Table There Quotes & Sayings

There was, of course, a more immediate point to frequent gatherings of lawmakers, diplomats, and cabinet officers at the president's table. It tends to be more difficult to oppose - or at least to vilify - someone with whom you have broken bread and drunk wine. Caricatures crack as courses are served; imagined demonic plots fade with dessert. — Jon Meacham

I felt badly because I'd been nasty. After your behavior tonight, I only wish I'd been nastier. I can be," she added on a threat.
Alan only smiled as Mario brought the wine to the table. Watching Shelby, Alan tasted it, then nodded. "Very good. It's the sort of flavor that stays with you for hours. Later, when I kiss you,the taste will still be there."
The blood began to hum in her ears. "I'm only here because you dragged me."
To his credit, Mario didn't spill a drop of the wine he poured as he listened.
Her eyes heated as Alan continued to smile. "And since you refuse to give me my keys,I'll simply walk to the nearest phone and call a locksmith. You'll get the bill."
"After dinner," Alan suggested. "How do you like the wine?"
Scowling, Shelby lifted the glass and drained half the contents. "It's fine." Her eyes, insolent now, stayed level with his. "This isn't a date, you know."
"It's becoming more of a filibuster, isn't it? More wine? — Nora Roberts

It was a pity that most people didn't actually go to libraries anymore, not when they could sit in the comfort of their own quarters and access files electronically. Want to read the new hot interstellar caper novel, or the latest issue of Beings holozine? Input the name, touch a control, and zip - it's in your datapad. . . .
There were, of course, old-fashioned beings who would still actually trundle down to where the files were. On some worlds the most ancient libraries kept books - actual bound volumes of printed matter - lined up neatly on shelves, and readers would walk the aisles, take a volume down, sniff the musty-dusty odor of it, and then carry it to a table to leisurely peruse.
There weren't many of those readers left, and they were growing rarer all the time . . . But there were some who still knew how to actually turn a page - and for those who were willing to do so, the rewards could be great indeed. — Michael Reaves And Steve Perry

In spite of this, our table's status on the Oronsay continued to be minimal, while those at the Captain's Table were constantly toasting to one another's significance. That was a small lesson I learned on the journey. What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power. Nothing much of lasting value ever happens at the head table, held together by familiar rhetoric. Those who already have power continue to glide along in the familiar rut they have made for themselves. — Michael Ondaatje

There is no national science, just as there is no national multiplication table; what is national is no longer science. — Anton Chekhov

My perfect day is constantly changing. Right now, it would be to lie around in a hammock reading with a portable phone and a table of food next to it. I would spend all day there. And that's all that I can possibly come up with on the spur of the moment. — Eric Stoltz

I thought she was sleeping until I heard her call out from across the room, "Will you bring me a glass of water?" I did. Then in her always-sleepy tone and drawl she said, "Do you remember when you were a little boy and you would ask your mama to bring you a glass of water?" Yeah. "You know how half the time you weren't even thirsty. You just wanted that hand that was attached to that glass that was attached to that person you just wanted to stay there until you fell asleep." She took the glass of water that I brought her and just sat it down full on the table next to her. Wow, I thought. What am I gonna do with love like this. — Dito Montiel

Elizabeth was counting on Marco to keep cousin Mary occupied until after the board meeting was over. A piece of cheese might catch a mouse, but an afternoon alone with a muscular masseur would ensnare her cousin far more effectively. And afterwards, while Mary lay sated and sleeping upon a massage table, wiser heads could determine the company's future. There were times, Elizabeth thought, when success in business demanded utter ruthlessness. — Barbara Taylor Bradford

I'm not sure why he's flustered until I realize there are now five of us and the table is set for four.
Pru waves her hand dismissively. "Don't bother. The dark-haired one is just my bodyguard. He can stand."
Kiernan seems entirely unfazed by the comment, but her tone pisses me off. — Rysa Walker

There is, following an ample meal, a sort of pause in time, filled with a gentle slackening of thought and energy, when to sit doing nothing gives us a sense of life's richness and a feeling that the least effort would be intolerable. The melancholy we took with us to table has disappeared and, if we think of it at all it is only to smile, as at some black mood now past, its cause having gone. And with the melancholy, all scruple, all remorse departs from us. — Marcel Proust

The rifle is a weapon. Let there be no mistake about that. It is a tool of power, and thus dependent completely upon the moral stature of its user. It is equally useful in securing meat for the table, destroying group enemies on the battlefield, and resisting tyranny. In fact, it is the only means of resisting tyranny, since a citizenry armed with rifles simply cannot be tyrannized. — Jeff Cooper

