When Time Stopped Quotes & Sayings

But when Marie laughed, when her mouth curved in a perfect arch, when her eyes became the combined colors of hydrogen on the visible light spectrum, when the manifestation of happiness as perfect music passed her lips, then time stopped. Just — Penny Reid

That was the thing about being on the inside: the world was just going on, even when it seemed like time for you had stopped for good. — Sarah Dessen

On a whim, he stopped and bought a watch from a sidewalk vendor. Normally, Billy could not abide keeping time, especially when it was attached to one's body. Time was like a relentlessly needy lapdog one had to haul around. It barked too much and had no sense of loyalty. — Jim Carroll

Patrick's handsome face descended toward mine. He stopped when he was just a whisper away. "You have a beautiful mouth."
God, he was magnificent. Such harsh, sensual beauty. The luck of genetics and vampirism and gym time? Who knew?
He watched me watching him and I knew he was probably in my head, listening in on my thoughts, my confusion. He grinned, just a little, and I knew that rotten, ugly, fat troll was reading my mind.
He laughed, unrepentant, and his breath plumed my lips. How the hell did he do that? How could he pretend to breathe? Or better yet, why did he pretend to breathe? — Michele Bardsley

Acquainted with the Night
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain - and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night. — Robert Frost

My mother's death ... seemed so much the focal point of all personal history in our lives, it was as though time began for us when it stopped for her. Maybe this is what happens to everyone - not necessarily sudden deaths , but certain events that create distinct before and after lines, walls really, requiring a great effort to climb, discouraging doing so. — Robin Black

This is me. Despite our long separation, I know you. You may pretend to be fine, but I don't buy it." He stopped her from moving by putting his hands on her shoulders. He pulled her closer to him. She didn't resist that much this time. He slid his arms around her and was surprised when she wrapped her arms around him as well. "I miss you," he whispered in her hair, dropping a light kiss there. She smelled so good. Her scent reminded him of all the things he missed about her. How had he ever been so stupid to let her go? — Nikki Lynn Barrett

Time, Eddie had decided during this period, was in large part created by external events. When a lot of interesting shit was happening, time seemed to go by fast. If you got stuck with nothing but the usual boring shit, it slowed down. And when everything stopped happening, time apparently quit altogether. Just packed up and went to Coney Island. Weird but true. — Stephen King

By concentrating single-mindedly on your most important task, you can reduce the time required to complete it by 50 percent or more. It has been estimated that the tendency to start and stop a task - to pick it up, put it down, and come back to it - can increase the time necessary to complete the task by as much as 500 percent. Each time you return to the task, you have to familiarize yourself with where you were when you stopped and what you still have to do. You have to overcome inertia and get yourself going again. You have to develop momentum and get into a productive work rhythm. But when you prepare thoroughly and then begin, refusing to stop or turn aside until the job is done, you develop energy, enthusiasm, and motivation. You get better and better and more productive. You work faster and more effectively. — Brian Tracy

Prove to me that you are not a figment of my imagination.
Am I a computer simulation?
Does the door swing both ways?
How can something come from nothing?
How do you know a line is straight?
If animals wanted to be eaten, would it be okay?
If time stopped then stared again, would we know about it?
What happens when you get scared half to death twice?
What is creationism?
What is ethical? — Jessica Park

When I left 'Being Human,' that was painful because the show was going on without me. But with 'Him & Her,' we finished on such a high together that if it is the end, it couldn't have stopped at a better time. But I hope with 'Him & Her' that we'll get another crack of the whip: that the writer might change his mind and write some more. — Russell Tovey

Where do we find happiness? We pursue it, search for it, kill ourselves trying to find it, and all the time it's just here ... It comes just when we've stopped expecting anything, stopped hoping, stopped being afraid. — Irene Nemirovsky

Rubashov had always believed that he knew himself rather well. Being without moral prejudices, he had no illusions about the phenomenon called the "first person singular" and had taken for granted, without particular emotion, that this phenomenon was endowed with certain impulses which people are generally reluctant to admit. Now, when he stood with his forehead against the window or suddenly stopped on the third black tile, he made unexpected discoveries. He found that those processes wrongly known as monologues are really dialogues of a special kind - dialogues in which one partner remains silent while the other, against all grammatical rules, addresses him as "I" instead of "you," in order to creep into his confidence and to fathom his intentions, but the silent partner just remains silent, shuns observation, and even refuses to be localized in time and space. — Arthur Koestler

[On writing more Sherlock Holmes stories.] 'I don't care whether you do or not,' said Bram. 'But you will, eventually. He's yours, till death do you part. Did you really think he was dead and gone when you wrote "The Final Problem"? I don't think you did. I think you always knew he'd be back. But whenever you take up your pen and continue, heed my advice. Don't bring him here. Don't bring Sherlock Holmes into the electric light. Leave him in the mysterious and romantic flicker of the gas lamp. He won't stand next to this, do you see? The glare would melt him away. He was more the man of our time than Oscar was. Or than we were. Leave him where he belongs, in the last days of our bygone century. Because in a hundred years, no one will care about me. Or you. Or Oscar. We stopped caring about Oscar years ago, and we were his bloody *friends.* No, what they'll remember are the stories. They'll remember Holmes. And Watson. And Dorian Gray. — Graham Moore

