Staking Quotes & Sayings

He sees her like I do: at seventeen, twenty, thirty. Superimposed over the fourteen-year-old, he sees the woman she'll become.
And he's staking claim.
Over. my. Dead. Fucking. Body.
And I can't die. — Karen Marie Moning

Sometimes I feel a strange exhilaration up here which seems to come from something beyond the mere stimulus of flying. It is a feeling of belonging to the sky, of owning and being owned - if only for a moment - by the air I breathe. It is akin to the well known claim of the swallow: each bird staking out his personal bug-strewn slice of heaven, his inviolate property of the blue. — Guy Murchie

He was very well aware that he ran no risk of being ridiculous in the eyes of Betsy or any other fashionable people. He was very well aware that in their eyes the position of an unsuccessful lover of a girl, or of any woman free to marry, might be ridiculous. But the position of a man pursuing a married woman, and, staking his life on drawing her into adultery, has something fine and grand about it, and can never be ridiculous; and so it was with a proud and gay smile under his mustaches that he lowered the opera glass and looked at his cousin. — Leo Tolstoy

Paul closed his eyes and turned his face to the sun. In spite of everything, it was hard not to take solace from the warmth flooding onto his skin. He stretched the muscles in his arms, his shoulders, his back -- and it felt like he was reaching out from the "self" in his virtual skull to all his mathematical flesh, imprinting the nebulous data with meaning; binding it all together, staking some kind of claim. He felt the stirrings of an erection. Existence was beginning to seduce him. He let himself surrender for a moment to a visceral sense of identity which drowned out all his pale mental images of optical processors, all his abstract reflections on the software's approximations and short-cuts. This body didn't want to evaporate. This body didn't want to bale out. It didn't much care that there was another -- "more real" -- version of itself elsewhere. It wanted to retain its wholeness. It wanted to endure. — Greg Egan

Every time you go to the doctor and get a good report, the odds keep staking more in your favour. — Fran Drescher

Our wisdom grows not by staking out claims and defending them against all comers, but by sharing information freely, so that we may work together for the betterment of all. — Marie Brennan

Many want to be a warrior but they don't know what a lonely, tough, or pain staking journey it is. Warriors have to fight on behalf of the defenseless, defend what is right, as well as fight believers and non-believers alike. In reality, few like warriors because they confront their own, and their own think they're above being confronted. The warrior, you see, most often walks alone. — Donna Lynn Hope

You think I can't pull it off, don't you? You think I'll look stupid next to someone like Luke. You think he's too good for me." This is my chance. I should say yes and make her hate me, kill her last bit of hope. Easy. Like staking a vamp. "I think you'll look beautiful." I turn away. "No one's too good for you. No one's good enough. — Laura Bradley Rede

Why won't you let me kiss you, Anna?"
I can't breathe.
"Why, Anna?"
"It's too much," I rasp.
"Not when I want everything." He says it so deep and strong, a staking of a claim. "And I want everything with you, Anna. — Kristen Callihan

The riders, too, were like nothing she had ever seen before: ethereal men and women with pale visages, their cheekbones so sharply sculpted that she could see their skulls through translucent skin. They surrounded her and looked at her with steely blue eyes, each gaze an arrow staking her to that spot, and she could not close her eyes though the sight of them made her eyes burn as if she were looking at the sun. — Malinda Lo

Democracy is about the conditions that make it possible for ordinary people to better their lives by becoming political beings and by making power responsive to their hopes and needs. What is at stake in democratic politics is whether ordinary men and women can recognize that their concerns are best protected and cultivated under a regime whose actions are governed by principles of commonality, equality, and fairness, a regime in which taking part in politics becomes a way of staking out and sharing in a common life and its forms of self-fulfillment. Democracy is not about bowling together but about managing together those powers that immediately and significantly affect the lives and circumstances of others and one's self. — Sheldon S. Wolin

Mom, how do you know if the guy is the guy?"
You mean if he'll be a good husband?" She pauses, then says "The ticket is for the man to love the woman more than she loves him."
Shouldn't it be equal?"
Mom cackles. "It can never be equal."
But what if the woman loves the man more?"
A life of hell awaits her. As women, the deck is stacked against us because time is our enemy. We age, while men season. And trust me, there are plenty of women out there looking for a man, and they don't mind staking a claim on somebody else's husband, no matter how old, creaky, and deaf they are. — Adriana Trigiani

Zachary looked down into the swirling morass that was his beer as the man walked onto the stage and started to play a solo piece, the band respectfully allowing him to start off his set by staking his claim. Zachary would give him staking his claim. He had his guitar nestling close by his side, as always, the leather of the case gently touching his calf, sending an almost erotic charge through his body every time he moved like the less than innocent brush of a future lover's hand on a bare arm. — Pete Langman

