Mortality Bridge Quotes

You ask me what it feels like to have wings. I can only tell you the feeling with words. And words have neither feelings nor wings. Words are leaky vessels into which a cargo of meaning and emotion are placed, and when they leave you and reach the farther shore of another mind a considerable portion of that cargo has been lost at sea. Fallen overboard, gone to rot, consumed by vermin, decayed to a state unlike its original form. ~ Steven R. Boyett

Dear Bill (O'Reilly) ... I am concerned that you have been losing touch with reality recently. Did you really say you are more powerful than any politician?
That reminds me of the famous story about Squeaky the Chicago Mouse. It seems that Squeaky was floating on his back along the Chicago River one day. Approaching the Michigan Avenue lift bridge, he called out: Raise the bridge! I have an erection! ~ Roger Ebert

There was no one else to blame anymore. No Bores or Old Ladies or Nortons, or Assassins waiting at the bridge. And there was no place to hide-no place across any river for a boatman to take us.
Our life would be what we made of it-nothing more, nothing less.
Baboons.
Baboons.
They build their own cages, we could almost hear the Pigman whisper, as he took his children with him. ~ Paul Zindel

Mortality is inscribed in your cellular structure, and you say you're not ill? Look at the painting. Look at it." She nods towards The Adoration of the Magi. I obey. I always will. "Thirteen subjects, if you count them, like the Last Supper. Shepherds, the Magi, the relatives. Study their faces, one by one. Who believes this newborn manikin can one day conquer death? Who wants proof? Who suspects the Messiah is a false prophet? Who knows that he is in a painting, being watched? Who is watching you back? ~ David Mitchell

It so happens that the work which is likely to be our most durable monument, and to convey some knowledge of us to the most remote posterity, is a work of bare utility; not a shrine, not a fortress, not a palace, but a bridge. - MONTGOMERY SCHUYLER IN HARPER'S WEEKLY, MAY 24, 1883 ~ David McCullough

Look for a wave shaped like an A.

An A.

Hmm.

I saw Zs and H's and Vs. I saw the Hindi alphabet and the Thai alphabet. I saw Arabic script. I saw no As.

Finally I gave up, and chose the next wave that would have me, which turned out to be a poor move.

There is a moment, shortly after one accepts the imminence of one's demise, when it occurs that you could be elsewhere: that if you simply left the house a little later, or lingered over a Mai Tai, you would not be here now confronting your mortality. This moment occurred just as I encountered a very large (from my perspective), rare and surprising wave. A wave that was pitching and howling, and it really had no business being where it was - underneath me.

The demon wave picked me up, and after that I have only a a vague recollection of spinning limbs, a weaponized surf board, and chaotic white water, churning together over a reef.

I decided surfing was not for me. I generally no longer engage in adrenaline rush activities that carry with them a strong likely hood of life-altering injury. (p. 138)
~ J. Maarten Troost

When I was a kid I had a friend who worked in a radio station. Whenever we walked under a bridge, you couldn't hear what he said. ~ Steven Wright

His life was absurd. He went all over the world accepting all kinds of bondage and escaping. He was roped to a chair. He escaped. He was chained to a ladder. He escaped. He was handcuffed, his legs were put in irons, he was tied up in a strait jacket and put in a locked cabinet. He escaped. He escaped from bank vaults, nailed-up barrels, sewn mailbags; he escaped from a zinc-lined Knabe piano case, a giant football, a galvanized iron boiler, a rolltop desk, a sausage skin. His escapes were mystifying because he never damaged or appeared to unlock what he escaped from. The screen was pulled away and there he stood disheveled but triumphant beside the inviolate container that was supposed to have contained him. He waved to the crowd. He escaped from a sealed milk can filled with water. He escaped from a Siberian exile van. From a Chinese torture crucifix. From a Hamburg penitentiary. From an English prison ship. From a Boston jail. He was chained to automobile tires, water wheels, cannon, and he escaped. He dove manacled from a bridge into the Mississippi, the Seine, the Mersey, and came up waving. He hung upside down and strait-jacketed from cranes, biplanes and the tops of buildings. He was dropped into the ocean padlocked in a diving suit fully weighted and not connected to an air supply, and he escaped. He was buried alive in a grave and could not escape, and had to be rescued. Hurriedly, they dug him out. The earth is too heavy, he said gasping. His nails bled. Soil fell f ~ E.L. Doctorow

