So It's Like That Quotes & Sayings

I mean I don't think it got me interested in acting. I think it might be what makes it so that I can have the idea of the variety of people in the world, different incomes. That helps. When you're going to play someone it's interesting and nice to see experiences that aren't like yours. But there's always the remarkable similarity of all people. — Peter Sarsgaard

I have spoken, and I was understood. It's not like I'm a tragic person who wasn't understood. All those books are in print, all those movies are still out there, the audience gets younger. So I don't have that "I've got to do one thing before I die." I did it. — John Waters

Well, I do expect a lot of myself. I'm a harsh critic because I know what I'm capable of. I have hit those occasional peaks amongst the valleys, but the peaks are so few-things like genuine flashes of virtuoso brush inking, like I've never executed before or since-I can count on one hand the number of jobs where I've been able to hit that mark. The same with penciling. Sometimes it just flows, but more often than not, it's pure physical and spiritual torment just to get something decent on paper. I often get very discouraged with the whole creative process. — Dave Stevens

Her father said, "You know, my dears, the world has been abnormal for so long that we've forgotten what it's like to live in a peaceful and reasonable climate. If there is to be any peace or reason, we have to create it in our own hearts and homes." "Even at a time like this?" Meg asked. The call from Calvin, the sound of her husband's voice, had nearly broken her control. "Especially at a time like this," her mother said gently. — Madeleine L'Engle

I don't have a favorite I like and then I'll go and watch "Days of Heaven" and I go how beautiful is that. So I think, at least my idea, was lets bring something again that's primitive and guttural but then let's also do something beautiful where you're outside and this isn't a typical western setting. It's lush. It's green. It's beautiful. — Josh Brolin

For the first time since Ben died, I look like a widow. For the first time since I lost him, I feel like I recognize the person in the mirror. There I am, grief-stricken and un-whole. Widowed. It's such a relief to see myself this way. I have felt so insecure in my widowness that seeing myself look like a widow comforts me. — Taylor Jenkins Reid

She talks. People talk easily to me. They think a bald albino hunchback can't hide anything. My worst is all out in the open. It makes it necessary for people to tell you about themselves. They begin out of simple courtesy. Just being visible is my biggest confession, so they try to set me at ease by revealing our equality, by dragging out their apparent deformities. That's how it starts. But I am like a stranger on the bus and they get hooked on having a listener. They go too far because I am one listener who is in no position to judge or find fault. They stretch out their dampest secrets because a creature like me has no values or morals. If I am "good" (and they assume that I am), it's obviously for lack of opportunity to be otherwise. And I listen. I listen eagerly, warmly, because I care. They tell me everything eventually. — Katherine Dunn

Do you love me?"
There was an awkward silence for a moment. Then Father gave a little chuckle. "Jonas. You, of all people. Precision of language, please!"
"What do you mean?" Jonas asked. Amusement was not at all what he had anticipated.
"Your father means that you used a very generalized word, so meaningless that it's become almost obsolete," his mother explained carefully.
Jonas stared at them. Meaningless? He had never before felt anything as meaningful as the memory.
"And of course our community can't function smoothly if people don't use precise language. You could ask, 'Do you enjoy me?' The answer is 'Yes,'" his mother said.
"Or," his father suggested, "'Do you take pride in my accomplishments?' And the answer is wholeheartedly 'Yes.'"
"Do you understand why it's inappropriate to use a word like 'love'?" Mother asked.
Jonas nodded. "Yes, thank you, I do," he replied slowly.
It was his first lie to his parents. — Lois Lowry

Your mistake is that you've concluded life is short, so you treat it as if it's precious, like a pretty little princess. Bullshit! Everyone's life is short. Quit feeling sorry for yourself. Fuck it. Treat it like a cheap hooker. Ask crazy shit from it, and you'll get more out of life than you could have ever wanted, imagined, or deserved. — Ty Roth

Here I come to one of the memoir writer's difficulties
one of the reasons why, though I read so many, so many are failures. They leave out the person to whom things happened. The reason is that it is so difficult to describe any human being. So they say: 'This is what happened'; but they do not say what the person was like to whom it happened. And the events mean very little unless we know first to whom they happened. — Virginia Woolf

Having Simultanagnosia (object blindness), Prosopagnosia (face blindness) and Semantic Agnosia (meaning blindness) goes in my favour with regards to abstract art living in world full of fragmented pieces when I draw it is in real time no visual memory means no "pre-formatted" picture in my mind so I go where my hand takes it's like journey that is happening in the moment, hence why I drew these without my lenses on. When I was younger I would draw pictures by "route" which made it a appear that I had a visual memory (cobbling together things out of context and making a contextual image) — Paul Isaacs

Okay, my man, in a minute you are gonna hear a bunch of shit that's gonna knock your socks off. So, two seconds to prepare, Ivey is my best friend, outside you my only real one, as you know. What you don't know, she is not my lover. She's my friend. And I'm gay. You tell anyone, I'll shoot you and you know I'm not fucking with you about that. Deal with it. We gotta move on, like, now. — Kristen Ashley

