Pushing Back Quotes

Can you just imagine the two of them next year at the Phi Delta Carnation Ball?" Laura Grace asks, clapping her hands together.
Daddy looks confused. "The two of who?"
"Why, Ryder and Jemma, of course." Mama pats him on the hand. "You remember the Carnation Ball--it's the first Phi Delta party of the year. They have to go together, right, Laura Grace?"
She nods. "We've been waiting all our lives for this."
Mama finally glances my way and sees my scowl. "Aw, honey. We're just teasing, that's all."
This sort of teasing has been going on my entire life--second verse, same as the first. It's gotten real old, real fast.
"May I be excused?" I ask, pushing back from the table.
"You go on and finish your dinner," Laura Grace says, entirely unperturbed. "We'll stop teasing. I promise."
"It's okay. I'm done. It was delicious, thanks. I just need to get some air, that's all. I'm getting a bit of a headache."
Laura Grace nods. "It's this heat--way too hot for September." She waves a hand in my direction. "Go on, then. Ryder, why don't you go get Jemma some aspirin or something."
I glance over at Ryder, and our eyes meet. I shake my head, hoping he gets the message. "No, it's fine. I'm…uh…I've got some in my purse."
"Go with her, son," Mr. Marsden prods. "Be a gentleman, and get her a bottle of water to take outside with her."
Ugh. I give up. My escape plot is now ruined.
Wordlessly, Ryder rises from the table and stalks out ~ Kristi Cook

I really will never understand pushing back on comedians who are like, "I'm like a politician campaigning and shaking hands with these people. They're going to be okay." ~ Jen Kirkman

Every day you say 'No' to your dreams, you might be pushing back your dreams a whole 6 months ~ Eric Thomas

The president is the cuticle of the nail bed of America: one would think pushing back makes him stronger, yet it turns out the opposite is true. ~ Warren G. Harding

I have always viewed thinking about arguing, about questioning, pushing back with, joking, about sharing and discovering the world and the news as enjoyable, the same way that I view watching basketball. ~ Chris Hayes

I'm one of the
freaks, the faggots,
the geeks, the savages,
rogues, rebels, dissident devils,
artists, martyrs, infidels ...
do we sit still
under attack?
or do we start pushing back?
never back up
never back down
& FIGHT. ~ Otep Shamaya

Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary line and adding to one's liberty. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel

I am increasingly attracted to restricting possibility in the poem by inflicting a form upon yourself. Once you impose some formal pattern on yourself, then the poem is pushing back. I think good poems are often the result of that kind of wrestling with the form. ~ Billy Collins

I was down on myself so much for what I saw as not pushing back sometimes that it had never occurred to me that took its own strength. ~ Richelle Mead

Another good reducing exercise consists in placing both hands against the table edge and pushing back ~ Robert Quillen

It is like a man standing for decades on the seashore, embracing certain 'good' waves and trying to prevent them from disintegrating, while simultaneously pushing back 'bad' waves to prevent them from getting near him. Day in, day out, the man stands on the beach, driving himself crazy with this fruitless exercise. Eventually, he sits down on the sand and just allows the waves to come and go as they please. How ~ Yuval Noah Harari

The kid who throws his spaghetti from the high chair onto his father's face, he's pushing back. He's sticking it to the man as he sees it. I like that. So that is punk. ~ Henry Rollins

Studying whether there's life on Mars or studying how the universe began, there's something magical about pushing back the frontiers of knowledge. That's something that is almost part of being human, and I'm certain that will continue. ~ Sally Ride

This has not, however, stopped their earnings from pushing back the boundaries of pure hypermathematics, and their chief research accountant has recently been appointed Professor of Neomathematics at the University of Maximegalon, in recognition of both his General and his Special Theories of Disaster Area Tax Returns, in which he proves that the whole fabric of the space-time continuum is not merely curved, it is in fact totally bent. ~ Douglas Adams

Levering himself over Evie's prone body, Sebastian risked a glance upward at the second-floor balcony. Bullard was gone. With a grunt of pain, Sebastian rolled to his side and searched his wife for injuries, terrified that the bullet might have struck her as well. "Evie…sweetheart…are you hurt?"
"Why did you push me like that?" she asked in a muffled voice. "No, I'm not hurt. What was that noise?"
His shaking hand brushed over her face, pushing back a tumble of hair that had fallen across her eyes.
Bemused, Evie wriggled out from beneath him and sat up.
Sebastian remained on his side, panting for breath, while he felt a hot slide of blood over his chest and waist.
People were crowding to flee the building, threatening to trample the couple on the floor. Suddenly a man came to crouch over them, having fought his way through the rushing horde.
He used his body as a bulwark to keep them from being overrun. Blinking, Sebastian realized that it was Westcliff. Dizzily Sebastian reached up to clutch at his coat. "He aimed for Evie," Sebastian said hoarsely. His lips had gone numb, and he licked at them before continuing. "Keep her safe…keep her… ~ Lisa Kleypas

There's a dream I keep having," Sheridan whispered into the telephone. "The dream has always been the same - until tonight."

