You Are Terrific Quotes & Sayings

Two-thousand-word scenes/chapters are potato chip length. That is, if you are about to go to bed and you're reading a terrific novel and the scenes/chapters come in around two-thousand-word bites, you'll tell yourself that you'll read just one more chapter. But if the narrative is really moving after you finish one of these bites, you won't be able to help yourself reading another. If the Story is extremely well told, you'll just keep eating the potato chip scenes all through the night. — Shawn Coyne

Do you know why people are reading more books now than ever before? Because the terrific catastrophe of the war has made them realize that their minds are ill. The world was suffering from all sorts of mental fevers and aches and disorders, and never knew it. Now our mental pangs are only too manifest. We are all reading, hungrily, hastily, trying to find out - after the trouble is over - what was the matter with our minds. — Christopher Morley

I'll wait. By the way, sex-me-up shoes?"
"I was following a theme."
"Well." Reo turned her ankles, looked down. "They are pretty fabulous."
"They are," Mira agreed.
"I was going to say the same about yours. What a terrific color."
"Could we not talk about shoes in the box that still smells of evildoer?"
"You started it," Reo reminded her before she turned back to Mira. — J.D. Robb

I love individuals. I think people are terrific as I meet and get to know them. I like imagination. I like the freedom that this society manages to parcel out to us in the midst of the rest of what they do to you. I also like thinking about the fact that the atoms in me are the same atoms that are in all the rest of the universe, and that every one of those atoms came from the middle of a star. In other words, it's only me out there. — George Carlin

There are very few horror shows, where you have a long running arc. Most horror shows play as a sort of an anthology. Buffy - a terrific show - had the-demon-of-the-week. Twilight Zone - X Files - these things had an anthology approach. Our show is a long running drama with the same creatures every week. — Glen Mazzara

There are so many people who've come before us,
arrows and wagon wheels, obsidian tools, buffalo.
Look out at the meadow, you can almost see them,
generations dissolved in the bluegrass and hay.
I want to try and be terrific. Even for an hour. — Ada Limon

You're guaranteed to be lucky several times in your life-it's what you do with it. Young writers spend all their time worrying, in a way that David Gerrold did not and I did not. How do they get to meet the right people? How do they get to the right parties? If only someone would read my script ... Forget all that. All these things are easy and will happen. The way you get your script to the right people is that you put it in an envelope. It's fucking easy. The difficult bit is writing something that is so good people will take a punt on a brand new writer. That's it-you have to write an absolutely terrific script. — Steven Moffat

I love you sons of bitches. You're all I read any more. You're the only ones who'll talk all about the really terrific changes going on, the only ones crazy enough to know that life is a space voyage, and not a short one, either, but one that'll last for billions of years. You're the only ones with guts enough to really care about the future, who really notice what machines do to us, what wars do to us, what cities do to us, what big, simple ideas do to us, what tremendous misunderstanding, mistakes, accidents, catastrophes do to us. You're the only ones zany enough to agonize over time and distance without limit, over mysteries that will never die, over the fact that we are right now determining whether the space voyage for the next billion years or so is going to be Heaven or Hell. — Kurt Vonnegut

Terrific! Have you done Step Three?" He waggled his brows as he opened up the top left drawer of my dresser.
"No. Hey! Do you mind, Nosy Newton?"
"Are these panties?" he asked, holding up two of my thongs. "Because they look like dental floss to me."
Oh my God. My almost father-in-law was digging around in my lingerie. Embarrassment bloomed in my face. "Ruadan, get out of my underwear!"
"Fine," he said, closing the left drawer and opening the right one. "Oh! Lookie here!"
"If you touch that box," I said menacingly, "I will cut off your head with your own swords. And I'm not talking about the one on your shoulders."
He laughed, shutting the drawer. "You won't need a vibrator anymore. You've got Patrick." His gaze slid toward the dresser. "Unless you have different toys in there. Nipple clamps?"
"I ... what ... oh God." I fell onto the bed, curled into the fetal position, and covered my face. — Michele Bardsley

I think disease and all the things that we treat are tied to national security in a lot of ways that we maybe don't realize or that the American people don't realize. If other countries have a chance to be stable, then that helps us. If there are ways we can prevent if there are ways we can help other countries defeat diseases, we're about to totally eradicate polio. And can you imagine? That would be so terrific. — Laura Bush

