Living On The Edge Quotes

In the end, I feel that one has to have a bit of neurosis to go on being an artist. A balanced human seldom produces art. It's that imbalance which impels us. I often think that all I want to do now is to avoid suicide, accidental or otherwise. Other than that, I think living on the edge is what drives my work and me beyond a certain point. The artist lives with anxiety. When you finally reach a plateau of achievement, there comes a new anxiety - the hunger to push on still further. That angst is what makes you go forward. ~ Beverly Pepper

I wasn't living on the edge, I had gone over it. Insanity was now the norm and I had to keep feeding it in order to maintain the new domain I had created for myself. I had one eye on the road and one on the rear view mirror when I wasn't pre-occupied with my beer, cigarettes or car stereo. ~ Steven C. Smith

I don't remember everything that was happening around me at the time, but gangster life was intoxicating and irresistible. It's difficult to describe the feeling. It's that jungle culture, the lion syndrome, the Tarzan tag; the invincibility, the lure of living on the edge; having not just one woman but a whole brothel on your tail; the shooting irons, the fast cars and the endless supply of cocaine. ~ Jacques Pauw

It's fun to think that one day our great, great grandchildren may get that much closer to understanding what the hell creation is doing here in the first place, and glimpsing the underlying structure and nature of matter itself. Hopefully they won't live with the same existential horrors we all quietly face today in our own lives.

There is a kind of bravery to our condition, I reckon: brought into being without an explanation, in a potentially infinite and apparently dead universe, and expected to just get on with it as though nothing strange is going on. Well it fucking is. And it's all right to have a meltdown about the whole affair from time to time, faced with the pressures of modern existence, trying to be a good human and a good worker and a good son/daughter/parent, trying to be a good citizen, trying to be wise without condescension but uninhibited without recklessness, trying to just muddle through without making any silly decisions, trying to align with the correct political opinions, trying to stay thin, trying to be attractive, trying to be smart, trying to find the ideal partner, trying to stay financially secure, trying to just find some modest corner of meaning and belonging and sanity to go and sit in, and all the while living on the edge of dying forever.

We're all in the same strange boat, grappling with the same strange condition. But it isn't quite so scary if we all do it together. So let's do it together. ~ Exurb1a

We have to learn to face our fears and push ourselves. If you're living on earth and you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room. When you push past the fear and realize that what you feared was not a big deal, you gain more confidence. ~ Farrah Gray

If you're not living on the edge then you're taking up a little too much space. ~ Morgan Freeman

The Warrior lives a life full of adventure, living on the edge of opportunity. Life on the edge keeps him in a space of heightened awareness and totally in the moment; therefore no matter what comes his way he is always prepared. ~ James Arthur Ray

I used to ride motorbikes and drive cars like everything was a racetrack; it was ridiculous. It wasn't because I thought it was cool; it was just because I loved living on the edge. But I've chilled. ~ Orlando Bloom

If you aren't living on the edge you're taking up too much room. Anon. ~ Pamela Eglinski

Look, I know it's none of my business, but you should really either get a job or get married, one or the other. I mean, seriously. Or better still, you should do both. Otherwise you're going to end up starving to death sometime, you know. You're really living on the edge. (138) ~ Sayaka Murata

If your not living on the edge, your taking up way too much space! ~ Devin C. Hughes

Nowness is the sense that we are attuned to what is happening. The past is fiction and the future is a dream, and we are just living on the edge of a razor blade. ~ Chogyam Trungpa

After living on the edge, the adrenalin, some people in the military get addicted. Anything else seem boring. They have to have the excitement. ~ Timothy McVeigh

I think the rock'n'roll myth of living on the edge is a pile of crap. ~ Robert Smith

I do sometimes miss living on the edge. The view from there takes your breath away. ~ Amy Molloy

The sheer vital energy of the Woolfs always astonishes me when I stop to consider what they accomplished on any given day. Fragile she may have been, living on the edge of psychic disturbance, but think what she managed to do nonetheless -- not only the novels (every one a breakthrough in form), but all those essays and reviews, all the work of the Hogarth Press, not only reading mss. and editing, but, at least at the start, packing the books to go out!

And besides all that, they lived such an intense social life. (When I went there for tea, they were always going out for dinner and often to a party later on.) The gaiety and the fun of it all, the huge sense of life! The long, long walks through London that Elizabeth Bowen told me about. And two houses to keep going! Who of us could accomplish what she did?

