Fired Quotes

Bright lamplight bounced off golden varnished wood. The suddenly vivid colors of scarves, hats, hair and faces after the gray-green gloom they'd been immersed in all morning dazzled them. The solid warmth of the coal-fired range, dry and hot, pressed against them from the front as the lingering damp embedded in their backs brought forth a final, convulsive shiver. The sights and smells of rich food and aromatic coffee hit them, no longer just a hope in their hollow stomachs. This made them all as if drunk with good fortune and delighted them with sheer, physical pleasure. ~ Antonio Dias

The number of kiwis was increasing by the minute. When I looked about me, there were dozens of them, all identical, and each one fired off a question to me in turn. ~ Hiromi Kawakami

My hands felt electrically charged. My blood was ready to burst from my veins and my heart was beating a manic rhythm. I was frightened out of my wits but I was catching a familiar, addictive adrenaline wave. I was ready to taunt the reaper. ~ Bobby Adair

Marital life cannot be easily represented in art because it is the
small, invisible, quotidian growth of the day-to-day, where
outwardly nothing happens. Romantic love is like a general
who knows how to conquer but not how to govern once the
last shot is fired. Unlike the aesthete, who knows how to 'kill
time' , married people master time without killing it. Marital
time is about the wise use and governance of time, setting
one's hands to the plough of the day-to-day. ~ John D. Caputo

Hisli's tail flicked to the side as the arrow buried itself in the sand just inches behind her rear hooves. But Ansel didn't dare look over he shoulder. She kept riding, and she did not stop. Celeana lowered her bow and watched until Ansel disappeared beyond the horizon. One arrow, that had been her promise. But she's also promised Ansel that she's had twenty minutes to get out of range.
Celeana had fired after twenty-one. ~ Sarah J. Maas

Afterward, describing his division's accomplishments to Washington, Lafayette commended "Colonel Hamilton, whose well known talents and gallantry were on this occasion most conspicuous and serviceable." He wrote, "Our obligations to him, to Colonel Gimat, to Colonel Laurens, and to each and all the officers and men, are above expression. Not one gun was fired . . . and, owing to the conduct of the commanders and the bravery of the men, the redoubt was stormed with uncommon rapidity. ~ Sarah Vowell

If I were a CEO of a company and ran it like God runs the universe, I'd be fired. ~ Sherwin Wine

The gun locked open and he slammed another magazine in. As he did it, he either saw or imagined he saw a ripple moving through the cornfield and fired four more shots at it, then stopped, crouched, and stepped sideways across the nose of the truck, saw Robertson facedown in the driveway gravel. He was alive, pushing up with his hands, getting nowhere. ~ John Sandford

Buster closed his eyes, held his breath, and, before he realized that the gun had been fired, a gust of heat and wind passed over him and deconstructed the beer can atop his head, the sound of something irrevocably giving up its shape and becoming, in an instant, something new. ~ Kevin Wilson

Higher LOVE has a mirror image...have you looked into it lately? When the wick of your soul is lit by love, it can magnify its purity, and diamond-like clarity; fired true to its perfection, in flawless reflection of affinity, and traceless etchings upon the heart, by detailed fingerprints of divinity. ~ Tracey Bond

I was having trouble with the scale of things. A man killed with a musket was just as dead as one killed with a mortar. It was just that the mortar killed impersonally, destroying dozens of men, while the musket was fired by one man who could see the eyes of the one he killed. That made it murder, it seemed to me, not war. How many men to make a war? Enough, perhaps, so they didn't really have to see each other? ~ Diana Gabaldon

Velvet Jesus faced a shadow man to my left. Laser beams fired from his eyes. ~ David Wong

Advertising was fairly simple work, and I really just wanted a job where I could sit and write every day and not get fired for it like I had at other jobs, but it was fun. ~ John Hughes

At the end of the day, you have a job to do, and if you don't do your job, you're going to get fired. You just have to kind of put your head down and do it. ~ Chris Pine

In the car and in front of the camera I tend to be very calm but behind the scenes I can get fired up and passionate, I just don't see the need to shout my mouth off in public. ~ Jenson Button

To be fired for my faith would be a greater honor than to be fired because we didn't win enough games, ~ Ron Brown

