You Could Be Them Quotes & Sayings

You may have noticed that people in bus stations, if they know you also are alone, will glance at you sidelong, with a look that is both piercing and intimate, and if you let them sit beside you, they will tell you long lies about numerous children who are all gone now, and mothers who were beautiful and cruel, and in every case they will tell you that they were abandoned, disappointed, or betrayed--that they should not be alone, that only remarkable events, of the kind one reads in a book, could have made their condition so extreme. And that is why, even if the things they say are true, they have the quick eyes and active hands and the passion for meticulous elaboration of people who know they are lying. Because, once alone, it is impossible to believe that one could ever been otherwise. Loneliness is absolute discovery. — Marilynne Robinson

Her eyes were so big and bright, as if they saw more than they could comprehend. Bright with terror, and beneath the terror a limitless confusion. That's what made them so beautifully bright. You have to be crazy to see things so lucidly, so all at once. If you're great you can stay that way and people will believe in you, swear by you, turn the world upside down for you. But if you're only partly great, or just a nobody, then what happens to you is lost. — Henry Miller

Silas knew words could have power behind them. Usually it was just a sort of bad luck. He also knew, very early on, that you could never tell when that bad luck would jump up to claim its due, so it was best to be careful. Quiet was safer. He wished his parents had been quieter when they were together. Who knew what might happen when you said something awful to someone else? It was hard to take some words back. Some words stuck and you couldn't shake them off. Silence was better than those kinds of words. Silas had learned that lesson the hard way. — Ari Berk

My weakness consists in not having a discriminating eye for the incidental
for the externals,
no eye for the hod of the rag-picker or the fine linen of the next mean. Next man
that's it. I have met so many men." he pursued, with momentary sadness
"met them too with a certain, certain impact, let us say; like this fellow, for instance
and in each case all I could see was merely a human being. A confounded democratic quality of vision which may be better than total blindness, but has been of no advantage to me
I can assure you. Men expect one to take into account their fine linen. But I never could get up any enthusiasm about these things. Oh! It's a failing; and then comes a soft evening; a lot of men too indolent for whist
and a story ... " [p.44] — Joseph Conrad

Mama and I would go to a funeral and she'd stand up to read the dead person's eulogy. She made the ignorant and ugly sound like scholars and movie stars, turned the mean and evil into saints and angels. She knew what people had meant to be in their hearts, not what the world had forced them to become. She knew the ways in which working too hard for paltry wages could turn you mean and cold, could kill the thing that made you laugh. — Henry Louis Gates

How do you know you love someone?" he'd asked his dad when he was kid.
"Huh. That's a tricky one. I suppose you know you love someone when you want to make them happy."
It was as good an answer as any, Cole thought. The word didn't have to come laden with expectations. It didn't have to be difficult. It didn't mean forever, or a commitment. Love could be as ephemeral as a single breath. That didn't make it a lie. — Lisa Henry

Here's what you do," suggested Tansy Wagwheel, whom this job in just a few short weeks would drive screaming down Fifteenth Street and on into the embrace of the Denver County public-school system, "It's in this wonderful book I keep close to me all the time, A Modern Christian's Guide to Moral Perplexities. Right here, on page eighty-six, is your answer. Do you have your pencil? Good, write this down - 'Dynamite Them All, and Let Jesus Sort Them Out.'" "Uh . . ." "Yes, I know. . . ." The dreamy look on her face could not possibly be for Lew. "Does it do horse races?" Lew asked after a while. "Mr. Basnight, you card. — Thomas Pynchon

She took off her engagement and
wedding rings and walked over to me. "I don't want anything to happen to these while I'm there."
I clasped both of her hands in mine. "It's not the rings I'm worried about."
A faint smile crossed her lips, and even though the face was different, there was a feel to that smile
that was uniquely Sydney. "I'll be fine ... but I want you to hold on to these for me until I get back."
"Deal," I said in a low voice that only she could hear, "but I get to put them back on you."
"Okay," she said.
"On my knees," I added.
"Okay."
"And we both have to be nake - "
"Adrian," she said warningly.
"We'll discuss the terms later," I said with a wink. — Richelle Mead

George!' [Horace] said, the relief evident in his voice. 'Are you all right?'
'No! I am not!' George replied with considerable spirit. 'I have a whacking great arrow stuck through my arm and it hurts like the very dickens! How could anybody be all right in those circumstances?' ...
'You saved my life, George,' Horace said gently ...
George grimaced. 'Well, if I'd known it was going to hurt like this, I wouldn't have! I would have just let them shoot you! Why do you live this way?' he demanded in a high-pitched voice. 'How can you bear it? This sort of thing is very, very painful. I always suspected that warriors are crazy. Now I know. — John Flanagan

All that weeping makes me want to slap her," he complained, "and I can scarce sleep for her sobbing." You would weep as well if you had a son and lost him, Sam almost said. He could not blame Gilly for her grief. Instead, he blamed Jon Snow and wondered when Jon's heart had turned to stone. Once he asked Maester Aemon that very question, when Gilly was down at the canal fetching water for them. "When you raised him up to be the lord commander," the old man answered. — George R R Martin

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

The truth is, Rosemary, that you are capable of anything. Good or bad. You always have been, and you always will be. Given the right push, you, too, could do horrible things. That darkness exists within all of us. You think every soldier who picked up a cutter gun was a bad person? No. She was just doing what the soldier next to her was doing, who was doing what the soldier next to her was doing, and so on and so on. And I bet most of them - not all, but most - who made it through the war spent a long time after trying to understand what they'd done. Wondering how they ever could have done it in the first place. Wondering when killing became so comfortable. — Becky Chambers

