Quotes & Sayings About Watching Your Words

The words 'Space Age' have a quaint, nostalgic tone - sitting on midcentury modern furniture watching 'The Jetsons.' — P. J. O'Rourke

And I put my hand on her arm to stop her rowing.
Aaron's Noise roars up in red and black.
The current takes us on.
"I'm sorry!" I cry as the river takes us away, my words ragged things torn from me, my chest pulled so tight I can't barely breathe. "I'm sorry, Manchee!"
"Todd?" he barks, confused and scared and watching me leave him behind. "Todd?"
"Manchee!" I scream.
Aaron brings his free hand towards my dog.
"MANCHEE!"
"Todd?"
And Aaron wrenches his arms and there's a CRACK and a scream and a cut-off yelp that tears my heart in two forever and forever.
And the pain is too much it's too much it's too much and my hands are on my head and I'm rearing back and my mouth is open in a never-ending wordless wail of all the blackness that's inside of me. — Patrick Ness

It was fun watching the cigarette smoke develop into words until he saw what they said. — Kealan Patrick Burke

He urged his horse forward, his body straining, ready to be on his way. But at the last second he looked back at her and swerved, drawing the beast up beside her. From underneath the brim of his hat, he peered down at her. The intensity in the blue depths dragged her in until she felt as if she were drowning. "You've done good so far, Priscilla." At the unexpected words of praise, she sucked in a breath. His gaze dropped to her lips, lingered there for an instant before returning to her eyes, darker, bluer. Her lungs stopped working, and she clutched a hand to her chest. "I'll see your pretty face in a couple days." She nodded, too breathless to respond. He kicked his heels into his horse and left her standing, watching after him, wondering if he was taking her heart with him. — Jody Hedlund

I learned by watching my favorite shows. I would just rewind and say the words back, until they sounded right to me. I never studied the American accent, in terms of getting a teacher or taking phonetics classes. I've always been a good mimic. It really wasn't that hard for me. — Adelaide Kane

When he reached his own room again, he found Khloe curled up on his bed, asleep. He stood over her, watching her sleep peacefully for a few moments before taking a deep breath and moving to the other side of the bed. He sat down on top of the covers next to her and watched the rise and fall of her chest as she slept. He withdrew a leather bond journal from the nightstand drawer and tried to push Hecate's words from his mind.
Khloe is yours to deal with. — Lia Davis

And when you're not partying in Vegas, what do you do?" she asked. "Prepare for your role as the next James Bond?"
"No, I don't work alone."
She cocked her head as if trying to make sense of his words.
"I'm a SEAL in Uncle Sam's Navy. When I'm working, I have a team of guys who could kick James Bond's ass watching my back, covering my six at all times. — Sara Jane Stone

I love the English language, playing with words, watching sentences fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, — Jane Green

Well, I'm sorry you couldn't make it either. I'm sorry I had to sit there in that church--which, by the way, had a broken air conditioner--sweating, watching all those people march down the aisle to look in my mother's casket and whisper to themselves all this mess about how much she looked like herself, even though she didn't. I'm sorry you weren't there to hear the lame choir drag out, song after song. I'm sorry you weren't there to see my dad try his best to be upbeat, cracking bad jokes in his speech, choking on his words. I'm sorry you weren't there to watch me totally lose it and explode into tears. I'm sorry you weren't there for me, but it doesn't matter, because even if you were, you wouldn't be able to feel what I feel. Nobody can. Even the preacher said so. — Jason Reynolds

I am a deeply uncertain individual. I often find myself acting like a fool to make the people around me laugh. When they're laughing, they're not watching me quite as closely. I smile to put people at ease. But what if I opened my mouth one day, spoke my actual thoughts, and the people glared at my opinions? What if they thought me disgusting or frightening or ugly because of my words? Would you keep your lips shut for the rest of your life to not face that judgment? Just for the sake of someone else's comfort? For these strangers, who I will never know? If I can't speak then I'll write. These strangers, whose opinions crush me, will be forced to listen. Because when they read my words those words will make a home within their heads. They may even end up using my own opinions against me. But at least I'll be hidden behind the pages of a book. — F.K. Preston

