Thing In Back Quotes & Sayings

It was then that my gaze happened to fall on the bookcase, on the gap there, where the old paperback of "Nine Stories" had fallen flat. "Where's the thing?" I said.
"What thing?"
"The mesh. My mesh."
She shrugged. "I tossed it."
"Tossed it? Where? What do you mean?"
In the next moment I was in the kitchen, flipping open the lid of the trash can, only to find it empty. "You mean outside?" I shouted. "In the dumpster?"
When I came thundering back into the room, she still hadn't moved. "Jesus, what were you thinking? That was mine. I wanted that. I wanted to keep it."
Her lips barely moved. "It was dirty. — T.C. Boyle

Whatever the new movie about Apple founder Steve Jobs unearths, one thing is doubtless: we will switch our Apple computers right back on (maybe to talk about it, maybe not) right after we see the film. Could anything short of one genuine civic conscience, related in all sincerity stop us from miring ourselves in pirouettes of unreality, counting stickers on blue and white virtual flypaper as dearer in our imaginations than anyone in our daily lives, perhaps even our own family members? — John Thomas Allen

The thing to keep in mind is that we're still in the very early days when it comes to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Saying there's a silence is a bit like if Columbus, looking to discover a new continent, only sailed 10 miles off the coast of Spain before turning back to say, 'Nothing out there!' — Seth Shostak

What do we do while we wait for my parents to find Jersey?" She let him go, took a step back.
"We live a normal life."
The words left his lips without emotion or meaning, because at this point he knew there was no such thing as a normal life for him.
Deep in his heart, he was still a vampire. — Kasi Blake

Risky, thought Paul D, very risky. For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love. The best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one. — Toni Morrison

When you look at police violence, over the last three or four years, whether you call it a social, economic or racial thing, these are the guys that we're supposed to trust. These are the guys who are given these guns and weapons to protect us. Not to use them upon us, but to protect us, and they can't even get it right. So, if they can't get it right, how can you fault a society for fearing them, and fearing them in a way that makes them want to take up arms and fight back. — Edwin Hodge

You see, there's some blues for folks ain't never had a thing, and that's a sad blues ... but the saddest kind of blues is for them that's had everything they ever wanted and has lost it, and knows it won't come back no more. Ain't no sufferin' in this world worse than that; and that's the blue we call 'I Had It But It's All Gone Now. — Ken Grimwood

Look back, to slavery, to suffrage, to integration and one thing is clear. Fashions in bigotry come and go. The right thing lasts. — Anna Quindlen

Making a record is a lot like surgery without an anesthetic. You first have to cut yourself up the middle. Then you have to rip out every single organ, every single part and lay them on a table. You then need to examine the parts, and the reality of the situation hits you. You find yourself saying things like "I didn't know that part was so ugly." Or "I better get a professional opinion about that." You go to bed hollow and then back into the operating room the next day ... facing every fear, every disgusting thing you hate about yourself. Then you pop it all back in, sew yourself shut and perform ... you perform like your life depended on it
and in those perfect moments you find beauty you never knew existed. You find yourself and you friends all over again, you find something to fight for, something to love. Something to show the world. — Gerard Way

The whole set of stylizations that are known as "camp" (a word that I was hearing then for the first time) was, in 1926, self-explanatory. Women moved and gesticulated in this way. Homosexuals wished for obvious reasons to copy them. The strange thing about "camp" is that it has been fossilized. The mannerisms have never changed. If I were now to see a woman sitting with her knees clamped together, one hand on her hip and the other lightly touching her back hair, I should think, "Either she scored her last social triumph in 1926 or it is a man in drag. — Quentin Crisp

I see hundreds of men come by on the road an' on the ranches with their bindles on their back an' that same damn thing in their heads. Hundreds of them. They come, an' they quit an' go on; an' every damn one of 'em's got a little piece of land in his head. An' never a God damn one of 'em ever gets it. Just like heaven. Ever'body wants a little piece of lan'. I read plenty of books out there. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody never gets no land. It's just in their head. — John Steinbeck

You must do whatever you think is best. But I know one thing. Nothing meant more to Graystripe than your friendship and his Clan. Even when he was in RiverClan, he longed to go home. He would want to see ThunderClan as strong as it could possibly be, even if that meant accepting that he's not coming back. — Erin Hunter

You can go back 150 years and literally find the same people saying the same thing in the same way. "If we have to pay you more, it will be bad for you." And that's because saying that is a much more polite way of saying, "I'm rich, you're poor, and I would prefer to keep it what way." — Nick Hanauer

When you perform with a live audience, the audience comes back to you, so that you and the audience are giving to each other, in a sense. It's an extraordinary thing. It's wild turf up there. — Al Pacino

Accountability was a foreign thing, and back in the day I avoided it like I owed it money. — Jay Crownover