She saw at last that her strange son was fired by some purpose which he would carry out or die. Seeing that, she finally currendered--the first casualty of the Revolution in Virginia. In so far as she herself realized, the sacrifice was made for George Wahington, but subconsciously she made it for his cause--just as unaware and obeying by blind instinct the laws of her nature, she had made him to begin with out of stuff that had been in the wearving a thousand years. ~ Nancy Byrd Turner

The first time I fired up a car, felt the engine shudder and the wheel come to life in my hands, I was hooked. It was a feeling I can't describe. I still get it every time I get into a race car. ~ Mario Andretti

As nearly two dozen Secret Service agents and members of the military were punished or fired following a 2012 prostitution scandal in Colombia, Obama administration officials repeatedly denied that anyone from the White House was involved. ~ Carol D. Leonnig

Agnes shut her eyes, clenched her fists, opened her mouth and screamed.

It started low. Plaster dust drifted down from the ceiling. The prisms on the chandelier chimed gently as they shook.
It rose, passing quickly through the mysterious pitch at fourteen cycles per second where the human spirit begins to feel distinctly uncomfortable about the universe and the place in it of the bowels. Small items around the Opera House vibrated off shelves and smashed on the floor.

The note climbed, rang like a bell, climbed again. In the Pit, all the violin strings snapped, one by one.
As the tone rose, the crystal prisms shook in the chandelier. In the bar, champagne corks fired a salvo. Ice jingled and shattered in its bucket. A line of wine-glasses joined in the chorus, blurred around the rims, and then exploded like hazardous thistledown with attitude.

There were harmonics and echoes that caused strange effects. In the dressing-rooms the No. 3 greasepaint melted. Mirrors cracked, filling the ballet school with a million fractured images.
Dust rose, insects fell. In the stones of the Opera House tiny particles of quartz danced briefly...

Then there was silence, broken by the occasional thud and tinkle.
Nanny grinned.
'Ah,' she said, 'now the opera's over. ~ Terry Pratchett

New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani fired his wife, Donna Hanover, as official hostess of the mayor's mansion last weekend. He's got his own idea of what a hostess should be. He wants a little cupcake. ~ Argus Hamilton

There will be ups, there will be downs, there will be sideways. I can just tell you I have been hired, I have been fired, I have been lauded, I have been vilified. I've said some of the most brilliant things that just by accident appeared on my tongue, and I've said some of the dumbest things that you could imagine. But each day - even the day that I knew I was going to be fired - I looked forward to because I've always believed that tomorrow was going to be the best day of my life. ~ Michael Bloomberg

The word thing is an interesting word. At first glance it looks like the front half of one word combined with the last half of another. It's a versatile word. It can be good, as in, "what a nice thing," or "she has a thing for you." Or it can be bad, like "the thing under the bed," or "here's the thing, you're fired and you smell bad." Add an "s" to the back end of it and it becomes something that most people in the world can't get enough of.
Things
People love things. They collect things. They store things. They cherish things and then move on and cherish other things. People also buy things. Some buy a lot of things simply because their neighbors have those same things
which is a weird thing if you really think about it.
It's remarkable what we'll do for the sake of things when in reality things couldn't care less about us. ~ Obert Skye

Torn clothes are funny ... until your dad gets fired. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

In previous years I was so fired up at times I made little mistakes. So I kept telling myself to be patient, relax, play like you do in practice. What I've been doing in practice will carry over into the game. ~ Randall Cunningham

But Holms had proven stalwart and valiant. When Miss Jones had shown up to discover them in the castle hallway, because she'd heard a suspicious noise and had feared for her schoolchums' safety, they' d had to bring her along. She'd wanted to run straight to the headmistress, of course, but Armand had persuaded her not to. How he regretted that decision now!
The duke had fired his guns at them all. They'd retreated, thought to go to the automobile to fetch a doctor and the sheriff, but they'd stumbled the wrong way and fallen down the slope to the beach instead. All three of them. And there, noble Jesse had died.
Fact. Fiction. Likely because so much of it had happened, and because Armand's red-eyed, stoic distress seemed so genuine, the adults around us had accepted it as truth.
Mostly.
I think if I hadn't been discovered wearing only Armand's coat as I knelt next to Jesse's body, Mrs. Westcliffe might have found the whole thing easier to swallow.
Yet the official version ruled the day. And here we all were basking in it, breathing fresh sea air, warmed by the generous spring sun. Burying a hero. A far, far greater hero than anyone standing around me at his funeral would ever suspect.
Somewhere in deep-blue briny waters, a U-boat rested, filled with live torpedoes and solid-gold men.
I thought I better understood Rue's letters now. I understood her warning about the pain that would come with my Gifts.
I understood my sacrifice. ~ Shana Abe