He kissed her soundly, stealing her breath, before saying, "Tell me what you want, my lovely."
"I-" She stopped, too many words coming at once. 'I want you to touch me. I want you to love me. I want you to show me the life that I have been missing.' She shook her head, uncertain.
He smiled, pressing firmly with his hand against her, watching the wave of pleasure course through her. "Incredible," he whispered against the side of her neck. "So responsive. Go on..."
"I want-" She sighed as he set his lips to the hardened peak of one breast again. "I want... I want you," she said, and, in that moment, the words, so utterly simple in the face of the roiling emotions that coursed through her, seemed enough.
He moved his fingers firmly, deftly against her, and she gasped. "Do you want me here, Empress?"
She closed her eyes in embarrassment, biting her lower lip.
"Are you aching for me here?"
She nodded. "Yes."
"Poor, sweet love. — Sarah MacLean

The most common way people could do time-travel would be a form of meditation in which you don't get caught up in your thoughts and don't make patterns of logical consequences follow as a result of your thinking process. It's very hard for most of us to do that if we think about it. But if you start to watch the process by which things come into being, and you begin to witness from the point of view of watching the words form, then you're beginning to move into the non-temporal mindset, or that which is free of time. — Fred Alan Wolf

All I cared about then was catching a glimpse of Chairman Mao. I turned my eyes quickly away from Liu to the front of the motorcade. I spotted Mao's stalwart back, his right arm steadily waving. In an instant, he had disappeared. My heart sank. Was that all I would see of Chairman Mao? Only a fleeting glimpse of his back? The sun seemed suddenly to have turned gray. All around me the Red Guards were making a huge din. The girl standing next to me had just pierced the index finger of her right hand and was squeezing blood out of it to write something on a neatly folded handkerchief. I knew exactly the words she was going to use. It had been done many times by other Red Guards and had been publicized ad nauseam: "I am the happiest person in the world today. I have seen our Great Leader Chairman Mao!" Watching her, my despair grew. Life seemed pointless. A thought flickered into my mind: perhaps I should commit suicide? — Jung Chang

You're lucky both you and your boyfriend were chosen," she says with quiet sincerity. "Tomas isn't my boyfriend." I feel the blush on my cheeks. "You could have fooled me." She gives me a wide smile. "I think he's in love with you." "He's just watching out for me. You know, since we're from the same colony," I say, but I can't help the thrill I feel at her words. — Joelle Charbonneau

Wanna take a nap? Cooper and Farah do it all the time." A lazy grin lit up Judd's face and I rolled my eyes. "Napping isn't code."
"I don't nap, babe. I wouldn't mind hanging out at home while you napped though. I wasn't planning on doing anything today besides watching some crap on DVR."
Staring up at him, I felt strangely nervous to say the words. Finally, I forced them out. "Can I sleep over tonight?"
Judd gave me another lazy grin. "Where else would you sleep, angel? — Bijou Hunter

He switched off the light, came back and sat in the chair. In the darkness, Liesel kept her eyes open. She was watching the words. — Markus Zusak

On the last good day he went to work for three hours and then came home and put on the History Channel. The program was about the Airstream RV. When it first came out, one one white knew what to make of the silver bullet, so the company sent a caravan of them on a promotional tour across Africa and Egypt. The native tribes came up the the RVs and poked at them with their spears. They prayed for the beasts to leave.
On the last good day, my father didn't' fall asleep while he was watching the show. He turned to me and said words that at the time were only words, not the life lessons they've since exploded into. "It just goes to show you," my father told me on the last good day, "the world's only as big as what you know. — Jodi Picoult

Just watching Israel bombarding Palestine and Palestine sending one or two little rockets over to Israel - it's just too sad for words. — Richard Branson

Thanks for calling. Be safe and I can't wait to see you."
"Hang tight, sweetheart. I'll be with you in spirit tomorrow and watching over you from close by."
Her throat tightened. His words gave her additional strength to take into the courtroom with her. — Kaylea Cross

Father Travis leaned back. I glanced up at him. He was watching us from under his brow, his hands folded in his lap. His eyes had taken on that cyborg gleam. His cheekbones looked like they were going to break right through his skin. Not only did he own a copy of Alien, not only did he have an amazing and terrible wound, but he had called us humiliating names without actually resorting to the usual swear words. Besides that there was the deft speed with which he'd caught Angus, the free weights beside the television, the fancy Michelob. It was almost enough to make a boy want to be a Catholic. — Louise Erdrich

While I was watching you, exotic words drifted across the mirror of my mind as summer clouds drift across the sky. — Cornel Wilde

