Quarter Quotes

Thirty miles is a long way, even by car, and on foot it's a thousand times more, especially for a dog, whose step is like a quarter of a human's. ~ Etgar Keret

Another drunk goes up to a parking meter, puts in a quarter, the dial goes to 60. The drunk says, "Huh. I lost 100 pounds!" ~ Henny Youngman

But did you know that during the past quarter century, no presidential election has been won by more than ten million ballots cast? Yet every federal election during the same time period had at least one hundred million people of voting age who did not bother to vote! ~ Andy Andrews

I had spent many years before I was 31 hearing people tell me, Oh Man, you're so funny, you need to be in television. But that and a quarter won't get you on a bus. ~ Chi McBride

Already it is twilight down in the Laredito. Bats fly forth from their roostings in courthouse and tower and circle the quarter. The air is full of the smell of burning charcoal. Children and dogs squat by the mud stoops and gamecocks flap and settle in the branches of the fruit trees. They go afoot, these comrades, down along a bare adobe wall. Band music carries dimly from the square. They pass a watercart in the street and they pass a hole in the wall where by the light of a small forgefire an old man beats out shapes of metal. They pass in a doorway a young girl whose beauty becomes the flowers about.

They arrive at last before a wooden door. It is hinged into a larger door or gate and all must step over the foot-high sill where a thousand boots have scuffled away the wood, where fools in their hundreds have tripped or fallen or tottered drunkenly into the street. They pass along a ramada in a courtyard by an old grape arbor where small fowl nod in the dusk among the gnarled and barren vines and they enter a cantina where the lamps are lit and they cross stooping under a low beam to a bar and belly up one two three.

There is an old disordered Mennonite in this place and he turns to study them. A thin man in a leather weskit, a black and straightbrim hat set square on his head, a thin rim of whiskers. The recruits order glasses of whiskey and drink them down and order more. There are monte games at tables by the wall and there are whores at another ~ Cormac McCarthy

If 22 bushels (1,300 pounds) of rice and 22 bushels of winter grain are harvested from a quarter acre field, then the field will support five to ten people each investing an average of less than one hour of labour per day. But if the field were turned over to pasturage, or if the grain were fed to cattle, only one person could be supported per quarter acre. Meat becomes a luxury food when its production requires land which could provide food directly for human consumption. This has been shown clearly and definitely. Each person should ponder seriously how much hardship he is causing by indulging in food so expensively produced. ~ Masanobu Fukuoka

Today, 8 million adult Americans, more than the entire population of Michigan, have not finished 5 years of school. Nearly 20 million have not finished 8 years of school. Nearly 54 million - more than one-quarter of all America - have not even finished high school. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

One boy took a peppermint from a woman's satin evening clutch but first held it up discreetly for consent. She moved her head down and back, just a quarter of an inch, and he smiled and slipped off the cellophane. ~ Ann Patchett

On this perfect day, when everything is ripening and not only the grape turns brown, the eye of the sun just fell upon my life: I looked back, I looked forward, and never saw so many and such good things at once. It was not for nothing that I buried my forty-fourth year today; I had the right to bury it; whatever was life in it has been saved, is immortal. The first book of the Revaluation of All Values, the Songs of Zarathustra, the Twilight of the Idols, my attempt to philosophize with a hammer - all presents of this year, indeed of its last quarter! How could I fail to be grateful to my whole life? - and so I tell my life to myself. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Somewhere along the line, between the idealisms of youth and the realities of adulthood, we become pacified by our jobs; we tolerate how we hurt the world so that we can sustain our lives. At some point, blurred in the past, we traded the greater good for ourselves. ~ Richard Beckham II

In most houses, militiamen received no quarter. "All that we found in the houses were put to death," Lieutenant Barker said. Lieutenant McKenzie confirmed this practice. ~ Thomas Fleming

Fundamentals in the gaming sector remained relatively healthy during the first quarter. ~ Brian Gordon

Certainly amongst all devotions, after that of receiving the sacraments, that of adoring Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament holds first place, is most pleasing to God, and most useful to ourselves. Do not then, O devout soul, refuse to begin this devotion; and forsaking the conversation of men, dwell each day, from this time forward, for at least half or quarter of an hour, in some church, in the presence of Jesus Christ under the sacramental species. Taste and see how sweet is the Lord. ~ Alphonsus Liguori

