Miandad Last Ball Quotes

Do you not comprehend this in America, how your unions have been all but destroyed in the last 30 years? Do you not understand why your local US Postal Service offices are cracked, neglected, and almost derelict buildings, with their staffs downsizing and limiting their days of service? The corporately owned US Congress is destroying the postal service as part of its act, playing you for a fool while wearing a two-party (two-headed) monster mask. One sadistic party acts as a wrecking ball hurled at a wall of political inertia that is the second and masochistic party. ~ John Hogue

You have a minute and a half left."
"Fine," she snapped. "Then I'll reduce this conversation to one single fact. Today I had six callers. Six! Can you recall the last time I had six callers?"
Anthony just stared at her blankly.
"I can't," Daphne continued, in fine form now. "Because it has never happened. Six men marched up our steps, knocked on our door, and gave Humboldt their cards. Six men brought me flowers, engaged me in conversation, and one even recited poetry."
Simon winced.
"And do you know why?" she demanded, her voice rising dangerously. "Do you?"
Anthony, in his somewhat belatedly arrived wisdom, held his tongue.
"It is all because he" - she jabbed her forefinger toward Simon - "was kind enough to feign interest in me last night at Lady Danbury's ball. ~ Julia Quinn

Everyone's here except for St. Clair." Meredith cranes her neck around the cafeteria. "He's usually running late."
"Always," Josh corrects. "Always running late."
I clear my throat. "I think I met him last night. In the hallway."
"Good hair and an English accent?" Meredith asks.
"Um.Yeah.I guess." I try to keep my voice casual.
Josh smirks. "Everyone's in luuurve with St. Clair."
"Oh,shut up," Meredith says.
"I'm not." Rashmi looks at me for the first time, calculating whether or not I might fall in love with her own boyfriend.
He lets go of her hand and gives an exaggerated sigh. "Well,I am. I'm asking him to prom. This is our year, I just know it."
"This school has a prom?" I ask.
"God no," Rashmi says. "Yeah,Josh. You and St. Clair would look really cute in matching tuxes."
"Tails." The English accent makes Meredith and me jump in our seats. Hallway boy. Beautiful boy. His hair is damp from the rain. "I insist the tuxes have tails, or I'm giving your corsage to Steve Carver instead."
"St. Clair!" Josh springs from his seat, and they give each other the classic two-thumps-on-the-back guy hug.
"No kiss? I'm crushed,mate."
"Thought it might miff the ol' ball and chain. She doesn't know about us yet."
"Whatever," Rashi says,but she's smiling now. It's a good look for her. She should utilize the corners of her mouth more often.
Beautiful Hallway Boy (Am I supposed to call him Etienne or St. Clair?) ~ Stephanie Perkins

When he pursed his lips and dropped a hand into his coat pocket, the last thing Nur expected him to pull out was a cricket ball. "I'd hoped for a disruptor at least," she muttered reprovingly.

The Doctor slipped three fingers around the ball and hefted it experimentally. "I thought we'd try something a little less excessive."

He breathed gently on to the maroon leather and polished it on his leg as the Sontaran finally tossed the Kshatriya aside and stopped to pick up its fallen weapon. He stepped around the corner, sighting along his free arm as the Sontaran straightened, its back fully turned. The cricket ball flashed down the length of the corridor in the blink of an eye, punching into the back of the Sontaran's collar and ricocheting away. To Nur's astonishment, the alien spasmed and crashed to the floor like a falling tree. "Out for a duck," the Doctor commented, blowing across his fingertips.

"I've never seen anything killed by a cricket ball before."

"You haven't yet. He'll wake up in a few minutes. ~ David A. McIntee

Hey! Sorry, lady, but nobody's staking anybody at this party! I hung a disco ball for this. ~ Rachel Caine

Women and gay guys always get stuck with that image that they couldn't possibly be interested in the game itself - it had to be the guys. I mean sure it's a fringe benefit but when the game is on the last thing you're thinking about is the bodies of the men. You're concentrating on that red leather oval ball and if it will make it between the triad of poles that will either signify glory or failure. ~ Sean Kennedy

