Crossings Quotes

Perhaps there is no other way of reaching some understanding of being than through art? Writers themselves don't analyze what they do; to analyze would be to look down while crossing a canyon on a tightrope. To say this is not to mystify the process of writing but to make an image out of the intense inner concentration the writer must have to cross the chasms of the aleatory and make them the word's own, as an explorer plants a flag. ~ Nadine Gordimer

Crossing barriers can be as simple as a smile. ~ Ron Kaufman

Izzy," said Jace, as they neared the pond, and she jumped up and spun around. Her smile was dazzling.
"Jace!" She flew at him and hugged him. Now that was the way sisters were supposed to act, Clary thought. Not all stiff and weird and peculiar, but happy and loving. Watching Jace hug Isabelle, she tried to school her features into a happy and loving expression.
"Are you all right?" Simon asked, with some concern. "Your eyes are crossing."
"I'm fine." Clary abandoned the attempt.
"Are you sure? You looked sort of ... contorted. ~ Cassandra Clare

I do hope after my crossing that more people will follow suit. ~ Roh Moo-hyun

Comrade Mao, whether he was crossing 'a sea of surging waves' or scaling 'a mountain pass impregnable as iron' always held unwaveringly to his course, setting a shining example for the Chinese Communist Party. ~ Xi Jinping

What if the girl says. Instead of saying, this border divides places. We said, this border holds together two really interesting different places. What if we declared border crossings places where, listen, when you crossed them, you yourself became doubly possible. ~ Ali Smith

Try to remember this: what you project Is what you will perceive; what you perceive With any passion, be it love or terror, May take on whims and powers of its own. Therefore a numb and grudging circumspection Will serve you best - unless you overdo it, Watching your step too narrowly, refusing To specify a world, shrinking your purview To a tight vision of your inching shoes, Which may, as soon as you come to think, be crossing An unseen gorge upon a rotten trestle. ~ Richard Wilbur

Though one should live through all the time from Adam and all the time to come before the judgment day doing good works, yet he who, energising in his highest, purest part, crosses from time to eternity, verily in the sight of God this man conceives and does far more than anyone who lives throughout all past and future time, because this now includes the whole of time. One master says that in crossing over time into the now each power of the soul will surpass itself ... ~ Meister Eckhart

Now, some people do this for shock value. Shock is just another uptown word for surprise. Granted it has a different quality to it, but a joke is about surprising someone. I'm a great believer in context. You can joke about anything. I do like finding out where the line is drawn, deliberately crossing it and bringing some of them with me across the line, and having them be happy that I did. ~ George Carlin

I could have told him that nothing was safe and that no matter how careful you were and how hard you tried, there were still accidents, hidden traps, and snares. You could get killed on an airplane or crossing the street. Your marriage could fall apart when you weren't looking; your husband could lose his job; our baby could get sick or die. ~ Jennifer Weiner

The real issue is not if a crossing is put in, but when. It would be negligent on the part of Union Pacific and the California Public Utilities Commission to not address the problem. ~ Dean Smith

Border crossings in the Balkans, where bitter wars have been waged, were not regarded as pleasurable; in many places, they weren't even possible, and one avoided them. But, while riding in the droshky and later, when we dismounted, we saw the most luxuriant orchards and vegetable gardens, dark-violet eggplants, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, gigantic pumpkins and melons; I couldn't get over my amazement at all the different things that grew here. "That's what it's like here", said Mother, "a blessed land. And it's a civilized land, no one should be ashamed of being born here. ~ Elias Canetti

True stories are the ones that lie open at the border, allowing a crossing, a further frontier. The final frontier is just science fiction – don't believe it. Like the universe, there is no end. ~ Jeanette Winterson

Having a career is a bit like navigating an Atlantic crossing - you have to make sure everything is keeping and is balanced. ~ Kristin Scott Thomas

I know it shouldn't make a difference, but crossing the dateline, we weren't sure what day it was - it was very strange. Now, I seem to cope with it better. ~ Phil Collins

