Quotes & Sayings About Things That Don't Last

I don't know how to cure the source-itis except to tell you that I can discover a good many possible sources myself for Wise Blood but I am often embarrassed to find that I read the sources after I had written the book. I have been exposed to Wordsworth's "Intimation" ode but that is all I can say about it. I have one of those food-chopper brains that nothing comes out of the way it went in. The Oedipus business comes nearer home. Of course Haze Motes is not an Oedipus figure but there are the obvious resemblances. At the time I was writing the last of the book, I was living in Connecticut with the Robert Fitzgeralds. Robert Fitzgerald translated the Theban cycle with Dudley Fitts, and their translation of the Oedipus Rex had just come out and I was much taken with it. Do you know that translation? I am not an authority on such things but I think it must be the best, and it is certainly very beautiful. Anyway, all I can say is, I did a lot of thinking about Oedipus. — Flannery O'Connor

Some things lend themselves well to songs, some things don't, and I'm learning that a lot at the moment. It's still a relatively new way of writing. It's only really the last five to 10 years that I've taken my writing seriously in this way, as something I can keep working toward. I think I feel myself much more before as simply a songwriter. — PJ Harvey

The only test, Baker, is how not to erase ourselves from the map. Our history is that things don't last. Every generation creates the right monsters to destroy itself. — Gerard Donovan

It's dreadfully unfair to say things like that when this is likely the last time we will speak and we both know you don't mean what you say. It's pure selfishness that you want to keep me here. — Rachel Caine

I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend ... I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend ... — Neil Gaiman

Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn't. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. — George Orwell

We're like a shattered peasant society. I mean, the last study I saw of it was done in around 1980, and the United States was at the level of Bangladesh, it was very close to Iran.33 Eighty percent of Americans literally believe in religious miracles. Half the population thinks the world was created a couple thousand years ago and that fossils were put here to mislead people or something - half the population. You just don't find things like that in other industrial societies.34 Well, — Noam Chomsky

No 'Middlemarch' for me," said Miss Barbara, with a wave of her hand. "I am too old for that. That means I've read it, my dear - the way an experienced reader like me can read a thing - in the air, in the newspapers, in the way everybody talks. No, that's not like going into a new neighborhood - that is getting to the secrets of the machinery, and seeing how everything, come the time, will run down, some to ill and harm, but all to downfall, commonplace, and prosiness. I have but little pleasure in that. And it's pleasure I want at my time of life. I'm too old to be instructed. If I have not learned my lesson by this time, the more shame to me, my dear." "But, Miss Barbara, you don't want only to be amused. Oh no: to have your heart touched, sometimes wrung even - to be so sorry, so anxious that you would like to interfere - to follow on and on to the last moment through all their troubles, still hoping that things will take a good turn." — Mrs. Oliphant

A few generations ago, men went to work or war and rarely got to see life beyond their careers. A generation ago, our parents had to answer the question of what they would do with the last third of their lives. How would they spend their retirement? Would it be squandered on silly things or invested in significance? But now, the question of legacy isn't a matter of if you live long enough or when you retire; it's a matter of what you will do with what you have right now. You don't have to earn a living for thirty years to turn around and spend the next thirty giving it away. If significance is what matters to you, you can structure your life and work in a way that allows you to live your legacy now. In fact, your giving doesn't have to be a by-product of your success; it can be the very thing that drives it in the first place. — Jeff Goins

If you make art, people will talk about it. Some of the things they say will be nice, some won't. You'll already have made that art, and when they're talking about the last thing you did, you should already be making the next thing.
If bad reviews (of whatever kind) upset you, just don't read them. It's not like you've signed an agreement with the person buying the book to exchange your book for their opinion.
Do whatever you have to do to keep making art. I know people who love bad reviews, because it means they've made something happen and made people talk; I know people who have never read any of their reviews. It's their call. You get on with making art. — Neil Gaiman

This could be the last night of our lives, certainly the last even barely ordinary one. The last night we go to sleep and get up just as we always have. And all I could think of was that I wanted to spend it with you."
Her heart skipped a beat. "Jace-"
"I don't mean it like that," he said. "I won't touch you, not if you don't want me to. I know it's wrong - God, it's all kinds of wrong - but I just want to lie down with you and wake up with you, just once, just once ever in my life." There was desperation in his voice. "It's just this one night. In the grand scheme of things, how much can this one night matter?"
... There was nothing she had ever wanted in her life more than she wanted this night with Jace.
"Close the curtains, then, before you come to bed," she said. "I can't sleep with this much light in the room. — Cassandra Clare

From REQUSISITION FOR: A THIEF - Book 1
Female Reporter: "Agent Garret, could you answer one more question?... Why can't the FBI catch this guy?"
Director Denny Garret: "The problem is two-fold, really. ...If we're ever gonna catch him it's gonna be because he's failed. If you want to see Gregg Hadyn fail, a jewel heist is the last place to look."

