The Fall Of Five Quotes & Sayings

I ate breakfast in the kitchen by candle-light, and then drove the five miles to the station through the most glorious October colouring. The sun came up on the way, and the swamp maples and dogwood glowed crimson and orange and the stone walls and cornfields sparkled with hoar frost; the air was keen and clear and full of promise. I knew something was going to happen. — Jean Webster

Altogether forty-five Emperors had claimed the Spear of Destiny as their possession between the coronation in Rome of Charlemagne and the fall of the old German Empire exactly a thousand years later. And what a pagentry it was! THe Spear had passed like the very finger of destiny through the millenium forever creating new patterns of fate which had again and again changed the entire history of Europe ... According to the legend associated with the Spear of Longinus, the claimant to this talisman of power has a choice between the service of two opposing Spirits in the fulfilment of his world historic aims
a Good and an Evil Spirit. — Trevor Ravenscroft

When we were five, they asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up. Our answers were thing like astronaut, president, or in my case ... princess.
When we were ten, they asked again and we answered - rock star, cowboy, or in my case, gold medalist. But now that we've grown up, they want a serious answer. Well, how 'bout this: who the hell knows?!
This isn't the time to make hard and fast decisions, its time to make mistakes. Take the wrong train and get stuck somewhere chill. Fall in love - a lot. Major in philosophy 'cause there's no way to make a career out of that. Change your mind. Then change it again, because nothing is permanent.
So make as many mistakes as you can. That way, someday, when they ask again what we want to be ... we won't have to guess. We'll know.
[from the movie] — Stephenie Meyer

To some people, not caring is supposed to be cool, commenting is more interesting than doing, and everything is judged and then disposed of in, like, five minutes. I'm not interested in those kinds of people. I like the person who commits and goes all in and takes big swings and then maybe fails or looks stupid; who jumps and falls down, rather than the person who points at the person who fell, and laughs. But I do sometimes laugh when people fall down. — Amy Poehler

All right, Adam", I say. "You're gonna help me win this war. — Pittacus Lore

Well, I've seen porn!" Evan defends and Dan just looks at him.
"Okay, captain Pornie, walk me through it," Dan challenges. "I'll be the pizza guy, and Jeff can be the plumber. You can be ... hey, why don't you be the high-powered young executive?"
Evan grins at him with a glint in his eye. "Okay, fine." He laces his fingers together and flexes them in front of him as if he's warming up. He sits back in chair and his eyes focus on the eaves of Jeff's roof then begins.
"The young executive come home after a hard day ...
[five pages of detailed porn]
" ... and all fall asleep together on the executives huge bed. The End." Evan is pretty clearly proud of himself, and Dan really blame him.
After an appreciative silence, Dan says, "Okay, yeah, so maybe there's some merit to the whole threesome thing. — Kate Sherwood

She kept her looks very well and continued, in a rather severe way, to pay attention to her dress. There were moments now when her laugh sounded a little hollow and brittle, the laughter of nerves not of mirth or good spirits. Occasionally in a conversation she seemed to lose track and fall into a self-absorption, to start up overwhelmed by embarrassment and unspoken remorse ... She was pushing thirty-five. But she could still be good company. — Robert Penn Warren

Chapter One of My Life. I walk down the street. There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in.
I am lost. I am helpless. It isn't my fault. It still takes forever to find a way out.
Chapter Two. I walk down the same street. There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I'm in the same place! But it isn't my fault. And it still takes a long time to get out.
Chapter Three. I walk down the same street. There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it there. I still fall in. It's a habit! My eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately.
Chapter Four. I walk down the same street. There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.
Chapter Five. I walk down a different street. — Portia Nelson

In the fall of 1996, I sat inside weekly strategy meetings of conservative activists as part of research for my book, 'Gang of Five,' chronicling the rise of the baby-boomer Right. — Nina Easton

I fall asleep feeling beautiful. Then, in the morning, before I leave the house, I say five things I love about myself, like 'You have really pretty eyes.' That way I can go out into the world with that little bit of extra confidence. It's a feel-good protein shake in my back pocket in case someone messes with me that day. — Jennifer Love Hewitt

... Mrs. Warren allowed her book to fall closed upon her lap, and her attractive face awakened to an expression of agreeable expectation, in itself denoting the existence of interesting and desirable qualities in the husband at the moment inserting his latch-key in the front door preparatory to mounting the stairs and joining her. The man who, after twenty-five years of marriage, can call, by his return to her side, this expression to the countenance of an intelligent woman is, without question or argument, an individual whose life and occupations are as interesting as his character and points of view. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

At this moment she was as natural as she had ever been when she was five years old: she felt that her tears has risen, and it was no use to try to do anything else than let them stay like water on a blue flower or let them fall over her cheeks, even as they would.
That moment of naturalness was the crystallizing feather-touch: it shook flirtation into love. — George Eliot

Certain roles, I just won't invest in. I'll go in and audition, but I might not spend five hours trying to figure out what the character is really about or go so deep into it. I might just learn the lines and go in and try my best because I know it's not safe for me to love the character or to fall in love with the idea of the role. — Madeline Zima

