Pivotal Quotes

I was a young black man, light-skinned enough so that four out of five people who met me, of whatever race, assumed I was white ... I was a homosexual who now knew he could function heterosexually.
And I was a young writer whose early attempts had already gotten him a handful of prizes ...
So, I thought, you are neither black nor white.
You are neither male nor female.
And you are that most ambiguous of citizens, the writer.
There was something at once very satisfying and very sad, placing myself at this pivotal suspension. It seemed, in the park at dawn, a kind of revelation
a kind of center, formed of a play of ambiguities, from which I might move in any direction. ~ Samuel R. Delany

Imagine the people you fear and dislike as pivotal characters in a fascinating and ultimately redemptive plot that will take years or even lifetimes for the Divine to elaborate. ~ Rob Brezsny

Justice Harry A. Blackmun, a quirky but pivotal member of the Supreme Court for 24 years, was a hoarder. He seems to have kept everything from his boyhood diaries to college correspondence to every scrap of paper that came his way on the Supreme Court. ~ Cliff Sloan

She relived the frantic shopping and packing, the last teary gatherings with friends, the fear of a faceless roommate, the terror of academic failure. She also relived the excitement, because, in hindsight, going to college had been the single most pivotal point in her life. ~ Barbara Delinsky

I'm Egyptian and Muslim, but I grew up in the West, far from my Arab roots. I began 'Sex and the Citadel' to help outsiders - like myself - to better comprehend this pivotal part of the world, up-close and personal. ~ Shereen El Feki

In the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore got more votes than George W. Bush, but still lost the election. The Supreme Court's ruling in Florida gave Bush that pivotal state, and doomed Gore to lose the Electoral College. That odd scenario - where the candidate with the most votes loses - has happened three times in U.S. history. ~ Juan Williams

In many ways marine biology is at a pivotal moment, when we are discovering the richness of the ocean at the very time we are grasping how we've managed to deplete it over the last few centuries. Preserving what's left, as well as rebuilding parts of it to a semblance of what it used to be, requires us to relinquish some of the power we have exercised in the past. It requires living with sharks. ~ Juliet Eilperin

There are moments that define our existence, moments that, if we recognize them, become pivotal turning points in our life. ~ C.W. Gortner

I think it's a universal thing in every family, that people have their own specific versions of pivotal events or even small memories, ~ Sarah Polley

I'm one that believes that Samuel Alito appointment on the Supreme Court is a pivotal appointment. And because he replace Sandra Day O'Connor and because she was the fifth vote on 148 cases, you well could be a very key and decisive vote. ~ Dianne Feinstein

Being the governor of a state is a more pivotal job in the future. I do indeed hope there's someone that says, "I'm going to go to Washington, try to get back to our constitutional roots, devolve the centralization of government back to the states." So why would you want to be up there if the action is down here in the states? ~ Rick Perry

You live and die two or three times making a movie. First, you write it, and the first pivotal moment comes when you can get it made. The second is in the process of making it, when the movie reveals itself to you, its flaws and its virtues. Then the most unnerving moment is when that movie is then launched into the world. It's like bringing your kid to the first day at school and somebody points out that it has bowlegs, it is cross-eyed, or it's gorgeous. You feel very exposed. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

If I have one special memory, it was when we recreated the trial of the Chicago Seven - and I'd known about it before - but this was a pivotal moment in my life. If my father had been found guilty of conspiracy, I wouldn't be here. ~ Troy Garity

For any book, it's distilling all of the moments in the book that are either fan favorites or pivotal that you have to have in there, and how you tie that all up into a two hour movie is not the easiest job. ~ Dana Brunetti

This was like July 13th, 1943, the pivotal day of the Battle of the Kursk. We were like Alexander Vasilevsky, the Soviet general. If we attacked now, this minute, we had to keep on and on attacking until the enemy was run off his feet and the war was won. If we bogged down or paused for breath even for a second, we would be overrun again. ~ Lee Child