No country is so peaceful as the one that leads into death. Life arches above one's head like a bridgespan, and below it flows the water, carries the boat, takes it further. — Alfred Doblin

You have so much going on. It comes off like a ... "
"Static?" I suggested.
"Exactly!" He snapped his fingers and pointed at me. "You need to tune it, get your frequencies in check, like a radio."
"I would love to.Just tell me how."
"It's not a matter of turning a dial. You have no on or off switch." He walked around in a large lazy circle. "It's something you have to practice. It's more like being potty-trained. You have to learn when to hold it and when to release."
"That's a pretty sexy analogy," I said. — Amanda Hocking

You sing about the things you're influenced by. So we've been big into sci-fi since we were kids, things like Star Trek etc. Then came movies like Terminator and Dune. Burton is also a really big reader and loves sci-fi novels which helps him write. It's also really cool he does that because it's through the perspective of how we see things going or possibly going. — Dino Cazares

You are the strangest girl I've ever met," he said, like he thought I was joking. He picked up his water bottle and gave me a sideways glance. "Have you ever kissed anybody?" he asked, and took a sip.
I smirked. "There aren't a whole lot of opportunities in the digital world. I did practice on my hand once. It didn't do anything for me."
Justin coughed on the water he was swallowing and I slapped my hand over my mouth.
"Did I just say that out loud?" I mumbled.
He was half coughing, half laughing. "Yes, you did," he managed to say.
"Delete, delete, delete," I said, and pushed an imaginary button in the air. "I really miss that feature."
"No, that's the good stuff. People always want to delete the good stuff." His eyes lit up. "That's a cool idea, though. What would you say, right now, if you could immediately delete it, so no one read it? — Katie Kacvinsky

[The heart is] really a fascinating organ. It's about the only organ in the body that you can really witness its function. Doing things. And so on. Some of the other organs you can witness, like the intestines, will have this sort of peristaltic motion. But nothing that can compare with the activity of the human heart. — Denton Cooley

He's been looking at my file. So the question has to be right there on the tip of his tongue right about now, waiting to be spoken. But he keeps up the 'act professional' charade, makes it feel like he sees this kind of thing all the time, but in reality he's having a little fun with it. I'm the story he's going to tell at a bar after making my name anonymous. I'm the case study that's going to become dinner conversation when he takes some rich bitch out next week. He's going to do it to make himself look well-balanced, prove how normal he is in a world full of weirdoes. In short, he's going to look 'normal' at my expense. — Cyma Rizwaan Khan

Later, the talk turned to all the other guys/girls who were currently hot for the two of them. 'There's this total dweeb named Robert who's always calling me, and I feel bad because he's really nice, but I'm totally not interested,' Phoebe told Pablo.

'Believe me, I know what that's like,' Pablo told Phoebe. 'There's this girl at Hunter who's, like, obsessed with me. She's, like, this big fat girl. Ass like a truck. She's always writing me these love letters. Maybe I should fuck her. You know, just to be nice.' (Smile, smile.)

'You're so bad.' (Phoebe shaking her head; Pablo loving it; Phoebe loving it, too. What was more ego-enhancing than making dumb jokes at the expense of ugly women? Phoebe could never decide whom she hated more--other people or herself.) — Lucinda Rosenfeld

Maybe it's the fact the most of the arts here are produced by world-weary and sophisticated older people and then consumed by younger people who not only consume art but study it for clues on how to be cool, hip - and keep in mind that, for kids and younger people, to be hip and cool is the same as to be admired and accepted and included and so Unalone. Forget so-called peer-pressure. It's more like peer-hunger. No? We enter a spiritual puberty where we snap to the fact that the great transcendant horror is loneliness, excluded encagement in the self. Once we've hit this age, we will now give or take anything, wear any mask, to fit, be part-of, not be Alone, we young. The U.S. arts are our guide to inclusion. A how-to. We are shown how to fashion masks of ennui and jaded irony at a young age where the face is fictile enough to assume the shape of whatever it wears. And then it's stuck there, the weary cynicism that saves us from gooey sentiment and unsophisticated naivete. — David Foster Wallace

So what? You act all mysterious to seem more interesting?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You're always wandering off or running away," he said. "But you're a lot more
interesting when you're just being yourself you know. When you're actually here."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Emma said coldly. "Where else would I be?"

"You know what I mean," he said, a rough edge to his voice. "It's like you're so busy trying not to act like your family that you've never even stopped to consider that it might not be such a bad thing."

"Well what about you?" she shot back, aware of the bitterness in her words.
"You complain about your dad not wanting you around, and then you complain when he wants you to stay home for school. You can't have it both wars."