How often have I painted a splendid picture of a journey marked by courageous ascents and daring desert crossings when all along all I've really been doing is running? ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Advice to children crossing the street: damn the lights. Watch the cars. The lights ain't never killed nobody. ~ Moms Mabley

After all these years, it's still amazing what Obama is allowed to get away with. He says low gas prices in 2009 were caused by a terrible economy, but then claims that the lower number of illegal aliens crossing the border is because of his border policies, not the same lousy economy. ~ Howie Carr

Ten silos," Inej said. "Nine crossings."
"They're a lot taller up close," said Nina. "Are you ready for this?"
Inej couldn't deny they were intimidating. "No matter the height of the mountain, the climbing is the same."
"That's not technically true. You need ropes, picks - "
"Don't be a Matthias. ~ Leigh Bardugo

Life is like crossing a river. If you take a huge step-aim for too bigger dreams-then the current will knock you off your feet and carry you away.
The way to do it is small steps, you will take hold of life. You will get there in the end. ~ Louis Sachar

Courage is crossing a starting line. ~ Amby Burfoot

The mere thought hadn't even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my mind. ~ Douglas Adams

Learning to communicate in and with a culture of science is a much broader undertaking than mastering a body of discrete conceptual or procedural knowledge. One observer, for example, describes the process of science education as one in which learners must engage in "border crossings" from their own everyday world culture into the subculture of science.1 The subculture of science is in part distinct from other cultural activities and in part a reflection of the cultural backgrounds of scientists themselves. ~ Heidi A. Schweingruber

... zebra crossings were rather like Bosnia's "safe zones": places where, if you die, you may simply die with the knowledge that your killer was in the wrong. ~ Lucy Wadham

When I was 14, I used to have a calendar on my wall, crossing the days off until I was 15, because the school leaving age was 15. Then three months before I turned 15 they changed the leaving age to 16. ~ Mark E. Smith

Zebra crossings have produced a peculiar new type of mentality in an increasing number of people. This has its new correlated freedom: THE RIGHT TO ZEBRA-CROSS. If Freud were still alive he would certainly be able to define this new psychological trait, this zebra-complex. For those afflicted, life is simply a huge zebra-crossing: as soon as they step into the arena they expect all movement to come to a standstill and give way to them. In very bad cases the patient expects people to watch him admiringly and wave to him with friendly smiles. ~ George Mikes

I know that experts say you're more likely to get hurt crossing the street than you are flying, but that doesn't make me any less frightened of flying. If anything, it makes me more afraid of crossing the street. ~ Ellen DeGeneres

Riches do not come by crossing your fingers and walking through the day hoping. Riches and wealth comes from well-laid plans. ~ Jim Rohn

One of my fantasies in my life has been that I was granted access with a camera to go back in time, and to film the actual campaign of Alexander crossing into India through Iran and Persia. ~ Oliver Stone

I'd seen the Shadow Fold on many maps, a black slash that had severed Ravka from its only coastline and left it landlocked. Sometimes it was shown as a stain, sometimes as a bleak and shapeless cloud. And then there were the maps that just showed the Shadow Fold as a long, narrow lake and labeled it by its other name, "the Unsea," a name intended to put soldiers and merchants at their ease and encourage crossings. I snorted. That might fool some fat merchant, but it was little comfort to me. I ~ Leigh Bardugo

The Commission endorses prevention as the principal strategy to use in deterring illegal entries. We applaud the efforts of innovative Border Patrol leaders such as Silvestre Reyes with Operation Hold the Line in El Paso. Operation Hold the Line demonstrated that a strategic use of personnel and technology can combine at our land border, as it has for many years at our airports, to reduce unauthorized crossings. ~ Barbara Jordan

After crossing the Smoky Hill River, I felt comparatively safe as this was the last stream I had to cross. ~ Buffalo Bill

