Small Pieces Quotes & Sayings

Dogs have not the power of comparing. A dog will take a small piece of meat as readily as a large, when both are before him. — Samuel Johnson

You should look at stocks as small pieces of business. — Warren Buffett

These are the pieces of my youth,
the small secrets and the not-so-great expectations
that defined my coming of age. — Tablo

I'm not a frustrated concert composer, and the concert pieces I've done have been a small part of my work. What I've sought there is instruction, variation from the demands of film and relief from its restrictions. — John Williams

We scatter small parts of ourselves as we journey through life, pieces that are stored by others and about which we may have no memory. — Olivia Lichtenstein

Your whole life and the story of your journey is the landscape picture on the front of the box of a 1,000 piece puzzle. The pieces are each a small sticky note that ends in mid-sentence. You simply need to figure out where each one starts and ends. — Ashly Lorenzana

she acknowledges Thomas only by bending down and scraping a handful of dirt into her hands, her fingernails filling with the cold moist earth and making them brown at the edges. And then she tosses it onto his coffin, where bits and pieces of torn grass and weeds have mixed with the tender soil and are sliding in a small pile down the sides of the domed casket. — Tiffani Burnett-Velez

There is always a point in the writing of a piece when I sit in a room literally papered with false starts and cannot put one word after another and imagine that I have suffered a small stroke, leaving me apparently undamaged but actually aphasic. — Joan Didion

Man cuts out for himself a manageable world: he throws himself into action uncritically, unthinkingly. He accepts the cultural programming that turns his nose where he is supposed to look; he doesn't bite the world off in one piece as a giant would, but in small manageable pieces, as a beaver does. He uses all kinds of techniques, which we call the "character defenses": he learns not to expose himself, not to stand out; he learns to embed himself in other-power, both of concrete persons and of things and cultural commands; the result is that he comes to exist in the imagined infallibility of the world around him. He doesn't have to have fears when his feet are solidly mired and his life mapped out in a ready-made maze. All he has to do is to plunge ahead in a compulsive style of drivenness in the "ways of the world. — Ernest Becker

The pieces of my broken heart are so small that
they could be passed through the eye of a needle. — Brian Helgeland

One should not forget that there are very few surviving items from this period, often just single, small bones, a tooth, a sliver of the skull. Categorizing these pieces can be very difficult. — Richard Leakey

Note for Americans and other city-dwelling life-forms: the rural British, having eschewed central heating as being far too complicated and in any case weakening moral fiber, prefer a system of piling small pieces of wood and lumps of coal, topped by large, wet logs, possibly made of asbestos, into small, smoldering heaps, known as "There's nothing like a roaring open fire is there?" Since none of these ingredients are naturally inclined to burn, underneath all this they apply a small, rectangular, waxy white lump, which burns cheerfully until the weight of the fire puts it out. These little white blocks are called firelighters. No one knows why. — Terry Pratchett

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches. — Anonymous

I avoid grandiose plans. I start with a small piece that I can do. I go to the root of the problem and then work around it. It's building brick by brick. — Muhammad Yunus

It's better to have a small diamond than a large piece of glass. — Robert Genn

I find others, those who prey on the innocent and do not play by the rules, and I make them go away in small, carefully wrapped pieces. — Jeff Lindsay

The two men
Fray and Malkin
were standing near each other. They were not unarmed. They were quite seriously not unarmed. Both men were carrying
or at least aiming
what could only be categorised as small artillery pieces: two bulky gas-powered spinguns, so heavy that they had to be strapped to their bodies via thick leather girdles. Malkin was aiming at the angels, more or less. — Alastair Reynolds

Everyone has that moment I think, the moment when something so momentous happens that it rips your very being into small pieces. And then you have to stop. For a long time, you gather your pieces. And it takes such a very long time, not to fit them back together, but to assemble them in a new way, not necessarily a better way. More, a way you can live with until you know for certain that this piece should go there, and that one there. — Kathleen Glasgow

There was more small talk, more laughing, sidelong glances, more of the unspoken physical friction that makes each new conquest so delightful. In the air was the strong smell of masculinity which creates the ideal medium for me to exist in. There was something in Emile tonight, a touch of seriousness, a chemical magnetism, that met my mood the way two pieces of a child's puzzle fit together. — Sylvia Plath

If I do anything, I have to start over, but all I have is fragments of ideas. Just pieces. Like a germ of an idea for this, and a germ of an idea for that. Nothing whole or concrete" - Violet