Pivotal to a happy writing life is a practice of daily personal writing. ~ Julia Cameron

Lifestyle and livelihood are pivotal moral issues. ~ Stephanie Mills

Motivation is pivotal to healthy lives and healthy companies. Make sure you're minding it. ~ Jason Fried

More than four decades after Nixon met Mao, the relationship between the U.S. and China has reached a pivotal moment. To date, even as China has become more powerful and present in our lives, Americans have generally found it to be an unsatisfying 'enemy.' ~ Evan Osnos

The move to creating stories was a natural progression for me, but the most pivotal time was probably in 6th grade: That year, a friend introduced me to the stories of Ray Bradbury, and a student teacher introduced me to creative writing. ~ Lynn Flewelling

Since I am a person who starts work without clear knowledge of a storyline, every single scene is a pivotal scene. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Oxygen plays a pivotal role in the proper functioning of the immune system. We can look at oxygen deficiency as the single greatest cause of all diseases. ~ Stephen Levine

I was also very lucky to be able to work with talented people while I was learning. I didn't actually go to fashion school. I worked with Riccardo Tisci at Givenchy which was a really pivotal experience for me. He taught me a lot about being faithful to your own voice and to really believe in your own voice and that's made a big difference. ~ Joseph Altuzarra

He did. He researched her. Someone told him that she had a special interest in John Milton. It did not take long to discover the century to which this man belonged. A third-year literature student in Beard's college who owed him a favor (for procuring tickets to a Cream concert) gave him an hour on Milton, what to read, what to think. He read "Comus" and was astounded by its silliness. He read through "Lycidas," "Samson Agonistes," and "Il Penseroso" - stilted and rather prissy in parts, he thought. He fared better with "Paradise Lost" and, like many before him, preferred Satan's party to God's. He, Beard, that is, memorized passages that appeared to him intelligent and especially sonorous. He read a biography, and four essays that he had been told were pivotal. The reading took him one long week. He came close to being thrown out of an antiquarian bookshop in the Turl when he casually asked for a first edition of "Paradise Lost." He tracked down a kindly tutor who knew about buying old books and confided to him that he wanted to impress a girl with a certain kind of present, and was directed to a bookshop in Covent Garden where he spent half a term's money on an eighteenth-century edition of "Areopagitica." When he speed-read it on the train back to Oxford, one of the pages cracked in two. He repaired it with Sellotape. ~ Ian McEwan

Take just one well-known event: The Beatles' 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. This has been depicted with astonishing regularity as a pivotal cultural moment; in fact an entire movie -- I Wanna Hold Your Hand -- was built around it. And that Sullivan episode was indeed a major event in popular culture. But did you know that in 1961, 26 million people watched a CBS live broadcast of the first performance of a new symphony by classical composer Aaron Copland? Moreover, with all the attention that sixties rock groups receive, it may come as a surprise to learn that My Fair Lady was Columbia Records' biggest-selling album before the 1970s, beating out those of sixties icons Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and The Byrds. ~ Jonathan Leaf

Margaret Thatcher was a great leader for her nation at a pivotal and a perilous time. So, I find the comparison flattering, but that's up to others to say whether that comparison is justified. ~ Carly Fiorina

My mom taught me the power of love. I learned to focus on the long-term big picture from my father. His sense of humor and light-hearted approach always make me smile. My husband is a pivotal anchor in my life. His influence encourages me to be independent and take risks. ~ Padmasree Warrior

I don't want to be the president of the United States. I do want to work with the governors across the country to make the states more pivotal, more powerful, as they should be. ~ Rick Perry

While genes are pivotal in establishing some aspects of emotionality, experience plays a central role in turning genes on and off. DNA is not the heart's destiny; the genetic lottery may determine the cards in your deck, but experience deals the hand you can play. Scientists have proven, for example, that good mothering can override a disadvantageous temperament.(152) ~ Thomas Lewis