We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Cross it? I'm making plans to destroy the bridge from orbit.
-Colonel Ceeta & Captain Tagon ~ Howard Tayler

It's incredible how many emotions you feel when crossing the finish line and seeing that you are No. 1. ~ Marcel Hirscher

When a black Jacksonian looks about his home community, he sees a city of over 150,000, of which 40% is Negro, in which there is not a single Negro policeman or policewoman, school crossing guard, or fireman. ~ Medgar Evers

Your future. It awaits only you, to live it and to write it. ~ Robin Hobb

In spirituals, the talk of heaven and deliverance was code for a better life. 'Crossing the River Jordan' was code, of course, for escaping to freedom. ~ Kathleen Battle

The distance between capital and labor is not a great gulf over which is swung a Niagara suspension bridge; it is only a step, and the laborers here will cross over and become capitalists and the capitalists will cross over and become laborers. Would to God they would shake hands while they are crossing, these from one side, and those from the other side. ~ Thomas De Witt Talmage

Writers themselves don't analyze what they do; to analyze would be to look down while crossing a canyon on a tightrope. ~ Nadine Gordimer

If liberals think Iraqis are genetically incapable of pulling off even the most rudimentary form of democracy, why do they believe 50 million Mexicans will magically become good Americans, imbued in the nation's history and culture, upon crossing the Rio Grande? Maybe we should dunk Iraqis in the Rio and see what happens ... ~ Ann Coulter

I did an audiobook for 'Rough Crossings,' which I thought was one of the best books I had published. But it was an absolute embarrassment to read it. All these horrible mucked-up bits of syntax, over-the-top adjectives. I found myself editing it while reading. Alert listeners will notice the difference. ~ Simon Schama

I could never toe the party line. I'd wear out the carpet crossing the floor. ~ Hazel McCallion

Because after you've crossed some lines, you just keep crossing them. And there's no escaping from constant escape. Distracting ourselves. Avoiding confrontation. Getting past the moment. Jacking off. Television. Denial. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Of everything that man erects and builds in his urge for living nothing is in my eyes better and more valuable than bridges. They are more important than houses, more sacred than shrines. Belonging to everyone and being equal to everyone, useful, always built with a sense, on the spot where most human needs are crossing, they are more durable than other buildings and they do not serve for anything secret or bad. ~ Ivo Andric

As he left the room it seemed to him that he was walking between two eternities, on one side a list of the living, with its inevitable crossings-out, on the other - eternal exile. Eternal as the stars, as the galaxies. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Lawyers-they get together all day and say to each other, "What can we postpone next?" The only thing they don't postpone, of course, is their bill, which arrives regularly. You've heard about the man who got the bill from his lawyer which said, "For crossing the street to speak to you and discovering it was not you, twelve dollars." ~ George S. Kaufman

The world is full of banks and rivers running between them, of men and women crossing bridges and fords, unaware of the consequences, not looking back or beneath their feet, and with no loose change for the boatman. ~ Arturo Perez Reverte

As you deal with thumb-crossings, or fingerings for the F-sharp-minor scale, or chromatic scales in double thirds, it is hard to accept that these will eventually allow you to probe eternity in the final movement of Beethoven's last sonata. Imagine that you are scrubbing the grout in your bathroom and are told that removing every last particle of mildew will somehow enable you to deliver the Gettysburg Address. ~ Jeremy Denk

Watching Jace hug Isabelle, she tried to school her features into a happy and loving expression.
"Are you all right?" Simon asked, with some concern. "Your eyes are crossing. ~ Cassandra Clare

The idea that you're going have zero people crossing the border is unrealistic. But today we know that's not the case. Today we know we've got a porous border and people are coming in, and we don't know who they are. So secure the border then we can have a conversation about it. ~ Rick Perry

There's an ancient saying in Japan, that life is like walking from one side of infinite darkness to another, on a bridge of dreams. They say that we're all crossing the bridge of dreams together. That there's nothing more than that. Just us, on the bridge of dreams. ~ M T Anderson