She is her odd self. The kiln has been fired. She is a person persnickity about keeping her house clean, but not above spitting on her desk to rub out a coffee stain. She will never be an athlete, or a mathematician, or a skinny person, or someone whose heart isn't snagged by the sight of fireflies on a summer night and the lilting cadence of a few good lines of poetry. ~ Elizabeth Berg

My parents were brutal to each other, so I slept in the basement by an old coal-fired furnace. I became a street kid. Occasionally, I'd live with aunts or uncles, then I'd run away to live in the woods, trapping and hunting game to survive. The wilderness pulled at me; still does. ~ Gary Paulsen

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

I'm convinced that a lot of people simply don't know what's available out there and how it is possible to find a job and work your way up if you are willing to accept responsibility for your life. I know what it's like to be on the bottom. I've been broke. I've been fired seven times from jobs. And I don't even have a college degree. But I didn't blame anyone else for my problems. I knew that if I didn't try to solve them on my own or with the help of friends or family members, no one else was going to take care of me. ~ Rush Limbaugh

He got fired because he didn't report the incident, and so no one else had the opportunity to learn from it. Not sharing an opportunity to learn is a cardinal sin." Cultures ~ Charles Duhigg

If a manager asks an academic consultant what to do and that consultant answers, then the consultant should be fired. No academic has the experience to know the context of a managerial problem well enough to give specific advice about a specific situation. ~ James G. March

Actually, I began to think that maybe there is a god, after all. Or maybe it's a different one. The old one got fired. ~ Terry Gilliam

Rooster here has missed Ned a few times himself, horse and all,' said the captain. 'I reckon his is on his way now to missing him again.'

Rooster was holding a bottle with a little whiskey in it. He said, 'You keep on thinking that.' He drained off the whiskey in about three swallows and tapped the cork back in and tossed the bottle up in the air. He pulled his revolver and fired at it twice and missed. The bottle fell and rolled and Rooster shot at it two or three more times and broke it on the ground. He got out his sack of cartridges and reloaded his pistol. He said, 'The Chinaman is running them cheap shells in on me again.'

LaBoeuf said, 'I thought maybe the sun was in your eyes. That is to say, your eye.'

Rooster swung the cylinder back in his revolver and said, 'Eyes, is it? I'll show you eyes!' He jerked the sack of corn dodgers free from his saddle baggage. He got one of the dodgers out and flung it in the air and fired at it and missed. Then he flung another one up and he hit it. The corn dodger exploded. He was pleased with himself and he got a fresh bottle of whiskey from his baggage and treated himself to a drink.

LaBoeuf pulled one of his revolvers and got two dodgers out of the sack and tossed them both up. He fired very rapidly but he only hit one. Captain Finch tried it with two and missed both of them. Then he tried with one and made a successful shot. Rooster shot at two and hit one. They drank whiskey and used up ~ Charles Portis

The shot of cold air hits Becca like it's been fired straight through the glass from the huge outside, wild and magic, pungent with foxes and juniper. ~ Tana French

All were indiscriminately condemned to death; but one out of three only were really executed. Ten cannon were placed on the drilling-ground, a prisoner fastened to each of their mouths, and five times were the ten guns fired, covering the plain with mutilated remains, in the midst of air tainted with the smell of burning flesh. These men, as M. de Valbezen says in his book called "Nouvelles Etudes sur les Anglais et l'lnde," nearly all died with that heroic indifference which Indians know so well how to preserve even in the very face of death. "No need to bind me, captain," said a fine young sepoy, twenty years of age, to one of the officers present at the execution; and as he spoke he carelessly stroked the instrument of death. "No need to bind me; I have no wish to run away." Such was the first and horrible execution, which was to be followed by so many others. At ~ Jules Verne

I wrote the script of Patton. I had this very bizarre opening where he stands up in front of an American flag and gives this speech. Ultimately, I was fired. When the script was done, they hired another writer and that script was forgotten. ~ Francis Ford Coppola

The shield went down for such a brief moment that, when it sealed again, the tail of the lasomag charge deflected wildly. Adrenaline fired, he dove for the floor, heart racing, as the flash burst backwards, striking someone in Theta's section. Panic swelled in a shrieking roar, front to back, some scattering, others frozen in place. ~ Marcha A. Fox