Life is a funny thing. We claim it to be our own; but the truth is, it's not. It belongs to something much bigger. We, like everything else, are transient. This life is temporary and everything about us is temporary. What we call our life is nothing more than borrowed energy from something much bigger--nature, the universe, God--whatever floats your boat. And one day, when we pass, we will give that energy back to the world we borrowed it from in the first place. — Leanne Waters

We have been marching for the last one hundred and fifty years. We sacrifice our individual liberties, and sometimes we fail and suffer. Sometimes we divide into separate groups and our methods conflict, though we all aim at one common goal. The significant thing is that we march on without turning back. What we want is peace not violence, We know that we thrive and prosper only in peace. — Carlos Bulosan

I love you," I said, gripping the back of her neck and bringing her mouth to mine. My hand trailed down her side, naked and smooth and covered in goose bumps.
"We're really doing this, aren't we?" she asked, pulling back just enough to meet my eyes.
"We're really doing this."
"Officially."
"A hundred percent. Dinners, dates, introducing you as my girlfriend. The whole thing."
"Think I like the sound of that," she said, her cheeks pink. — Christina Lauren

One thing I've experienced and I feel really grateful for now that I'm on my way out is that I felt that the justices gave that back to me. I really did. You know, of course, you can have some sharp exchanges. That's the nature of the thing, and that's fine. But really in the main I felt like the tone from them was, "Yeah. We may not agree with you, but we're going to have a discussion about this." And it did. — Donald Verrilli Jr.

So what? You act all mysterious to seem more interesting?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You're always wandering off or running away," he said. "But you're a lot more
interesting when you're just being yourself you know. When you're actually here."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Emma said coldly. "Where else would I be?"

"You know what I mean," he said, a rough edge to his voice. "It's like you're so busy trying not to act like your family that you've never even stopped to consider that it might not be such a bad thing."

"Well what about you?" she shot back, aware of the bitterness in her words.
"You complain about your dad not wanting you around, and then you complain when he wants you to stay home for school. You can't have it both wars."

"Well neither can you," he said. " You can't keep everyone at arms length and then expect them to be there for you when you need them. — Jennifer E. Smith

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

Well when my death is in front,
I just want to turn back to my life,
And say the last thing,
looking in to its lens that,
"Life oh my life,
Nobody would have ever painted
this life as beautiful as i did". Good Bye

-Ravi — Ravi

Arching her back towards him. Her slender arms, legs, waist enfolded by his arms. His warm and authentic embrace. That was how I came into this world. Love. Isn't love the only answer for every simple thing that is sympathetic and creative in this world. Everything that is good in the family way.
Everything that is blessed. The pursuit of happiness and loveliness. — Abigail George

Gogol remembers having to do the same thing when he was younger, when his grandparents died ... He remembers, back then, being bored by it, annoyed at having to observe a ritual no one else he knew followed, in honor of people he had seen only a few times in his life ... Now, sitting together at the kitchen table at six-thirty every evening, his father's chair empty, this meatless meal is the only thing that seems to make sense. — Jhumpa Lahiri

A world of "if"s, but it would make no difference. If I could go back in time ... but I couldn't. The past was behind me. The best thing now would be to stop looking over my shoulder. It was time to forget the past and look to the present and future. — Darren Shan

Time is a curious thing. Most of us only live for the time that lies right ahead of us. A few days, weeks, years. One of the most painful moments in a person's life probably comes with the insight that an age has been reached when there is more to look back on than ahead. And when time no longer lies ahead of one, other things have to be lived for. Memories, perhaps. Afternoons in the sun with someone's hand clutched in one's own. The fragrance of flowerbeds in fresh bloom. Sundays in a cafe. Grandchildren, perhaps. One finds a way of living for the sake of someone else's future. — Fredrik Backman

As I sat alone at my desk in the dark, I thought about suicide. Sometimes I did that, thought about suicide, though not in an active way - it was more like pulling a lucky stone out of your back pocket. It was a comforting thing to have with you, so you could rub your fingers over it, reassure yourself that it was there if you needed it. I didn't want to try to kill myself, didn't want the blood and the hysterical parents and the guilt, any of it. But sometimes I liked the idea of simply not having to be here anymore, not having to deal with my life. As if death could be just an extended vacation.
But now what I thought about suicide was this: If I died tonight, everyone would believe this journal was true.
Like Amelia, Chava, and Sally, everyone would forever believe that I had written that diary. Everyone would believe they knew how I "really felt." And how dare they? — Leila Sales

Texts between Dr. Stayner & Livie(with a little help from Kacey)
Dr. Stayner: Tell me you did one out-of-character thing last night
Livie: I drank enough Jell-O shots to fill a small pool, and then proceeded to break out every terrible dance move known to mankind. I am now the proud owner of a tattoo and if I didn't have a video to prove otherwise, I'd believe I had it done in a back alley with hepatitis-laced needles. Satisfied?
Dr. Stayner: That's a good start. Did you talk to a guy?
Kacey(answering for Livie): Not only did I talk to a guy but I've now seen two penises, including the one attached to the naked man in my room this morning when I woke up. I have pictures. Would you like to see one?
Dr. Stayner: Glad you're making friends. Talk to you on Saturday — K.A. Tucker