" 'Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.' Pearl S. Buck. Maybe a germ is enough. Maybe it's all you need. We can start small. Open up a new document or pull out a black piece of paper. We'll make it our canvas. Remember what Michelangelo said about the sculpture being in the stone - it was there from the beginning, and his job was to bring it out. Your words are in there too" -Finch — Jennifer Niven

I think tobacco and alcohol warnings are too general. They should be more to the point: 'People who smoke will eventually cough up small pieces of lung.' ... And 'Warning!! Alcohol will turn you into the same jerk your father was.' — George Carlin

Divide the big task into small pieces which can be done every day — Sunday Adelaja

Pawns are such fascinating pieces, too ... So small, almost insignificant, and yet
they can depose kings. Don't you find that interesting? — Lavie Tidhar

If he says something that isn't true, he is bringing uncertainty into the world. He is blinding the people around him to a small part of the truth - and every part of the truth is important. You can't complete a jigsaw if one of its pieces has been swapped out for a piece of a different jigsaw. — M.R. Carey

Dougal eyed the breakfast repast. In addition to burnt toast, there was poorly trimmed ham, eggs that looked rubbery enough to bounce off the floor, pathetically dry scones, and small, smoking pieces of something he suspected had once been kippers.
Sophia noted Dougal's disgusted expression, and her heart lifted.
He looked amazingly handsome this morning, dressed in a pale blue riding coat and white shirt, his dark blond hair curling over his collar, his green eyes glinting as he began to fill his plate. Two scones, a scoop of eggs, and a large piece of blackened ham all went onto his plate.
Sophia had eaten earlier in the kitchen with Mary, who had served warm muffins with cream and marmalade, some lovely bacon, and crusty toast, complemented by a pot of hot tea.
Sophia hid a smile as Dougal attempted to cut his ham. Too tough for his blade, it tore into uneven pieces under his knife. He lifted a piece and regarded it on the tines of his fork. — Karen Hawkins

My mother, who is a pianist and a fine artist, purchased a piano for me. Twice. This was back when I was a small girl. Pianos, of course, came complete with the quintessential piano teacher who whacked my hand with a stick each time I struck the wrong key. I learned a few pieces, yes, but eventually my pen compelled me to write too much and the sound of the leaves rustling in the wind compelled me to climb trees too often. Sorry mom. Coincidentally, books come from trees and flipping the pages sounds like wind through leaves ... hhhmmmm ... I guess I'm still just climbing trees now, but in a different way! — C. JoyBell C.

I folded Lizzie into small pieces. But the letters did not stop. — Sarah Schmidt

The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars. One of the basic and difficult lessons every artist must learn is that even the failed pieces are essential. X-rays of famous paintings reveal that even master artists sometimes made basic mid-course corrections (or deleted really dumb mistakes) by overpainting the still-wet canvas. The point is that you learn how to make your work by making your work, and a great many of the pieces you make along the way will never stand out as finished art. The best you can do is make art you care about - and lots of it! — David Bayles

From building a fire one can learn something about artistic composition. If you use only small kindling and large logs, the fire will quickly eat up the small pieces but will not become strong enough to attack the large ones. You must supply a scale of sizes from the smallest to the largest. The human eye also will not make its way into a painting or building unless a continuum of shapes leads from the small to the large, from the large to the small. — Rudolf Arnheim

Just because the girl doesn't end up with the boy in the end - doesn't mean she ends up with nothing. Life's a gift. I just want to share yours, no matter how small the pieces that are shared may be. — Rachel Van Dyken

I wanted to take part in the liberation of even a small piece of enslaved Latin America. — Che Guevara

She remembered Kelsier, standing boldly before a small group of thieves, proclaiming that they would
overthrow the Lord Ruler and free the empire. We're thieves, he'd said. And we're extraordinarily
good ones. We can rob the unrobbable and fool the unfoolable. We know how to take an
incredibly large task and break it down to manageable pieces, then deal with each of those pieces.
That day, when he'd written up the team's goals and plans on a small board, Vin had been amazed by
how possible he had made an impossible task seem. That day, a little bit of her had begun to believe that
Kelsier could overthrow the Final Empire. — Brandon Sanderson

The short and obscene sentence of Poseidonius about the rubbing together of two small pieces of flesh, which I have seen you copy in your exercise books with the application of a good schoolboy, does no more to define the phenomenon of love than the cord touched by the finger accounts for the infinite miracle of sounds. Such a dictum is less an insult to pleasure than to the flesh itself, that amazing instrument of muscles, blood, and skin, that red-tinged cloud whose lightning is the soul. — Marguerite Yourcenar

It's such a beautiful day," he said, and his voice was in many pieces. A great day to die. A great day to die, like this.

