Quotes & Sayings About Tapping Out

Unlinked by a pacemaker, the cells beat irregularly, spasmodically, each tapping out a rhythm approximate to the 350 beats a minute normal to a chick. But as the observer watches, over a period of hours an astonishing phenomenon occurs. Instead of five independent heart cells contracting at their own pace, first two, then three, and then all the cells pulse in unison. There are no longer five beats, but one. How is this sense of rhythm communicated in the saline, and why? — Paul W. Brand

Parents sat gloomy and still, like rows of turnips in a grocer's box. Their little criminals sat with them, tapping LOLs on their phones, or milled in the yard outside stinking of Lynx and taut nonchalance. Solicitors strode in and out in a twist of slacks and briefcases. — Lisa McInerney

It was a stressful morning," Shane said, tapping his eye patch. "Turns out you can't grow eyes back. Who fucking knew, right?" "Fucking medical system," Max said, taking another drag. "Thanks, Obama. — Jake Bible

I was sitting in a plastic desk-chair contraption in an English classroom in Minnesota, tapping out the meter of lines from Pound's Cantos, wearing a baseball shirt with a small hole in the armpit. But I was also roiling with feelings and thoughts and doubts and conjectures and worries and layers of complication ... If so much happened in my head, didn't I have to conclude that it was the same way with everyone else? I had to look down again. The world was too big. — Kate Hattemer

Oberon could not speak for the burning anger on is tongue. Instead, he drew back his mighty fist and would have knocked his captain clean off the wall, down on the jagged rocks below...
Only suddenly, standing between him and his prey was the gloriously golden image of his wife smiling sweetly up at him.
"Really, darling, such a display. And so public too!" she said, laughing like the ringing of a bell chorus. "What will all the little ones think?'
"Out of my way, Titania!" Oberon bellowed. "Puck has told me of your part in all this nonsense, and I'll be dealing with you next!"
But Titania had seen too many of her husband's tempers over the long centuries of their marriage to mind him much now. "Don't be ridiculous," she said lightly, tapping him on the nose with one long, elegant finger. 'Do you really want to stand in the way of true love? When you start meddling with people's hearts, things never go well, as everyone knows. — Camryn Lockhart

You have a generation that is saying we are tapping out of religion in many ways. But what they are not saying is that we are tapping out of a serious search for meaning in life. — Erwin McManus

That's what literature is. It's the people who went before us, tapping out messages from the past, from beyond the grave, trying to tell us about life and death! Listen to them! — Connie Willis

It's my Prom King, Brett. He's tapping at the window, wanting me to roll it down or to get out of the car - what an image that would be. How will I ever live that down? I can't even see myself laughing about it twenty years from now. If the neighbors walk past they'll probably report me to social services, I can hear them on the phone now, She's too lazy to even go to the bathroom, she just shits in her car. — P.K. Darling

By tapping into flowers and their elixirs, we have a method at our fingertips that helps us be our happiest, clearest, and most loving selves. With this book I invite you to catalyze your own personal Flowerevolution and create a worldwide ripple effect of positivity - transforming the world from the inside out. — Katie Hess

At length the Turk turned to Larry:
'You write, I believe?' he said with complete lack of interest.
Larry's eyes glittered. Mother, seeing the danger signs, rushed in quickly before he could reply.
'Yes, yes' she smiled, 'he writes away, day after day. Always tapping at the typewriter'
'I always feel that I could write superbly if I tried' remarked the Turk.
'Really?' said Mother. 'Yes, well, it's a gift I suppose, like so many things.'
'He swims well' remarked Margo, 'and he goes out terribly far'
'I have no fear' said the Turk modestly. 'I am a superb swimmer, so I have no fear. When I ride the horse, I have no fear, for I ride superbly. I can sail the boat magnificently in the typhoon without fear'
He sipped his tea delicately, regarding our awestruck faces with approval.
'You see' he went on, in case we had missed the point, 'you see, I am not a fearful man. — Gerald Durrell

