Around The Bend Quotes

I don't know that you'll understand this, but once upon a time, long ago, I was a scholar and a marathon man, but that fella's gone now, dead I suppose, but I remember something he thought, which was that if you don't learn the mistakes of the past, you'll be doomed to repeat them. Well we've been making a mistake with people like you, because public trials are bullshit and executions are games for winners - all this time we should have been giving back pain. That's the real lesson. That's the loser's share, just pain, pure and simple, pain and torture, no hotshot lawyers running around trying to see that justice is done. I think we'd have a nice peaceful place here if all you warmakers knew you better not start something because if you lost, agony was just around the bend. That's what I'd like to give you. Agony. Not what you're suffering now. I mean a lifetime of it, 'cause that's the only degree of justice I think we're ready for down here yet, and I know any humanist might disagree with me too, but I don't think you will, because you had a lot to do with educating me, I'm like you now, except I'm better at it, because you're going to die and I've still got a long way to go. ~ William Goldman

Sometimes the fluffy bunny of incredulity zooms around the bend so rapidly that the greyhound of language is left, agog, in the starting cage. ~ David Mitchell

Jesus, Gabrielle! Are you having a seizure?!"

"Please please please can I keep him mom? I promise I'll take care of him! Oh baby, I'll take care of him!"

"Good lord. She's finally gone around the bend. Can I have your Manolos when they come to take you away? ~ N.M. Silber

What if God wants us to be happy? What if there's nothing else around the bend? What if all our unhappiness is in the past and from here on out we get an uncomplicated life? Some people get that, you know. Why shouldn't it be us? ~ Cristina Henriquez

Sometimes we look around and realize we need new friends. That's the sign that they are just around the bend :) ~ Liz Hester

He had the innate sense that something bad was just around the bend, but a hope that something incredible was waiting in the distance.
It had to be.
His burning love for her cursed through him until he felt so full he didn't know whether he would fit through the portal. ~ Lauren Kate

I don't know what I'm going to write when I begin to write. It feels like you are walking down a path, but you can't see around the bend and you don't know where you are going to go, which is fun. ~ Paul Simon

My future seemed to stretch before me like a straight road. I thought I could see along it for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I don't know what lies around the bend, but I'm going to believe that the very best does. - Anne Shirley ~ L.M. Montgomery

Life should be a risk. It's more than a straight line that you can see clearly from one point to the other. It dips and curves and you never know what's around the bend sometimes until you get there. That scares a lot of people. But that's the beauty of it. ~ Katie Kacvinsky

I don't know what lies around the bend,
but I'm going to believe that the best does."

-L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables ~ Jenny Han

I tear down Baxter, which loops around the last mile down to Back Cove.
And then I stop short. The buildings have fallen away behind me, giving way to ramshackle sheds, sparsely situated on either side of the cracked and run-down road. Beyond that, a short strip of tall, weedy grass slants down toward the cove.
The water is an enormous mirror, tipped with pink and gold from the sky. In that single, blazing moment as I come around the bend, the sun - curved over the dip of the horizon like a solid gold archway - lets out its final winking rays of light, shattering the darkness of the water, turning everything white for a fraction of a second, and then falls away, sinking, dragging the pink and the red and the purple out of the sky with it, all the color bleeding away instantly and leaving only dark.
Alex was right. It was gorgeous - one of the best I've ever seen. ~ Lauren Oliver

There is a path for each of us. When we are on our right path, we have a surefootedness. We know the next right action―Although not necessarily what is just around the bend. ~ Julia Cameron

One by one they dissapeared Pumpkin last of all.
The last May saw of himwas his sad face under his waving tuft of hair and then his long fingers,reaching out toward her for a hug that would never happen now as they turned around the bend. ~ Jodi Lynn Anderson

I watch her blond head until it disappears around the bend, and I feel bare, like there's nothing left to protect me against pain. Her absence stings worst of all. ~ Veronica Roth

