Jumpy Quotes

One more consideration also weighed with Smiley, though in his paper he is too gentlemanly to mention it. A lot of ghosts walked in those post-fall days, and one of them was a fear that, buried somewhere in the Circus, lay Bill Haydon's chosen successor: that Bill had brought him on, recruited and educated him against the very day when he himself, one way or another, would fade from the scene. Sam was originally a Haydon nominee. His later victimisation by Haydon could easily have been a put-up job. Who was to say, in that very jumpy atmosphere, that Sam Collins, manoeuvring for readmission, was not the heir elect to Haydon's treachery?
For all these reasons George Smiley put on his raincoat and got himself out on the street. Willingly, no doubt - for at heart, he was still a case man. Even his detractors gave him that. ~ John Le Carre

Wine's terrible for babies." Dorian swept into the sitting room to join me, elegantly arranging himself on a love seat that displayed his purple velvet robes to best effect.
"Well of course it is. I'd never dream of giving wine to an infant! What do you take me for, a barbarian? But for you ... well, it might go a long way to make you a little less jumpy. You've been positively unbearable to live around.
"I can't have it either. It affects the babies in utero. ~ Richelle Mead

Jumped and spun around. Man, my nightmares were making me jumpy. I hit the off button. It's time for school. Ugh. School was so my ~ Jessica Sorensen

Do you have any idea how hard a story is to write? My brain is jumpy, and my heart doesn't know where to live. Is Male is such an imperfect narrator, but he will try to finish his tale. ~ Jenny Hubbard

A way to do this is to "hand back" the projection to the client. For example, if the client says, "You're making me feel really jumpy today," the therapist could say, "Are you feeling jumpy today?" If the client says, "You must be feeling really tired after doing so many massages," the therapist can ask the client, "How are you feeling? Are you feeling tired?" If the client seems to be anticipating the future, the therapist can ask, "Is this what you are expecting will happen?" These responses must be made in a casual and nonchallenging manner. Asking in a manner that is too penetrating makes the client feel self-conscious and possibly judged. Handing back a projection is a good strategy because projections are a way a person puts, displaces, gets rid of, or abandons something of him- or herself into the environment and away. By handing it back, the therapist gives the client an opportunity to become more aware of it as belonging to him- or herself. ~ Elliot Greene

Coroners made Al Garcia jumpy; they always got so cheery when somebody came up with a fresh way to die. ~ Carl Hiaasen

I'm standing in a slaughterhouse where the cattle are begging to become hamburgers. I have a right to be jumpy. ~ Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

The rule of fishes is the same as the rule of people: if the shark comes, they will all escape, and leave you to be eaten. They share a single jumpy heart that drives them to move all together, running away from danger just before it arrives. Somehow they know. Underneath ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Mother seemed happy because the school yard where Rafik would spend his recesses was surrounded by a high stone wall. She'd recently started talking about 'safety' in a way that made Liyana jumpy. Liyana never thought about safety unless someone else brought it up. She didn't WANT to think about it either. SHE WANTED TO LIVE IN AN UNLOCKED WORLD ~ Naomi Shibab Nye

Eve: What is it about asking you Catholic questions that gets you all jumpy?
Roarke: You'd be jumpy, too, if I asked you things that make you feel the hot breath of hell at your back.
Eve: You're not going to hell.
Roarke: Oh, and have you got some inside intel on that?
Eve: You married a cop ... you married me. I'm your goddamn salvation. ~ J.D. Robb

Crime writers, I've noticed, can be jumpy. They live in a world where there are murderers on the loose and they haven't been caught yet! ~ Sara Sheridan

she came out - dancing around in a white shirt with nothing underneath, the rosy coins of her nipples visible under the thin fabric - asking for a wood saw and spackle, he'd been jumpy as a jackrabbit sniffing Easter candy. He could have looked in the bedroom when she left to sleep, to go to Brass and Bones, to go wherever sex-witch art-fairies go. She came back every day with packages from the Indian import store, bags from the pagan crystal shop, boxes that smelled like incense and old wood. But he didn't look because deep down he liked the mystery, that a woman had claimed a space in the house he'd designed, made it hers to reveal on her terms. ~ Kira A. Gold