Religion can hardly revive, because it cannot decay. To put the matter bluntly on the lowest level, it is not to anybody's interest that religion should disappear. If it did, many compositors would be thrown out of work; the audiences of our best-selling scientists would shrink to almost nothing; and the typewriters of the Huxley Brothers would cease from tapping. Without religion the whole human race would die, as according to W. H. R. Rivers, some Melanesian tribes have died, solely of boredom. Every one would be affected: the man who regularly has a run in his car and a round of golf on Sunday, quite as much as the punctilious churchgoer. — T. S. Eliot

I was listening to a lot of math rock-y type bands do lots of complex stuff and I couldn't figure out how they were doing it. Then I realized that sometimes they were finger tapping, so I started messing around doing it. — Marnie Stern

The golden rule of drums is hands clapping and feet tapping, and when you are in and out of consciousness, you can't do that to best of your ability. — Steven Adler

Now, of course, having failed in every attempt to subdue the Glades by frontal attack, we are slowly killing it off by tapping the River of Grass. In the questionable name of progress, the state in its vast wisdom lets every two-bit developer divert the flow into drag-lined canals that give him 'waterfront' lots to sell. As far north as Corkscrew Swamp, virgin stands of ancient bald cypress are dying. All the area north of Copeland had been logged out, and will never come back. As the glades dry, the big fires come with increasing frequency. The ecology is changing with egret colonies dwindling, mullet getting scarce, mangrove dying of new diseases born of dryness. — John D. MacDonald

Expecting someone?" I tease, as if Connor's not here just about every night she isn't at his grad dorm.
"Not if I don't finish my homework," she says, picking the pen back up and tapping the course packet with it. "Even when he's not my teacher, Connor's a pain in my ass."
"They make lube for that, you know."
"Francesca?"
"Yes?"
"Get out. — Dahlia Adler

Catherine" she paused. I waited, tapping my finger on my desk. Then she spoke words that had me almost falling out of my chair. "I've decided to come to your wedding."
I actually glanced at my phone again to see if I'd been mistaken and it was someone else who'd called me.
"Are you drunk?" I got out when I could speak.
She signed. "I wish you wouldn't marry that vampire, but I'm tired of him coming between us."
Aliens replaced her with a pod person, I found myself thinking. That's the only explanation — Jeaniene Frost

I leaned into Barabas's office. "Do you want to come help pick out a suit for Christopher?" "No," Barabas said firmly, tapping a stack of papers against his desk to even it out. "Why?" "Because I don't need to see him in a suit." Curran — Ilona Andrews

I Imagine Them

turning some dog-eared page
tapping out a drum beat on the dash
sorting the laundry
digging for a matching sock
buried in deep pockets
breaking an egg on the side of a bowl
fingering guitar strings

Where are they now?

tenderly holding a pen to paper
furiously moving through air
in concert
with your conversation
resting assuredly on the back
of a chair

oh to be the steering wheel
or the spoon
to have your palms
pressed solidly upon me
the full fan of your fingers
curved to the slope
of my shoulders
oh to be warmed
to be wrapped
in hope
to be healed
by the laying on
of your hands — Nancy Boutilier

It was like my uterus was tapping out a happy dance on the rest of my organs. God, I was dying the longest, most tortuous, and arousing death in the history of the world. — Cora Carmack

Some read biographies of famous Christians to try to short-cut themselves into a deeper walk with the Lord and successful ministry. They think: "If I just copy some of their techniques, beliefs, and quotes, I will have their success." Such thinking, though, creates men who trust in the past work of other believers, living out of their zeal instead of tapping into the actual power of God which these men had. True men of God are only signposts to point the way. Their sign should point to heaven, to the Lord himself. — Greg Gordon

Probably the best explanation for my success and other Internet writers, is that we're tapping a genre or a niche out there that needs to be filled and isn't. — Tucker Max

Perhaps the one comforting thought I got out of this whole disgusting affair was that over the years when the government was tapping my telephone, it must certainly have heard some home truths from me about themselves, often couched in good Anglo-Saxon terms. — Helen Suzman

