Thought Sheet Quotes & Sayings

We're all black, and we all love to be black, and we all sing from our own hymn sheet. We're all surely black people, but we may be finally approaching a point of human history where you can't talk up or down to us anymore, but only to us. He's talking down to white people - how curious it sounds the other way round! In order to say such a thing, one would have to think collectively of white people, as a people of one mind who speak with one voice - a thought experiment in which we have no practice. But it's worth trying. It's only when you play the record backward that you hear the secret message. 3 — Zadie Smith

The lake hadn't been frozen long and of all them had been expressly forbidden to go out on it, but Norman Pye, who was older than the rest of them, said that it would be safe if they slid out on their bellies. So they did. "We thought it was exciting as all get out," Miss Vernon said. "We could hear the ice cracking but it didn't give, and we slid across it like seals. Oh, it was tremendous fun. The ice was clear as glass and you could see right to the bottom. All the stones lying there, brighter and more colourful than they ever are when you look through the water. You could even see fish swimming about. And then all at once there was this loud crack and the whole sheet gave way, and there we were in the water. — Mary Lawson

I thought if I lost the band, I was dead. If I didn't stick with the Who, I would be a sheet metal worker for the rest of my life. — Roger Daltrey

Earlier that day I had found a sheet of paper on which Min's grandmother had written her definition of the "superior woman." At the top of the page is said, "Formula for Woman, According to Dignity." The formula was "Has excellent posture, which is two-thirds contentment and one-third desire."
At first I thought this a bit arbitrary. But all day the idea had been passing through my mind like a mantra. I began to think, in this strange place - half kingdom, half city - that the grandmother's formula caught the entire world in its tiny palm. Two-thirds contentment, one-third desire. Of course, I thought, as I spiraled my way through the trees to Asia Foodstore, that is the composition of the world. — Rebecca Lee

The blizzard seemed to be dying down, and it was now possible to enjoy the sight of the buildings and embankments and bridges smothered in the diamond-dusted whiteness. There's always something soothing in the snow, thought Gabriel, a promise of happiness and absolution, of a new start on a clean sheet. Snow redesigned the streets with hints of another architecture, even more magnificent, more fanciful than it already was, all spires and pinnacles on pale palaces of pearl and opal. All that New Venice should have been reappeared through its partial disappearance. It was as if the city were dreaming about itself and crystallizing both that dream and the ethereal unreality of it. He wallowed in the impression, badly needing it right now, knowing it would not last as he hobbled nearer to his destination. — Jean-Christophe Valtat

And each night in bed I thought of her as the moon came through my window. I could have lowered my shade to make it darker and easier to sleep, but I never did. In that moonlit hour, I acquired a sense of the otherness of things. I liked the feeling the moonlight gave me, as if it wasn't the opposite of day, but its underside, its private side, when the fabulous purred on my snow-white sheet like some dark cat come in from the desert. — Jerry Spinelli

The future is an empty canvas or a blank sheet of paper, and if you have the courage of your own thought and your own observation you can make of it what you will — Lewis H. Lapham

And then I got to my feet and stumbled toward the door again. And got halfway there before I realized I was naked. Of course I am, I thought angrily, and went back to the bed for a sheet. God forbid I actually wake up dressed anymore. — Karen Chance

I woke with sweat beading across my forehead and my hands balled into fists clutching the sheet over my eyes. The dreams. They were back. Haunting me relentlessly. I thought they were gone ... I should've known better. (Rayne) — Kimberly Brockman

He stared at her again and then smiled a big, goofy smile. "I didn't really think of it like that." He looked lost in thought for a minute and finally, a mischievous grin formed on his face. "Wait here a minute."
He got up and left. He returned a few minutes later and handed her something. A piece of paper, folded too many times.
"What's this?" She took it from him, amused and smiling with curiosity.
He sat down next to her and shrugged. "I dunno, some guy asked me to give it to you."
She tentatively started unfolding, looking up at him with each bend of the paper. Just before the last fold, she could see the crude handwriting inside, as if it were written by a child. She lifted the sheet, opening it up fully and stared at it.
Danarya, will you go with me?
Please mark the box
Yes [ ] or No [ ]
Paul

"Oh my gosh!" she squealed with delight. She burst out laughing. "I haven't received one of these since fifth grade. — S. Jackson Rivera

I could hear and indescribable seething roar which wasn't which wasn't in my ear but everywhere and had nothing to do with sounds. I realised that I had died and reborn numberless times but just didn't remember especially because the transitions from life to death and back to life are so ghostly eas, a magical action for naught, like falling asleep and waking up again a million times, the utter casualness and deep ignorance of it.
I realised it was only because of the stability of the intrinsic Mind that these ripples of birth and death took place, like the action of wind on a sheet of pure, serene, mirror-like water. I felt sweet, swinging bliss, like a big shot of heroin in the mainline vein, like a gulp of wine late in the afternoon and it makes you shudder; my feet tingled.
I thought I was going to die the very next moment. — Jack Kerouac

