Space For Myself Quotes & Sayings

When I wrote the opera, I made a deal with myself that for at least an hour a day I would work on it, even if it meant just sitting on my piano bench, staring into space and thinking about it. It's about keeping it regular, like your bowel movements - let's get real: it's your bodily artistic movements! It comes from the same place. — Rufus Wainwright

She was crouched in the corner of the room, eating something off the floor. It was the old woman dressed in endless black. When she looked up this time there was no question she was there for me. She had the face of my mother but much older, her ancient decayed mouth coming closer for her good-night kiss. I steeled myself against her putrid smell, the mouthful of bitter dust, but as her lips touched mine it was like biting into a purple black plum whose fruit was brilliant red, like an explosion of intense joy. Its childhood smell wrinkled my nose with pleasure, its sweet juices ran down my chin, turning into a beautiful black ocean where I floated safely, not lost as I had imagined, but securely tucked away deep in space. — Mary Woronov

I believed that work would save me, make me happy, solve my problems; that if I absolutely wore myself out, happiness would be waiting for me on the other side of all that work. But it wasn't. On the other side was just more work. More expectations, more responsibility. I'd trained a whole group of people to know that I would never say no, I would never say "this is too much". I would never ask for more time or space, I would never bow out. And so they kept asking, and I was everyone's responsible girl. — Shauna Niequist

When I am assailed with heavy tribulations, I rush out among my pigs rather than remain alone by myself. The human heart is like a millstone in a mill: when you put wheat under it, it turns and grinds and bruises the wheat to flour; if you put no wheat, it still grinds on, but then 'tis itself it grinds and wears away. So the human heart, unless it be occupied with some employment, leaves space for the devil, who wriggles himself in and brings with him a whole host of evil thoughts, temptations, and tribulations, which grind out the heart. — Martin Luther

I just wanted you to know I'd be chasing after you right now, naked if need required it. But because I'm respecting your need for time and space, I'll force myself to lie here in bed and pretend I'm asleep. — Nicole Williams

I have to make myself write, sometimes. In the space between poems, you somehow forget how to do it, where to begin. It was good to be task - based for a while. I just came downstairs each day, picked the one I was going to do that day, and wrote. — Simon Armitage

I do know what my family has done for me, but they do need to give me some space to let me be myself. There would be some things I would handle differently. — Kim Wilde

You want to just dump me in space?" My voice is low, but not for long. "It's not like I've done anything wrong! I didn't wake myself up, you know!"
Eldest shrugs. "It would be by far the simplest solution. You are, after all, nonessential."
"We can't do that," the doctor says, and I totally forgive him for being creepy and threatening me with drugs. — Beth Revis

The past, if there is such a thing, is mostly empty space, great expanses of nothing, in which significant persons and events float. Nigeria was like that for me: mostly forgotten, except for those few things that I remembered with an outsize intensity. These were the things that had been solidified in my mind by reiteration, that recurred in dreams and daily thoughts: certain faces, certain conversations, which, taken as a group, represented a secure version of the past that I had been constructing since 1992. But there was another, irruptive, sense of things past. The sudden reencounter in the present, of something or someone long forgotten, some part of myself I had relegated to childhood and to Africa. — Teju Cole

It's not all gone. She loved someone before and so did I. The Society and the Rising and the world are all still out there, pressing against us. But Lei holds them away. She's made enough space for two people to stand up together, whether or not any Society or Rising says that they can. She's done it before. The amazing thing is that she's not afraid to do it again. When we fall in love the first time, we don't know anything. We risk a lot less than we do if we choose to love again.
There is something extraordinary about the first time falling.
But if feels even better to find myself standing on solid ground, with someone holding on to me, pulling me back, and know that I'm doing the same for her. — Ally Condie

don't you see how
hard speaking is for me?
how hard
breathing is?

don't you see that
I'm a negative space
cut from the
universe and
when you ask
me to breathe
i am trying to
will myself
into
being? — Darshana Suresh

Thanks for not pulling out Diplomatic Felix," Becky whispered. "You're showing admirable restraint. They really are very nice people. The more sane ones are being polite and giving you space while the others . . . Well, they're just . . . they're . . . we're not used to . . . if Tom Selleck showed up here, I'd probably make a complete idiot out of myself."

myself."

"And why didn't meeting me cause the same effect?"

"Come on, sweetie. You're great and all, but you're no Tom Sell-eck."

"What does he do? He smiles with dimples and grows a mustache."

