Pin Quotes

Rollins held up his watch chain. A turnip was hanging from the fob where his diamond-studded time piece should have been. "That little bastard
" Then a thought came to him. He reached for his wallet. It was gone. So was his tie pin, the Kaelish coin pendant he wore for luck, and the gold buckles on his shoes. Rollins wondered if he should check the fillings in his teeth.
"He picked your pockets?" Doughty asked incredulously.
No one got one over on Pekka Rollins. No one dared. But Brekker had, and Rollins wondered if that was just the beginning. ~ Leigh Bardugo

You can't raise happy kids in a happy family if you aren't happy and don't know who you are. You can't pin your life on someone else's happiness. ~ Jean Oram

If you hadn't been jealous of Ayden and thrown me in your car, Eros would never have had to come to my rescue which started this whole fiasco." "Don't try to pin this on me!"
"The lonely lone wolf didn't deny he loved Aurora." Blake chuckled and dodged out of the Aussie's swack.
"Ugh." Ayden walked beside me and put a hand around my waist.
"Now I have to compete for your affection with both Blake and Matthias."
I rolled a dramatic shrug. "I tried to put him down easy, but he's so infatuated. It's embarrassing. Even with all those other girls after him."
"I can't bloody stand you!" Blake sighed. "Me thinks he doth confess too much."
A & E Kirk (2014-05-26). Drop Dead Demons: The Divinicus Nex Chronicles: Book 2 (Divinicus Nex Chronicles series) (p. 565). A&E Kirk. Kindle Edition. ~ A&E Kirk

Out the corner of my eye I see Packard fly at Marty, pin him against the wall. "You do not do that! You do not!" He jerks Marty with every *not*. "You do *not* disrespect that woman, you understand me?" Packard speaks through his teeth, as if to bite back his fury. "It was your goddamn *lucky* day she decided to come in here. And you would spit at her? You were *privileged* she came in here! ~ Carolyn Crane

We learn quickly that, like a spectre, the possibility of rape is everywhere at once. We are taught that, like a spectre, rape is almost impossible to pin down. ~ Erin Wunker

You can build walls all the way to the sky and I will find a way to fly above them. You can try to pin me down with a hundred thousand arms, but I will find a way to resist. And there are many of us out there, more than you think. ~ Lauren Oliver

I thought of my father's wisdom, as though it were buried in a box under a tree. As in the old song - a gold box with a silver pin. Some day I should be grown up, and I should dig up the box and turn the pin. ~ Mary Butts

I prefer the monotony of obscure sacrifices to all ecstasies. To pick up a pin for love can convert a soul. ~ Therese De Lisieux

Most headlines are set too big to be legible in the magazines or newspaper. Never approve a layout until you have seen it pasted into the magazine or newspaper for which it was destined. If you pin up the layouts on a bulletin board and appraise them from fifteen feet, you will produce posters. ~ David Ogilvy

You Can Fly But Your Body Can't

My first seat was in first class between Penny and Belinda. Before I poured Rémy Martin down my throat and had to come see what the folks back here think of things.

316

'Cool out, you know, I didn't mean it, I don't really hate you,' I hear someone say.
While, over the intercom, the pilot jabbers. He's explaining that some dysfunction, once we're on the ground, can be easily fixed with a pin. I don't know, at that point, how much any of us will care. Maybe I'm drunk, but seems like they could give the plane to the Arabs once we've all made our connecting flights.

317

The beer nuts just served to me in a cello packet are the most delicious food I've ever tasted in my life.
Back at Dallas-Fort Worth I put an Otis Redding CD into my player and I doubt I'll ever have a reason to take it out.
Through the window, trigonometry, under a silky pink sky. ~ Mary Robison

His fear-inflamed mind sent the control-signal to his finger-joint to fold back. The trigger sliced back. The blast seemed to lift the booth clear off the floor, drop it down again. A pin-wheel of vacancy appeared in the glass, flinging off shards and slivers. ~ Cornell Woolrich

There are a lot of myths about my injuries. They say I have broken every bone in my body. Not true. But I have broken 35 bones. I had surgery 14 times to pin and plate. I shattered my pelvis. I forget all of the things that have broke. ~ Evel Knievel