Liesel walked at him. She was courageous enought to reach out and hold his bearded face. "Is it really you, Max?"

Such a brilliant German day and its attentive crowd.

He let his mouth kiss her palm. "Yes, Liesel, it's me," and he held the girl's hand in his face and cried onto her fingers. He cried as the soldiers came and a small collection of insolent Jews stood and watched.

Standing, he was whipped. — Markus Zusak

At night I locked my bedroom door, because [my father] could not sleep and would insist on talking to me, endlessly, without making sense. But there was a small window over the door which could not be locked. One night I woke up to see him slithering through the tiny aperture and jumping nimbly to the floor. But he paid no attention to me. He aimlessly picked up various pieces of heavy mahogany furniture and let them drop with seemingly little effort. In his insanity he had become superhumanly agile and powerful. Staying with him was a nightmare. — Jung Chang

In essence, art lies embedded in the conceptual leap between pieces, not in the pieces themselves. And simply put, there's a greater conceptual jump from one work of art to the next than from one work of craft to the next. The net result is that art is less polished - but more innovative - than craft. The differences between five Steinway grand pianos - demonstrably works of consummate craftsmanship - are small compared to the differences between the five Beethoven Piano concerti you might perform on those instruments. A — David Bayles

A good writer cannot avoid having social consciousness. I don't mean this about small pieces of writing, but about a big book. If it's a big book, there has to be more than one undertow. — Marguerite Young

Like we were just jagged puzzle pieces that made no sense alone but together we fit perfectly. That's what life is supposed to be like for normal people right? You find that other piece that matches yours that completes yours. And you make the jags and the crevices fit, even if they don't go in perfectly smooth, even if they require a few adjustments. You don't demand perfection you make it work and appreciate the parts that fit instead of obsessing about the small angles that don't. — James Patterson

the most clear evidence and assurance of the truth and goodness in these holy things of Christ and the new creature arises out of themselves, as light follows from the body of the Sun, without the contusion or compulsion of an harsh arguments. And by a holy sympathy a regenerate heart entertains with infinite delight these precious and holy truths. Arguments and syllogisms make a great noise in the world. I think they are like that appearance in Horeb to the prophet Elijah when the great and strong wind broke the mountains and broke in pieces all the rocks. But it is said, the Lord was not found in the wind, nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire, but He was in the still, small voice. Lux spiritus santi est lenis luxs, persundens sementibus, the Holy Spirit does gently hover over the soul and brood upon it. Heavenly doctrine falls down upon the spirits of men, not like a mighty violent rain, but like a shower of oil, like a sweet honey-dew. — William Tyndale

As one gets older being sad and miserable can become a bit of a habit. To counteract this, she suggests making a point of savoring such things as the tastiness of a piece of fruit, or other small things we might have been prone to overlook during our younger, busier days. — Rumer Godden

From shoes that are a size too small to a dress that doesn't fit quite right, there are incredible pieces in most wardrobes that have never been worn. — Brad Goreski

Oh, I was lucky, you know, to get anyone. I was what they called an old bride of twenty-six. Of course I married him. Everyone needs to keep something private from their family.
Like a shutter in a rainstorm, banging against the window, I venture forth, retreat back, try afresh, retreat again. Nothing changes in my life and yet nothing is the same.
That did not help, Ed knew as the words hung between them and he had that all-too-familiar sensation of wanting to claw them from the air and stuff them back in his mouth.
We were all in small pieces that didn't fit together, too many countries, too many scars, too many secrets inside us.
How do you make a stranger so intimate when they could easily destroy you? — Tracy Chevalier

Researchers, with science as their authority, will be able to cut animals up, alive, into small pieces, drop them from a great height to see if they are shattered by the fall, or deprive them of sleep for sixteen days and nights continuously for the purposes of an iniquitous monograph ... Animal trust, undeserved faith, when at last will you turn away from us? Shall we never tire of deceiving, betraying, tormenting animals before they cease to trust us? — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Break me into pieces,
Small enough to fit
In the palm of your hand, baby.
I never thought that you would save me,
break a piece
for your friends
break a piece
just for luck
break a piece
sell it sell it
break me break me. — Maggie Stiefvater

