Made It Quotes

This is a stamina game, so don't despair if you run down a blind alley and have to start over, or if you get another rejection letter. Every successful writer has gone through that, but they kept writing and didn't quit until they made it happen. ~ Tim Maleeny

Everybody says: the Kremlin, the Kremlin. They all go on about it, but I've never seen it. The number of times (thousands) I've been drunk or hung over, traipsing round Moscow, north-south, east-west, end to end, straight through or any old way - and I've never once seen the Kremlin.

For instance, yesterday - yesterday I didn't see it again, though I was buzzing round that area the whole evening and it's not as if I was particularly drunk. I mean, as soon as I came out onto Savyelov Station, I had a glass of Zubrovka for starters, since I know from experience that as an early-morning tipple, nobody's so far dreamed up anything better.

Anyway, a glass of Zubrovka. Then after that - on Kalyaev Street - another glass, only not Zubrovka this time, but coriander vodka. A friend of mine used to say coriander had a dehumanizing effect on a person, i.e, it refreshes your parts but it weakens your spirit. For some reason or other it had the opposite effect on me, i.e., my spirit was refreshed, while my parts all went to hell. But I do agree it's dehumanizing, so that's why I topped it up with two glasses of Zhiguli beer, plus some egg-nog straight from the bottle, in the middle of Kalyaev Street.

Of course, you're saying: come on, Venya, get on with it - what did you have next? And I couldn't say for sure. I remember - I remember quite distinctly in fact - I had two glasses of Hunter's vodka, on Chekhov Street. But I couldn't have made it across th ~ Venedikt Erofeev

You were like the clouds
That made it difficult
For the stars in me to shine
And
To shine again
I had to let you go ~ Ambica Uppal

At about the end of the eighteen minutes and twenty miles, I said: "But suppose I don't find anything before election day?"

The Boss said, "To hell with election day. I can deliver Masters prepaid, special handling. But if it takes ten years, you find it."

We clocked off five miles more, and I said, "But suppose there isn't anything to find."

And the Boss said, "There is always something."

And I said, "Maybe not on the Judge."

And he said, "Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something."

Two miles more, and he said, "And make it stick."

And that was all a good while ago. And Masters is dead now, as dead as a mackerel, but the Boss was right and he went to the Senate. And Callahan is not dead but he has wished he were, no doubt, for he used up his luck a long time back and being dead was not part of it. And Adam Stanton is dead now, too, who used to go fishing with me and who lay on the sand in the hot sunshine with me and with Anne Stanton. And Judge Irwin is dead, who leaned toward me among the stems of the tall gray marsh grass, in the gray damp wintry dawn, and said, "You ought to have led that duck more, Jack. You got to lead a duck, son." And the Boss is dead, who said to me, "And make it stick."

Little Jackie made it stick, all right. ~ Robert Penn Warren

It is a difficult question, my friends, for any young man
that question I had to grapple with, and which thousands are weighing at the present moment in these uprising times
whether to follow uncritically the track he finds himself in, without considering his aptness for it, or to consider what his aptness or bent may be, and re-shape his course accordingly. I tried to do the latter, and I failed. But I don't admit that my failure proved my view to be a wrong one, or that my success would have made it a right one; though that's how we appraise such attempts nowadays
I mean, not by their essential soundness, but by their accidental outcomes. If I had ended by becoming like one of these gentlemen in red and black that we saw dropping in here by now, everybody would have said: 'See how wise that young man was, to follow the bent of his nature!' But having ended no better than I began they say: 'See what a fool that fellow was in following a freak of his fancy! ~ Thomas Hardy

Cambodians resent outsiders' implications that they are a nation of shell-shocked survivors, but in 2004 news from police stations around the country made it impossible not to notice how many seemingly pedestrian conflicts escalated into stunning violence: the farmer who beheaded his neighbor with a machete in a dispute over a fence; the disgruntled relative who stormed away from an argument at a wedding and returned to douse the guests with battery acid. ~ Corinne Purtill

Network marketing is the only industry that allows common people to earn millions with a minimal investment and zero overhead, coupled with total time freedom and the joy of global travel. There are three magic words that worked for all of us who have made it to the pinnacle and they'll work for you: 'Just don't quit.' ~ Mark Yarnell

