You Almost There Quotes & Sayings

Every generation has its war. I have just been reminded of mine. It ended in 1989, 43 years after it began, the longest war Britain fought and certainly the most expensive. Its climax was total victory. Yet there was no parade, no medals, no colours hung in cathedrals. The Cold War saw no battles and cost almost no blood. Where there is no blood there is no glory and hence no history. Asked What did you do in the war, Daddy?, I could say only that I paid my taxes and left it at that. — Simon Jenkins

I say it with my tongue firmly planted in cheek but there's truth to it - being a comedian is very close to being a therapist. When you're working smaller clubs, you're listening. You're feeling an energy, you're going with a tone but when people start yelling out, you almost start a conversation with people. — Dane Cook

The tragedy for comedians is there's nothing more they want than to be liked. We desperately seek approval. It's almost like a personality disorder you can do as a job. — Jimmy Carr

That is an incredible period I think when you have a near-death experience. You are really understanding that there is a greater self than the physical body, and the cosmic anatomy as I call it is suspended and physical, is almost attached to it but not quite, and you're living in that in-between sphere of apparent reality around you and then the real reality of the infiniteness of it all. — Maya Tiwari

The thing that got Daley mad," one of the delegates said later, "was that Ribicoff had been ass-kissing him just a day or two before. He came over and pushed for McGovern to our delegation and made a big speech about what a great guy Daley was. Then he got up there and played the hero for the TV cameras."
Daley was on his feet, his arms waiving, his mouth working. The words were lost in the uproar, but it was later asserted by Mayday, an almost-underground Washington paper, that a lip-reader had determined that he said: "Fuck you, you Jew son of a bitch, you lousy motherfucker, go home. — Mike Royko

Well, growing up in LA, things are kind of thrust in front of you. You're almost forced to grow up pretty fast, with experiences and stuff. Going to that school there were a lot of rich girls, a lot of partying, a lot of wild things. You're put in this environment where you're forced to wear a uniform. It was all girls, so you rebel naturally, I think. I don't know, I just kind of got inspiration from every day living and going to school. — Sarah Hudson

And although I have seen nothing but black crows in my life, it doesn't mean that there's no such thing as a white crow. Both for a philosopher and for a scientist it can be important not to reject the possibility of finding a white crow. You might almost say that hunting for 'the white crow' is science's principal task. — Jostein Gaarder

I almost forgot," said Red. His voice sounded very strange, as if from a long, long distance. He reached into his pocket. "I have something for you."
He put it into my hand. A round, shiny, perfect apple, green as new grass with a faint blush of rosy pink. And now his eyes had changed so that I saw what lay there, hidden deep, so deep only the bravest or most foolhardy would seek to find it.
He has always understood me better, without words. So I laid my hand on my heart, held it there for a moment, and then moved it over and touched my palm against his breast. My heart. Your heart. — Juliet Marillier

So there would be two of them, probably armed, which probably meant guns, since this was Miami. And it might mean Bobby Acosta, too, who would have some kind of weapon, since he was a wealthy fugitive. And I was in a small room with no place to hide, and I was burdened with Samantha, who would probably yell, "Watch out!" at them if I tried to surprise them. On the plus side, my heart was pure and I had a bent tire iron. It wasn't much, but I have learned that if you examine the situation carefully, you can almost always find a way to improve your odds. I stood up and looked around the room, thinking that someone might have left an assault rifle lying on a shelf; I even made myself touch the jars and look behind them, but no such luck. "Hey," Samantha said. "If you're thinking, like, you know - I mean, I don't want to be rescued or anything. — Jeff Lindsay

There's no question almost press secretaries talk about the sense of serving two masters. On the one hand you want to protect the president's interests, and you represent his interests to the press. And the press is a proxy for the American people. — Dee Dee Myers

There are a lot of people who are successful and have a lot of money, but you can almost see their limitations because they have these walls around them. Harmony Korine exceeds those walls, and those are the types of people who go on to exceed people's expectations. — Riff Raff

Do you love me?"
There was an awkward silence for a moment. Then Father gave a little chuckle. "Jonas. You, of all people. Precision of language, please!"
"What do you mean?" Jonas asked. Amusement was not at all what he had anticipated.
"Your father means that you used a very generalized word, so meaningless that it's become almost obsolete," his mother explained carefully.
Jonas stared at them. Meaningless? He had never before felt anything as meaningful as the memory.
"And of course our community can't function smoothly if people don't use precise language. You could ask, 'Do you enjoy me?' The answer is 'Yes,'" his mother said.
"Or," his father suggested, "'Do you take pride in my accomplishments?' And the answer is wholeheartedly 'Yes.'"
"Do you understand why it's inappropriate to use a word like 'love'?" Mother asked.
Jonas nodded. "Yes, thank you, I do," he replied slowly.
It was his first lie to his parents. — Lois Lowry

