Quotes & Sayings About Standing Up

So ... what are you up to?" she asked.
"I'm looking at a pretty girl."
Huh? If this were texting, that would definitely earn a WTF reply. "Okaay ... "
"She's blonde, wearing blue and standing with two friends. She's talking on her phone, probably to some unworthy jerk, but damn, I wish I were him. — Cherrie Lynn

I get criticized for a lot of what I write about, but as far as I'm concerned I'm actually standing up and having a look at what goes on in the minds of men, and I have the authority to talk about it because I'm a man. — Nick Cave

Travis' expression was a mixture of surprise and gratitude. "Now I've seen it all. I was just defended by a girl," he said, standing up. — Jamie McGuire

Sometimes the only way to remain strong is to hole up with your best friend and try to forget you are standing on a stick of dynamite with enemies lined up, itching to light the fuse. — Elaine Hussey

And do not think you shouldn't be standing on that chair, shouting, "I AM A FEMINIST!" if you are a boy. A male feminist is one of the most glorious end-products of evolution. A male feminist should ABSOLUTELY be on the chair - so we ladies may all toast you, in champagne, before coveting your body wildly. And maybe get you to change that lightbulb, while you're up there. We cannot do it ourselves. There is a big spiderweb on the socket. — Caitlin Moran

Terrible worm in an iron cocoon, as he was called in an anonymous poem, the knight rode on a saddle rising in a high ridge above the horse's backbone with his feet resting in very long stirrups so that he was virtually standing up and able to deliver tremendous swinging blows from side to side with any one of his armory of weapons. — Barbara W. Tuchman

If I am always standing at the bottom of the mountain longingly looking up, in all probability it is because I have heeded the pillaging dogma of mediocrity which persistently tells me that the dream is not worth the climb. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

There was a period of time between 2005 and 2008 that was pretty challenging. I had taken a leap of faith and moved to Los Angeles from New York, which had been incredible to me professionally. I couldn't get arrested in this town. There was a lot of doubt and fear that crept in, and boy, did insecurity stick her foot up in it. There were many obstacles that were overcome during that very dark period - creative, financial, emotional, and spiritual - and I'm here, standing, stronger than ever. — Erica Tazel

I actually saw a kid and went home and drew him. I don't even know who he was. I was buying a TV set in Circuit City. I was looking at this kid and he was kind of standing there, staring off into space. Kids are pretty chubby nowadays because of all the fast-food places. I grew up eating fast food but now everything is double beef and double cheese. So there are a lot of these chubby boys with long, baggy shorts. — Mike Judge

Another time, I was at the bar getting a drink and this geezer is stood at the bar with a ciggie in his mouth, trying his best to look rock hard. He takes a drag and points his finger in my face and drawls, 'Don't I know you?'
He was looking snake-eyed at me like a typical big screen gangster.
I stood in front of him and drawled back, 'I don't know, but they call me Richy Horsley,' and then bang, I batter him with a left hook that landed with a strange dull thud. Mr Movie Gangster was stood there leaning against the bar and staring out in to space, knocked out standing up. — Stephen Richards

No carelessness in your actions. No confusion in your words. No imprecision in your thoughts. No retreating into your own soul, or trying to escape it. No overactivity. They kill you, cut you with knives, shower you with curses. And that somehow cuts your mind off from clearness, and sanity, and self-control, and justice? A man standing by a spring of clear, sweet water and cursing it. While the fresh water keeps on bubbling up. He can shovel mud into it, or dung, and the stream will carry it away, wash itself clean, remain unstained. To have that. Not a cistern but a perpetual spring. How? By working to win your freedom. Hour by hour. Through patience, honesty, humility. — Marcus Aurelius

Some three or four years before this Dr. Sloper had moved his household gods up town, as they say in New York. He had been living ever since his marriage in an edifice of red brick, with granite copings and an enormous fanlight over the door, standing in a street within five minutes' walk of the City Hall, which saw its best days (from the social point of view) about 1820. After this, the tide of fashion began to set steadily northward, as, indeed, in New York, thanks to the narrow channel in which it flows, it is obliged to do, and the great hum of traffic rolled farther to the right and left of Broadway. — Henry James

The outright propagandist sets up in me such a fury of opposition I am not apt to care much whether he has got his facts straight or not. He is like someone standing on your toes between you and an open window, describing the view to you. All I ask of him to do is to open the window, stand out of the way, and let me look at the view for myself. — Katherine Anne Porter

