Breaking Measures Quotes

The piano entered the story, bringing a new voice to the narrative. Her fingers brushed the keys, her heart straining to find satisfaction in the harmonic shifts and subtle colorings.

It wasn't there.

Leila closed her eyes, tried new ways of speaking a phrase - holding back, pushing forward, adding an unexpected accent, waiting a breath before the harmonic resolution.

But she couldn't find it.

She pushed the music forward with frantic exhilaration, dragging the orchestra behind her.
René shot her a warning look.
Leila drove hard, demanding they follow, viciously attacking the finale as she searched for what eluded her.

But when the last chord exploded, ringing with a rage composed of love and longing, Leila felt nothing but a drained emptiness.

It was as if the reins keeping her in control, in the carefully constructed environment where she'd always created music, had snapped and broken away.
Everything had felt just beyond reach. The notes had danced before her but she'd been unable to grasp them, to own and mold them into what she wanted to say.

"Brava!"

Leila blinked.

People stood, flooding the hall with a deluge of approval for her sacrifice on stage. ~ Emma Raveling

What happened to your face?"
"Dentist."
"They're all con artists. ~ Emma Raveling

Things are really fucked up right now. We hardly see each other anymore and when we do, we go to sleep on opposite sides of the bed ~ Lucinda Rosenfeld

A lot of people will break your heart, but if you look at the bright side, only one will be the worst. ~ Dominic Riccitello

It is a very trying task for deceitful people, always to have to cover up their lack of sincerity and to repair the breaking of their word. ~ Madeleine De Souvre, Marquise De ...

The Betty Lady explains love and splitting up: "It´s like playing the shell game with Jesus. You can´t figure anything out; it´s best not to try. You´ll just humiliate yourself. ~ Suzanne Finnamore

I blink rapidly, breaking our reverie and force myself to focus on something,anything, other than his beauty. Or his body. A body I want pressed against mine, limbs and tongues twisted and tangled, our flesh contortioned into X-rated abstract art ... ~ S.L. Jennings

You still love me? After all I have done?" she asked, her voice breaking.
"It doesn't matter. Nothing that has happened matters. I am here now, and I love you. ~ Elena Greene

Drag is like breaking the fourth wall in theater where we're letting you know straight up that this is an illusion. People are attracted to that because they know it's the truth of who they are also. No one is who they think they are. That's why people are attracted to drag. ~ RuPaul

As I train myself to cast off words, as I learn to erase word-thoughts, I begin to feel a new world rising up around me, The old world of houses, rooms, trees and streets shimmers, wavers and tears away, revealing another universe as startling as fire. We are shut off from the fullness of things. Words hide the world. They blur together elements that exist apart, or they break elements into pieces bind up the world, contract it into hard little pellets of perception. But the unbound world, the world behind the world – how fluid it is, how lovely and dangerous. At rare moments of clarity, I succeed in breaking through. Then I see. I see a place where nothing is known, because nothing is shaped in advance by words. There, nothing is hidden from me. There, every object presents itself entirely, with all its being. It's as if, looking at a house, you were able to see all four sides and both roof slopes. But then, there's no "house," no "object," no form that stops at a boundary, only a stream of manifold, precise, and nameless sensations, shifting into one another, pullulating, a fullness, a flow. Stripped of words, untamed, the universe pours in on me from every direction. I become what I see. I am earth, I am air. I am all. My eyes are suns. My hair streams among the galaxies. ~ Steven Millhauser

Sitting there, I wasn't convinced I'd survive until that day let alone beyond it. I felt the struggle intensifying between my mom and me no matter what I did to try to stop it. I couldn't imagine a future where she'd just let me walk away from her. As it was, I felt like she was breaking me down a little more each day. ~ J.M. Northup

It is generally anger dreams that occupy my nights now.
This is not uncommon after loss of love -

blue and black and red blasting the crater open.
I am interested in anger. ~ Anne Carson

Learn rules carefully so you can break them properly ~ Anonymous

Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof?" (Job 38:4-6). How completely is the pride of man laid in the dust! ~ Arthur W. Pink

And the darkness of John's sin was like the darkness of the church on Saturday evenings[ ... ] It was like his thoughts as he moved about the tabernacle in which his life had been spent; the tabernacle that he hated, yet loved and feared[ ... ] The darkness of his sin was in the hardheartedness with which he resisted God's power; in the scorn that was often his while he listened to the crying, breaking voices, and watched the black skin glisten while they lifted up their arms and fell on their faces before the Lord. For he had made his decision. He would not be like his father, or his father's fathers. He would have another life. ~ James Baldwin

Because your character is always full of ambition, the news of my being locked up must have been much harder on you than it was on me. When I was arrested, it was almost a relief to know that I could now experience what you were experiencing yourself. I am so afraid that they are breaking your spirit. ~ Diet Eman

Live every day as if you've come back in time from a dystopian future to try and prevent everything from breaking. ~ Charlie Jane Anders

This body is breaking down, but I am not. ~ Ann Brashares

Life is attention to both the large and the small, little brother. Pay heed to the sun, but watch your feet, or you'll fall ingloriously on your nose. ~ Mercedes Lackey

A worthy life means showing up when showing up is the only thing to do. Goodness bears itself out in millions of ordinary ways across the globe, for the rich and poor, the famous and unknown, in enormous measures and tiny, holy moments. It may involve a career and it may not. It may include traditional components and it may not. ~ Jen Hatmaker

