Talking Down To Quotes & Sayings

(Authors Publish asked WHY DO YOU WRITE?) "Voices...won't...stop...talking. When I drive the car, walk the dog, stir the soup--voices make me write down what they say and shape a world to catch the words. — Delaney Green

Qhuinn got down on one knee. Just dropped right on to the depiction of an apple tree in full bloom. "I don't have a ring. I don't have anything fancy in my mind or on my tongue." Qhuinn swallowed hard. "I know this is too early, and that it's out of the blue, but I love you and I want us to - " For once in his life, Blay had to agree with the guy - enough with the fucking talking. With a decisive shift of his body, he leaned down and kissed all that conversation right into silence. Then he pulled back and nodded. "Yes. Yes, absolutely, yes ... — J.R. Ward

Talking to animals' isn't a matter of words used, it is a matter of your thoughts, your expression, and above all the tone of your voice. A harsh voice from me can make my cows jump in terror. I shouted at old Queenie once and she got such a shock that she fell down just as if she'd been shot ... — Barbara Woodhouse

We're all black, and we all love to be black, and we all sing from our own hymn sheet. We're all surely black people, but we may be finally approaching a point of human history where you can't talk up or down to us anymore, but only to us. He's talking down to white people - how curious it sounds the other way round! In order to say such a thing, one would have to think collectively of white people, as a people of one mind who speak with one voice - a thought experiment in which we have no practice. But it's worth trying. It's only when you play the record backward that you hear the secret message. 3 — Zadie Smith

First of all, we occupied Afghanistan and Iraq and I'm not even talking about the past occupation of them, I'm just talking about currently. And we all know that occupations, in military terms, comes down basically to policing, so you have an army basically functioning as a police force in these foreign territories as part of foreign policy. I'm not knocking that down, I'm just observing. — Oren Moverman

Jay sat down across from Chelsea and took both of her hands in his. The oversized lunchroom was buzzing with activity, and he practically had to yell to be heard.
"Chelsea, for the love of everything good and holy, please ... please stop ruining my friend."
Violet bit her lip to stop from laughing at the two of them. She knew what he was talking about before he even explained. It was the new facial hair.
Chelsea jerked her hands out of his. "Oh, relax, drama queen. He's not broken. Besides, I'm gonna fix him this weekend."
Jay seemed relieved. — Kimberly Derting

Tempting. But you see, I can simply insist on a lifetime contract with none of your silly restrictions, or kill you right now."
"You won't," Shane said. That made Morley's eyes open wide.
"Why not? Jacob and Patience were quite specific - they're concerned for Claire. Not for you, boy."
"Because if you kill me and Eve, you'll make her your enemy. This girl won't stop until she sees you all pay."
Claire had no idea whom he was talking about - she didn't feel like that Claire at all, until she imagined Shane and Eve lying dead on the ground.
Then she understood. "I'd hunt you down," she said quietly. "I'd use every resource I have to do it.
And you know I'd win."
Morley seemed impressed. "She is small, but I see your point, boy. Besides, she has the ear of Amelie, Oliver, and Myrnin; not a combination I would care to test. — Rachel Caine

Hey," he says.
I feel foolish for being out of breath and standing over him. The moonlight cuts a line down my chest. "Hey," I say.
"Checking on me?"
"I couldn't sleep. Scottie. She's in the bathroom." I stop talking.
"Yeah?" he says and sits up.
"She's playacting." I don't know how to say it. I don't need to say it. "She's kissing the mirror."
"Oh," he says. "I used to do some messed-up things as a kid. Still do."
I feel wide awake, which always makes me angry in the middle of the night. I'm useless without sleep. I can't get myself to go back to my own room. I sit on the end of the bed by his feet. "I'm worried about my daughters," I say. "I'm worried there's something wrong with them."
Sid rubs his eyes.
"Forget it," I say. "Sorry for waking you up."
"It's going to get worse," he says. "After your wife dies." He holds the blanket up to his chin. — Kaui Hart Hemmings

Whoa," Becky said, because the baby kicked her hard in the bladder.

Felix startled, backing up and nearly falling over a chair.

"Sorry, I was whoa-ing because right when you came in, the baby kicked, not because you're Felix Callahan. Oh, you know what it reminded me of ? When Elisabeth's baby kicks just as Mary greets her? Isn't that funny? As if I had some spiritual sign when I saw you."

Annette smiled, her eyebrows raised. Felix glared handsomely. Becky stamped down a desire to squirm.

"No, it's not terribly funny," Felix said, "particularly as I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Elisabeth, wife of Zacharias, cousin to Mary, mother of Jesus? No? Nothing?"

Felix looked at her with a careful lack of amusement.