You cry, i cry. you hurt,i hurt. you laugh, i laugh. You jump off a bridge den ima miss u lil buddy ~ Carly

My fellow Americans, we can only build our bridge to the 21st century if we build it together, and if we're willing to walk arm-in-arm across that bridge together. ~ William J. Clinton

How do I shape my reality? I use wisdom and strategy to shift the possible to the probable ... Then, effort and consistency will bridge the probable to the inevitable. Success is a behavior ... I make sure my mindset and actions are working in alignment. ~ Steve Maraboli

How old the world is! I walk between two eternities ... What is my fleeting existence in comparison with that decaying rock, thatvalley digging its channel ever deeper, that forest that is tottering and those great masses above my head about to fall? I see the marble of tombs crumbling into dust; and yet I don't want to die! ~ Denis Diderot

I was the bridge between the Michael Jordan era and LeBron James era. ~ Allen Iverson

So you have chosen aloneness. You have chosen the security and the relative freedom of solitude, because there is no risk involved. You can stay up every night and watch your TV shows and eat ice cream out of the box and scroll through your Tumblr and never let your brain sit still, not even for a moment. You can fill your days up with books and coffees and trips to the store where you forget what you wanted the second you walk in the automatic sliding door. You can do so many little, pointless things throughout the day that all you can think of is how badly you want to sleep, how heavy your whole body is, how much your feet hurt. You can wear yourself out again and again on the pavement, and you do, and it feels good. No one will ever bridge that gap and point to your stomach or your hair or your eyes in the mirror and magically make you see the wonderful things about getting to be next to you. And maybe that's it, after all, this fear that no one will ever truly feel about you the way you want to be felt about. Maybe what you want is someone to make you love yourself, to put sense into all that positive rhetoric, to make it so the aloneness of TV and blasting music in your ears at all times isn't the most happy place you can think of. Maybe you want someone who makes you so sure of how wonderful things are that you cannot help but to tell them your feelings first, even at the risk of being humiliated. Because you will know that, when you're telling them you love them, what ~ Chelsea Fagan

Home-schooled students are able to successfully adapt emotionally, interpersonally, and academically to their first, and most challenging, semester in college. That is probably because, having had the consistent teaching and support of a family and a community, they have developed strengths and convictions that provide a bridge over the troubled waters of a multitude of challenges and temptations. ~ Laura Schlessinger

The Englishmen were clean and enthusiastic and decent and strong. They sang boomingly well. They had been singing together every night for years. The Englishmen had also been lifting weights and chinning themselves for years. Their bellies were like washboards. The muscles of their calves and upper arms were like cannonballs. They were all masters of checkers and chess and bridge and cribbage and dominoes and anagrams and charades and Ping-Pong and billiards, as well. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I think that there is something beautiful about mortality. It makes our decisions mean more. ~ Brandon Boyd

Everett's approach, which he described as "objectively deterministic" with probability "reappearing at the subjective level," resonated with this strategy. And he was thrilled by the direction. As he noted in the 1956 draft of his dissertation, the framework offered to bridge the position of Einstein (who famously believed that a fundamental theory of physics should not involve probability) and the position of Bohr (who was perfectly happy with a fundamental theory that did). According to Everett, the Many Worlds approach accommodated both positions, the difference between them merely being one of perspective. Einstein's perspective is the mathematical one in which the grand probability wave of all particles relentlessly evolves by the Schrodinger equation, with chance playing absolutely no role. I like to picture Einstein soaring high above the many worlds of Many Worlds, watching as Schrodinger's equation fully dictates how the entire panorama unfolds, and happily concluding that even though quantum mechanics is correct, God doesn't play dice. Bohr's perspective is that of an inhabitant in one of the worlds, also happy, using probabilities to explain, with stupendous precision, those observations to which his limited perspective gives him access. ~ Brian Greene

How the things that hold us are only as strong as the faith we have in them-you go on the bridge because you trust it will not fall the fingers will clasp because we trust them to. ~ David Levithan

When I think about the future, I know that the most fantastic things are too awesome to even imagine today. Great entrepreneurs are like Indiana Jones: They take leaps before seeing the bridge because they know that if they don't, someone else will get that holy grail. That holy grail is yours for the taking. ~ Sophia Amoruso

Kota popped in beside North. He glanced around, a finger touching the bridge of his glasses. Were we not invited to the ... zombie-nail-painting-cupcake party? ~ C.L.Stone

