Quotes & Sayings About Winding Up

Life is not a straight line leading from one blessing to the next and then finally to heaven. Life is a winding and troubled road. Switchback after switchback. And the point of biblical stories like Joseph and Job and Esther and Ruth is to help us feel in our bones (not just know in our heads) that God is for us in all these strange turns. God is not just showing up after the trouble and cleaning it up. He is plotting the course and managing the troubles with far-reaching purposes for our good and for the glory of Jesus Christ. — John Piper

It was how wars really ended, Dieffenbaker supposed
not at truce tables but in cancer wards and office cafeterias and traffic jams. Wars died one tiny piece at a time, each piece something that fell like a memory, each lost like an echo that fades in winding hills. In the end even war ran up the white flag. Or so he hoped. He hoped that in the end even war surrendered. — Stephen King

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it ...
It wasn't only the sand drifts and the mud and the narrow, winding, broken roads up in the mountains. There was all that business at the frontier posts, all that haggling in the forest outside wooden huts that flew strange flags. I had to talk myself and my Peugeot past the men with guns
just to drive through bush and more bush. And then I had to talk even harder, and shed a few more bank notes and give away more of my tinned food, to get myself
and the Peugeot
out of the places I had talked us into.
Some of these palavers could take half a day ... — V.S. Naipaul

Newsmen winding up the nation, a little bad news helps circulation, pass on the panic to the population. — Ray Davies

We climbed the height by the zigzag path And wondered why - until We understood it was made zigzag To break the force of the hill. A road straight up would prove too steep For the traveler's feet to tread; The thought was kind in its wise design Of a zigzag path instead. It is often so in our daily life; We fail to understand That the twisting way our feet must tread By love alone was planned. Then murmur not at the winding way, It is our Father's will To lead us Home by the zigzag path, To break the force of the hill. ANONYMOUS — Lettie B. Cowman

Driving down deserted early morning roads. Round and round. Round downtown. Through naked streets. Lips pursed on two litre bottles of beer, but pursuing the lips of freedom's night. Swapping cars. Winding up at karaoke bars or Bolsi- the best place in town. For the food. For the folk. For the service. For the crema de papaya. And for that late night dawn's whiskey coffee. — Harry Whitewolf

The end of a man's life is often compared to the winding up of a well written play, where the principal persons still act in character, whatever the fate in which they undergo. — Joseph Addison

think you need a hug. A nice warm, dripping-wet one."

Keenan started clapping while Brecken gave me a warning look. "I've got your son on my shoulders. I can't run away from you."

I gave an overdone smile then lunged. "Exactly," I exclaimed, winding my arms around him and wiggling the rest of my wet self against him.

Brecken let out a drawn-out groan, but he stood there and took it, hanging on to Keenan while I hung on to him. "Mature. So mature." He sighed all dramatic-like. "Wonderful example you're setting for your son here."

I tipped my head up, eyebrow raised. "This coming from the man who mixed Frosted Flakes and Cocoa Puffs this morning?"

His eyebrows lifted. "I'm setting the example of how to behave like a proper five-year-old. You're the parent. You get to set the parental example. — Nicole Williams

I didn't think you were real for a long time," I confess. "I thought you were someone I'd dreamed up."
"A dream worth reliving every night for ten years?" he asks, chuckling and slowly loosening his hold.
"For eternity," I whisper, winding my arms around his neck to keep him close.
"Good." He leans down and brushes his lips against mine. "That is exactly how long I plan on keeping you. — Erica Cameron

The Waking
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go. — Theodore Roethke

Criticizing people, winding them up, making idiots of them or fooling them doesn't make people with autism laugh. What makes us smile from the inside is seeing something beautiful, or a memory makes us laugh. This generally happens when there's nobody watching us. And at night, on our own, we might burst out laughing underneath the duvet, or roar with later in an empty room ... When we don't need to think about other people or anything else, that's when we wear our aural expressions. — Naoki Higashida

