Thayer Quotes & Sayings

The first time I saw you," I say, "I had a premonition. I had the feeling I'd found the thing I'd always been waiting for. The next time I saw you, it was the same. And every time after it's been the same. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Does every woman at some point in her life wander through the sleeping house, looking in at her husband and children, and wonder what she's doing here, in this particular life? — Nancy Thayer

I need something fun to get my mind off of pretending to die and I didn't have any squibs under water. — Maria Thayer

It's funny, but if I had to say whom I'm closer to, who knows me better, I'd have a hard time choosing between my husband and my best friend. — Nancy Thayer

Ah, well! then the young woman was only in advance of the age," said Miss Archer; "and what with that and the telephone, and that dreadful phonograph that bottles up all one says and disgorges at inconvenient times, we will soon be able to do everything by electricity; who knows but some genius will invent something for the especial use of lovers? something, for instance, to carry in their pockets, so when they are far away from each other, and pine for a sound of 'that beloved voice,' they will have only to take up this electrical apparatus, put it to their ears, and be happy. Ah! blissful lovers of the future! — Ella Cheever Thayer

Perhaps in every close friendship there is an element of, if not competition, then comparison. Perhaps that is one of the things that makes a friend belong especially to us. Somehow, in the secrecy of our hearts, a scale must balance. — Nancy Thayer

the morning after Haley's party and — Nancy Thayer

If someone is doing something crazy - or what I think is crazy - I'm watching, but also am I keeping the actual seriousness of someone actually running for president in my mind all the time? — Maria Thayer

When I was hired by the University of Washington extension school to teach the one-year fiction writing course - 96 classroom hours - I quickly determined that I knew only about an hour's worth off the top of my head. — James Thayer

But in fact there are infinite subtleties to identity-that is to say, there is the way that you are, which is the sum of the way you are becoming and the way you have been, which does not take into account the way you secretly wish to be. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

I love not serious documentaries, too, but I love seeing people at their wits' end, I guess. — Maria Thayer

It was impossible to tell what was going through her mind, but she seemed more weirdly here, alive and in her element, than she'd ever been while trudging the halls of Upper Thayer with her books under her arms, or sitting at our dining room table. — Joe Schreiber

It is easy to fool yourself. It is possible to fool the people you work for. It is more difficult to fool the people you work with. But it is almost impossible to fool the people who work under you. — Harry Bates Thayer

Mine is not a smiling face. Strangers on the street always say, Smile! But my muscles do not naturally go there. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

I think we've established a convention on the show that allows us to do pretty much anything we want to. — Thayer David

There has been a constant struggle on the part of the military element to keep the end- fighting, or readiness to fight-superior to mere administrative considerations. The military man, having to do the fighting, considers that the chief necessity; the administrator equally naturally tends to think the smooth running of the machine the most admirable quality. — Alfred Thayer Mahan

We are spontaneous when we are at our genuine best. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

If she could no longer be called beautiful, she possessed something better-a knowledge of beauty; it's inflated value, it's inevitable loss. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Free supplies and open retreat are two essentials to the safety of an army or a fleet. — Alfred Thayer Mahan

Lying is a full time occupation, even if you tell just one, because once you tell it, you're stuck with it. If you want to do it right, you have to visualize it, conjure the graphics, tone, and sequence of action, then relate it purposefully in the midst of seemingly spontaneous dialogue. The more actual the lie becomes to the listener, the more actual it becomes to the teller, which is scariest of all. Some people really get to believing their own lies. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

and after she went, Dalton didn't last long. His death certificate listed heart failure as the cause, but Owen Gray knew it had been loneliness and grief. After — James Thayer

It was then that I began to write. Writing helps when you can't talk to your friends; it wasn't that my friends were untrustworthy, it's just that I would never discuss something that was hardly real as though it were really real. Often people do this, forcing friends into authenticating an imaginary life. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Looking at him made things worse. It wrapped her closer to him and made her want to drag in every breath of air that specifically made him Thayer. — Calia Read