Ye gods! But you're not standing around holding it by the hand all this time. No. [ ... ] [T]he dough takes care of itself. [ ... ] While you cannot speed up the process, you can slow it down at any point by setting the dough in a cooler place [ ... ] then continue where you left off, when you are ready to do so. In other words, you are the boss of that dough. — Julia Child

I sat up so fast I practically broke the sound barrier, but it was Cal standing in my doorway, not Archer. I heaved a huge sigh, one of relief, and not even a little bit of disappointment.
Of course, once I'd wrapped my mind around the fact that it was Cal and not Archer standing in my bedroom, it dawned on me that Cal was standing in my bedroom. — Rachel Hawkins

Blue was standing over her, shaking out his wet hair like an annoying blue dog. Beads of water clung to the muscle of his chest. He was wiry, not buff like Henley, but his body made up for size with definition.
Nothing could make up for his personality.
"Stop dripping on me," Mira snapped. — Sarah Cross

As American culture changes, the scandal of Christianity is increasingly right up front, exactly where it was in the first century. The shaking of American culture will get us back to the question Jesus asked his disciples at Caesarea Philippi: "Who do you say that I am?" As the Bible Belt recedes, those left standing up for Jesus will be those who, like Simon Peter of old, know how to answer that question. Once Christianity is no longer seen as part and parcel of patriotism, the church must offer more than "What would Jesus do?" moralism and the "I vote values" populism to which we've grown accustomed. Good. — Russell D. Moore

Katie let the curtain fall back into place. Standing before the window, she felt herself let go of the old world and embrace the new. She would survive this. She would go on. That was all there was to it. She wouldn't give up without a fight. She would do whatever it took to survive. — Rhiannon Frater

He always knew what I would have liked to say, and with startling and increasing accuracy as we spent more time together. One time, for example, I was wondering exactly how he had lost that tooth at the back of his mouth when he saw my eyes on his waning grin and replied, "Ran into a fence when I was twelve." And then I wondered how the heck he could have missed the giant fence standing right in front of him and he said, "Shut up. — Rose Christo

Will looked back at me, startled, and I kept my heart muscle strong, feeling something inside me shiver like a pale green flower shoot just waking up for spring. But whatever that thing was, it was still too new to feel ready to bloom; it wanted time to set down roots. Someday soon I was going to bloom like crazy and then I'd have what I needed to keep me standing tall. — Ingrid Law

I still like boiled potatoes with the skins on," he said, "and I do not want a man standing in back of my chair, laughing up his sleeve at me while I am taking the potatoes' jackets off." Of pleasure and material things he was wary. "I have never known what to do with money after my expenses were paid. I can't squander it on myself without hurting myself," he said, "and nobody wants to do that. — David Halberstam

Africa has been going through so much for so many years; it's time that it stands up the way other nations are standing up. — Nas

Here you had John McCain and Lindsey Graham in a very principled way standing up and defending Barack Obama. You had people like Gene Robinson and a lot of other liberals, who said, and this I personally agree with, however flawed Rand Paul was as a messenger, we need a debate about this. The administration has not been forthcoming enough about its drone policy. — E. J. Dionne

the fact remains that it is the fight itself, standing up against the hate because we dare to demand equality, that changes the culture and brings people to the cause. — Michelangelo Signorile

We run our schools like factories. We line kids up in straight rows, put them in batches (called grades), and work very hard to make sure there are no defective parts. Nobody standing out, falling behind, running ahead, making a ruckus. Playing it safe. Following the rules. Those seem like the best ways to avoid failure. — Seth Godin

Long ago, men went to sea, and women waited for them, standing on the edge of the water, scanning the horizon for the tiny ship. Now I wait for Henry. He vanishes unwillingly, without warning. I wait for him. Each moment that I wait feels like a year, an eternity. Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass. Through each moment I can see infinite moments lined up, waiting. Why has he gone where I cannot follow? — Audrey Niffenegger

There was a man that hated his footprints and his shadow, so one day he thought that if he ran fast enough, his footprints and shadow would not be able to follow him and then he never ever had to look at them again. He ran and he ran as fast as he could, but the shadow and the footprints had no problems keeping up to him. And he ran even faster and all of a sudden he fell dead to the ground. But if he been standing still there hadn't been any footprints and if he had been resting under a tree his shadow had been swallowed of the trees shadow. — Benjamin Hoff

It seemed to me it would be better to die standing up to a tyrant than to survive as a tool of his will. — Juliet Marillier