"Well neither can you," he said. " You can't keep everyone at arms length and then expect them to be there for you when you need them. — Jennifer E. Smith

Despair is the state in which anxiety and restlessness are immanent to existence. Nobody in despair suffers from "problems", but from his own inner torment and fire. It's a pity that nothing can be solved in this world. Yet there never was and here never will be anyone who would commit suicide for this reason. So much for the power that intellectual anxiety has over the total anxiety of our being! That is why I prefer the dramatic life, consumed by inner fires and tortured by destiny, to the intellectual, caught up in abstractions which do not engage the essence of our subjectivity. I despise the absence of risks, madness and passion in abstract thinking. How fertile live, passionate thinking is! Lyricism feeds it like blood pumped into the heart! — Emil M. Cioran

I like crime movies where the crime is so incredible that, attractive as it seems, you don't wanna do it because it's just too dangerous. — Ice-T

Why do the X-Men need another girl telepath?" she asked. "This one has purple hair." "It's all so sexist." Park's eyes got wide. Well, sort of wide. Sometimes she wondered if the shape of his eyes affected how he saw things. That was probably the most racist question of all time. "The X-Men aren't sexist," he said, shaking his head. "They're a metaphor for acceptance; they've sworn to protect a world that hates and fears them." "Yeah," she said, "but - " "There's no but," he said, laughing. "But," Eleanor insisted, "the girls are all so stereotypically girly and passive. Half of them just think really hard. Like that's their superpower, thinking. And Shadowcat's power is even worse - she disappears. — Rainbow Rowell

Well, good science fiction is intelligent. It asks big questions that are on people's minds. It's not impossible. It has some sort of root in the abstract. So automatically you're getting closer to potentially divine sources of interest because it is abstract. It's one of the only ways that a film actor can express himself in the abstract and have audiences still go along for the ride. They don't contend it. They accept it, that they're going to go places that are a bit more of the imagination, a bit more out there, and that's more and more where I like to dance. — Nicolas Cage

It seemed like so much of romantic relationships today have to do when the people are not in the same room. Whether it's texting or emailing or Facebooking, there's a kind of distance between the participants. I think it's sort of shifted the energy of that first romantic meeting, where it's quicker, perhaps more desperate, more energetic, in a whole different way, and it's resulted in a situation where people seem to be sometimes more comfortable having a sexual relationship than an emotional one. — Ivan Reitman

Reading all my old love letters was disorienting. You remember thinking the thoughts and writing the words but, man, you can't TOUCH those feelings. Its like they belonged to someone else. Someone you don't even know. I'm aware, in an intellectual way. That I felt all those things about him, but this emotions are far away now.
What's so strange to me is that I can't even force my heart back to that place where I felt that all consuming passion. That makes me feel distant from myself. Who WAS I then? Will I ever be able to get back to that place? Reading the letters again made me wonder: Which is the real me? The one who saw the world in that emotionally saturated way, or the me who sees it the way I do now? — Bill Shapiro

One of my pleasantest memories as a kid growing up in New Orleans was how a bunch of us kids, playing, would suddenly hear sounds. It was like a phenomenon, like the Aurora Borealis
maybe. The sounds of men playing would be so clear, but we wouldn't be sure where they were coming from. So we'd start trotting, start running
'It's this way! It's this way!'
And sometimes, after running for a while, you'd find you'd be nowhere near that music. But that music could come on you any time like that. The city was full of the sounds of music. — Danny Barker

I feel my job as an artist is to drive people to country radio. That's my job as a country artist. So these streaming places, especially these on-demand streaming places, where you can just push a button and hear it as many times as you want, like YouTube, any of that stuff, that's taking all the ears away from country radio. — Garth Brooks

That happens a lot when people become parents, too. There's just so much at stake suddenly, and you're also witness to the total miracle of birth, and stuff like that. So I started reading tons of religious texts and checking everything out. One of the things I wanted to make sure of on the record is that it still has a "searching" vibe rather than an authoritative vibe. — Mason Jennings

Behind her, Preston grunted and said, "I know it's not the right thing to say to a lady, miss, but you are sweating like a pig!"
Tiffany, trying to get her shattered thoughts together, muttered, "My mother always said that horses sweat, men perspire, and ladies merely glow ... "
"Is that so?" said Preston cheerfully.
"Well, miss, you are glowing like a pig! — Terry Pratchett

It's been so long since I've really truly felt what it's like to live life without substances to help. Massive struggle that's natural to one's health, but with addiction in my blood I play the cards I was dealt. — Macklemore

Yet it had been delicious to touch her grandfather's robe. It was as different from ordinary material as something sung from something spoken. In a way she liked her grandfather. Once she had seen children crawling under a circus-tent so that they could see the elephant, and she would have done that to see her grandfather; and what she like in him was the upside-downness of him, as this inverted luxury which gave him an everyday possession
for she supposed this robe was just a dressing gown
which was uniquely exquisite ... — Rebecca West

It was not the time to recall all those really horrifying nursery stories she'd read, Bluebeard, Babes in the Wood, Little Red Riding Hood. Why is it that children's stories are so filled with monsters like wolves and witches who eat children, and men who kill their wives? And to think, that people actually sat and told their children such things. — Karen Ranney