People need to believe in more than what they see in everyday life. Somewhere inside, we all know that there is more out there than we experience normally. A belief in the other world can help explain why things happen to us. It can give us hope. I feel that we all hope we never get to be too old to fly to Never-Never Land or go through a wardrobe into Narnia. We want to think that there is something looking back at us when we look at the stars. We want to think that just around the bend in the forest, we'll find fairies dancing in a ring. I hope that my work affirms those beliefs," she continues. "I want people to think of my work as a key to that other world. ~ Wendy Froud

CHAOS WON'T LET US SEE
WHAT'S COMING AROUND THE BEND
THE JOURNEY IS MORE
IMPORTANT THAN THE END- Gemini Syndrome,Syndrome ~ Gemini Syndrome

I'm just as ambitious as ever. Only I've changed the object of my ambitions. I'm going to be a good teacher- and I'm going to study at home here and take a little college course all by myself. Oh, I've dozens of plans Marilla. I've been thinking them out for a week and I shall give life here my best, and I believe it will give its best to me in return. When I left Queens my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought I could see ti along for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I don't know what lies around the bend, but I'm going to believe that the best does. It has a fascination of its own that bind, Marilla. I wonder how the road beyond it goes - what there is of green glory and soft, checkered light and shadows - what new landscapes- what new beauties - what curves and hills and valley's further on. ~ L.M. Montgomery

Some books send you around the world, while others send you around the bend. ~ Kevin Ansbro

Fearlessness is generated when you can appreciate uncertainty, when you have faith in the impossibility of these interconnected components remaining static and permanent. You will find yourself, in a very true sense, preparing for the worst while allowing for the best....By knowing that something is lying in wait for you just around the bend, by accepting that countless potentialities exist from this moment forward, you acquire the skill of pervasive awareness and foresight like that of a gifted general, not paranoid but prepared. ~ Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse

Breath (from the book Blue Bridge)

Whispering to myself
With every step I take,
Trying out names, for I know
There is something yet to be called …..

I know it, something up ahead
Just around the bend
Or over the rise –
A bird taking to the sky
From the edge of a jagged cliff –
A bird floating outwards
In silence ……. A silence
Waiting for a footstep
To crunch on stones,
For a voice to fling upward
Through sharp sunlight
With a name…… calling
Before the bird could call
Before the bird called.

Oh the bird was there alright
And sure it took flight
When it heard me approach
But it broke my heart
With a mighty croak!

So I'm sitting here playing
With a purple flower
Slender stem, no leaves
Purple fizz –

And it's quiet again.
I am still
I am nothing
And the hill
Is a long, long slope
Down, down, down to the sea
Far below.

I could roll
I could run
I could scream
But I am nothing.

A cool wind blows
And the light is naked and nameless
And the rocks are faces of angels
And the bird in the sky wheels
And cries to forget the earth
And its ancient bones –
Oh, sensual pain –
Wings…. Wings…. Wings,
Singing wings.

If only I could begin
To describe the emptiness
Which fills me to the brim
With n ~ Jay Woodman

But then Lalita did something odd. Well, not odd, but beautiful. She shifted the clay pot of water from her right hip to her left. She pushed it up against the curve of her waist, wrapped her arm around the neck of the pot, and disappeared around the bend. Mohan knelt to the ground; he could taste the earthen dampness clinging to her waist. He knew then that he'd been wrong: she wasn't simply happy; happiness could not possibly explain the strange loveliness, the utter seductiveness, of that gesture. No, what Lalita had was something even more audacious than happiness. What was it? Mohan trembled....

Sitting on his bed that afternoon, after lunch, Mohan decided that the clay of the pot and the bronze of Lalita's skin were the only true substances. They were why the rains fell, why the sun rose. His fingers traced them all his life. Then he knew. He knew what Lalita had that the others didn't, that he didn't; she had sex. In fact, he realized, what she had was the opposite of what he had. But what was it that he had? What was the opposite of sex? It seemed like a question without an answer. Like where does reality stop and unreality begin? Or, what goes deeper, the human soul or the human imagination? But this one had an answer. That much Mohan knew. He knew that the opposite of sex was fear. And fear was something he had an abundance of. ~ Shobha Rao

Sam wandered through the dark corridor, keeping a hand on the wall to maintain his balance. The stone floor was uneven, and he caught his toe on a couple of rocks that were sticking up in his path. He was about to give up and turn around when he heard something up ahead. He stopped in his tracks, thinking about Patrick Henry's ghost. He listened carefully and heard a man's voice coming from around the bend. ~ Steven K. Smith

I want my life to be a celebration of slowness.