Never mind," Leo said. "I'm pretty sure pi is, uh, 3.1415 blah blah blah. The number goes on forever, but the sphere has only five rings, so that should be enough, if I'm right."
"And if you're not?" Frank asked.
"Well, then, Leo fall down, go boom. Let's find out! — Rick Riordan

I give it as my fixed opinion, that but for our graduated cadets, the war between the United States and Mexico might, and probably would have lasted some four or five years, with, in its first half, more defeats than victories falling to our share; whereas, in less than two campaigns, we conquered a great country and a peace without the loss of a single battle or skirmish. — Winfield Scott

Do you really expect me to fall apart every time another woman throws herself at you? Because, if that's so, I'll be a nervous wreck before the honeymoon's over. Although, if they do it in front of me ... "
He went still. "Did you just propose to me?"
She bristled. "Do you have a problem with that?"
The scoreboard lit up, and he gave the world a high five. "God, I love you. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

In his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the eighteenth-century British historian Edward Gibbon describes the scene of Romans fleeing the city of Nisibis in A.D. 363 after it was handed over to the Persians......Gibbon could have been describing a photograph from the 1994 genocide in Rawanda or the crisis in Darfur, Sudan. He could have been describing any number of forced migrations that have occurred all over the world in the last ten years, even the last five. The picture has not changed much since the fourth century. — Charles London

In her most recent project, she tested 356 children, ages five to ten, who were brought to Monell to determine their "bliss point" for sugar31. The bliss point is the precise amount of sweetness - no more, no less - that makes food and drink most enjoyable. She was finishing up this project in the fall of 2010 when she agreed to show me some of the methods she had developed. Before we got started, I did a little research on the term bliss point itself. Its origins are murky, having some roots in economic theory. In relation to sugar, however, the term appears to have been coined in the 1970s by a Boston mathematician named Joseph Balintfy, who used computer modeling to predict eating behavior. The concept has obsessed the food industry ever since. — Michael Moss

If I fall asleep, it is because I am overloaded. I sleep because one hour with Henry contains five years of my life, and one phrase, one caress answers the expectations of a hundred nights. When I hear him laugh, I say, "I have heard Rabelais.". And I swallow his laughter like bread and wine. — Anais Nin

For months in the fall of 2001, our highways looked like a county fair on wheels. "Look out, Al-Qaeda
patriot on board!" I once saw a guy with five flags tell a guy with four flags to go back to Afghanistan. — Bill Maher

Listen to yourself speak, saying, "The knowledge of God has no practical application." Do you know why all your Christian bookstores are filled up with self-help books, and five ways to do this or that, and six ways to be godly, and 10 ways not to fall? - because people don't know God! And so they have to be given all sorts of trivial little devices of the flesh to keep them walking as sheep ought to walk! "Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame" (1Co 15:34). Why the rampant sinning even among God's people? It is a lack of the knowledge of God! — Paul David Washer

Maybe Artist is hard job. It is not for me to say. But I would be surprised if it was as hard a job as Rock Thrower. Throwing rocks is not so easy. For example, five years ago, one of my shoulders detached from my arm when I was throwing a boulder off a cliff. And two years after that, the other shoulder detached also. I can still throw rocks. But now, when I throw them, I am screaming. Not just once in a while, but constantly. Every time I throw a rock I am screaming, so loud. I do not always realize I am screaming - it is just part of my life. Usually, by sundown, I have no voice left. It is gone, you understand, because I was screaming so much from the pain of throwing rocks. Another thing is that sometimes I fall off the cliff, which is a bad situation. — Simon Rich

The man who eats to live, who is friends with the five powers - earth, water, ether, sun and air - who is a servant of God, the Creator of all these, ought not to fall ill. — Mahatma Gandhi

So this was love! I had escaped it for all the years I had roamed the five continents and their encircling seas; in spite of beautiful women and urging opportunity; in spite of a half-desire for love and a constant search for my ideal, it had remained for me to fall furiously and hopelessly in love with a creature from another world, of a species similar possibly, yet not identical with mine. — Edgar Rice Burroughs

I could hear a gaggle of Americans, couples, laughing, saying their loud goodbyes as they parted for their respective rooms: old college friends, jobs in the financial sector, five-plus years of corporate law and Fiona entering the first grade in the fall, all's well in Oaklandia, well goodnight then, God we love you guys, a life I might have had myself except I didn't want it. — Donna Tartt

The captive had broken off the stalagmite, and upon the stump had placed a stone, wherein he had scooped a shallow hollow to catch the precious drop that fell once in every three minutes with the dreary regularity of a clock- tick
a dessertspoonful once in four and twenty hours. That drop was falling when the Pyramids were new; when Troy fell; when the foundations of Rome were laid when Christ was crucified; when the Conqueror created the British empire; when Columbus sailed; when the massacre at Lexington was "news." It is falling now; it will still be falling when all these things shall have sunk down the afternoon of history, and the twilight of tradition, and been swallowed up in the thick night of oblivion. Has everything a purpose and a mission? Did this drop fall patiently during five thousand years to be ready for this flitting human insect's need? — Mark Twain

I love a lots of things about being a writer! The thrill of seeing characters come to life, and the satisfaction as a story starts to fall into place. Independence not being answerable to anyone but myself or tied to a nine-to-five routine is very important to me, too. And of course, it's great being a writer when it comes to parties! In my experience, most people are fascinated by the process of writing and the whole idea of romantic fiction, even if they have never read any. — Jessica Hart

