Delicately Put Quotes

Since Betty was on the pill or took precautions of her own which Graham did not choose to enquire into, the marital bed was untrammelled by tedious prophylaxis so that what Graham had been expecting to find an onerous and even distasteful duty unexpectedly partook of a freedom and absence of restraint that he found exhilerating. ~ Alan Bennett

In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined,' as General MacArthur so delicately put it. ~ Robert M. Gates

A lot of hitters stay away from the plate, some are close up, some are forward, some are back. The thing about hitting is this: You have to know the strike zone. That's the most important thing. Hit strikes and put the bat on the ball. ~ Stan Musial

If increasing income equality is the goal, it might be wiser to put money into infrastructure than to subsidize manufacturing. Construction also pays good wages, but with lower educational requirements. And America's infrastructure needs are enormous. ~ Christina Romer

Growing up in the sport, I've been able to separate what happens on the track with what happens away from the track. That track is totally different. I'm not the same person when I put that helmet one. ~ Trevor Bayne

I use that word endlessly: "primitive." "Oh, the primitive world," I say. "What instinctive truths were lost with it!" And while I sit there, baiting a poor, unimaginative woman with the word that freaky boy tries to conjure the reality! I sit looking at pages of centaurs trampling the soil of Argos - and outside my window he is trying to become one, in a Hampshire field! ... I watch that woman knitting, night after night - a woman I haven't kissed in six years - and he stands in the dark for an hour, sucking the sweat of his God's hairy cheek! Then in the morning, I put away my books on the cultural shelf, close up the Kodachrome snaps of Mount Olympus, touch my reproduction statue of Dionysus for luck - and go off to hospital to treat him for insanity. Do you see? ~ Peter Shaffer

He put the book down. "As you wish." He rose and walked past me. I lowered my sword, expecting him to pass, but suddenly he stepped in dangerously close. "Welcome home. I'm glad you made it. There is coffee in the kitchen for you."
My mouth gaped open.
He inhaled my scent, bent close, about to kiss me ...
I just stood there like an idiot.
Curran smirked and whispered in my ear instead. "Psych."
And just like that, he was out the door and gone.
Oh boy. ~ Ilona Andrews

Put glibly:
In science if you know what you are doing you should not be doing it.
In engineering if you do not know what you are doing you should not be doing it.
Of course, you seldom, if ever, see either pure state. ~ Richard Hamming

She handed him the blankets and the ground sheet and he shook them out, then put them down under the trees. Angie got down on her knees and spread the ground sheet over the leaves, then the blankets.
'You never forget do you? I mean about seeing things first.'
'Hope I never.'
He was oddly uncomfortable, hesitant. 'Good way to lose your hair, not noticing things.'
He sat down and pulled off his boots. The cottonwoods whispered more softly. The squirrel gave one short inquiring chatter, then was silent.
The lone coyote spoke to the sky and the stream rustled busily about the stones. A bit of mud fell into the stream with a faint plop.
It was night and there was no sound. Or anyway, not very much. (p 154) ~ Louis L'Amour

Oh, I see. So, by admitting that you hate fighting, you would be a disappointment to your father and he would be embarrassed by you. Am I correct?" inquired the voice, eager.
The prince winced. "Yeah, you could put it like that."
"Ha! I learned something new today!" the voice said, excited. ~ Antje Hergt

Do I "really like" him? Is that the right way to put it? I've only known him for the summer technically, but "really like" doesn't seem to encompass it. If you "really like" someone, do they insist on invading your every thought? Does just saying their name make goose bumps rise on your arms? Do you contemplate how many freckles your children will have? ~ Leah Rae Miller

