Alice Kessler Quotes

The two of them had fallen into the habit of bartering knowledge whenever she visited. He schooled her in jazz, in bebop and exotic bossa nova, playing his favorites for her while he painted- Slim Gaillard, Rita Reys, King Pleasure, and Jimmy Giuffre- stabbing the air with his brush when there was a particular passage he wanted her to note. In turn, she showed him the latest additions to her birding diary- her sketches of the short-eared owl and American wigeon, the cedar waxwing and late warblers. She explained how the innocent-looking loggerhead shrike killed its prey by biting it in the back of the neck, severing the spinal cord before impaling the victim on thorns or barbed wire and tearing it apart.
"Good grief," he'd said, shuddering. "I'm in the clutches of an avian Vincent Price. ~ Tracy Guzeman

Alice haunted the mossy edge of the woods, lingering in patches of shade. She was waiting to hear his Austin-Healey throttle back when he careened down the utility road separating the state park from the cabins rimming the lake, but only the whistled conversation of buntings echoed in the branches above. The vibrant blue males darted deeper into the trees when she blew her own 'sweet-sweet chew-chew sweet-sweet' up to theirs. Pine seedlings brushed against her pants as she pushed through the understory, their green heads vivid beneath the canopy. She had dressed to fade into the forest; her hair was bundled up under a long-billed cap, her clothes drab and inconspicuous. When at last she heard his car, she crouched behind a clump of birch and made herself as small as possible, settling into a shallow depression of ferns and leaf litter. ~ Tracy Guzeman

Facts swooped like swallows, darting across her mind; there was a rush of pride in things still remembered. Singing was limited to the perching birds, the order Passeriformes. Nearly half the birds in the world didn't sing, but they still used sound to communicate- calls as opposed to song. Most birds had between five and fifteen distinct calls in their repertoire; alarm and territorial defense calls, distress calls from juveniles to bring an adult to the rescue, flight calls to keep the flock coordinated, even separate calls for commencing and ending flight. Nest calls. Feeding calls. Pleasure calls. Some chicks used calls to communicate with their mothers while they were still in the egg. ~ Tracy Guzeman

Well, I think I speak for everyone when I say that 'Alice Faye picked a peck of pepper for the poor, piping pig in the purple poke.' Wait - is that not what we're talking about here? ~ Elle Lothlorien

Catch Either/Or Thinking

Anxious perfectionists will typically think "I need to perform flawlessly at all times," with their underlying assumption being "or else it will result in disaster." This is a common type of thinking trap termed either/or thinking. In this case, the either/or is this: Either there is flawless performance or complete and utter failure, and nothing in between.
Not only can this style of thinking make you feel crushed when you don't meet your own ideal standards, but it also often leads to perfectionism paralysis. Take, for example, an artist who sees his future career prospects as becoming either the next Picasso or a penniless flop; this person doesn't see other possible outcomes in between. You can see how this would give the artist a creative block.
For other folks, their hidden assumption may be slightly different: "Either I need to perform flawlessly at all times, or other people will reject me." When I look back at my clinical psychology training, I realize I had this belief at that time. At a semiconscious level, I thought that the only way to prevent getting booted out of the program was to score at the top of the class for every test or assignment.
Ultra-high standards often arise because a person is trying to hide imagined catastrophic flaws. In this scenario, people often think that if their flaws get revealed they'll be shunned, and so the only way to conceal their defects is by always excelling. When people who hav ~ Alice Boyes

What I think was hardest for me to realize was that he had tried each time to stop himself. He had killed animals, taking lesser lives to keep from killing a child ~ Alice Sebold

The only time I ever find my dealings with God less than clear-cut is when I'm not being honest with Him. The fuzziness is always on my side, not His. ~ Catherine Marshall

There's no point in spending your life in the pursuit of something that's easy. ~ Alice Kuipers

The priests were deferential, siding with Rome, and those who opposed them were said to be robbers and thugs, my father and his friends among ~ Alice Hoffman

Mother loved the wind. When I was growing up, she would recite this poem to me. Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I, But when the trees bow down their heads, The wind is passing by. So it is with God. ~ Alice Steinbach

And life is beautiful, love is beautiful, nature and music are beautiful. Everything we experience is a gift, a present we should cherish and pass on to those we love. ~ Alice Herz-Sommer

Oh, Alice, you haven't even had a taste of my romantic streak yet. And when the time's right I don't think I'll have to 'try' to have my way with you. I just WILL. ~ Elle Lothlorien

Alice opened the door when I rang. She had on green pyjamas and held a hairbrush in one hand. She looked wearily at Quinn and spoke wearily: "Bring it in."
I took it in and spread it on a bed. It mumbled something I could not make out and moved one hand feebly back and forth, but its eyes stayed shut. ~ Dashiell Hammett