"Oh, maybe you don't have the Bible in England. See, there's this guy named Jesus and his mother is named Mary, and well, it's a really interesting read if you don't mind parables. — Shannon Hale

If we've deluded ourselves into thinking that our angry mass emails or conversation-stopping talking points serve as a ministry or carry out the purposes of God, we need to slow down and take a breath. — David Dark

Whether you're talking about Shakespeare or, you know, if you look at Greek tragedies. I mean, every playwright, every songwriter, every artist who's ever sat down and been moved to create something, has been living in a context. A political moment that's most often reflected in their work. Even if you're, you know, kind of a nature poet. — Sarah Jones

At night she began cooking things in the kitchen, things too strange to mention. She steeped oleander in boiling water, and the roots of a vine with white trumpet flowers that glowed like faces. She soaked a plant collected in moonlight from the neighbors' fence, with little heart-shaped flowers. Then she cooked the water down; the whole kitchen smelled like green and rotting leaves. She threw out pounds of the wet-spinach green stuff into somebody else's dumpster. She wasn't talking to me anymore. She sat on the roof and talked to the moon. — Janet Fitch

I can't understand how people can settle for having just one life. I remember we were in English class and we were talking about that poem by - that one guy. David Frost. 'Two roads diverged in a yellow wood-' You know this poem, right? 'Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could, to where it bent in the undergrowth-"
"I loved that poem. But I remember thinking to myself: Why? How come you can't travel both? That seemed really unfair to me. — Dan Chaon

How do you know it'll be pleasurable?" He got on the bed and lay down.
Breath a whisper, she came closer and tied one wrist to the headboard. The cat growled but didn't try to make him wrench free.
"Because just looking at you gives me the most extreme pleasure I've ever felt."
"Christ, baby, tie me up before you start talking like that. — Nalini Singh

Gwynn, she was always talking about wanting to be drunk and honestly I did want to encourage that, I wanted to go to a bar with her and let all the stuff sobriety pushed down be released so I could catch it in my palms and finally kiss her. She was just so sad. Melancholy was a fleshy wave permanently cresting on her face, she had to speak through it when she talked. — Michelle Tea

You can't change anything from the outside in. Standing apart, looking down, talking the overview, you see pattern. What's wrong, what's missing. You want to fix it. But you can't patch it. You have to be in it, weaving it. You have to be part of the weaving. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I was talking about time. It's so hard for me to believe in it. Some things go. Pass on. Some things just stay. I used to think it's just my rememory. You know. Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it's not. [...] What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head. I mean, even if I don't think it, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there. [...] Someday you be walking down the road and you hear something or see something going on. So clear. And you think it's you thinking it up. A thought picture. But no. It's when you bump into a rememory that belongs to somebody else. — Toni Morrison

I'd say that what I do is like a crack in the mirror. If you go back over the books from Carrie on up, what you see is an observation of ordinary middle-class American life as it's lived at the time that particular book was written. In every life you get to a point where you have to deal with something that's inexplicable to you, whether it's the doctor saying you have cancer or a prank phone call. So whether you talk about ghosts or vampires or Nazi war criminals living down the block, we're still talking about the same thing, which is an intrusion of the extraordinary into ordinary life and how we deal with it. What that shows about our character and our interactions with others and the society we live in interests me a lot more than monsters and vampires and ghouls and ghosts. — Stephen King

My ears perked up like a dog's again when she spoke and pointed in the general direction of the chick that smelled of Slim Jims.
I hope I don't start barking.
"Oh, please, like she doesn't know about the smell of meat products wafting from her lady parts. I think she rubs bologna down there to attract men. Lunch meat is her sex pheromone."
The brunette shook her head in irritation. "If I do a shot, will you please stop talking about Jade's disgusting vagina and never, ever use the word meat product in a sentence?"
"Woof!"
Three sets of eyes all turned to look at me.
"Did I just bark out loud?"
Three heads bobbed up and down in unison. — Tara Sivec

Every man has to settle down eventually. You know why you gotta settle
down eventually? Because you don't want to be the old guy in the club.
You know what I'm talking about. Every club you go into, there's always
some old guy. He ain't really old, just a little too old to be in the
club. — Chris Rock

We ain't spies," I say in a hurry.
"The army your girl's been talking about has been spotted marching down the river road," Doctor Snow says. "One of our scouts just reported them as less than an hour away."
"Oh, no," I hear Viola whisper.
"She ain't my girl," I say, low.
"What?" Doctor Snow says.
"What?" Viola says.
"She's her own girl," I say. "She don't belong to anyone."
And does Viola ever look at me. — Patrick Ness

I feel good because it's my first finish in UFC. Training camp was long and hard and I prepared for a long fight but I have no complaints. I'm going to stay in this cycle and be this healthy in every camp. I feel great with this nutrition and the way my body has reacted to it. I'm firing on all cylinders. I've been talking about this move down for a long time and when you do it the right way you don't feel any effects. I don't want to make this harder than it needs to be. I've got great coaches and I know I haven't peaked yet. I'm going to keep getting better and I'm taking on all comers. — Daniel Cormier