His father asked Ethan in a raspy voice, "You spend time with your son?" "Much as I can," he'd answered, but his father had caught the lie in his eyes. "It'll be your loss, Ethan. Day'll come, when he's grown and it's too late, that you'd give a kingdom to go back and spend a single hour with your son as a boy. To hold him. Read a book to him. Throw a ball with a person in whose eyes you can do no wrong. He doesn't see your failings yet. He looks at you with pure love and it won't last, so you revel in it while it's here." Ethan thinks often of that conversation, mostly when he's lying awake in bed at night and everyone else is asleep, and his life screaming past at the speed of light - the weight of bills and the future and his prior failings and all these moments he's missing - all the lost joy - perched like a boulder on his chest. ~ Blake Crouch

So many kinds of people exist
hundreds of plans for profit and fame
hearts intent on glory
always trying to get rich
minds that never rest
rushing about like smoke
dependents gather around
one yell and a hundred heads nod
but less than seventy years from now
ice becomes water and roof tiles break
dead at last all cares cease
who will be their heir
drop a ball of mud in water
and behold the thoughtless mind ~ Han-shan

Depends on the dog. Big country dogs like these? Yeah. It's the fancy city ones that give me trouble. Overbred, Dad says. Makes them skittish and screws up their wiring. I had a Chihuahua attack me last year." He showed me a faint scar on his hand. "Took a good chunk out."
I sputtered a laugh. "A Chihuahua?"
"Hey, that thing was more vicious than a pit bull. I was at a park with Simon, kicking around a ball. All of a sudden, this little rat dog comes tearing out of nowhere, jumps up, and clamps down on my hand. Wouldn't let go. I'm shaking it, and the owner's yelling at me not to hurt little Tito. I finally get the dog off. I'm bleeding all over that place and the guy never even apologizes. ~ Kelley Armstrong

I read the last Harry Potter, and I cried for at least the last 70 pages. Awful! I was curled into a ball and I just kept sobbing. It was embarrassing. I was loud, and I just kept wiping tears away so I could see the page. ~ Jesmyn Ward

I also have the last season of Beverly Hills 90210, only because I love to watch the final episode when Donna and David finally frickin' get married. Her dress was amazing. She looked like Cinderella going to the ball. ~ Julie Prestsater

It looked like she held a basketful of woven gold.
Arin leap down the stairs. He strode up to his cousin and seized her arm.
"Arin!"
"What did you do?"
Sarsine jerked away. "What she wanted. Pull yourself together."
But Arin only saw Kestrel as she had been last night before the ball. How her hair had been a spill of low light over his palms. He had threaded desire into those braids, had wanted her to sense it even as he dreaded that she would. He had met her eyes in the mirror, and didn't know, couldn't tell her feelings. He only knew the fire of his own.
"It's just hair," Sarsine said. "It will grow back."
"Yes," said Arin, "but no everything does. ~ Marie Rutkoski

The Hispanic population grew by 4.7 percent last year, while blacks expanded by 1.5 percent and whites by a paltry 0.3 percent. Hispanics cast 6 percent of the vote in 1990 and 12 percent in 2000. If their numbers expand at the current pace, they will be up to 18 percent in 2010 and 24 percent in 2020. With one-third of Hispanics voting Republican, they are the jump ball in American politics. As this vote goes, so goes the future. ~ Dick Morris

I am speaking of the evenings when the sun sets early, of the fathers under the streetlamps in the back streets
returning home carrying plastic bags. Of the old Bosphorus ferries moored to deserted
stations in the middle of winter, where sleepy sailors scrub the decks, pail in hand and one
eye on the black-and-white television in the distance; of the old booksellers who lurch from
one ϧnancial crisis to the next and then wait shivering all day for a customer to appear; of
the barbers who complain that men don't shave as much after an economic crisis; of the
children who play ball between the cars on cobblestoned streets; of the covered women
who stand at remote bus stops clutching plastic shopping bags and speak to no one as they
wait for the bus that never arrives; of the empty boathouses of the old Bosphorus villas; of
the teahouses packed to the rafters with unemployed men; of the patient pimps striding up
and down the city's greatest square on summer evenings in search of one last drunken
tourist; of the broken seesaws in empty parks; of ship horns booming through the fog; of
the wooden buildings whose every board creaked even when they were pashas' mansions,
all the more now that they have become municipal headquarters; of the women peeking
through their curtains as they wait for husbands who never manage to come home in the
evening; of the old men selling thin religious treatises, prayer beads, a ~ Orhan Pamuk

