The Crack Up Quotes & Sayings

When you start to crack open, don't waste a moment gathering your old self up into something like you knew before. Let your new self splash like sunlight into every dark place and laugh and cry and make sounds you never made & thank all that is holy for the gift ... — Brian Andreas

And I put my hand on her arm to stop her rowing.
Aaron's Noise roars up in red and black.
The current takes us on.
"I'm sorry!" I cry as the river takes us away, my words ragged things torn from me, my chest pulled so tight I can't barely breathe. "I'm sorry, Manchee!"
"Todd?" he barks, confused and scared and watching me leave him behind. "Todd?"
"Manchee!" I scream.
Aaron brings his free hand towards my dog.
"MANCHEE!"
"Todd?"
And Aaron wrenches his arms and there's a CRACK and a scream and a cut-off yelp that tears my heart in two forever and forever.
And the pain is too much it's too much it's too much and my hands are on my head and I'm rearing back and my mouth is open in a never-ending wordless wail of all the blackness that's inside of me. — Patrick Ness

Ah!" Journeyman cackled ... "Finally! Carefully now, man. If you crack one of my new crystals, I'll hoist you up on a spike!" Grimm cleared his throat calmly. Journeyman squinted over his shoulder. "Ah," he said. "That is, I will report you to ... to ... the proper person in the chain of command, who will make decisions about discipline that are not mine to make. — Jim Butcher

It's the cushiest job, but some lines are so funny that I crack up. — Dan Castellaneta

It wasn't by eliminating the impossible that you got at the truth, however improbable; it was by the much harder process of eliminating the possibilities. You worked away, patiently asking questions and looking hard at things. You walked and talked, and in your heart you just hoped like hell that some bugger's nerve'd crack and he'd give himself up. — Terry Pratchett

If she has been called a woman of the town, a tart, a bawd, a wanton, a bawdy-basket, a bird-of-the-game, a bit of stuff, a buttered bun, a cockatrice, a cock-chafer, a cow, a crack, a cunt, a daughter of Eve, a gay-girl, a gobble-prick, a high-flyer, a high-roller, a hussy, a hurry-whore, a jill, a jude, a judy, a jug, laced mutton, lift-skirts, light o' love, merry legs, minx, moll, moonlighter, morsel, mutton-broker, mount, nestcock, night-bird, night-piece, night-walker, nymph of darkness, nymph of the pavement, petticoat, pick-up, piece, pillow-mate, pinch-prick, pole-climber, prancer, quail, quiet mouse, or even Queen - it is not surprising. A woman of lively parts is as likely to be slandered as she is to be praised. — Erica Jong

Today there are no fairy tales for us to believe in, and this is possibly a reason for the universal prevalence of mental crack-up. Yes, if we were childish in the past, I wish we could be children once again. — Anita Loos

Yet, there is a Chennai that hasn't changed and never will. Women still wake up at the crack of dawn and draw the kolam - the rice-flour design - outside their doorstep. Men don't consider it old-fashioned to wear a dhoti, which is usually matched with a modest pair of Bata chappals. The day still begins with coffee and lunch ends with curd rice. Girls are sent to Carnatic music classes. The music festival continues to be held in the month of December. Tamarind rice is still a delicacy - and its preparation still an art form. It's the marriage between tradition and transformation that makes Chennai unique. In a place like Delhi, you'll have to hunt for tradition. In Kolkata, you'll itch for transformation. Mumbai is only about transformation. It is Chennai alone that firmly holds its customs close to the chest, as if it were a box of priceless jewels handed down by ancestors, even as the city embraces change. — Bishwanath Ghosh

I'm very good at getting up in the morning - so much of my life has been spent on film sets where we start at the crack of dawn. — Joanna Lumley

With a suddenness that startled them all the wizard sprang to his feet. He was laughing! "I have it!" he cried. "Of course, of course! Absurdly simple, like most riddles when you see the answer."
Picking up his staff he stood before the rock and said in a clear voice: Mellon!
The star shone out briefly and faded again. Then silently a great doorway was outlined, though not a crack or joint had been visible before. Slowly it divided in the middle and swung outwards inch by inch, until both doors lay back against the wall. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Any big televised event that starts at the crack of dawn is worth getting up for. I've done it all my life: big boxing matches, royal weddings, even TV-A.M.'s inaugural episode was enjoyed in pyjamas in my house. — Sharon Horgan

I'm not a comedian. I'm not a show host. I'm a musician. That's why I've turned down offers to host the Grammy Awards and the American Music Awards. Is it really entertaining for me to get up there and crack a few weak jokes and force people to laugh because I'm Michael Jackson, when I know in my heart that I'm not funny? — Michael Jackson