It has long been known that the chemical atomic weight of hydrogen was greater than one-quarter of that of helium, but so long as fractional weights were general there was no particular need to explain this fact, nor could any definite conclusions be drawn from it. ~ Francis William Aston

I just tell you what I feel. I go out there, you put a quarter on my tongue, twist my ear and I'll spit out some hit for you. ~ Al Jourgensen

Karikis then uttered what I thought to be a pretty fair assessment of the larger political situation in Greece. "This society is a society that has been very dependent on state money," he said, extinguishing his cigarette. "It's a communistic capitalism which gives people a small slice of state money so they will shut the fuck up and continue to bear the stealing. Now they say it's our fault because we received the state money." He paused and snapped: "Bullshit!" Then he added in a calmer voice, "We are bearing the weight of the public deficit because of our very big salaries? That is a myth. That is not half true. It's maybe one-quarter true. ~ James Angelos

In the same way, you were happy in spring,
With the half colors of quarter-things,
The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds,
The single bird, the obscure moon- The obscure moon lighting an obscure world
Of thing that would never be quite expressed,
Where you yourself were never quite yourself
And did not want nor have to be ... ~ Wallace Stevens

After filing a patent, your job is only quarter done. ~ Kalyan C. Kankanala

I have my own religion. I'm sort of one-quarter Baptist, one-quarter Catholic, one-quarter Jewish. ~ Tom T. Hall

Children listen to superstitious tales, the story goes, that that spot, in the heart of the "Big Cane," is a haunted place. For more than a quarter of a century, human voices had rarely, if ever, disturbed the silence of the clearing. Rank and noxious weeds had overspread the once cultivated field - serpents sunned themselves on the doorway of the crumbling cabin. It was indeed a dreary picture ~ Solomon Northup

It's certainly sobering to think that British consumers waste roughly a quarter of the food we buy. Or to put it another way, we funnel £12 billion a year from the supermarket through to our rubbish tips, costing each household an average of £480. ~ Tristram Stuart

In 2010, about six hundred thousand Americans, and more than 7 million humans around the world, will die of cancer. In the United States, one in three women and one in two men will develop cancer during their lifetime. A quarter of all American deaths, and about 15 percent of all deaths worldwide, will be attributed to cancer. In some nations, cancer will surpass heart disease to become the most common cause of death. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

We shall have no more prophets or sages from the ancient quarter, which is why the devotions of today are only the echoing repetitions of yesterday, sometimes ratcheted up to screaming point so as to ward off the terrible emptiness. ~ Christopher Hitchens

health risks of diets loaded with red meat, such as hamburger and steak, and processed meats, such as hot dogs, bacon, and cold cuts. They found that over a ten-year period, men who ate the equivalent of a quarter-pounder hamburger a day had a 22 percent higher risk of dying from cancer and a 27 percent higher risk of dying from heart disease than those men whose diet did not contain such red meat. With women, it was even more impressive. Women who ate large amounts of red meat had a 20 percent higher risk of dying from cancer and a 50 percent higher risk of dying from heart disease. ~ Richard Furman

Too bad. Game over. Insert new fucking quarter. ~ Nenia Campbell

You can take the people out of the city, but you can't take the soul - that remains here. ~ T.J. Fisher

Musick is certainly a very agreeable Entertainment, but if it would take the entire Possession of our Ears, if it would make us incapable of hearing Sense, if it would exclude Arts that have a much greater Tendency to the Refinement of human Nature; I must confess I would allow it no better Quarter than Plato has done, who banishes it out of his Common-wealth. ~ Joseph Addison

I remember playing a high school basketball game where I didn't eat anything for breakfast. I ate, you know, like a PB and J and some chips for lunch and nothing before the game. I didn't make it through the first quarter. I wish I hadn't have learned that way, but it did leave a lasting impression. ~ Andrew Luck

What do you privately consult about?"
Haunted houses, exorcisms, that sort of thing," he answered.
Wow. You're like-"
Don't say it."
-Giles from Buffy."
He rolled his eyes. "If I had a quarter for every time someone said
that. ~ Rhiannon Frater

You can buy turmeric from any supermarket - or get it raw from Asian shops and grate a quarter of an inch of the root into your food. There's evidence to suggest raw turmeric may have greater anti-inflammatory effects, while cooked turmeric offers better DNA protection. ~ Michael Greger