He studied the composition of food-stuffs, and knew exactly how many proteids and carbohydrates his body needed; and by scientific chewing he said that he tripled the value of all he ate, so that it cost him eleven cents a day. About the first of July he would leave Chicago for his vacation, on foot; and when he struck the harvest fields he would set to work for two dollars and a half a day, and come home when he had another year's supply - a hundred and twenty-five dollars. That was the nearest approach to independence a man could make "under capitalism," he explained; he would never marry, for no sane man would allow himself to fall in love until after the revolution. — Upton Sinclair

Experiencing this pain in my muscles and aching and going on and on is my challenge. The last three or four reps is what makes the muscles grow. This area of pain divides a champion from someone who is not a champion. That's what most people lack, having the guts to go on and just say they'll go through the pain no matter what happens. I have no fear of fainting. I do squats until I fall over and pass out. So what? It's not going to kill me. I wake up five minutes later and I'm OK. A lot of other athletes are afraid of this. So they don't pass out. They don't go on. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

I get scared when I approach teachers and tell them that I'll probably be able to attend only half the classes, .. I'm scared that they're going to drop me. In the fall of 2002 I signed up for five classes and had to drop three of them. — Amanda Beard

It's time for bed. And here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to get in bed, and I don't have anyone to sleep with now, so what I do is I sleep with my books. And I know that's kind of weird and solitary and pathetic. But if you think about it, it's very cozy. Over a period of four, five, six, seven, nine, twenty nights of sleeping, you've taken all these books to bed with you, and you fall asleep, and the books are there.
***
Some of the books are thick, and some are thin, some of the books are in hardcover and some in paperback. Sometimes they get rolled up with the pillows and the blankets. And I never make the bed. So it's like a stew of books. The bed is the liquid medium. It's a Campbell's Chunky Soup of books. The bed you eat with a fork. — Nicholson Baker

Staying interested in a match is a lot harder than many people think. Throughout my career, I've always had trouble in the early rounds of a tournament mainly because it was hard for me to psychologically get up until I got to the quarters or the semis. What happened a lot of times is that I would fall behind early, maybe even lose the first couple of sets in a five-set match and then begin to concentrate. Still it wasn't something I could control from the start. — Rod Laver

Fucking you all night is part of the Boyfriend Experience. If you want me to fuck you only once and then fall asleep five seconds after, that's the Husband Experience. — Tiffany Reisz

With the superciliousness of extreme youth, I put thirty-five as the utmost limit at which a man might fall in love without making a fool of himself. — W. Somerset Maugham

The most devoted complete a 25-mile run every day for a thousand consecutive days. They wear straw sandals and carry a knife at their waist, to be used to kill themselves should they fail to continue. After five years, they conduct a nine-day fast, after which their senses are heightened to such a degree that they can hear ash fall from an incense stick. In the seventh year of their pilgrimage, the monks undertake the "Great Marathon" of 52.5 miles a day every day for a year. — Scott Jurek

I began the process of recording myself seriously in the fall of 1999. If I could finish an album of my own music, I would. Five years later I am happy to say I have. — Jack Irons

He couldn't be more than twenty-five, but he obviously lived enough to have things to regret. He looked like he'd taken a long fall a short time ago. Pieces of the man he'd been were jumbled up with the new guy, the lost soul. — Jonathan Lethem

An accident which should have caused the death of only five hundred instead of five thousand persons, but on the same day and in public, as the outcome of an accident appealing strongly to the eye, by the fall, for instance, of the Eiffel Tower, would have produced, on the contrary, an immense impression on the imagination of the crowd. — Gustave Le Bon

There's so many good books, but I'm always like, "I'm sorry, I have five more Faulkners to read, I can't be bothered." Most of the time when you try, you fall on the wrong one. — Lou Doillon

On January 17, 1991 and for the 43 days that followed, I watched CNN's live coverage of SCUD missiles and bombs fall over Baghdad like rain; then the 12 ½ years of unjust sanctions that killed approximately a million Iraqis, half of which were children under the age of five; then an unjust attack in 2003 that opened the borders to terrorists from all over the world and reduced the cradle of civilization to piles of rubble. The gov. asked us to support their plan or else be considered anti-American and undemocratic and they ask of us the same today, 25 years later, even though history proved they were pro-profit not pro-life. — Weam Namou

Begin with "I remember." Write lots of small memories. If you fall into one large memory, write that. Just keep going. Don't be concerned if the memory happened five seconds ago or five years ago. — Natalie Goldberg

In the summer I mowed their lawns for five dollars a week; in the winter I shovelled their walks for cups of hot chocolate; and in the fall I raked their leaves for the pure thrill of watching them burn. — Dan Wells

MAGGIE, in pain: That's what I mean; I'm a joke to most people.
QUENTIN: No, it's that you say what you mean, Maggie. You don't seem to be upholding anything, you're not - ashamed of what you are.
MAGGIE: W-what do you mean, of what I am?
... But you didn't, did you?
He turns to her in agony.
Laugh at me?
QUENTIN: No. He suddenly stands and cries out to Listener. Fraud! From the first five minutes! ... Because! I should have agreed she was a joke, a beautiful piece, trying to take herself seriously! Why did I lie to her, play this cheap benefactor, this - Listens, and now unwillingly he turns back to her.
MAGGIE: Like when you told me to fix where my dress was torn? You wanted me to be - proud of myself. Didn't you? — Arthur Miller