Lady Maccon stopped suddenly. Her husband got four long strides ahead before he realized she had paused. She was starring thoughtfully up into the aether, twirling the deadly parasol about her head.
"I have just remembered something," Alexia said when he returned to her side.
"Oh, that explains everything. How foolish of me to think you could walk and remember at the same time. — Gail Carriger

I had stopped painting around 2000, which I guess was when the music thing started getting pretty busy. I just didn't have enough time to pursue it properly. — Kurt Wagner

Reagan was president. He had the authority to end the infighting, set policy, and advance American interests in the Middle East. Before him was a clear choice; Shultz arguing for engagement, Weinberger for disengagement. Engagement would likely have involved the use of military force; disengagement offered the comfort of a casualty-free retreat. In the post-Vietnam era, for this president, at this time, disengagement made more sense. He still talked a good game, but when it was time for a decision, he punted. "In the weeks immediately after the bombing," he later wrote, "I believed the last thing we should do was turn tail and leave."58 And yet, fearful of another Vietnam, he waited a few months and then pulled the remaining marines out of Beirut. According to McFarlane many years later, his decision opened the door to the terrorism that has plagued the region and the world ever since. "I am convinced we could have stopped it then, just as it was starting, but Reagan chose not to. — Marvin Kalb

And just when His Grace was certain they were going to gain the privacy of the men's punch bowl, who should come wafting by but dear little Sophia herself ? "Lord Sindal?" She stopped, her gaze fixed on Sindal's face. "I'm fetching him a glass of punch, Sophie." His Grace took Sindal by the arm. "I believe Her Grace said something about Westhaven decimating the marzipan trays. You might want to have a look, hmm?" He had to drag the boy away bodily. "You can lurk under the mistletoe later, Sindal. I want no more than five minutes of your time." And grandchildren. He most assuredly wanted grandchildren, though based on the way Sophie and her swain made eyes at each other, this happy outcome was a foregone conclusion. Legitimate — Grace Burrowes

Talking to you is like talking to someone I've never met before. When did you become so competitive? When did you decide that you needed to win all of the time?'
He stopped dead in the promenade and grabbed her hand, turning her to face him.
He caught her by surprise. She leant her neck backwards slightly in defence.
'When I lost you. — Tan Redding

People get cranky when you burst their bubble. Over time, advances in astronomy have relentlessly reinforced the utter insignificance of Earth on a celestial scale. Fortunately, political and religious leaders stopped barbecuing astronomers for saying so, turning their spits with human-rights activists instead. — Nathan Myhrvold

Ever since he could remember, he'd people-watched to pass time. When he was younger, everyone told him it was rude. He hadn't stopped; merely perfected his technique. — Laura Oliva

I will never forget, one day [when I] was six years old and I was playing beside the road and this plantation owner drove up to me and stopped and asked me, could I pick cotton.' I told him I didn't know and he said, Yes, you can. I will give you things that you want from the commissary store,' and he named things like crackerjacks and sardines--and it was a huge list that he called off. So I picked the 30 pounds of cotton that week, but I found out what actually happened was he was trapping me into beginning the work I was to keep doing and I never did get out of his debt again. My parents tried so hard to do what they could to keep us in school, but school didn't last four months out of the year and most of the time we didn't have clothes to wear. — Fannie Lou Hamer

One day that song stopped being on the outside of me and went deep inside. It was there all the time, especially when I was feeling particularly lonely. — Susan Crandall

In Pakistan, when we were stopped from going to school, at that time I realized that education ... Is the power for women, and that's why the terrorists are afraid of education — Malala Yousafzai

Derek stopped short. I smacked into his back - not for the first time, since he insisted on walking in front of me. I'd been tripping on his heels and mumbling apologies the whole way. When I'd slow down to let him get farther ahead, he'd snap at me to keep up.
"We're almost there," Simon said.
He was behind me - sticking to the curbside, walking as close as Derek. While normally I wouldn't complain about Simon being so close, I had the weird sensation of being blocked in.
As we started forward again, I tried dropping back with Tori, who lagged behind, but Simon put his finger on my elbow and steered me back into place.
"Okay," I said. "Something's up. What's with the walking blockade?"
"They're protecting you," Tori said. "Shielding you from the big bad world." — Kelley Armstrong

What if you could take everything you were looking for in a person and whisper it into someone's ear, and they brought that person to you? And then, when you saw them for the first time, even if you didn't know they were the one for you, you suddenly knew it anyway?"
His finger traced my eyebrows, my cheekbones, as he thought a moment.
"What if your heart stopped when you saw that person, and only after that did you realize that they truly were everything you ever wanted? — Delilah S. Dawson

Fear the time when the bombs stopped falling while the bombers live - for every bomb is proof that the spirit has not died. And fear the time when the strikes stop while the great owners live - for every little beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken. — John Steinbeck