It ended up being a great quarter across the country. The national trend was more on the IT (information technology) side of things. When you look at Southern California and San Diego specifically, it's driven largely by the life sciences and biotech side of things. ~ Don Williams

...the danger of developing a policy of rush, of being gradually more and more obsessed by what one has to do next. In this way one may come to exist as in a prison, and one's life may cease to be one's own. One may take the dog out for a walk at eight o'clock, and meditate the whole time on the fact that one must begin to read at a quarter to nine, and that one must not be late.
And the occasional deliberate breaking of one's programme will not help to mend matters. The evil springs not from persisting without elasticity in what one has attempted, but from originally attempting too much, from filling one's programme till it runs over. The only cure is to reconstitute the programme, and to attempt less. ~ Arnold Bennett

The dismal quarter of Soho seen under these changing glimpses, with its muddy ways, and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never been extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful re-invasion of darkness, seemed, in the lawyer's eyes, like a district of some city in a nightmare (The Carew Murder Case) ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Man is at the mercy of events. Life is a perpetual succession of events, and we must submit to it. We never know from what quarter the sudden blow of chance will come. Catastrophe and good fortune come upon us and then depart, like unexpected visitors. They have their own laws, their own orbits, their own gravitational force, all independent of man. ~ Victor Hugo

The money economy thus leaves a large ecological footprint, defined as the amount of land and resources required to meet a typical consumer's needs. For example, with only about 4% of the world's population, the United States, the largest money economy, consumes in excess of one-quarter of the world's energy and materials and generates in excess of 25 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. ~ Stuart L. Hart

Why do you want to know?"
The shrug again. "Just wondering."
"Really. You've skipped your lawn tennis or duck hunting or whiskey drinking or whatever else people of your sort do all day, only to come all the way out to the island to ask me about the piano piece. Because you were just wondering." I pushed away from the door. "Coming here to kiss me would have been more believable."
"Well, it was second on my list."
"I'm not intimidated by you," I said, blunt. "If you're hoping I'll turn out to be some pathetic, blubbering little rag-girl who begs you not to ruin her, you're in for a surprise."
"That's good." Lord Armand met my eyes. "I like surprises."
We gazed at each other, he on the bed and me by the door, neither of us giving quarter. It seemed to me that the room was growing even more dim, that time was repeating the same ploy it had pulled in Jesse's cottage, drawing out long and slow. The storm outside railed against the castle walls, drowning the air within. It layered darkness through Armand's eyes, the once-vivid blue now deep as the ocean at night.
Beyond my window the rain fell and fell, fat clouds weeping as if they'd never stop.
"Nice bracelet," Armand said softly. "Did you steal it?"
I shook my head. "You gave it to me."
"Did I?"
"As far as everyone else if concerned, yes. You did."
"Hmm. And what do I get in return for agreeing to be your…benefactor?"
"The answer to your question."
"No kiss?" ~ Shana Abe

One of these fellows had crawled out from under the porch of the house at 29 Neibolt Street one day and had offered to give Eddie a blowjob for a quarter. ~ Stephen King

I say, Bertie," he said, after a pause of about an hour and a quarter.
"Hallo!"
"Do you like the name Mabel?"
"No."
"No?"
"No."
"You don't think there's a kind of music in the word, like the wind rustling gently through the tree-tops?"
"No."
He seemed disappointed for a moment; then cheered up.
"Of course, you wouldn't. You always were a fat-headed worm without any soul, weren't you?"
"Just as you say. Who is she? Tell me all. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Would your reply possibly be this? Well, it all depends on what my tax rate will be on the gain you're saying we're going to make. If the taxes are too high, I would rather leave the money in my savings account, earning a quarter of 1 percent. Only in Grover Norquist's imagination does such a response exist. ~ Warren Buffett

First Conjuration Addressed to Emperor Lucifer. Emperor Lucifer, Master and Prince of Rebellious Spirits, I adjure thee to leave thine abode, in what-ever quarter of the world it may be situated and come hither to communicate with me. ~ A. E. Waite

In recent times, European nations, with the use of gunpowder and other technical improvements in warfare, controlled practically the whole world. One, the British Empire, brought under one government a quarter of the earth and its inhabitants. ~ John Boyd Orr

A university is not about results in the next quarter; it is not even about who a student has become by graduation. It is about learning that molds a lifetime, learning that transmits the heritage of millennia; learning that shapes the future ~ Drew Gilpin Faust

Are you Italian?" Nico asked, putting
down his drink.