I was hoping Betsy Nash would disappear. Literally. She was so insubstantial, I could imagine her slowly evaporating, leaving only a sticky spot on the edge of the sofa. But she lingered, eyes darting between me and her husband before we even began speaking. Like she was winding up for the conversation. The children, too, hovered about, little blonde ghosts trapped in a limbo between indolence and stupidity. The pretty girl might do all right. But the piggy middle child, who now waddled dazedly into the room, was destined for needy sex and snack-cake bingeing. The boy was the type who'd end up drinking in gas-station parking lots. The kind of angry, bored kid I saw on my way into town. — Gillian Flynn

That scene in the office stayed with me. Those cigars, the fine clothes. I thought of good steaks, long
rides up winding driveways that led to beautiful homes. Ease. Trips to Europe. Fine women. Were they
that much more clever than I? The only difference was money, and the desire to accumulate it.
I'd do it too! I'd save my pennies. I'd get an idea, I'd spring a loan. I'd hire and fire. I'd keep whiskey in
my desk drawer. I'd have a wife with size 40 breasts and an ass that would make the paperboy on the
corner come in his pants when he saw it wobble. I'd cheat on her and she'd know it and keep silent in
order to live in my house with my wealth. I'd fire men just to see the look of dismay on their faces. I'd
fire women who didn't deserve to be fired. — Charles Bukowski

The pessimists believe that the cosmos is a clock that is running down; the progressives believe it is a clock that they themselves are winding up. But I happen to believe that the world is what we choose to make it, and that we are what we choose to make ourselves; and that our renascence or our ruin will alike, ultimately and equally, testify with a trumpet to our liberty.- The Illustrated London News, July 10, 1920 Issue. — G.K. Chesterton

The parasail's winch turned, winding up the line, pulling Ally and Serena lower and closer to him in a steady pull. A funny feeling seized him as he watched her. Logically, he knew she kept getting closer, but he suddenly knew she'd never arrive. She'd be suspended out on the end of that line for eternity, seemingly within reach, yet somehow distant. His breath stopped. — Linda Morris

The darkest moments for me weren't necessarily winding up in the hospital or anything like that. It was those quiet moments alone when I just hated the person I had become. — Jodie Sweetin

In real life I always seem to have a hard time winding up a conversation or asking somebody to leave, and sometimes the moment becomes so delicate and fraught with social complexity that I'll get overwhelmed trying to sort out all the different possible ways of saying it and all the different implications of each option and will just sort of blank out and do it totally straight
'I want to terminate the conversation and not have you be in my apartment anymore'
which evidently makes me look either as if I'm very rude and abrupt or as if I'm semi-autistic and have no sense of how to wind up a conversation gracefully ... I've actually lost friends this way. — David Foster Wallace

When I talk to my friends I pretend I am standing on the wings
of a flying plane. I cannot be trusted to tell them how I am.
Or if I am falling to earth weighing less
than a dozen roses. Sometimes I dream they have broken up
with their lovers and are carrying food to my house.
When I open the mailbox I hear their voices
like the long upward-winding curve of a train whistle
passing through the tall grasses and ferns
after the train has passed. I never get ahead of their shadows.
I embrace them in front of moving cars. I keep them away
from my miseries because to say I am miserable is to say I am like them. — Jason Shinder

Those slight words and looks and touches are part of the soul's language; and the finest language, I believe, is chiefly made up of unimposing words, such as "light," "sound," "stars," "music" - words really not worth looking at, or hearing, in themselves, any more than "chips" or "sawdust." It is only that they happen to be the signs of something unspeakably great and beautiful. I am of opinion that love is a great and beautiful thing too, and if you agree with me, the smallest signs of it will not be chips and sawdust to you: they will rather be like those little words, "light" and "music," stirring the long-winding fibres of your memory and enriching your present with your most precious past. — George Eliot