When you see the natural and almost universal craving in English sick for their 'tea,' you cannot but feel that nature knows what she is about ... A little tea or coffee restores them ... There is nothing yet discovered which is a substitute to the English patient for his cup of tea. — Florence Nightingale

She's contemplative; I can feel the air around her thick with her thoughts. "No," she says at last, "I want to believe you're being sincere but I know you're not. So I say no, because even if I allow myself to fantasize a little about our lives in a cabin on the beach, I still find myself being left by you. There's almost no scenario I can think of where we live happily ever after."
"There could be," I tell her and mean it at the moment. Maybe mean it for longer. Her fingers stop moving and she sighs. I open my eyes and she's staring down at me. The lights have come on around the parking lot and one of them shines directly into her face. She angelic, a neon seraphim under the brilliant skies of the spring. I can see us on our boat, eating our hand picked clams on the fire behind our place. I can see it so vividly I'm almost sure it's happened. — Jaden Wilkes

Then, as we turned the final curve past the abandoned little hamlet of Ballydubh, with the village almost out of sight, he forced me to turn around and take in the full sweep of the mountains and the sea. "And there", he said, "is your An Clohan. You had best said good-bye, now. — Nancy Scheper-Hughes

never seen real darkness, not in the city, but how, if you stood peeing off the cabin porch on a moonless night, or took a walk through the woods where the treetops stitched out the stars, you could almost forget you were there, you felt invisible. Country dark, his mother called it. — Tom Franklin

Neither day nor night is our master. And do you know what happens when a woman walks without fear?"
Teia shook her head, but there was a sudden longing deep in her that swelled so strong it paralyzed her tongue. Tell me. Tell me.
"She becomes."
Becomes what? Teia didn't say the words aloud, but he knew what she was thinking, for he answered:
"She becomes whatever she wills. Minus only one thing." In the dark, he held up a finger, almost like he was scolding her.
Teia was silent now. The question was obvious, and now she didn't want to ask it.
Sharp said, "She has one thing she can never be, never again. You know what it is, don't you?"
The words came unbidden to her lips, from a place so dark no light had ever touched it: "A slave. — Brent Weeks

Well then, I'm going to tell you a secret almost every newspaper man and woman who's been at it awhile knows: in real life, the number of actual stories - those with beginnings, middles, and ends - are slim and none. But if you can give your readers just one unknown thing (two at the very outside) and then kick in what Dave Bowie there calls a musta-been, your reader will tell himself a story. — Stephen King

Trouble is, we call politics a game, but it isn't one. There is no referee, and the teams make up the rules as they go along. You can't cry foul or offside in politics. Almost anything goes. — Michael Ignatieff

Day watched God close his eyes and push with enough force to breach him with just his head. "Ugh!" Day's mouth flew open. Dammit, God's cock head was bigger than he thought. God pressed his body into his and tilted his hips forward. Day brought his legs up higher to open himself up more to quench the fierce burning in his ass. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Breathe. God's face was buried in the crook of his neck and his body shook against him. "Jesus, Leo," God hissed. "Cash," Day said, his moans like a cry. "Almost there, sweetheart." God pushed in deeper and Day grabbed at his hips to stop him. "Ugh. Fuck, you're fucking big," Day groaned. — A.E. Via

No comets crashing, nothing you could really call a nuclear war. Just everything else, tangled in the changing climate: droughts, water shortages, crop failures, honeybees gone like they almost were now, collapse of other keystone species, every last alpha predator gone, antibiotics doing even less than they already did, diseases that were never quite the one big pandemic but big enough to be historic events in themselves. And all of it around people: how people were, how many of them there were, how they'd changed things just by being there. — William Gibson