I really think music in school is vital. Some pivotal moments in my life were my childhood scholastic experiences with music - teachers who found out I could sing, and encouraged me, or teachers who turned me on to music or bands I hadn't yet heard. ~ Dave Smalley

It is all very well to have some internal sense of oneself as an individual, but that sense must correspond to an external reality. Part of that external reality is property. The fact that something belongs to me and not to everyone increases my sense of myself as someone in particular. For Hegel that sense of individual particularity is intrinsic to the modern moral order. Indeed "the right of the subject's particularity to find satisfaction, or
to put it differently
the right of subjective freedom, is the pivotal and focal point in the difference between antiquity and the modern age." The fact that others do not take my property
that they regard it as mine
is also a way in which they recognize me as an individual. It is precisely this recognition that the slave, the bondsman, and the serf lack. That the right to own private property, to control some corner of the world, is universal in the modern state is for Hegel part of its glory. (p. 155) ~ Jerry Z. Muller

My 6 years with Murdoch were pivotal for my entire research career. ~ Paul Nurse

It was probably very difficult to go from Chinese and then suddenly go to kindergarten and start speaking English; it's very hard to transition back and forth when you are in that pivotal age. It's also hard to transition back, but if I was immersed in the country for a given amount of time, you are surrounded by it, everyone is speaking, you are learning new things, you are practicing all the time. ~ Lucy Liu

I have the 'thing' worked out - the trick or the surprise or the pivotal fact. Then I just start somewhere and let the story work itself out. ~ Lee Child

In stories, when someone behaves uncharacteristically, we take it as a meaningful, even pivotal moment. If we are surprised again and again, we have to keep changing our minds, or give up and disbelieve the writer. In real life, if people think they know you well enough not only to say, 'It's Tuesday, Amy must be helping out at the library today,' but well enough to say to the librarian, after you've left the building, 'You know, Amy just loves reading to the four-year-olds, I think it's been such a comfort for her since her little boy died' - if they know you like that, you can do almost anything where they can't see you, and when they hear about it, they will, as we do, simply disbelieve the narrator. ~ Amy Bloom

Because past environmental destruction was the result of ignorance, we can easily forgive it. Today, we are better informed. Therefore, it's essential that we make an ethical examination of what we have inherited, what we are responsible for, and what we will pass on to coming generations. Ours is clearly a pivotal generation. We have global communication and yet confrontation is more common than dialogue. ~ Dalai Lama

Cut Africa out of the Bible and Christian memory, and you have misplaced many pivotal scenes of salvation history. It is the story of the children of Abraham in Africa; Joseph in Africa; Moses in Africa; Mary, Joseph and Jesus in Africa; and shortly thereafter Mark and Perpetua and Athanasius and Augustine in Africa. ~ Thomas C. Oden

Hawaii has always been a very pivotal role in the Pacific. It is in the Pacific. It is a part of the United States that is an island that is right here. ~ Dan Quayle

It was the pivotal teaching of Pluthero Quexos, the most celebrated dramatist of the Second Dominion, that in any fiction, no matter how ambitious its scope or profound its theme, there was only ever room for three players. Between warring kings, a peacemaker; between adoring spouses, a seducer or a child. Between twins, the spirit of the womb. Between lovers, Death. Greater numbers might drift through the drama, of course
thousands in fact
but they could only ever be phantoms, agents, or, on rare occasions, reflections of the three real and self-willed beings who stood at the center. And even this essential trio would not remain intact; or so he taught. It would steadily diminish as the story unfolded, three becoming two, two becoming one, until the stage was left deserted. ~ Clive Barker

There will always be cases that cry out to me for ultimate punishment. That is not the true issue. The pivotal question instead is whether a system of justice can be constructed that reaches only the rare, right cases, without also occasionally condemning the innocent or the undeserving. ~ Scott Turow

I look back, now, and I know that the naming moment, which seemed so insignificant then, which seemed to demand no more than an arbitrary and superstitious yes or no, was in fact a pivotal moment in my life. ~ Gregory David Roberts

