Kuzmin Table Tennis Quotes

Britain's counterespionage officers saw signs of treachery in everything Ivor Montagu did: they saw it in his friends, his appearance, his opinions, and his behavior. But above all, they saw it in his passionate, and dubious, love of table tennis. ~ Ben Macintyre

Jeremy Bentham startled the world many years ago by stating in effect that if the amount of pleasure obtained from each be equal there is nothing to choose between poetry and push-pin. Since few people now know what push-pin is, I may explain that it is a child's game in which one player tries to push his pin across that of another player, and if he succeeds and then is able by pressing down on the two pins with the ball of his thumb to lift them off the table he wins possession of his opponent's pin. [...] The indignant retort to Bentham's statement was that spiritual pleasures are obviously higher than physical pleasures. But who say so? Those who prefer spiritual pleasures. They are in a miserable minority, as they acknowledge when they declare that the gift of aesthetic appreciation is a very rare one. The vast majority of men are, as we know, both by necessity and choice preoccupied with material considerations. Their pleasures are material. They look askance at those who spent their lives in the pursuit of art. That is why they have attached a depreciatory sense to the word aesthete, which means merely one who has a special appreciation of beauty. How are we going to show that they are wrong? How are we going to show that there is something to choose between poetry and push-pin? I surmise that Bentham chose push-pin for its pleasant alliteration with poetry. Let us speak of lawn tennis. It is a popular game which many of us can play with pleasure. It needs skill and jud ~ W. Somerset Maugham

We played for about half an hour before I realized we were actually playing two different games. What I'd thought of as ludo was actually a game called gin rummy, and what Warren was playing seemed to be a mixture of craps and table tennis. Once we started playing by one consistent set of rules, though, the fun was really over. ~ Graham Parke

I'm a decent table tennis player, but if you were to put me up against any of the guys you see on television at the Olympics, I'd be lucky to get a couple of points. ~ Matt Kuchar

Science fiction is a dialogue, a tennis match, in which the Idea is volleyed from one side of the net to the other. Ridiculous to say that someone 'stole' an idea: no, no, a thousand times no. The point is the volley, and how it's carried, and what statement is made by the answering 'statement.' In other words - if Burroughs initiates a time-gate and says it works randomly, and then Norton has time gates confounded with the Perilous Seat, the Siege Perilous of the Round Table, and locates it in a bar on a rainy night - do you see both the humor and the volley in the tennis match? ~ C.J. Cherryh

Vivian was not alone in thinking that a man who spent so much time discussing table tennis was probably a spy. ~ Ben Macintyre

So there is not a lot about me that you don't know other than that I play table tennis. I'm great, I'm great at table tennis! You will look at me and go, 'How does that dude know how to play that well?' ~ Jamie Foxx

table tennis in the afternoon... ~ Phillip Lundberg

Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town. A great black stove is its main feature; but there is also a big round table and a fireplace with two rocking chairs placed in front of it. Just today the fireplace commenced its seasonal roar. A woman with shorn white hair is standing at the kitchen window. She is wearing tennis shoes and a shapeless gray sweater over a summery calico dress. She is small and sprightly, like a bantam hen; but, due to a long youthful illness, her shoulders are pitifully hunched. Her face is remarkable - not unlike Lincoln's, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind; but it is delicate, too, finely boned, and her eyes are sherry-colored and timid. "Oh my," she exclaims, her breath smoking the windowpane, "it's fruitcake weather! ~ Truman Capote

Although it often struggles to be heard in respectable circles, there is an alternative to the Christian-Romantic tenet that sex and love should always be inseparable. The libertine position denies any inherent or logical link between loving someone and needing to be unfailingly sexually loyal to them. It proposes that it can be entirely natural and even healthy for partners in a couple occasionally to have sex with strangers for whom they have little feeling but to whom they nonetheless feel strongly attracted. Sex doesn't always have to be bound up with love. It can sometimes – this philosophy holds – be a purely physical, aerobic activity engaged in without substantive emotional meaning. It is, so its adherents conclude, just as absurd to suppose that one should only ever have sex with the person one loves as it would be to require that only those in committed couples ever be permitted to play table tennis or go jogging together. ~ Alain De Botton