I lifted my wand, hoping she would see this as a dramatic move, not a threat. "Why once, in my bunker at Charing Cross Station, I stalked the
deadly prey known as Jelly Babies."
Neith's eyes widened. "They are dangerous?"
"Horrible," I agreed. "Oh, they seem small alone, but they always appear in great numbers. Sticky, fattening - quite deadly. There I was, alone
with only two quid and a Tube pass, beset by Jelly Babies, when ... Ah, but never mind. When the Jelly Babies come for you ... you will find out on
your own."
She lowered her bow. "Tell me. I must know how to hunt Jelly Babies."
I looked at Walt gravely. "How many months have I trained you, Walt?"
"Seven," he said. "Almost eight."
"And have I ever deemed you worthy of hunting Jelly Babies with me?"
"Uh ... no. — Rick Riordan

Then she moved backwards, deeper into the shadow. All I could see was that she was barely there, like something you almost recall: the Pledge of Allegiance, your daddy's real name. — Daniel Woodrell

His words were almost soundless. "I've gotten to a really dark place, Melly. The darkest place I've ever been."
"You don't have to be there anymore," she told him gently. "Don't you know what happens at the darkest point of the day?"
He stroked her soft lower lip with the ball of one thumb. "What?"
She rubbed her fingers soothingly along his muscled forearms. "A beautiful, brand-new day begins, and it's all fresh and full of promise." She smiled into his gaze. "That's why magic in the fairy tales happens at midnight, you know. When you reach that point, you have the power to change everything. — Thea Harrison

The goal - at least the way I think about entrepreneurship - is you realize one day that you can't really work anyone else. You have to start your won thing. It almost doesn't matter what the thing is. We had six different business plan changes, and then the last one was PayPal.
If that one didn't work out, if we still had the money and the people, obviously we would not have given up. We would have iterated on the business model and done something else. I don't think there was ever clarity as to who we were until we knew it was working. By then, we'd figured out our PR pitch and told everyone what we do and who we are. But between the founding and the actual PayPal, it was just like this tug-of-war where it was like, "We're trying this, this week." Every week you go to investors and say, "We're doing this, exactly this. We're really focused. We're going to be huge." The next week you're like, "That was a lie. — Jessica Livingston

I really like when critics reveal their subjectivity and their humanity. I prefer it when people say nice things, but if they say not-nice things or things that are critical, I'm open to it and I accept it. I mean, I have to live with it. But I do think there's a dishonesty in not acknowledging that you're a person with an opinion. I think it's almost like a power grab. — Charlie Kaufman

Writing reminds you of how much there is in your life that stands outside your explanations. In that way, it's almost a journey into faith and doubt at once. — Pico Iyer

There's something that just happens to you when you have a baby, and you look at their little eyes for the first time when you're holding them. They've been safe inside your belly for almost 10 months, and now they're in your arms. Intuition kicks in, where you will do anything for them and you have all the tools inside of you to take care of them. — Hilary Duff

There have been many poets who have lived at the fifth center of creativity and never gone ahead - many painters, many dancers, many singers who created great art, but never moved to the third eye. And there have been mystics who have remained with the third eye, knowing their own inner beauty; it is so fulfilling that they thought they had arrived. Somebody is needed to tell you that there is still something more ahead; otherwise, in your ignorance, what you will do is almost unpredictable. — Rajneesh

By Annie Wilkes ...
If you can get into that chair all by yourself, Paul, she said at last, then I think you can fill in your f******* n's.
She then closed the door and locked it again. Paul sat looking at it for a long time, almost as if there was something to see. He was too flabberghasted to do anything else. — Stephen King

There are almost 200 currencies of the world, but there's only one international currency. There are almost 200 currencies controlled by central banks and governments, but there is only one mathematical currency today, and that is bitcoin. We are going to build more of them. Cryptographic currencies are going to be a mainstay of our financial future. They are going to be a part of the future of this planet because they have been invented. It's as simple as that. You cannot un-invent this technology. You cannot turn this omelette back into eggs. — Andreas M. Antonopoulos

And on this issue of the Shia in Iraq, I think there's been a certain amount of, frankly, Terry, a kind of pop sociology in America that, you know, somehow the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq's always been very secular. — William Kristol

And so, the youngsters you have today, even though there are far fewer of them - in World War II 16.5 million men and women in uniform, today roughly a million in uniform in spite of the fact that the country is almost twice as large a population as we had in World War II. — Oliver North

I really feel the novel has certain conveniences about it and has something so fundamental about it you could almost say that as long as there is paper, there is going to be the novel. — William Golding

The Violin of my dreams. If you wanna play a pianissimo that is almost inaudible and yet it carries through a hall that seats 3,000 people, there's your Strad. — Itzhak Perlman