Yes!" He says. "Fear is an excellent motivator. I find that it really brings out the true ingenuity of a creature. ~ M.D. Elster

That's why people get into fandom and bands and stuff. They just want something to hold on to something that makes them feel good. Even if it's all a big lie. ~ Alice Oseman

Wow, you have so many clothes!" Jimmy exclaimed as he searched through Alice's closet. Alice was already running towards Jimmy. She pulled Jimmy away and rapidly closed the doors of her closet. "Hasnt your mother told you that is not polite to put your nose into somebody else's stuff?" Jimmy pulled himself together and approached Alice. He looked her deep in her green eyes and, after a couple of seconds he stuck out his tongue and grinned. ~ Abidanus Fortitudo

Taryn? Are you all right?" I nodded, pushing away the doubt. My fingers laced with his. "I've never been swept off my feet before. Sounds a little ... terrifying."
He laughed, and I drank in the sound. "Terrifying is not what I'm shooting for." He kissed me, his lips caressing mine over and over until my pulse was thrumming, warming my whole body. He stared into my eyes. "Breathless maybe ... ~ Lisa Kessler

I see children, all children, as humanity's most precious resource, because it will be to them that the care of the planet will always be left. ~ Alice Walker

Every time I told my story, I lost a bit, the smallest drop of pain. ~ Alice Sebold

I don't want to be pinned down to any position. My position is the lack of a position, but of course you can't even talk about it; the minute you talk you spoil the whole game-Marcel Duchamp ~ Alice Goldfarb Marquis

I had blundered again, obscurely, and rather than go on worrying over my behavior, I decided to just give in and dislike Alice. ~ Michael Cunningham

Look what happens when we dream. ~ Alice Sebold

After the opera house, we toured our way through a couple of churches and visited the Mark Twain museum. My personal highlight was the toilet labeled Mark Twain sat here. ~ Lisa Kessler

That was the beginning of her abstraction. ~ Alice Walker

I could bear it [the shame] because I knew the truth, child," I say. "There was one of us in that marriage who was old, fat, and smelly, and it wasn't me."

"The King was cruel to speak thus," Alice says, but in a low voice. As if Henry, dead these past ten years, might somehow hear her.

"He was, yes," I say. "But I think mostly he was afraid."

Alice is sceptical. "Kings are afraid of nothing," she says.

"This King was afraid. I know it, for I'm the one who made him so. I made a mistake, child, a grave one."

"What was it?"

"I made my face a mirror when it should've been a mask, and what the King saw there terrified him. He hated me for it, and never, ever forgave me."

[Anna of Cleves] ~ Jennifer Donnelly

With her silence alone she held off, for a moment longer, the suggestion that the worst was over, the tree had fallen, the storm was passing, and time, as she was given to saying, was marching on: school tomorrow, work for their father, laundry, shopping, meals. For just a moment more, she let them linger. ~ Alice McDermott

I look at the good. When you are relaxed, your body is always relaxed. When you are pessimistic, your body behaves in an unnatural way. It is up to us whether we look at the good or the bad. When you are nice to others, they are nice to you. When you give, you receive. ~ Alice Herz-Sommer

Alice likes to swing as high as she can. At the schoolyard on the big swings there, I think maybe she's going to go all the way over the top. I can read her mind when she swings. I know she's thinking about jumping out and flying away when she swings that high. Flying to California. She doesn't say anything about it. ~ Jan Strnad

His eyes went again to the crucifix above his head, reflected in the mirror. The strained arms, the arched spine. All that effort to open the gates of heaven for us and we (he thought) probably spend out first hours among the heavenly hosts settling old scores with relatives. ~ Alice McDermott

Original sin is my only refuge, I was born bad and I never have recovered ~ Alice James

You said, there was no harm in wondering. You said, it'd just be a peek, And you said, don't be a mother hen. You said, you could land on your feet. But we both know now, You had to learn somehow. Alice, dear, things in mirrors are not as they seem. Stop risking it all on one of your lunatic schemes. ~ Marni Bates

If you can't think of anything nice to say, come sit here beside me. ~ Alice Roosevelt Longworth

Emotional exhibitionism is one block away from whoring for attention. ~ Alice Walsh

All governments lie, as I.F. Stone pointed out, including Israel and Hamas. But Israel engages in the kinds of jaw-dropping lies that characterize despotic and totalitarian regimes. It does not deform the truth; it inverts it. It routinely paints a picture for the outside world that is diametrically opposed to reality. And all of us reporters who have covered the occupied territories have run into Israel's Alice-in-Wonderland narratives, which we dutifully insert into our stories - required under the rules of American journalism - although we know they are untrue. ~ Chris Hedges