An early spring started one morning in March with a swarm of sudden, glassy, bird cries, and then the cool jewelry of primrose and violet loosened themselves in the dirt. Then summer burst into the world like a gorgeous car accident- opening eyes all over our bodies in the brilliant light. Fall- the smell of pumpkin guts, sluttish and unsweetened. Until winter fell all over us like pieces of heaven, glazed with oxygen or ether, hitting the grounder in small, cold shards. It was like a year in Eden where no Eve had ever lived. — Laura Kasischke

I've spent many long hours thinking about the bits and pieces of things; the complexity of human interaction; personalities and emotions; temperaments; the knowns, the unknowns, and intangibles involved in two people coming together, and I've come to the conclusion that it's a small miracle any two people can put it all together and actually find love with each other. — Margaret Lesh

Therapies administered included but were not limited to: turning things off, then on again; picking them up a couple of inches and then dropping them; turning off nonessential appliances in this and other rooms; removing lids and wiggling circuit boards; extracting small contaminants, such as insects and their egg cases, with nonconducting chopsticks; cable-wiggling; incense-burning; putting folded-up pieces of paper beneath table legs; drinking tea and sulking; invoking unseen powers; sending runners to other rooms, buildings, or precincts with exquisitely calligraphed notes and waiting for them to come back carrying spare parts in dusty, yellowed cardboard boxes; and a similarly diverse suite of troubleshooting techniques in the realm of software. — Neal Stephenson

I was surrounded by heaven. The sun, the moon, the earth, and all those living stars. They wen't static like in pictures taken from impossibly far away- they breathed, they glowed. They were future and past, possibility and memory. They were beautiful.
"I never knew there were so many," I whispered. We are merely pieces of a grander design, even more insignificant than I imagined. When the earth ceases to be, all those stars will shine on. Out deaths will mean nothing to them.
"I feel so small." No one replied. I wondered as I watched the stars, really seeing them for the fist time, whether they could see me, too. — Shaun David Hutchinson

During the first five years that I was writing the series, I made plans and wrote small pieces of all the books. I concentrate on one book at a time, though occasionally I will get an idea for a future book and scribble it down for future reference. — J.K. Rowling

I feel my life is so scattered right now. Like it's all these small pieces of paper and someone's turned on the fan. — John Green

I was shaking so hard, I could barely get the door unlocked. I just got the door shut behind me when I sank to my knees and fell apart. I cried so hard I was nearly convulsing. I had never felt such raw emotions in my life. I felt like someone had ripped my heart out of my chest and tore it to pieces. I curled into a ball on the floor and tried desperately to disappear. But no matter how small I got, I was still here. I still existed. And for a short while, I thought I had mattered to someone. I guess I was wrong. I mattered to no one. — Dakota Madison

1. Turn ordinarily meals into family time. Cultivate a fun and relaxed atmosphere and impose a "No TV" rule. 2. Feed your toddler the same type of food you feed to the rest of your family. 3. Do not force your toddler to eat. Issuing threats and punishments will only make him dislike and dread mealtimes. 4. Respect your toddler's food preference on what he likes and what he dislikes. 5. If he refuses to eat the main meal, offer another healthy alternative, like a sandwich or a cereal. 6. Make sure to cut your toddler's food into small bite size pieces. 7. Gently encourage your toddler to try out new food products. 8. Do not impose the clean your plate rule. When your toddler tells you he is full, do not force him to eat. 9. Offer your child small portions, like 1/3 or 1/4 of the usual adult portion. Give him lesser amount of food than what you think he can consume and let him ask for extra servings. 10. Make desserts a part of your meals, and not as a form of reward. — Monica McBride

How they are all about, these gentlemen
In chamberlains' apparel, stocked and laced,
Like night around their order's star and gem
And growing ever darker, stony-faced,
And these, their ladies, fragile, wan, but propped
High by their bodice, one hand loosely dropped,
Small like its collar, on the toy King-Charles:
How they surround each one of these who stopped
To read and contemplate the objects d'art,
Of which some pieces still are theirs, not ours.
Whit exquisite decorum they allow us
A life of whose dimensions we seem sure
And which they cannot grasp. They were alive
To bloom, that is be fair; we, to mature,
That is to be of darkness and to strive. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Tadas was sent to the principal today," announced Jonas at dinner. He wedged a huge piece of sausage into his small mouth.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because he talked about hell," sputtered Jonas, juice from the plump sausage dribbling down his chin.
"Jonas, don't speak with your mouth full. Take smaller pieces," scolded Mother.
"Sorry," said Jonas with his moth stuffed. "It's good." He finished chewing. I took a bite of sausage. It was warm and the skin was deliciously salty.
"Tadas told one of the girls that hell is the worst place ever and there's no escape for all eternity."
"Now why would Tadas be talking of hell?" asked Papa, reaching for the vegetables.
"Because his father told him that if Stalin comes to Lithuania, we'll all end up there. — Ruta Sepetys