Staying on the treadmill is one thing, and I do think it's related to staying true to our commitments even when we're not comfortable. But getting back on the treadmill the next day, eager to try again, is in my view even more reflective of grit. Because when you don't come back the next day - when you permanently turn your back on a commitment - your effort plummets to zero. As a consequence, your skills stop improving, and at the same time, you stop producing anything with whatever skills you have. — Angela Duckworth

Both back when I was acting and now that I'm writing, I've always wanted the same thing out of my career: to be able to get up in the morning and do what I love doing. — Tana French

i am confident i am over you. so much that some mornings i wake up with a smile on my face and my hands pressed together thanking the universe for pulling you out of me. thank god i cry. thank god you left. i would not be the empire i am today if you had stayed.

but then.

there are some nights i imagine what i might do if you showed up. how if you walked into the room this very second every awful thing you've ever done would be tossed out the closet window and all the love would rise up again. it would pour through my eyes as if it never really left in the first place. as if it's been practicing how to stay silent so long only so it could be this loud on your arrival. can someone explain that. how even when the love leaves. it doesn't leave. how even when i am so past you. i am so helplessly brought back to you. — Rupi Kaur

One thing you can't beat in this world is time. I learnt that the hard way. You can't play basketball forever. You can't play football forever. You can't bodybuild forever. I mean you CAN do it, but not at a high level against younger guys who have more time and have not reached their peaks yet. There's only so much the body can do and once you're done, you can't go back in time. — Ronnie Coleman

The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit's one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself like a once-blind man unbound. The gaps are the clefts in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock - more than a maple - universe. — Annie Dillard

If instead of arranging the atoms in some definite pattern, again and again repeated, on and on, or even forming little lumps of complexity like the odor of violets, we make an arrangement which is always different from place to place, with different kinds of atoms arranged in many ways, continually changing, not repeating, how much more marvelously is it possible that this thing might behave? Is it possible that that "thing" walking back and forth in front of you, talking to you, is a great glob of these atoms in a very complex arrangement, such that the sheer complexity of it staggers the imagination as to what it can do? When we say we are a pile of atoms, we do not mean we are merely a pile of atoms, because a pile of atoms which is not repeated from one to the other might well have the possibilities which you see before you in the mirror. — Richard Feynman

You know that man's story already. He's just starting to believe what Day's been saying to him for years, but he's scared as fuck. If you hurt him in any way, Day will hurt you." Johnson stopped grinning and looked back at God. "I thought Day hated him?" "Day is complex, Johnson. He's crazy about Ronowski, that's why he rides the man so hard." "I get that," Johnson responded. "All right. I don't mind doing the slow thing. We'll start with wings and a game tonight." Johnson shrugged and started inching toward his car. "Next week, maybe dinner and a movie." "Sounds good, bro." God waved and climbed in his truck. Now that he was done playing Chuck Woolery and there were no more love connections to be made. He was going home to his sweetheart. — A.E. Via

The first thing you do at the end is reflect on the beginning. Maybe it's some form of reverse closure, or just the basic human impulse toward sentimentality, or masochism, but as you stand there shell-shocked in the charred ruins of your life, your mind will invariably go back to the time when it all started. And even if you didn't fall in love in the eighties, in your mind it will fee like the eighties, all innocent and airbrushed, with bright colors and shoulder pads and Pat Benatar or The Cure on the soundtrack. — Jonathan Tropper

I mean that I'd change into something I shouldn't." Miss Saeki looks at me with great interest. "As long as there's such a thing as time, everybody's damaged in the end, changed into something else. It always happens, sooner or later." "But even if that happens, you've got to have a place you can retrace your steps to." "A place you can retrace your steps to?" "A place that's worth coming back to." Miss — Haruki Murakami

I don't have any interest in helping you keep your job," I say, shifting my weight onto my heels, suddenly tired and
resigned. "But I promise to do what I can to keep you from being fired over false pretenses. If you get thrown out of here,
it'll be your fault, not mine, and not Mr. Dade's."
"You say that now - "
" - and I'll say it tomorrow." I turn and pull open the door. "Good night, Asha. Go home and get some sleep."
"I'm not tired."
"Then go to the park and pull the wings off butterflies," I say with a sardonic smile. "That seems like the kind of
thing you would enjoy."
She smiles back, shakes her head. "Butterflies are too weak."
"Then shoot a coyote, whatever," I suggest. "But your work day's over. We all need our rest and if I'm going to be a
dictator, I'm going to try to be a benevolent one. — Kyra Davis

The one thing that shaped my life was when I was 15 or 16: I knew I wanted to be a journalist. And not just a journalist, but a journalist in the Middle East, and to go back to the Arab world and try to understand what it meant to be Lebanese. — Anthony Shadid