What would shopping this way mean in the supermarket? Well, imagine your great grandmother at your side as you roll down the aisles. You're standing together in front of the dairy case. She picks up a package of Go-Gurt Portable Yogurt tubes - and has no idea what this could possibly be. Is it a food or a toothpaste? And how, exactly, do you introduce it into your body? You could tell her it's just yogurt in a squirtable form, yet if she read the ingredients label she would have every reason to doubt that that was in fact the case. Sure, there's some yogurt in there, but there are also a dozen other things that aren't remotely yogurtlike, ingredients she would probably fail to recognize as foods of any kind, including high-fructose corn syrup, modified corn starch, kosher gelatin, carrageenan, tricalcium phosphate, natural and artificial flavors, vitamins, and so forth. — Michael Pollan

Shannon fought her laughter down and tiptoed back to the bedroom to retrieve her cell phone. Big, badass, John Palmer was sleeping with a lonely puppy. Padding back out to the living room she snapped a quick picture. "If that goes anywhere other than your phone, there will be hell to pay," he growled, sending her into fits of giggles. The puppy's eyes snapped open and she lifted her head wobbily. When she saw Shannon standing a few feet away, she tumbled to the floor and jogged over to pee at her feet. John laughed out loud as he sat up on the couch. "That's what you get for trying to be sneaky. You can get this one." Shannon — J.M. Madden

Breaking up could sit in front of you for a while. It was a ring of fire you had to at last decide to run through. You finally got tired of standing there, looking at it, feeling the heat, tired enough to finally just let go. Getting burned at last seemed better than the waiting to get burned. — Deb Caletti

Anybody who knows me has said, 'I had a Denis O'Hare moment.' I suppose in the kindest instance it means standing up for yourself. In the unkindest, it means the crazy guy in the street. — Denis O'Hare

He looked up as the party emerged and nickered a soft hello to his master, who was dressed in an unfamiliar green cloak and had dirt plastered on his face. Halt glanced at him, brow furrowed, and silently mouthed the words 'shut up'. Abelardshook his mane, which was as close as a horse could come to shruging, and turned away.
'My horse recognized me,' Halt said accusingly out of the side of his mouth to Horace.
Horace glanced at the small shagging horse, standing beside his own massive battlehorse.
'Mine didn't,' he replied. 'So that's a fifty-fifty result.'
'I think I'd like odds better than that,' Halt replied.
Horace suppressed a grin. 'Don't worry. He can probably smell you.'
'I can smell myself,' Halt replied acerbically. 'I smell of tea and soot.'
Horace thought it was wiser not to reply to that. — John Flanagan

Standing up for what you believe in comes at a price but backing down exacts a toll that your soul never stops paying — Lee Goldberg

But instead of standing up for reason, our government is handing education over to the world of faith. — Polly Toynbee

A strong hand suddenly grasped my arm above the elbow. My eyes flew open in surprise. It was that hateful, arrogant man from earlier, standing a few steps below me. He looked at me with a strange expression on his face. It almost looked like ... concern. What did he want? I tried to ask him, but the walls were falling in on me again. I closed my eyes tightly. "I think you're about to faint," a low voice said. Whose voice was it? It was too nice to belong to that man. I shook my head and said weakly, "I don't faint." And then darkness rushed up while I swooped down. We met in the middle and it swallowed me whole. — Julianne Donaldson

The whole incident could not have taken as much as half a minute. Not to let one's feelings appear in one's face was a habit that had acquired the status of an instinct, and in any case they had been standing straight in front of a telescreen when the thing happened. Nevertheless it had been very difficult not to betray a momentary surprise, for in the two or three seconds while he was helping her up the girl had slipped something into his hand. — George Orwell

The other day I got out the shower and I bend down to reach for a towel, and I felt a sharp pain in my chest. Shot through my chest and up around my shoulder and down my spine. I thought 'Oh, Lord.' I thought I was dying. I bent over and looked, and I was standing on my own titty. — Eddie Murphy

The happiest people I've ever met, regardless of their profession, their social standing, or their economic status, are people that are fully engaged in the world around them. The most fulfilled people are the ones who get up every morning and stand for something larger than themselves. They are the people who care about others, who will extend a helping hand to someone in need or will speak up about an injustice when they see it. — Wilma Mankiller

This was a world where one became outdated before one's time was up. An entire country standing up and applauding the fact that no one was capable of doing anything properly anymore. The unreserved celebration of mediocrity. — Fredrik Backman