I don't think I could ever describe myself as unlucky because people would look at me, playing football for a living, and say: 'Are you winding me up?' — Jermain Defoe

The simple life on the farm was everything to me. Nothing was more relaxing after a long plane flight than to reach the winding driveway that led up to my house. The quiet of the night was more soothing than a sleeping pill. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

To me, the highlight of the event is watching a reenactor in a long striped dress sitting alone on a blanket, winding yarn. Absorbed in the task of wrapping strands of wool around her hand, she never looks up. Watching her is so mesmerizing and oddly sacred that it never occurs to me to interrupt her and ask her name or how she got into the yarn-winding reenactment biz, maybe because she isn't recreating; she is creating. — Sarah Vowell

You can speed up your life if you want to - that's easy. Winding down is what's hard. — Jennifer James

Youth is only being in a way like it might be an animal. No, it is not just like being an animal so much as being like one of these malenky toys you viddy being sold in the streets, like little chellovecks made out of tin and with a spring inside and then a winding handle on the outside and you wind it up grrr grrr grrr and off it itties, like walking, O my brothers. But it itties in a straight line and bangs straight into things bang bang and it cannot help what it is doing. Being young is like being like one of these malenky machines. — Anthony Burgess

I collect travel alarm clocks. I was in a flea market in France once, in 1994, and I opened up this beautiful Jaeger-LeCoultre folding eight-day winding clock folded into a beautiful case, and I went, 'Wow, man.' And I've been collecting travel alarm clocks since 1994. — Alec Baldwin

There is a two-fold solemnity which belongs to the dying hour-it is the winding up of life, and it is the commencement of eternity. — Frederick William Robertson

I woke up one day and I realized I wasn't born beautiful, but my wife was, so I decided to make a horror film about it: what it would be like to be born beautiful. — Nicolas Winding Refn

and heading for the next, running the first horse into the second corral, throwing the saddle on the next bronc and then heading down the line to the next place and the next until winding up back at the first place just about at — Molly Gloss

God is a thing I think I see in glimmers all over: an enormous and vague warmth I sometimes catch pulsing around me, giving me shivers and making tears prick my eyes; a mysterious and limitless Thing threaded through all the world and refusing to be reduced to a name or a set of rules and instead winding itself through millions of stories, true and made up, connecting all breathing things. And — Emily Henry

But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
..Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. — John Keats

Our Victrola stood in the diningroom. I was allowed to climb onto the seat of a diningroom chair to wind it, start the record turning, and set the needle playing. In a second I'd jumped to the floor, to spin or march around the room as the music called for - now there were all the other records I could play too. I skinned back onto the chair just in time to lift the needle at the end, stop the record and turn it over, then change the needle. Winding up, dancing, being cocked to start and stop the record, was of course, all in one the act of listening. Movement must be at the very heart of listening. — Eudora Welty

He no sooner saw the woman than he saw the aftermath of her - his marriage proposal and her acceptance, the home they would set up together, the drawn rich silk curtains leaking purple light, the bed sheets billowing like clouds, the wisp of aromatic smoke winding from the chimney - only for every wrack of it - its lattice of crimson roof tiles, its gables and dormer windows, his happiness, his future - to come crashing down on him in the moment of her walking past. — Howard Jacobson

I picked up the corpse and dragged it down and down the winding steps of the tower, into the stinking dungeon, and threw it to rot with the rest there. — Anne Rice

Life takes up one long, winding road to fulfill its seemingly endless journey, and when we find ourselves stumble upon forks in the road, we choose wisely. — Amani Abbas

The casting of any film is around 60% of the film, but it's also about the right casting insight. It's a bit like a house of cards, everyone has to match up in a certain way so the whole structure is grounded. So that's essential, and yes, it's about finding the right people and the right constellation around the lead character. — Nicolas Winding Refn

