Plectrum Picks Quotes

As soon as I start to write I'm very aware, I'm trying to be aware that a reader just might well pick up this poem, a stranger. So when I'm writing - and I think that this is important for all writers - I'm trying to be a writer and a reader back and forth. I write two lines or three lines. I will immediately stop and turn into a reader instead of a writer, and I'll read those lines as if I had never seen them before and as if I had never written them. ~ Billy Collins

I'm sipping cranberry-and-ginger-ale punch and talking to Aunt D. about her divorce when Peter Kavinsky walks in wearing a hunter-green sweater with a button-down shirt underneath, carrying a Christmas tin. I almost choke on my punch.
Kitty spots him when I do. "You came!" she cries. She runs right into his arms, and he puts down the cookie tin and picks her up and throws her around. When he sets her down, she takes him by the hand and over to the buffet table, where I'm busying myself rearranging the cookie plate.
"Look what Peter brought," she says, pushing him forward.
He hands me the cookie tin. "Here. Fruitcake cookies my mom made."
"What are you doing here?" I whisper accusingly.
"The kid invited me." He jerks his head toward Kitty, who has conveniently run back over to the puppy. Josh is standing up now, looking over at us with a frown on his face. "We need to talk."
So now he wants to talk. Well, too late. "We don't have anything to talk about."
Peter takes me by the elbow and I try to shake him off, but he won't let go. He steers me into the kitchen. "I want you to make up an excuse to Kitty and leave," I say. "And you can take your fruitcake cookies with you."
"First tell me why you're so pissed at me."
"Because!" I burst out. "Everyone is saying how we had sex in the hot tub and I'm a slut and you don't even care!"
"I told the guys we didn't!"
"Did you? Did you tell them that all we did was kiss and that's all ~ Jenny Han

A.J. notices an Elmo doll sitting on the floor with a note attached to his matted red chest by a safety pin. He sets the baby down and picks up Elmo, a character A.J. has always despised because he seems too needy. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Stop what you are doing long enough to enjoy the sunset, listen to a special song that lifts you up, or pick up the phone and share some special thought with a caring friend. ~ Barbara Johnson

Even in half demon hunter clothes, Clary thought, he looked like the kind of boy who'd come over your house to pick you up for a date and be polite to your parents and nice to your pets.
Jace on the other hand, looked like the kind of boy who'd come over your house and burn it down just for kicks. ~ Cassandra Clare

You either have to be great or you have to be bad to get a good pick. ~ Magic Johnson

It doesn't occur to me that I don't drive a cool car until I hang out with Jon Hamm, who picks me up in what looks like a Transformer, and I think, 'Oh, that's what movie stars are driving. I guess I'm not a movie star.' ~ Bill Hader

Our work on light bulbs wasn't an arbitrary mandate. We didn't just pick a standard out of the air, or look for a catchy sounding standard like 25 by 2025 not based in science or feasibility. Instead, we worked with both industry and environmental groups to come up with a standard that made sense and was doable. ~ Fred Upton

I've read that if an avalanche buries you and you're lying there underneath all that snow, you can't tell which way is up or down. You want to dig yourself out but pick the wrong way, and you dig yourself to your own demise. ~ Khaled Hosseini

Before I went to college I read two books. I read a book "Moral Mazes" by Robert Jackall which is a study of how corporations work, and it's actually a fascinating book, this sociologist, he just picks a corporation at random and just goes and studies the middle managers, not the people who do any of the grunt work and not the big decision makers, just the people whose job is to make sure that things day to day get done, and he shows how even though they're all perfectly reasonable people, perfectly nice people you'd be happy to meet any of them, all the things that they were accomplishing were just incredibly evil. So you have these people in this average corporation, they were making decisions to blow out their worker's eardrums in the factory, to poison the lakes and the lagoons nearby, to make these products that are filled with toxic chemicals that poisoned their customers, not because any of them were bad people and wanted to kill their workers and their neighbourhood and their customers, but just because that was the logic of the situation they were in.

Another book I read was a book "Understanding Power" by Noam Chomsky which kind of took the same sort of analysis but applied it to wider society which you know we're in a situation where it may be filled with perfectly good people but they're in these structures that cause them to continually do evil, to invade countries, to bomb people, to take money from poor people and give it to rich people, to do all th ~ Aaron Swartz

Hitting the ball has never been my issue, so I can literally not pick up a racquet for two months and hit the ball, really, really nicely. I mean movement's always an issue. ~ Andre Agassi

There's an awful lot of scenes where we don't know what the scene's going to be about, we ask the audience, pick a place that the scene is happening, pick the relationship, tell us who they are, things like that. ~ Brian Henson

Our son is in school now. You know, he's six-and-a-half and so a big chunk of the day is taken up by school. So I'm hoping that I'll be able to certainly take him to school in the morning, maybe pick him up in the afternoon and come back to work. ~ Connie Chung

Trusting the government to monitor your calls without listening. It's kind of like trusting Chris Christie to pick up the McDonald's and not eat the fries on the way home. ~ Bill Maher

Any other woman who has to go to work and pick up the kids and make dinner - that's way harder than what I have to do. ~ Beyonce Knowles

Have you ever thought about rhythm? The way it changes from inside a song? The way it picks up pace or drops and takes you somewhere new?