It took almost fifteen minutes to explain the situation. By the time I finished, my throat was dry and Demi's eyes were so wide that it seemed like they might fall out of her head. I glanced at Jeff, afraid of finding judgment or disapproval in his eyes. Not because it would change the way I felt about my brother, but because I liked Jeff, and it would be a shame to have to find a place to hide his body. — Seanan McGuire

Even Proust - there's a famous passage where Odette opens the door with a cold, she's sulky, her hair is loose and undone, her skin is patchy, and Swann, who has never cared about her until that moment, falls in love with her because she looks like a Botticelli girl from a slightly damaged fresco. Which Proust himself only knew from a reproduction. He never saw the original, in the Sistine Chapel. But even so - the whole novel is in some ways about that moment. And the damage is part of the attraction, the painting's blotchy cheeks. Even through a copy Proust was able to re-dream that image, re-shape reality with it, pull something all his own from it into the world. Because - the line of beauty is the line of beauty. It doesn't matter if it's been through the Xerox machine a hundred times. — Donna Tartt

Cass Mastern lived for a few years and in that time he learned that the world is all of one piece. He learned that the world is like an enormous spider web and if you touch it, however lightly, at any point, the vibration ripples to the remotest perimeter and the drowsy spider feels the tingle and is drowsy no more but spring out to fling the gossamer coils about you who have touched the web and then inject the black, numbing poison under your hide. It does not matter whether or not you meant to brush the web of things. You happy foot or you gay wing may have brushed it ever so lightly, but what happens always happens and there is the spider, bearded black and with his great faceted eyes glittering like mirrors in the sun, or like God's eye, and the fangs dripping. — Robert Penn Warren

This is a place that was "discovered" by a dude who didn't know how to read a map, so he just showed up on some shore, thought he was in India, and then proceeded to plant a flag there, like, "TA-DA." No, sir, no. What Christopher Columbus's goofass needed was a compass and a clue for being so aggressively mediocre, but that dude has a federal holiday in his honor. He showed up on someone else's property and claimed it as his because he didn't know what it was. This country started off all the way wrong and continued in the same fashion. Chris — Luvvie Ajayi

People write books for children and other people write about the books written for children but I don't think it's for the children at all. I that all the people who worry so much about the children are really worrying about themselves, about keeping their world together and getting the children to help them do it, getting the children to agree that it is indeed a world. Each new generation of children has to be told: 'This is a world, this is what one does, one lives like this.' Maybe our constant fear is that a generation of children will come along and say: 'This is not a world, this is nothing, there's no way to live at all. — Russell Hoban

I thought that deserved a book and feel like the door needs to be open so people can say, "Ok, here we go, let's deal with this" because we're not dealing with it. I'm waiting for somebody to write another book but it hasn't happened yet, though I guess mine's only been out for a year and a half. — Brad Warner

Every time I step onto the field, whether people like it or not, I'm not trying to play dirty - I'm just playing tough. And I'm trying to earn my spot on the team. I'm trying to earn a starting spot. I'm trying to become a complete midfielder who attacks, who defends. So that's the mindset. — Carli Lloyd

I know that I'm very susceptible to getting caught up in storylines like, "I want him to be different. I want him to be more open. I want him to call." We have all of these storylines that kind of take over sometimes, and I think there's real grace and a peaceful heart at the center of just accepting what is, and knowing that everything's OK. The good, the bad, the ugly, the pain, the hurt, the frustration - all of that is valuable and part of this human experience, so we should lean in to all of it. — Sara Bareilles

I stood for parliament with the amazing support and help of my ex-husband, but it's not something that was handed to me like a peerage. I worked hard and was elected. So my achievements, such as they are, are my own. — Louise Mensch

There is a difference between our wisdom and nature's simplicity. That reflects the burden of a complex intelligence. A complex intelligence like ours is impotent compared to the intelligence of a monarch butterfly migrating from Canada to Mexico, or the intelligence of hummingbirds that have co-evolved with the flowers all along their migration route. That seems so simple; it just happens, it just unfolds. — Alison Hawthorne Deming

Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale's there? It is the same he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead seem now faded away. I think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to death. But mark the other head's [Right Whale] expression. See that amazing lower lip, pressed by accident against the vessel's side, so as firmly to embrace the jaw. Does not this whole head seem to speak of an enormous practical resolution in facing death? This Right Whale I take to have been a Stoic; the Sperm Whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his latter years. — Herman Melville

Having been an actor, I always want to leave room for the actors to find their comfort zone, so I don't like to be too rigid in how I plan my shots. It's different if you have weeks to rehearse and you can rehearse on your sets or in your locations and you can plan that out with your actors, but in modern independent filmmaking, you don't really have that time. You have to have a certain level of improvisation. — Eric Balfour

It helps so much being on location. It's like the difference between performing for the rectangle of the camera versus a world being created and then the camera finds things within that. There's a huge difference in that, because what it takes away is performance. You don't feel like performing. You're just kind of doing it. You're existing. — Christian Bale

