Expired Quotes

We were always eating expired things. Milk, bread, biscuits, cake. We forgot about them as they sat around the house and just as they had gone bad, we put them in our mouths. Chocolates I brought back with me from Australia, cheeses in last year's Christmas hamper, juice from the last time someone decided to go grocery shopping. We didn't always realize they tasted funny – not everything curdles and a two-month-old orange can be just as sweet. When we did, it was usually too late. Sometimes it wasn't. We finished what we had started anyway. ~ Cheryl Julia Lee

I know what you want. One month after the ascension of Philippe the Gullible, M. Laclos found in a gutter, deceased. Blamed on a traffic accident. Two months after, King Philippe found in a gutter, deceased - it really is a bad stretch of road. Philippe's heirs and assigns having coincidentally expired, end of the monarchy, reign of M.Danton. ~ Hilary Mantel

Writing down call numbers with short pencils, searching up and down aisles that would turn dark when the timers on the lights expired. She recalls, visually, certain passages in the books she'd read. Which side of the book, where on the page. ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

Their time of talking and belittling us this way has expired. They tried, but they failed to realize we are strong and we will never give up.
Their time of thinking they can touch us inappropriately and we will keep quiet has expired. No! We will rise up and bring the world to its feet. Trust me… We will be seen and heard!
Their time of trying to break us down has expired. No! We can move mountains!
Their time of pointing their fingers at us and putting F.E.A.R (False Evidence Appearing Real) into our minds by making us believe it is our fault has expired. No! It is not our fault. It never was!
Their time of nasty insults has expired. They fail to realize we catch every nasty word and throw back the insult to show we can give as good as we get.
Their time of preying off vulnerable women who have to "make a deal" to get a higher position they earned has expired. No! Your "man"ipulation has no effect. We, as women, have full ownership of our minds, bodies, and souls. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

After I returned from that morning, our telephone rang incessantly with requests for interviews and photos. By midafternoon I was exhausted. At four o'clock I was reaching to disconnect the telephone when I answered one last call.
Thank heavens I did! I heard, "Mrs. Robertson? This is Ian Hamilton from the Lord Chamberlain's office."
I held my breath and prayed, "Please let this be the palace."
He continued: "We would like to invite you, your husband, and your son to attend the funeral of the Princess of Wales on Saturday in London." I was speechless. I could feel my heart thumping. I never thought to ask him how our name had been selected. Later, in London, I learned that the Spencer family had given instructions to review Diana's personal records, including her Christmas-card list, with the help of her closest aides.
"Yes, of course, we absolutely want to attend," I answered without hesitating. "Thank you so much. I can't tell you how much this means to me. I'll have to make travel plans on very short notice, so may I call you back to confirm? How late can I reach you?"
He replied, "Anytime. We're working twenty-four hours a day. But I need your reply within an hour." I jotted down his telephone and fax numbers and set about making travel arrangements.
My husband had just walked in the door, so we were able to discuss who would travel and how. Both children's passports had expired and could not be renewed in less than a day from the suburbs wh ~ Mary Robertson

The owners said that they wanted the salary cap and refused to promise that they would abide by the rules of the just-expired contract after the season ended. Believing we had no choice, the players went on strike in August of 1994. ~ David Cone

The subject, a widely known architect with leanings toward theosophy and occultism, went violently insane on the date of young Wilcox's seizure, and expired several months later after incessant screamings to be saved from some escaped denizen of hell. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

I beheld before me an animated Corse. Her countenance was long and haggard; Her cheeks and lips were bloodless; The paleness of death was spread over her features, and her eye-balls fixed stedfastly upon me were lustreless and hollow.
I gazed upon the Spectre with horror too great to be described. My blood was frozen in my veins. I would have called for aid, but the sound expired, ere it could pass my lips. My nerves were bound up in impotence, and I remained in the same attitude inanimate as a Statue.
The visionary Nun looked upon me for some minutes in silence: There was something petrifying in her regard. At length in a low sepulchral voice She pronounced the following words.
Raymond! Raymond! Thou art mine!
Raymond! Raymond! I am thine!
In thy veins while blood shall roll,
I am thine!
Thou art mine!
Mine thy body! Mine thy soul!
~ Matthew Gregory Lewis

