Not Living Quotes

Just then Antonio, his two guards, his two Pit Bulls, Sebastian, and a strange, tall Keja bloke who had long white-grey hair and a matching long beard entered.
That's Luther, Jared informed me. He's Antonio's Advisor.
Someone should tell him that he's not living in the film Lord of the Rings.
Jared coughed to hide his giggle. ~ Suzanne Wrightt

My chest clenched as I looked down at the oil-stained asphalt. Here but not. Existing but not living. I knew that feeling. Lived it for several years. Some days it felt like I was still wearing that feeling like a heavy jacket buttoned up too tightly. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

Sometimes we forget that if we do not encourage new work now, we will lose all touch with the work of the past we claim to love. If art is not living in a continuous present, it is living in a museum, only those working now can complete the circuit between the past, present and future energies we call art. ~ Jeanette Winterson

For those who think religious people live in a constant state of fear and quaking, compare Ps 111:10 to Ps 112:7. There, you will find that the person who fears God will not fear anyone, or anything else. This is not living in fear. By choosing one fear, they are liberated from the many fears. ~ Michael Ben Zehabe

Unless you're not pushing yourself, you're not living to the fullest. You can't be afraid to fail, but unless you fail, you haven't pushed hard enough.
~ Dean Karnazes

I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living. ~ Alain De Botton

It is not living that matters, but living rightly. ~ Socrates

The violin wasn't alive. It wasn't a baby or an animal, not living.
But that would be easier to believe if I hadn't felt it breathe and sing. ~ Jessica Martinez

When I went to the University of Iowa in order to be a writer, I thought, This is the worst way to learn how to write. To sit in a room with a bunch of would-be writers, who want to write the Great American Novel, every one of them, and you read their stories and they read yours, and you're not living a life. I don't like that. I like learning on the job. The character of my work has definitely evolved from the character of my life. ~ Joe Frank

There is his religion of art, my young successor: rejecting life! Not living is what he makes his beautiful fiction out of! And you will now be the person he is not living with! ~ Philip Roth

Boredom is your mind and body's way of telling you you're not living up to your potential. ~ Hal Sparks

If we are not living IN our bodies, honoring them as our TEMPLE, we are closing off the divine channels (nadis) of energy that run through us. Additionally, when we are not in good physical shape, we limit our enjoyment of our life experience. Thus, yoga is spiritual and physical. ~ Dashama Konah Gordon

Money and riches don't mean nothing to me. I don't care nothing about being no rich individual. I'm not living for glory or for fame; all this is doomed for destruction. You got it today, tomorrow it's gone. I got bigger things on my mind than that. I got Islam on my mind. ~ Muhammad Ali

One day I was living silently in a personal hell, without anyone to tell what I felt, without even knowing that the feelings I had were possible to have; and then one day I was not living like that at all. I had begun to see the past like this: there is a line; you can draw it yourself, or sometimes it gets drawn for you; either way, there it is, your past, a collection of people you used to be and things you used to do. Your past is the person you no longer are, the situations you are no longer in. ~ Jamaica Kincaid

If we lived correctly, there would be no need to concern ourselves with the bowel. However, most of us are not living right. ~ Bernard Jensen

They know no urge of seasons; they feel no kiss of sun, no lash of wind and weather. They live forever by not living at all. ~ Aldo Leopold

Do you think maybe your writing isn't going anymore because you're unhappy? Because you're not living the life you could? A life worth writing about? You must know that cliche-write what you know-but what do you know, Bree, when you shut the world out? ~ Holly Bourne

There's nothing I miss about anything in the whole wide world. The idea of missing something means you're not living in the moment. Every moment is good for something. ~ Ricky Williams

watching TV and playing solitaire is not a proper life. It's not living. It's killing time, and that's hardly the same. You start asking yourself too many questions when your day is reduced to these rote activities that accomplish nothing. You start to wonder ~ Catherine Ryan Hyde

