Barking Up The Wrong Tree Quotes

Until you learn to play what you want to hear, you're barking up the wrong tree. ~ Billy Gibbons

If you were a kid actor, if you had any plans of being an actor as an adult, you were really barking up the wrong tree. ~ Susan Olsen

Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting people have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world, though we can't explain them. People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree. ~ Pablo Picasso

Hey, Alec," he said.
The man was on his hands and knees, leaning his face into the middle of a bush; he grunted something that kind of sounded like a "Yeah?"
"Why are we spending so much time on this side of where we left them?"
Alec pulled himself out of the bush and looked back at him. "Seemed logical. I'd think they either followed us out of here to find us, or they were taken by the same yahoos who attacked us. Or ... maybe they went to investigate the fire."
Mark thought that was all barking up the wrong tree. "Or they ran away from the fire. Not every person on earth is as wacky-brained as you, good sir. Most people see a huge roaring inferno coming at them? They decide to cut and run. Just saying. ~ James Dashner

I don't fuck girls," Stitch repeated. "Are you blind? I'm a fucking fag. I've always been. I couldn't even fuck my wife properly. Why do you think she divorced me? This is some bullshit!" He kicked the broken window and cracked the wood with his boot.
Zak let out a long breath, his mouth pressing into a thin like. "Why didn't you say anything? You never said you were gay. How could I know that?" he asked in a small voice. "I thought... that we were just buddies."
Stitch walked up to him and cupped Zak's face, digging his thumbs into his warm cheeks. "I don't like to talk about this kind of shit. There is no other option for me. Either you're in, or you're not. We're not 'buddies' and we never were. We're not friends, we're not mates. I see you as a… lover. Someone to get close to, someone I can be myself with. If you need to arrange to be exclusive, then it looks like this dog was barking up the wrong tree."
Zak opened and closed his mouth, his shining blue eyes looking straight into Stitch's soul. "I've never been with anyone like this. ~ K.A. Merikan

This is a little off subject, but I'm interested in those cases where someone is barking up the wrong tree, or misapplying their talent. ~ David Salle

There are days when you will wonder if it is even possible to make money doing what you do, or whether you are just barking up the wrong tree...

There will be days when you think that if you don't show up for the next few days nobody will miss you and nobody will care...

Don't believe it...it's not true...If your gift and your passion wasn't needed you wouldn't have them... ~ Osayi Emokpae Lasisi

In response to the intensifying cruelty of children to one another, schools all over this continent are rushing to design programs to inculcate social responsibility in youngsters. We are barking up the wrong tree when we try to make children responsible for other children. In my view it is completely unrealistic to believe we can in this way eradicate peer exclusion and rejection and insulting communication. We should, instead, be working to take the sting out of such natural manifestations of immaturity by reestablishing the power of adults to protect children from themselves and from one another. ~ Gabor Mate

If two people with no symptoms in common can both receive the same diagnosis of schizophrenia, then what is the value of that label in describing their symptoms, deciding their treatment, or predicting their outcome, and would it not be more useful simply to describe their problems as they actually are? And if schizophrenia does not exist in nature, then how can researchers possibly find its cause or correlates? If psychiatric research has made so little progress in recent decades, it is in large part because everyone has been barking up the wrong tree. It is not a question of getting a bigger and better scanner, but of going right back to the drawing board.

What's more, medical-type labels can be as harmful as they are hollow. By reducing rich, varied, and complex human experiences to nothing more than a mental disorder, they not only sideline and trivialize those experiences but also imply an underlying defect that then serves as a pseudo-explanation for the person's disturbed behaviour. This demeans and disempowers the person, who is deterred from identifying and addressing the important life problems that underlie his distress. ~ Neel Burton

When you go and create something, you want to believe in it. If they don't, we're barking up the wrong tree. But when you believe in something and you see other people believing in it too, it just feels like you're doing something right in the world, and that feels good. ~ Zachary Levi

I braced my hands on my hips, examining the drop, the trees, the lake beyond. "What did I do wrong?"