Tyra's always standing up for herself and her "race" over perceived slights. For example, she'll say, "You just pushed me because I'm black!" No, I pushed you because the train was coming right at you, you bulimic twit. — Joan Rivers

It's true that he would come to himself at once, and yet, if he were asked what he had been thinking about while standing there, he would most likely not remember, but would most likely keep hidden away in himself the impression he had been under while contemplating. These impressions are dear to him, and he is most likely storing them up imperceptibly and even without realizing it - why and what for, of course, he does not know either; perhaps suddenly, having stored up his impressions over many years, he will drop everything and wander off to Jerusalem to save his soul, or perhaps he will suddenly burn down his native village, or perhaps he will do both. There are plenty of contemplators among the people. Most likely Smerdyakov, too, was such a contemplator, and most likely he, too, was greedily storing up his impressions, almost without knowing why himself. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

'WASP' is the only ethnic term that is in fact a term of class, apart from redneck, which is another word for the same group but who are in the lower social strata, so it's inexplicably tied up with social standing and culture and history in a way that the other hyphenations just are not. — Christopher Hitchens

About the same time I came in contact with another Christian family. At their suggestion I attended the Wesleyan church every Sunday. For these days I also had their standing invitation to dinner. The church did not make a favourable impression on me. The sermons seemed to be uninspiring. The congregation did not strike me as being particularly religious. They were not an assembly of devout souls; they appeared rather to be wordly-minded people, going to church for recreation and in conformity to custom. Here, at times, I would involuntarily doze. I was ashamed, but some of my neighbours, who were in no better case, lightened the shame. I could not go on long like this, and soon gave up attending the service. — Mahatma Gandhi

He had got a good start on another book, Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson. I stood until he finished a paragraph, shut the book on a finger, and looked the question. "Twenty grand," I told him. "The DA wanted fifty, so I'm stepping high. One of the dicks was pretty good, he nearly backed me into a corner on the overalls, but I got loose. No mention of Saul or Fred or Orrie, so they haven't hit on them and now they probably won't. I signed two different statements ten hours apart, but they're welcome to them. The status quo has lost no hide. If there's nothing urgent I'll go up and attend to my hide. I had a one-hour nap with a dick standing by. As for eating, what's lunch? — Rex Stout

Sometimes love didn't spring up on you in a moment of blinding clarity. Sometimes it crept up on you on a Tuesday night while you were standing at the sink doing dishes, the feeling settling into your soul in a way that made it too heavy to ignore anymore. — Jessica Gadziala

Even in the toughest of times ... don't give up hope. It may look dark but you will find the sun standing behind even the darkest of clouds. — Timothy Pina

He who stands by his heart has God in him. Our conscience is what unites us with God. — Suzy Kassem

When an apple ripens and falls - what makes it fall? Is it that it is attracted to the ground, is it that the stem withers, is it that the sun has dried it up, that it has grown heavier, that the wind shakes it, that the boy standing underneath wants to eat it? No one thing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of conditions under which every organic, elemental event of life is accomplished. And the botanist who finds that the apple falls because the cellular tissue degenerates, and so on, will be as right and as wrong as the child who stands underneath and says that the apple fell because he wanted to eat it and prayed for it. — Leo Tolstoy

We talk of strong personalities, and they are strong, until the not-every-day when we see them as we might see one woman alone in a desert, and know that all the strength we thought we knew was only courage, only her lone song echoing among the stones; and then at last when we have understood this and made up our minds to hear the song and admire its courage and its sweetness, we wait for the next note and it does not come. The last word, with its pure tone, echoes and fades and is gone, and we realize - only then - that we do not know what it was, that we have been too intent on the melody to hear even one word. We go then to find the singer, thinking she will be standing where we last saw her. There are only bones and sand and a few faded rags. — Gene Wolfe

There is darkness on your lantern
and pumpkins in your wind.
and Oh, they clutter up your mind
with their senseless bumping
while your heart is like a sea gull
frozen into a long distance telephone
call.
I'd like to take the darkness
off your lantern and change the pumpkins
into sky fields of ordered comets
and disconnect the refrigerator telephone
that frightens your heart into standing
still. — Richard Brautigan

So many times I've wanted to crack up, standing there stiff while seven women are crawling round my toes fixing hems and the designer's having a freak-out because the denim cuffs are crooked. I'm on the verge of hysteria. — Helena Christensen