Resurrection. In the crude form in which it is preached to console the weak, it is alien to me. I have always understood Christ's words about the living and the dead in a different sense. Where could you find room for all these hordes of people accumulated over thousands of years? The universe isn't big enough for them; God, the good, and meaningful purpose would be crowded out. They'd be crushed by these throngs greedy merely for the animal life.
But all the time, life, one, immense, identical throughout its innumerable combinations and transformations, fills the universe and is continually reborn. You are anxious about whether you will rise from the dead or not, but you rose from the dead when you were born and you didn't notice it. — Boris Pasternak

It's all right that there are things that you do not get over, not really. You just go on, knowing that the things you love could be stripped from you at any moment, remembering to love them now.
It makes you human. You try to be decent and treat people gently, knowing that they, too, have their scars and madness that, like yours, do not show. — Joy Castro

Could I be your girl, too?" I asked quickly.
The large, broad-shouldered man looked away before he answered. "Well, now," he said, as though he had given it deep thought, "I sure do think I would like that."
"But," I said, concerned that he hadn't noticed, "I don't look like your other girls."
"You mean because you white?"
I nodded.
"Abinia," he said, pointing toward the chickens, "you look at those birds. Some of them be brown, some of them be white and black. Do you think when they little chicks, those mamas and papas care about that? — Kathleen Grissom

I don't really know a whole lot about complicated, worldly things. But I think parents and siblings, they need to be able to care for each other unconditionally. How many people could you risk your life to protect? Not that many, I bet. Everyone's top priority is taking care of themselves. But if there's anyone who can overcome that, it's flesh and blood. If you understand that feeling, then you can look at other people, and realize, this person's family cares about them, too. That's a really heavy feeling. When you think about that, it becomes a lot harder to do horrible things to them. So I think that love for your family ... is really at the root of what it means to care for other people. — Mohiro Kitoh

Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them. And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha (2 Kings 6:16-17).
In the gospel of Jesus Christ you have help from both sides of the veil, and you must never forget that. When disappointment and discouragement strike
and they will
you remember and never forget that if our eyes could be opened we would see horses and chariots of fire as far as the eye can see riding at reckless speed to come to our protection. They will always be there, these armies of heaven, in defense of Abraham's seed. — Jeffrey R. Holland

Would the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God have sent his only-begotten son to save those beetles and their household mites, Jared?" "No." "But the god of this place has as great a care for them as for any other creature in the world. This is why I knew you could benefit from seeing those beetles yesterday. Those beetles are a manifestation of the gods' unending abundance and a sign to be read by those who have eyes to read. I wanted you to see how the gods lavish care without stint on every thing: no less upon a beetle whose supreme achievement is burying a mouse than upon the brain of Einstein, no less upon a mite whose favorite dish is a fly's egg than upon the eye of Michelangelo. — Daniel Quinn

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

Later, the talk turned to all the other guys/girls who were currently hot for the two of them. 'There's this total dweeb named Robert who's always calling me, and I feel bad because he's really nice, but I'm totally not interested,' Phoebe told Pablo.

'Believe me, I know what that's like,' Pablo told Phoebe. 'There's this girl at Hunter who's, like, obsessed with me. She's, like, this big fat girl. Ass like a truck. She's always writing me these love letters. Maybe I should fuck her. You know, just to be nice.' (Smile, smile.)

'You're so bad.' (Phoebe shaking her head; Pablo loving it; Phoebe loving it, too. What was more ego-enhancing than making dumb jokes at the expense of ugly women? Phoebe could never decide whom she hated more--other people or herself.) — Lucinda Rosenfeld

Unfortunately, this unexpected, internal condition has often been called "falling in love." This reaction to attraction, which we could also describe as a "chemically induced crush," is actually infatuation. Who among us has not walked into a room, made eye contact with a complete stranger, and felt an instant, unexpected rush of emotion and attraction? Who hasn't had that sudden impulse to look again? Why these moments happen and what exactly triggers them - who knows? But the feelings are definitely a temporary condition. The attraction is neither irresistible nor dependable. You can easily experience infatuation with people who would turn out to be relational nightmares. That's why it is so dangerous — Chip Ingram

Yes" Bazarov began, "man's a strange being. When you look at a quiet, dull life, like my good parents' life here, cursorily or from a distance, you think - what could be better? Eat, drink and know you're acting in the most correct, sensible way. But that's not how it is. Boredom descends. You want to engage with people, even if just to shout at them, but still engage with them. — Ivan Turgenev

I really do think how we frame things determines so much of our experience, and I've been talking to a lot of oncologists, like, why don't we call them transformation suites and give people transformation juice and have guides that support people when they're going through chemo so you could actually burn away what needs to be burned away, as opposed to this dread, terror, horror, which is a very different experience. — Eve Ensler

The best books ...
The best books of men are soon exhausted
they are cisterns, and not springing fountains.
You enjoy them very much at the first acquaintance,
and you think you could hear them a hundred times over-
but you could not- you soon find them wearisome.
Very speedily a man eats too much honey:
even children at length are cloyed with sweets.
All human books grow stale after a time-
but with the Word of God the desire to study it increases,
while the more you know of it the less you think you know.
The Book grows upon you: as you dive into its depths
you have a fuller perception of the infinity which remains
to be explored. You are still sighing to enjoy more of that
which it is your bliss to taste. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

A good rule breaker always things of things that could go wrong and addresses them beforehand. Be proactive."
"You need to use these powers for good and not evil," Lo says, shoving Grace in the shoulder. — Jessica Love

