Falling Short Quotes

I can look at my early work and see what a pained struggle it was to draw what I was drawing. I was trying so hard to get this specific look that was in my head, and always falling short. ~ Daniel Clowes

Face each day with the expectation of achieving good, rather than the dread of falling short. ~ Shannon Miller

Few things can mess you up as badly as trying to do your best. For the tender heart, the earnest heart, it is so discouraging to give all you have trying to do what you think Jesus would have you do, and find yourself falling short, sabotaging your own efforts at every turn. Discouragement and shame settle in like a long Seattle rain.
And this is what most Christians experience as the Christian life: Try harder; feel worse. ~ John Eldredge

As individuals, we may not be able to do much, but when we're silent when someone uses the word "gay" as an insult, we are falling short. When we don't vote to support equal marriage rights for all, we are falling short. When we support musicians like Tyler, the Creator, we are falling short. We are failing our communities. We are failing civil rights. There are injustices great and small, and even if we can only fight the small ones, at least we are fighting. ~ Roxane Gay

How great it is when we come to know that times of disappointment can be followed by joy; that guilt over falling short of our ideals can be replaced by pride in doing all that we can; and that anger can be channeled into creative achievements ... and into dreams that we can make come true. ~ Fred Rogers

We have so little in common, but we were both avid readers growing up. I read almost nonstop when I was little, and it saved me in school. I hated classes, hated teachers. They always wanted me to do things I didn't want to do. But because I was a reader, they knew I wasn't stupid, just different. They cut me slack. It got me through.
Reading couldn't help me make friends, though. I never got the hang of it. I would talk to kids, and over the years a handful of them even seemed to like me enough to ask to come over, but after that first visit to the house they never lasted. Ma told me what I did wrong but I could never manage to do it right. 'Act interested in what they say,' she said, but they never said anything interesting. 'Don't talk too much,' she said, but it never seemed like too much to me. So it wasn't like people threw tomatoes at me, or dipped my pigtails in inkwells, or stood up to move their desks away from mine, but I never really managed to make friends that I could keep.
And I got used to it. I got used to a lot of things. Writing extra papers to make up for falling short in class participation. Volunteering to do the planning and the typing up whenever we had group work assigned, because I knew I could never really work right with a group. And the coping always worked. Up until three years into college, where despite Ma's repeated demands to try harder, I stalled. Every semester since, I was always still trying to finish that last Oral Communicatio ~ Jael McHenry

The perfect life, the perfect lie … is one which prevents you from doing that which you would ideally have done (painted, say, or written unpublishable poetry) but which, in fact, you have no wish to do. People need to feel that they have been thwarted by circumstances from pursuing the life which, had they led it, they would not have wanted; whereas the life they really want is precisely a compound of all those thwarting circumstances. It is a very elaborate, extremely simple procedure, arranging this web of self-deceit: contriving to convince yourself that you were prevented from doing what you wanted. Most people don't want what they want: people want to be prevented, restricted. The hamster not only loves his cage, he'd be lost without it. That's why children are so convenient: you have children because you're struggling to get by as an artist - which is actually what being an artist means - or failing to get on with your career. Then you can persuade yourself that your children prevented you from having this career that had never looked like working out. So it goes on: things are always forsaken in the name of an obligation to someone else, never as a failing, a falling short of yourself. ~ Geoff Dyer

I'd been through so much, falling short again and again, and only recently had found a place where who I was, right now, was enough. ~ Sarah Dessen

There's a belief that whatever it is I'm looking for is out there, but I have a really difficult time finding it. Search algorithms alone are falling short in being able to provide real context around information. ~ Chris Shipley

WORTH IT?
It is no credit to our phase of civilization if it is fear rather than ambition that drives most of those who bankrupt themselves on the vanities, or who end up under the surgeon's knife. It is the fear of falling short, of being inadequate in the eyes of others, including loved ones. [ ... ]
It is unfitting, one might say, improper, treating one's owm body as a tool rather than a part of oneself. [ ... ]
The bottom line is that it dishonors ourselves, for we ought to think better of ourselves than that. ~ Simon Blackburn