"And what happened tonight?" asked Lil' John.

Sheridan hesitated, his words stumbling out in tentative phrases: "The man in my dream . . . he spoke to me for the first time . . . he told me of a sacred gift that had been lost . . . a gift that could save the world."

"Your dream," John urged gently. "Is the gods conspiring to give you freedom, just like the elders sang that night in the Sundance ceremony:"
When worlds collide
There sounds a tolling
A call to rise
And seize the moment
The gods conspire
To give us freedom
When worlds collide
The journey has begun
Sheridan pulled at the collar of his t-shirt, Lil' John's words suffocating him. Pushing back from the precipice of dread, Sheridan strained to speak, his husky words weak and staggering: "What are you saying?"

"Your search for the sacred gift has already begun . . . ~ Phillip R. White

As his hands fell upon the keyboard, it was still possible to believe a beautiful harmony had been formed at random, in spite of him. But a second later the music came surging out, the power of it sweeping away all doubts, voices, sounds, wiping away the fixed grins and exchanged glances, pushing back the walls, dispersing the light of the reception room out into the nocturnal immensity of the sky beyond the windows.

He did not feel as if he were playing. He was advancing through a night, breathing in its delicate transparency, made up as it was of an infinite number of facets of ice, of leaves, of wind. He no longer felt any pain. No fear about what would happen. No anguish or remorse. The night through which he was advancing expressed this pain, this fear, and the irremediable shattering of the past, but this had all become music and now only existed through its beauty. ~ Andrei Makine

History, the winnowing wind, never halts. We see the chaff rise, forget the waiting grain, seed of the future, fallen to the threshing floor. We never learn, but live on, slit-narrow, as if our living were a pencil line traced upon paper, behaving as trapped denizens of a flat world hemmed in by the bigoted horizon of our own making. Yet the meaning of living is a pushing back, a pulling down of the great walls and domes of fear and ignorance, is relinquishing the nest for the sky, ignorance for understanding. The look back is also a look forward. ~ Han Suyin

It took me until my teenage years to realize that I was medicating with music. I was pushing back against my stupid school uniform, instructors who called me by my last name and my classmates, who, while friendly enough, were not at all inspiring. ~ Henry Rollins

Literature tried to open the universe, to increase, even if only slightly the sum total of what it was possible for human beings to perceive, understand, and so, finally to be. Great literature went to the edges of the known and pushed against the boundaries of language, form, and possibility, to make the world feel larger, wider, than before. Yet this was an age in which men and women were being pushed toward ever-narrower definitions of themselves, encouraged to call themselves just one thing, Serb or Croat or Israeli or Palestinian or Hindu or Muslim or Christian or Baha'i or Jew, and the narrower their identities became, the greater was the likelihood of conflict between them. Literature's view of human nature encouraged understanding, sympathy, and identification with people not like oneself, but the world was pushing everyone in the opposite direction, toward narrowness, bigotry, tribalism, cultism and war. There were plenty of people who didn't want the universe opened, who would, in fact, prefer it to be shut down quite a bit, and so when artists went to the frontier and pushed they often found powerful forces pushing back. And yet they did what they had to do, even at the price of their own ease, and sometimes their lives. ~ Salman Rushdie

Really, Watson, you excel yourself," said Holmes, pushing back his chair and lighting a cigarette. "I am bound to say that in all the accounts which you have been so good as to give of my own small achievements you have habitually underrated your own abilities. It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

We all push sometimes, just to make sure someone is on the other side, pushing back. ~ Brigid Kemmerer

And do I look like the kind of man that can be intimidated?" barked Uncle Vernon.
"Well ... " said Moody, pushing back his bowler hat to reveal his sinisterly revolving eye. Uncle Vernon lept backward in horror and collided painfully with a luggage trolley. "Yes, I'd have to say you do, Dursley. ~ J.K. Rowling