My memory is coming back. It is curious how it comes. Each day, a rush of pieces, loosely connected, unimportant bits, snake through me. They click, click, click into my brain, like links being snapped together. And then they are done. A small chain of memories that fill in one tiny part of my life. They come out of nowhere, and most are not important. — Mary E. Pearson

Say what you want without saying it yourself: quote. Very useful, this, sometimes lovely, and versatile, too: big thoughts in small pieces, neatly wrapped and bundled in bulk, in different flavors for different tastes. — Willis Regier

Pride is a sweetmeat, to be savoured in small pieces; it makes for a poor feast. — Laurie R. King

If Amber kept up her act forever, it would only be a matter of time before the broken pieces of her real self were too small to ever be put back together. I didn't know what happened to people once they were unfixable. I only hoped I never had to find out. — Cole Gibsen

If you want to become a fossil, you actually need to die somewhere where your bones will be rapidly buried. You then hope that the earth moves in such a way as to bring the bones back up to the surface. And then you hope that one of us lot will walk around and find small pieces of you. — Louise Leakey

What's your name, big guy?" Carden asked.
Blue let out something between a bark and a howl that sounded just like," Bluuuue."
"Good boy," Carden said, and gave Blue the dog biscuit. Blue took it in his mouth and crunched it into pieces, eating it bit by bit instead of gobbling.
That's all it took for Lindsey to fall head-over-heels for Blue. His owner wasn't too bad either. — Tracy March

She often thought about the power everybody had to ruin everybody else. You could do it by accident, just by showing up, or you could make the wrong decisions in such small pieces that by the time you realized what you were doing, it was too late. — Rosalie Knecht

There are pieces of me, small pieces, still in love with a fiction. A ghost living inside a living boy I cannot begin to fathom. The ghost who sat by my bed while I dreamed in pain. The ghost who kept Samson from my mind as long as he could, I know, delaying an inevitable torture.

The ghost who loves me, in what poisoned way he can.

And I feel that poison working in me. — Victoria Aveyard

You cruel, hard-hearted gods!" I flung the goblet in his direction. Hermes barely had time to dart out of its way before it hit the wall and shattered to small pieces. "You're all the same! Hsst! Jealous! Vindictive! That's what you are! You allow yourselves to take pleasure with any mortal you wish. Let a goddess do the same. Let a goddess choose a mortal for her lover, and you set off in a fury of revenge against her as if her actions are an affront to you. And all the while, you male gods allow yourselves all kinds of liberties you deny to us females. — Tamara Agha-Jaffar

You can divide infinity an infinite number of times, and the resulting pieces will still be infinitely large," Uresh said in his odd Lenatti accent. "But if you divide a non-infinite number an infinite number of times the resulting pieces are non-infinitely small. Since they are non-infinitely small, but there are an infinite number of them, if you add them back together, their sum is infinite. This implies any number is, in fact, infinite."
"Wow," Elodin said after a long pause. He leveled a serious finger at the Lenatti man. "Uresh. Your next assignment is to have sex. If you do not know how to do this, see me after class. — Patrick Rothfuss

I lay there silently,
hoarding my small dignity.
I did not ask about the gate or the closet.
I did not question the bedtime ritual
where, on the cold bathroom tiles,
I was spread out daily
and examined for flaws.
I did not know
that my bones,
those solids, those pieces of sculpture
would not splinter. — Anne Sexton

I keep only a small edit in my wardrobe because I think it is important to keep things moving through, and I like to find out which pieces from my collections work and which could be reworked and improved. — Alice Temperley

Chess is a game with simple rules and pieces, a small sixty-four-space board, but there are more possible chess games than there are atoms in the universe. — Austin Grossman