For a split second, Harry thought how absurd it was for Tonks to expect the dummy to hear her talking that quietly through a sheet of glass, when there were buses rumbling along behind her and all the racket of street full of shoppers. Then he reminded himself that dummies could not hear anyway. — J.K. Rowling

I woke up. I didn't scream. That night I kept the scream in my throat. Just barely. I sat up in my bed, a cold puddle of moonlight caught in a lapful of sheet, and I thought, Died suddenly. That night I didn't get back to sleep so quickly. — Stephen King

Have you heard from his lordship lately?" I asked.
"Oh no! About six months ago I had indeed one little note, but I gave it to Macara by mistake, and really I don't know what became of it afterwards."
"Did Macara express hot sentiment of incipient jealousy on thus accidentally learning that you had not entirely dropped all correspondence with the noble Earl?"
"Yes. He said he thought the note was very civilly expressed, and wished me to answer it in terms equally polite."
"Good! And you did so?"
"Of course. I penned an elegant billet on a sheet of rose-tinted note-paper, and sealed it with a pretty green seal bearing the device of twin hearts consumed by the same flame. Some misunderstanding must have occurred, though, for in two or three days afterwards I received it back unopened and carefully enclosed in a cover. The direction was not in his lordship's hand-writing: Macara told me he thought it was the Countess's. — Charlotte Bronte

learned to read and write in the Slavic alphabet from a single sheet. Then, I proceeded to make up my own dictionary using a small notebook with every page a different letter. An added impediment was the difference between these two Slavic languages. The writing presented also slight differences, also the orthography. All this added to the difficulties and the confusion, at first. The new, Soviet administration never thought of offering language classes for the new citizens. — Pearl Fichman

Aside from helping people with their homework, or anything else they needed, she really didn't know how to meet people. She didn't feel like she was a shy person. She thought of herself as a take-charge sort of girl. And yet, somehow, if there wasn't some request along the lines of "I can't remember how to do long division" then it was just too awkward to go up to someone and say ... what? She'd never been able to figure out what. And there didn't seem to be a standard information sheet, which was ridiculous. The whole business of meeting people had never seemed sensible to her. Why did she have to take all the responsibility herself when there were two people involved? Why didn't adults ever help? She wished some other girl would just walk up to her and say, "Hermione, the teacher told me to be friends with you". — Eliezer Yudkowsky

The Academy ER had a sticker sheet of glittery Oscar statues that were reserved for patients who put on Oscar-worthy acts. The nurses would stick one on a patient's chart so that everyone who treated the patient knew what to expect. Some staffers didn't like Oscar because it gave the practitioners preconceived notions. But Molly thought it was funny and a stress reliever. — Alexandra Robbins

He wasn't just beautiful; he was ... enthralling. He was the kind of guy who made a woman want to rip his shirt open and watch the buttons scatter along with her inhibitions. I looked at him in his civilized, urbane, outrageously expensive suit and thought of raw, primal, sheet-clawing fucking. — Sylvia Day

The beautiful clarity of all marked outlines occurred to her--there would be a deep satisfaction in strengthening fences, for instance, going along on the inside of a strong fence enclosing a large land, leaning outward to push towards the extreme limit of property; too, what about the lovely definition of a sheet of white paper alone on her desk, oblong and complete, the tightness with which the sky fitted onto the earth at the horizon, the act of caressing the spine of a book? Irresistibly, she thought with a shiver of a razor sharp edge slicing horizontally through her eyes, into her mouth, and then coming around the hard corner of a building, saw again the campus and its lights and heard its sounds. — Shirley Jackson

The lines gradually become their own demiurges and, like some witless yet miraculous participant, I witness the birth on paper of sentences that have eluded my will and appear in spite of me on the sheet, teaching me something that I neither knew nor thought I might want to know. — Muriel Barbery

Suicide. It's something I've been thinking about. Not too seriously, but I have been thinking about it.
That's the note. Word for word. And I know it's word for word because I wrote it dozens of times before delivering it. I'd write it, throw it away, write it, crumple it up, throw it away.
But why was I writing it to begin with? I asked myself that question every time I printed the words onto a new sheet of paper. Why was I writing this note? It was a lie. I hadn't been thinking about it. Not really. Not in detail. The thought would come into my head and I'd push it away.
But I pushed it away a lot. — Jay Asher

The idea that man is a tabula rasa, or Mao's sheet of blank paper upon which the most beautiful characters can be written, is an old one with disastrous implications. I do not think though that the cults you mention could survive honest thought about human nature. — Theodore Dalrymple

He was just drifting off when he heard her soft whisper. "Cooper?"
"Still here." Maybe she'd changed her mind about the sheet. The thought made his body twitch. Yeah, she was going to toss that damn thing aside and roll toward him. She'd wrap that hot little bod tight to his, and he'd
"Thank you." Breanne said very quietly.
He blinked. "Thank you? He slid his hand down to cup himself. Still hard. Nope, he hadn't missed anything ... — Jill Shalvis

She had not made a lot of money, but she had not made a loss, and she had been happy and entertained. That counted for infinitely more than a vigorously healthy balance sheet. In fact, she thought, annual accounts should include an item specifically headed Happiness, alongside expenses and receipts and the like. — Alexander McCall Smith