Augusta is a very unique golf course. It's a long hitters' course; main reason is because the greens are so severe, and the areas where they put the pin is such a small area. The little plateaus and undulations mean it's incredibly important to be close to that pin so you can be aggressive. ~ Fred Funk

The game against the Vikings back in my second year stands out. It was kind of a turnaround for us. It allowed us to make a run at the playoffs for the first time in quite a while. The memories are so many it's hard to pin one down. ~ Drew Bledsoe

When I work with my art department on putting imagery together for my blog posts I always think, 'Would I pin this?' That really helps. ~ Lauren Conrad

But there is only one person I blame for getting shafted, and that's myself. I went into the deal which I thought would secure the future of Orange Aids with culpable impetuosity. I had been used to doing business on a handshake and my work of honour, and I made the error of actually believing what the men in the pin-striped suits told me. ~ Trevor Baylis

Maybe truth is just like that. You can see it, but only out of the corner of your eye.
Adele never demands of him any actual conversation. She seems to understand that she is there to keep time and drown out the alarm of more individuated noises. The clink of a pin drop that can fray his nerves, the grinding of gravel beneath the weight of a man on the street, the spike of a dulled conversation as a couple pass beneath his window over Langegasse, the mounting pitch of the conspiratorial exchange as they approach. ~ Janna Levin

You know, the truth is that right after 9/11, I had a (flag) pin. Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we're talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for, I think, true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest ... ~ Barack Obama

Like all sentient beings, Fat Charlie had a weirdness quotient. For some days the needle had been over in the red, occasionally banging jerkily against the pin. Now the meter broke. ~ Neil Gaiman

Most pilots learn, when they pin on their wings and go out and get in a fighter, especially, that one thing you don't do, you don't believe anything anybody tells you about an airplane. ~ Chuck Yeager

He was so crooked, you could have used his spine for a safety-pin. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

Rock star. The words are so full of smoke and mirrors that it's impossible to find a real person behind them. But I am a rock star. I have the bank account of a rock star and the platinum records of a rock star and the girlfriend of a rock star. But I fucking hate that term, and hearing Mia pin it on me ups the level of my loathing to a new stratosphere. ~ Gayle Forman

The stands are packed every weekend, year after year, even though the team's achievements have collapsed in line with the town's economy. And perhaps that's why - because everyone hopes than when the team's fortunes improve again, the rest of the town will get pulled up with it. Which is why places like this always have to pin their hopes for the future on young people. They're the only ones who don't remember that things actually used to be better. ~ Fredrik Backman

They call me a monster and if it were untrue the weight of my crimes would pin me to the ground. I have maimed and I have murdered and if this mountain stood but a little higher I would cut the angels from their heaven. I care less for accusations than for the rain that soaks me, that runs down every limb. I spit both from my lips. Judgment has always left a sour taste. ~ Mark Lawrence

What confused and disappointed me, thought, was that I could never discover within her something special that existed just for me. A list of her good qualities far outstripped a list of her faults, and certainly far outshone my own, yet there was something missing, something absolutely vital. If only I'd been able to pin down what that was, I know we would have ended up sleeping together. I wouldn't have held back forever. Even if it had taken a long time, I would have persuaded her that it was absolutely necessary for her to sleep with me. But I lacked the confidence to see this through. ~ Haruki Murakami

He stood and went to read my pin as I approached. "America, is it?" he said, a smile playing on his lips.
"Yes, it is. And I know I've heard your name before, but could you remind me? ~ Kiera Cass

I've done over 125 posters and I have worked with some of the best photographers in the world. They made me America's Number one Pin Up. ~ Cindy Margolis

It's hard to know where to start. Things have been a mess for so many years that trying to pin down a starting point is like trying to figure out where your skin starts. All you can ever really know is that it's wrapped around you, sometimes a little tighter than you'd like.
But clearly there have been some mistakes. Bad ones. You can tell that just by looking at him. ~ Jonathan Tropper