I walked to the windows and pulled the shades up and opened the windows wide. The night air came drifting in with a kind of stale sweetness that still remembered automobile exhausts and the streets of the city. I reached for my drink and drank it slowly. The apartment house door closed itself down below me. Steps tinkled on the quiet sidewalk. A car started up not far away. It rushed off into the night with a rough clashing of gears. I went back to the bed and looked down at it. The imprint of her head was still in the pillow, of her small corrupt body still on the sheets. I put my empty glass down and tore the bed to pieces savagely. — Raymond Chandler

We had, I felt, bared small pieces of our symmetrical souls to each other, fast, as if playing one of those breathless card games, and I had pretended to be as moved as I had been the first time I uncovered it all myself, back in East Hampton. — Olivia Sudjic

An investor should ordinarily hold a small piece of an outstanding business with the same tenacity that an owner would exhibit if he owned all of that business. — Warren Buffett

They were roots, Michael realized. Every memory of Maria was a root she had put inside his body. Too many roots, he thought. If Michael left all that roots could come off, shattering him to pieces. There would be nothing, just small and useless parts. — Melinda Metz

Today, we could only look and try to believe the sight of our eyes. We pulled the heavy curtains from the windows and we saw that the rooms were small, and we thought that not more than twelve men could have lived here. We thought it strange that men had been permitted to build a house for only twelve.
Never had we seen rooms so full of light. The sunrays danced upon colors, colors, more colors than we thought possible, we who had seen no houses save the white ones, the brown ones and the grey. There were great pieces of glass on the walls, but it was not glass, for when we looked upon it we saw our own bodies and all the things behind us, as on the face of a lake. There were strange things which we had never seen and the use of which we do not know. — Ayn Rand

Who but my mother held those small pieces of my childhood? Where would they go when she was gone? — Lorna Crozier

He said at another time that she had no heart; and he added in a moment that she had given it all away - in small pieces, like a frosted wedding-cake. — Henry James

This life is difficult. We lose fathers, brothers, mothers, songbirds and pieces of ourselves. Whips strike the innocent, honors go to the guilty, and there is too much loneliness. I would be a fool to pray for my children to escape all of that. Ask for too much and it might actually turn out worse. But I can pray for small things, like fertile fields, a mother's love, a child's smile - a life that's less bitter than sweet. — Nadia Hashimi

I make a point to appreciate all the little things in my life. I go out and smell the air after a good, hard rain. I re-read passages from my favorite books. I hold the little treasures that somebody special gave me. These small actions help remind me that there are so many great, glorious pieces of good in the world. — Dolly Parton

So it seems as though this part of us that is living a life on Earth is only a small piece or splinter of a much larger us. That we are many rather than one, or rather pieces of a more complex whole. We are only able to focus on the splinter we perceive as our totality. That is a good thing, because if we were aware of the complexity of it we would not be able to function in this world or reality. We are only able to see the facade that masks a much larger picture. Only now are we being allowed to peek behind the veil. — Dolores Cannon

A photograph is just a little, teeny-weeny, small piece of life. I feel like I see so much more than what I can actually get. — Annie Leibovitz

The desert is hot and boring, I'm sorry but that's pretty much all there is to it. It's also sandy, but rocks are essentially dull things and breaking them up into really small pieces doesn't improve matters. — Mark Lawrence

The role of leadership is to transform the complex situation into small pieces and prioritize them. — Carlos Ghosn

Everything in existence matters - all the pieces of the puzzle are important whether great or small, the flap of a butterfly wing affects all."
-Shireen Violett — Shireen Violett

Research suggests that the earliest flying reptiles swallowed small pieces of volcanic rock and could breathe out flammable gases like hydrogen produced in their own bodies. It is hypothesized that their ingenious "fire breath" was used as a defense against predatory reptiles. — Karen Shanor

I think what happens is you write how you grew up. And I was born on the prairie, and so everything is kind of spare on the prairie. And so I'm just used to writing in that way. 'Sarah, Plain and Tall' was that way. And most of my fiction is. I like writing small pieces. Somehow it just suits me. — Patricia MacLachlan

We cannot build a viable state with a country that is disintegrating into small pieces. — Mahmoud Abbas

There was a bag of coffee beans beneath a harpoon gun and a frozen hunk of spinach, but there was no way to grind the beans into tiny pieces to make coffee. Near a picnic basket and a large bag of mushrooms was a jug of orange juice, but it had been close to one of the bullet holes in the trunk, and so had frozen completely solid in the cold. And after Sunny moved aside three chunks of cold cheese, a large can of water chestnuts, and an eggplant as big as herself, she finally found a small jar of boysenberry jam, and a loaf of bread she could use to make toast, although it was so cold it felt more like a log than a breakfast ingredient. — Lemony Snicket