Carly Macklin: "What is your thing, Gregg Hadyn?"
Gregg Hadyn: "You know, I'm really good at taking things that don't belong to me."

Director Denny Garret: "Bobby pins?"
International Jewel Thief Gregg Hadyn: "They make the best handcuff picks. — J.A. Devereaux

Only problem with the whole scheme, really, is that Lauren's about to blow up the planet. See, that's the part you aren't in on. The thing in the Box? It's an angel. And it's really old and really pissed off." "You're bluffing," Nicky said. "Are we?" Caitlin shrugged. "We're keeping things under wraps to avoid a panic, but a full report's been delivered to the prince and his inner council. A council which, last time I checked, includes your father. Why don't you get in touch with him? Ask him who Belephaia is." He looked from her to me and back again, resting his hand on his desk phone. His brow furrowed as he worked out the implications. — Craig Schaefer

That's the trouble with living things. Don't last very long. Kittens one day, old cats the next. And then just memories. And the memories fade and blend and smudge together. — Neil Gaiman

I like smoking at home. I like it to be one of the last things I do that day. I don't wake and bake at all; I couldn't do that. If I'm waking and baking, then I'm staying inside my place the rest of the day. I can't start my day off high. — Hannibal Buress

One's attitude toward life makes every possible difference in one's living. You know, you don't have to study a thousand ancient books to discover that fact. But sometimes it needs to be pointed out again that life doesn't change so much as you ...
The day when you stop building your own environment, when you stop building your own surroundings, when you stop waving a magic hand and gracing everything around you with magic and beauty, things cease to be magical, things cease to be beautiful. Well, maybe you've just neglected somewhere back in the last few years to wave that magic hand. — L. Ron Hubbard

She paused and saw him tense in expectation. He wouldn't like to hear this, but better from her than one of the others. "You aren't the only pilot I have in my service. And you aren't the only person with a dark past, though the illegal things that you did, you were forced to do by the Core. But I will tell you what I've told the others. This is your last chance. You screw up with me and you get shipped up river. I don't offer second chances - I offer last chances."
Nope, he didn't like it. She saw the hand not holding the bottle of beer curl into a fist.
Sin and Del, from Sunscapes Trilogy, Book 1: Last Chance — Michelle O'Leary

The very first noble truth of the Buddha points out that suffering is inevitable for human beings as long as we believe that things last - that they don't disintegrate, that they can be counted on to satisfy our hunger for security. — Pema Chodron

You can find things in the traditional religions which are very benign and decent and wonderful and so on, but I mean, the Bible is probably the most genocidal book in the literary canon. The God of the Bible - not only did He order His chosen people to carry out literal genocide - I mean, wipe out every Amalekite to the last man, woman, child, and, you know, donkey and so on, because hundreds of years ago they got in your way when you were trying to cross the desert - not only did He do things like that, but, after all, the God of the Bible was ready to destroy every living creature on earth because some humans irritated Him. That's the story of Noah. I mean, that's beyond genocide - you don't know how to describe this creature. Somebody offended Him, and He was going to destroy every living being on earth? And then He was talked into allowing two of each species to stay alive - that's supposed to be gentle and wonderful. — Noam Chomsky

Ginny, listen ... I can't be involved with you anymore. We've got to stop seeing each other. We can't be together."
"It's for some stupid noble reason isn't it?"
"It's been like ... like something out of someone else's life these last few weeks with you. But I can't ... we can't ... I've got to do things alone now. Voldemort uses people his enemies are close to. He's already used you as bait once, and that was just because you were my best friend's sister. Think how much danger you'll be in if we keep this up. He'll know, he'll find out. He'll try and get me through you."
"What if I don't care?"
"I care. How do you think I'd feel if this was your funeral ... and it was my fault ... — J.K. Rowling

After all, there are beautiful things that don't last. But memory of them does. — Edilberto K. Tiempo

Some things, Cassie, you just feel. You don't know. You feel them. In here," Gabriel said, pointing to his chest. "I knew without words, without facts, without knowing every last detail about you and your life that I was drawn to you. That we had a connection. I was mesmerized. The kind of thing that is rare. — Heather Hall

To be honest, I'd be the last person who should be doling out gardeinng advice. I don't have the patience for growing things. Yes, I realize there's nothing quite as satisfying as eating food that you've pulled up from the ground and that's why, at the height of the planting season, I bury cans of tomato soup in my backyard and dig them up in late spring. — Ellen DeGeneres

To remember sometimes is a great sorrow, but when the remembering has been done, there comes afterwards a very curious peacefulness. Because you have planted your flag on the summit of the sorrow. You have climbed it.
And I notice again in the writing of this confession that there is nothing called long-ago after all. When things are summoned up, it is all present time, pure and simple. So that, much to my surprise, people I have loved are allowed to live again. What it is that allows them I don't know. I have been happy now and then in the last two weeks, the special happiness that is offered from the hand of sorrow. — Sebastian Barry