I'm the thing that stands between you and the dark. I will always be standing there, bracing for the shit storm, ready to fucking defend and protect you, if that's what you want, because you're the most important, pivotal, vital thing that's ever happened to me. ~ Callie Hart

There is no question in the fact that India has a global responsibility, and the coming "Gyan Yug" would see India play a pivotal role, using the strengths of its democracy and demographic dividend. ~ Narendra Modi

listen.
it wouldn't have hurt so much if she wasn't the girl i always wanted to be.

in high school i carved the word ugly into my skin
so that even if i once reached
that pivotal point of high self esteem
i would always be reminded of who i was
underneath it all
and i wanted so badly to be
the athletic girl
who put makeup on effortlessly
who knew a thing or two about fashion
whose laughter sounded like flowers blooming
who knew what it meant to be sad,
and anxious,
but in the beautiful way
in the mysterious way
in the way that could be cured by true love's kiss
whose skin was always soft
and hair always brushed
- sometimes styled -
long, and long, and dark, and wavy
a fine contrast against her light eyes
and pale skin that never led anyone to question
just where she was from
whose body hair was fine,
or at least taken care of so frequently and expertly,
that no one ever questioned just where she fell
in human evolution
whose body curved in all the right places
whose skin was taut with muscle
and soft with and inviting where it should be
who ate right
who never smoked
and never tried to end her life;
once, twice, seventeen times
who liked art but didn't really understand it
who studied hard even though she hated it
who cared about injustice but not to the point
that too much thought ~ Kara Petrovic

Computers rely on the one and the zero to represent all things. This distinction between something and nothing - this pivotal separation between being and nonbeing - is quite fundamental and underlies many Creation myths. ~ Neal Stephenson

Now that young girls like my twelve-year-old friend Mai are being exposed to modern Western women like me through crowds of tourists, they're experiencing those first critical moments of cultural hesitation. I call this the "Wait-a-Minute Moment" - that pivotal instant when girls from traditional cultures start pondering what's in it for them, exactly, to be getting married at the age of thirteen and starting to have babies not long after. They start wondering if they might prefer to make different choices for themselves, or any choices, for that matter. Once girls from closed societies start thinking such thoughts, all hell breaks loose. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Software architecture plays a pivotal role in the delivery of successful software yet it's frustratingly neglected by many teams. ~ Simon Brown

There is a pivotal point in every interaction between humans which sets the course in their relationship. Do you hide or do you shine? Which way are you going to go?
Hide or shine? ~ Ava Ayers

The wait is as much journey as the motion, because timing is pivotal. ~ Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

What about free will? . . . There's that too. I never understood why people think they're mutually exclusive. Ask me, our entire lives aren't planned out for us- just some things. Specific events along the way, crossroads we're meant to come to. Tests, maybe, to measure our progress. But we always have choices, and those choices can send us along an unplanned path . . . there are some things that are meant to happen at a certain moment and in a certain way. No matter which path you choose, which decisions you make along your own particular journey, those pivotal moments appear to be set in stone. Maybe they represent the specific lessons we're meant to learn . . . Things we have to face. Things we have to learn. Responsibilities we have to fulfill. And mistakes we have to correct. ~ Kay Hooper

Lives are made of strings of moments, and every once in a while, one of those moments is pivotal and defining. It changes everything, alters you so completely that when you look back, there's a clear before and after ~ Elizabeth Norris

It was pivotal in making you but you don't remember it. Or do you? Do we understand the events that make us who we are? Do we understand the factors that make us do the things we do? ~ Douglas Coupland

Okay, so there's just you. Your goals, your career, your crew, your prospects, and your God. All together, chillin'. Before the house, the apartment, the kids, the boyfriend, the wedding, the night you crossed over with your frat brothers, there's that pivotal point of asking your heart, Who am I, really? What do I really like? Do I want to change for someone else? Is my soul mate right now, somewhere, finishing this sentence and completing my thoughts? ~ Kirk Franklin

Just as soaps were very pivotal in the transition from radio to television, they will be right in the thick of things again in the transition from television to the Internet. Exciting news. ~ Cameron Mathison

What is the future of men who have
lost sight of the past?