Oh am I late? No, I already graduated
And you can live through anything if Magic made it
They say I talk with so much emphasis
Ooh they so sensitive ~ Kanye West

made it through this year because I had to, because I had no options. But now that I've experienced comfort and safety, how can I go back? These thoughts take me to the edge of despair, so I will myself - I force myself - not to have them. ~ Christina Baker Kline

It was the hard work of our people, the freedom they enjoyed and their faith in God that built this country and made it the envy of the world. In all of our great cities and towns evidence of the faith of our people is found: houses of worship of every denomination are among the oldest structures. While never willing to bow to a tyrant, our forefathers were always willing to get to their knees before God. When catastrophe threatened, they turned to God for deliverance. When the harvest was bountiful the first thought was thanksgiving to God. ~ Ronald Reagan

The earliest intelligence of the travellers' safe arrival at Antigua, after a favourable voyage, was received; though not before Mrs. Norris had been indulging in very dreadful fears, and trying to make Edmund participate them whenever she could get him alone; and as she depended on being the first person made acquainted with any fatal catastrophe, she had already arranged the manner of breaking it to all the others, when Sir Thomas's assurances of their both being alive and well made it necessary to lay by her agitation and affectionate preparatory speeches for a while. ~ Jane Austen

One thing I always make - and I'm sure this is partly to do with memory and yearning and because I've made it ever since my children were born - I make gingerbread every year. And it's partly just the perfume of the spices in the house, makes it smell like winter to me. ~ Bee Wilson

Which made it sweet as all get-out that he took their two very young children pretty much everywhere he went. They even had playpens and cribs at his office. It was crazy. ~ Kristen Ashley

But what I heard was a low insistent murmur, with pauses for reply in which no reply was made. It had a hypnotic quality that I had never heard in any voice: a blend of urgency, cajolery, and extreme tenderness, and with below it the deep vibrato of a held-in laugh that might break out at any moment. It was the voice of someone wanting something very much and confident of getting it, but at the same time willing, no, constrained, to plead for it with all the force of his being. ~ L.P. Hartley

The winter is cold, is cold.
All's spent in keeping warm.
Has joy been frozen, too?
I blow upon my hands
Stiff from the biting wind.
My heart beats slow, beats slow.
What has become of joy?

If joy's gone from my heart
Then it is closed to You
Who made it, gave it life...

Elusive, evasive, peace comes
Only when it's not sought.

Help me forget the cold
That grips the grasping world... ~ Madeleine L'Engle

The success of 'The Fighter' made it a lot easier to get 'Broken City' green-lit. And the buzz about 'The Fighter' also made it a lot easier to get 'Contraband' green-lit. ~ Mark Wahlberg

Jay lurched in one direction, jerked back, lurched in another, tripped for no reason. He finally made it through a gauntlet of invisible obstacles and crouched behind a water fountain shaped like a hippopotamous throwing up. ~ Adam Rex

It's made it easier to communicate important issues, but I wonder if connecting with millions of people online is ever as arresting to someone's attention as one man standing and screaming in front of City Hall. ~ Jim Parsons

It is not easy being you just when you think you made it and its done and over with something comes up and your back to square one all over again wishing with all your heart that it was not so that you weren't back in the darkness you escaped. don't worry you just started and it is not easy but in the end it'll be worth every tear. ~ Morigann Sidhe

As always, Adam was reminded of how Ronan belonged in this place. Something about the familiar way he stood as he searched for ripe fruit implied that he had done it many times before. It made it easy to understand that Ronan had grown up here and would grow old here. Easy to see how to exile him was to excise his soul. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

The sweeter the honey the smarter the bee that made it. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

our common humanity made it possible to find common cause in the midst of competition and that peace depended on our own virtue and ethical behavior. ~ Jeffrey D. Sachs

A lot of people I know would hate that ending, but not me. I loved it. Mainly because I got to make the book happy. I decided they made it. They made it to the past. I decided the past was our world, and the future was their world. It was parallel worlds. ~ Lois Lowry