And so, Navani painted a prayer onto the stones themselves, sending her attendants for more ink. She paced off the size of the glyph as she continued its border, making it enormous, spreading her ink onto the tan rocks.
Soldiers gathered around, Sadeas stepping from his canopy, watching her paint, her back to the sun as she crawled on the ground and furiously dipped her brushpen into the ink jars. What was a prayer, if not creation? Making something where nothing existed. Creating a wish out of despair, a plea out of anguish. Bowing one's back before the Almighty, and forming humility from the empty pride of a human life.
Something from nothing. True creation.
Her tears mixed with the the ink. She went through four jars. She crawled, holding her safehand to the ground, brushing the stones and smearing ink on her cheeks when she wiped the tears. When she finally finished, she knelt back before a glyph twenty paces long, emblazoned as if in blood. The wet ink reflected sunlight, and she fired it with a candle; the ink was made to burn whether wet or dry. The flames burned across the length of the prayer, killing it and sending its soul to the Almighty. ~ Brandon Sanderson

A soldier must be like a bullet, constantly ready to be fired.' I learnt that by heart. You go to war in order to kill. Killing is my profession - that's what I was trained to do. ~ Svetlana Alexievich

Okay, well, I guess I'm still a kid. Because when I get really angry and fired up and I feel like my back is up against the wall, I will say vicious things. ~ Howard Stern

The news of the open military help to Franco from Hitler and Mussolini, and the heroic resistance of the people of Madrid, Barcelona and the big cities fired a widespread wish to help the Republic and its people. ~ Bill Alexander

He was back at the point of departure, at the place that filled writers with dread and excitement, for this was where they must decide which new story to tackle of the many floating in the air, which plot to bind themselves to for a lengthy period; and they had to choose carefully, study each option calmly ... because there were dangerous stories, stories that resisted being inhabited, and stories that pulled you apart while you were writing them ... At that moment, before reverently committing the first word to paper, he could write anything he wanted, and this fired his blood with a powerful sense of freedom, as wonderful as it was fleeting, for he knew it would vanish the moment he chose one story and sacrificed all the others. ~ Felix J. Palma

Stale beer sticks to wobbling tables. The cigarette machine flashes in the corner, mocking smokers who never have any change on them. There's no natural light in this pub, so it's dark and gloomy. The pain on the face of the staff tells its own story: overworked, underpaid, exploited and treated as expendable. I feel at home with them. They're so scared they will be fired from their terrible jobs, every time I order a beer they ask me if I want any peanuts or crisps, in case between drinks I've turned into the dreaded mystery shopper. The air is chewy and weighs heavy on the skin. The fruit machines in the corners don't make a sound, aware this is the last stop saloon for the drunk few who can't afford to gamble properly. Everyone here is down to their last pint and pound. ~ Craig Stone

It can be liberating to get fired because you realize the world doesn't end. There's other ways to make money, better jobs. ~ Ron Livingston

The crucial question one comes back to is the examination; without that experience is meaningless. And I think it's true that society is becoming more and more passive, less and less fired up with enthusiasm, in many spheres. ~ Peter Hammill

My father worked for the same firm for 12 years. They fired him and replaced him with a tiny gadget that does everything my father does, only much better. The depressing thing is my mother ran out and bought one ~ Woody Allen

A fundamental lesson on being fired: Never lie about it. People will know what you're saying is a cover-up for how you really feel - embarrassed, discouraged, and afraid. ~ Mika Brzezinski

SCUM will become members of the unwork force, the fuck-up force; they will get jobs of various kinds and unwork... SCUM office and factory workers, in addition to fucking up their work, will secretly destroy equipment. SCUM will unwork at a job until fired, then get a new job to unwork at. ~ Valerie Solanas

It never made sense to my young mind, how a hurt from so long ago could keep a man from walking right. Stay with him for the rest of his life. But now that I am older, now that I've fought my own wars and fired my own guns, I understand. ~ Ryan Graudin

I can't wait till tomorrow," he said, backing me against the door of my car, his lips moving toward my neck. Every nerve receptor in my body simultaneously fired as his strong hands gripped the small of my back; my hands pulled him closer and closer.
We kissed and kissed some more in the hotel parking lot, flirting dangerously with taking it a step--or five--further. Out-of-control prairie fires were breaking out inside my body; even my knees felt hot. I couldn't believe this man, this Adonis who held me so completely and passionately in his arms, was actually mine. That in a mere twenty-four hours, I'd have him all to myself. ~ Ree Drummond