My grandmother was the greatest cook in the world. She could just go in there, the whole kitchen would look like a tornado hit it and then she'd come out with the best food. Then she'd sit at the table and she wouldn't eat! — Edie Brickell

Most successful businesses in the country were started on a kitchen table. As long as people have needs unmet or problems unsolved, there are business opportunities. — Brian Tracy

I have a bad feeling about this," she said.
"We'll fake it. And if push comes to shove, we can just sing Goober Peas and waltz around."
"Rebecca might not find that very funny."
"Rebecca is a Northerner. You can tell because there aren't any cheese straws on the snack table. — Mary Jane Hathaway

Tiny quails may not seem as impressive as a mammoth turkey, but there is something refreshing about a spread of individual birds on the Christmas table. — Yotam Ottolenghi

I'll see she gets them," Brodick said.
Judith shook her head. "I want to meet her," she explained. She stood up and walked over to the table. "I have messages to give her from her mother."
"I'll be happy to show you the way," Alex volunteered.
"I'll do it," Gowrie announced in a much firmer voice.
Brodick shook his head. "Isabelle is my sister-in-law," he snapped. "I'll show Judith the way."
Iain had opened the door, and stood there listening to the argument. He was having difficulty believing what he was hearing ... and seeing. His warriors were acting like lovesick squires while they argued over who would escort Judith. — Julie Garwood

My kids learned to color on this table. There's been a lot that's went around this table. Waylon Jennings sat right there in that chair and showed Miley the chords to 'Good Hearted Woman.' Sitting in that chair. This table's a bit like life. It's a circle. And I believe everything in life is a circle. You come into this world a little teeny wrinkled-up fetus — Billy Ray Cyrus

My forehead hit the table again with a thud. Ow. The words left me in a rush.
"I'm-fucking-the-married-closeted-father-of-my-only-close-friend-in-the-entire-world-and-his-wife-is-going-to-be-here-in-two-weeks."
I heard the hiss as Robin sucked his breath in between his teeth. "Ouch."
"Yeah." I sighed, my forehead rubbing against the table as I nodded miserably. At least he didn't try to deny the idiotic part.
"You know there's absolutely no way that can end well."
"Duh. — Amelia C. Gormley

Suppose we had some kind of device with particles moving with a certain definite symmetry, and suppose their movements were bilaterally symmetrical (fig. 20). Then, following the laws of physics, with all the movements and collisions, you could expect, and rightly, that if you look at the same picture later on it will still be bilaterally symmetrical. So there is a kind of conservation, the conservation of the symmetry character. This should be in the table, but it is not like a number that you measure, and we will discuss it in much more detail in the next lecture. The reason this is not very interesting in classical physics is because the times when there are such nicely symmetrical initial conditions are very rare, and it is therefore a not very important or practical conservation law. But — Richard Feynman

It's interesting when you're doing signing sessions with other writers and you look at the queues at each table and you can see definite human types gathering there ... My queue is always full of, you know, wild-eyed sleazebags and people who stare at me very intensely, as if I have some particular message for them. As if I must know that they've been reading me, that this dyad or symbiosis of reader and writer has been so intense that I must somehow know about it. — Martin Amis

All the London ton acknowledged Scotland as a barbaric place. The packs there cared very little for the social niceties of daytime folk. Highland werewolves had a reputation for doing atrocious and highly unwarranted things, like wearing smoking jackets to the dinner table. Lyall shivered at the delicious horror of the very idea. — Gail Carriger

Now we get to the Karma thing: You make yourself so vulnerable by not tipping well or treating people in the service industry with respect. Not only is it wrong to treat another human being like that, but there's a practical consideration: They're standing between you and eating. Without waiters, nothing comes to your table and nothing goes away. Aren't you worried that they'll put rat poison in your food, or at least spit in it? pages 86-87 — Tim Gunn

Here she was at eight, with the chemistry set she'd begged for at Christmas. Her father was beside her in this one, showing her a picture of the periodic table, explaining how everything on earth, everything in the universe, even - people, starfish, cement, bicycles, and far-off planets - was made up of a combination of these elements. "Isn't it amazing to think of, Ruthie?" he'd asked. Ruthie had found the idea that we were only a series of neatly constructed puzzle pieces or building blocks vaguely unsettling - even at eight, she wanted there to be more to it than that. — Jennifer McMahon

