Talk To Me Once Quotes & Sayings

I hired a publicist once I got cast in 'Passing Strange,' and one of the first conversations we had was about how I wanted to handle talking about my sexuality. I said, 'It's never been an issue for me. I want to talk about my work, but if something about myself relates to my work, of course I'll talk about it.' — Colman Domingo

Nervous sweat gathered on my palms, and for once I was glad I couldn't talk. I swallowed, my throat clenching around the scream scalding me from the inside. The gray haze was darker now, though no thicker. I could see through it easily, yet it tainted everything my terrified gaze landed on , as if the entire gym had been draped in a translucent cloud of smog. And things still moved on the edge of my vision, drawing my eye first in one direction, then another .

I would have given anything to be able to speak in that moment, not just to warn Emma -
because that was evidently a moot point -
but to ask Nash what the hell was going on. Could he see what I saw? More important, could they see us? — Rachel Vincent

More than once, while staring at the wall, I'd thought of Our Lady. I wanted to talk to her, to say, Where do I go from here? But when I'd seen her earlier, when August and I had first come in, she didn't look like she could be of service to anybody, bound up with all that chain around her. You want the one you're praying to at least to look capable. I dragged myself out of bed and went to see her anyway. I decided that even Mary did not need to be one hundred percent capable all the time. The only thing I wanted was for her to understand. Somebody to let out a big sigh and say, You poor thing, I know how you feel. Given a choice, I preferred someone to understand my situation, even though she was helpless to fix it, rather than the other way around. But that's just me. Right — Sue Monk Kidd

We'll just sit here," said Barney, "and if we think of anything worth while saying we'll say it. Otherwise, not. Don't imagine you're bound to talk to me."
"John Foster says," quoted Valancy, "'If you can sit in silence
with a person for half an hour and yet be entirely comfortable, you
and that person can be friends. If you cannot, friends you'll
never be and you need not waste time in trying.'"
"Evidently John Foster says a sensible thing once in a while,"
conceded Barney. — L.M. Montgomery

My son, again you worry me. From time to time you worry me, so regularly it should calm me. I remember once, when you were little, we saw a fire together in a big hotel. The flames and the water and the smoke, the wailing and the shouting and the madly flashing lights, all these saved me from lots of talk on what life is. And we stood in silence. I ask myself where my father hid his fear, perhaps in a closed closet or some other place beyond the reach of children, perhaps deep in his heart. But now again you worry me. I'm always looking for you, this time among the mists of the Upper Galilee. I am a mist father. And the child is no more, for he is already grown. — Yehuda Amichai

You once said to me that I talk like a man in a book. I not only talk, but think and feel like one. I have spent my life in books; literature has deeply dyed my brain its own colour. This literary colouring is a protective one
like the brown of the rabbit or the checks of the quail
making it impossible for me to tell where literature ends and I begin. — Nathanael West

No duties. I don't have to be profound.
I don't have to be artistically perfect.
Or sublime. Or edifying.
I just wander. I say: 'You were running,
That's fine. It was the thing to do.'
And now the music of the worlds transforms me.
My planet enters a different house.
Trees and lawns become more distinct.
Philosophies one after another go out.
Everything is lighter yet not less odd.
Sauces, wine vintages, dishes of meat.
We talk a little of district fairs,
Of travels in a covered wagon with a cloud of dust behind,
Of how rivers once were, what the scent of calamus is.
That's better than examining one's private dreams.
And meanwhile it has arrived. It's here, invisible.
Who can guess how it got here, everywhere.
Let others take care of it. Time for me to play hooky.
Buena notte. Ciao. Farewell. — Czeslaw Milosz

Mack once told me that he used to speak his mind more freely in his younger years, but he admitted that most of such talk was a survival mechanism to cover his hurts; he often ended up spewing his pain on everyone around him. He says that he had a way of pointing out people's faults and humiliating them while maintaining his own sense of false power and control. Not too endearing. — Wm. Paul Young

I was worried people would laugh at me when I started to talk the language, but they were just pleasantly surprised that I could. The sense of humour here is great - once I could have a giggle, I settled down. — Parminder Nagra

I like the idea that people have formed their own opinions. And of course once people meet me or talk to me their opinion totally changes because I'm much more that girl that you hang out with than you think. — Willa Ford

Only it seems to me that once in your life before you die you ought to see a country where they don't talk in English and don't even want to. — Thornton Wilder

Once I had an opportunity to talk with Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, about the fact that I was not able to do my practice properly. I had just started the vajrayana practices and I was supposed to be visualizing. I couldn't visualize anything. I tried and tried but there was just nothing at all; I felt like a fraud doing the practice because it didn't feel natural to me. ( ... ). So he encouraged me by saying that as long as you have these kinds of doubts, your practice will be good. — Pema Chodron

I'd like to have a good long talk with you once you've calmed down. Please call me soon. Happy Birthday. — Haruki Murakami

That's the ultimate anonymity. Me in a cabin in the woods somewhere. I imagine I'll go to town once a week for groceries, make small talk with pleasant people that I will never get any closer to, and then go home." "It sounds lonely," he said. In the back of his head, he wondered if she didn't have the right idea. "You can be lonely in a room full of people. And perfectly content in a cabin by yourself. It all depends on what you're looking for in life. — B.E. Sanderson

I no longer find such pleasure in that preeminently good society, of which I was once so fond. It seems to me that beneath a cloak of clever talk it proscribes all energy, all originality. If you are not a copy, people accuse you of being ill-mannered. — Stendhal

How could I feel so miserable in the midst of such splendor? The question flashed through me all at once, not waiting for words to express it. The answer came more slowly: No one makes you angry. Anger, like love, is something you choose. Stunned, I sat down in the middle of the field I'd been walking through. I knew I needed to look within myself, let go of my anger and have a quiet talk with God. — Susan L. Taylor

I am sorry.