Azriel, who had been sharpening Truth-Teller in his lap, flicked his hazel eyes up to me. "Aside from the tree? ~ Sarah J. Maas

Doesn't matter what the press says. Doesn't matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn't matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right.
This nation was founded on one principle above all else: The requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world
No, YOU move. ~ J. Michael Straczynski

The first truth about mortals is that none of us wants to die, but all of us are going to. It's in the name – mortals – the dying ones. If you don't understand that bit, you won't understand the rest of it. Here you are, some 5-hundred years old and you haven't yet figured out something that a 3 year old human is starting to understand. You see, as soon as we can even think, our brains are wrapping themselves around that One Truth, that one offensive, undeniable, irrevocable Truth. The rest of our existence grows up in the shadow of a dead leaning tree, which will at one point in the not unimaginable future fall and crush all that has grown up beneath it…



…Rescue them for what? Why from dying! Does that mean they won't die? No, it just means they won't die today. At best, we're talking about delaying the inevitable death sentence laid on our friends. Now how does this particular truth strike you, Mister Immortal…?



…And why? Why not merely stand now and fall sooner rather than later? Because there is something precious and sacred about rearguard action. It's an active retreat that's been repeated valiantly and ceaselessly from the beginning of mortal time. It just seems wrong to give up. It seems invalid and invalorous. More importantly, it's indecent to simply lie down and be overrun…



…Instead we rage against it and sing our defiance through bloodied teeth. Somehow, in our pointless battle, we find moment ~ J. Robert King

Ever feel like you're always winding up and never throwing it out? You might blame it on perfectionism or procrastination or preparation. You may even call it prudent. But whatever it is...IT'S NOT WORKING. I call this phenomenon "petrified performance." Where you're busy, busy, busy (on the wrong activities or the right activities for too long), and never accomplishing the idea or task you set out to do. You're stuck. Like a tree that once was lively is now dead and immovable like a stone. What once was a fluid idea is now frozen in time. How do you overcome petrified performance? With practice, silly. Everything you do should be considered a "project" because projects have a beginning and an end with a timeline. No more dreaming. Wake up and put those dreams to work by putting the steps necessary to make them happen on the calendar. Are you willing to practice? That's my prescription. ~ Richie Norton

I walk at night under a moonless sky. Only the terrain guides my steps, yet my footfall is as sure as if a dozen suns lit the way. I go to meet you under a leafless tree that never seems to grow or alter its shape. I am uncertain if it still lives or has learned to disguise its death. The same thought crosses my mind when I feel your cold fingers take my hand. It is not the tree I reflect upon.

'Do you still love me?' The words tumble clumsily out of the dark.

Hesitation is its own answer, but I reply 'I'm here' anyway as if my words were whispered comfort and not a weathered blade. They are taken wrong.

'I love you too.'

Your arms wrap me up and clamp tightly around my waist. An old, familiar kiss hardens my lips. I wonder why it is I return to this place every year where only memories remain fond. Perhaps it is because I keep hoping this leafless tree will either change or die. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good. ~ W. H. Auden

Do you guys even realize that you're not really playing ultimate?" Megan asked. "I looked it up online and you're doing it entirely wrong."
"We're doing it McGowan style," Doug replied with a knowing nod.
"What does that mean?" Megan asked.
"It's football with a Frisbee," Finn told her. "And at the end of the game we like to high five a lot and make barking noises. No one knows why or when we started it; we just did. ~ Kate Brian