Washington is the only city in the world where you can go to a black-tie dinner and there at the foot of the table is a television set up to catch a press conference. — Hugh Newell Jacobsen

Others have said it before me. If you don't have a seat at the table, you're probably on the menu. And so it is important that we have women in the United States Senate - strong women, women who are there to help advance an agenda that is important to women. — Elizabeth Warren

Altogether bad,' the host concluded. 'As you will, but there's something not nice hidden in men who avoid wine, games, the society of charming women, table talk. Such people are either gravely ill or secretly hate everybody around them. True, there may be exceptions. Among persons sitting down with me at the banqueting table, there have been on occasion some extraordinary scoundrels! ... And so, let me hear your business. — Mikhail Bulgakov

A Mother's Advice

Manners matter, regardless of your position in society. There is no excuse in this world to practice bad manners, especially at the table. I found that out in high school. I was invited to my boyfriend's house for dinner. His parents were somewhat formal, and I knew the dinner would be "fancy," at least in my mind. My family wasn't upper class (or even middle class), and my mother never had what would be called "social graces."
Before I left, my mother gave me a piece of advice: hold your head high, be quiet, and take the lead from his mother. Even though I was scared to death, I did what my mother advised and got through the experience with flying colors.
To this day, my mother's advice has gotten me through many difficult situations, especially ones that are totally new to me! With my mother's simple advice, I know I could dine with the Queen of England, just by following her lead. Thanks, Mother!

-Deborah Ford — Deborah Ford

I can't speak American dog very well. There was a lot of improvisation with Uggie - like when I put the dog on the table or sometimes I follow him, sometimes he follows me. I had a lot of treats in my pocket. We worked with Omar Von Muller, the dog trainer. It was very easy because it was a big movie. — Jean Dujardin

Gregor grinned. "Congratulations to you, too, Miles. Your father before you needed a whole army to do it, but you've changed Barrayaran history just with a dinner invitation." Miles shrugged helplessly. God, is everybody going to blame me for this? And for everything that follows? "Let's try to avoid making history on this one, eh? I think we should push for unalleviated domestic dullness." "With all my heart," Gregor agreed. With a cheery salute, he cut the com. Miles laid his head down on the table, and moaned. "It's not my fault!" "Yes, it is," said Ivan. "It was all your idea. I was there when you came up with it." "No, it wasn't. It was yours. You're the one who dragooned me into attending the damned state dinner in the first place." "I only invited you. You invited Galeni. And anyway, my mother dragooned me." "Oh. So it's all her fault. Good. I can live with that." Ivan — Lois McMaster Bujold

There are very few people at the decision-making table to argue for minimum-wage workers. Very few people. — Elizabeth Warren

Because there wasn't anything else to do, he settled at the kitchen table
with a bottle of mead and nearly emptied it. The anesthetic effect he hoped for hadn't happened, though. At least not yet. — Ann Gimpel

Swann's father, an excellent but an eccentric man in whom the least little thing would, it seemed, often check the flow of his spirits and divert the current of his thoughts. Several times in the course of a year I would hear my grandfather tell at table the story, which never varied, of the behaviour of M. Swann the elder upon the death of his wife, by whose bedside he had watched day and night. My grandfather, who had not seen him for a long time, hastened to join him at the Swanns' family property on the outskirts of Combray, and managed to entice him for a moment, weeping profusely, out of the death-chamber, so that he should not be present when the body was laid in its coffin. They took a turn or two in the park, where there was a little sunshine. Suddenly M. Swann seized my grandfather — Marcel Proust

There does exist and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for 20 years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960s, to examine its papers and secret record. — Carroll Quigley

We gotta have a toast." Rocky on her pins, Peabody used the table for balance. She managed to raise her glass without spilling more than half its contents on Eve's head. "To the best fucking cop in the whole stinking city, who's gonna marry the sexiest sumbitch I, personally, have ever laid eyes on, and who, because she's so goddamn smart, has seen to it that I'm perman'ly attached to Homicide. Which is where any half-blind asshole could tell you I belong. So there." She downed the rest of her drink, fell backward into her chair, and grinned foolishly.
"Peabody," Eve said and flicked a finger under her eyes. "I've never been more touched."
"I'm shit faced. Dallas."
"The evidence points to it. — J.D. Robb

There is a book waiting for him upon the library table; his eyes fancy they still follow its lines of type, his head still runs upon its argument, his fingers itch to take it up again. — Susanna Clarke

