Should Have Been Quotes

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

Certainly a visitor from Mars descending upon a colony of birth-injured cripples, dwarfs and hunchbacks...could not deduce what they should have been. But then let us not study cripples, but the closest thing we can get to whole, healthy men. In them, we find qualitative differences, a different system of motivation, emotion, value, thinking and perceiving. In a certain sense, only the saints are mankind. All the rest are cripples. ~ Abraham H. Maslow

I wanted to write about my mother as she should have been if she had not been messed up by World War I. ~ Doris Lessing

I don't feel like there should have been three backs taken ahead of me. And I'll always feel that way. But there's only one draft, and I can't change it. All I can do is go out and prove myself. ~ Clinton Portis

Maybe our telling of the story wasn't as clear as it should have been, but I don't think that's true. In terms of understanding the story, it comes across. ~ Joel Coen

What happens also is that a lot of those people and reporters who vote for Hall of Famers, some of the people who were around when Ray Guy was around, are deceased. And some of the reporters don't remember Ray Guy. He should have been in the Hall of Fame 15 years ago. ~ Gale Sayers

Ysolde: "You think so? Well maybe your precious Aisling just needs to watch out, because I'm not some pushover, you know. I'm a mage, and mated to the baddest ass in the dragon world."
Brom looked speculatively at Baltic. "That's you?"
Baltic: "Yes. If you were my son, as you should have been, you, too, would have a badass. ~ Katie MacAlister

The messages pile up,
The worry knocks at
my door, louder & louder.
More calls from the therapist.
Pills that should have been
taken lie scattered across the floor.
The moon taps at my window.
Stars spell out their concern.

I pretend I do not see. ~ Darshana Suresh

I should have been smart enough to stay happy. But my ambition ruled my life. ~ Eva Gabor

I always wanted to be something, but now I see I should have been more specific. ~ Lily Tomlin

[Robin Stewart] was your man. True for you, you had withdrawn the crutch from his sight, but still it should have been there in your hand, ready for him. For you are a leader-don't you know it? I don't, surely, need to tell you?-And that is what leadership means. It means fortifying the fainthearted and giving them the two sides of your tongue while you are at it. It means suffering weak love and schooling it till it matures. It means giving up you privicies, your follies and your leasure. It means you can love nothing and no one too much, or you are no longer a leader, you are led. ~ Dorothy Dunnett

Now you're going to get it," I said, guessing Al was coming when the ones in the back scattered. "You should have been nice."
With a weird cry, the closest surface demon fell back, but it was too late. A flash of red light exploded overhead, smashing the buildings away as if I were at the center of an atomic explosion. The surface demons scattered like brown leaves, the remnants of their clothes and auras fluttering. It was Al, and he burst into existence in a grand mood, an old-fashioned lantern in his hand and a walking cane at his side.
"Rachel Mariana Morgan!" he shouted enthusiastically, raising the lantern high, and I painfully rose from my crouch, breaking my bubble with a small thought. "I've come to save you, love! ~ Kim Harrison

IT WASN'T A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT. It should have been, but that's the weather for you. For every mad scientist who's had a convenient thunderstorm just on the night his Great Work is finished and lying on the slab, there have been dozens who've sat around aimlessly under the peaceful stars while Igor clocks up the overtime. ~ Terry Pratchett

The wave of pure outrage blindsided me. I shouldn't be here, I thought. This is utterly fucked up. I should have been sitting in a garden down the road, barefoot with a drink in my hand, swapping the day's work stories with Peter and Jamie. I had never thought about this before, and it almost knocked me over: all the things we should have had. We should have stayed up all night together studying and stressing out before exams, Peter and I should have argued over who got to bring Jamie to our first dance and slagged her about how she looked in her dress. We should have come weaving home together, singing and laughing and inconsiderate, after drunken college nights. We could have shared a flat, taken off Interrailing around Europe, gone arm-in-arm through dodgy fashion phases and low-rent gigs and high-drama love affairs. Two of us might have been married by now, given the other one a godchild. I had been robbed blind. ~ Tana French

What captivated my fancy was that I, Axel Heyst, the most detached of creatures in this earthly captivity, the veriest tramp on this earth, an indifferent stroller going through the world's bustle - that I should have been there to step into the situation of an agent of Providence. I, a man of universal scorn and unbelief ... ~ Joseph Conrad

If capitalism had never existed, any honest humanitarian should have been struggling to invent it. But when you see men struggling to evade its existence, to misrepresent its nature, and to destroy its last remnants - you maybe sure that whatever their motives, love of man is not one of them. ~ Ayn Rand