I write the paragraph, then I'm crossing out, changing words, trying to improve it. When it seems more or less OK, then I type it up because sometimes it's almost illegible, and if I wait, I might not be able to read it the next day. ~ Paul Auster

For me, it's church and state, not church in state, and I really feel there are some churches in central Ohio crossing that line. ~ Eric Williams

We stock up on popcorn and candy like we're crossing the Sierras, don't we? I'll have a couple of soft pretzels, a hot dog, Milk Duds, Snocaps. Is that the largest popcorn you've got there, that bucket? You don't have a barrel or anything like that? Do you have a donkey or a pack mule or anything? - Oh, and a Diet Coke. ~ Ellen DeGeneres

Although I would appreciate it if you tried not to sound so bloody sarcastic. Beelzebub himself ticked me off the other day for not getting the proper respect from you blasted cats. He came all the way from Pandemonium because he found out that the Captain had started calling me "mate." I said to him: it's a different world nowadays, Beelzebub. It's not as respectful as it used to be. People on mobile phones; people cycling on the pavement; people cycling across pedestrian crossings even when the lights are against them. ~ Lynne Truss

If you don't discover God's dreams, you'll either waste your life running in wrong races and crossing wrong finish lines or, like many people, have no finish line at all. ~ Dutch Sheets

I came to the conclusion that war was an unacceptable way of solving whatever problems there were in the world
that there would be problems of tyranny, of injustice, of nations crossing frontiers and that injustice and tyranny should not be tolerated and should be fought and resisted, but the one thing that must not be used to solve that problem is war. Because war is inevitably the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of people. And that fact overwhelms whatever moral cause is somewhere buried in the history of that war. ~ Howard Zinn

A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I should study Nature's laws in all their crossings and unions; I should follow magnetic streams to their source and follow the shores of our magnetic oceans. I should go among the rays of the aurora, and follow them to their beginnings, and study their dealings and communications with other powers and expressions of matter. ~ John Muir

Crossing the Swamp"

Here is the endless
wet thick
cosmos, the center
of everything - the nugget
of dense sap, branching
vines, the dark burred
faintly belching
bogs. Here
is swamp, here
is struggle,
closure -
pathless, seamless,
peerless mud. My bones
knock together at the pale
joints, trying
for foothold, fingerhold,
mindhold over
such slick crossings, deep
hipholes, hummocks
that sink silently
into the black, slack
earthsoup. I feel
not wet so much as
painted and glittered
with the fat grassy
mires, the rich
and succulent marrows
of earth - a poor
dry stick given
one more chance by the whims
of swamp water - a bough
that still, after all these years,
could take root,
sprout, branch out, bud -
make of its life a breathing
palace of leaves. ~ Mary Oliver

I try to very hard to avoid a situation where I would be eating cat or dog; I've managed to gracefully avoid that. It's hypocritical of me and an arbitrary line, but one that I have managed to avoid crossing. ~ Anthony Bourdain

My grandfather was Catholic; my grandmother, Jewish. Crossing over from Bavaria, as immigrants to the United States, the ship started to sink. My grandmother jumped overboard. My grandfather followed, to save this girl he had never met. ~ Emanuel Celler

Americans are rightly concerned about the security and the integrity of the nation's borders because the system is broken. Some are concerned about the possibility of terrorists crossing our borders and coming into our cities. ~ Chris Cannon

This is a book called Women in the Shade of Islam. It's published by the government of Saudi Arabia. I picked it up in Pakistan, where the Taliban Ladies Auxiliary, and our young wife in California would've picked up an item like this. And it puts out that Salafi-Wahhabi ideology that is ultimately the toxic poison that is crossing all these borders. ~ Dalia Mogahed

Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five. ~ C.S. Lewis

Crossing the uplands of time, Skirting the borders of night, Scaling the face of the peak of dreams, We enter the region of light, And hastening on with eager intent, Arrive at the rainbow's end, And here uncover the pot of gold Buried deep in the heart of a friend. ~ Grace Coolidge