Elvis!" Min shoved herself off the couch to shoo him away. "Stay away from there. There's broken glass."
"He did that on purpose," David said, outraged.
"Yes, David, the cat is plotting against you." Min fished the base out of the water and glass shards and put it on the table. Then she went to get her wastebasket and began to put the glass pieces in it. — Jennifer Crusie

We're doing quite well in some states, but there are states that you can't - I mean, it's just ridiculous the representation of women, and having been an advocate for women, lobbied in many states as well as here at the national level for women. People behave differently when there are women at the table, men do. Our issues get higher prominence. We're taken more seriously. — Eleanor Smeal

The doors to his father's council room were thrown open and Celaena prowled in, her dark cape billowing behind her. All twenty men at the table fell silent, including his father, whose eyes went straight to the thing dangling from Celaena's hand. Chaol was already striding across the room from his post by the door. But he, too, stopped when he beheld the object she carried.
A head.
The man's face was still set in a scream, and there was something vaguely familiar about the grotesque feature and mousy brown hair that she gripped. It was hard to be certain as it swung from her gloved fingers. — Sarah J. Maas

There are times when any amount of being within the world is like rubbing bare skin against sandpaper, when any form of motion is a kind of abrasion, leaving you raw and pink and vulnerable to the next thing. At these times I prefer to close my eyes and be still, still like the cups or candles or crackers on the table, nerveless and open. I closed my eyes and tried to think of the thing furthest from my situation. — Alexandra Kleeman

I knew that iridium-193 was one of two stable isotopes of iridium, a very rare, very dense metal, but I didn't know that the periodic table even existed.
I knew how many zeroes there were in a quintillion, but I thought that algebra lived in ponds.
I'd picked up a few Latin words, and a smattering of Elvish, but my French was non-existent.
I'd read more than one book of more than one thousand pages (more than once), but I wouldn't have been able to identify a metaphor if it poked me in the eye.
By secondary-school standards, I was quite a dunce. — Gavin Extence

He joined Jude in the kitchen and began making a salad, and JB slumped to the dining-room table and started flipping through a novel Jude had left there. "I read this," he called over to him. "Do you want to know what happens in the end?"
"No, JB," said Jude. "I'm only halfway through."
"The minister character dies after all."
"JB!"
After that, JB's mood seemed to improve. — Hanya Yanagihara

Webster and I are very aloof. The two of us go and sit there by ourselves. I sit by myself in the corner with my book and the newspaper. He kind of runs around a little bit, and then he goes and sits on top of the picnic table. He never plays with other little dogs. — Calista Flockhart

You are a wise man, Major, and I will consider your advice with great care - and humility." He finished his tea and rose from the table to go to his room. "But I must ask you, do you really understand what it means to be in love with an unsuitable woman?"
"My dear boy," said the Major. "Is there really any other kind? — Helen Simonson

Astronomers still can't decide what the shape of our universe is. Is it closed and finite, which is to say, is there a countable tally of all the galaxies that exist, even beyond the ones we can see? Or is it infinite? The latter possibility is still on the table. — Seth Shostak

I once went into a meeting, and every woman put her a million-pound bag on the table. Then I'm there with my tote bag and anorak. And I'm like, well, I'm still the most important person in the room right now. — Caitlin Moran

Echo bent over the table to make her second shot. Her beautiful breasts were right there for me to see, but i wanted to do more than observe, i wanted to ...
"You should put your tongue back in your mouth. You 'll get all cotton-mouthed if it dries out."
"I can't help it you 're hot." I loved it when she dished it out. — Katie McGarry

Oh Lord, make us able
To eat all that's on this table,
And if there's some we haven't got
Bring it to us while it's hot — Wendell Berry

If you're going to be a visual artist, then there has to be something in the work that accounts for the possibility of the invisible, the opposite of the visual experience. That's why it's not like a table or a car or something. I think that that might even be hard for people because most of our visual experiences are of tables. It has no business being anything else but a table. But a painting or a sculpture really exists somewhere between itself, what it is, and what it is not-you know, the very thing. And how the artist engineers or manages that is the question. — Richard Tuttle

The room was a library. Not a public library, but a private library; that is, a collection of books belonging to Justice Strauss. There were shelves and shelves of them, on every wall from the floor to the ceiling, and separate shelves of them in the middle of the room. The only place were there weren't books was in one corner, where there were some large, comfortable-looking chairs and a wooden table with lamps hanging over them, perfect for reading. Although it was not as big as their parents library, it was cozy, and the Baudelaire children were thrilled. — Lemony Snicket