To the door of an inn in the provincial town of N. there drew up a smart britchka - a light spring-carriage of the sort affected by bachelors, retired lieutenant-colonels, staff-captains, land-owners possessed of about a hundred souls, and, in short, all persons who rank as gentlemen of the intermediate category. In the britchka was seated such a gentleman - a man who, though not handsome, was not ill-favoured, not over-fat, and not over-thin. Also, though not over-elderly, he was not over-young. His arrival produced no stir in the town, and was accompanied by no particular incident, beyond that a couple of peasants who happened to be standing at the door of a dramshop exchanged a few comments with reference to the equipage rather than to the individual who was seated in it. "Look at that carriage," one of them said to the other. "Think you it will be going as far as Moscow?" "I think it will," replied his companion. "But not as far as Kazan, eh?" "No, not as far as Kazan." With that the conversation ended. Presently, as the britchka was approaching the inn, it was met by a young man in a pair of very short, very tight breeches of white dimity, a quasi-fashionable frockcoat, and a dickey fastened with a pistol-shaped bronze tie-pin. The young man turned his head as he passed the britchka and eyed it attentively; after which he clapped his hand to his cap (which was in danger of being removed by the wind) and resumed his way. On the vehicle reaching the inn door, its occupant ~ Nikolai Gogol

I wish I knew what you were talking about," she returned. "Where's
the pin?"
"Pin?"
"Yes. Pin. To fasten the diaper. The kid can't hold the thing up with
two hands. ~ Emma Goldrick

It was like a vault , this house, but still you got the impression it could, with a great deal of effort, and only if you made it very angry, lift itself off its manicured haunches and chase after you at a terrible pace. That it could overtake you and chase after you at a terrible pace. That it could overtake you and pin you down by the shirttail, and then it could carefully lower itself right back down, all the vast weight of its ancient rock-heaps and stones bearing down on top of you, crushing you - Outside boy pg.306 ~ Jeanine Cummins

The Buddhist explanation is that we feel this uneasiness because we're always trying to get ground under our feet and it never quite works. We're always looking for a permanent reference point, and it doesn't exist. Everything is impermanent. Everything is always changing - fluid, unfixed, and open. Nothing is pin-down-able the way we'd like it to be. This is not actually bad news, but we all seem to be programmed for denial. We have absolutely no tolerance for uncertainty. It seems that insecurity ~ Pema Chodron

You wish they understood, as you do, that there is no escape and never was, that from the moment two cells combined to become one they were doomed. You wish they understood that there is joy in this fact, greater joy and love in just this one last moment than they experienced in the entirety of their lives. Because even in this last moment there is still Everything, whole galaxies and eons, the sum total of every experience across time, shrunk to the head of a pin, theirs for the asking, right here, right now. And so anything, anything, anything is possible. ~ Ron Currie Jr.

My parents got divorced. Early and ugly. My mum was nuts so I lived with my dad. We used to play a father/son games. Pin the blame on me, rock, paper, get me another beer, casino night. ~ Christopher Titus

If the doom of failure stifles some time the path of our life, it can pin us down like downtrodden aliens, while, meanwhile, the world around is erupting in joy and contentment. Let's go back then to the nuts and bolts and consult the core of our inner self. ("The grass was greener over there") ~ Erik Pevernagie

And I have known the eyes already, known them all
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume? ~ T. S. Eliot

Just...for the first time, I want so bad for someone to like me back. Don't get me wrong, I've had crushes before, guys I'd never meet or ones I knew would never look at me like that. Sometimes it's safer to pin your dreams on somebody who's never going to see you. While it's sad, it's also safe. Because there's no chance he'll ever break your heart for real. ~ Ann Aguirre

The natural world gives us many examples of the great effectiveness of this way. The Chinese philosophy of which judo itself is an expression - Taoism - drew attention to the power of water to overcome all obstacles by its gentleness and pliability. It showed how the supple willow survives the tough pine in a snowstorm, for whereas the unyielding branches of the pine accumulate snow until they crack, the springy boughs of the willow bend under its weight, drop the snow, and jump back again. If, when swimming, you are caught in a strong current, it is fatal to resist. You must swim with it and gradually edge to the side. One who falls from a height with stiff limbs will break them, but if he relaxes like a cat he will fall safely. A building without 'give' in its structure will easily collapse in storm or earthquake, and a car without the cushioning of tires and springs will soon come apart on the road. The mind has just the same powers, for it has give and can absorb shocks like water or a cushion. But this giving way to an opposing force is not at all the same thing as running away. A body of water does not run away when you push it; it simply gives at the point of the push and encloses your hand. A shock absorber does not fall down like a bowling-pin when struck; it gives, and yet stays in the same place. To run away is the only defense of something rigid against an overwhelming force. Therefore the good shock absorber has not only 'give,' but also stability or 'weight. ~ Alan W. Watts