Let's get something clear up front. I'm not Harry Dresden. Harry's a wizard. A genuine, honest-to-goodness wizard. He's Gandalf on crack and an IV of Red Bull, with a big leather coat and a .44 revolver in his pocket. He'll spit in the eye of gods and demons alike if he thinks it needs to be done, and to hell with the consequences
and yet somehow my little brother manages to remain a decent human being. I'll be damned if I know how. But then, I'll be damned regardless. My name is Thomas Raith, and I'm a monster. — Jim Butcher

Green-tinted with chlorophyll from crying. "Percy," she sniffled. "I was just asking about Grover. I know something's happened. He wouldn't stay gone this long if he wasn't in trouble. I was hoping that Leneus - " "I told you!" the satyr protested. "You are a better off without that traitor." Juniper stamped her foot. "He is not a traitor! He's the bravest satyr ever, and I want to know where he is!" "WOOF!" Leneus's knees started knocking. "I ... I won't answer questions with this hellhound sniffing my tail!" Nico looked like he was trying to not crack up. "I'll walk the dog," he volunteered. — Rick Riordan

We phone each other because it's only in these long-distance calls, this groping for each other along cables of buried copper, cluttered relays, the whirling contact points of clogged selector switches, only in this probing the silence and waiting for an echo that one prolongs that first call from afar, that cry that went up when the first great crack of the continental drift yawned beneath the feet of a human couple, when the depths of the ocean opened up to separate them, while, torn precipitously apart, one on one bank and one on the other, the couple strove with their cries to stretch out a bridge of sound that might keep them together yet, cries that grew ever fainter until the roar of the waves overwhelmed all hope. — Italo Calvino

As for breaking up, once the relationship is over, you never really know what went wrong; you just feel nauseous whenever the subject comes to mind. After a plane crash there's the black box that tells the FAA what caused the crack-up. Too bad there's no black box of relationships. — Linda Sunshine

If you enjoyed laughing in the face of death, you might like to have a crack at High Saffron. One hundred merits, and all you have to do is take a look.'
'I understand there's a one hundred percent fatality rate?'
'True. But up until the moment of death there was a one hundred percent survival rate. Really, I shouldn't let anything as meaningless as statistics put you off. — Jasper Fforde

Sheila taught me a survival technique for getting through seemingly intolerable situations-boring lunches, stern lectures on attitude or time management, those necessary breakup conversations, and the like: maintaining eye contact, keep your face inscrutable and masklike, with your faintest hint at a Gioconda smile. Keep this up as long as you possibly can, and just as you feel you are about to crack and take a letter opener and plunge it into someone's neck, fold your hands in your lap, one nestled inside the other, like those of a supplicant in a priory. Now, with the index finger of your inner hand, write on the palm of the other, very discreetly and undetectably, "I hate you. I hate you. I hate you ... " over and over again as you pretend to listen. You will find that this brings a spontaneous look of interest and pleased engagement to your countenance. Continue and repeat as necessary. — David Rakoff

The door opened a crack, and then Lassiter, in his game gear, stepped inside the room. As he held something out, Mary couldn't see what it was - Wait a minute, was that a Snickers bar? "What are you doing?" she blurted as he cautiously approached. The beast snapped to attention, its jowls curling up in a snarl at the angel. But Lassiter was undaunted - so not a shocker. "Here," he said. "Have a Snickers. You're not yourself when you're hangry." There was a heartbeat of a pause. And then she couldn't help it. She had to start laughing. "Really. Really? — J.R. Ward

If you wake up / And the day feels broken / Just lean into the crack — Bjork

I'd crack up without my music. It's the best company you can have, really. It don't say 'no' or 'maybe,' or ask no questions. — Terry McMillan

Self-sabotage is the proverbial hammer over the head that finally wakes us up, demanding that we pay attention. For most of us, it takes something devastating to crack us open, to get us out of our minds and into our hearts. — Debbie Ford

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

When some of the gangs got involved with the drug trade, particularlythe crack cocaine trade, and the lethal violence started to flare up in the '80s, then there was a great deal of public attention on gangs and a great deal of concern about what was going on in these social groups. — Meda Chesney-Lind

Love? Dude. It's like a fart. You don't even know it's happening, but all of a sudden,it crawls up the crack of your ass and then the stink hits you. — Ann Everett

Same thing every year, getting up at the crack of dawn, drinking, fighting, throwing up, pissing on walls and then you leave the house and things get bad. — Greg Fitzsimmons

Horrifying as it was to crack up in the public eye, it made me look at myself and fix it. People were exploitative; that's human nature. — Margot Kidder