At least, not in this country,' she added after a moment's thought. 'In China it's a little different. Once I saw a Chinaman in Shanghai. His ears were so big he could use them for a raincoat. When it rained, he just crept in under his ears and was warm and snug as could be. Not that the ears had such a rattling good time of it, you understand. If it was specially bad weather, he'd invite friends and acquaintances to pitch camp under his ears too. There they sat, singing their sorrowful songs while it poured down outside. — Astrid Lindgren

It was important to me to be cool as a comedian. I didn't want to be a crowd-pleaser who sent out the vibe of, "I need you guys." I wanted to be so cool that the audience could leave and I would still be killing, that I didn't want to have to rely on them or need them. That really appealed to me. — Anthony Jeselnik

In a thousand ways, you live by the sword and you die by the sword. When you allow other people to determine your best choices; when you allow yourself to be carried along by what other people think your life should be, could be, must be; when you hand them the pen and tell them to write your story, you don't get the pen back. Not easily anyway. I — Shauna Niequist

What I realized with Funny or Die is that I could take it into my own hands. On a much smaller scale, I think these videos are an accurate representation of who I am. As weird as they may be, I'm at least proud of them, and it showed that I do have a slightly different voice. I can't tell you how often people bring up these videos in interviews, and I'm so happy to talk about them because we created them from the ground up. — Dave Franco

Keep my word' is such a strange expression. At first glance, it just means 'Be true to what you agreed on. But it could also mean, 'Hold your words back.' Keep them in. Let your actions speak instead. — Peter Gould

When you could get angry with someone and separate yourself from them, don't do that. If you have people who are difficult to deal with, be neither attracted nor repulsed. Go a step higher. — Frederick Lenz

If you do not share the universities' values, it could be a big mistake to send your children to college before they are intellectually and morally prepared for the indoctrination-rather-than-education they will receive there. Therefore, prepare them morally and intellectually and, if possible, do not send them to college right after high school. Let them work for a year, or perhaps travel (for example, given the antipathy to Israel on campuses, a trip to Israel would be both morally clarifying and maturing). The younger the student, the less life experience and maturity they have, the more they are likely to embrace the rejection of your values. — Dennis Prager

Calina studied Nessa's profile in the dim light of dawn. Her pulse raced as she formed a question in her mind. "Who do you want to be bothered by?"

Calina felt like anything could happen in the silence that followed. It wrapped around Nessa and her, stifling the breath from her body and tightening her throat.

Nessa shifted and turned so she was facing Calina. It was too dark for Calina to see Nessa's eyes, but she could feel them wandering over her face.

"You." The word was exhaled from Nessa as if a great relief had washed over her. "I want to be bothered by you. — Heather McVea

Yes, we saw from above," Elhokar said. "Perhaps a few of us could ride ahead. ... " "Your Majesty," Dalinar said. "The point of bringing my troops along would be somewhat undermined if you left them behind." Elhokar rolled his eyes. Dalinar did not yield, his expression as immobile as the rocks around them. — Brandon Sanderson

What is it that you ever wanted in life?
Who cares about you?
Who laughs with you?
Who shared your hopes and dreams?
To top it all, maybe just maybe,
When you are near your death,
All that you ever wanted is to ask forgiveness to whom you have sinned,
to tell them that they should take care of themselves, wish them to be safe, and to ask mercy from God to let you enter His Kingdom.
And barely wouldn't even care what will happen with your facebook account.
Well maybe we can start with start living simple
And could stop living like a pro,
Because nothing in this world is worth of value to the One up above.
Don't you know that none of us is born perfect,
And no one else will be? — The Eldest

I kept going deeper and deeper into this world of repetition ... The sad thing is, people don't want to believe that the person they're in love with is out of his mind, drinking and using, so if you give them even half an excuse, they're going to want to believe it. A girl with no prior exposure to the disease had to be blissfully unaware of the nefarious tricks of the dope fiend. That's how I was able to get high all summer and autumn and pretend like it wasn't happening. I was saying, 'I'm sick.' I was deteriorating physically and emotionally. Jaime was tolerant, and it did speak well of her character, because she was not the type to abandon ship during a crisis. She didn't consider backing off or bowing out, she was just there, which I can't say about everybody. I don't know if I could say it even about myself. — Anthony Kiedis

Keep Your Pants On
Some people believe the myth that if you do NOT have sex by the third date the relationship is going nowhere. What a joke!!! Why would you have sex with a complete stranger? This person could be married, a psycho, or have an interesting disease that could be spread to you. Get to know the person for who they are, no matter how great their body is. Why risk having sex before discovering you really do not like them? Think before you get naked! — Pamela Cummins

I think there is a contempt for the human dignity of people who were enslaved. You couldn't see them as fully human and so you didn't respect their desire to be connected to a family and a place. That was the only way you could tolerate and make sense of lynching and the terror that lynching represented. — Bryan Stevenson

though. Our Azadian friends are always rather nonplussed by our lack of a flag or a symbol, and the Culture rep here - you'll meet him tonight if he remembers to turn up - thought it was a pity there was no Culture anthem for bands to play when our people come here, so he whistled them the first song that came into his head, and they've been playing that at receptions and ceremonies for the last eight years." "I thought I recognized one of the tunes they played," Gurgeh admitted. The drone pushed his arms up and made some more adjustments. "Yes, but the first song that came into the guy's head was 'Lick Me Out'; have you heard the lyrics?" "Ah." Gurgeh grinned. "That song. Yes, that could be awkward." "Damn right. If they find out they'll probably declare war. Usual Contact snafu. — Iain M. Banks