You could expect many things of God at night when the campfire burned before the tents. You could look through and beyond the veils of scarlet and see shadows of the world as God first made it and hear the voices of the beasts He put there. It was a world as old as Time, but as new as Creation's hour had left it.
In a sense it was formless. When the low stars shone over it and the moon clothed it in silver fog, it was the way the firmament must have been when the waters had gone and the night of the Fifth Day had fallen on creatures still bewildered by the wonder of their being. It was an empty world because no man had yet joined sticks to make a house or scratched the earth to make a road or embedded the transient symbols of his artifice in the clean horizon. But it was not a sterile world. It held the genesis of life and lay deep and anticipant under the sky. ~ Beryl Markham

The shape she loved was a triangle. Always black. Mauma put black triangles on about every quilt she sewed. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

You have a mismatched pair of genetic characteristics. Either alone would have been useful, would have aided the survival of your species. But the two together are lethal. It was only a matter of time before they destroyed you."

[...]

Jdahya made a rustling noise that could have been a sigh, but that did not seem to comer from his mouth or throat. "You are intelligent," he said. "That's the newer of the two characteristics, and the one you might have put to work to save yourselves. You are potentially one of the most intelligent species we've found, though your focus is different from ours. Still, you had a good start in the life sciences, and even in genetics."

"What's the second characteristic?"

"You are hierarchical. That's the older and more entrenched characteristic. We saw it in your closest animal relatives and in your most distant ones. It's a terrestrial characteristic. When human intelligence served it instead of guiding it, when human intelligence did not even acknowledge it as problem, but took pride in it or din not notice it at all..." The rattling sounded again. ~ Octavia E. Butler

She'll never understand. The realization washes all the fight out of me, leaving behind only heartache. I gently pull my wrist from her grip. "Because," I say, my voice so soft it's nearly swallowed up by the trees, "I'm standing here, telling you how much you hurt me, and you can't hear it." Tears fill my eyes. I've lost the strength to hide them. "You broke my heart, and you didn't even notice. How can I ..." My throat closes up, I look away. "How could I ever trust you to put the pieces back together? ~ Isabel Sterling

It's not about being rich, but everyone back home has a pool. And I was a total water baby. My mom couldn't get me out - she'd put my dinner plate at the end of the pool, and I'd eat my meals in the water. ~ Margot Robbie

At the end of the day, if the guy is going to write the girl a letter, whether it's chicken scratch or scribble or looks like a doctor's note, if he takes the time to put pen to paper and not type something, there's something so incredibly romantic and beautiful about that. ~ Meghan Markle

Action should be founded on contemplation, and those of us who act don't put enough time, don't give enough emphasis, to contemplation. ~ Robert McNamara

The burden therefore rests with the American legal community and with the American human-rights lobbies and non-governmental organizations. They can either persist in averting their gaze from the egregious impunity enjoyed by a notorious war criminal and lawbreaker, or they can become seized by the exalted standards to which they continually hold everyone else. The current state of suspended animation, however, cannot last. If the courts and lawyers of this country will not do their duty, we shall watch as the victims and survivors of this man pursue justice and vindication in their own dignified and painstaking way, and at their own expense, and we shall be put to shame. ~ Christopher Hitchens

If you are mindful in your work, if you put your best effort into it, then something comes back to you. ~ Frederick Lenz

I wear makeup and dress this way because I think it makes me look better. I am not doing it to get people to stare at me. If I wanted to do that I could just put a pot on my head, wear a wedding dress, and run screaming down the street. ~ Boy George

Where once his grandparents put up crucifixes and images of the benediction on their walls, he and Reine-Marie put up books on theirs. History books. Reference books. Biographies. Fiction, nonfiction. Stories lined the walls and both insulated them from the outside world and connected them to it. ~ Louise Penny

I take some pains to learn the material beforehand. I have a bunch of tricks I use to try and hit the ground running. I write everything out. I take the text and I very methodically go through, and that tends to put it into my head a little bit more solidly than if I just glanced at it and hoped for the best. ~ Colm Feore

