Sized Up Quotes & Sayings

I rented Ghostbusters, my all-time favorite inspirational movie. I picked up some microwave, popcorn, a KitKat, a bag of bite-sized Reese's peanut butter cups, and a box of instant hot chocolate with marshmallows. Do I know how to have a good time, or what? — Janet Evanovich

I wonder if all mothers feel like this the moment they realize their daughters are growing up- as if it is impossible to believe that the laundry I once folded for her was doll-sized; as if I can still see her dancing in lazy pirouettes along the lip of the sandbox. Wasn't it yesterday that her hand was only as big as the sand dollar she found on the beach? That same hand, the one that's holding a boy's; wasn't it just holding mine, tugging so that I might stop and see the spiderweb, the milkweed pod, any of a thousand moments she wanted me to freeze? Time is an optical illusion- never quite as solid or strong as we think it is. You would assume that, given everything, I saw this coming. But watching Kate watch this boy, I see I have a thousand things to learn. — Jodi Picoult

Our twenties can be like living beyond time. When we graduate from school, we leave behind the only lives we have ever known, ones that have been neatly packaged in semester-sized chunks with goals nestled within. Suddenly, life opens up and the syllabi are gone. There are days and weeks and months and years, but no clear way to know when or why any one thing should happen. It can be a disorienting, cave-like existence. As one twentysomething astutely put it, The twentysomething years are a whole new way of thinking about time. There's this big chunk of time and a whole bunch of stuff that needs to happen somehow. — Meg Jay

I'm getting chocolate. I need you. Come over." She hung up, hoping he would get the message. A binge was coming, get help.
Inside the store, she blew past the small plastic shopping baskets not made for heavy lifting, and wheeled the full-sized grocery cart over to the holiday aisle. One of the wheels dragged like a conscience, pulling the cart halfheartedly in the direction of the fresh produce. The other wheels squealed in protest. — Ann Wertz Garvin

Many different kinds of sprouts lay torn. Green, purple and orange leaves lay scattered across the dark soil, and the thorn fence surrounding the bed had a fist-sized hole in it. Teacher eased himself into a squat, poked at the inside of the hole. Whatever made the hole had left blood on the thorns. The sprouts looked like wispy ghosts, pale and broken. Their delicate leaves and stems were riddled with bites. Life drained out of them like water dripping from a hanging cloth, and a breeze made them dance sadly. It felt like a funeral.
Teacher picked up a gnawed berry and gently squeezed it until purple juice dripped down his thumb. He placed the berry by the plant's roots.
Chandi's small face bunched up. "Are they dead?"
"They're dying, yes." Yuvali took her hand. "But their bodies will help other plants grow. — B.T. Lowry

Chaos that closely resembled panic awaited.

Shuttles raced to the presumed safety of the planet below while fighters crisscrossed the perimeter of the station. Platoon-sized formations of frigates and several cruisers formed up and accelerated away. To where the approaching attackers were located?

She didn't give a damn what her mother said in public. This was a bona fide insurrection. — G.S. Jennsen

Though Mrs. Fontaine smiled, I couldn't help but wonder if she'd sized me up and found me lacking. — Beth Hoffman

MacKenzie started to look frightened and Valor looked like he was going to kill somebody if they didn't stop scaring his girlfriend. At the same time, Victor looked like he was ready to step in and take control of the situation. And if these suits decided to pull out some guns, I could see where they might end up as a set of life-sized garden gnomes. — Taylor Longford

It's easy to romanticize the people in our lives that mean something to us. We elevate them onto a higher plane that the rest of humanity. They appear glorious and pristine and full of wonders of the Universe all wrapped up into one person-sized box waiting to be unpacked. It's easy to forget, when they appear perfect in every way and in every facet of their lives with every action they take, in the end they are still human. And we duly forget being human comes with an inherent composition of flaws in our genetic and mental make-up. — August Clearwing

This is Tez Jones," I said. "He's a police detective from Tampa."
"Oh, my," said Martha, blinking up at him. "Is something wrong?"
"Nope," said Tez, grinning at her and offering a saucy wink. "I'm just the boyfriend."
"Well, then." She sized him up, and nodded."It's about time Elizabeth found someone who deserved her."
"I worship at her dainty feet. — Michele Bardsley

I just got an apartment here in Nashville, and I invested in a Queen-sized bed because I'm like, "I haven't had a big bed since I was a kid." I woke up this morning on one side, like, in "coffin position." — Lzzy Hale

In nature, improbabilities are the one stock in trade. The whole creation is one lunatic fringe. If creation had been left up to me, I'm sure I wouldn't have had the imagination or courage to do more than shape a single, reasonably sized atom, smooth as a snowball, and let it go at that. — Annie Dillard

But Urdda stood firm. 'Where do you come from, sir?'
'I come' - the littlee-man stalked towards her in a way that might have been menacing, had he been full-sized - 'from Smelly-bumhole Land. You may call me Mister Odiferous. Up through the arse of the world I come here, and when I'm finished I will squeeze myself back out it. — Margo Lanagan

Pete Berman sized up his competition like a predator lining up its prey. Gerry Williams dribbled once with his left hand, stopped on a dime, and nailed an open 15-footer. He had played on the Fellingwood Varsity Basketball Team since his freshman year, and was now a 16 year-old boy in a man's body. Pete sat on a board of the old splinter-ridden, wooden stands fixed on Gerry, but he was unable to defend his turf. His team was losing badly again, and the waiting was pure agony. — Phil Wohl