Walking through the sage from our front door, I am gradually drawn into the well-worn paths of deer. They lead me to Round Mountain and the bloodred side canyons below Castle Rock. Sometimes I see them, but often I don't. Deer are quiet creatures, who, when left to their own nature, move slowly. Their large black eyes absorb all shadows, especially the flash of predators. And their ears catch each word spoken. But today they walk ahead with their halting prance, one leg raised, then another, and allow me to follow them. I am learning how to not provoke fear and flight among deer. We move into a pink, sandy wash, their black-tipped tails like eagle feathers. I lose sight of them as they disappear around the bend.

On the top of the ridge I can see for miles.... Inside this erosional landscape where all colors eventually bleed into the river, it is hard to desire anything but time and space.

Time and space. In the desert there is space. Space is the twin sister of time. If we have open space then we have open time to breath, to dream, to dare, to play, to pray to move freely, so freely, in a world our minds have forgotten but our bodies remember. Time and space. This partnership is holy. In these redrock canyons, time creates space--an arch, an eye, this blue eye of sky. We remember why we love the desert; it is our tactile response to light, to silence, and to stillness.

Hand on stone -- ~ Terry Tempest Williams

There's a lot of really inspiring music coming around the bend - we tend to believe that to sound classic or timeless is to sound vintage or retro. It's a little bit dangerous, because you'll really miss a chance to make your mark as a generation. ~ Brandi Carlile

We, with our propensity for murder, torture, slavery, rape, cannibalism, pillage, advertising jingles, shag carpets, and golf, how could we be seriously considered as the perfection of a four-billion-year-old grandiose experiment? perhaps as a race, we have evolved as far as we are capable, yet that by no means suggests that evolution has called it quits. in all likelihood, it has something beyond human on the drawing board. we tend to refer to our most barbaric and crapulous behavior as "inhuman," whereas, in point of fact, it is exactly human, definitively and quintessentially human, since no other creature habitually indulges in comparable atrocities. this negates neither our occasional virtues nor our aesthetic triumphs, but if a being at least a little bit more than human is not waiting around the bend of time then evolution has suffered a premature ejaculation. ~ Tom Robbins

There's no reason to stop. Who knows what's around the bend? To participate, meet new people. It's mostly other musicians and people like you, or anybody I meet who's in this, that keeps me going. ~ Stephen Malkmus

People who have never canoed a wild river, or who have done so only with a guide in the stern, are apt to assume that novelty, plus healthful exercise, account for the value of the trip. I thought so too, until I met the two college boys on the Flambeau.

Supper dishes washed, we sat on the bank watching a buck dunking for water plants on the far shore. Soon the buck raised his head, cocked his ears upstream, and then bounded for cover.

Around the bend now came the cause of his alarm: two boys in a canoe. Spying us, they edged in to pass the time of day.

'What time is it?' was their first question. They explained that their watches had run down, and for the first time in their lives there was no clock, whistle, or radio to set watches by. For two days they had lived by 'sun-time,' and were getting a thrill out of it. No servant brought them meals: they got their meat out of the river, or went without. No traffic cop whistled them off the hidden rock in the next rapids. No friendly roof kept them dry when they misguessed whether or not to pitch the tent. No guide showed them which camping spots offered a nightlong breeze, and which a nightlong misery of mosquitoes; which firewood made clean coals, and which only smoke.