If I dismiss the ordinary - waiting for the special, the extreme, the extraordinary to happen - I may just miss my life ... To allow ourselves to spend afternoons watching dancers rehearse, or sit on a stone wall and watch the sunset, or spend the whole weekend rereading Chekhov stories - to know that we are doing what we're supposed to be doing - is the deepest form of permission in our creative lives. The British author and psychologist Adam Phillips has noted, 'When we are inspired, rather like when we are in love, we can feel both unintelligible to ourselves and most truly ourselves.' This is the feeling I think we all yearn for, a kind of hyperreal dream state. We read Emily Dickinson. We watch the dancers. We research a little known piece of history obsessively. We fall in love. We don't know why, and yet these moments form the source from which all our words will spring. — Dani Shapiro

Oh Susie, I often think that I will try to tell you how very dear you are, and how I'm watching for you, but the words won't come, though the tears will, and I sit down disappointed. Yet, darling, you know it all
then why do I seek to tell you? I do not know. In thinking of those I love, my reason is all gone from me, and I do fear sometimes that I must make a hospital for the hopelessly insane, and chain myself up there so I won't injure you. — Emily Dickinson

Act Like a Success, Think Like a Success lets you know that it is not good enough to simply exist. Life is more than wading through a lifeless job, earning a gold watch, and cashing in your 401(k). Your life has to be more than just waiting for the right opportunity to come along and find you. Your life has to be more than just marking time watching others achieve success. The words in this book will motivate you to get the most out of your life by using something that you already have - your gift. — Steve Harvey

Watching a scene from a film in slow motion is possible, but there's an unreal air to it; reading a passage from a book slowly does nothing to rob the words of their power. A film presents images; a book creates images inside the reader, with the reader's active participation. Books are good for your brain. — Lewis Buzbee

I fake an annoyed look at his interruption. "As I was saying, your ego doesn't need to be inflated."
But as I say the words, I realize that I don't think they're true. Every now and then I catch him watching me at an unguarded moment, and his eyes are so vulnerable I almost feel like I'm looking at his eight-year-old self. He clearly enjoys the banter back and forth, however, and we seem to drop into that routine naturally. — Rysa Walker

what's the most horrible experience you can imagine? To me - it's being left, unarmed, in a sealed cell with a drooling beast of prey or a maniac who's had some disease that's eaten his brain out. You'd have nothing then but your voice - your voice and your thought. You'd scream to that creature why it should not touch you, you'd have the most eloquent words, the unanswerable words, you'd become the vessel of the absolute truth. And you'd see living eyes watching you and you'd know that the thing can't hear you, that it can't be reached, not reached, not in any way, yet it's breathing and moving there before you with a purpose of its own. That's horror. Well, that's what's hanging over the world, prowling somewhere through mankind, that same thing, something closed, mindless, utterly wanton, but something with an aim and a cunning of its own. — Ayn Rand

The sizes and shapes of the panels have never been important to my stories. It has always been the words and images that drew me in, kind of like watching a movie. — Jaime Hernandez

Marry me," I said without hesitation. I was surprised at how quickly and easily the words came.
His mouth spread into a broad smile. "When?"
I shrugged. "We can book a flight tomorrow. It's Spring Break. I don't have anything going on tomorrow, do you?"
"I'm callin' your bluff," he said, reaching for his phone. "America Airlines," he said, watching my reaction closely as he was connected. "I need two tickets to Vegas, please. Tomorrow. Hmmmmm ... ," he looked at me, waiting for me to change my mind. "Two days, round trip. Whatever you have."
I rested my chin on his chest, waiting for him to book the tickets. The longer I let him stay on the phone, the wider his smile became. — Jamie McGuire

He called her'daughter of Abraham,' which likely sent a shock wave through the room; it was the first time the phrase had ever been spoken. People had only ever heard 'sons of Abraham'
never daughters. But at the sound of Jesus' words daughter of Abraham, he gave her a place to stand alongside the sons, especially the ones snarling with their sense of ownership and exclusivity over it all, watching. — Sarah Bessey

I love you." Jack focused on her face, watching her pupils dilate in reaction to his words. "I love you and I'm staying here in Elliott. I'm quitting undercover work and maybe the police force altogether. We'll do whatever you want. Date me. Move in with me. Marry me. Make me beg. I don't care." He pressed a kiss against her mouth with a sigh. "Whatever you want. — Robin Covington