Boredom presents a very real, if insidious peril. To quote Blaine Harden from the Washington post:"Boredom kills, and those it does not kill, it cripples, and those it does not cripple, it bleeds like a leech, leaving its victims pale, insipid, and brooding. Examples abound ... Rats kept in comfortable isolation quickly become jumpy, irritable, and aggressive. Their bodies twitch, their tails grow scaly." The backcountry traveler, then, in addition to developing such skills as the use of a map and compass, or the prevention and treatment of blisters, must prepare mentally and materially to cope with boredom, lest his tail grow scaly. ~ Jon Krakauer

Quick, nervy and jumpy -yet to the children she was as constant as a staff, a tree that can be counted on not to pull up its root and shift in the night. She was the tree that grew in the centre of their lives and in whose shade they lived. ~ Anita Desai

If you put music into your Vine, and it's really jumpy, just do it over again. ~ Maisie Williams

A soft poke at my shoulder blade startled me.
"Still jumpy, I see."
I spun to see Simon, Derek hanging back behind him.
Simon grinned, the sight as familiar as Derek's scowl. "Got my note, I hear," he said.
I pulled it out and waved it.
He plucked it from my fingers and tucked it into my jacket pocket. ~ Kelley Armstrong

But it is fantasy to think that successful writers do not have these bored, defeated hours, these hours of deep insecurity when one feels as small and jumpy as a water bug. They do. But they also often feel a great sense of amazement that they get to write, and they know that this is what they want to do for the rest of their lives. ~ Anne Lamott

Maybe I'm too jumpy, too untrusting. The thing is, once something bad happens, there's no way to undo it. There's no erase button on life. I can't just click the delete key and start over. ~ H.M. Ward

You nervous about doing this on camera?"
Chance tilted his head a little, considering. "Well, yeah, of course. You don't know what you look like when you come - for all I know, I'm hella ugly or something. But at the same time ... " He trailed off and shuddered, and his eyes got half-lidded. One hand went unconsciously to his stomach, then slid up to his nipples, which were still pointy and puckered. "It's sort of cool. It's making my stomach all jumpy, and ... " His other hand slid down under the waistband of his shorts, as he made obvious kneading motions on his groin.
"It's turning you on?"
"Mmmm ... "
"Take the shorts off, Chance, and show us. ~ Amy Lane

I saw them in the dark, the girls, the women yet to be found. I counted their faces, gave them names and said the names, as if calling a class register. Here's what I learnt from the clippings: that there is a pattern. These women had requested assistance. They'd told people: Someone is watching me, has been following me, has beaten me up before, has promised me he will kill me. They'd pointed their murderers out, and they had been told "It won't happen," or that nothing could be done, because of this and that, etc. I was jumpy in those days, expecting something terrible to happen to me at any moment, without knowing where it would happen to me, or why, or who would do it. ~ Helen Oyeyemi

My mother couldn't take having three boys. She was extremely jumpy, to say the least. Any noise startled her. The sound of a pot dropping on the ground could make her hit the ceiling. ~ Bruce Eric Kaplan

The negative effects of combat were nightmares, and I'd get jumpy around certain noises and stuff, but you'd have that after a car accident or a bad divorce. Life's filled with trauma. You don't need to go to war to find it; it's going to find you. We all deal with it, and the effects go away after awhile. At least they did for me. ~ Sebastian Junger

The top two for me are Spotlight and The Revenant [movies]. Everything says The Revenant, but Spotlight is special. I think this movie would have been a lot more jumpy and fast-faced if anyone else had done it. This movie is very unassuming in how powerful it is. It very calmly, and very cooly, eats you up inside. I think if there's anything that will upset the Revenant run, it's gonna be Spotlight. ~ Bun B.

