Voigt Quotes & Sayings

On this road they saw some other men, fishers and farmers Elske was told; some of the men were accompanied by women whose hair was wrapped around with colored cloths. These men and women stared at Elske, in her fur boots and wolfskin cloak, but when she stared back and them they looked away. — Cynthia Voigt

Men, and women too, are unpredictable creatures. You have seen little of this. I wonder now if your innocence is enough protection for you. — Cynthia Voigt

The solo break or the small break, it's ... one of the most glorious ways to win a bike race. It's pretty damn impressive in my mind. — Jens Voigt

The people they had been last summer, the person she had been
Dicey guessed she'd never be afraid again, not the way she
had been all summer. She had taken care of them all, sometimes well, sometimes badly. And they had covered the distances.
For most of the summer, they had been unattached. Nobody knew who they were or what they were doing. It didn't matter
what they did, as long as they all stayed together. Dicey remembered that feeling, of having things pretty much her own way.
And she remembered the feelings of danger. It was a little bit like being a wild animal, she thought to herself.
Dicey missed that wildness. She knew she would never have it again.
And she missed the sense of Dicey Tillerman against the whole world and doing all right. — Cynthia Voigt

Hopefully I've shown them (fellow cyclists) you just need some self-belief and that you need to take your destiny into your own hands instead of waiting for it. You have to go out and force it. You need to go out and take life, and shape your life and destiny the way you need it. I hope I can pass that message along. — Jens Voigt

But I'll tell you something else, too. Something I've learned, the hard way. I guess" - Gram laughed a little - "I'm the kind of person who has to learn things the hard way. You've got to hold on. Hold on to people. They can get away from you. It's not always going to be fun, but if you don't - hold on - then you lose them. — Cynthia Voigt

It's so great to be able to write from home. My bread is rising downstairs, and I'm upstairs writing. I have a writing room that my grandchildren consider one of their playrooms. — Cynthia Voigt

On a bright Sunday morning in the early years of the last century, — Cynthia Voigt

My writing process often begins with a question. I write down ideas and let them stew for about a year. Then, when I sit down to write, I make a list of characters and try to see how they fit. — Cynthia Voigt

Kids are really tougher than adults, but we tend to forget this in an affluent society that lets kids indulge themselves. — Cynthia Voigt

Cycling is not rocket science. — Jens Voigt

Where the veil broke, you could see silvery clouds on which tall angels might stand. Not cute little Christmas angels, but high, stern angels in white robes, whose faces were sad and serious from being near God all day and hearing His decisions about the world. — Cynthia Voigt

I didn't write anything at all except book reports until I was in seventh grade, and then I wrote mostly poetry for myself. — Cynthia Voigt

All I wanted to do was read, to be told stories. Stories were full of excitement and emotions and characters that entertained and often inspired. — Cynthia Voigt

All she knew was that his smile lit up the morning as the rising sun does. For a moment, looking at his face, it was as if her ribs were empty, hollow, as if the world had stopped forever while she looked into his eyes as blue as the bellflowers that grew wild across the meadows. For a moment, just until her beating heart had returned to her chest, Birle had thought she understood everything about herself she had never understood before. — Cynthia Voigt

Orien," Birle protested again.
"You can stay if you must." Orien's cheeks were hollow with hunger and he had little strength for anger. "But I wish you'd come. I don't know how long it would be before I could come back for you."
So she followed him, since he would return for her. — Cynthia Voigt

You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs ... They thought that just because they were smashing eggs they must be making an omelette — Cynthia Voigt

Reading was my hobby, my sport and my activity of choice. It was the prime pleasure of my days, an unfailing escape from whatever realities were distressing me, and the only source of pride I knew, other vanities lying beyond my grasp. I couldn't do anything else well, but I could do words. — Cynthia Voigt

Oriel didn't move. But inside of his head, all was movement, like a river running over rapids, searching for the way through, trying routes around rocks and over shallows, a turbulence of thought more rapid than he could follow. Griff, he knew, would do and say nothing until he heard Oriel's choice. — Cynthia Voigt