Bout a month ago. She came in Boxing Day but I put her out. She was begging people, not even tapping, but begging for drink."
"She can't have been disrupting ye, surely?" asked Maureen.
"See those old swines over there?" He gestured to his only customers. The old men heard him and their chat fell silent.
The barman raised his voice. "They were asking what they would get for their money. Auld swines, playing on the lassie's weakness for the drink." He lowered his voice. "That's pensioners for ye - they can smell a bargain a mile off," he muttered, as if the bargain-hunting skill of the elderly was an unspoken universal truth. — Denise Mina

Too often, we miss out on opportunities in this life because we were too busy waiting for them to fall into our lap that we missed them tapping on our shoulder. — Daniel Willey

You will never have to worry about safety. Being a Dardano will buy you all the security you'll ever need."
Bree shook her head and threw her hands up. "Being a Dardano will put the bulls eye on my back, you asshole,"
"Really, darling, once you become Mrs. Dardano, we're going to have to work on cleaning up that saucy mouth of yours. At least in public," Alessandro purred, tapping her nose.
Bree saw red. But she smiled at him. She took the plate from him and set it down on the vanity table. Then she took the vitamin shake, pulled out the waistband of his pants and poured it down inside. — E. Jamie

razor-thin hips glide across the lobby with determined expressions on their faces. The tapping of their stilettos on the marble floor rings out a harsh staccato rhythm like a machine gun. I've been working here for three — Evelyn Glass

Owen had been using the track for months, but he didn't recall Sterling doing anything more athletic than tapping his pencil against his desk until Owen's fingers had itched with the need to spank the brat out of him. — Jane Davitt

People who might once have bought a newspaper to beguile themselves now look at their Android. Magzines readers look at their Android, too. Amazingly, even manufactures of chewing gum have taken a hit, because nervously chewing while staring out the window has become nervously tapping while staring into a handled screen. — Bruce Sterling

Playing drums or music, being a musician, is inside of you. So you would always see me tapping on something, playing on tables ... I never felt the need to pull out drums. — Eric Hernandez

I sing the best when I'm really in my voice. It's kind of like I'm meditating but I sort of imagine my voice as a physical thing. I see colours, I feel it moving out of me and I try to tap into images that I was tapping into when I was writing the song. — Brett Dennen

He raised his voice over the crowd's roar and gestured to Cade's phone. "Good news?"
Cade tucked the phone back into his pocket. "She said yes."
Vaughn blinked - clearly having expected Cade to say something else - then threw out his hands. He had no clue what they were talking about, but right then everything was a cause for celebration. "She said yes! Hell, yeah!" He grabbed Huxley and pointed to Cade, shouting over the crowd. "She said yes."
"Sweet," Huxley said, tapping his beer to Cade's. "Who said yes?"
"Brooke Parker. I'm seeing her tonight."
"Fuck you," Vaughn said, somewhat in awe. "I knew it. You've been digging her from the moment she told you to shove your obstruction of justice threats up your ass."
"What can I say? I'm a sucker for the shy, quiet types. — Julie James

I'm not formal and I'm impatient. So I think my team would say that when she starts tapping her pen and the leg starts moving quickly, that it's time to move on. I'm not good at long, drawn-out kinds of sessions. — Anne M. Mulcahy

So did he answer you? I finally had to ask her after a considerable pause, accompanied by the tapping of her fingernails. (illustration credit ill.3) Not really, she said. I'm not sure giving answers is in his bag of tricks. He seems to be more about messing with your mind so that you can't stop thinking about his questions. And if he thinks I can afford to keep stepping out of time like this, with my schedule, then, well, he's just way off. Maybe — Rebecca Goldstein

Comedy is really my passion. I started out way before television doing sketch comedy with other women. Very much along the lines of, at the time it was 'Sensible Footwear', but now it's 'Smack The Pony', 'French And Saunders', that kind of thing. That's how I started out. — Amanda Tapping