Anyone who does not see the vanity of the world is very vain himself. So who does not see it, apart from young people whose lives are all noise, diversions, and thoughts for the future?
But take away their diversion and you will see them bored to extinction. Then they feel their nullity without recognizing it, for nothing could be more wretched than to be intolerably depressed as soon as one is reduced to introspection with no means of diversion. — Blaise Pascal

Be true in your relationship with the Sovereign Creator, for He is the greatest one with whom you could relate in all your affairs and states.
Know that He cares for those who turn to Him; relieves difficulties for them; is there for them in every circumstance, condition and change; and He shelters them in His Mercy, Grace, Pardon and Forgiveness. — Habib Umar Bin Hafiz

A local white bootlegger, idling under the store awning, accosted Major Stem. "Why'd you call that damned nigger woman 'Mrs. Shaw'?" he demanded. In those days, white Southerners did not use courtesy titles for their black neighbors. While it was permissible to call a favored black man "Uncle" or "Professor" - a mixture of affection and mockery - he must never hear the words "mister" or "sir." Black women were "girls" until they were old enough to be called "auntie," but they could never hear a white person, regardless of age, address them as "Mrs." or "Miss" or "Ma'am." But Major Stem made his own rules. — Timothy B. Tyson

Remember, you cannot be responsible for the happiness of other people. You can do your best to be sensitive to the needs and desires of others, but some people will not be happy no matter how much you do for them. If you decided you were responsible for their happiness, you could drive yourself completely up the nearest wall. — Kevin Leman

I had no idea, however, that in Pennsylvania, the cradle of toleration and freedom of religion, it [fanaticism] could have arisen to the height you describe. This must be owing to the growth of Presbyterianism. The blasphemy of the five points of Calvin, and the impossibility of defending them, render their advocates impatient of reasoning, irritable, and prone to denunciation. — Thomas Jefferson

In so far as I listen with interest to a record, it's usually to figure out how it was arrived at. The musical end product is where interest starts to flag. It's a bit like jigsaw puzzles. Emptied out of the box, there's a heap of pieces, all shapes, sizes and colours, in themselves attractive and could add up to anything
intriguing. Figuring out how to put them together can be interesting, but what you finish up with as often as not is a picture of unsurpassed banality. Music's like that."
From "Derek Bailey and the Story of Free Improvisation" by Ben Watson, Verso, London, 2004, p. 440. — Derek Bailey

He has spoken blasphemy." This was a wrong charge to bring - for Pilate, having his superstition again aroused - is even more afraid to put him to death. And he comes out again, and says, "I find no fault in Him." What a strong contest between good and evil in that man's heart! But they cried out again, "If you let this man go you are not Caesar's friend." They hit the mark this time, and he yields to their clamor. He brings forth a basin of water, and he washes his hands before them all, and he says, "I am innocent of the blood of this just Person. You see to it." A poor way of escaping! That water could not wash the blood from his hands, though their cry did bring the blood on their heads - "His blood be on us, and on our children. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

You have no idea how many people there are in the world whose day could be made and their life changed for the better if someone would just look them in the eye, smile, and say, Hello. — Stormie O'martian

Entitlement is a precarious place from which to create or perform - it projects the idea that you have nothing to prove, nothing to claim, nothing to show but self-satisfaction, a smug boredom. It breeds ambivalence. It's as if instead of having to prove they are something, these musicians prove they aren't anything. It's an inverted dynamic, one that sets performers up to fail, but also gives them a false sense of having already arrived. I don't understand how someone would not push, challenge, or at least be present, how anyone could get onstage and not give everything. — Carrie Brownstein

I loved lingerie. I loved the feel of satin and silk on my skin. I loved the juxtaposition of wearing a pair of two-hundred-dollar lace panties under blue jeans, like the pair I was wearing at the moment. Lingerie was a personal statement that you didn't have to declare to the world. You could be as demure or as naughty as you wanted to be, and no one ever had to know unless you showed them ... or were injured in a serious car accident. — Molly Harper

The Ukraine is still under Russian influence, even if they did give us independence. Ethnic Russians number 22% of our population. The facts remain they will control us economically. We will continue to owe them monetarily for the natural gas, the petroleum and all other industrial tools we need. After they've exhausted our scant resources and we have run up large bills, they will just walk right back in and take us over again. Monitor it closely in the years to come, Nicholas, you will see I am right. It could be easy to disregard this movement of mine, if it weren't for the queer twists and turns history takes from time to time. — Nicholas Anderson

You told me that the children of the forest had the greensight. I remember."
"Some claimed to have that power. Their wise men were called greenseers."
"Was it magic?"
"Call it that for want of a better word, if you must. At heart it was only a different sort of knowledge."
Oh, to be sure, there is much we do not understand. The years pass in their hundreds and
their thousands, and what does any man see of life but a few summers, a few winters? We look at mountains and call them eternal, and so
they seem ... but in the course of time, mountains rise and fall, rivers change their courses, stars fall from the sky, and great cities sink
beneath the sea. Even gods die, we think. Everything changes.
So long as there was magic, anything could happen. Ghosts could walk, trees could talk, and broken boys could grow up to be knights. — George R R Martin

It was an unfamiliar feeling, waking up with a place to go, a place I was actually beginning to comprehend and face without a sense of terror.
More than that, I was even questioning the assumption that I was, in my bones, a scared and anxious and miserable person. It felt like the days were almost supernaturally good, that I could wake up without the usual wave of terror, that the days were admixed with some foreign substance dripping into them, some animating essence, like the dragonborn races of Endoria, dragonborn days. I felt like I'd stumbled on one of the open secrets of the world. Why hadn't I realized before that being a grown-up could be anything you wanted it to be? — Austin Grossman