The shot has gone under my rib, Boulard my boy, so it must have been the shortest one who fired.
Even his final sigh was a police investigation. ~ Timothee De Fombelle

Years later, the plain-speaking Truman would explain: "I fired him because he wouldn't respect the authority of the president . . . . I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail. ~ Douglas Brinkley

I'm the luckiest guy in the world. I wake up every day just fired up. My one rule is, don't let anyone pinch me, because I don't want to wake up. ~ Mark Cuban

It was weird that most people knew me as someone let go from 'SNL.' I had the best time there, and in retrospect, it was the perfect amount of time. The only thing that matters is what you do with yourself in that moment after. If you decide, 'I'm the girl who was fired from 'SNL,' you're just that. ~ Michaela Watkins

Thank you," he said. "Welcome. Welcome especially to Mr. Coyle Mathis and the other men and women of Forster Hollow who are going to be employed at this rather strikingly energy-inefficient plant. It's a long way from Forster Hollow, isn't it?"

"So, yes, welcome," he said. "Welcome to the middle class! That's what I want to say. Although, quickly, before I go any further, I also want to say to Mr. Mathis here in the front row: I know you don't like me. And I don't like you. But, you know, back when you were refusing to have anything to do with us, I respected that. I didn't like it, but I had respect for your position. For your independence. You see, because I actually came from a place a little bit like Forster Hollow myself, before I joined the middle class. And, now you're middle-class, too, and I want to welcome you all, because it's a wonderful thing, our American middle class. It's the mainstay of economies all around the globe!"

"And now that you've got these jobs at this body-armor plant," he continued, "You're going to be able to participate in those economies. You, too, can help denude every last scrap of native habitat in Asia, Africa, and South America! You, too, can buy six-foot-wide plasma TV screens that consume unbelievable amounts of energy, even when they're not turned on! But that's OK, because that's why we threw you out of your homes in the first places, so we could strip-mine your ancestral hills and feed the coal-fired generators t ~ Jonathan Franzen

Greta's car was three blocks away, and up ahead there looked to be a crowd of people gathering. They had probably come outside to see what the commotion was. Rapp stopped running. There was no quicker way to attract attention than running in street clothes at night when gunshots had been fired. The sirens were much closer now. At the next intersection a police car came skidding around the corner. Rapp's training kicked in. He stopped and stared directly at the two policemen in the front seat. That's what innocent people did. Guilty people looked away, hid their faces, and even ran. ~ Vince Flynn

Every time you start a new job, you're starting from the beginning again and it's terrifying. And you feel like you're going to be fired and told to go home and never to darken the doors of these people ever again. ~ Emily Mortimer

In the Queen's dream she ran hazily through an emerald mist. Behind her trailed caricatures of elves. Their bodies were shadows, long and twisted. Just one of their strides covered two of hers. They were like harlequins, and their smiles gleamed white as they fired arrows that left bare trails in the Nixus. She looked over her shoulder just as an arrow sliced at her face and severed locks of her scarlet hair. Her bones made an unpleasant jolt as the Queen hit what felt like a wall. A great shadow towered over her, its face a porcelain white mask. Unlike the elves, however, the figure did not smile. Claws plucked her from the fog as if she were a child's toy, and the shadow's mask flipped open, revealing a familiar face. ~ Plague Jack

People are afraid that they're going to upset somebody on top, and so there's a real sense of, I've got to be quiet, I don't want to be fired. ~ Nick Offerman

It has been rumored that we have fired scud missiles into Kuwait. I am here now to tell you, we do not have any scud missiles and I don't know why they were fired into Kuwait. ~ Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

There's no grander sight in the world than that of a person fired with a great purpose, dominated by one unwavering aim. ~ Orison Swett Marden

When was the last time you were kissed?" he went on easily. "And I'm not talking about the dry, noncommittal, meaningless kiss you forget about as soon as it's over."

I scrambled out of my stupor long enough to quip, "Like last night's kiss?"

He cocked an eyebrow. "That so? I wonder, then, why you moaned my name after you drifted to sleep."

"I did not!"

"If only I'd had a video recorder. When was the last time you were really kissed?" he repeated.

"You seriously think I'm going to tell you?"

"Your ex?" he guessed.