It feels so great when things finally fall into places and you can smile all over again seeing that incomplete puzzle all complete in one pieceSome people are like those incomplete pieces of the puzzle, which we keep looking for.Its either lost,hidden,Ignored or out of our sight.And we try so hard to look for that one piece we are looking for, but end up finding other pieces which we did not want, but then still settle for it thinking maybe we will finish the other half of the puzzle with whatever we get and don't put in our effort to look for that one piece which we were looking for in the begining and we get distracted.But then when we find that piece it makes us so happy to finally put in the last piece while we smile at it feeling happy and contented — Nadia

I wondered if my life was going to be one immersion after another, a great march of shallow, unpopular popular culture infatuations that don't really last and don't really mean anything. Sometimes I even think maybe my deepest obsessions are just random manifestations of my loneliness or isolation. Maybe I infuse ordinary experience with a kind of sacred aura to mitigate the spiritual vapidity of my life ... no, it is beautiful to be enraptured. To be enthralled by something, anything. And it isn't random. It speaks to you for a reason. If you wanted to, you could look at it that way, and you might find you aren't wasting your life. You are discovering things about yourself and the world, even if it is just what you find beautiful, right now, this second. — Dana Spiotta

Things don't always change with a bang. Sometimes they change so gradually that you can't clearly pinpoint the last moment they were truly the same. — C.K. Kelly Martin

...grown up with very bad contemporary literature, and they find it much more fifficult to approach earlier writing than we do. The more we have known of the really good things, the more insipid the thin lemonade of later literature becomes, sometimes almost to the point of making us sick. Do you know a work of literature written in the last, say, fifteen years that you think has any lasting quality? I don't. It is partly idle chatter, partly propaganda, partly self-pitying sentimentality, but there is no insight, no ideas, no clarity, no substance and almost always the language is bad and constrained. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I don't know if I have the willpower to let you put your mouth on me. I won't last, not tonight."

It was intoxicating, the thought that he could want her that hard, that much. "So? Come in my mouth, and then show me all the things you've wanted to do to me."

Noah groaned, his fingers tightening until her scalp tingled. "That is a filthy fucking suggestion. — Kit Rocha

I had more to say," Sin said, still looking frustrated. "But it doesn't come out right when I try. I always say the wrong things."
Boyd nodded but he was so caught by their proximity, by the green of Sin's eyes, that at first he struggled with his own words.
"It's alright," he said at last. "As long you don't hate me, it's enough."
"That is not enough," Sin growled. "Not by a goddamn long shot. You just have no idea, Boyd. No fucking clue."
"About what?"
"Everything. Why I acted the way I did ... Why I was so pissed off. It will never make any sense to you because I don't know how to explain."
"So try," Boyd pressed. "Please."
"I don't know how. — Ais

I haven't tried this with anyone ... signifacant in a long time. It's never worked before."
"You haven't had sex before?"
"I have. But not with anyone i cared about or ... knew. One-time things. That's all."
"That's all-ever?"
"It's not like they 've been tons of them. There were more before, in high school, than there have been the last three years."
"Lucas? I said yes, and i meant it. I want this-as long as you have protection, i mean. I want this, with you. So this is okay. Please don't ask me to say stop."
"I want it to be better than okay. You deserve better than okay."
"You 're shaking, Jacqueline. Do you want to-"
"No." "I'm just a little cold."
"Better?"
"Yes."
"You know you can say it. But i'm not asking you to, this time."
"Good."
His earlier hesitation gone, he removed the last scraps of fabric we were wearing, fixed the condom in place, kissed me fiercely and rocked into me. — Tammara Webber

I discovered, for the first time but not the last, that politicians don't care too much what things cost. It's not their money. — Donald J. Trump

I want to say one last thing, and it's important. Though I am a generally happy person who feels comfortable in my skin, I do beat myself up because I am influenced by a societal pressure to be thin. All the time. I feel it the same way anybody who picks up a magazine and sees Keira Knightley's elegantly bony shoulder blades poking out of a backless dress does. I don't know if I've ever seen my shoulder blades once. Honestly, I'm dubious that any part of my body could be so sharp and firm as to be described as a "blade." I feel it when I wake up in the morning and try on every single pair of my jeans and everything looks bad and I just want to go back to sleep. But my secret is: even though I wish I could be thin, and that I could have the ease of lifestyle that I associate with being thin, I don't wish for it with all of my heart. Because my heart is reserved for way more important things. — Mindy Kaling

Good Morning!" said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat.
"What do you mean?" he said. "Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?"
"All of them at once," said Bilbo. "And a very fine morning for a pipe of tobacco out of doors, into the bargain.
...
"Good morning!" he said at last. "We don't want any adventures here, thank you! You might try over The Hill or across The Water." By this he meant that the conversation was at an end.
"What a lot of things you do use Good morning for!" said Gandalf. "Now you mean that you want to get rid of me, and that it won't be good till I move off. — J.R.R. Tolkien

The last thing the world needs is another boring person or another boring brand, so embrace all the things that make you different. Alter your clothes all you want, but don't you dare alter your inner freak - she's got your back as much as I do. — Sophia Amoruso