I got so discouraged, I almost stopped writing. It was my 12-year-old son who changed my mind when he said to me, "Mother, you've been very cross and edgy with us and we notice you haven't been writing. We wish you'd go back to the typewriter. That did a lot of good for my false guilts about spending so much time writing. At that point, I acknowledged that I am a writer and even if I were never published again, that's what I am." — Madeleine L'Engle

Time, so majestically fine, was passing by when I asked him to stop, a while, and lay his imprint upon the spaciousness of feelings: his face, reflected in the mirror of my memories, his smile, envisaged by my eyes, in quest of his new dwellings with wells of meanings. And there, he stopped its moment... and kissed my curiosity. It was then when I felt in love with him. — Soar

I just wanted to be with her. To show her who I truly was - not the jaded asshole she probably remembered. I wanted to find out who she had become and, even more than that, who she wanted to be. And then I wanted to be the one to give her that.
I draped an arm across her hips then pulled, forcing her to roll over on top of me. Her laughter abruptly stopped when I grazed a soft kiss over her lips. "No more running. Give me time to fix this. — Aly Martinez

In the Lakota/Sioux tradition, a person who is grieving is considered most wakan, most holy. There's a sense that when someone is struck by the sudden lightning of loss, he or she stands on the threshold of the spirit world. The prayers of those who grieve are considered especially strong, and it is proper to ask them for their help.
You might recall what it's like to be with someone who has grieved deeply. The person has no layer of protection, nothing left to defend. The mystery is looking out through that person's eyes. For the time being, he or she has accepted the reality of loss and has stopped clinging to the past or grasping at the future. In the groundless openness of sorrow, there is a wholeness of presence and a deep natural wisdom. — Tara Brach

As I passed a market, I thought I saw Devera, Aliera's daughter, looking at me. I almost stopped, but when I looked again she was gone, so I decided I was either imagining it, or she didn't want to talk to me. She is a very unusual child, but I guess now isn't the best time for that conversation. I put it out of my head and kept walking until I reached the Imperial Palace. — Steven Brust

harbinger, n.
When I was in third grade, we would play that game at recess where you'd twist an apple while holding on to its stem, reciting the alphabet, one letter for each turn. When the stem broke, the name of your true love would be revealed. Whenever I played, I always made sure that the apple broke at K. At the time I was doing this because no one in my grade had a name that began with K. Then, in college, it seemed like everyone I fell for was a K. It was enough to make me give up on the letter, and I didn't even associate it with you until later on, when I saw your signature on a credit card receipt, and the only legible letter was that first K. I will admit: When I got home that night, I went to the refrigerator and took out another apple. But I stopped twisting at J and put the apple back. You see, I didn't trust myself. I knew that even if the apple wasn't ready, I was going to pull that stem — David Levithan

People always say the greatest love story in the world is Romeo and Juliet. I don't know. At fourteen, at seventeen, I remember, it takes over your whole life." Alice was worked up now, her face flushed and alive, her hands cutting through the night-blooming air. "You think about nobody, nothing else, you don't eat or sleep, you just think about this ... it's overwhelming. I know, I remember. But is it love? Like how you have cheap brandy when you're young and you think it's marvelous, just so elegant, and you don't know, you don't know anything ... because, you've never tasted anything better. You're fourteen."
It was no time for lying. "I think it's love"
You do?"
I think maybe it's the only true love."
She was about to say something, and stopped herself. I'd surprised her, I suppose. "How sad if you're right," she said, closing her eyes for a moment. "Because we never end up with them. How sad and stupid if that's how it works. — Andrew Sean Greer

I hollowed out, stopped listening to music, never picked up a pencil, started slipping into old habits. All of the vibrancy I used to see became de-saturated. Lost Slowly, once I had done enough damage to myself, I began to climb out of the hole. Clean. When I made it out, the only thing left inside was the voice, and for the second time in my life, I no longer ignored it - because it was my own. — Gerard Way

Netflix will know everything. Netflix will know when a person stops watching it. They have all of their algorithms and will know that this person watched five minutes of a show and then stopped. They can tell by the behavior and the time of day that they are going to come back to it, based on their history. — Mitchell Hurwitz

This is another thing I think of, turning it over, try to put together two pictures of it, but this time it's about me, it's myself I'm trying to figure. Because one sounds so disgusting, not even able to tell Al about it, win the big game, take the virgin to her first bonfire, feed her a beer or two, and then the two of us in someone's car with your hand between my legs, unbuttoned and hiked down and the noises I made, before I finally, gasping, stopped you. It sounds terrible and it's probably the truth, the real picture, gross when I write it down and shamed about it. But it's the real, whole truth I'm trying to get down, how it happened, and honestly it felt different then, different from that bad picture. I can see it, so gentle the way you moved, the thrill that was there with us as no one knew where we were or what we were doing. — Daniel Handler

Things change so quickly. Just when you get used to something, zap! It
changes. Just when you begin to understand someone, zap! They grow up. The
same is happening with Katie. She changes every day; her face just becomes so
much more grown-up every time I look at her. Sometimes I have to stop pretending
I'm interested in what she's saying in order to realize that I actually am
interested. We go shopping for clothes together and I take her advice, we eat
out for lunch and giggle over silly things. I just can't cast my mind back to the
time when my child stopped being a child and became a person. — Cecelia Ahern