Rhythm is the key, but sometimes rhythm shakes and shimmies, shifts and emerges all mermaid-new. ~ Fox Benwell

I'm very hopeful that I'm not the only one who's willing to pick up the baton of freedom, because freedom is not free, and we must fight for it every day. Every one of us must fight for it, because we're fighting for our children and the next generation. ~ Ben Carson

The world has always been this way. I am sure in the mystery world of Egypt, ancient Atlantis, you pick a cosmos - There is always somebody on your case. ~ Frederick Lenz

I'm here to say there is a choice. If you want to stick to the status quo, pick the Republicans or Democrats, but don't complain. Nobody can do a better job than I can. ~ Scott Ashjian

Food has powers. It picks us up from our lonely corners and sits us back down, together. It pulls us out of ourselves, to the kitchen, to the table, to the diner down the block. At the same time, it draws us inward. Food is the keeper of our memories, connecting us with our pasts and with our people. ~ Jessica Fechtor

And if I want to get involved in choosing sides, I usually pick hockey or football. ~ Dierks Bentley

I have a computer screen near my seat where I monitor the overall health of the vehicle and pick up any problems that might be occurring early on or once we see any kind of a malfunction or anything unusual that's happening, we can look at the data and figure out what that is. ~ Laurel Clark

The leader sets the tone for his followers. If something goes wrong and the leader acts worried or angry, then everyone picks up on that attitude and it spirals larger and larger. ~ Jim Korkis

Of course with John McCain out of the race, George W. Bush has to pick a running mate. Which is kind of a scary proposition when you think about it. I mean his dad picked Dan Quayle, an he isn't as smart as his dad. ~ Jay Leno

I am now going to make an admission. I confess, I agree, that all these good people who protested, who laughed, who did not perceive what we perceived, were in a quite legitimate position. Their opinion was quite in order. One must not be afraid to say that the kingdom of letters is only a province of the vast empire of entertainment. One picks up a book, one puts it aside; and even when one cannot put it down one very well understands that this interest is related to the facility of pleasure. That is to say that every effort of a creator of beauty or of fantasy should be bent, by the very essence of his work, on contriving for the public pleasure which demands no effort, or almost none. It is through the public that he should deduce what touches, moves, soothes, animates or enchants the public.

There are however several publics; amongst whom it is not impossible to find some people who do not conceive of pleasure without pain, who do not like to enjoy themselves without paying, and who are not happy if their happiness is not in some part their own contrivance through which they wish to realize what it costs them.
~ Paul Valery

Soon we're both frowning hard at the paperwork. "Middle name?" Noah says. "Does Gideon even have a middle name?"
"I don't know"
Noah turns to me and says, "Do you have a middle name?" his glare implying that, if I do, this whole thing is somehow my fault.
"I ... have no idea."
"Primary language spoken at home." Noah makes a face. "What does this mean? Our primary language? Gideon's? That's sort of why we're here ... "
"Um, it's under family, so I'm guessing ours?"
"Well ... " Noah lowers his pen. The paperwork has defeated him. "What's our primary language?"
"English? ASL? Physical affection?"
"Food?" Noah says.
"Food's a good guess."
He picks up the pen. "I'm writing food, comma passive aggressive."
"Good call. ~ Hannah Moskowitz

Everybody who says the same words is the same person if the spectra are the same only they happen differently in time, you dig? But the time is arbitrary. You pick your zero point anywhere you want, that way you can shuffle each person's time line sideways till they all coincide. ~ Thomas Pynchon

Place where man laughs, sings, picks flowers, chases butterflies and pets birds, makes love with maidens, and plays with children. Here he spontaneously reveals his nature, the base as well as the noble. Here also he buries his sorrows and difficulties and cherishes his ideals and hopes. It is in the garden that men discover themselves. Indeed one discovers not only his real self but also his ideal self?he returns to his youth. Inevitably the garden is made the scene of man's merriment, escapades, romantic abandonment, spiritual awakening or the perfection of his finer self. ~ Confucius

What did Kavinsky say about it?" Chris asks me.
"Nothing yet. He's still at lacrosse practice."
My phone immediately starts to buzz, and the three of us look at each other, wide-eyed. Margot picks it up and looks at it. "It's Peter!" She hot-potatoes the phone to me. "Let's give them some privacy," she says, nudging Chris. Chris shrugs her off.
I ignore both of them and answer the phone. "Hello." My voice comes out thin as a reed.
Peter starts talking fast. "Okay, I've seen the video, and the first thing I'm going to say to you is don't freak out." He's breathing hard; it sounds like he's running.
"Don't freak out? How can I not? This is terrible. Do you know what they're all saying about me in the comments? That I'm a slut. They think we're having sex in that video, Peter."
"Never read the comments, Covey! That's the first rule of--"
"If you say 'Fight Club' to me right now, I will hang up on you."
"Sorry. Okay, I know it sucks but--"
"It doesn't 'suck.' It's a literal nightmare. My most private moment, for everybody to see. I'm completely humiliated. The things people are saying--" My voice breaks. Kitty and Margot and Chris are all looking at me with sad eyes, which makes me feel even sadder.
"Don't cry, Lara Jean. Please don't cry. I promise you I'm going to fix this. I'm going to get whoever runs Anonybitch to take it down."
"How? We don't even know who they are! And besides, I bet our whole school's seen it by now. ~ Jenny Han

You pick pieces of things you've experienced in life to make it real to yourself. ~ Brooklyn Sudano

My pick for Best Political Move of the Year, which is the decisive (ph) and this means it is actually the best political movement is Bill Clinton getting on the phone and encouraging Donald Trump to run for the president. ~ Lawrence O'Donnell

We are all so broken. Pick up a person, shake them around and you'll hear the rattling of their broken pieces. Pieces our fathers broke, or our mothers, or our friends, strangers, or our loves. ~ Tarryn Fisher

A blade can be nothing but a blade. Only the hand that picks it up knows that there was ever anything else worth holding. ~ Nora Sakavic