Frank thought. Each time he became someone else's spy it got easier. The ideological virgin usually finds his first time an excruciating experience, just as an amateur hiker, used to the straight-and-narrow freeway of nine-to-five reliability, looks askance at the boulder-strewn path of mercenary betrayal, winding on up into the clouds and down into terrible moraines. But after the first time, the pain and intimacy and guilt becomes a habit subject to check listed procedures; and to the professional, the politically promiscuous soul, all that matters is the craft itself, the right skitter and stab and swing of the hips, so that in the end you can laugh at the inevitability of your own violent death. Frank was now almost at that stage. — William T. Vollmann

I've been making films since the '70s and trying to develop that best possible fiction-film style that I feel is the most expressive. At a certain point, I felt I was winding up making the same film stylistically and I found that boring. — Jonathan Demme

Falconer was wearing his street clothes - jeans, a black turtleneck and an empty shoulder holster under his armpit. Cowboy boots. Little bit of beard stubble. John wondered if the guy would walk from one end of the street to the other without winding up covered in bitches. — David Wong

In the green fields and under the shadow of the goodly trees they set up the altars of their idols. Extensive groves, that retained their foliage throughout the year, were dedicated to the worship of false gods. With these groves were connected beautiful gardens, their long, winding avenues overhung with fruit-bearing trees of all descriptions, adorned with statuary, and furnished with all that could delight the senses or minister to the voluptuous desires of the people, and thus allure them to participate in the idolatrous worship. — Ellen G. White

To be a righteous woman during the winding up scenes on this earth, before the second coming of our Savior, is an especially noble calling ... She has been placed here to help to enrich, to protect, and to guard the home
which is society's basic and most noble institution. — Spencer W. Kimball

At the great iron gate of the churchyard he stopped and looked in. He looked up at the high tower spectrally resisting the wind, and he looked round at the white tombstones, like enough to the dead in their winding-sheets, and he counted the nine tolls of the clock-bell. — Charles Dickens

The way Jesus shows you is not easy. Rather, it is like a path winding up a mountain. Do not lose heart! The steeper the road, the faster it rises towards ever wider horizons. — Pope John Paul II

Fields and more fields on either side of the road.From where they are it looks as if the whole world were green.But from higher up,from a hill-if there were a hill in this flat country-or from a pyramid(one of the many that two thousand years ago lined this route from Thebes to Memphis,from the Delta to the Cataract)or from an aeroplane today,you would be able to see how narrow the strip green was,how closely it clung to the winding river.The river like a lifeline thrown across the desert, the villages and the town hanging on to it, clustering together, glancing over their shoulders at the desert always behind them.Appeasing it,finally,by making it the dwelling of their head. — Ahdaf Soueif

So hire slowly. It's the only way to avoid winding up at a cocktail party of strangers. — Jason Fried

Before my eyes daily as we sailed way down upon the Suwannee River were visions of spring furrows at Clouds Creek, the warmed earth opened up behind the plow; of wildflowered meadows, cool and verdant, and airy open woods along the shaded creeks, winding southeast to the Edisto. That spring landscape turned forever and away in my mind's eye, changing softly into gold greens of upland summer in that lost land where I was born, the country of my forefathers, the heart of home. Clouds Creek - my earth - was the wellspring and the source of Edgar Watson, all the Eden he had ever wished or hoped to find. — Peter Matthiessen

The soles of Cynthia Sawyer's shoes squeaked on the damp flagstone walkway that meandered through Hawthorne Manor's formal gardens. Hazy rays of sun kissed the sprint morning dew, glistening on the early-blooming flowers and foliage soon to blossom into a Southern Living-worthy wonderland. Perfect for tiny Maple Creek, Maryland's annual garden party - the most exciting event of the season, especially for the quirky retirees. Last year, crazy old Mrs. Osworth got lost in the winding boxwood maze and called 911 to get "one of those strong young firemen" to come rescue her. She'd said she felt faint, and claimed she'd need mouth-to-mouth resuscitation the moment they showed up. — Tracy March