He clenched onto her, the way a 3-year-old kid would clench to his doll whenever someone tried to take it away from him. The doll was getting tore a bit every time the kid held it tighter. In the end, when they stopped trying to take it away from him, he looked at it with all the love he had for it. The doll wasn't the same anymore. It had lost all its beauty it had in the beginning. And the kid just wished in silence that if only he could let it go in the beginning. — Akshay Vasu

[T.J.] Without thinking, I held them out to her. She stopped laughing, and looked at me like she wasn't quite sure what I meant. I waited, and she leaned toward me and opened her mouth. I slid my fingers inside, wondering if my eyes were as big as hers. When she sucked the breadfruit off, my breathing got all messed up.
"More?"
She nodded, just barely, and her breathing didn't sound right either. I scooped up some breadfruit and this time, when I put my fingers in her mouth, she put her hand on my wrist.
I waited for her to swallow and then I lost my shit completely.
I grabbed her face with both hands, and I kissed her, hard. She opened her mouth and I slipped my tongue inside. I could have kissed her for days, and if she told me to stop I wasn't sure I'd be able to. — Tracey Garvis-Graves

Time was not something then we thought of as an item that possessed an ending, but something that would go on forever, all rested and stopped in that moment. Hard to say what I mean by that. You look back at all the endless years when you never had that thought. I am doing that now as I write these words in Tennessee. I am thinking of the days without end of my life. And it is not like that now. — Sebastian Barry

The same thing happened to me that, according to legend, happened to Parmeniscus, who in the Trophonean cave lost the ability to laugh but acquired it again on the island of Delos upon seeing a shapeless block that was said to be the image of the goddess Leto. When I was very young, I forgot in the Trophonean cave how to laugh; when I became an adult, when I opened my eyes and saw actuality, then I started to laugh and have never stopped laughing since that time. I saw that the meaning of life was to make a living, its goal to be- come a councilor, that the rich delight oflove was to acquire a well-to-do girl, that the blessedness of friendship was to help each other in financial difficulties, that wisdom was whatever the majority assumed it to be, that enthusiasm was to give a speech, that courage was to risk being fined ten dollars, that cordiality was to say "May it do you good" after a meal, that piety was to go to communion once a year. This I saw, and I laughed. — Soren Kierkegaard

I can't remember a time when I wasn't acting, so I can't imagine what I would do if I stopped now. — Lillian Gish

Came to the world at a time when it was in need of a villain / An asshole, that role I think I succeed in fulfilling / Dont think I ever stopped to think I was speaking to children / Everything was happening so fast, it was like I blinked, sold three million. — Eminem

The night I sat down to read Dostoievski for the first time was a most important event in my life, even more important than my first love. It was the first deliberate, conscious act which had significance for me; it changed the whole face of the world. Whether it is true that the clock stopped that moment when I looked up after the first deep gulp I don't know any more. But the world stopped dead for a moment, that I know. It was my first glimpse into the soul of a man, or shall I say simply that Dostoievski was the first man to reveal his soul to me?"

Henry Miller — Henry Miller Shreve

In stark contrast to two nights ago, when I felt Peeta was a million miles away, I'm struck by his immediacy now. As we settle in, he pulls my head down to use his arm as a pillow; the other rests protectively over me even when he goes to sleep. No one has held me like this in such a long time. Since my father died and I stopped trusting my mother, no one else's arms have made me feel this safe. — Suzanne Collins

Thanks for being here for me," she whispered.
He started to answer flippantly, but stopped when he realized how much it meant to him as well, that he could be there for her. "Anytime, babe."
And for the first time in his life, he actually meant it. — Jill Shalvis

There was a time I stopped talking, just like you. My reasons were a little bit different, but... I think the feelings of being ashamed of myself and hating myself... are the same. Here it says "to like yourself." What does that mean? Good things---how are you supposed to find them? I only know things that I hate about myself. Because that's all I know: I hate myself. Even if your force yourself to find good things... it feels so empty. It doesn't work that way. People like your teacher just don't get it.
I think... when you hear someone say they like you for the first time... then you can begin to like yourself. I think when someone accepts you for the first time... you feel like you can forgive yourself a little. You can begin to face your fears.

~Yuki — Natsuki Takaya

I even had this idea that the knife stopped working, that after a certain time it just stops working for you, when your number is up. I thought maybe it was me who had done it. That I killed him just by growing older, and being ready to replace him. — Kendare Blake

When he stopped walking and kissed me a few minutes later, it was like time had stopped, with the air, my heart, and the world all so still. And it was this I remembered every other time I was with Marshall. — Sarah Dessen

By the time I came out, that kind of stopped it. The bullying stopped when I claimed myself and proved that I wasn't afraid. A lot of it was when I was hiding when I was younger. — Randy Harrison

You feel like you stopped living when he went missing. You feel like the rest of your days are killing time until it's time to die. — Taylor Jenkins Reid

