Skids Quotes & Sayings

Ronald Reagan has a stack of three-by-five cards in his lap. He skids up a new one: "What advice do you, as the youngest American fighting man ever to win both the Navy Cross and the Silver Star, have for any young marines on their way to Guadalcanal?"
Shaftoe doesn't have to think very long. The memories are still as fresh as last night's eleventh nighmare: ten plucky Nips in Suicide Charge!
"Just kill the one with the sword first."
"Ah," Reagan says, raising his waxed and penciled eyebrows, and cocking his pompadour in Shaftoe's direction. "Smarrrt
you target them because they're the officers, right?"
"No, fuckhead!" Shaftoe yells. "You kill 'em because they've got fucking swords! You ever had anyone running at you waving a fucking sword? — Neal Stephenson

I've never been asked to appear on 'I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here!,' so I guess I mustn't be on the professional skids just yet. — Robin Williams

Once we were a people who left no tracks. Now we are different. We print ourselves deeply on the earth. We build roads. The ruts and skids of our wheels bite deep and the bush recedes. We make foundations for our buildings and sink wells beside our houses. Our shoes are hard and where we go it is easy to follow. I have left my own tracks, too. I have left behind these words. — Louise Erdrich

You got to have an enemy to fight. And when you have an enemy to fight, then you can unite the entire world behind you, and you seize power. That was Hitler's plan. His enemy: the Jew. Al Gore's enemy, the U.N.'s enemy: global warming. Then you get the scientists
eugenics. You get the scientists
global warming. Then you have to discredit the scientists who say, 'That's not right.' And you must silence all dissenting voices. That's what Hitler did. — Glenn Beck

All the skills from DBT glom together, a mass of acronyms without any meaning. I pull out the DBT books and paw through the pages. Something has to help. Then I find these words: 'The lives of suicidal, borderline individuals are unbearable as they currently being lived. — Kiera Van Gelder

Bread is a staple article of diet in theory, rather than in practice. There are few who are truly fond of bread in its simplest, most pure, and most healthful state ... Is there one person in a thousand who would truly enjoy a meal of simple bread of two days old? — William Alcott

Mother Goose, she's on the skids. Sure ain't happy, neither are the kids. — Neil Young

We don't think of ourselves as 'unforgiving' or 'bitter'- those words imply that we are somehow personally responsible. We prefer to talk about how deeply we have been 'hurt', implying that we are merely helpless victims. Are those who have been deeply wounded destined to live damaged lives? Or is there real healing for deep hurt? I say there is ... We've also deceived ourselves into believing that we can love and serve God and be 'good Christians,' while failing to forgive. When are we going to get honest? — Byron Paulus

Never follow a dog act. You know you're on the skids when you play yourself in the movie version of your life. — Erica Jong

And there is no nicer time on earth than now - everything in the offing, nothing gone wrong, all potential - the very polar opposite of how I felt driving home the other night, when everything was on the skids and nothing within a thousand kilometers worth anticipating. This is really all life is worth, when you come down to it. — Richard Ford

The pilot was military, so he was using the rudder. Civilian pilots avoid using the rudder. Using the rudder makes the plane slew, like a car skids. Passengers don't like the feeling. So civilian pilots turn by juicing the engines on one side and backing off on the others. Then the plane comes around smoothly. — Lee Child

The exit from agony is always there. The tunnel out of the agony sector is always in front of you and yet you don't take it. You don't take it by choice. You want to indulge a lot and be in pain. The easiest way out is to write a list of what you're grateful for. If everybody literally did that before they went to bed at night, there'd be no unhappy people. — Jim Carrey

The plane was on descent. Reacher could feel it in his ears. And he could feel abrupt turns. The pilot was military, so he was using the rudder. Civilian pilots avoid using the rudder. Using the rudder makes the plane slew, like a car skids. Passengers don't like the feeling. So civilian pilots turn by juicing the engines on one side and backing off on the others. Then the plane comes around smoothly. But military pilots don't care about their passengers' comfort. It's not like they've bought tickets. — Lee Child

I hate how on TV they have to fill so many minutes. It means they have to put in anything, and by doing so they sort of trivialize news; news becomes this commodity that they need to fill dead time between commercials with. — Chuck Palahniuk

Jason smiled and took a sip of his coke before responding. I'm not sure how to reply to that. I thought about just giving you a nasty look. But I see you already have one. — Mark A. Cooper

Sorrow is my own yard where the new grass flames as it has flamed often before but not with the cold fire that closes round me this year. — William Carlos Williams

In all of the history of mankind there has never been a time when we have had a greater opportunity to increase our knowledge of the law of the Lord ... Surely there can be no excuse for us not to become the best informed generation of all time in our knowledge of the scriptures. Never before have we had opportunity such as we have today to become real gospel scholars. — L. Tom Perry

What is the elephant in all our rooms? It is the global triumph of capitalism. Democracy is fiercely disputed. Freedom is under threat even in old-established democracies such as Britain. Western supremacy is on the skids. But everyone does capitalism. Americans and Europeans do it. Indians do it. Russian oligarchs and Saudi princes do it. Even Chinese communists do it ... Karl Marx would be turning in his grave. Or perhaps not, since some of his writings eerily foreshadowed our era of globalized capitalism. His prescription failed but his description was prescient. — Timothy Garton Ash

Losing is the bane and bugbear of every professional athlete's existence, but in baseball the monster seems to hang closer than in other sports, its chilly claws and foul breath palpable around the neck hairs of the infielder bending for his crosshand scoop or the reliever slipping his first two fingers off-center on the ball seams before delivering his two-and-two cut fastball. — Roger Angell

Even what seems stable and true skids upon a razor balanced upon another razor perched upon the thinnest, keenest slice of luck. — Robert Reed

Scions of old families who've hit the skids do like to flaunt their illustrious ancestors.... — Charlotte MacLeod

My family kinda hit the skids. We were experiencing poverty at that point. We all got a job, where the whole family had to work as security guards and janitors. And I just got angry. — Jim Carrey

Time slid from under me in drifts like ice skids on the highway, punctuated by sudden sharp flashes where my wheels caught and I was flung into ordinary time: — Donna Tartt

He bolted right through the wooden cross arm at the parking garage exit and power-slid into traffic. A torrent of car horns and skids enveloped his vehicle, but the tears in Danny's eyes created the inability to differentiate one vehicle from another. The colors of the automobiles bled into each other like melting rainbow sherbet. — Rick Mayhew

I say what I think," said the woman. "My people don't hide behind masks."
"You certainly do," said Awt, equably. "Your mask is rudeness and offensively plain speech. We only see how you wish to appear, not your true self. Mask or not, Watchman Inarakhat has been more honest than you. — Ann Leckie

It's the opening line of a football game returned for a touchdown. Or fumbled.

It's what orange juice is to breakfast, the first minutes of a blind date, a salesman's opening remarks.

It sets the tone, lights the stage, greases the skids for everything to follow.

It's the most important part of everything you'll ever write because if it doesn't work, whatever follows won't matter. It won't get read.

It's your opening paragraph. And enough can't be said about its importance.

Seduction. That's basically what leads are all about--enticing the reader across the threshold of your book, novel or article--because nothing happens until you get 'em inside.

And you literally have only seconds to do it because surveys show that eight out of ten people quit reading whatever it is they've started after the first fifty words. — Lionel Fisher