There seems to be a different Chicago around every street corner, behind every bar, and within every apartment, two-flat, cottage, or bungalow. City of immigrants or city of heartless plutocrats, say what you will, Chicago almost defies interpretation. In many ways Chicago is like a snake that sheds its skin every thirty years or so and puts on a new coat to conform to a new reality. — Dominic A. Pacyga

There's slowly been a kind of shift in how we think about childhood. It's like childhood almost extends to 20 or 22 even after the end of college. When I was growing up, there was this expectation that you were on your own now. — Joe Meno

He thought, in your most secret dreams you cut a niche for yourself, and it is finished early, and then you wait for someone to come along to fill it - but to fill it exactly, every cut, curve, hollow and plane of it. And people do come along, and one covers up the niche, and another rattles around inside it, and another is so surrounded by fog that for the longest time you don't know if she fits or not; but each of them hits you with a tremendous impact. And then one comes along and slips in so quietly that you don't know when it happened, and fits so well you almost can't feel anything at all. And that is it.
"What are you thinking about?" she asked him.
He told her, immediately and fully. She nodded as if he had been talking about cats or cathedrals or cam-shafts, or anything else beautiful and complex. She said, "That's right. It isn't all there, of course. It isn't even enough. But everything else isn't enough without it."
"What is 'everything else'? — Theodore Sturgeon

Hey, we live each day, start each day, as if we had an endless number stretching out ahead of us. We don't, but that's how one has to face the day, right? I see an analogy with writing fiction: the story at hand probably won't come off well, and even if it does, it probably won't get published, but if it does there won't be any payment for it - and even if there is, almost nobody will read it, and most who do won't understand or like it. But you go ahead and write the story. What choices do you have? There's always silence, but that won't do for me." - Gordon Weaver (who is suddenly my hero, even though I don't know who he is). — Gordon Weaver

That pain you feel," Master Blint said almost gently, "is the pain of abandoning a delusion. The delusion is meaning, Kylar. There is no higher purpose. There are no gods. No arbiters of right and wrong. I don't ask you to like reality. I only ask you to be strong enough to face it. There is nothing beyond this. There is only the perfection we attain by becoming weapons, as strong and merciless as a sword. There is no essential good in living. Life is nothing in itself. It's a place marker that proves who's winning, and we are the winners. We are always the winners. There is nothing by the winning. Even winning means nothing. We win because it's an insult to lose. The ends don't justify the means. The means don't justify the ends. There is no one to justify to. There is no justification. — Brent Weeks

Back in those days I was stoned almost twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The difference today is that there is nothing you or anyone else could say to persuade me to inhale enough even to fill a flea's lung with cannabis. It's actually impossible to measure how fantastic I feel. — Chris Sullivan

You told me once of the plants that lie dormant through the drought, that wait, half-dead, deep in the earth. The plants that wait for the rain. You said they'd wait for years, if they had to; that they'd almost kill themselves before they grew again. But as soon as those first drops of water fall, those plants begin to stretch and spread their roots. They travel up through the soil and sand to reach the surface. There's a chance for them again. — Lucy Christopher

Her pleasure went on and on, and so did Ben's. Ben could almost smell the gardenia, could almost see her pinning it on, her hands all thumbs.
"You're selling your store?" she said.
There was radiance between them now. There were overtones and undertones to everything they said. The talk itself was formal, lifeless.
"Money Talks — Kurt Vonnegut

Why?" His question was almost buried by my heavy breathing.
I think I understood the question now. I could only hope I had the right answer. If there was one.
"Because I want to trust, be trusted. I want someone I can count on, someone who can count on me. I want somewhere safe. I want a home. But that can only happen if I'm with you."
"I'm never going to be like other men, Grant."
I wasn't sure what he meant until I turned enough to see his expression. The knowledge in his eyes spoke of those places he looked into. The windows or portals he disappeared into when he followed the light.
"I can give you what I have, but I can never give you everything." It wasn't Morgan didn't want to, he couldn't. I could see that too. He could never give me all of himself because he didn't control everything he had.
Could I live with that? — Adrienne Wilder

Milwaukee has more bars and more churches per capita than almost any other city in North America. I'm not sure if there's a relationship in that. Does too much prayer cause you to drink? Or vice versa? — Nanci Rathbun

You look out into the audience and you see so much joy on people's faces. You make eye contact with people who are almost crying because they can't believe they're seeing the Rumours five back again, they can't believe their eyes. It's almost like a family reunion on stage, there's no angst, there's no animosity, there's just tremendous amount of friendship. — Christine McVie

It amazed Chess how he'd really believed, almost all along, that there was nothing he'd miss, leaving this world. Only the whole of it, you ass-stupid fool.