In other words, I have tried to learn in my writing a monastic lesson I could probably not have learned otherwise: to let go of my idea of myself, to take myself with more than one grain of salt ... In religious terms, this is simply a matter of accepting life, and everything in life as a gift, and clinging to none of it, as far as you are able. You give some of it to others, if you can. Yet one should be able to share things with others without bothering too much about how they like it, either, or how they accept it. Assume they will accept it, if they need it. And if they don't need it, why should they accept it? That is their business. Let me accept what is mine and give them all their share, and go my way. — Thomas Merton

I once thought that grief was chronic, that all you could do was appreciate the good days and take them along with the bad. And then I started to think that maybe the good days aren't just days; maybe the good days can be good weeks, good months, good years. Now I wonder if grief isn't something like a shell. You wear it for a long time and then one day you realize you've outgrown it. So you put it down. — Taylor Jenkins Reid

Deal," I said in a low voice that only she could hear, "but I get to put them back on you." "Okay," she said. "On my knees," I added. "Okay." "And we both have to be nake - — Richelle Mead

She had this uncanny sense of seeing things the way they were instead of the way you'd want them to be, of knowing me better than I knew myself. She could sniff out the truth even if it hurt. — Mike Gayle

Are wild strawberries really wild? Will they scratch an adult, will they snap at a child? Should you pet them, or let them run free where they roam? Could they ever relax in a steam-heated home? Can they be trained to not growl at the guests? Will a litterbox work or would they make a mess? Can we make them a Cowberry, herding the cows, or maybe a Muleberry pulling the plows, or maybe a Huntberry chasing the grouse, or maybe a Watchberry guarding the house, and though they may curl up at your feet oh so sweetly can you ever feel that you trust them completely? Or should we make a pet out of something less scary, like the Domestic Prune or the Imported Cherry, Anyhow, you've been warned and I will not be blamed if your Wild Strawberries cannot be tamed. — Shel Silverstein

There is a saying for what it is like to "be at the top" that provides a clue to what the other proposal for the basis of life is. The saying is "It's lonely at the top." Why is it lonely? It is lonely because you have not been a friend to others on your journey to the top and you brought them down so that you could advance. And once you are at the top, you cannot consider anybody to be a friend to you, because you imagine that they are only trying to find a way to bring you down so that they can replace you at the top. Therefore, you are lonely because you have no true friends. And thus, there is the clue to what the other proposal for the basis of life is. — Ralph D. Sinn

She knew her duty inside and out. The prosperity of the cash drawer brought happiness to husband and wife. Not that Madame Puta was bad looking, not at all, she could even, like so many others, have been rather pretty, but she was so careful, so distrustful that she stopped short of beauty just as she stopped short of life - her hair was a little too well dressed, her smile a little too facile and sudden, and her gestures a bit too abrupt or too furtive. You racked your brains trying to figure out what was too calculated about her and why you always felt uneasy when she came near you. This instinctive revulsion that shopkeepers inspire in anyone who goes near them who knows what's what, is one of the few consolations for being as down at heel as people who don't sell anything to anybody tend to be. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

California had organized itself, not accidentally, into highly partisan legislative districts. It elected highly partisan people to office and then required these people to reach a two-thirds majority to enact any new tax or meddle with big spending decisions. On the off chance that they found some common ground, it could be pulled out from under them by voters through the initiative process. Throw in term limits - no elected official now serves in California government long enough to fully understand it - and you have a recipe for generating maximum contempt for elected officials. Politicians are elected to get things done and are prevented by the system from doing it, leading the people to grow even more disgusted with them. "The vicious cycle of contempt," as Mark Paul calls it. California state government was designed mainly to maximize the likelihood that voters will continue to despise the people they elect. — Michael Lewis

If we didn't kill all of these animals and eat them, then we wouldn't have to breed all of these cows, pigs, chickens, and other livestock. If we didn't breed these animals, then we wouldn't have to feed these animals. If we didn't have to feed them, we wouldn't have to devote all of the land to growing grains and legumes to feed to them. So then the forest could come back, wildlife could return, ocean life would return, the rivers would be clean again, the air would be clean again, and our health would return. This is achievable by switching to a plant-based diet and encouraging other people to do the same. Educate yourself and others. Show them that there are delicious and nutritious alternatives to eating meat, and that by eating meat they are contributing to the pollution of the planet. There are plenty of plant foods that will provide you with more than enough nutrients to be healthy. — Joseph P. Kauffman

Grandma laughed. "You'd be surprised. It's awfully hard to dislike someone when you really pray for them. In fact the person you pray for could turn out to be one of your best friends. — Arleta Richardson

Douglas ignored her look, determined to move to the next phase in his strategy and went on. "Julia, I intend to be your lover." With Julia's soft warmth pressed so close, he could smell her. Both the feel of her and her scent made his body begin to tighten in an intensely pleasant way so that, when he spoke, his voice deepened, became hungry, as he, again, made his intentions clear but this time, he made them clearer. "I intend to sleep in sheets that smell of tangerines and jasmine. I intend to have your naked body squirming under mine. I intend to touch you everywhere with my hands and my mouth. I intend to memorise the taste of you, to make you call my name while I'm moving inside you, to make you so excited you beg me to let you come ... — Kristen Ashley

WCW wasn't what I thought it should be. I thought it could be better. I would make suggestions, but nobody would want to hear them. They think you want their job. Please. It would be easier doing their job because they're used to doing nothing. — Bobby Heenan

