Bellyacher Crossword Quotes

Turn your obstacles to your advantage. If you can find a plus out of a negative, then it cannot weigh you down. I like to think I have a superpower called dyslexia. I am creative, intuitive, and empathetic. I am great with problem-solving, and I can think outside the box. Just the other day, I was helping my daughter with a crossword puzzle, and she said, "Dad, how do you find the answers so fast? And I said, "I have dyslexia, and it helps me see things differently. To which she replied, "Aw, I want that." If we can see our differences or unique qualities as gifts, we can bypass the stigmas that come with them and impress upon ourselves and society we can do anything any other person can do, just differently, and sometimes better. ~ Lorin Morgan-Richards

Our lives aren't so different from a crossword puzzle, sure. But the thing about life is we don't get to draw the grid; we take the rows and columns we're given. Our bodies, parents, mental health issues, all that. What we do get to do is fill the cells. ~ Arvin Ahmadi

Whatever wisdom I have has been hard-earned – each meaning carefully culled out of the dictionary of human experiences and emotions and put in its precise place in the matrix. Meaning doesn't come easy. The Great Crossword Setter in the Sky is capricious and wilful, demanding absolute obedience. You can waste the better part of a lifetime arguing about the randomness of the clues, the setting of the squares, why a certain square is black and not white as you need it to be, question the whole point of doing the crossword – what, after all, is to be gained by solving it. Only after all the chattering is over and you give your complete attention to it, does the perfection of the pattern reveal itself. As is, where is, everything fits. And at the end, when it's all done, there is no reward to be had – the joy of doing it right is all the reward there ever is. (A Deepavali Gift) ~ Manjul Bajaj

But are you glad you went to college? Was it a good experience?"
I suppose it was. Althought I can't remember a single thing I learned. Except for Latin, and that's only because the nuns literally beat it into us and I use it sometimes for the crossword."
There were nuns at Radcliffe?"
Yes, it was all nuns."
Are you sure? At Radcliffe?"
Maybe it was high school."
But you aren't Catholic," I said. "I don't think you ever went to a parochial school."
Well, I distinctly remember nuns with sticks walking up and down the aisles as we recited Latin. Maybe it was a show I was in, but I doubt it because nuns don't beat children in musicals. ~ Peter Cameron

Some people like doing crossword puzzles or Sudoku. I love auditioning. On camera, I hated auditioning. But voiceovers I like trying to figure it out, then getting in there and seeing how close you can get. ~ Tom Kenny

Digger stood and ambled toward the balcony. "This explains so much. I feel like I've just finished a crossword puzzle."
"How do you know what that feels like?" Kelly asked ~ Abigail Roux

Within the same hour as the murder took place, Isabel Trumbo sat in her armchair dozing, the Alaskan Outdoor magazine on her lap. Her kid sister Alma fidgeted in the other armchair, from time to time picking up her newspaper folded over to the day's crossword puzzle. ~ Ed Lynskey

I was watchin' the news the other day, and I heard them talking about a criminal named Brian Regan same spelling and everything. He's gonna be in jail for the rest of his life. So I'm sitting there doing a crossword puzzle and all of a sudden I hear, It is unknown whether the charges against Brian Regan will lead to his execution. Guess I can put this down. Honey, did we pay that parking ticket?! ~ Brian Regan

Where nothing in a person's earlier years lends itself to an old age devoted to continuing intellectual and physical pursuits, a late-life interest in Tolstoy or even crossword puzzles is unlikely to appear, no matter the urging by well-intentioned social workers or people like me who write books about it. ~ Sherwin B. Nuland

Try reading a book while doing a crossword puzzle; that's the intellectual environment of the Internet. BACK ~ Nicholas Carr

Sorry, it's all those crossword puzzles I do. I love words ... ~ Dakota Cassidy

I became an actor because I love solving problems. I'm a big crossword puzzle person. I love doing research. One of the reasons I became Jewish is because I love text study. ~ Anthony Heald

Koko B. Ware is a crossword wrestler: he enters the ring vertically, and leaves horizontally. ~ Jerry Lawler

But I'm really enjoying my retirement. I get to sleep in every day. I do crossword puzzles and eat cake. ~ Derek Landy

He was an arsehole, but, God, she looked at Richard sometimes, the racing bike, the way he did the crossword in pencil first. There were evenings when she wanted Dad to ride in off the plains, all dust and sweat and tumbleweed, kick open the saloon doors and stick some bullet holes in those fucking art books. ~ Mark Haddon

Wouldn't it be wonderful if I won a helicopter in a crossword puzzle competition? There is not much hope though I am afraid, as they never give such practical prizes. ~ Leonora Carrington