Once we were on the road, I glanced at my passenger. "If you've got any ideas about how I can get this shit storm cleared up, I'm all ears."
Tank snorted, sneezed, and lay down on the bench seat, plopping his head on my leg. I rested my hand on his back, eyes glued to the winding two-lane highway. "Yeah, I don't have a goddamn clue either. — Lisa Kessler

Most people, on waking up, accelerate through a quick panicky pre-consciousness check-up: who am I, where am I, who is he/she, good god, why am I cuddling a policeman's helmet, what happened last night?
And this is because people are riddled by Doubt. It is the engine that drives them through their lives. It is the elastic band in the little model aeroplane of their soul, and they spend their time winding it up until it knots. Early morning is the worst time -there's that little moment of panic in case You have drifted away in the night and something else has moved in. This never happened to Granny Weatherwax. She went straight from asleep to instant operation on all six cylinders. She never needed to find herself because she always knew who was doing the looking. — Terry Pratchett

At the lip of a cliff, I look out over Lake Superior, through the bare branches of birches and the snow-covered branches of aspens and pines. A hard wind blows snow up out of a cavern and over my face. I know this place, I know its seasons - I have hiked these mountains in the summer and walked these winding pathways in the explosion of colour that is a northern fall. And now, the temperature drops well below zero and the deadly cold lake rages below, I feel the stirrings of faith that here, in this place, in my heart, spring will come again.
But first the winter must be waited out. And that waiting has worth. — Marya Hornbacher

For some reason, the despair that's welling up in me is transforming into white-hot rage. I feel it working its way up from my toes, winding around my legs, and burrowing into the pit of my stomach. It spears its razor-sharp tendrils through the pieces of my broken heart. It's crippling, and devastating, and unrelenting. I have only one choice to survive this; I turn that rage outward. — Michelle Figley

All my other movies have the same process. Same approach. Same amount of changes. Everything. Things being made up on the fly. Changing things around. Firing and recasting. Constantly, constantly, in chronological sequence, not really knowing how this is going to end up. That is the only dogmatic approach I take towards everything. — Nicolas Winding Refn

There was a small stand of trees nearby, and from it you could hear the mechanical cry of a bird that sounded as if it were winding a spring. We called it the wind-up bird. Kumiko gave it the name. We didn't know what it was really called or what it looked like, but that didn't bother the wind-up bird. Every day it would come to the stand of trees in our neighborhood and wind the spring of our quiet little world. — Haruki Murakami

I'm just angry at the sort of things that are winding up in ground beef. I'm angry that other people - mainly children - are going to be sickened by eating a hamburger. — Eric Schlosser

The husband was a teetotaller, there was no other woman, and the conduct complained of was that he had drifted into the habit of winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth and hurling them at his wife. — Arthur Conan Doyle

An air of anticipation hung over the lab. The pied crow - whose name, according to Tasha, was Pitch, and who had been raised in captivity, bouncing from wildlife center to wildlife center before winding up living in my sister's private aviary - gripped her perch stubbornly with her talons and averted her eyes from the screen, refusing to react to the avatar that was trying to catch her attention. She'd been ignoring the screen for over an hour, shutting out four researchers and a bored linguist who was convinced that I was in the middle of some sort of creative breakdown. All — Elizabeth Bear

They continued to mount the winding staircase. A high wind, blowing through the loopholes, went rushing up the shaft, and filled the girl's skirts like a balloon, so that she was ashamed, until he took the hem of her dress and held it down for her. He did it perfectly simply, as he would have picked up her glove. She remembered this always. — D.H. Lawrence

Real life is me searching for answers but winding up feeling more lost than ever. Looking — Autumn Doughton

My best ideas almost always come from winding up in unexpected places and stumbling across things I never could have imagined in advance. — Damian Kulash

To ask me is in vain;
For who goes up your winding stair
Can ne'er come down again. — Mary Howitt