But nothing can be taken back, not the leaves by the trees, the rain by the clouds. You want to take back the ugly thing you said, but some shrapnel remains in the wound, some mud. — Dean Young

He raped me, Agent Calhoun, he hit me but he didn't kill me. As long as I'm breathing,
I've got fight in me and luckily I'm breathing."
It was at that he whispered, "You aren't like a lot of women."
"Yes I am," I whispered back. "I'm like all women. You see this but inside there's
something else that I won't let you see or him see but it's the mess he left me. But that's
mine. No one gets to it. Everything you get and he gets is a show. One thing you learn really
quickly and really well when that kind of thing happens to you is to be a fucking great
actress. You don't have a choice in that because a man like that does something like that to
you, you lose having choices. The only choice you have is what role you intend to play. I
picked my role and that ... that Agent Calhoun is what you see. — Kristen Ashley

Sometimes a cloudless swatch of sky would blow past the moon, and Pella could see the outline of Mike's face in a slightly sharper relief. It was strange the way he loved her: a sidelong and almost casual love, as if loving her were simply a matter of course, too natural to mention. Like their first meeting on the steps of the gym, when he'd hardly so much as glanced at her. With David and every guy before David, what passed for love had always been eye to eye, nose to nose; she felt watched, observed, like the prize at the zoo, and she wound up pacing, preening, watching back, to fit the part. Whereas Mike was always beside her. She would stand at the kitchen window and look out at the quad, at the Melville statue and beyond that the beach and the rolling lake, and realize that Make, for however long, had been standing beside her, staring at the same thing. — Chad Harbach

Can I tell you a dirty secret?"
"Yes," she gasped. "Just hurry."
Derek's dark laughter increased her arousal, coating her in slick heat. Achingly slow, he sunk two thick fingers inside her. "If I could go back and do one thing differently that first night, I would taste your virgin pussy before I fucked you. I bet it would have been extra sweet. — Tessa Bailey

When I'm preforming a lot I'm aching to get back in the studio but I love live performance. I love trying to think on my feet and be spontaneous. I like doing that in a live show and I do the same thing in the studio. — Joel Plaskett

Whenever you feel 'short' or in 'need' of something, give what you want first and it will come back in buckets. That is true for money, a smile, love, friendship. I know it is often the last thing a person may want to do, but it has always worked for me. I just trust that the principle of reciprocity is true, and I give what I want. — Robert T. Kiyosaki

On the night of our secret wedding
when he held me in his mouth like a promise
until his tongue grew tired and fell asleep,
I lay awake to keep the memory alive.
In the morning I begged him back to bed.
Running late, he kissed my ankles and left.
I stayed like a secret in his bed for days
until his mother found me.
I showed her my gold ring,
I stood in front of her naked,
waved my hands in her face.
She sank to the floor and cried.
At his funeral, no one knew my name.
I sat behind his aunts,
they sucked on dates soaked in oil.
The last thing he tasted was me. — Warsan Shire

I'll come back to you," I say. "I promise you, if it's the last thing I do, I'll come back to you."
Her face is buried in my neck. She nods.
"I'll count the minutes until you do." she says. — Pittacus Lore

Trust just doesn't come because you ask
for it. It has to be earned. Even then it's usually a
false word people toss around just to get what
they want. Then in the end they always end up
doing the same thing, stabbing you in the back. - Andrew to Vapor — Stephani Hecht

She knew bullshit when it was being tossed at her by the shovelful. "You know, Ms Purcell, I'm at absolute capacity in the friend department. You'll have to apply elsewhere. As for Roarke and his business, that's his deal. As for you, let's get this straight: You don't look stupid, so I don't believe you think you're the first of Roarke's discarded skirts to swing back this way. You don't worry me. In fact, you don't much interest me. So if that's all?"
Slowly Magdelana slid off the desk. "The man is just never wrong is he? I don't like you."
"Aw."
She moved to the door, then stopped, leaned on the jamb as she looked over at Eve again. "Just one thing? He didn't discard me. I discarded him. And since you don't look stupid either, you know that makes all the difference. — J.D. Robb

Riding upon the back of a waterhorse - what mortal had ever stayed in such a seat for so long? On a horse made of cold currents and liquid convergences, jests and trickery - pressed against a hide like the burnished sea of midnight, thing look different to the rider. — Cecilia Dart-Thornton

If I had to wish for something, just one thing, it would be that Hannah would never see Tate the way I did. Never see Tate's beautiful, lush hair turn brittle, her skin sallow, her teeth ruined by anything she could get her hands on that would make her forget. That Hannah would never count how many men there were, or how vile humans can be to one another. That she would never see the moments in my life that were full of neglect, and fear, and revulsion, moments I can never go back to because I know they will slow me down for the rest of my life if I let myself remember them for one moment. Tate, who had kept Hannah alive that night, reading her the story of Jem Finch and Mrs. Dubose. And suddenly I know I have to go. But this time without being chased by the Brigadier, without experiencing the kindness of a postman from Yass, and without taking along a Cadet who will change the way I breath for the rest of my life. — Melina Marchetta