It never stopped, even at night, it was our lullaby. It was our metronome, our pulse. It was our lives measured out in doses slightly larger than those famous coffee spoons. Soup spoons, maybe? Dented tin spoons brimming with what should have been sweet but was sour, gone off, gone by without our savouring it: our lives ~ Susanna Kaysen

Why doesn't this story have a happy ending?" Jeffrey asked. "It seems like there should have been hugs and kittens for everyone, at that point. Everyone likes hugs and kittens. ~ Matthew Storm

Eric Steele was strapped in and rubbing a rag over his father's 1911. Demo had brought the pistol with the rest of Steele's
gear on board the C-17. In the cockpit, the pilot pushed the throttle forward, shoving Steele back in his seat. He barely
noticed because he was thinking about the first time his father let him hold the pistol. It had felt so heavy in his hands
back then.


So much I never got to ask him.

He ran his thumb over the spot where the serial number should have been. It was silver and all traces of the file marks were
smoothed out by years of use. The pistol was one of John Moses Browning's masterpieces, the same design that the American
infantryman had carried in the Battle of Belleau Wood, Iwo Jima, Korea, and Vietnam. It was the only thing he had to remind
him of the father he never really knew.


Steele had made the pistol his own by modifying it to shoot 9mm, adding a threaded barrel, and installing suppressor sights,
which were taller than the factory ones. It was his gun now, and he slipped it away before taking an amphetamine tablet out
of his pocket and downing it with a sip of water. ~ Sean Parnell

The doctor gave him a look of sympathy. "We won't have a choice. If left untreated, both mother and child could die. The only cure for eclampsia is delivery of the baby. We're doing tests to determine the lung maturity of the baby. At thirty-four weeks' gestation, the child has a very good chance of survival without complications."

Ryan dug a hand into his hair and closed his eyes. He'd done this to her. She should have been cherished and pampered during her entire pregnancy. She should have been waited on hand and foot. Instead she'd been forced to work a physically demanding job under unimaginable stress. And once he'd brought her back, she'd been subjected to scorn and hostility and endless emotional distress.

Was it any wonder she wanted to wash her hands of him and his family?

"Will…will Kelly be all right? Will she recover from this?"

He didn't realize he held his breath until his chest began to burn. He let it out slowly and forced himself to relax his hands.

"She's gravely ill. Her blood pressure is extremely high. She could seize again or suffer a stroke. Neither is good for her or the baby. We're doing everything we can to bring her blood pressure down and we're monitoring the baby for signs of stress. We're prepared to take the baby if the condition of either mother or child deteriorates. It's important she remain calm and not be stressed in any way. Even if we're able to bring down her blood pressure and put o ~ Maya Banks

Danny should have been elated: Everything they had thought might happen was now happening. He wasn't elated, however; he was anxious. At 10:30, an hour into trading, every financial stock went into a free fall, whether it deserved to or not. "All this information goes through me," he said. "I'm supposed to know how to transmit information. Prices were moving so quickly I couldn't get a fix. It felt like a black hole. The abyss." It ~ Michael Lewis

Goldstein was delivering his usual venomous attack upon the doctrines of the Party - an attack so exaggerated and perverse that a child should have been able to see through it, and yet just plausible enough to fill one with an alarmed feeling that other people, less level-headed than oneself, might be taken in by it. ~ George Orwell

Grief should have been all-consuming. I hated myself that it wasn't. But sometimes I forgot. Jesus, how could I fucking forget? Sometimes I went for minutes without remembering my dad was dead, but that whole time it was regrouping so it could hit me all over again. ~ Lisa Henry

It seems as if every month brings another study showing that breast milk is what Ponce de León should have been searching for. ~ Nicholas Day

If we stay together, I'll have to forgive you over and over again, and if you're still in this, you'll have to forgive me over and over again too. So forgiveness isn't the point. What I really should have been trying to figure out is whether we were still good for each other or not ~ Veronica Roth

It should have been the Arabian Nights, but to Bond, seeing it first above the tops of trams and above the great scars of modern advertising along the river frontage, it seemed a once beautiful theatre-set that modern Turkey had thrown aside in favour of the steel and concrete flat-iron of the Istanbul-Hilton Hotel, blankly glittering behind him on the heights of Pera. ~ Ian Fleming