Hey!" I turned, crossing my arms and glaring. "I was talking to him!"
Tybalt eyed me with amusement, which just made me glare harder. "No, you were inciting him to stab you with a toothpick. Again, the difference is small, but I think it matters. ~ Seanan McGuire

You have film actors doing TV, rap stars doing TV, with everyone kind of crossing the line. ~ Anthony Michael Hall

Where did all the women come from? The supply was endless. Each one of them was individual, different. Their pussies were different, their kisses were different, their breasts were different, but no man could drink them all, there were too many of them, crossing their legs, driving men mad. What a feast! ~ Charles Bukowski

As I hurtled through space, one thought kept crossing my mind - every part of this rocket was supplied by the lowest bidder. ~ John Glenn

Let go the past, let go the future, and let go the present (front, back, middle). Crossing to the farther shore of existence, with mind released everywhere, do not further undergo birth and decay. ~ Gautama Buddha

Directly beneath the Lotus Pond of Paradise lay the lower depths of Hell, and as He peered through the crystalline waters, He could see the River of Three Crossings and the Mountain of Needles as clearly as if He were viewing pictures in a peep-box. ~ Ryunosuke Akutagawa

There are certain bridges that are not worth crossing, no matter what others think. Loyalty and relationships are important. ~ Tony Dungy

Letters crossing in the post, unfamiliar tunes heard three times in one day, the way that blows of fate descend upon the same bowed shoulders, and the beams of good fortune glow perpetually upon the blessed. Fairy tales, as I said, are lived out daily. There is far more going on in the world than we ever imagine. ~ Fay Weldon

There are people in our lives whom we love, and lose, and unfailingly long for. They orbit our hearts like Halley's Comet, crossing into our universe only once, or if we are lucky, twice in a lifetime. ~ Jamie Ford

I imagine you working on me as an algebra problem, reducing me to fractions, crossing out common denominators, until there's nothing left on the page but a line that says x = whatever it is that is wrong with me. ~ Patricia McCormick

The Obama administration has issued numerous orders essentially suspending deportations, prompting a major spike in illegal crossings. ~ Aaron Klein

Sorry but nothing of much importance ever happened to me ... I'm just a girl who forgot to look both ways before crossing the street. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

A good programmer is someone who always looks both ways before crossing a one-way street. ~ Doug Linder

I don't like my hockey sticks touching other sticks, and I don't like them crossing one another, and I kind of have them hidden in the corner. I put baby powder on the ends. I think it's essentially a matter of taking care of what takes care of you. ~ Wayne Gretzky

I see humanity now as one vast plant, needing for its highest fulfillment only love, the natural blessings of the great outdoors, and intelligent crossing and selection. ~ Luther Burbank

It was anyway all a long time ago; the world, we know now, is as it is and not different; if there was ever a time when there were passages, doors, the borders open and many crossing, that time is not now. The world is older than it was. Even the weather isn't as we remember it clearly once being; never lately does there come a summer day such as we remember, never clouds as white as that, never grass as odorous or shade as deep and full of promise as we remember they can be, as once upon a time they were. ~ John Crowley

I got my heel stuck in a drain as I was crossing the street and cars were coming. It was really scary. A girl in heels in New York is a hard combination. ~ Sasha Pieterse

Crossing the starting line may be an act of courage, but crossing the finish line is an act of faith. Faith is what kepes us going when nothing else will. Faith is the emotion that will give you victory over your past, the demons in your soul, & all of those voices that tell you what you can & cannot do & can & cannot be. ~ John Bingham

The border is a marketplace. The invisible hand of the powerful governs the crossings. ~ Amitava Kumar

But I can hardly sit still. I keep fidgeting, crossing one leg and then the other. I feel like I could throw off sparks, or break a window
maybe rearrange all the furniture. ~ Raymond Carver