Earl Hollsopple lived on the edge of civilization in a deserted shack for nearly forty years. His life was one beautiful night of stargazing after another, until a helicopter flies overhead, and exposing his meager world. It is a sign; it is time for him to return to civilization.

Unknowingly, Earl's journey parallels another he had deeply repressed, and that is his return from the Vietnam War. The lone survivor of a plane crash, Earl waits for rescue that never came. He is left to find his way home alone.

On both his quests, old Earl and young Earl learn lessons of survival, overcoming isolation and handling conflicts; his travels teach him not just about himself, but humankind. Reaching pivotal points in both journeys, Earl meets fateful loves, leading to destinies that are ultimately intertwined.

Everything in life circles until we are able to answer the riddles that plaque man and humanity. Only until we take the journey, solve the problems of our own existence, do we find our way home. ~ Jennifer Ott

The pivotal moments in your life are always made up of smaller pieces, things that seemed insignificant at time, but in fact brought you to where you needed to be. ~ Elizabeth Norris

A proactive person needs no pressure to perform and an ineffective person offloads his pressure onto others to deform the positive work culture of the system. So practically, a progressive organization knows that no pressure environment plays a pivotal role to increase the productivity or proficiency of its workforce. ~ Anuj

When it comes to statistics, our best advice is to use them as input, not output. Use them to make up your mind on an issue. Don't make up your mind and then go looking for the numbers to support yourself - that's asking for temptation and trouble. But if we use statistics to help us make up our minds, we'll be in a great position to share the pivotal numbers with others, ~ Chip Heath

Contrary to what your friends' hyper-consciously constructed Facebook updates would have you believe, life isn't a series of discrete, pivotal, deeply meaningful lily pads. Life is a smear. It's messy, indistinct and disorienting: pinball, not chess. ~ Lindy West

Pivotal changes occur with every period of time ~ Sunday Adelaja

In the future, officials will feel more pressure to protect the environment. But how to assess the officials' efforts to protect the environment is still a pivotal issue. ~ Ma Jun

As a member of Guess Who, I think 'No Time' was the best thing we ever did. It was a pivotal song in our career. ~ Burton Cummings

The death of Jesus is the pivotal event of human history and everything needs to be understood in light of that. ~ Alistair Begg

We can no longer assume that our preaching takes place within a more or less 'Christian culture,' " Craig Loscalzo says. "The great narratives of Judeo-Christian belief, the pivotal stories of the Bible's characters, the epoch of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, either are not known or do not carry the meaning-making significance they did to previous generations. ~ Graham M. Johnston

To look back and know that I have had a pivotal role in the development of comics is something I'm very proud of, although it's not something I think about unless someone brings it up. ~ Joe Simon

Ask any successful person to look back over the events of his or her life, and chances are there'll be a turning point of one kind or another. It doesn't matter if that success has come on a ball field or in a boardroom, in a research laboratory or on a campaign trail - it can usually be traced to some pivotal moment. ~ Bill Rancic

The culture is in a pivotal season of decision between throwing the family model out altogether, or fighting to get back to ground zero...the vintage family, refashioned and repurposed, by reclaiming its origin. ~ Drenda Keesee

A statement about luck is a statement about the mind, not about the world ... We find what seems to have been the lucky break or the big mistake, and so we thank our lucky stars that we took the road less traveled or curse the fates that sent that little wavelet that flipped us on our backs. With hindsight, we seem to see that everything preceding the pivotal point was leading up to it, tending toward it, and that everything following it grew from it.
To any observer outside the lucky one himself, however, luck is simply chance. Chance is neutral. ~ Eric Kraft

It's not often that you get to read something that just feels very original for a star but also something that feels like it's more than just a movie or entertainment. Even though the riots were one of the most pivotal riots in civil rights history, especially for the LGBT community, I knew surprisingly very little about them. You don't learn about Stonewall in schools. It's a bit gross really! So it certainly felt like something that was quite important. ~ Jeremy Irvine

Amherst was pivotal in my broad intellectual development; MIT in my development as a professional economist. ~ Joseph Stiglitz

I was trying so hard to find the single pivotal moment that set my life on its path. The moment that answered the question, 'How did I get here?'