As soon as you meet him [james Corden], within five minutes you'll want to sleep with him. He presented me with my award for Comedy Actress of the Year at the Glamour Awards and he said such lovely things. He's so charming and he listens to you and he's funny and sensitive and adorable. I can totally see why all the women fall for him. — Joanna Page

This custom is known as the "Frog Dropping" since every year on the first Wednesday before Lent four (or sometimes five) frogs are dropped from the tower of the church of St. Eustachius. They fall onto the pavement beneath, whereupon their remains are examined by the oldest accredited virgin in the town who acquires the honorific title of "Frog Maiden" therefrom. (And in all conscience, she often looks not unlike a frog.) The Frog Maiden is said to be able to foretell the future from these remains and if any spectator is splashed by the blood of the fallen frogs it is considered unusually lucky. — Anonymous

To live is to hold your child, your own flesh, your very blood, in your arms. To see her smile and wrap five tiny fingers around just one of yours. To live is to hold your wife close to you as you lie in bed and listen to her breathe -- to fall asleep, one against the other, fitted as if you were made for each other, and then awaked in the dawn when she turns to you and whispers your name. To live is to walk your land, knowing every tree and footpath and foxhole, and come home to the smell of a pot of stew, boiling over the fire. Home, wife, children. That is what it is to live. — N. Gemini Sasson

Her other paramour was a student at the UASD
one of those City College types who's been in school eleven years and is always five credits shy of a degree. Students today don't mean na; but in Latin America whipped into a frenzy by the fall of Arbenz, by the stoning of Nixon, by the Guerillas of the Sierra Madre, by the endless cynical maneuverings of the Yankee Pig Dogs
in a Latin America already a year and a half into the Decade of Guerilla
a student was something else altogether, an agent for change, a quantum string in the staid Newtonian universe. Such a student was Arquimedes. He also listened to the shortwave, but not for Dodgers scores; what he risked his life for was the news leaking out of Havana, news of the future. Arquemides was, therefore, a student, the son of a Zapatero and a midwife, a tirapiedra and a quemagoma for life. Being a student wasn't a joke, not with Trujillo and Johnny Abbes scooping up everybody following the foiled Cuban Invasion of 1959. — Junot Diaz

My grandmother caught me climbing the highest tree in her yard, the one we were all forbidden to attempt. All five feet of her stood tall as she tilted her head back and squinted up at me. "Well, don't stop now," she said. "If you're going to fall no use doing it from the halfway point. Keep climbing and let's see just how high you can go. — Toni Sorenson

I remember exiting the birth canal and suddenly I was in a film. But you are never really in charge of that. The movie came out about five or six months ago in America. It was Miramax in the States and Disney here [fakes falling asleep]. What happened. I love working for Disney, not Walt specifically because he couldn't be more dead, but the company is fantastic — Ryan Reynolds

Trained hawks have a peculiar ability to conjure history because they are in a sense immortal. While individual hawks of different species die, the species themselves remain unchanged. There are no breed or varieties, because hawks were never domesticated. The birds we fly today are identical to those of five thousand years ago. Civilisations rise and fall, but hawks stay the same. This gives falconry birds the ability to feel like relics from the distant past. You take a hawk onto your fist. You imagine the falconer of the past doing the same. It is hard not to feel it is the same hawk. — Helen Macdonald

If we don't accept any common beliefs, we can't exist in spacetime. But when we don't believe in age, at least we don't have to die because our numbers change. [ ... ] When you don't believe in birthdays, the idea of aging turns a little foreign to you. You don't fall into trauma over your sixteenth birthday or your thirtieth or the big Five-Oh or the deadly Century. You measure your life by what you learn, not by counting how many calendars you've seen. If you're going to have trauma, better it be the shock of discovering the fundamental principle of the universe that some date predictable as next July. — Richard Bach

I saw the Fall of Troy! World War Five! I was pushing boxes at the Boston Tea Party! Now I'm gonna die in a dungeon ... [disgustedly] in Cardiff! — Russell T. Davies

A far cicada rings high and clear over the river's heavy wash. Morning glory, a lone dandelion, cassia, orchids. So far from the nearest sea, I am taken aback by the sight of a purple land crab, like a relict of the ancient days when the Indian subcontinent, adrift on the earth's mantle, moved northward to collide with the Asian landmass, driving these marine rocks, inch by inch, five miles into the skies. The rise of the Himalaya, begun in the Eocene, some fifty million years ago, is still continuing: an earthquake in 1959 caused mountains to fall into the rivers and changed the course of the great Brahmaputra, which comes down out of Tibet through northeastern India to join the Ganges near its delta at the Bay of Bengal. — Peter Matthiessen