I'm sorry that I feel as if you don't trust me enough to confide me.
This is me being selfish even though this isn't about me, it's about you.
I'm sorry that it makes me upset that in those times you thought about ending your life, I feel like I didn't cross your mind.
I hate myself for thinking you didn't care enough to talk to me about those toxic thoughts that's trying to push you to end everything, because I know myself that's it is hard to share.
I hate myself for thinking you didn't care enough to think about how horrible it is going to be for me once I learn what you've done.

I'm sorry for feeling like this, it is selfish, I am selfish.
I'm sorry for feeling like I'm not a good friend, I know that's now how you think, I'm sorry.

I just love you and I'm hurt. — Mari

I should never have told you ... I don't know what happened to me. I just ... wanted to talk to somebody."
"And if you hadn't you'd still be going crazy with what you know, and I'd be going crazy with what I didn't know, and both of us would be alone. Right now, I'm upset but I'm ... " Neverfell hesitated, like one stretching a limb they think might be broken. "I'm all right. I think I'm more all right than I have been for ages. Great big holes of unknown are the worst thing. Before this, I didn't know anything was wrong but I didn't not know, if you see what I mean. You can go mad like that. And if my face is spoilt now, once and for all, then it means I don't have to worry about it any more. — Frances Hardinge

Once you become successful, people know where you live, the type of house you live in, the kind of car you drive, the clothes you wear, and so it would be patronising to go and talk like a welder. Welding's a mystery to me now. You can't go back, your life changes every day. — Billy Connolly

Call me Jack, darling. All the pretty girls call me Jack."
Finley rolled her eyes.
Emily grinned at him, bright eyes sparkling. "No doubt they call you many things, some of which they might even repeat in polite company."
"You come here to talk or flirt?" Sam demanded.
Jack smiled. "Unlike you, mate, I'm able to do two fings at once. — Kady Cross

Oh, thank the gods. Now I can talk to someone about clothes without being asked how so-and-so would approve of it, or gobble down a box of chocolates without someone telling me I'd better watch my figure - tell me you like chocolates. You do, right? I remember stealing a box from your room once when you were out killing someone. They were delicious." Aelin waved a hand toward the boxes of goodies on the table. "You brought chocolate - as far as I'm concerned, you're my new favorite person." Lysandra — Sarah J. Maas

Rather than fill me with ecstasy or gladness, this breakthrough overpowered me with dread. I didn't know myself anymore. I was inhabited by something that wasn't me, and that thing was so terrible, so alien in its newness, I couldn't bring myself to talk about it. I let the tears come pouring out of me, and once I started, I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to stop — Paul Auster

In Maya's group, the "executive branch," everyone is talking at once. Maya hangs back. Samantha, tall and plump in a purple T-shirt, takes charge. She pulls a sandwich bag from her knapsack and announces, "Whoever's holding the plastic bag gets to talk!" The students pass around the bag, each contributing a thought in turn. They remind me of the kids in The Lord of the Flies civic-mindedly passing around their conch shell, at least until all hell breaks loose. — Susan Cain

When I die, I wonder what will happen to me. Is there some place like heaven, and will I be able to meet you there someday? I don't know. There's no way to know. No one knows what comes after death. But at the very least, we won't be able to talk until then.

There's a wide, deep and fast running river between the living and the dead. Once you cross that river, no matter what happens, you're never coming back. It's a one way trip. — Ao Jyumonji

Once, at one of the very rare and savory moments when my own teammates grudgingly allowed me to take the ball around one of the ends, Seymour, playing for the opposite side, disconcerted me by looking overjoyed to see me as I charged in his direction, as though it were an unexpected, an enormously providential chance encounter. I stopped almost dead short, and someone, of course, brought me down, in neighborhood talk, like a ton of bricks. — J.D. Salinger

My ultimate crush may be Judith McNaught - I met her once more than 20 years ago, and she was incredibly kind and encouraging to me. I adore that woman. But I also fangirl over aspiring or beginning authors, because every time I talk with them, I'm so energized and inspired. — Lisa Kleypas

You told me men don't do this."
"Do what?"
She walked around the counter, speaking animatedly. "Two years ago. We were at Firelight, having drinks. Cade and I had split up and you said that men don't mope around after a breakup. You said that men avoid issues, get drunk, and pick up a new girl to forget the old one - but that you don't brood."
Ford held out his hands in disbelief. "How do you remember that? And I'm not brooding."
She folded her arms across her chest and looked at him.
"I know you're my friend," he said. "But please, for once, can you just act like you have a penis?
Because I don't want to talk about this."
She shrugged. "Fine. We'll just sit here and listen to music." She reached for his phone again.
"Have you heard Taylor Swift's new song?"
"No."
"Well, you're going to - on endless repeat until you start talking. — Julie James