That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is. Most people love you for who you pretend to be. To keep their love, you keep pretending - performing. You get to love your pretence. It's true, we're locked in an image, an act - and the sad thing is, people get so used to their image, they grow attached to their masks. They love their chains. They forget all about who they really are. And if you try to remind them, they hate you for it, they feel like you're trying to steal their most precious possession. — Jim Morrison

People need to know you have to walk through that rejection, and it's only going to fuel you. If you can somehow look at it like it's a gift, you're just going to regroup, and work harder, and go deeper. So just embrace it. — Jeremy Piven

If I do a movie where I have to have a son and it's a chubby kid, my mother is always like, 'You were never like that.' She gets so upset about it. — Kevin James

In so far as I listen with interest to a record, it's usually to figure out how it was arrived at. The musical end product is where interest starts to flag. It's a bit like jigsaw puzzles. Emptied out of the box, there's a heap of pieces, all shapes, sizes and colours, in themselves attractive and could add up to anything
intriguing. Figuring out how to put them together can be interesting, but what you finish up with as often as not is a picture of unsurpassed banality. Music's like that."
From "Derek Bailey and the Story of Free Improvisation" by Ben Watson, Verso, London, 2004, p. 440. — Derek Bailey

...like my own granddad used to say, if you get down to the nub of it, people don't change.

That's not true, Katie thought. Not at all. Everyone changed, all the time. That was what was so hard. — Megan Abbott

Look it - you start out as an artist, I started out when I was nineteen, and you're full of defenses. You have all of this stuff to prove. You have all of these shields in front of you. All your weapons are out. It's like you're going into battle. You can accomplish a certain amount that way. But then you get to a point where you say, "But there's this whole other territory I'm leaving out." And that territory becomes more important as you grow older. You begin to see that you leave out so much when you go to battle with the shield and all the rest of it. You have to start including that other side or die a horrible death as an artist with your shield stuck on the front of your face forever. You can't grow that way. And I don't think you can grow as a person that way, either. There just comes a point when you have to relinquish some of that and risk becoming more open to the vulnerable side, which I think is the female side. It's much more courageous than the male side. — Sam Shepard

Lord, you will have to be our teacher, because the dignity has been drained out of us in so many ways. We have been treated like dirt, and that has stuck on us. We've put ourselves against standards of our own making, because we thought it would give us worth. Please touch each person with how unique they are in your eyes and how their dignity in your eyes is so great that you will not even override them; you will woo them and pursue them and help them to accept that you are seeking them and you will allow yourself to be found by them if they simply cry out for help. I pray that great freedom will come across them because of their awareness of where they stand in your kingdom. That will make Jesus very happy, and the angels in heaven will jump up and down. And so we say, Let it be so, and that's what we mean by amen. Amen. Dallas Willard — Dallas Willard

The woman doesn't look up. It's as if she's deaf. Maybe she is. Maybe she's like the Cambodian women I've read about, the ones who witnessed so many atrocities that they have willed themselves blind. Maybe that's what you have to do sometimes to survive. You kill off part of yourself, your hearing or eyesight, your capacity for hope. — Ron Rash

The elephant's trunk strokes her cheek, her throat, her forehead, before slipping the scarf free and lifting it, so that the wind carries it off like a rumor. — Jodi Picoult

But we did see the process develop. I remember going to the Rocket Pictures base and they had something like 40 people there, drawing. They didn't know what the characters looked like yet and I remember on the walls seeing 30 or 40 different versions of Juliet. So, it was then that I realised that someone's got to come in and make some really executive decisions. — Matt Lucas

I kind of don't believe in actors directing themselves. Obviously some people have done it well, but I don't see how I could. It's funny that you ask, because I've just been thinking that maybe I'd rather direct The Bell Jar than act in it. It's a huge leap to go from a short to a feature, so I'm tentative - I'm like, Well, that's just so triple-type-A personality of you. — Julia Stiles

So let me get this straight." ... "He threw the note at Tommy and then told him to fuck off? Or do I have it backwards?"
"I'm detecting some sarcasm."
"And then got himself sent the principal's office because he was ready to defend your honor?"
"Quinn."
"Her friend waved a hand. "No, I think you might be on to something. This is clearly an elaborate plot to screw with you. He asks you out, he defends you from that meathead - what next?" Quinn's eyes flashed wide in mock surprise. "Crap, Bex, do you think he will do something truly horrible like buy you flowers? — Brigid Kemmerer

Eager to hear more about the aforementioned behaviors of the ill-bred Miss Bowman, Livia leaned back against the edge of the desk, facing Marcus. "I wonder what Miss Bowman did to offend you so?" she mused aloud. "Do tell, Marcus. If not, my imagination will surely conjure up something far more scandalous than poor Miss Bowman is capable of."
"Poor Miss Bowman?" Marcus snorted. "Don't ask, Livia. I'm not at liberty to discuss it."
Like most men, Marcus didn't seem to understand that nothing torched the flames of a woman's curiosity more violently than a subject that one was not at liberty to discuss. "Out with it, Marcus," she commanded. "Or I shall make you suffer in unspeakable ways."
One of his brows lifted in a sardonic arch. "Since the Bowmans have already arrived, that threat is redundant. — Lisa Kleypas