If the generations of mankind suffered and laid down their lives; if martyrs sang in the fire ... for no other end than that a race of creatures of such unexampled insipidity should succeed, and protract ... their contented and inoffensive lives, why, at such a rate ... better ring down the curtain before the last act of the play, so that a business that began so importantly may be saved from so singularly flat a winding up. — William James

The prevalence of suicide, without doubt, is a test of height in civilization; it means that the population is winding up its nervous and intellectual system to the utmost point of tension and that sometimes it snaps. — Havelock Ellis

Ever feel like you're always winding up and never throwing it out? You might blame it on perfectionism or procrastination or preparation. You may even call it prudent. But whatever it is...IT'S NOT WORKING. I call this phenomenon "petrified performance." Where you're busy, busy, busy (on the wrong activities or the right activities for too long), and never accomplishing the idea or task you set out to do. You're stuck. Like a tree that once was lively is now dead and immovable like a stone. What once was a fluid idea is now frozen in time. How do you overcome petrified performance? With practice, silly. Everything you do should be considered a "project" because projects have a beginning and an end with a timeline. No more dreaming. Wake up and put those dreams to work by putting the steps necessary to make them happen on the calendar. Are you willing to practice? That's my prescription. — Richie Norton

CHAPTER XIV THE WINDING-UP — Charlotte Bronte

The War,' said a soldier proverb, 'will last a hundred years
five years of fighting and ninety-give of winding up the barbed wire. — Preston William Slosson

Just going outside put me at risk of winding up dead or captured. If I let that daunt me, I'd never do anything. — Samantha Shannon

I wanted to tell a dream-come-true story about going from a closeted gay kid who loved pop culture to an out adult man making pop culture. I went from being told when I was 21 that I should never go on TV because of my crossed eyes to winding up being a 'Housewives' whisperer and talk-show host. — Andy Cohen

I was breathless, talking as fast as I could. I was afraid if I stopped talking, even for a second, I'd start sobbing again.
"Whoa, there." Fang smiled and reached up, tracing a hand down the side of my face, winding strands of my hair around his fingers. "Stop talking and let me just tell you how great it is to wake up staring at your face. Okay? — James Patterson

An evening up on the Empire State roof-the strangest experience. The huge tomb in steel and glass, the ride to the 84th floor and there, under the clouds, a Hawaiian string quartet, lounge, concessions and, a thousand feet below, New York-a garden of golden lights winking on and off, automobiles, trucks winding in and out, and not a sound. All as silent as a dead city-and it looks adagio down there. — Dawn Powell

Sleep is to a man what winding up is to a clock. — Arthur Schopenhauer

THE City of Angels operated mostly on a grid pattern, with a few winding streets tossed in to fuck up a tourist trying to get from Hollywood to downtown. Adding to the confusion are three of the worst intersected freeways known to mankind. An innocent stranger to the molasses gridlock around the downtown exits could unsuspectingly take the wrong course among the five hundred options available amid the endless construction and find himself circling the area, hopelessly lost until he either ran out of gas or went mad from the hell he couldn't escape.
Bobby was dead certain many of the street people trudging through downtown muttering to themselves were actually motorists who finally abandoned their cars and set to walking the cement and steel desert until the end of their days. I wasn't all together certain he was wrong. — Rhys Ford

Life is a journey up a spiral staircase; as we grow older we cover the ground covered we have covered before, only higher up; as we look down the winding stair below us we measure our progress by the number of places where we were but no longer are. The journey is both repetitious and progressive; we go both round and upward. — William Butler Yeats

And because they had mass, they became simpler," said Beatty. "Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple population. Films and radios, magazines, books leveled down to a sort of paste pudding norm, do you follow me?" "I think so." Beatty peered at the smoke pattern he had put out on the air. "Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests, Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending." "Snap ending." Mildred nodded. "Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume. — Ray Bradbury

I keep referring to them in the plural but all I'm dealing with is Bob. I don't know where Harvey fits in the equation. He was very present at the beginning, winding his brother up. I don't know where he is now. — Terry Gilliam