Kate lost a mother," I said, "but I lost a nothing."
Kate doesn't feel that way," Jack assured me.
But what about everybody else besides Kate? How can I ever explain to anyone what she was when she and I had no name? People need names for everything. I wasn't a relative or a friend, I was just an object of her kindness."
He wiped my cheeks, saying Ssshh. I buried my face in his shoulder.
True kindness is stabilizing," I went on. "When you feel it and when you express it, it becomes the whole meaning of things. Like all there is to achieve. It's life, demystified. A place out of self, a network of simple pleasures, not a waltz, but like whirls within a waltz."
You're the one now," Jack said definitively. "That's why you met her. She had something she had to pass on." (p. 95) — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Kindness is everything ... When you receive it and express it, it becomes the whole meaning of things. It's life, demystified. A place out of self. Not a waltz, the the whirls within a waltz. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

I wondered what the value was, in the Darwinian sense, of making fast friends like that. There must be some scientific significance to being a follower, to allowing yourself to be persuaded by personality — Hilary Thayer Hamann

My experience is that an original and compelling idea for a novel is a rare thing. — James Thayer

Sometimes a day is a symbolic day, and you behave symbolically. Sometimes you search inside for a feeling, and, finding none, you remember that no feeling is frequently the most possible feeling. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

What is freedom when you're too beholden to act spontaneously — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Nothing is an easy thing to feel but a difficult thing to express (pg 20). — Hilary Thayer Hamann

She acknowledged each person's nearness to the dead and helped the group in its struggle for order-who grieved most, whose pain was most real-because in life there is always hierarchy, and it is frankly not profitable to remain modest and anonymous, not even at a funeral. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Evan looked down at the woman who was ruining his life. — Thayer King

Jaxton couldn't get his mind to settle on one thought, as he stared at the ground.
Roman was here, after all these years. He was just a few steps away from him, talking and flirting with Thayer, as if the last six years had been nothing.
Where had he been? Why did he leave? Why didn't he tell him where he was going, and why had he run off, without a word?
Unable to focus his thoughts, he pushed them aside and ignored them. It was easier to pretend they didn't exist, than to face what they really meant. — Elaine White

My students - all adults - bring a lot of writing skill to the first class, and they and I get better as the class progresses. — James Thayer

They say that travelling broadens your mind, but first you must have a mind. — William Greenough Thayer Shedd

It's never too late - in fiction or in life - to revise. — Nancy Thayer

The piecemeal criticism which, like the fly, scans only the edge of a plinth in the great edifice upon which it crawls, disappears under a criticism that is all-comprehending and all-surveying. — William Greenough Thayer Shedd

No one knows how it is that with one glance a boy can break through into a girl's heart. — Nancy Thayer

Economist Frederick Thayer has studied the history of our balanced-budget crusades and has come up with some depressing statistics. We have had six major depressions in our history (1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893 and 1929); all six of them followed sustained periods of reducing the national debt. We have had almost chronic deficits since the 1930s, and there has been no depression since then - the longest crash-free period in our history. — Molly Ivins

Why remain polite but powerless, in love but a beggar? — Hilary Thayer Hamann

I'm strictly a movie person. I mean, I watch the HBO documentaries and Netflix. — Maria Thayer

Having therefore no foreign establishments, either colonial or military, the ships of war of the United States, in war, will be like land birds, unable to fly far from their own shores. To provide resting places for them, where they can coal and repair, would be one of the first duties of a government proposing to itself the development of the power of the nation at sea. — Alfred Thayer Mahan

Nantucket is a place where some kind of magic happens, it's where I met my husband 32 years ago, and we've been together since the day we met. It's the kind of place that when people come here, they think they'll be happy. I see people falling in love or recovering from some conflict here, and I wanted to capture that. — Nancy Thayer

My mother refuses to go into the ocean. She respects it, she says, which is basically the same as saying she's afraid. I go in because it scares me ... — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Documentaries are my favorite thing, and the more depressing, the better. — Maria Thayer

I've played four characters now, my latest one being Sandor the gypsy. — Thayer David

The most awful hunger is the type that is satisfied too soon, before it moves you, before you are moved by it, before it becomes protracted and superior, a motivating business, making you honorable, graceful, clever - a hunter. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

None of great sages of China preached the precept of love as a guideline for human behavior ... — James Thayer

She was aware of the two men in the room, both of them carrying their burden of history, their charms and flaws, their heaviness and guilt, for no adult was ever really without guilt of some sort. — Nancy Thayer