Before our young adventurers pushed off downstream, we learned that both were slated for the Army upon the conclusion of their trip. Now the motif was clear. This trip was their first and last taste of freedom, an int ~ Aldo Leopold

The forestland thickened at one point, and without warning it opened onto a road. Fading back behind a screen of ferns, I watched the traffic. It appeared I'd reached a major crossroads. A stone marker at the intersection indicated the Akaeriki road downhill, and to the north lay the town of Thoresk.
A town. Surely one anonymous female could lose herself in a town? And while she was at it, find some shelter?
Big raindrops started plopping in the leaves around me. The coming storm wouldn't be warded by tree branches and leaves, that was for certain. Clutching my half-empty basket to my side, I started up the road, careful not to limp if anyone came into view from the opposite direction.
I saw a line of slow wagons up ahead, with a group of small children gamboling around them. I hurried my pace slightly so I would look like I belonged with them; I had nearly caught up when a deep thundering noise seemed to vibrate up from the ground.
"Cavalcade! Cavalcade!" a high childish voice shrieked.
The farmers clucked at their oxen and the wagons hulked and swung, metal frames creaking, over to one side. The children ran up the grassy bank beside the road, hopping and shrieking with excitement.
Feeling my knees go suddenly watery, I scrambled up the bank as well, then sat in the grass with my basket on my lap. I checked my kerchief surreptitiously and snatched my hand down as two banner-carrying outriders galloped into view around the bend I'd walked so sh ~ Sherwood Smith

I've been around the bend in corporations. ~ Indra Nooyi

He knew it would take as many years as could think of now to forget the tracks, no matter how deeply buried. Some morning in autumn, spring, or winter he kn he'd wake and, if he didn't go near the window, if he just lay deep and snug and warm, in his bed, he would hear it, faint and far away.
And around the bend of the morning street, up the avenue, between the even rows of sycamore, elm and maple, it the quietness before the start of living, past his house h would hear the familiar sounds. Like the ticking of a doe the rumble of a dozen metal barrels rolling, the hum of single immense dragonfly at dawn. Like a merry-go-round like a small electrical storm, the color of blue lightning, coming, here, and gone. The trolley's chime! The hiss like a sc fountain spigot as it let down and took up its step, and starting of the dream again, as on it sailed along its way, traveling a hidden and buried track to some hidden and buried destination. ~ Ray Bradbury

There are many unknowns in life. This is patently clear again and again when we face vocational transitions. We cannot see around the bend in the road. We make decisions about our lives with implications for the lives of those we love and those for whom we have some responsibilities, and there are so many unknown variables. But there is one key variable that can be a known factor in our lives: The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore. (Ps 121:8) On this we can depend. It will be the same now and for each transition of our lives. If we believe this, it will be evident because fear will no longer co-opt our lives. ~ Gordon T. Smith

For me, Modern Warfare 3 's plot makes its signature turn around the bend when Russia invades Europe. As in, all of it. Simultaneously.
Now, I've never invaded Europe, except for that one time, but I would think that's a project you might want to stagger out a bit if you haven't forged an alliance with any galactic empires lately. ~ Yahtzee Croshaw

This country of ours has more wealth than any nation, but that's not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military on Earth, but that's not what makes us strong. Our universities and our culture are the envy of the world, but that's not what keeps the world coming to our shores.
It is that American spirit - that American promise - that pushes us forward even when the path is uncertain; that binds us together in spite of our differences; that makes us fix our eye not on what is seen, but what is unseen, that better place around the bend ~ Barack Obama

Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: how Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down. ~ Celeste Ng

Leo gave her one more smile, and it was so full of joy that her heart skipped a beat. Then he turned around and strode off, his long legs eating up the distance toward the elevator bank around the bend.

"Come back to me, George," Becca said. "Don't go toward the light."

"What?"