Michael: 'Hey, remember when I almost didn't let you into the house that first day you came?'
Claire: 'Yep'
Michael: 'Well, I was dead wrong. Maybe I never said that out loud before, but I mean it, Claire. All that's happened since ... we wouldn't have made it. Not me, not Shane, not Eve. Not without you.'
Claire: 'It's not me. It's not! It's us, that's all. We're just better together. We ... take care of each other.'
Shane: 'Stop vamping up my girl, man. She needs coffee.'
Michael: 'Don't we all. Vamping up your girl? Dude. That's low.'
Shane: 'Digging for China. Come on. ~ Rachel Caine

Human life, I realized, got progressively worse as you got older, by the sound of things. You arrived, with baby feet and hands and infinite happiness, and then the happiness slowly evaporated as your feet and hands grew bigger. And then, from the teenage years onward, happiness was something you could lose your grip of, and once it started to slip, it gained mass. It was as if the knowledge that it could slip was the thing that made it more difficult to hold, no matter how big your feet and hands were. ~ Matt Haig

In April the true labor began. He rose before dawn and was at work in the trees as the sun rose. On a ladder, with his shears, maneuvering into the farthest reaches of the understories. At times whistling, at times muttering to himself. But mostly silent. Always working in that calm, deliberate way that made it impossible to imagine that he would ever complete the row, not to mention the entire orchard, in time. How could he afford to be so careful? It's that it was just possible, but barely. The design, the organization he achieved in the rows, in each tree, pleased him like nothing else. It was his passion, his whole life. ~ Amanda Coplin

Newt had said I loved Ivy more than the church. I wasn't going to deny it, but there were all kinds of love, and how shallow would I be if my anchor to reality was a hunk of real estate? It was the people who were there that made it mean something. ~ Kim Harrison

A new beginning done right," she said out loud, because everyone knew that saying it out loud made it true. "You hear that, karma?" She glanced upward through her slightly leaky sunroof into a dark sky, where storm clouds tumbled together like a dryer full of gray wool blankets. "This time, I'm gong to be strong." Like Katharine Hepburn. Like Ingrid Bergman ."So go torture someone else and leave me alone."
A bolt of lightning blinded her, followed by a boom of thunder that nearly had her jerking out of her skin. "Okay, so I meant pretty please leave me alone."
-Maddie ~ Jill Shalvis

It was just me and him, there in that place where tragedy had happened, where I thought my life had ended. But somehow, he made it seem like a home again.
Somehow, he gave it back to me. ~ T.J. Klune

Oh, no you don't. You're not heading down to that dock, young man," Babette declares as she clears my plate.
"But Babette, Dr. Felix said I only had to rest yesterday!"
"Yes he did, and I won't make you stay in bed today. But you're going to stay here while I go. I don't think your crutches are able to make it down the path. It's too rough. You'll end up tripping over something."
I scoff. She doesn't know that I'm the guy who not only made it down to the dock, but also did it in the dark WITHOUT falling flat on his back.
"But Babette - "
"No buts, Rylan. You're staying here and that's final"
"Fine," I grumble. ~ Colleen Boyd

The hoary joke in the literary world, based on 'Dreams From My Father,' was that if things had worked out differently for Barack Obama, he could have made it as a writer. ~ James Fallows

She slipped both hands into the water. Her skin looked pale and creamy below its surface. Not its usual warm bronze color. She fixed her gaze on the place where the water met the air, on the strange bend that made it seem as though her hands were in a different world beneath the water -
A world that moved more slowly and told stories.
The water lies. ~ Renee Ahdieh

I understand you're the reason we made it out of the harbor alive."
"I suspect there were a lot of reasons," said Inej.
"I'm a reason," Jesper offered helpfully.
"All the same," said Matthias, ignoring him. "Thank you."
They moved on, and Jesper saw a pleased grin playing over Inej's lips.
"Surprised?" he asked.
"A bit," she admitted. "I spend so much time with Kaz. I guess - "
"It's a novelty to feel appreciated. ~ Leigh Bardugo

My life hasn't been perfect, yet I've never wasted my time envying anyone else. If something wasn't the best it could be - I made it better. ~ Aleatha Romig

Their constant outward-looking, their mania for radios, cars, and a thousand other trinkets made them dream and fix their eyes upon the trash of life, made it impossible for them to learn a language which could have taught them to speak of what was in their or others' hearts. The words of their souls were the syllables of popular songs. ~ Richard Wright