Falling short of self-destructive, her apathy toward the potential hazard was, given her internal upheaval, not unusual. Only later would she look back on her attitude as irresponsible; only later would she understand that she must have wanted something, anything to happen, to prove to herself that some part of her was still alive. ~ Barbara Delinsky

I feel like there are a lot of people doing a lot of hard work. I think it's too early to judge, and I don't think the gay community is in any way falling short. ~ Amy Ray

Toxic shame, the shame that binds us, is experienced as the all-pervasive sense that "I am flawed and defective as a human being." Toxic shame is no longer an emotion that signals our limits; it is a state of being, a core identity. Toxic shame gives you a sense of worthlessness, a sense of failing and falling short as a human being. Toxic shame is a rupture of the self with the self. It is like internal bleeding - exposure to oneself lies at the heart of toxic shame. A shame-based person will guard against exposing his inner self to others, but more significantly, he will guard against exposing himself to himself. Toxic shame is so excruciating because it is the painful exposure of the perceived failure of self to the self. In toxic shame the self becomes an object of its own contempt, an object that can't be trusted. As an object that can't be trusted, one experiences oneself as untrustworthy. ~ John Bradshaw

I don't want my life to not be the way I expected.
I may not be scared of crowds. Or the dark. Or small spaces. But I am afraid.
I am afraid of responsibility; I am afraid of not living up to expectations, of the changing future, of growing up, not knowing, sex, relationships, hardship, secrets, grades, judgement, falling short, loneliness, change, confusion, arguments, curiosity, love, hate, losing, pressure, differences, honesty, lies.
I am afraid of me.
Yet, despite this, I know I am brave. I know I am brave because I've accepted my invisible fears and haven't let them overcome me.
I want you to know that you're brave because you know your fears. You're brave because you introduced yourself. You're brave because you said 'No, I don't understand.' You're brave because you are here. ~ Emily Trunko

Gideon was quickly checking through her muscular structure and then weaving very gently into the complexities of her reproductive system. Suddenly Legna cried out again, her hands hitting his chest and grabbing fistfuls of his shirt, her entire body trembling from head to toe. This time Gideon gave the reaction his full attention. He looked into her wide eyes, the pupils dilating as he watched. Her mouth formed a soft, silent circle of surprise.
"What are you doing?" she asked, her breath falling short and quick.
"Nothing," he insisted, his expression reflecting his baffled thoughts. "Merely continuing the exam. What are you feeling?"
Legna couldn't put the sensation into words. Her entire body felt as if it were pooling liquid fire, like magma dripping through her, centering under the hand he had just splayed over her lower belly. So, being the empath she was, she described it in the only way she could with any efficiency and effectiveness. She sent the sensations to him, deeply, firmly, without preparation or permission, exactly the way she had received them.
In an instant, Gideon went from being in control of a neutral examination to an internal thermonuclear flashpoint of arousal that literally took his breath away. His hand flexed on her belly, crushing the silk of her dress within his fist.
"Legna!" he cried hoarsely. "What are you doing?"
She didn't even seem aware of him, her eyes sliding closed and her head falling back as she tried to g ~ Jacquelyn Frank

Songwriters: DAVID GRAY

Please forgive me if I act alittle strange
For I know not what I do
Feels like lightning running through my veins
Everytime I look at you
Everytime I look at you

Help me out here all my words are falling short
And there's so much I want to say
Want to tell you just how good it feels
When you look at me that way
When you look at me that way
Throw a stone and watch the ripples flow
Moving out across the bay
Like a stone I fall into your eyes
Deep into some mystery
Deep into that mystery

I got half a mind to scream out loud
I got half a mind to die
So I won't ever have to lose you girl
Won't ever have to say goodbye
I won't ever have to lie
Won't ever have to say goodbye

Please forgive me if I act alittle strange
For I know not what I do
Feels like lightning running through my veins
Everytime I look at you
Everytime I look at you
Everytime I look at you
Everytime I look at you ~ David Grey

