Buckling Down Quotes

I may not have baggage with Nick, but nailing it still means I have to push everything else aside. Nothing else can matter but fully becoming Ellen, and what would Ellen do is a situation like this? She'd give herself an hour to be mad, to be sad, to be whatever she needed to be, and then she'd buckle down. No excuses. ~ Christina Lauren

If I could only turn the etch-a-sketch of my life upside down. ~ Lynda Barry

He was dead tired, thanks to which, whatever emotions he might have had, simply came and went without gaining a foothold. The Rat began to relax and lay down his empty head on the mingled sounds of the waves and the deejay until sleep crept over him. ~ Haruki Murakami

He cranks the condo's AC way down at night and still most mornings wakes up soaked, fetally curled, entombed in that kind of psychic darkness where you're dreading whatever you think of. ~ David Foster Wallace

I used to say in the cabinet room, 'confidence is not like a can of Popeye spinach - you can't take the top off and swallow it down.' You know, confidence has to be earned. ~ Paul Keating

I sit down and liberally spread salad dressing across my plate, because on the eight day, God created ranch dressing, ~ Julie Murphy

For example, I wouldn't hesitate to sit somebody down if he wasn't performing, even if he was the No. 1 player in the world. I've been sat down before. ~ Payne Stewart

Donald Trump is kind of a riverboat gamble. He won the Illinois primary; in this case, we have seen the Republican vote up and the Democratic vote down, so it looks like it's a net benefit. ~ Mark Kirk

I knew you'd be wet," he whispered, and gave in to temptation, biting her ear.
She quivered. "Now I want you to spread your legs for me. Just a little bit. That's right," he crooned in her ear. "That's perfect. You're perfect. Beautiful." He kissed the side of her neck, because he couldn't help it. He wanted his fingers inside her, wanted his cock inside her, but he couldn't have what he wanted. If he turned her, yanked off her pants and pushed her down on the floor he wouldn't stop, and this had to be for her and her alone. ~ Anne Stuart

For me to sit down here, even as a Nobel Laureate and make a prediction about which science I think that will be a mistake. ~ Ahmed H. Zewail

Everyone goes to the forest; some go for a walk to be inspired, and others go to cut down the trees. ~ Vladimir Horowitz

Instead of replying, Alec reached down and took Magnus's hands. Magnus let Alec pull him to his feet, a questioning look in his eyes. Before he could say anything, Alec drew him closer and kissed him. Magnus made a soft, pleased sound, and gripped the back of Alec's shirt, rucking it up, his fingers cool on Alec's spine. Alec leaned into him, pinning Magnus between the table and his own body. Not that Magnus seemed to mind.
'Come on,' Alec said against Magnus's ear. 'It's late. Let's go to bed. ~ Cassandra Clare

Dove sat between his legs for a few more seconds, trying to come up with any feasible reason she could stay there.
I want to sniff his balls. Just once. ~ Debra Anastasia

Deep practice is built on a paradox: struggling in certain targeted ways - operating at the edges of your ability, where you make mistakes - makes you smarter. Or to put it a slightly different way, experiences where you're forced to slow down, make errors, and correct them - as you would if you were walking up an ice-covered hill, slipping and stumbling as you go - end up making you swift and graceful without your realizing it. ~ Daniel Coyle

Oh my honey Jesus. You did NOT tell Sway that you knew this fine mountain of a man, no you did NOT. Holy goodness Lord above, I need a cold shower after that girlfriend. You get your pretty little self into my chair and you tell Sway all about it. Every single delectable thing about it, if you know what I mean. Sweet heavens, I need a drink."
I turn my head from my perch in Axel's arms and laugh down at Sway. He is standing in the doorway of the salon fanning his face.
"What is that?" Axel says softly into my ear so only I hear him.
Turning around with a bright smile I say, "That is Sway. ~ Harper Sloan

Of course I was afraid. But I had learned to fear other things more: being despised, whittled down one small piece of myself at a time, smirked at and taken advantage of. I put my chin up and said, as cold as I could be in answer, "And what will you give me in return? ~ Naomi Novik

I think the guys who are sort of infantry in Somali piracy are not unlike low-level drug dealers in urban areas in America, who see it as, you know, not having many other options. I think it comes down to money and needing to survive. ~ Cutter Hodierne

You're here! She repeated, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs
around his hips. He'd dropped his bags as she'd ran, and now he cupped her bottom in his large hands ... His heart gave a giant thump, all the way down from his chest to his stomach,
and as she smiled up at him he lowered his head and devoured her mouth,
smile and all. Her lips were just as warm, and just as soft as he remembered, and her mouth tasted like peaches and cinnamon and Corinne Carol-Anne and without thought he pushed her back against the hallway wall and kissed her and kissed her and kissed her as though all their time apart would disappear in that frantic mating of tongue and lips and teeth. He wanted to take her into himself, all of her, and keep her warm and safe and happy, just like this moment when she
burst with joy, just to see him.
Wounded
(Green and Cory, after being apart) ~ Amy Lane