Every bit, the living and the dead, and then some; hot sun on his back, the wind and the rain, full-out galloping into battle, feel of his guns in hand, a good hard fuck. Getting drunk - on absinthe, anger, blood. Stomping twice on some enemy's face for good measure, and laughing while he did it; the sound of Asher Rook's voice preaching, or Yancey's, singing. Ed's heartbeat under his cheek. — Gemma Files

I think it is every woman's duty to make herself as attractive as her time and means permit. After all, there you are, in your person- a living symbol of the progress of art, science and imagination. To be as attractive as we can be is almost a civic duty; there are so many sad and ugly things in the world that I think women should say to themselves humbly, not with vanity, 'I will try to be as pretty as I can, so that when people look at me, they will feel refreshed. I will make an effort to be easy on the eye.' — Ilka Chase

I get a singular comment that's very revealing: "I didn't know what to expect." Every time I hear that I think it's really just code for, "I wasn't sure I'd be comfortable with you in this role," which I understand coming from Oscar Bluth and Hank Kingsley and whatever. But I think there's a degree of, "Oh, okay, this is how it is." Then almost always people tell me that they love it and then people start talking to me about their families, whether it's transgender issues or not. — Jeffrey Tambor

There's a mobile app for almost anything you may want to do, any situation you confront. — Jacqueline Leo

There's the pressure of being a No. 1 on the call sheet, being a lead actor. There's almost this feeling like being captain of the team. You want to put a bit of energy into actually setting a good example. — Joel Edgerton

When I'm standing in the middle of the salt flats, where you swear that the pupils of your eyes have turned white because of the searing heat that is rising from the desert, I think of my childhood, I think of my mother, my father, my grandparents; I think of the history that we hold there and it is beautiful to me. But it is both a blessing and a burden to be rooted in place. It's recognizing the pattern of things, almost feeling a place before you even see it. In Southern Utah, on the Colorado plateau where canyon walls rise upward like praying hands, that is a holy place to me. — Terry Tempest Williams

There are these little towns outside of L.A. Once you get an hour and a half, two hours out, you get into these little, tiny towns that are almost like stuck in time. — Joe Manganiello

Remember those dogs I was talking about? The cues? While I was watching TV, I missed a few. Take a look:
Steven is smiling, almost laughing. After all the punishment he's received from my sister over the years, he's developed quite the sadistic streak when it comes to other people getting their asses handed to them.
Then there's Matthew. God only knows what kind of sick and depraved penalties Delores has inflicted on that poor bastard, because he just looks scared.
Kate, on the other hand, is staring at my hand like it's a cockroach. That she wants to squash. And then she gets an idea - a wonderful, awful idea. If you look hard enough, you can see the light bulb go on above her head. She smiles and leaves the room.
I missed all this the first time. — Emma Chase

True, there
are those in our league who take even less time. But they don't do any research. They do a
handful of the more well-known spots, cruise through without eating a thing, write brief
comments. It's their business, not mine. If I may be perfectly frank, I doubt that many writers
take as many pains as I do at this level of reportage. It's the kind of work that can break you if
you're too serious about it, or you can kick back and do almost nothing. The worst of it is,
whether you're earnest or you loaf, the difference will hardly show in the finished piece. On the
surface. Only in the finer points can you find any hint of the distinction — Haruki Murakami

There was never a moment ... when I forgot my hatred of you. It's almost like ... a violent hatred that resembles love. — Kaori Yuki

Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary - the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there's a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trimtab.
It's a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trimtab. Society thinks it's going right by you, that it's left you altogether. But if you're doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go.
So I said, call me Trimtab. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Now he [Rattler] was staring at Prairie with an intensity you could light fires with. And she stared back. There was something between them, all right, something cracking with tension and danger, something almost ... alive. — Sophie Littlefield

I didn't invent the rainy day, man. I just own the best umbrella. That's one of my favorite lines of all time. It's from a movie called Almost Famous. I think what it means is that life is going to throw all kinds of stuff at you, good and bad. But all you can do is get out there and try to stay dry. — Valerie Thomas