People complain about the obscurity of poetry, especially if they're assigned to write about it, but actually poetry is rather straightforward compared to ordinary conversation with people you don't know well which tends to be jumpy repartee, crooked, coded, allusive to no effect, firmly repressed, locked up in irony, steadfastly refusing to share genuine experience--think of conversation at office parties or conversation between teenage children and parents, or between teenagers themselves, or between men, or between bitter spouces: rarely in ordinary conversation do people speak from the heart and mean what they say. How often in the past week did anyone offer you something from the heart? It's there in poetry. Forget everything you ever read about poetry, it doesn't matter--poetry is the last preserve of honest speech and the outspoken heart. All that I wrote about it as a grad student I hereby recant and abjure--all that matters about poetry to me is directness and clarity and truthfulness. All that is twittery and lit'ry: no thanks, pal. A person could perish of entertainment, especially comedy, so much of it casually nihilistic, hateful, glittering, cold, and in the end clueless. People in nusing homes die watching late-night television and if I were one of them, I'd be grateful when the darkness descends. Thank God if the pastor comes and offers a psalm and a prayer, and they can attain a glimmer of clarity at the end. ~ Garrison Keillor

Staying in that house alone didn't appeal to me - some ghost hunter I was. Nothing had happened, and I was already jumpy. ~ Patricia Briggs

When Martha first met me, I was anxious and jumpy. I was always tapping my foot, rocking, or exhibiting some other behavioral aberration. Of course, now we know that's just normal Aspergian behavior, but back then other people thought it was weird, so of course I did, too. One day, for some reason, she decided to try petting my arm, and I immediately stopped rocking and fidgeting. The result was so dramatic, she never stopped. It didn't take long for me to realize the calming effect, too. I like being petted and scratched. "Can you pet me?" I say when I sit next to her. ~ John Elder Robison

A good base stealer should make the whole infield jumpy. Whether you steal or not, you're changing the rhythm of the game. If the pitcher is concerned about you, he isn't concentrating enough on the batter. ~ Joe Morgan

Early Summer, loveliest season,
The world is being colored in.
While daylight lasts on the horizon,
Sudden, throaty blackbirds sing.

The dusty-colored cuckoo cuckoos.
"Welcome, summer" is what he says.
Winter's unimaginable.
The wood's a wickerwork of boughs.

Summer means the river's shallow,
Thirsty horses nose the pools.
Long heather spreads out on bog pillows.
White bog cotton droops in bloom.

Swallows swerve and flicker up.
Music starts behind the mountain.
There's moss and a lush growth underfoot.
Spongy marshland glugs and stutters.

Bog banks shine like ravens' wings.
The cuckoo keeps on calling welcome.
The speckled fish jumps; and the strong
Swift warrior is up and running.

A little, jumpy, chirpy fellow
Hits the highest note there is;
The lark sings out his clear tidings.
Summer, shimmer, perfect days. ~ Marie Heaney

At my cabin I got so jumpy after saving my young heroine from three older men who resembled my friends that I flipped and conceived of a highly illegal meal, a thirty-pound elephant's asshole shipped FedEx from Zimbabwe, cooked for three days in a rock-lined fire hole in a bleached gunnysack soaked in 151 rum, to which is added thirteen pounds of garlic and an equal amount of fresh hot chiles. Serve with plain white rice. A Bordeaux is a possibility. ~ Jim Harrison

But young parents, educated middle-class ones anyway, are very jumpy these days, they get so much information from the media about all the things that could be wrong with their child - autism, dyslexia, attention deficit disorder, allergies, obesity and so on - they're in a constant state of panic, watching their offspring like hawks for warning signs. ~ David Lodge