"Exactly." Becca snapped her fingers. "Stay with me, babe. Don't let the hottie who stole your virginity send you into zombieland. ~ Sarina Bowen

What would normal people think if they knew what went on in a writer's mind below the surface? They'd think him even more around the bend than they had previously supposed if they could see the witches' cauldron of images and memories boiling up from the subconscious, impressions whirling in from without, ideas and insights bursting up like bubbles and gone again before they can be seized. And the hopelessness of the business, the whole infuriating, exhausting, fascinating business of grabbing something out of the turmoil and imposing upon it some faint shadow or rumor of the order, pattern and rhythm of the world. ~ Elizabeth Goudge

April is the cruelest month, T.S. Eliot wrote, by which I think he meant (among other things) that springtime makes people crazy. We expect too much, the world burgeons with promises it can't keep, all passion is really a setup, and we're doomed to get our hearts broken yet again. I agree, and would further add: Who cares? Every spring I go out there anyway, around the bend, unconditionally ... Come the end of the dark days, I am more than joyful. I'm nuts. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

I think that for all of the dangers of technology spreading, I think it is more dangerous in some ways that it doesn't. My simple reason for that is we've got 7 billion people on the planet, and we have these very serious problems, and I think we don't know who's going to have the answers to the problems that are coming around the bend. ~ Daniel Suarez

Silvia, with her long gorgeous hair sprawled across the pillow, was the most beautiful creature I'd ever seen. Her breasts bunched up like they were stuck in a corset made by Derek's weight, the good bits hidden by his muscular arm. I'd gotten more than an eyeful in the mystical aura of the Blood Stone, but craved to see if she was really that perfect in the stark reality of dawn. Derek closed his eyes, settling around his wife with a satisfied sigh and his arm slipped. My heart leapt and I bit my lip. Yep. Definitely perfect.

J.M. Friedman. Succubus in Seattle (Kindle Locations 1050-1054). ~ J.R. Thorn

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on." "You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down! ~ Anonymous

There you are. The sight of the changing world is miraculous and heartbreaking, both at the same time.
But so it is for me too. The heartbreaking side of growing old is not in the things around one but in oneself. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

I also urge the Obama administration - both on its own and in cooperation with other responsible governments around the world - to use all legal means necessary to shut down WikiLeaks before it can do more damage by releasing additional cables. WikiLeaks' activities represent a shared threat to collective international security. ~ Joe Lieberman

You can't get around the image of people shooting at people toprotect their stores and it working. This is damaging to the [guncontrol] movement. ~ Josh Sugarmann

If only we could all escape from this house of incest, where we only love ourselves in the other, if only I could save you all from yourselves, said the modern Christ.
But none of us could bear to pass through the tunnel which led from the house into the world on the other side of the walls, where there were leaves on the trees, where water ran beside the paths, where there was daylight and joy. We could not believe that the tunnel would open on daylight: we feared to be trapped into darkness again; we feared to return whence we had come, from darkness and night. The tunnel would narrow and taper
down as we walked; it would close around us, and close tighter and tighter around us and stifle us. It would grow heavy and narrow and suffocate us as we walked. ~ Anais Nin

You know, once you give birth, once you have kids, you realize what's important in life, and you realize it's really not difficult to be a good person. And so when people aren't good around me, I tend to move away from that. There are so many good people in the world, and you want to surround your children with that. ~ Pamela Anderson

Don't bend, don't bleed, don't beg, don't scream, don't whine, don't fight, don't tell me. Don't tell me, don't tell me. Don't feel, don't tear, don't kiss, don't care, don't touch, don't want me. Don't want me, don't want me. Something's so sick about this, my misery's so addictive. I'm halfway there watching Northshore from the floor singing to you over my shoulder. ~ Tegan Quin

I love Canadians. I think we make an impact around the world just when people meet us, and whenever I meet another Canadian, I see it as well. ~ Kiesza

Best ever was filming in Barcelona last year, and I had a couple of scenes with De Niro. He's a very shy man. Speaks so quietly that people tend to bend down and adopt the same tone, almost the same voice, whenever they talk to him - watching, you'd think someone's offering to carry out a hit for him when they're just offering him a cup of coffee. ~ Toby Jones