Wasn't that what Jesus said: do what I do? He was here as an example for us to follow. Same with all prophets. Didn't the prophets tell us to be like them? That's what's wrong with Christianity. They make Jesus and the prophets into icons, take them off of earth, and put them in heaven to worship them, so they're no longer accessible. You've taken a reality and made it into a worthless idol. Christians talk about the idolatry of other religions, but when they no longer live principles and just worship the people who taught them, that's exactly what they're doing. — Daniel Suelo

I don't want easy. I want the impossible. I want love so thick, I drown in it; it's the only thing worth having and, I'm sorry Kona, you're a nice guy when you're not acting like an entitled jackass, but I really don't think you're capable of being anything more than that. — Eden Butler

I never really understood that massive collaboration involving hundreds of people is what makes movies possible, and it's also why I would agree that curiosity is not the most important human trait; the urge to collaborate is. Heck ... only we have the ability to cooperate to make like online communities and space telescopes and imaginariums and movies. So the great thrill of this whole experience [my novel being made into a movie] for me was ..seeing humanity do what it's best at, which ultimately is not competing but cooperating. — John Green

Miranda!"
"What?" She batted him with her pillow.
"Hoyden! Are you drunk?"
"I don't think so. I'm not sure. They never gave us wine at Yardley. I feel happy."
"Happy?" He grabbed a corner of the pillow as she whacked him again with it. "Stop it!"
"You're too serious, Winterley!" She reached for another pillow. "I will beat you until you smile!"
He ducked out of his chair with a rakish grin as she swung at him, then tackled her flat on the soft bed, both of them laughing.
"You are ... impossible," he chided with a gentle sigh as he braced his elbows on either side of her head. He traced her cheekbones with the pads of his thumbs.
"Difficult, but not impossible." She wrapped her arms around him, relishing the weight of him atop her, the smoothness of his bare chest against her bodice. "It all depends on who's trying."
"That sounded distinctly like an invitation," he murmured. — Gaelen Foley

One good thing about New York is that most people function daily while in a low-grade depression. It's not like if you're in Los Angeles, where everyone's so actively working on cheerfulness and mental and physical health that if they sense you're down, they shun you. Also, all that sunshine is a cruel joke when you're depressed. In New York, even in your misery, you feel like you belong. — Mindy Kaling

It takes so many people to make a success story like that. It starts with the song and the songwriters, then Mark Wright's producing, all of the players that played on it, me singing, the marketing department, the promotion department at the label ... It takes a lot of people to make a hit like that. — Lee Ann Womack

Our enemies are quite good for relentlessly keeping us sharp and on our toes. This especially goes for sincere philosophers. They use their enemies to challenge their arguments so that they can know the weak points in their own reasoning and how to argue for and strengthen their position. There are just none like one's enemies to always look for his mistakes and do it harder than anyone else. — Criss Jami

When I lived in New York, there wasn't as much TV or film around. I got asked to do a couple of indie films, just based on me being from The Smashing Pumpkins and A Perfect Circle. I did a couple of indie movies from Japan and one from Canada, and I thought it was an exciting, fun thing to do. I had a great time doing it, it was just that, in New York, there really wasn't as much. My studio in New York closed, so I moved out to L.A. and just started looking into composing as another thing to do, as a musician. I like it a lot. It's fun and it's a different way of thinking about music. — James Iha

It's a beautiful thing to be that committed to something that you get so much joy from, but it is like a sick addiction, because sometimes it's incredibly volatile, incredibly painful, and very frustrating. A man shouldn't be defined by his work, but I am. — Scott Weiland

She described how Camus's aphorism "One must imagine Sisyphus happy" helps her fight back against unproductive feelings of meaninglessness.
If we consider, like Camus, Sisyphus at the foot of his mountain, we can see that he is smiling. He is content in his task of defying the Gods, the journey more important than the goal. To achieve a beginning, a middle, an end, a meaning to the chaos of creation - that's more than any deity seems to manage: But it's what writers do. So I tidy the desk, even polish it up a bit, stick some flowers in a vase and start.
As I begin a novel I remind myself as ever of Camus's admonition that the purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself. And even while thinking, well, fat chance! I find courage, reach for the heights, and if the rock keeps rolling down again so it does. What the hell, start again. Rewrite. Be of good cheer. Smile on, Sisyphus! — Fay Weldon

Wordy! I enjoy description - I like words, and words are the tools that writers use, just like paint is the tool that artists use. I think words are fun, and I have a lot of fun using them. I know that a lot of kids think my stories start very slowly, and I expect that's true. But that's the way I like to read stories, so when I'm writing them I can do what I want! I say that to kids in schools, and they are very generous - they say, That's true. You can do what you want. It's your story. — Natalie Babbitt

My father got a job at Bradford University in textiles. And he came for - I guess, you know, why do people immigrate? - like, for a better life to find, you know, a new world. And, you know, I think he always - he saw it as an opportunity. And so yeah so we came to this coal mining town in the north of England and that's where I grew up. — Aasif Mandvi