A [news] magazine printed a [photo-illustration] of me in a ball gown holding a vacuum cleaner, saying I started a company. Last time I checked, I'm not selling vacuums. It was very sexist. ~ Reese Witherspoon

For a long time we dreamed of a real leather ball, and at last my brother had one for his birthday. The feel of the leather, the stitching round it, the faint gold letters stamped upon it, the touch of the seam, the smell of it, all affected me so deeply that I still have that ache of beauty when I hold a cricket ball. ~ Alison Uttley

I have time for only one drink," Jordan said, glancing at the ormolu clock on the opposite wall. "I've promised Alexandra to stand at her side at a ball tonight and beam approvingly at a friend of hers."
Whenever Jordan mentioned his wife's name, Ian noted with amusement, the other man's entire expression softened.
"Care to join us?"
Ian shook his head and accepted his drink from the footman. "It sounds boring as hell."
"I don't think it'll be boring, precisely. My wife has taken it upon herself to defy the entire ton and sponsor the girl back into the ranks. Based on some of the things Alexandra said in her note, that will be no mean feat."
"Why is that?" Ian inquired with more courtesy than interest.
Jordan sighed and leaned his head back, weary from the hours he'd been working for the last several weeks and unexcited at the prospect of dancing attendance on a damsel in distress-one he'd never set eyes on. "The girl fell into the clutches of some man two years ago and an ugly scandal ensued."
Thinking of Elizabeth and himself, Ian said casually, "That's not an uncommon occurrence, evidently."
"From what Alex wrote me, it seems this case is rather extreme."
"In what way?"
"For one thing, there's every chance the young woman will get the cut direct tonight from half the ton-and that's the half that will be willing to acknowledge her. Alex has retaliated by calling in the heavy guns-my grandmother, to be exact, and Tony and mys ~ Judith McNaught

I'm glad we were able to win this last one. I saw some good things tonight, ... It's just preseason, but we ran the ball good. I'm happy about that, and the first-team offense was pretty sharp. ~ Bill Parcells

noticed a large digital screen on the wall facing what looked the common area, where people would gather for announcements. He saw numbers labeled on the buildings, and the buildings themselves, but he didn't see anything else. The transport stopped at Building One, and the driver simply, and in a somewhat harsh tone, said, "Out!" The children scrambled to get out of the transport, and as the last one barely made it off, the transport drove away, presumably being driven back to the registration area. They began to enter the building, when they were greeted by an adult woman. The children thought she looked mean and angry, and the teens thought she was built like a bodybuilder, but looked and sounded like a man with her short butch haircut and somewhat deep voice. ~ Cliff Ball

Distinctively gentle he was, and trustworthy, and of special courtesy. His great physical strength was never used in combat, men remembered, except when needed for the defence of the weak. In the last hours, when his mind went roving over the past, he said to someone who stoody by: 'I thank god that in all my life I never struck a man in anger...Ishould have killed my antagonist and then his blood, at this awful moment, would have lain heavily on my soul....Idie at peace with all mankind.' (Referring to Augustine Washington, husband of Mary Ball and father of George Washington.) ~ Nancy Byrd Turner

The players have competed on the level the last 25 or 30 years are always going to be the players that compete at a high level. These guys practice hard, they work on their game, they still hit the ball extremely well. ~ Greg Norman

In various talk th' instructive hours they past, Who gave the ball, or paid the visit last; One speaks the glory of the British queen, And one describes a charming Indian screen; A third interprets motions, looks, and eyes; At every word a reputation dies. ~ Alexander Pope

Mom told me you got hit by a ball last night, but I didn't think it would be that nasty looking. Does it hurt?"
"It's tender," I admitted.
"I have some makeup that will cover it right up. No one will know."
"Maybe I want people to know. Maybe I see it as a badge of honor."
"Please. It looks like the first stage of turning into a zombie. ~ Rachel Hawthorne

I wanted to believe that he came because he liked me, because he saw something in me that he didn't see in any of his other options. I wanted to believe mine was the first door he knocked on. I truly did. But I couldn't. I was never the first for anything. I was the kid who got picked last for dodge ball. I would not be the first to be awoken by an insomniac celebrity, even one with whom I had a sort-of history. I could dream all I wanted, but I knew the absurdity of it. ~ Ryan Loveless