Question: how can one manage not to lose time? Answer: experience it at its full length. Means: spend days in the dentist's waiting room on an uncomfortable chair; live on one's balcony on a Sunday afternoon; listen to lectures in a language that one does not understand, choose the most roundabout and least convenient routes on the railway (and, naturally, travel standing up); queue at the box-office for theatres and so on and not take one's seat; etc. — Albert Camus

His slut of a cousin, his cocksucking, suit-wearing, Montblanc-up-theass cousin Saxton the Magnificent, was standing next to the queen, looking like a combination of Cary Grant and some model in a goddamn cologne ad.
Not that Qhuinn was bitter.
Because the guy was sharing Blay's bed.
Nah.
Nope. Not at all. — J.R. Ward

You're the tattooed, chain-smoking, beer-guzzling, train wreck, son of the movie star who's marrying my family-values, ex Marine Senator father. You're a tabloid headline, standing right here in front of me!

Yeah? Well, you're the goody-goody, stuck up, boring-ass virgin who's so uptight she can't find anyone to punch her v-card except the manwhore from her school who will screw literally anyone. And then turns out to be the most boring fucking lay I've ever had. — Sabrina Paige

Sometimes a cloudless swatch of sky would blow past the moon, and Pella could see the outline of Mike's face in a slightly sharper relief. It was strange the way he loved her: a sidelong and almost casual love, as if loving her were simply a matter of course, too natural to mention. Like their first meeting on the steps of the gym, when he'd hardly so much as glanced at her. With David and every guy before David, what passed for love had always been eye to eye, nose to nose; she felt watched, observed, like the prize at the zoo, and she wound up pacing, preening, watching back, to fit the part. Whereas Mike was always beside her. She would stand at the kitchen window and look out at the quad, at the Melville statue and beyond that the beach and the rolling lake, and realize that Make, for however long, had been standing beside her, staring at the same thing. — Chad Harbach

This moment right here, me standing up here all brown with my boobs and my Thursday night of network television full of women of color, competitive women, strong women, women who own their bodies and whose lives revolve around their work instead of their men, women who are big dogs, that could only be happening right now. — Shonda Rhimes

The next day I was driven down to New York City to take the physical. It was one of the strangest things I'd ever seen. Several hundred young men, maybe even a thousand, in their skivvies, walking around an enormous room, all of us lost, dazed, and confused.
Some of these guys had dodged the draft and were there under the watchful eyes of dozens of federal marshals lined up against one of the walls. After eight hours of being poked, prodded, stuck, and poked again, I was given a large red envelope. I had been rejected. I had the respiratory problems of an old man, high blood pressure, partial loss of hearing, very bad teeth, very flat, very wide feet and I tested positive for tuberculosis.
"Frankly," the doctor said, "I don't know how the hell you're even standing up," and that was when the sergeant told me that if they bottled everything that was wrong with me "we could take over the world without a shot. — John William Tuohy

It was simple. His world was Kate. If he denied that, he might as well stop breathing right now.
"I have to go," he blurted out, standing up so suddenly that his thighs hit the edge of the table, sending walnut shell shards skittering across the tabletop.
"I thought you might," Colin murmured.
Benedict just smiled and said, "Go."
His brothers, Anthony realized, were a bit smarter than they let on.
"We'll speak to you in a week or so?" Colin asked.
Anthony had to grin. He and his brothers had met at their club every day for the past fortnight. Colin's oh-so-innocent query could only imply one thing - that it was obvious that Anthony had completely lost his heart to his wife and planned to spend at least the next seven days proving it to her. And that the family he was creating had grown as important as the one he'd been born into.
"Two weeks," Anthony replied, yanking on his coat. "Maybe three."
His brothers just grinned. — Julia Quinn

At 6:15 she was standing on her front porch watering gardenias and watching another line of thunderstorms split and go around her. The same thing happened almost every day. Some days they came so close all she could smell was the rain. The wind whipped up dust from the fields until it drove like buckshot into the shuddering mesquites, and Clara Nell started to pray. 'Jesus,' she whispered. 'Jesus, Jesus....' But the only thing that came out of the sky was her topsoil. Every day the wind took a little more, and it hadn't rained in almost a year. — Andrew Geyer

could see people standing on the beach staring at the wave, immobilized, in a trance, as if they were watching a movie. They didn't think that what was happening in the ocean would reach the shore. Even if they ran as fast as they could, they wouldn't have been able to escape it. They were screening a new clip from Thailand or Indonesia. It showed a little boy climbing up the trunk of a tree as the tidal wave flattened the tall palm trees. "The earthquake started near the Sumatra Islands in Indonesia. — Dorit Sliverman