Seeing your mother naked is not something you easily recover from. Seeing your mother naked and jumping from one side of a king-sized bed to the other with a nurse's hat on while your father, who is also naked, is chasing her with a bandanna around his neck, is reason to put yourself up for adoption. — Chelsea Handler

The door swung open and three pint-sized...hookers...stared up at him, their glitter-glossed smiles slowly disappearing from their over painted faces. — Samanthe Beck

Now, no complaining, Waxillium. It will help. I've put the list in this little book," Steris said, producing a palm-sized notebook, "for ease of reference. Each page contains a conversation opener, indexed to the people it will likely work best upon. The numbers below list ways you could segue the conversation into useful areas and perhaps figure out what our targets are up to, and what their connection is to the Bands of Mourning."
"I'm not socially incompetent, Steris," Wax said. "I can make small talk."
"I know that," Steris said, "but I'd rather avoid an incident like the Cett party. ... "
"Which Cett party?"
"The one where you head-butted someone."
He cocked his head. "Oh, right. That smarmy little man with the ridiculous mustache. — Brandon Sanderson

I'm very powerful, Ivy. I've told you that a hundred thousand times before, but you probably just ignored me. Big things come in small packages."

"That . . . explains nothing," I stated.

He cocked his head to the side. "Well, I am kind of like a house elf."

"Oh my God!" I shrieked, jumping off the couch. "You are not a house elf! This isn't the wizarding world of fucked up! You're fully grown. Likeman-sized grown."

"I'm going to pretend you did not speak of the wizarding world in such a tone,'" he replied snottily. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Tavish could tell he was being sized up. And by the narrowing of Joseph's eyes, he recognized Tavish's intent as well. They stood, eyeing one another for several long and silent moments. Tavish had not intended to pursue Katie in the least. Now, it seemed, he had a rival. Joseph Archer was infuriatingly difficult to read. Was it confidence that kept him so at ease? Joseph did have the advantage. Katie lived in his house. He could see her, talk to her every day. Joseph was wealthy, with the air of class and money about him. Tavish had none of those things. And though Katie had warmed to him a bit, he didn't yet feel she'd entirely shed her wariness of him. — Sarah M. Eden

My favorite showed Mimi and Deke doing the twist at a school dance. She looked like she was having fun; he looked like a man with a fair-sized stick up his ass. — Stephen King

Theseus put his club aside. He approached the Pine Bender and sized up the situation. He wasn't as strong as Sinis. He didn't have the ability to root himself to the earth. He didn't even have a plan. But he glanced over at the girl Perigune, and his distractible brain started racing. A girl in the trees. A girl. A tree. Trees have spirits. I'm hungry. Wow, Sinis smells bad. A dryad. I bet the dryads in these trees are really tired of getting bent. Hey, there's a chipmunk. — Rick Riordan

Her words had the intended effect. The Roman officers laughed nervously. Some sized up Ella, then looked at Octavian and snorted. The idea of a chicken lady issuing prophecies was apparently just as ridiculous to Romans as it was to Greeks. "I, uh ... " Octavian dropped his teddy bear. "No, but - — Rick Riordan

Being large and muscular, you are not taken very seriously as an actor. When bigger roles come up and the actor needs to be muscular they tend to cast a regular sized actor and get him to hit the weight program as opposed to hiring an actor who's already muscular and developed in that area. — James Preston Rogers

Then, while Cinnamon straightened up the kitchen as usual, Nutmeg and I sat at a small table, drinking tea. She ate only one slice of toast, with a little butter. Outside, a cold, sleety rain was falling. Nutmeg said little, and I said little - a few remarks about the weather. She seemed to have something she wanted to say, though. That much was clear from the look on her face and the way she spoke. She tore off stamp-sized pieces of toast and transported them, one at a time, to her mouth. We looked out at the rain now and then, as if it were our longtime mutual friend. — Haruki Murakami

I sized Seth up. As usual his khaki pants were pristine, perfectly pressed, not a dirt stain in sight. Seth Allen had to be the only person on the planet who could make it through pitch-black underground tunnels without getting a speck of dirt on his pants, but give the kid a jelly donut, and jam would end up in places jam had absolutely no right to be. — Lisa Roecker

I will lift mine eyes unto the pills. Almost everyone takes them, from the humble aspirin to the multi-colored, king-sized three deckers, which put you to sleep, wake you up, stimulate and soothe you all in one. It is an age of pills. — Malcolm Muggeridge

People make mistakes all the time. Small ones, like you get in the wrong checkout line. The one with the lady with a hundred coupons and a checkbook.

Sometimes you make medium-sized ones. You go to medical school instead of pursuing you passion.

Sometimes you make big ones.