Let me in! Quick, Caroline!"
Ma opened the door and Pa slammed it quickly behind him. He was out of breath. He pushed back his cap and said: "Whew! I'm scared yet."
"What was it, Charles?" said Ma.
"A panther," Pa said.
He had hurried as fast as he could go to Mr. Scott's. When he got there, the house was dark and everything was quiet. Pa went all around the house, listening, and looking with the lantern. He could not find a sign of anything wrong. So he felt like a fool, to think he had got up and dressed in the middle of the night and walked two miles, all because he heard the wind howl.
He did not want Mr. and Mrs. Scott to know about it. So he did not wake them up. He came home as fast as he could because the wind was bitter cold. And he was hurrying along the path, where it went on the edge of the bluff, when all of a sudden he heard that scream right under his feet.
"I tell you my hair stood up till it lifted my cap," he told Laura. "I lit out for home like a scared rabbit."
"Where was the panther, Pa?" she asked him.
"In a tree-top," said Pa. "In the top of that big cottonwood that grows against the bluffs there."
"Pa, did it come after you?" Laura asked, and he said, "I don't know, Laura."
"Well, you're safe now, Charles," said Ma.
"Yes, and I'm glad of it. This is too dark a night to be out with panthers," Pa said. ~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

Arin glanced up as she approached. One tree shadowed the knoll, a laran tree, leaves broad and glossy. Their shadows dappled Arin's face, made it a patchwork of sun and dark. It was hard to read his expression. She noticed for the first time the way he kept the scarred side of his face out of her line of sight. Or rather, what she noticed for the first time was how common this habit was for him in her presence--and what that meant.
She stepped deliberately around him and sat so that he had to face her fully or shift into an awkward, neck-craned position.
He faced her. His brow lifted, not so much in amusement as in his awareness of being studied and translated.
"Just a habit," he said, knowing what she'd seen.
"You have that habit only with me."
He didn't deny it.
"Your scar doesn't matter to me, Arin."
His expression turned sardonic and interior, as if he were listening to an unheard voice.
She groped for the right words, worried that she'd get this wrong. She remembered mocking him in the music room of the imperial palace (I wonder what you believe could compel me to go to such epic lengths for your sake. Is it your charm? Your breeding? Not your looks, surely.).
"It matters because it hurts you," she said. "It doesn't change how I see you. You're beautiful. You always have been to me." Even when she hadn't realized it, even in the market nearly a year ago. Then later, when she understood his beauty. Again, when she saw his face ~ Marie Rutkoski

Boney freckled knees pressed into bits of bark and stone, refusing to feel any more pain.
Her faded t-shirt hugged her protruding ribs as she held on, hunched in silence.
A lone tear followed the lumpy tracks down her cheek, jumped from her quivering jaw onto a thirsty browned leaf with a thunderous plop.
Then the screen door squeaked open and she took flight.
Crispy twigs snapped beneath her bare feet as she ran deeper and deeper into the woods behind the house. She heard him rumbling and calling her name, his voice fueling her tired muscles to go faster, to survive.
He knew her path by now. He was ready for the hunt.
The clanging unbuckled belt boomed in her ears as he gained on her.
The woods were thin this time of year, not much to hide behind. If she couldn't outrun him, up she would go.
Young trees teased her in this direction, so she moved east towards the evergreens.
Hunger and hurt left her no choice, she had to stop running soon.
She grabbed the first tree with a branch low enough to reach, and up she went.
The pine trees were taller here, older, but the branches were too far apart for her to reach. She chose the wrong tree.
His footsteps pounded close by.
She stood as tall as her little legs could, her bloodied fingers reaching, stretching, to no avail. A cry of defeat slipped from her lips, a knowing laugh barked from his.
She would pay for this dearly. She didn't know whether the price was more ~ Kim Bongiorno

But Emma resists all of Galen's reasonings, based on the fact that it doesn't "feel right."
Speaking of things that don't feel right... He pulls his new SUV into her driveway, the excitement sloshing in his stomach like high tide. As he steps out, he notices how much he likes sliding down instead of hoisting himself up from a little compact death trap. He's almost glad Rayna tied the red car around a tree-except that she and Emma could have gotten hurt. He shakes his head, crunching across the gravel of Emma's driveway in his suede Timberlands.
Even over that, he hears the thud of his heart. Is it faster than usual? He's never noticed it before, so he can't tell. Shrugging it off as paranoia, he knocks on the door then folds his hands in front of him. I shouldn't be doing this. This is wrong. She could still belong to Grom.
But when Emma answers the door, everything seems right again. Her little purple dress makes the violet in her eyes jump out at him. "Sorry," she says. "Mom threw a fit when I tried to leave the house in jeans. She's old-school I guess. You know. 'Thou must dress up for the movies,' says the woman who doesn't even own a dress."
"She did me a favor," he says, then shoves his hands in his pockets. More like she did me in. ~ Anna Banks