How ironic, to be my last game that I ever played would be against Dan in a Super Bowl. The thing I always was afraid of was playing in a Super Bowl when it was raining. I can't throw a wet ball. ~ John Elway

My greatest point is my persistence. I never give up in a match. However down I am, I fight until the last ball. My list of matches shows that I have turned a great many so-called irretrievable defeats into victories. ~ Bjorn Borg

Day'll come, when he's grown and it's too late, that you'd give a kingdom to go back and spend a single hour with your son as a boy. To hold him. Read a book to him. Throw a ball with a person in whose eyes you can do no wrong. He doesn't see your failings yet. He looks at you with pure love and it won't last, so you revel in it while it's here. ~ Blake Crouch

Excerpt from Storm's Eye by Dean Gray

With a final drag and drop, Jordan Rayne sent his latest creation winging its way toward the publisher. He looked up, squinted at that little clock in the right hand corner of his monitor, and removed his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. His cover art was finished and shipped, just in time for lunch. He sighed and stood, rolling his shoulders and bending side to side, his back cracking in protest as the muscles loosened after having been hunched over the screen for so long. Sam raised his head, tilting it enquiringly at him, and Jordan laughed.
"Yeah, I know what you want, some lunch and a nice long walk along the beach, hmm?" Jordan smiled fondly at the furry ball of energy he'd saved from certain death. With his mom's recent death it was just Sam and him in the house. Sometimes he wondered what kept him here, now that the last thread tethering him to the island was severed.

Sam limped over and nuzzled at his hand. When Jordan had first found him out on the main road, hurt and bleeding, he hadn't been sure the pooch would make it. Taylor, his best friend and the local vet, had done what she could. At the time, Jordan simply didn't have the deep pockets for the fancy surgery needed to mend Sam's leg perfectly, he could barely afford the drugs to keep his mom in treatment. So they'd patched him up as well as they could, Taylor extending herself further than he could ever repay, and hoped for the best. The d ~ Dean Gray

Ode to Douglas Adams

In the solar system we inhabit, we live on a small planet we all call Earth. Okay, when I say small, I mean it's small compared to say, oh, Jupiter. Earth is something like a dime compared to Jupiter's beach ball. On this Earth is a fairly large country we all call The United States of America. Of course, when I say fairly large, it's like the U.S. is a piece of broccoli next to China's really large cauliflower. Now that I think of it, that may not be a good comparison as it depends on the restaurant you go to. At the place I was at last night it would be a good comparison as the cauliflower was larger than the broccoli. Not that I'd touch either. I had a hamburger with fries and somebody at the next table had those ghastly vegetables.

From the Preface to "Sex and the American Male." I was saddened by the passing of Douglas Adams and wrote the preface to sound a little like his "Hitchhiker's..." books and to honor him. I hope he's smiling. ~ Jay Williams

There are those who worship loneliness, I'm not one of them In this age of fiberglass I'm searching for a gem The crystal ball up on the wall hasn't shown me nothing yet I've paid the price of solitude, but at last I'm out of debt ~ Bob Dylan

Oh, blast, this is all so confusing!" she complained. "How is a woman supposed to figure out what a man really wants?"
"If you learn the answer to that question, do be a dear and tell the rest of us," Minerva quipped. "Though as far as I can tell, men are simple creatures, for all their posturing. They want food, drink, and a wench to bed, not necessarily in that order."
"And love?" Celia asked.
Minerva smiled. "That, too. Some men do, anyway. You'll just have to spend some time with Mr. Pinter and find out if that's what he wants from you."
"And how on earth am I supposed to spend time with him when he's been avoiding me ever since the last time we kissed?"
"Perhaps he's worried about the difference in your stations."
"That didn't keep him from kissing me." She scowled. "Besides, you've heard what he says about our sort. If anything, he thinks himself above us, not below us. He didn't even ask me to dance tonight! He could have. No one would have thought anything of that. Instead, he spent the entire ball standing about, looking disappointed, and talking to servants."
"Perhaps because you spent the entire ball in the company of your suitors."
Celia released an exasperated breath. "What else was I supposed to do? I'm not allowed to ask a man to dance. And at least I know what my suitors want. Lord Devonmont wants to seduce me, the viscount wants peace in his old age, and the duke wants to marry me. I don't have any idea what Jackson wan ~ Sabrina Jeffries