Dane picked up on the second ring. "How's Operation Baby Rescue going?"
"I've rescued the baby. Now I'd like someone to rescue me."
"Miss Independent never needs to be rescued."
I felt the hint of a genuine smile appear on my face, like a crack in the winter ice. "Oh, right. I forgot. — Lisa Kleypas

With the people, for the people, by the people. I crack up when I hear it; I say, with the handful, for the handful, by the handful, cause that's what really happens. — Fannie Lou Hamer

The [bowling] ball flew out jerkily, sailed about four feet, hit the lane with a loud crack, and then promptly entered the gutter. Roman walked up beside me, and we silently watched the ball complete its journey.
'Are you always that rough with balls?' he asked finally.
'Most men don't complain. — Richelle Mead

The feelings pile up, threatening to crack-up my chest wide-open .. — Gayle Forman

Savannah, darlin'?" "Yes, Mama. Come in." Her mother opened the door a crack, then slipped into the room, carrying the largest, most extravagant bouquet of wildflowers Savannah had ever seen. Wildflowers that smelled of lilac and honeysuckle and the outdoors. She breathed deeply and sighed, looking at her mother in question. "Asher Lee," she said, "is downstairs." Savannah felt her mouth tilt up into an involuntary smile and her eyes flood with tears. Her mother set the bouquet on her vanity and put her arm around Savannah. "Whatever he did, he's awful sorry, button." "He yelled at me and made me cry." "Guessing he didn't mean whatever it is he said." "He thinks I want him to change." "Well, of course you do," said her mother matter-of-factly, swiping at Savannah's tears with the corner of her sunflower apron. "We all want to change the men we love. Leave our mark on them." "Oh, I don't lov - " "Of course you don't. I was just makin' conversation. — Katy Regnery

Second choice always comes as a result of being realistic and lowering your sights. If you want to go through life accepting second best, or worse still, third or fourth, then don't be surprised if you end up feeling unfulfilled with your lot. Set a goal that puts fire in your belly and keep striving until you reach it. Providing you want it badly enough, you will do whatever it takes. ~ "Once you say you're going to settle for second, that's what happens to you in life." - John F. Kennedy ~ — Jack The Crack

Veeva should count her blessings. Three years ago it was cocaine and a year ago it was crack and lemme tell you, that stuff you got to have. You do anything for that high." He laughed again, savoring his memories. "Where do you think the furniture went? Up my nose, that's where. She finally had me carted out of here screaming like an insane man. Spent some time in Bellevue with little sparkly bugs coming out my orifices. Compared to that being a drunk is practically a sensible existence. — Dan Ahearn

AN INVITATION I don't want to hear what you believe I'm not at all interested in your certainty I couldn't care less about your unexcelled perfection Share with me your doubts Open up your tender heart Let me in to your struggles I'll meet you in that place Where your spiritual conclusions Are starting to crack open That's where the creativity lies That's where the newness shines That's where we can truly meet: Beyond the image Your imperfections Are so perfect In this light I don't want you to be perfect I want you to be real — Jeff Foster

Who wouldn't prefer having breakfast in bed to getting up at the crack of dawn and having a cup of coffee in a studio makeup department? — Rita Hayworth

The creatures came up the stairs a few at a time, pausing to sit up and sniff the air. Their eyes glinted in the darkness.They were a foot long. They were covered in moth-eaten grey fur and they had enormous fangs and big bushy tails, and there were maybe twenty of them, chittering from all around.
Vampire crack squirrels, thought James, and wished he hadn't. — Jonathan Blum

I like big books and I cannot lie.
You other readers can't deny
That when a kid walks in with The Name of the Wind
Like a hardbound brick of win.
Story bling.
Wanna swipe that thing
Cause you see that boy is speeding
Right through the book he's reading.
I'm hooked and I can't stop pleading.
Wanna curl up with that for ages,
All thousand pages.
Reviewers tried to warn me.
But with that plot you hooked
Me like Bradley.
Ooh, crack that fat spine.
You know I wanna make you mine.
This book is stella 'cause it ain't some quick novella. — Jim C. Hines

Dying wasn't the joke, it was the punchline, the final guffaw, the crack-up, when your listeners' eyes should be streaming and your woman pees in her pants with laughing. You had to live with sufficient panache that the punchline worked. — Jane Messer

Do we really want to condemn as excessive the use of safety helmets, car seats, playgrounds designed so kids will be less likely to crack their skulls, childproof medicine bottles, and baby gates at the top of stairs? One writer criticizes "the inappropriateness of excessive concern in low-risk environments," but of course reasonable people disagree about what constitutes both "excessive" and "low risk." Even if, as this writer asserts, "a young person growing up in a Western middle-class family is safer today than at any time in modern history," the relevance of that relative definition of safety isn't clear. Just because fewer people die of disease today than in medieval times doesn't mean it's silly to be immunized. And perhaps young people are safer today because of the precautions that some critics ridicule. — Alfie Kohn