When ye've lived as long as I have, ye realize how relative time is. I've endured centuries that passed in the blink of an eye as if I were barely breathing.' He stopped and faced her. 'Or I can experience an entire lifetime in the span of a few nights. All the hope and passion that makes life worth living, 'tis suddenly surrounding me like a gift from God.' (Angus MacKay) — Kerrelyn Sparks

Did you catch the time-of-great-suffering thing?"
Her expression softened. "Can you just make sure I'm not around when it happens?"
"No can do," I said, strolling back to my office with a negating wave of my hand. "If I have to suffer, then so does everyone else within a ten-mile radius."
She pursed her lips. "What ever happened to taking one for the team?"
"Was never much of a team player."
"Sacrificing yourself for the greater good?"
"Not that into human sacrifice."
"Suffering in silence?"
I stopped and turned back to her, my eyes narrowing accusingly. "If I have to suffer, I'll be screaming your name at the top of my lungs the whole time. You'll be able to hear me all the way to Jersey, mark my words."
- Charley to Cookie — Darynda Jones

Hey, Captain," Ty called after him.
Turner stopped and turned, raising an eyebrow.
"Is there a reason you have to be such a dick all the time?"
Turner licked his lips and walked closer, looking all around them to ensure they were having a private discussion. "Because," he said in a low voice as he drew closer. "Being such a dick all the time lets you know that when I stand here and tell you I love you, I fucking mean it. — Abigail Roux

Perhaps it's time you stopped sulking over an engagement three years broken and bore yourself like a man!" The duke's voice snaps like a whip. "Zeus and Hera, how did I beget such an unruly son?"

"If you've forgotten, perhaps you could summon up the dead and ask my lady mother."

The duke barks a laugh. "You got that tongue from her, that's for certain. But she was obedient to me for all her carping."

"Obedient?" says Lord Anax. The desk creaks and shifts; I think he is leaning against it. "We must remember her very differently."

"Always when it counted, my boy, which is more than can be said of you. I wanted that girl for my daughter, you know."

"Adopt her, then. I believe it's legal."

"First I'd have to kill her parents," says the duke, "and I am given to understand that's frowned upon these days."

"It's gone the same sad way as the right of a father to execute his sons. — Rosamund Hodge

The secret to success: Don't stop to admire yourself too often. I only stopped to admire my work after I wrote eight books, before that, I never once admired myself for accomplishing anything in my profession. Don't stop to admire yourself too much, instead, admire people who have achieved more than you have, because that gives you something to keep on looking forward to. But when the time comes that you should take a look at the greatness you have done, make sure you take a really long and hard good look at it! Make sure you know your own greatness. — C. JoyBell C.

Book-club night stopped abruptly when Caleb died. For almost a year and a half, as if by some type of tacit agreement, they all knew they couldn't be in the same room at the same time. It was as if their collective grief would multiply, rebounding endlessly within any closed space like an image in a house of mirrors, until the pain would overcome them all. — Francis Guenette

It was hard to understand, and all I knew was that you had to run, run, run without knowing why you were running, but on you went through fields you didn't understand and into woods that made you afraid, over hills without knowing you'd been up and down, and shooting across streams that would have cut the heart out of you had you fallen into them. And the winning post was no end to it, even though crowds might be cheering you in, because on you had to go before you got your breath back, and the only time you stopped really was when you tripped over a tree trunk and broke your neck or fell into a disused well and stayed dead in the darkness forever. — Alan Sillitoe

I stopped acting when I was 19. The only time I acted again was during the war, when there were no other Nazis available. — Otto Preminger

Hen Anne stopped and talked to me for the first time. I can't remember what we said, maybe our names and where we came from. at the end of the conversation I invited her to dinner at my house that night. It was Christmastime, or nearly, and I made a pizza and bought a bottle of wine. We talked until very late. That was when Anne told me she'd been to Mexico several times. Overall, her adventures were very similar to mine. Anne thought this was because the lives or the youths of any two individuals would be fundamentally alike, in spite of the obvious or even glaring differences. I preferred to think that somehow she and I had both explored the same map, fought the same doomed campaigns, received a common sentimental education. At five in the morning, or perhaps later, we went to med and made love. — Roberto Bolano

The sight made her ache. How can I not touch you? she thought hopelessly, and then she was doing it, her fingers on his wrist. He didn't jump or even look at her, just stopped writing. Neither one of them moved, nothing moved, and the whole thing lasted three or four seconds at most, but when Pen took her hand away and started to breathe again, her chest hurt, as though she had been holding her breath for a very long time. — Marisa De Los Santos

The other night he took me to dinner. We were having a wonderful time when he remarked, "You can certainly tell the wives from the sweethearts."
I stopped licking the stream of butter dripping down my elbow and replied, "What kind of crack is that? — Erma Bombeck

I'm trying to decide
Which way to go
I think I made a wrong turn back there somewhere
Didn't cha know, didn't cha know
Tried to move but I lost my way
Didn't cha know, didn't cha know
Stopped to watch my emotions sway
Didn't cha know, didn't cha know
Knew the toll, but I would not pay
Didn't cha know, didn't cha know
Cause you never know where the cards may lay
Time to save the world
Where in the world is all the time
So many things I still don't know
So many times I've changed my mind
Guess I was born to make mistakes
But I ain't scared to take the weight
So when I stumble off the path
I know my heart will guide me back — Erykah Badu