You give up. — Nicola Yoon

The past plummeting towards me like a vulture-dropped hand to become what-purifies-and-sets-me-free, because now as I look up there is a feeling at the back of my head and after that there is only a tiny but infinite moment of utter clarity while I tumble forwards to prostrate myself before my parents' funeral pyre, a minuscule but endless instant of knowing, before I am stripped of past present memory time shame and love, a fleeting but also timeless explosion in which I bow my head yes I acquiesce yes in the necessity of the blow, and then I am empty and free, because all the Saleems go pouring out of me, from the baby who appeared in jumbo-sized front-page baby-snaps to the eighteen-year-old with his filthy dirty love, pouring out goes shame and guilt and wanting-to-please and needing-to-be-loved and determined-to-find-a-historical-role and growing-too-fast, I am free — Salman Rushdie

I was already becoming a woman who sized up another one fast - I was becoming typical. — Lorrie Moore

Violet lay next to me and I scooted over, making room for the two of us on the twin-sized bed. She took my hand in hers, slowly and deliberately threading our fingers together, like she used to do when we were little girls. And just like that, I felt six years old again, with my eight-year-old sister next to me, shaking in fear as we listened to one of Momma's tirades outside our bedroom. My eyes flooded with tears while I gripped her hand, hanging on for dear life. Violet softly hummed the old lullaby she made up years ago, the one she used to sing to me when I was scared or sad. I drifted off to sleep, — Denise Grover Swank

Oh, girl! He's got a big one," the fortune teller exclaimed, her dark eyes briefly flickering up to Violet's face before returning back to the cards spread out in front of her. She paused for a moment as she studied them, her pointer finger tapping against her jaw. Finally, she added, "Just like a summer sausage, and I'm not talking about the snack-sized ones. And it's attached to a body that could put Dwayne Johnson to shame. What women could resist a package like that? I'd say the future is definitely going to be bright ... at least for you. — Rose Wynters

I am the girl who prefers to send her Friday night curled up with her pillow, reading a good novel, and I am also the girl who likes to go out on a Saturday night and dance until the DJ plays his last song. I am the girl who wants to wear beat up converses and an over-sized sweatshirt, and I am also the girl who owns over sixty dresses and too many shoes to count. Why did it become okay to say one is better than the other? Because I am all of that. — Ming Liu

Oh my God, look!"
I stand and hold out my hand for Sam to inspect.
"Wow," he says, taking the glass and holding it up to the sun. "Red is, like, the rarest color there is.
You're totally lucky you even saw it."
I take the deep red, half-dollar-sized piece from him and smile, looking out across the ocean. I told Matt in my letter before we left that I'd find a piece just for him, but now that it's actually here, sparkling in my hand, I know he'd want me to do something else with it.
I raise it above my head and throw it as hard and as far as I can into the sea.
Let someone else have a lucky day, Anna.
Sam laughs. "Hey, crazy, what'd you do that for? You'll probably never see something like that again in your entire life."
"Right. But I did see it. And now someone else can, too. — Sarah Ockler

What doesn't work is when we adopt some TEMPORARY habits, lose some weight and then pick our previous habits back up. Surprise, surprise. The weight always returns. Live one way, lose weight. Live another way, gain weight. Hhhmmm...how curious.

What also doesn't work is lying to yourself about what you ate and then falling into a crying heap on the scale, playing the victim. Poor you. Never mind you ate three biscuits with butter before your dinner even hit the table at Billy Bob's Feed trough last night--it was only a salad. Never mind you gobbled down five handfuls of M&Ms off the receptionist's desk between trips to the break room for a soda--it was diet! Never mind you drove through Coffee Planet on the way to work and downed a 32 oz. Italian-named mocha-choca-ya-ya worth a day's calories in some starving nations--you skipped the whipped cream and said "no thanks" to the Chihuahua-sized muffin.

I'm telling you, diets work. — Shannon Sorrels

Tengo chopped a lot of ginger to a fine consistency. Then he sliced some celery and mushrooms into nice-sized pieces. The Chinese parsley, too, he chopped up finely. He peeled the shrimp and washed them at the sink. Spreading a paper towel, he laid the shrimp out in neat rows, like troops in formation. When the edamame were finished boiling, he drained them in a colander and left them to cool. Next he warmed a large frying pan and dribbled in some sesame oil and spread it over the bottom. He slowly fried the chopped ginger over a low flame. — Haruki Murakami

History and experience ought to teach us to be suspicious of Goliaths, because the very thing that makes the giant so terrifying is also the source of his weakness. David understood that, as he sized up his opponent long ago in the Valley of Elah. And in a different time and in a very different age, — Malcolm Gladwell

Irma, she said. But I had started to walk away. I heard her say some more things but by then I had yanked my skirt up and was running down the road away from her and begging the wind to obliterate her voice. She wanted to live with me. She missed me. She wanted me to come back home. She wanted to run away. She was yelling all this stuff and I wanted so badly for her to shut up. She was quiet for a second and I stopped running and turned around once to look at her. She was a thimble-sized girl on the road, a speck of a living thing. Her white-blond hair flew around her head like a small fire and it was all I could see because everything else about her blended in with the countryside.
He offered you a what? she yelled.
An espresso! I yelled back. It was like yelling at a shorting wire or a burning bush.
What is it? she said.
Coffee! I yelled.
Irma, can I come and live
I turned around again and began to run. — Miriam Toews

They talk like people, he thought, who have kept the huddled-up secrets of their guilts and inadequacies to themselves for a long time, only to discover that these things, when verbalized, were only life-sized after all. — Stephen King

Her eyes slid to Daniel. His fingers did a fast hunt-and-peck across the keyboard as his brows furrowed. The glow of the screen lit his face in the inadequately lit room. He had a nice profile. Long dark lashes that swept up and down as he typed, the perfect sized nose, a strong jaw, freshly shaven. His lips were nice too. Gently rounded peaks, set far apart. His lower lip was generous. Good kissing lips. He pursed them now. Jade jerked her eyes away. What are you doing, Jade? That's Daniel. She'd never noticed his nose or his long lashes, to say nothing of his lips - or had thoughts of kissing them. It was the hormones. They were doing weird things to her. Making her think crazy thoughts. Thoughts — Denise Hunter