I looked up at him. "A quarter, and how
did you know that? I don't look it."

"You kind of do, plus you use a spoon like
Gina, that's the waitress, and she's half Italian."

I shrugged, having picked up the habit
from my nonna.

"What else are you?" he asked.

"I'm also a quarter Māori, part
French, Welsh, Danish, and English."

His eyes twinkled at me. "Add a few more
countries in there and you'll be a one-woman United Nations."

I smiled at that and lifted the pasta to
my mouth. Gina returned with Nico's plate of food, causing me to lower the fork
momentarily, making me wonder whether I should wait for him, but Gina started
asking him questions about university, so I took a bite. I shivered at the
delicious taste of garlic, the chef having put the perfect amount in, just how
my nonna would've made it.

The waitress disappeared as Nico picked up
his fork, twirling the spaghetti onto it without the aid of a spoon. "Looks
like you got the best parts out of all of those nationalities," he said.

I blushed at the compliment, always
embarrassed when people said nice things about my looks. "Thanks."

"You're welcome," he replied, popping the
spaghetti into his mouth, his unusual eyes once more twinkling at me, so bright
that I understood why his adop ~ Marita A. Hansen

The span of his seventy-five years had acted as a magic bellows - the first quarter-century had blown him full with life, and the last had sucked it all back. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

The vast majority (over 80 percent) of fast-food and similar low wage service jobs (<$9.24/hr) are held by adults. A quarter are adults over 40. Another quarter are moms raising kids. ~ David Rolf

Ordinarily my mom just sunk deeper into her corner of the couch and ignored it. She had succesfully ignored a quarter of a century of entropy and decay, had sat peacefully crunching popcorn and drinking soda while the house fell down around us. If I had to guess the number of books she read during that time, I would place the number at somewhere in the neighborhood of forty thousand. ~ Haven Kimmel

I hope it's that she simply doesn't figure large enough in his life to be worth mentioning, Vita thought.
And then she thought, if that was the case. It was therefore rather pathetic that Suzie loomed larger for her than for Tim, that Suzie was in some ways a more real presence in her life than in his. What she thought it boiled down to was that she really didn't want the woman he left her for to be the true, profound love of his life.
I auditioned for that role. I put so much effort into it, I loved it. I'm not ready to let it go to someone else.
But you keep forgetting he didn't leave you, Vita - you left him.
And then she thought, is this a slewed version of Aesop's dog in the manger? I don't want him - but I don't want him wanting anyone else?
And then she thought, For God's sake, shut up! This is doing me no good at all. All this thinking and wondering that I do isn't going to change him or the past. What a waste of quarter of an hour - sifting through all that emotional JUNK. She knew there was nothing of value in it- she'd been through it with a fine toothcomb over and again. ~ Freya North

There was a time when we were told ... that a sense of common interest would preside over the conduct of the respective members ... This language at the present day would appear as wild as that great part of what we now hear from the same quarter will be thought, when we shall have received further lessons from that best oracle of wisdom, experience. ~ Alexander Hamilton

Directors work 10 times harder than anyone else. Get paid a quarter. ~ William H. Macy

You should conduct a research- to study the issue or field you are interested in; explore the topic in every quarter and search information in all kinds of sources ~ Sunday Adelaja

Fuel-efficient my big engine is not. I drove 38 miles and burned through more than a quarter-tank of expensive premium gas. Every time I accelerated I could sense a Saudi Arabian somewhere was smiling. ~ C.D. Payne

It is over. The long Occupation that created Israeli generations born in Israel and not knowing another 'homeland' created at the same time generations of Palestinians strange to Palestine; born in exile and knowing nothing of the homeland except stories and news. Generations who posses an intimate knowledge of the streets of faraway exiles, but not of their own country. Generations that never planted or built or made their small human mistakes in their own country. Generations that never saw our grandmothers quarter in front of the ovens to present us with a loaf of bread to dip in olive oil, never saw the village preacher in his headdress and Azhari piety hiding in a cave to spy on the girls and the women of the village when they took of their clothes and bathed, naked, in the pool of 'Ein al-Deir.