Who do you want them to think you are? How do you think people see you? Or don't you let them near enough to see. You make up their minds for them. Do you think you succeed in convincing people that you are what you seem to be? You make people meet you on your own territory. You don't help them. You let them verbally hang themselves and then feel better about yourself, your power, your own sense of worth. You have the power to alienate them and if they allow it, you might even manage to make them feel awkward and foolish--foolish for letting you affect them at all. Do you want them to like you? Or are you one of those people who "don't care what people think." You're not living your life for them, so why should you give a fuck what people think? You make people come to you and, when they eventually do, you punish them with your smugness. Nothing ever out of character. ~ Carrie Fisher

When I want to move, I remember death, how it is ultimate and inevitable, and pure. Then I am free to move properly in life. It's like a man who wants to think, going and standing in front of a window. The space purifys ones' soul. And death is a window to me, with the darkness outside. And when I stand there, looking out, then the world and its active life seems only like a roomful of racket and light behind me, where I am taking part for a time, but not staying for long. It does not contain me and confine me. When I stand peacefully looking out on death, what is true in my soul disengages itself and is free and clear and untrammeled, I know what to do, I am sure, and free, and glad. Then I can turn into the world again"...

"When one stands in front of the darkness, and knows that one's own life will pass away there also, into the darkness...then, in the peace that accompanies this knowledge, one can declare simply that the existing world of man is base and wrong, and must go, we know that our lives contain the inception of a new earth.."

..."Remembering death, I know the life of the world as it is now is not living, it is a bad process of dying. And what we must live for is a new world of life. It doesn't matter when we die, so long as we live fulfilling the deepest desire that is in us. And a life which is a denial of the deepest desire is much worse than any death, it is a sheer lie."

"If one accepts death and knows that nothing can take u ~ D.H. Lawrence

I'm not living my life under the spotlight for anybody. ~ Annie Lennox

It seemed to me that life was a giant ice skating rink, and I was the only one who didn't have skates. Most people fear death. I don't. I'm only afraid of not living. I don't want to be the one behind the ice rink fence, watching other people having fun. ~ Milena Veen

Life is made up of moments. If you're not in one, then you're not living. ~ Alison G. Bailey

They were totally alone, those kids, like each had been accidentally sent to earth from a distant planet to live among adult humans and be dependent on them for everything because compared to the adult humans they were extremely fragile creatures and didn't know the language or how anything here worked and hadn't arrived with any money. And because they were like forbidden by the humans to use their old language they'd forgotten it so they couldn't be much company or help to each other either. They couldn't even talk about the old days and so pretty soon they forgot there ever were any old days and all there was now was life on earth with adult humans who called them children and acted toward them like they owned them and like they were objects not living creatures with souls. ~ Russell Banks

Seek what you know as the highest. It does not matter whether it is going to happen or not - living with a vision itself is a very elevating process. ~ Jaggi Vasudev

There will always be people who try to squeeze you into their molds and pressure you into being who they want you to be. They may be good people. They may mean well, but the problem is they didn't breathe life into you. They didn't equip you or empower you. God did.
If you're going to become the winner you were created to be, you need to have a boldness. The second quality of a winner is that you run your race the way you want to run it.
You can't be insecure and you can't worry about what everyone thinks. You can't try to keep everyone happy. If you change with every criticism and play up to people, trying to win their favor, you'll go through life letting people manipulate you and pressure you into their boxes.
You have to accept the fact that you can't keep everyone happy. You can't make everyone like you. You will never win over every critic. Even if you changed and did everything they asked, some would still find fault. You're not really free until you're free from trying to please everyone. You're respectful, you're kind, but you're not living to please people, you're living to please God. ~ Joel Osteen

It is not lies or a lack of loyalty that ends a relationship. It is the agonizing truth that one person feels in their heart on a daily basis. It is realizing that you are coping and not living. It is the false belief that there is a verse, quote, phrase or talk that will magically make you feel content, complete or not care. However, it doesn't last longer than a few days, before your mind and heart goes back to what it wants. It is the moment you realize that you left without ever leaving. It is the moment you realize that fear, shame or guilt is the only thing standing in the way of the life God meant for you to live. ~ Shannon L. Alder

I am alive, but I'm not living, I remember thinking as I walked. I am the living dead. I am nothing but a shell. ~ Elizabeth Smart