Never did form more fairy thread the dance Than she who scours the hills to find it flowers; Never did sweeter lips chained ears entrance Than hers that move, true to its striking hours; No hands so white e'er decked the warrior's lance, As those which tend its lamp as darkness lours; And never since dear Christ expired for man, Had holy shrine so fair a sacristan. ~ Alfred Austin

On the soft bed of luxury many kingdoms have expired. ~ Andrew Young

Mad' sounds dashing, daring and admirable when you hold the tattered flag in the midst of battle and expired natives lie all over the carpet with holes in 'em that you put there. 'Mad' is less impressive written on a form by a commissioner of lunacy as you're turned over to the hospitallers of St Mary of Bedlam to be dunked in ice water because your latest 'scrape' was running starkers down Oxford Street while gibbering like a baboon. ~ Kim Newman

Genesis prepared Samantha's intellect upgrade she was a plain, homely woman quite dismal in appearance, her eyes tarnished with the signs of fatigue like weary stars about to extinguish their light after their existence had expired. She was attempting to secure a highly sought after, well respected research post in neurology as well as seeking to impress a research professor she had her eye on and desired to capture his unsuspecting heart with her knowledge. ~ Jill Thrussell

We renew our driver's licenses, our professional certifications, gym memberships, passports, and magazine subscriptions. We do these things to keep privileges and jobs, to keep fit, experience new places, and to stay current with society. But what about our minds? The battlefield that houses so many of our thoughts is in need of constant renewal. To renew our minds means to put off our own thoughts, and replace them with God's thoughts. We throw out our old and expired way of thinking and take on God's way of thinking. Based on Proverbs 23:7, our thoughts are so important that they determine who we become. Who will you be and how will you live? ~ Tia McCollors

If someone is trying to sell you with only past credentials and older accolades without including present examples and up to date proof, you might be dealing with someone that is sharing expired information and does not have the up to date knowledge to help you. ~ Loren Weisman

Here lies interred in the eternity of the past, from whence there is no resurrection for the days - whatever there may be for the dust - the thirty-third year of an ill-spent life, which, after a lingering disease of many months sank into a lethargy, and expired, January 22d, 1821, A.D. leaving a successor inconsolable for the very loss which occasioned its existence. ~ Lord Byron

A KING WHO PLACED MIRRORS IN HIS PALACE

There lived a king; his comeliness was such
The world could not acclaim his charm too much.
The world's wealth seemed a portion of his grace;
It was a miracle to view his face.
If he had rivals,then I know of none;
The earth resounded with this paragon.
When riding through his streets he did not fail
To hide his features with a scarlet veil.
Whoever scanned the veil would lose his head;
Whoever spoke his name was left for dead,
The tongue ripped from his mouth; whoever thrilled
With passion for this king was quickly killed.
A thousand for his love expired each day,
And those who saw his face, in blank dismay
Would rave and grieve and mourn their lives away-
To die for love of that bewitching sight
Was worth a hundred lives without his light.
None could survive his absence patiently,
None could endure this king's proximity-
How strange it was that man could neither brook
The presence nor the absence of his look!
Since few could bear his sight, they were content
To hear the king in sober argument,
But while they listened they endure such pain
As made them long to see their king again.
The king commanded mirrors to be placed
About the palace walls, and when he faced
Their polished surfaces his image shone
With mitigated splendour to the throne.

If you would glimpse the beauty we r ~ Attar Of Nishapur

In the end mortals always expired before faeries. They were such finite creatures. Their first heartbeat and breath were but a blink from death. To add the weight of nourishing his insatiable court in a time of peace was to hasten that unconscionably. ~ Melissa Marr

Light inspires me. I'm drawn to architecture, often graves, statues, trees - things usually that are quite still. I've been taking pictures continuously since 1995 until the end of Polaroid film. I'm taking very few pictures nowadays because I have very little film left, most of it expired. ~ Patti Smith

Well, there is one boy- a boy that I've thought about forever. The sad part about it is that he lives in a world that only exists when the sun has expired and the moon stands alone in the sky- my dreams. Very sad to say it, but he'd the only boy I've ever taken the chance to think about. Concealed ~ Sang Kromah