There's a saying in Africa, if you give a woman empowerment, you empower a community, you empower men, you empower man. When women become empowered and live in their strength it's beneficiary to others, and I think as young women today we sometimes forget that we are standing on the struggle of other women. Those women had to stand up to make a change, and they were not popular, and now we're making them unpopular again. — Danai Gurira

Finally, I found what seemed at the time to be a lid of some sort. Presuming it was a toilet seat (but not really caring one way or the other) I lifted it up, then dropped my shorts and began to piss. Ahhh ... success. Then I stumbled back to bed and passed out. It wasn't until the next morning that I realized what had actually happened. I woke to the sight of Junior standing over my bed with a look of disgust on his face. Hey, man. Did you pee in my suitcase? — Dave Mustaine

Life is like riding a bicycle. You get nowhere standing up, so get up on that seat and go! — Lynne Ewing

He had drawn many a thousand of these rations in prisons and camps, and though he'd never had an opportunity to weight them on scales, and although, being a man of timid nature, he knew no way of standing up for his rights, he, like every other prisoner, had discovered long ago that honest weight was never to be found in the bread-cutting. There was short weight in every ration. The only point was how short. So every day you took a look to soothe your soul - today, maybe, they haven't snitched any. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The Churches of the Standing Order were filled with unconverted persons, with many who had grown up in them from infancy, being introduced at that time by christening; and but a small proportion of their members made any claim to a spiritual regeneration. The intuitions of a converted soul recoil from Church associations with those whose only claim to membership in Christ's mystical body is a ceremony performed over an unconscious infant, for the renewed man seeks fellowship with those who, like himself, have exercised faith in Christ's saving merits, and he is likely to take the Scriptures for his guide in seeking his Church home. — Thomas Armitage

When there's evil standing in your way, you got to get around it however you can, Natalie. You got to look it in the eye, let it know you see it and that it can't creep up on you. What's dangerous is pretending it isn't there at all and letting it get closer and closer while you're looking someplace else, until suddenly evil's walking alongside you like you were two friends out for a stroll on Sunday. So you look it in the face. You tell it with your eyes that you know what it is, that it don't have you fooled. You tell it you know what GOOD looks like. — Kate Milford

Inside your head you hear
a phone ringing, and when you open your eyes you're washing up
in a stranger's bathroom,
standing by the window in a yellow towel, only twenty minutes away
from the dirtiest thing you know.
All the rooms of the castle except this one, says someone, and suddenly
darkness,
suddenly only darkness.
In the living room, in the broken yard,
in the back of the car as the lights go by. In the airport
bathroom's gurgle and flush, bathed in a pharmacy of
unnatural light,
my hands looking weird, my face weird, my feet too far away. — Richard Siken

Women standing up for each other is critically important. — Hillary Clinton

His fingers gouged into my leg harder. "My sister was in that cafeteria," he said. "She saw her friends die, thanks to you and that puke boyfriend of yours. She still has nightmares about it. He got what he deserved, but you got a free pass. That ain't right. You should've died that day, Sister Death. Everyone wishes you would have. Look around. Where is Jessica, if she wants you here so bad? Even the friends you came here with don't want to be with you."
"Let go of me," I said again, pulling on his fingers. But he only pinched tighter.
"Your boyfriend isn't the only one who can get his hands on a gun," he said. Slowly he eased himself up to standing again. He reached into the waistband of his jeans and pulled out something small and dark. He pointed it at me, and when the moonlight hit it, I gasped and pressed myself against the barn wall. — Jennifer Brown

Nothing is as uncomfortable, dangerous and hurtful as believing that I'm standing on the outside of my life looking in and wondering what it would be like if I had the courage to show up and let myself be seen. — Brene Brown

I can sleep anywhere. I can fall asleep standing up, literally anywhere. — Jenna Ushkowitz

Syme felt moved to spring up and leap over the balcony. When the President's eyes were on him he felt as if he were made of glass. He had hardly the shred of a doubt that in some silent and extraordinary way Sunday had found out that he was a spy. He looked over the edge of the balcony, and saw a policeman, standing abstractedly just beneath, staring at the bright railings and the sunlit trees. — G.K. Chesterton

Think back for a moment on your own history
not just where you were born or where you grew up, but the circumstances that contributed to your being right here, right now. What were the moments along the way that wounded or scared you? Chances are, you've had a few. But here's what's remarkable: You are still here, still standing. — Oprah Winfrey