The Occupation has created generations without a place whose colours, smell, and sounds they can remember; a first place that belongs to them, that they can return to in their memories in their cobbled-together exiles. There is no childhood bed for them to remember, a bed on which they forgot a soft cloth doll, or whose white pillows - once the adults had gone out of an evening were their weapons in a battle that had them shirking with delight. This is it. The Occupation has created generations of us that have to adore an unknown beloved; distant, difficult, surrounded by guards, by walls, by nuclear missiles, by sheer terror.

The long Occupation has succe ~ Mourid Barghouti

The problem with keeping money in a bank is that in the blink of a tiger's eye it will turn on you: what's yours becomes theirs, what was your sweat and labor and sold off portions of a lifetime become a stranger's. This problem - this banking problem - gnaws at the forefront of Hock Seng's mind, a genehack weevil that he cannot dig out and cannot pinch into pus and exoskeleton fragments.

Imagined in terms of the time - time spent earning wages that a bank then holds - a bank can own more than half of a man. Well, at least a third, even if you are a lazy Thai. And a man without one third of his life, in truth, has no life at all.

Which third can a man lose? The third from his chest to the top of his balding skull? From his waist to his yellowing toenails? Two legs and an arm? Two arms and a head? A quarter of a man, cut away, might still hope to survive, but a third is too much to tolerate.

This is the problem with a bank. As soon as you place your money in its mouth, it turns out that the tiger has gotten its teeth locked around your head. One third, or one half, or just a liver-spotted skull, it might as well be all.

But if a bank cannot be trusted, what can? ~ Paolo Bacigalupi

Night came. The moon was entering her first quarter, and her insufficient light would soon die out in the mist on the horizon. Clouds were rising from the east, and already overcast a part of the heavens. ~ Jules Verne

A Child will make two Dishes at an Entertainment for Friends; and when the Family dines alone, the fore or hind Quarter will makea reasonable Dish; and seasoned with a little Pepper or Salt, will be very good Boiled on the fourth Day, especially in Winter. ~ Jonathan Swift

As it was a time of war between the Catholics and the Huguenots, and as he saw the Catholics exterminate the Huguenots and the Huguenots exterminate the Catholics--all in the name of religion--he adopted a mixed belief which permitted him to be sometimes Catholic, sometimes a Huguenot. Now, he was accustomed to walk with his fowling piece on his shoulder, behind the hedges which border the roads, and when he saw a Catholic coming alone, the Protestant religion immediately prevailed in his mind. He lowered his gun in the direction of the traveler; then, when he was within ten paces of him, he commenced a conversation which almost always ended by the traveler's abandoning his purse to save his life. It goes without saying that when he saw a Huguenot coming, he felt himself filled with such ardent Catholic zeal that he could not understand how, a quarter of an hour before, he had been able to have any doubts upon the superiority of our holy religion. ~ Alexandre Dumas

A quarter of America is a dramatic, tense, violent country, exploding with contradictions, full of brutal, physiological vitality, and that is the America that I have really loved and love. But a good half of it is a country of boredom, emptiness, monotony, brainless production, and brainless consumption, and this is the American inferno. ~ Italo Calvino

Where I live you're not supposed to shoot a firearm within a quarter mile of a dwelling. ~ Bonnie Jo Campbell

I would be content with any job, however thankless, in any quarter, however remote, if I had the chance of making a corner of the desert blossom and a solitary place glad. ~ John Buchan

American family life has never been particularly idyllic. In the nineteenth century, nearly a quarter of all children experienced the death of one of their parents ... Not until the sixties did the chief cause of separation of parents shift from death to divorce. ~ Richard Louv

If we operate with a belief in long sweeps of time, we build cathedrals; if we operate from fiscal quarter to fiscal quarter, we build ugly shopping malls. ~ Stephen Nachmanovitch

Our economy creates and loses jobs every quarter in the millions. But of the net new jobs, the jobs come from small businesses: both small businesses on Main Street and many of the net new jobs come from high growth, high impact businesses that are located all across the country. ~ Karen Mills

Tampa's Latin quarter, Ybor City. Ybor had been the Cuban-Italian core when Tampa was Cigar City USA. ~ Tim Dorsey

Imagine the most terrible part of the whole punishment is, not the bodily pain at all - but the certain knowledge that in an hour, - then in ten minutes, then in half a minute, then now - this very instant - your soul must quit your body and that you will no longer be a man - and that this is certain, certain! That's the point - the certainty of it. Just that instant when you place your head on the block and hear the iron grate over your head - then - that quarter of a second is the most awful of all. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I wanted to create a multibillion dollar company that lets me go out and let us go out and change the world and create a Skin Cancer Awareness Center that costs a quarter a billion dollars. ~ Curt Schilling