I think a lot of people are very good, but I don't think anybody could do my rhythm. I was thinking, "If you want my rhythm" - and when I was writing, I was writing them for myself - "why am I watching another actor doing what I should be doing?" It was just a really unpleasant experience. — Jake M. Johnson

Why then should I often be unhappy over what happens here? Shouldn't I always be glad, contented and happy, except when I think about her and her companions in distress? I am selfish and cowardly. Why do I always dream and think of the most terrible things- my fear makes me want to scream out loud sometimes. Because still, in spite of everything, I have not enough faith in God. He has given me so much- which I certainly do not deserve- and I still do so much that is wrong every day. If you think of your fellow creatures, then you only want to cry, you could really cry the whole day long. The only thing to do is to pray that God will perform a miracle and save some of them. And I hope that I am doing that enough! — Anne Frank

There was no sense to life, to the structure of things. D.H. Lawrence had known that. You needed love, but not the kind of love most people used and were used up by. Old D.H. had known something. His buddy Huxley was just an intellectual fidget, but what a marvelous one. Better than G.B. Shaw with that hard keel of a mind always scraping bottom, his labored wit finally only a task, a burden on himself, preventing him from really feeling anything, his brilliant speech finally a bore, scraping the mind and the sensibilities. It was good to read them all though. It made you realize that thoughts and words could be fascinating, if finally useless. — Charles Bukowski

[The maid] went on and on about how you and three casks of wine and three women spent the week before our wedding trying to...you know"--Adrienne muttered an unintelligible word--"your brains out."
"To what my brains out?"
"You know." Adrienne rolled her eyes.
"I'm afraid I don't. What was that word again?"
"Adrienne looked at him sharply. Was he teasing her? Were his eyes alight with mischief? That half-smile curving his beautiful mouth could absolutely melt the sheet she was clutching, not to mention her will. "Apparently one of them succeeded, because if you had any brains left you'd get out of my sight now," she snapped.
"It wasn't three." Hawk swallowed a laugh.
"No?"
"It was five."
"Adrienne's jaw clenched. She held her fingers up again. "Fourth--this will be a marriage in name only. Period."
"Casks of wine, I meant."
"You are not funny. — Karen Marie Moning

Vegetables cooked for salads should always be on the crisp side, like those trays of zucchini and slender green beans and cauliflowerets in every trattoria in Venice, in the days when the Italians could eat correctly. You used to choose the things you wanted: there were tiny potatoes in their skins, remember, and artichokes boiled in olive oil, as big as your thumb, and much tenderer ... and then the waiter would throw them all into an ugly white bowl and splash a little oil and vinegar over them, and you would have a salad as fresh and tonic to your several senses as La Primavera. It can still be done, although never in the same typhoidic and enraptured air. You can still find little fresh vegetables, and still know how to cook them until they are not quite done, and chill them, and eat them in a bowl. — Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

I hardly saw Osbert that week because he went to school, unlike Isaac and Edmond and Piper, who were supposed to be homeschooled, which as far as I could tell meant reading whatever books you happen to be interested in, and every once in a blue moon having Aunt Penn say Have you learned any geography? and them saying yes. — Meg Rosoff

You have only to lift your hand,' Thorkel Fostri said. And after a moment, 'What else were you born for?'
'Why not happiness, like other men? Thorfinn said.
'You have that,' said his foster-father. 'But if you try to trap it, it will change. Why do you resist? It is your right.'
'I resist because it is no use resisting,' Thorfinn said. 'Do you not think that is unfair? I shall be King because I was King; and I shall die because I did die; and did I remember them, I could even tell what are the three ways it might befall me. — Dorothy Dunnett

Occasionally they would hear a harsh croak or a splash as some amphibian was disturbed, but the only creature they saw was a toad as big as Will's foot, which could only flop in a pain-filled sideways heave as if it were horribly injured. It lay across the path, trying to move out of the way and looking at them as if it knew they meant to hurt it.
'It would be merciful to kill it,' said Tialys.
'How do you know?' said Lyra. 'It might still like being alive, in spite of everything.'
'If we killed it, we'd be taking it with us,' said Will. 'It wants to stay here. I've killed enough living things. Even a filthy stagnant pool might be better than being dead.'
'But if it's in pain?' said Tialys.
'If it could tell us, we'd know. But since it can't, I'm not going to kill it. That would be considering our feelings rather than the toad's.'
They moved on. — Philip Pullman

It's a known fact that in life, you can't have everything. In my heart I knew I loved them both, as much as possible to love two people at the same time. Conrad and I were linked, we would always be linked. That wasn't something I could do away with. I knew that now - that love wasn't something you could erase, no matter how hard you tried. — Jenny Han

You can't be transcendent,... which will mean to be perfect in everything. You can try to act as such person, but there is a lot of to learn.

- As first you always will know the few from everything

- Everything is endless!