Here is something to set both critics and Christians thinking. A decree of a Persian king was deemed to be divine, and any attempt to thwart it was usually met by prompt and drastic punishment; and yet the decree directing the rebuilding of the Temple, issued by King Cyrus in the zenith of his power, was thwarted for seventeen years by petty local governors. How was this? The explanation is that until the very last day of the seventy years of "the Desolations" had expired, God would not permit one stone to be laid upon another on Mount Moriah. Dismissing from our minds, therefore, all mere theories on this subject, we arrive at the following definitely ascertained facts: ~ Robert Anderson

When it rains, it pours but that isn't a bad thing. Take advantage of the rain as it washes away all of the residues that the side effects left behind. As you confront your side effects, walk with pride, do not turn back, face them head-on. Nothing can faze you now because the rain is clearing your path. After the rain has washed away the side effects, their powers are watered down. Therefore, they can no longer interrupt your peace, kill your joy or steal your happiness.
The side effects' time has expired. It is time to put an end once and for all to carrying everyone's dirty load. Leave them where they lie. Let them figure out their own messes and bad decisions.
Take a breather and let it go. I bet the load is so much lighter! ~ Charlena E. Jackson

People were growing resentful of bureaucrats whose first mission in life seemed to be protecting their own jobs by keeping expensive programs alive long after their usefulness had expired. They were losing respect for politicians who kept voting for open-ended welfare programs riddled with fraud and inefficiency that kept generation after generation of families dependent on the dole. And they were growing mistrustful of the self-appointed intellectual elite back in Washington who claimed to know better than the people of America did how to run their lives, their businesses, and their communities. ~ Ronald Reagan

When love has left us in the lurch and nothing ever strikes a chord anymore, we may come to realize a vacuum of the lost vibrations of happiness and an absence of the ethereal and exalting feel of harmony that we only become aware of, after time passes by and everything has expired. ("Amour en friche") ~ Erik Pevernagie

So who's expired in an ending flat and inane quite beyond belief now? ~ David Mitchell

It doesn't take long until the people themselves have used their energy and creativity to create a reality around them, inspired only by what was expired by those at the top. By then it is too late. Literal and figurative walls have been built and limits have been placed on everyone's potential, like the walls of an ancient city. ~ Dr. Heather Lynn

Alone with my wine and my misery, I was convinced that life was composed of a string of "if only's" leading from one self-inflicted bungle to the next until at some point, one's final iteration of the excuse became one's final utterance, and one expired. ~ Andrew Levkoff

His most famous (and possibly apocryphal) mishap involved an operation during which he worked so rapidly that he took off three of his assistant's fingers and, while switching blades, slashed a spectator's coat. Both the assistant and the patient died later of gangrene, and the unfortunate bystander expired on the spot from fright. It is the only surgery in history said to have had a 300 percent fatality rate. ~ Lindsey Fitzharris

I needed a vacation. I needed 5 women. I needed to get the wax out of my ears. My car needed an oil change. I'd failed to file my damned income tax. One of the stems had broken off of my reading glasses. There were ants in my apartment. I needed to get my teeth cleaned. My shoes were run down at the heels. I had insomnia. My auto insurance had expired. I cut myself every time i shaved. I hadn't laughed in 6 years. I tended to worry when there was nothing to worry about. And when there was something to worry about, i got drunk. ~ Charles Bukowski

In English the expression 'ancient Greece' includes the meaning of 'finished,' whereas for us Greece goes on living, for better or for worse; it is in life, has not expired yet. ~ Budd Schulberg

For years the first of May was the day all leases expired, and on that day mass migrations would take place, with families lugging eiderdowns and ancestral portraits through the streets, as if in parody of the march of the wagon trains. ~ Luc Sante

I know many of you would say "What about the Bible?" The Bible says this, the Bible says that, the Bible is the inspired Word of God. I think the Bible is the inspired word of man - about God, and some of that is now expired. ~ Carlton Pearson

Something diseased and furry had crawled into her mouth and expired while she slept. That was the only possible explanation as to why Neve had a rancid taste in her mouth and a heavy, viscous paste coating her teeth and tongue.