In this world, there is no true freeze frame. Pictures do not escape time. But they do sit in it. Pictures are men grabbing at wind to make themselves feel less beaten by the driving current of this river. We pinch brushes to pinch moments, feelings, and ... that thing that was just now but now it's gone. Did you catch that? We push buttons and point electric boxes. Did you get that? And most of the time we never go back to look. I got it (I think). But we feel better, like fishermen hooking everything but reeling rarely. — N.D. Wilson

There's no doubt in my mind that I wouldn't be in the position that I am if I didn't have my 'One Tree Hill' fans. They're the most dedicated, devoted fans. They're behind you no matter what. If one person says one bad thing about me on Twitter, they're fighting back! — Jana Kramer

Stu stops munching, looks up at me from under his shaggy hair.
"So, can you read?" He slides a section toward me.
I cock my head toward the paper. The letters are small, blurry drawings. The alphabet might as well be Chinese or Arabic. Strange that I can't read or speak, though I still have language inside my head. Words are a consolation, but not a tool.
"Guess not. You want me to read stuff out loud to you?"
I would, but not right now. If I wanted to show interest in the newspaper I could cross the table and rub against his shoulder. Instead I gaze at him over the bowl of milk.
"It's so weird," he says in a hesitant voice. "You don't look like a cat. When you stare at me, you look like Eliza."
That's the nicest thing he could have said. With a happy lightness to my step I move between the bowls, over his napkin ring and spoon, until I stand on the edge of the table and nip at his prickly chin. This is my way of saying: Hi, there. I like you. — Simone Martel

Perhaps the most interesting thing about non-verbal communication is that it almost always is involuntary. Given its nature, you cannot control just as easily as verbal communication and, most importantly, you cannot fake it. Not sure about that? Go back in time and remember meeting someone for the first time. If you did not like him/her, it is highly likely you've involuntarily sent non-verbal messages about your interest. It is difficult to fake interest, no matter how hard you might try. In — Ian Berry

Gosh, was I wrong. Never listen to a pundit. Is there such a thing as "magnetic back-assward"? We pundits and commentators have had our compass needles pointed in that direction for the past eighteen months. Want a stock tip? I would — P. J. O'Rourke

Don't you remember what your grandfather used to say? That thing about pots and people?"
"That pots were like people," Alex replied flatly, thinking back to his grandfather carrying a tray of wet freshly thrown clay pots across the studio in ancient Athens. "He said you couldn't tell how well they'd turn out until they'd been fired in the kiln."
"Well then?"
"Well then, what?" muttered Alex. "Some pots shatter in the heat, Aries. I should know. I was the one who had to sweep them up every evening. Sometimes it's better not to go near the fire."
"Well, that's the spirit I must say!" huffed Aries. "Thank you very much! — Julia Wills

There have been times when I've written something and it goes out and it comes back in a letter from some kid as to what they think about it and I've taken their analysis to heart so much that I have taken up his thing. Writing what my audience is telling me to write. — David Bowie

Out of the trees came faerie after faerie, the entirety of the Dark Court, who had apparently been listening to the whole exchange. I looked at Reth, shocked, but he just smiled. I clenched my jaw and shook my head, annoyed. They'd had a plan all along, and it hadn't involved me. I was here for show - Hey, look! Our pet Empty One! You can hitch a ride back if you join now! Limited time offer!
"I did warn her you were less likely to come if you thought you weren't in charge," Reth said, his voice cracked but his tone self-congratulatory.
"Did you warn her I'm highly likely to back out of the entire thing if you piss me off?"
"Perhaps you had better watch your back, stupid glowy golden faerie man whore."
He frowned at me. "That made no sense."
"Good! Now maybe I can join your club." I took a step away from him but immediately felt terrible when he swayed and looked like he was going to fall. — Kiersten White

My phone buzzes, and I shut off YouTube so I can access my messages.

Logan: Just found the perfect xmas present for you in Boston.

A photo promptly appears, summoning a loud groan from my throat. The asshole sent me a pic of a novelty My Little Pony dildo. Damn thing is bright pink, with rainbow sparkles on the handle.

Logan: And it's rechargeable! U don't have to buy batteries. THAT'S handy!

Me: Hardy-har-har. You = comedian.

Then I message Grace: Tell your BF to stop being mean to me.

