Tension At Top Quotes & Sayings

I've met a few people who were passive-aggressive, but I've never met anyone who was aggressive-passive. I don't want tacos! Maybe. — Demetri Martin

Most people have never known solitude ... But there are a few of the other kind who can go back to their rooms anywhere and close the door on the whole world, and feel that they need never emerge. — Louis Aragon

Utopias travel about underground, in the pipes. There they branch out in every direction. They sometimes meet, and fraternize there. Jean-Jacques lends his pick to Diogenes, who lends him his lantern. Sometimes they enter into combat there. Calvin seizes Socinius by the hair. But nothing arrests nor interrupts the tension of all these energies toward the goal, and the vast, simultaneous activity, which goes and comes, mounts, descends, and mounts again in these obscurities, and which immense unknown swarming slowly transforms the top and the bottom and the inside and the outside. Society hardly even suspects this digging which leaves its surface intact and changes its bowels. There are as many different subterranean stages as there are varying works, as there are extractions. What emerges from these deep excavations? The future. — Victor Hugo

Without seeming to think about it, he turned sideways, dropping his feet over the arm of the couch and - shockingly - his head into her lap. He tugged at his tie and unbuttoned the top two buttons in an effort to get more comfortable and then turned to face the TV.

"What are we watching?"

The "we" undid her, and she allowed the tension to leave her body at this unexpected turn of events. Her hands, which had been hovering in midair as she tried to figure out where to place them, dropped - one to his hair and the other to his shoulder. — Natasha Anders

People make the mistake of assuming far too many things about armies,' Lefevre told me one evening. 'They assume, for a start, that generals know what they are doing and know what is going on. They assume that orders pass down from top to bottom in a smooth and regulated fashion. And above all they assume that wars start only when people decide to start them.' 'You are going to tell me that is not the case?' 'Wars begin when they are ready, when humanity needs a bloodletting. Kings and politicians and generals have little say in it. You can feel it in the air when one is brewing. There is a tension and nervousness on the face of the least soldier. They can smell it coming in a way politicians cannot. The desire to hurt and destroy spreads over a region and over the troops. And then the generals can only hope to have the vaguest notion of what they are doing. — Iain Pears

A controlling relationship can start with over-the-top romantic gestures and gifts, and great protestations of you 'being the only one' and their love being a special kind of 'you and me against the world', often disconcertingly early in a relationship. There may be a charm campaign aimed at you and even friends and family, your other potential allies and 'protectors'. Suddenly or gradually there are rules, or flashes of mystifying rage or sulking designed to modify your behaviour to what they want you to do. Then the 'nice' person reappears, and all is well, he's romantic and doting again, before the next flashpoints of anger or rage or sullen tension. This is not a 'return to the good times'. It's the classic cycle of abuse, recognised — Kaz Cooke

Nothing ever comes to an end. Wherever one has sunk roots that emanate from one's best or truest self, one will always find a home. — Liv Ullmann

Okay, I said, what's so hot about playing the piano?
She told me that the most important thing was to establish the tenderness right off the bat, or at least close to the top of the piece, just a hint of it, a whisper, but a deep whisper because the tension will mount, the excitement and the drama will build - I was writing it down as fast as I could - and when the action rises the audience might remember the earlier moment of tenderness, and remembering will make them long to return to infancy, to safety, to pure love, then you might move away from that, put the violence and agony of life into every note, building, building still, until there is an important decision to make: return to tenderness, even briefly, glancingly, or continue on with the truth, the violence, the pain, the tragedy, to the very end. — Miriam Toews

Nolan has long been a devout subscriber to the cause. A director famed for being able to get a multimillion dollar project off the ground with only his own name as collateral, he — Anonymous

Take a deep breath and exhale slowly. Mentally picture all tiredness, tension, and fatigue leaving you. Visualize that a wave of golden light is entering you at the top of your head and passing throughout your entire body. — Frederick Lenz