Becky patted his arm consolingly. "Someday you'll be able to grow a mustache too. Just give it time. — Shannon Hale

You're an asshole," she grumbles, lying down beside me, close enough to touch but we're not touching. She feels miles away right now, coldness settling in that space between us.
"Yeah, well, at least you know..."
"Yeah, and it's a pity, really, because I found myself starting to give a fuck about you."
She says nothing else.
I don't say anything, either.
We lay there in silence.
For once, I don't prefer it.
I want her to say something else, anything else, just to erase those words now assaulting my mind.
I found myself starting to give a fuck about you.
I don't like it, not at all, because as she says those words, I come to realize, in the moment, that feeling might be mutual. — J.M. Darhower

Something must always remain that eludes us ... For power to have an object on which it can be exercised, a space in which to stretch out its arms ... As long as I know there exists in the world someone who does tricks only for the love of the trick, as long as I know there is a woman who loves reading for reading's sake, I can convince myself that the world continues ... And every evening I, too, abandon myself to reading, like that distant unknown woman ... — Italo Calvino

The time arrives. 'It is a waltz, I think,' Miss Larkins doubtfully observes, when I present myself. 'Do you waltz? If not, Captain Bailey - ' But I do waltz (pretty well, too, as it happens), and I take Miss Larkins out. I take her sternly from the side of Captain Bailey. He is wretched, I have no doubt; but he is nothing to me. I have been wretched, too. I waltz with the eldest Miss Larkins! I don't know where, among whom, or how long. I only know that I swim about in space, with a blue angel, in a state of blissful delirium, until I find myself alone with her in a little room, resting on a sofa. She admires a flower (pink camellia japonica, price half-a-crown), in my button-hole. I give it her, and say: 'I ask an inestimable price for it, Miss Larkins.' 'Indeed! What is that?' returns Miss Larkins. 'A flower of yours, that I may treasure it as a miser does gold.' 'You're a bold boy,' says Miss Larkins. 'There. — Charles Dickens

A lot of the time I don't understand what I'm doing here. In life, I mean. I'm not saying that I wish I were dead or anything. Most of the time, I'm glad for the opportunity to be alive. I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to be doing with it. I think my purpose is to be a writer: to craft beautiful sentences that change the way people view the world, to create something meaningful outside of myself. That's what I think a lot of the time. But then sometimes I wonder if I just made that up in order to make myself feel like I have a reason for taking up space. — Leila Sales

When evening has come, I return to my house and go into my study. At the door I take off my clothes of the day, covered with mud and mire, and I put on my regal and courtly garments; and decently reclothed, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them lovingly, I feed on the food that alone is mine and that I was born for. There I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reason for their actions; and they in their humanity reply to me. And for the space of four hours I feel no boredom, I forget every pain, I do not fear poverty, death does not frighten me. I deliver myself entirely to them. — Niccolo Machiavelli

I was seized at once with a profound fascination, a burning thirst to learn, to immerse myself totally, to melt away, to become as one with this foreign universe. To know it as if I had been born and raised there, begun life there. I wanted to learn the language, I wanted to read the books, I wanted to penetrate every nook and cranny.
It was a kind of malady, a dangerous weakness, because I also realized that these civilizations are so enormous, so rich, complex, and varied, that getting to know even a fragment of one of them, a mere scrap, would require devoting one's whole life to the enterprise. Cultures are edifices with countless rooms, corridors, balconies, and attics, all arranged, furthermore, into such twisting, turning labyrinths, that if you enter one of them, there is no exit, no retreat, no turning back. To become a Hindu scholar, a Sinologist, an Arabist, or a Hebraist is a lofty all-consuming pursuit, leaving no space or time for anything else. — Ryszard Kapuscinski

I never could keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because the fault must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that such a very liberal amount of space was given to the organ which enables me to make promises that the organ which should enable me to keep them was crowded out. But I grieve not. I like no half-way things. I had rather have one faculty nobly developed than two faculties of mere ordinary capacity. — Mark Twain

I endured all our hardships as if they had been luxuries: I made light of scurvy, banqueted off train-oil, and met that cold for which there is no language framed, and which might be a new element; or which, rather, had seemed in that long night like the vast void of ether beyond the uttermost star, where was neither air nor light nor heat, but only bitter negation and emptiness. I was hardly conscious of my body; I was only a concentrated search in myself. — Harriet Prescott Spofford

I cannot recall having believed, even as a child, that the purpose of reading fiction was to learn about the place commonly called the real world. I seem to have sensed from the first that to read fiction was to make available for myself a new kind of space. In that space, a version of myself was free to move among places and personages the distinguishing features of which were the feelings they caused to arise in me rather than their seeming appearance, much less their possible resemblance to places or persons in the world where I sat reading. — Gerald Murnane

I no longer protect myself from the world I grew up in. Rather, today I try to protect the feelings I have for that world, the emotional space where my desire to write first took hold, and still grows. — Elena Ferrante