There may be a lot of self-involvement in A Writer's Diary, but there is no self-pity (and what has to be remembered is that what Leonard published at that time was only a small part of all the journals, the part that concerned her work, so it had to be self-involved). It is painful that such genius should evoke such mean-spirited response at present. Is genius so common that we can afford to brush it aside? What does it matter if she is major or minor, whether she imitated Joyce (I believe she did not), whether her genius was a limited one, limited by class? What remains true is that one cannot pick up a single one of her books and read a page withou ~ May Sarton

If you're not living on the edge you're taking up too much space. ~ Stephen Hunt

When you are thrown onto the stage at 17 in such an enormous way, it becomes living on the edge because every step you take, every word you speak, every action you do becomes headline news. And it became, for me, life or death. ~ Boris Becker

The year the bus drivers went on strike in Pittsburgh, I was twenty-three and living on the edge of the city in a neighborhood that was on the verge of becoming a ghetto. I had just been fired from a good job as a cartographer in a design studio where I had worked for about four months. ~ Said Sayrafiezadeh

Sure, I'm dramatic and sloppily semi-cynical and semi-sentimental. But, in leisure years I could grow and choose my way. Now I am living on the edge. We all are on the brink, and it takes a lot of nerve, a lot of energy, to teeter on the edge, looking over, looking down into the windy blackness and not being quite able to make out, through the yellow, stinking mist, just what lies below in the slime, in the oozing, vomit-streaked slime; and so I could go on, my thoughts, writing much, trying to find the core, the meaning for myself. ~ Sylvia Plath

Instead of clinging to the only Lifeboat that can save, we have tossed overboard biblical truths in the name of [compromise], living on the edge of life, like the man who rides the parameter of a hurricane, daring it to sweep him away. ~ Billy Graham

The apartment was built at the edge of a high cliff so that when you looked out the back window it seemed as if you were twelve floors up instead of four. It was very much like living on the edge of the world - a last resting place before the final big drop. ~ Charles Bukowski

Um, what's cooking in that sadistic brain of yours?" Jen asked nervously.
Sally's eyes snapped open. "I was just thinking that maybe if you met someone else then you could get past your furry problem."
"My furry problem? Really? You make it sound like I have abnormal leg hair growth or something." Jen rolled her eyes.
"Look." Sally stopped Jen before she could walk out of the room. "Let's just give it a go. You, me, and Jacque – tonight. We'll get Sorin to take us somewhere where there are going to be guys. Then you can do your thing."
"My thing?" Jen asked, raising her eyebrows.
"Yeah. You know, your thing. The hottie hunting thing."
Jen laughed. "Man, it sounded like such a good idea at the time."
Sally groaned. "Oh, come on, Jen."
Jen interrupted her before Sally could continue. "Don't. Don't do that whiny voice."
"Then say you will go tonight," Sally challenged. "Or are you chicken?"
"You really like living on the edge, don't you, Thelma?"
"Hey, I'm just calling it how I see it. ~ Quinn Loftis

Life requires balance and at this point, I was living on the edge, teetering in balance. ~ Greg Dutilly

I believe that living on the edge, living in and through your fear, is the summit of life, and that people who refuse to take that dare condemn themselves to a life of living death. ~ John H. Johnson

I've been living on the edge for so long, my friends call me Cliff ~ Benny Bellamacina

The people on the QVC shopping channel convince me that life is worth living. They see the good in everything. People who go to counselling should actually go to a room with a QVC seller for half an hour and let them find the qualities within them. For example, they'd look at me and say, 'To anybody else this looks like a stomach but, actually, his feet never get wet in the rain. ~ Johnny Vegas

I've spent enough time on the dead. Time to return to the business of the living and those caught in-between. ~ Darren Shan

It is easy to forgive a person his faults when he is dead because in death, he atones for his sins somewhat before the eyes of people who are still living and who have yet to add more on the parchment where their sins are listed. ~ F. Sionil Jose