It's hard for everyone isn't it? Anyone who says it's easy is a liar. There's
this huge divide between me and Alex right now because I feel like we're living
in such different worlds, I don't know what to talk about with him anymore.
And we used to be able to talk all night. He phones once a week and I
listen to what he's been up to during the week and try to bite my tongue
every time I go into another Katie story. Truth is I have nothing other to talk
about but her and I know it bores people. I think I used to be interesting
once upon a time. — Cecelia Ahern

When I was a kid and I'd be in trouble. I'd ask God to help me, and then once the fire was out, I wouldn't talk to Him anymore. When I got older, I began to find I needed some help spiritually, just to function. — Stephen Adly Guirgis

We should live, my Lesbia, and love
And value all the talk of stricter
Old men at a single penny.
Suns can set and rise again;
For us, once our brief light has set,
There's one unending night for sleeping.
Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,
Then another thousand, then a second hundred,
Then still another thousand, then a hundred;
Then, when we've made many thousands,
We'll muddle them so as not to know
Or lest some villain overlook us
Knowing the total of our kisses.
(Translated by Guy Lee) — Catullus

We were sitting, no longer talking or touching, and I remember thinking that I didn't want to argue with you anymore. I didn't want to sit like this in hurt silence; I wanted to talk excitedly all night as we once had. I wanted to find some way that wasn't corny sounding to tell you how much fun I'd had in your company, how much knowing you had meant to me, and how I had suddenly realized that I'd been so intent on becoming lovers that I'd overlooked how close we'd been as friends. I wanted you to know that. I wanted you to like me again. — Stuart Dybek

It's a very odd feeling for a daughter to see her mother blush over a man."
"You wouldn't?" Alan skimmed a thumb over her cheekbone. Shelby forgot her mother altogether.
"Wouldn't what?"
"Blush," he said softly, tracing her jawline. "Over a man."
"Once-I was twelve and he was thirty-two." She had to talk-just keep talking to remember who she was. "He,uh, came to fix the water heater."
"How'd he make you blush?"
"He grinned at me.He had a chipped tooth I thought was really sexy."
On a quick ripple of laughter, Alan kissed her just as Myra opened the door.
"Well,well." She didn't bother to disguise a self-satisfied smile. "Good evening.I see you two have met."
"What makes you think that?" Shelby countered breezily as she stepped inside.
Myra glanced from one to the other. "Do I smell strawberries?" she asked sweetly.
"Your lamp." Shelby gave her a bland look and indicated the box Alan carried. "Where would you like it? — Nora Roberts

No one has expressed it better than a great novelist I heard once on a talk show who said something like You want to know the price I pay for being a writer? Okay, I'll tell you. I travel by plane a great deal. And I'm usually seated next to some huge businessman who works on files or his laptop computer for a while, and then notices me and asks me what I do. And I say I'm a writer. Then there's always a terrible silence. Then he says eagerly, 'Have you written anything I might have heard of? — Anne Lamott

I could tell by his expression that once he got over his anger at me for keeping this secret from him, there was nothing left to talk about. He wasn't confused. He didn't need questions answered. He didn't ask why or how or with whom or whether I thought maybe it might just be a phase. He didn't ask who knew and who didn't know or whether I thought it might ruin my career. I was his sister and he didn't care whether I was straight or gay; it simply didn't matter to him. — Portia De Rossi

Listen more; talk less."
An executive once gave me this advice. I think it's a good thing for us all to keep in mind. — Mary Turner Heimstead

I was once on a German talk show, and this woman said to me, 'Mr. Williams, why do you think there is not so much comedy in Germany?' And I said, 'Did you ever think you killed all the funny people?' — Robin Williams

Talk uses up ideas. Once I have spoken them aloud, they are lost to me, dissipated into the noisy air like smoke. Only if I bury them, like bulbs, in the rich soil of silence do they grow. — Doris Grumbach

Kids talk to me and say they want to do musicals again because they've studied the tapes of the old films. We didn't have that. We thought once we had made it, even on film, it was gone except for the archives. — Gene Kelly

I have now been married ten years. I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest - blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband's life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. I know no weariness of my Edward's society: he knows none of mine, any more than we each do the pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate bosoms; consequently, we are ever together. To be together is for us to be at once free as in solitude, as gay as in company. We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but more animated and an audible thinking. All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character - perfect concord is the result. — Charlotte Bronte

The Church's war against women occurred not under Christ - who by all accounts held women as equals to men - but through the writings of St Irenaeus and Tertullian, and that most cruel woman-hater of them all, St Paul, whose hostile views on women were unfortunately included in the Bible. But let me be clear, it is not only a Catholic problem; it is a Christian one: Martin Luther, the scourge of the old Church, shares its views on women. He once wrote: "Girls begin to talk and to stand on their feet sooner than boys because weeds always grow up more quickly than good crops." Weeds! Weeds! — Matthew Reilly

A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. "Well," said the man, "I shouldn't have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing." I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Nelson Mandela once said, 'If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.' He was so right. When you make the effort to speak someone else's language, even if it's just basic phrases here and there, you are saying to them, 'I understand that you have a culture and identity that exists beyond me. I see you as a human being — Trevor Noah