Common sense says go home and forget it, no money coming in. Common sense always speaks too late. Common sense is the guy who tells you you ought to have had your brakes relined last week before you smashed a front end this week. Common sense is the Monday morning quarterback who could have won the ball game if he had been on the team. But he never is. He's high up in the stands with a flask on his hip. Common sense is the little man in a gray suit who never makes a mistake in addition. But it's always somebody else's money he's adding up ~ Raymond Chandler

I was a very focused kid. I always had this crazy lifestyle ... billions of jobs, two hours of gymnastics every day, handball, anything with a ball, really. I must have had ADHD or something. I was very energetic, and very small. I didn't start growing until the last year of high school. ~ Mads Mikkelsen

Elizabeth," he said, trying not to laugh. "At a wedding reception, the guests cannot leave until the bride and groom retire. If you look over there, you'll notice my great-aunts are already nodding in their chairs."
"Oh!" she exclaimed, instantly contrite. "I didn't know. Why didn't you tell me earlier?"
"Because," he said, taking her elbow and beginning to guide her from the ballroom, "I wanted you to enjoy every minute of our ball, even if we had to prop the guests up on the shrubbery."
"Speaking of shrubbery," she teased, pausing on the balcony to cast a last fond look at the "arbor" of potted trees with silk blossoms that occupied one-fourth the length of the entire ballroom, "everyone is talking about having gardens and arbors as themes for future balls. I think you've stared a new 'rage.'"
"You should have seen your face," he teased, drawing her away, "when you recognized what I had done."
"We are probably the only couple," she returned her face turned up to his in laughing conspiracy, "ever to lead off a ball by dancing a waltz on the sidelines." When the orchestra had struck up the opening waltz, Ian had led her into the mock "arbor," and they had started the ball from there.
"Did you mind?"
"You know I didn't," she returned, walking beside him up the curving staircase.
He stopped outside her bed chamber, opened the door for her, and started to pull her into his arms, then checked himself as a pair of servants came marching down ~ Judith McNaught

It can be crazy hard. To keep your faith, to keep going. It can be harder than I ever would have imagined. Sometimes things happen to you, really bad things that aren't fair, things that make you feel so terrible you're not even sure who you are anymore or whether you're right or wrong, good or bad. Sometimes you feel like there's no one to turn to, and you're all alone and so scared you can hardly move and so tired you just want to curl up in a ball and go to sleep forever. I guess that's kind of the way Alex felt that last night I saw him. And that's the way I felt now. But I guess I had one advantage over Alex. I guess in some way I'd been training for this time my whole life. I'd been training every day, even in simple things, little things. I trained to keep my mind sharp when I went to school. I trained in karate to keep my body and spirit strong. Even when I just went to church, or when I prayed by myself, it was a kind of training: I was training to remember that I was not alone. I was never alone. ~ Andrew Klavan

There was a time - the year after leaving, even five years after when this homely street, with its old-fashioned high crown, its sidewalk blocks tugged up and down by maple roots, its retaining walls of sandstone and railings of painted iron and two-family brickfront houses whose siding imitates gray rocks, excited Rabbit with the magic of his own existence. These mundane surfaces had given witness to his life; this cup had held his blood; here the universe had centered, each downtwirling maple seed of more account than galaxies. No more. Jackson Road seems an ordinary street anywhere. Millions of such American streets hold millions of lives, and let them sift through, and neither notice nor mourn, and fall into decay, and do not even mourn their own passing but instead grimace at the wrecking ball with the same gaunt facades that have outweathered all their winters. However steadily Mom communes with these maples - the branches' misty snake-shapes as inflexibly fixed in these two windows as the leading of stained glass - they will not hold back her fate by the space of a breath; nor, if they are cut down tomorrow to widen Jackson Road at last, will her staring, that planted them within herself, halt their vanishing. And the wash of new light will extinguish even her memory of them. Time is our element, not a mistaken invader. How stupid, it has taken him thirty-six years to begin to believe that. ~ John Updike