To me, Hell isn't a place; it's a state of mind. It is a psychological self-imprisonment in which fear is the warden. It is a result of not living in alignment with your goals, dreams, and purpose. It is to find yourself in the endless emotional agony of, What if? ~ Steve Maraboli

People have no idea of the things that don't happen to them - the lives they're not living, the deaths stalking them - and thank Christ for that. Hard enough to get through each day without glimpsing all the hovering possibilities, like insects thickening the air. ~ Emma Donoghue

Heaven is comfort, but it's still not living. ~ Alice Sebold

Being a thoughtful person, I always have indulged myself in to things, life brought in my way and come-up with my own definitions and meanings of them. Somewhere deep into myself I always have been making conscious endeavors to improve my nature in order to uplift my life in a way that each moment I live enhance my interest in living the life and enjoy the beauty it encompass in itself.
I found life is always "Imperfect". Whenever, I saw flowers, I saw thorns with them as well with which they have made compromise in order to live and look beautiful. I saw butterflies with such little visual acuity that they cannot see the beauty of the garden they roam around. So I realized, these flowers and butterflies are there to beautify somebody else's world and they are not living for their selves only. This is life, that is how it works. So for me, it is interesting and beautiful when it has to do something good with somebody else as well. ~ Amna Farooq

I think fiction writers should work. If you have a job and are not living off advances or grants, you never have to make concessions in your writing, ever. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

Is not living at all not better than living badly? ~ Critias

The fear of becoming old is born of the recognition that one is not living now the life that one wishes. ~ Susan Sontag

I would say that just as easy as a person puts on a raincoat and opens their umbrella before stepping out on a rainy day, you too must put on a new concept of yourself and never take it off, nor pull the umbrella of your imagination down until you see the sun shining on the new situation that you have imagined. You must never be convinced that you are being drenched in your old reality, regardless of how much others are absorbed in it. What is true for them is not true for you, because they are not living in your world. They are not living in your raincoat nor are they living beneath the umbrella of consciousness that you have raised. They may be completely soaked in their world while you remain poised and untouched by unfavorable conditions in your own. ~ Curtis Tyrone Jones

Well, life is not just a business of standing on dry land and occasionally getting your feet wet. It is merely an illusion that some of us stand on one bank and some on the opposite. So long as we stand like that we are not living at all, but dreaming. So jump, jump in, and let the shock wake us up. Even if we drown, at least for a moment or two before we die we shall be awake and alive. ~ Paul Scott

(Even Tucker's way of not living could be described as living, if you had a crush on him.) ~ Nick Hornby

You had once asked me if I was afraid of death. I said I was afraid of not living. I don't want to eke out my life like a resource in short supply. The only selfish life is a timid one. To hold back, to withdraw, to keep the best in reserve, both overvalues the self, and undervalued what the self is. ~ Jeanette Winterson

If you are not living with a whole heart now, the end of the world poses no threat; your life is already gone. Life is only as valuable as our presence to enjoy it. To miss the beauty of the moment because you are preparing to protect yourself from the next one, is to trade a precious gem for a cheap trinket. ~ Alan Cohen

If you're living your life in fear, then you're just not living. ~ Demi Lovato

It struck him as curious that you could create dead men but not living ones. Comrade Ogilvy, who had never existed in the present, now existed in the past, and when once the act of forgery was forgotten, he would exist just as authentically, and upon the same evidence, as Charlemagne or Julius Caesar. ~ George Orwell

To be a living being is not the ultimate state; there is something [the Reality] beyond, much more wonderful, which is neither being nor non-being, neither living nor not-living. It is a state of Pure Awareness, beyond the limitations of space and time. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. ~ Oscar Wilde

The unexamined life is not worth living. But if all you're doing is examining, then you're not living! ~ Adam Leipzig

If you are not living unto Christ, you are not dying unto Him, either. ~ Monica Johnson

Humans should believe in the power of living for just one day, those who want to live for tomorrow are not living. ~ Santosh Kalwar