Buddha once saw a jackal, a wild dog, run out of the forest where he was staying. It stood still for a while, then it ran into the underbrush, and then out again. Then it ran into a tree hollow, then out again. Then it went into a cave, only to run out again. One minute it stood, the next it ran, then it lay down, then it jumped up. The jackal had the mange. When it stood, the mange would eat into its skin, so it would run. Running, it was still uncomfortable, so it would stop. Standing, it was still uncomfortable, so it would lie down. Then it would jump up again, running to the underbrush, the tree hollow, never staying still. The Buddha said, "Monks, did you see that jackal this afternoon? Standing, it suffered. Running, it suffered. Sitting, it suffered. Lying down, it suffered. It blamed standing for its discomfort. It blamed sitting. It blamed running and lying down. It blamed the tree, the underbrush, and the cave. In fact, the problem was with none of those things. The problem was with his mange." We are just the same as that jackal. Our discontent is due to wrong view. Because we don't exercise sense restraint, we blame our suffering on externals. Whether we live in Thailand, America or England, we aren't satisfied. Why not? Because we still have wrong view. Just that! So wherever we go, we aren't content. But just as that jackal would be content wherever it went as soon as its mange was cured, so would we be content wherever we went once we rid ourselves of wrong vi ~ Ajahn Chah

What was wrong with the past?" asked Mama Ramotswe. She intended the question seriously. There were too many people who took the view that the past was bad, that we should rid ourselves of all traces of it as soon as possible. But the past was not bad; some of it may have been less than perfect-- there had been cruelties then that we had done well to get rid of-- but there had also been plenty of good things. There had been the old Botswana ways, the courtesy and the kindness; there had been the attitude that you should find time for other people and not always be in a desperate rush; there had been the belief that you should listen to other people, should talk to them, rather than spend all your time fiddling with your electronic gadgets; there had been the view that it was a good thing to sit under a tree sometimes and look up at the sky and think about cattle or pumpkins or non-electric things like that. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

I wrote about the night bird cries, the sea sounds and the lonely barking, and I liked what I wrote in flashes; but something was wrong with it. There is always something wrong with writing. So I tore the paper up at last, liking the untouched memory so much better, not wanting it forced into the insincerity of words. ~ Denton Welch

people have the perseverance to stay the course (drug-free) before "seeing the light." Nearly all of them will give up training, or resort to "staying in shape." There's nothing wrong with training to "stay in shape," if that's what you want. But if big and strong muscles are what matter to you, to resign yourself to "staying in shape" is a disaster. ~ Stuart McRobert

I actually grew up with people from all over the world. There wasn't enough of a difference to feel different from anybody else. Their grandmother hollered at me like my grandmother hollered at all the kids when anybody did anything wrong. And their parents did the same thing. ~ Richie Havens

Everything I had learned or assimilated from my parents I now regarded as unreliable, and needing to be rethought from scratch. In fact, I probably went further-I felt that everything my parents believed was by definition wrong, and that if I ever felt myself in agreement with my parents I should immediately recant. Everything ... needed to be jettisoned. But in a way what they said wasn't the problem: what I was more worried about was the attitudes, prejudices, beliefs I might have picked up from them subconsciously or before I was old enough to even know what I was learning. Effectively, I had to question everything I believed, and never accept my own instincts. It required constant vigilance; it was intellectually exhausting. ~ Lynn Barber

In a world turned upside-down, where everything was wrong, bizarre, you could at least look up at the sky and see normality. Stars that shone regardless of who won a civil war, or who should or should not be a president. Their light was billions of years old. They didn't have a care ... ~ Alex Scarrow