But Pastor Prince, doesn't such preaching just make believers feel that it is all right to go on sinning?"
Let me ask you a question: when a truly born-again believer knows that he is forgiven of all his sins, does he go, "Yippee! Now I can go sin all I want"?
I submit to you that no true believer of Jesus is looking for an excuse to sin. Many may be struggling with sin, but they are looking for a way out. They know that what they are doing is self-destructive and not glorifying to their Lord and Savior.
"Oh, Pastor Prince, I know of so-and-so, who says he is under grace, and now he has left his wife to be with his mistress."
Friend, let me be the first to tell you that this person isn't living under grace. The Word of God tells us in no uncertain terms that "sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace" (Rom. 6:14).
This Scripture shows us that when a person is truly under grace, he is not ruled by sin, nor does he happily continue to live a sinful lifestyle. Notice that it also tells us that the way to be liberated from sin's dominion is to come under grace. ~ Joseph Prince

The ripe, the golden month has come again, and in Virginia the chinkapins are falling. Frost sharps the middle music of the seasons, and all things living on the earth turn home again ... the fields are cut, the granaries are full, the bins are loaded to the brim with fatness, and from the cider-press the rich brown oozings of the York Imperials run. The bee bores to the belly of the grape, the fly gets old and fat and blue, he buzzes loud, crawls slow, creeps heavily to death on sill and ceiling, the sun goes down in blood and pollen across the bronzed and mown fields of the old October. ~ Thomas Wolfe

This exists. It can be seen. It can be touched. These in pace, these dungeons, these iron hinges, these necklets, that lofty peep-hole on a level with the river's current, that box of stone closed with a lid of granite like a tomb, with this difference, that the dead man here was a living being, that soil which is but mud, that vault hole, those oozing walls,
what declaimers! ~ Victor Hugo

The largest, and most provocative, sense in which a technological singularity might be an existential opportunity can only be grasped by stepping outside the human perspective altogether and adopting a more cosmological point of view. It is surely the height of anthropocentric thinking to suppose that the story of matter in this corner of the universe climaxes with human society and the myriad living brains embedded in it, marvelous as they are. Perhaps matter still has a long way to go on the scale of complexity. Perhaps there are forms of consciousness yet to arise that are, in some sense, superior to our own. Should we recoil from this prospect, or rejoice in it? Can we even make sense of such an idea? Whether or not the singularity is near, these are questions worth asking, not least because in attempting to answer them we shed new light on ourselves and our place in the order of things.

Murray Shanahan ~ Murray Shanahan

Love is the only flame that set the soul on fire. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Tiny parasites inside you, big parasites outside you, people living from your work even though they stay on the other side of the world, making you do it by the force of laws and guns. Laws like mistletoe! ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

The younger sister was piqued, and in turn disparaged the life of a tradesman, and stood up for that of a peasant.

"I would not change my way of life for yours," said she. "We may live roughly, but at least we are free from anxiety. You live in better style than we do, but though you often earn more than you need, you are very likely to lose all you have. You know the proverb, 'Loss and gain are brothers twain.' It often happens that people who are wealthy one day are begging their bread the next. Our way is safer. Though a peasant's life is not a fat one, it is a long one. We shall never grow rich, but we shall always have enough to eat."

The elder sister said sneeringly:

"Enough? Yes, if you like to share with the pigs and the calves! What do you know of elegance or manners! However much your good man may slave, you will die as you are living-on a dung heap-and your children the same."

"Well, what of that?" replied the younger. "Of course our work is rough and coarse. But, on the other hand, it is sure; and we need not bow to any one. But you, in your towns, are surrounded by temptations; today all may be right, but tomorrow the Evil One may tempt your husband with cards, wine, or women, and all will go to ruin. Don't such things happen often enough? ~ Leo Tolstoy

This is what you do to me, Jane," he said in a voice raw with hunger. He grabbed her hand to press it against him there. "I've desired you from the day we first met."
As his flesh moved beneath the stockinette, she swallowed. "I don't recall ever seeing you like this back then--all…big and thrusting. I think I would have noticed."
He choked back a laugh. "It's the sort of thing a gentleman generally takes great pains to keep his lady from seeing. But tonight you're making it difficult for me to behave."
"Good! I don't want you to behave. I want you to be wicked." She fondled him shamelessly. "With me."
A harsh breath escaped him. "You have no idea what being wicked entails."
"Then perhaps you should show me."
His eyes glinted in the lantern light and he growled, "Perhaps I should."
Next thing she knew, he was sweeping the tools and carriage lanterns off the table near them. Then he lifted her onto it and parted her thighs with his hands.
"This, my sweet, is wicked," he warned just before he knelt to place his mouth on the secret part of her that lay in the juncture of her thighs.
Shock gripped her. It had been one thing to have him touch her furtively beneath her skirts last night, but this blatant, outrageous--
"Ohh, Dom…" She clasped the edge of the table to keep from dissolving into a puddle. "That is..that is…"
"Wicked?" he asked hoarsely, his eyes dark with sinful promise.
She nodded. Her cheeks surely shone as ~ Sabrina Jeffries