They sat cross-legged on
the floor, short of lotus, lay back
between table and couch. In the
upset zone known as not
yet
there they reconvened, she
unexpected harmony's ghost,
another she recondite solace's
regret. . . They sat on the
floor
sipping herb as we looked
on,
incense an androgyne funk,
flesh crevice, book of anabatic
recess — Nathaniel Mackey

One day, Oliver and Noah had descended into the kitchen at the usual dinner-hour, to banquet upon a small joint of mutton - a pound and a half of the worst end of the neck - when Charlotte being called out of the way, there ensued a brief interval of time, which Noah Claypole, being hungry and vicious, considered he could not possibly devote to a worthier purpose than aggravating and tantalising young Oliver Twist. Intent upon this innocent amusement, Noah put his feet on the table-cloth; and pulled Oliver's hair; and twitched his ears; and expressed his opinion that he was a 'sneak'; and furthermore announced his intention of coming to see him hanged, whenever that desirable event should take place; and entered upon various topics of petty annoyance, like a malicious and ill-conditioned charity-boy as he was. But, — Charles Dickens

Our culture believes strong individuals can transcend their circumstances. I myself don't much enjoy books by Hardy or Dreiser or Wharton, where the outside world is so strong, so overwhelming, that the individual hasn't a chance. I get impatient, I keep feeling that somehow the deck is stacked unfairly. That is the point, of course, but my feeling is that if that's true, I don't want to play. I prefer to move to another table where I can retain my illusion, if illusion it be, that I'm working only against only probabilities, and have a chance to win. Then if you lose, you can blame it on your own poor playing. That is called a tragic flaw, and like guilt, it's very comforting. You can go on believing that there really is a right way, and you just didn't find it. — Marilyn French

When done right - or wrong, depending on how you look at it - deficits remove liberal options from the table. Suddenly there's no money for building bridges or inspecting meat. Not surprisingly, running up a deficit is a strategy favored by the wrecking crew for its liberal-killing properties. — Thomas Frank

He went into the Gray Joy, drank a glass of Arkanarian brew, patted the hostess's cheek, and deftly used one of his swords to flip the table of the usual informer, who was gawking at him with empty eyes. Then he walked over to a far corner and tracked down a shabby bearded man with an inkwell around his neck. "Hello, Brother Nanin," he said. "How many petitions have you written today?"
Brother Nanin smiled shyly, showing small, decayed teeth. "There aren't many petitions written nowadays, noble don," he said. "Some people think that asking is pointless, while others expect that in the near future they'll be able to take without asking. — Arkady Strugatsky

Pain has an odd way of expressing itself in the acts of business. No matter how many setbacks a leader might experience, there always seems to be a new opaque watermark of endurance testing, invisibly triggered for erratic combustion in each compounding decision. Every CEO in the world knows this, yet few have the good sense to walk away from the table when their cards are hot. Why win in Act Two when a comeback in Act Three gives you a longer biography? Ego is not so much about immortality as it is about demonstrating stately resistance to nightmarish attacks in public forums. Any good smack to the head is a continuity wake up call, or at least another invitation to be interviewed by Charlie Rose. — Ken Goldstein

All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture. The only real question is: whose interpretation? People with differing interpretations of Scripture cannot set a Bible on a table and ask it to resolve their differences. In order for the Scripture to function as an authority, it must be read and interpreted by someone. According to "solo" Scriptura, that someone is each individual, so ultimately, there are as many final authorities as there are human interpreters. — Keith Mathison

We sat together as a family for dinner at night. And my mother had a job. My dad had a job. But there was always a meal on the table at 6:00, you know. — Trisha Yearwood

I think everybody comes to the table with a different point of view and a different need ... A lot of Beverly Lewis' material revolves around secrets and bringing those secrets to light. So, you know, there's always that theme, that ... we're as sick as our secrets and once they're revealed we can be set free from them. So, that's definitely a theme that resonates. — Michael Landon Jr.