If the majority of the "spiritual market" is drawn to prerational magic and myth, how do you reach the small group who are involved in genuine, laborious, demanding, transrational spiritual practice? This is very difficult, because both markets are referred to as "spiritual," but these two camps really don't get along very well-one is mostly translative, the other is mostly transformative, and they generally disapprove of each other-so how do you put them into one magazine without alienating them both? ~ Ken Wilber

Thanks, you guys." Fiona smiled. "I haven't been with anyone since Jackson and I split. I hate to act like such a hoochie mama, but
"
"Hey. There's a little hoochie mama in all of us," Charli said. "Didn't I tell you how I finally got Reno to make the big move?"
"No."
"The famous Wilder barbecue party? While we were dancing, I conveniently told him I'd forgotten to put panties on under my dress. He could barely keep his hands to himself. Then I told him if he was interested, I'd meet him back at his house."
"Oooh, devious." Abby laughed. "Was there any rubber left on his tires?"
"Nope." Charli grinned. "But that was one hoochie-mama move I'll never regret. ~ Candis Terry

Let me see if I can put this in scientific terms: Think of autism like a fart, and vaccines are the finger you pull to make it happen. ~ Jenny McCarthy

Simply put, diagnosis wields immense power. It can provide us access to vital medical technology or shame us, reveal a path toward less pain or get us locked up. It opens doors and slams them shut. ~ Eli Clare

One of the great "theologians" of our time, Sean Penn, put it this way: "When everything gets answered, it's fake. The mystery is the truth."21 ~ Rob Bell

A tramp, therefore, is a celibate from the moment when he takes to the road. He is absolutely without hope of getting a wife, a mistress, or any kind of woman except - very rarely, when he can raise a few shillings - a prostitute.
It is obvious what the results of this must be: homosexuality, for instance, and occasional rape cases. But deeper than these there is the degradation worked in a man who knows that he is not even considered fit for marriage. The sexual impulse, not to put it any higher, is a fundamental impulse, and starvation of it can be almost as demoralizing as physical hunger. The evil of poverty is not so much that it makes a man suffer as that it rots him physically and spiritually. And there can be no doubt that sexual starvation contributes to this rotting process. Cut off from the whole race of women, a tramp feels himself degraded to the rank of a cripple or a lunatic. No humiliation could do more damage to a man's self-respect. ~ George Orwell

The spell is at its strongest in the center of the room," I added. "So whatever you want to hold, you wanna put it as close to dead center as you can."
"You must've been awesome at Memory as a kid," Archer mused.
I shrugged. "When you're perusing a book full of the most powerful dark magic ever, you pay attention."
Our gazes fell to the center of the room, where there was nothing but one of the cellar's bazillion shelves. And under that shelf, drag marks in the dirt.
We both moved to either end of the shelf. It took a minute (and a couple of impolite words from both of us), but we managed to move it several feet over. Then we stood there, breathing hard and sweating a little, and stared at the trap door in the floor.
"Whatever's down there," Archer said after a moment, "it's hard core enough that Casnoff went to all this trouble to hold it. Are you sure you want to do this, Mercer?"
"Of course I don't," I said, grabbing the iron ring affixed to the trap door. "But I'm gonna."
I yanked at the ring, and the door came up easily. Cool air, smelling faintly of dirt and decay, wafted up. A metal ladder was bolted to the side of the opening, and I counted ten rungs before it disappeared into the blackness below.
Archer made a move to stop into the hole, but I stopped him. "I'll go down first. You'll just look up my skirt if I go after you."
"Sophie-"
But it was too late. Trying to shake the feeling that I was stepping into a grave, I ~ Rachel Hawkins

For some reason, I like to put myself in situations where I don't even know how I ended up there. I never want to be complacent or comfortable in a role. ~ Laura Prepon

I think that in general
well, at least it's true for me
you tend to put something of yourself into the story as a whole. Not necessarily in any character, you understand. But you've got your own way of looking at the world, and that naturally will affect how you craft a story. ~ Sam Lake