The more clearly we see the infinite chasm between God's glory and our sinful falling short thereof, the greater will be our appreciation of His grace and love in bridging that gulf to redeem us. ~ Dave Hunt

The animal does not rebel against its own kind. Consider animals: how just they are, how well-behaved, how they keep to the time-honored, how loyal they are to the land that bears them, how they hold to their accustomed routes, how they care for their young, how they go together to pasture, and how they draw one another to the spring. There is not one that conceals its overabundance of prey and lets its brother starve as a result. There is not one that tries to enforce its will on those of its own kind. Not a one mistakenly imagines that it is an elephant when it is a mosquito. The animal lives fittingly and true to the life of its species, neither exceeding nor falling short of it.

He who never lives his animal must treat his brother like an animal. Abase yourself and live your animal so that you will be able to treat your brother correctly. You will thus redeem all those roaming dead who strive to feed on the living. And do not turn anything you do into a law, since that is the hubris of power. ~ C.G. Jung

falling short to deliver responses is one of the most popular blunders that innovators create. ~ Dan Anderson

To attempt to write seriously is always, I feel, to fail - the disjunction between my beautifully sonorous, accurate and painfully affecting mental content, and the leaden, halting sentences on the page always seems a dreadful falling short. ~ Will Self

Despite its successes, in the end, philosophical thinking always falls short of its real goal. It involves both the wonder of aspiring toward the Truth and the distress of falling short of that Truth. In this way, philosophy can be characterized as wondrous distress. ~ John Marmysz

To many people fall short of their goals because they mistakenly believe that losing is just another comfortable place to sit. ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.

Behind the naive vanities, the daydreams, they had very badly wanted to be writers. Had wanted it without knowing at all what it was they wanted, their fervor making up for their ignorance. His older self was cooler, more noncommittal, for he had learned that to publicize your goals means running the risk of falling short of them. ~ David Sedaris

Yasunari Kawabata wrote: "When speaking of those who take their own lives, it is always most dignified to use silence or at least restrained language, for the ones left most vulnerable and most deeply hurt by such an occurrence can feel oppressed by the louder assertions of understanding, wisdom and depth of remorse foisted upon them by others. One must ask: Who is best served by speculation? Who is really able to comprehend? Perhaps we must, as human beings, continue to try and comprehend, but we will fall short. And the falling short will deepen our sense of emptiness. ~ Howard Norman

Failure is an inescapable part of life and a critically important part of any successful life. We learn to walk by falling, to talk by babbling, to shoot a basket by missing, and to color the inside of a square by scribbling outside the box. Those who intensely fear failing end up falling short of their potential. We either learn to fail or we fail to learn. ~ Tal Ben-Shahar

The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark. ~ Michelangelo Buonarroti

In some ways, it's easier to settle for someone else's version of success than to risk falling short at one's own. ~ Peter Buffett

Beyond aspects of pain that are physical, thought Oppenheimer, sickness or injury or privation, beyond the so-called obvious, suffering can be a work of art. It can be made of buried and rising things, helpless and undiscovered, song of frustrated want, silence after desire. It can be the test of the self falling short, constrained, distorted, disturbed or rebuffed, the vacuum left by longing, call without an answer. ~ Lydia Millet

Hypocrisy means deliberately pretending. None of us lives up to his ideals; none of us is all that he would like to be or all that he could be in Christ. But that is not hypocrisy. Falling short of our ideals is not hypocrisy. Pretending we have reached our ideals when we have not - that is hypocrisy. ~ Warren W. Wiersbe

I would have thought that I would have become one of those parents - just because it's my nature to be such a perfectionist - that anything falling short, I would have seen as a failure. But something has happened to me over the past few years - it's not Zen, believe me, I'm not at all Zen - but I'm so appreciative of even the chaos. ~ Brooke Shields