I think one of the downsides of the sort of obsession with romantic love and personal fulfillment is that the plain fact of the matter is that those feelings don't last for ever and so they better be replaced and reinforced by things that do. — Mary Archer

People set newspapers on fire; they use them for wrapping fish. The Internet does not have that property. What I don't think we've gotten is that you can make things last longer than in print. — Ezra Klein

The task of art is to transform what is continuously happening to us, to transform all of these things into symbols, into music, into something which can last in man's memory. That is our duty. If we don't fulfill it, we feel unhappy. — Jorge Luis Borges

I think I need to become perfect all at once, so I keep getting overwhelmed and putting it off. I can't remember the last time that I didn't have something hanging over my head. There are usually about thirty to eighty things. Is that normal? Don't tell me. If it's not, I'm a jerk. If it is, that's super-depressing, and I know I'll just use 'this is normal' as an excuse to procrastinate even more. — Anna Kendrick

Nature - how, we don't know - has technology that works in every living cell and that depends on every atom being precisely in the right spot. Enzymes are precise down to the last atom. They're molecules. You put the last atom in, and it's done. Nature does things with molecular perfection. — Richard Smalley

BE KIND to your future self. Leave things as you would wish to find them tomorrow. You never wake up and say, "I'm glad I had that last drink!" You wouldn't junk up your car, so don't junk up your body. Your car is replaceable. — Marcia K. Matthews

It's what I call common sense, properly understood,' replied Father Brown. 'It really is more natural to believe a preternatural story, that deals with things we don't understand, than a natural story that contradicts things we do understand. Tell me that the great Mr Gladstone, in his last hours, was haunted by the ghost of Parnell, and I will be agnostic about it. But tell me that Mr Gladstone, when first presented to Queen Victoria, wore his hat in her drawing-room and slapped her on the back and offered her a cigar, and I am not agnostic at all. That is not impossible; it's only incredible. But I'm much more certain it didn't happen than that Parnell's ghost didn't appear; because it violates the laws of the world I do understand. So it is with that tale of the curse. It isn't the legend that I disbelieve - it's the history. — G.K. Chesterton

As the storm came nearer I began to realize that I hadn't made the most of my three years' immunity. In fact, I hadn't done a single thing about cleaning up my life. I was, if anything, an even more logical target for lightning than the last time I was in range. And thunderstorms don't creep up on you at seven o'clock in the morning in a non-thunderstorm country for nothing, you know. I lined up a rather panicky schedule of reforms ...
But as the storm suddenly petered out and went off in the other direction nothing much has come out of it yet. I may have three years more, and these things can't be rushed. — Robert Benchley

A lot of American shows don't last for as long as 12 episodes. They get cut after one. But certainly one of the great things about The Office in particular was that there was a beginning, a middle and an end. — Matt Groening

Things don't fall apart. Things hold. Lines connect in thin ways that last and last and lives become generations made out of pictures and words just kept. — Lucille Clifton

We understand a person with problems, someone who is wrong about a lot of things in his or her life, who makes messes. We don't understand someone who is constantly right, who is only felled by Kryptonite. Chuck Klosterman had a pretty great book about this whole thing - I Wear The Black Hat - that came out last year and which I greatly enjoyed. — Tod Goldberg

I like to keep things classic, not lavish or blinged out. I don't even say that word. The last thing I want to be is over the top. — Dhani Jones

Something that is very hard to learn and accept about real life is that a lot of people, a surprising number of people, don't really care about anyone but themselves. They pretend to care, and they can go through the motions a little bit for a little while, but when real and sad things happen that last longer than a few days, they lose interest fast. It is best to not have these people be your best friends, because they are terrible. Unfortunately, they are everywhere, and, to make things worse, they sometimes procreate. — Katie Heaney

In a relationship when things are really great you don't need to say anything and just enjoy the other person. Sometimes with a couple, it gets dark and you don't know what to say and that silence can last all day. Other times you don't want to stop talking because you don't want to lose one another. — Anton Yelchin

It's the end. It's the end of the civilization. We're going down.
No, it's sure not too attractive. Lenticels.
I just hope my kids don't live to see the last days. The things burning and people living in cellars.
Violet.
The only thing worse than the thought it may all come tumbling down is the thought that we may go on like this forever. — M T Anderson

Everyone says it's wrong, 'drinking and driving', don't they.
I can tell you two things that are far more dangerous than 'drinking and driving': 1. 'drinking'; 2. 'driving'.
Do you know how many people were killed last year in Britain as a direct result of alcohol abuse?--thirty-five-thousand!
Do you know how many people were killed as a direct result of driving a car?--twenty-two-thousand!
Do you know how many people were killed as a direct result of drinking _and_ driving?--five-hundred!
::pauses::
I'm not taking any fuckin' chances!
::swigs his beer:: — Lee Mack

