The Thing On The Doorstep Quotes & Sayings

Vodou says, there's God, sure, Gran Met, but He's big, too big and too far away to worry Himself if your ass is poor, or you can't get laid. Come on, man, you know how this works, it's street religion, came out of a dirt-poor place a million years ago. Vodou's like the street. Some duster chops out your sister, you don't go camp on the Yakuza's doorstep, do you? No way. You go to somebody, though, who can get the thing done. — William Gibson

My mother was known as the 'bird lady' of the neighborhood. Anything injured, or any unusual creature somebody found, they would always come to our doorstep. — Sylvia Earle

The Holocaust happened in Europe, and that's important to how it is viewed. Had Europeans done such a thing in the far corners of the earth, rather than on their own doorstep, it might not be mentioned in the history books. — Jamaica Kincaid

We read the Golden Rule and judge it to be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impulses. And then we come across another of God's teachings on morality: if a man discovers on his wedding night that his bride is not a virgin, he must stone her to death on her father's doorstep (Deuteronomy 22:13-21). — Sam Harris

Solitude is one thing and being alone is another. Solitude can be isolation, an escape, an unwanted thing; but to be alone without the burden of life, with that utter freedom in which time/thought has never been, is to be with the universe. In solitude there is despairing loneliness, a sense of being abandoned, lost, craving for some kind of relationship, like a ship lost at sea. All our daily activity leads to this isolation, with its endless conflicts and miseries, and rare joys thrown in. This isolation is corruption, manifested in politics, in business and of course in organized religions. Corruption exists in the very high places and on the very doorstep. To be tied is corruption; any form of attachment leads to it, whether it be to a belief, faith, ideal, experience, or any conclusion. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Even his highly emotional Italian mother didn't believe that true love could blossom overnight. Like his brothers and sisters-in-law, she wanted nothing more for him than to marry and start a family, but if he showed up at her doorstep and said that he'd met someone two days ago and knew she was the one for him, his mother would smack him with a broom, curse in Italian, and drag him to church, sure that he had some serious sins that needed confessing. — Nicholas Sparks

The federal air marshal, the passengers, the flight crew, and the pilots are truly the last line of defense. American public spaces and schools need the same approach. Let's cut the feel-good politics and recognize that by the time someone with dangerous plans reaches your doorstep, it's too late to ponder root causes of antisocial behavior - it's time to act! All of the thinking should have been done beforehand. And the level of commitment to stop grotesque violence in its tracks - stone cold dead - has to exceed theirs if protecting the principal is going to succeed. — Gary J. Byrne

The thing I didn't see back then is that people can be destroyed by goodness. Damage can be done by hope. If people aren't ready for hope, it's a cruel trick to put it on their doorstep. — Barbara Hall

Voodou isn't like that. It isn't concerned with notions of salvation and transcendence. What it's about is getting things done. You follow me? In out system, there are many gods, spirits. Part of one big family, with all the virtues, all the vices. There's a ritual tradition of communal manifestation, understand? Voodou says, there's a God, sure, Gran Met, but He's big, too big and too far away to worry Himself if your ass is poor, or you can't get laid. Come on, man, you know how this works, it's street religion, came out of dirt poor places a million years ago. Voodou's like the street. Some duster chops out your sister, you don't go camp on the Yakuza's doorstep, do you? No way. You go to somebody, though, who can get the thing done. Right? — William Gibson

The invasion of Iraq turned the region into a cauldron. And when the new American president decided the time had come to withdraw, the cauldron boiled over. And then there was this folly we called the Arab Spring. Mubarak must go! Gaddafi must go! Assad must go!" He shook his head slowly. "It was madness, absolute madness. And now we are left with this. ISIS controls a swath of territory the size of the United Kingdom, right on the doorstep of Europe. Even Bin Laden would have never dared to dream of such a thing. And what does the American president tell us? ISIS is not Islamic. ISIS is the jayvee team. — Daniel Silva

The total vacuity of world leadership thinking has lead to the practice of claiming to heal the world through politicising unviable theoretical means of finding world peace,what we need is just to cement the differences between people and there will be a piece of peace at every doorstep — Mpho Leteng

The one thing with writing stories about the rise of fascism is that if you wait long enough, you'll almost certainly be proved right. Fascism is like a hydra - you can cut off its head in the Germany of the '30s and '40s, but it'll still turn up on your back doorstep in a slightly altered guise. — Alan Moore

The moment when the finished book or, better yet, a tightly packed carton of finished books arrives on my doorstep is the moment of truth, of culmination; its bliss lasts as much as five minutes, until the first typographical error or production flaw is noticed. — John Updike

The only thing he was sorry for was slamming the door and perhaps raising his voice to the woman who'd been like a mother to him since the passing of his parents. Perhaps she hadn't really deserved his reaction, but he was, justifiably, weary of their meddling and hearing about his father's will. Apparently no suitable maiden was going to appear on his doorstep. He seemed to be looking for a needle in a haystack. — Lisa M. Prysock

Beware the ends of the earth and the exotic: the drama is on your doorstep wherever the slums; are, wherever there is malnutrition, wherever there is exploitation and cruelty. — John Grierson

The artist's world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep. — Paul Strand

Here's the thing about New York, the thing I love most: there is no such substance as silence. If you ever stop talking, and he stops talking, the city takes over for you. A siren forms a distant parabola of sound. A door slams. The old couple in 4A argues over who will answer the telephone. The young lovers in 2C reach an animalistic climax. A million other lives play out on your doorstep, and not one of them gives a damn about your little problems. Life goes on and on and on. — Beatriz Williams

Lies, fictions and untrue suppositions can create new human truths which build technology, art, language, everything that is distinctly of Man. The word "stone" for instance is not a stone, it is an oral pattern of vocal, dental and labial sounds or a scriptive arrangement of ink on a white surface, but man pretends that it is actually the thing it refers to. Every time he wishes to tell another man about a stone he can use the word instead of the thing itself. The word bodies forth the object in the mind of the listener and both speaker and listener are able to imagine a stone without seeing one. All the qualities of stone can be metaphorically and metonymically expressed. "I was stoned, stony broke, stone blind, stone cold sober, stonily silent," oh, whatever occurs. More than that, a man can look at a stone and call it a weapon, a paperweight, a doorstep, a jewel, an idol. He can give it function, he can possess it. — Stephen Fry

A bedraggled woman stood on his doorstep in the pouring rain, and his first impulse was to slam the door in her face.
But she had clearly come as far as she could; her pale face was twisted in pain, and she shivered convulsively beneath a denim jacket that was as soaking wet as the rest of her. Long black strands of hair hung down in twisted ribbons like seaweed in the vanishing daylight, reminding him of a sea creature he'd once dated briefly in his more adventurous youth. — Deborah Blake

But we shouldn't be concerned about trees purely for material reasons, we should also care about them because of the little puzzles and wonders they present us with. Under the canopy of the trees, daily dramas and moving love stories are played out. Here is the last remaining piece of Nature, right on our doorstep, where adventures are to be experienced and secrets discovered. And who knows, perhaps one day the language of trees will eventually be deciphered, giving us the raw material for further amazing stories. Until then, when you take your next walk in the forest, give free rein to your imagination-in many cases, what you imagine is not so far removed from reality, after all! — Peter Wohlleben