Shopping for clothes is a Boyfriend Thing. You stand around and look blankly at a bunch of pieces of fabric and you look at the price tags and you wonder how something that'd barely cover your right nut can cost the price of a kidney and you watch the shop assistants check you out and wonder what you're doing with her because she's cute and you're kind of funny-looking and she tries clothes on and you look at her ass in a dozen different items that all look exactly the same and let's face it you're just looking at her ass anyway and it all blurs together and then someone sticks a vacuum cleaner in your wallet and vacuums out all the cash and you leave the store with one bag so small that mice couldn't fuck in it. Repeat a dozen times or until the front of your brain dies. — Warren Ellis

I started natural farming after the war with just one small plot, but gradually I acquired additional acreage by taking over surrounding pieces of abandoned land and caring for them by hand. — Masanobu Fukuoka

If you hang up on me again, I will slice your car into small pieces and hang them on your roof like Christmas wreaths. — Ilona Andrews

11 And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake:
12 And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.
13 And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave. And, behold, there came a voice unto him, and said, What doest thou here, Elijah? — 1 Kings 19 1113

The day you decide to let God into your life, that day God will start pulling you into pieces and destroy who you think you are to reassemble you bit by bit piece by piece, with small blocks of pure love.
Untill you become that and nothing else. — Faruk H.T.

It is confirmation to me that beyond the material world of cause and effect, there is a dimension of spirit waiting for our recognition. We see such a small piece of all the wonder surrounding us. — Paula D'Arcy

Happiness doesn't come from big pieces of great success, but from small advantages hammered out day by day. — Jim Rohn

You don't realize how small you really are until you're faced with something like that. We live our lives as if we're at the center of our own universe, but we're just tiny pieces of a shattered whole. — Cora Carmack

Some Things, Say the Wise Ones Some things, say the wise ones who know everything, are not living. I say, you live your life your way and leave me alone. I have talked with the faint clouds in the sky when they are afraid of being left behind; I have said, Hurry, hurry! and they have said: thank you, we are hurrying. About cows, and starfish, and roses, there is no argument. They die, after all. But water is a question, so many living things in it, but what is it, itself, living or not? Oh, gleaming generosity, how can they write you out? As I think this I am sitting on the sand beside the harbor. I am holding in my hand small pieces of granite, pyrite, schist. Each one, just now, so thoroughly asleep. — Mary Oliver

Small communities grow great through harmony, great ones fall to pieces through discord. — Sallust

The schools wear the blank faces of war buildings, their windows blown blind by rocks or guns or mortars. Their plaster is an acne of bullet marks. The huts and small houses crouch open and vulnerable; their doors are flimsy pieces of plyboard or sacks hanging and lank. Children and chickens and dogs scratch in the red, raw soil and stare at us as we drive through their open, eroding lives. — Alexandra Fuller

They cut us up like boarding house pie. And that's real small pieces. — Darrell Royal

Molecular biology has shown that even the simplest of all living systems on the earth today, bacterial cells, are exceedingly complex objects. Although the tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small, weighing less than 10-12 gms, each is in effect a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the nonliving world. — Michael Denton

I remember when I was probably about ten years old I had a pen pal, and writing letters back and forth with him was one of my favorite things to do. His name was Steve and he lived in one of those huge mansions that's so big it has a name. It was called the Louisiana State Penitentiary, and he told me it was even bigger than the mayor's mansion. We'd send letters back and forth and he'd ask me to send him my favorite books and small pieces of metal or wood that were lying around and all the money I could find in my house. And I'd gather them all up and put cute little stickers of cats on the packages and send them away. It was so fun. Eventually we stopped writing because I moved to another city and he moved out to live on his own. He called it "solitary confinement." I was always so impressed by his vocabulary. — Ellen DeGeneres

Well, it's all a kind of puzzle, isn't it? You start out with your own little set of pieces you're trying to fit together, then you get married and it's a lot more pieces, way more than double in my opinion, and next thing you have kids and all of a sudden there are too many pieces for the table, and more showing up every day." He gave a small dry laugh. "I suppose the Buddhists and them would say you just got to appreciate the ever-changing thinginess of the puzzle. — Tom McNeal