I could blame my lack of a happy ending on Edward all day long but the truth was that my own dissatisfaction with my life wasn't anybody's fault but mine. I'd been looking for a man to sweep me off my feet when I should have been looking for one who willing to pick up the pieces. Not some fictional hero, but a real flesh-and-blood man. Someone who would love me for the long haul. ~ Beth Pattillo

Quentin flicked a quick glance back at her again. Poppy. This girl had the wrong name. She should have been Rose. Great face, lots of prickles. ~ Ros Baxter

As I stood and gave the eulogy for young Michael Brown last week, I kept thinking about the fact that this child should have been in college instead of laying in a coffin. ~ Al Sharpton

We must beware of one who is in a passion against us as of one who has once sought our life; for the fact that we still live is due to the absence of power to kill, - if looks could kill, we should have been dead long ago. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Like I said, magic comes from life, and especially from emotions. They're a source of the same intangible energy that everyone can feel when an autumn moon rises and fills you with a sudden sense of bone-deep excitement, or when the first warm breeze of spring rushes past your face, full of the scents of life, and drowns you in a sudden flood of unreasoning joy. The passion of mighty music that brings tears to your eyes, and the raw, bubbling, infectious laughter of small children at play, the bellowing power of a stadium full of football fans shouting "Hey!" in time to that damned song - they're all charged with magic.

My magic comes from the same places. And maybe from darker places than that. Fear is an emotion, too. So is rage. So is lust. And madness. I'm not a particularly good person. I'm no Charles Manson or anything, but I'm not going to be up for canonization either. Though in the past, I think maybe I was a better person than I am today. In the past I hadn't seen so many people hurt and killed and terrorized by the same kind of power that damn well should have been making the world a nicer place, or at the least staying the hell away from it. I hadn't made so many mistakes back then, so many shortsighted decisions, some of which had cost people their lives. I had been sure of myself. I had been whole. ~ Jim Butcher

Let's go to the festival," he said. He was too thin, I thought. There were shadows under his cheekbones where flesh should have been, in a face so young. "No Ryzek. Just you and me."
I stared down at his upturned palm. He offered touch to me so freely, without realizing how rare it was. How rare he was, to a person like me.
"Why?" I said.
"What?"
"You've been nice to me recently." I furrowed my brow. "You're being nice to me now. Why? What's in it for you?"
"Growing up here really has warped you, hasn't it?"
"Growing up here," I clarified, "has made me see the truth about people."
He sighed, like he disagreed with me but didn't want to bother to argue. He sighed that way a lot. "We spend a lot of time together, Cyra. Being nice is a matter of survival."
"I'll be recognized. The currentshadows are memorable, even if my face is not."
"You won't have any currentshadows. You'll be with me." He cocked his head to the side. "Or are you really that uncomfortable with touching me?"
It was a challenge. And maybe a manipulation. ~ Veronica Roth

Grief took a terrible toll. It was paid at every birthday, every holiday, each Christmas. It was paid when glimpsing the familiar handwriting, or a hat, or a balled-up sock. Or hearing a creak that could have been, should have been, a footstep. Grief took its toll each morning, each evening, every noon hour as those who were left behind struggled forward. ~ Louise Penny

It does. This is how it should have been anyway.' I caught my breath as he kissed my neck, teeth grating my skin. 'And I'll take back what's mine. ~ Richelle Mead

Fire and Blood were the words of House Targaryen, but Dunk once heard Ser Arlan say that Aegon's should have been Wash Her and Bring Her to My Bed. ~ George R R Martin

I was born of heterosexual parents. I was taught by heterosexual teachers in a fiercely heterosexual society. Television ads and newspaper ads - fiercely heterosexual. A society that puts down homosexuality. And why am I a homosexual if I'm affected by role models? I should have been a heterosexual. And no offense meant, but if teachers are going to affect you as role models, there'd be a lot of nuns running around the streets today. ~ Harvey Milk

He should have been everything I ever wanted because he truly was more than I deserved. But I'd settled all these years, looking for normal because I was afraid of greatness. ~ Amelia Gates

I don't know that you'll understand this, but once upon a time, long ago, I was a scholar and a marathon man, but that fella's gone now, dead I suppose, but I remember something he thought, which was that if you don't learn the mistakes of the past, you'll be doomed to repeat them. Well we've been making a mistake with people like you, because public trials are bullshit and executions are games for winners - all this time we should have been giving back pain. That's the real lesson. That's the loser's share, just pain, pure and simple, pain and torture, no hotshot lawyers running around trying to see that justice is done. I think we'd have a nice peaceful place here if all you warmakers knew you better not start something because if you lost, agony was just around the bend. That's what I'd like to give you. Agony. Not what you're suffering now. I mean a lifetime of it, 'cause that's the only degree of justice I think we're ready for down here yet, and I know any humanist might disagree with me too, but I don't think you will, because you had a lot to do with educating me, I'm like you now, except I'm better at it, because you're going to die and I've still got a long way to go. ~ William Goldman

