Excellences Mean Quotes

we all had our own reasons to hate the narrative, but that didn't necessarily mean we had an overwhelming love for humanity. So we loved the quiet instead. The spaces where there were no stories, where anything could happen. ~ Seanan McGuire

Mean people suck ~ Jim Goad

O, how I wanted to hug him! O, how I wanted to pour our my affection! But there are times, I was learning, when one must not, on any account, give in to impulse. It was, I suppose, what they mean by the whole idea of "being British": holding oneself in check for the greater good; substituting the encouraging word for the crushing embrace. ~ Alan Bradley

Letter 68


A pod of whales was lying like long reclining Buddhas on the sea.
My sister and I put our ears to the bottom of the boat so we could listen to their songs.

We turned to my grandfather and asked, "What do their song mean?"

"The whales do not sing because they have an answer," he said.
"They sing because they have a song. ~ Gregory Colbert

Better say nothing at all. Language is worth a thousand pounds a word! ~ Lewis Carroll

Daniel: You're beautiful, Ashlyn. I don't just mean your looks. I mean your smarts, your tears, your brokenness. I think that's beautiful. ~ Brittainy C. Cherry

By swap news do you mean drink?" "I do, and that excessively. ~ Joe Abercrombie

There really isn't much wrong with me,' I say, 'it's just that, well, I'm not like other people; I don't want the things they want. And this is not right, I mean, in other people's eyes, and I feel as though they feel they are duty-bound to normalise me, that it isn't okay just to not want the things they want, you know? ~ Sara Baume

She broke the seal to find the flowing, masculine script that had come to mean the world to her.
Courage, my love. I need you to possess the same fire that led you from Scotland to Normandy that first day when we met. Whatever the day brings, know that I will always love you. You carry with you, my heart, my soul, my very being. Be strong for me, Kenna.
Ever your knight,
S
Postscriptum
S doesn't stand for Stryder.
She laughed at that, even though her eyes were filled with tears.
-Simon in a letter to Kenna ~ Kinley MacGregor

Remember that, Iz. Be a kid of honesty. Wave it like a banner for all to see. Also, while I'm thinking about it - be a kid who loves surprises. Squeal with delight over puppies and cupcakes and birthday parties. Be curious, but content. Be loyal, but independent. Be kind. To everyone. Treat every day like you're making waffles. Don't settle for the first guy (or girl) unless he's the right guy (or girl). Live your effing life. Do so with gusto, because my God, there's nothing sorrier than a gusto-less existence. Know yourself. Love yourself. Be a good friend. Be a kid of hope and substance. Be a kid of appetite, Iz. You know what I mean, don't you? (Of course you do. You're a Malone.) Okay, that's all for now. Catch you on the flip side.
Blimey, get ready.
Signing off,
Mary Iris Malone,
Your Big Sister ~ David Arnold

I get that
but why replace him with this guy? I mean, Dick Clark did American Bandstand. All this guy's done is deny that he's gay. ~ Keith R.A. DeCandido

I'm deeply grateful to live and work in this country and to the United States for opening its arms to me the way it has. I mean I think my attitude as an Aussie coming here - I've been coming here for a while now, I've been coming here for about 12 or 13 years - is that this country has afforded me and my family work and security. For that, I'm forever grateful. ~ Jennifer Lopez

Janet Mock's honest and sometimes searing journey is a rare and important look into la vida liminal, one that she manages to negotiate remarkably well, with grace, humor, and fierce grit. Mock doesn't only redefine what realness means to her, but challenges us to rethink our own perceptions of gender and sexuality, feminism and sisterhood, making this book a transcendent piece of American literature. ~ Raquel Cepeda

Later Michel went up to the priest as he was packing away the tools of the trade. "I was very interested in what you were saying earlier ... " The man of God smiled urbanely, then Michel began to talk about the Aspect experiments and the EPR paradox: how two particle, once united, are forever and inseparable whole, "which seems pretty much in keeping with what you were saying about one flesh." The priest's smile froze slightly. "What I'm trying to say, "Michel went on enthusiastically, "is that from an ontological point of view, the pair can be assigned a single vector in Hilbert space. Do you see what I mean? ~ Michel Houellebecq

It is in general true that in order to create works of art one has to have leisure. On the other hand I think that one needs to experience resistance in a practical sense, and even that which is poignant to bring out what makes easy reading for others. Too much deprivation of course, means death. ~ Marianne Moore

She knows they mean no harm by it, but come on! No seven-year-old who has seen films about the Italian Mafia wants to be "sorted" by her family. ~ Fredrik Backman