Thomas was still outside, so I knocked once and opened the door without waiting for a response. Loki was in the middle of changing clothes as I came in. He'd already traded his worn slacks for a pair of pajama pants, and he was holding a white T-shirt, preparing to put it on.
He had his back to me, and it was even worse than I'd thought.
"Oh, my god, Loki," I gasped.
"I didn't know you were coming." He turned around to face me, smirking. "Shall I leave the shirt off, then?"
"No, put the shirt on," I said, and I closed the door behind me so nobody could see or overhear us talking.
"You're no fun." He wrinkled his nose and pulled the shirt over his head.
"Your back is horrific."
"And I was just going to tell you how beautiful you look today, but I'm not going to bother now if you're going to talk that way." Loki sat back down on his bed, more lying than sitting. — Amanda Hocking

Wow. You're going to be a little more difficult to date than I
anticipated."
I loosely crossed my arms and leaned against the door frame. "Yep. It's gonna require a little effort on your part. Like physically leaving your room and crossing that horrible hallway that protects you from the cold and snow, and actually come talk to me in person."
"Alright, alright. You win. Personal contact it is. So how about you meet me for lunch tomorrow?"
"Sure." I reached over and gently tugged him towards me. "See how easy that was?" His body pressed up against me and his lips brushed mine once more. My insides did a happy dance.
"I want you to remember this arrangement when I stop by unexpectedly and you have green goop smeared all over your face and you're too embarrassed to open the door. — Devon Ashley

Antoine St. Exupery once mourned the loss of a man and the secret treasures that he held inside him. I loved Exupery; I will read him again, and he will talk to me, not being dead, or gone. Is that life after death - mind living on paper and flesh living in offspring? Maybe. I do not know. — Sylvia Plath

Now to sum it up,' said Bernard. 'Now to explain to you the meaning of my life. Since we do not know each other (though I met you once I think, on board a ship going to Africa), we can talk freely. The illusion is upon me that something adheres for a moment, has roundness, weight, depth, is completed. This, for the moment, seems to be my life. If it were possible, I would hand it you entire. I would break it off as one breaks off a bunch of grapes. I would say, Take it. This is my life. — Virginia Woolf

The acting part of me is not me. The music side is who I really am and what I want to talk about. It'll be hard for people to differentiate those different sides but I think it's possible. Once the music is out there, people will start to realize how serious I am about it rather than, 'Oh god, another actress making an album.' — Lucy Hale

I'm a Cancer, you know," I tell her. "So it's hard for me to talk. And I have all these weird dreams, not the ones with the Sony Girls - ha-ha - but mostly where I mow the lawn. Sometimes I just wash the car, like Gupta! But there's this voice in my head, and Lt. Kim thinks that once we get it to go away, I'll stop worrying that the good things in life are destined to fail, like you and me. But I'm up in this satellite dish, and I'm thinking: what if this is the voice that still believes things can be okay, that believes in good and warns me from bad? It wants to protect me, just like the United Nations. — Adam Johnson

It's been said that adults spend the first two years of their children's lives trying to make them walk and talk, and the next sixteen years trying to get them to sit down and shut up.
It's the same way with potty training: Most adults spend the first few years of a child's life cheerfully discussing pee and poopies, and how important it is to learn to put your pee-pee and poo-poo in the potty like big people do.
But once children have mastered the art of toilet training, they are immeadiately forbidden to ever talk about poop, pee, toilets and other bathroom-related subjects again. Such things are now considered rude and vulgar, and are no longer rewarded with praise and cookies and juice boxes.
One day you're a superstar because you pooped in the toilet like a big boy, and the next day you're sitting in the principal's office because you said the word "poopy" in American History class (which, if you ask me, is the perfect place to say that word). — Dav Pilkey

Why do you suppose the poets talk about hearts?' he asked me suddenly. 'When they discuss emotional damage? The tissue of hearts is tough as a shoe. Did you ever sew up a heart?'
I shook my head. 'No, but I've watched. I know what you mean.' The walls of a heart are thick and strong, and the surgeons use heavy needles. It takes a good bit of strength, but it pulls together neatly. As much as anything it's like binding a book.
The seat of human emotion should be the liver,' Doc Homer said. 'That would be an appropriate metaphor: we don't hold love in our hearts, we hold it in our livers.'
I understood exactly. Once in ER I saw a woman who'd been stabbed everywhere, most severely in the liver. It's an organ with the consistency of layer upon layer of wet Kleenex. Every attempt at repair just opens new holes that tear and bleed. You try to close the wound with fresh wounds, and you try and you try and you don't give up until there's nothing left. — Barbara Kingsolver

If you try to talk about a truth that's merely moral, people always think it's merely metaphorical. A real live man with two legs once said to me: 'I only believe in the Holy Ghost in a spiritual sense.' Naturally, I said: 'In what other sense could you believe it?' And then he thought I meant he needn't believe in anything except evolution, or ethical fellowship, or some bilge. . . .