Our Meat Facial today, Ms. Loeffler?" "Uhm, how's that." "You didn't get our offer in the mail? on special all this week, works miracles for the complexion - freshly killed, of course, before those enzymes've had a chance to break down, how about it?" "Well, I don't . . ." "Wonderful! Morris, kill . . . the chicken!" From the back room comes horrible panicked squawking, then silence. Maxine meantime is tilted back, eyelids aflutter, when - "Now we'll just apply some of this," wham! ". . . meat here, directly onto this lovely yet depleted face . . ." "Mmff . . ." "Pardon? (Easy, Morris!)" "Why is it . . . uh, moving around like that? Wait! is that a - are you guys putting a real dead chicken in my - aaahhh!" "Not quite dead yet!" Morris jovially informs the thrashing Maxine as blood and feathers fly everywhere. Each ~ Thomas Pynchon

Sit, then, as if you were a mountain, with all the unshakeable, steadfast majesty of a mountain. A mountain is completely natural and at ease with itself, however strong the winds that try to bother it, however thick the dark clouds that swirl around its peak. Sitting like a mountain, let your mind rise and fly and soar ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Do all wizards," he said, "get the kiddie crowns and war them around? Or is that only for special occasions?"
"Do all werewolves," I shot back, snatching the crown from my head, "wear glasses and too much Old Spice? Or is taht only for full moons? ~ Jim Butcher

Yes, Mo would come. Meggie could think of nothing else as Fenoglio led her away with him, his arm around her as if he could really protect her from Capricorn and Basta and all the others. But he couldn't. Would Mo be able to protect her? Of course not. He mustn't come, she thought. Please. Perhaps he won't be able to find his way in again! He mustn't come. Yet there was nothing she wanted more, nothing in the whole wide world. ~ Cornelia Funke

Christmas is a time in which, of all times in the year, the memory of every remediable sorrow, wrong, and trouble in the world around us, should be active with us, not less than our own experiences, for all good. ~ Charles Dickens

Bastian had climbed a dune of purplish-red sand and all around him he saw nothing but hill after hill of every imaginable color. Each hill revealed a shade or tint that occured in no other. The nearest was cobalt blue, another was saffron yellow, then came crimson red, then indigo, apple green, sky blue, orange, peach, mauve, turquoise blue, lilac, moss green, ruby red, burnt umber, Indian yellow, vermillion, lapis lazuli, and so on from horizon to horizon. And between the hill, separating color from color, flowed streams of gold and silver sand. ~ Michael Ende

Once while vacationing at my grandparent's house in Rajasthan, we were sleeping on the roof and I spotted an object hovering around in the sky - kind of a UFO. It totally spooked me out. I couldn't sleep for days after that. ~ Nimrat Kaur

I look around the room and can't help but think about how it is the little things we look back on in life. I wonder how often people think that they should pay more attention to them. ~ Erika Lance

I went out there to play my game for the fun of it and never based my career around records. ~ Jerry Rice

It's an old song that's been played on all the jukeboxes in America. The song has been around so long that it's been recorded on the very dust of America and it has settled on everything and changed chairs and cars and toys and lamps and windows into billions of phonographs to play that song back into the ear of our broken heart. ~ Richard Brautigan

mad maddie: i am SOOOO pissed. SnowAngel: oh no. why? mad maddie: one word. well, two. JANA WHITAKER. SnowAngel: the queen bee of our entire class? *gasps* what'd she do this time? mad maddie: i hate her. she's evil. SnowAngel: i KNOW that. TELL ME WHAT SHE DID!!!! mad maddie: we had a substitute for last period study hall and he insisted on taking roll, cuz god forbid one of us had snuck off to do something productive. when he got to me he called out, "madeleine kinnick?" and jana turns around, all batting eyes and innocent, and goes, "um, isn't your name madigan?" SnowAngel: yr name IS madigan. mad maddie: which jana totally knows! SnowAngel: so what's the problem? mad maddie: r u serious?!! mad maddie: it was the way she said it, like she was honestly confused. like, "oh my goodness, i THINK i know u, don't i?" WHEN WE'VE GONE TO SCHOOL TOGETHER SINCE 7th GRADE!!! ~ Lauren Myracle

The world is a beautiful place, travel has been my greatest teacher, my close friends and folks are the greatest givers. I even have a ring of support around my bed as I type ... Goodbye world. Spread good energy. Pay it forward! ~ Brittany Maynard