But it's never just one moment. It's a series of them. And your life can branch out from each one in a thousand different ways. Maybe there's a version of your life for all the choices you make and all the choices you don't. ~ Nicola Yoon

King's Quest IV was a much bigger hit than I, II, or III. I do feel that King's Quest IV was a pivotal game in bringing in more female players. ~ Roberta Williams

Being in grief, it turns out, is not unlike being in love.
In both states, the imagination's entirely occupied with one person. The beloved dwells at the heart of the world, and becomes a Rome: the roads of feeling all lead to him, all proceed from him. Everything that touches us seems to relate back to that center: there is no other emotional life, no place outside the universe of feeling centered on its pivotal figure. ~ Mark Doty

When I played the Shins, I changed someone's life. When I play Belle and Sebastian in a pivotal scene in my next movie ... well, let's just say I made sure I that I can't be held legally responsible for all the deaths people will suffer out of shock upon hearing them. They're a terrific band. ~ Zach Braff

If the government controls, guarantees, channels, or directs investment, it is not capitalism. Pivotal to the investment process is interest rates. For entrepreneurs to control capital, interest rates must reflect its real cost rather than merely the cost of printing money. Otherwise the money printers will dominate investment. ~ George Gilder

IT more often needs to play a pivotal role in discovering the path to strategy implementation. ~ Pearl Zhu

(Running out of Night) ...is a story that respects this pivotal era of American history, a story that reveals the pain, the courage, and the hope that eventually changed the world.–Middle Shelf : Cool Reads for Kids magazine ~ Sharon Lovejoy

You don't grow up gradually. You grow up in short bursts at pivotal moments, by suddenly realizing how ignorant and immature you are. ~ Robert D. Kaplan

Here you have an incredibly ambitious, accomplished woman who comes up against some of the same problems that women in power come up against today. Cleopatra plays an oddly pivotal role in world history as well; in her lifetime, Alexandria is the center of the universe, Rome is still a backwater. ~ Stacy Schiff

Marriage and deathless friendship, both should be inviolable and sacred: two great creative passions, separate, apart, but complementary: the one pivotal, the other adventurous: the one, marriage, the centre of human life; and the other, the leap ahead. ~ D.H. Lawrence

I did not dwell on the issue of Europe during either the 2001 or the 2005 campaigns - despite it being a pivotal personal concern and despite seeing it as something of a litmus test for liberal democracy. ~ Charles Kennedy

A man whose fear is greater than his desire, or a man who has no great, all-consuming passion, or one who has patience and does not oppose, cannot be a pivotal character. ~ Lajos Ecri

Maybe it's true that the people who live through the times that become history's pivotal points are those least likely to understand them. ~ Jean Hegland

A pivotal spiritual attribute is that of self-mastery-th e strength to place reason over appetite. Self-mastery builds a strong conscience. And your conscience determines your moral responses in difficult, tempting, and trying situations. ~ Russell M. Nelson

Music in Rocky has always been pivotal. ~ Bun B.