If you were my queen, truly my queen, our court would be stronger still. If you were mine , without mortal distractions, we'd be safer. We'd be stronger if we were truly together. Summer is a time to rejoice in pleasures and heat. When I'm around you, I want to forget everything else. I love Donia. I always will, but when I'm near you
He stopped himself. — Melissa Marr

So often, environmentalists and others working to slow the destruction are capable of plainly describing the problems (Who wouldn't be? The problems are neither subtle nor cognitively challenging), yet when faced with the emotionally daunting task of fashioning a response to these clear and clearly insoluble problems, we generally suffer a failure of nerve and imagination. Gandhi wrote a letter to Hitler asking him to stop committing atrocities, and was mystified that it didn't work. I continue to write letters to the editor pointing out untruths, and continue to be surprised each time the newspaper publishes its next absurdity. At least I've stopped writing to politicians. — Derrick Jensen

I've never been willing to lie about my age. Why on earth would I want to tell people I'm 35, which I'm not, and have them say, 'Oh that's nice,' when I could tell them I'm 47, which I am, and have them look at me and go, 'Whoa!'. I'm not afraid of aging. I stopped being afraid of life a long time ago. — Sharon Stone

Each time I stopped I stripped myself of something vitally important. I was, becoming my own enemy! And I can't tell you how it hurt me when I found that out. What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

We stopped when we reached a plateau near the peak of the mountain and perhaps it was delirium, but I think I saw God for the first time. — Jamie Hoang

He stopped before opening the door and faced her. "You'll leave the window open for me and you'll be naked. When I come back, I'll take what I want from you, as many times as I want to." He grinned; it was pure and raw and astonishingly beautiful. "Understand me Lady Dagmar?" She shook her head. "No. You'll have to explain it to me."
"I will. Even if I have to tie you to bed and explain it to you again and again and again." He looked over one more time. "And don't play with yourself after I'm gone. Don't want you wearing my pussy out before I've had a chance to use it." With his hand on the door, Gwenvael rewarded her with the warmest smile she'd seen from anyone. "Besides, you look so beautiful when you come, I don't want to miss a second of it. — G.A. Aiken

When Sadik lost his own lease, we moved in together. And after a few months of closer scrutiny, he began to realize that the city had indeed had an effect on me, although not the one he'd expected. I stopped getting high. I ran three miles a day and fasted on Sundays. For the first time in years, I applied myself to my studies and started keeping a journal of daily reflections and very bad poetry. — Barack Obama

Mike Mason says, "A decision to rejoice in the present changes not only the present, it also changes my view of the past and ignites my future with hope."[26] I've stopped demanding that a moment last longer than it can. I don't require a moment to be anything other than what it is: a brief span of time that has been given by a gracious Father. I will wring every bit of pleasure out of this moment because I don't know when the next one will come. We're rarely satisfied with today; we spend too much time regretting the unrepeatable past and wishing we could get a do-over, or we waste our energy on worry and anxiety about the unknowable future. Either way, TODAY is ignored or minimized. — Kay Warren

I kept wondering then - I'm still wondering now - if there was a time when she realizes that something was going wrong. Inside her, I mean. when she could feel herself slipping away, something new creeping in. If she could have stopped it, or if it just... happened. — Nina LaCour

You have to be on TV a surprisingly long time before you're stopped on the street. Then, when you are, you get a lot of, 'Hey, you're great! What's your name again?' — Dick Cavett

When she tried to put the nozzle back onto the pump, it kept falling off because her hands were shaking. She didn't feel anything at all, but she couldn't get her hands to stop shaking. By the time she looked up, Troy was already gone. He had gotten into his car (white sedan, broken taillight) and pulled away without looking at her once. She forced herself to stand very still and breathe slowly until her hands stopped shaking. Once they were steady, she put the nozzle back onto the pump, deliberately opened her car door, and drove away at a reasonable speed. The entire time she felt fine. — Joseph Fink

He was out playing and heard Molly calling him. "Richard! Supper!" Instead of answering "Coming!" and running to her, he dodged under a hedge, scraping his knees. "Richard! Richard!" Molly sounded frantic this time, but he remained silent, crouched. "Richard! Where are you, Dicky?" A rabbit stopped and watched him, and he locked eyes with the rabbit and, for those short moments, only he and the rabbit knew where he was. Then the rabbit leaped out and Molly peered under the bushes and saw him. She smacked him. She told him to stay in his room for the rest of the day. She said she was very upset and would tell Mr. and Mrs. Churchill. But those short moments had made it all worthwhile, those moments of pure plenary abandon, when he felt as if he, and he alone, were in control of the universe of his childhood. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Then he would ask for songs and I would pluck them out for him on a lute I borrowed from my father's wagon. He would even sing from time to time. He had a bright, reckless tenor that was always wandering off, looking for notes in the wrong places. More often than not he stopped and laughed at himself when it happened. He was a good man, and there was no conceit in him. Not long after he joined our troupe, I asked Abenthy what it was like being an arcanist. He gave me a thoughtful look. Have you ever known an arcanist? — Patrick Rothfuss