Do you want to live the rest of your life wondering how things would have been different if you made it right? ~ Katie Ashley

Though President Obama promised during the 2008 campaign to pass the DREAM Act, he never made it a priority and failed to bring Republicans and Democrats together to do it in his first term. ~ Juan Williams

I can't believe we really made it, I'm partly surprised. ~ Drake

Look at Ron and Hermione. Obstacles everywhere. But did Hermione give up on Ron when he was dating Lavender Brown? Did Ron give up on Hermione when he was knocking about with that Bulgarian Quidditch bloke? Did they let the pressure of tracking down the final few Horcruxes tear them apart? No. All the drama they went through made it all the more poignant when they finally got together. ~ Tom Ellen

The 'Pan' script made it to the Black List in 2013. ~ Jason Fuchs

Before giving advice we must have secured its acceptance, or, rather, have made it desired. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel

Under the gold standard, a free banking system stands as the protector of an economy's stability and balanced growth ... The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit ... In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation ~ Alan Greenspan

Listen to me," Jordan begged urgently, somehow convinced that she would stay alive if she understood how much she meant to him. "Listen to what my life was like before you hurtled into it wearing that suit of armor - Life was empty. Colorless. And then you happened to me, and suddenly I felt feelings I never believed existed, and I saw things I'd never seen before. You don't believe that, do you, darling? But it's true, and I can prove it." His deep voice ragged with unshed tears, Jordan recited his proof: "The flowers in the meadow are blue," he told her brokenly. "The ones by the stream are white. And on the arch, by the arbor, the roses are red."

Lifting her hand to his face, he rubbed his cheek against it. "And that's not all I noticed. I noticed that the clearing by the pavilion - the one where my plaque is - looks like the very same one where we had our duel a year ago. Oh, and darling, there's something else I have to tell you: I love you, Alexandra."

Tears choked his voice and made it a tormented whisper. "I love you, and if you die I'll never be able to tell you that. ~ Judith McNaught

Leaving home is living as though I do not yet have a home, and must look far and wide to find one. Home is the center of my being, where I can hear the voice that says, "You are my beloved. On you my favor rests," the same voice that gave life to the first Adam and spoke to Jesus, the second Adam. The same voice that speaks to all the children of God and sets them free to live in the midst of a dark world while remaining in the light. I have heard that voice. It has spoken to me in the past and continues to speak to me now. It is the never-interrupted voice of love speaking from eternity and giving life and love wherever it is heard. When I hear that voice, I know that I am home with God and have nothing to fear. As the beloved of my heavenly Father, "I can walk in the valley of darkness: no evil would I fear." As the beloved I can "cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils." Having "received without charge," I can "give without charge." As the Beloved, I can confront, console, admonish, and encourage without fear of rejection or need for affirmation. As the Beloved I can suffer persecution without desire for revenge and receive praise without using it as a proof of my goodness. As the Beloved I can be tortured and killed without ever having to doubt that the love that is given to me is stronger than death. As the Beloved I am free to live and give life, free also to die while giving life.
Jesus has made it clear to me that the same voice that h ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

We had a very successful trip to Russia. We made it back. ~ Bob Hope

Prophet finally breathed when the forceps came off - how long he'd been holding it, he had no idea, but fuck, everything was reduced to the feeling of the piercing, the burning throb in his nipple, and that made it hard to focus on anything else. A long moment later, the ring was locked firmly in place, and Tommy was sinking to his knees in front of him, unzipping his pants and taking his hard cock down his throat. Prophet shot immediately - and Tom had to know that would happen. Prophet knew he'd no doubt have come as he was being pierced . . . if he'd had Tom sucking him while Ray did the piercing. But that was interesting as a fantasy only. Because this wasn't about sharing. Or payback. This was Tom showing him that he understood. That, no matter what, no matter how pissed they got, how much they fucked up . . . Prophet was his. Which was Tom's way of assuring that he wasn't going anywhere. ~ S.E. Jakes