When I played Darth Maul, it sort of came from inside. I'm not saying it was natural, but I really enjoyed it, and I think I was tapping into my childhood, growing up with 'Star Wars.' And I grew up with G.I. Joe as well. Same as 'Thundercats' and 'Transformers' and 'He-Man.' And so I think it was the inner kid in me just came out. — Ray Park

* * * In the afternoon, when Grace was just about to ruin her dinner with a big bowl of popcorn while looking through various online floral arrangements on her laptop, there was a light tapping at her back door. She pulled the curtain to peek out through the window in the door and was shocked to see Iris. She opened the door. Don't newlyweds lay around in bed for several days after the wedding? — Robyn Carr

That night she heard the branches tapping against the house and the window frames rattle. She sat alone and thought of the geese, she could hear them out there. It had gotten cold. The wind was blowing their feathers. They lived a long time, ten or fifteen years, they said. The one they had seen on the lawn might still be alive, settled back into the fields with the others, in from the ocean where they went to be safe, the survivors of bloody ambushes. Somewhere in the wet grass, she imagined, lay one of them, dark sodden breast, graceful neck still extended, great wings striving to beat, bloody sounds coming from the holes in its beak. She went around and turned on the lights. The rain was coming down, the sea was crashing, a comrade lay dead in the whirling darkness. — James Salter

We need to get you laid."
Despite the fact she couldn't see my face, my brow furrowed. "How is that going to help?"
"Rebound sex is exactly what you need right now, sweaty, dirty, work-your-frustration-out sex. In fact, I have the perfect guy in mind - "
I jolted up quickly at the sound of a firm tapping. I looked over at the window to see Kacey's sun kissed face, his shades resting at the edge of his long nose, baby blue eyes fixed on me.
I placed my hand over my thumping heart. "You ass."
"Bitch?"
"Not you, Jayne." I climbed off my bed. "Kay and Ty are here."
"Speak of the devil, and his sexy ass will most definitely appear. — Elizabeth Morgan

It feels weird, being out in the real world again. Around people just living their lives like normal. Their presence is oppressive. The very fact that the world is going on as usual, like nothing ever happened, makes me want to scream. I know it's irrational to expect everything to grind to a halt because of June, but still. A wave of anxiety builds in my chest, my head pounding so loud it drowns out the noise of people talking and tapping away on their laptops. — Hannah Harrington

I think it would be easier to fight in a dress," says Marlene, tapping her chin. "It would give your legs freer movement. And who really cares if you flash people your underwear, as long as you're kicking the crap out of them?"
Lynn goes silent, like she recognizes that as a spark of brilliance but can't bring herself to admit it.
"What's this about flashing underwear?" says Uriah, sidestepping a bunk. "Whatever it is, I'm in. — Veronica Roth

Is this seat taken?" she asked him again, tapping on a chair at the table.
"That's where my Rum is sitting. He is my guest!"
"But the bottle is in your hand, and not in this chair," she spoke, pointing out the bottle.
"So, it is!" he answered, looking at his Rum. Then, looking back at her: "But he was invited to this party. — Ted Anthony Roberts

Placidity and order and everything in its place, with a decorous and sanctioned violence going on underneath everything, like a heavy, brutal shoe tapping out the rhythm on a carpeted floor. — Margaret Atwood

Emily tucks her knees up beneath her and leans forward on the table. 'Do you like Ryan?' she asks Nick, and Mom's eyes go wide. Kevin chokes a little on his water. Mortified, Ryan looks away, holding her breath.
Nick turns to Emily, and with mock seriousness, leans down to consult with her. 'Do you like Ryan?'
Emily considers this a moment, tapping a finger against her lips in thought. 'I guess most of the time,' she says finally. 'I guess she's okay.'
'Then I think so too' he says, turning back to the rest of the table. He winks at Ryan. 'We've decided you're okay.'
She breathes out. 'I can live with that. — Jennifer E. Smith