Cos a cop asking a guy for a discount on his crack, that's screwed up.
Sign of the goddamn apocalypse is what it is. — Warren Ellis

The truth is that the hard-fought victories of the Civil Rights Movement caused a reaction that stripped Brown of its power, severed the jugular of the Voting Rights Act, closed off access to higher education, poured crack cocaine into the inner cities, and locked up more black men proportionally than even apartheid-era South Africa. — Carol Anderson

She looked in the mirror and her hopes fell. "Our friend is behind us again and he's coming up fast. Closing the distance."
Then he knows we're on to him."
Christ! He's got a gun, Red! He's stuck his arm out the window."
Don't worry," Red told her. "Shooting a pistol left-handed from a moving car at another moving car at sixty miles an hour at this distance? Hell, he'd be lucky to hit that mountain."
There was a sharp crack and the rear window disintegrated into flashing shards. Something buzzed in the air between them and smashed into the tapedeck. Fee howled and ducked into his console.
Unless," Red continued thoughtfully, "that's Orvid Crayle behind us. He's very good. — Michael Flynn

A bubble of fear passes up my spine. It's the feeling of standing on ice and suddenly hearing it crack under your weight - both thrilling and terrifying together. — Hannah Kent

It is a queer weapon, a shotgun. Every effort to secure additional range is well paid for. A bird may be going away at tremendous speed, "burning the air" as a youngster would put it. Seemingly nothing but chain-lightning, which zig-zagged a bit, could stop him. A crack of the gun and that wild flier is dead in the air, a full forty yards away. Right then the conviction comes to us that man never made another weapon so deadly as the shotgun. However, go back another forty yards, set the bird up on the limb of a tree and you might shoot at him all day and not kill him. The shotgun is a deadly weapon but its range is strictly limited and we are ourselves pretty well convinced that nothing less than a two-inch cannon will regularly kill single game-birds at one-hundred yards, with any kind of shot that can be put in the gun. — Charles Askins

I saw it all," Skye continued. "You should've seen the things your brother was doing to her." Deenie felt something crack and twist at her temple. "What? What did you say?"
"Your brother going down on your Lise. Lise's leg twitching like a dog's." Deenie felt her neck stiffen to wood, her hand leaping to it. She couldn't stop it, or Skye. Why Skye would say
"She seemed to love it," Skye said, jaw out, her lips white. "She didn't care who saw. Your brother didn't either."
"You shut the fuck up. You don't know what you're talking about. It wasn't my brother," Deenie said. "Stop saying that. It wasn't him. — Megan Abbott

But Empire building also bears the seeds of its own destruction. The closer a state comes to the ultimate goal of world domination and one-world government, the less reason is there to maintain its internal liberalism and do instead what all states are inclined to do anyway, i.e., to crack down and increase their exploitation of whatever productive people are still left. Consequently, with no additional tributaries available and domestic productivity stagnating or falling, the Empire's internal policies of bread and circuses can no longer be maintained. Economic crisis hits, and an impending economic meltdown will stimulate decentralizing tendencies, separatist and secessionist movements, and lead to the break-up of Empire. We have seen this happen with Great Britain, and we are seeing it now, with the US and its Empire apparently on its last leg. — Hans-Hermann Hoppe

The people who are best at telling jokes tend to have more health problems than the people laughing at them. A study of Finnish police officers found that those who were seen as funniest smoked more, weighed more, and were at greater risk of cardiovascular disease than their peers [10]. Entertainers typically die earlier than other famous people [11], and comedians exhibit more "psychotic traits" than others [12]. So just as there's research to back up the conventional wisdom on laughter's curative powers, there also seems to be truth to the stereotype that funny people aren't always having much fun. It might feel good to crack others up now and then, but apparently the audience gets the last laugh. — Anonymous

So what is the fallout for dogs of the Lassie myth? As soon as you bestow intelligence and morality, you bestow the responsibility that goes along with them. In other words, if the dog knows it's wrong to destroy furniture yet deliberately and maliciously does it, remembers the wrong he did and feels guilt, it feels like he merits a punishment2, doesn't it? That's just what dogs have been getting - a lot of punishment. We set them up for all kinds of punishment by overestimating their ability to think. Interestingly, it's the "cold" behaviorist model that ends up giving dogs a much better crack at meeting the demands we make of them. The myth gives problems to dogs they cannot solve and then punishes them for failing. And the saddest thing is that the main association most dogs have with that punishment is the presence of their owner. This puts a pretty twisted spin on loooving dogs 'cause they're so smart, doesn't it? — Jean Donaldson