Having to talk to people was the one thing, but soliciting conversation was something else. If I acted squirmy or didn't make eye contact, they would want to know what was wrong, and I would have to say, Nothing, since nothing really was wrong. Nothing is an easy thing to feel but a difficult thing to express — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Severine was a greedy, selfish person. She wanted everything. Right now, sitting here with Thayer, she wanted to keep this moment forever. Nothing gave her the right to desire it so much. — Calia Read

Commercial jobs are pretty easily adjustable because they only take a few hours to complete, which is one of the reasons they are a Godsend to the actor. — Thayer David

Time is a blank paper we paint with our best colors; is a gift to feel well and exercising happiness. — Markus Thayer

Fabulous Aunt Fancy had died on her sixtieth birthday while parachuting from an airplane. — Nancy Thayer

If you travel internationally, you will feel shocked by contemptuous talk of America. To hear your fellow citizens characterized as barbarians who know nothing of love, food, health, and religion, but everything of lawsuits, fast food, and guns, is to experience a national fidelity of which you may not have thought yourself capable. And yet, you're at a loss for a defense. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

The universe is always speaking to us ... sending us little messages, causing coincidences and serendipities, reminding us to stop, to look around, to believe in something else, something more. — Nancy Thayer

Getting lost just means not understanding. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Sometimes I think together we are the worst kind of calamity." Thayer grinned back. Severine's lips burned. "Then I've never wanted to be destroyed so bad. — Calia Read

If I've gotta go down, I'm gonna go down in style. — Nancy Thayer

When you lose your parents as a child, you are indoctrinated into a club, you re taken into life's severest confidence. You are undeceived. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

The Great Point lighthouse rose at the far end of the barrier beach, a tall white steeple to the sky, with a working light flashing at the top. Here was the end of the island, the great point where the Atlantic Ocean met Nantucket Sound in a froth of waves. All along the point, enormous fat seals lolled on the sand, occasionally lumbering in and out of the water, grunting and lounging like a tribe of overfed Roman emperors. — Nancy Thayer

I don't believe in the idea of the strong woman; there is simply woman. — Melissa Thayer

I think I have between twenty and thirty commercials playing at present. — Thayer David

He owns Douchedome. All assholes compete in the douche form of the Olympics at Douchedome. — Calia Read

It was frankly sort of confusing, the way everyone stared at our bodies exactly as they tried to erase the ideas of our bodies from our minds. We were supposed to get over ourselves but no one was supposed to get over us. The female body was our worst handicap and our best advantage
the surest means to success, the surest course to failure. (p. 72) — Hilary Thayer Hamann

As an actor, I'll take any job. — Maria Thayer

Who is getting more pleasure from this rocking, the baby or me? — Nancy Thayer

I love Errol Morris so much; he's one of my heroes. — Maria Thayer

No matter how wild the winds or rough the seas of life, libraries stand ready, beaming their reliable lights, guiding us toward knowledge, pleasure, consolation, wisdom, and hope. — Nancy Thayer

I need time to develop the idea into a plot before I talk about it. — James Thayer

Organized force alone enables the quiet and the weak to go about their business and to sleep securely in their beds, safe from the violent without or within. — Alfred Thayer Mahan

Life on earth may be limited, but grandchildren were the promise of the eternal. — Nancy Thayer

Their friendship is like a tapestry in a drawer. Today is the iron passing over the cloth, smoothing out the wrinkles, bring out the pattern that makes it unique and beautiful. — Nancy Thayer

Jocks were pretty much exempt from the standards that bound the rest of us. Teachers and administrators humor them because it's in everyone's interests to coax them through school and get them out of the building. Since it's unethical to turn them loose on society, they get sent to college to be kept out of the mix until their frontal lobes develop more fully. As enticement they are given sports scholarships that will later amount to nothing, not even good health. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

They were sorting, or classifying. It's easy-anyone dressed funny is the enemy, especially if they reject your supremacy or do not acknowledge school as entertainment. If the enemy tries to look like you and act like you, only in more affordable clothes, that person is still the enemy, only of a more contemptible, less terrifying variety- — Hilary Thayer Hamann

People with motorcycles always assume that everyone without one wants a ride. I didn't want to offend him, so I said sure. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

When you stop looking forward to things, you get used to low expectations and you realise, what's the big deal about success anyway? If we're all to attain everything we've been conditioned to desire - wealth, fame, education, prestige, security - then those things will become so prevalent that they'll become meaningless. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