Under the horizon, under the bowl of the earth, giant wheels have started turning, monstrous conveyer belts are winding, toothed gears are pulling the sun down and the moon up. The day is tired, it has folded its white wings, flies west-ward, big, in loose clothes, it waves a sleeve, releases stars, blesses the people walking on the chilling earth: good-bye, good-bye, I'll come again tomorrow. — Tatyana Tolstoya

"Have you done your homework?" my mother would ask. "I'll do it later." "You will do it now, young man. I don't want you winding up on the third shift at Flagg-Utica." Flagg-Utica was a local textile plant. Somehow, I never could figure how failing to read three chapters in my geography book about the various sorts of vegetation to be found in a tropical rain forest had anything to do with facing a life as a mill hand. But with enough guilt and fear as catalysts, you can read anything, even geography books and Deuteronomy. — Lewis Grizzard

Sarah shifted on the bench. I worried she was winding up to say something, that Sky would start humming now, that the fright spring-coiled inside me would break loose. Then I remembered the widow dress I was wearing. I made a sound with my lips like I was trying to give him an answer, but choking on the words, seized by my grief, and I didn't have to pretend that much. I felt sorrow for my life, for what I'd lived and seen and known, for what was lost to me, and the weeping turned real. — Sue Monk Kidd

And this is because people are riddled by Doubt. It is the engine that drives them through their lives. It is the elastic band in the little model aeroplane of their soul, and they spend their time winding it up until it knots. Early morning is the worst time - there's that little moment of panic in case You have drifted away in the night and something else has moved in. — Terry Pratchett

As all clocks need winding, so all human brains and bodies need to be wound up by sleeping. — Julia McNair Wright

I might have starved to death. I would be mud-slick, stuffed to the guts with cold and hopelessness, and my body might know it was doomed and give up on its own. That would be better than idly winding wool on a snowy day, waiting for someone to kill me. — Hannah Kent

She was drowning, pulled under by a froth of limbs and bodies, swept along by currents of voices, music, and car engines. Dark shadows circled her like hungry sharks. She rose up, dragged to the surface by an impatient crowd. Hands and elbows pushed and shoved. Exhaust fumes and food smells clogged her nostrils. This was the old part of the city, where archaic buildings stood side by side, defences pitched against the onslaught of the modern. There were no smooth walls here, no towers made of steel and glass. This was all shadows and sculpture, buttresses and winding alleys; the impenetrable heart of a long ago city, beating to a circadian rhythm. The — Malcolm Richards

If doubtful whether to end with "yours faithfully," or "yours truly," or "yours most truly," &c. (there are at least a dozen varieties, before you reach "yours affectionately"), refer to your correspondent's last letter, and make your winding-up at least as friendly as his: in fact, even if a shade more friendly, it will do no harm! — Lewis Carroll

I try not to have too specific notions because it messes up the process later on. I leave it very open to interpretation until I start casting. Everything changes a lot when you start casting. I mean everything. — Nicolas Winding Refn

A man who has decided upon self-destruction is far removed from mundane affairs, and to sit down and write his will would be, at that moment, an act just as absurd as winding up one's watch, since together with the man, the whole world is destroyed; the last letter is instantly reduced to dust and, with it, all the postmen; and like smoke, vanishes the estate bequeathed to a nonexistent progeny. — Vladimir Nabokov

He poured the tumbler full. Drink up, he said. The world goes on. We have dancing nightly and this night is no exception. The straight and the winding way are one and now that you are here what do the years count since last we two met together? Men's memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not. — Cormac McCarthy

I love rock ballads, and I'm kind of in emotional turmoil, being ill and high, so I start to sing to the song, I turn it up and start to sing. — Nicolas Winding Refn

Death is a solemn event for everyone. It is the winding up of all earthly plans & expectations. It is a separation from all we have loved and lived with. It is often accompanied by much bodily pain and distress. It opens the door to judgement and eternity - to heaven or to hell. It is an event after which there is no change, or space for repentance — J.C. Ryle