I asked myself what I believed. I had never prayed a lot. I hoped hard, wished hard, but I didn't pray. I had developed a certain distrust of organised religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptised. — Lance Armstrong

You can set up an altar to God in your minds by means of prayer. And so it is fitting to pray at your trade, on a journey, standing at a counter or sitting at your handicraft. — Saint John Chrysostom

That was when I left her and went outside to talk to Charles. I knew I would dislike talking to Charles, but it was almost too late to ask him politely and I thought I should ask him once. Even the garden had become a strange landscape with Charles' figure in it; I could see him standing under the apple trees and the trees were crooked and shortened beside him. I came out the kitchen door and walked slowly toward him. I was trying to think charitably of him, since I would never be able to speak kindly until I did, but whenever I thought of his big white face grinning at me across the table or watching me whenever I moved I wanted to beat at him until he went away, I wanted to stamp on him after he was dead, and see him lying dead on the grass. So I made my mind charitable toward Charles and came up to him slowly. — Shirley Jackson

Elend Venture," she said, standing up. "There is something I've been meaning to tell you for some time." She paused, blinking away her
tears. "You read too much. Especially in the presence of ladies. — Brandon Sanderson

Lester Coggins was a lifelong bachelor who as an adolescent had suffered nightmares of masturbating and looking up to see Mary Magdalene standing in his bedroom doorway. — Stephen King

Being a Milliner's about standing up for what's right, for those who can't stand up for themselves. — Frank Beddor

To be standing together in a frosty field, looking up into the sky, marvelling at birds and revelling in the natural world around us, was a simple miracle. And I wondered why we were so rarely able to appreciate it. — Lynn Thomson

You cut up a thing that's alive and beautiful to find out how it's alive and why it's beautiful, and before you know it, it's neither of those things, and you're standing there with blood on your face and tears in your sight and only the terrible ache of guilt to show for it. — Clive Barker

Perhaps we should spice up our next wager."
A wary look entered her blue eyes. "How?"
"By wagering your mother's necklace against ... your clothing."
She froze, her arms over her head, her eyes wide. "My clothing?"
"Yes. Your gown-against your mother's neckace." His body was already hard at the thought of her standing before him in nothing but her chemise and stockings.
Sophia lowered her arms with a teasing smile. "I doubt it will fit you."
A surprised laugh broke from him. "That would be a sight. But to be crystal clear, if I win this hand, you will disrobe for me. — Karen Hawkins

As he rose to his feet he noticed that he was neither dripping nor panting for breath as anyone would expect after being under water. His clothes were perfectly dry. He was standing by the edge of a small pool - not more than ten feet from side to side in a wood. The trees grew close together and were so leafy that he could get no glimpse of the sky. All the light was green light that came through the leaves: but there must have been a very strong sun overhead, for this green daylight was bright and warm. It was the quietest wood you could possibly imagine. There were no birds, no insects, no animals, and no wind. You could almost feel the trees growing. The pool he had just got out of was not the only pool. There were dozens of others - a pool every few yards as far as his eyes could reach. You could almost feel the trees drinking the water up with their roots. This wood was very much alive. — C.S. Lewis

I wove my way between the tables, pulling my hair forward over my shoulders as I went.Alex was still sitting when I reached him.
"Hey.This was on the floor in the upstairs hall ... "
I stood behind his chair. Completely frozen.
I might have stood there for a very long time if he hadn't pushed himself away from the table to get up. The chair thumped me in the stomach first, then in the knees.I think I made a noise. I dropped his book.
"Oh.Oh,crap.I'm really sorry!" Alex jerked the chair out of the way and bent down a little. He had to, to see my face. "You okay?"
I did manage to nod.
"Seriously.I must have really pounded you there.You sure you're all right?"
"Yes,fine," I whispered.
Across the table, Chase Vere laughed. "Dude, she was,like, standing right behind you. — Melissa Jensen

I think that "Arabs coming out in droves" is so violative Jewish values that non-Jews admire so much about Jewish people throughout history, of welcoming the stranger, of standing up for the outsider, of defending the marginalized. This was classic us against them. This was the narrowest and meanest of politics, to which Jews, sadly and tragically, around the world have been subjected to. — Mark Shields