She knew it was crazy. That was a given. She had a balloon-sized head covered by a scarf while rocking a uniboob. Her cat was orbiting her, while hissing, at top speed.
It just figures at this point. There's a rain cloud fucking me up the ass. Don't panic, she told herself.
Her brain ran around, scraping at her skull and trying to get out of the horror instead.
Be someone else!
The two men stood, stunned stupid by her elaborate costume. Both jumped when
Dove opened her mouth to speak.
"I'm Lotsa Vampersex!" She'd increased her volume and cranked up the pitch of her voice in an effort to disguise herself.
Duke recovered first. "Hey, are you, like, hosting Voldemort's half-dead body or are you just into freakier stuff than I thought? — Debra Anastasia

Like everyone he knew, Luka possessed a wide assortment of pocket-sized alternate-reality boxes, and spent much of his spare time leaving his own world to enter the rich, colorful, musical, challenging universes inside these boxes, universes in which death was temporary (until you made too many mistakes and it became permanent) and a life was a thing you could win, or save up for, or just be miraculously granted because you happened to bump your head into the right brick, or eat the right mushroom, or pass through the right magic waterfall, and you could store up as many lives as your skill and good fortune could get you. — Salman Rushdie

There are no medium-sized trees in the deep forest. There are only the towering ones, whose canopy spreads across the sky. Below, in the gloom, there's light for nothing but mosses and ferns. But when a giant falls, leaving a little space ... then there's a race - between the trees on either side, who want to spread out, and the seedlings below, who race to grow up. Sometimes, you can make your own space. — Terry Pratchett

and well-informed insights into their insular world. We all took our seats as a picture of a smiling Paul Verdun in toque was projected up onto screens. White jackets streamed from the kitchen: the amuse-bouche, a shot glass filled with a bite-sized baby octopus cooked in its "natural essence," extra virgin olive oil from Puglia, and a single — Richard C. Morais

I'd asked Tink about good fae when I got home. He'd been busy on my computer, creating If Daryl Dies We Riot memes. He'd genuinely appeared confused by my line of questioning. According to my pint-sized roommate, all fae were bad. There was no such thing as a good fae. Something had occurred to me while I'd watched him concentrate, the white glare from my computer lighting up his face. "Do you ever leave this house, Tink? Go anywhere?" He'd frowned up at me like I'd asked him why I should watch The Walking Dead. "Why would I leave? This place has everything I need, and if it doesn't, I can order it from Amazon." He'd paused. "Though, on second thought, we could use a live-in chef, because you can't cook for shit. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

The world is not checking in with us to see what skills we've picked up, what idea we've concocted, what dreams we carry in our hearts. When a job opens, whether it's in the chorus line or on the assembly line, it goes to the person standing there. It goes to the eager beaver the boss sees when he looks up from his work: the pint-sized kid standing at the basketball court on the playground waiting for one of the older boys to head home. "Hey, kid, wanna play?" — Chris Matthews

Mr. Clark," she repeated, looking up at him. "You are very tall."
"And you," he said in a low voice, "you, my most maddeningly beautiful, brilliant, Free. You are perfectly sized. If you Mr. Clark me once more, I shall be forced to do something dreadful, something like kiss you in public."
Even her wildest fantasies had not had him saying something like that on arrival. She squeezed his hands and then looked up into his dark eyes.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Clark," she said. "What did you say, Mr. Clark? Mr. Clark, I fear that I have become rather hard of hearing. The noise of the press is terribly distracting. What was that you said you'd do if I called you Mr. Clark? — Courtney Milan

Lying flat, the small mound of their child nearly disappeared,with only a palm-sized hardness palpable below her navel. Darcy murmured nonsense over this evidence of their love, tickling Lizzy's skin so that she giggled and squirmed.
"What are you saying to him, love?"
"I am informing him that he has been gifted to the very best mother in the entire world. Also, I am reintroducing myself and thanking him for finally allowing me to feel him. If need be, I shall squeeze him several times a day. He can kick me whenever the whim takes him!" He glanced up into her mirth-filled face. — Sharon Lathan

It popped up on my Outlook calendar, flagged in red like an inflamed pimple full of infected bureaucratic pus ... I've been trying desperately to get it shifted, but no, it is stuck like a king-sized dildo in a guinea pig. — Charles Stross

At the Sandwich Islands, Kaahumanu, the gigantic old dowager queen - a woman of nearly four hundred pounds weight, and who is said to be still living at Mowee - was accustomed, in some of her terrific gusts of temper, to snatch up an ordinary sized man who had offended her, and snap his spine across her knee. Incredible as this may seem, it is a fact. While at Lahainaluna - the residence of this monstrous Jezebel - a humpbacked wretch was pointed out to me, who, some twenty-five years previously, had had the vertebrae of his backbone very seriously discomposed by his gentle mistress. The — Herman Melville

Perhaps you're a parent and you bought this book to learn how to raise an achievement-oriented, drug-free adult virgin ... The essential ingredients, I can tell you up front, are a strong father figure, bad skin, and a child-sized colonial-lady outfit. — Tina Fey