Blake climbed in her passenger seat and pushed his mask up to reveal his face - even with the sun out! Livia kissed him and kissed him and kissed him. When she started her car, she was sure her cheeks would crack from smiling so much. — Debra Anastasia

A revolutionary in every bedroom cannot fail to shake up the status quo. And if it is your wife that is revolting, you can't just split to the suburbs. Feminism, when it truly achieves it's goals, will crack through the most basic structures of our society. — Shulamith Firestone

You're just worried they'll hire a male instructor and he'll be hotter than you."
Jace's eyebrows went up. "Hotter than me?"
"It could happen," Clary said, "You know, theoretically."
"Theoretically the planet could suddenly crack in half, leaving me on one side and you on the other, forever and tragically parted, but I'm not worried about that either. Some things," Jace said, with his customary crooked smile, "are just too unlikely to dwell upon. — Cassandra Clare

I think the other honest attraction was that I just grew up loving watching TV and loving watching film, and there's so many directors and actors that I dreamed of working with, I just really wanted to take a crack at it and see if I could ever work with some of those. — David Schwimmer

In December, at the darkest time of the year, Olenka delivered triplets. Mother-in-law came by and called Benedikt in to come look at the brood. She congratulated him. He lay there, empty and heavy-hearted, waiting for the signal; and there wasn't any. All right then, he'd go take a look.
There were three kids: one appeared to be female, she was tiny and cried. Another seemed to be a boy, but it was hard to tell right off. The third
well, you couldn't figure out what it was
to look at, it was a fuzzy, scary-looking ball. All round-like, but with eyes. They picked it up in their arms to rock it, and started singing: "Bye Baby Bunting, Daddy's gone a-hunting ... " and with a shove it pushed away, jumped on the floor, rolled off, and disappeared into a crack in the floor. They all rushed to catch it, their hands outstretched. They moved stools and benches
but no luck. — Tatyana Tolstaya

It was the most pleasurable thing I've ever done, playing this character, and I just remember feeling so at home and so - I don't know, I was just happy - and it just wasn't ever work! It was like a sandbox for me, and I would crack myself up rehearsing. — Jenna Elfman

You think you're gonna find your soul. Ever since I've known you, you've been thinkin' that someday you're gonna crack and end up like your daddy. And you're been looking for proof that you won't. What you don't realize is this: the looking is the proof. Trust me when I tell you that Billy Dent never had a moment's doubt in his life about what he was and what he was doing. Your doubt is your soul — Barry Lyga

Ever since I was 2 or 3, I loved to perform for people. I would walk up to another table in a restaurant and crack a joke, sing a song, do a dance, or something entertaining, and the 'audience' would almost always smile and laugh. — Maxim Knight

I have attended a number of psychological conferences dealing with this whole problem of the difference between the mystical experience and the psychological crack-up. The difference is that the one who cracks up is drowning in the water in which the mystic swims. — Joseph Campbell

His undies had ridden up into the crack of his narrow ass, of which I was treated to a full view of as he turned and tried to go as quietly as possible up the stairs. — Lili St. Crow

The flies were teaching an advanced seminar in philosophy as they crawled up the crack of my ass — Richard Brautigan

Whereas story is processed in the mind in a straightforward manner, poetry bypasses rational thought and goes straight to the limbic system and lights it up like a brushfire. It's the crack cocaine of the literary world. — Jasper Fforde

Always Believe In Yourself ... If You're Down And Broken For A Reason, Rise Up And Focus ... Remember Strong Lightning Only Happens When Two Heavy Clouds Collide & Crack Each Other ... You Are That Lightning Which Is The Product of The Clash Between Your Purpose & Failure ... — Muhammad Imran Hasan

Cyrus walked straight to the tallest crack of light, a seam between two doors. They were locked, but they were also thin and old, and they bent a little with pressure from his shoulder.

He backed up.

"Try one of Skelton's keys," said Antigone. "Is there a keyhole?"

"Nope." Cyrus threw himself against the doors. Wood popped, but he bounced back. "I can break it."

"You mean a rib? Maybe your shoulder?" Antigone adjusted her grip, propping Horace in front of her.

"There's just one little bolt," said Cyrus. "And it's set in old wood." He paused. What was he hearing? Voices. Shouting. "You hear that?" he asked.

Antigone nodded. "They don't sound happy."