Remember that for all the books we have in print, are as many that have never reached print, have never been written down-even now, in this age of compulsive reverence for the written word, history, even social ethic, are taught by means of stories, and the people who have been conditioned into thinking only in terms of what is written-and unfortunately nearly all the products of our educational system can do no more than this-are missing what is before their eyes. For instance, the real history of Africa is still in the custody of black storytellers and wise men, black historians, medicine men: it is a verbal history, still kept safe from the white man and his predations. Everywhere, if you keep your mind open, you will find the words not written down. So never let the printed page be your master. Above all, you should know that the fact that you have to spend one year, or two years, on one book, or one author means that you are badly taught-you should have been taught to read your way from one sympathy to another, you should be learning to follow you own intuitive feeling about what you need; that is what you should have been developing, not the way to quote from other people. ~ Doris Lessing

The sun descending in the west,
The evening star does shine;
The birds are silent in their nest,
And I must seek for mine.
The moon, like a flower,
In heaven's high bower,
With silent delight
Sits and smiles on the night.

Farewell, green fields and happy groves,
Where flocks have took delight.
Where lambs have nibbled, silent moves
The feet of angels bright;
Unseen they pour blessing,
And joy without ceasing,
On each bud and blossom,
And each sleeping bosom.

They look in every thoughtless nest,
Where birds are covered warm;
They visit caves of every beast,
To keep them all from harm.
If they see any weeping
That should have been sleeping,
They pour sleep on their head,
And sit down by their bed.

When wolves and tigers howl for prey,
They pitying stand and weep;
Seeking to drive their thirst away,
And keep them from the sheep.
But if they rush dreadful,
The angels, most heedful,
Receive each mild spirit,
New worlds to inherit.

And there the lion's ruddy eyes
Shall flow with tears of gold,
And pitying the tender cries,
And walking round the fold,
Saying, 'Wrath, by His meekness,
And, by His health, sickness
Is driven away
From our immortal day.

'And now beside thee, bleating lamb,
I can lie down and sleep;
Or think on Him ~ William Blake

What I should have been, you see, is a neurologist. ~ Jonathan Miller

Oh, you're in television! That's interesting. No, I mean, the word television is interesting. It's a hybrid, you see: tele- comes from the greek, and -vision comes from the latin. It should have been either "telerama", or "procolvision". ~ Graham Chapman

I knew I should have been more worried about her motives. ~ R.K. Lilley

I was trying to go ... somewhere," Jace said. "But I kept getting pulled back here. I couldn't stop walking, couldn't stop thinking. About the first time I ever saw you, and how after that I couldn't forget you. I wanted to, but I couldn't stop myself. I forced Hodge to let me be the one who came to find you and bring you back to the Institute. And even back then, in that stupid coffee shop, when I saw you sitting on that couch with Simon, even then that felt wrong to me-I should have been the one who made you laugh like that. I couldn't get rid of that feeling. That it should have been me. And the more I knew you, the more I felt it- it had never been like that for me. ~ Cassandra Clare

Disrespect one of our associates and face the penalty | This was our creed. There should have been corpses floating that cold September eve. This was the perfect place to do it, too, in the middle of the ocean where gunfire goes unheard and chopped up limbs and torsos would be lucky to survive the predators and float onto a beach weeks or even months later. ~ Gary Govich

I used to think struggle was what aged you, but if that were the case, Julian should have been a hundred years old. Now I wonder if the opposite is true. Maybe instead of accelerating your age, pain won't let you grow. ~ Robin Roe

I should have been put down at birth. ~ Richard Dawkins

It's a cruel, ironical art, photography. The dragging of captured moments into the future; moments that should have been allowed to evaporate with the past, should exist only in memories glimpsed through the fog of events that came after. Photography forces us to see people before their future weighed down on them. Before they knew their endings. ~ Kate Morton

You get good at being by yourself and you're condemned to a life sentence of solitude. You think, "Wait a minute! I should have been a tap dancer or something". But in my life, I feel like I take my stories to people orally. ~ Sandra Cisneros