The Savior desires to save us from our inadequacies as well as our sins. Inadequacy is not the same as being sinful - we have far more control over the choice to sin than we may have over our innate capacity ... A sense of falling short or falling down is not only natural but essential to the mortal experience. Still, after all we can do, the Atonement can fill that which is empty, straighten our bent parts, and make strong that which is weak. ~ Bruce C. Hafen

A lizard never thinks something is wrong with the world, even as it watches its young get eaten alive. It doesn't tell itself "something is wrong with the world," because it doesn't have enough neurons to imagine the world being other than what it is. It doesn't expect a world in which there is no predators, so it doesn't condemn the world for falling short of expectations. it doesn't condemn itself for failing to keep its offspring alive. Humans expect more, and we do something about it. That's why we end up focused on our disappointments instead of saluting our accomplishments. ~ Loretta Graziano Breuning

After a short flurry of national and international concern over the "death of the Sun," the human race settled down to solving the insoluble problem in the best way that they knew - they ignored it and hoped it would go away. ~ Robert L. Forward

In falling markets, there is nothing that has not happened before. The bear or pessimist sees only the past, which imprisons the wretched financial soul in eternal circles of boom and bust and boom again. ~ James Buchan

5 weeks since the Rapture "Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition." Thessalonians 2:3 ~ Phillip W. Simpson

You must know something."
"And why is Archer Cross here?" That was from Jenna. His voice had apparently changed over the summer, since he actually said the words instead of squeaking them. "He's an Eye."
"Didn't he try to kill you?" Nausicaa had drifted up, and she narrowed her eyes at me. "And if so, why exactly were you holding his hand earlier?"
Conversations like this usually ended in pitchforks and torches, so I held my hands out in what I hoped was an "everyone just calm the heck down" gesture. But then Jenna spoke up. "Sophie doesn't know anything," she said, nudging my behind her. That might've been more effective if Jenna weren't so short. "And whatever reason we're here, the Council had nothing to do with it." Jenna didn't add that that was because the entire Council, with the exception of Lara Casnoff and my dad, was dead. "She's just freaked out as the rest of us, so back. Off." From the expressions on the other kids' faces, I guessed Jenna had bared her fangs, and maybe even given a flash of red eyes.
"What's going on here?" a familiar voice brayed. Great. Like this night didn't suck out loud enough already. The Vandy-who had been a cross between school matron and prison guard at Hex Hall-shoved her way through the crowd, breathing hard. Her purple tattoos, marks of the Removal, were nearly black against her red face. "Downstairs, now!" As the group began moving again, she glared at Jenna and me. "Show your fangs again, Miss Talbot, and I'll w ~ Rachel Hawkins

I love rain. I love the sound of it falling on an umbrella, each drop that hits the cloth a soothing sound. Everything is so fresh and clean. It always feels as if each drop is helping to wash away the hurt, the pain, the dirt that life leaves behind. As if the mere act of it falling can give life a rebirth, a second chance. ~ Brandi M. Polier

Our life is just as long or short as our memory, as vibrant as our feeling, and as profound as our thinking. ~ Neel Burton

Some wee short hour ayont the twal. ~ Robert Burns

Eena focused on the younger version of herself. Her hair was tied back with a pink ribbon. The ruffled dress she wore was soiled up to the waist in wet grains of sand. A short, square shovel was gripped tightly as the child concentrated on her digging efforts.

Curious, Eena stepped closer to the girls. Ian followed along silently. Eena could feel his eyes on her, searching her profile before turning to the sand scene. She approached her younger self and stopped to watch. At first, she smiled at the darling ponytailed child. Then the spoiled girl's mouth opened.

"Angee," the five-year-old called the younger version of Angelle. "Go get water."

The older child jumped up at the command. "Yes, Eena."

"A whole bucket full."

"Yes, Eena."

"Angee, don't step on my holes!"

The older girl quickly picked up her foot, checking to be sure there were no child-made burrows nearby. She nodded at the little five-year-old. "Okay, Eena, I'll be careful."

Instead of being grateful, the ponytailed child tilted her head and bugged out her eyes. "Hurry up, Angee!"

"Okay, okay." The young Angelle lifted her skirt to watch for surrounding holes while carting a bucket in her other hand towards the lake.