...The efficacy of psychedelics with regard to art has to do with their ability to render language weightless, as fluid and ephemeral as those famous "bubble letters" of the sixties. Psychedelics, I think, disconnect both the signifier and the signified from their purported referents in the phenomenal world - simultaneously bestowing upon us a visceral insight into the cultural mechanics of language, and a terrifying inference of the tumultuous nature that swirls beyond it. In my own experience, it always seemed as if language were a tablecloth positioned neatly upon the table until some celestial busboy suddenly shook it out, fluttering and floating it, and letting it fall back upon the world in not quite the same position as before - thereby giving me a vertiginous glimpse into the abyss that divides the world from our knowing of it. And it is into this abyss that the horror vacui of psychedelic art deploys itself like an incandescent bridge. Because it is one thing to believe, on theoretical evidence, that we live in a prison-house of language. It is quite another to know it, to actually peek into the slippery emptiness as the Bastille explodes around you. Yet psychedelic art takes this apparent occasion for despair and celebrates our escape from linguistic control by flowing out, filling that rippling void with meaningful light, laughter, and a gorgeous profusion. ~ Dave Hickey

I grew up at 16 years old driving trucks across the George Washington Bridge. ~ Don Sherwood

Perhaps this was what love was like after all- not the lurch of going over a humpback bridge, and not the incandescence of fireworks, just the quiet understanding that one should take a kind hand when it was offered, before all light was gone from the sky. ~ Chris Cleave

The stimulus is our bridge over troubled waters. And if it's invested well, it'll generate a lot of economic growth, and we'll get quite a bit of the revenues back. ~ William J. Clinton

Social mobility decreased under Labour and under the current government it is reversing. The differences between the poorest and richest are returning to Victorian levels. We don't have open sewers and infant mortality rates at fifty percent but in economic terms we're getting to a level of disparity we haven't seen for a couple of hundred years. And we're getting there very quickly. ~ Jonathan Trigell

Most people are not really scared of death. They are merely terrified of being taken to a mortuary and/or being buried or cremated and/or being forgotten. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Sure. You want to be touched, inspired and made to feel alive. But a relationship is like a bridge where you meet other people half-way. That means if you want to be touched, inspired and made to feel alive, you have to be touching, inspiring and bring the fire of your aliveness to the union of your companionship. ~ Bryant McGill

Only by being both deity and humanity could Jesus Christ bridge the gap between where God is. ~ David Jeremiah

General improvements in health/decline in mortality do not affect all classes equally. As mortality rates fall, social inequalities commonly widen. ~ Michael Marmot

The realistic style is easy to abuse: from haste, from lack of awareness, from inability to bridge the chasm that lies between what a writer would like to be able to say and what he actually knows how to say. It is easy to fake; brutality is not strength, flipness is not wit, edge-of-the-chair writing can be as boring as flat writing; dalliance with promiscuous blondes can be very dull stuff when described by goaty young men with no other purpose in mind than to describe dalliance with promiscuous blondes. ~ Raymond Chandler

Then, as in the middle of the bridge, in the middle of a walk, in the middle always, whether of a book, a conversation, or making love, it was borne in on me again that I had never done what I wanted and out of not doing what I wanted to do there grew up inside me this creation which was nothing but an obsessional plant, a sort of coral growth, which was expropriating everything, including life itself, until life itself became this which was denied but which constantly asserted itself, making life and killing life at the same time. ~ Henry Miller

I didn't want to be a slave to any passion anymore. I gave up card playing altogether, even bridge and gambling - more or less. It took me a few years to get out of it. ~ Omar Sharif

She dreamed of Venice. However, it wasn't a city alive with stars dripping like liquid gold into canals, or Bougainvillea spilling from flowerpots like overfilled glasses of wine. In this dream, Venice was without color. Where pastel palazzi once lined emerald lagoons, now, gray, shadowy mounds of rubble paralleled murky canals. Lovers could no longer share a kiss under the Bridge of Sighs; it had been the target of an obsessive Allied bomb in search of German troops. The only sign of life was in Piazza San Marco, where the infamous pigeons continued to feed. However, these pigeons fed not on seeds handed out by children, but on corpses rotting under the elongated shadow of the Campanile. ~ Pamela Allegretto