Have you ever seen The Last of the Mohicans?"
"I love it."
"Really?" I'm over the moon. We share a movie. Finally, we're on the same planet.
"Don't you love the part where he says, 'Stay alive. I will find you'?" I ask.
"I love that massacre scene," he says, like an excited little boy, "where they're walking down that path in the middle of nowhere and they're surrounded by the woods and you know the Indians are going to attack and it's so tense."
Things that make you go hmmm. — Melina Marchetta

Maybe falling in love isn't about someone wrapping his arm around you and shooting the bad guys while shielding you and then promising he'll always be around to do that. Maybe it's just about finding the right person for a certain time in your life. Maybe I do love him because he was kind to me, because he gave me a place to belong. Because he kidnapped me. And maybe one day, he'll let me go. Or I'll let him go.
It doesn't mean we didn't love each other. It doesn't mean he didn't give me a betterness that will last my whole life. It just means things shift quietly.
I decide it's okay for me to be in love with him right now. I don't have to tell him about it. I just have to show him. — J.A. Rock

I don't remember who wins awards [Oscars]. I've won a few but what I really remember are movies. I love films, so I'm not concerned about speculation about winning things because I really enjoy being in films that last longer than an opening weekend. That's my goal in life. — George Clooney

I thought all I had to do to get you back was kill off your so-called mother and that little girl. No, I also pondered eating you alive. I imagined drinking all your blood and swallowing you whole many times. A thousand times ... no, a million times over the past few days! I couldn't even tell apart my dreams from reality. Why are you so obsessed with your piece of shit family? They abandoned you! Why must you only desire the things I can't give you, huh?! If you have any love left to go around, then don't give it to those worthless people. Give it to me! Give me everything. I want it all, even the last speck of dust lying at the bottom of your heart! Give me everything before I lose my mind! Before I really do drink your blood and eat your flesh! Before I swallow you whole! — Hajin Yoo

It's always easiest for me as a writer if I know I have a great ending. It can make everything else work. If you don't have a good ending, it's the hardest things in the world to come up with one. I always loved the ending of 'The Kite Runner,' and the scenes that are most faithful to the book are the last few scenes. — David Benioff

Moving from Hope to Faith to Knowledge
Step 1: Realize that your life is meant to progress.
Step 2: Reflect on how good it is to truly know something rather than just hoping and believing. Don't settle for less.
Step 3: write down your dilemma. Make three separate lists, for the things you hope are true, the things you believe are true, and the things you know are true.
Step 4: Ask yourself why you know the things you know.
Step 5: Apply what you know to those areas where you have doubts, where only hope and belief exist today.
The brain likes to work coherently and methodically, even when it comes to spirituality. The first two steps are psychological preparation; the last three ask you to clear your mind and open the way for knowledge to enter. — Deepak Chopra

You don't want flame to hit your food. Flame is bad. Flame does nasty things to food. It makes soot and it makes deposits of various chemicals that are not too good for us. The last thing you really want to see licking at your food while it's on a grill is an actual flame. — Alton Brown

There are a lot of bad things out there. Things the Hounds of Heaven were
created to destroy." He trailed his finger down the side of my face. "I can't be the hero you want
me to be
at least not in that way. But you can, Grace. You don't have to become one of the dark
ones. You can fight it. You can turn this curse into a blessing. You can become the hero. You
can become truly divine. — Bree Despain

I seriously don't understand how men came to rule the world, she'd said to her sister, Bridget, this morning, after she'd told her about how John-Paul had lost his rental car keys in Chicago. It had driven Cecilia bananas seeing that text message from him. There was nothing she could do! This type of thing was always happening to John-Paul. Last time he went overseas he'd left his laptop in a cab. The man lost things constantly. Wallets, phones, keys, his wedding ring. His possessions just slid right off him. — Liane Moriarty

One of the reasons I grew my hair long last year was that I like how my bangs cover my eyes: it helps me block out the things I don't want to see.
-August thinking — R.J. Palacio

I love you," I said firmly. "That might change over time, but for right now, you're the first person I think about when I wake up and the last before I go to sleep. When I'm happy, I want to tell you, and when I'm scared or upset, I know you're the only one who can make things right. We may never work as a couple, but we're linked for the rest of eternity. And I don't know about you, but that's too long for me to wonder 'what if. — Kaitlin Bevis

At last she interrupted with a harsh rattle of laughter. "Oh, yes, I like this book! Crazy hopes of a glamorous, rich, colorful life and then abduction, rape, slavery. That book, at least, is true."
"It is not true. It is a male sex fantasy."
"And life for most women is just that, a performance in a male sex fantasy. The stupid ones don't notice, they've been trained for it since they were babies, so they're happy. And of course the writer of that book made things obvious by speeding them up. What happens to the Blandish girl in a few weeks takes a lifetime for the rest of us. — Alasdair Gray