When Rita asked Tabin to change places with her and operate on the next patient, he did his best to impress her, but the first incision with the point of his blade brought a grunt of disapproval.
'Try not to jab at the patient like you're killing a pig,' Rita said. 'Let your hand widen the wound gently.'
Tabin pictured the way fencers held their foils as they sized up opponents, swaying gently side to side, and attempted to send that image to receptors in the fine muscles of his fingers, so that they enlarged the opening one delicate cut at a time.
'Much better, Doctor Geoff,' Rita said. 'If you keep this up, you'll hardly blind anybody. — David Oliver Relin

Not long after he and Margaret were married, he'd complimented her on a pot of yellow blossoms near the front door. She'd laughed, and blushed, and then confessed that weeks earlier, watching him walk around the vegetable garden, she'd slipped out, dug up a brick-sized clump of earth which held the clear impression of his right foot, and tucked it into the flower pot. In that earth she'd planted a chrysanthemum, hoping that as it bloomed year after year so would his love for her. How should he marry again, after that? — Andrea Barrett

You see, Christ's purpose can't be derailed by your limitations or troubles. Your difficulties will not trip Him up or cause Him delays. Painful trials, which may bring you to your knees will not baffle our Creator. He has a God-sized dream waiting for you to accomplish. His majestic plan is sovereign. Ultimately, He could use anything to graciously lead you to victory. — Dana Arcuri

Gary looked back at Lartin and sized him up. Then he did that thing that I swear only unicorns can do. His blue eyes got impossibly big. His eyelashes lengthened as he fluttered them at Lartin. His mane was luminous in the darkened cave, and he purred, Well aren't you precious. — T.J. Klune

submission would be, because I'd really earned it." "Oh, please. You have so many rules, your rules have rules. Any woman who dared to date you would need an encyclopedia-sized book to keep up. — Lisa Renee Jones

Boys are found everywhere- on top of, underneath, inside of, climbing on, swinging from, running around or jumping to. Mothers love them, little girls hate them, older sisters and brothers tolerated them, adults ignore them and Heaven protects them. A boy is Truth with dirt on its face, Beauty with a cut on its finger, Wisdom with bubble gum in its hair and the Hope of the future with a frog in its pocket. A boy is a magical creature- you can lock out of your workshop, but you can't lock him out of your heart. You can get him out of your study, but you can't get him out of your mind. Might as well give up- he is your captor, your jailor, your boss and your master- a freckled-faced, pint-sized, cat-chasing bundle of noise. But when you come home at night with only the shattered pieces of your hopes and dreams, he can mend them like new with two magic words- 'Hi, Dad! — Alan Beck

Living like this means you don't have a container anymore for the different days, can't hold in a little twenty-four-hour-sized box set of events that constitute a unit, something you can compartmentalize, something with a beginning and an end, something to fill with a to-do list. Living like this means that it all runs together, a cold and bright December morning with your father or a lazy evening in late August, one of those sunsets that seem to take longer than is possible, where the sun just refuses to go down, where the hour seems to elongate to the point that it doesn't seem like it can stretch any farther without detaching completely from the hour before it, like a piece of taffy, like under sea molten lava forming a new island, a piece of time detaching from the seafloor and floating up to the surface. — Charles Yu

Mine was bright green with gold swirls. Adam's was black.
"You have no imagination," I told him smugly. "It wouldn't hurt if you found a pink ball to bowl with."
"All the pink balls have kid-sized holes in them," he told me. "The black balls are the heaviest."
I opened my mouth, but he shut me up with a kiss. "Not here," he said. "Look next to us."
We were being observed by a boy of about five and a toddler in a frilly pink dress.
I raised my nose in the air. "As if I were going to joke about your ball. How juvenile. — Patricia Briggs

Any business that wanted to set up shop inside the OASIS had to rent or purchase virtual real estate (which Morrow dubbed "surreal estate") from GSS. Anticipating this, the company had set aside Sector One as the simulation's designated business zone and began to sell and rent millions of blocks of surreal estate there. City-sized shopping malls were erected in the blink of an eye, and storefronts spread across planets like time-lapse footage of mold devouring an orange. Urban development had never been so easy. — Ernest Cline

Arriane sized her up, tapping one finger against her lips. "Perfect," she said, stepping forward to loop her arm through Luce's. "I was just thinking I could really use a new slave. — Lauren Kate

King-sized? It would take up all my space. I need wide-open spaces.
She glanced at Kane for help, but he was rolling around on a matress and moaning in a loud, orgasmic manner. She rolled her eyes and heaved a sigh. — Christine Feehan

The Golden Snitch is walnut-sized, as was the Golden Snidget. It is bewitched to evade capture as long as possible. There is a tale that a Golden Snitch evaded capture for six months on Bodmin Moor in 1884, both teams finally giving up in disgust at their Seekers' poor performances. Cornish wizards familiar with the area insist to this day that the Snitch is still living wild on the moor, though I have not been able to confirm this story. — J.K. Rowling

It's happening everywhere; commercial and housing development, along with the road network needed to support it, is the single greatest pressure on natural landscapes in the United States, and by its very pervasiveness the hardest to control. Between 1982 and 1997, developed land in the forty-eight contiguous states increased by 25 million acres - meaning a quarter of all the open land lost since European settlement disappeared in just those fifteen years. This isn't a trend, it's a juggernaut, and the worst may be yet to come. At this pace, by 2025 there will be 68 million more rural acres in development, an area about the size of Wyoming, and the total developed land in the United States will stand at a Texas-sized 174 million acres. Already, just the impervious covering we put on the land, the things like roads, sidewalks, and buildings we pave with asphalt or concrete, adds up to an area the size of Ohio.3 — Scott Weidensaul