She'd never put words to it, but she believed most humans wanted laws - to feel safe from people with the wrong amount of money, the wrong color skin, the wrong religion or thoughts or words, and so they begged for them. They worshipped laws, because laws were how they puffed themselves up and pushed their foes into the mud. In one blink of Ryn's eye, though, the laws turned around like tigers and mauled the ones who made them. It was idiotic, and she felt bad for Naomi's father, because he had a principle; but there weren't many like him. Most of their kind loved flags. Most deserved to choke on them. ~ Casey Matthews

Labels. I stuck them on everything. 'Good.' 'Bad.' 'Right.' 'Wrong.' 'Square.' 'Hip.' 'Queer.' 'Normal.' 'Friend.' 'Enemy.' 'Success.' 'Failure.' They're easy to use. They save you the bother of thinking. Those labels stay stuck. They proliferate. They become a habit. Soon, they're covering everything, and everybody, up. You start thinking reality is the labels. Simple labels, written in permanent marker. The trouble is, reality's the opposite. Reality is nuanced, paradoxical, shifting. It's difficult. It's many things at once. That's why we're so crummy at it. People harp on about freedom. All the time. It's everywhere. There are riots and wars about what freedom is and who it's for. But the Queen of Freedoms is this: to be free of labels. ~ David Mitchell

John Doyle just knows how to feed actors, and what comes out of us, good, bad, right, wrong, doesn't matter. There's no fear or censure. He opens up the creative goo and all of the actor vessel stuff. He knows how to do it. It's just incredible. ~ Patti LuPone

I call up Amazon. It seems to me they do a major thing wrong, right. I mean, they protect me against the loss of a $50 liability I have of something on my credit card, but they do nothing to protect me against somebody who is watching to see what books I'm interested in, what new perversions I've developed. ~ Whitfield Diffie

She crawled," Ben said. There were tears in his voice. That was wrong. Ben barely even tolerated me on the best of days. "She crawled to the bathroom to clean herself again. If it weren't for the two subs in the pack, I'd be on the bottom. And she wouldn't stand up in my presence for guilt. ~ Patricia Briggs

The girl looked at Patty with large, sad-looking eyes. She finally let out a long sigh. "Oh boy," she said. "Well. I'm sorry I said that shit about you. That stuff about you."
Patty said, "You're sixteen."
"Fifteen."
"You're fifteen, I'm the adult, and I'm the one who did something wrong."
Patty was startled to see that tears had begun to slip down the girl's face, and the girl wiped them with her hand. "I'm just tired," Lila said. "I'm just so tired."
....(Patty:) I can get you into a school, and you can go."
The girl put her head down on her arms on Patty's desk. Her shoulders shook. In a few minutes she said, looking up, her face wet. "I'm sorry. But when someone's nice to me--Oh God, it just kills me."
...Patty handed her a tissue. "It's okay. I'm telling you. It is all going to be okay. ~ Elizabeth Strout

There is simply something wrong with my conscience. I do try to wrestle with the devil as I ought, but, like Eve, even when tempted by the Forbidden Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, I succumb. Good as they are, how could my parents have bred a daughter like me? ~ Miriam Brenaman

Only a tiny fraction of corpses fossilize, and we are lucky to have as many intermediate fossils as we do. We could easily have had no fossils at all, and still the evidence for evolution from other sources, such as molecular genetics and geographical distribution, would be overwhelmingly strong. On the other hand, evolution makes the strong prediction that if a single fossil turned up in the wrong geological stratum, the theory would be blown out of the water. ~ Richard Dawkins

To keep your marriage brimming, with love in the wedding cup, whenever you're wrong, admit it; whenever you're right, shut up. ~ Ogden Nash