I always want to take everybody down! But I think you can do it with a smile on your face and be nice and talking to them. You don't have to be mean or rude. — Lorena Ochoa

for now I'm just throwing it out there and asking you to at least consider that romantic attraction, as wonderful and as emotionally intoxicating as it can be, can actually lead you astray as much as it can help you. I'm not talking it down; "connecting" with someone on that level is a wonderful thing. Enjoy it, revel in it, even write a song about it if you want, but don't bet your life on it. — Gary L. Thomas

Do you have any idea what the typical response is whenever I do give someone a glimpse of my life?"
Gideon paused, as if he waited for her to answer.
And Monroe hesitated. Yes. She did know. She knew because it was the same response she would get it she chose to let down her own guard. Hell, it was practically the same response Miles had given the night she had told him the unadulterated truth of her past. She shook her head again.
"Standard response," he said. "I swear to God. First thing out of their mouth's is: 'Wow. It's shocking you're so normal.' What the fuck? Do I have to be damaged for my past to make sense? And what the hell is normal anyway? And does white bread America have dibs on it?"
Gideon stopped talking, crossed his arms, and the look on his face said he regretted saying as much as he had. — Taylor Stevens

Still feel like talking?" she murmured against his mouth.
In response, he tore her panties down with a speed and finesse that left her speechless. She heard him rummage in his pocket and a foil wrapper rip, then he tugged her back in his lap, her knees on either side of him. He kissed her while she felt between them, fumbling for his c#ck and finding it already sheathed in latex. The knowledge that it was in preparation to fuck her made her dizzy with want. — Lux Zakari

His feet started in her direction, his body following rather as a dog would its master, with no thought of deviating from the path chosen by her for him
iAm grabbed his arm and yanked him back. "Don't even fucking think about it."
Trez's first impulse was to rip himself free, even if he left his own limb behind in his brother's grip. "I don't know what you're talking about - "
"Do not make me grab your hard-on to prove my point," iAm hissed.
Numbly, Trez looked down at the front of himself. Well. What do you know. "I'm not going to ... " Fuck her came to mind, but God, he couldn't use the f-word around that female, even in the hypothetical. "You know, do anything."
"You actually expect me to believe that."
Trez's eyes flipped over to the doorway she'd disappeared through. Shit. Talk about having no credibility on the subject of abstinence — J.R. Ward

Assumptions can blind you; hypotheses can guide you. Good negotiators expect surprises; great negotiators reveal the surprises. Negotiation should be seen as a process of discovery. If you think you're too smart to discover anything new, then you will be a terrible negotiator. Until you know who or what you are dealing with, you are actually in the dark and should proceed with caution. Listening well does not come easily to most. By truly listening, you will disarm your opponent, giving them a sense of calm and a feeling of safety. Talking about wants gives us an illusion of control; needs are required to survive and make us feel vulnerable. The biggest mistake a negotiator can make is to rush things. By slowing down the process, you are able to calm down the situation. A soothing but confident voice helps in confrontational situations. Mirroring relies on the fact that we fear what's different and are drawn to what's similar. — Book Summary

The CIA officer at the black site relayed the report to his headquarters. The CIA's director, George Tenet, was unhappy to learn that the FBI was leading the questioning. He ordered a CIA counterterrorism team to take over in Thailand. "We were removed," Soufan said. "Harsh techniques were introduced" - at first, stripping the prisoner of his clothes and depriving him of sleep for forty-eight hours at a time - and "Abu Zubaydah shut down and stopped talking." Then the FBI took over again. — Tim Weiner

I was breathless, talking as fast as I could. I was afraid if I stopped talking, even for a second, I'd start sobbing again.
"Whoa, there." Fang smiled and reached up, tracing a hand down the side of my face, winding strands of my hair around his fingers. "Stop talking and let me just tell you how great it is to wake up staring at your face. Okay? — James Patterson

Are you all right?" he said.Water dripped down his face and long nose.
He's talking to you! her mind yelled. He's talking to you! Say something clever! Say something clever!
Azalea said, "Mffloscoflphus?"
"The water is rather cold," he said. He pulled her to the bank. Azalea chattered and shivered and coughed, and he continued asking her if she was all right. She wasn't.She was morbidly embarrassed,that's what she was. — Heather Dixon

It's difficult to make your clients understand that there are certain days that the market will go up or down 2%, and it's basically driven by algorithms talking to algorithms. There's no real rhyme or reason for that. So it's difficult. We just try to preach long-term investing and staying the course. — Warren Stephens

So, now I shall talk every night. To myself. To the moon. I shall walk, as I did tonight, jealous of my loneliness, in the blue-silver of the cold moon, shining brilliantly on the drifts of fresh-fallen snow, with the myriad sparkles. I talk to myself and look at the dark trees, blessedly neutral. So much easier than facing people, than having to look happy, invulnerable, clever. With masks down, I walk, talking to the moon, to the neutral impersonal force that does not hear, but merely accepts my being. And does not smite me down. — Sylvia Plath