But what might be written in the book which had rounded its edges off in his pocket, she did not know. What he thought they none of them knew. But he was absorbed in it, so that when he looked up, as he did now for an instant, it was not to see anything; it was to pin down some thought more exactly. That done, his mind flew back again and he plunged into his reading. He read, she thought, as if he were guiding something, or wheedling a large flock of sheep, or pushing his way up and up a single narrow path; and sometimes he went fast and straight, and broke his way through the bramble, and sometimes it seemed a branch struck at him, a bramble blinded him, but he was not going to let himself be beaten by that; on he went, tossing over page after page. ~ Virginia Woolf

I like being a pin-up girl. There's nothing wrong with it. ~ Jayne Mansfield

Obama has been attacked repeatedly for not wearing a flag pin, with Republicans claiming that his patriotism is in question. It's all a bit silly. ~ Will Thomas

See, I always forget this about you," he says, and even now, long after we first lost our privacy, I can't help wondering who's overhearing him. "Every decade, you like to pin me to the ground, pull open my mouth, and take a sh** right into it. ~ Curtis Sittenfeld

This preternatural love of rules almost for their own sake punctuates German finance as it does German life. As it happens, a story had just broken that a German reinsurance company called Munich Re, back in June 2007, or just before the crash, had sponsored a party for its best producers that offered not just chicken dinners and nearest-to-the-pin golf competitions but a blowout with prostitutes in a public bath. In finance, high or low, this sort of thing is of course not unusual. What was striking was how organized the German event was. The company tied white and yellow and red ribbons to the prostitutes to indicate which ones were available to which men. After each sexual encounter the prostitute received a stamp on her arm to indicate how often she had been used. The Germans didn't just want hookers: they wanted hookers with rules. ~ Michael Lewis

Because even when there is no hope, somehow you can still find a place to pin inside the things that you need. ~ Chris Howard

You could write all the IDEAS of all the movies, my own included, on the head of a pin. ~ Orson Welles

Pin thy faith to no man's sleeve. Hast thou not two eyes of thy own? ~ Thomas Carlyle

Trust is a confusing thing. It seems so simple, but when you try to pin it down, it can be so elusive. ~ Ze Frank

Forgiveness. The ability to forgive oneself. Stop here for a few breaths and think about this because it is the key to making art, and very possibly the key to finding any semblance of happiness in life. Every time I have set out to translate the book (or story, or hopelessly long essay) that exists in such brilliant detail on the big screen of my limbic system onto a piece of paper (which, let's face it, was once a towering tree crowned with leaves and a home to birds). I grieve for my own lack of talent and intelligence. Every. Single. Time. Were I smarter, more gifted, I could pin down a closer facsimile of the wonders I see. I believe, more than anything, that this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers. Forgiveness, therefore, is key. I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself. ~ Ann Patchett

That's why we sing for these kids who don't have a thing, except for a dream and a fuckin rap magazine; Who post pin-up pictures on they walls all day long, idolize they favorite rappers and know all they songs; Or for anyone who's ever been through shit in they lives, so they sit and they cry, at night, wishin they'd die; Til they throw on a rap record and they sit and they vibe; We're nothin to you, but we're the fuckin shit in they eyes; That's why we seize the moment; Try to freeze it and own it, squeeze it and hold it, cause we consider these minutes golden; And maybe they'll admit it when we're gone; Just let our spirits live on, through our lyrics that you hear in our songs... [Sing for the Moment] ~ Eminem

I think I should learn to get along better with people," he explained to Miss Benson one day, when she came upon him in the corridor of the literature building and asked what he was doing wearing a fraternity pledge pin (wearing it on the chest of the new V-neck pullover in which his mother said he looked so collegiate). Miss Benson's response to his proposed scheme for self-improvement was at once so profound and so simply put that Zuckerman went around for days repeating the simple interrogative sentence to himself; like Of Times and the River, it verified something he had known in his bones all along, but in which he could not placed his faith until it had been articulated by someone of indisputable moral prestige and purity : "Why," Caroline Benson asked the seventeen-year-old boy, "should you want to learn a thing like that? ~ Philip Roth

Nobody should pin their hopes on a miracle. ~ Vladimir Putin

I sprinkle some flour on the dough and roll it out with the heavy, wooden rolling pin. Once it's the perfect size and thickness, I flip the rolling pin around and sing into the handle - American Idol style.