-- The Secret of Father Brown — G.K. Chesterton

My homies hold me down, really. I talk to Baby, Jeezy, Rozay, Nicki, everybody, from jail. Just call once in a while and holla at people like, 'Yo what's up? What's life like out there?' for people to give me a report of what's going on. — Meek Mill

My dad had once told me, crimson-red deep in "the talk," that with sons, all he had to worry about was one penis, but with a daughter, he had to worry about everyone else's. — Nicole Williams

When I got back to my office Tween was there. She rose from the foyer couch as I wheezed in off the ramp. I took one look at her and said, "Come inside." She followed me through the inner door. I waved my hand over the infra-red plate and it closed. Then I put out my arms.
She bleated like a new-born lamb and flew to me. Her tears were scalding, and I don't think human muscles are built for the wrenching those agonized sobs gave her. People should cry more. They ought to learn how to do it easily, like laughing or sweating. Crying piles up. In people like Tween, who do nothing if they can't smile and make a habit-pattern of it, it really piles up. With a reservoir like that, and no developed outlet, things get torn when the pressure builds too high.
I just held her tight so she wouldn't explode. The only thing I said to her was "sh-h-h" once when she tried to talk while she wept. One thing at a time. — Theodore Sturgeon

They think it's what we need to hear, but it's the opposite. Inviting glamorous people to school, asking them to parade their glamorous lives onstage, getting them to inspire us with their message that anything is possible if only we believe. Dream. Reach for the stars. Well, no thanks. That's not for me. I'm not going to get there, and neither are most people that I know, and that's fine by me. It is. It really is. When did it stop being fine for everyone else? The normal stuff. Sunday dinners and, I don't know , taking a walk in the park and listening to music and working in an ordinary job for an ordinary wage that will allow you to maybe go on holiday once a year, and really look forward to it too because you're are not a greedy bastard wanting more, more, more all the time. That's who should be doing a talk at school. Seriously. Show me someone happy with a life like that, because it's enough. It should be enough. All that other stuff is meaningless. — Annabel Pitcher

It seems to me that today, if the artist wishes to be serious - to cut out a little original niche for himself, or at least preserve his own innocence of personality - he must once more sink himself in solitude. There is too much talk and gossip; pictures are apparently made, like stock-market prices, by competition of people eager for profit; in order to do anything at all we need (so to speak) the wit and ideas of our neighbors as much as the businessmen need the funds of others to win on the market. All this traffic sharpens our intelligence and falsifies our judgment. — Edgar Degas

I can't talk about my books. I have written them and tried to forget them. I have written once, and readers have read me many times, no? I try to think of what I wrote, it's very unhealthy to think about the past, the case of elegies is very sad, as much as the case of complaints. — Jorge Luis Borges

And I still have other smothered memories, now unfolding themselves into limbless monsters of pain. Once, in a sunset-ending street of Beardsley, she turned to little Eva Rosen (I was taking both nymphets to a concert and walking behind them so close as almost to touch them with my person), she turned to Eva, and so very serenely and seriously, in answer to something the other had said about its being better to die than hear Milton Pinski; some local schoolboy she knew, talk about music, my Lolita remarked:
'You know what's so dreadful about dying is that you're completely on your own'; and it struck me, as my automaton knees went up and down, that I simply did not know a thing about my darling's mind and that quite possibly, behind the awful juvenile cliches, there was in her a garden and a twilight, and a palace gate - dim and adorable regions which happened to be lucidly and absolutely forbidden to me, in my polluted rags and miserable convulsions ... — Vladimir Nabokov

And in the silence what followed, I reckon our eyes had some long conversation our mouths could've never talked through. Some long, looking talk about things gone and long since said. About cries out in the night and some long ago tangling of limbs. And about them betrayals done time and time again - by both of us - what led to me pointing the Green Man's rifle at the man what once loved me under the Green Man's stars. — J.D. Jordan

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

We can't all leave this country, Bijan had told me-this is our home. The world is a large place, my magician had said when I went to him with my woes. You can write and teach wherever you are. You will be read more and heard better, in fact, once you are over there. To go or not to go? In the long run, it's all very personal, my magician reasoned. I always admired your former colleague's honesty, he said. Which former colleague? Dr. A, the one who said his only reason for leaving was because he liked to drink beer freely. I am getting sick of people who cloak their personal flaws and desires in the guise of patriotic fervor. They stay because they have no means of living anywhere else, because if they leave, they won't be the big shots they are over here; but they talk about sacrifice for the homeland. And then those who do leave claim they've gone in order to criticize and expose the regime. Why all these justifications? — Azar Nafisi

Jared glanced at Dad, then back at Kami, and said, "I'll call you later."

You have never called me once in the entirety of your life, said Kami. I'll talk to you in a few minutes. — Sarah Rees Brennan

Alex leaned over and treated me to a Rhett Butler kiss, slow and deep but not too sweet. He once told Scarlett something to the effect of how badly she needed kissing, and by someone who knew what he was doing. Alex knew what he was doing. By the time he finished proving it, I was breathless. I rested my head on his shoulder, basking in his warmth and filling my lungs with his scent. "What was that for?"
"That was to show you how glad I am that we got out of that mess in one piece and that we're here together." He extracted his arm from around my shoulders and sat back. "Now let's talk about your crazy stunt."
Damn it, Rhett did that, too. He'd kiss Scarlett silly, then lecture her. — Suzanne Johnson