Hornergy' is Zen's term for the indomitable athletic edge powered by sexual restraint. The basketball, baseball and football teams haven't had a winning season in years. The table-tennis team, however, is undefeated. ~ Megan McCafferty

about four inches down, he suddenly came into a small chamber in the cool-damp sand and there lay eggs, many eggs, almost perfectly round eggs the size of table tennis balls, and he laughed then because he knew. It had been a turtle. ~ Gary Paulsen

I once read that if the folds in the cerebral cortex were smoothed out it would cover a card table. That seemed quite unbelievable but it did make me wonder just how big the cortex would be if you ironed it out. I thought it might just about cover a family-sized pizza: not bad, but no card-table. I was astonished to realize that nobody seems to know the answer. A quick search yielded the following estimates for the smoothed out dimensions of the cerebral cortex of the human brain.

An article in Bioscience in November 1987 by Julie Ann Miller claimed the cortex was a "quarter-metre square." That is napkin-sized, about ten inches by ten inches. Scientific American magazine in September 1992 upped the ante considerably with an estimated of 1 1/2 square metres; thats a square of brain forty inches on each side, getting close to the card-table estimate. A psychologist at the University of Toronto figured it would cover the floor of his living room (I haven't seen his living room), but the prize winning estimate so far is from the British magazine New Scientist's poster of the brain published in 1993 which claimed that the cerebral cortex, if flattened out, would cover a tennis court. How can there be such disagreement? How can so many experts not know how big the cortex is? I don't know, but I'm on the hunt for an expert who will say the cortex, when fully spread out, will cover a football field. A Canadian football field. ~ Jay Ingram

My application's not bought,' I am telling them, calling into the darkness of the red cave that opens out before closed eyes. 'I am not just a boy who plays tennis. I have an intricate history. Experiences and feelings. I'm complex.
'I read,' I say. 'I study and read. I bet I've read everything you've read. Don't think I haven't. I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM-drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it." My instincts concerning syntax and mechanics are better than your own, I can tell, with due respect. But it transcends the mechanics. I'm not a machine. I feel and believe. I have opinions. Some of them are interesting. I could, if you'd let me, talk and talk. Let's talk about anything. I believe the influence of Kierkegaard on Camus is underestimated. I believe Dennis Gabor may very well have been the Antichrist. I believe Hobbes is just Rousseau in a dark mirror. I believe, with Hegel, that transcendence is absorption. I could interface you guys right under the table,' I say. 'I'm not just a creatus, manufactured, conditioned, bred for a function.'

I open my eyes. 'Please don't think I don't care. ~ David Foster Wallace

It was easy to write to Nick, but also competitive and thrilling, like a game of table tennis ~ Sally Rooney

And then also, again, still, what are those boundaries, if they're not baselines, that contain and direct its infinite expansion inward, that make tennis like chess on the run, beautiful and infinitely dense? The true opponent, the enfolding boundary, is the player himself. Always and only the self out there, on court, to be met, fought, brought to the table to hammer out terms. The competing boy on the net's other side: he is not the foe: he is more the partner in the dance. He is the what is the word excuse or occasion for meeting the self. As you are his occasion. Tennis's beauty's infinite roots are self-competitive. You compete with your own limits to transcend the self in imagination and execution. Disappear inside the game: break through limits: transcend: improve: win. Which is why tennis is an essentially tragic enterprise… You seek to vanquish and transcend the limited self whose limits make the game possible in the first place. It is tragic and sad and chaotic and lovely. All life is the same, as citizens of the human State: the animating limits are within, to be killed and mourned, over and over again…Mario thinks hard again. He's trying to think of how to articulate something like: But then is battling and vanquishing the self the same as destroying yourself? Is that like saying life is pro-death? … And then but so what's the difference between tennis and suicide, life and death, the game and its own end? ~ David Foster Wallace

A registered trademark of a British company that makes equipment for playing table tennis, the real name of ~ Joey Green

What sort of perverse beast uses sex to lure a woman into a game of table tennis? ~ R.R. Hood

We walked down the back stairwell into the garden where the old breakfast table used to be. 'This was my father's spot. I call it his ghost spot. My spot used to be over there, if you remember.' I pointed to where my old table used to stand by the pool.