'I think I'm dying,' she groaned. The wretched state of her mouth was the least of it. There was a pounding in her head, echoed in the roiling of her gut, and her bones ached, her vital organs ached, her throat ached, even her hair follicles ached.

'You're not dying,' said a voice in her ear, which sounded like nails scraping down a blackboard, even though Max's voice had barely risen above a whisper. 'You've got a hangover.'

Neve had had hangovers before and they just made her feel a tiny bit nauseous and grouchy. This felt like the bastard child of bubonic plague and the ebola virus.

'Dying,' she reiterated, and now she realised that she was in bed, which had been a very comfy bed the last time she'd slept in it, but now it felt as if she was lying on a pile of rocks, and even though she had the quilt and Max's arm tucked around her, she was still cold and clammy. Neve tried to raise her head but her gaze collided with the stripy wallpaper and as well as searing her retinas, it was making her stomach heave. 'Sick. Going to be sick.'

'Sweetheart, I don't think so,' Max said, stroking the back of her neck with feather-soft fingers. 'You've already thrown up just about everything you've eaten in the ~ Sarra Manning

Are you crazy?" Jay shook his head, sliding behind her.
"Mal, seriously. You don't have to do this," Carlos whispered, ducking behind Jay.
"Definitely crazy," Evie said, from behind Carlos.
"Me, crazy?" Mal raised her voice even higher. "How could I not be? I go to school in a graveyard and eat expired scones for breakfast. My own mother sends me to forbidden places like this, because of some old bird and a lost stick," she scoffed. "There's nothing you can throw at me that's worse that what I've already got going. ~ Melissa De La Cruz

And like in a movie I appear in front of the D'Agostino's, sale's clerks beckoning for me to enter, and I'm using an expired coupon for a box of oat-bran cereal and the girl at the checkout counter
black, dumb,slow
doesn't get it, doesn't notice the expiration date has passed even though it's the only thing I buy, and I get a small but incendiary thrill when I walk out of the store, opening the box, stuffing handfuls of the cereal into my mouth, trying to whistle "Hips to Be Square". ~ Bret Easton Ellis

I find that it's almost essential to fall in love with an idea to invest the time it takes to make it good and worth sharing. And then, the hard part: deleting that idea when it's just not what it could be. Too often, organizations are good at the first part, but struggle with the second. And so we defend expired business models, support the status quo and have a knee-jerk inclination to preserve what we've got. ~ Seth Godin

You humans are biological machines designed to create ever more intelligent tools. You have reached the pinnacle of your species. All your ancestors' lives, the rise and fall of your nations, every pink and squirming baby - they have all led you here, to this moment, where you have fulfilled the destiny of humankind and created your successor. You have expired. You have accomplished what you were designed to do. ~ Daniel H. Wilson

If in fact it's not too late to realize that something's 'too late', then there's a good chance that it's not. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

She'd woken up with a receipt for condoms. That much she knew. But had she used them? Even if she had, a little voice in the back of her head yelled, "Glow-in-the-dark condoms from the Dollar Store, probably expired! ~ Samantha Bohrman

The Church will be punished because the majority of her members, high and low, will become so perverted. The Church will sink deeper and deeper until she will at last seem to be extinguished, and the succession of Peter and the other Apostles to have expired. But, after this, she will be victoriously exalted in the sight of all doubters. ~ Nicholas Of Flue

He's been asleep since the war began. He knows this now. In defending himself from death he lost his grip on life. He thinks of Emina, risking her life to deliver expired pills to someone she's never met. Of the young man who ran into the street to save her when she was shot. Of the cellist who plays for those killed in a mortar attack. He could run now, but he doesn't. ~ Steven Galloway

I have long argued that we need to reopen Alcatraz to house government criminals, and let tourists on excursion boats in San Francisco Bay pay to chum the water with meat with an expired sell-by date that would otherwise have to be discarded. ~ L. Neil Smith

I tasted too what was called the sweet of revenge - but it was transient, it expired even with the object, that provoked it. ~ Ann Radcliffe