Eena frowned at the sight. She heard Ian snicker beside her.

"I was a brat," she admitted ruefully.

"You still are. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Wall Street can be a dangerous place for investors. You have no choice but to do business there, but you must always be on your guard. The standard behavior of Wall Streeters is to pursue maximization of self-interest; the orientation is usually short term. This must be acknowledged, accepted, and dealt with. If you transact business with Wall Street with these caveats in mind, you can prosper. If you depend on Wall Street to help you, investment success may remain elusive. ~ Seth Klarman

Couldn't Keep It To Myself

alarmingly, i've been falling at your feet every time you look at me, and every time we speak and honestly, I just want a little harmony but every time you look at me, and every time we speak in a cold room, well only you knew you're just too much, I can't keep it up honestly, you've taken every little piece of me put it somewhere that i can't see, above my head honestly, you know there's things that'll never be you know there s things that'll we'll never see while we're in bed in a cold room, you knew you're just too much, I can't keep it up alarmingly, alarmingly, oh alarmingly in a cold room, you knew you're just too much, I can't keep it up ~ Gorgeous Bully

Sweetheart, darling, dearest, it was funny to think that these endearments, which used to sound exceedingly sentimental in movies and books, now held great importance, simple but true verbal affirmations of how they felt for each other. They were words only the heart could hear and understand, words that could impart entire pentameter sonnets in their few, short syllables. ~ E.A. Bucchianeri

We just think that we're being born, when we're born; (headfirst crying out of the smile of the womb, if we'd only known that it was all the same before getting involved in Samsara---saving motion and nervousness, not forsaking peace---I remember being forced out---to the discriminatory prickles and thorns of the world)--- We're still the same old substance, High Hearable Essence Light---(whatever it really is, & Empty)--- Unbornness is the above---

We just think that we're dying, when we die!---headfirst falling in the airplane, falling once again, from stage-emptiness to stage-emptiness---unborn and undying and undead---Birth and death not a dualism, no difference---same Dharmakaya Universal Essence---

No death, no birth, no error, no "prose", but uncreated single substance essence flow of transitory unreal words riding an unreal ride across the memory of the unreal word,

I can't say that the world is
Not that it is not -
Because it is just from Mind ~ Jack Kerouac

Alyssa, you've been given a chance at two lives and two loves. That is nothing short of a miracle. Cherish the gift for what it is. I shall see you soon, in Wonderland. ~ A.G. Howard

When you're jumping, it's just an aggressiveness, but I think the exhilaration and the fun comes after you make the bar and you're falling. That's the best part - a few seconds to celebrate and relax. ~ Jenn Suhr

To a physicist life looks nothing short of a miracle. It's just amazing what living things can do. ~ Paul Davies

The Victorians, for instance, couldn't get five minutes' peace without falling over a ghost. So what has changed? Have all the spectres left town? ~ Jan-Andrew Henderson

My dear Rosie,

Unbeknownst to you I took this chance before, many, many years ago. You never received that letter and I'm glad because my feelings since then have changed dramatically. They have intensified with every passing day.
I'll get straight to the point because if I don't say what I have to say now, I fear it will never be said. And I need to say it.
Today I love you more than ever; I want you more than ever. I'm a man of fifty years of age coming to you, feeling like a teenager in love, asking you to give me a chance and love me back.
Rosie Dunne, I love you with all my heart. I have always loved you, even when I was seven years old and I lied about falling asleep on Santa watch, when I was ten years old and didn't invite you to my birthday party, when I was eighteen and had to move away, even on my wedding days, on your wedding day, on christenings, birthdays and when we fought. I loved you through it all. Make me the happiest man on this earth by being with me.
Please reply to me.