He opened his arm as I slid next to him. I settled against his side, letting out another deep sigh as his familiar heat and aura closed over me. I laid my head on his shoulder and was rewarded with the pressure of his cheek against the top of my head, a subtle caress.
I shut my eyes. It seemed they were leaking again. I had thought I was done with crying. "I thought you were dead," I said for the hundredth time. "I keep thinking you'll vanish, and I'll wake up."
"I told you, while you live, I live." He sounded calmer now, the tension leaving him. He settled back into the seat, and I leaned into him, grateful. "I would not abandon you, Dante. — Lilith Saintcrow

It's going to be okay, Jacinda."
I angled my head. "So I won't be punished?"
"I convinced them that you wanted to return. I told them you're eager to fall back into pride life. That you'll behave yourself and be more compliant." His top lip curls faintly, and I remember what he told me in Chaparral when he found me, that he liked me because I was different from everyone else here. Now he wants me to be the same.
I inhale sharply through my nose. Compliant. Submissive. Meek. Biddable. Do I even have it in me?
"Compliant? Jacinda?" Az giggles, unaware of the tension. "They bought that? — Sophie Jordan

This "who's on top" banter continues until one wrestler (who has slyly gone to hide behind a chair) leaps upon his rival with an animal cry. The pair then proceeds to create a series of tableaux that appear to be from the Kama Sutra, Vatsyayana's ancient Indian textbook of carnal satisfaction. Occasionally, the tension is broken by a wrestler who picks up a large object, such as a table, to throw on the other's head, as if suddenly disgusted by his forbidden love. — A.C. Kemp

Can we conceive what humanity would be if it did not know the flowers? — Maurice Maeterlinck

I always designed my practice plans the night before and then made tweaks a few hours before practice began — Bobby Knight

And during the day, to prevent stress from building up - which makes it harder to fall asleep at night - every few hours take sixty seconds of recovery time the way top tennis players introduce tiny slots of recovery rituals into their game. All you have to do is stop what you are doing, and simply bring your awareness to the palms of your hands or the soles of your feet, or both. Let it stay there for a minute, and feel all tension leaving your body, drifting away from you through your hands and feet. — Arianna Huffington

The moment she opened the bakery door, his blue eyes had filled with desire. No man had ever looked at her so intensely, like at any moment he would rip her clothes off and ravage her on top of one of the tables. Tension built between her legs as his eyes slowly took in every inch of her. But when he'd kissed her - her body exploded. Everything she'd wanted over the last year had come to fruition. Then, just as fast, he'd disappeared. — Stacey O'Neale

Self-publishing is easy. It's the stuff that comes before and after that's hard work. — Cindy Hiday

The shapes arranged themselves into words, and the words spelled out a delicious and wonderful phrase: Once upon a time. — Kate DiCamillo

I don't run behind authority. — Naguib Sawiris

The best writers who have put pen to paper have often had a journalism background. — Rick Bragg

Like most others, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hell-raiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles - a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other - that kept me going. — Hunter S. Thompson

I've been fascinated by the world ever since I read 'Kitchen Confidential' by Anthony Bourdain. I've watched 'Top Chef' and watched interviews with chefs on 'Charlie Rose' ... I thought they're really intriguing characters, and they really encapsulate that tension between vision and commerce, art and commerce. — Jon Favreau

I'd never wanted to consume another body as rabidly as I did when he was inside me, but even like this, I could never seem to get close enough to the parts of him I wanted to feel. And it was with that thought in my mind that the delicious ratcheting tension along my skin and in my belly crystallized into an ache so heavy I slipped my legs off his shoulders, pulling all of his weight on top of me and pleading, "Please, please, please," over and over. — Christina Lauren

Why interesting and important? Because women are interesting and important in real life. They are not an afterthought of nature, they are not secondary players in human destiny, and every society has always known that. Without women capable of giving birth, human populations will die out. That is why the mass rape and murder of women, girls, and children has long been a feature of genocidal wars, and of other campaigns meant to subdue and exploit a population. — Margaret Atwood