When meter is honored over thythm, line over syntax, form over structure, even the most prodigious manipulation of traditional patterns may be rendered purely decorative. — Ellen Bryant Voigt

I wanted to get to the wild place - to see a fish that counted as part of the natural world. — Emily Voigt

I gave it everything in the last 20 minutes. I knew that I still had the energy, that I was ahead of the mark. I felt euphoric - it was the last 20 minutes of my sporting career. — Jens Voigt

Crashing is never funny, but sometimes you can jump up, laugh at your stupidity, and go, 'What the hell was that?' — Jens Voigt

I think we all want to successfully push back the aging process, to deny the aging process. Who among us says, 'Yippee, I'm getting older'? — Jens Voigt

Chris Boardman was my first teammate and my first roommate. I saw him finish his career with an hour record and thought, 'Yeh, what a way to go out!' — Jens Voigt

When she asked him to play a song while she finished, he had to strum chords for a while and pretend to be tuning up until he settled down. He didn't want her to see how unsettled he'd been by the whole thing. How unsettled he still was. He had thought he was the fisherman, but he saw now - She had pronged him, with a single stroke, pronged him through the heart and he was caught. Just like with Melody, caught. But this wasn't Melody, Dicey wasn't. And besides, he didn't feel pronged, he felt - overwhelmed, out of breath, breathless. — Cynthia Voigt

I felt that the world itself had changed and that it would never be steady under my feet again. I felt I understood nothing of people and had no way to learn. I felt fear.
Until you have felt fear, you cannot imagine it. Once you have really felt it, you know that all your earlier nervousness was but a pale shadow. — Cynthia Voigt

Mina thought to herself, watching, her momma was the kind of woman she wanted to be, wherever else she got to in her life. — Cynthia Voigt

People can be unimaginably foolish ... and they can be unimaginably grand, at times. — Cynthia Voigt

I'm a big fan of outlining. Here's the theory: If I outline, then I can see the mistakes I'm liable to make. They come out more clearly in the outline than they do in the pages. — Cynthia Voigt

The air in the library rooms was silent, full of ideas, the thinking of the writers of books, the thinking of the readers of books. — Cynthia Voigt

You must not let yourself become too respectable. Keep yourself a little wild. What is life for, if not for the living of it? — Cynthia Voigt

People had no more choice than animals about the burdens they carried. — Cynthia Voigt

Bullet shrugged. She was right, it would just be another box. It was going to be just another box for him, too, but he'd figured it out. You didn't get out of one box without getting into another, and you didn't get out of one box without getting into another, and you didn't get out without it costing you. For himself, he was just looking for a box that fit him. For her - what he was hoping to do was just loosen a board or two for her. It was up to her what she did about that. — Cynthia Voigt

I am confident that when I get really old, the human lifespan will be extended. — Jens Voigt

Having things organized is for small-minded people. Genius controls chaos. — Jens Voigt

He felt - washed clean, healed. He felt if he could just live here he would be all right. He felt as if he had never been alive before. He felt at ease with himself and as if he had come home to a place where he could be himself, without hiding anything, without pretending even to himself. He felt, thinking his way back up the beach, as if his brain had just woken up from some long sleep, and it wanted to run along beside the waves, to see how far and fast it could go. — Cynthia Voigt

I want to be remembered as somebody working hard, walking straight in life, most of the time, and just being a down-to-earth person, being loyal and being indestructible. — Jens Voigt

Elske screamed, too. But when Elske screamed, it was the war cry of the Volkaric that came out of her mouth, a howling like the voice of a wolf. The cry wound around the narrow streets as if they were in the wild and merciless northlands. — Cynthia Voigt

In the hierarchy of the family, I'm just above the dog. But I like it that way. — Jens Voigt

I think writing is a part-time career, because otherwise you get a little stale, maybe even self-indulgent, when you have to fill the hours with sentences. I don't think, if I wrote 12 hours a day, my work would be much better. — Cynthia Voigt