Bond in 'Goldeneye' is pretty much a set character. To be honest, he's another version of Connery, and Connery was terrific. How many submarines can you blow up? How many control rooms are evaporating? — Martin Campbell

You can become proficient with a computer. You can become a terrific negotiator or a super salesperson. You can learn to speak in public. You can learn to write effectively and well. These are all skills you can acquire as soon as you decide to and make them a priority. Three — Brian Tracy

I earnestly hope that all children will spoil this book by painting the illustrations. I wanted to do this myself but the publishers would not let me. But let the colours you lay on be violent, gorgeous, terrific colours, because my feelings are like that. — G.K. Chesterton

You have a little bit of talent, a certain amount of good fortune and a lot of hard work in pursuit of whatever truth you can find in it, and if you are really lucky, a terrific partner and I have that and those four things worked out for me. — Donald Sutherland

If someone says to you, 'Go to an old-folks' home,' that's kind of ridiculous, because a lot of old people are doing terrific things for society. — Myron Scholes

With the casting in Israel, sometimes there were four or five people, that you could just flip a coin and choose from, that would have been all terrific. And seeing all of these fabulous faces that the American audiences are just not used to seeing is really exciting. — Tim Kring

For a lot of people, their first love is what they'll always remember. For me it's always been the first hate, and I think that hatred, though it provides often rather junky energy, is a terrific way of getting you out of bed in the morning and keeping you going. If you don't let it get out of hand, it can be canalized into writing. In this country where people love to be nonjudgmental when they can be, which translates as, on the whole, lenient, there are an awful lot of bubble reputations floating around that one wouldn't be doing one's job if one didn't itch to prick. — Christopher Hitchens

In practice, ship and iterate means that marketing programs and PR pushes should be minimal at launch. If you are in the restaurant business, you call this a soft opening. When you push the babies out of the nest, don't give them a jetpack or even a parachute - let them fly on their own. (Note: This is a metaphor.) Invest only when they get some lift. Google's Chrome is a great example of this - it launched in 2008 with minimal fanfare and practically no marketing budget and gained terrific momentum on its own, based solely on its excellence. Later, around the time the browser pushed past seventy million users, the team decided to pour fuel on the fire and approved a marketing push (and even a TV advertising campaign). But not until the product had proven itself a winner did it get fed. — Eric Schmidt

Girls with their legs crossed, girls with their legs not crossed, girls with terrific legs, girls with lousy legs, girls that looked like swell girls, girls that looked like they'd be bitches if you knew them. It was really nice sightseeing, if you know what I mean. In a way, it was sort of depressing, too, because you kept wondering what the hell would happen to all of them. When they got out of school and college, I mean. You figured most of them would probably marry dopey guys. Guys that always talk about how many miles they get to a gallon in their goddam cars. Guys that get sore and childish as hell if you beat them at golf, or even just some stupid game like ping-pong. Guys that are very mean. Guys that never read books. Guys that are very boring - But I have to be careful about that. I mean about calling certain guys bores. I don't understand boring guys. I really don't. — J.D. Salinger

L'Avventura,' Dad said, 'has the sort of ellipsis ending most American audiences would rather undergo a root canal than be left with, not only because they loathe anything left to the imagination-we're talking about the country that invented spandex-but also because they are a confident, self-assured nation. They know Family. They know Right from Wrong. They know God-many of them attest to daily chats with the man. And the idea that none of us can truly know anything at all-not the lives of our friends or family, not even ourselves-is a thought they'd rather be shot in the arm with their own semi-automatic rifle than face head-on. Personally, I think there's something terrific about not knowing, relinquishing man's feeble attempt to control. When you throw up your hands, say, "Who knows?" you can get on with the sheer gift of being alive. — Marisha Pessl

You can't convince someone else - whether it's a potential employer, a loan officer at the car dealership, or someone you've been crushing on - that you're amazing and terrific if you don't actually think you are. — Sophia Amoruso

All terrific but the people. THE PEOPLE. Everyone looks so exalted, or so wretched, or so spiffy, so funny, so splendid. If you are ever bored or blue, stand on the street corner for half an hour. — Maira Kalman