Puggle isn't a word, Bridge."
Letting her down gently had no effect. She stomped a boot on the ground, making the contents of the mystery pink bag rattle in her hand. "It is," she insisted. "Ask someone."
I looked from left to right, wondering who she was expecting me to stop. As busy as the park was, I couldn't see a single person who looked knowledgeable in Australian wildlife. "What am I supposed to ask, Bridget?" I asked. "Excuse me ma'am, do you know what a puggle is?"
She raised her free hand, bouncing on the spot. "I know! I know!" she squealed. "It's a baby 'chidna."
I made a mental note to hold off on the sarcasm for a year or two. I decided to dazzle her with science instead. I took my phone from my pocket and Googled it – then had to eat my words because a baby echidna is indeed called a puggle.
"How can you possibly know the things you do?"
She grinned, reminding me too much of her mom. "I'm a smart girl, Ry. ~ G.J. Walker-Smith

The power of the Will in a man, is favoured by the Heavens. The man who sets his Heart and Word onto something, and says "I will" no matter what obstacle is placed in his way - joins the ranks of the demi-gods. All else remain in mortality and are soon forgotten. ~ C. JoyBell C.

For me, the good death includes being prepared to die, with my affairs in order, the good and bad messages delivered that need delivering. The good death means dying while I still have my mind sharp and aware; it also means dying without having to endure large amounts of suffering and pain. The good death means accepting death as inevitable, and not fighting it when the time comes. This is my good death, but as legendary psychotherapist Carl Jung said, "It won't help to hear what I think about death." Your relationship to mortality is your own. ~ Caitlin Doughty

Mia is walking away, walking toward the other end of the bridge. Without me.
I get it now.
I have to make good on my promise. To let her go. To really let her go. To let us both go. ~ Gayle Forman

Robert crossed Pulteney Bridge with a light step. He grinned at the boy raking odiferous horse manure to the curb and tipped him well for his service. He nodded - with a grin - to the puzzled driver of a hack heading into the city. And he bowed - with a grin - as he stepped aside to allow the weary-looking woman with two toddlers to pass.
None to see him would realize that Robert had fallen under the hooves of a racing carriage and risen from the other side unscathed - metaphorically speaking, of course. ~ Cindy Anstey

I've been really fortunate to have Bridge Records interested in publishing my music for the past 25 years. Most of my music is available in their catalog. ~ Paul Lansky

In a world so torn apart by rivalry, anger, and hatred, we have the privileged vocation to be living signs of a love that can bridge all divisions and heal all wounds. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

If you imagine that I have the smallest desire to receive your hand as a reward for having performed a difficult task to your satisfaction you're beside the bridge, my child! I've no fancy for a reluctant wife. I want your love, not your gratitude. ~ Georgette Heyer

A bridge can still be built, while the bitter waters are flowing beneath. ~ Anthony Liccione

It's the advantage of the virus to spread, and you can only spread when you infect people and they infect other people without necessarily killing them. So if you had 100 percent mortality, the potential pandemic would almost self-eliminate itself. ~ Anthony Fauci

If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it's not easy being quiet and good, it's like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you've already fallen over; you don't seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength. ~ Margaret Atwood

All of creation suffers, young ones. Only in accepting our own mortality can we make a difference. Only in bearing the burden of our failures can we find the strength to go on. Only in detachment from glory, or honour, or jealousy... from life itself can we hope to spare others from grief. We are Doom Eagles. And we are dead already. --
Librarian Secundus Thryn of the Doom Eagles ~ Simon Spurrier

The word connects the visible trace with the invisible thing, the absent thing, the thing that is desired or feared, like a frail emergency bridge flung over an abyss. ~ Italo Calvino

I was just going over London Bridge and I saw someone had attacked the Madonna's statue. Knocked off the baby's head.'
'That was done a while back. It would be that devil Cranmer. You know what he is when he's taken a drink. ~ Hilary Mantel

In some of the early northern European paintings, Christ looks like you flushed him out from under a bridge, but in Sunday-school books and the sorts of pictures they sell at Christian supply stores, he falls somewhere between Kenny Loggins and Jared Leto, always doe-eyed and, of course, white, with brown - not black - hair, usually wavy. And he always has a fantastic body, shown at its best on the cross, which - face it - was practically designed to make a man's stomach and shoulders look good.

What would happen, I often wonder, if someone sculpted a morbidly obese Jesus with titties and acne scars, and hair on his back? On top of that, he should be short - five foot two at most. "Sacrilege!" people would shout. But why? Doing good deeds doesn't make you good-looking. ~ David Sedaris

You cannot control what you love
you watch it driving recklessly towards the broken bridge, the torn-up track, the horror of seventy years ahead. ~ Graham Greene