Even when I wrote Basic myself the day before I burned it into a computer I wasn't making design changes. I didn't have a testing team. I did all the testing myself. And there was no project methodology or schedule that, there was the notion of coming to a close means testing a lot at the end and making very few changes. ~ Bill Gates

In the rearview mirror, they saw the young officer stumble out of the precinct just in time to see them speed away.
"A little slower on the turns, Alfred," Bruce managed to say as they screeched around a corner and bolted into a freeway tunnel.
Alfred chuckled. He still had his hospital band wrapped around his wrist. "WayneTech cars aren't made for slow turns, Master Wayne."
"And you wonder where I get it from." Bruce felt as if his stomach could touch his spine. Even in his Aston Martin, he'd never been able to drive the way Alfred was now.
"I used to be in the Royal Air Force, Master Wayne," Alfred answered in a dry tone. "At least I have an excuse. Just because one can doesn't mean one should. I expect you not to use this against me the next time you go for a joyride."
"I'll try not to," Bruce managed to reply as he clutched the edges of his seat. In the back seat, Harvey looked green. ~ Marie Lu

I don't think you ever get to relax. I mean, sure there's a couple of people who could, but I bet they don't. Because by the time they get to where they could relax, they don't. Because by the time they get to where they could relax, they've gotten completely used to not being able to. How do you just suddenly become somebody who relaxes? The kind of ambition you need to get to that place is not relaxing. It's searing. I think there's probably something about living your whole life in a popularity contest -- trying to get people to like you who you couldn't give a flying fuck about -- that kills relaxation. ~ Carrie Fisher

On top of all that, look at this guy? I mean he's a idiot, he's 7 feet of pure idiot. You put his brain in a parakeet ... zing! It'll fly backwards. ~ Dwayne Johnson

I found early on in teaching, if you're too blunt an instrument, the students discredit you and think you're just being mean. They're not interested in what you have to say. ~ Tim Gunn

Evil is caused by selfishness, by people acting out of the belief that they and their needs are paramount. And just because our first and only commandment is love, the diametric opposite of selfishness, doesn't mean that we're going to save people from the consequences of their selfishness. If you force the vast majority of people to live in squalor so you can live in splendor, you'll bring on the Black Death. If you allow the rise of a homicidal maniac like Hitler because you see him as a way to beat down those who want equality and social justice, he'll start killing people. Don't blame God. ~ Tony Hendra

Time is but a thought, a means of measurement, not a reality. ~ Antiphon

Wait. Far be it for me to say this" - Hamish looked around the compartment - "and if anyone tells Uncle Eddie I suggested being an upstanding citizen I'll kill 'em, but aren't there ... laws and stuff? I mean, can't you ... you know ... sue him or something?" asked the boy who had once stolen an entire circus, all three rings. ~ Ally Carter

We are uttering a mere tautology if we mean by 'in the mind' the same as by 'before the mind', i.e. if we mean merely being apprehended by the mind. ~ Bertrand Russell

Animals are sad as a rule," she went on. "And when a man is sad - I don't mean because he has a toothache or has lost some money, but because he sees, for once in a way, how it all is with life and everything, and is sad in earnest - he always looks a little like an animal. He looks not only sad, but more right and more beautiful than usual. That's how it is, and that's how you looked, Steppenwolf, when I saw you for the first time. ~ Hermann Hesse

There was magic. Some kind of alchemy. I don't remember the moment you transformed from a prop into a main character. No, that's not what happened. I don't remember when you shape-
shifted from an elf into a Prince. No, that isn't it either. What I really mean is: I don't know if we were meant to fall into each other all along or if you were just in the right place at the right time. Yes, I found safety in your arms in the middle of a hurricane I chose to escape, and I still don't know how it would have turned out if someone else came to my door that day. Or if you never held me. Or if I never cried. Or if everything hadn't been so fairy tale. Until it wasn't. Do you see the magic now, now that it's too late? Do you still remember me? Do I still remember you? And what, in the end, have we learned? Is it really better to have loved and lost? Was it love for you? Who now is dying faster from the lonely? ~ Vironika Tugaleva

If you don't have an auto industry, you will not be secure as a nation because you won't have a backbone like manufacturing to be able to put people to work in producing the means to you keep you secure. ~ Jennifer Granholm

How does knowing 'things could be worse' than what I already deem awful make me feel any better? You mean I could sink even lower? Oh joy! ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Angela," she whispered, "are you asleep?"