Possibly, I should have been a jazz singer from the beginning. ~ Rita Coolidge

Whole villages of Muslims had been hacked to pieces by drunken Christian youth, and as foreigners, we should have been pulled out by the organization. But the U.S. government supported the Christian tribes, just as the French had all through the colonial days, and to pull us out would have meant admitting that things weren't as stable for their puppet government as the western companies, trading in Ivory Coast for cocoa, rubber, and timber, and selling Coke and cigarettes, wanted to hear. ~ Tony D'Souza

Vickery, a slim fellow in his early fifties, had already sweated through his uniform. His shirt clung to his chest, and his pants puckered out in back where an ass should have been. ~ Gillian Flynn

The dead of Auschwitz should have brought upon us a total transformation; nothing should have been allowed to remain as it was, neither among our people nor in our churches. Above all, not in the churches. ~ Johann Baptist Metz

And the United States of America should have been at the front of that line. And was not ... ~ Kimberley Strassel

Oh, if I had done nothing simply from laziness! Heavens, how I should have respected myself, then. I should have respected myself because I should at least have been capable of being lazy; there would at least have been one quality, as it were, positive in me, in which I could have believed myself. Question: What is he? Answer: A sluggard; how very pleasant it would have been to hear that of oneself! It would mean that I was positively defined, it would mean that there was something to say about me. 'Sluggard' - why, it is a calling and vocation, it is a career. Do not jest, it is so. I should then be a member of the best club by right, and should find my occupation in continually respecting myself. I knew a gentleman who prided himself all his life on being a connoisseur of Lafitte. He considered this as his positive virtue, and never doubted himself. He died, not simply with a tranquil, but with a triumphant conscience, and he was quite right, too. Then I should have chosen a career for myself, I should have been a sluggard and a gluteton, not a simple one, but, for instance, one with sympathies for everything sublime and beautiful. How do you like that? I have long had visions of it. That 'sublime and beautiful' weighs heavily on my mind at forty But that is at forty; then - oh, then it would have been different! I should have found for myself a form of activity in keeping with it, to be precise, drinking to the health of everything 'sublime and beautiful.' I should have s ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Kaltain Rompier had just turned the tide of this war.
Dorian had never been more ashamed of himself.
He should have been better. Should have seen better. They all should have. ~ Sarah J. Maas

When she walked into my house the first time and I laid eyes on her, I was attracted to her. That part was easy. But then I got to know her. She wasn't like any other girl I'd ever known. She was so determined, when she should have been beat down. Her life had given her shit, and she was fighting to live. She wasn't going to back down or give up. I admired her. Then I got a taste, and I was sunk. She's everything I want to be. ~ Abbi Glines

Whoever decided that Indiana Jones should wear a felt hat and a leather jacket in the jungles should have been shot. ~ Harrison Ford

Dimitri should have been here with me. That's how it was supposed to have been. ~ Richelle Mead

She [Jo] recalled them holding one another and feeling a terrible numbness where caring should have been. She'd blamed it on the circumstances, the weight of what each of them carried that night, the responsibilities. But it wasn't that. They were holding something dying, maybe already dead, but they were too scared to admit it.
She wondered why the tragedy at Burke's Landing hadn't brought them together. Adversity was supposed to do that, wasn't it? Instead, everything got worse. Cork wasn't just distant. Something in him seemed to have died along with the other deaths that drizzly morning. Nothing mattered. ~ William Kent Krueger

They constantly told me that my first love would be a handsome boy who'd save me, or a pretty girl who'd hold me. So I searched the world for another, never knowing that my first love should have been me. ~ KV

You sold us out, Clark. You gave them the power that should have been ours. Just like your parents taught you. My parents taught me a different lesson ... lying on this street ... shaking in deep shock ... dying for no reason at all. They showed me that the world only makes sense when you force it to. ~ Frank Miller

Most of us mortals never get to know our real destiny; we're just trampled by it. By the time we raise our heads and see it moving off down the road, it's already too late, and we have to walk the rest of the way along the straight and narrow ditch the dreamers call maturity. Hope is no more than the belief that that moment hasn't yet come, that we might still manage to see our real destiny when it draws near and jump on board before the chance of being ourselves disappears forever, condemning us to live in emptiness, missing what should have been and never was. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Our enemies, like the Grecian hero, have one vulnerable point. You have not touched it yet. What should have been their element of weakness has been suffered to remain an element of strength. ~ Jay Alan Sekulow

I sometimes believe there should have been only two religions - true & lie. ~ Farooq