There are epic impulses everywhere you look in There Will Be Blood; what's missing is character development, focused storytelling and, most significantly (apart from that terrific opening sequence), any sense of raw, intuitive drama. — Stephanie Zacharek

Skillshare is a terrific online learning community for creative people. It teaches you new skills through well-made videos with great production values. I've been using Skillshare to teach myself Adobe After Effects. All the videos feature people who are professionals in their field. I love this site. — Mark Frauenfelder

(In reply to the question, 'Would you like some suggestions for a plot for your next book?')
There are three problems with getting plot suggestions from other people. The first is that ideas are the easy part of writing; finding the time and energy to get them down on paper is the hard part. I have plenty of ideas already. Which brings me to the second problem: the ideas that excite you, the ones you think would make a terrific book, are not necessarily the same ideas that excite me. And if a writer isn't excited about an idea, she generally doesn't turn out a terrific book, even if the idea is terrific. And the third problem with my using your suggestions is that, theoretically, you could sue me if I did, and that tends to make publishers nervous, which makes it hard to sell a book. So thank you, but no. — Patricia C. Wrede

Hey, this is terrific!" he said. "Someone down there is trying to kill us!"
"Terrific," said Arthur.
"But don't you see what this means?"
"Yes. We are going to die."
"Yes, but apart from that."
"Apart from that?!"
"It means we must be on to something!"
"How soon can we get off it? — Douglas Adams

We used to get in some terrific fights. You have to be just as tough as they are. You can't let them get by with anything because they are going to take care of themselves, and your job is to take care of the customer. I'd threaten Procter & Gamble with not carrying their merchandise, and they'd say, 'Oh, you can't get by without carrying our merchandise.' And I'd say, 'You watch me put it on a side counter, and I'll put Colgate on the endcap at a penny less, and you just watch me.' They got offended and went to Sam, and he said, 'Whatever Claude says, that's what it's going to be.' Well, now we have a real good relationship with Procter & Gamble. It's a model that everybody talks about. But let me tell you, one reason for that is that they learned to respect us. They learned that they couldn't bulldoze us like everybody else, and that when we said we were representing the customer, we were dead serious." In — Sam Walton

Being a consultant is like flying first-class. The food is terrific, the drinks are cold. But all you can do is walk up to the pilot and say, 'bank left.' If you're in management, you have the controls. — Greg Brenneman

I'm gonna say it one more time. We are Georgia Southern. Our colors are blue and white. We call ourselves the Bald Eagles. We call our offense the Georgia Power Companyand that's a terrific name for an offense. Our snap count is 'rate, hike.' We practice on the banks of Beautiful Eagle Creek and that's in Statesboro, Georgia-the gnat capital of America. Our weekends begin on Thursday. The co-eds outnumber the men 3 to 2. They're all good looking and they're all rich. And folks, you just can't beat that and you just can't beat Georgia Southern. And you ain't seen nothin yet! — Erk Russell

When you are editing, the final master is Aristotle and his poetics. You might have a terrific episode, but if people are falling out because there are just too many elements in it, you have to begin to get rid of things. — Ken Burns

I binge-watched this show Damages. Glenn Close and Rose Byrne are so good. Lily Tomlin is in it. You see all these great actors and the writing is terrific. There are a lot of shows like that. And there are all these conversations right now about roles for women and being paid equally and all of that, but I think what it really is, is opportunity. — Winona Ryder

REAL LIFE vs THE MOVIES
Breaking Up in the Movies:
Boy #1: This isn't working out, is it?
Boy #2: Sort of not, huh?
Boy #1: You cant say we didn't try.
Boy #2: We sure did. Beside, we're still best friends.
Boy #1: Forever
Boy #2: This is terrific pasta
Breaking Up for Real:
Boy #1: Are you sleep?
Boy #2: Does it sound like it?
Boy #1: I'm sorry about the tuna fish
Boy #2: It isn't the tuna fish! It's the last six months!
Boy #1: You're an asshole.
Boy #2: Let go of my cock. — Steve Kluger

Did you ever see the customers in health - food stores? They are pale, skinny people who look half - dead. In a steak house, you see robust, ruddy people. They're dying, of course, but they look terrific. — Bill Cosby