I have graded my separate works from A to D. The grades I hand out to myself do not place me in literary history. I am comparing myself with myself. Thus can I give myself an A-plus for Cat's Cradle, while knowing that there was a writer named William Shakespeare. The report card is chronological, so you can plot my rise and fall on graph paper, if you like:
Player Piano B
The Sirens of Titan A
Mother Night A
Cat's Cradle A-plus
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater A
Slaughterhouse-Five A-plus
Welcome to the Monkey House B-minus
Happy Birthday, Wanda June D
Breakfast of Champions C
Wampeters, Foma & Grandfalloons C
Slapstick D
Jailbird A
Palm Sunday C — Kurt Vonnegut

Sometimes it seem like to tell the truth today is to run the risk of being killed. But if I fall, I'll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I'm not backing off. — Fannie Lou Hamer

For the first four, nearly five, years of their lives, I'd had complete understanding of my sons' brains. Every animal Cap identified - I knew where he'd learned it. Every food Leo liked - I knew when he'd first tasted it. Every word they used came from me or a book we'd read together. Even as they started to have their own thoughts and ideas - "I'm a doggie, and you're the mommy doggie, and we're going to fall in the mud" - I could source the books and experiences they were mixing and matching. — Hilary Liftin

I want to know what your five-dollar wish was for."
"Is that all?" He smiled beneath her exploring fingertips. "I wished you would find someone who wanted you as much as I did. But I knew it wouldn't come true."
The candlelight slid over Daisy's delicate features as she raised her head to look at him. "Why not?"
"Because I knew no one could ever want you as much as I do."
Daisy levered herself farther over him until her hair tumbled in a dark curtain around them both.
"What was your wish?" Matthew asked, combing his fingers through the fall of shimmering hair.
"That I could find the right man to marry." Her tender smile stopped his heart. "And then you appeared. — Lisa Kleypas

Tom," said Douglas, "just promise me one thing, okay?"
"It's a promise. What?"
"You may be my brother and maybe I hate you sometimes, but stick around, all right?"
"You mean you'll let me follow you and the older guys when you go on hikes?"
"Well ... sure ... even that. What I mean is, don't go away, huh? Don't let any cars run over you or fall of a cliff."
"I should say not! Whatta you think I am, anyway?"
"'Cause if worst comes to worst, and both of us are real old
say forty or forty-five some day
we can own a gold mine out West and sit there smoking corn silk and growing bears."
"Growing beards! Boy!"
"Like I say, you stick around and don't let nothing happen."
"You can depend on me," said Tom.
"It's not you I worry about," said Douglas. "It's the way God runs the world."
Tom thought about this for a moment.
"He's all right, Doug," said Tom. "He tries. — Ray Bradbury

Romance is the truth of imagination and boyhood. Homer's horses clear the world at a bound. The child's eye needs no horizon to its prospect. The oriental tale is not too vast. Pearls dropping from trees are only falling leaves in autumn. The palace that grew up in a night merely awakens a wish to live in it. The impossibilities of fifty years are the commonplaces of five. — Robert Aris Willmott

I want to be remembered for the good things - for winning the Champions League, for winning five of the first six trophies at Barcelona. I could win another Champions League and I want to go on making history. It goes back to the feeling of more responsibility at Liverpool. I felt I had to suffer more to not be criticised but here the responsibility falls on others too and I can enjoy it more. — Luis Suarez

Twenty-five years now and I still love to watch my wife sleep. I'm fascinated by the way the unconscious self (the deeper self) rises when consciousness falls away and often expresses itself in the face of a sleeper. — David Bottoms

Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home. — Stephen King

Eighty-five per cent of the crowd is going to fall in love with me - they're going to feel it, wow. But fifteen per cent are going to think, 'This guy is obnoxious.' I spend enormous time with them - every negative review of 'Crush It!' on Amazon has a response from me - and I can probably bring back ten of the fifteen. — Gary Vaynerchuk

You've got to be fucking kidding me!" The words are out of my mouth before I can put my brain into gear.

He must have felt the pain from five pairs of eyes burning straight into the side of his head. Red hot, radioactive beams buzzing onto his temple as he quickly turns his attention to the group of people staring at him. Then his eyes fall on me. Yet again, I melt on the spot at the chocolate pools looking at me. — A.J. Walters

In the initial stages of my journey, I was trying to travel too fast by horse by sticking to a 'five days on and two off' schedule. On the steppe, time is not measured by days, weeks or hours but the fall of the seasons and condition of the animals. — Tim Cope

On present-day Earth we have the most Christ-like nation in human history, a civilization built on loving kindness and demilitarization. They are being wiped off the face of their homeland. Well, at least the Chinese government isn't blaming Christ or Buddha for their actions against Tibet! But many savage pillagers throughout the past two thousand years have, and the Romans of a thousand years ago fall into that category. Within five hundred years they erased nearly all the nature-based, matriarchal tribes in what we now know as Europe. The invaders falsified history in order to justify their greed. Harmless facts and beautiful rituals were twisted to appear Satanic. Love of the environment and its animals and plants, love of healing modalities that modern day health professionals are now searching frantically to recover, were spin-doctored into demented superstition and turned outlaw. — Doug "Ten" Rose