- (The Wolf of Wall Street), forgot everything what people say to you about the topic "Money"...because money are the thing which make your life interesting. You could buy the best phone, the best hotel or the best room, the best house, the best car, the best TV, the best books... the best wife... There are outside a lot of women which will sleep with you in replace of money... so reality you need money to have them...
(More far than this I can't take you, because the train is too fast It will delete everything.... it will just start from here.)... What I gonna say or I will say is "Good Luck and try by yourself the finish the mission". — Deyth Banger

When I was young, we thought that Oscar Wilde was a great nobleman who had thrown his life away for love. Nothing could be less true. He slept with East Enders who were procured for him by Lord Alfred Douglas. He knew them only 'in Braille' - the curtains were never drawn back in the rooms in Oxford where he met those boys. It was the most sordid life you can imagine. And he was bleating about love and dragging the fair name of Mr. Plato into the trial - after a life like that? — Quentin Crisp

Do you know my best quality?" she asks.
"Of your many, I could not say, my darling."
"I see the best in people. I fall in love with people when I see a window into their beings, their shining moments. I've fallen in love with so many people but the trouble is I fall out of love so quickly too. I see the worst in them just as easily.
"Do you know I fell in love with you right away? That day at the Trotters' I had noted you because you were new, of course, and then you sat down at the piano, and you played a few notes, but you played them so well, with no self consciousness, and no idea that anyone might be listening. It was in that room off the garden and you were the only one there. I was passing through on the way to the ladies' room and saw you there. I fell in love with you right then, and so I slipped my drink all over myself so I could meet you." — Janice Y.K. Lee

Looking a dead insect in the sack of basmati that had come all the way from Dehra Dun, he almost wept with sorrow and marvel at its journey, which was tenderness for his own journey. In India almost nobody would be able to afford this rice, and you had to travel around the world to be able to eat such things where they were cheap enough that you could gobble them down without being rich; and when you got home to the place where they grew, you couldn't afford them anymore. — Kiran Desai

She gulped her whiskey sour. The bar was hot tonight.
CJ circled back to check on them. "You ladies doing okay?"
"Define okay." Natalie's whiskey seemed to be talking. Because the whiskey was the only thing that could've put that husky, suggestive tone in her voice. Yep, that was all the whiskey.
He propped his elbows on the bar, which put his face level with hers, and fixed his undivided attention on her. There went her lady bits fanning themselves. With a few added whimpers. They remembered what his hands and body and lips felt like too.
"Content." His voice was low and raw, his gaze penetrating and unwavering. "Happy. Completely, one hundred percent satisfied."
Her mouth went dry while the rest of her went up in needy flames that made her want to scratch the all-but-gone rash he'd tended so well on Monday.
"Nope," Natalie squeaked. "Not okay then. — Jamie Farrell

Anybody can make jokes. But unless they come from conviction, and there's truth in them, you haven't nailed it. They aren't as funny as they could be, and they don't make a point. — Dan Jenkins

Before he dies, all his experiences in these long years gather themselves in his head to one point, a ques-tion he has not yet asked the doorkeeper. He waves him nearer, since he can no longer raise his stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend low towards him, for the difference in height between them has altered much to the man's disadvantage. "What do you want to know now?" asks the doorkeeper; "you are insati-able." "Everyone strives to reach the Law," says the man, "so how does it happen that for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for admit-tance?" The doorkeeper recognizes that the man has reached his end, and to let his failing senses catch the words roars in his ear: "No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it. — Franz Kafka

Boys have their soft and gentle moods too. You would suppose by the morning racket that nothing could be more foreign to their nature than romance and vague sadness ... But boys have hours of great sinking and sadness, when kindness and fondness are peculiarly needful to them. — Henry Ward Beecher

I wasn't sure what would happen with us. I knew that there were no guarantees. Terrible things happened when you were least expecting them, on sunny Saturday mornings, and the consequences just had to be lived with, every day. But it seemed that wonderful things could happen too. You could be forced to take a trip, not knowing who you would meet. Not knowing that it would change your life. — Morgan Matson

Imagine, [Kriezler] said, that you enter a large, somewhat crumbling hall that echoes with the sounds of people mumbling and talking repetitively to themselves. All around you these people fall into prostrate positions, some of them weeping. Where are you? Sara's answer was immediate: in an asylum. Perhaps, Kreizler answered, but you could also be in a church. In the one place the behavior would be considered mad; in the other, not only sane, but as respectable as any human activity can be. — Caleb Carr

Aria smiled, then her gaze traveled to his waist. "Perry, did you know your pants are falling down?"
"Yeah." He didn't have to look; he could feel them sliding down his hips. "I, uh . . . I took my belt off to make you feel comfortable."
"You took your belt off to make me feel comfortable?"
He nodded, trying to hold back a laugh. "I worked it out in my head that this would be more natural."
"Your pants falling down is natural?"
He grinned. "Yeah. If they fall any further, it's going be very natural. — Veronica Rossi

I don't think you could teach someone to be a genius, but you can certainly teach them to not make rookie mistakes and to look at writing the way a writer looks at writing, and not just the way a reader looks at writing. There are a lot of techniques and skills that can be taught that will be helpful to anybody, no matter how gifted they are, and I think writing programs can be very good for people. — Michael Chabon

You can't do things for money. You just can't act them. There's gotta be something about the script that you really want to do. I wouldn't do a job if I didn't think I could do the best work I possibly could. — Tom Wilkinson

Yes. I know all about soul-wraiths." Ramsey frowned. "How did you avoid them in the past?"
"Set a perimeter of energized diaman crystal. That will keep them at bay." Hel smiled without humor. "I have the diaman crystal in my saddle pack. I lack a sexual partner to energize them. I had intended to return with a magistra but a magister will work as well. Care to volunteer?"
"Only if I top," Ramsey snapped.
"You'd have to kill me first," returned Hel.
"With pleasure."
Steffania took a breath. Ram cut her off. "No. I don't share you, Vixen."
Fear of the unknown almost froze Adonia's tongue, but she was the obvious answer. She could do this, and the opportunity might never present itself again. "I'll be your partner. — Patricia A. Knight