"And if he was?"

"Was it your ex who taught you to be ashamed and uncomfortable with intimacy? He took from you what he wanted, but never seemed to be around when you wanted something back, isn't that right? What do you want, Britt?" he asked me point-blank.
"Do you really want to pretend like last night never happened?"

"Whatever happened between me and Calvin isn't your business," I fired back.

"For your information, he was a really great boyfriend. I-I wish I was with him right now!" I exclaimed untruthfully. My careless comment made him flinch, but he recovered quickly.

"Does he love you?"

"What?" I said, flustered.

"If you know him so well, it shouldn't be a hard question. Is he in love with you? Was he ever in love with you?"

I tossed my head back haughtily. "I know what you're doing. You' ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

All movements need a few people who can't be fired. ~ Gloria Steinem

Go forward until the last round is fired and the last drop of gas is expended ... then go forward on foot! ~ George S. Patton

The first time I took Reed hunting was when he was six years old. I took him on the last day of duck season, and we pulled right up to the water. I gave him a BB gun, and I had my shotgun. Our property was a haven for wood ducks, so that's what I wanted to shoot so he could see what made this spot so special. Wouldn't you know it? The first two ducks that flew in our sights were a mallard drake and hen. We were on a bank instead of in a blind, which was unusual, but the ducks floated down and lit about ten feet in front of us. More than anything, I showed Reed the power of a duck call, because the water in front of us was only about two inches deep. I couldn't believe the ducks were sitting there.
"I'm going to count to three," I whispered to Reed. "Get your BB gun. When I get to three, you fire.
"One, two, three!" I said.
Reed shot his BB gun, and I fired my shotgun at the same time. The drake never knew what hit him, and Reed immediately looked down at his BB gun. It was like he was thinking, What is this thing? I don't think he even realized I killed the duck with my shotgun. Reed was so excited that I don't believe he realized that I had shot, despite the fact of the booming sound. He looked back at me, and I told him, "Boy, you put a good shot on him, son. ~ Jase Robertson

Have I mentioned the last time I saw her she marched out of my shop in a blaze of angry glory?
Might be because I fired her sexy ass five years ago.
Yeah, there's some bad blood between us. ~ Lauren Blakely

The NBA's been around how long? A hundred years? Fifty years? So to change it now, whoever that person is needs his college degree revoked ... Whoever did that needs to be fired. It was terrible, a terrible decision. Awful. I might get fined for saying that, but so what? ~ Shaquille O'Neal

Dumped? Fired? Scorned? Humiliated? Totally pissed off? If so, I've got great news! You might be on your way to living your best life ever - if you consciously choose to channel this pain into fuel - and use it to motivate yourself to become your highest potential self! ~ Karen Salmansohn

The unions are the worst thing that ever happened to education because it's not a meritocracy. It turns into a bureaucracy, which is exactly what has happened. The teachers can't teach and administrators run the place and nobody can be fired. It's terrible. ~ Steve Jobs

I didn't get fired."
"You didn't punch your boss and get fired from the Tribune? That's what I heard."
"I punched what could loosely be called a colleague for cribbing my notes on a story and since the editor–who happened to be the asshole's uncle–took his word over mine, I quit."
"To write books. Is it fun?"
"I guess it is."
"I bet you killed the asshole in the first one you wrote."
"You'd be right. Beat him to death with a shovel. Very satisfying. ~ Nora Roberts

if you have the right people on the bus, the problem of how to motivate and manage people largely goes away. The right people don't need to be tightly managed or fired up; they will be self-motivated by the inner drive to produce the best results and to be part of creating something great. ~ James C. Collins

The armies massing ... crowding thick-and-fast
as the swarms of flies seething over the shepherds' stalls
in the first spring days when the buckets flood with milk-
so many long-haired Achaeans swarmed across the plain
to confront the Trojans, fired to smash their lines ~ Fagles Robert

I lived through a classic publishing story. My editor was fired a month before the book came out. The editor who took it over already had a full plate. It was never advertised. We didn't get reviewed in any major outlets. ~ Anita Diament

I had fired 9-millimeters before and didn't like them. they weren't as accurate as my .38 special. they weren't as safe, and they could jam. i had never been one to substitute quantity for quality, and there was no substitution for being informed and practiced ~ Patricia Cornwell

The important thing to know about an assassination or an attempted assassination is not who fired the shot, but who paid for the bullet. ~ Eric Ambler