I became very much, if I have to describe myself, I'm sort of a Libertarian Capitalist, and I was looking for, what's the economic engine that's going to drive us into space. — Peter Diamandis

I'm dating myself by saying this, but I was the test audience for 'Space Invaders.' I remember when that was the first game that wasn't a pinball game. I spent a lot of money on 'Space Invaders,' in the form of quarters, of course. — John C. Reilly

There was only so much space between us, not even a real distance if measured in miles or feet or even inches, all the things that told you how far you'd come or had left to go. But it was a big space, if only for me. And as I moved forward to him covering it, he waited there on the other side. It was only the last little bit I has to go, but in the end, I knew it would be all I would truly remember. So as I kissed him, bringing this summer and everything else full circle, I let myself fall, and was not scared of the ground I knew would rise up to meet me. — Sarah Dessen

I brushed the curtain aside, scowling. Hadn't even spoken to the girl and I felt like a stalker staring out the window, waiting once more ... waiting for what? To catch a glimpse of her? Or to better prepare myself for the inevitable meeting?
If Dee saw me now, she'd be on the floor laughing.
And if Ash saw me right now, she'd scratch out my eyes and blast my new neighbor into outer space. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

The sweetness of dogs (fifteen)
What do you say, Percy? I am thinking
of sitting out on the sand to watch
the moon rise. Full tonight.
So we go
and the moon rises, so beautiful it
makes me shudder, makes me think about
time and space, makes me take
measure of myself: one iota
pondering heaven. Thus we sit,
I thinking how grateful I am for the moon's
perfect beauty and also, oh! How rich
it is to love the world. Percy, meanwhile,
leans against me and gazes up into
my face. As though I were
his perfect moon. — Mary Oliver

I'm a workaholic. I would not pretend to be anything else. I rarely go to bed before one o'clock in the morning. I might kind of have a spa between half-past twelve and one and relax, and that's when I do my thinking, or my non-thinking. That's when I have a bit of space for myself. — Joan Kirner

I usually can't stop babbling, just to fill space, but with Julienne, I can see the appeal of just being. Julienne is quiet, obviously, but that's because she can say what she means to in so few words. She has a commanding presence that's hard to ignore. Julienne doesn't seem to feel the same urgency other people do. Everyone else, myself included, is constantly vying for a space to occupy, just for the sake of it. But when Julienne does share, it's incredible. She has an actual opinion on everything, not just something to say, and I want to hear about all of them. — Pega Rose

I wasn't a misanthrope and I wasn't a misogynist but I liked being alone. It felt good to sit alone in a small space and smoke and drink. I had always been good company for myself. — Charles Bukowski

For me, between "Reference" and "Sketching & Conceptualizing" is the "Get the Hell Out of the Studio" step. I most often NEED to shut off the computer, push myself back from my desk and escape the studio space to let possible ideas percolate in my gray matter before committing anything to paper or digital imagery as a sketch or a concept. — Jeff Fisher

To express dynamic motion through a static moment became for me limited and unsatisfactory. The basic idea was to liberate myself from this old concept and arrive at an image in which the spectator could feel the beauty of a fourth dimension, which lies much more between moments than within a moment. In music one remembers never one tone, but a melody, a theme, a movement. In dance, never a moment, but again the beauty of a movement in time and space. — Ernst Haas

This sense of my own weakness and emptiness comforts me. I feel myself a mere speck of dust lost in space, yet I am part of that endless grandeur which envelopes me. I could never see why that should be cause for despair, since there could very well be nothing at all behind the black curtain. — Gustave Flaubert

I can't write from the subconscious actually, because a lot of the time when I co-write with other people, I'm writing for them as opposed to for myself. When it comes to lyrics, I tend to want to give them their voice, since it's most likely going to be on their record, or somebody else's record. And I find for more commerial-style music, people want simplicity, less vagueness, and less space to fill between the lines, so to speak. So I can't be quite as ethereal and mystical. — Gary Louris

EVERY TIME I see a dog in a movie, I think the same thing: I want that dog. I see Skip or Lucy or Shiloh and for a moment I can't even think about the movie's plot. I can only think about the dog. I want to hold it, pet it, take it for walks, and tell it what a good dog it is. I want to love it, and I want it to love me. I have an empty space inside myself that can only be filled by a dog. — Roger Ebert

When I return to the writing process after being away from it for a while, the first part of it always is being honest with myself: What am I into right now? Is it rock bands and guitars, is it noise, is it dance beats and electronics? Is it space, is it clutter? — Trent Reznor