They made their way into the sleeping bag. It was crowded, and she was still naked, so it only took about three seconds flat for him to get hard again.
She reached between them. "Are you sure there aren't any more condoms?"
He flexed at her words, then groaned softly. It was going to be a long night. "Positive."
He was torn between asking her to stop tormenting him and begging her to keep on doing it. The outcome of the latter as inevitable, and in a sleeping bag, more than a little messy.
Just a few seconds more, he told himself as he closed his eyes and gave himself up to the steady stroking of her hand. He would stop her before things got out of control.
But Phoebe being Phoebe and his attraction to her being what it was, that point of "out of control" arrived a lot faster than he would have realized. Painfully aroused and right on the edge, he grabbed her wrist.
"You're killing me."
"So not my purpose."
Then she stunned him by opening the sleeping bag, pushing it away and sliding down between his legs. As her fingers toyed with his testicles, her mouth settled on his erection. From there it was a thirty-seven-second journey to heaven. ~ Susan Mallery

So, you ready to let us in on your plan, Meg? Alik spoke just above a whisper, though we were completely isolated. I think he was worried I was going to get all moody and crazy on him. Poor fellow. It must be tough living with a walking emotional superconductor all the time. ~ Karen Luellen

Ultimately, this cosmologem is not just a piece of funerary geography, but conveys basic truths about the nature of human existence. It relates that the dead have no need for their memories, having passed beyond the realm in which those memories have value. But the memories of the departed are not without value for those who are yet living. The accumulated memories of the dead comprise the totality of human history. Preserved and appreciated, they are the source of true wisdom, the wisdom that is based on the full sweep of human experiences rather than the idiosyncratic events of one human life. In the last analysis, the present depends upon the past, the living upon the dead, and this world upon the other. Those who die do not just pass on but continue to contribute to the sustenance of this world, as the world of the living draws strength, meaning, and wisdom from the world of the dead, much as one draws water from a spring. ~ Bruce Lincoln

I had achieved so much success in my career and then had this spectacular fall from grace that left me unemployed and living in a town, Los Angeles, that is built on envy. Once you fall, people don't really root for you to come back again. I'd go to restaurants where I always had the best table and half the time they wouldn't even let me pay. And then when I stopped making movies, the same places wouldn't even give me a lousy table, never mind the best one! ~ Mickey Rourke

There are few chemicals that we as a people are exposed to that have as many far reaching physiological affects on living beings as Monosodium Glutamate does. MSG directly causes obesity, diabetes, triggers epilepsy, destroys eye tissues, is genotoxic in many organs and is the probable cause of ADHD and Autism. Considering that MSG's only reported role in food is that of 'flavour enhancer' is that use worth the risk of the myriad of physical ailments associated with it? Does the public really want to be tricked into eating more food and faster by a food additive? ~ John E. Erb

Mom perched on the edge of our sofa, her forehead etched with a line of concern I'd grown to know well. It was the same one she'd flashed at me when I pointed to the twisty slide, the same one she'd pulled out when I'd taken up Tae Kwon Do in third grade, and the same one that had frozen on her features all through driver's ed last spring. It was her SMother face. ~ Gemma Halliday

Discovery of purpose is a continuous activity, and revelation of it is an ongoing process ... The most fortunate people on earth are those who have found a calling that is bigger than they are, a reason for living that moves them and fills their lives with constant passion, aliveness, and growth. Your soul's true purpose is to be the love that you are! ~ Glenda Green

I remember the first time we stood in this spot. We were on the deck of a boat in the middle of what was then Penny's Bay, envisioning what could be, what would be, what will be. Six years later, through our dream partnership with Hong Kong government, the creative dream is now a reality. Hong Kong Disneyland stands before us as a living symbol of the creativity and imagination that are the heart and soul of Disney. ~ Michael Eisner