Her youthful habit of consuming a picture just inches from its aromatic surface died a long time ago. Sebastian, when they were first dating, had once called it an affectation and she could never bring herself to do it again. His offhanded comment should have been a sign of future cruelties and standards of perfection, but instead she'd quickly agreed with his assessment and was grateful for his candor. She ~ Dominic Smith

Understand?"
"Sure."
"Good."
"'Cause I always love a challenge."
He'd caught her with that when she was halfway in the cab. With one foot in and the other still braced against the curb, she stared at him. "What challenge?"
"You're challenging me to get you back into my life."
"No, I'm not."
"Your exact words were 'I challenge you, Bobby Ray Smith, to get me back into your life.'"
"I never said that."
"That's what I heard." The beauty of wolf hearing. You heard only what you wanted to, made up what was never said but should have been, and the rest meant little or nothing. ~ Shelly Laurenston

They were together, and that was all that mattered. The food, the house, the cars, the money, the power, all inconsequential. She would tear it all down herself with her bare hands if she had to, because her family was alive, well, and surrounding her in love. It was how it should have been that night, and it was the last thing Abigail thought or saw in her minds eye as she faded off into the oblivion and unknown of death. ~ Stephen Vaughn

When people photograph an object, they often put a pack of cigarettes next to it to give the viewer a sense of the object's actual size, but the pack of cigarettes next to the images in my memory expanded and contracted, depending on my mood at the time. Like the objects and events in constant flux, or perhaps in opposition to them, what should have been a fixed yardstick inside the framework of my memory seemed instead to be in perpetual motion. ~ Haruki Murakami

I was a good Indian girl, but naughty in that I would often sneak out of the back door and into the garden and go off with my friends when I should have been at home cooking or cleaning. ~ Gurinder Chadha

Perhaps I should have been a Negro. I suspect I would have been a rather large and terrifying one, continually pressing my ample thigh against the withered thighs of old white ladies in public conveyances a great deal and eliciting more than one shriek of panic. Then, too, if I were a Negro, I would not be pressured by my mother to find a good job, for no good jobs would be available. My mother herself, a worn old Negress, would be too broken by years of underpaid labor as a domestic to go out bowling at night. She and I could live most pleasantly in some moldy shack in the slums in a state of ambitionless peace, realizing contentedly that we were unwanted, that striving was meaningless. ~ John Kennedy Toole

You feel something you haven't for years: it's to do with university parties with bathtubs of alcohol and the smell of hamburgers on fingers and beer in a kiss. You should have been disgusted by all that but you weren't. You'd be wet so quick; to get their clothes off, to have their weight upon you, to be rammed against a wall with your leg curled up. ~ Nikki Gemmell

Bush is very clever. When the debate should have been about the deterioration of our cities and the lack of action by government, he sent in his idiot to make an outrageous statement about Murphy Brown. ~ Tim Robbins

We have no way to quantify the damage done by telling tens of millions of children that masturbation will make them blind, or that impure thoughts will lead to an eternity of torment, or that members of other faiths including members of their own families will burn, or that venereal disease will result from kisses. Nor can we hope to quantify the damage done by holy instructors who rammed home these lies and accompanied them with floggings and rapes and public humiliations. Some of those who "rest in unvisited tombs" may have contributed to the good of the world, but tho who preached hatred and fear and guilt and who ruined innumerable childhoods should have been thankful that the hell they preached was only one among their wicked falsifications, and that they were not sent to rot there. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Tattered. Water or something more foul soaked both knees of the pants. But Thomas took all that in quickly. Most of his attention was drawn to the man's head. Thomas couldn't help but stare, mesmerized. It looked like hair had been ripped from his scalp, leaving bloody scabs in its place. His face was pallid and wet, with scars and sores everywhere. One eye was gone, a gummy red mass where it should have been. He also had no nose, and Thomas could actually see traces of the nasal passages in his skull underneath the terribly mangled skin. And his mouth. Lips drawn back in a snarl, gleaming white teeth exposed, clenched tightly together. His good eye glared, somehow vicious in the way it darted between Brenda and Thomas. Then the man said something in a wet and gurgly voice that made Thomas shiver. He spoke only a few words, but they were so absurd and out of place that it just made the whole thing that much more horrifying. Rose ~ James Dashner

Someday they will die, their children will die, all children will die. Someday stars will wind down or blow up. Someday death will cover us all like the water of a lake and perhaps nothing will ever come to the surface to show that we were ever there. But we were there, and during the time we lived, we were alive. That's the truth- what is, what was, what will be- not what could be, what should have been, what never can be. If we die, then our death has meaning to the rest of the universe. Even if our lives are unknown, the fact that someone lived here, and died, that will have repercussions, that will shape the universe. ~ Orson Scott Card