A really good friend, the kind of friend who - when they were together both of them were more able to be who they really were. — Cynthia Voigt

When this map was made, there was only empty forest in the south," Gran told Birle.
"Not empty," Granda corrected her. "The forest is never empty. — Cynthia Voigt

Even after everyone had gone home, the house was filled with the good time they'd had, as if it could linger in the air like the voices and music lingered in memory. Mina wrapped the memory up and put it in her heart; there was a quiet gladness, deep like a tree and tall in her — Cynthia Voigt

I'm happy that the sacrificing, the hard training, the travel, the time being away from the family, is going to stop. So I'm happy; I'm glad about that. But I'm also terrified. Frightened. Because, I mean, in my whole adult life, cycling was the most consistent thing I ever did. — Jens Voigt

No fish were biting. Not that morning. She heard James calling her with panic in his voice. Slowly, she trudged back to her family. "I told you," Sammy said to James, "because the fishing line was — Cynthia Voigt

To himself, he called it a safe place, and when they were finally settled in at the end of July, living in the three-room house where windows gave out over the water and woods and sky, he knew he had been right. — Cynthia Voigt

Hiding under the bed doesn't make the worry stop. — Cynthia Voigt

She couldn't get any farther away inside from her skin. She couldn't get away. — Cynthia Voigt

I lost quite a bit of skin on the left side of my body and sustained some deep cuts in my hand and around my knee, but the doctors were able to stitch it all back together. Luckily I didn't hurt my shoulder but I'm now at the point where the only thing on my body which isn't hurting is my bad shoulder. — Jens Voigt

If he was a ghost in the life he remembered, Jeff thought, he was also a ghost in his present life, just the same way. Except, in all the fourteen years, just a couple of times. With Melody that first summer he had felt alive. On the beach on the island. And when he played the guitar. Most of the time, he thought, he practiced not being anybody. If you weren't anybody then nobody could - what? Hurt you or leave you behind? Make you unhappy? But then they couldn't make you happy either, could they? If you played it safe, then you kept safe. Jeff figured he was pretty good at keeping safe - he didn't even look in mirrors because he didn't want to see Melody's eyes. But one result of that was that Jeff didn't know anything about himself. And he thought, sitting in the little boat, alone on the creek, alone with the creek and the sky and the marshes, that he might want to know more. — Cynthia Voigt

It is the passion inside me that means I keep going. I love what I do, and I think I am lucky to do it. When I am riding a quiet country road, I hear the birds singing and think, 'I am in my office now.' — Jens Voigt

Ideas, he knew from experience, arrived in their own good time, dressed exactly the way they wanted to be and saying only as much as they felt like. — Cynthia Voigt

One of the reasons I'm so competitive - I mean, I'm not winning much anymore - at my age was because I always worked hard and because we have a level playing field. We don't have motorbikes in the peloton anymore. — Jens Voigt

It was almost as if he'd been a ghost in all those rooms, all those days, a ghost in his own life. — Cynthia Voigt

I enjoy almost everything I do, perhaps because when I don't enjoy something, I don't do it. I enjoy writing; I enjoy teaching; I enjoy having a family to live among. I am neither a feminist nor an antifeminist, because it seems to me that we are first human beings and after that men and women. Human beings have, so far, proved interesting enough to keep me busy just trying to figure out what might be right and true about them. — Cynthia Voigt

Behind the mask Jackaroo wore, there could be a face of bone, its flesh long since eaten away. Jackaroo could fight as a trained soldier, with swords and shield; he could ride a horse like a Lord; and he had the knowledge of letters which only the Lords held. — Cynthia Voigt

When a daring idea first crosses one's mind, if it is to be realized in the future it is often appealing. Then, as the time for its execution comes nearer, one begins to dread that which had once been anticipated. — Cynthia Voigt