"Calling Gloriaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa . . ."

And then I turn around.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Without thinking, I bend my arm and throw the rolling pin like a tomahawk . . . straight at the head of the guy who's standing just inside the kitchen door.

The guy I didn't hear come in.

The guy who catches the hurling rolling pin without flinching - one-handed and cool as a gorgeous cucumber - just an inch from his perfect face.

He tilts his head to the left, looking around the rolling pin to meet my eyes with his soulful brown ones. "Nice toss."

Logan St. James.

Bodyguard. Totally badass. Sexiest guy I have ever seen - and that includes books, movies and TV, foreign and domestic. He's the perfect combo of boyishly could-go-to-my-school kind of handsome, mixed with dangerously hot and tantalizingly mysterious. If comic-book Superman, James Dean, Jason Bourne and some guy with the smoothest, most perfectly pitched, British-Scottish-esque, Wessconian-accented voice all melded together into one person, they would make Logan fucking St. James.

And I just tried to clock him with a baking tool - while wearing my Rick and Morty pajama short-shorts, a Winnie-the-Pooh T-shirt I've had sinc ~ Emma Chase

Before you bombed my boy Osama I always thought an explosion was such a quick thing but now I know better. The flash is over very fast but the fire catches hold inside you and the noise never stops ... I live in an inferno where you could shiver with cold Osama. This life is a deafening roar but listen. You could hear a pin drop. ~ Chris Cleave

It was the kind of behavior that could only occur when
people had been trapped for thousands of years, staring at the
same sights, fetishizing everything around them, spiraling
down toward the full-blown insanity of religion. You didn't
need gates and barbed wire to make a prison. Familiarity could
pin you to the ground, far more efficiently. ~ Greg Egan

So I thought. Are you happy?"
"What's that?"
"Don't you know yet? But who really knows what it is? Dancing on the head of a pin, maybe. ~ Erich Maria Remarque

What is it about you?"
"Me?" She lifted her chin, looked at me head on.

"I can't stop myself. I want to pin you and fuck you against every surface I come to…. ~ Alessandra Torre

This pen: this is nothing less than the driving of nails. Nails driving out my habits of discontent and driving in my habit of eucharisteo. I'm hammering in nails to pound out nails, ugly nails that Satan has pierced through the world, my heart. It starts to unfold, light in the dark, a door opening up, how all these years it's been utterly pointless to try to wrench out the spikes of discontent. Because that habit of discontentment can only be driven out by hammering in one iron sharper. The sleek pin of gratitude. I ~ Ann Voskamp

If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

When this is done, Jerkface, I will hold your tarnished and melted pin up as my trophy as your smoldering ship marks your pyre, and the final resting place of your crushed and broken corpse!"
- Spensa, pg. 64 ~ Brandon Sanderson

The Indians are finding the gaps like a pin in a haystack. ~ Navjot Singh Sidhu

I took out my grenade and put my fingers inside the pin. 'Do you boys want this to be your last meal, or do you want to answer his question? ~ Ishmael Beah

Music is an experience. It's alive. Untamable. You can try to plan it out, pin it down, and bend it to your will, but it can't really be done. ~ Caisey Quinn

I like to look like a tomboy during the day and then a pin-up girl at night. ~ Josephine De La Baume

Now, as the party reached the royal hall the brothers shared, Tolners produced a note and held it up for Kell to read. "This isn't funny."
Apparently Rhy had had the grace to pin the note to his door, in case anyone in the palace should worry. "Not kidnapped. Out for a drink with Kell. Sit tight. ~ Victoria Schwab