He already couldn't remember what it'd been like before her. He'd thought everything was great in his life but then he'd been thrown a curve ball in the form of this gorgeous, passionate woman who he suddenly couldn't get enough of. Which made it official. He was hers, completely. ~ Jill Shalvis

I look away. I'm tired of liking him. I only have a day and a half worth of memories, but they're all filled with me not hating Silas. And now He's made it his personal mission to make me love him. ~ Tarryn Fisher

But I made it. And for some reason, I'm not worried about my job prospects. I truly believe I will be okay. ~ Katherine Reay

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

Acting for kids is like playing house, you know? But growing up in Hollywood, it just made it seem possible. ~ Jennifer Jason Leigh

If I've given the impression that trust is easy - with your spouse, with your kids, with anybody you care about - if I've made it seem like it's easy to do....then I've misspoken. It's the hardest thing I've ever had to do. But you have nothing without it. Nothing meaningful at all. That's why I chose to do it. Over and over and over. Even when it bit me in the ass. And I will keep choosing it until the day I die ~ Taylor Jenkins Reid

Don't throw any of yourself away. Don't worry about a grand scheme or unified vision for your work. Don't worry about unity
what unifies your work is the fact that you made it. One day you'll look back and it will all make sense. ~ Austin Kleon

She had climbed into his turmoil and made herself at home, fixing him one brick at a time from the inside, powerless to stop her, she touched his pain and made it a little better each time. ~ V. Theia

Two wives despaired of him,' he said. 'When he got engaged to Sylvia, she made it a condition that he should take the cure at Zurich. And it worked. He came back in three months a different man. And he hasn't touched a drop since, even though Sylvia walked out on him.'
'Why did she do that?'
Well, poor Charlie got rather a bore when he stopped drinking. But that's not really the point of the story. ~ Evelyn Waugh

Scandal had made it easy for Penelope to end the engagement without being jilted. Well, at least, not precisely.
She would not describe it as a jilt, exactly. More of a jolt, really. ~ Sarah MacLean

Yeah, I told you she was The One. Problem is I made it so I wasn't The One for her. ~ Kristen Ashley

Well, it's nice to know that the Trolls made it this far south,' Ulath said. 'I'd hate to have to go looking for them.'
'Their Gods were guiding them, Ulath,' Tynian pointed out.
'You've never talked with the Troll-Gods, I see,' Ulath laughed. 'Their sense of direction is a little vague - probably because their compass only has two directions on it.'
'Oh?'
'North and not-north. It makes finding places a little difficult. ~ David Eddings

You are unique, special and exceptional as you have made it. ~ Patricia Dsouza

They say that secrets live at the bottom of a wine bottle. Mama had made it there the night before, slow glass by slow glass, but she'd never spoken a word. ~ Alethea Kontis

I took those horrible scars and turned them into something better. My tattoos made something ugly and twisted pretty again. Just like my soul, every prick of the needle healed my flesh, took what was dirty and made it new again. I am better than I was before. I am stronger. ~ Annie Anderson

It is a well-worn saying but one nonetheless true and nonetheless worthy of repetition, inasmuch as it expresses peculiarly the situation now widely prevalent, that "where there is no vision the people perish. " Mankind as a whole, or more particularly the Western element, has lost in some incomprehensible way its spiritual vision. An heretical barrier has been erected separating itself from that current of life and vitality which even now, despite willful impediment and obstacle, pulses and vibrates passionately in the blood, pervading the whole of universal form and structure. The anomalies presented today are due to this rank absurdity. Mankind is slowly accomplishing its own suicide. A self-strangulation is being effected through a suppression of all individuality, in the spiritual sense, and all that made it human. It continues to withhold the spiritual atmosphere from its lungs, so to speak. And having severed itself from the eternal and never-ceasing sources of light and life and inspiration, it has deliberately blinded itself to the fact - than which no other could compare in importance - that there is a dynamic principle both within and without from which it has accomplished a divorce. The result is inner lethargy, chaos, and the disintegration of all that formerly was held to be ideal and sacred. ~ Israel Regardie

Don't follow your heart-follow the One who made it! ~ Mary Kate

Don't be distressed, Elle, about the other girls and who made it. With you here, I'm not sure there is much competition. ~ Chanda Hahn

If I cared deeply about what people thought of me, I probably would have never made it out of Compton, California. ~ Venus Williams