Plus, I know for a fact that Governor Cruel won't allow them to keep us." Pip sneered at her. "You're about to learn a harsh lesson, little girl. You're nothing to him. Just another replaceable whore." He raked a harsh glare over her body. "Probably not even that. I've heard his tastes run more along the line of pretty young boys." She met his glare with one of her own. "You know nothing about him. And if you refer to him again with anything other than the utmost respect in your tone, you won't have to worry about prison or the League. I'll fucking kill you with my own bare hands." Those words had the effect she wanted them to. Everyone sucked their breath in and held it. No one had ever heard her use such language before. It wasn't in her nature. But she was through watching others insult Darling when all he'd ever done was try to help them. Her — Sherrilyn Kenyon

What makes the Bible God's Word isn't its uncanny historical accuracy, as some insist, but the sacred experiences these stories point to, beyond the words themselves. Watching these ancient pilgrims work through their faith, even wrestling with how they did that, models for us our own journeys of seeking to know God better and commune with him more deeply. — Peter Enns

A movie can evoke feelings, thoughts, it is all there and happening, there is no control over the images when you are watching a movie. You are transported for three hours to a world where you see real people. In a novel it is private - there's only you, and words on pages. The landscape is in your mind and in your feelings. — Jay Neugeboren

When you're home or you're working, your mind just isn't allowed to just roll on like it does when you're watching the scenery go by. You're hurdling through space but you're not really moving ... It's that dreaminess, that ability to just get dreamy while you're looking out the window and you see something ... and it makes you think of something else, and all of a sudden the words are just flowing out of you. — Pegi Young

When you've grown sick of reading and bug-eyed from watching TV, when your friends are all visited out, no words can adequately praise the link to the outside world provided by your parents and family. — Lance Loud

What can I recommend? Trust your story; trust yourself; trust your readers - but wisely. Trust watchfully, not blindly. Trust flexibly, not rigidly. The whole thing, writing a story, is a high-wire act - there you are out in midair walking on a spiderweb line of words, and down in the darkness people are watching. What can you trust but your sense of balance? — Ursula K. Le Guin

Vegas?" I asked. His brow furrowed, unsure of where I was headed.
"Yeah?"
"Have you thought about going back?" His eyebrows shot up.
"I don't think that's a good idea for me."
"What if we just went for a night?" He looked around the dark room, confused.
"A night?"
"Marry me," I said without hesitation. I was surprised at how quickly and easily the words came. His mouth spread into a broad smile.
"When?" I shrugged.
"We can book a flight tomorrow. It's spring break. I dont't have anything going on tomorrow, do you?"
"I'm callin' your bluff," he said, watching my reaction closely as he was connected. "I need two tickets to vegas, please. Tomorrow. Hmmmm ... ," he looked at me, waiting for me to change my mind. "Two days, round trip. Whatever you have. — Jamie McGuire

You haven't given me any ink," he said.
"Oh, you won't need ink," said Professor Umbridge with the merest suggestion of a laugh in her voice.
Harry placed the point of the quill on the paper and wrote: I must not tell lies.
He let out a gasp of pain. The words had appeared on the parchment in what appeared to be shining red ink. At the same time, the words had appeared on the back of Harry's right hand, cut into his skin as though traced there by a scalpel - yet even as he stared at the shining cut, the skin healed over again, leaving the place where it had been slightly redder than before but quite smooth.
Harry looked around at Umbridge. She was watching him, her wide, toadlike mouth stretched in a smile.
"Yes?"
"Nothing," said Harry quietly. — J.K. Rowling

The boy was twelve, reveling in the strange dust-smelling murk of a New Orleans library, watching motes flash gold in a beam of sun. He loved the ceiling lights on chains and the table lamps with their green glass shades. The room was as beautiful as another world. — Marly Youmans

We must remember that beauty is dictated from the spectators opinion therefore anyone can be beautiful depending on who is watching you — Yolanda De Iuliis

How dare you touch my cookies, you bastard!" Jason said in utter disgust before popping the cookie into his mouth and heading back to his house.
"Damn those looked good, too," Brad grumbled.
Haley sighed. "Don't worry I have a second plate on my counter." The words were barely out of her mouth when Jason abruptly changed course and headed towards her house.
"Well, there was," she said, watching Jason walk into her house like he owned it. A minute later he walked out of her house, carrying both plates and the gallon of milk she had in her fridge. He headed back to his house, but not before he glared at Brad. "You cookie thieving bastard," they heard him mutter.
Brad rolled his eyes, chuckling. "And people wonder how I lost weight rooming with him in college. — R.L. Mathewson

Little John, watching her standing next to her brother, half-glowering in the old Cecil manner and half-comforted by Robin's words, saw for a moment what it had been like for her as Will's litter sister. Some of what she was good at, and some of what she was bad at, as his pupil, came clear to him in that moment; and something else came clear to him too, but he set it aside so quickly that he allowed himself not to recognize it for what it was. — Robin McKinley