The real challenge is getting into the damned thing, and I believe that's why so many would-be writers with great ideas never actually pick-up the pen or start tapping away at the keys. All too often, it's like trying to start a car on a cold day. At first the motor doesn't even crank, it only groans. But if you keep at it (and the battery doesn't die), the engine starts...runs rough...and then smooths out. — Stephen King

I can see, for just a moment, his beating heart in his ribcage, and then that, too, withers and dies, the useless, blackened lump tapping against his ribs before plopping out of his body. — Beth Revis

My friends always told me they wanted to rescue me from Siobhan, and I relished being saved because it meant that people stopped tapping me on the shoulder to point out what I was doing wrong. — Melina Marchetta

If you're out there stressing on your pro day, then you're not going to perform well, so I plan on having a little fun. Play a little music while we're out there throwing the football, have everybody tapping their toes and bobbing their head and just go out there and make the most of the experience. — Robert Griffin III

TEIRESIAS:
I tell you, king, this man, this murderer
(whom you have long declared you are in search of,
indicting him in threatening proclamation
as murderer of Laius)- he is here.
In name he is a stranger among citizens
but soon he will be shown to be a citizen
true native Theban, and he'll have no joy
of the discovery: blindness for sight
and beggary for riches his exchange,
he shall go journeying to a foreign country
tapping his way before him with a stick.
He shall be proved father and brother both
to his own children in his house; to her
that gave him birth, a son and husband both;
a fellow sower in his father's bed
with that same father that he murdered.
Go within, reckon that out, and if you find me
mistaken, say I have no skill in prophecy. — Sophocles

Ten minutes later the kid came out trailing his mother. She hurried out the door. He stuck out his tongue at me. Loser, I thought, until I saw the white pill sitting on his pink tongue. He coughed into his hand, then mouthed the word remember, tapping his cast, and tossed the pill into the trash can.
I watched him leave.

He wasn't glossy. He wasn't dreary, either. He was something else.

He was all there. — Angie Smibert

The Open Source theorem says that if you give away source code, innovation will occur. Certainly, Unix was done this way ... However, the corollary states that the innovation will occur elsewhere. No matter how many people you hire. So the only way to get close to the state of the art is to give the people who are going to be doing the innovative things the means to do it. That's why we had built-in source code with Unix. Open source is tapping the energy that's out there. — Bill Joy

There are four on whose pots the Holy One, blessed he, knocked, only to find them filled with piss, and these are they: Adam, Cain, the wicked Balaam, and Hezekiah.
Again, an abrupt transposition from the divine to the domestic, from upper to lowly spheres, occurs in the midrash. The homely image of the Holy One knocking on pots apparently derives from the practice of tapping on a clay or earthen pot to hear its ring in order to decide if it is worthy of holding wine. In current Hebrew usage, the expression 'to assess or gauge someone's pot' still denotes taking in the measure of a person's character. From Adam's answer to God, we learn that he turned out to be a pisspot. — Shuli Barzilai

The attorney general also spelled out some of the authorities the FBI would use under the Patriot Act, which passed the Senate that same day: capturing e-mail addresses, tapping cell phones, opening voice-mails, culling credit card and bank account numbers from the Internet. All of this would be done under law, he said, with subpoenas and search warrants. But the Patriot Act was not enough for the White House. On October 4, Bush commanded the National Security Agency to work with the FBI in a secret program code-named Stellar Wind. The — Tim Weiner

We think the way out of poverty is to view the poor as producers, and the Internet is probably the most efficient tool we have for tapping this capacity. Because you don't need roads. You don't need customs officials who are friendly. You don't need to manage shipping and delivery schedules. You don't have to worry about tariffs. — Leila Janah

Tapping a little bell, I leaned on the desk and turned to look at a small, traditionally decorated Christmas tree on a table near the entranceway. It was complete with shiny, egg-fragile bulbs; miniature candy canes; flat, laughing Santas with arms wide; a star on top nodding awkwardly against the delicate shoulder of an upper branch; and colored lights that bloomed out of flower-shaped sockets. For some reason this seemed to me a sorry little piece. — Thomas Ligotti

Well, well. Lucinda Hutton. One flexible little gal." He is reclining in his chair again. Both feet are flat on the floor and they point at me like revolvers in a Wild West shootout.