I love talking to people and hearing their stories. Everyone's got their own story to tell, and when you sit down with someone and really talk to them, you can learn so much. — Dan Wells

They wanted me to do Scream 2, and I hate talking about movies I turned down, because it sounds judgmental. There's nothing wrong with horror movies. I enjoy watching them. The main reason I turn a part down is if I think I won't be good. — Casey Affleck

I don't believe in talking down to children. I don't believe in talking down to any certain segment. — Walt Disney

Spirituality doesn't look like sitting down and meditating. Spirituality looks like folding the towels in a sweet way and talking kindly to the people in the family eve though you've had a rough day. — Sylvia Boorstein

I wanted to tell him a story, but I didn't. It's a story about a Jew riding in a streetcar, in Germany during the Third Reich, reading Goebbels' paper, the Volkische Beobachter. A non-Jewish acquaintance sits down next to him and says, "Why do you read the Beobachter?" "Look," says the Jew, "I work in a factory all day. When I get home, my wife nags me, the children are sick, and there's no money for food. What should I do on my way home, read the Jewish newspaper? Pogrom in Romania' 'Jews Murdered in Poland.' 'New Laws against Jews.' No, sir, a half-hour a day, on the streetcar, I read the Beobachter. 'Jews the World Capitalists,' 'Jews Control Russia,' 'Jews Rule in England.' That's me they're talking about. A half-hour a day I'm somebody. Leave me alone, friend. — Milton Sanford Mayer

Buster went bananas, running over to Paci and jumping up on his legs, begging for attention. Paci didn't disappoint him, either. He bent down and baby-talked with Buster, like he was an old hand at it.
I smiled in amusement. Paci was no wimp. He was almost as big as Bodo and ripped to the max. He had zero body fat, so Peter and I were able to admire his every muscle, which I noticed Peter was doing with unabashed curiosity. I caught his attention and raised my eyebrows at him in a conspiratorial message of mutual admiration. He smiled in return, giving me a pitiful wink that made him look like he had something stuck in both eyes. It made me laugh.
Paci looked up at me. "Something strike you as funny?"
"Yeah. You baby-talking to a nude poodle. — Elle Casey

I could never get bored talking about him, he was my favourite player. I loved watching him because he did everything you'd want to see in a footballer. He could dictate the pace of a game; he could take it by the scruff of the neck and control it; he could score decisive goals; he could make the killer pass; he could switch the play, open teams up, slow the game down, quicken it up; whatever was needed. He would take the ball anywhere on the pitch He was such a selfless footballer, too Scholesy was the man, all right. — Rio Ferdinand

I am here to determine my relationship."
Simon goggled. She couldn't be talking about him. Could she?
"Do you see that man?" Isabelle asked, pointing at Simon. Apparently she was talking about him. "That's Simon Lewis, and he is my boyfriend. So if any of you think about trying to hurt him because he's a mundie or
may the Angel have mercy on your soul
pursuing him romantically, I will come after you, I will hunt you down and I will crush you to powder. — Cassandra Clare

And yet, quite often, she comes to me. Seldom to have anything explained, but often to tell me something.
When she comes over to me, I sit down on the floor. It does not seem right to tower over her when she is talking to me. Instead I sit down, then our heads are on a level. — Peter Hoeg

Maybe it was just the after glow talking. Maybe it was the glow giving me my River blues..but it felt real. And my feeling, pure or not, were the only thing I had to go on. River had manipulated people. And Murdered people. He was wicked. Not as wicked as Brodie, but.. Still wicked. It was better that he was gone. Better he was out of my life. I knew that, logically. What I felt though, deep, deep down in the darkest of my heart, was that I didn't give a damn if River was Evil. I still liked him. Maybe i even kind of love him. And Maybe that made me Wicked too. — April Genevieve Tucholke

Basically, radio hasn't changed over the years. Despite all the technical improvements, it still boils down to a man or a woman and a microphone, playing music, sharing stories, talking about issues - communicating with an audience. — Casey Kasem

He needs to be corrected, if you don't mind me saying so. He needs a good talking-to, and perhaps a bit more. My own girls, sir, didn't care for the Overlook at first. One of them actually stole a pack of my matches and tried to burn it down. I corrected them. I corrected them most harshly. And when my wife tried to stop me from doing my duty, I corrected her. — Stephen King

I heard about the project over a year before we began. My American agent said, 'Oh, you might want to read 'In Cold Blood' because they're talking about you for Capote, but the script's with Johnny Depp and Sean Penn at the moment.' So, these things take their time to dribble down the food chain. — Toby Jones

When I stay with the couple who are my closest friends, I hear them laughing and talking in bed, and sometimes in the middle of the night one of them goes down and makes tea, and when the clock goes off in the morning, they start again, talking to each other. — Nuala O'Faolain

They were always like two people talking to each other in different languages. But she loved him so much, when he withdrew as he had now done, it was like the warm sun going down and leaving her in chilly twilight dews. — Margaret Mitchell