It's the obligation of all writers to shoulder up against the wall of the permissible and shove. Writers must shove no matter how large the obstacle and without concern for the strength of those pushing back from the other side. This shoving is made more difficult by the fact that those pushing back are very often the same shovers who moved the wall to where it now stands--they nudged it forward as far as they could stomach it, and cannot tolerate a millimeter more. ~ J.C. Hallman

You're honestly going to let them all think you're gay?"
There was an odd steel about Skylar's expression. "Let them think what they want. I don't care."
Skylar looked serious, but Xander couldn't help pushing back. "You care a hell of a lot and you know it."
"I care more about you. About myself. I don't want to live like that anymore." His shoulders sagged. "Please, Xander. I don't want to fight. I want to be with you ~ Heidi Cullinan

Inside of you lies a seed capable of pushing back every forces trying to destroy your dream ~ Tshikororo Mashudu

Dread skittered down my spine and brushed away the last tendrils of sleep. Pushing back the bed linens, I disentangled myself from Polly. Then I put my bare feet on the wooden floorboards and felt the early autumn chill on my legs. I glided soundlessly down the stairs, drawn inexorably to Papa's chamber, the only room where the candles still burned bright. I ~ Stephanie Dray

There is no moment in America when I do not feel like I am fighting. When I do not feel like I'm pushing back against a machine that asks me to prove that I belong here. ~ Hanif Abdurraqib

You must also forgive yourself. You must forgive yourself for any past mistakes and failures that you cannot forget. ~ Laura Aranda

And then something blossomed deep within and opened almost like the multitude petals of a rose, pushing back the tension in rippling waves as they bloomed until she surrendered to relaxation with a soft exclamation of surprise ~ Mary Balogh

I'm glad the NCAA is pushing back the 3-point line a foot. I'm a big supporter of the 3-point shot; it's exciting. I hope the high schools adopt the same rule. ~ Morgan Wootten

After six hours in the car, he felt no panic, only a kind of numb wonder. On some level he had come to view his situation as almost natural. Sooner or later a black car came for everyone. It came and took you away from your loved ones, and you never got to go back. ~ Joe Hill

The first time I almost died was surfing: I got hit on the head with a board. I went under and started swimming until I hit the bottom of the ocean. I thought, 'Oh my God, I'm going the wrong way. Do I have enough air to get back up?' If you're a surfer, you know the feeling. ~ Robert David Hall

As I rolled over, stretching out, my only thought was to go back to the dream I'd been having, which I couldn't remember, other than that it had been good, in that distant, hopeful way unreal things can be. ~ Sarah Dessen

The painter folded back the heavy curtain, standing in the stream of light breaking through the damp thickness of the room. He paused, still holding the drape in his hand as he considered with suspicion that a world could exist outside the window. ~ Thomas Lloyd Qualls

Harry Collins was the first magician I ever saw back in 1965 when I was five years old. He was doing a magic show and I was the volunteer from the audience. ~ Lance Burton

The one who fights back retains his dignity and his self-respect. ~ Jeff Cooper

So if I can give anyone advice in this business on love and balancing, it's that you truly have to take a second, step back, to figure out who you are and what you want. And it is okay if those people around you don't fit into that. Because what you don't want to do is end up living your life for someone else. ~ Eva Marcille

Maybe we all have in us a secret pond where evil and ugly things germinate and grow strong. But this culture is fenced, and the swimming brood climbs up only to fall back. ~ John Steinbeck

One second you're having the time of your life in front of all these people, and then you come backstage to the exact opposite - there's only lukewarm carrots back there. ~ Babatunde Adebimpe

Don't do this," he begged hoarsely against her temple, crumbling inside. Honor wasn't the type to make empty threats or do something like this on a whim. No, she meant it and was prepared to go through with it. He had one last shot to change her mind, right now, before he lost her forever. So no, even he wasn't above begging if that's what it took to make her stay and work this out. "You said you still love me," he whispered brokenly. He was holding onto that for all it was worth. It had to be enough. He squeezed her tighter. "I know you're scared and I know you're hurting but… Don't do this. Don't walk away. Please." Don't leave me. She'd never know how much it cost him to beg her this way, but he was so damn scared right now he didn't care how pathetic it made him look. He'd do or say f-ing whatever it took to get her to listen to reason, make her change her mind. Anything except agreeing to live a lie and hide his true feelings for her from the rest of the world, no matter what the reason. A sob tore out of her. Honor stopped shoving at him. She wound her arms around his back and squeezed so hard he felt the muscles in her arms tremble. Liam closed his eyes and pressed his face against her hair, that painful bubble of hope surfacing again. He could feel her torment, her pain. If he could just calm her down long enough to get her to listen, really listen and then think this through… "Sweet pea, just listen to me," he began softly.
"No, I can't." Honor tore away from h ~ Kaylea Cross