"HR," I clip at him. I'm losing this game and he knows it. Calling HR is virtually like tapping out. He picks up the pencil and presses the sharpened tip against the pad of his thumb. If a human could grin without moving their face, he just did it. — Sally Thorne

There's nothing to it," they all said in chorus, "if you have a magic staff." Then six of them cancelled themselves out and simply disappeared.
"But it's only a big pencil," the Humbug objected, tapping at it with his cane.
"True enough," agreed the Mathemagician; "but once you learn to use it, there's no end to what you can do. — Norton Juster

Grayson folded his arms over his Adonis-like chest, tapping out an imaginary
beat on his forearm. "Just don't want you to string some poor sucker along,
knowing you could never give yourself one hundred percent."

"Should I be more like you? How many broken hearts have you left tangled in
the sheets?" I slid into a pair of faded low-rise jeans. — Jenn Windrow

Watching a tree grow will likely drive you crazy. It's a boring process if you stand there, impatiently tapping your foot, waiting for it to do something. But if you step away and come back later, you'll be surprised to see something beautiful emerge. The fact is the plant is doing something: it's growing. Just not as quickly as you might like. Our culture has conditioned us to expect instant results and overnight success; this impatience runs so rampant that we dress it up in terms like "efficiency" and "productivity." But really what's happening is we are conditioning ourselves to get what we want now, all the time. This mindset robs us of the lessons that waiting can teach us, causing us to miss out on the slow but important stuff of life. — Jeff Goins

The timbre of his voice went into that low register that made my insides curl in on themselves
it was like my uterus was tapping out a happy dance on the rest of my organs. — Cora Carmack

We're so distracted, we're missing out own lives. The parent who records his kid's dance recital or first steps or graduation is so busy trying to capture the moment--to create a thing that proves that they were there--they miss out on actually living and enjoying the moment.
I've done this before with my camera. I have jockeyed for position, bumping elbows with other parents so I could get into the best spot to look through the viewfinder of my SLR to capture the moment of my daughter's dance recital. Five-year-old Phoebe was so cute in her little sailor outfit, tapping away. And I got some great pictures. It's just that while I remember getting the pictures, I do not recall the moment. So much of the time we don't trust ourselves to experience our world without stuff. Things so often don't enhance our lives, but are barriers to fully living our lives. — Dave Bruno

She was looking at Alec instead, watching him as he talked to Jace. There was a kinetic, almost feverish energy to him that hadn't been there before. Something about Jace sharpened him, brought him into focus. If she were going to draw them together, she thought, she would make Jace a little blurry, while Alec stood out, all sharp, clear planes and angles. Jace was looking down as Alec spoke, smiling a little and tapping his water glass with a fingernail. She sensed he was thinking of other things. She felt a sudden flash of sympathy for Alec.
Jace couldn't be an easy person to care about.
I was laughing at you because declarations of love amuse me, especially when unrequited. Jace looked up as the waitress passed. "Are we ever going to get any coffee?" he said aloud, interrupting Alec midsentence. Alec subsided, his energy fading. — Cassandra Clare

Oh, girl! He's got a big one," the fortune teller exclaimed, her dark eyes briefly flickering up to Violet's face before returning back to the cards spread out in front of her. She paused for a moment as she studied them, her pointer finger tapping against her jaw. Finally, she added, "Just like a summer sausage, and I'm not talking about the snack-sized ones. And it's attached to a body that could put Dwayne Johnson to shame. What women could resist a package like that? I'd say the future is definitely going to be bright ... at least for you. — Rose Wynters

Hail! natural desire! Hail! happiness! divine happiness! and pleasure of all sorts, flowers and wine, though one fades and the other intoxicates; and half-crown tickets out of London on Sundays, and singing in a dark chapel hymns about death, and anything, anything that interrupts and confounds the tapping of typewriters and filing of letters and forging of links and chains, binding the Empire together. — Virginia Woolf