Seventeen, eh!" said Hagrid as he accepted a bucket-sized glass of wine from Fred.
"Six years to the day we met, Harry, d'yeh remember it?"
"Vaguely," said Harry, grinning up at him. "Didn't you smash down the front door, give Dudley a pig's tail, and tell me I was a wizard?"
"I forge' the details," Hagrid chortled. — J.K. Rowling

We need to reach the millions who live in cities, the hundreds of thousands in industrial centers, the tens of thousands in medium-sized towns, the thousands in small towns, and the hundreds in villages
all these at once. Like a volcanic eruption, a spiritual revolution needs to spread through the country, to spur people to crucial decisions. People have to recognize the futility of splitting life up into politics, economics, the humanities, and religion. We must be awakened to a life in which all of these things are completely integrated. — Eberhard Arnold

We are turning into a nation of whimpering slaves to Fear - fear of war, fear of poverty, fear of random terrorism, fear of getting down-sized or fired because of the plunging economy, fear of getting evicted for bad debts or suddenly getting locked up in a military detention camp on vague charges of being a Terrorist sympathizer. — Hunter S. Thompson

On a cloudy day, when the dim dance of the firelight and the warmth of the sconces are not enough, the books shed their own form of light. By the hundreds, they fill the shelves that stretch across every inch of exposed wall. They rise up to the ceiling, warriors of an impenetrable army, encircling my over-sized armchair and keeping me safe as they whisper their stories softly in my ear. — Kelseyleigh Reber

For only when I err do I get away from what I know and what I understand. If "truth" were what I can understand, it would end up being but a small truth, my-sized. Truth must reside precisely in what I shall never understand. — Clarice Lispector

The bushes are thick and smell like unripe bananas. Stiff branches and monster-sized leaves block the path, but I walk forward anyway, praying I don't end up falling off a cliff because I can't see where I'm going. I fully comprehend right now why those explorers on TV walk through the jungle dramatically whacking at leaves with three-foot-long machetes. I never thought I'd need one in LA. — Rachel A. Marks

In Santa Fe her whole yard had been crowded with different-sized terra-cotta pots, out of which she grew everything from rosemary and lavender to ornamental pear and plum trees and even peppers, although they were not particularly popular with the bees.
In Colorado she'd created a fertile oasis out of old gas cans and cut-off oil drums. Her neighbors had been skeptical to begin with but once her creepers grew up and her flowers draped down and her shrubs fluffed out, the junkyard ugly duckling was transformed into the proverbial backyard swan. — Sarah-Kate Lynch

Lincoln found himself in a stifling courtroom one hot summer day, pleading his client's case. The opposing lawyer, in a concession to the oppressive heat, took off his coat and vest as the debate went on. The man's shirt had its buttons in the back, a style which was unusual even then. Lincoln looked at his opponent and sized up the man's apparel. Knowing that the rural jury disliked pretension of any kind, or any attempt to show superior social rank, he said: "Gentlemen of the jury, having justice on my side, I don't think you will be at all influenced by the gentleman's pretended knowledge of the law, when you see he does not even know which side of his shirt should be in front." The jury burst into laughter, and Lincoln won the case. — Rriiver Nyile

There's increasing consciousness that a "command and control" style of management which one associates with a male model isn't necessarily what works anymore, especially with small to medium sized companies. There's increasing evidence that a more flexible management style, where responsibility is distributed up and down the line, is what works best. And that kind of management style is one that will allow individual workers more flexibility - men and women. — Betty Friedan

My favorite chick was the tawny-colored Buff Orpington. She promised to one day be a bodacious plus-sized model of a chicken, wearing fluffy pantaloons under full feathery skirts and with as charming a personality as her appearance suggested. Predictably named Buffy, she didn't mind being handled and rather seemed to enjoy the company, clucking softly with a closed beak as I picked her up and stroked her silky feathers. — Lucie B. Amundsen

Every town has a psychopath or two. Not just the everyday crazy person, either. Not like Crazy Larry, the paint huffing weirdo peddling around town on a child-sized Huffy ranting about the end of the world, or the old lady dressed in rags who hands out filthy doll clothes to the kiddies. I'm talking about the cold, never remorseful lunatic, who may never have seemed insane up until the day he hacked apart his mother and shoved her stinking corpse into the attic. This town is overflowing with them; bloodcurdling murderers like Kenny Wayne Hilbert, Charlie Fender ... Orland Winthro. And Al, the crazy had to come from somewhere. — Nikki Ferguson

This memory was both happy and sad: happy because it was so pleasant, and sad because it made Penelope think about how much she missed Swanburne
the girls, the teachers, Miss Mortimer. Or perhaps it was her own much younger self, that pint-sized person whom she could never be again, whom she missed. It was hard to say. — Maryrose Wood

Most times a person grows up gradually, but I found myself in a hurry ... Hoping to find an answer, I uncovered an article about the common goldfish. "Kept in a small bowl, the goldfish will remain small. With more space, the fish will double, triple, or quadruple in size." It occurred to me then that I was intended for larger things. After all, a giant man can't have an ordinary-sized life. — John August