I'd like to go back to five years old again. Just sometimes. To be turning over rocks and looking for pill bugs and holding earthworms, playing dolls, erecting forts, digging through dirt for marbles, burrowing in leaf piles, failing at igloo building, when my biggest concern was going to sleep with the lights off. I wish I was five again, before things got hard, before I was forced to grow up way too early and been stuck in this "adult" thing way too long. I wish I could sit in my Grandpa's lap and let him sing me crazy Irish songs and go over the names of the planets. "Gwampa, tell me about Outer Space." ... "Gwampa, sing the Swimming Song."
I wish I could go back there, just for a little while, and pick raspberries by myself in the sun and find secret hideaways and not hurt, not worry, not carry the heavy things. If I could be five years old ... just for a few minutes. Remember what it felt like to be free. That would be something. — Jennifer DeLucy

For the record, sports cars have ridiculously small trunks.
I know that for a fact, since I found myself stuffed into one. — Roberta Pearce

o here I am, upside down in a woman. Arms patiently crossed, waiting, waiting and wondering who I'm in, what I'm in for. My eyes close nostalgically when I remember how I once drifted in my translucent body bag, floated dreamily in the bubble of my thoughts through my private ocean in slow-motion somersaults, colliding gently against the transparent bounds of my confinement, the confiding membrane that vibrated with, even as it muffled, the voices of conspirators in a vile enterprise. That was in my careless youth. Now, fully inverted, not an inch of space to myself, knees crammed against my belly, my thoughts as well as my head are fully engaged. I've no choice, my ear is pressed all day and night against the bloody walls. I listen, make mental notes, and I'm troubled. I'm hearing pillow talk of deadly intent and I'm terrified by what awaits me, by what might draw me in. — Ian McEwan

Light. Space. Light and space without time, I think, for this is a country with only the slightest traces of human history. In the doctrine of the geologists with their scheme of ages, eons and epochs all is flux, as Heraclitus taught, but from the mortally human point of view the landscape of the Colorado is like a section of eternity- timeless. In all my years in the canyon country I have yet see a rock fall, of its own volition, so to speak, aside from floods. To convince myself of the reality of change and therefore time I will sometimes push a stone over the edge of a cliff and watch it descend and wait- lighting my pipe- for the report of its impact and disintegration to return. Doing my bit to help, of course, aiding natural processes and verifying the hypotheses of geological morphology. But am not entirely convinced. — Edward Abbey

Louise, I would gladly fire the past for you, go and not look back. I have been reckless before, never counting the cost, oblivious to the cost. Now, I've done the sums ahead. I know what it will mean to redeem myself from the accumulations of a lifetime. I know and I don't care. You set before me a space uncluttered by association. It might be a void or it might be a release. Certainly I want to take the risk. I want to take the risk because the life I have stored up is going mouldy. — Jeanette Winterson

Much to my surprise, as I set them free, I was able to forgive myself for the judgments I had made about them. I now hold them in a loving space in my heart and honor them as my ancestors who love me and guide me each day. — Iyanla Vanzant

A romantic painting shows a heap of icy debris in a polar light; no man, no object inhabits this desolate space; but for this very reason, provided I am suffering an amorous sadness, this void requires that I fling myself into it; I project myself as a tiny figure, seated on a block of ice, abandoned forever. "I'm cold," the lover says, "Iet's go back"; but there is no road, no way, the boat is wrecked. There is a coldness particular to the lover, the chilliness of the child (or of any young animal) that needs maternal warmth. — Roland Barthes

No, indeed!" she cried, all indignation. "I have no notion of asking people to perform services for me which I can do perfectly well for myself. I do not intend to go, in the space of one hour, from the helplessness of enchantment to another sort of helplessness!" pg. 761 — Susanna Clarke

I don't know how you hear music. I imagine that if you like music at all then it has, in your head, some kind of third dimension to it, a dimension suggesting space as well as surface, depth of field as well as texture.
Speaking for myself, I used to hear "buildings" ... three-dimensional forms of architectural substance and tension. I did not "see" these buildings in the classic synaesthetic way so much as sense them. These forms had "floors", "walls", "roofs", "windows", "cellars". They expressed volume. Music to me has always been a handsome three-dimensional container, a vessel, as real in its way as a Scout hut or a cathedral or a ship, with an inside and an outside and subdivided internal spaces.
I'm absolutely certain that this "architecture" had everything to do with why music has always exerted such a hold over me. I think music was the structure in which I learned to contain and then examine emotion. — Nick Coleman

The true gardener then brushes over the ground with slow and gentle hand, to liberate a space for breath round some favorites; but he is not thinking about destruction except incidentally. It is only the amateur like myself who becomes obsessed and rejoices with a sadistic pleasure in weeds that are big and bad enough to pull, and at last, almost forgetting the flowers altogether, turns into a Reformer. — Freya Stark