She texts back a smiley face. Traitor. — Elle Kennedy

A man walks fast along the forecourt of the station towards a gate, moving towards a train that's about to leave. I get shivery all over as I watch the back of his head, which is about Yuan's height, with hair and a neckline just like his. My eyes tell me what my mind knows cannot be true. I follow him along seeking the one thing that would confirm him as someone else. The man turns his head slightly to talk to a train official. I can see his nose in profile. My eyes sting. — Dayo Forster

Inside your head you hear
a phone ringing, and when you open your eyes you're washing up
in a stranger's bathroom,
standing by the window in a yellow towel, only twenty minutes away
from the dirtiest thing you know.
All the rooms of the castle except this one, says someone, and suddenly
darkness,
suddenly only darkness.
In the living room, in the broken yard,
in the back of the car as the lights go by. In the airport
bathroom's gurgle and flush, bathed in a pharmacy of
unnatural light,
my hands looking weird, my face weird, my feet too far away. — Richard Siken

At the same time, we may not as a culture be fond of old-fashioned supernaturalism, but we certainly like spirituality in whatever form we can get it. I suspect that if anyone other than Jesus (Krishna, say, or Buddha) were suddenly put forward as being due for a second coming, millions in our postsecular society would embrace such a thing uncritically, leaving Enlightenment rationalism huffing and puffing in the rear. We are a puzzled and confused generation, embracing any and every kind of nonrationalism that may offer us a spiritual shot in the arm while lapsing back into rationalism (in particular, the old modernist critiques) whenever we want to keep traditional or orthodox Christianity at bay. — N. T. Wright

He took his hands off the oars and pulled in the mooring rope. If I make a couple of loops, he thought, I can strap the axe on to my back.
He had a mental picture of what could happen to a man who plunged into the cauldron below a waterfall with a sharp piece of metal attached to his body.
GOOD MORNING.
Vimes blinked. A tall dark robed figure was now sitting in the boat.
'Are you Death?'
IT'S THE SCYTHE, ISN'T IT? PEOPLE ALWAYS NOTICE THE SCYTHE.
'I'm going to die?'
POSSIBLY.
'Possibly? You turn up when people are possibly going to die?'
OH, YES. IT'S QUITE THE NEW THING. IT'S BECAUSE OF THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE.
'What's that?'
I'M NOT SURE.
'That's very helpful. — Terry Pratchett

If you must look back, do so forgivingly. If you must look forward, do so prayerfully. However, the wisest thing you can do is be present in the present ... gratefully. — Maya Angelou

Love Came ...
and became like blood in my body.
It rushed through my veins and
encircled my Heart.
Everywhere I looked,
I saw One Thing ...
Love's Name written
on my limbs,
on my left palm,
on my forehead,
on the back of my neck,
on my right big toe ...
Oh, my friend,
all that you see of me
is just a shell,
and the rest belongs to Love. — Rumi

Are you mad?" I ask.
"I was." He glances at the ceiling then back at me. "Or confused, anyway. The whole thing threw me through for a loop. I thought I'd finally met a guy at Underwood I could relate to, and it turns out he wasn't a guy at all."
I swallow. "I can see how that would be weird."
"In a way though, I was relieved."
"Relieved?" I echo. "Why?"
He looks around embarrased. "Let's just say you had me questioning my sexual orientation. — Jody Gehrman

The best thing is to draw men and women from the nude and thus fix in the memory by constant exercise the muscles of the torso, back, legs, arms and knees, with bones underneath. — Giorgio Vasari

When I came to this country in America which was in New York City which is crowd-est place in the world first thing I saw; people walking literally constantly back and forth and then first thing went through my mind a question like 'why are this people walking around like zombies' seriously people in America specially New York people are dead walking meaning by this that people are 'off' from reality. — Nadair Desmar

You do that, and I take back every nasty thing I've ever said about you."
He grinned, his mood changing from serious to wicked in an instant. "Why? I'm all those things and more."
I shook my head. Ian was more proud of his depravity than anyone I'd met, but if he helped me pull Bones out from under four bespelled vampires and one demonically-enchanced vamp, I'd shower him with prostitutes and porn while swearing he was an angel. — Jeaniene Frost

I traveled the world ten times over doing something I never thought I'd do in a million years. I found myself in Tokyo, Japan. I (was in) a Dell Computer commercial, the first thing I had ever done, and I fell in love with it. I fell in love with the green screens, I fell in love with (everything). The translator was explaining everything to me. It was a passion like I had never felt before. I came back and it took me five years to really accept that that was okay. — Drew Waters

Just because you've had one or two of those games, you can't really go back to the next practice and change everything. That's the most important thing in those situations that you don't think too much, you don't try to change too much because then you're going to be in deep trouble, that's what I think. It's all about keep working on what's been successful for you and keep believing what you're doing is the right thing. — Jonas Gustavsson

Not the first time. I didn't think my heart could stand it. But the airplane is a wonderful thing. You are still in one place when you arrive at the other. The airplane is faster than the heart. You arrive quickly and you leave quickly. You don't grieve too much. And there is something else about the airplane. You can go back many times to the same place. And something strange happens if you go back often enough. You stop grieving for the past. You see that the past is something in your mind alone, that it doesn't exist in real life. You trample on the past, you crush it. In the beginning it is like trampling on a garden. In the end you are just walking on ground. That is the way we have to learn to live now. The past is here." He touched his heart. "It isn't there." And he pointed at the dusty road. I — V.S. Naipaul