If you're still believing, then you're almost there! — Anthony Liccione

There they are.
The extreme definiteness with which they stand, now a brilliant white, again yellow, and in some lights red, imposes ideas of durability, of the emergence through the earth of some spiritual energy elsewhere dissipated in elegant trifles. But durability exists independently of our admiration. Although the beauty is sufficiently humane to weaken us, to stir the deep deposit of mud - memories, abandonments, regrets, sentimental devotions - the Parthenon is separate from all that; and if you consider how it has stood out at night, for centuries, you begin to connect the blaze (at midnight the glare is dazzling and the frieze almost invisible) with the idea that perhaps it is beauty alone that is immortal. — Virginia Woolf

There's no reason to do anything twice, and certainly no reason to do something that almost killed you. — Sebastian Junger

You know, I think everybody I've seen has come from some other therapy, and almost invariably it's very much the same thing: the therapist is too disinterested, a little too aloof, a little too inactive. They're not really interested in the person, he doesn't relate to the person. All these things I've written so much about. That's why I've made such a practice really, over and over to hammer home the point of self-revelation and being more of yourself and showing yourself. Every book I write I want to get that in there. — Irvin D. Yalom

If you take 67 brush fires times 10 years, that's almost 700 right there. Those brush fires are incredibly dangerous, all those homes going down proved that. — Joseph Wambaugh

I believe if there's any kind of God it wouldn't be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between. If there's any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know, it's almost impossible to succeed but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt. — Richard Linklater

Does not Eternity appear dreadful to you. I often get to thinking of it and it seems so dark to me that I almost wish there was no Eternity. To think that we must forever live and never cease to be. It seems as if Death would be a relief to so endless a state of existence. — Emily Dickinson

Her name is Mackenzie. She's got long blond hair and the biggest blue eyes you'll ever see. She's almost four. See her there? On the other end of the seesaw I'm currently riding. — Emma Chase

If you work with such people almost on the level of spiritual direction, you see that they are people who prefer a world view of order and even punitiveness. And for some reason, there's a feeling that the male psyche is going to give that to them. And if that's your view of religion, which it is for many people, if they've never come to the mystical level, religion is for social order and to maintain social order. — Richard Rohr

There is nothing so nice as supposing. It's almost like being a fairy. If you suppose anything hard enough it seems as if it were real. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

People will often, almost always, prefer a male God. A male image of God gives them this sense of security, safety, order, no nonsense. So that's where their psyche is at. Probably it's something that they've got to go through. Not that there isn't a need for order in the world, but the mystical level seems to be the mature level of religion, and there the question is not order but union - divine union. And so, without some integration of the feminine, usually you never get to the mystical level. — Richard Rohr

I have a theory that there's almost this primal viewpoint on women in the business, that once you're beyond childbearing age, you are perceived as nonthreatening, nonsexual, noncastable. Sure, I already knew it before I got into it. I just didn't know I'd end up making my living from low-budget, independent films. — Marcia Gay Harden

So much of the theatrical can leave you with a yearning for the real. The real is suddenly and starkly there right at the city's edge and extends for thousands of square miles of desert and mountain and canyon with which human beings can do almost nothing profitable other than to leave it be and just look at it. — Timothy O'Grady

I thought the other ones were so obviously - what are we going to do if she burns down the house? The DEA, which I think was maybe the best one because she's wearing the jacket when she goes through the mirror and I think that was kind of amazing because you really weren't expecting that. There's something almost slapstick about this in a way that worried me. It was a little pratfalley with the golf club and the - but I think it probably cut together okay. — Mary-Louise Parker

I don't like medicine. There's an old Irish proverb that goes, "If I knew where I was going to die, I wouldn't go there." I suspect that I'm going to die in a hospital, so every time I go past one, I drive really quickly to get away from those things. So I spend a lot of money on health: gyms, I go to naturopaths, acupuncturists; anybody else who's almost the alternative to medicine. I think by the time you need medicine, it's too late. That's my belief. — Robert Kiyosaki

You may not know it, but at the far end of despair, there is a white clearing where one is almost happy. — Joan Baez

As he rose to his feet he noticed that he was neither dripping nor panting for breath as anyone would expect after being under water. His clothes were perfectly dry. He was standing by the edge of a small pool - not more than ten feet from side to side in a wood. The trees grew close together and were so leafy that he could get no glimpse of the sky. All the light was green light that came through the leaves: but there must have been a very strong sun overhead, for this green daylight was bright and warm. It was the quietest wood you could possibly imagine. There were no birds, no insects, no animals, and no wind. You could almost feel the trees growing. The pool he had just got out of was not the only pool. There were dozens of others - a pool every few yards as far as his eyes could reach. You could almost feel the trees drinking the water up with their roots. This wood was very much alive. — C.S. Lewis