It is okay to be at a place of struggle. Struggle is just another word for growth. Even the most evolved beings find themselves in a place of struggle now and then. In fact, struggle is a sure sign to them that they are expanding; it is their indication of real and important progress. The only one who doesn't struggle is the one who doesn't grow. So if you are struggling right now, see it as a terrific sign - celebrate your struggle. — Neale Donald Walsch

How different the world would be if each parent could say to the child: "Who you are is terrific, all you are meant to be. And who you are, as you are, is loved by all of us. You have a source within, which is the soul, and it will express itself to you through what we call desire. Always respect the well-being of the other, but live your own journey, serve that desire, risk being that which wishes to enter the world through you, and you will always have our love, even if your path takes you away from us." Such persons would then have a powerful tool to enable them to change their lives when it was not working out for them. Such persons would be able to make difficult decisions, mindful always of the impact on others, but also determined to live the life intended by the gods who brought us here. — James Hollis

When you get older, you realize something: all those stupid mores and customs related to how a man should comport himself in the "game" of courtship are just that - stupid. Age affords you this blend of apathy and confidence - with a little bit of wisdom thrown in - that allows you to say, "Hey, I am attracted that girl over there, so I'm going to introduce myself. If it doesn't work out, that's fine. If it does, terrific. Either way, I lose nothing for trying." — Jason Mulgrew

I've been very lucky. There are guys I know who are really terrific in this business of stand-up who have not gotten the recognition they deserve. And it's nice, if you've put in the time, to achieve that recognition. — Lewis Black

Shut up about Leibniz for a moment, Rudy, because look here: You - Rudy - and I are on a train, as it were, sitting in the dining car, having a nice conversation, and that train is being pulled along at a terrific clip by certain locomotives named The Bertrand Russell and Riemann and Euler and others. And our friend Lawrence is running alongside the train, trying to keep up with us - it's not that we're smarter than he is, necessarily, but that he's a farmer who didn't get a ticket. And I, Rudy, am simply reaching out through the open window here, trying to pull him onto the fucking train with us so that the three of us can have a nice little chat about mathematics without having to listen to him panting and gasping for breath the whole way. — Neal Stephenson

I've accepted the fact that because I'm human, I'm terrific in one thing, good at some, mediocre at a bit more, and terrible at others. And if you're human, you are too. You'll have to discover the one thing that you are good at and major in it. — Bo Sanchez

Lawyers are alright, I guess - but it doesn't appeal to me", I said. "I mean they're alright if they go around saving innocent guys' lives all the time, and like that, but you don't do that kind of stuff if you're a lawyer. All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot. And besides, even if you did go around saving guys' lives and all, how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save guys' lives, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do was be a terrific lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back and congratulating you in court when the goddam trial was over, the reporters and everybody, the way it is in the dirty movies? How would you know you weren't being a phony? The trouble is you wouldn't. — J.D. Salinger

Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad. — Terry Pratchett

What are you doing here?" [ndr prison]
Selling Girl Scout cookies," I said. "Want some? The Samoas are terrific."
(Max II to Max) — James Patterson

You see a lot of these movies that are really just 90-minute video games. The effects are incredible. I get it: There's an art to that, terrific. I'm not interested in it, but there's an art to that I suppose. — Jeff Daniels

Ideas are nothing. They're irrelevant. If you think your idea is so important, you're doomed. The reality is if you don't like one idea, I've got 299 more. If I tell you my idea, and you can execute better against that idea than I can - great; I get to play a terrific game. — Warren Spector

... But don't be late, Troy, or I'll ... " She hesitated and laughed, not entirely happily. "I don't suppose I'll ever need to worry about you again, will I? I don't suppose I've ever needed to worry over a magician."
"There are always car accidents," Tabitha declared cheerfully. "A car could come around the corner and ... wallop! You'd need a terrific magician to get out of that one ... "
"Or eagles dropping tortoises," Troy added, looking amused. "That happened in Ancient Greece, you know. An eagle dropped a tortoise on some dramatist and killed him."
"No eagles or tortoises here," said Tabitha, "but a bit could fall off a plane. — Margaret Mahy

If you achieve your goal, you celebrate and feel terrific, but only until you realize you just lost the thing that gave you purpose and direction. Your options are to feel empty and useless, perhaps enjoying the spoils of your success until they bore you, or set new goals and reenter the cycle of permanent presuccess failure. — Scott Adams