She smoothes the front of the dress, looking down at her hands, at her bitten fingernails, at her big feet in the pointy-toes shoes. This is a woman's dress, she thinks, a young woman's dress. It is not a girl's dress. It is solidly on the other side of the line outside of girlhood. It is a dress that says something big in a very quiet way; it is a dress that is talking to Alice right now, a dress that is making her feel possibilities never before considered, the possibility of perfume and pretty and dancing and boys. This dress is who she might be, only more so. — Laura Harrington

For too long, our controversies seem to boil down to conservatives and liberals (or, if you prefer, traditionalists and progressives) talking past each other for the benefit of stirring up their loyalists, as partisans do in the primary campaigns of electoral politics. The rest of us are expected to line up with our team just as soon as they show their colors. — Ken Wilson

Becoming the beloved is pulling the truth revealed to me from above down into the ordinariness of what I am, in fact, thinking of, talking about and doing from hour to hour. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Oh, that was a terrible time for me, I can tell you. I kept the blinds drawn down over both my windows. When I peeped out, I saw the sun shining as if nothing had happened. I could not understand it. I saw people going along the street, laughing and talking about indifferent things. I could not understand it. It seemed to me that the whole of existence must be at a standstill
as if under an eclipse. — Henrik Ibsen

The days went by for him, all different and all the same. The boy was happy, and yet he didn't know that he was happy, exactly: he couldn't remember having been unhappy. If one day as he played at the edge of the forest some talking bird had flown down and asked him: "Do you like your life" he would not have known what to say, but would have asked the bird: "Can you not like it? — Randall Jarrell

Warren knows God doesn't chow down on Doritos or caviar. What he fails to see, however, is that there is no difference in principle between the old animal sacrifice theology and his own. Surely the same principle applies to emotional gratification. He is still manifestly talking about the care and feeding of God. His God, like an insecure boyfriend, seems to need emotional stroking. — Robert M. Price

One day, you're a nobody, and the next, you're in a movie that everybody is talking about. But Hollywood has a way of knocking you back down to Earth. — Patrick Fugit

Her eyes were misting over, her heart was talking on her lips. To need everything when everything is finished. She no longer knew whether she was sad or whether it was hunger. To live like that, head bent forward, chin resting down near her breasts, without muscles, without sinews, without vertebrae.
She smiled a martyr's smile for her own benefit: for her wretchedness was also a tenderness, and resignation is not the same as oblivion. — Violette Leduc

I want you to start a brand-new section in your notebooks and call it Mr. Browne's Precepts." He kept talking as we did what he was telling us to do. "Put today's date at the top of the first page. And from now on, at the beginning of every month, I'm going to write a new Mr. Browne precept on the chalkboard and you're going to write it down in your notebook. Then we're going to discuss that precept and what it means. And at the end of the month, you're going to write an essay about it, about what it means to you. So by the end of the year, you'll all have your own list of precepts to take away with you. — R.J. Palacio

So did you actually try to kill yourself? Or did that weird bitch just make up the whole thing?'
Silently, I held up my left arm, wrist facing Emily. She crossed her arms and kept her lips squished together as she examined me for a moment, sizing up those three perfect scars. Finally, she said, 'You know that you're supposed to cut down to kill yourself, right? You did it wrong.'
I looked at Emily and thought about what would have happened if I'd cut the other way. Or what wouldn't have happened. Char wouldn't have broken up with me. Alex wouldn't be mad at me. Pippa wouldn't hate me.
And I never would have met Vicky. I would never have had my first kiss. I would never have worn rhinestone pumps. I would never have heard Big Audio Dynamite. I would never have discovered Start. I would never have known I could be a DJ.
Emily Wallace didn't know what she was talking about. She never had.
You did it wrong, she said.
'No,' I said to her. 'I didn't. — Leila Sales

We work in this cave, and we speak to each other sort of subconsciously and with like, weird cues and tangential brother speak, but it really comes down to if you are the person who is moving amongst the actors and talking to people more, the other one can have a little more time to really watch. — Mark Duplass

When I watch professional football, I love listening to John Madden because I know he knows what he's talking about. He's been both down in the trenches and in front of the bench as a coach. He knows the game. — Robert Kiyosaki

As historical texts become rich and conceptually dense, readers may slow down not because they fail to comprehend, but because the very act of comprehension demands that they stop to TALK with their texts. In plain English, they pretend to deliberate with others by talking to themselves. — Sam Wineburg

Mr. Klamp laid down the law. No tardiness, no talking above 40 decibels, no untied shoelaces, no visible undergarments, no eating, no chewing gum, no chewing tobacco, no chewing betel nuts, no chewing coca leaves, no chewing out students (unless Mr. Klamp was doing the chewing out), no chewing out teachers (unless ditto), no unnecessary displays of temper (unless ditto), no unnecessary displays of affection (no exceptions), no pets over one ounce or under one ton, and no singing, except in Bulgarian. I began to think Mr Klamp wouldn't be so bad ... — Polly Shulman