Swathed in silk, I feel like a caterpillar in a cocoon awaiting metamorphosis. I always supposed that to be a peaceful condition. At first it is. But as I journey into the night, I feel more and more trapped, suffocated by the slippery bindings, unable to emerge until I have transformed into something of beauty. I squirm, trying to shed my ruined body and unlock the secret to growing flawless wings. Despite enormous effort, I remain a hideous creature, fired into my current form by the blast from the bombs. ~ Suzanne Collins

To defend my fear of sudden change, I chose to believe that life was incremental, that the tiny decisions you make every day determine your fate, that your job is to captain an enormous ship subtly into ever-clearer waters. But that's not how it works at all. Life occurs in moments. You get into college. You propose. You get the job. You get cancer. You get fired. She leaves you ... Because I was born in a stable country at a stable time, I falsely extrapolated that change is incremental. But if you zoom out just a little bit, you see that life is soccer, not basketball. It's revolution, invention, war. It's big bangs, exploding stars, asteroids killing the dinosaurs. Which means that all the action is in the risk taking, whether I want it to be or not. ~ Joel Stein

The people in a position to resolve the financial crisis were, of course, the very same people who had failed to foresee it: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, future Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack, Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit, and so on. A few Wall Street CEOs had been fired for their roles in the subprime mortgage catastrophe, but most remained in their jobs, and they, of all people, became important characters operating behind the closed doors, trying to figure out what to do next. With them were a handful of government officials - the same government officials who should have known a lot more about what Wall Street firms were doing, back when they were doing it. All shared a distinction: They had proven far less capable of grasping basic truths in the heart of the U.S. financial system than a one-eyed money manager with Asperger's syndrome. ~ Michael Lewis

You're not a killer,"Calvert said.

"No…" I replied. I couldn't see, so I screwed my eyes closed, felt the moisture of tears threatening to spill forth. I took in a deep breath.

"…But I suppose, in a roundabout way, you made me into one," I finished. I aimed the gun and fired. ~ Wildbow

Hey, Mom. Hey, Dad. Oh, I'm good, you know. Mostly. I guess I'm in a bit of a spot. You see, I fucked a patient while I was on the clock. I mean, it's fine, because I thought I liked him, and we didn't get caught. But then I had sex with him again...totally off the clock this time...and we did get caught and then I got fired. Haha. I'm totally broke. Can I move back home?
That wasn't exactly how the conversation had gone. I'd have died. But I had told my parents that St. Andrew's hadn't worked out, and my Dad at least had an inkling as to why. Despite my being a colossal fuck-up and throwing away everything I'd ever wanted over a guy, they were letting me move into my old room.
Not ideal. Surely. But I'd just cleaned out my checking account to make my student loan payment, and rent was due in a week, and no one was exactly jumping out of their skin to hire a deaf waiter or a deaf receptionist while I looked for something permanent. It was moving home or living in my car, I guess ~ Peter Styles

Just to be clear, Ray Rice was not fired for beating his wife. He was fired because a video of him beating his wife was released. ~ Chris Rock

They fired director Richard Donner because they didn't want to pay him, and he's the reason the franchise became so successful in the first place. There's a big part of Superman II that he did that no one has ever seen. ~ Margot Kidder

I started casting. I cast music videos, but I kept getting fired from jobs because I was iconoclastic in my ways of casting. ~ Lee Daniels

I used to work at UPS I got fired for unloading packages into my car. ~ Felipe Esparza

She locked eyes with Jase. And said his middle name. "David."
Simultaneously, she fired her weapon.
Jase wrenched himself to the side. The bullet lodged in Turner's brain before Jase even hit the ground. ~ Virna DePaul

And as we stood there, a curious thing happened: a kind of window opened in the rain, just as if a cloud had been hitched aside like a curtain, and in the space between we saw a landscape that took our breath away. The high ground along which the road ran fell away through a black, woody belt, and beyond it, for more miles than you can imagine, lay the whole basin of the Black Country, clear, amazingly clear, with innumerable smokestacks rising out of it like the merchant shipping of the world laid up in an estuary at low tide, each chimney flying a great pennant of smoke that blew away eastward by the wind, and the whole scene bleared by the light of a sulphurous sunset. No one need ever tell me again that the Black Country isn't beautiful. In all Shrophire and Radnor we'd seen nothing to touch it for vastness and savagery. And then this apocalyptic light! It was like a landscape of the end of the world, and, curiously enough, though men had built the chimneys and fired the furnaces that fed the smoke, you felt that the magnificence of the scene owed nothing to them. Its beauty was singularly inhuman and its terror – for it was terrible, you know – elemental. It made me wonder why you people who were born and bred there ever write about anything else. ~ Francis Brett Young