She was only saying what I already knew in my heart, but hearing the words spoken made it seem all the more true, all the more terrifying.
Words gave concepts power.
Once they were released, there was no choice but to understand them, no matter how painful they might be. ~ Mike A. Lancaster

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

I locked the door and turned on the water to fill the tub. I made it so hot that I had to get in real slow. I wanted it to hurt; wanted my outside to feel as bad as my inside. I sat there a long time watching my skin turn redder and redder ... Finally my insides was as fiery as my skin. I liked the burn and hoped it took everything I'd been wishing for and turned it to ashes. ~ Susan Crandall

From his vantage point in Ruchill Park, Laidlaw looked out over the city. He could see so much of it from here and still it baffled him. 'What is this place?' he thought.

A small and great city, his mind answered. A city with its face against the wind. That made it grimace. But did it have to be so hard? Sometimes it felt so hard…It was a place so kind it would batter cruelty into the ground. And what circumstances kept giving it was cruelty. No wonder he loved it. It danced among its own debris. When Glasgow gave up, the world could call it a day. ~ William McIlvanney

I asked who are you ? He said I am the one, a clay potter.

I asked what is in the clay ? He said my commanded soul.

And he then said whatever and whoever the clay are made of I am the one who command the soul in it.

And I asked curiously who is he who has born to a virgin who had breath the soul in the clay? and made it fly!

He said shush!!! he is my secret! ~ Aiyaz Uddin

Thus on Easter we celebrate Christ's Resurrection as something that happened and still happens to us. For each one of us received the gift of that new life and the power to accept it and to live by it. It is a gift which radically alters our attitude toward everything in this world, including death. It makes it possible for us joyfully to affirm: "Death is no more!" Oh, death is still there, to be sure and we still face it and someday it will come and take us. But it is our whole faith that by His own death Christ changed the very nature of death, made it a passage - a "passover," a "Pascha" - into the Kingdom of God, transforming the tragedy of tragedies into the ultimate victory. "Trampling down death by death," He made us partakes of His Resurrection. This is why at the end of the Paschal Matins we say: "Christ is risen and life reigneth! Christ is risen and not one dead remains in the grave! ~ Alexander Schmemann

If you want to be a slave in life, then continue going around asking others to do for you. They will oblige, but you will find the price is your choices, your freedom, your life itself. They will do for you, and as a result you will be in bondage to them forever, having given your identity away for a paltry price. Then, and only then, you will be a nobody, a slave, because you yourself and nobody else made it so. ~ Terry Goodkind

that He is committed to meeting our needs, but not our wants. That concept comes in reaction to those who have taken the wonderful Gospel and made it a self-centered lifestyle, in which we use the name of God, along with His principles, to get what we want. While that is a tragic misuse of Scripture, so is the concept that God cares only for our needs. He is not the director of an orphanage, guaranteeing us three meals a day and a cot to sleep on at night. He is a Father who delights in His children by becoming involved in their dreams. He fulfills dreams and desires out of His nature. It is who He is. ~ Bill Johnson

And they dare to rule the world! They have made it so ugly. Square houses! Their obsession with straight lines and right angles has ruined the earth! They consider all curves, all subtleties, all softness, all indefinites, female, and they shun them. They have poisoned and denatured everything they touch, and expect us to be grateful. ~ Lucy Ellmann

I gazed up at him as the laughter filled his face, and just loved him. The day had sucked, but Jean-Claude made it suck a lot less, and that was what love was supposed to do. It was supposed to make things better, not worse ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

There is that in the soul of man which must respond to the highest in virtue. It may not respond at once. Human nature can easily be over-faced by examples too remote and austere. Moreover, human nature can easily deny God because the whole race has long been in rebellion against Him. Yet there is that in human nature which calls out to the supreme examples of virtue: owns, as it were, the intention of God who made it, and feels the unmistakable homesickness of the soul. ~ Bill Vaughan

We try to entertain first, advertise second. When you find out that it's sponsored, we've already won you over. We try to make it obvious that the brand has made it better. ~ Charles Lincoln Neal

She did not believe he was a monster. He was not a monster, to her. Probably he had some endearing trait: he whistled, offkey, in the shower, he had a yen for truffles, he called his dog Liebchen and made it sit up for little pieces of raw steak. How easy it is to invent a humanity, for anyone at all. What an available temptation. ~ Margaret Atwood

Before the Civil War, Canada was at the top of the underground railroad. If you made it into Canada, you were safe unless someone came and hauled you back. That was also true during the Vietnam War for draft resisters. ~ Margaret Atwood

The Toreador primogen approached her Ventrue counterpart. When she neared, Eleanor gave Victoria a hug in greeting. Or rather, the Ventrue made it plain she was favoring Victoria with a hug.