Listen," I said, cool as a 911 operator talking someone down from a ledge, "you're dead. I'm sorry about that, but I am not going to let you possess me. So follow the light, or go to the other side, or hang around your own house and haunt your accounting ledgers or something. You do not get to stay in my head. — Devon Monk

Stop talking now," I whispered because if he didn't I'd start crying.
"You asked."
"Okay, I did, but you need to stop talking now."
"Baby-"
I looked down at the cookie sheet. "And don't be nice anymore, I prefer you annoying. — Kristen Ashley

I have the weirdest job. The hair and makeup people were talking the other day about how weird their job is. And costumes, they have to be in people's faces and have to reach in their skirts to pull their shirts down and stuff. I was like, "You guys, I meet someone, I shake their hand, and then I kiss them. And sober. During midday. For money." — Mary Elizabeth Ellis

It makes me angry that you hate yourself for something that somebody else made you do. Don't let them take any more. Don't you do that Andres."
"None of this does any good, Grace. All these visits, all this talking, all this strolling down fucking memory lane. It doesn't help. And you know why it doesn't help? Because everything that's happened - it lives so deep inside me that the only way I can ever get rid of it is to die."
"That's not true, Andres."
"It is true. Happiness isn't in the cards for everyone, Grace. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

Three; - and this would be sufficient reason by itself - what are we supposed to be about, Sma? What is the Culture? What do we believe in, even if it hardly ever is expressed, even if we are embarrassed about talking about it? Surely in freedom, more than anything else. A relativistic, changing sort of freedom, unbounded by laws or laid-down moral codes, but - in the end - just because it is so hard to pin down and express, a freedom of a far higher quality than anything to be found on any relevant scale on the planet beneath us at the moment. — Iain M. Banks

You are always dragging me down,' said I to my Body. 'Dragging _you_ down!' replied my Body. 'Well I like that! Who taught me to like tobacco and alcohol? You, of course, with your idiotic adolescent idea of being "grown up". My palate loathed both at first: but you would have your way. Who put an end to all those angry and revengeful thoughts last night? Me, of course, by insisting on going to sleep. Who does his best to keep you from talking too much and eating too much by giving you dry throats and headaches and indigestion? Eh?' 'And what about sex?' said I. 'Yes, what about it?' retorted the Body. 'If you and your wretched imagination would leave me alone I'd give you no trouble. That's Soul all over; you give me orders and then blame me for carrying them out. — C.S. Lewis

It is not simply that these two cities are perched side by side at the edge of the Pacific; it is that adolescence sits next to middle age, and they don't know how to relate to each other. In a way, these two cities exist in different centuries. San Diego is a post-industrial city talking about settling down, slowing down, building clean industry. Tijuana is a preindustrial city talking about changing, moving forward, growing. Yet they form a single metropolitan area. — Richard Rodriguez

But Max said: "Last summer I spent working these peace booths at state fairs. We'd go around in this bigole pickup with this knocked-down booth in the back and boxes of literature. People'd come up to me and hear me talking about colonialism or the bomb or who was responsible for the Cold War, and they'd start railing on Communists. Communists, these damn Communists. And I'd say hey, hold on now, you're talkin' about my mother. They'd look at me like I'd turned into a Russky before their very eyes. It certainly shut 'em up." He smiled to remember, delighted. "They were good people. Country people. Didn't want to say anything bad about a fellow's mom." Saul — John Crowley

He had become completely mad in his movements; He seemed to be doing everything at the same time. It was a shaking of the head, up and down, sideways; jerky, vigorous hands; quick walking, sitting, crossing the legs, uncrossing, getting up, rubbing the hands, rubbing his fly, hitching his pants, looking up and saying 'Am,' and sudden slitting of the eyes to see everywhere; and all the time he was grabbing me by the ribs and talking, talking — Jack Kerouac

"Joss"
"What?"
"What?" Dylan asked back.
"You just said my name."
"No I didn't"
"Sorry that was me."
I sat up, banging my head on the roof. "Who is that?"
"Hey, stay down here where the air is good, okay?" Dylan pulled me gently back down. "Hows your head?"
"Not good, I think."
"Um, okay, so you here me. Heather's right, you do think loud. I mean, I've never heard you before, but my Talent seems to be a lot more selective than her's. But now that she's got me turned in to you-"
"Who are you?"
"It's still me, Marshall. It's Dylan. I'm right here."
"My name's Joel."
"Joel?"
"Joss, what are you talking about?" He took my face in his hands. "Who's Joel?"
"The voice in my head, I guess."
"Jesus. — Susan Bischoff

I used to psych myself up before the show and now I do the complete opposite: I psych myself down. It's 12:30 at night, you don't want some guy yelling at you. You want some guy just talking to you. — Craig Ferguson