I'm learning to practice gratitude for a healthy body, even if it's rounder than I'd like it to be. I'm learning to take up all the space I need, literally and figuratively, even though we live in a world that wants women to be tiny and quiet. To feed one's body, to admit one's hunger, to look one's appetite straight in the eye without fear or shame - this is controversial work in our culture. Part of being a Christian means practicing grace in all sorts of big and small and daily ways, and my body gives me the opportunity to demonstrate grace, to make peace with imperfection every time I see myself in the mirror. On my best days, I practice grace and patience with myself, knowing that I can't extend grace and patience if I haven't tasted it. — Shauna Niequist

I think I'm still just as conflicted about the war as I always was. On the one hand, I was a soldier carrying out his duty, following his allegiance to his country and to the mission at hand. But yet, there was always this unease plaguing me. "What are we doing here?" "Are we really fixing this country or are we doing more harm than good?" And the most pressing question: "How do we pull ourselves out of this quicksand?" I think I'm still there in that white space you mentioned, trying to get clarity for myself on what this war did to us as a nation. — Dave Abrams

I think I set myself on a course to become a scientist around about the time that Carl Sagan's 'Cosmos' series was on television, and there really was no going back for me at that point, and then I went on to study space science and then get my Ph.D., then go aboard and work in the European Space Agency. — Alastair Reynolds

I write for myself, and my goal is bringing that world and that experience of black Americans to life on the stage and giving it a space there. — August Wilson

I have learned to take the part of me that is very fearful and work on that. There is space for that in my life. I have learned to give myself a bit more freedom between 'action' and 'cut.' I come by all that fear honestly, like most humans have. I can't bring it with me to work, so in that way, the work feels quite liberating. — Taylor Schilling

Jonah Griggs.
Not just a name but a state of mind I never want to revisit, although I do keep him at the back of my mind for those times I get me hopes raised about something. So then I can slap myself into reality and remind myself of what happens when you let someone into your sacred space. Jonah Griggs is my second reminder to never ever trust another human being. My mother was first. — Melina Marchetta

I consider myself really lucky to be able to visit so many parts of the world, but after all of that, I love to come home. I appreciate my own space and the world I create for myself, my family and friends. — Kylie Minogue

Sometimes I wander round and round in circles, going over the same ground, getting lost, sometimes for hours, or days, or even weeks ... But I know that if I immerse myself in it long enough, things will clarify, simplify. I can count on that. When it happens, it happens fast. Boom ba boom ba boom! One thing after the other, taking the breath away. And then, you know, I feel like I'm walking out in some remote corner of space, where no mortal's ever been, all alone with something beautiful ... Once, when I was in Switzerland some friends took me up in some very high cable cars, climbing up a mountain ... There was a restaurant on top and the view was supposed to be sublime. When we got up it was a great disappointment because the clouds were obscuring everything. But suddenly there was a rent in the clouds and there were the Jungrau and two other peaks towering right in front of us ... That's what it's like. — Steven Pinker

I let myself feel the fear, give in to it completely, for the space of several deep, long breaths. Then, because I had no other choice, I let it go. — Vicki Keire

I'm happy to report you still get nothing you don't need at Motel 6, and, therefore, you don't have to pay for it. I don't need valet parking. If I can drive the old crate 300 miles to the hotel all by myself, I can certainly handle the last nine feet to the parking space. — Tom Bodett

When I consider the brief span of my life absorbed into the eternity which precedes and will succeed it - memoria hospitis unius diei praetereuntis (remembrance of a guest who tarried but a day) - the small space I occupy and which I see swallowed up in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I know nothing and which know nothing of me, I take fright and am amazed to see myself here rather than there: there is no reason for me to be here rather than there, now rather than then. Who put me here? By whose command and act were this place and time allotted to me? — Blaise Pascal

To truly understand what it is to be in the light, you have to also understand what it is to be in the shadow. Because it is one thing to hold the light within myself, but how can I hold the space for another being when they are in their shadow and still love them? And not judge them? I am only going to judge them if I am still judging me. — Seane Corn

I actually chafe at describing myself as masculine. For one thing, masculinity itself is such an expansive territory, encompassing boundaries of nationality, race, and class. Most importantly, individuals blaze their own trails across this landscape. And it's hard for me to label the intricate matrix of my gender as simply masculine.