When the Kindred separated, Eleanor said, "This looks like a wonderfuil party, my dear. You must be very satisfied." Her face was animated with all the false sincerity she could muster, which was enough to fool and flatter anyone but one as perceptive as Victoria.

Victoria wanted to gut the bitch right here, but she knew she had to be careful. On the other hand, too much care might alert Eleanor as much as a blatant warning, so she had to play along with the Ventrue's double-entendre politics.

"Well thank you Eleanor. Such compliments certainly mean something when they come from you. ~ Stewart Wieck

It is possible that a scientific discovery will be made that humans will later regret because it has awful consequences. The problem is, we probably would not know in advance and, once the discovery is made, it cannot be undiscovered. ~ Paul Davies

Don't worry about unity from piece to piece - what unifies all of your work is the fact that you made it. ~ Austin Kleon

I do enjoy my own company. I cannot imagine anybody entertaining me more than I do. If it sounds selfish, I don't care. I made it a religion almost. ~ Manolo Blahnik

But if Miss Golightly remained unconscious of my existence, except as a doorbell convenience, I became, through the summer, rather an authority on hers. I discovered, from observing the trash-basket outside her door, that her regular reading consisted of tabloids and travel folders and astrological charts; that she smoked an esoteric cigarette called Picayunes; survived on cottage cheese and Melba Toast; that her vari-colored hair was somewhat self-induced. The same source made it evident that she received V-letters by the bale. They were torn into strips like bookmarks. I used occasionally to pluck myself a bookmark in passing. Remember and miss you and rain and please write and damn and goddamn were the words that recurred most often on these slips; those, and lonesome and love. ~ Truman Capote

I will miss myself in relation to others. The rareness. The exceptional differences. I will miss the gift that comes with hardship and paying the price. I will miss the tragedy of my own life. As I once spoke...emphatically, but I now repeat here, quietly - the pain, the pain is what made it so God damn beautiful. I endured. You can wait a lifetime for thirty seconds, five minutes, or for an hour to come into your life - a brief interval that makes all the suffering purposeful. In such moments of splendor and rapture - even if the rapture be stilled, the private hours and years of reckoning are unloaded, a burden lifted and the spirit feels as it did on the happiest day of its life when it was young and untormented Or rather, unconscious of the torment waiting to be ignited. ~ Wheston Chancellor Grove

I just made it official. I'm a twenty-eight year old married woman with a twenty-two year old boyfriend who lives twenty minutes from a husband he doesn't know exists. That God I started believing in a few minutes ago is sending me straight to Hell. ~ Chrissy Anderson

Well, there were, of course, people to call. A good fifty names in my telephone book, which I had acquired only a month ago. But there was no one I wanted to talk to, much less see. Maybe I was just depressed. In that case, long live depression! That hypothetical malady made it very easy for me to take the most important decision in my life. ~ Max Frei

Universities are filled with poets and novelists conducting demure and careful lives in imitation of Eliot and Forster and those others who (through what seems to be have been discretion) made it. ~ Gore Vidal

That's the point of a promise, he thinks. It wouldn't have any value, if you could see what it would cost you when you made it. ~ Hilary Mantel

If that's the case, hurrah for the crazy people! Look, Lola, do you remember a single name, for instance, of any of the soldiers killed in the Hundred Years War? Did you ever try to find out who any of them were? No! You see? You never tried. As far as you are concerned, they are as anonymous, as indifferent, as the last atom of that paperweight, as your morning bowel movement. Get into your head, Lola, that they died fot nothing! For absolutely nothing, the idiots! I say it and I'll say it again! I've proved it! The one thing that counts is life! In ten thousand years, I'll bet you, this war, remarkable as it may seem to us at present, will be utterly forgotten... Maybe here and there in the world a handful of scholars will argue about its causes or the dates of the principal hecatombs that made it famous. Up until now those are the only things about men that other men have thought worth remembering after a few centuries, a few years, or even a few hours... I don't believe in future, Lola... ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