I felt as though I owned the whole world. And little wonder, because at no time are we ever in such complete possession of a journey, down to its last nook and cranny , as when we are busy with preparations for it. After that, there remains only the journey itself, which is nothing but the process through which we lose our ownership of it. This is what makes travel so utterly fruitless. ~ Yukio Mishima

Crime begins with God. It will end with man, when he finds God again. Crime is everywhere, in all the fibres and roots of our being. Every minute of the day adds fresh crimes to the calendar, both those which are detected and punished, and those which are not. The criminal hunts down the criminal. The judge condemns the judger. The innocent torture the innocent. Everywhere, in every family, every tribe, every great community, crimes, crimes, crimes. War is clean by comparison. The hangman is a gentle dove by comparison. Attila, Tamerlane, Genghis Khan reckless automatons by comparison. Your father, your darling mother, your sweet sister: do you know the foul crimes they harbor in their breasts? Can you hold the mirror to iniquity when it is close at hand? Have you looked into the labyrinth of your own despicable heart? Have you sometimes envied the thug for his forthrightness? The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself. All that you despise, all that you loathe, all that you reject, all that you condemn and seek to convert by punishment springs from you. The source of it is God whom you place outside, above and beyond. Crime is identification, first with God, then with your own image. ~ Henry Miller

When you want to break a board, cracking it in the middle is only the first step. Success comes when you bounce up and down with all your might until the board snaps in half ~ Arthur Golden

She made herself look. To face down that place of pain and despair. It would always leave a mark, a stain on her, but she would not let it define her.

Hers was not a story of darkness.

This would not be the story. She would fold it into herself , this place, this fear, but it would not be the whole story. It would not be her story. ~ Sarah J. Maas

Our culture says 'live your dream,' but God calls you to place your dream on His altar and to keep it there at all times. It is good to have hopes and dreams for the future, but we have no rights. There are no certainties. Any dream can become an idol and, if it does, God will bring it down. ~ Colin S. Smith

The Middle East that Obama inherited in 2009 was largely at peace, for the surge in Iraq had beaten down the al Qaeda-linked groups. U.S. relations with traditional allies in the Gulf, Jordan, Israel and Egypt were very good. Iran was contained, its Revolutionary Guard forces at home. ~ Elliott Abrams

If you built the box, you can also break it down. ~ Gina Greenlee

I sometimes used to ask myself, what on earth did I love her for? Maybe fore the warm hazel iris of her fluffy eyes, or for the natural side-wave of her brown hair, done anyhow, or again for that movement of her plump shoulders. But, probably the truth was that I loved her because she loved me. To her I was the ideal man: brains, pluck. And there was none dressed better. I remember once, when I first put on that new dinner jacket, with the vast trousers, she clapsed her hands, sank down on a chair and murmured: 'Oh, Hermann ... It was ravishment bordering upon something like heavenly woe. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Then the wind comes so swift and dashing that it takes the autumn leaves with it, and they rise into the juggling air, while the trees bleat and blubber. Then drops fall, big as the thumb … the earth itself seems to heave up and cheep in the monsoon rains. It churns and splashes, beats against the treetops, reckless and wilful, and suddenly floating forwards, it bucks back and spits forward and pours down upon the green, weak coffee leaves, thumping them down to the earth. ~ Raja Rao

Learn to draw. Try to make your hand so unconsciously adept that it will put down what you feel without your having to think of your hands. Then you can think of the thing before you. ~ Sherwood Anderson

It sounds stupid, but there's nothing like walking down the street and seeing a building that's older than 100 years old. I think London - not to sound pretentious - like New York, it's a big melting pot for all things and it's just got this energy that you can't find anywhere else. ~ Christian Cooke

He explained how ridiculous the clowning was, and there and then I decided to settle down and play seriously. ~ Mary Lou Williams

Who did you pray for?"
I stared down at the lake. "I prayed for Mandy."
"That's so sweet."
"Yeah, I asked God to make her less annoying. ~ M.K. Schiller

my life was only one of countless stories of human pain; that though I had considered myself the prima donna of sufferers, I was simply one of a vast troupe; that darkness indeed descends upon every man and woman, but that moon and stars also shine down upon all.
p 315 ~ Jamie Langston Turner

She reached out a hand and touched the hair at his temple. "You're getting a little gray here." "Big surprise. I really didn't know you'd be such a handful." "I'm the best thing that ever happened to you." "Yeah," he said in a breath. He leaned down and kissed her brow. "Yeah, baby. You sure are. And you're a reproductive genius." John ~ Robyn Carr