To me, branding individual self-expression as simply feminine or masculine is like asking poets: Do you write in English or Spanish? The question leaves out the possibilities that the poetry is woven in Cantonese or Ladino, Swahili or Arabic. The question deals only with the system of language that the poet has been taught. It ignores the words each writer hauls up, hand over hand, from a common well. The music words make when finding themselves next to each other for the first time. The silences echoing in the space between ideas. The powerful winds of passion and belief that move the poet to write. — Leslie Feinberg

My childhood was so inconsistent that I never expected normalcy, and it's enough for me to be able to have time and space to be good to myself and the people around me. Children are nice, but I decided to save myself instead. — Meghan Daum

After all, there was nothing preposterous and world-shaking in the idea that there might be events which overstepped the limited categories of space, time, and causality. Animals were known to sense beforehand storms and earthquakes. There were dreams which foresaw the death of certain persons, clocks which stopped at the moment of death, glasses which shattered at the critical moment. All these things had been taken for granted in the world of my childhood. And now I was apparently the only person who had ever heard of them. In all earnestness I asked myself what kind of world I had stumbled into. Plainly, the urban world knew nothing about the country world, the real world of mountains, woods and rivers, of animals and 'God's thoughts' (plants and crystals). I found this explanation comforting. At all events, it bolstered my self-esteem. — C. G. Jung

The most rigid pattern was not the one imposed by the school system or the adolescent social system. It was the pattern I made of the people around me, a mythology for their incomprehensible activity, a mythology that brought me a cramped delight, which I protected by putting all possible space between myself and other people. the boundaries of my inner world did not extend out, but in, so that there was a large area of blank whiteness starting at my most external self and expanding inward until it reached the tiny inner province of dazzling color and activity that it safeguarded. — Mary Gaitskill

I love isolation. It's very important for me to have time and space to myself when I can sit and read or write as well as paint. It's all part of the process. — Stuart Pearson Wright

For me, it's always this constant battle and search when I'm out on stage as to where and when do I really open myself up to the people that are there. How do I let myself feel present in the space, and how do I allow myself to get into the music and interact with the band members. — Matisyahu

I have committed myself to joy. I have come to realize that those who make space for joy, those who prefer nothing to joy, those who desire the utter reality, will most assuredly have it. We must not be afraid to announce it to refugees, slum dwellers, saddened prisoners, angry prophets. Now and then we must even announce it to ourselves. In this prison of now, in this cynical and sophisticated age, someone must believe in joy. — Richard Rohr

What do we want from our mothers when we are children? Complete submission. Oh, it's very nice and rational and respectable to say that a woman has every right to her life, to her ambitions, to her needs, and so on--it's what I've always demanded myself--but as a child, no, the truth is it's a war of attrition, rationality doesn't come into it, not one bit, all you want from your mother is that she once and for all admit that she is your mother and only your mother, and that her battle with the rest of life is over. She has to lay down arms and come to you. And if she doesn't do it, then it's really a war, and it was a war between my mother and me. Only as an adult did I come to truly admire her--especially in the last, painful years of her life--for all that she had done to claw some space in this world for herself. — Zadie Smith

Each time I think I've created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space. — Wole Soyinka

I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. Particularly when one can't see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window - no, I don't feel how small I am - but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body. — Ayn Rand

For me personally, I try to use my size to my advantage where I can either slip by guys or try to create more space for myself. — Patrick Kane

I think I give far more space and play to avant-garde writing than any other contemporary textbook author. I want students to be able to decide for themselves which aesthetics are closest to their own. Still, while I try not to be a nostalgist myself, I suppose I am drawn to those poignant moments in our lives, rendered clearly and artfully. — David Starkey

I've learned that feminism is for everybody and there's nothing wrong with taking up space in the world, even if you have to fight for it a little bit, and that if you don't feel like smiling or waving, that's okay. You don't have to, and you don't have to say sorry. Mostly, I've learned that I don't really care if you like these answers or not, because they're the best, most honest ones I've got, and I just don't feel like I can cheat myself enough to give you what you want me to say. — Libba Bray

I am an eye. A mechanical eye. I, the machine, show you a world the way only I can see it. I free myself for today and forever from human immobility. I'm in constant movement. I approach and pull away from objects. I creep under them. I move alongside a running horse's mouth. I fall and rise with the falling and rising bodies. This is I, the machine, manoeuvring in the chaotic movements, recording one moment after another in the most complex combinations.
Freed from the boundaries of time and space. I co-ordinate any and all points of the universe, wherever I want them to be. My way leads towards the creation of a fresh perception of the world. Thus I explain in a new way the world unknown to you. - Dziga Vertov 1923 — John Berger

At times I feel as if I am spread out over the landscape and inside things, and am myself living in every tree, in the splashing of the waves, in the clouds and the animals that come and go, in the procession of the seasons. There is nothing in the Tower that has not grown into its own form over the decades, nothing with which I am not linked. Here everything has its history, and mine; here is space for the spaceless kingdom of the world's and the psyche's hinterland. — C. G. Jung