I'd never heard of them, but at that moment, it was the best song I'd ever heard. I went out and bought Ten and listened to it on repeat. When I listened to track five, "Black," it was like I was there, in that moment all over again.
After the summer was over, when I got back home, I went to the music store and bought the sheet music and learned to play it on the piano. I thought one day I could accompany Conrad and we could be, like, a band. — Jenny Han

Let me see a complete reorganization of the North Atlantic fleet's defensive strategy against Nazi U-boats. And if it won't go on one side of one sheet of paper, it hasn't been properly thought out - Winston Churchill. — Patrick Robinson

-she'd never thought of him while in the tub or flat on her bed- but in his presence she didn't want to talk or eat, she wanted to be nude with him, under a dirty sheet in a borrowed house. She wanted to hold his shoulders; she wanted to go snowshoeing with him; she wanted to go to funerals with him; she wanted him to be the father of her children — Dave Eggers

A lover of comfort might shrug after looking at the whole apparent jumble of furniture, old paintings, statues with missing arms and legs, engravings that were sometimes bad but precious in memory, and bric-a-brac. Only the eye of a connoisseur would have blazed with eagerness at the sight of this painting or that, some book yellowed with age, a piece of old porcelain, or stones and coins.
But the furniture and paintings of different ages, the bric-a-brac that meant nothing to anyone but had been marked for them both by a happy hour or memorable moment, and the ocean of books and sheet music breathed a warm life that oddly stimulated the mind and aesthetic sense. Present everywhere was vigilant thought. The beauty of human effort shone here, just as the eternal beauty of nature shone all around.
pp. 492-493 — Ivan Goncharov

She felt as if things were moving past her as she lay stretched on the bed under the single sheet. But it's not landscape any longer, she thought; it's people's lives, their changing lives. — Virginia Woolf

I don't remember waking up that Sunday morning - - perhaps I never slept. Iwas just sitting up in bed watching Sarah sleep. She'd slept naked in my bed but she hadn't let me have sex with her. I didn't care. I loved watching her sleep. The light was falling through my window, all over the blue sheets of my old bed, and onto her face. I lifted up the sheets and watched her breasts move with her breath. They seemed to be sleeping themselves.
I hoped that she wouldn't wake up. I laid the sheet back over her, right up to her chin.
I looked up and out of my room.
I thought, This must be what praying is like. — Ethan Hawke

Pushing his black-framed glasses up his nose, he said, "Today, we're going to start building cabinets. I've run out of storage areas and I thought this would be a good learning experience for you. You should see a sheet in front of you that shows that dimensions that I need. You can either make a plain cabinet or you can add detailing for extra credit. And Sophie?" He looked at me.
"Yes?" I asked.
"Please, I'm begging you, stay away from the power tools. — Micalea Smeltzer

I witness the birth on paper of sentences that have eluded my will and appear in spite of me on the sheet, teaching me something that I neither knew nor thought I might want to know. This painless birth, like an unsolicited proof, gives me untold pleasure, and with neither toil nor certainty but the joy of frank astonishment I follw the pen that is guiding and supporting me. — Muriel Barbery

But once I saw Fulvia Cardew crumple up a sheet of paper with just a couple of words written on it and you would've thought she'd murdered someone from the looks she got. — Suzanne Collins

He climbed up behind Hazel. Arion took off across the water, the nymphs screaming behind them, and Narcissus shouting, "Bring me back! Bring me back!" As Arion raced towards the Argo II, Leo remembered what Nemesis had said about Echo and Narcissus: Perhaps they'll teach you a lesson. Leo had thought she'd meant Narcissus, but now he wondered if the real lesson for him was Echo
invisible to her brethren, cursed to love someone who didn't care for her. A seventh wheel. He tried to shake that thought. He clung to the sheet of bronze like a shield. He was determined never to forget Echo's face. She deserved at least one person who saw her and knew how good she was. Leo closed his eyes, but the memory of her smile was already fading. — Rick Riordan

I suggested to Jean that she try an exercise that many people find helpful. I call it the "Bug/Brag List." I asked her to take a sheet of paper and on one side write "Things That Bug Me About Serena." Then, on the other side, to write "Things I Appreciate About Serena." I thought she might be surprised at the outcome. — Nancy Samalin

It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things. — Lemony Snicket

She glanced up at him, and in that moment he pulled his wet shirt over his head. She forced her mind blank. Blank as a new sheet of paper, blank as a starless sky. He came to the fire and crouched before it. He rubbed the water from his bare arms and flicked it in the flames. She stared at the goose and sliced his drumstick carefully and thought of the blankest expression on the blankest face she could possibly imagine. It was a chilly evening; she thought about that. The goose would be delicious, they must eat as much of it as possible, they must not waste it; she thought about that. — Kristin Cashore

One time I stayed at a haunted motel. When I checked into my room, there was a sheet on the floor, and I thought it was a ghost that had passed out, so I kicked it. — Mitch Hedberg