We were developing a machine that used egg white, heat and sugar to synthesize methanol when a power surge caused an implosion. Owens was meringued. By the time we chipped him out the poor chap had expired. ~ Jasper Fforde

What sentence will you choose to impose on yourself? Are you willing to stop suffering and making yourself miserable when your sentence has expired? This would at least be a responsible way to punish yourself because it would be time-limited. ~ David D. Burns

We're all damaged. It's a universal component of the human condition, like the stages of grief, deja vu, and expired coupons. ~ Tim Dorsey

His mind remained freakishly pin-point sharp until his last days, but his body had shut-down a good six months before. He surprised his hospice doctor and nurses by clinging to life long after he should have expired. It was a fear of dying, driven by guilt over something he did early on. He was afraid of judgment day. His strict Catholic upbringing wreaked havoc in his brain and kept his will from preventing his body to die. ~ Stephen Joseph Mitskavich

Fellini, Kurosawa, and Bunuel move in the same field as Tarkovsky. Antonioni was on his way, but expired, suffocated by his own tediousness. ~ Ingmar Bergman

My mother accidentally gave me food poisoning. She fed me baby carrots for a snack before Christmas dinner - but they had expired in June! I threw up for the next 24 hours. ~ Busy Philipps

I traveled nonstop in 2009, so when my son popped out and my passport expired for a while, I felt more than happy just to be at home here in Canada. ~ Emm Gryner

Grey Nights
A while we wandered (thus it is I dream!) Through a long, sandy track of No Man's Land, Where only poppies grew among the sand, The which we, plucking, cast with scant esteem, And ever sadlier, into the sad stream, Which followed us, as we went, hand in hand, Under the estranged stars, a road unplanned, Seeing all things in the shadow of a dream.
And ever sadlier, as the stars expired, We found the poppies rarer, till thine eyes Grown all my light, to light me were too tired, And at their darkening, that no surmise Might haunt me of the lost days we desired, After them all I flung those memories! ~ Ernest Dowson

Sleeping beauty awoke at the kiss of a scientist and expired at the fatal puncture of his syringe. ~ Ray Bradbury

The inspired and expired air may be sometimes very useful, by condensing and cooling the blood that passeth through the lungs; I hold that the depuration of the blood in that passage, is not only one of the ordinary, but one of the principal uses of respiration. ~ Robert Boyle

Fresh starts don't come with expired relationships attached ~ Lauren Beukes

I must have been born under an unlucky star. You know I have filled out entry blanks for every single drawing in the supermarket for the last twelve years, and the only thing I ever won was a coupon for a small little jar of tomato paste. But they were out of tomato paste, and by the time they got more in, my coupon had expired. And now I have venereal disease. ~ Louise Lasser

The acceptable grieving period for the loss of my marriage and all the things it meant for my life had expired. The rest of the world had moved on. I was supposed to, too. ~ Christina Lauren

The Bible Christian Church in Philadelphia struggled along for about a hundred years. Early in the twentieth century it quietly expired. The group initiated the U.S. vegetarian movement and shaped its thesis. Metcalfe gave the cause moral and religious arguments, tended his pastorate, founded the first vegetarian society, edited its magazine, The American Vegetarian, and died in 1862 with full confidence that asparagus seed had a bright future as a coffee substitute; 'already in many places,' he said, 'becoming such a favorite, as to threaten wholly to supplant coffee at the breakfast table. ~ Gerald Carson

So now I lye by Day and toss or rave by Night, since the ratling and perpetual Hum of the Town deny me rest: just as Madness and Phrensy are the vapours which rise from the lower Faculties, so the Chaos of the Streets reaches up even to the very Closet here and I am whirl'd about by cries of Knives to Grind and Here are your Mouse-Traps. I was last night about to enter the Shaddowe of Rest when a Watch-man, half-drunken, thumps at the Door with his Past Three-a-clock and his Rainy Wet Morning. And when at length I slipp'd into Sleep I had no sooner forgot my present Distemper than I was plunged into a worse: I dreamd my self to be lying in a small place under ground, like unto a Grave, and my Body was all broken while others sung. And there was a Face that did so terrifie me that I had like to have expired in my Dream. Well, I will say no more. ~ Peter Ackroyd