Seven million German dead, including the five hundred thousand killed by the Allied bombing campaign. The sixty million dead overall of the Second World War, including eleven million murdered in the Holocaust. The sixteen million of the First World War, over four million in Vietnam, forty million to the Mongol conquests, three and a half million to the Hundred Years War, the fall of Rome took seven million, the Napoleonic Wars took four million, twenty million to the Taiping Rebellion. And so on and so on and so on, all the way back to — Kate Atkinson

Long, long ago, (said the voice), five hundred years ago or more, on a winter's day at twilight, a young man entered the Church with a young girl with ivy leaves in her hair. There was no one else there but the stones. No one to see him strangle her but the stones. He let her fall dead upon the stones and no one saw but the stones. He was never punished for his sin because there were no witnesses but the stones. The years went by and whenever the man entered the Church and stood among the congregation the stones cried out that this was the man who had murdered the girl with the ivy leaves wound into her hair, but no one ever heard us. But it is not too late! We know where he is buried! In the corner of the south transept! Quick! Quick! Fetch picks! Fetch shovels! Pull up the paving stones. Dig up his bones! Let them be smashed with the shovel! Dash his skull against the pillars and break it! Let the stones have vengeance too! It is not too late! It is not too late! — Susanna Clarke

Card five hundred and thirty-four," repeated Artemis. "Of a series of six hundred standard inkblot cards. I memorized them during our sessions. You don't even shuffle."
Argon checked the number on the back of the card: 534. Of course. "Knowing the number doesn't answer the question. What do you see?"
Artemis allowed his lip to wobble. "I see an ax dripping with blood. Also a scared child, and an elf clothed in the skin of a troll."
"Really?" Argon was interested now.
"No. Not really. I see a secure building, perhaps a family home, with four windows. A trustworthy pet, and a pathway leading from the door into the distance. I think, if you check your manual, you will find that these answers fall inside healthy parameters."
Argon did not need to check. The Mud Boy was right, as usual. — Eoin Colfer

Forty-five minutes later, Benedict was slouching in his chair, his eyes glazed. Every now and then he had to stop and make sure his mouth wasn't hanging open.
His mother's conversation was that boring.
The young lady she had wanted to discuss with him had actually turned out to be seven young ladies, each of which she assured him was better than the last.
Benedict thought he might go mad. Right here in his mother's sitting room he was going to go stark, raving mad. He'd suddenly pop out of his chair, fall to the floor in a frenzy his arms and legs waving, mouth frothing-
"Benedict, are you even listening to me?"
He looked up and blinked. Damn. Now he would have to focus on his mother's list of possible brides. The prospect of losing his sanity had been infinitely more appealing. — Julia Quinn

There must be some definite cause why, whenever snow begins to fall, its initial formation invariably displays the shape of a six-cornered starlet. For if it happens by chance, why do they not fall just as well with five corners or with seven? . . . Who carved the nucleus, before it fell, into six horns of ice? - From "On the Six-Cornered Snowflake," by Johannes Kepler, 1610 — Anthony Doerr

Move along," Hines said. "Last room down."
I spotted a fish tank halfway down the aisle. Dug into my pocket.
"Hi," I whispered. "Distraction in five. Four. Three ... "
I broke off as we neared the tank.
Hi spun. "Yo, warden. When do we eat around here? I'm hypoglycemic, plus I've got a hernia. And rabies simplex D. Basically, I need a ton of pills or my arms will fall off."
"Boy, you're on my last nerve."
As Hines glared at Hiram, I palmed the flash drive and dumped it into the fish tank. The yellow-and-black rectangle tumbled to the bottom.
So long, friend. Let's hope Shelton's email went through.
"It's a cultural thing," Hi was saying. "I think you're being very insensitive."
Hines snorted. "Do you want me to cuff you?"
"Kinda."
"Hi." I nodded. — Kathy Reichs

Occasionally we glimpse the South Rim, four or five thousand feet above. From the rims the canyon seems oceanic; at the surface of the river the feeling is intimate. To someone up there with binoculars we seem utterly remote down here. It is this know dimension if distance and time and the perplexing question posed by the canyon itself- What is consequential? (in one's life, in the life of human beings, in the life of a planet)- that reverberate constantly, and make the human inclination to judge (another person, another kind of thought) seem so eerie ... Two kinds of time pass here: sitting at the edge of a sun-warmed pool watching blue dragonflies and black tadpoles. And the rapids: down the glassy-smooth tongue into a yawing trench, climb a ten-foot wall of standing water and fall into boiling, ferocious hydraulics ... — Barry Lopez

We started filming in 1993 which was only four years after the fall of communism. The difference in Budapest over the last five years has been remarkable. — Derek Jacobi

Comes again the longing, the desire that has no name. Is it for Mrs. Prouty, for a drink, for both: for a party, for youth, for the good times, for dear good drinking and fighting comrades, for football-game girls in the fall with faces like flowers? Comes the longing and it has to do with being fifteen and fifty and with the winter sun striking down into a brick-yard and on clapboard walls rounded off with old hard blistered paint and across a doorsill onto linoleum. Desire has a smell: of cold linoleum and gas heat and the sour piebald bark of crepe myrtle. A good-humored thirty-five-year-old lady takes the air in a back lot in a small town. — Walker Percy

Movies principally require the best of everybody, all at the same time, being the best they can be. Not just like five people being the best they've ever been, and 10 people not being the best they could be. It's like if everybody is either doing their greatest work, or the whole house of cards falls apart. — Steven Spielberg