It is very extraordinary, if the head of the money department of a country, being unprincipled enough to sacrifice his trust and his integrity, could not have contrived objects of profit sufficiently large to have engaged the co-operation of men of far greater importance than Reynolds, and with whom there could have been due safety, and should have been driven to the necessity of unkennelling such a reptile to be the instrument of his cupidity. ~ Alexander Hamilton

The real preparation for [Christ's] return is not to act like we know it's coming right now and do something different. It's to do what we should have been doing all along. ~ Mike Huckabee

Whether vampires should have been declared 'alive' and full citizens of the United States of America was one of the big debates ranking right up there with gun rights and abortion. In a way all of them are about life and death - defining what life is, and what it isn't, and how far we'll go to protect, or take, it. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

The encompassing silence and the ease(or difference) of my companions have left my soul free to contemplate, to drink in the wonder of this place. How fitting it is that it should have been here that Moses heard the word of God! For here,where Man -if he is to live-lives perforce so close to Nature and by her Grace, I feel so much closer to the entire mystery of Creation that it would not surprise me at all were I to be vouchsafed a vision or a revelation; indeed it would seem in the very order of things that such an epiphany would happen. ~ Ahdaf Soueif

I was trying to go... somewhere. But I kept getting pulled back here. I couldn't stop walking, couldn't stop thinking. About the first time I ever saw you, and how after I couldn't forget you. I wanted to, but I couldn't stop myself. I forced Hodge to let me be the one who came to find you and bring you back to the Institute. And even back then, in that stupid coffee shop, when I saw you with Simon, even then that felt wrong to me-- I should have been the one sitting with you. The one who made you laugh like that. I couldn't get rid of that feeling. That it should have been me. And the more I knew you, the more I felt it-- it had never been like that for me before. I'd always wanted a girl and then gotten to know her and not wanted her anymore, but with you the feeling just got stronger and stronger until that night when you showed up at Renwick's and I knew. And then to find out the reason I felt like that-- like you were some part of me I'd lost and never ever knew I was missing until I saw you again-- that the reason was that you were my sister, it felt like some cosmic joke. Like God was spitting on me. I don't even know for what-- for thinking that I actually get to have you, that I would deserve something like that, to be happy. I couldn't imagine what it was I'd done that I was being punished for-- ~ Cassandra Clare

I was thrilled. I had never met a famous writer before. I examined him closely as he sat in my office. What astonished me was that he looked so ordinary. There was nothing in the least unusual about him. His face, his conversation, his eyes behind the spectacles, even his clothes were all exceedingly normal. And yet here was a writer of stories who was famous the world over. His books had been read by millions of people. I expected sparks to be shooting out of his head, or at the very least, he should have been wearing a long green cloak and a floppy hat with a wide brim. But no. ~ Roald Dahl

I should have been a much better artist if I could have studied more and amused myself less. ~ Ida Rentoul Outhwaite

No, I was not going to work. I was an artist, a lover, a lover of women, of the oppressed and downtrodden, a warrior really. I should have been somewhere leading an armed revolution in the name of love and no, I was not going to work. ~ Michelle Tea

If any man has drunk a little too deeply from the cup of physical pleasure; if he has spent too much time at his desk that should have been spent asleep; if his fine spirits have become temporarily dulled; if he finds the air too damp, the minutes too slow, and the atmosphere too heavy to withstand; if he is obsessed by a fixed idea which bars him from any freedom of thought: if he is any of these poor creatures, we say, let him be given a good pint of amber-flavored chocolate ... and marvels will be performed. ~ Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Then, slowly, my feet settled to the ground. Before I had taken six steps I sagged like a sail when the wind fades. As I walked back through the town, past sleeping houses and dark inns, my mood swung from elation to doubt in the space of three brief breaths.
I had ruined everything. All the things I had said, things that seemed so clever at the time, were in fact the worst things a fool could say. Even now she was inside, breathing a sigh of relief to finally be rid of me.
But she had smiled. Had laughed.
She hadn't remembered our first meeting on the road from Tarbean. I couldn't have made that much of an impression on her.
'Steal me,' she had said.
I should have been bolder and kissed her at the end. I should have been more cautious. I had talked too much. I had said too little. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

Sure. I've been involved with a couple women who should have been committed. ~ Paul Levine