It looks as though your shop is doing well," Luka said gazing around, "Could you help me find a gift for a lady friend of mine?"
My heart plunged to my grenn satin slippers, and I had to stare down at Azarte for a minute, petting him hard. Naturally Luka had a "lady friend." She was probably nobly born: the daughter of a count or a duke. I imagined her having thick dark hair and clear skin, and was bitterly jealous. "Of course," I stammered after a time. "What would she like? A gown? A sash?" If she came in for a fitting, I decided to "accidentlly" poke her with every pin. ~ Jessica Day George

If somebody wants you to pin a label on my place in your life, just tell them I'm yours. It's that simple. ~ Shannon Stacey

I was sorry to notice that my clumsiness with the safety-pin hurt her. Indeed, it might have been serious, for the skin of her throat was pierced. I must have pinched up a piece of loose skin and have transfixed it, for there are two little red points like pin-pricks, and on the band of her nightdress was a drop of blood. When I apologised and was concerned about it, she laughed and petted me, and said she did not even feel it. Fortunately it cannot leave a scar, as it is so tiny. ~ Bram Stoker

He holds the elevator door open with one enormous hand and leans out to look at the weather. Then he swings those dark blue eyes to mine, his brow beginning to crease. The familiar bubble forms in my head. I wish he was my friend. I burst it with a pin. "I'll give you a ride," he forces out. "Ugh, no way," I say over my shoulder and run. ~ Sally Thorne

On Sunday at St St. Andrews in 2005, Tiger woke up with a two-stroke lead, and his warm-up on the practice range was freakishly good. He'd comment later that it was one of the best of his life. He hit the 50-yard sign four times in a row, the 100-yard sign three times in a row, and the 150-yard sign on his first shot. I jokingly told Steve that on shots around 100 yards he should remind Tiger to aim right or left of the pin. Sure enough, on the third hole Tiger's wedge hit the pin and bounced off the green. ~ Hank Haney

Something in what Deacon said caused Aiden to string together an atrocity of f-bombs. My brows flew up. Aiden rarely cussed or lost his cool, but boy, he was a grenade whose pin had just been pulled. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

She had what the Victorians would call a finely shaped head. You could imagine the skull quite easily.
I'd know her head anywhere.
And what's inside it. I think of that, too: her mind. Her brain, all those coils, and her thoughts shuttling through those coils like fast, frantic centipedes. Like a child, I picture opening her skull, unspooling her brain and sifting through it, trying to catch and pin down her thoughts. What are you thinking, Amy? ~ Gillian Flynn

He didn't care. She was a sexual hand grenade with the pin pulled out, but he could never manage to resist her. Whatever this said about him didn't matter. ~ Daniel Suarez

The art of spreading rumors may be compared to the art of pin-making. There is usually some truth, which I call the wire; as this passes from hand to hand, one gives it a polish, another a point, others make and put on the head, and at last the pin is completed. ~ John Newton

In the Name of Allah the Merciful, the Compassionate, Who manifests Himself through everything, the revelation of a clear knowing to whomsoever He wishes, peace be upon you, my son. This praise belongs to Allah Who manifests Himself on the head of a pin to whom He wishes, so that one testifies that He is not, and another testifies that there is none other than He. But the witnessing in the denying of Him is not rejected, and the witnessing in the affirming of Him is not praised. ~ Mansur Al-Hallaj

In a long meter hymn, a singer - they call it 'lays out a line.' And then the whole church joins in in repeating that line. And they form a wall of harmony so tight, you can't wedge a pin between it. ~ Maya Angelou

Everything you've told yourself you ought to do, your mind thinks you should do right now. Frankly, as soon add you have two things to do stored in your RAM, you've generated personal failure, because you can't do two things at the same time. This produces an all-pervasive stress factor whose source can't be pin-pointed. ~ David Allen

He sent you a text message that read: FIre Sign - You're compatible with all signs. Your blood group breathes disappointment and happiness. You stick your tongue in the woman's mouth in order to cool down. The fog that burns on the ceiling is the steam of sweat. You buy pins and colored pictures from the shop. You pin them on your flesh when you receive a guest. The firewood comes to you throughout the night, wrapped in nightmares. When you wake up you have a bath on fire. You eat on fire. You read the newspapers on fire. You smoke a cigarette on fire. In the coffee cup you come across prophecies of fire. You laugh on fire. You have your lungs checked at the hospital, and they find a spring of errors that looks like a tumor. You dream of the final act: It goes out. ~ Hassan Blasim