When he bared his fangs, she knew he was going to go for her jugular, and she wanted him there. Turning her head to the side, she bared herself to him - The strike was brutal, his fangs going in so deep, she screamed - but not in pain, even though it hurt in a delicious way. This was the marking she had heard about. This was the owning of the female by the male, the staking of the claim. And sure enough, he held her in place at the throat with his teeth as he marked her from the inside out by coming into her sex. But — J.R. Ward

Without personal commitment to the attributes of fair play and integrity, the United States is in grave danger. Malice and intolerance stalk our society, staking claim to our minds, and not one corner of our social order is unaffected. This darkness is a significant threat to our national good, perhaps the most significant threat in our history, for it strikes at the heart of democracy. Where people are not free to disagree, there can be no democracy, since that is what democracy is. — Marianne Williamson

I took my line straight away. I knew I was staking everything, but I jumped there and then. "We're on absolutely the biggest thing that has ever been invented," I said, and put the accent on "we." "If you want to keep me out of this, you'll have to do it with a gun. I'm coming down to be your fourth labourer to-morrow. — H.G.Wells

So, to start with, you might be wondering how this chick with a monkey on her back about the size
of King Kong is running about staking nasties and whatnot. Well, truth be told, I've been stretching the
truth like it was a big handful of raspberry-flavored saltwater taffy. — Kathleen Tierney

If we do nothing, we are handing our children a ticking time bomb that will require they pay ever greater payroll taxes just as they are beginning their careers, starting their own families and staking their claim to the American Dream. — John McCain

Hey! Sorry, lady, but nobody's staking anybody at this party! I hung a disco ball for this. — Rachel Caine

Insides the moment Lotho stated his condition. Daemon kissed like he was staking a claim, but he already had me - all of me. My heart. My soul. My whole being. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Since no one said anything, I decided to make offense my best ... offense. You didn't call me up here to kill me, did you? Or to pay me back for staking you? Because the last time I saw you upright, you were ... rude. — Faith Hunter

You see, I had decided - rightly or wrongly - to grow a moustache, and this had cut Jeeves to the quick. He couldn't stick the thing at any price, and I had been living ever since in an atmosphere of bally disapproval till I was getting jolly well fed up with it. What I mean is, while there's no doubt that in certain matters of dress Jeeves's judgment is absolutely sound and should be followed, it seemed to me that it was getting a bit too thick if he was going to edit my face as well as my costume. No one can call me an unreasonable chappie, and many's the time I've given in like a lamb when Jeeves has voted against one of my pet suits or ties; but when it comes to a valet's staking out a claim on your upper lip you've simply got to have a bit of the good old bulldog pluck and defy the blighter. — P.G. Wodehouse

You need to understand something," she said intently. "Charles is my husband. You can't have him. Mine. Not yours. There are lots of nice, unattachment men out there, I'm sure. Pick one of them and you might live longer." Then her body relaxed and her voice regained its usual cheeriness. "Thank you for your time, Ms. Newman. — Patricia Briggs

That is what leadership is all about: staking your ground ahead of where opinion is and convincing people, not simply following the popular opinion of the moment. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

Reference to the deadness of the past is a way of staking a claim on it. But historians must be open, as ethnographers try to be, to the shock of the unpredictability and difference of the past, which means open to the possibility of the past living in its insistence on telling its own story and so confounding us. Only in this way can the past teach us something new about ourselves, about the limits of our imaginings and ways of knowing, and even of our particular and distinctive ways of being human. — Robert A. Orsi

Now, when he kissed her or put his arms around her, Scarlet felt like he was staking a claim. Which normally would have sent her on a tirade about relationship independence, except she felt like she'd claimed him a long time ago. The moment she'd expected him to choose her over his pack, the moment she'd dragged him aboard that ship and taken him away from everything he'd ever known, she'd made the decision for them both. He was hers now, just like she was his. Except — Marissa Meyer

I was Carson "Joker" Steele's. End of story. He was mine too, but with a manly man biker, that was secondary. It went with the territory, hand in hand with him staking his claim. This did not bother me. It didn't trouble me. It didn't annoy me. It utterly thrilled me. — Kristen Ashley

For women to be supplying the soldiery with banners, flannel shirts and other material comforts was, superficially, all of a piece with their ministrations to their menfolk at home. Such contributions to the war effort were socially acceptable because they could be seen as an extension into the military sphere of the traditional female virtues of charity, nurture and needlework. Yet in reality what the women were doing represented the thin end of a far more radical wedge. Consciously or not, these female patriots were staking out a civic role for themselves. And many of them relished it. — Linda Colley