They don't go into what is the cause of goodness, so why of the other shop? If lewdies are good that's because they like it, and I wouldn't ever interfere with their pleasures, and so of the other shop. And I was patronizing the other shop. More, badness is of the self, the one, the you or me on our oddy knockies, and that self is made by old Bog or God and is his great pride and radosty. But the not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self. And is not our modern history, my brothers, the story of the brave malenky selves fighting these big machines? — Anthony Burgess

There is another peculiar satisfaction in really hearing someone: It is like listening to the music of the spheres, because beyond the immediate message of the person, no matter what that might be, there is the universal. Hidden in all of the personal communications which I really hear there seem to be orderly psychological laws, aspects of the same order we find in the universe as a whole. So there is both the satisfaction of hearing this person and also the satisfaction of feeling one's self in touch with what is universally true. — Carl Rogers

People need to be given enough so that they feel like they're not missing something. There's a thing that you have when you watch a movie where, if you feel like you're not following and you're going to get tested on it later, you're going to get disengaged. So, you have to give people just enough information, so that they're able to keep up with the story. — Mark Waters

It's all right."
"It's not. Nothing's right. I've never done a right thing in my life, it seems."
"That makes a pair of us then." Her lips pressed against the spot under his ear. "But I believe we are right together, don't you? People like us ... we have no talent for following rules. We can only follow our hearts. I've wronged people as well, but is it horribly wicked that I can't bring myself to regret it? It brought me to you."
He took one of her hands and kissed it. "You're so young, you can't know the meaning of true regret. It's never what you've done, love, it's what you've left undone. — Tessa Dare

The same uneven application of values applies in the weird worlds of academia and the think tanks. Like the media, they choose to close off their minds the moment that the question of Islam comes along. Most bizarre is that you can get away with saying anything, absolutely anything, so long as it is flattering of Islam. It doesn't matter how soppy, how sentimental, how completely unacademic it is: so long as it's about Islam, different standards apply. — Douglas Murray

With a dreamy sigh, I prop my chin on my fists. "Who knew that one day I'd be on a date with the lead singer from a famous boy band?"
He scowls. "Infinite Gray was not a boy band."
"Were there any girls in the band?"
"No."
"That makes you a boy band."
"It made us an all-male rock group."
I bite back my smile. He's so cute when he's irritated. "Right, like 'N Sync."
He winces. "Not like 'N Sync. Jesus, watch where you hurl those things. Words hurt, Maggie. — Lexi Ryan

We could sit around and talk if you'd like."
"Okay." She crossed her arms and tried to look casual. "So what's up?"
"Considering what you're wearing beneath that sheet, and what we just heard in the hallway, you might want to rephrase that particular statement. — Jill Shalvis

I believe that, your art is like a time capsule for where you were at, where your mentality was at, at that specific or that particular space in time. A lot of times people want the same thing over and over again; I'm not going to give you that, I'm just not. So, I want my fans to continue to grow with me and let's take this journey, because it ain't gon' never stop. — Jon Connor

You know how sometimes when you come home and you haven't seen a place for so long that it seems unbelievably beautiful, and you want to cry because you love it so much you think it's going to break your heart? I felt like that, too. I am HOME. — Elizabeth Wein

What a shock that a guy who makes $2 million a week behaves exactly like I would with $2 million a week. As far as I'm concerned, if you make $2 million a week and you don't have a hooker in your hotel room, you're creepy and I don't trust you. And I don't do drugs at all, so for me it would just be more prostitutes. That's how they would find me. I would be dead on the floor, flattened by a pile of prostitutes. I'd look like a cat in a hoarders' house. — Jim Norton

As you become an adult, shame gets introduced and reintroduced constantly to you. So where something that, to a child, just is what it is - you know, your father's violent but he loves you and that's just the way it is - later on you realize that this is like different, shameful, blah blah blah. — Justin Torres

She ordered white wine, and I ordered Schweppes tonic water without the booze. The drinks came, and I took a hit.
The first thing she said was, "I don't know how you can drink that stuff straight?"
"You mean without the liquor to kill the taste?"
"Yeah, it's so bitter."
"That's what I like about it. It's bitter like me. We match."
"You mean you're a grumpy old man?"
"Right. Can't help it. That's what happens when you get old."
"Well, I'm an optimist."
"I'm an optimist too, just a grumpy optimist. — Robert Hobkirk

A panda walks into a tea room and ordered a salad and ate it. Then it pulled out a pistol, shot the man in the next table dead, and walked out. Everyone rushed after it, shouting "Stop! Stop! Why did you do that?" "Becuase I am a panda," said the panda. "That's what pandas do. If you don't believe me, look in the dictionary." So they looked in the dictionary and sure enough they found Panda: Racoon-like animal of Asia. Eats shoots and leaves. — Ursula K. Le Guin