That's the thing about hearts. They don't get put back together, not really. They just get patched. But the damage is still there. ~ Lauren Oliver

But pass through Copula Hall and she or he might leave Beszel, and at the end of the hall come back to exactly (corporeally) where they had just been, but in another country, a tourist, a marvelling visitor, to a street that shared the latitude-longitude of their own address, a street they had never visited before, whose architecture they had always unseen, to the Ul Qoman house sitting next to and a whole city away from their own building, unvisible there now they had come through, all the way across the Breach, back home. ~ China Mieville

It takes love, you see, to bring the world back to life. ~ S. Jae-Jones

Rather than trying to recover and maintain a tradition that links back to the past (and former glories), Chaos Magick is an approach that enables the individual to use anything that s/he thinks is suitable as a temporary belief or symbol system. What matters is the results you get, not the 'authenticity' of the system used. So Chaos Magic then, is not a system - it utilises systems and encourages adherents to devise their own, giving magic a truly Postmodernist flavour. ~ Phil Hine

I wasn't expecting two seconds of me on the medal stand to go viral after the Olympics. I came back to my room after the medal ceremony, and my dad said this picture of me doing a face I don't even remember making is blowing up. ~ McKayla Maroney

There are evidences of a very great art in Europe as long as twenty-five thousand years ago, and in Egypt as far back as sixty thousand years. Money had nothing to to do with the production of these treasures. Money will have nothing to do with the art of the future. ~ Henry Miller

Coming back from doing 'The Hobbit,' you think 'Sherlock' is realistic, but of course, it's not that realistic. ~ Martin Freeman

In the twilight of dawn, when his ears are still fresh to the day's first sounds, he can hear clearer than at any other time of day. He turns his head back and forth, cocking his ears to each direction. Sometimes, he closes his eyes to listen better. He hears the branches cracking from the frost, the groan of the snow beneath his feet, the rumbling of the lake ice, the timber in the house shrinking and shifting, sometimes he thinks he can even hear the clouds sliding across the sky. ~ Shandi Mitchell

All I really wanted to do was make an album that was going to be just back to what I like to do ... And it was a coincidence that these new bands, this new wave of bands, were doing Alice and Iggy rock. ~ Alice Cooper

Core strength and stability is very important to me. Tennis is all about rotation of the body and my ability to create power. I incorporate a lot of abdominal, back and glute exercises into my gym sessions. ~ Samantha Stosur

I've always had an inquisitive mind about everything from flowers to television sets to motor cars. Always pulled them apart - couldn't put 'em back, but always extremely interested in how things work. ~ Craig Johnston

When Brittany walks into Mrs. P.'s class on Friday I'm still thinking about how I'm going to get back at her for throwing my keys into the woods last weekend. It took me forty-five minutes to find the suckers, and all the while I was cursing Brittany. Okay, so I give her props for dishing it out. ~ Simone Elkeles

But by taking the time away, getting myself off the treadmill, and just slowing down and learning, I felt I had so much more to give back. And maybe that was something that needed to happen for all of us. ~ Lindsey Buckingham

At the tattoo parlor, my friend worked with needle and ink applying a design to the skin on his client's back, as the three of us sat discussing our spiritual desires and ambivalence about religion. In the midst of our conversation, the man under the needle turned and said, 'Jesus is cool, it's just that they have f***ed with Jesus. I mean, Christianity was at its best when it was secret and hidden and you could die for it.' This profound, if crass, statement recognizes that the power of the gospel lay in its ability to be a counter-cultural and revolutionary force - not only a story to believe, but a distinctive way of life. The man's comment prompted me to consider the questions: Am I in some measure complicit in the domestication of Jesus? ~ Mark Scandrette

Cats are too independent. They piss me off. They play when they want, and then they turn their back on you. Dogs, you throw the ball, and they bring it back, tongue hanging out, tail wagging. Cats are like "Not right now, too busy." Definitely a dog man. Except when it comes to cleaning up after them! Cats win that! ~ Denzel Washington