There's some stuff you just leave alone. You don't fix every problem that comes across your radar. You don't try to straighten out every dispute that comes before you. Don't chase down every rumor. If people are gossiping about you, let them talk, because the people who are talking negatively about you don't matter. — T.D. Jakes

The biggest problem is the moment you say "spirituality," somebody starts talking about God, someone else about mukti, someone else about nirvana and someone else about the Ultimate. They are all already up there. You cannot do anything with people who are already up there. If somebody is down here, you can do something with them. You can only take a step if your feet are on the ground, isn't it? The moment you talk about God, you are not here anymore; you know it all. You can only start a journey from where you are. You cannot start a journey from where you are not. If you are willing to come down to where you are, then we can see what the next step is. If you are already on the third step to heaven, what can I do with you? — Jaggi Vasudev

We catched fish, and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and it warn't often that we laughed, only a kind of low chuckle. We had mighty good weather, as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all, that night, nor the next, nor the next. — Mark Twain

She nodded, jotting something in her notebook.
You're writing that down? Has the interview started?
Lee, whenever you're talking to a reporter, you're being interviewed. — Curtis Sittenfeld

If you are talking about terrorism, you need to sit down and understand what is making these people put dynamite around their waists and blow themselves up. — Lakhdar Brahimi

If I didn't have my parents to think about I'd have given in my notice a long time ago, I'd have gone up to the boss and told him just what I think, tell him everything I would, let him know just what I feel. He'd fall right off his desk! And it's a funny sort of business to be sitting up there at your desk, talking down at your subordinates from up there, especially when you have to go right up close because the boss is hard of hearing. — Franz Kafka

If you're talking down to the audience, no matter how brutish it is, they know it and they hate you for it. — Bernard Sahlins

Any time I let it, the weight of living creeps in and starts to drag her down. It would be too easy to say that I feel invisible. Instead, I feel painfully visible, and entirely ignored. People talk to her, but it feels like they are outside a house, talking through the walls. There are friends, but they are people to spend time with, not people to share time with. There's a false beast that takes the form of instinct and harps on the pointlessness of everything that happens. — David Levithan

I'll drive down the street, and I'll practice improv. I will sit there at a red light and see two guys talking to each other, and I will just start playing both characters. I can't hear them, but I can see their mouths moving, so I'll just put words in their mouths. — J. B. Smoove

You realize I had half my guard out searching for you?" Eddard Stark said when they were alone. "Septa Mordane is beside herself with fear. She's in the sept praying for your safe return. Arya, you know you are never to go beyond the castle gates without my leave."
"I didn't go out the gates," she blurted. "Well, I didn't mean to. I was down in the dungeons, only they turned into this tunnel. It was all dark, and I didn't have a torch or a candle to see by, so I had to follow. I couldn't go back the way I came on account of the monsters. Father, they were talking about killing you! Not the monsters, the two men. They didn't see me, I was being still as stone and quiet as a shadow, but I heard them. They said you had a book and a bastard and if one Hand could die, why not a second? Is that the book? Jon's the bastard, I bet. — George R R Martin

GOVERNOR. And then I must call your attention to the history teacher. He has a lot of learning in his head and a store of facts. That's evident. But he lectures with such ardor that he quite forgets himself. Once I listened to him. As long as he was talking about the Assyrians and Babylonians, it was not so bad. But when he reached Alexander of Macedon, I can't describe what came over him. Upon my word, I thought a fire had broken out. He jumped down from the platform, picked up a chair and dashed it to the floor. Alexander of Macedon was a hero, it is true. But that's no reason for breaking chairs. The state must bear the cost. — Nikolai Gogol

Don't do it. I let you push me pretty far sometimes, but not this time. I will not have you put your" - it took me a moment to find the right words - "sorcerer's brand on me, so you can hunt me down whenever and wherever you please. And that, Jericho Barrons, is non-negotiable."

Well done, Ms. Lane. Just when I think you're all useless fluff and nails, you show me some teeth."

You win. This time. I won't tattoo you. Not today. But in lieu of that, you will do something for me. Refuse and I tattoo you. And, Ms. Lane, if I chain you up one more time tonight, there'll be no more talking. I'll gag you. — Karen Marie Moning

We are talking about an awesome power. It is the power to weave illusions that appear real as long as they last. That is the very core of the Fed's power. Of course not everyone is instinctively against this illusion-weaving power, and many even welcome it. Tragically, the innocent who understand little about the complexity of the monetary system suffer the most, while those who are in the know reap great profit whether the market is going up or down. — Ron Paul