The air grew colder and thinner as they rode through the mountain passes. The sun was high and bright, but Martise wrapped her shawl tightly around her and pressed against Silhara's back. Gnat kept a steady pace, breathing harder in the thin air. Unlike him, the mountain ponies suffered no effects from the rising elevation and clipped ahead at a swift pace. Patches of snow spilled from embankments onto the rutted paths. A brisk wind moaned a soft dirge as it whipped through the towering evergreens cloaking the mountainside.
Silhara called a sudden halt. Martise peered around his arm, expecting to see some obstacle in their path. The way was clear, with only the Kurmans watching them curiously.
"What's wrong?"
"You're quaking hard enough to make my teeth rattle." He moved his leg back and untied one of the packs strapped to the saddle. "Get down."
She slid off Gnat's back. Silhara followed and pulled one of their blankets from the packet. "Here. Wrap this around you." She had only pulled the blanket over her shoulders when he picked her up and tossed her onto Gnat's back once more, this time in the front of the flat saddle. She clutched the horse's mane with one hand and held on to her blanket with the other. Silhara vaulted up behind her, scooted her back against him and took up the reins.
"Better," he said and whistled to the waiting Kurmans he was ready. Martise couldn't agree more. The blanket's warmth and Silhara's body heat so ~ Grace Draven

It is wrong to say that schoolmasters lack heart and are dried-up, soulless pedants! No, by no means. When a child's talent which he has sought to kindle suddenly bursts forth, when the boy puts aside his wooden sword, slingshot, bow-and-arrow and other childish games, when he begins to forge ahead, when the seriousness of the work begins to transform the rough-neck into a delicate, serious and an almost ascetic creature, when his face takes on an intelligent, deeper and more purposeful expression - then a teacher's heart laughs with happiness and pride. It is his duty and responsibility to control the raw energies and desires of his charges and replace them with calmer, more moderate ideals. What would many happy citizens and trustworthy officials have become but unruly, stormy innovators and dreamers of useless dreams, if not for the effort of their schools? In young beings there is something wild, ungovernable, uncultured which first has to be tamed. It is like a dangerous flame that has to be controlled or it will destroy. Natural man is unpredictable, opaque, dangerous, like a torrent cascading out of uncharted mountains. At the start, his soul is a jungle without paths or order. And, like a jungle, it must first be cleared and its growth thwarted. Thus it is the school's task to subdue and control man with force and make him a useful member of society, to kindle those qualities in him whose development will bring him to triumphant completion. ~ Hermann Hesse

It was wrong. It was so relentlessly awful that my mother had been taken from me. I couldn't even hate her properly. I didn't get to grow up and pull away from her and bitch about her with my friends and confront her about the things I wished she'd done differently and then get older and understand that she had done the best she could and realize that what she had done was pretty damn good and take her fully back into my arms again. Her death had obliterated that. It had obliterated me. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Renormalization is just a stop-gap procedure. There must be some fundamental change in our ideas, probably a change just as fundamental as the passage from Bohr's orbit theory to quantum mechanics. When you get a number turning out to be infinite which ought to be finite, you should admit that there is something wrong with your equations, and not hope that you can get a good theory just by doctoring up that number. ~ Paul Dirac

I thought Oliver was trying hard before, but now I realize it's quite the opposite
he doesn't try, he just is, makes up his mind and doesn't check if it's going to work for his image or come off wrong. Since the rest of us are being so self-aware, his presence seems calculated. No one can possibly be that breezy, saying what he thinks, feeling what he feels. I can see why people don't like him for this very reason
it's so much easier to call him a poser.
Because if he's the real deal, then that makes the rest of us fakes. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

Jung said that to be in a situation where there is no way out or to be in a conflict where there is no solution is the classical beginning of the process of individuation. It is meant to be a situation without solution; the unconscious wants the hopeless conflict in order to put ego consciousness up against the wall, so that the man has to realize that whatever he does is wrong, whichever way he decides will be wrong. This is meant to knock out the superiority of the ego, which always acts from the illusion that it has the responsibility of decision ... If he is ethical enough to suffer to the core of his personality, then generally, because of the insolubility of the conscious situation, the Self manifests. In religious language you could say that the situation without issue is meant to force the man to rely on an act of God. ~ Marie-Louise Von Franz