Inside a wool jacket the man had made a pocket for the treasure and from time to time he would jiggle the pocket, just to make sure that it was still there. And when on the train he rode to work he would jiggle it there also, but he would disguise his jiggling of the treasure on the train by devising a distraction. For example, the man would pretend to be profoundly interested in something outside the train, such as the little girl who seemed to be jumping high up on a trampoline, just high enough so that she could spy the man on the train, and in this way he really did become quite interested in what occurred outside the train, although he would still jiggle the treasure, if only out of habit. Also on the train he'd do a crossword puzzle and check his watch by rolling up his sleeve; when he did so he almost fell asleep. Antoine often felt his life to be more tedious with this treasure, because in order not to be overly noticed he had deemed it wise to fall into as much a routine as possible and do everything as casually as possible, and so, as a consequence, despite the fact that he hated his wife and daughter, he didn't leave them, he came home to them every night and he ate the creamed chicken that his wife would prepare for him, he would accept the large, fleshy hand that would push him around while he sat around in his house in an attempt to read or watch the weather, he took out the trash, he got up on time every morning and took a quick, cold shower, he shaved, he acce ~ Justin Dobbs

It's the boredom that kills you. You read until you're tired of that. You do crossword puzzles until you're tired of that. This is torture. This is mental torture. ~ Jack Kevorkian

Thank you for your attempt at trying to be thoughtful while stealing shit from me." He picked up a crossword booklet from a chair and tossed it into the trash. "And for filling out my fucking crossword puzzles without me having to ask. I'm not sure how I've ever survived this long without you. ~ Whitney G.

Looking at the sky, he suddenly saw that it had become black. Then white again, but with great rippling circles. The circles were vultures wheeling around the sun. The vultures disappeared, to be replaced by checkers squares ready to be played on. On the board, the pieces moved around incredibly rapidly, winning dozens of games every minute. They were scarcely lined up before they started rushing at each other again, banging into each other, forming fighting combinations, wiping the other side out in the wink of an eye. Then the squares scattered, giving way to the grille of a crossword puzzle, and here, too, words flashed, drove each other away, clustered, were erased. They were all very long words, like Catalepsy, Thunderbird, Superrequeteriquísímo and Anticonstitutionally. The grille faded away, and suddenly the whole sky was covered with linked words, long sentences full of semicolons and inverted commas. For the space of a few seconds, there was this gigantic sheet of paper on which were written sentences that moved forward jerkily, changing their meaning, modifying their construction, altering completely as they advanced. It was beautiful, so beautiful that nothing like that had ever been read anywhere, and yet it was impossible to decipher the writing. It was all about death, or pity, or the incredible secrets that are hidden somewhere, at one of the farthest points of time. It was about water, too, about vast lakes floating just above the mountains, lakes shimmering u ~ J M G Le Clezio

He fakes a smile and then turns to unlock the door.
I follow him inside; he stops me at the kitchen island. "I found it right here." He points to the countertop.
"You found what right where?" I ask, feeling my face scrunch up in bewilderment.
"The crossword puzzle from today." He pulls it out of his pocket. "I found it here when I was making breakfast this morning."
"Wait, you didn't get it in the mail?"
"I'm sorry; I thought I mentioned that."
"No," I say, holding back from whacking him in the head. "I think I would've remembered if someone had broken into your apartment.
"I'm sorry," he repeats, and then lets out a stress-filled sigh.
"So, someone broke in here last night while you were asleep?"
"I'm not sure. I was thinking that, too, but then . . . what if I just didn't see it last night when I got home?"
"Are you sure you didn't set your mail down here, maybe even for a second, and then leave this piece behind?"
"What difference does it makes?"
"It makes a huge difference." My voice gets louder. "The difference between someone breaking in or not." I peer around the kitchen and living room, trying to see if anything looks off.
"I don't know." He reaches for a box of cereal. "I mean, I'm pretty sure I would've noticed getting another puzzle in the mail, especially since we've been talking so much about this stuff."
"Who has a key to your apartment?"
"No one that I know of."
"None of your friend ~ Laurie Faria Stolarz

I think that, at the end of the day, I'm drawn to a certain level of ambiguous storytelling that requires hard thought and work in the same way that the 'New York Times' crossword puzzle does: Sometimes you just want to put it down or throw it out the window, but there's a real rewarding sense if you feel like you've cracked it. ~ Damon Lindelof

Egotism, n: Doing the New York Times crossword puzzle with a pen. ~ Ambrose Bierce

Sometimes I'll work through the crossword sections of three separate papers. ~ Samantha Bond

When asked "What do we need to learn this for?" any high-school teacher can confidently answer that, regardless of the subject, the knowledge will come in handy once the student hits middle age and starts working crossword puzzles in order to stave off the terrible loneliness. ~ David Sedaris

The great god Ra, whose shrine once covered acres, is filler now for crossword puzzle makers. ~ Keith Preston