It doesn't take two minutes on an examining table for a girl to know that abortion is painful and destructive and it'll have far-reaching effects on her life. Besides the emotional trauma of going through something so violent, there are the physical aspects, the aftereffects. Unfortunately, by the time she's gone that far, it's too late to change her mind. — Francine Rivers

Shall I tell you the difference between our Holy Father and ourselves? We see things from a single view-point. He sees things from several. We decide that the thing is as we see it. But He has seen it otherwise, and He presents it as a more or less complete coaction of its qualities. See this sapphire. Well, you see the face of it: underneath, if I take it off my finger, there are a number of facets to be seen and a number more which are hidden by the gold of the setting. Now my meaning is that our Holy Father has seen all the facets as well as the table of the sapphire, or the thing. Consequently He knows a great deal more about the sapphire, or the thing, than we do. You must have noted that in Him. You must have noted how that every now and then, when He deigns to explain, He makes mysteries appear most wonderfully lucid. — Frederick Rolfe

There is no leveller like Christianity - but it levels by lifting to a lofty table-land, accessible only to humility. He only who is humble can rise, and rising lift. — George MacDonald

The three cardinal tenets of rum drinking in Newfoundland. The first of these is that as soon as a bottle is placed on a table it must be opened. This is done to "let the air get at it and carry off the black vapors." The second tenet is that a bottle, once opened, must never be restoppered, because of the belief that it will then go bad. No bottle of rum has ever gone bad in Newfoundland, but none has ever been restoppered, so there is no way of knowing whether this belief is reasonable. The final tenet is that an open bottle must be drunk as rapidly as possible "before all to-good goes out of it. — Farley Mowat

What do you want?" I repeated, and there was no huskiness there now. All demand. A suspended moment, then he suddenly leaned forward again, practically over the entire table and into my lap, sucking me into all that green. "I want to get you away from that bastard," he announced on a growl. "Out of his life. Out of his bed." Pause. "And into mine. — Nicola Claire

Families need to have a time when they can cook together. They can eat at the table and you can look eye-to-eye. Phones are put away and there are no interruptions. And what you do is concentrate on each other. Listen to what they have to say, and let them listen to you. — Kay Robertson

Actually," the chief guardian said in a calm voice, "you have no rights at all. But I am going to tell you the decision so that there will be no misunderstanding. "The orphan girl Kira will stay. She will have a new role." He gestured toward the Singer's robe, still spread out on the table. "Kira," he said, looking at her, "you will continue your mother's work. You will go beyond her work, actually, since your skill is far greater than hers was. First, you will repair the robe, as your mother always did. Next, you will restore it. Then your true work will begin. You will complete the robe. — Lois Lowry

That's the thing," Jo says. "You think you know what you're in for. I mean, you tell yourself that, of course, it's not going to be wine and roses and all of that bullshit for the rest of your life, but then, one day, you wake up, and your fucking husband has morphed into someone whom you barely recognize. And you sit there and you stare at him while he scratches his balls through his underwear at the kitchen table, and you think, 'This is totally not what I signed up for. I mean, who knows if I even love this ball-scratching, foul-breathed man?' And then you wonder if you love him more out of habit than out of anything else." She chews the inside of her lip and considers. "And I guess from there, all bets are off. — Allison Winn Scotch

I am absolutely convinced that the E.U. will still be around. I am convinced the U.K. will be sitting at that table and not negotiating an exit, but being there to stay. — Mark Rutte

With the compelling convincingness of dreams, which are vague yet exact, the ghost voice draws us (to ourselves and all of our component selves), lifts them casually out of the well of the past
the well wherein nothing is lost, the deep well of forgetfulness, and remembrance
and tosses them mockingly on the glassy table surface of our consciousness. There we are forced to consider them. There we are forced to regard, analyze, and re-understand. — Heinrich Robert Zimmer

There is a big difference between The Merchant of Venice and a photograph of two males of different races in an erotic pose on a marble table top. — Jesse Helms

- and there, on the table under her bedroom window, lies the voice that has set her dreaming again. Fragments of a life lived a long, long time ago. Across a hundred years the woman's voice speaks to her - so clearly that she cannot believe it is not possible to pick up her pen and answer. — Ahdaf Soueif

It's important for me who is at the table with me; the moment when everyone speaks to each other and everyone listens. If there's good food, it's much better. — Andrea Bocelli

His father placed his elbows on the table and leaned toward him. "We need to know if you are simply ordinary or larger than life." To the best of his ability, he mulled over the notion of being larger than life. "Did you have to go there when you were young?" His father nodded. "Were you afraid?" His father sat back into his tall, brocaded armchair, as if in recall. "In the beginning I was. Until I learned to overcome fear. — James Luceno

As far as evil goes" - she shrugged one shoulder - "I've spent a dozen years studying the subject and there's one thing I know for sure." Her expression grew distant, breakable somehow. She blinked and seemed to push whatever had distracted her aside. "If you want to know what evil looks like, look in the mirror." She leaned down, flattened her hands on the table once more, and went face-to-face with Wells. "Any one of us is capable of evil, Detective. We all have a line. It's not crossing it that separates us from the Ed Geins and Charles Mansons of the world. — Debra Webb