As she lay there she said to herself that there was something she must tell Selden, some word she had found that should make life clear between them. She tried to repeat the word, which lingered vague and luminous on the far edge of thought - she was afraid of not remembering it when she woke; and if she could only remember it and say it to him, she felt that everything would be well. ~ Edith Wharton

To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometers in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the port holes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity. ~ Michael Denton

I started doing theatre, and that's when I really fell in love with the profession; I learned a lot. It felt a bit weird to go from living in New York on Broadway to university, so I kept putting it off. Then, eventually, I had to give up the place. ~ Bel Powley

When I sit up I am greeted by the world. Level with the treetops I look down on sparrows swooping in and out of the branches. The tide, the new rising moon, the clouds, the wind - these greet me. These are my allies. The whole planet is laid out before me and available for whatever adventure the day will take me on.
By comparison, living in society seems to require an alarm clock. Primarily assembled from angst and fish anuses, these contraptions, regardless of your soul's whereabouts, will slap and assault you into a pitiful state of what passes for consciousness. Your first sight is the Time, an arragement of molecules on the clock's face to whom you will be enslaved for the rest of the day. You may as well call him "master." Next, a pile of dirty clothes on the floor, a knocked-over glass of water, and so forth, until you are so overwhelmed with despair that to prevent hurling yourself through the window, you must ignore your personal bill of rights, put on an acceptable frown, and go about your business, disregarding the pleas from you increasingly timid soul. ~ Daniel Hays

Granma said everybody has two minds. One of the minds has to do with the necessaries for body living. You had to use it to figure out how to get shelter and eating and such like for the body... She said we had to have that mind so as we could carry on. But she said we had another mind that had nothing atall to do with such. She said it was the spirit mind.

Granma said if you used the body-living mind to think greedy or mean; if you was always cuttin' at folks with it and figuring how to material profit off'n them ... then you would shrink up your spirit mind to a size no bigger 'n a hickor'nut.

Granma said that when your body died, the body-living mind died with it, and if that's the way you had thought all your life there you was, stuck with a hickor'nut spirit, as the spirit mind was all that lived when everything else died...

Granma said that the spirit mind was like any other muscle. If you used it it got bigger and stronger. She said the only way it could get that way was using it to understand, but you couldn't open the door to it until you quit being greedy and such with your body mind. Then understanding commenced to take up, and the more you tried to understand, the bigger it got.

Natural, she said, understanding and love was the same thing; except folks went at it back'ards too many times, trying to pretend they loved things when they didn't understand them. Which can't be done.

I see right out that I was going ~ Forrest Carter

The problem of the church is not lack of prayer. The problem of the church is lack of action. So many Christians are on prayer mountains at the beginning of the every year (and that's wonderful) but few actually lifts a finger towards doing what they are praying for.

Too many Christians have used this phrase "I'm waiting on God" to escape their life's purpose and work in general. Some do nothing but wait on God from January to December. But God doesn't work with waiters. God works with doers, movers and shakers. ~ Nicky Verd

British / Pakistani ISIS suspect, Zakaria Saqib Mahmood, is arrested in Bangladesh on suspicion of recruiting jihadists to fight in Syria

• Local police named arrested Briton as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood, also known as Zak, living in 70 Eversleigh Road, Westham, E6 1HQ London
• They suspect him of recruiting militants for ISIS in two Bangladeshi cities
• He arrived in the country in February, having previously spent time in Syria and Pakistan
• Suspected militant recruiter also recently visited Australia

A forty year old Muslim British man has been arrested in Bangladesh on suspicion of recruiting would-be jihadists to fight for Islamic State terrorists in Syria and Iraq.

The man, who police named as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood born 24th August 1977, also known as Zak, is understood to be of Pakistani origin and was arrested near the Kamalapur Railway area of the capital city Dhaka.

He is also suspected of having attempted to recruit militants in the northern city of Sylhet - where he is understood to have friends he knows from living in Newham, London - having reportedly first arrived in the country about six months ago to scout for potential extremists.

Militants: The British Pakistani man (sitting on the left) named as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood was arrested in Bangladesh.