I read, write and create. I must lose myself in work, so that there is no space for the other/anything else. — Patricia Highsmith

Why should I bother defending myself," Nesta said with lethal cold, "to a male who is so puffed up on his own sense of importance there's barely enough space in the room for his enormous head? — Sarah J. Maas

For quite some time now, like the foetus inside a womb, a terrible knowledge had been ripening within me and filling my soul with frightened foreboding: that the Infinite Universe is inflating at incredible speed, like some ridiculous soap bubble. I become obsessed with a miser's piercing anxiety whenever I allow myself to think that the Universe may be slipping out into space, like water through cupped hands, and that, ultimately - perhaps even today, perhaps not till tomorrow or for several light years - it will dissolve for ever into emptiness, as though it were made not of solid matter but only of fleeting sound. — Tadeusz Borowski

Once I started writing all the time and interacting with poets, I made a conscious decision to identify myself as a poet. It's funny how much a single word can provide focus and direction. As soon as I claimed that identity, I started clearing more and more space for poetry in my life and applying poetic tools to other areas of my life. The world became a different place, and I witnessed it through different kinds of eyes. — Tracy K. Smith

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

I'll only ever worship these lips. I'll only ever worship this body." Gripping the back of her neck tighter, Gavin deepened the kiss. "When I look at you, I feel like I'm looking at the other half of myself. You've filled the empty space in my soul, and because of that, you're a goddess to me. That's the way I'm always going to treat you. For the rest of your life. I promise you that. I fucking promise. — Gail McHugh

Twenty-eight years is a long time to think about why I loved you, and it's not for the reasons I first assumed: because you swam in the space below my heart; or because you stanched the youth I was bleeding out daily; or because one day you might take care of me when I couldn't take care of myself. [. . .] I loved you, Bethany, because you were the one relationship I never had to earn. You arrived in this world loving me more, even when I did not deserve it. — Jodi Picoult

I do keep him at the back of my mind for those times I get me hopes raised about something. So then I can slap myself into reality and remind myself of what happens when you let someone into your sacred space. — Melina Marchetta

Artistic truth is for me literally the highest truth: art may seize the essence of persons and movements no less truly, and certainly far more vitally, than a scientific generalization unifies a chaos of phenomena. Time and Space are only the conditions through which spiritual facts struggle. Hence I have here and there permitted myself liberties with these categories. — Israel Zangwill

For one day as I leant over a gate that led into a field, the rhythm stopped: the rhymes and the hummings, the nonsense and the poetry. A space was cleared in my mind. I saw through the thick leaves of habit. Leaning over the gate I regretted so much litter, so much unaccomplishment and separation, for one cannot cross London to see a friend, life being so full of engagements; nor take a ship to India and see a naked man spearing a fish in blue water. I said life had been imperfect, an unfinished phrase. It had been impossible for me, taking snuff as I do from any bagman met in a train, to keep coherency - that sense of the generations, of women carrying red pitchers to the Nile, of the nightingale who sings among conquests and migrations. It had been too vast an undertaking, I said, and how can I go on lifting my foot perpetually to climb the stair? I addressed myself as one would speak to a companion with whom one is voyaging to the North Pole. — Virginia Woolf

I have become a marketing tool and I feel very uncomfortable with that. There's no space for me to express myself. — Janet McTeer

I used to take myself very seriously, now it's all just funny. You gotta laugh at yourself. You know, most of the time when something's a big deal for us, it's only become a big deal in the space between our ears. — Gillian Anderson

In the empty expanses of space, the wandering traders need men like myself to care for the spiritual side of a life so given over to commerce, and worldly pursuits. — Isaac Asimov

In the very early stages of working in sports, I was sick of being referred to as "the Barbie doll" because I had long, blond, fake hair. So I went and bought a boxed hair color, dyed my hair black, and put on glasses. And I looked ridiculous. I looked like a completely different person. I was trying to get away from the stereotype but what I realized in doing that is that what I say and how I conduct myself in what I do will speak for itself, and I don't need to apologize for being a woman in that space. — Charissa Thompson

My father,' I replied, 'I am fond of action. I like to succour the afflicted, and make people happy. Command that there be built for me a tower, from whose top I can see the whole earth, and thus discover the places where my help would be of most avai1.'
'To do good, without ceasing, to mankind, a race at once flighty and ungrateful, is a more painful task than you imagine,' said Asfendarmod.
After saying these words, my father motioned to us to retire; and immediately I found myself in a tower, built on the summit of Mount Caf - a tower whose outer walls were lined with numberless mirrors that reflected, though hazily and as in a kind of dream, a thousand varied scenes then being enacted on the earth. Asfendarmod's power had indeed annihilated space, and brought me not only within sight of all the beings thus reflected in the mirrors, but also within sound of their voices and of the very words they uttered. ("The Story of The Peri Homaiouna") — William Beckford