The most terrible thing about marriage, I suppose, is that we know and understand each other's weaknesses and fears as much as we know our strengths and desires. — Nancy Thayer

I remember him. Jaxton only knew I existed long enough to take the piss out of me. He certainly never liked me." Roman sighed, giving his side of the story, though it was a slanted
one. Only three people knew the real story; him, Jaxton and Ben, and it was far from the tale of bully and victim that Jaxton kept telling people.
"Yeah, that's what he said," Thayer agreed, with a laugh.
Roman wasn't even surprised. Disappointed, but never surprised. — Elaine White

There's a certain gravity in Stokes, due to the situations I have to handle. — Thayer David

Music is one of the most efficient mood elevators we have. People in nursing homes, whether ambulatory or even bedridden, whether lucid or not, would be provided with great pleasure by your playing. Maybe they could even dream, return to the best times in their lives, when they were loved. — Nancy Thayer

Sophie felt as if she were encased in a glass globe called summer. — Nancy Thayer

I'll often rush out from Dark Shadows, having made a 5.30PM appointment, working for a couple of hours. — Thayer David

And loneliness. I should say something of loneliness. The panic, the sweeping hysteria that comes not when you are without others, but when you are without yourself, adrift. I should describe the filthy province of mind, the blighted district inside, the place so crowded you cannot raise the lids of your eyes. Your shoulders are drawn and your head has fallen and your chest is bruised by the constant assault of your heart. (p. 37) — Hilary Thayer Hamann

It's better to keep grief inside. Grief inside works like bees or ants, building curious and perfect structures, complicating you. Grief outside means you want something from someone, and chances are good you won't get it. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Total depravity means the entire absence of holiness, not the highest intensity of sin. A totally depraved man is not as bad as he can be, but he has no holiness, that is, no supreme love of God — William Greenough Thayer Shedd

I liked the idea of marking the place where a life ends as opposed to the place a corpse is buried. And also the idea of leaving remains uncollected. It's bad enough being dead, but it's worse to have people see you dead, and to have living hands feel a dead you, jostle and dress you, push your stiffening arms into clean sleeves and cry over your blood-drained body. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Even to play a dead body; that'd be an easy gig. — Maria Thayer

I know it's a crock of shit. I ain't offering you happily-ever-after. I'm offering you ... happily-maybe-sometimes-ever-after. Sort of. You know, with warts and shit. -Thayer — Wally Lamb

Sometimes the best you can do is your small part, perfectly — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Dan Curtis, our producer, has the idea that people like to see a stock company of actors. — Thayer David

The families of graduating seniors emptied out of cars, sheepish in uncommon splendor, like milling clans at the origin of a parade. There is something spent about the families of teenagers; possibly it's the look of exhausted loyalties. Perhaps it's only right that we grow overbig in someone else's space. Perhaps we need to tire and differentiate, leave and adapt. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Read The Charisma Factor - How to Develop Your Natural Leadership Ability by Robert J. Richardson and S. Katharine Thayer. It is a superb book for any aspiring leader, or a current one, who seeks to advance to the next level. 195. — Robin S. Sharma

question. "I don't know. I like Boston. And I like being close to my mom." "And your sisters." Arden hesitated. This was officially a first date, — Nancy Thayer

If I'm so popular, why did they replace me with Tommy Thayer? — Ace Frehley

Optimism is when you're not sure where life is going to take you, so naturally you anticipate the best possible outcome — Hilary Thayer Hamann

If the present and past moods of these people were bad, they were more likely to contract the cold. So, — Robert E. Thayer

The pug owner continued, "Not to be a Grinch, I only ask because I'd forgotten how much work dogs are. They have to be walked several times a day, and it's holy murder crawling out of bed early on a dark winter morning to take Poppy out. But she yips and yaps and scratches at the bed until I do. Then there's the matter of chewing. I can't tell you how many leather shoes Poppy's ruined. And she's not even a big dog, certainly not one of those eternally hungry dogs like yellow Labs who will eat anything, even the contents of wastebaskets, no matter how much you feed them. — Nancy Thayer

Someone who knows she is beautiful, who is always told that she is beautiful, but who, deep down, does not feel very beautiful. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Before Ethan went all Incredible Hulk on Thayer's ass, the most exciting thing to happen was a spray-cheese fight some of the morons from the wrestling team got into on the back patio. — Sara Shepard