It's about finding your place at the table and knowing there will always be enough to fill your plate. — Kathryn Kennish

Even if we give first priority to the destruction of terrorist networks, and even if we succeed, there are still governments that could bring us great harm. And there is a clear case that one of these governments in particular represents a virulent threat in a class by itself: Iraq. As far as I am concerned, a final reckoning with that government should be on the table. — Al Gore

Hephzibah normally left the dishes until the next day. Piled up in the sink so that it was near impossible to fill a kettle. And what the sink wouldn't take would stay on the kitchen table. Treslove liked that about her. She didn't believe they had to clean up after every excess. There wasn't a price to pay for pleasure. — Howard Jacobson

It feels as though there is a gaping hole in the middle of everything. The decades of my mother's life here with Thalia, they are dark, vast spaces to me. I have been absent. Absent for all the meals Thalia and Mama have shared at this table, the laughs, the quarrels, the stretches of boredom, the illnesses, the long string of simple rituals that make up a lifetime. Entering my child-hood home is a little disorienting, like reading the end of a novel that I'd started, then abandoned, long ago. — Khaled Hosseini

The important thing to understand," he reached across the table to touch her hand, "is that there are things about ourselves that we can change and things about ourselves that we can't change. The key is to know the difference. — Debra Holland

The acrobat practices: He steps on the edge of a chair and leaps to the floor, feeling the rush as the air flares up his face as he falls. Then he sets himself on something higher, like a table then jumps. He scales a ladder to the ceiling, climbs a tree, pole, watchtower. He keeps increasing the height until no one sees him and the fear to jump leaves him completely, layer by layer [. . .] The acrobat imagines there is a highest possible point in the sky where if he were to fall from it the fall would never end. — Wataru Tsurumi

For example, when I was writing Leviathan, which was written both in New York and in Vermont - I think there were two summers in Vermont, in that house I wrote about in Winter Journal, that broken-down house ... I was working in an out-building, a kind of shack, a tumble-down, broken-down mess of a place, and I had a green table. I just thought, "Well, is there a way to bring my life into the fiction I'm writing, will it make a difference?" And the fact is, it doesn't make any difference. It was a kind of experiment which couldn't fail. — Paul Auster

In an economy of grace, there is enough to go around. The Father's love and generosity are not scarce. His table is brimming with luxurious fare. That is why we invite those who cannot repay us. After all, it is not our table, but his. — Michael S. Horton

But the lawyer he jumps on the table and yells, and says: "Gentlemen - gentlemen! Hear me just a word - just a single word - if you please!

There's one way yet - let's go and dig up the corpse and look. — Mark Twain

Stu stops munching, looks up at me from under his shaggy hair.
"So, can you read?" He slides a section toward me.
I cock my head toward the paper. The letters are small, blurry drawings. The alphabet might as well be Chinese or Arabic. Strange that I can't read or speak, though I still have language inside my head. Words are a consolation, but not a tool.
"Guess not. You want me to read stuff out loud to you?"
I would, but not right now. If I wanted to show interest in the newspaper I could cross the table and rub against his shoulder. Instead I gaze at him over the bowl of milk.
"It's so weird," he says in a hesitant voice. "You don't look like a cat. When you stare at me, you look like Eliza."
That's the nicest thing he could have said. With a happy lightness to my step I move between the bowls, over his napkin ring and spoon, until I stand on the edge of the table and nip at his prickly chin. This is my way of saying: Hi, there. I like you. — Simone Martel

I appear inadvertently to have caused much trouble, sir."
"Jeeves!" I said.
"Sir?"
"How much money is there on the dressing-table?"
"In addition to the ten-pound note which you instructed me to take, sir, there are two five-pound notes, three one-pounds, a ten-shillings, two half-crowns, a florin, four shillings, a sixpence, and a halfpenny, sir."
"Collar it all," I said. "You've earned it. — P.G. Wodehouse

She wasn't ready to settle down, she told her friends. That was one way of putting it. Another was would have been that she had not found anyone to settle down with. There had been several men in her life, but they hadn't been convincing. They'd been somewhat like her table - quickly acquired, brightened up a little, but temporary. The time for that kind of thing was running out, however. She was tired of renting. — Margaret Atwood

Um, you don't have to join me, but if you're looking for a table, there are a couple good seats over there. He nodded toward the far end. — J.M. Richards