What scares me is not living up to be a good enough father to my son and letting down my family - not being there enough and not being able to give enough of yourself. ~ Morten Tyldum

People actually ask me why I bring in projects on budget and on time. It seems I am not living up to the fashionable genius role. I really enjoy when a project gets down to the wire, and through sheer force of will and faith in our process, we cross the goal line, when most people thought it impossible. ~ Curtis W. Fentress

We should be working to live, not living to work. We have created this "individualistic culture" were living to work has been centered around material gains. Working to live is a better approach because it emphasis on the human experiences and the condition of living. ~ Henry Johnson Jr

Maybe he knows noting. Maybe it's that he feels it all, but whatever is happening to him, he understands that he lived before. He lived other lives, in different times. And why not? It's something he has often wondered about, sitting on the train in the morning, looking from the corner of his eye at the other commuter, wondering why.
Why am I not living that person's live? That man, there, with the sharp suit and the slightly stupid tie? Or that scruffy guy with the headphones? Or that woman, a little pregnant?
Often, as he sat fiddling with OneDegree, he has wondered why this life is the one he's had, and not one of the thousands of contacts passing through his device, or one of the countless others that could have been his.
Now he knows. He has been others. ~ Marcus Sedgwick

If you carve out what you expect, that's how you end up getting disappointed, not living fully in the present. ~ Gwyneth Paltrow

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

Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

Most people's greatest regret is not living the life they knew they could live. ~ Todd Stocker

I am longer living my life according to another's opinion. If you hurt me expect to be forgiven and forgotten, if you show me apart of your ego; I'll feed it soul as I walk away, if you show me what I'm lacking, I'll teach you how to fix it within yourself. I live my life to the drum of my own melody and some won't agree with it, but im not living to make the critics happy. ~ Nikki Rowe

[Fur] is really ridiculous. It's outrageous. We're not living in igloos. We don't need to trade pelts anymore. There is this diabolical idea that fur is fashionable. It's not. It's death. There's no excuse for it. ~ Margaret Cho

What I try to get physically healthy people to understand is that they're going to die someday. There is no way out. And dying isn't failure, but not living is, so make use of your time. Don't keeping waiting. ~ Bernie Siegel

Most of our life we pass by waiting for tomorrow, but not living for today. ~ Debasish Mridha

The thing that always attracted me to New York was the sense of being in a place where a lot of people had a lot of stories not unlike mine. Everybody comes from somewhere else. Everyone's got a Polish grandmother, some kind of metamorphosis in their family circumstances. That's a very big thing - the experience of not living where you started. ~ Salman Rushdie

I came here to tell you that I'M READY. I'M ALL IN, if you'll have me, because if you won't, I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life. No one could ever love me the way you do. You've forgiven me when other people wouldn't, you've loved me when I couldn't even love myself, and you've shown me that some things are worth fighting for. I accused you of not fighting for me, but the truth is, I've never fought for anything. It's been easier for me to wrap myself in my protective bubble, so I don't get hurt, but that's not living. I want to live my life to the fullest… and I can't do that without you in it. ~ Codi Gary

I cannot live in fear of losing him, for fear of not living my life at all. ~ Serena Valentino

In this one life, this one life that you have to live, you must embrace every moment that creeps into your existence. You must feel every possible emotion to realize you're really alive, you're really living. If you build walls and you hide behind them in fear, you're not embracing moments, you're not actually living. And if you're not living, then you're dead. Maybe not physically, but mentally and emotionally, you are non-existent. Why would you want to waste such precious time, non-existing, especially behind a crumby wall? Fear? Fear of what? Fear of something great? Fear of something amazing? Hurt? Fear of pain? Isn't pain what makes us appreciate feelings of absolute happiness and love? Who doesn't want happiness? Let me be the one to tell you that this life is short, it's damn short. So, let go of your grudges, your past, your stupid walls and feel reality. Avoidance is not life. Pain is life, happiness is life, emotion is life. Live your damn life. Stop being dead. Embrace every good feeling in your heart and soul and act on it without the fear of hurt, because undoubtedly hurt will happen, but hurt will also disappear and lead to the most valuable feelings in this world. Regret is not something you want to live with in this short, short life. So follow that tiny fist sized drum in your chest because it is honest and it is true. Take those fucking chances, take them knowing this world is full of opportunity, opportunity for great things, absolutely amazing fucking thi ~ Anonymous