This time, Cyrus used his foot. The wood splintered, and the two doors wobbled open onto a world of emerald and sunlight. — N.D. Wilson

Resurrection of the flesh. Out of nothingness, out of the void, out of white plaster, out of a dense fog, out of a snowy field, out of a sheet of paper there suddenly will appear people, living bodies, they rise up to remain forever, because they can't vanish, disappearing is simply not an option; death has already come and gone. First the contour, outlines, edges. Period, period, comma makes a crooked little face. Cross-out. The man stretches from this crack in the wall to that spot of sun. Stretches from nail to nail. — Mikhail Shishkin

When you were little, what inspired you to feel this way?' Then he paused and asked, 'Looking in the mirror and having it crack in two?'
Instead of clobbering him, I laughed-the kind of laugh that escapes into the air before you can catch it. The kind of chuckle that shows a tiny form of acceptance.
Trevor obviously didn't expect me to find his remark entertaining. He was primed for a fight. We both cracked up and locked eyes. His gaze lingered a little too long, not in a creepy way, but in a way that says I'm not ready to let this moment go. — Ellen Schreiber

Wake up: all of that 'crack in the street' talk?
It's made up, like 'Jack and the Beanstalk.' — Sean Price

Walk down any sidewalk in any city and eventually you'll find a flower growing out of a crack in the concrete, tenaciously grasping for life, barely enough earth for it to clench hold of. This little flower has seeded, sprouted, and blossomed, despite thousands of feet walking over and around it every day. This flower is a survivor, thriving better than if it were in my Aunt Tilda's fucking backyard garden with her fussing over it day and night and giving it all the goddamned care she thought it needed. Yeah, eventually, some careless asshole's gonna trample and kill that flower, but another one's gonna replace it. [...] I'll always believe in you, Raeburn. You just have to find another crack in the sidewalk and blossom. Don't be another Kurt Cobain. Don't give up. People need you. — Pete Conrad

So [Polaroid's Dr. Edwin] Land, at 75, went off to spend the remainder of his life doing pure science, trying to crack the code of color vision. The man is a national treasure. I don't understand why people like that can't be held up as models: This is the most incredible thing to be - not an astronaut, not a football player - but this. — Steve Jobs

The problem with cell phones is that you can't slam them down into a cradle when you hang up. Your only option is to throw them, and if you do, they just skitter across the floor and crack their case. It's not satisfying at all.
I close my eyes and bend down to pick up the pieces. — Holly Black

Headache!" Zeus bellowed. "Bad. bad headache!"
As if to prove his point, the lord of the universe slammed his face into his pancakes, which demolished the pancakes and the plate and put a crack in the table, but did nothing for his headache.
"Aspirin?" Apollo suggested. (he was the god of healing)
"Nice cup og tea?" Hestia suggested
"I could split your skull open," offered Hephaestus, the blacksmith god
"Hephaestus!" Hera cried. "Don't talk to your father that way!"
"What?" Hephaestus demanded "Clearly he's got a problem in there. I could open up the hood and take a look. Might relieve the pressure. Besides, he's immortal. It won't kill him — Rick Riordan

There was scrutiny is Lincoln's eyes as he looked at me. He was studying me. Eyeing me up and down. Taking in my hair, my mouth, my eyes. His gaze fell on the ring pierced through my nose. He stopped at the small leftover drawings illustrated on my wrists from yesterday's English class doodlings--reading me like I was a book that had been on a shelf so long dust embossed the title on the spine. He read me as though he was the first to crack open that cover in over a decade. I felt him blowing off the pages. — Megan Squires

I can't give up. It's a rap thang. And I ain't goin back to the crack game. — Tupac Shakur

I was sick. I guess I was about to crack up thinking about all my good buddies. They were better men than me and they're not coming back. Much less back to the White House, like me. — Ira Hayes

Now see the nasturtiums. The leaves are like tiny green parasols blown inside-out and the flowers are terrifically garish. In every village we pass through, see how they are everywhere, how they fill every gap in every wall, every crack in every path.
The nasturtiums have it figured out, how survival's just a matter of filling in the gaps between sun up and sun down. Boiling kettles, peeling potatoes, laundering towels, buying milk, changing light-bulbs, rooting wet mats of pubic hair out of the shower's plughole. This is the way people survive, by filling one hole at a time for the flightiest of temporary gratifications, over and over and over, until the season's out and they die off anyway, wither back into the wall or path, into their dark crevasse. This is the way life's eaten away, expended by the onerous effort of living itself. — Sara Baume

Saw a science program the other day. Rats were crawling through their own food to get to crack cocaine. The conclusion was that rats would rather starve with food in front of them than give up crack. The conclusion was wrong: rats will do anything to forget they are in a cage ~ John P. McAfee — John P. McAfee

The government will pay certain farmers to not grow corn. Wow. Where's my check? That'd be great. "Hey, what do you do for a living?" "Well, I don't grow corn. Get up at the crack of noon, make sure there's no corn growing. I'm gonna get up early tomorrow. And not plow. You know, we used to not grow tomatoes-but there's more money in not growing corn." — Brian Regan

