Thumbing Quotes & Sayings

Tender Warrior," Adam replied and showed John the cover. "You can read it; I'm almost done. Check this out," he said, thumbing backward through the pages. "It was written by Stu Weber, a Vietnam veteran, Special Forces. He became a chaplain. — Eric Blehm

But why?" "You heard the pay, right? And also, to be near you." Thumbing a tear from my cheek, he added, "Mostly, to be near you. — Tammara Webber

Not only are we digital immigrants, we are also media dinosaurs. We enjoy thumbing through glossy magazines, and maybe still subscribe to a daily newspaper. We schedule at least one evening per week around a favorite TV program, created by one of the major television or cable networks. We can name at least one local or national news anchor. And scattered around our homes and offices are veritable graveyards of physical media - old tapes, vinyl records, floppy disks, and magazines - that we insist on keeping, even though we'll probably never use them again. — Ian Lamont

The American people do not want people thumbing their nose at the law. It undercuts the very fabric of our society and the system of civil justice and of criminal justice as well. — Ernest Istook

The decision to change the name meant we were getting serious, because we couldn't make a record if some other band had the same name as us.
I told the boys I was in a record store, thumbing though 45s, and I'd seen a record with the name the Warlocks on it. I've often wondered whether I hallucinated it, because I never saw the record again and I never heard a word about any band called the Warlocks. — Phil Lesh

We stood under a roadlamp, thumbing, when suddenly cars full of young kids roared by with streamers flying. 'Yaah! Yaah! we won! we won!' they all shouted. Then they yoohooed us and got great glee out of seeing a guy and a girl on the road. Dozens of such cars passed, full of young faces and 'throaty young voices,' as the saying goes. I hated every one of them. Who did they think they were, yaahing at somebody on the road just because they were little high-school punks and their parents carved the roast beef on Sunday afternoons? Who did they think they were, making fun of a girl reduced to poor circumstances with a man who wanted to belove? — Jack Kerouac

I told her I'd taken to thumbing pastes and powders onto my forehead as an act of identification: culturally Hindu, even though God qua God was not really important to me, except as God manifested in my lovers and the emptiness left by my lovers. It was the only thing I knew how to do, being motherless, fatherless. I had made a religion of making presence out of absence. — Anonymous

Lebedev: France has a clear and defined policy ... The French know what they want. They just want to wipe out the Krauts, finish, but Germany, my friend, is playing a very different tune. Germany has many more birds in her sights than just France ...
Shabelsky: Nonsense! ... In my view the German are cowards and the French are cowards ... They're just thumbing their noses at each other. Believe me, things will stop there. They won't fight.
Borkin: And as I see it, why fight? What's the point of these
armaments, congresses, expenditures? You know what I'd do? I'd gather together dogs from all over the country, give them a good dose of rabies and let them loose in enemy country. In a month all my enemies would be running rabid. — Anton Chekhov

If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who. — Kurt Vonnegut

And to kill time while awaiting death, I smoke slender cigarettes thumbing my nose to the gods. — Jules Laforgue

And now it's some other guy's hands that are thumbing their way over Joey's face and down Dee Dee's chin and - oh, fucking hell - dropping down between the A and the M, going right for the V under the H&M-meets-S&M miniskirt. — David Levithan

Stop,' I tell her, stepping between her and the bag. 'Look what you're doing.' Jo gazes down at her hands as if they're not even attached to her body. She lowers them. She says, 'I've got a problem.'
'No shit,' I reply.
Her head lolls back and I can see she's hurting. 'I made you coffee.' I tell her, thumbing at the mug on the picnic table. 'Extra strong.'
She asks, 'Did you spike it with arsenic?'
'We're all out,' I answer. 'Unfortunately, all I could find was Excerdrin. — Julie Anne Peters

When I reach the shades at last it will no doubt astonish Satan to discover, on thumbing my dossier, that I was a member of the Y.M.C.A. — H.L. Mencken

There's no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat to the United States and to our allies. If Saddam persists in thumbing his nose at the inspectors, then we're clearly going to have to do something about it. — Howard Dean

I like to get input from the ladies when I shop." He grabbed a navy T-shirt and studied the il ustration, a cartoon drawing of a woman with enormous
breasts and a rocket launcher between her legs.
"That would be a definite no," she said.
"I like it." He tossed it over his shoulder and began thumbing through a stack of jeans.
"I thought you wanted my input."
He stared at her blankly. "Why'd you think that?" She gave up. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

My opinion is that somebody certainly has the right to do cartoons that make fun of somebody else's religion. But to reprint them just to provoke a fight and just to provoke it like thumbing your nose at someone else and going, What are you gonna do about it? — David Byrne

Contrary, aren't you,' said Damen softly, thumbing over Laurent's cheek.
'Fuck me,' said Laurent.
'I want to,' said Damen. 'Can you let me? — C.S. Pacat

I started reading G. K. Chesterton's 'The Man Who Was Thursday' on a subway ride, almost missed my stop, and walked home thumbing pages. — Kate Christensen

It's not my fault you have the attention span of a gnat, capable of only thumbing through the crap on Facebook, instead of reading something of worth that can change your life. No, I'm not talking about Oprah's or Ellen's book either. — Dara Reidyr

Indeed, in the midst of the devastation, most Londoners demonstrated a dogged determination to live as normal a life as possible: it was their way of thumbing their nose at Hitler. Each morning, millions of people left their shelters or basements and, despite the constant disruption of the train and Underground systems, went to work as usual, many hitchhiking or walking ten or more miles a day. Their commutes, which frequently involved long detours around collapsed buildings, impassable streets, and unexploded bombs, could take hours. Of the staff at Claridge's, Ben Robertson noted after a particularly violent raid: "Everyone was red-eyed and tired, but they were all there." The head waiter's house had been demolished during the night, but he had shown up, as had the woman who cleaned Robertson's room. "She was buried three hours in the basement of her house," another maid told Robertson. "Three hours! And she got to work this morning as usual." FOR — Lynne Olson