You can't compare and rank heartache. Pain is pain is pain. There is no precise measurement. No quarter cup. ~ Kaui Hart Hemmings

Even the sidewalks in ‪New Orleans‬ had personality. ~ Hunter Murphy

The Ideal Man! Oh, the Ideal Man should talk to us as if we were goddesses, and treat us as if we were children. He should refuse all our serious requests, and gratify every one of our whims. He should encourage us to have caprices, and forbid us to have missions. He should always say much more than he means, and always mean much more than he says.

He should never run down other pretty women. That would show he had no taste, or make one suspect that he had too much. No; he should be nice about them all, but say that somehow they don't attract him.

If we ask him a question about anything, he should give us an answer all about ourselves. He should invariably praise us for whatever qualities he knows we haven't got. But he should be pitiless, quite pitiless, in reproaching us for the virtues that we have never dreamed of possessing. He should never believe that we know the use of useful things. That would be unforgiveable. But he should shower on us everything we don't want.

He should persistently compromise us in public, and treat us with absolute respect when we are alone. And yet he should be always ready to have a perfectly terrible scene, whenever we want one, and to become miserable, absolutely miserable, at a moment's notice, and to overwhelm us with just reproaches in less than twenty minutes, and to be positively violent at the end of half an hour, and to leave us for ever at a quarter to eight, when we have to go and dress for dinner. A ~ Oscar Wilde

If that god is described as being all-powerful and all-knowing and all-good, I don't see evidence for it anywhere in the world. So I remain unconvinced. If that god is all-powerful and all-good, I don't see that when a tsunami kills a quarter-million or an earthquake kills a quarter-million people. I'd like to think of good as something in the interest of your health or longevity. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The only thing that mattered was the quarter century or so he had remaining would be HIS life, to live out as he chose and in his own best interests. Nothing took precedence over that...The possibilities...were endless. ~ Ken Grimwood

For a quarter-century British governments had tried and failed to combine economic growth, increased social service provision and a high level of employment. The second depended ultimately on the first, but when difficulty arose, the first had always been sacrificed to the other two. The United Kingdom was, after all, a democracy whose votes, greedy and gullible, had to be placated. ~ J.M. Roberts

How remote we were too from the crazy musicians who arrived on a blustery fall day with the idea that, since this was a financial center, there would be a rain of coins from the tall buildings in response to their trumpet, guitar, and bass fiddle. The wind swirled their jazz among the canyons. I saw that no one was paying them the slightest attention. Feeling guilty, I threw them a quarter, but they didn't see it. They danced and made jazz in the cold, while upstairs we went on with our work, and they didn't exist, and it was nobody's fault. ~ Alan Harrington

I am concerned only with the proper training of the mind to encounter and deal with the formidable mass of undigested problems presented to it by the modern world. For the tools of learning are the same, in any and every subject; and the person who knows how to use them will, at any age, get the mastery of a new subject in half the time and with a quarter of the effort expended by the person who has not the tools at his command. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

The harvest moon has no innocence, like the slim quarter moon of a spring twilight, nor has it the silver penny brilliance of the moon that looks down upon the resorts of summer time. Wise, ripe, and portly, like an old Bacchus, it waxes night after night. ~ Donald C. Peattie

My Snowman sadly bowed
his head
in March, one sunny day,
and this is what he softly said
before he went away:

'In the middle of December
I was handsome, round,
and tall,
now I hardly can remember
those December days at all.
Oh my stomach's started
shrinking,
I am losing all my form,
and I'm thinking as I'm
shrinking
that I wish it weren't warm.

I can feel my shoulders
stooping
as my body's getting thin,
my nose has started
drooping
and my mouth has lost
its grin,
I am surely getting
shorter,
there is little left
of me,
my head is but a quarter
of the size it used to be.