How many times would a defendant's lawyer enter the courtroom before a session and ask each of the male clerks and paralegals around me, 'Are you the assistant in charge?' while I sat there invisible to him at the head of the table? — Sonia Sotomayor

Opening the door quietly, I slipped in without switching on the light. From the entrance hall, I
could see the dining room at the end of the corridor, the table still decked out for the party. The cake was there, untouched, and the crockery still waited for the meal. I could make out the motionless silhouette of my father in his armchair, as he observed the scene from the window. He was awake and still wearing his best suit. Wreaths of smoke rose lazily from a cigarette he held between his index and ring
fingers, as if it were a pen. I hadn't seen my father smoke for years. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

She suspected if they looked in Gamache's bedside table, they'd find all sorts of lost souls he put there for safekeeping. And maybe a baguette. — Louise Penny

All right, beautiful. You've got me tied down to this stone table, and there's a knife in your hand that says you get to rule Narnia for another hundred years. So maybe I die, and winter goes on. Maybe the hunger and the darkness and the fear never end. But as long as the children believe in me, I know that Aslan will live again. I, the Great Lion, Son of The Emperor Over The Sea, will live again and
aaaaauugh!! — C.S. Lewis

There are more people at Obama's table offering ideas than there were five years ago, but when it came to facing up to the Republicans' threat to force a double-dip recession if they didn't get their millionaires' tax cut, they still amounted to nothing. And therein lies our fundamental problem. — Eric Alterman

There is, in the Army, a little known but very important activity appropriately called Fatigue. Fatigue, in the Army, is the very necessary cleaning and repairing of the aftermath of living. Any man who has ever owned a gun has known Fatigue, when, after fifteen minutes in the woods and perhaps three shots at an elusive squirrel, he has gone home to spend three-quarters of an hour cleaning up his piece so that it will be ready next time he goes to the woods. Any woman who has ever cooked a luscious meal and ladled it out in plates upon the table has known Fatigue, when, after the glorious meal is eaten, she repairs to the kitchen to wash the congealed gravy from the plates and the slick grease from the cooking pots so they will be ready to be used this evening, dirtied, and so washed again. It is the knowledge of the unendingness and of the repetitious uselessness, the do it up so it can be done again, that makes Fatigue fatigue. — James Jones

The third day, he wasn't on the road. I wanted to feel relieved. Instead, I was disappointed. Until I got home. Mom had had the day off, the first in a long while. So, of course, she was home when I got there. And so was Joe. Sitting at our kitchen table. Wearing dress pants, a dress shirt. And a bow tie. Which, unbeknownst to me, turned out to be one of my greatest weaknesses. I — T.J. Klune

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

In order to get somewhere in life, you need to have a vision. The vision brings you to the table. Without a vision, you just do what everybody else does and you are just there. — Michael Schenker

Downstairs in the kitchen, Marco and Sophia - my grandparents, who have insisted I call them by their first names - were already there. Sophia stood over the oven, pans hissing, as the smell of bacon filled the air. Marco sat at the table, the morning newspaper opened up in front of him. — Jessica Sorensen

You know that you're part of a Spielberg production when you've got some aliens involved, but you really know when you're sitting there at a table read, and they say, 'Steven really wanted it this way.' — Jessy Schram

I had a moment in the Library of Congress among the presidential papers. I opened a folder, and there was an envelope in it. The front of the envelope was facing the table, so I didn't know what was in it. I opened it and out spilled all this hair. I turned the envelop over and it says, 'Clipped from President Garfield's head on his deathbed.' — Candice Millard

But you know if God should stamp eternity or even judgment on our eyeballs, or if you'd like on the fleshy table of our hearts I am quite convinced we'd be a very, very different tribe of people, God's people, in the world today. We live too much in time, we're too earth bound. We see as other men see, we think as other men think. We invest our time as the world invests it. We're supposed to be a different breed of people. I believe that the church of Jesus Christ needs a new revelation of the majesty of God. We're all going to stand one day, can you imagine it- at the judgment seat of Christ to give an account for the deeds done in the body. This is what- this is the King of kings, and He's the Judge of judges, and it's the Tribunal of tribunals, and there's no court of appeal after it. The verdict is final. — Leonard Ravenhill

I had never been to Texas. I'd been through Texas, but I'm so glad to be back in a place that's not L.A. or New York. To talk about Dallas, to talk about there being sweet tea on the catering table, it's rich and saturated in American-ness. — Kelli Giddish