I had a lot of things I wanted to do ... I want to be a teacher ... I also want to be an astronaut ... and also make my own cake shop ... I want to go to the sweets bakery and say "I want one of everything", ohhhh I wish I could live life five times over ... Then I'd be born in five different places, and I'd stuff myself with different food from around the world ... I'd live five different lives with five different occupations ... and then, for those five times ... I'd fall in love with the same person ... — Tite Kubo

Its always important to fall back on your instincts and core beliefs and that was pretty hard for me to do but trusting in my self the way I trusted that if I were to sit at a piano for two hours and I was going learn something, that trust I'd put in myself really helped me get through it. For five to six months I just wrote songs and believed they would turn out to be things I could be proud of and be happy. — James Vincent McMorrow

It's possible, and I stress possible, that such a moment may never come: you may not fall in love, you may not be able to or you may not wish to give your whole life to anyone, and, like me, you may turn forty-five one day and realize that you're no longer young and you have never found a choir of cupids with lyres or a bed of white roses leading to the altar. The only revenge left for you then will be to steal from life the pleasure of firm and passionate flesh - a pleasure that evaporates faster than good intentions and is the nearest thing to heaven you will find in this stinking world where everything decays, beginning with beauty and ending with memory. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I'm one of those passengers who arrives at the airport five or six hours early so I can throw back a few drinks and muster up the courage to board the plane. Apparently I'm not alone because I've never been in an empty airport bar. I don't care what time you get there. Even at 8:00 a.m. you have to fight your way to the bar. At that hour, everyone drinks Bloody Marys so no one can tell it's booze- at least until they fall off their chair. — Bob Newhart

I don't know if I'd call it a crush," he finally said. "It's more like, I haven't been able to stop thinking about you for the past five days. When I'm in a band meeting ... " He kissed her eyebrow. "When I'm onstage." He kissed the bridge of her nose. "When I'm trying to bloody fall asleep at night, that's the worst. And the best. — Ophelia London

You must acquire the trick of ignoring those who do not like you. In my experience, those who do not like you fall into two categories: the stupid, and the envious. The stupid will like you in five years time, the envious never. — Stephen Jeffreys

In places, the drop was just a little ripple - a fall of some five feet or so. But in others, majestic waterfalls plunged fifty feet or more before pounding onto the next stone platform. It looked like a man-made effect, for the various split streams and waterfalls eventually ran back together into the river, which flowed away from the city toward distant Elendel. — Brandon Sanderson

He would not chance arrest by crawling into a corner of one of the old houses on Lower Broadway where the cops swept through periodically with their mindless net. What difference did it make whether four or six or eight lost men slept under a roof and out of the wind in a house with broken stairs and holes in the floors you could fall through to death, a house that for five or maybe ten years had been inhabited only by pigeons? What difference? — William Kennedy

But the events that transpired on those various dates did not throw the city of Moscow into upheaval. When the page was torn from the calendar, the bedroom windows did not suddenly shine with the light of a million electric lamps; that Fatherly gaze did not suddenly hang over every desk and appear in every dream; nor did the drivers of a hundred Black Marias turn the keys in their ignitions and fan out into the shadowy streets. For the launch of the First Five-Year Plan, Bukharin's fall from grace, and the expansion of the Criminal Code to allow the arrest of anyone even countenancing dissension, these were only tidings, omens, underpinnings. And it would be a decade before their effects were fully felt. No. — Amor Towles

Another five minutes, thought Olivia, and shut her eyes. Not to fall asleep again; but to go back as it were and do the thing gradually---detach oneself softly, float up serenely from the clinging delectable fringes. Oh, heavenly sleep! Why must one cast it from one, all unprepared, unwilling? Caught out again by Kate in the very act! You're not trying , you could wake up if you wanted to: that was their attitude. And regularly one began the day convicted of inferiority, of a sluggish voluptuous nature, seriously lacking in will-power. — Rosamond Lehmann

At five-thirty the rain began to fall in great, heavy drops which bounced off the pavement before they spread out into black spots. At the same time thunder rumbled from the direction of Charenton and an eddy of wind lifted the dust, carried away the hats of passers-by who took to their heels and who, after a few confused moments, were all in the shelter of doorways or under the awnings of cafe terraces.
Street pedlars of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine scurried about with an apron or a sack over their heads, pushing their carts as they tried to run. Rivulets already began to flow along the two sides of the street, the gutters sang, and on every floor you could see people hurriedly closing their windows. — Georges Simenon

Initially, suspended headfirst, thousands of feet above the ground, restrained from falling only by a seat belt, I was paralyzed by terror. My hands and arms reflexively braced against the sides of the cockpit, as if holding on would hold me in. Every muscle in my body was tensed, vibrating, and there was a rushing feeling, almost like a noise, going up and down the back of my skull. Yet I didn't fall out of the plane. The seat belt attached in five places and kept me pinioned, rock-solid, in my seat. My eyes told me that nothing was keeping me from plummeting to my death, but with experience, I started to be able to override that sensation with reason: I was actually just fine, I wasn't going to fall out of the plane. Eventually the fear that I might faded. — Chris Hadfield