Don't we all discover, at some stage or another that there are some things we'll never get any better at, even though we have no idea why and hardly ever notice it when it happens, even though we may have enjoyed these things and might not have been lagging behind last time we checked? Learning to draw, for instance, was a familiar catastrophe - all of a sudden, unaware, you just stop getting any better at it, your drawings never progress beyond those of a four-year-old or a six-year-old, you're left behind by those who "can draw," condemned to producing flat, doughy figures on the page, with no sense of perspective to them and (this was what really struck me) no resemblance to the outside world: condemned by your ruined self to a shameful childhood. — Jean-Christophe Valtat

We try to resist it by making things that will last - forever, we say - things that we don't have to wash, things that we don't have to iron. Somehow, in the process of trying to deny that things are always changing, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things. — Pema Chodron

I think I am at that stage of Life now where Success or Failure, nothing Bothers me. If I get little success then I get lots of rejections and failures on a regular basis too. But none of that bothers me at all. I can take failure as sportingly without getting bothered as I take success. And this is how my life has drastically changed in last one year or something. I don't do things anymore to please people around me and all I care about is If I am happy being where I am and I am enjoying doing what I am doing or not. I may not be where I want to be yet but I am Happy.This is what matters in Life. Isn't it? Find what you love. Sooner or Later but you need to find one day, and once you find, give your everything to it. There may be many failures and rejections on the way but you will reach where you want to be some day and most importantly, you will be happy and in Peace with where you are. — Shivam Singh

It's the real thing at last. A new type of man: and it's people like you who've got to begin to make him." "That's my trouble. Don't think it's false modesty, but I haven't yet seen how I can contribute." "No, but we have. You are what we need: a trained sociologist with a radically realistic outlook, not afraid of responsibility. Also, a sociologist who can write." "You don't mean you want me to write up all this?" "No. We want you to write it down - to camouflage it. Only for the present, of course. Once the thing gets going we shan't have to bother about the great heart of the British public. We'll make the great heart what we want it to be. But in the meantime, it does make a difference how things are put. — C.S. Lewis

I had learned that some people feel that books are "intrusive," in the sense that books put things in their heads that they don't want there. Some people call these things "ideas." Maybe they're right. Sometimes these ideas sprout into what are known as "thoughts," and you know my feelings about school, government, and big businesses
thoughts are the last things they want rattling around inside people's heads because thoughts inevitably lead to consumer protection, free speech and hippies. — Gary Reilly

And Jazz snapped.
He didn't snap the way a normal person might snap. A normal person would fling his arms around and stomp his feet and rant at the top of his lungs, bellowing to the sky. There might be tears, from a normal person.
Jazz went quiet. He darted out one hand and grabbed the wrist of the paramedic who had been trying to cuff him and pulled the man close, holding his gaze.
In a moment, he channeled every last drop of (his father).
Who am I? I'll tell you. I'm the local psychopath, and if you don't save my best friend's life, I will hunt down everyone you've ever cared about in your life and make you watch while I do things to them that will have you begging me to kill them. That's who I am. — Barry Lyga

I have flown twice over Mt St. Helens out on our west coast. I'm not a scientist and I don't know the figures, but I have a suspicion that that one little mountain has probably released more sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere of the world than has been released in the last ten years of automobile driving or things of that kind that people are so concerned about. — Ronald Reagan

I'm afraid of children my own age. They kill each other. Did it always use to be that way? My uncle says no. Six of my friends have been shot in the last year alone. Ten of them died in car wrecks. I'm afraid of them and they don't like me because I'm afraid. My uncle says his grandfather remembered when children didn't kill each other. But that was a long time ago when they had things different. — Ray Bradbury

You can't live life waiting for things to go wrong, because then you're not really living. Everyone is going to die. That is part of the journey of living. What matters most is living each day you do have like it might be yout last. — Missy Johnson

All the talk about virgins recently had made him secretly yearn for some of the Nectar that they produced in their young wombs.It must have been at least fifty years since he had last tasted a virgin's Nectar. And that came from the lovely Metis, the neighbour's daughter, who subsequently became his wife.
Virgins were supposed to have hymens, yet he had never seen his wife's hymen."You don't notice such things when you are young", he told himself. All his three daughters had grown up from virgins to adults without him ever noticing them having hymens. They were all happily married now, with families of their own.[MMT] — Nicholas Chong

Your mother hollers that you're going to miss the bus. She can see it coming down the street. You don't stop and hug her and tell her you love her. You don't thank her for being a good, kind, patient mother. Of course not
you vault down down the stairs and make a run for the corner.
Only if it's the last time you'll ever see your mother, you sort of start to wish you'd stopped and did those things. Maybe even missed the bus.
But the bus was barreling down our street so I ran. — Emmy Laybourne

There are a lot of things I can take, and a few that I can't. What I can't take is when my older brother, who's everything that I want to be, starts losing faith in things. I saw that look in your eyes last night. I don't ever want to see that look in your eyes again. — M. Night Shyamalan