But the remarkable thing about the beetles was their sensitivity to all the grammar and directives and slogans and even unstated desires of the ant world, which they learned to manipulate. They first memorized the proper antenna-vibration and foreleg-tap which the ants themselves used to request food. The poor workers, busy going here and there and back again all day and never getting a chance to think, automatically assumed that these fearsome strangers had been authorized by the Central Committee since they knew the password, and so they regurgitated a drop or two of fruit juice on cue, much the same as when one is traveling across Europe or Asia on the train and a person in uniform requests one's passport, one's ticket, takes them away, and comes back, or else does not come back, having sold them; a badge and a superior manner can obtain anything in this world. — William T. Vollmann

Back in East St. Louis, tennis wasn't the real thing. If you weren't playing baseball, basketball, football, you were kind of on the outside. — Jimmy Connors

Came Honker's trip to Slice City along about then: our sax-man got a neck all full of the sharpest kind of steel. So we were out one horn. And you could tell: we played a little bit too rough, and the head-arrangements Collins and His Crew grew up to, they needed Honker's grease in the worst way. But we'd been together for five years or more, and a new man just didn't play somehow. We were this one solid thing, like a unit, and somebody had cut off a piece of us and we couldn't grow the piece back so we just tried to get along anyway, bleeding every night, bleeding from that wound. ("Black Country") — Charles Beaumont

Coming back to Guess is so natural for me; they're my family. I always love being back, and to be able to come home and be in Malibu across the street from my high school shooting this campaign is absolutely amazing and just feels like the right thing. — Gigi Hadid

I am trying now to be entirely honest. I did actually comfort in the thought that the Devil had, on Strawless Common, defeated God. I much preferred that thought to the thought that God hadn't cared, hadn't helped Robin. I thought all the way back to the story of Eden. God, all-loving, all-wise, had surely wanted people to be happy and healthy and good; it was the Devil who spoiled it all ... and since so many people were miserable and sickly and bad the Devil must indeed by very powerful. The lifeless, voiceless thing, lately a singing boy, which they had cut down and put under a sack in the barn to await an unhallowed cross-road grave seemed to me to prove the power of the Devil.
Lady Alice Rowhedge — Norah Lofts

I was just disciplined. I knew I had to get back into shape after six weeks for the film Goal II, but I cheated in the end - I wore a corset. I loved my pregnancy, I blossomed. I felt goddess-like and very secure. I found it comforting to have a little thing growing inside me, and very calming. — Anna Friel

Every couple of days I have to remind myself that I'm really okay. And it's not the pretend kind of okay. It's the kind that you feel from the inside out. It's the kind of okay that has me thinking about outfits and coffee first thing in the morning, and homework that's due later this week, and that I need to call Jodi back, and what Cole's abs look like when he flexes. It's the kind of okay that makes life a zillion times more bearable and also has me waiting for the other shoe to drop. I — Autumn Doughton

Not sure how this whole social media thing is supposed to be fun. It's like being back in elementary school and waiting to be picked for kickball. — Katie McGarry

This is a good plan for life in general. If you have two choices, choose the harder. If you're trying to decide whether to go out running or sit home and watch TV, go running. Probably the reason this trick works so well is that when you have two choices and one is harder, the only reason you're even considering the other is laziness. You know in the back of your mind what's the right thing to do, and this trick merely forces you to acknowledge it. — Paul Graham

I believe in fiction and the power of stories because that way we speak in tongues. We are not silenced. All of us, when in deep trauma, find we hesitate, we stammer; there are long pauses in our speech. The thing is stuck. We get our language back through the language of others. We can turn to the poem. We can open the book. Somebody has been there for us and deep-dived the words. — Jeanette Winterson

By now I had drawn up as much magic as I could possibly hold, but I was afraid to start sending big bolts of it into the fray. The last thing I wanted was to hit Archer, who, I was beginning to realize, had definitely held back in Defense. I'd never seen anyone move like he did, his movements fast and sure. Too bad they weren't doing any good.
Finally,one of the ghouls got a grasp on his hair, and he winced as the thing jerked his head back. I think I might have cried out, but it was hard to hear anything between my heartbeat and the whirring of magic in my veins.
"Could we start with the necromancing now?" Archer shouted at me. — Rachel Hawkins

It's one of my biggest memories of my father reading. I had pneumonia, remember, but I was a little better now, and madly caught up in the book, and one thing you know when you're ten is that, no matter what, there's gonna be a happy ending. They can sweat all they want to scare you, the authors, but back of it all you know, you just have no doubt, that in the long run justice is going to win out. — William Goldman

As I watched all the problems you were struggling with, I realized how much you meant to me. It changed everything. I was worried about you - so, so worried. You have no idea. And it became useless to try to act like I could ever put any Moroi life above yours. It's not going to happen, no matter how wrong others say it is. And so I decided that's something I have to deal with. Once I made that decision ... there was nothing to hold us back." He hesitated, seeming to replay his words as he brushed my hair from my face. "Well, to hold me back. I'm speaking for myself. I don't mean to act like I know exactly why you did it."
"I did it because I love you," I said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. And really, it was. — Richelle Mead