The paramount duty of maintaining public order and defending the interests of our own people may require the adoption of measures of restriction, but they should not tolerate the oppression of individuals of a special race. ~ Grover Cleveland

She could not smash anything without breaking herself. ~ Kevin Wilson

How I suffered when I had to preach to you those pious lies that I detest in my heart. What remorse your credulity caused me! A thousand times I was on the point of breaking out publicly and opening your eyes, but a fear stronger than myself held me back, and forced me to keep silence until my death. ~ Jean Meslier

To an unmoored, middle-aged man like myself, it was heart-breaking. That's all right. I like to have my heart broken. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

I'm always on Netflix. They got 'Breaking Bad!' How can you say no to that? ~ Tony Oller

The soybean itself is a notably inauspicious staple food; it contains a whole assortment of "antinutrients" - compounds that actually block the body's absorption of vitamins and minerals, interfere with the hormonal system, and prevent the body from breaking down the proteins of the soy itself. ~ Michael Pollan

To think of food as a weapon, or of a weapon as food, may give an illusory security and wealth to a few, but it strikes directly at the life of all.

The concept of food-as-weapon is not surprisingly the doctrine of a Department of Agriculture that is being used as an instrument of foreign political and economic speculation. This militarizing of food is the greatest threat so far raised against the farmland and the farm communities of this country. If present attitudes continue, we may expect government policies that will encourage the destruction, by overuse, of farmland. This, of course, has already begun. To answer the official call for more production -- evidently to be used to bait or bribe foreign countries -- farmers are plowing their waterways and permanent pastures; lands that ought to remain in grass are being planted in row crops. Contour plowing, crop rotation, and other conservation measures seem to have gone out of favor or fashion in official circles and are practices less and less on the farm. This exclusive emphasis on production will accelerate the mechanization and chemicalization of farming, increase the price of land, increase overhead and operating costs, and thereby further diminish the farm population. Thus the tendency, if not the intention, of Mr. Butz confusion of farming and war, is to complete the deliverance of American agriculture into the hands of corporations. ~ Wendell Berry

People know what happened in California, and they know it can happen again and again. They know that no group has passed more ballot measures than we have. They know we have a focused strategy. They know we have a budget of $150 million a year. And they know we're ready for a fight. ~ Wayne Pacelle

I loved her; I didn't know how to say it without breaking down the autobot façade she saw before her and revealing the ugly and scarred wreck that lived within my skin. So I played with the radio instead. ~ David Louden

We're breaking another taboo, talking about racism, but I've just broken a bigger one confronting that guy before the entire restaurant, instead of sticking to that Asian nonconfrontational thing. But these are rules meant to be broken. Something happens to a kid when they see their parent treated like that. Something happens to the parent. ~ Abigail Hing Wen

Brother, these last two months I've found in myself a new man. A new man has risen up in me. He was hidden in me, but would never have come to the surface, if it hadn't been for this blow from heaven. I am afraid! And what do I care if I spend twenty years in the mines, breaking ore with a hammer? I am not a bit afraid of that- it's something else I am afraid of now: that that new man may leave me. Even there, in the mines, underground, I may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, and I may make friends with him, for even there one may live and love and suffer. One may thaw and revive a frozen heart in that convict, one may wait upon him for years, and at last bring up from the dark depths a lofty soul, a feeling, suffering creature; one may bring forth an angel, create a hero! There are so many of them, hundreds of them, and we are all to blame for them. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Ours has been an expansionist society, but that narrative must change as we run out of places to expand into. But our culture is like a cart stuck in the same old rut that has been leading us in one direction. The longer we've been using a path, the deeper the ruts get, the harder it is to escape them. We've been moving ever Westward, but there's only so far we can go in that direction before we fall into the ocean. It's a direction that we cannot continue on forever, but the breaking of those ruts will require a major rupture. The old narrative is dying, and it will be quite a crushing of gears before things are re-adjusted. A shared story is needed for a civilization to endure. ~ James Rozoff

Jah come to break downpression, rule equality, wipe away transgression, set the captives free. ~ Bob Marley

It would probably break my heart to hear that people didn't like me. I don't look on the Internet. ~ Elisabeth Rohm

I disregard the proportions, the measures, the tempo of the ordinary world. I refuse to live in the ordinary world as ordinary women. To enter ordinary relationships. I want ecstasy. I am a neurotic - in the sense that I live in my world. I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself. ~ Anais Nin

The concept of the strong linkage to the family is breaking down in Western nations. ~ Azim Premji

His jaw clenched. "Okay, so I guess trying to let you down easy was a bad idea--"

"This is your idea of letting me down easy? Breaking up with me so you can screw other girls? Without feeling guilty? Are you serious?"

"As a heart attack."

The last thing I thought before I picked up my econ textbook and hurled it at him: How can he use such a piece-of-shit cliche in a moment like this? ~ Tammara Webber

He held up the AK-47, the muscles in his arm bunching against the weight. "This is an assault rifle." Then held up the handgun. "This is a semi-automatic pistol."
Then he gave a little thrust of his hips and looked down at his penis. "That is my gun. As you've discovered, it's pumpaction like a shotgun , but it doesn't fire bullets. ~ Pamela Clare