I don't deny that impulse drew us together, but while physical gratification began and ended it for you, in making love, dumbo here - - ' she jerked a thumb at her chest ' - was also demonstrating that she cared.'
His tongue moistened his lips. 'You're very up-front, aren't you?'
'You mean none of your other rejects have ever looked you in the eye and complained?' Sian queried. She might have made things easy last night, but she refused to make anything easy for him now. 'I suppose you'd prefer it if I shrugged my shoulders, muttered something about it being nice while it lasted, and filed the experience away under lessons learned? Well, sorry, but for me, and for most women if they're honest, going to bed with someone is a darn sight more complicated than that! — Elizabeth Oldfield

Imagine the spirit as a mansion. You'll guess we don't use many rooms. Apart from a few moments in childhood we don't dance around it in sunlight. But there's a traffic of things in and out, and what happens is that unwanted bulks can gather inside. Gather and gather, menacing us. Unable to shift them, we hide in ever-smaller spaces. And in our last hole, life offers a choice: to play out our demise in parallel theatres - psychosis, zealotry, religion, cancer, addiction - or to bow quietly out. But beware: life doesn't ask these high questions when we're confident and fresh - it waits for hopelessness. — D.B.C. Pierre

Most people can motivate themselves to do things simply by knowing that those things need to be done. But not me. For me, motivation is this horrible, scary game where I try to make myself do something while I actively avoid doing it. If I win, I have to do something I don't want to do. And if I lose, I'm one step closer to ruining my entire life. And I never know whether I'm going to win or lose until the last second. — Allie Brosh

How do you get the happy ending? John Irving ought to know. One of my favorite authors, Irving writes these multigenerational epics of fiction that somehow work out in the end. How does he do it? He says, 'I always begin with the last sentence ; then I work my way backwards, through the plot, to where the story should begin.' Thst sounds like a lot of work, especially compared to the fantasy that great writers sit down and just go where the story takes them. Irving lets us know that good stories and happy endings are more intentional than that.
Most 20 something's can't write the last sentence of their lives. But when pressed, they usually can identify things they want in their 30s or 40s or 60s -or things they don't want- and work backward from there. This is how you have your own multigenerational epic with a happy ending. This is how you live your life in real time. — Meg Jay

Sooner or later, we are bound to discover some things about ourselves that we don't like. But once we see they're there, we can decide what we want to do with them. Do we want to get rid of them completely, change them into other things, or use them in beneficial ways? The last two approaches are often especially Useful, since they avoid head on conflict, and therefore minimize struggle. Also, they allow those transformed characteristics to be added to the list of things we have that help us out.
In a similar manner, instead of struggling to erase what are referred to as negative emotions, we can learn to use them in positive ways. We could describe the principle like this: while pounding on the piano keys may produce noise, removing them doesn't exactly further the creation of music. — Benjamin Hoff

This is sad. I just think it's a little ridiculous we are still only looking at the surface of one another. Red hair? Blue hair? Pink? Blonde? Short? Long? Whatever. We might as well shave our heads. Hair has nothing to do with the reason we playing music. It's a style. Something that will never last as long as the songs we play and the words we sing. Listen up ladies in bands, I'm so proud to be one of you and I don't care if we all look exactly alike or if we are all carbon copies of each other. We have things to say and it's up to us to get people to not just look but to LISTEN! — Hayley Williams

I was taught to confront things you can't avoid. Death is one of those things. To live in a society where you're trying not to look at it is stupid because looking at death throws us back into life with more vigour and energy. The fact that flowers don't last for ever makes them beautiful. — Damien Hirst

I need to give you one last bit of advice in the off chance this rather extraordinary and enviable situation in which you find yourself is actually true- that somehow you've fallen deep down into a Cordova story. I stared back at him. Be the good guy, he said. How do I know I'm the good guy? He pointed at me, nodding. A very wise question. You don't. Most bad guys think they're good. But there are a few signifiers. You'll be miserable. You'll be hated. You'll fumble around in the dark, alone and confused. You'll have little insight as to the true nature of things, not until the very last minute, and only if you have the stamina and the madness to go to the very, very end. But most importantly- and critically- you will act without regard for yourself. You'll be motivated by something that has nothing to do with the ego. You'll do it for justice. For grace. For love. Those large rather heroic qualities only the good have the strength to carry on their shoulders. And you'll listen. — Marisha Pessl

When your time is up, what are your last thoughts going to be?' I asked. 'All of your miserable memories? When you were lonely or scared or heartbroken? The things that almost kill you don't make you stronger. If anything, they make you bitter and closed off and broken.
( ... )
I think what you have to live for makes you stronger — Katie Kacvinsky

So I put it out of its misery, if it really was miserable, and tried not to think about it. That was another thing they taught us at Willow Creek: don't write their eulogy, don't try to imagine who they used to be, how they came to be here, how they came to be this. I know, who doesn't do that, right? Who doesn't look at one of those things and just naturally start to wonder? It's like reading the last page of a book ... your imagination just naturally spinning. And that's when you get distracted, get sloppy, let your guard down and end up leaving someone else to wonder what happened to you. — Max Brooks