When love congeals It soon reveals The faint aroma of performing seals, The double-crossing of a pair of heels. I wish I were in love again! ~ Lorenz Hart

As a co-chair of the State's 2010 Olympics Task Force, I am working to make sure our border crossings are ready to handle the risks and benefits the Games will bring. ~ Rick Larsen

I get a lot of letters. Not only from children but from adults, too. Almost every week, every month, clippings come in from some part of the world where ducks are crossing the street. ~ Robert McCloskey

Sarai had treasured every stage of Rachel's childhood, enjoying the day-to-day normalcy of things; a normalcy which she quietly accepted as the best of life. She had always felt that the essence of human experience lay not primarily in the peak experiences, the wedding days and triumphs which stood out in the memory like dates circled in red on old calendars, but, rather, in the unself-conscious flow of little things - the weekend afternoon with each member of the family engaged in his or her own pursuit, their crossings and connections casual, dialogues imminently forgettable, but the sum of such hours creating a synergy which was important and eternal. ~ Dan Simmons

Carnal reason is an enemy to faith: it is ever crossing and contradicting it. It will never be well with thee, Christian, so long as thou art swayed by carnal reason, and you rely more upon thy five senses, than upon the four Evangelists. As the body lives by breathing, so the soul lives by believing. ~ Thomas Brooks

The crossing of space ... may do much to turn men's minds outwards and away from their present tribal squabbles. In this sense, the rocket, far from being one of the destroyers of civilisation, may provide the safety-value that is needed to preserve it. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

Good ideas may not want to be free, but they do want to connect, fuse, recombine. They want to reinvent themselves by crossing conceptual borders. They want to complete each other as much as they want to compete ~ Steven Johnson

... to wander far from the familiar "home" of his adolescent ways of belonging, doing, and being. He must, as poet Mary Oliver puts it, "stride deeper and deeper into the world." His culture will greatly influence the manner in which he wanders, as will his gender, physical constitution, psychological temperament, age, and bio-region. In one culture, his wandering might take him geographically far from his hometown or village. In another culture, geographic movement will have little importance for the true depth of his wandering. What is critical is not whether he engages in this practice or that, or undergoes this ritual or another, but that his wandering changes his relationship to the world, that he leaves the home of his adolescent identity, and that his border crossings usher him into the mysteries of nature and psyché. ~ Bill Plotkin

When I am getting ready to cross a street, I look both ways before crossing. My bones, my muscles, are not what they used to be, so I am careful when I go up and down stairs, because I've heard stories of older people falling and having very disabling injuries. I have enough things that begin to go a little bit wrong as I get a little bit older. ~ Buzz Aldrin

To me thinking outside the box means; crossing disciplines and pulling in expertise and perspective from outside of the standard boundaries. ~ Dror Benshetrit

The Gospel lives in conversation with culture, and if the Church holds back from the culture, the Gospel itself falls silent. Therefore, we must be fearless in crossing the threshold of the communication and information revolution now taking place. ~ Pope John Paul II

True love is boundless like the ocean and, swelling within one, spreads itself out and, crossing all boundaries and frontiers, envelops the whole world. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

For the ordinary man, whose mind is a checkerboard of crisscrossing reflections, opinions, and prejudices, bare attention is virtually impossible; his life is thus centered not in reality itself but in his ideas of it. By focusing the mind wholly on each objects and every action, zazen strips it of extraneous thoughts and allows us to enter into a full rapport with life. ~ Philip Kapleau

In his fierce, bold determination to see the lives of modern-day slaves up close, Benjamin Skinner reminds me of the British abolitionist of two hundred years ago, Zachary Macaulay, who once traveled on a slave ship across the Atlantic, taking notes. Skinner goes everywhere, from border crossings to brothels to bargaining sessions with dealers in human beings, to bring us this vivid, searing account of the wide network of human trafficking and servitude which spans today's globe. ~ Adam Hochschild