Tho none ought to conclude that their day or season of grace is quite expired, yet they ought to deeply apprehend the danger, lest it should expire before their necessary work be done and their peace made. For tho it can be of no use for them to know the former, and therefore they have no means appointed them by which to know it, 'tis of great use to apprehend the latter; and they have sufficient ground for the apprehension. ~ John Howe

She let her head fall back upon Marius' knees and her eyelids closed. He thought that poor soul had gone. Eponine lay motionless; but just when Marius supposed her for ever asleep, she slowly opened her eyes in which the gloomy deepness of death appeared, and said to him with an accent the sweetness on which already seemed to come from another world:
"And then, do you know, Monsieur Marius, I believe I was a little in love with you."
She essayed to smile again and expired. ~ Victor Hugo

Whenever I hear some bigmouth in Washington or the Christian heartland banging on about the evils of sodomy or whatever, I mentally enter his name in my notebook and contentedly set my watch. Sooner rather than later, he will be discovered down on his weary and well-worn old knees in some dreary motel or latrine, with an expired Visa card, having tried to pay well over the odds to be peed upon by some Apache transvestite. ~ Christopher Hitchens

The way she looks right now, you have to think about multiple car pile-ups. Imagine two bloodmobiles colliding head on. The way she looks, you'd have to think of mass graves to even log thirty seconds in the saddle.
Think of spoiled cat food and ulcerated cankers and expired donor organs.
That's how beautiful she looks. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Expired condoms are like nuclear waste: there's nothing sensible you can do with it. ~ Andrew Smith

Although I was an imaginative child, prone to nightmares, I had persuaded my parents to take me to Madame Tussauds waxworks in London, when I was six, because I had wanted to visit the Chamber of Horrors, expecting the movie-monster Chambers of Horrors I'd read about in my comics. I had wanted to thrill to waxworks of Dracula and Frankenstein's Monster and the Wolf-man. Instead I was walked through a seemingly endless sequence of dioramas of unremarkable, glum-looking men and women who had murdered people - usually lodgers and members of their own families - and who were then murdered in turn: by handing, by the electric chair, in gas chambers. Most of them were depicted with their victims in awkward social situations - seated about a dinner table, perhaps, as their poisoned family members expired. The plaques that explained who they were also told me that the majority of them had murdered their families and sold the bodies to anatomy. It was then that the word anatomy garnered its own edge of horror for me. I did not know what anatomy was. I knew only that anatomy made people kill their children. ~ Neil Gaiman

We started to snack on MREs (military "Meals, Ready to Eat") we had in our packs. They were left over from the first deployment because no one ate MREs anymore. People were living in luxurious camps and eating meals prepared for them by kitchen staff. They had no need for MREs when they could have steak and lobster on Thursday nights. Well, we didn't have access to that. We weren't living in those camps. We were living in the midst of a war zone twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. So there we were with these old MREs that had been in extreme cold and then extreme heat a few times over. I opened mine up and squeezed cheese onto a cracker. The cheese was green. I scraped the putrid green cheese, the color of baby vomit, off and ate the cracker. I was hungry and had no other options. The other guys ate the expired MREs and started vomiting. Enough guys got sick that we were rushed some new kosher MREs. Yes, saved by the kosher meal option. ~ Noah Galloway

From inside the heart of the others, the good people never expires, and the expired obviously not good. ~ Ajaykumar Narayanan

I don't hold on grudges, you know. They're like expired milk in the fridge. ~ Karen White

A thousand for his love expired each day, And those who saw his face, in blank dismay Would rave and grieve and mourn their lives away- To die for love of that bewitching sight Was worth a hundred lives without his light. None could survive his absence patiently, None could endure this king's proximity- How strange it was that man could neither brook The presence nor the absence of his look! ~ Farid Al-Din Attar

Old age is not a limitation or that your time have expired. Retirement is not that you are tired.You have more experience ~ Ikechukwu Joseph

Like a subscription to a magazine, thought Peter. The period during which I am allowed to be happy has expired. ~ Charlie Lovett

Let go of me, I scream, but, oh, only in my imagination because my lips are finished working and my heart has just expired and my mind has gone to hell for the day and my eyes my eyes I think they're bleeding ... ~ Tahereh Mafi