Here, sleep with your back against me. I shall protect you better this way."
She nodded, shuffled closer, and leaned back against him. Her unique womanly scent washed over him, and he fortified his resolve, though having her so close on a bed of furs fired his blood. She dragged her fur up, and he draped his extra across, tucking it in around her shoulders and arms.
"I do not fancy having one of them lying next to you. Besides, I wish not for your pinkie to wander. ~ Angela Quarles

One thing I learned working at magazines was that if you couldn't get people to look at a page or a cover, then you were fired. It was all about how you create arresting works, and by arresting I mean stop people, even for a nano-second. ~ Barbara Kruger

She covered his hand with hers over her abdomen. His was so much bigger than hers and had probably fired guns, rifles, and god knew what else, but right here, right now, his tenderness broke down her will as sure as any grenade. ~ Lisa Kessler

But first, I want the pleasure of telling you that you are fired. I fire you. I fire you and all your relatives. I fire your ancestors and your descendants. I fire the very air you breathe and the ground you walk upon. ~ Z.A. Maxfield

You never suffer nearly as much as you imagine you suffer. You never suffer the illnesses you most dread nor the miseries that you fear. ~ Osho

To operate based on conviction and belief requires an acceptance that your actions could get you fired. This is different from pig-headed bravado, and it is different from putting the company at risk. ~ Simon Sinek

Maybe some people think we're too different, but maybe we're not," Joshua said. "Maybe we're two sides of the same coin."
"Like, 'You complete me'?" Melina asked, snickering. She couldn't resist quoting the corny line.
"No, not like that," Joshua said. "Like, you challenge me. You get me fired up. We're like steak and horseradish."
"That's such as dude thing to say," Melina laughed. "What am I?"
Joshua grinned devilishly. "The hot one, of course! ~ Heidi Joy Tretheway

I come home that morning, after I been fired, and stood outside my house with my new work shoes on. The shoes my mama paid a month's worth a light bill for. I guess that's when I understood what shame was and the color of it too. Shame ain't black, like dirt, like I always thought it was. Shame be the color of a new white uniform your mother ironed all night to pay for, white without a smudge or a speck a work-dirt on it. ~ Kathryn Stockett

Those important brain circuits, the ones that enabled most of us to avoid saying the wrong thing, were simply not there in Martha's case; or fired in the wrong order; or were short-circuiting. In other words, Martha Drummond was an electrical problem. And understanding people as electrical problems undoubtedly helped one to tolerate them. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

They – note the 'they' – paid Dr Stone to figure out what had destroyed the patient entering the ward. In each case a bullet had been fired at him, somewhere, at some time, in his life. The bullet entered him and the pain began to spread out. Insidiously, the pain filled him up until he split in half, right down the middle. The task of the staff, and even of the other patients, was to put the person back together but this could not be done so long as the bullet remained. All that lesser therapists did was note the person split into two pieces and begin the job of patching him back into a unity; but they failed to find and remove the bullet. The fatal bullet fired at the person was the basis of Freud's original attack on the psychologically injured person; Freud had understood: he called it a trauma. Later on, everyone got tired of searching for the fatal bullet; it took too long. Too much had to be learned about the patient. Dr Stone had a paranormal talent, like his paranormal Bach remedies which were a palpable hoax, a pretext to listen to the patient. Rum with a flower dipped in it – nothing more, but a sharp mind hearing what the patient said. ~ Philip K. Dick

We should because when coaches get fired, the players have a lot to do with it. ~ Allen Iverson

I was fired ignominiously from the Junior School Choir for being so off tune that the choir mistress declared she couldn't even bear to have me mime. ~ Sara Sheridan

The best part about Omar was that he wasn't simply a decoy. Surrounding the robot was a grid of ultraviolet and microwave beams. When Loving or his partner, presumably from some distance, took up position and fired the typical three-burst round into Omar's head, empty and inexpensively replaceable, a computer would instantly correlate trajectory, speed and GPS coordinates and indicate on our handhelds where the shooter was, down to three feet. Would ~ Jeffery Deaver