Grace paused. And while she did, the clouds scattered and let the moonlight through, and Dogville underwent another of those little changes of light.
lt was as if the light, previously so merciful and faint, finally refused to cover up for the town any longer.
Suddenly you could no longer imagine a berry that would appear one day on a gooseberry bush, but only see the thorn that was there right now.
The light now penetrated every unevenness and flaw in the buildings...
and in... the people!
And all of a sudden she knew the answer to her question all too well.
lf she had acted like them she could not have defended a single one of her actions and could not have condemned them harshly enough.
lt was as if her sorrow and pain had finally assumed their rightful place.
No. What they had done was not good enough. And if one had the power to put it to rights,
it was one's duty to do so.
For the sake of the other towns.
For the sake of humanity.
And not least for the sake of the human being that was Grace herself. ~ Lars Von Trier

Anyone and everyone taking a writing class knows that the secret of good writing is to cut it back, pare it down, winnow, chop, hack, prune, and trim, remove every superfluous word, compress, compress, compress...

Actually, when you think about it, not many novels in the Spare tradition are terribly cheerful. Jokes you can usually pluck out whole, by the roots, so if you're doing some heavy-duty prose-weeding, they're the first to go. And there's some stuff about the whole winnowing process I just don't get. Why does it always stop when the work in question has been reduced to sixty or seventy thousand words--entirely coincidentally, I'm sure, the minimum length for a publishable novel? I'm sure you could get it down to twenty or thirty if you tried hard enough. In fact, why stop at twenty or thirty? Why write at all? Why not just jot the plot and a couple of themes down on the back of an envelope and leave it at that? The truth is, there's nothing very utilitarian about fiction or its creation, and I suspect that people are desperate to make it sound manly, back-breaking labor because it's such a wussy thing to do in the first place. The obsession with austerity is an attempt to compensate, to make writing resemble a real job, like farming, or logging. (It's also why people who work in advertising put in twenty-hour days.) Go on, young writers--treat yourself to a joke, or an adverb! Spoil yourself! Readers won't mind! ~ Nick Hornby

We can not run away from our youth. We have to put them in the lead ~ Michel Sidibe

We're interested by public personas and private personas, otherwise we wouldn't put on with actors rambling on with the same kind of stuff, over and over again, saying variations of the same thing. I'm always amazed by how fascinated people still are by actors because it's the same version of events that actors describe, all the time. ~ Toby Jones

There is a rule of Sharia: If the enemy wants to suppress you, you are supposed to put up a strong resistance. ~ Akhmad Kadyrov

Marriage is love put to it's ultimate test - the grindstone of life. Where the idealism of love meets the everydayness of marriage. ~ Carew Papritz

As most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling stop at this same New Bedford, thence to embark on their voyage, it may as well be related that I, for one, had no idea of so doing. For my mind was made up to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft, because there was a fine, boisterous something about everything connected with that famous old island, which amazingly pleased me. Besides though New Bedford has of late been gradually monopolizing the business of whaling, and though in this matter poor old Nantucket is now much behind her, yet Nantucket was her great original - the Tyre of this Carthage; - the place where the first dead American whale was stranded. Where else but from Nantucket did those aboriginal whalemen, the Red-Men, first sally out in canoes to give chase to the Leviathan? And where but from Nantucket, too, did that first adventurous little sloop put forth, partly laden with imported cobblestones - so goes the story - to throw at the whales, in order to discover when they were nigh enough to risk a harpoon from the bowsprit? ~ Herman Melville

He had always rather liked emergencies. Other people's at any rate. They put your own problems into perspective. It was like being on a ferry. You didn't have to think about what you had to do or where you had to go for the next few hours. It was all laid out for you. ~ Mark Haddon

I promise to love you forever," Teague said when he put her back on the ground. He reached down and kissed her knuckles. Mina smiled and spoke softly, "Forever isn't long enough. ~ Chanda Hahn