She nods, turning the silver bangle around on her wrist.
"She came from some village north of here, a few hours away. She traveled all the way to the city just to…"
She trails off, feeling a lump grow in her throat.
"…to take you to that orphanage?" Sanjay finishes for her.
Asha nods.
"And she gave me this."
She slides the bangle back on her wrist.
"They gave you everything they had to give," Sanjay says. He reaches across the table for her hand. "So how do you feel, now that you know?"
Asha gazes out the window.
"I used to write these letters, when I was a little girl," she says. "Letters to my mother, telling her what I was learning in school, who my friends were, the books I liked. I must have been about seven when I wrote the first one. I asked my dad to mail it, and I remember he got a really sad look in his eyes and he said,
'I'm sorry, Asha, I don't know where she is.'"
She turns back to face Sanjay.
"Then, as I got older, the letters changed. Instead of telling her about my life, I started asking all these questions. Was her hair curly? Did she like crossword puzzles? Why didn't she keep me?"
Asha shakes her head.
"So many questions."
"And now, I know," she continues. "I know where I came from, and I know I was loved. I know I'm a hell of a lot better off now than I would have been otherwise."
She shrugs.
"And that's enough for me. Some answers, I'll just have to figure ou ~ Shilpi Somaya Gowda

The human mind is stimulated by change, motivated by meeting the challenge of novelty or threat or pleasure, rewarded with the sensations of being instrumental in altering environments, and will persevere in this as long as there is some degree of perceivable progress. People turn to knitting baby booties, doing crossword puzzles, collecting rare coins; they may even make an effort to understand E=mc2 or to study the genetic adaptations of cacti, but in all cases, they need to see some fruit of their labors. ~ Michael D. O'Brien

There's this moment sometimes, when you do a crossword puzzle and you have the one really long word. And once you get that, the whole thing kind of comes into focus. Sometimes it's just working things over in your mind and then finding that one line that kind of ties the song together, and now it works. It's a puzzle of sorts. ~ Craig Finn

Because I can't help doing it," he said with a shrug. "And hey, if I keep loving you, maybe you'll eventually crack and love me too. Hell, I'm pretty sure you're already half in love with me."
"I am not! And everything you just said is ridiculous. That's terrible logic."
Adrian returned to his crossword puzzle. "Well, you can think what you want, so long as you remember-no matter how ordinary things seem between us-I'm still here, still in love with you, and care about you more than any other guy, evil or otherwise, ever will."
"I don't think you're evil."
"See? Things are already looking promising. ~ Richelle Mead

New Rule: The person who sat in my seat on the flight before me and could not finish the People magazine crossword puzzle has to be ashamed of themselves. I don't know who you are, but "Desperate _____wives"? Nothing? A three-letter word for "Writing utensil, you're holding it in your hand." Here's one more for you: Four letters, begins with a v, something you shouldn't be allowed to do this November. ~ Bill Maher

Those who are to follow the arts should have a training in what is called poverty. Given a comfortable middle-class start in life, the artist is almost sure to end up by becoming a bellyacher, constantly complaining because the public does not rush forward at once to proclaim him. ~ Sherwood Anderson

His way of coping with the days was to think of activities as units of time, each unit consisting of about thirty minutes. Whole hours, he found, were more intimidating, and most things one could do in a day took half an hour. Reading the paper, having a bath, tidying the flat, watching Home and Away and Countdown, doing a quick crossword on the toilet, eating breakfast and lunch, going to the local shops ... That was nine units of a twenty-unit day (the evenings didn't count) filled by just the basic necessities. In fact, he had reached a stage where he wondered how his friends could juggle life and a job. Life took up so much time, so how could one work and, say, take a bath on the same day? He suspected that one or two people he knew were making some pretty unsavoury short cuts. ~ Nick Hornby

There seem to be two main types of people in the world, crosswords and sudokus. ~ Rebecca McKinsey

I've been working on 'The New York Times' crossword puzzle on the subway. I can make it until about Wednesday. ~ Eddie Kaye Thomas

Even at the age of twenty-four, she felt more comfortable with people in their eighties than people in their twenties. People her age never sat and relaxed on a Saturday morning with a cup of coffee and a crossword. They never just sat around and talked. They took selfies and got rip-roaring drunk and partied all night long. And ~ Jessica Clare

Certainly not! I didn't build a machine to solve ridiculous crossword puzzles! That's hack work, not Great Art! Just give it a topic, any topic, as difficult as you like..."
Klapaucius thought, and thought some more. Finally he nodded and said:
"Very well. Let's have a love poem, lyrical, pastoral, and expressed in the language of pure mathematics. Tensor algebra mainly, with a little topology and higher calculus, if need be. But with feeling, you understand, and in the cybernetic spirit."
"Love and tensor algebra?" Have you taken leave of your senses?" Trurl began, but stopped, for his electronic bard was already declaiming:

Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to n,
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!

Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.

In Reimann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.

I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thou'lt tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove,
And in bound partition never part.

For what did Cauchy know, or Christoffel,
Or Fourier, or any Boole or Euler, ~ Stanisław Lem

My activities tend to revolve around crossword puzzles, reading and playing piano and games with my friends. ~ Rashida Jones