What I will say is that you have to exercise your writing muscle. Write every day. Get better at it. Read a lot of good books. As a professional writer, I force myself to write when I don't feel like it. I don't wait to feel inspired. It takes discipline and grit and sacrifice to be able to bring a book out to the world. It's so much work, and it's very difficult, but it is also the most fun I've ever had. I love making things up. I love amusing myself. — Melissa De La Cruz

The way I feel about suicide is, I like knowing it's there. I like having it as an option. Because if I'm going to kill myself, then nothing really matters, so I might as well stick around for one more day. Just to see what happens. Out of curiosity. If I'm going to die anyway, then nothing is of particular consequence, so why not see what happens next? That way all I have to do is live until tomorrow. I know I can always handle one more day. — Nina De Gramont

The typewriter is neat and compact and sturdy and blue, just the right machine to pound out a missive of love. When you strike the keys it's a sound that hasn't been heard in the qorld world for thirty years (we are so far away from a time when typewriters won world wars). When you strike the keys they make a sound like a pistol shot, a sound so definite and sure you feel like a genius, or an orayor orator, or a beat poet. When you strike the keys you just want to keep on fucking writing. You have to wrestle with the thing, like I am doing now, steer it like an old manual car, keep the words together and right and on the page, but the blood and muscle of a typewriter, it is a beautiful thing. — Yvette Walker

Tolerance is a virtue, but like all virtues, when exaggerated, it transforms itself into a vice. We need to be careful of the 'tolerance trap' so that we are not swallowed up in it. The permissiveness afforded by the weakening of the laws of the land to tolerate legalized acts of immorality does not reduce the serious spiritual consequence that is the result of the violation of God's law of chastity. — Boyd K. Packer

I would like to sit and and write some acoustic stuff. That's what I want to do. It means creatively, that's what I want so I need to do that for myself and then I'll see. — Avril Lavigne

Mr. Garrison glanced at Daemon, frowning. "It's the fact that the energy was so strong it disrupted a satellite's signal and they weren't able to snap any pictures of the event. Nothing like that has ever happened before."
Daemon kept his expression blank. "I guess I'm just that awesome. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

I loved the city, so the feeling in 2001 [election] first was shock, then (I was) nervous, then scared but then it's - I really wasn't happy and ecstatic like I thought I (would be). I was immediately hit with the enormity of the responsibility and the fact that most people in that town - particularly those that voted for me were placing their hopes and dreams in me. That is a big, big stressful place to be. — Kwame Kilpatrick

Nice dress Zoey. It looks just like mine. Oh, wait! It used to be mine.
Aphrodite laughed a throaty, I'm-so-grown-and-you're-just-a-kid laugh.
I really hate it when girls do that.I mean, yes, she's older, but I have boobs, too. — P.C. Cast

What is it? something you live and breathe in like air? a kind of vacuum filled with wraithlike and indomitable anger and pride and glory at and in happenings that occurred and ceased fifty years ago? a kind of entailed birthright father and son and father and son of never forgiving General Sherman, so that forevermore as long as your childrens' children produce children you wont be anything but a descendant of a long line of colonels killed in Pickett's charge at Manassas? 'Gettysburg,' Quentin said. 'You cant understand it. You would have to be born there. — William Faulkner

I really hope you like this," he says again, and flings open the door.
It's a glass room, a greenhouse, I realize. Within are tulips, hundreds, of all colors. Tulips bloom in the middle of July in Desi's lake house. In their own special room for a very special girl.
"I know tulips are your favorite, but the season is so short," Desi said. "So I fixed that for you. They'll bloom year-round. — Gillian Flynn

The other night I took her on-out of pity-and what do you think the crazy bitch had done to herself? She had shaved it clean ... not a speck of hair on it. Did you ever have a woman who shaved her twat? It's repulsive, ain't it? And it's funny, too. Sort of mad like. It doesn't look like a twat any more: it's like a dead clam or something." He describes to me how, his curiosity aroused, he got out of bed and searched for his flashlight. "I made her hold it open and I trained the flashlight on it. You should have seen me ... it was comical. I got so worked up about it that I forgot all about her. I never in my life looked at a cunt so seriously. — Henry Miller

I have bad days. Sometimes I have a lot of bad days. By and large, I think most people fall into a bad mood because they're able to ruminate on whatever the problem at hand is, and that makes it worse. But when you intercept the rumination process with something that requires your full attention - that's stimulating and absorbing, that places a demand on your intellectual focus - you don't get to ruminate. In a way, it's a mental health aid to be able to do that so much. My routine, what I do, it just feels like home. It's my comfort food. — Maria Popova

I don't want to be a movie star like Angelina Jolie. Nothing about being a celebrity is desirable. I'm an actor. It's bizarre to me that everybody's so obsessive. — Kristen Stewart

There's good sex, and then there's sex where the memory takes up permanent residence in your brain, changes the fucking chemical balance or something so that you crave it like a damn fix. It makes you jones for it, gets under your skin like an itch. That's the kind of sex this is. — Sabrina Paige

And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs. Willard's kitchen mat ... I also remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after I had children I would feel differently, I wouldn't want to write poems any more. So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state. — Sylvia Plath