The entire time Albie followed Beverly around the house doing what the children referred to as "the stripper soundtrack":
Boom chicka-boom, boom-boom chicka-boom.
When their mother stopped walking the soundtrack stopped. If she took a single step it was accompanied by Albie saying only "boom" in a voice that was weirdly sexual for a six-year-old. — Ann Patchett

It was now Frodo's turn to feel pleased with himself. He capered about on the table; and when he came up a second time to the cow jumped over the Moon, he leaped in the air. Much too vigorously; for he came down, bang, into a tray full of mugs, and slipped, and rolled off the table with a crash, clatter, and bump! The audience all opened their mouths wide for laughter, and stopped short in gaping silence; for the singer disappeared. He simply vanished, as if he had gone slap through the floor without leaving a hole! — J.R.R. Tolkien

I haven't started counting yet. I wonder if it's just me or if it's like that for everybody; that every time someone dies you start counting how much time has passed since they've been gone. First you count it in minutes, then in hours. You count in days, then weeks, then months. Then one day you realize that you aren't counting anymore, and you don't even know when you stopped. That's the moment they're gone. — Katja Millay

I was a crazy creature with a head full of carnival spangles until I was thirty, and then the only man I ever really cared for stopped waiting and married someone else. So in spite, in anger at myself, I told myself I deserved my: fate for not having married when the best chance was at hand. I started traveling. My luggage was snowed under blizzards of travel stickers. I have been alone in Paris, alone in Vienna, alone in London, and all in all, it is very much like being alone in Green Town, Illinois. It is, in essence, being alone. Oh, you have plenty of time to think, improve your manners, sharpen your conversations. But I sometimes think I could easily trade a verb tense or a curtsy for some company that would stay over for a thirty-year weekend. — Ray Bradbury

You don't know what it's like to grow up with a mother who never said a positive thing in her life, not about her children or the world, who was always suspicious, always tearing you down and splitting your dreams straight down the seams. When my first pen pal, Tomoko, stopped writing me after three letters she was the one who laughed: You think someone's going to lose life writing to you? Of course I cried; I was eight and I had already planned that Tomoko and her family would adopt me. My mother of course saw clean into the marrow of those dreams, and laughed. I wouldn't write to you either, she said. She was that kind of mother: who makes you doubt yourself, who would wipe you out if you let her. But I'm not going to pretend either. For a long time I let her say what she wanted about me, and what was worse, for a long time I believed her. — Junot Diaz

It's like chopping down a huge tree of immense girth. You won't accomplish it with one swing of your axe. If you keep chopping away at it, though, and do not let up, eventually, whether it wants to or not, it will suddenly topple down. When that time comes, you could round up everyone you could find and pay them to hold the tree up, but they wouldn't be able to do it. It would still come crashing to the ground ... . But if the woodcutter stopped after one or two strokes of his axe to ask the third son of Mr. Chang, "Why doesn't this tree fall?" And after three or four more strokes stopped again to ask the fourth son of Mr. Li, "Why doesn't this tree fall?" he would never succeed in felling the tree. It is no different for someone who is practicing the Way. - ZEN MASTER HAKUIN — Robert Greene

This beginning motion, this first time when a sail truly filled and the boat took life and knifed across the lake under perfect control, this was so beautiful it stopped my breath ... — Gary Paulsen

So you scream from behind your door, say what's mine is mine, and not yours
I may have too much, but I'll take my chances
Cause God's stopped keeping score
And you cling to the things they sold you
Didn't you cover your eyes when they told you that he can't come back
Cause he has no children to come back for
It so hard to learn, there's so much to hate
Hanging on to hope when there is no hope to speak of
And the wounded skies above say it's much too late
So maybe we should all be praying for time — George Michael

I had achieved so much success in my career and then had this spectacular fall from grace that left me unemployed and living in a town, Los Angeles, that is built on envy. Once you fall, people don't really root for you to come back again. I'd go to restaurants where I always had the best table and half the time they wouldn't even let me pay. And then when I stopped making movies, the same places wouldn't even give me a lousy table, never mind the best one! — Mickey Rourke

I had no thought, that night - none, I am quite sure - of what was soon to happen to me. But I have always remembered since, that when we had stopped at the garden gate to look up at the sky, and when we went upon our way, I had for a moment an undefinable impression of myself as being something different from what I then was. I know it was then, and there, that I had it. I have ever since connected the feeling with that spot and time, and with everything associated with that spot and time, to the distant voices in the town, the barking of a dog, and the sound of wheels coming down the miry hill. — Charles Dickens

I headed for my office, but stopped when I saw my laptop on the couch. Sorrel had obviously borrowed it - again - without permission. I grabbed it, wondering what questionable site he'd left on the screen this time and making a mental note to run the anti-virus software. After taking a shower, putting on my pajamas, and fixing an ice cream sundae for dinner - yes, it was one of those days - I sat down at my desk and pulled up the web browser. — H.D. Smith