Contemporary fantasists all bow politely to Lord Tennyson and Papa Tolkien, then step around them to go back to the original texts for inspiration
and there are a lot of those texts. We have King Arthur and his gang in English; we've got Siegfried and Brunhild in German; Charlemagne and Roland in French; El Cid in Spanish; Sigurd the Volsung in Icelandic; and assorted 'myghtiest Knights on lyfe' in a half-dozen other cultures. Without shame, we pillage medieval romance for all we're worth. ~ David Eddings

I look around at my peers, and I'm so blown away by their talent and their beauty and their cool style, as well as their ability to be an actress and be a movie star and be good at it. I mean, they're so good, and we're all trying to get the same parts. ~ Anne Hathaway

I think I should learn to get along better with people," he explained to Miss Benson one day, when she came upon him in the corridor of the literature building and asked what he was doing wearing a fraternity pledge pin (wearing it on the chest of the new V-neck pullover in which his mother said he looked so collegiate). Miss Benson's response to his proposed scheme for self-improvement was at once so profound and so simply put that Zuckerman went around for days repeating the simple interrogative sentence to himself; like Of Times and the River, it verified something he had known in his bones all along, but in which he could not placed his faith until it had been articulated by someone of indisputable moral prestige and purity : "Why," Caroline Benson asked the seventeen-year-old boy, "should you want to learn a thing like that? ~ Philip Roth

I kicked a rib cage off my foot and swaggered around the tree as if I owned the place. "Hey there!"
Startled, Nidhogg stopped in mid-mutter. He stared at me, his huge yellow eyes blinking in confusion. Then, nostrils flaring dangerously, he let out a bellow that doubled as an impressive display of razor-sharp fangs.
My heart faltered, but I swallowed my fear and pressed on.
"Is that supposed to intimidate me?" I made a big show of rolling my eyes. "I've heard louder roars from Thor's butt."
Nidhogg flinched as if I'd whacked him on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper. "That wasn't very nice." He sounded so hurt I almost felt sorry for him.
Instead, I snorted with derision. "Buddy, I insult everyone." I waved my daggers. "See these? They're sharp, but not as sharp as my tongue." Or your fangs, I added to myself as the dragon loomed in closer to inspect my blades.
"Wow. Those are pointy." Nidhogg looked genuinely impressed. "Are your insults really sharper than that?"
"Mister, that question is so dumb it makes me think your brain is like Odin's left eye socket - completely empty."
Nidhogg winced. "Wow. That really, really hurt. But you're right, of course." He tapped a daggerlike claw against his skull. "My brain is empty. Of insults, anyway."
That was my opening. I sheathed my daggers and cocked my head to one side as if considering something. "You know, I have some powerful one-liners that never fail to infuriate. I'd be willing to ~ Rick Riordan

So many people wait around for funding, and if they're unsuccessful, they don't make the film; if you've got a good idea, that seems so pointless. There's always a way of doing it; you've just got to find it. ~ Joel Edgerton

But-" Maia, still looking at Alec and Magnus, broke off and rasied her eyebrows. Simon turned to see what she was looking at - and stared.
Alec had his arms around Magnus and was kissing him full on the mouth. Magnus, who appeared to be in a state of shock, stood frozen. Several groups of people - Shadowhunters and Downworlders alike - were staring and whispering. Glancing to the side, Simon saw the Lightwoods, their eyes widen, gaping at the display. Maryse had her hand over her mouth.
Maia looked perplexed. "Wait a second," she said. "Do we all have to do that, too? ~ Cassandra Clare

Like Adam, we have all lost Paradise; and yet we carry Paradise around inside of us in the form of a longing for, almost a memory of, a blessedness that is no more, or the dream of a blessedness that may someday be again. ~ Frederick Buechner

Get up: the illusory barrier of the warm blankets, the thin armor of sleep, the nightly evasion with its very torments drops to pieces around us, and we find ourselves mercilessly awake, exposed to insult, atrociously naked and vulnerable. A ~ Primo Levi