I don't want to have that one year too much, where people actually, behind my back, start smiling at me and pointing fingers at me and go, 'Ah, look, that's Jensie. No, he's not good anymore.' — Jens Voigt

Apart from the fact that I can move the bike fast, I am basically Joe Average, — Jens Voigt

Curled up, closed his eyes, and marched himself off, as if sleep were an actual place, like home, like the kitchen - a place a mouse could go to. — Cynthia Voigt

I am a family man, and I have to find my priorities. During the season, it is to race. During the off-season, it is to spend time with my family. — Jens Voigt

If you go (with a break), you can either win or not win. If you don't go for it, you definitely won't win. — Jens Voigt

One day at my grandmother's house, I discovered 'The Secret Garden' and read it. This was the first book I found entirely for myself, and I cherished it. — Cynthia Voigt

I was eighteen when I wrote my first book, and I can't remember what it was called. I have no idea where the manuscript is - I lost it when I was twenty-one. — Cynthia Voigt

I had a great career. I have no reason to complain. It's the way it goes in nature. You slow down. And I believe I lasted a lot longer than a lot of people. — Jens Voigt

I love you,' Rachael said. 'If I entered a room and found a sofa covered with your hide I'd score very high on the Voigt-Kampff test. — Philip K. Dick

The worst things weren't outside of you. — Cynthia Voigt

Rebellion is necessary for development of character. — Cynthia Voigt

I'd like to throw Betsey Andreu and Travis Tygart in a wood-chipper. That would be my idea of a good time. Maybe I could get George to come over and help me clean up after. — Jens Voigt

Maybe life was like a sea, and all the people were like boats ... Everybody who was born was cast into the sea. Winds would blow them in all directions. Tides would rise and turn, in their own rhythm. And the boats - they just went along as best they could, trying to find a harbor. — Cynthia Voigt

This problem," Rick said, "stems entirely from your method of operation, Mr. Rosen. Nobody forced your organization to evolve the production of humanoid robots to a point where - "
"We produced what the colonists wanted," Eldon Rosen said. "We followed the time-honored principle underlying every commercial venture. If our firm hadn't made these progressively more human types, other firms in the field would have. We knew the risk we were taking when we developed the Nexus-6 brain unit. But your Voigt-Kampff test was a failure before we released that type of android. If you had failed to classify a Nexus-6 android as an android, if you had checked it out as human - but that's not what happened." His voice had become hard and bitingly penetrating. "Your police department - others as well - may have retired, very probably have retired, authentic humans with underdeveloped empathic ability, such as my innocent niece here. Your position, Mr. Deckard, is extremely bad morally. Ours isn't. — Philip K. Dick

Is there such a thing?' Birle asked.
He looked thoughtfully at her, but not as if he saw her. 'Men have dreamed of it, although none has ever held it in his hand, not to my knowledge. I cannot say that there is such a thing, no. But equally I cannot say there is not. Why should a man be able to dream of it if it cannot be? If it is so impossible, then what put's it into a man's mind? Greed puts many things into men's mind, and fear does too. But men dream of other things, as well
of justice, of the lost golden age, of an order to their world ... of medicine to cure all sickness ... — Cynthia Voigt

It's never been today before. — Cynthia Voigt

All work is worth doing well. And there are things to be enjoyed about most jobs ... — Cynthia Voigt

If it hurts me, it must hurt the other ones twice as much. — Jens Voigt

He had locked her out of his mind and out of his life. She could no longer get through to him, to make him feel the way she used to. He just wanted to forget about her and the way she played on his feelings - the same way she used to play on the guitar, he thought, remembering for a minute. He knew now just how badly she had played the guitar. — Cynthia Voigt

You could say that all of life is a series of last chances. — Cynthia Voigt

I was no scholar in college, and was arrogant about what I thought. — Cynthia Voigt

Cycling is an endurance sport. You lose your fast-twitch ability as you age, but your endurance peaks when you hit 30. I don't think I really started feeling my age until around 40. — Jens Voigt