'Did I have a spot?' he asked with a half grin.

'You'll always have a spot.'

I wanted to tell him that the pool, the garden, the house, the tennis court, the orle of paradise, the whole place, would always be his ghost spot. Instead, I pointed upstairs to the French windows of his room. Your eyes are forever there, I wanted to say, trapped in the sheer curtains, staring out from my bedroom upstairs where no one sleeps these days. When there's a breeze and they swell and I look up from down here or stand outside on the balcony, I'll catch myself thinking that you're in there, staring out from your world to my world, saying, as you did on that one night when I found you on the rock, I've been happy here. You're thousands of miles away but no sooner do I look at this window than I'll think of a bathing suit, a shirt thrown on on the fly, arms resting on the banister, and you're suddenly there, lighting up your first cigarette of the day - twenty years ago today. For as long as the house stands, this will be your ghost spot - and mine too, I wanted to say. ~ Andre Aciman

Why do I wear tennis shoes? That's two questions. Do I wear tennis shoes? The answer to that question is, "Yes." "Why?" That's a question philosophers have been pondering for centuries. ~ Irwin Corey

A good book is the very essence of a good man. His virtues survive in it, while the foibles and faults of his actual life are forgotten. All the goodly company of the excellent and great sit around my table, or look down on me from yonder shelves, waiting patiently to answer my questions and enrich me with their wisdom. A precious book is a foretaste of immortality. ~ Theodore L. Cuyler

We had taken him for a Norwegian ship's captain and had come to his table to hear some more about seafaring, not about philosophy, from which, indeed, we had fled north from Central Europe. ~ Thomas Bernhard

What do you want?" I repeated, and there was no huskiness there now. All demand. A suspended moment, then he suddenly leaned forward again, practically over the entire table and into my lap, sucking me into all that green. "I want to get you away from that bastard," he announced on a growl. "Out of his life. Out of his bed." Pause. "And into mine. ~ Nicola Claire

In Hollywood people lie to each other and cheat each other and then go and play tennis. But I don't want to be a tennis player. ~ David Geffen

Do not be afraid of simplicity. If you have a cold chicken for supper, why cover it with a tasteless white sauce which makes it look like a pretentious dish on the buffet table at some fance dress ball? ~ Marcel Boulestin

I find it amazing that the only group of people who are not fighting and not killing and not pillaging and not burning and not raping, and the group of people who are mostly - though not exclusively - who are keeping life going in the midst of war, are not included in the negotiating table. ~ Zainab Salbi

How perverse! just when everything seems to be in order and as families gather round the table to have supper,the phantom of the superclass appears,selling impossible dreams:luxury,beauty,power.And the family falls apart ~ Paulo Coelho

Mr. Eissen, the man in the wonderful suit, tapped one fingertip on the table. He did it very quietly, but everyone got silent and sat up a little straighter. Eissen gave me a microscopic smile. "Robert," he said, emphasizing the name slightly, and then adding, "Robert Chase." He gave a slight, dismissive shake of his head. "Robert is a well-known actor, Mr. Morgan. ~ Jeff Lindsay

Everything I do I always feel very confident. Whether it's tennis, badminton, football, whatever. I just go out there and think I can do it and most of the time I can. What I'm good at I don't mind saying because it's not a secret, is it? For me confidence is so important. It's good to know I can go out on the field and feel I can take on the world. ~ Nicklas Bendtner

It was like this blackness that crept into the corners of my life until everything was grey and dirty. My insides felt burnt out, like if you cut me open, all you would find would be smoke. No heart. No bones. There was nothing left, just the anger. It followed me everywhere. It sat on my bed and watched me sleep and when I had to eat, it looked at me across the table. ~ Tanya Byrne