I am getting hard of hearing
and my vision's little use,
for my ears are disappearing
and my eyes are coming loose.
Through the icy weeks
of winter
I stood prouder than a king,
now I'm thinner than
a splinter,
winter's melting into spring!' ~ Jack Prelutsky

When New York passed its Internet sales-tax law, Amazon's sales in New York State dropped 10 percent over the next quarter, according to a person familiar with Amazon's finances at the time. ~ Brad Stone

My mom said:'Don't put your finger in your brother's ear! If you want to know how that quarter trick is done, go ask the magician.' So I tugged on The Great Arturo's pant leg until he finally taught me how. That was my first magic trick! I was five years old. ~ Autumn Morning Star

Vashon is an island, accessible by ferry from Seattle, mainly populated by NIMBY-ish hippies, NIMBY-ish yuppies, boutique farmers, and wizards riding recumbent bicycles. A full quarter of the children in Vashon schools are unvaccinated. ~ Lindy West

I actually have a life I said I wanted to have. I wanted to tell stories I want and be with my family. I'm whispering it, because I'm a quarter Jewish and afraid it's all going to be taken away. ~ Helen Hunt

Another Quarter Pounder sometimes seems like a good idea- but I always regret later. Only in hindsight do we see how God would not let us settle for our well-intentioned but limited desires, but called us- sometimes weeping and kicking- to something more enduring and satisfying. ~ Christopher Ruddy

We crossed one of the subterranean rivers, then wound our wag through the library quarter and the Chamber of Birds.
(Carter says I should tell you why it's called that. It's a cave full of all sorts of birds. Again
duh. [Carter, why are you banging your head against the table?]) ~ Rick Riordan

Evans turned away, did something with his left eyelid for the benefit of the other two. "It's got him," he smirked. "He's tuned-in from now on."

Time started to slow up and act crazy. Minutes took much longer to pass than they had before. It was hard for him to adjust himself to the new ratio, he got all balled-up. When it seemed like half an hour had gone by, the radio would still be playing only the first chorus of the same selection that had begun a good thirty minutes before. Otherwise, nothing much happened. Vinnie was doing a good deal of muffled giggling over there on the divan. The stranger who had been sitting reading the paper got up, yawned, stretched ponderously, and strolled out into the hall, with a muttered "Happy landing!" by way of leave-taking. He didn't come back again any more.

Turner looked down one time and a quarter of an inch of charred paper was all that was left between his fingers. Then the next time he looked there was a full length cigarette again. ~ Cornell Woolrich

Just as a cautious businessman avoids investing all his capital in one concern, so wisdom would probably admonish us also not to anticipate all our happiness from one quarter alone. ~ Sigmund Freud

I've been trying to watch my weight a bit, but when I come to Las Vegas, all bets are off. I get enough healthy food in L.A. where the food is the size of a quarter and costs $40 - when I'm in Vegas, I want a steak! ~ Billy Gardell

It is a long way to Ireland, Janet, and I am sorry to send my little friend on such weary travels: but if I can't do better, how is it to be helped? Are you anything akin to me, do you think, Jane?"
I could risk no sort of answer by this time: my heart was still.
"Because, he said, "I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you - especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land some broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, - you'd forget me. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Bruges had the air of a ghost town. The high towers, the trees along the canals withdrew, absorbed by the same muslin: impenetrable fog with not a single rift. Even the carillon seemed to have to escape, to force its way out of a prison yard filled with cotton wool to be free in the air, to reach the gables over which, every quarter of an hour, the bells poured, like falling leaves, a melancholy autumn of music. ~ Georges Rodenbach

In 1959 Florence Green occasionally passed a night when she was not absolutely sure whether she had slept or not. This was because of her worries as to whether to purchase a small property, the Old House, with its own warehouse on the foreshore, and to open the only bookshop in Hardborough. The uncertainty probably kept her awake. She had once seen a heron flying across the estuary and trying, while it was on the wing, to swallow an eel which it had caught. The eel, in turn, was struggling to escape from the gullet of the heron and appeared a quarter, a half, or occasionally three-quarters of the way out. The indecision expressed by both creatures was pitiable. They had taken on too much. Florence felt that if she hadn't slept at all - and people often say this when they mean nothing of the kind - she must have been kept awake by thinking of the heron. ~ Penelope Fitzgerald

Hemorrhoids Go big or go home! That was my mental response to childbirth. You want me to push? Okay, awesome. I'm going to push so hard that I not only eject this baby from me, but I'm also going to turn my butthole inside out. When I explained the issue to my OB, she insisted hemorrhoids were totally normal, and if they didn't go away, I could get a quick surgery to correct them, a suggestion that I met with a resounding "Nope!" I had already spent a month in elementary school sitting on a blowup pillow, and I'm not pulling my pants down as an adult to have surgery in my butt. So, here I am, five years out from my last birth and sitting in my chair a quarter of an inch taller. ~ Brittany Gibbons