From Adam Smith's pin factory to Moore's Law of microchips, the division of labor drives the extension of the market, not the other way around. Supply creates its own demand through the proliferation of goods and services down the curves of learning, entropy, and imagination. ~ George Gilder

Dear good white people (you know who you are), I have a secret to tell you: There is no such thing. There are only white people who work to do good, just things. You are an ally because of your actions, not because you say you are. You're an ally when you call out racist comments, when you listen and learn, when you work in solidarity with people of color to dismantle institutional racism, when your efforts and actions are felt by others. Not just when you wear a safety pin. ~ Kate Schatz

I'm persuaded today that the only way you can get into another country with a different culture from your own is to find a local partner who knows the market. Discovering this felt like small children discovering that if you put a bobby pin into an electric plug you get a shock! ~ Roberto Civita

Setting down her own basket, Annabelle held a pin between her thumb and forefinger, and closed her eyes. Whenever the opportunity presented itself, she always made the same wish…to marry a peer. Strangely, however, a new thought entered her head, just as she cast the pin into the well.
I wish I could fall in love.
Surprised by the wilful, wayward notion, Annabelle wondered how it was that she could have wasted a wish on something that was obviously so ill-advised. Opening her eyes, Annabelle saw that the other wallflowers were staring into the well with great solemnity. "I made the wrong wish," she said fretfully. "Can I have another?"
"No," Lillian said in a matter-of-fact tone. "Once you've thrown in your pin, it's done."
"But I didn't mean to make that particular wish," Annabelle protested. "Something just popped into my head, and it wasn't at all what I had planned."
"Don't argue, Annabelle," Evie advised. "You d-don't want to annoy the well spirit."
"The what?"
Evie smiled at her perplexed expression. "The resident spirit of the well. He's the one to whom y-you make a petition. But if you annoy him, he may decide to demand a terrible price for granting your wish. Or he may drag you into the well with him, to live there forever as his c-consort."
Annabelle stared into the brown water. She cupped her hands around the sides of her mouth to help direct her voice. "You don't have to grant my rotten wish," she told the unseen spi ~ Lisa Kleypas

To take an example, therefore, from a very trifling manufacture; but one in which the division of labour has been very often taken notice of, the trade of the pin-maker; a workman not educated to this business (which the division of labour has rendered a distinct trade), nor acquainted with the use of the machinery employed in it (to the invention of which the same division of labour has probably given occasion), could scarce, perhaps, with his utmost industry, make one pin in a day, and certainly could not make twenty. But in the way in which this business is now carried on, not only the whole work is a peculiar trade, but it is divided into a number of branches, of which the greater part are likewise peculiar trades. One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving, the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business, to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands, though in others the same man will sometimes perform two or three of them. I have seen a small manufactory of this kind where ten men only were employed, and where some of them consequently performed two or three distinct operations. But though they were very poor, ~ Adam Smith

St. Louis Blues (1929)

I hate to see de evenin' sun go down,
Hate to see de evenin' sun go down
'Cause ma baby, he done lef' dis town.
Feelin' tomorrow like I feel today,
Feel tomorrow like I feel today,
I'll pack my trunk, make ma git away.

Saint Louis woman wid her diamon' rings
Pulls dat man 'roun' by her apron strings.
'Twant for powder an' for store-bought hair,
De man ah love would not gone nowhere, nowhere.
Got de Saint Louis Blues jes as blue as ah can be.
That man got a heart lak a rock cast in the sea.

Or else he wouldn't have gone so far from me. Doggone it!
I loves day man lak a schoolboy loves his pie,
Lak a Kentucky Col'nel loves his mint an' rye.
I'll love ma baby till the day ah die.

Been to de gypsy to get ma fortune tole,
To de gypsy, done got ma fortune tole,
Cause I'm most wile 'bout ma Jelly Roll.
Gypsy done tole me, "Don't you wear no black."
Yes, she done told me, "Don't you wear no black.

Go to Saint Louis, you can win him back."
Help me to Cairo, make Saint Louis by maself,
Git to Cairo, find ma old friend Jeff,
Gwine to pin maself close to his side;
If ah flag his train, I sho' can ride.
Got de Saint Louis Blues jes as blue as ah can be.
That man got a heart lak a rock cast in the sea.