It was in that room too that I learned not to think about anything that I was writing from the time I stopped writing until I started again the next day. That way my subconscious would be working on it and at the same time I would be listening to other people and noticing everything, I hoped; learning, I hoped; and I would read so that I would not think about my work and make myself impotent to do it. Going down the stairs when you had worked well, and that needed luck as well as discipline, was a wonderful feeling and I was free then to walk anywhere in Paris. — Ernest Hemingway,

One night I was standing on Third Avenue playing my guitar, when this big Irish policeman came strolling by, and stopped to listen to my singing and playing. When I was done, he politely handed me a ticket for disturbing the peace, while at the same time telling me how much he liked my voice. I wish I still had that ticket. — Frank Stallone

Atticus sat looking at the floor for a long time. Finally he raised his head. "Scout," he said, "Mr. Ewell fell on his knife. Can you possibly understand?"
Atticus looked like he needed cheering up. I ran to him and hugged him and kissed him with all my might. "Yes sir, I understand," I reassured him. "Mr. Tate was right."
Atticus disengaged himself and looked at me. "What do you mean?"
"Well, it'd be sort of like shootin' a mockingbird, wouldn't it?"
Atticus put his face in my hair and rubbed it. When he got up and walked across the porch into the shadows, his youthful step had returned. Before he went inside the house, he stopped in front of Boo Radley. "Thank you for my children, Arthur." he said. — Harper Lee

You were my once in a lifetime.
This I knew from the moment your eyes met mine.
You were my once in a lifetime.
This I knew the first time I whispered into your ear and my heart stopped.
You were my once in a lifetime.
This I knew when your face touched my spirit.
You were my once in a lifetime.
This I knew when I kissed your lips and felt it in my soul.
So where did you go, where did you go? — Kim Karr

We moved around a lot at first as a kid, and then I was on the road at 17, and new in town by the time I got to LA, and then famous again with that whirlwind. I did really want substance in my life, and when I stopped with the road for my children, it was really because I didn't want to miss out. It wasn't just selflessness. I didn't want to miss out on that. — Lynda Carter

When we were children, Bapi used to dress us up in the same clothes, going to Apsara for 'Titanic' or reruns of 'Dadar Kirti' and we used to be so embarrassed by that, even at six. Day before yesterday when I saw Neev and you wearing matching purple shirts, I encountered envy for the first time. You had taken on his colors, as though you were in his house already. I felt as though that moment you had stopped needing me to make you feel whole and nothing was ever going to remain the same.'
('Left from Dhakeshwari') — Kunal Sen

It struck me that perhaps a lot of the people you see walking about are dead. We say that a man's dead when his heart stops and not before. It seems a bit arbitrary. After all, parts of your body don't stop working -hair goes on growing for years, for instance. Perhaps a man really dies when his brain stops, when he loses the power to take in a new idea. Old Porteous is like that. Wonderfully learned, wonderfully good taste - but he's not capable of change. Just says the same things and thinks the same thoughts over and over again. There are a lot of people like that. Dead minds, stopped inside. Just keep moving backwards and forwards on the same little track, getting fainter all the time, like ghosts. — George Orwell

So he stopped at the first of them, a frigid hothouse whose front tipped forward over the street in defiance of gravity, taste, and ordinance; inside, the tender daytime flowers could be seen huddling in family groups beneath a constant, unseen sun, and behind them was the hermetic door to the dark Cactus Room where the shy nocturnal plants, genus cereus, could bloom in privacy at any hour. Vivien, once out of the car, appeared less constrained. She did not have that stiffness so many have on first entering bars, that air of waiting stubbornly for alcohol to loosen them, which so often presages their manner when it comes' time for bed. She was already excited when the martinis came. — Douglas Woolf

It seems to me that one of the things that happened with a lot of literary fiction in the 1980s and 1990s was that it became very concerned with the academy and less with how people live their lives. We got to a point where the crime novel stepped into the breach. It was also a time when the crime novel stopped being so metropolitan. — Val McDermid

I devised a test.
I turned off the TV and instantly the snoring stopped. She began to move. When I felt her eyes about to open, I turned the TV back on and back to sleep she went. Then I'd turn it off and on - sometimes for millisecond - and she never failed me. Each time it was off, she's move and mutter - each time it was on, she'd sleep.
By the time the headlights from Amy's Nova turned into our driveway, my suspicion had been confirmed. My mother has a more intimate, connected relationship with this television than she has ever had with me. — Peter Hedges

Seeing him was a sucker punch to the gut. Once upon a time he'd loved her. And then when he'd stopped, it wasn't really his fault. — Sarina Bowen

The world is going under, I thought, and this notion so little surprised me, it seemed as though I had been waiting a long time for just that to happen. But now, from amid the burning and collapsing city, I saw a boy come toward me. His hands were buried in his pockets and he hopped and skipped from one leg to another, resilient and light-hearted. Then he stopped and emitted an ingenious whistle
our signal from grade school days, and the boy was my friend who had shot himself when he was a student. Immediately I too became, like him, a boy of twelve, and the burning city and the distant thunder and the blustering storm of howling voices from all corners of the world sounded wondrously exquisite to our newly awakened ears. Now everything was good, and the dark nightmare in which I had lived for so many despairing years was gone forever. — Hermann Hesse