The evening I went for a walk. To walk for the sake of walking is something I seldom do.Inside my apartment I'd felt inexplicably anxious. I needed to talk to someone, to be reassured. Or perhaps I needed to confess my sin: I was once again having impure thoughts about saving the world. Or it was neither of these
I was afraid I was dreaming. Indeed, considering the events of the day, it was likely that I was dreaming. I sometimes fly in my dreams, and each time I say to myself, "At last
it's happening in reality and not in a dream!"
In any case, I needed to talk to someone, and I was alone. This is my habitual condition, by choice
or so I tell myself. Mere acquaintanceship leaves me unsatisfied, and few people are willing to accept the burdens and risks of friendship as I conceive of it. — Daniel Quinn

So once the zookeeper realized it was the monkeys who stole the bananas, he knew there was only one way he'd be able to get them back."
"How?" I whispered. My throat was so sore.
"Don't talk. He had to beat them in shuffleboard, of course."
"What?"
"I said don't talk. Monkeys love shuffleboard."
He used a page from a homework assignment he'd failed and a stack of quarters to make a shuffleboard court. I watched the monkeys and the zookeepers have their showdown while I sipped the last of my applejuice.
"Need more?" Graham asked me without looking up, when my straw skidded against the dry bottom of the box.
"Uh uh."
"You're supposed to drink juice."
"I just drank some."
"More, though."
I shook my head.
"Drink more juice or the monkeys are going to kill you. The only thing they love more than shuffleboard is beating up dehydrated sick boys. — Hannah Moskowitz

The only part of the evening I really enjoyed was when Lord Pomtinius told me a limerick about an adulterous abbot."
"Don't you dare repeat it!" her sister ordered. Georgiana had never shown the faintest wish to rebel against the rules of propriety. She loved and lived by them.
"There once was an adulterous abbot," Olivia teased, "as randy-"
Georgiana slapped her hands over her ears. "I can't believe he told you such a thing! Father would be furious if he knew."
"Lord Pomtinius was in his cups," Olivia said. "Besides, he's ninety-six and he doesn't care about decorum any longer. Just a laugh, now and then."
"It doesn't even make sense. An adulterous abbot? How can an abbot be adulterous? They don't even marry."
"Let me know if you want to hear the whole verse," Olivia said. "It ends with talk of nuns, so I believe the word was being used loosely. — Eloisa James

Heart that beats in our separate bosoms; consequently, we are ever together. To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking. All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character - perfect concord is the result. Mr. — Charlotte Bronte

You think you know horror, Irnakk? Horror is looking into the eyes of the Shadowed One, knowing you are about to die ... and then being forced to live. Horror is waking each day to see every part of your body moving on its own - a shifting mass of Protodites where once was solid metal and living tissue. Horror is what is in the eyes of your partners when they look at you ... and in the cries of your enemies when your swarm engulfs them. Don't talk to me about fear, creature - I am fear!
-Zaktan — Greg Farshtey

Once I began a book, I couldn't put it down. It was like an addiction; I read while I ate, on the train, in bed until late at night, in school, where I'd keep the book hidden so I could read during class. But I had almost no desire to talk with anyone about the experience I gained through books and music. I felt happy just being me and no one else. — Haruki Murakami

There's a woman I see who's not my therapist, but she's like an old friend who's a therapist in profession. She lets me talk to her like a therapist once in a while, and she does a great thing. Whenever I have a big dilemma, like this is a big problem in my life, she always says, 'Wow, you're going to have to figure that out.' — Louis C.K.

My boyfriend dumped me. My best friend won't talk to me. My future is in a garbage can. Everything has turned to crap. Can you please just let me be a sullen teenager. just this once — J.J. Johnson

Telling Mom was one thing. Telling Dad is another.
He's in the living room smoking and watching what he claims is a very important Yankees game. It's in the ninth inning and the teams are tied. I consider backing out, maybe waiting another week or so, but maybe he won't actually care when I tell him. Maybe all that stuff he said when I was younger, about never acting like a girl or playing with any female action figures, will go away once he realizes I am the way I am without any choice. Maybe he'll accept me.
Mom follows me into the living room and sits down on Eric's bed. "Mark, do you have a minute? Aaron has something he wants to talk about."
He exhales cigarette smoke. "I'm listening." He never looks away from the game. — Adam Silvera

Aurora once told me that she knew I was different within the first few months after I was born, because as a baby, I never cried. She had no way of knowing if I was hungry or if my stomach hurt until I was old enough to point and talk. Even when I fell and it was obvious that I had hurt myself, I did not cry. When I didn't get my way, I would go off by myself and sulk or have a tantrum. But I never cried. Later, when I was eleven and Abba died, I didn't cry. When Joseph, my best friend at St. Elizabeth's, died, I didn't cry. Maybe I don't feel what others feel. I have no way of knowing. But I do feel. It's just that what I feel does not elicit tears. What I feel when others cry is more like a dry, empty aloneness, like I'm the only person left in the world.
So it is very strange to feel my eyes well with tears as I read Jasmine's list. — Francisco X Stork

Even though people are shallow and lots of people prefer scripted fictional heroes to real human beings, they can still be shaken out of it in the presence of someone who is REAL. Your problem is not that you haven't mastered the conversational skills necessary to maintain someone's interest. Your problem is that you've never forced yourself to define exactly who you are and what you love and how you want to live. You've never had to talk about these things passionately. You've never dared to lay yourself bare, without apology. Once you can look someone in the eyes and say, "Here's what really matters to me"? That's what people find attractive, trust me. They want to be with someone who knows himself and gives a shit. That's what's alluring and attractive and irreplaceable, even in this age of smooth make-believe. — Heather Havrilesky