Angela, lying on her back with her eyes shut and her hands folded like Snow White in a glass coffin, said flatly, "Yes."

"Because I'd like to talk about our feeeeeeeelings."

"I wish I was dead."

"Angela, you don't mean that."

"Kami, I do. And do you know why? Because then you might let me rest in peace. ~ Sarah Rees Brennan

A British pressing with a compilation of the best stuff really, I mean actually not only that but, these were all kind of semi hits for the people on it in America. ~ Eric Clapton

Your ribcage never meant to hurt you.
Your windpipe doesn't know how to be pretty,
but she knows how to howl -
and here, I'd like to take a moment
to submit a formal apology to my soft parts
because they kept me warm
when I was trying to freeze to death,
and I hated them for it. An apology
for a starvation that went deeper than my skin.
One for the strongest skeleton I will ever own
and how I kept using the word girl against it.
Or how I turned words like beautiful into shapes
I could contort myself into. I didn't mean
to compare myself to faces I can't have.
Or spend years trying to carve myself,
like Michelangelo's angels, from the marble -
forgetting what it is to be skin instead of stone.
I let myself be afraid. I was taught to be.
When you learn you are only as good
as your beauty routine, you forget
how to define yourself by anything else. ~ Ashe Vernon

I don't want no abortion," i cried out. "It's probably the best course you could take now, and I'd recommend it. But that's not what I was talking about. I said that there was a chance you could spontaneously abort, have a miscarriage." "Oh no!" i moaned. "What are you going to do?" "Relax. It's probably nothing serious. It's nothing much to worry about." "What do you mean, nothing much to worry about. I want this baby." "Well, I can't force you to do anything, but my advice is to have an abortion. It will be better for you and for everyone else. ~ Assata Shakur

What is impossible to see from the viewpoint of those who believe in cures is that the very symptoms the good doctors have suppressed and turned into chronic disease were the body's only means of correcting the problem! The so-called "disease" was the only "cure" possible! ~ Philip K. Chapman

There's only a couple hundred of us here in the Square. Pretty much everybody has a sweet pad, except Brainbox, who lives in the library. I mean literally lives in the Bobst Library. I ~ Chris Weitz

President Bush wants to build a space station on the moon. And from the moon, he wants to launch people to Mars. You know what this means. He's been drinking again. ~ David Letterman

What has happened at Guantanamo Bay ... does not represent the will of the American people. I'm embarrassed about it, I think its wrong. I think it does give terrorists an unwarranted excuse to use the despicable means to hurt innocent people. ~ Jimmy Carter

Anything that's shiny, shines due to its reflective quality. Reflection. People usually think that you are shiny because you are shiny. But what does it actually mean? It means that you reflect back to others the beauty in themselves and the love and care that they give to you. It's never actually about you. It's actually about everyone else. Your capability to reflect determines how luminous you are. ~ C. JoyBell C.

Stil snorted. "I am not in love with Angelique. I'm in love with you," he said, scooting closer.

Gemma pushed her chair away.
"Well, that's not proper."

"Why not?" Stil asked, butting his chair up against Gemma's.

"Because of the age difference."

"Age difference?"

"Of course. Surely you can't be a day younger than fifty or sixty," Gemma said in surprise.

Stil's jaw dropped.

"You think I'm an OLD MAN?!" Stil thundered.

"Most magic users are not the age they physically appear to be," Gemma said."And it is well known that they age much more slowly."

"You think I'm an OLD MAN?!" he repeated, his voice even louder.

"I'm not even twenty-five yet, you mean-spirited mule, and my clothes are fashionable among mages!" Stil said.

"This whole time you've thought I am OLD?"

"I get the impression that offends you."

"IT DOES."

Gemma only lifted her eyebrows.

"Aren't you going to apologize?" Stil asked.

"For what?"

"For thinking I'm OLD!"

Gemma shrugged. "It seems you have only yourself to blame for that misunderstanding."

Stil glowered ~ K.M. Shea

The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people. ~ James Madison

I bet you're a real heartbreaker," he said, giving me a nearly irresistible smile.
"I've never broken a single heart," I admitted. "I've broken more than a few noses and stomped on several ball sacks though."
Vaughn's grin widened. "Let me buy you a drink."
"I have a drink."
"Fine. Let me take you to a booth and sweet talk your sexy ass into my bed tonight."
"I'm abstaining from fucking guys like you."
"Guys like me? You mean, sexy bastards that'll make you scream their names?"
"Yeah, basically. ~ Bijou Hunter