Annie, last year ... That day in the yard ... I made a mistake not strapping on a gun the minute I found you, and it wasn't that I was against marrying you, it was that I was against letting them make me do anything. So they almost killed Foxface and threatened to shoot the horses, and I gave in. But they could have shot everything in five miles to pieces and couldn't have made me crawl."
A tremor passed through her, but he continued. "That was last year. Now if somebody pointed a gun at you, really could hurt you, I'd crawl on my belly or my knees or do anything else. Maybe that's part of why loving is frightening. I'd rather pay the price and have you than be invincible because I have nothing. — Ellen O'Connell

What does this Daimon look like? (Xedrix)
He's tall and blond. (Kyle)
Well, that narrows it down to every Daimon here except Stryker. What would that be? Several thousand of them? Could you be a bit more specific and if you tell me he was dressed in black, I'll kill you myself and spare me the agony of dying. (Xedrix) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

We thought of the poor, at that time, as quite divorced from us, who were not poor. By the exercise of one's charity, life could be made all right. You would always have the poor with you, they were the unfortunate, and you made donations. You could handle them. It was mildly unpleasant, but not fundamentally upsetting. Now, for the first time, we face the dreadful reality that we are not separated. They are us. They are something we have made. There is no conceivable way today to say: Fish, and you'll be all right. In hurt, in anguish, in shock, we are becoming aware that it is ourselves, who have to be found wanting, not the poor. — Studs Terkel

Of course, everyone's going to freak out when you show up at school."
"Freak out? Why?"
"Because you're so much hotter now than when you left." She shrugged. "It's true. Must be a vampire thing."
Simon looked baffled. "I'm hotter now?"
"Sure you are. I mean, look at those two. They're both totally into you." She pointed to a few feet in front of them, where Isabelle and Maia had moved to walk side by side, their head bent together.
Simon looked up ahead at the girls. Clary could almost swear he was blushing. "Are they? Sometimes they get together and whisper and stare at me. I have no idea what it's about."
"Sure you don't." Clary grinned. "Poor you, you have two cute girls vying for your love. Your life is hard. — Cassandra Clare

What if she was meant to be, or could have been, someone important in my life? I think that's what scares me: the randomness of everything. That the people who could be important to you might just pass you by. Or you pass them by. How do you know ... I felt that by walking away I was abandoning [them], that I spent my entire life, day after day, abandoning people. — Peter Cameron

You have brought detection as near an exact science as it ever will be brought in this world. My companion flushed up with pleasure at my words, and the earnest way in which I uttered them. I had already observed that he was as sensitive to flattery on the score of his art as any girl could be of her beauty. — Arthur Conan Doyle

I know, it looks pure and beautiful to you now, at your great old age of twenty-two. But do you know what it means? Thirty years of a lost cause, that sounds beautiful, doesn't it? But do you know how many days there are in thirty years? Do you know what happens in those days? ... I want you to know what's in store for you. There will be days when you'll look at your hands and you'll want to take something and smash every bone in them, because they'll be taunting you with what they could do, if you found a chance for them to do it, and you can't find that chance, and you can't bear your living body because it has failed those hands somewhere. — Ayn Rand

I'll have to think about it, but I can do that," Taryn said. "Of course you can," Dannon said. "But don't think about ways to trick them or outsmart them. Just focus on your ignorance. You don't know anything, but you're willing to speculate, and you'd like some information from them - to hear what they think." "What about you and Carver?" "We can handle it," Dannon said. "We've spent half our lives lying to cops, of one kind or another. Nobody else on the staff knows. Might not be a bad idea for us to stay away completely . . . unless they ask for us." "Let's do that," Taryn said. "Maybe you two could start doing some advance security work." "I'll talk to Ron," Dannon said. He heard high heels, and said, "Here comes Alice. — John Sandford

In the summer quiet. Just be. Joshua liked the Beatles, used to listen to them in his room, you could hear the noise even through the big headphones he loved. Let it be. Silly song, really. You let it be, it returns. There's the truth. You let it be, it drags you to the ground. You let it be, it crawls up your walls. — Colum McCann

I could reach out and take her hand, force the issue, but I want her to be the one to do it this time. I want her to acknowledge this thing between us out loud. I can't leave well enough alone. I want her to say the words. We're meant to be. Something. Anything. I need to hear them. To know that I'm not alone in this.
I should let it go.
I am going to let it go.
'What are you so afraid of?' I ask, not letting it go at all. — Nicola Yoon

The Jesuits were quite balked by those Indians who, being burned at the stake, suggested new modes of tortures to their tormentors. Being superior to physical suffering, it sometimes chanced that they were superior to any consolation which the missionaries could offer; and the law to do as you would be done by fell with less persuasiveness on the ears of those who, for their part, did not care how they were done by, who loved their enemies after a new fashion, and came very near freely forgiving them all they did. — Henry David Thoreau

She believed photography to be the greatest of all art forms because it was simultaneously junk food and gourmet cuisine, because you could snap dozens of pictures in a couple of hours, then spend dozens of hours perfecting just a couple of them. — Tommy Wallach

Why are there such long words in the world, Miss?' enquires Sophie, when the mineralogy lesson is over.
'One long difficult word is the same as a whole sentence full of short easy ones, Sophie,' says Sugar. 'It saves time and paper.' Seeing that the child is unconvinced, she adds, 'If books were written in such a way that every person, no matter how young, could understand everything in them, they would be enormously long books. Would you wish to read a book that was a thousand pages long, Sophie?'
Sophie answers without hesitation.
'I would read a thousand million pages, Miss, if all the words were words I could understand. — Michel Faber