They've been lying from the start. From the first time we read the words 'once upon a time,' we're fed the idea that these girls - these gorgeous, demure, singing-with-the-wildlife girls - get a happy ending. And I get it. Poor thing had to do some chores around the house, fine. But the idea that she needs a magic old lady to come down and skim off the dirt so the prince will see her beauty? That's ridiculous. Maybe she should have been working on her lockpicking skills instead of serenading squirrels. She could have busted out, hitched a ride to the castle, and impressed the prince with her safe-cracking prowess. Sorry, magic-fairy lady. She didn't need your help. ~ Kelsey Macke

My darling was purring in her sleep, with the archaic smile on her lips, and she had the extra glow of comfort and solace she gets after love, a calm fulfilledness.
I should have been sleepy after wandering around the night before, but I wasn't. I've noticed that I am rarely sleepy if I know I can sleep long in the morning. The red dots were swimming in my eyes, and the street light threw the shadows of naked elm branches on the ceiling, where they made slow and stately cats' cradles because the spring wind was blowing. The window was open halfway and the white curtains swelled and filled like sails on an anchored boat ...
I felt good and fulfilled, too, but whereas Mary dives for sleep, I didn't want to go to sleep. I wanted to go on fully tasting how good I felt. ~ John Steinbeck

When you get over the anxiety, you discover you should have been mad a long time ago. ~ Amy Clampitt

For great and horrible punishments be appointed for thieves, wheras much rather provision should have been made that there were some means they might get their living, so that no man should be driven to this necessity. ~ Thomas Moore

There were so many different versions of him. It was countless versions of a song, and they were all original, and they were all true, and they were all right. It should have been impossible. Was I supposed to love them all? ~ Maggie Stiefvater

This person should have been aborted years ago. ~ Richard Dawkins

While there might be some people who were natural diplomats, she wasn't one of them. She was forever butting heads with people, challenging them when she should have been convincing them, raising hackles where she should have been raising support. She had always been in a hurry, without always knowing where she wanted to go; she was too impatient to wait for the right time or the right confluence of events. ~ Robert Masello

Hadn't they watched any high school comedies? We should have been whipping him with wet towels at this point, ferocious in our fury to protect the sanctity of the girls' locker room. Instead, they were concentrating on strategic posture shifts for maximum cleavagization. ~ Kiersten White

And if I really wanted to understand the Raramuri, I should have been there when this ninety-five-year-old man came hiking twenty-five miles over the mountain. Know why he could do it? Because no one ever told him he couldn't. ~ Christopher McDougall

Look at timber prices in the late '90s, at around $50. If you count the true damage of cutting down forests, the resultant flooding, insurance claims, and so on, then the timber price should have been $100. ~ Jochen Zeitz

Job-wise, I did have a moment of panic that I should have been a doctor a few years ago, but I hate when people vomit. ~ Kate Beckinsale

I was no child, for you and my mother gave me no childhood; and my maidenhood you tore from me, that I might never become a woman; and a woman I have not become, for I have been too afraid. But I return to you now all that you did give me: all the rage and the terror, the pain and the hatred that should have been love. The nightmares, and the waking dreams that are worse than nightmares because they are memories. These I return to you, for I want them no more, and I will bear them not one whit of my time on this earth more. ~ Robin McKinley

You look beautiful, Rena." Gently he laid a hand on the mound of her belly. His sister, he thought as wonder and pride mixed together. His baby sister. "I can't get used to it," he murmured.
Serena put her hand on his. "You don't have a great deal more time to get used to it." She felt the baby move under their joined hands and grinned as Alan's gaze dropped to them. "He or she is impatient to begin." Tilting her head, she studied Alan's face. "Dad's suddenly gotten it into his head there might be two...I wonder who might have planted that seed?"
His eyes smiled as he lifted them to his sister's. "It was purely a defensive maneuver."
"Mmm-hmm." Turning, she held out both hands. "You must be Shelby. I'm glad you could come."
Shelby felt the warmth, more carefres than Alan's, the welcome, less curious than Caine's. "So am I.I've been wanting to meet the woman who broke Alan's nose."
With a muffled chuckle, Serena jerked her head toward Caine. "It was supposed to be his." She narrowed her eyes a moment as Caine dipped his hands into his pockets and grinned. "It should have been his. Come on in and meet the rest of the family," she continued as she tucked her arm through Shelby's. "God,I hope Alan prepared you."
"In his own way."
"If you start to feel overwhelmed, just shoot me a look. These days all I have to do is sigh to distract Dad's attention for an hour and a half. ~ Nora Roberts