My heart gave a weird little flutter. I'd been around Lexi for over a month, listening to her gush over boys, watching her point out the "gorgeous" ones. I understood human beauty now, and I'd even reached the point where I could nudge Lexi toward a cute guy, and she would agree that he was hot, but I still didn't get the fascination.
Maybe all the boy-watching had finally sunk in, because this stranger was, to use two of Lexi's favorite words, absolutely gorgeous. — Julie Kagawa

Shelley," I say. "You should've let him win. You know, to be polite." Shelley's response is a shake of her head. Applesauce drips on her chin. "That's the way it's going to be, huh?" I say, hoping the scene doesn't gross Alex out. Maybe I'm testing him, to see if he can handle a glimpse of my home life. If so, he's passing. "Wait until Alex leaves. I'll show you who the checkers champion is."
My sister smiles that sweet, crooked smile of hers. It's like a thousand words put into one expression. For a moment I forget Alex is still watching me. It's so weird having him inside my life and my house. He doesn't belong, yet he doesn't seem to mind being here. — Simone Elkeles

I find that with fantasy, you lose yourself in it a lot. It's great to be able to go into a dark theater or turn off the lights in your house and just get sucked into this world. I remember watching Star Wars when I was a little kid when they did the re-release of all the originals. I couldn't even read yet but my uncle took me and he would read me the opening as the words were coming up on the screen. I just remember being so sucked into that and thinking, "I want to be Luke Skywalker." — Austin Butler

Apprenticeship assumes that knowing a trade not only comes by numbers and outlines but also by watching and inhabiting. Knowing is found in these forms, because teaching is. We teach not only by our words and assignments but also by the manner of our words and the ways we ourselves already embody the assignments we give. — Zack Eswine

I don't trust novels with points, do you? If a novel is only about a point, the writer should just say it in as few words as possible so we can take it in and go back to watching 'The Bachelor' on television. — William Lashner

Inside him, twenty years dissolved and mixed into one complex, swirling whole. Everything that had accumulated over the years
all he had seen, all the words he has spoken, all the values he had held
all of it coalesced into one solid, thick pillar in his heart, the core of which was spinning like a potter's wheel. Wordlessly, Tengo observed the scene, as if watching the destruction and rebirth of a planet. — Haruki Murakami

The little girl who was watching me kneels beside a motionless woman, screeching and trying to rouse her. Another wave of bullets slices across the chest of her yellow coat, staining it with red, knocking the girl onto her back. For a moment, looking at her tiny crumpled form, I lose my ability to form words. Gale prods me with his elbow. "Katniss?" "They're — Suzanne Collins

Thoroughly ruffled, Rachel turned her back on the source of her annoyance and started for the door. She could feel his gaze on her, and the notion that he was watching her made her suddenly self-conscious. In her teetering heels, she could not help but sway.
Just as she reached the door, he made an odd sound that caused her to glance back at him, startled.
"Rachel," he said in what was scarcely more than a husky whisper, while his eyes drilled into hers, "don't sleep with him. Sleep with me instead."
Her breath caught for a moment as the words coiled around her like a seductive snake. Only by forcing herself to keep walking was she able to escape. — Karen Robards

I told you to make yourself at home," he says. "I don't want you to feel like you have to tiptoe around, afraid of doing something wrong or hearing something you shouldn't, like phone conversations." My blood runs cold at those words. I can feel his eyes on me and not the screen. "I, uh ... " I don't know what to say. "It's okay," he says, those words silencing me. He kisses the top of my head again, subject closed as he goes back to watching the movie. A few minutes pass before Naz lets out a light laugh. "So, tell me something ... did you at least google me? — J.M. Darhower

Go back 2,400 years, and you can hear it from the Athenian orator Demosthenes as he chastises his fellow citizens for responding to Macedonian aggression by "forever debating the question and never making any progress" and issuing "empty decrees." "All words, apart from action," Demosthenes warned, "seem vain and idle, especially from Athenian lips: for the greater our reputation for a ready tongue, the greater the distrust it inspires in all men." We've had several years now of watching Obama and his foreign policy team prove this eternal truth as they have feebly and fecklessly responded to crisis after crisis in Ukraine, Syria, and a dozen other venues. — Anonymous