Week of taverns soon qualified him for another year of night-cellars. Such was the life of Savage, of Boyse, and of a crowd of others. Sometimes blazing in gold-laced hats and waistcoats; sometimes lying in bed because their coats had gone to pieces, or wearing paper cravats because their linen was in pawn; sometimes drinking Champagne and Tokay with Betty Careless; sometimes standing at the window of an eating-house in Porridge island, to snuff up the scent of what they could not afford to taste; they knew luxury; they knew beggary; but they never knew comfort. These men were irreclaimable. They looked on a regular and frugal life with the same aversion which an old gipsy or a Mohawk hunter feels for a stationary abode, and for the restraints and securities of civilised communities. They were as untameable, as much wedded to their desolate freedom, as the wild ass. — Samuel Johnson

Standing among all those tiny, wavering lights, I felt as though I were God, up to my knees in the Milky Way. — Kurt Vonnegut

Mark shook Trina awake and scrambled to his feet, pulling her up with him. The Toad was definitely sick, and he was standing just a few feet from their camp. They didn't know anything about this sickness, but that only made it scarier. Trina seemed disoriented, but Mark didn't relent, half dragging her to the other side of the dead coals of their fire from earlier that night. "Alec!" he shouted. "Lana! Wake up!" As if the two were still soldiers, — James Dashner

The witch's words were cut off and Izzy stumbled back into the earth.
Izzy looked up at the dragoness standing over her. her grandmother smiled. "What did I miss? I sensed I was missing something!"
Rhiannon looked down at her claws, "Did I step in something? I feel like I stepped in something. — G.A. Aiken

Honestly, I didn't expect anything. I didn't plan on standing in your penthouse kitchen this morning."
A grin splits his face.
"But you are." Keeping the smile, he sticks his tongue through his teeth.
"Yeah, I am." I beam up at him.
"You stay'n in my kitchen?" he asks, his face moving closer.
"I thought we are seeing how things go?"
I press my hands to his chest, sliding my arms up to his shoulders.
"I'll just take that as a yes. — Sadie Grubor

There, flanking either side of the walkway were a pair of raised fountains. The base of each was a shell-shaped bowl filled with water and lily pads. Standing in each bowl was the masculine version of Boticelli's famous "Birth of Venus". The man stood in the same pose as Venus, left hand coyly drawn up o cover his chest, right down by his genitals, yet instead of covering them, he held his optimistically endowed penis, pointing it upward. Water jetted from each penis, and over into the basin of the twin statue opposite. The water didn't flow in a smooth stream though. It spurted. "Please tell me there is something wrong with his water pressure" Cassandra said. "No, I believe that's the desired effect. — Kelley Armstrong

He looks up and the loss in his Noise is so great it feels like I'm standing on the edge of an abyss, that I'm about to fall down into him, into blackness so empty and lonely there'd never be a way out.
"Todd," I say again, a catch in my voice. "On the ledge, under the waterfall, do you remember what you said to me? Do you remember what you said to save me?"
He's shaking his head slowly. "I've done terrible things, Viola. Terrible things-"
"We all fall, you said." I'm gripping his hand now. "We all fall but that's not what matters. What matters is picking yourself up again. — Patrick Ness

The music defied classification. If I had been writing a
review of the show, I would have labeled it progressive,
guitar-driven rock 'n' roll. But the guitars made sounds guitars
didn't always make. Symphonic sounds. Sacred sounds.
The music dug in so deep you didn't hear it so much as feel
it, reminding me of a dream I used to have when I was a kid,
where I would be standing on a street corner, I would jump
into the air, flap my arms, and soar up into the sky.
That's the only way I could describe the music.
It was the sonic equivalent of flight. — Tiffanie DeBartolo

What then is to be the lot of Rossetti's fame and influence? 'An amateur who failed in two arts', it is true; yet it hardly harms Rossetti or touches his standing. On the contrary, it defines both very brilliantly. The small word 'failed' is a small word and little more to artists who are forever going on until they give up over a game that must be lost. Every artist, when confronted by the immensities of art, which is life, must confess to failure. A failure is a thing very relative. — Ford Madox Ford

I have spent the better part of my adult life standing up and fighting for working families. — Bernie Sanders

You want to be commander in chief, you can start by standing up for the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States, even when it's not politically convenient. — Barack Obama

Give voice to what you know to be true, and do not be afraid of being disliked or exiled. I think that's the hard work of standing up for what you see. — Eve Ensler

I would rather die standing up to live life on my knees. — Ernesto Che Guevara

Door's open!" she shouted. She was in her underwear, lying on the floor, arms outstretched and legs up against the couch. She tilted her head back and looked at me upside down. "Charlie, darling! Why are you standing on your head? — Daniel Keyes