This is not exactly what I had in mind when I agreed to miss lunch," Alex said grumpily forty minutes later. He shifted uncomfortably and tried to see what I was doing.
I stared him back into submission. "Wait."
The art room is usually empty Thursday afternoons except for me. Ms. Evers leaves early to teach her UArts class and looks up.Of course, I am one of the few entrusted with the Secret Location of the Key.
A few feet away from where I sat perched on a stool,Alex was posed on the anchient chaise we use for figure drawing. It's a relic, probably from the Palladinetti years: chipped mahogany and dusty velvet, what little remaining stuffing pokes out from a century of holes. I was probably luxurious once. Now it's like sitting on a slightly smelly board. But I'd wanted to sketch Alex as I so often saw him, reclining with his head propped on one hand,listening or talking or coaxing me to put down the glass, already,Ella,and come here. — Melissa Jensen

Keep things informal. Talking is the natural way to do business. Writing is great for keeping records and putting down details, but talk generates ideas. Great things come from out luncheon meetings which consist of a sandwich, a cup of soup, and a good idea or two. No martinis. — T. Boone Pickens

GUIL: It [Hamlet's madness] really boils down to symptoms. Pregnant replies, mystic allusions, mistaken identities, arguing his father is his mother, that sort of thing; intimations of suicide, forgoing of exercise, loss of mirth, hints of claustrophobia not to say delusions of imprisonment; invocations of camels, chameleons, capons, whales, weasels, hawks, handsaws
riddles, quibbles and evasions; amnesia, paranoia, myopia; day-dreaming, hallucinations; stabbing his elders, abusing his parents, insulting his lover, and appearing hatless in public
knock-kneed, droop-stockinged and sighing like a love-sick schoolboy, which at his age is coming on a bit strong.
ROS: And talking to himself.
GUIL: And talking to himself. — Tom Stoppard

You are talking to a man who can only play a plastic keyboard. Give me anything weighted and I've had it. I haven't got the strength in my fingers to push them down. So I don't get a lot of expression on the keyboard. — Midge Ure

At twenty-one, Richard Wright was not the world-famous author he would eventually be. But poor and black, he decided he would read and no one could stop him. Did he storm the library and make a scene? No, not in the Jim Crow South he didn't. Instead, he forged a note that said, "Dear Madam: Will you please let this nigger boy have some books by HL Mencken?" (because no one would write that about themselves, right?), and checked them out with a stolen library card, pretending they were for someone else. With the stakes this high, you better be willing to bend the rules or do something desperate or crazy. To thumb your nose at the authorities and say: What? This is not a bridge. I don't know what you're talking about. Or, in some cases, giving the middle finger to the people trying to hold you down and blowing right through their evil, disgusting rules. Pragmatism is not so much realism as flexibility. — Ryan Holiday

Augie. You're a good girl," said Dad. This was more hope than truth. "You're nine and a half."
"NINE," she corrected. She hated how adults never rounded down to the nearest integer when talking to children. — Zach Weinersmith

All dressed up with nowhere to go," said Iko from the doorway.
Cinder spit out the flashlight with a laugh and glanced down at her oil-stained cargo pants. "Yeah, right. All I need is a tiara."
"I was talking about me. — Marissa Meyer

He says, "But it is really whatever, you know? You've saved me way more times. And we call ourselves friends."
It doesn't matter what we call ourselves, really. "You already saved me," I say.
"That was nothing."
"I'm not talking about the cave."
He wrinkles his nose.
"That first day," I say, "When you got up on the rocks to flirt with a human boy."
He smiles big, with all his ground-down teeth shining. — Hannah Moskowitz

I didn't knowingly meet a conservative until, to my shame, I was 60 years old and sat down and said, 'Wow, I don't understand what this guy's talking about, but he has a great civility about him. Perhaps I better investigate this thing.' — David Mamet

On this Very Street in Belgrade
Your mother carried you
Out of the smoking ruins of a building
And set you down on this sidewalk
Like a doll bundled in burnt rags,
Where you now stood years later
Talking to a homeless dog,
Half-hidden behind a parked car,
His eyes brimming with hope
As he inched forward, ready for the worst. — Charles Simic

I love sitting down and talking to people. CNBC gave me a chance to do it in a way that I liked. They gave me a chance to also develop the skills to learn from my mistakes. — Daisy Fuentes

You're dying right now. Right this minute.' He looked at his watch, said, 'Right this second,' then tapped it with his finger. 'See there? That second passed. It's gone. Not gonna come again. And while I'm talking to you, every second I'm talking, a second is passing. Gone. Count them up. Count them down. They're gone. Each one bringing you closer to your dying time. — Billie Letts

The more I look at most of the art movements, it's all occultism, when you get down to it. The Surrealists were openly talking about being magicians. — Alan Moore

There is nothing to fear,' she says to me softly. 'There is never anything to fear. The worst fear is of fear itself, and you can conquer that.'
'How?' I murmur. It feels as if I am talking in my sleep, floating down a stream of sleep. 'How can I conquer the worst fear?'
'You just decide,' she says simply. 'Just decide that you are not going to be a fearful woman and when you come to something that makes you apprehensive, you face it and walk towards it. Remember - anything you fear,you walk slowly and steadily towards it. And smile. — Philippa Gregory