There's something almost perfect in the ugly duckling syndrome. Because a sensitivity is tattooed on a part of you no one else can see but can somehow guess is there. — Stephanie Klein

Read Demosthenes or Cicero, read Plato, Aristotle, or any other of that class: you will, I admit, feel wonderfully allured, pleased, moved, enchanted; but turn from them to the reading of the Sacred Volume, and whether you will or not, it will so affect you, so pierce your heart, so work its way into your very marrow, that, in comparison of the impression so produced, that of orators and philosophers will almost disappear; making it manifest that in the Sacred Volume there is a truth divine, a something which makes it immeasurably superior to all the gifts and graces attainable by man. Section — John Calvin

You do realize you just insulted me, right?"
"How so?"
"You implied that I can't protect her or my people."
I looked at him. "That's not at all what I meant."
"Apologize and I'll let it go."
I kept my hands firmly on the iron rail before me. Grabbing the weight bar and walloping the Beast Lord upside the head wouldn't be the best diplomatic move.
"I'm sorry, Your Majesty." There. I was civil. It almost killed me. — Ilona Andrews

It knows you.Every soul is connected to it in the same way-nobody is closer farther.Doesn't matter what your beliefs were in that life or any of them.Only the soul can create distance between itself and what you call God ... and almost every one of us does,at one time or another.Then we just have to learn how to bridge the distance and find our way home again.There are lots of different ways. — Sheri Meshal

There's been plenty of adversity, starting the moment he was born. He had a respiratory crisis, and it was touch and go for a week whether he would survive. I think ever since, you can feel this pulse in the guy, an almost physical enthusiasm. — James Taylor

It's almost as if there were an invisible reservoir of abundance in the universe that can be tapped if you will just obey certain spiritual laws. — Norman Vincent Peale

This guy is pretty slick, Atticus. What else do you think he has in his pockets? Maybe a thick salami for me?> I almost dropped the goblets. Gods, Oberon, it's a good thing no one can hear you. It's not polite to ask if a man has a big salami in his pants, okay? Especially this guy. Laughter bubbled forth from Jesus as he poured two generous shots for us. "I like your hound, Siodhachan." He turned his head a bit to address him. "Hello, Oberon. I can hear what you say as well, and I tell you truly, I have nothing against salami itself. It is best to know when to keep your salami in your pants and when to pull it out, however, and even my priests have had some difficulty with that issue. Fortunately for us, there is little doubt regarding the right course of action in this situation." He pulled a long soppressata from the same pocket that had produced the goblets. — Kevin Hearne

A very tall bearded guy was standing in a doorway, smoking a cigarette. "Hey", he said.
"Hi," I said. "Excuse me, do you rehearse here?"
"Yeah," he said, extending his hand and saying, almost formally, "Gibby Haynes. I'm in the Butthole Surfers."
I shook his hand. "Moby," I said. "I just moved upstairs."
"Are you an artist?"
"No, a musician."
"Oh, cool. Welcome to the building."
"Do you know who else has spaces here?" I asked.
"Well, there's us and Iggy and Sonic Youth and Helmet and Sean Lennon and the Beastie Boys and some other people," he said as someone behind him started making a wall of feedback. — Moby

The list of my favorite experiences would almost equal the list of plays I've been in. There are a few exceptions, but out of politeness I'm not going to mention them. If you don't have a few stinkers, you can't appreciate the good ones. — T. R. Knight

Sometimes in the late evenings one walks busily up and down the ward doing this and that, forgetting that there is anything beyond the drawn blinds, engrossed in the patients, one's tasks - bed-making, washing, one errand and another - and then suddenly a blind will blow out and almost up to the ceiling, and through it you will catch a glimpse that makes you gasp, of a black night crossed with bladed searchlights, of a moon behind a crooked tree.
The lifting of the blind is a miracle; I do not believe in the wind. — Enid Bagnold

But it would be wrong to say you were unhappy there, for you had no trouble adjusting to your reduced circumstances, you found it invigorating to learn that you could get by on almost nothing, and as long as you were able to write, it made no difference where or how you lived. — Paul Auster

Jesus, you know I was walking back to the huddle and I looked over and, god damn, I almost flipped when I saw you and Davis standing together on the sideline. I thought, man, the world really is changing when you see a thing like that - Hunter Thompson and Al Davis - Christ, you know that's the first time I ever saw anybody with Davis during practice; the bastard's always alone out there, just pacing back and forth like a goddamn beast. ... — Hunter S. Thompson