So many times I've wanted to crack up, standing there stiff while seven women are crawling round my toes fixing hems and the designer's having a freak-out because the denim cuffs are crooked. I'm on the verge of hysteria. — Helena Christensen

Luckily, many ghosts prefer the night time but then those who lived to wake up at the crack of dawn never get the message that ghosts are for the night, or at least the evening! Nearly a non-zombie by the end of the walk. Helps if it's a cold day, or a very sunny one, to wake me up! — L.P. Donnelli

So this, Harriet thought, gazing at her black-clad reflection, was what bearing up looked like. The eyes in the mirror stared at her, somehow, while fixing themselves far away.
Bearing up, then, must be this: the feeling of perfect frozen stillness, so that to raise your hand was a wrenching and unnatural event. It was not being able to sleep or eat, and the small placid tone in which she heard herself decline the food. It was the presentiment that there must be a crack or a hole somewhere at hand down which she was to throw and extinguish herself, since there must surely be something provided to make this bearable. — Jude Morgan

The only negative about doing stand-up is that you're on the road by yourself. When you're on the road with comics we just crack each other up every night going, "Can you believe they're paying us to do this? They're crazy." — Jeff Foxworthy

What about a teakettle? What if the spout opened and closed when the steam came out, so it would become a mouth, and it could whistle pretty melodies, or do Shakespeare, or just crack up with me? I could invent a teakettle that reads in Dad's voice, so I could fall asleep, or maybe a set of kettles that sings the chorus of "Yellow Submarine," which is a song by the Beatles, who I love, because entomology is one of my raisons d'etre, which is a French expression that I know. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Each egg hatched a different way, but a crack at the right time speeded things up. — Anne McCaffrey

You ever notice how sometimes, in the middle of July, right downtown, you'll see a flower poking up through a crack in the asphalt. And you think, What a stupid place to set down roots. It'll get run over, or it'll dry up and blow away. But it hangs on, and it grows, and it blooms. Somehow, against the odds, it finds what it needs and it makes that place better for being there. — Cinda Williams Chima

I ... " He struggled to answer. "When everything was quiet, I went up to the corridor and the curtain in the livingroom was open just a crack ... I could see outside. I watched, only for a few seconds." He had not seen the outside world for twenty-two months.
There was no anger or reproach.
It was Papa who spoke.
How did it look?"
Max lifted his head, with great sorrow and great astonishment. "There were stars," he said. "They burned by eyes. — Markus Zusak

The only other scenario that could explain everything, up to and including your own bizarre apperance, is a convoluted conspiracy theory involving the Russian Mafia and a crack team of plastic surgeons. — Eoin Colfer

The world, with all its impossible variegation and the basic miracle of its existence, draws most mourners out of their grief and back into itself. The homosexual forsythia blooms; the young Irish dancers in Killarney dance, their arms as rigid as shovel handles; secret deals are done involving weapons or office space or crude oil or used cars or drugs; new lovers, believing they will never really have to get up, lie down together; the Large Hadron Collider smashes the Higgs boson into view; snow drapes its white stoles on the bare limbs of winter; the crack of the bat swung by a hefty Dominican pulls a crowd to its feet in Boston; bricks for the new hospital in Phnom Penh are laid in true courses; the single-engine Cessna lands safely in an Ohio alfalfa field during a storm. How can you resist? The true loss in only to the dying, and even the won't feel it when the dying's done. — Daniel Menaker

I learned a very valuable lesson. The hood will sell crack to your mother, watch your little sisters all grown up and try to fuck them, kill your little brothers, send our men to jail, steal our dreams, steal our families, fuck up friendships and do the same to the next generation behind us. And what we fail to realize is no matter how much we love the hood, that bitch will never love us back! — S. Yvonne

Love, she believed, had to come, suddenly, with a great clap of thunder and a lightning flash, a tempest from heaven that falls upon your life, like a devastation, scatters your ideals like leaves and hurls your very soul into the abyss. Little did she know that up on the roof of the house, the rain will form a pool if the gutters are blocked, and there she would have stayed feeling safe inside, until one day she suddenly discovered the crack right down the wall. — Gustave Flaubert

Alec surprised Magnus and the werewolf both by breaking away and lunging at Marcy. Whatever he had been planning, it didn't work: this time the werewolf's swipe caught him full in the chest. Alec went flying into a hot pink wall decorated with gold glitter. He hit a mirror set into the wall and decorated with curling gold fretwork with enough force to crack the glass across.
"Oh, stupid Shadowhunters," Magnus moaned under his breath. But Alec used his own body hitting the wall as leverage, rebounding off the wall and up, catching a sparkling chandelier and swinging, then dropping down as lightly as a leaping cat and crouching to attack again in one smooth movement. "Stupid, sexy Shadowhunters. — Cassandra Clare