Who knew it was in my power to make anyone so happy? Or that I could ever be so happy myself? My moods were a slingshot; after being locked-down and anesthetized for years my heart was zinging and slamming itself around like a bee under a glass, everything bright, sharp, confusing, wrong - but it was a clean pain as opposed to the dull misery that had plagued me for years under the drugs like a rotten tooth, the sick dirty ache of something spoiled. The clarity was exhilarating; it was as if I'd removed a pair of smudged-up glasses that fuzzed everything I saw. All summer long I had been practically delirious: tingling, daffy, energized, running on gin and shrimp cocktail and the invigorating whock of tennis balls. And all I could think was Kitsey, Kitsey, Kitsey! ~ Donna Tartt

School is not like church.
I know a lot of people in my school are happy about this,
but I think that's because they've known the wrong kind
of churches, the ones that hold back instead of lifting up. ~ David Levithan

When you say no to the wrong people, it opens up the space for the right people to come in. ~ Joe Calloway

Empty space eventually fills up with something. A void, cultivated in the aftermath of misfortune, begins to attract the wrong kind of attention. Marco knew it was time to leave when disagreeable spirits started roaming freely through the house, as if they owned the place. ~ Rahma Krambo

It was worth repeating, because it constituted the First Law of Sentient Ordnance: Thou shalt not blow up the wrong planet. On that point the programmers had been insistent to the point of fussiness. Accordingly, ~ Tom Holt

Government's running the student loan program; what in the world could be wrong with it? If the government's running it, if Obama's taken it over, and he's got a lot of compassion, a big heart, loves people, what could possibly be wrong with it? And then the subject of tuition came up, and how come tuition never gets cut? Why does tuition always go up? Guarantee, folks, when you subsidize something, if you run a university and the government's gonna subsidize parts of your operation, why in the world should you cut anything? ~ Rush Limbaugh

She murmured, in that particular Nancy way of hers that grates most when my inner bitch is aching to be let loose, 'Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.'
My eyes popped open to see her lemon face standing over me.
'SOMEONE,' I hissed, 'HASN'T EVEN WOKEN UP YET. GOD, WHAT IS YOUR ANEURYSM? CAN'T YOU JUST LEAVE ME ALONE? ~ Rachel Cohn

I try to live my life where I end up at a point where I have no regrets. So I try to choose the road that I have the most passion on because then you can never really blame yourself for making the wrong choices. You can always say you're following your passion. ~ Darren Aronofsky

I thought about you. Every day."
I froze, my hand still holding the canvas flap.
Cal's voice was slightly hoarse as he continued. "Three weeks is a long time to wonder where someone is. All that time, I thought maybe I'd done the wrong thing, telling you to find the Brannicks."
I turned around then. I wanted to make a joke, or say something sarcastic, anything that would cut the tension enveloping us. Instead, I said, "I thought about you, too."
Cal glanced up, and I met his eyes. "Cal, you…you saved my dad's life. You tried to save Archer's." My chest ached, saying that out loud, but I made myself go on. "That's so huge, I don't even know where to start. 'Thank you' doesn't really cut it, you know? And I'm not sure there's a fruit basket big enough to-"
He rose to his feet, and suddenly his arms were around me and my face was pressed against his chest. He smelled good, and familiar, and tears sprang to my eyes as I put my hands on his back and pressed him closer. He stroked my hair. "He might be okay, Sophie," Cal murmured. "The Eye could've gotten him out. ~ Rachel Hawkins

We go quiet as the next episode picks up exactly where it left off. Antoine manages to subdue Marie-Thérèse, and the two proceed to argue for ten minutes. Don't ask me about what, because it's in French, but I do notice that the same word - héritier - keeps popping up over and over again during their fight.

"Okay, we need to look up that word," I say in aggravation. "I think it's important."

Allie grabs her cell phone and swipes her finger on the screen. I peek over her shoulder as she pulls up a translation app. "How do you think you spell it?" she asks.

We get the spelling wrong three times before we finally land on a translation that makes sense: heir.

"Oh!" she exclaims. "They're talking about the father's will."

"Shit, that's totally it. She's pissed off that Solange inherited all those shares of Beauté éternelle."