God will not give you more than you can bear. Just when it feels like your back is breaking ... the weight is lifted & you can stand straight again. He knows just how much you can carry & you find out that you are stronger than you thought. You have also built muscles for the future. ~ Sanjo Jendayi

I think innovation as a discipline needs to go back and get rethought and revived. There are so many models to talk about innovation, there are so many typologies of innovation, and you have to find a good innovation metric that truly captures the innovation performance of a company. ~ Indra Nooyi

Parting is inevitably painful, even for a short time. It's like an amputation, I feel a limb is being torn off, without which I shall be unable to function. And yet, once it is done ... life rushes back into the void, richer, more vivid and fuller than before. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

How far back does one's memory of someone go? ~ Kyung-Sook Shin

One day we fall in love with the one who makes us live intensely and laugh hard and heavy. And as hard as we love them, their friend loves us back equally and we just can't be. ~ Darnell Lamont Walker

I already had a feeling I was screwed, seeing I was in sacrificial virgin attire and in a corral. But now I was thinking I was way screwed. My attention focused back on her when she went on to say in a dire tone, The Wife Hunt. ~ Kristen Ashley

Why do you suppose that in the last 100 years technology has evolved a thousand times further than it has in the last 3,000 years? It's the level of souls that are incarnating. The older Atlantean souls are coming back. They have a natural affinity for communication, electronics, medicine, law and media. ~ Frederick Lenz

when she baked, she could feel herself coming back to center, that everything else fell away, and she remembered who she was supposed to be. ~ Jodi Picoult

It takes strength and courage to take a step back and remind ourselves that people's reactions are not about us; they are about them. ~ Ashley Sword-Surma

We have a deal."
"The hell you do!" Maria cried out, dashing into the room. She barely noticed that the others stayed behind in the hall.
Nathan looked disconcerted by her appearance, and Oliver looked alarmed. "Leave this to me, Maria," he said tersely.
"The only way that scoundrel is getting your mother's pearls," she shot back," is if I strangle him with them." She marched up and snatched the box from Nathan. "Besides, you already have them to me."
"And you left them behind," Oliver reminded her. "Gran said you refused to keep them."
"Well, I want them now."
"At the risk of being dragged through the courts?" he said, coming to her side. "Of having your name maligned by this vermin?" He lowered his voice. "Do you really want him examining every action you've taken in the past two weeks, having it all laid out before a judge?"
She could tell he was thinking of her appearance at the brothel and the unpleasantness there, not to mention her public betrothal to him. "Let him do his worst." She had an ace in the hole.
She was about to call for Miss Kinsley when Oliver said, "Hyatt won't let go of this matter without some financial consideration. With 125,000 pounds at stake-"
Nathan's bark of laughter cut him off. "Is that what she's told you her half of the company is worth, Lord Stoneville?" Nathan sneered. "Now I understand why a marquess is sniffing around her."
Oliver's eyes turned a dangerous shade of black. He seized the ma ~ Sabrina Jeffries

You spend five months filming in outer space and saving the world, and suddenly that kind of family unit and story disappears, and you come crashing back down to Earth, and you have to do your own washing ... and most actors are insecure that the last job they did will be their last job ever. ~ Sam Worthington

That breaks my heart, to think that you can't remember a world without the Humdrum. I worry that your generation will just acclimate to it. That you won't see the necessity of fighting back. ~ Rainbow Rowell

I'd been dreaming of such adventures since I was small. Back then I'd believed in destiny, and believed in it absolutely, with every strand and fiber of my little kid heart. I'd felt it like an itch in my chest while listening to my grandfather's extraordinary stories. "One day that will be me." What felt like obligation now had been a promise back then - that one day I would escape my little town and live an extraordinary life as he had done; and that one day, like Grandpa Portman, I would do something that mattered. ~ Ransom Riggs

The prime feature in Cornish geology is the upheaval of the granite, distorting, folding back, and altering the superincumbent beds. ~ Sabine Baring-Gould

He was again showing recklessness in giving voice to these spasmodic outbursts of worldly knowledge. The champagne perhaps caused this intermittent pulling aside of the curtain that concealed some, apparently considerable, volume of practical information about unlikely people: a little storehouse, the existence of which he was normally unwilling to admit, yet preserved safely at the back of his mind in case of need. ~ Anthony Powell

The thing about being an artist is that you evolve so quickly, you grow, you learn, you change, you find yourself hating work that you made months prior. That's the hard part about making an album, but every couple days I fall asleep listening to my album front to back and I lay there feeling so proud of what I did. ~ Halsey