The arrested man has been identified as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood, sources at the media wing of Dhaka Metropolitan Police told local newsp ~ Zakaria Zaqib Mahmood

Any objection to the carryings on of our present golden-calf Christianity is met with the triumphant reply, "But we are winning them!" And winning them to what? To true discipleship? To cross-carrying? To self-denial? To separation from the world? To crucifixion of the flesh? To holy living? To nobility of character? To a despising of the world's treasures? To hard self-discipline? To love for God? To total committal to Christ? Of course the answer to all these questions is no. ~ A.W. Tozer

No one wants to die or even plans to die, at least not when you are young and living life on top of everything, stepping on gold, running the miles with hot chicks on tow, but even if I wasn't a rock star, and just a normal civilian, I still wouldn't plan to die young. Death is so boring. ~ Sofea Shah

The real danger is found in Humanity's refusal to move beyond the trap of instinct and into the intellectual mind. The refusal to accept our health and the health of every other living thing on this planet must always come before profit. Whether it's the oil companies, pharmaceutical companies; or anyone else; we are not Gods no matter how much the New Agers like to proclaim it. In that path lies the rubble of the enemy of life, his Fallen God Bombers and his murderous dark medics. Out of that emanates the force of fear; fear of judgement, fear of difference and fear the other will bring you pain. ~ Cole J. Davis

It's something that exists on a daily basis on practically every street in India. You have people who are Hindus, Muslims, Christians - not just Catholics, but Protestants, you name it, all kinds of Christians - a hundred other religions, living side by side. And the kind of personal religion that people end up practicing is a bizarre concoction of ritual drawn from each other. So everybody ends up celebrating everyone else's festivals. ~ Anita Rau Badami

The Order of Merciful Aid provided merciful aid, usually on the edge of a blade or the burn of a bullet. ~ Ilona Andrews

As a British person living in the USA, I keep a low profile on Independence Day, July 4th. ~ Steven Magee

Joe had never flown in an airplane, never seen a city from any higher vantage point than that afforded by his own six-foot-three frame. Now, standing on the observation deck, he looked out at the many spires of New York rising through a pall of smoke and steam and heat haze and did not know whether he found it beautiful or frightening.
He leaned over the low stone parapet and peered down at miniature cars and buses and swarms of tiny people scurrying along the streets. The city below him, Joe realized, murmured. The cacophony of honking horns and wailing sirens and rumbling streetcars that had as**saulted his ears at street level were reduced up here to something gentler and more soothing, like the sonorous breathing of an enormous living thing. It was a much bigger, more connected, world than he had ever thought possible. ~ Daniel James Brown

There's got to be a backbone, there's got to be a skeleton to the whole way I perform, but you never want to hit the same note twice during a performance, I think. I think it's always got to be fresh so it doesn't bore me, and I always want to go out on edge. ~ Casey Abrams

I love to garden and cook whenever I get the chance and escape anywhere that's peaceful and quiet. My philosophy on living well is to always stay positive in life. ~ Francisco Costa

Men are so frustrating; sometimes I think they really do come from Mars. That's the planet where they take boy babies' souls at birth to raise them with no feminine influence of any kind. They use John Wayne as the primary role model and make them mean and tough. Then they return their souls to them when they start puberty. That's why they are so obsessed with the female species at that time. After all, they've been living on Mars, where no such things exist. ~ Carolyn Brown

The day drags through though storms keep out the sun;
And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on:
Even as a broken mirror, which the glass
In every fragment multiplies; and makes
A thousand images of one that was,
The same, and still the more, the more it breaks;
And thus the heart will do which not forsakes,
Living in shattered guise, and still, and cold,
And bloodless, with its sleepless sorrow aches,
Yet withers on till all without is old,
Showing no visible sign, for such things are untold. ~ George Gordon Byron

Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals and the answer is: Because the animals are like us. Ask the experimenters why it is morally okay to experiment on animals and the answer is: Because the animals are not like us. Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction. ~ Charles R. Magel Philosophy Professor

I think from the time I was a kid I've been an entertainer. I've always had the ability to play characters. When I came to California, I was overwhelmed that you could do this and get paid for it, make a living on it, and be creative within this art form. ~ Matt Schulze

The reason for her love of maps. It's half worn away, the dot, and the red color is bleached. Yet it's there, flung down there on the map halfway between the lower left corner and its center, and next to it is written, "You are here."
Sometimes it's easier to go on living, not even knowing who you are, when at least you know precisely where you are while you go on not knowing ~ Fredrik Backman

Probably you consider the body is not at all important. I've seen you eat, and you eat as if you were feeding a furnace. You may like the taste of food, but it is all so mechanical, so inattentive, the way you mix food on your plate. When you become aware of all this, your fingers, your eyes, your ears, your body all become sensitive, alive, responsive. This is comparatively easy. But what is more difficult is to free the mind from the mechanical habits of thought, feeling and action into which it has been driven by circumstances – by one's wife, one's children, one's job. The mind itself has lost its elasticity. The more subtle forms of observation escape it.