And then one day he realised that of course he was always staring at his hand when he wrote, was always watching the pen as it moved along, gripped by his fingers, his fingers floating there in front of his eyes just above the words, above that single white sheet, just above these words i'm writing now, his fingers between him and all that, like another person, a third person, when all along you thot it was just the two of you talking and he suddenly realized it was the three of them, handling it on from one to the other, his hand translating itself, his words slipping thru his fingers into the written world. You. — B.P. Nichol

Ow!" she cried out. She would have a fresh bruise there by the time she went to sleep, somewhere out at sea. A bruise is a lesson, she told herself, and each lesson makes us better.
Syrio stepped back. "You are dead now."
Arya made a face. "You cheated," she said hotly. "You said left and you went right."
"Just so. And now you are a dead girl."
"But you lied!"
"My words lied. My eyes and my arm shouted out the truth, but you were not seeing."
"I was so," Arya said. "I watched you every second!"
"Watching is not seeing, dead girl. The water dancer sees. Come, put down the sword, it is time for listening now. — George R R Martin

He was like one of those pictures full of small errors, the kind you could only pick out by searching the image from every angle, and even then, a few always slipped by. On the surface, Eli seemed perfectly normal, but now and then Victor would catch a crack, a sideways glance, a moment when his roommate's face and his words, his look and his meaning, would not line up. Those fleeting slices fascinated Victor. It was like watching two people, one hiding in the other's skin. And their skin was always too dry, on the verge of cracking and showing the color of the thing beneath. — Victoria Schwab

But it is not that you are something which is just watching what happens. "What happens" is just using your organism to watch itself. It is the universe centering as a particular being, though it is not necessary to use or insist on this concept, for what is important here is not the idea but the feeling of it. The words are only a special use of noises in the air, marks on paper, or vibrations in the brain. — Alan W. Watts

I don't know what gives me more pleasure: watching my story unfold or going in and watching a room full of black people talking for me and writing words for black people. — Lee Daniels

He could have spent the whole night watching her red lips form the words to the songs. Those lips-they were as bright as the red maple trees that glowed this time of year. Her blue eyes danced with each fast song, a wild swirl of crisp leaves in the autumn wind.

That was how she haunted his heart. Every season, every corner of Gott's good land, he saw Annie there. — Rosalind Lauer

In fact, now for whatever reason, if we're recording in the same room, I get a little distracted because I'm watching the actor instead of listening to the actor. The way we do it now, they're on the phone, and we're sitting here with scripts in front of us taking notes seriously and marking takes and doing some adlibs. I can really focus on the words and not the surroundings. — Adam Reed

How happily, said Austerlitz, have I sat over a book in the deepening twilight until I could no longer make out the words and my mind began to wander, and how secure have I felt seated at the desk in my house in the dark night, just watching the tip of my pencil in the lamplight following its shadow, as if of its own accord and with perfect fidelity, while that shadow moved regularly from left to right, line by line, over the ruled paper. — W.G. Sebald

I want you to make love to me, Eros," he whispers in the darkness of the bedroom. "Now. Tomorrow. Always."

I kiss the tip of my finger and place it over his lips to stop him from saying more. I can't listen to him use words like always, or even tomorrow. As bad as I ache at the thought of watching him walk away from me, I know there is no tomorrow for the two of us, regardless of what happens with him and Kathleen.

"Ssh. Let's just enjoy tonight, okay? — Candi Kay

Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice. — Edward W. Said

I've always been an ironic dreamer, unfaithful to my inner promises.
Like a complete outsider, a casual observer of whom I thought I was,
I've always enjoyed watching my daydreams go down in defeat.
I was never convinced of what I believed in.
I filled my hands with sand, called it gold, and opened them up to let it slide through.
Words were my only truth.
When the right words were said, all was done; the rest was the sand that had always been. — Fernando Pessoa

You said, 'I'm going to leave him because my love for you makes any other life a lie.' I've hidden those words in the lining of my coat. I take them out like a jewel thief when no-one's watching. They haven't faded. Nothing about you has faded. You are still the colour of my blood. You are my blood. When I look in the mirror it's not my own face I see. Your body is twice. Once you once me. Can I be sure which is which? — Jeanette Winterson

You can't forget anything," I said, watching the words vanish into nothing. "And even if you do, it always comes back to bitch-slap you in the morning. — Kim Harrison

If I could be small again, Monique told me at the playground's fence, slurring her words and watching Caitlin sob, I'd want to have a friend like her. — E.R. Frank

What kind of a name is Tax?" "It's the name of a person who always collects a debt," I say, watching her breath hitch in response to my words. — Nina G. Jones