It's a sweet setup, I'll admit. For all that the maids STILL show up each day with jumbo crucifixes, jumpy movements, and red eyes from crying over the short straw that drew them vampire duty.' Yesterday, she'd just stopped herself from raising her clenched hands above her head and chasing one of them around the room groaning, 'I vant to suck your blood. ~ Kresley Cole

You not watching the road is making me a little jumpy."
"No, I think city boy is scared of the woods." She gave a quick laugh before saying, "Granny once told me she saw the devil out there. Pitchfork and all."
"Well, if I was scared, that wouldn't help. ~ Dorlana Vann

Fear is a weakness. It makes a person lose her nerve and her cool. It makes people jumpy and organizations nervous, and when that happens, there is always a chance to take advantage. ~ Ally Carter

She'd already accepted that she loved him, hadn't she? And it had been easy, a simple process of steps and study. Her mind was amde up, her goals set. Damn it, she'd been pleased by the whole business.
So what was this shaky, dizzy, painful sensation, this clutch of panic that made her want to turn her mount sharply around and ride as far away as possible?
She'd been wrong, Keeyley realized as she pressed an unsteady hand to her jumpy heart.She'd only been falling in love up to now.How foolish of her to be lulled by the smooth slide of it.This was the moment, she understood that now. This was the moment the bottom dropped away and sent her crashing.
Now the wind was knocked out of her, that same shock of sensation that came from losing your seat over a jump and findng yourself flipping through space until the ground reached up and smacked into you. Jolting bones and head and heart.
Love was an outrageous shock to the system, she thought. It was a wonder anyone survived it.
She was a Grant, Keeley reminded herself and straightened in the saddle. She knew how to take a tumble, jsut as she knew how to pick herself back up and focus mind and energy on the goal. She wouldn't just survive this knock to the heart.She'd thrive on it.And when she was done with Brian Donnelly, he wouldn't know what had hit him. ~ Nora Roberts

Somehow Christmas was making me feel jumpy inside. All this talk about being together and being happy and celebrating - it felt threatening. Like I shouldn't be part of it. Like I wasn't allowed. And Susan wanted me to be happy, which was scarier still. ~ Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

I arrived to work on the wrong foot. I was jumpy and agitated, constantly watching the doors. A loud fart would have sent me skyrocketing into orbit. ~ J.A. Saare

Strenuous occasions where (jumpy, un-opiated, wracked to the last synapse), ~ Donna Tartt

July 15, 1991

Nita: My mother was a paragon of our neighborhood, People always come up to us with hugs, saying "You have the most wonderful mother." l'd think. "Don't you see what's going on in this house?" To this day, if somehow even in jest raises their hand to me, I will do this (raises hands to protect face and cowers) I cringe. Then they look at me like, what's your probem? You don't get that from a great childhood. ~ Sarah E. Olson

And this note was a jittery time bomb, ticking beneath my normal life, in my pocket all day firecely reread, in my purse all week until I was afraid it would get crushed or snooped, in my drawer between two dull books to escape my mother and then in the box and now thunked back to you. A note, who writes a note like that? Who were you to write one to me? It boomed inside me the whole time, an explosion over and over, the joy of what you wrote to me jumpy shrapnel in my bloodstream. I can't have it near me anymore, I'm grenading it back to you, as soon as I unfold it and read it and cry one more time. Because me too, and fuck you. Even now.
I can't stop thinking about you. ~ Daniel Handler

There's a very mean girl down the hall who's trying to get me fired. I'm no good with confrontation, so whenever I say, "Have a wonderful day," to her out loud, I'm really saying, "Be nice to me or I will stab you in the face with a fork," in my head. I wish her a wonderful day at least once an hour. She's starting to get paranoid and jumpy about it, but there's really nothing she can do, because she can't complain about me wishing her a wonderful day without sounding totally insane. This is why you should never mess with nonconfrontational people. Because they're too unstable to second-guess. And because they're totally the kind of people who could suddenly snap, and stab you in the face with a fork. ~ Jenny Lawson