People talk about nightfall, or night falling, or dusk falling, and it's never seemed right to me. Perhaps they once meant befalling. As in night befalls. As in night happens. Perhaps they, whoever they were, thought of a falling sun. That might be it, except that that ought to give us dayfall. Day fell on Rupert the Bear. And we know, if we've ever read a book, that day doesn't fall or rise. It breaks. In books, day breaks, and night falls.
In life, night rises from the ground. The day hangs on for as long as it can, bright and eager, absolutely and positively the last guest to leave the party, while the ground darkens, oozing night around your ankles, swallowing for ever that dropped contact lens, making you miss that low catch in the gully on the last ball of the last over. — Hugh Laurie

Once when she was just learning to talk, I ran my hand across her face, naming every part of it. Later, when I put her in the crib, she called me back. First, she asked for water, then for milk, then for kisses. "It hurts. Don't go," she said. "What does? What hurts, sweetie?" She paused. "My eyelashes. — Jenny Offill

I guess I should explain. I'm not exactly your typical sixteen-year-old girl.
Oh, I seem normal enough, I guess. I don't do drugs, or drink, or smoke-well, okay, except for that one time Sleepy caught me. I don't have anything pierced, except my ears, and only once on each earlobe. I don't have any tattoos. I've never dyed my hair. Except for my boots and leather jacket, I don't wear an excessive amount of black. I don't even wear dark fingernail polish. All in all, I am a pretty normal, everyday, American teenage girl.
Except, of course, for the fact that I can talk to the dead. — Meg Cabot

I went downstairs to Dad's encyclopedia and looked up HOMOSEXUALITY, but that didn't tell me much about any of the things I felt. What struck me most, though, was that, in the whole long article, the word "love" wasn't used even once. That made me mad; it was as if whoever wrote the article didn't know that gay people actually love each other. The encyclopedia writers ought to talk to me, I thought as I went back to bed; I could tell them something about love. — Nancy Garden

I learned a lot about systems of oppression and how they can be blind to one another by talking to black men. I was once talking about gender and a man said to me, "Why does it have to be you as a woman? Why not you as a human being?" This type of question is a way of silencing a person's specific experiences. Of course I am a human being, but there are particular things that happen to me in the world because I am a woman. This same man, by the way, would often talk about his experience as a black man. (To which I should probably have responded, "Why not your experiences as a man or as a human being? Why a black man?") — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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

Go on, glare your eyes at me, and cry and plead, and talk to
me about money and what it can buy. But it can't buy back a child once he's dead! — V.C. Andrews

Once Monica appeared wearing a borderline unprofessional dress, a bit too short, if you asked me. I could only think, Who does she think she is? She was straphanging around George Stephanopoulos, and I shooed her like a stray cat. She hissed another lame excuse. I was fed up with her games, but at this moment the president arrived, easily catching her sight (or scent - I don't know which). They made small talk. She walked away. Her mission was complete; she had caught the president's wandering eye. She turned back to ensure she had his attention - and flipped up her black-and-white print dress to reveal her blue thong. — Gary J. Byrne

Who was he?" "A magician who took me in after I left the Bone-master. On his good days, he tried to teach me everything he knew." "What about his bad days?" "On his bad days, he generally thought he was an onion." "That's awful," said Jinx. "No, it's not. What was awful was when he thought he was a potato masher." "Oh." "He always said to me, 'Mildred, one day this will all be yours.'" Simon made a wide gesture, encompassing books, cats, and the door to Samara. "Er, he called you Mildred?" "Often as not." "Maybe he really meant to leave everything to Mildred," said Jinx. "If she ever shows up, we'll talk," said Simon. "But I think she may have been a dog he once had. — Sage Blackwood

No one can say if you are that person who, given good paint, good brushes, and a fine canvas, can produce something better than the factory man. That is, and has always been, beyond the realm of science. You do have the attitude of the dreamer about you. For that reason, I haven't the heart to argue anymore about this - it is a hopeless talk. And for a simple factory man like me, an effort must be abandoned once its hopelessness is exposed. Only the artist perseveres in such circumstances. — David Wroblewski

I actually once sat at the back of a payroll class in America - just me and 40 women! And I'm sitting back there, learning payroll, because I want to understand it. So that when I talk to people about payroll I know what they're talking about. And I set up and managed and ran a full payroll system myself. — David Perry

What?" The word exploded out of me. "What do you want me to tell you? You want to hear about how they tied us up like animals to bring us into the camp - or, hey! How about that time a PSF once beat in a girl's skull so badly she actually lost an eye? You want to know what it was like to drink rotten water for an entire summer until new pipes finally came? How I woke up afraid and went to bed in terror every single day for six years? For God's sake, leave me alone! Why do you always have to dig and dig when you know I don't want to talk about it? — Alexandra Bracken

TO-DO LIST
1. Buy broccoli
2. Make sure Haddie gets the help she needs from a better therapist.
3. Set up a vocational counseling appointment for Henry.
4. Convince Will to love me again.
5. Get Birdie to talk to me.
6. Bury Louise once and for all.
7. Have a religious epiphany so # 8 is going to be okay with me.
8. Die. — Lesley Kagen