Or else he wouldn't have gone so far from me. Doggone it!
I loves day man lak a sch ~ Bessie Smith

Love is the same as a safety pin unsafe in the lapel of chance. ~ Joaquin Sabina

If a man lose his balance, and immerse himself in any trades or pleasures for their own sake, he may be a good wheel or pin, but he is not a cultivated man. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

But just then, as if to avoid a certain awkwardness, Seaman began to talk not about Newell but about Newell's mother, Anne Jordan Newell. He described her appearance (pleasing), her work (she had a job at a factory that made irrigation systems), her faith (she went to church every Sunday), her industriousness (she kept the house as neat as a pin), her kindness (she always had a smile for everyone), her common sense (she gave good advice, wise advice, without forcing it on anyone). A mother is a precious thing, concluded Seaman. Marius and I founded the Panthers. We worked whatever jobs we could get and we bought shotguns and handguns for the people's self-defense. But a mother is worth more than the Black Revolution. That I can promise you. In my long and eventful life, I've seen many things. I was in Algeria and I was in China and in several prisons in the United States. A mother is a precious thing. This I say here and I'll say anywhere, anytime, he said in a hoarse voice. ~ Roberto Bolano

He that takes not up a pin, slights his wife. ~ George Herbert

Let us be worthy of those who pin their hopes on us. May God bless you with success. ~ Yasser Arafat

This story never really had a point. It's just a lull - a skip in the record. We are addresses in ghost towns. We are old wishes that never came true. We are hand grenades (and every word you say pulls the pin). We are all gods, we are all monsters. ~ Pete Wentz

Dorothy's cooking was legendary. It had once been said that she could turn soil to cake. William, her husband, had remarked that he could achieve the reverse, earning himself a sharp smack with the rolling pin. ~ Jonathan Renshaw

Consumers could be in for an even sweeter deal, either getting discounts from retailers for using the PIN debit cards or being rewarded by card network by winning money back for using the signature debit cards. ~ David Robertson

To be oneself on a basis of gold
is no better than founding one's house on the sand.
For your watch, and your ring, and the rest of your trappings
the good people fawn on you, grovelling to earth;
they lift their hats to your jewelled breast-pin;
but your ring and your breast-pin are not your person.- ~ Henrik Ibsen

My favorite birthday game is Pin the Cleanup on the guests. ~ Maxine

Melville had to fight, fight against the existing world, against his own very self. Only he would never quite put the knife in the heart of his paradisal ideal. Somehow, somewhere, somewhen, love should be a fulfillment, and life should be a thing of bliss. That was his fixed ideal. Fata Morgana. That was the pin he tortured himself on, like a pinned-down butterfly. ~ D.H. Lawrence

I knelt to examine the floor, and there it was, in tiny writing, quite fresh it seemed, scratched with a pin or maybe just a fingernail, in the corner where the darkest shadow fell: Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. ~ Margaret Atwood

Greenmail, in case you're wondering, is when a company pays a raider a premium for his holdings-if he'll go away. What I think it really is is blackmail in a pin-striped suit. ~ Lee Iacocca

There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

I was feeling lonely without her, but the fact that I could feel lonely at all was consolation. Loneliness wasn't such a bad feeling. It was like the stillness of the pin oak after the little birds had flown off. ~ Haruki Murakami

To what extent facts we recognize as such really are as they seem, and to what extent these are facts merely because we label them as such, is an impossible distinction to draw. Therefore, in order to pin down reality as reality, we need another reality to relativize the first. Yet that other reality requires a third reality to serve as its grounding. An endless chain is created within our consciousness, and it is the maintenance of this chain which produces the sensation that we are actually here, that we ourselves exist. But something can happen to sever that chain and we are at a loss. What is real? Is reality on this side of the break in the chain? Or over there, on the other side? ~ Haruki Murakami

The complete novelist would come into the world with a catalog of qualities like this. He would own the concentration of a Trappist monk, the organizational ability of a Prussian field marshal, the insight into human relations of a Viennese psychologist, the discipline of a man who prints the Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin, the exquisite sense of timing of an Olympic gymnast, and by the way, a natural instinct and flair for exceptional use of language. ~ Leon Uris