One quart milk, one quart cream, one dozen eggs, 12 tablespoons sugar, one pint brandy, half-pint rye whiskey, quarter-pint rum, quarter-pint sherry. Mix. Store by cool window or in cellar. ~ Kristiana Gregory

Now, now." She sits across from me with her toast and offers me a slice, but I push it back toward her. "Give it time. Do you remember what I told you in the hospital?" I shake my head. "Things'll get worse before they get better. Well, they surely did get worse, and now there's nowhere to go but up." She takes a bite and I keep spinning the quarter until she swallows. "You should bring that boy of yours by sometime for dinner, Cooper. It's about time we met him. ~ Karen M. McManus

They're in their own world, where good things happen, a quarter mile and a million light years away. ~ Caroline Kepnes

It was at a concert of lovely old music. After two or three notes of the piano the door was opened of a sudden to the other world. I sped through heaven and saw God at work. I suffered holy pains. I dropped all my defences and was afraid of nothing in the world. I accepted all things and to all things I gave up my heart. It did not last very long, a quarter of an hour perhaps; but it returned to me in a dream at night, and since, through all the barren days, I caught a glimpse of it now and then. Sometimes for a minute or two I saw it clearly, threading my life like a divine and golden track. But nearly always it was blurred in dirt and dust. Then again it gleamed out in golden sparks as though never to be lost again and yet was soon quite lost once more. ~ Hermann Hesse

I am a technophile, so there is no such thing as a first draft. The first draft plunges on, and about a quarter of the way through it I realise I'm doing things wrong, so I start rewriting it. What you call the first draft becomes rather like a caterpillar; it is progressing fairly slowly, but there is movement up and down its whole length, the whole story is being changed. I call this draft zero, telling myself how the story is supposed to go. ~ Terry Pratchett

Work hard - beat out half the team. Be committed, play fair as a team player - Beat out another quarter of the team. The last quarter is your desire and beliefs, and where you are playing. ~ John Kessel

I think New Orleans is such a beautiful city. It looks like a fairytale when you walk through the French Quarter or the Garden District. There is such a lush sense of color, style, architecture - and the people themselves. ~ Anika Noni Rose

I was 8 years old when I went across the street from my house to a fair, and they always had a used book sale. For a quarter I bought a book called 'Come On Seabiscuit.' I loved that book. It stayed with me all those years. ~ Laura Hillenbrand

During the past quarter of a century, most developing countries have liberalized trade to a huge degree. They were first pushed by the IMF and the World Bank in the aftermath of the Third World debt crisis of 1982. There was a further decisive impetus towards trade liberalization following the launch of the WTO in 1995. During the last decade or so, bilateral and regional free trade agreements (FTAs) have also proliferated.Unfortunately, during this period, developing countries have not done well at all, despite (or because of, in my view) massive trade liberalization, ~ Ha-Joon Chang

The library in summer is the most wonderful thing because there you get books on any subject and read them each for only as long as they hold your interest, abandoning any that don't, halfway or a quarter of the way through if you like, and store up all that knowledge in the happy corners of your mind for your own self and not to show off how much you know or spit it back at your teacher on a test paper. ~ Polly Horvath

We met financial expectations for the quarter in a difficult economic environment. We also signed a two-year programming agreement with Home & Garden Television to launch two new cable television series, and launched the Martha Stewart Kids magazine These initiatives provide future revenue and earnings growth for the brand and build long-term value for shareholders. ~ Martha Stewart

She's kept her love for him as alive as the summer they first met. In order to do this, she's turned life away. Sometimes she subsists for days on water and air. Being the only known complex life-form to do this, she should have a species named after her. Once Uncle Julian told me how the sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti said that sometimes just to paint a head you have to give up the whole figure. To paint a leaf, you have to sacrifice the whole landscape. It might seem like you're limiting yourself at first, but after a while you realize that having a quarter-of-an-inch of something you have a better chance of holding on to a certain feeling of the universe than if you pretended to be doing the whole sky.
My mother did not choose a leaf or a head. She chose my father. And to hold on to a certain feeling, she sacrificed the world. ~ Nicole Krauss