I read a study once about sleep deprivation. The researchers made cat-sized islands of sand in the middle of a pool of water, then placed very tired cats on top of them. At first, the cats curled up perfectly on the sand and slept, but eventually they'd sprawl out and wake up in water. I can't remember what they were trying to prove exactly. All I took away was that the cats went crazy. — Jenny Offill

Let's say that you could carry around a perfect copy of a three-dimensional realization of a Caravaggio painting (or if your tastes are more modern make it a Picasso). You would carry a small box in your pocket, and whenever you wanted, you could press a button and the box would open up into life-sized glory and show you the picture. You would bring it to all the parties you attended. The peak of the culture of the seventeenth century (or say the 1920s if you prefer Picasso) would be at your disposal. Alternatively, let's say you could carry around in your pocket an iPhone. That gives you thousands of songs, a cell phone, access to personal photographs, YouTube, email, and web access, among many other services, not to mention all the applications that have not yet been written. You will have a strong connection to the contemporary culture of small bits. — Tyler Cowen

Krakatoa, spelled "Krakatau" in Indonesian, is a volcano in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra. It is also the name of an island group made up of what is left of a larger island, consisting of three volcanic peaks that were destroyed by the catastrophic 1883 eruption. This explosive force was equivalent to 100,000 Hiroshima sized atomic bombs. It was the loudest sound ever heard in modern history and could be heard up to 3,000 miles away. At that time, the explosion caused huge tsunamis which killed more than 36,000 people and sent out shock waves that were recorded worldwide for almost a week. Years later in 1927, "Anak Krakatau" a new island mountain formed in its place and is again the location of volcanic activity. It is considered a part of the Pacific "Ring of Fire. — Hank Bracker

[The kakapo] is an extremely fat bird. A good-sized adult will weigh about six or seven pounds, and its wings are just about good for waggling a bit if it thinks it's about to trip over something - but flying is out of the question. Sadly, however, it seems that not only has the kakapo forgotten how to fly, but it has forgotten that it has forgotten how to fly. Apparently a seriously worried kakapo will sometimes run up a tree and jump out of it, whereupon it flies like a brick and lands in a graceless heap on the ground. — Douglas Adams

Molly and Armitage ate in silence, while Case sawed shakily at his steak, reducing it to uneaten bite-sized fragments, which he pushed around in the rich sauce, finally abandoning the whole thing. 'Jesus,' Molly said, her own plate empty, 'gimme that. You know what this costs?' She took his plate. 'They gotta raise a whole animal for years and then they kill it. This isn't vat stuff.' She forked a mouthful up and chewed. 'Not — William Gibson

Shut up. You have to know you're a bombshell. Sure, maybe travel-sized, but beautiful nonetheless. You're proportioned just right. Trust me. Girl are jealous of your knockers and ass. — Tiffany King

Far from erupting all over them, clinging like Greek fire for a moment, then leaping away to safety, Sir Mordred sized up his prey in the leisurely manner of a much older cat, taking all the time necessary to unsheathe his claws, blow on them, adjust for windage and elevation, and finally reach out to draw them daintily down Nicholas' left leg from calf to ankle, like a bear marking a tree. And he looked upon his work, saw that it was good - four neat slits in the red hose, and scratched skin showing through - and he sat back, deeply content, and said, "Rao. — Peter S. Beagle

Ebola, that little bastard of a bug, had popped up earlier in the summer in Sierra Leone in the worst outbreak in history. Was it possible that global warming had changed something important about the ecological balance in Africa and turned it into an optimal, continent-sized petri dish for breeding that virus? — Bobby Adair

The U.K. outside of the European Union will end up being a mid-sized economy, somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, in neither America nor Europe. — Mark Rutte

Coyotes don't eat dachshunds," Johnson said. "Dachshunds were bred to go down badger tunnels and drag the badgers out by their ass. A good-sized dachshund could weigh thirty pounds and has jaws like a crocodile. Old Dixie would straight-out fuck up a coyote." "Didn't know that," Virgil said. - — John Sandford

Marta Jolicoeur: We all learned how to ride from George and had wonderful riding careers but more than that, George taught us how to be successful in life...George had us all sized up. He used to tell me that I'm a worrier and he was right! I used to get rally nervous in the ring when I was about fifteen, and he made me go around the ring, reciting out loud, 'I know I'm going to see a distance. It might be a little short or a little long, but I know I'm going to see something.' I would have to say it loud over and over again on course... — George H. Morris

My fat years were when I was not human shaped. I was a 16-stone triangle, with inverted triangle legs, and no real neck. And that's because I wasn't doing human things. I didn't walk or run or dance or swim or climb up stairs; the food I ate wasn't the stuff that humans are supposed to eat. No one is supposed to eat a pound of boiled potatoes covered in Vitalite, or a fist-sized lump of cheese on the end of a fork, wielded like a lollipop. I had no connection to or understanding of my body. I was just a brain in a jar. I wasn't a woman. — Caitlin Moran

Leo!" Jason was shaking his shoulder. "Hey, man, why are you hugging Nike?"
Leo's eyes fluttered open. His arms were wrapped around the human-sized statue in Athena's hand. He must have been thrashing in his sleep. He clung to the victory goddess like he used to cling to his pillow when he had nightmares as a kid. (Man, that had been so embarrassing in the foster homes.)
He disentangled himself and sat up, rubbing his face.
"Nothing," he muttered. "We were just cuddling. — Rick Riordan