This was the pivotal insight of the Scientific Revolution: that the advancement of knowledge depends on current theories collapsing in the face of new insights and discoveries. In this model of progress, errors do not lead us away from the truth. Instead, they edge us incrementally toward it. ~ Kathryn Schulz

How such incredibly powerful creatures could be so vulnerable was a crime against the universe. The tragic futility of it all was what really got me. The rhino's brilliant million-year evolutionary effort to build up three tons of muscle, bone and horn to defend itself meant nothing in a modern technological world that didn't care a fig about them. The fact that our grandchildren may never see a rhino in the wild again was a pivotal reason to continue to try and save them. ~ Lawrence Anthony

I gave away the Irish dancing, which is pivotal. It's just so silly and fun and nice to do because it kind of lifts the energy for us, right at the point where the energy could start to take a nose dive. ~ Katherine Shindle

It is unrealistic to imagine a US geostrategic vision which sees its pivotal interests linked exclusively to the Pacific region. More appropriately, we need to consider the wider Middle East, Central Asia and North-East Africa to be bound together in a geopolitical unit of pivotal importance. ~ Nayef Al-Rodhan

After several days, I had a pivotal interview with my teacher. When I described how I'd become so overwhelmed, she calmly asked, "How are you relating to the presence of desire?" I was startled into understanding. Her question pointed me back to the essence of mindfulness practice: It doesn't matter what is happening. What matters is how we are relating to our experience. For me, desire had become the enemy, and I was losing the battle. She advised me to stop fighting my experience and instead investigate the nature of my wanting mind. Desire was just another passing phenomenon, she reminded me. It was attachment or aversion to it that was the problem. ~ Tara Brach

It was probably the pivotal point of our friendship when he realized I had actually spent some hours thinking about him and his troubles, and he was trying to place that in his tremendously involved and tormented mental categories. Something clicked in both of us. ~ Jack Kerouac

When I was right out of college, I felt competitive with some of the guys in my class over career stuff. It's funny now to think about it - that a friend getting a job or something had anything to do with me ... I think that my relationship with my wife has played a pivotal role in the chilling out of Aaron. ~ Aaron Staton

'What if?' history is a tricky game, but there is no doubt that the senior planners of D-Day - including Eisenhower and the British general Bernard Montgomery - believed that the Double Cross operation had played a pivotal role in the victory. ~ Ben Macintyre

Israel is extraordinary blessed to have [Benjamin Netanyahu] as prime minister at this pivotal time in history and so is the United States of America to hear his voice against this deal. ~ Lou Dobbs

In this study, we will be attempting to answer the pivotal question: How does God want to be worshipped? How we want to worship God is irrelevant. ~ Joseph C. Morecraft III

I think our nation is at a pivotal point. Too many people fear that we are losing the sense of limitless possibility that has always defined this nation. ~ Carly Fiorina

Even the editors of main journals themselves recognise that peer review may not be the best system ever devised by mankind. Here is what Richard Horton, the editor of The Lancet, has to say on the matter: "The mistake, of course, is to have thought that peer review was any more than a crude means of discovering the acceptability - not the validity - of a new finding. Editors and scientists alike insist on the pivotal importance of peer review. We portray peer review to the public as a quasi-sacred process that helps to make science our most objective truth teller. But we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong. ~ Malcolm Kendrick

Imagine you are sitting down in a chair and on a screen before you you are shown a bloody, ripping film of yourself undergoing surgery. The surgery saved your life. It was pivotal in making you you. But you don't remember it. Or do you? Do we understand the events that make us who we are? Do we ever understand the factors that make us do the things we do?
When we sleep at night - when we walk across a field and see a tree full of sleeping birds - when we tell small lies to our friends - when we make love - what acts of surgery are happening to our souls - what damage and healing and shock are we going through that we will never be able to fathom? What films are generated that we will never be shown? ~ Douglas Coupland

MIDLIFE is that pivotal moment when you can FINALLY say that you basically have all your shit together and then your body starts falling apart! ~ Tanya Masse

Hate. Huh. He'd never hated himself. If anything, he'd always liked himself a little too much. Once, a human female had even accused him of picturing his own face while he climaxed. He hadn't denied it, either, and next time he'd slept with her, he'd made sure to scream, "Strider" at the pivotal moment."
Strider, keeper of the demon of Defeat
~ Gena Showalter