The devil ain't got no power over me. The devil come, and me shake hands with the devil. Devil have his part to play. Devil's a good friend, too ... because when you don't know him, that's the time he can mosh you down. ~ Bob Marley

Since our tongues first moved in our mouths we've asked, What does it all mean? No other question made sense, with death breathing down our necks. But just let us settle in on ten thousand worlds spinning around ten thousand alien suns and the question will fade away. ~ Ray Bradbury

But what might be written in the book which had rounded its edges off in his pocket, she did not know. What he thought they none of them knew. But he was absorbed in it, so that when he looked up, as he did now for an instant, it was not to see anything; it was to pin down some thought more exactly. That done, his mind flew back again and he plunged into his reading. He read, she thought, as if he were guiding something, or wheedling a large flock of sheep, or pushing his way up and up a single narrow path; and sometimes he went fast and straight, and broke his way through the bramble, and sometimes it seemed a branch struck at him, a bramble blinded him, but he was not going to let himself be beaten by that; on he went, tossing over page after page. ~ Virginia Woolf

If an historian be an unbeliever in all heroism, if he be a man who brings every thing down to the level of a common mediocrity, depend upon it, the truth is not found in such a writer. ~ Matthew Arnold

Bitches will take your ass down if you try to publish that. Peace out. ~ Libba Bray

VANNBRUGGHE. (Spitting upon the floor) But the bounds of the Mind are yet unknown: we form our Judgments too much on what has been done without knowing what might be done. Originals must soar into the region of Liberty.

DYER. And then fall down, since they have Wings made only of Wax. Why prostrate your Reason to meer Nature? We live off the Past: it is in our Words and our Syllables. It is reverberant in our Streets and Courts, so that we can scarce walk across the Stones without being reminded of those who walked there before us; the Ages before our own are like an Eclipse which blots out the Clocks and Watches of our present Artificers and, in that Darkness, the Generations jostle one another. It is the dark of Time from which we come and to which we will return.

VANNBRUGGHE. (Aside) What is this stuff about Time? (To Dyer) This is well said, but this Age of ours is quite new. The World was never more active or youthful than it is now, and all this Imitation of the past is but the Death's Head of Writing as it is of Architecture. ~ Peter Ackroyd

I was walking down a street and after his death and saw a billboard on the side of a brick wall for Van's shoes. It was a picture of Hopper's face, and all it said was, 'Hopper Lives.' So I think he's still part of youth culture. There are lessons to be learned from Hopper about being a young person who wants to live the art life in America. ~ Tom Folsom

Edie Sedgwick (1943-1971)

I don't know how she did it. Fire
She was shaking all over. It took
her hours to put her make-up on.
But she did it. Even the false eye-lashes.
She ordered gin with triple
limes. Then a limosine. Everyone
knew she was the real heroine of
Blonde on Blonde.
oh it isn't fair
oh it isn't fair
how her ermine hair
turned men around
she was white on white
so blonde on blonde
and her long long legs
how I used to beg
to dance with her
but I never had
a chance with her
oh it isn't fair
how her ermine hair
used to swing so nice
used to cut the air
how all the men
used to dance with her
I never got a chance with her
though I really asked her
down deep
where you do
really dream
in the mind
reading love
I'd get
inside
her move
and we'd
turn around
and she'd
turn around
and turn the head
of everyone in town
her shaking shaking
glittering bones
second blonde child
after brian jones
oh it isn't fair

how I dreamed of her
and she slept
and she slept
forever
and I'll never dance
with her no never
she broke down
like a baby
like a baby girl
like a lady
with ermine hair
oh it isn't fair
and I'd like to see
her rise again
her white white bones
with baby bri ~ Patti Smith

You can hardly call Deor old.' Arisa wrapped her arms around herself; the breeze was brisk despite the sunlight. 'He didn't live long enough to get old. Why would he do that? I know kings are supposed to care for the realm above all else, and so on, and so on, but that's rot. They're men, just like anyone else. Do you think he really, deliberately, laid down his life?'
'Yes,' said Weasel. 'At least, I think it's possible.'
It was the last answer she'd expected from Weasel-the-cynic.
'But why?' Arisa asked.
'Not having been there, I can't say for sure.' Weasel stuck his hands in his pockets. 'But I'd guess it was for the future.'
Arisa frowned. 'I don't understand.'
'The One God willing,' said Weasel softly, 'you never will. ~ Hilari Bell

His life was dedicated to the fine art of tearing down and building anew. ~ Michael Lewis

Rose, the moon is incredible. Everything down on Earth relies on it. Rats jump for it. Tides rush out from it. Humans kiss under it. Without it there'd be nothing down there worth the light. And that just happened by chance -trillions of odd against it- one bit of stardust meets another bit of dust. ~ Gareth Roberts