This means seeing yourself actually as you are without wanting to correct yourself or change what you see or escape from it – just to see yourself actually as you are, so that the mind doesn't fall back into another series of habits. When such a mind looks at a flower or the colour of a dress or a dead leaf falling from a tree, it is now capable of seeing the movement of that leaf as it falls and the colour of that flower vividly. So both outwardly and inwardly the mind becomes highly alive, pliable, alert; there is a sensitivity which makes the mind intelligent. Sensitivity, intelligence and freedom in action are the beauty of living. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

That air of electric tension, of a great city on the edge of an abyss, is more noticeable than ever at the White Russian cabaret called, not inappropriately, "New York." You wouldn't know you were in China. An almond-eyed platinum-blonde has just finished wailing, with a Mott Street accent, "You're gonna lose your gal." ("Jane Brown's Body") ~ Cornell Woolrich

There he is, a woman's living, breathing fantasy, doing his slow, cocky turn, spiky black hair, darkly tanned chest, dimpled smile-killer smile-all in the package of Remington Tate. He's perfection itself, and a new surge of hormones sweeps through me as I do what the rest of the crowd does and take in his visual, so blatantly on display in those low riding boxing shorts and so strikingly sexy, he becomes the center of my attention. The center. Of my. World. ~ Katy Evans

Lately, because computer technology has made self-publishing an easier and less expensive venture, I'm getting a lot of review copies of amateur books by writers who would be better advised to hone their craft before committing it to print. The best thing you can do as a beginning writer is to write, write, write - and read, read, read. Concentrating on publication prematurely is a mistake. You don't pick up a violin and expect to play Carnegie Hall within the year - yet somehow people forget that writing also requires technical skills that need to be learned, practiced, honed. If I had a dollar for every person I've met who thought, with no prior experience, they could sit down and write a novel and instantly win awards and make their living as a writer, I'd be a rich woman today. It's unrealistic, and it's also mildly insulting to professional writers who have worked hard to perfect their craft. Of course, then you hear stories about people like J.K. Rowling, who did sit down with no prior experience and write a worldwide best-seller...but such people are as rare as hen's teeth. Every day I work with talented, accomplished writers who have many novels in print and awards to their name and who are 'still' struggling to make a living. The thing I often find myself wanting to say to new writers is: Write because you love writing, learn your craft, be patient, and be realistic. Anais Nin said about writing, "It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it bre ~ Terri Windling

The repetitive phases of cooking leave plenty of mental space for reflection, and as I chopped and minced and sliced I thought about the rhythms of cooking, one of which involves destroying the order of the things we bring from nature into our kitchens, only to then create from them a new order. We butcher, grind, chop, grate, mince, and liquefy raw ingredients, breaking down formerly living things so that we might recombine them in new, more cultivated forms. When you think about it, this is the same rhythm, once removed, that governs all eating in nature, which invariably entails the destruction of certain living things, by chewing and then digestion, in order to sustain other living things. In The Hungry Soul Leon Kass calls this the great paradox of eating: 'that to preserve their life and form living things necessarily destroy life and form.' If there is any shame in that destruction, only we humans seem to feel it, and then only on occasion. But cooking doesn't only distance us from our destructiveness, turning the pile of blood and guts into a savory salami, it also symbolically redeems it, making good our karmic debts: Look what good, what beauty, can come of this! Putting a great dish on the table is our way of celebrating the wonders of form we humans can create from this matter--this quantity of sacrificed life--just before the body takes its first destructive bite. ~ Michael Pollan

She did not want to be moved or bothered or distracted ('No, don't do anything yet, don't do anything, just wait'), nor did she want voices or movement around her, as if she were so full of foreboding that she preferred everything about her to be in a state of utter paralysis and preferred to remain on the situation and posture that at least allowed her to go on living rather than risk any variation, however minimal, that might upset the temporary and precious stability. ~ Javier Marias