The main thing is to do each project the way you want, and if they find an audience, that's terrific. And if they don't, there's nothing you can do anyway, so don't let it concern you that much. An awful lot of good movies have done badly and an awful lot of bad movies have done very well. There are no real rhymes or reasons for it. Sometimes the stars don't always align right. But if you've done the best you can, you feel pretty good about it. — Clint Eastwood

Before people will do anything, they have got to eat. And if you are really looking for a way for people to lean on you and to be dependent on you, in terms of their cooperation with you, it seems to me that food dependence would be terrific. — Hubert H. Humphrey

First word [of my father] when I arrived [as a CEO] is, 'Son, i hope your first deal is a loser, otherwise, you'll think you're a lot smarter than you are.' But he had tremendous values, tremendous integrity, humility, work ethic and terrific thirst for knowledge. — Charles Koch

Missions are stupid, Tereza. I have no mission. No one has. And it's a terrific relief to realize you're free, free of all missions. — Milan Kundera

On any mechanical repair job ego comes in for rough treatment. You're always being fooled, you're always making mistakes, and a mechanic who has a big ego to defend is at a terrific disadvantage. If you know enough mechanics to think of them as a group, and your observations coincide with mine, I think you'll agree that mechanics tend to be rather modest and quiet. There are exceptions, but generally if they're not quiet and modest at first, the works seems to make them that way. And skeptical. Attentive, but skeptical. But not egotistic. There's no way to bullshit your way into looking good on a mechanical repair job, except with someone who doesn't know what you're doing. — Robert M. Pirsig

Ants are a terrific analogy for the route to success. They will go over, under, around, or through whatever gets in their way. They never stop moving, and neither should you. Take the word impossible and turn it into I'm Possible. — Honoree Corder

My attitude to writing is like when you do wallpapering, you remember where all the little bits are that don't meet. And then your friends say: It's terrific! — Harrison Birtwistle

You hear terrible stories because there'll be a story about some terrible kid, but most of the kids I work with are terrific kids. They're poor, maybe their families are broken, so they're not coming home to a mom and dad and a nice dinner every night. But these kids are capable. — Rafe Esquith

There are things you can do with this knowledge, like always save room for dessert. Seriously, imagine planning a vacation with the peak-end rule in mind. Your overall pleasure will be enhanced if you end it on a high note. It's certainly something for me to keep in mind in planning my workshops. Maybe people will believe the whole presentation was terrific if I end with something especially compelling. You should also keep in mind that here is a way your brain consistently distorts your perception of your own happiness and misery. Politicians use this principle all the time - that's why they propose their most audacious policies just after they're elected, assuming that we'll be lulled into not caring, as we adapt to their new reality. Remember GWB's attempt at social security reform? — Anonymous

To achieve consistently terrific customer service, you must hire wonderful people who believe in your company's goals, habitually do better than the norm and who will love their jobs; make sure that their ideas and opinions are heard and respected; then give them the freedom to help and solve problems for your customers. Rather than providing rules or scripts, you should ask them to treat the customer as they themselves would like to be treated - which is surely the highest standard. — Richard Branson

There is only one way, really, to get into a state of living, and that's live There is no substitute for an all-out, over-the-ramparts, howling charge against life. That's living. Living does not consist of sitting in a temple in the shadows and getting rheumatism from the cold stones. Living is hot, it's fast, it's often brutal It has a terrific gamut of emotional reactions. If you are really willing to live, you first have to be willing to do anything that consists of living. Weird. But it's one of those awfully true things that you wonder why one has to say it. And yet it has to be said. — L. Ron Hubbard

I think Julianne Moore is very, very good. I've worked with her. We did Surviving Picasso. I remember one scene we did together. She had to have a nervous, a mental, breakdown in this one scene.I didn't have many lines. I just had to make sure I knew I came in on cue all right. And I was just watching her walking though the rehearsal. I thought I know what she's doing, "This is going to be terrific." So they said, "Are you ready" and she said, "Yeah," "Ok, roll the camera." And all in one take. — Anthony Hopkins

I think understanding your life as a story is a really terrific way of kind of knowing where you are and knowing who you are. — Donald Miller