At the end of our visit, Fleisher agreed to play something on my piano, a beautiful old 1894 Bechstein concert grand that I had grown up with, my father's piano. Fleisher sat at the piano and carefully, tenderly, stretched each finger in turn, and then, with arms and hands almost flat, he started to play. He played a piano transcription of Bach's "Sheep May Safely Graze," as arranged for piano by Egon Petri. Never in its 112 years, I thought, had this piano been played by such a master-I had the feeling that Fleisher has sized up the piano's character and perhaps its idiosyncrasies within seconds, that he had matched his playing to the instrument, to bring out its greatest potential, its particularity. Fleisher seemed to distill the beauty, drop by drop, like an alchemist, into flowing notes of an almost unbearable beauty-and, after this, there was nothing more to be said. — Oliver Sacks

maybe she should take out a book and read, for it don't make no sense to just lean against the shop front, doing nothing, and she start to search in her bag, when she hear Pansy shout, "Lord Jesus! Oh God, help me!" Pansy bawling for help louder and louder, so Grace get frighten. She drop her schoolbag, run quick into the shop, and push on the door to the back room with all her might. After a couple tries, it fly open. Staring at her are one pair of feet with brown socks, one pair of feet with no socks, four legs with no covering and Mortimer's bare bottom rising and falling with a motion that remind her of when he was using the saw. Grace look, turn right around, march out, pick up her school bag, and start walking home. First she is furious with Pansy, but then she start to laugh. Mortimer have a nice body, but he is short. Pansy is a good-sized girl. Grace remember Gramps say, "Tiny insects pollinate sizeable flowers, — Pamela Mordecai

If any of you are injured, take a seat in this fine classroom." Dee opens up the nearest door and peeks in. It's a classroom with a life-sized skeleton hanging on a stand. "Bones will keep you company while you wait for the doctor. — Susan Ee

You're literally sized up with measuring tape as a 13- or 14-year-old girl. I wanted to opt out of that experience. — Mary Elizabeth Winstead

The constant need to move on, and to document progress, in normal schools means that education tends to be cut up into bite sized task.. — Guy Claxton

The villagers were speeding up the circling of events because she was too shortsighted to see that her infidelity had already harmed the village, the waves of consequences would return unpredictably, sometimes in disguise, as now, to hurt her. This roundness had to be made coin-sized so that she would see is circumference: punish her at the birth of her baby. Awaken her to the inexorable. People who refused fatalism because they could invent small resources insisted on culpability. Deny accidents and wrest fault from the stars. — Maxine Hong Kingston

I grimace, thinking someone should come up with a new phrase for 'I left the ocean without a kiwi-sized chunk of my lower-left butt cheek' to replace the rather nebulous term 'exploratory bite. — Elle Lothlorien

HIDEOUS! Sorry, Mom, but vomit green is NOT my colour. And that dress is impossible to walk in! It's so tight around my legs that it looks like a giant fish tail. While the other bridesmaids walked gracefully to the "Wedding March" song, I flopped my way down the aisle like a human-sized catfish or something! Those rug burns were pure agony! It was getting late and I was running out of time! The last thing I wanted to do was to traumatise Brandon by showing up at the dance looking like a MUTANT FISH GIRL or something. Right now I'm SO frustrated that I'm seriously considering just NOT going to the dance. Why is my life so hopelessly CRUDDY?! — Rachel Renee Russell

In seconds an 'up' elevator came rushing toward them. The doors opened, revealing a mostly-empty interior.
"Sometimes," he said, "you have to go up to go down."
Liv followed him in, marveling at the scene below them. She could see the full scope of Dragon Con from her bird's eye vantage, the floor a living mass of bodies. Tiny toy-sized people in cosplay moved in bright splotches of color ten stories down. And it wasn't just one section. The atrium level was equally packed, the hallways leading to ballrooms around the hotel teaming with people. With an unsettling rush, the elevator sprang upward, the figures shrinking into specks. Liv's stomach contracted and she pulled back from the glass. They were incredibly high. — Danika Stone

Cambodian dust whipped up in the wind and stuck to my clothes like clay. I put a hand between my face and the sun and blinked Phnom Penn dust from my tired eyes. One idea, drink, beamed light in all directions across my dark consciousness.
A slim lady walked toward me with a big smile and a bigger head. Her left hand rested on her waggling hips and her right hand rose above her head, limp-wristed, like she'd just thrown a winning ball toward a basket and was leaving her hand in the shot position. The lady walking toward me was a man. At least that much was clear, but the nature or our relationship was still a fog to me. She wore blue jeans and a white top accentuating her breasts, but her Adam's apple and cow sized hands revealed more in daylight than she could hide at night. — Craig Stone

Mrs. Ishida muttered, "Typical teenagers."
"Think they can take on the world," Mr. Ishida agreed.
"We did." Tristan's grandparents high fived. "And we won."
"You blew up the entire - "
"Mom, let it go." Logan shuffled his feet. Blake's uncle laughed.
"She's just still mad about - " He caught the pint-sized brunette's scathing look,
" - the thing that I agreed to never talk about. Ever."
A & E Kirk (2014-05-26). Drop Dead Demons: The Divinicus Nex Chronicles: Book 2 (Divinicus Nex Chronicles series) (p. 508). A&E Kirk. Kindle Edition. — A&E Kirk