Floating in the void free of gravity I made my way along the side of the ship. I listened to my own breaths. It was so dark and I was so weightless that I had to look for my bubbles to be sure which way was up. I swam backward a little away from the boat and into outer space and waved my arm through the water. Sure enough the phosphorescents appeared trailing my movement like the tail of a shooting star. I let myself tip upside down and floated there watching the gentle snowstorm marveling that a world of such strangeness existed here all the time just under the surface. — Elisabeth Eaves

I'm an eye. A mechanical eye. I, the machine, show you a world the way only I can see it. I free myself for today and forever from human immobility. I'm in constant movement. I approach and pull away from objects. I creep under them. I move alongside a running horse's mouth. I fall and rise with the falling and rising bodies. This is I, the machine, manoeuvring in the chaotic movements, recording one movement after another in the most complex combinations.
Freed from the boundaries of time and space, I co-ordinate any and all points of the universe, wherever I want them to be. My way leads towards the creation of a fresh perception of the world. Thus I explain in a new way the world unknown to you. — Dziga Vertov

What a waste it would be, I said to myself, to ruin our story by leaving too much space for ill feelings: ill feelings are inevitable, but the essential thing is to keep them in check. — Elena Ferrante

I'd like to build myself a rocket ship and launch myself into space. Still waiting on the technological advances required for a DIY space flight. — Alex Gaskarth

When I was thinking of people for the Space Twins, I wanted people who were sort of space cadets in the first place. I consider myself to be one. — Brian Bell

I myself have dreamed up a structure intermediate between Dyson spheres and planets. Build a ring 93 million miles in radius - one Earth orbit - around the sun. If we have the mass of Jupiter to work with, and if we make it a thousand miles wide, we get a thickness of about a thousand feet for the base.
And it has advantages. The Ringworld will be much sturdier than a Dyson sphere. We can spin it on its axis for gravity. A rotation speed of 770 m/s will give us a gravity of one Earth normal. We wouldn't even need to roof it over. Place walls one thousand miles high at each edge, facing the sun. Very little air will leak over the edges.
Lord knows the thing is roomy enough. With three million times the surface area of the Earth, it will be some time before anyone complains of the crowding. — Larry Niven

That's what being shy feels like. Like my skin is too thin, the light too bright. Like the best place I could possibly be is in a tunnel far under the cool, dark earth. Someone asks me a question and I stare at them, empty-faced, my brain jammed up with how hard I'm trying to find something interesting to say. And in the end, all I can do is nod or shrug, because the light of their eyes looking at me, waiting for me, is just too much to take. And then it's over and there's one more person in the world who thinks I'm a complete and total waste of space.
The worst thing is the stupid hopefulness. Every new party, every new bunch of people, and I start thinking that maybe this is my chance. That I'm going to be normal this time. A new leaf. A fresh start. But then I find myself at the party, thinking, Oh, yeah. This again.
So I stand on the edge of things, crossing my fingers, praying nobody will try to look me in the eye. And the good thing is, they usually don't. — Carol Rifka Brunt

People have often asked me, do I want to be the next Oprah - there is no such thing. Oprah is Oprah, and she's still being Oprah if anybody hasn't noticed ... what I bring to TV is myself ... I really think there's space in daytime TV for a whole bunch of fun, some amazing music, and some heart. — Queen Latifah

If I am to love the Lord my God with all my mind, there will not be room in it for carnality, for pride, for anxiety, for the love of myself. How can the mind be filled with the love of the Lord and have space left over for things like that? — Elisabeth Elliot

People who have been hunting all their lives with no compunction to consider the exchange they make and the gravity of the trade, I don't know where to put them. I just remind myself there are too many mule deer for the earth to handle, and before my inner dialogue says we took their space, not the other way around, I try to change the channel. — Liz Stephens

And yet sometimes it seems to me I am there, among the incriminated scenes, tottering under the attributes peculiar to the lords of creation ... Yes, more than once I almost took myself for the other, all but suffered after his fashion, the space of an instant. — Samuel Beckett

I can't separate the process of writing from the visual process. I'm speaking only for myself here, but I'm a highly visual writer. In my imagination, when I'm thinking of a scene, I think of every last detail of it: The space, the color palette, the blocking of the actors, the placement of the camera. — Stephen Gaghan