We high five at having figured it out, and in the moment our palms meet, pure clarity slices into me and I'm able to grasp precisely what my life has become.

With a growl, I snatch the remote control and hit stop.

"Hey, it's not over yet," she objects.

"Allie." I draw a steady breath. "We need to stop now. Before my balls disappear altogether and my man-card is revoked."

One blond eyebrow flicks up. "Who has the power to revoke it?"

"I don't know. The Man Council. The Stonemasons. Jason Statham. Take your pick."

"So you're too muc ~ Elle Kennedy

Rookie agent Melody Ganz spoke up. Ganz was on temporary assignment to Bravo after her gorgeous legs caught Kelli Randleman's attention early on in the Copeland investigation. Although basically straight, Melody had experimented a little in college and saw nothing wrong with switch-hitting if it got her out of the Bureau's dreadful backwater office in Jacksonville, South Carolina. ~ Jess Money

Yes. I trusted Amanda," Pierce says, leaning back again in his chair. "And yet you cheated on her with your neighbour," Moen breaks in. He fixes a hard look on her. He finds her annoying, picking away at him. "That was a moment of stupidity. Becky came on to me. I shouldn't have done it. Just because I did something wrong, it doesn't mean my wife did." "Doesn't it?" Moen asks, arching an eyebrow. He doesn't like her. He doesn't like either one of them. He considers getting up and leaving. He knows he's within his rights to do so - he's here voluntarily. Moen continues to goad him. "You haven't asked who was having an affair with your wife." "Maybe because I don't want to know," Robert says bluntly. "Or maybe it's because you know already?" Webb suggests. Robert gives the detective a hostile look. "Why would you say that?" "We think she was sleeping with your neighbour, Larry Harris." He is suddenly furious, but tries to tamp down his anger. "I didn't know." "Sure, you didn't," Webb says pleasantly. "That's not why you slept with Becky Harris, is it, to get back at your wife's lover? You wouldn't do that, would you? Just like you wouldn't kill your wife. ~ Shari Lapena

We know that every father has a personal responsibility to do right by their kids - to encourage them to turn off the video games and pick up a book; to teach them the difference between right and wrong; to show them through our own example the value in treating one another as we wish to be treated. And most of all, to play an active and engaged role in their lives. ~ Barack Obama

It's never going to stop,' Malenfant whispered. 'It will consume the Solar System, the stars - '
This isn't some local phenomenon, Malenfant. This is a fundamental change in the structure of the universe. It will never stop. It will sweep on, growing at light speed, a runaway feedback fueled by the collapse of the vacuum itself. The Galaxy will be gone in a hundred thousand years, Andromeda, the nearest large galaxy, in a couple of million years. It will take time, but eventually -
'The future has gone,' Malenfant said. 'My God. That's what this means, isn't it? The downstream can't happen now. All of it is gone. The colonization of the Galaxy; the settlement of the universe; the long, patient fight against entropy...' That immense future had been cut off to die, like a tree chopped through at the root. 'Why, Michael? Why have the children done this? Burned the house down, destroyed the future - '
Because it was the wrong future. Michael looked around the sky. He pointed to the lumpy, spreading edge of the unreality bubble.
There. Can you see that? It's already starting...
'What is?'
The budding... The growth of the true vacuum region is not even. There will be pockets of the false vacuum - remnants of our universe - isolated by the spreading true vacuum. The fragments of false vacuum will collapse. Like -
'Like black holes.' And in that instant, Malenfant understood. 'That's what this is for. This is just a better way of making black ~ Stephen Baxter

Check it out-this is a copy of a painting of a Greek High Priestess named Calliope. it says she was also the Poet Laureate after Sappho. Doesn't she look exactly like Cher?'
Wow, that's insane. She does look just like young Cher,' Erin said.
Yeah, before she started wearing those white wigs. What the hell's up with that?' Shaunee said.
Damien gave the Twins a look. 'There is nothing wrong with Cher. Absolutely. Nothing.'
Uh-oh,' Shaunee said.
Stepped on a gay nerve,' Erin agreed. ~ P.C. Cast