All my love,
Alex ~ Cecelia Ahern

Probably you were not quite well, my little dove, when you wrote to me, for a note of real melancholy pervaded your letter. I recognized in it a nature closely akin to my own. I know the feeling only too well. In my life, too, there are days, hours, weeks, aye, and months, in which everything looks black, when I am tormented by the thought that I am forsaken, that no one cares for me. Indeed, my life is of little worth to anyone. Were I to vanish from the face of the earth to-day, it would be no great loss to Russian music, and would certainly cause no one great unhappiness. In short, I live a selfish bachelor's life. I work for myself alone, and care only for myself. This is certainly very comfortable, although dull, narrow, and lifeless. But that you, who are indispensable to so many whose happiness you make, that you can give way to depression, is more than I can believe. How can you doubt for a moment the love and esteem of those who surround you? How could it be possible not to love you? No, there is no one in the world more dearly loved than you are. As for me, it would be absurd to speak of my love for you. If I care for anyone, it is for you, for your family, for my brothers and our old Dad. I love you all, not because you are my relations, but because you are the best people in the world. ~ Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Listen. Put on morning. Waken into falling light. ~ W.S. Graham

Casting my eyes on Mr. Wemmick as we went along, to see what he was like in the light of day, I found him to be a dry man, rather short in stature, with a square wooden face, whose expression seemed to have been imperfectly chipped out with a dull-edged chisel. There were some marks in it that might have been dimples, if the material had been softer and the instrument finer, but which, as it was, were only dints. The chisel had made three or four of these attempts at embellishment over his nose, but had given them up without an effort to smooth them off. ~ Charles Dickens

Stars were falling across the sky myriad and random, speeding along brief vectors from their origins in night to their destinies in dust and nothingness. ~ Cormac McCarthy

If you have someone falling out of the boat, you'd have to drag the boat up the river and film the same scene ten times, every time, dragging the boat exactly where it was up the river. ~ Bonnie Jo Campbell

I'm the death investigator," the man said in a dry voice. He was wearing gray chinos, plain black walking sneakers, a tucked-in white short-sleeved polo shirt with a pen inserted on the placket, and a gray windbreaker. His head was slightly over-large and his hair was thinning. If he was going for the look of 'quietly angry engineer who will one day explode,' or 'DI by day, super-villain by night,' he had succeeded. ~ Nina Post

You want to know the story? I'd be happy to tell you. I think I have just enough caloric energy stored up to make it through the telling of the tale. It's short. I am monstrously fat. I am a glutton. My wife was disgusted and repulsed. She gave me six months to lose one hundred pounds. I joined Weight Watchers . . . see it there, right across the street, that gaunt storefront? This afternoon was the big six-month weigh-in. So to speak. I had gained almost seventy pounds in the six months. An errant Snickers bar fell out of the cuff of my pants and rolled against my wife's foot as I stepped on the scale. The scale over there across the street is truly an ingenious device. One preprograms the desired new weight into it, and if one has achieved or gone below that new low weight, the scale bursts into recorded whistles and cheers and some lively marching-band tune. Apparently, tiny flags protrude from the top and wave mechanically back and forth. A failure--see for instance mine--results in a flatulent dirge of disappointed and contemptuous tuba. To the strains of the latter my wife left, the establishment, me, on the arm of a svelte yogurt distributor whom I am even now planning to crush, financially speaking, first thing tomorrow morning. Ms. Beadsman, you will find an eclair on the floor to the left of your chair. Could you perhaps manipulate it onto this plate with minimal chocolate loss and pass it to me. ~ David Foster Wallace

Where the road bends abruptly, take short steps. ~ Ernest Bramah

I either eat too much or starve myself. Sleep for 14 hours or have insomniac nights. Fall in love very hard or hate passionately. I don't know what grey is. I never did. ~ Anais Nin

As such, we must oppose torturing human beings for the same reason we oppose "choice" in abortion rights, because torture dehumanizes both the tortured and the torturer. We ought to be those insisting that capital punishment, where it exists, is not discriminatory against the poor or racial minorities and that it not exist as part of a system in which innocent persons are mistakenly executed. A death penalty that exempts the white and the affluent, while putting to death those without the power to evade such justice, is hardly what God set forth in the covenant with Noah or in the sword-wielding delegated authority to Caesar to punish evildoers. And, even short of the death penalty, we should care about impartiality before the law, in the making and in the enforcement of laws for all persons, regardless of race or ethnicity or background. ~ Russell D. Moore