As taxpayers, we have quietly accepted the fact that our taxes will be spent to pay big bucks for all sorts of ugly, twisted metal to be displayed in front of or inside government buildings, in the name of 'art' that was obviously never meant to give the public any enjoyment and often represented a thumbing of the artist's nose at the public. — Thomas Sowell

He let the shirt fall and grabbed a Tupperware container of cookies out of the fridge. Maybe he could frustrate the Shadowhunters by refusing to work out and sitting around eating carbs. I defy you, Shadowhunters, he thought, thumbing the top off the container and popping a cookie in his mouth. I mock you with my sugar cravings. — Cassandra Clare

Here I was just thinking all these wonderful things about you and now you're trying to strip down before we can have sex."
His hands casually held in the air, he explained, "I was hot."
"It's seventy degrees in here."
His hands went to his cotton pants, thumbing the cinched band, preparing for a total strip down. Gawd, how I secretly wanted him to do it, but for some reason, the word stop came out of my mouth. At least I agreed with myself when I said, "That is so not fair."
Neither was the way the left side of his mouth curled up, smiling wickedly as his eyes swept across my body. "You're right. Your ogling is making me uncomfortable. You should remove your top to compensate. — Devon Ashley

Jesus is still up in Heaven, thumbing through his Bible, going 'Where did I say build a water slide?' — Sam Kinison

In fact, when drugs are legalized, use sometimes goes down, it's been claimed. Part of the reason is that teenage kids use illicit drugs because they are illicit. They are thumbing their noses at society. If they were legal, they might not. — Noam Chomsky

Skeptic that I was as an adolescent, I had recently come to believe in a Supreme Being after thumbing through a Victoria's Secret catalogue. — Woody Allen

We see this tendency to throw off restraints in life, in art - it's an inglorious gesture of thumbing the nose - it makes me laugh ... — John Geddes

Kat picked up a folder labeled Senior. "What are these? Bank records?" She did a double take, looking at Hale. "Did your dad really pay two million dollars to the campaign to elect Ross Perot?"
"I ... " Hale said, stumbling for words and thumbing through another file. "Wow. I guess my cousin Charlotte isn't really my cousin."
"Don't worry," Kat said. "It looks like there might be a kid in Queens who is. — Ally Carter

I finally tracked down Derek. He was alone in the library, thumbing through a book.
"Found you." I said on a sigh of relief.
He turned. His lips curved in a quarter smile, gaze softening in a way that did something to my insides, made me pull up short, momentarily forgetting why I was there.
"I-Is Simon around?"
He blinked, then turned back to the shelf.
"He's upstairs. He's really pissed about Andrew so that's probably that safest place for him until we're ready to go, or he'll say something to him we don't want said. You need him?"
"Actually, m-maybe I should show you first."
He glanced over his shoulder, frowning.
"We found something."
" Oh." He paused, like he was mentally shifting gears, then nodded and followed me out. — Kelley Armstrong

There is something about all beards that is like the gesture of thumbing the nose. Thank you very much. Up yours. — Wallace Stegner

He went to the table and picked up a football magazine, opened it, thumbed through it, and was thumbing through it again when he said: "Scout, if there's ever anything that happens to you or something - you know - something you might not want to tell Atticus about - " "Huh?" "You know, if you get in trouble at school or anything - you just let me know. I'll take care of you." Jem sauntered from the livingroom, leaving Jean Louise wide-eyed and wondering if she were fully awake. — Harper Lee

Although she's miles away, still I remember spending that December, staring at the sounds she made with her breath. And when I asked what it was she was up to "five foot nothing" came from her cracked honky-tonk lips and from a calico bonnet monstrous curls unfurled like apple-blossoms scattering about into the back-country. And wreaths of snowflakes swarmed over the hems of her garments and wandered with us into the ether on John F. Kennedy Avenue, and mingled in the traffic. While she held my head together like Jackie Onassis.
Although she's miles away, still I remember her pinning roses to a lapel and the icicles that hung upon the city when I told her "I may not be a handsome man and I probably don't have what it takes to make you forget for long, but know that I'm grateful we had this little drink and a dance before I'm sent ony way." Down John F. Kennedy Avenue, thumbing to Dallas. She held my head together
Like Jackie Onassis. — Valentine Xavier

Not all writers are artists. But all of us like the idea of somebody in the year 2283 blowing the dust off one of our books, thumbing through it and exclaiming, Hey, listen to what this old guy had to say back in the twentieth century! — William Attwood

Claire closed her eyes. Her breathing got deeper. She was awake - she could still hear Lydia greedily thumbing through pages - but she was also asleep, and in that sleep, she felt herself dipping into a dream. There was no narrative, just fragments of a typical day. She was at her desk paying bills. She was practicing the piano. She was in the kitchen trying to come up with a grocery list. She was making phone calls to raise money for the Christmas toy drive. She was studying the shoes in her closet, trying to put together an outfit to wear to lunch. — Karin Slaughter

His gaze settles on the discarded book. He leans, reaching until his fingertips graze Dante's Inferno, still on its bed of folded sheets. "What have we here?" he asks.
"Required reading," I say.
"It's a shame they do that," he says, thumbing through the pages. "Requirement ruins even the best of books. — Victoria Schwab