My parents always pushed creativity on us, but they made it seem like the fun thing to do. ~ Gwen Stefani

Everybody saw my successful advertising and thought I was a big success. But, behind those successes were several failures that I had to learn from before I made it. I've always looked at failure as just another step you need to take to reach success. ~ Joseph Sugarman

No, [the U.S.] has made it clear that we consider a peaceful resolution an essential aspect of American foreign policy. This I believe to be a situation understood by China, but again, it is important to not sound too truculent. Taking on a billion-plus Chinese is not an enterprise which one should enter lightly. ~ Henry A. Kissinger

I leaned my head back. "I look worse than I did the night you met me."
"I thought you looked fine."
I rolled my head to the side, so I could see him. Hoping the shadows made it so he couldn't see me. "What are you talking about? I looked like a Cirque du Soleil performer."
"What are you talking about?"
"The black dots around my eyes?"
He shook his head. "I'm lost."
"You were staring--"
"Oh, yeah." He gazed through the windshield. "Sorry about that. I've just never seen eyes as green as yours. I was trying to figure out if you wore contacts."
"You were looking at my eyes?"
"Yeah."
"Not the makeup?"
He turned his attention back to me. "I didn't realize you were wearing any. That night, anyway. Tonight it's pretty obvious."
"Oh." Didn't I feel silly? "I thought--" I shook my head. "Never mind." On second thought...
"You don't like all the makeup?"
"I just don't think you need it. I mean, you look pretty without it."
Oh, really? That was totally unexpected. ~ Rachel Hawthorne

In the United States, liberals have made it virtually impossible [to increase the supply of oil] by banning drilling in all sorts of places and preventing any new refinery from being built anywhere in the country in the last 30 years. ~ Thomas Sowell

We talked, she and I. She asked about my work and it was a pretense, she was not interested in my work. And when I answered, it was a pretense. I was not interested in my work either. There was only one thing that interested us, and she knew it. She had made it plain by her coming. ~ John Fante

Harry went closer and could see she was attractive. And there was something about the relaxed way she spoke, the way she looked him straight in the eye, that suggested that she was also self-assured. A professional woman, he guessed. Something requiring a cool, rational mind. Estate agent, head of a department in a bank, politician or something like that. Well-off at any rate, of that he was fairly sure. It wasn't just the coat and the colossal house behind her, but something in the attitude and the high, aristocratic cheekbones. She walked down the steps as if walking along a straight line, made it seem easy. Ballet lessons, Harry thought. ~ Jo Nesbo

No amount of smiling at a flight of stairs has ever made it turn into a ramp, ~ Stella Young

I was living in Germany in the thirties, and I knew that Hitler had made it his mission to exterminate all Jews, especially the children and the women who could bear children in the future. I was unable to save my people, only their memory. ~ Roman Vishniac

What is this earth and sea of which I have seen so much? Whence is it produced? And what am I and all the other creatures, wild and tame, humane and brutal? Whence are we?
Sure we are all made by some secret power, who formed the earth and sea, the air and sky; and who is that?
Then it followed most naturally, It is God that has made it all. Well, but then it came on strangely, if God has made all these things, He guides and governs them all, and all things that concern them; for the power that could make all things must certainly have power to guide and direct them.
If so, nothing can happen in the great circuit of His works, either without His knowledge or appointment.
And if nothing happens without His knowledge, He knows that I am here, and am in this dreadful condition; and if nothing happens without His appointment, He has appointed all this to befall me.
Nothing occurred to my thought to contradict any of these conclusions; and therefore it rested upon me with the greater force that it must need be, that God had appointed all this to befall me; that I was brought to this miserable circumstance by His direction, He having the sole power, not of me only, but of every thing that happened in the world. Immediately it followed:
Why has God done this to me? What have I done to be thus used? ~ Daniel Defoe