I would like to propose slow cycling. Commute by bike. At a stroke, you remove the need for and absurd cost of public transport. Cycling is almost completely free. There is no longer any need for the gym as you get fit by cycling. And you can go at your own pace. — Tom Hodgkinson

There's always peripheral things that you like that you don't know, but starting with whatever his British influences are, are some of my favourite artists, and the American things are what I grew up on as well. In the end, for me, it's those foundations of the music business - those things that are a lot of the foundations of what music today is. You can hear a bit of all of those things that we talk about in almost all music today. — Paul Weller

Why me?" she finally asked.
Sighing, I touched the end of her hair, fingering it slightly. It felt so silky. "You were the first person I saw at this school. I'd parked in the lot and was walking past the auditorium and saw this gorgeous girl come out of the music room. The sun hit your stunning red hair, and it shone so brightly it almost looked like you had a halo. You were staring down at some music you were holding, and you started humming something. I froze. I just stood there and watched you walk by. You were so engrossed you didn't even notice me." I twisted the loop of her hair around my finger. — Lacey Weatherford

Would you like me to write Mrs. Ames about inviting you to Yaddo? Get Miss Moore to write too. You can't invite yourself, though, of course, almost all the invitations are planned. It would be marvelous to have you there. I know the solitude that gets too much. It doesn't drug me, but I get fantastic and uncivilized.
At last my divorce [from Jean Stafford] is over. It's funny at my age to have one's life so much in and on one's hands. All the rawness of learning, what I used to think should be done with by twenty-five. Sometimes nothing is so solid to me as writing - I suppose that's what vocation means - at times a torment, a bad conscience, but all in all, purpose and direction, so I'm thankful, and call it good, as Eliot would say. — Robert Lowell

It is more than twenty years since we left the city. This is a serious chunk of time, longer than the years we spent living there. Yet we still think of Jerusalem as our home. Not home in the sense of the place that you conduct your daily life or constantly return to. In fact, Jerusalem is our home almost against our wills. It is our home because it defines us, whether we like it or not. — Yotam Ottolenghi

I wouldn't have missed it for the world," said Mrs. Bridge, smiling all around, "and I feel awfully lucky. Even so we were certainly glad to see the Union Station. I suppose no matter how far you go there's no place like home."
She could see they agreed with her, and surely what she had said was true, yet she was troubled and for a moment she was almost engulfed by a nameless panic. — Evan S. Connell

Lie there panning, looking, all ribs and elbows and dilated eyes. The awake floor is littered with gear and dirty clothes, blond hardwood with sealed seams, two throw-rugs, the bare waxed wood shiny in the windows' snowlight, the floor neutral, faceless, you cannot see any face in the floor, awake, lying there, faceless, blank, dilated, playing beam over floor again and again, not sure all night forever unsure you're not missing something that's right there: you lie there, awake and almost twelve, believing with all your might. — David Foster Wallace

There is a need for aloneness, which I don't think most people realise for an actor. It's almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you'll let the whole world in on only for a moment, when you're acting. But everybody is always tugging at you. They'd all like sort of a chunk of you. — Marilyn Monroe

You do realize, Kilmartin,' Colin said, his voice so soft it was almost chilling, 'that there is no reason you can't marry her. None at all. Except, of course,' he added, almost as an afterthought, 'the reasons you manufacture for yourself. — Julia Quinn

I think I just get excited by music, and, like, singing is a very physical thing. It releases endorphins in your body. You're using almost muscle in there, and I think that adrenaline really helps to kind of make the songs fresh every time. — Florence Welch

Almost any book was better than life, Audrey thought. Or rather, life as she was living it. Of course, life would soon change, open out, become quite different. You couldn't go on if you didn't hope that, could you? But for the time being there was no doubt that it was pleasant to get away from it. And books could take her away. — Jean Rhys

No need to be like that, sir," said Groat levelly. "No need to be like that. You can't destroy the mails. You just can't do it, sir. That's Tampering With The Mail, sir. That's not just a crime, sir. That's a, a - " "Sin?" said Moist. "Oh, worse'n a sin," said Groat, almost sneering. "For sins you're only in trouble with a god, but in my day, if you interfered with the mail, you'd be up against Chief Postal Inspector Rumbelow. Hah! And there's a big difference. Gods forgive. — Terry Pratchett