Life is not living in the suburbs with a white picket fence. That's not life. Somehow our American culture has made it out that that's what life needs to be - and that if it's not that, it's all screwed up. It's not. ~ Tom Brady

And eventually I realized that being in love is not living a life in fairy tale.. I woke up, not with a kiss but with a twinge.. Hello real world.. teach me now.. how to be practically real and really practical.. ~ Himmilicious

Well I don't care how other people live" I said. "If they want to let their men sleep around, that's their business. But I'll be damned if I'll put up with it. Not good enough for me, and no way I want Noah growing up thinking that's how you treat a woman. Ruger can take his offer, stick it on a fork, and shove it up his ass. Now I need to find a job and somewhere to live, because I'm sure as hell not living with him any longer. ~ Joanna Wylde

If we demand perfection from ourselves we are not living in the real world ... The inherent problem in the relationship between the ideal & the real is that the ideal judges the real as unacceptable and brings down condemnation and wrath on the real. This sets up an adversarial relationship between the two and like all adversaries, they move further and further apart. ~ Henry Cloud

If you are not living according to the will of God but independent of Him, you will never be happy and experience inner rest ~ Sunday Adelaja

If what you do doesn't make others better at what they do then you are not living up to your potential. ~ Ziad K. Abdelnour

If you lower the standards of your life and expect to live life like the people in a movie or a soap opera, you are not living God's will for your life. ~ Sue Detweiler

An unshared life is not living. He who shares does not lessen, but greatens, his life. ~ Stephen Samuel Wise

This will sound mean, but just because Khalil's not living doesn't mean you stop living. ~ Angie Thomas

With all cameras on me, Chip released the blindfold and said, "Ta-da!"
I wasn't sure what I was looking at. A shipwreck, maybe? On the back of a semi?
"What is that?" I said.
"I got this for you, Jo!" Chip replied.
"That better not be for me," I said. It was the ugliest, rundown-looking, two-story shack of a boat I'd ever seen. "What the heck are we going to do with a houseboat?"
"That's our new home!" Chip said, beaming with pride at his purchase.
"What? You are crazy. We are not living on a houseboat."
It quickly dawned on me that this wasn't a joke and Chip wasn't even close to kidding. I wasn't mishearing him. He was dead serious about making that boat our home for the next six months.
I just about lost it. "How can we live on the water, Chip? Three of our kids don't even know how to swim! Did you think this through?!"
Then he fessed up and told me how much money he'd spent on it. As it all sank in, I realized I'd never been so mad at him--ever--and that's saying something.
"Come on. At least come look at it. I know this can work," he pleaded.
As soon as we walked a little closer, we could see the holes. Holes. In the boat.
We pulled ourselves up onto the flatbed and went inside to find the interior covered in mold. Someone had taken the AC unit out on top and left a gaping hole in the roof, so for years it had rained straight into the boat. We tried turning the engine over, and of course it didn't start. That's ~ Joanna Gaines

Standing in a two-hour line makes people worry that they're not living in a democratic nation. ~ David Sedaris

Most architects think in drawings, or did think in drawings; today, they think on the computer monitor. I always tried to think three dimensionally. The interior eye of the brain should be not flat but three dimensional so that everything is an object in space. We are not living in a two-dimensional world. ~ Frei Otto

Living in fear is what every hater, negative person, and the devil wants. Live a righteous life with God and nothing but positivity. You must forgive anyone who has done you dirty, and move on. Your personal life, career, and love life will be that much more amazing after. Life is too short to live it being empty inside, sad, angry, and defensive just to hide your pain. Let it all go and let love and happiness in. Put yourself out there all the way and don't be fearful of losing love. If you don't live life by fully enjoying it and opening your heart, your just not living. ~ Behdad Sami

I don't remember doing anything else; I don't remember not living in the studio. I'm itching for people to hear this album because I'm sick of hearing it myself. ~ James Hetfield