For sure we live in a youth-obsessed culture that is constantly trying to tell us that if we're not young and glowing and "hot," we don't matter. But I refuse to buy into such a distorted view of reality. And I would never lie about or deny my age. To do so is to contribute to a sickness pervading our society - the sickness of wanting to be what you're not. I know for sure that only by owning who and what you are can you step into the fullness of life. I feel sorry for anyone who buys into the myth that you can be what you once were. The way to your best life isn't denial. It's owning every moment and staking a claim to the here and now. You're not the same woman you were a decade ago; if you're lucky, you're not the same woman you were last year. The whole point of aging, as I see it, is change. If we let them, our experiences can keep teaching us about ourselves. I celebrate that. Honor it. Hold it in reverence. And I'm grateful for every age I'm blessed to become. — Oprah Winfrey

As events developed, the debate about jobs and energy extraction in general became more divisive. Those at one extreme embraced the industry as an expression of old-fashioned free enterprise. It offered work that built character and brought deserving rewards for those with initiative, whether they be roughnecks working twelve-hour shifts, investors staking their capital, or researchers staking their reputation on the next big discovery. At the other end of the spectrum were those who saw the industry as a relic of grandfather clauses and cronyism that dated to a period of predatory exploitation, when fantastical deals were pitched by door-to-door peddlers, manufacturing waste was buried in lagoons on private property, and unions were nonexistent. The middle ground was occupied by an untold number of consumers used to cheap plentiful energy, and property owners, who had their worries but also were able to calculate how much a mineral rights lease might be worth. — Tom Wilber

I'm staking out the bathroom to see if I can pick up chicks," he told her. "See? It worked. — Hailey Abbott

The fact that Nehru had risked his life to save a single Moslem had a profound effect far beyond New Delhi. Many thousands of Moslems who had intended to flee to Pakistan now stayed in India, staking their lives on Nehru's ability to protect them and assure them justice. In — Shashi Tharoor

There was a delicious possessiveness in the way he kissed her, as if he were staking his claim at the same time he was burning away the memories of anyone else for her. And he did. In an instant, there was nobody but him. — J. Lynn

Colchester, Ash, my captain, staking my body with his cock like a conqueror, like a king. — Sierra Simone

It's not my business to worry about the reason. God knows the reason. One day I may discover what it was. Or not. It doesn't matter. All I know now is that I can't stake a bit of my life on it being true, the story. If it's true it requires the staking of the whole of my life. And that's because it's not only a story, as you and I have always called it. It's something that happened in reality, to reality, and changed it forever. It's something that asked a question that, once we've heard it, we have to answer. — Lucy Beckett

Animating is a very slow, pain-staking process and the animators become the actors at that point. — Wes Anderson

It is far better to limit our choice to real permanencies, which do not require staking ... and a general mixture throughout of dwarf shrubs, perennials and ground-covers, with bulbs ... This has been called gardening in four layers, and I believe it to be the most satisfying form of gardening. — Graham Stuart Thomas

How badly I wanted to belong as I had when I was a young Mormon girl, to be simply a working part in the great Mormon plan of salvation, a smiling exemplar of our sparkling difference. But instead I found myself a headstrong Mormon woman staking out her spiritual survival at a difficult point in Mormon history. — Joanna Brooks

It's the digital era. What makes it exciting is that it's both the Golden Age of television and the Wild West of television. Something is happening now that's unprecedented, and we know that we're a part of it. What could be more exciting or better than that? You can't lose because you're on the pony and you're staking the claim. — Kate Mulgrew

Now there's us, staking out our piece of cinematic turf (might be small but
it's ours). And the music has to fit the vision as specifically as it did for [Star Wars and The Matrix.] OUR music comes from THEIR music, this scrappled bunch. It is spare, intimate, mournful and indefatigable. — Joss Whedon

He was very well aware that in their eyes the position of an unsuccessful lover of a girl, or of any woman free to marry, might be ridiculous. But the position of a man pursuing a married woman, and, regardless of everything, staking his life on drawing her into adultery, has something fine and grand about it, and can never be ridiculous; and so it was with a proud and gay smile under his mustaches that he lowered the opera glass and looked at his cousin. But — Leo Tolstoy

Love is that as well, I was forgetting: it is taking a huge gamble, staking your all on a single improbable throw, jumping off a cliff and trusting an unknown person to catch you before you hit the ground. — A.P.

My heart, as you well know, Bright Eyes, has always been yours for the asking. Or the staking. — Teresa Medeiros

Some years later, after Scott's death, we came my father and I to the Field Museum, a long dismal peristyle dwindling away into the howling distance, and inside stood before a tableau of Stone Age Man, father mother and child crouched around an artificial ember in postures of minatory quiet - until, feeling my father's eye on me, I turned and saw what he required of me - very special father and son we were that summer, he staking his everything this time on a perfect comradeship - and I, seeing in his eyes the terrible request, requiring from me his very life; I, through a child's cool perversity or some atavistic recoil from an intimacy too intimate, turned him down, turned away, refused him what I knew I could not give. — Walker Percy