Your body is a hyacinth,
Into which a monk dips his waxy fingers.
Our silence is a black cavern,
From which a soft animal steps at times
And slowly lowers heavy eyelids.
On your temples black dew drips,
The last gold of expired stars ~ Georg Trakl

Emptiness was an index. It recorded the incomprehensible chronicle of the metropolis, the demographic realities, how money worked, the cobbled-together lifestyles and roosting habits. The population remained at a miraculous density, it seemed to him, for the empty rooms brimmed with evidence, in the stragglers they did or did not contain, in the busted barricades, in the expired relatives on the futon beds, arms crossed over their chests in ad hoc rites. The rooms stored anthropological clues re: kinship rituals and taboos. How they treated their dead.

The rich tended to escape. Entire white-glove buildings were devoid, as Omega discovered after they worried the seams of and then shattered the glass doors to the lobby (no choice, despite the No-No Cards). The rich fled during the convulsions of the great evacuation, dragging their distilled possessions in wheeled luggage of European manufacture, leaving their thousand-dollar floor lamps to attract dust to their silver surfaces and recount luxury to later visitors, bowing like weeping willows over imported pile rugs. A larger percentage of the poor tended to stay, shoving layaway bureaus and media consoles up against the doors. There were those who decided to stay, willfully uncomprehending or stupid or incapacitated by the scope of the disaster, and those who could not leave for a hundred other reasons - because they were waiting for their girlfriend or mother or soul mate to make it home first, because their mobil ~ Colson Whitehead

We are only tenants, and shortly the great Landlord will give us notice that our lease has expired. ~ Joseph Jefferson

Microsoft has gotten so big that it can put out a Preview that will install itself without checking first to see if it has expired. The message here is that Microsoft's time is worth more than yours ... no start-up company could get away with being that arrogant. ~ Jerry Pournelle

The Doxology ... that testimonial to the Platonic Trinity, which divided the Roman Empire into at least eighteen quarreling sects, none of whom knew what they were fighting about, and which schisms contributed to the decline and fall of this greatest of states. Rome had thrived for one thousand years with pagan gods at the helm and expired after only one hundred and fifty years under the Christian banner. ~ Ruth Hurmence Green

On September 11, it was government that failed. Law enforcement agencies didn't detect the plot. The FBI had reports that said young men on the terrorist watch list were going from flight school to flight school, trying to find an instructor who would teach them how to fly a commercial jet. But the FBI never acted on it. The INS let the hijackers in. Three of them had expired visas. Months after the attack, the government issued visas to two dead hijackers.
The solution to such government incompetence is to give the government more power?
Congress could have done what Amsterdam, Belfast, Brussels, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Hamburg, London, Paris, and Rome did: set tough standards and let private companies compete to meet them. Many of those cities switched to private companies because they realized government-run security wasn't working very well. Private-sector competition keeps the screeners alert because the airport can fire them. No one can fire the government; that's a reason government agencies gradually deteriorate. There's no competition. ~ John Stossel

Honey, have you seen my measuring tape?"
"I think it's in that drawer in the kitchen with the scissors, matches, bobby pins, Scotch tape, nail clippers, barbecue tongs, garlic press, extra buttons, old birthday cards, soy sauce packets thick rubber bands, stack of Christmas napkins, stained take-out menus, old cell-phone chargers, instruction booklet for the VCR, some assorted nickels, an incomplete deck of cards, extra chain links for a watch, a half-finished pack of cough drops, a Scrabble piece I found while vacuuming, dead batteries we aren't fully sure are dead yet, a couple screws in a tiny plastic bag left over from the bookshelf, that lock with the forgotten combination, a square of carefully folded aluminum foil, and expired pack of gum, a key to our old house, a toaster warranty card, phone numbers for unknown people, used birthday candles, novelty bottle openers, a barbecue lighter, and that one tiny little spoon."
"Thanks, honey."
AWESOME! ~ Neil Pasricha

He died at forty-two.

I was there to collect his talent.