[I love my work] intensely - I wouldn't be in it if I ever stopped loving it, I would shift it and go over into something else. ... I don't think life is worth living unless you're doing something you love completely, so that you get out of bed in the morning and want to rush to do it. If you're doing something mediocre, if you're doing something to fill in time, life really isn't worth living. ... I can't understand people not living at the top of their emotions constantly, living with their enthusiasms, living with some sense of joy, some sense of creativity - I don't care how small a level it is. ... I don't care what field it is though, and there's gotta be a field for everyone, doesn't there? ~ Ray Bradbury

It's just not enough to do what you love. That's not living. Do what you love, WITH love. That's living. ~ Gregor Collins

We're in our own world, and we're in the world that has been given us outside, and the problem is to achieve3 a harmonious relationship between the two. I come into this society, so I've got to live in terms of this society. It's ridiculous not to live in terms of this society because, unless I do, I'm not living. But I mustn't allow this society to dictate to me how I should live. One has to build up one's own system that may violate the expectations of the society, and sometimes society doesn't accept that. But the task of life is to live within the field provided by the society that is really supporting you. ~ Joseph Campbell

You shouldn't be afraid of dying, Sarah - everyone does it. The only thing to be scared of is not living before you do. ~ Emma Chase

We are all actors: being a citizen is not living in society, it is changing it. ~ Augusto Boal

Dragging out life to the last possible second is not living to the best effect. The nearer the bone, the sweeter the meat. The best of life, Passworthy, lies nearest to the edge of death. ~ H.G.Wells

It's not important for me to be a star, but it is important for me to be one of the better players. I won't feel comfortable with not living up to my potential. I don't want to be spoken of as the player who had potential who never reached it, so I am going to work extra hard to try to be the best I can be. ~ Julius Peppers

A map such as that one is worth many hundreds, and as luck will have it, thousands of dollars. But more than this, it is a remembrance of that time before our planet was so small. When this map was made, I thought, you could live without knowing where you were not living. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

Being out there doing your best and what you're supposed to do, will energize you like nothing else. Living your purpose and destiny makes you feel alive and it gives you vitality. If you're tired, it's because you're not living your best life. It's time to start living your best life. It's time to live the life your're Destined to live. ~ Jeanette Coron

If you are not living in joy, you are out of integrity with your soul. ~ Michael Beckwith

Those who lie and cheat, but do not believe what they are doing to be wrong, may be living according to ethical standards. They may believe, for any of a number of possible reasons, that it is right to lie, cheat, steal and so on. They are not living according to conventional ethical standards, but they may be living according to some other ethical standards. ~ Peter Singer

If you wait for the weekend to live,
you're not living 71% of your life. ~ Khang Kijarro Nguyen

The function of staying alive is automatic, living your life is not, living takes knowing what you are doing and where you are going. ~ Mark Quam

You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book ... or you take a trip ... and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. Some never awaken. ~ Anais Nin

If you really want to live your life to the fullest and realize your greatest potential, you must be willing to run the risk of making some people mad. People may not like what you do, people may not like how you do it, but these people are not living your life. You are! ~ Iyanla Vanzant

I can't imagine that anyone in Hollywood is sitting around trying to decide what actor is good or right or qualified for a role and is being denied a role because of their political views. I don't think that's the way Hollywood works. We're not living in an era of blacklisting. ~ Kevin Spacey

I don't envy "busy." Busy means having a schedule, not living life. What I really covet is leisure and peace of mind. Those who have both, have it all. ~ Donna Lynn Hope

He was not living his life; life was living him ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

One my favorite things is to go to the provinces of Russia and see the 18th century wood churches with the onion dome architecture. These humble wonders of incredible imagination of architects that were obviously not living in places like Paris or London, but they've created these amazing churches. ~ Andre Leon Talley

I would have loved to have met some former spies, but they don't readily advertise themselves unless they're not living in Moscow, and even then. I'm sure I've met some without realizing it. ~ Jeremy Northam

If youre not living awake to the fact the life can change in a dime, then youre living asleep ... ~ Kristine Carlson