You once said you loved me. Do you still?"
My sister is watching this exchange between us. She smiles warmly at me, giving me the strength to tell him the truth. "I never stopped loving you. Even when I tried desperately to forget you. I couldn't. — Simone Elkeles

Listen up, 'cause I'm only gonna say this once," Ty muttered as they walked to their gate. "I don't talk when I fly. I sleep. And I don't listen when I eat, understand? I don't wanna be buddies. I don't wanna chat," he said with a sarcastic lilt to the word. "I don't wanna know about your childhood or how your momma whipped you with a rubber glove or how much therapy you had to go through 'cause you flunked out of preschool. I don't wanna hear about how you want to be Director someday or how many collars you got chasin' those Internet freaks or how proud you are of your bowel movements. I don't wanna go shopping at Barney's with you, and I'm not gonna help you pick out your ties to match your socks and, I swear to God, if you get me shot, I'll kill you. — Abigail Roux

She's stronger than you are, Sam. It's like fighting yourself and Caine and Jack and Dekka, all at once."
"Yeah."
"Talk to Astrid about it."
"I already talked to Astrid."
"And she's okay with a suicide mission? Because I'm not. You go out there, go to win, huh? Don't go out there thinking you're doing us a favor by getting killed."
Sam sighed. "It's the endgame, my friend."
"Sam . . .," Edilio began, but that was all he had, that one word, that one-word plea for a different solution.
"Take care of Astrid for me. Try to keep her safe and don't let her follow me. — Michael Grant

When I started on MySpace, people wanted to support me, but once I rose to fame with the MTV show, they felt like I had abandoned them for some reason, that I was too famous to talk to them anymore. — Tila Tequila

A wise man once said to me, "Don't ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." Actions speak louder than words. Don't just talk about what you plan to do. Make it happen. — Jes Fuhrmann

Let me digress a moment to talk about beginnings. How much simpler life would be if we were wise enough to stop at the first blush of romance, the start of a business transaction or a casual friendship. If we knew enough to pause and think: this is as good as it gets. Everything will go downhill from this moment on. So once again our instincts are the opposite of what they should be, propelling us forward exactly when they should be holding us back. — Francine Prose

As long as I'm between home and the clinic I do all right. But out in the real world, I feel like prey. I slink around and can feel people looking at me. I feel their eyes boring into me. I feel what they're thinking: Watch her, she could go off anytime. But within the walls of my farmhouse, I climb out of the protective shell, my arms slowly rise like a phoenix, and I dance, wail, fly around the room and then collapse, crying, in front of my mirrors. I start to see in the mirror what it is I really look like, instead of what I was trained from the womb to see. I do not write about it. I do not talk about it. I do not know what I am doing. But just like a baby bird, I am blinking once-sealed eyes and unfolding damp wings. I cannot articulate the past. A part of me knows it's there, lurking, just behind what I can acknowledge, but it is not within sight. And I am keeping it that way. — Julie Gregory

You talk far too much ... Procure for me at once a chariot or a flying carpet or a well-trained dragon, or whatever is usual for royal and noble persons in your land. Then bring me to places where I can get clothes and jewels and slaves fit for my rank. Tomorrow I will begin my conquest of the world. — C.S. Lewis

This time Simone did not smile at all.
"I cannot tell that to you, child. This is a
secret I am not allowed to talk about. I only hope that you will
know how to follow the true and right path. And now, farewell!" She
turned around and walked away between the bookshelves, disappearing
from their sight.
Nirupa looked at the book she held in her
hand. On its thick front cover she read:
"Atlantis."
Deep shudders shook her body. She turned her
head and looked at Miss Bell, who also looked numb with fear.
"Now that we have started the adventure, me
must carry it through to the end," Ni whispered to Miss Bell,
opening the book. She did not have time to see what was written
inside because, once the first page was open, a whirl of warm air
sucked Ni and Miss. Bell inside, In the twinkle of an eye they
found themselves standing up on the main street of a magnificent
bazaar. — Leora Cika Waldman

The 1143-year-long war hand begun on false pretenses and only because the two races were unable to communicate.
Once they could talk, the first question was 'Why did you start this thing?' and the answer was 'Me? — Joe Haldeman

On bad days I talk to Death constantly, not about suicide because honestly that's not dramatic enough. Most of us love the stage and suicide is definitely your last performance and being addicted to the stage, suicide was never an option - plus people get to look you over and stare at your fatty bits and you can't cross your legs to give that flattering thigh angle and that's depressing. So we talk. She says things no one else seems to come up with, like let's have a hotdog and then it's like nothing's impossible.
She told me once there is a part of her in everyone, though Neil believes I'm more Delirium than Tori, and Death taught me to accept that, you know, wear your butterflies with pride. And when I do accept that, I know Death is somewhere inside of me. She was the kind of girl all the girls wanted to be, I believe, because of her acceptance of "what is." She keeps reminding me there is change in the "what is" but change cannot be made till you accept the "what is. — Tori Amos

For me, it's been a treat to interact with authors who were publishing when I was a young reader. Judy Blume once gave me a pep talk at a writing conference. I had a short story featured in the same anthology as Beverly Cleary. Magic. — Cynthia Leitich Smith

My father tried to give me the sex talk once, and he chickened out. He walked into my room and went, 'Adam - uh, don't kiss guys.' — Adam Ferrara