The average person's short-term memory can hold only five to seven bits of data at any one moment. If you put more items in, others fall out. The older you are, the more you have crammed into those memory circuits. Twenty-five-year-olds can remember things because they still have empty space. Some of us take our children to the supermarket in the hope they will remember why we are there. — Jennifer James

Sometimes you walk past a pretty girl on the street there's something beyond beauty in her face, something warm and smart and inviting, and in the three seconds you have to look at her, you actually fall in love, and in those moments, you can actually know the taste of her kiss, the feel of her skin against yours, the sound of her laugh, how she'll look at you and make you whole. And then she's gone, and in the five seconds afterwards, you mourn her loss with more sadness than you'll ever admit to. — Jonathan Tropper

A man of forty-five can consider himself still young till the moment comes when he realises that he has children old enough to fall in love. — Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa

Sadhana The simplest thing that you can do to change the health and fundamental structure of your body is to treat the five elements with devotion and respect. Just try this. Every time you are consciously in touch with any of the elements (which you are every moment of your life), just make a conscious attempt to refer to it in terms of whatever you consider to be the ultimate or the loftiest ideal in your life, whether it is Shiva, Rama, Krishna, God, Allah (or even Marx!). You are a psychological being right now, and your mind is full of hierarchy. This process will settle the hierarchy. After some time, the word can fall away. But you instantly see the change as the number of truly conscious moments in your life increases. The air that you breathe, the food that you eat, the water that you drink, the land that you walk upon, and the very space that holds you - every one of them offers you a divine possibility. — Sadhguru

We cannot expect to be in control of the circumstances in our lives when we cannot control our minds for five minutes. Meditation is the daily minimum requirement that will prevent us from breaking down and falling apart at the most inopportune moments. It is the art of listening. It is a practice which enables us to tune in and fine-tune the key areas of our lives: the mind and the spirit. — Iyanla Vanzant

I always feel like I'm in the five- to 10-pound struggle, but my life is so busy. I'm just not that concerned, really. I'm normal and I'm perfectly happy being that way. Some weeks I'm like, 'Man, my clothes are fitting so good,' and then some weeks, I'm, like, 'I need to cut back on a few things,' but that's it. I don't fall into the trap of having to be 110 pounds. — Hilary Duff

Then a soft air, a simple melody, rose to the ears of the suddenly hushed court; and for me, it was May Day again, and I was no longer cold, for the sun burned bright and the grass smelled of its sour-sweet bruisings and an old man fashioned a ballad for the Nut-Brown maid, who would ever be true to her lover. I leaned towards the brightness and, in an abandonment of joy and because there was none to see, tore off my henin and let my nut-brown hair fall to my knees. For I would be a child again, for five minutes, and remember the time when men stopped to gaze at me, with my chaplet of flowers crowning that at which they all marvelled, and longed to touch and stroke and possess. — Rosemary Hawley Jarman

Curious, I asked, "Why do I scare you so much?"

"You don't scare me," she responded immediately, sounding defensive.

"Then why are your hands shaking?"

Jennifer let the spoon fall into the batter bowl and leaned against the counter, her eyes lifting for the briefest of seconds. "You don't scare me, I'm just . . . I'm just nervous."

"Why're you nervous?"

"Because . . . because . . . because you're dangerous. And I have a hard time believing your revenge plan involved anything as benign as a male stripper."

"Make no mistake, George is not benign. He is an eighty-five-year-old committed professional and brings his gun. Well, he brings both his guns. — Penny Reid

In five hundred years' time, to the historian writing the Decline and Fall of the British Empire, this little episode would not exist. There will be plenty of other causes. You and me and poor Jones will not even figure in a footnote. It will be all economics, politics, battles. — Graham Greene

Have you been infected with the toxin of denial? Here are the top five signs to help you find out: If you think you are above certain things happening to you, you are in denial. Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall. PROVERBS 16:18 If you think you have the power to plan your own future, you are in denial. We can make our own plans, but the LORD gives the right answer. PROVERBS 16:1 If you think you are the only one who can get it right, you are in denial. People may be pure in their own eyes, but the LORD examines their motives. PROVERBS 16:2 If you think you are never wrong and it's always someone else's fault, you are in denial. Pride ends in humiliation, while humility brings honor. PROVERBS 29:23 If you have a rebuttal to anyone and everything, you are in denial. Too much talk leads to sin. — Kasey Van Norman

Fifty-five thousand, five hundred and seventy-three dead from Bomber Command. Seven million German dead, including the five hundred thousand killed by the Allied bombing campaign. The sixty million dead overall of the Second World War, including eleven million murdered in the Holocaust. The sixteen million of the First World War, over four million in Vietnam, forty million to the Mongol conquests, three and a half million to the Hundred Years War, the fall of Rome took seven million, the Napoleonic Wars took four million, twenty million to the Taiping Rebellion. And so on and so on and so on, all the way back to the Garden when Cain killed Abel. — Kate Atkinson

Most of us fall in love with someone's persona and spend the next three to five years discovering who that person really is. If you can stay connected through that process of raw vulnerability, I think you have a shot at the prize of knowing and accepting another human being for who and what they really are after years of highs and lows. — Jennifer Aniston