I don't know if it was a defining moment. I knew it as soon as I could comprehend the possibility of having a career. I knew very young I wanted to be a movie star. As much as I grew into love of the craft. As soon as I could speak I was auditioning and going to classes every day. It was my life. ~ Columbus Short

Being pregnant was very much like falling in love. You are so open. You are so overjoyed. There's no words that can express having a baby growing inside of you so, of course, you want to scream it out and tell everyone. ~ Beyonce Knowles

The role of humour is to make people fall down and writhe on the Axminster, and that is the top and bottom of it. ~ Alan Coren

Our very walking is an incessant falling; a falling and a catching of ourselves before we come actually to the pavement. It is emblematic of all things a man does. ~ Thomas Carlyle

Holly winked. 'Do I look like a fly boy to you, Fowl?'
Artemis had to admit that she didn't. Captain Short was extremely pretty in a dangerous sort of way. Black-widow pretty. Artemis was expecting puberty to hit in approximately eight months, and he suspected that at that point he would look at Holly in a different light. It was probably just as well that she was eighty years old. ~ Eoin Colfer

He started to apologize for the fact that there were no chairs in his son's room
only floor cushions
but I quickly gave him to believe that for me this was little short of a godsend. (In fact, I think I said I hated chairs. I was so nervous that if he had informed me that his son's room was flooded, night and day, with a foot of water, I probably would have let out a little cry of pleasure. I probably would have said I had a rare foot disease, one that required my keeping my feet wet eight hours daily.) ~ J.D. Salinger

Each star had cost an effort. For each there had been planning, watching and anticipation. Each one recalled to me a place, a time, a season. Each one now has a personality. The stars, in short, had become my stars. ~ Leslie C. Peltier

That's something that would really sell. I mean, I admire that you tell stories of make-believe people in worlds that don't exist and that have no relevance to how we live. That can be nice, but people also like things that are uplifting and practical.
(From the short story: The Late Novels of Gene Hackman) ~ Rivka Galchen

Billions of people have seen and been influenced by movies in the short history of this industry. ~ Conrad Hall

When our time is limited and we are uncertain about how best to serve our priorities, we are forced to deal with the fact that both the experiencing self and the remembering self matter. We do not want to endure long pain and short pleasure. Yet certain pleasures can make enduring suffering worthwhile. The peaks are important, and so is the ending. ~ Atul Gawande

Focus. Focus. Focus ... on your burning priorities. Say no to everything else. Life's short. You only get one shot at great. ~ Robin Sharma

I quit my job just to quit. I didn't quit my job to write fiction. I just didn't want to work anymore. ~ Don DeLillo

Now, this is the fun part about getting stoned. They get stoned, then they become paranoid. Now, when they started out, they said, "Let's get high and have fun." So they're high; now they're paranoid. "Am I falling out of this chair?" ~ Bill Cosby

The charm of Ronald Reagan is not just that he kept telling us screwy things, it was that he believed them all. No wonder we trusted him, he never lied to us ... His stubbornness, even defiance, in the face of facts ('stupid things,' he once called them in a memorable slip) was nothing short of splendid ... This is the man who proved that ignorance is no handicap to the presidency. ~ Molly Ivins

My mother is very short - four-eleven. She could walk under tables and never hit her head. ~ Mel Brooks

Almost said 'theater'! But I know the blacks don't go! Unless it's that My Arms Are Too Short To Box With God production. Or The Wiz. ~ Jimmy Pardo

I don't have many fears other than being unemployed, homeless, friendless, rejected by my family, covered with honey and tied to a bed of fire ants, the flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz, squash, computer paper, ghosts named Maggie, falling out of the space shuttle right before it leaves the Earth's atmosphere, licorice, elves, lawnmowers, unwashed hands, waking hours and being romantically linked to Madonna and Alex Rodriguez. ~ Cary Clack