For me, the present agony of departure, the silent terror of leaving a place known to me if hated, the well-nigh impossible task of conquering the fear that possessed me. Not the fear of that hasty look round, the sudden plunge headlong and the giddy shock of hard, cold water, the river itself entering my lungs, rising in my throat, tossing me upon my back with my arms outflung - I could hear the sob strangled in my chest and the blood leave me - but fear of the certain knowledge that there was no returning, no possible means of escape, and no other thing beyond. — Daphne Du Maurier

The thing that keeps the thoughts coming back is the power that you put in the thought that you can't think of it. — Maria Bamford

First, there is the person one thinks he is and the appearance one thinks he has. Then there is the thing one actually is, and there is that which the others think, and here a myriad-faced being arose in her thought, but the second came back as being more difficult to know, for what eyes would see it and where would it stay? — Elizabeth Madox Roberts

This is just a nigger talkin', an' a busted-back nigger. So it don't mean nothing, see? You couldn't remember it anyways. I seen it over an' over-a guy talkin' to another guy and it don't make no difference if he don't hear or understand. The thing is, they're talkin', or they're settin' still not talkin'. It don't make no difference, no difference. — John Steinbeck

I do think that I'm a big believer in having an idea or having ideas and just tucking them away in the back of your brain. Even if you aren't consciously thinking of them, I think they simmer. You're working on them, even if you don't know you're working on them, and I think having something in your head for a while is a valuable thing. — Rian Johnson

Great art is anything that provokes a deep emotinal reaction at the time that you hear it and then you can't get it out of your head. And then you go back and you experince something completely different to the thing that you experinced the first time. And wheather its a painting, a piece of music or a book. In a book, its that moment, when you put it down and you go:"I'm not quite the same person, that I was before I read that book" or "I'm not the same person I was before I saw this painting." That is great art. — Neil Gaiman

The thing about looking back over Clinton's presidency, and probably anybody's presidency, is that when you look back, the events all line up in a way that makes sense. At the time, you don't know where it's going. — Dee Dee Myers

She gulped her whiskey sour. The bar was hot tonight.
CJ circled back to check on them. "You ladies doing okay?"
"Define okay." Natalie's whiskey seemed to be talking. Because the whiskey was the only thing that could've put that husky, suggestive tone in her voice. Yep, that was all the whiskey.
He propped his elbows on the bar, which put his face level with hers, and fixed his undivided attention on her. There went her lady bits fanning themselves. With a few added whimpers. They remembered what his hands and body and lips felt like too.
"Content." His voice was low and raw, his gaze penetrating and unwavering. "Happy. Completely, one hundred percent satisfied."
Her mouth went dry while the rest of her went up in needy flames that made her want to scratch the all-but-gone rash he'd tended so well on Monday.
"Nope," Natalie squeaked. "Not okay then. — Jamie Farrell

I cupped her chin and tilted it back, deepening the kiss, wanting to somehow claim her very soul. Funny thing was, it was my soul that was being claimed, my breath that was being stolen, and my heart that was pounding crazy fast in my chest. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

I was the dhampir daughter of the family patriarch, the little known stain on an otherwise immaculate record. Louis-Cesare, on the other hand, was vamp royalty. The only Child of Mircea's younger, and far stranger, brother Radu, he was a first-level master
the highest and rarest vampire rank.
A month ago, the prince and the pariah had crossed paths because we had one thing in common: we were very good at killing things. And Mircea's bug-eyed crazy brother Vlad had needed killing if anyone ever had. The collaboration hadn't exactly been stress free, but to my surprise, we eventually sorted things out and got the job done. By the end, I'd even started to think that it was kind of nice, having someone to watch my back for a change.
Sometimes, I could be really stupid. — Karen Chance

She tilted her head, looking back down at Del's notes as she absently tore the crust off her pizza.
And then she reached across the table and handed it to him as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
He glanced down at the crust and then back at her; her eyes were still on his notebook as she flipped a page and began reading again, and he felt something settle in his chest. It was pathetic, but that was probably the nicest thing anyone had done for him in a long time. — Priscilla Glenn

If I'm in the studio, I'm completely on music. I try to go to that place and that's the toughest thing for me to do. When I'm with other musicians, sometimes I go back to, almost like, childhood, because that's what I always wanted to be. — Jamie Foxx

Get this straight, you can use a Leopard in a mission, you can send him out to kill for you. Hell, you can even fuck one. The one thing you can never, ever do is trust one. Leopards by nature are cold, emotionless and psychotic. They were made with one purpose and that was to destroy others. So whatever you do, don't turn your back on one and you sure as hell don't fall in love with one of the batshit, crazy loons - Carson to Trevor about Shane — Stephani Hecht

Back when people couldn't read, other people would take newspapers and turn them into theater so that people would know what was going on in the world. That is a powerful thing. — Aja Naomi King