Jessica came back into the room. When she saw Myron's face, she stopped and looked a question at him. Myron hung up and told her. She listened. Remembering Esperanza's crack, Myron realized that he had now spent four nights in a row here - a post-breakup world and Olympic record. He worried about that. It wasn't that he didn't like staying here. He did. It wasn't that he feared commitment or any of that other drivel; to the contrary, he craved it. But part of him was still afraid - old wounds that wouldn't heal and all that. Myron — Harlan Coben

U.S. Presedent Barack Sadam Husene Obame sit in the darkened Oval Ofice at 2 a.m. wearing hes traditienel Kenyan roabe.
He take one last bite of the Chicago style deep dish pizza that he has flown to him every day on the Amerecan tax payer's dime and wipe the grease off his mouth with the U.S. consititutien.
He get up and walk to desk, where he keeps the Kenyan black magic crystle ball. Its black glow iluminate his face.
"Eeny, meeny, miney, mo - which basic U.S. freedoms are next to go?" he say aloud to no one and every one at the same time.
Then he flash that trade mark Bary Obame million doller grin as a crack of lightning sound in the distence. — Seinfeld 2000

With the likely nominations of Barack Obama by the Democrats and John McCain by the Republicans, one of these two parties is headed for a 2009 crack-up that could prove as messy as any party civil war in recent history. — Chuck Todd

He was like one of those pictures full of small errors, the kind you could only pick out by searching the image from every angle, and even then, a few always slipped by. On the surface, Eli seemed perfectly normal, but now and then Victor would catch a crack, a sideways glance, a moment when his roommate's face and his words, his look and his meaning, would not line up. Those fleeting slices fascinated Victor. It was like watching two people, one hiding in the other's skin. And their skin was always too dry, on the verge of cracking and showing the color of the thing beneath. — Victoria Schwab

Chamberlain raised his saber, let loose the shout that was the greatest sound he could make, boiling the yell up from his chest: Fix bayonets! Charge! Fix bayonets! Charge! Fix bayonets! Charge! He leaped down from the boulder, still screaming, his voice beginning to to crack and give, and all around him his men were roaring animal screams, and he saw the whole Regiment rising and pouring over the wall and beginning to bound down through the dark bushes, over the dead and dying wounded, hats coming off, hair flying, mouths making sounds, one man firing as he ran, the last bullet, last round. — Michael Shaara

Once public opinion is convinced that the increase in the quantity of money will continue and never come to an end, and that consequently the prices of all commodities will not cease to rise, everybody becomes eager to buy as much as possible and restrict his cash holdings to minimum size ... If the credit expansion is not stopped in time, the boom turns to crack-up boom: the flight into real values begins, and the whole monetary system founders. — Ludwig Von Mises

Hello again, friend of a friend, I knew you when
Our common goal was waiting for the world to end
Now that the truth is just a rule that you can bend
You crack the whip, shape shift and trick the past again
I'll send you my love on a wire
Lift you up, everytime, everyone, ooo, pulls away, ooo
From uou — Metric

Let's say you get a present and open it and it's a fabulous diamond necklace. Initially, you're delirious with happiness, jumping up and down, you're so excited. The next day, the necklace still makes you happy, but less so. After a year, you see the necklace and you think, Oh, that old thing. It's the same for negative emotions. Let's say you get a crack in your windshield and you're really upset. Oh no, my windshield, it's ruined, I can hardly see out of it, this is a tragedy! But you don't have enough money to fix it, so you drive with it. In a month, someone asks you what happened to your windshield, and you say, What do you mean? Because your brain has discounted it. — Maria Semple

But I'm also feeling all that I have in my life, which includes what I have lost, as well as the great unknown of what life might still bring me. And it's all too much. The feelings pile up, threatening to crack my chest wide open. — Gayle Forman

It's offense you maybe can't live with because it opens up a crack inside your thinking, and if you look down into it you see there are evil things down there, and they have little yellow eyes that don't blink, and there's a stink down there in that dark and after a while you think maybe there's a whole other universe where a square moon rises in the sky, and the stars laugh in cold voices, and some of the triangles have four sides, and some have five, and some have five raised to the fifth power of sides. In this universe there might grow roses which sing. Everything leads to everything, he would have told them if he could. Go to your church and listen to your stories about Jesus walking on the water, but if I saw a guy doing that I'd scream and scream and scream. Because it wouldn't look like a miracle to me. It would look like an offense. — Stephen King

Then our eyes meet and we both crack up like we're made of the same air. — Jandy Nelson