I just tend to do things to myself that I don't realize I'm doing. Sometimes I bite my lip so that it splits and hurts, and yet I can't stop. And sometimes I'd play shows on the last run, I'd scratch my neck while I was singing, and I'd horrified to see these red streaks of blood after. — Fiona Apple

And I don't care if you're talking about things that are true, you're still talking about my personal life. How about I go peek in your window, take what underwear you wore last night, whose husband you were f
ing, and shove that in the megaphone throughout your neighborhood? How does that feel? It's none of your goddamn business. — Jeremy Renner

We all have direct experience with things that do or don't make us happy, we all have friends, therapists, cabdrivers, and talk-show hosts who tell us about things that will or won't make us happy, and yet, despite all this practice and all this coaching, our search for happiness often culminates in a stinky mess. We expect the next car, the next house, or the next promotion to make us happy even though the last ones didn't and even though others keep telling us that the next ones won't. — Daniel Gilbert

I don't like ephemeral things; I like things that last forever — Laura Ashley

Dad told Uncle Seth not to screw things up," she informed me as we washed our hands. "He said even if Uncle Seth is famous, him getting a woman like you defies belief."
I laughed and smoothed down the skirt of my dress. "I don't know about that. I don't think your dad gives your uncle enough credit."
Brandy gave me a sage look, worthy of someone much older. "Uncle Seth spent last Valentine's Day at a library. — Richelle Mead

[We are] persuaded to spend money we don't have on things we don't need to create impressions that won't last on people we don't care about. — Tim Jackson

was speaking to hospitality associates at the Four Seasons Hotel in Miami, Florida, when one very young, very skinny, and very brave associate stood up. He said, "I didn't have a father, so I don't know how to properly button my jacket. Do I leave the last button open? When I need help with things like this, I don't know where to look for answers." After that tug at my heart, I wrote this career reference book specifically directed at hospitality associates globally. Hospitality Management: People Skills and Manners On and Off the Job covers just about every area of the hospitality associate's professional and personal life. — Lyn Pont

I don't know how much things have changed. You still need to be able to run the ball, pick up blitzes and catch the ball out of the backfield. Perhaps you need a running back to do a little bit more or be more versatile today but that is a good thing. People say we get hurt and don't last as long, but it's still an important position and you need everyone in the backfield to be able to contribute. — Giovani Bernard

You think it's so easy to change yourself. You think it's so easy, but it's not. True, things don't stay the same forever: couches are replaced, boys leave, you discover a song, your body becomes forever scarred. And with each of these moments you change and change again, your true self spinning, shifting positions
but always at last it returns to you, like a dancer on the floor. Because throughout it all, you are still, always, you: beautiful and bruised, known and unknowable. And isn't that - just you - enough. — Leila Sales

I haven't even graduated from high school yet - and I've realised in the last four years, with all the travelling I've done and all of the movies I've made, that the world is my classroom. I've experienced things I don't know you can necessarily get from reading a history book. — Hailee Steinfeld

I don't really know that this story has a whole lot of things happen in it. It doesn't really. It's just a record of how things were in my life during this last winter. I guess things happened, but nothing out of the ordinary. — Markus Zusak

Everybody asks why I started at the end and worked back to the beginning, the reason is simple, I couldn't understand the beginning until I had reached the end. There were too many pieces of the puzzle missing, too much you would never tell. I could sell these things. People want to buy them, but I'd set all this on fire first. She'd like that, that's what she would do. She'd make it just to burn it. I couldn't afford this one, but the beginning deserves something special. But how do I show that nothing, not a taste, not a smell, not even the color of the sky, has ever been as clear and sharp as it was when I belonged to her. I don't know how to express the being with someone so dangerous is the last time I felt safe ... (White Oleander) — Janet Fitch

Oh, and one thing. Please, please don't depend on me too much. I mean that. I'm not going to be of much help. If your plots come to a head - if things go wrong at the last moment and you're in danger or distress - don't think of me. I will fail you. That I promise from my heart with absolute sincerity. - Lightsong — Brandon Sanderson

Nothing lasts. So it's my belief, yes, I know a lot of the things that we liked didn't last, but maybe things we don't like, they're also not going to last. There has been progress in my lifetime. There are certainly things that are better than when I was young, and there are things that are worse. New York City, it's worse. There's no question. — Fran Lebowitz

He pressed another kiss to her lips as he took her hand into his. "I'm sorry for being a jerk last night and almost making the biggest mistake of my life. I was afraid of hurting you. I know what I am and I also know you deserve a guy that can spoil you rotten and take you to all the nice places that you deserve. I-"
"Jason, I don't care about those things," she said softly.
He shook his head stubbornly. "It doesn't mean that you don't deserve them, but if you give me a chance to make up for my past stupidity, and I'm not just talking about with you, I promise that I will do my best to make you happy."
"Jason-"
"I want to try this. You and me, I mean. I know I'll most likely fuck up along the way and you'll want to ring my neck, but I want to try. I'll do my best not to hurt you. — R.L. Mathewson