If I'd grown up here,I'd have had headless ghosts for playmates and kept my room in a tower."
Alan maneuvered around one of the winding curves that only added to the atmosphere. The sea was close enough so its scent and sound drifted in the open windows. "There aren't any ghosts, though my father periodically threatened to import a few bloodthirsty ones from Scotland." With his lips just curved, he sent Shelby a quick sidelong look. "He keeps his office in a tower room. — Nora Roberts

As the vine which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak and been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round it with its caressing tendrils and bind up its shattered boughs, so is it beautifully ordered by Providence that woman, who is the mere dependent and ornament of man in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smitten with sudden calamity, winding herself into the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly supporting the drooping head, and binding up the broken heart. — Washington Irving

Oh, putrid puffballs! Stop winding us all up like this or I'll tie a knot in your tail! — Cornelia Funke

I like to think how easily Nature will absorb London as she absorbed the mastodon, setting her spiders to spin the winding-sheet and her worms to fill in the grave, and her grass to cover it pitifully up, adding flowers - as an unknown hand added them to the grave of Nero. — Edward Thomas

Oh, if I had had a friend at this moment, a friend in an attic room, dreaming by candlelight and with a violin lying ready at his hand! How I should have slipped up to him in his quiet hour, noiselessly climbing the winding stair to take him by surprise, and then with talk and music we should have held heavenly festival throughout the night! — Hermann Hesse

It's always more interesting when you're doing things with someone you like because you're much more open to suggesting things. Also, it's fun. It's like if you're sitting with your mates and you're bantering, or you're winding each other up and insulting each other in a playful way, but having fun with it. — Joseph Morgan

Opposition to God and His Christ, opposition to light and truth has existed since the beginning to the present day. This is the warfare that commenced in heaven, that has existed through all time, and that will continue until the winding up scene, until He reigns whose right it is to reign, when He shall come in clouds of glory to reward every man according to the deeds done in the body. — Wilford Woodruff

She could hardly believe it, not after ten years, but they were finally making out on her couch. And Holy Mother of God, Bryce Ryder could kiss!
He was slow and lazy with his kisses, but masterful. His tongue and fingers were thrusting forward and back, in and out, mimicking sex, winding her up so tight until she was rubbing her p#ssy against his hand while clutching his hair. More . . . she had to have more. — Sophie Renwick

When I was in high school, I would drive into Seattle to see bands and sip coffee late into the night, and I always ended up taking the long way home. I'd be a little anxious about stalling my Datsun on one of the hills around the city, so when I saw Denny Way, I always turned onto it, even though it led away from my home to Seattle's Capitol Hill district. From there I navigated winding hills and eventually ended up at home. A quick look at a map would have revealed the freeway that heads straight to my house, but since my circuitous route was familiar, I stuck to it. I should have known better, but I was just a kid. What excuse does the richest nation on earth have for driving around in the dark like an adolescent? Just because our familiar arguments over how best to help families and the economy lead us along well-trod paths doesn't make them the best ones we could be taking. — Heather Boushey

Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up; a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again. — Frank Morton McMurry

Winding up unfinished business with another person can give you a great burst of positive energy. — Brian Tracy

Where war destroys, art inspires. And in order to inspire, you need to penetrate the brain. In order to penetrate the brain, you need something to react to. To have something to react to, you need to get your emotions up and running. To get your emotions up and running, you need to have something that ... whatever direction you go in, it has to be a movement between you and the experience. — Nicolas Winding Refn

I sometimes play different kinds of music to see where the performers end up. I play one genre. Then something else when I do it again. It really helps. — Nicolas Winding Refn

The half minute which we daily devote to the winding-up of our watches is an exertion of labour almost insensible; yet, by the aid of a few wheels, its effect is spread over the whole twenty-four hours. — Charles Babbage