This is what I like, sitting at a table and watching people go by. It does something to your outlook on life. The Anglo-Saxons make a great mistake not staring at people from a sidewalk table. ~ Patricia Highsmith

My tennis skills are okay. ~ Enrique Iglesias

The day the library was shut down, he thought, some maiden librarian had moved down the room, pushing each chair against its table. Carefully, with a plodding precision that was the cachet of herself. ~ Richard Matheson

That is why we need to come with you," Logan replied as if he read my mind. "You don't have to do everything alone, Rose." He placed his hand on top of mine which was resting on the table.

A few volts of electricity ran up my spine. ~ Claudia Caren

I'd just as soon play tennis with the net down. ~ Robert Frost

When the bread basket comes to the table and I have a bite, people are like, "Oh, you eat bread?" I say, "Oh, my God, of course I eat bread. I'm human." ~ Eva Mendes

I've got a terrible knee from too much tennis. ~ Ridley Scott

Scream at the mangled leather carcass lying at the foot of the stairs, and my parents would roar with laughter. That's what you get for leaving your wallet on the kitchen table. ~ David Sedaris

She looked up over Pony's shoulder and saw Noel, and Noel saw her - and he strode straight through the basement, over the love seat and up onto the coffee table and over the couch and through Pony and Simini, and wrapped his arms around Mags, swinging her in a circle. (Midnights) ~ Rainbow Rowell

You can fill this table up with people who are racist, homophobic, Satanist worshippers, sexist and we can be arguing but if you put on a song, I guarantee that people will stop and listen and that's what I love about music, it can bring people together. ~ Charles King

We're following the evolution of tennis. On the women's side, there has been a very positive change, with the arrival of many new stars. ~ Stephane Simian

When one has apparently made up one's mind to spend the evening at home and has donned one's house-jacket and sat down at the lamplit table after supper and do the particular job or play the particular game on completion of which one is in the habit of going to bed, when the weather out is so unpleasant as to make staying in the obvious choice, when one has been sitting quietly at the table for so long already that one's leaving must inevitably provoke general astonishment, when the stairwell is in any case in darkness and the street door locked, and when in spite of all this one stands up, suddenly ill at ease, changes one's coat, reappears immediately in street clothes, announces that one has to go out and after a brief farewell does so, feeling that one has left behind one a degree of irritation commensurate with the abruptness with which one slammed the apartment door, when one then finds oneself in the street possessed of limbs that respond to the quite unexpected freedom one has procured for them with out-of-the-ordinary agility, when in the wake of this one decision one feels capable, deep down, of taking any decision, when one realizes with a greater sense of significance than usual that one has, after all, more ability than one has need easily to effect and endure the most rapid change, and when in this frame of mind one walks the long city streets - then for that evening one has stepped completely outside one's family, which veers into inessentiality, while one's ow ~ Franz Kafka

Probably if half a kilogram [of radium] were in a bottle on that table it would kill us all. It would almost certainly destroy our sight and burn our skins to such an extent that we could not survive. The smallest bit placed on one's arm would produce a blister which it would need months to heal. ~ William Crookes

Madly in love after so many years of sterile complicity, they enjoyed the miracle of loving each other as much at the table as in bed, and they grew to be so happy that even when they were two worn-out old people, they kept on blooming like little children and playing like dogs. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

It is very important and my success very much depends on the harmony that I feel in my private life. It is essential for me to be happy in my private life. And if it continues, I am able to continue playing tennis. ~ Novak Djokovic

You can take a book to the beach without worrying about sand getting in its works. You can take it to bed without being nervous about it falling to the floor should you nod off. You can spill coffee on it. You can sit on it. You can put it down on a table, open to the page you're reading, and when you pick it up a few days later it will still be exactly as you left it. You never have to be concerned about plugging a book into an outlet or having its battery die. ~ Nicholas Carr