Mina wanted some of the kind of love Momma gave to her children, where love was the first and deepest thing, and the questions came later and the answers wouldn't matter much measured up against the love. — Cynthia Voigt

I do have trouble starting books. I have ideas that I have trouble starting to write. But I'm the kind of person who tends to finish everything she starts out of sheer stubbornness. — Cynthia Voigt

I hope I am allowed to say that the reason I am popular is because of the way I am, the way I race, and the way I talk. I am just the old-fashioned, reliable guy, and people always know I am after one thing: 'There is Jens. He will go in the breakaway.' — Jens Voigt

To see what books were available for my older students, I made many trips to the library. If a book looked interesting, I checked it out. I once went home with 30 books! It was then that I realized that kids' novels had the shape of real books, and I began to get ideas for young adult novels and juvenile books. — Cynthia Voigt

If you try to win, you might lose, but if you don't try to win, you lose for sure! — Jens Voigt

I get paid to hurt other people, how good is that? — Jens Voigt

I love teaching; I love little kids. — Cynthia Voigt

I used to know kids better because I was teaching in a classroom, but I still have a sense of comfort with them. I don't believe that kids have essentially changed. — Cynthia Voigt

If I was sure, I'd say. For your Momma, maybe. For all of us, maybe, but I don't think so. I think, maybe, it's reaching out for that school. Somehow. I'm not saying that's what you thought you were doing or what you even wanted to do. But it's how it turned out. And I'm sorry, the way it turned out. Because somebody's slapped your hand back good and hard. But I don't want you to stop reaching, just because it didn't come out the way it should have. — Cynthia Voigt

When he sat in the rowboat again, the oars ready but not yet dipped into the water to take him away from the island, Jeff looked back. He didn't see the busy land crabs nor the overgrown interior; he saw the beach, knowing it was there just beyond sight, keeping the sight of it clear in his inner eye. He splashed the oars into the water. Behind him, a great blue squawked - Jeff turned his head quickly. The heron rose up from the marsh grass, croaking its displeasure at the disturbance, at Jeff, at all of the world. Its legs dragged briefly in the water before it rose free to swoop over Jeff's head with a whirring of powerful wings. It landed again on the far side of the ruined dock, to stand on stiltlike legs with its long beak pointed toward the water. Just leave me alone, the heron seemed to be saying. Jeff rowed away, down the quiet creek. The bird did not watch him go. — Cynthia Voigt

At the Tour, you always have some fantastic days and some days where you hit the asphalt. Today was an asphalt day for me, — Jens Voigt

What would we be without the fans? They're more important than me, because they make our sport great; they make things happen. We put on the show, but if people don't react to it, we are nothing. So, the fans, basically we should roll out the red carpet for them. — Jens Voigt

My favorite season was when I wrote every morning for three or four hours, then I would go and teach my classes at school, come home to my family and hang out with them, have dinner, and then, after everyone was tucked in, I would prepare for my classes the next day. — Cynthia Voigt

He dismounted and lifted his arms to Shae. Light as she was, he had to step backward when she leaned into him. He steadied them both, and then turned to instruct the groom. When Kai looked for her again, Shae was gone. A smile touched his mouth as he went through an archway in the inner curtain wall. He would keep his knowledge of Shae's morning activities to himself. (from DawnSinger) — Janalyn Voigt

Every time I race, I will race so fiercely my legs cry. — Jens Voigt

I have the feeling that I know who I am, only I'm not anymore. — Cynthia Voigt

Shut up body and do what I tell you — Jens Voigt

Night's darkness cloaked Elske, covering her as the winter snows cover mountains, from peak to foot. Elske moved with the weight of darkness on her shoulders, on her head; and she tasted it in her mouth like the flavorless rills that ran so fast in spring melts. — Cynthia Voigt

While I'm not very talented at cooking, I am very talented at eating. — Jens Voigt

They spent almost four dollars on supper at the mall, and none of them had dessert. They had hamburgers and french fries and, after Dicey thought it over, milkshakes. — Cynthia Voigt