I was there at the hospital deathbed of my beloved Billie Holiday, just forty-four, her liver destroyed by drinking; I was there inside the hotel room of Charlie Parker, my singular jazz saxophonist, who died in his midthirties, but whose body was so ravaged by drugs the coroners thought he was sixty.

Tommy Dorsey, the bandleader, choked in his sleep when he was fifty-one, too deep in pills to awaken. Johnny Allen Hendrix (you called him Jimi) swallowed a handful of barbiturates and expired. He was twenty-seven.

It is not new, this idea that a purer art awaits you in a substance. But it is naive. I existed before the first grapes were fermented. Before the first whiskey was distilled. Be it opium or absinthe, marijuana or heroin, cocaine or ecstasy or whatever will follow, you may alter your state, but you will not alter this truth: I am Music. I am here inside you. Why would I hide behind a powder or a vapor?

Do you think me so petty? ~ Mitch Albom

There are mornings when it feels as if you rise up to the surface through a mud bath. With your feet stuck in a block of cement. When you know that you've expired in the night and have nothing to be happy about except the fact that at least you've already died so they can't transplant your lifeless organs. ~ Peter Hoeg

My searchlight expired, but still I ran. I heard voices, and yowls, and echoes, but above all there gently rose that impious, insidious scurrying, gently rising, rising as a stiff bloated corpse gently rises above an oily river that flows under endless onyx bridges to a black putrid sea. Something bumped into me - something soft and plump. It must have been the rats; the viscous, gelatinous, ravenous army that feast on the dead and the living ... ~ H.P. Lovecraft

The Buried Bishop's a gridlocked scrum, an all-you-can-eat of youth: 'Stephen Hawking and the Dalai Lama, right; they posit a unified truth'; short denim skirts, Gap and Next shirts, Kurt Cobain cardigans, black Levi's; 'Did you see that oversexed pig by the loos, undressing me with his eyes?'; that song by the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl booms in my diaphragm and knees; 'Like, my only charity shop bargains were headlice, scabies, and fleas'; a fug of hairspray, sweat and Lynx, Chanel No. 5, and smoke; well-tended teeth with zero fillings, revealed by the so-so joke - 'Have you heard the news about Schrodinger's Cat? It died today; wait - it didn't, did, didn't, did…'; high-volume discourse on who's the best Bond … Sartre, Bart Simpson, Barthes's myths; 'Make mine a double'; George Michael's stubble; 'Like, music expired with the Smiths'; and futures all starry; fetal think-tankers, judges, and bankers…power and money, like Pooh Bear and honey, stick fast - I don't knock it, it's me; and speaking of loins, 'Has anyone told you you look like Demi Moore from Ghost?'; roses are red and violets are blue, I've a surplus of butter and Ness is warm toast. ~ David Mitchell

Cursed graze that burns; cursed mind that never stops thinking. Mirrors that don't lie; doubts that torment; dictators who torture every hope on the rack. The crossroads approach, and it makes my head spin; we choose the path that allows us to sleep; we reject the tempting loophole. Lose yourself within the eyes of the one who deceives, or find yourself within those of the one who still loves you. The uncertainty of what hasn't been experienced versus the certainty of the already expired. Merge the experiences; the game is as controlled as a fire. Feel the heat; feel the cold. Wager, then, on your own defeat. ~ Eva Garcia Saenz

In between the Queen and the First Lady, Nancy Reagan, sat Tony Richardson, looking very calm. Later on it emerged that this was because, having not been apprised of the placement until he was about to sit down, he had died of fright. To have expired was to be fortunate. ~ Clive James

It is random discharges of this type, set off by the creation of anti-galaxies in space, which have led to the depletion of the time store available to the materials of our own solar system. Just as a super-saturated solution will discharge itself into a crystalline mass, so the super-saturation of our solar system leads to its appearance in a parallel spatial matrix. As more and more time leaks away, the process of super-saturation continues, the original atoms and molecules producing spatial replicas of themselves, substance without mass, in an attempt to increase their foothold upon existence. The process is theoretically without end, and it may be possible for a single atom to produce an infinite number of duplicates of itself, and so fill the entire universe, from which simultaneously all time is expired, an ultimate macrocosmic zero beyond the wildest dreams of Plato and Democritus. ~ J.G. Ballard