Slack Quotes

Marcelina loved that miniscule, precise moment when the needle entered her face. It was silver; it was pure. It was the violence that healed, the violation that brought perfection. There was no pain, never any pain, only a sense of the most delicate of penetrations, like a mosquito exquisitely sipping blood, a precision piece of human technology slipping between the gross tissues and cells of her flesh. She could see the needle out of the corner of her eye; in the foreshortened reality of the ultra-close-up it was like the stem of a steel flower. The latex-gloved hand that held the syringe was as vast as the creating hand of God: Marcelina had watched it swim across her field of vision, seeking its spot, so close, so thrillingly, dangerously close to her naked eyeball. And then the gentle stab. Always she closed her eyes as the fingers applied pressure to the plunger. She wanted to feel the poison entering her flesh, imagine it whipping the bloated, slack, lazy cells into panic, the washes of immune response chemicals as they realized they were under toxic attack; the blessed inflammation, the swelling of the wrinkled, lined skin into smoothness, tightness, beauty, youth.

Marcelina Hoffman was well on her way to becoming a Botox junkie.

Such a simple treat; the beauty salon was on the same block as Canal Quatro. Marcelina had pioneered the lunch-hour face lift to such an extent that Lisandra had appropriated it as the premise for an entire series. Whore. ~ Ian McDonald

Showers and sunshine bring,
Slowly, the deepening verdure o'er the earth;
To put their foliage out, the woods are slack,
And one by one the singing-birds come back. ~ William C. Bryant

Someday, emerging at last from the violent insight,
let me sing out jubilation and praise to assenting angels.
Let not even one of the clearly-struck hammers of my heart
fail to sound because of a slack, a doubtful,
or a broken string. Let my joyfully streaming face
make me more radiant; let my hidden weeping arise
and blossom. How dear you will be to me then, you nights
of anguish. Why didn't I kneel more deeply to accept you,
inconsolable sisters, and surrendering, lose myself
in your loosened hair. How we squander our hours of pain.
How we gaze beyond them into the bitter duration
to see if they have an end. Though they are really
our winter-enduring foliage, our dark evergreen,
our season in our inner year
, not only a season
in time
, but are place and settlement, foundation and soil
and home. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

He was so conspicuously, irrefutably good-looking, it was silly; it made you want to laugh. With his long legs and his broad shoulders, and the flatness of his belly where his shirt tucked into his trousers, and those dark eyes with the thick black lashes, he looked like a god compared to other Pagford men, who were so slack and pallid and porky. ~ J.K. Rowling

I love making music, I love composing on my computer, just making crazy ethnic slack orchestral tracks, that's one of my fun things. ~ Casey Abrams

The problem is that many entrepreneurs start with good intentions to create a new mindset system but then slack off. The solution is to make that system part of your daily routine. ~ Lisa A. Mininni

How I wish I were by the sea again.
This slack season the men must be painting
the hulls of the boats or sleeping the noon away.
I would not sleep if I were they. ~ Simeon Dumdum Jr.

I think I'm a fun flatmate. I'm always cheerful. I go on tour with my band so it's 12 people on one bus and I feel like I'm the one who's happy in the morning. I'm not a chaotic person, but I might slack off on doing the dishes from time to time. ~ Zooey Deschanel

I saw people who had gotten so absorbed in other people's problems they didn't have time to identify or solve their own. These were people who had cared so deeply, and often destructively, about other people that they had forgotten how to care about themselves. The codependents felt responsible for so much because the people around them felt responsible for so little; they were just taking up the slack. ~ Melody Beattie

Help, Lord, will suit us living and dying, suffering or labouring, rejoicing or sorrowing. In Him our help is found, let us not be slack to cry to Him. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The clarity of gender makes possible the human dialectic. Let the lines of balanced tension go slack and the structure dissolves into the ooze of androgyny and narcissism. ~ Bill Vaughan

Being under the microscope meant I was never given any slack. I still managed to screw up plenty in life, mind you, but in the things I really cared about - the legal work, or the stories I was telling as a writer, or the office I built in government - I wasn't left a lot of margin for error. It's kept me driven. ~ Ronan Farrow

There is something that can happen to every athlete and every human being; the instinct to slack off, to give in to pain, to give less than your best; the instinct to hope you can win through luck or through your opponent not doing his best, instead of going to the limit and past your limit where victory is always found. Defeating those negative instincts that are out to defeat us, is the difference between winning and losing - and we all face that battle every day. ~ Jesse Owens

A heat wave crashes into my body and I tug at the collar of my winter coat. I could take this thing off and probably still sweat. The memories of his mouth moving against mine and how his hands pressed into my body flood my brain. I lick my lips in anticipation. I crave for him to kiss me again, but ... "Are you going to call me after?"
A small grin plays on his lips. "You aren't going to cut me any slack, are you?"
It's like he's begging me to tease him, and without thought, I slide back to the braver girl at the bar. "Is that a problem?"
He shakes his head. "Not from you." ~ Katie McGarry

The minister said, "Let us pray," but as everyone else bowed their head, I could only stare slack-jawed at the sight of Peter Van Houten. After a moment, he whispered, "We gotta fake pray," and bowed his head. ~ John Green

Reinvention takes place in the middle of the organization, so the first requisite is that there has to be a middle. I'll assume your organization still has one. Now pour in some slack, increase safety, and take steps to break down managerial isolation. Viola, the formula for middle-of-the-hierarchy reinvention. ~ Tom DeMarco

Durbeyfield was what was locally called a slack-twisted fellow; he had good strength to work at times; but the times could not be relied on to coincide with the hours of requirement; and, having been unaccustomed to the regular toil of the day-labourer, he was not particularly persistent when they did so coincide. ~ Thomas Hardy

I have to do draft after draft ... It takes me a long time, but I love doing it, and I have to do it every day, or I feel slack. ~ Donald Hall

Yeah," Alex said in his drawling voice. "I mean, Naomi only got beat half to death. She can cut this Clarissa slack, it's no big deal. But the captain's girlfriend got hurt. He's the real victim here. ~ James S.A. Corey

When he took my hand he taught me something about the value of touch, the communicative power of the human hand. I didn't know, as I lay there, that I would think of him many times in the years ahead. When my son lay on a hospital bed, age four, with the raging fever of meningitis, I reached through the bodies of the attending doctors and held his slack, heated hand in both of mine. When my youngest child disappeared beneath the waves of the Mediterranean Sea and I had to leap in, haul her out, turn her upside-down so that the water drained from her lungs. Then all she and I could do was sit on the sand, wrapped in towels, contemplating what had almost happened, her small fingers wrapped in mine. ~ Maggie O'Farrell

So often I wonder, do all brothers end up at Kitty Hawk? Flipping a coin to write history. One will fly. The other stands slack-jawed with awe. Maybe chasing his brother. The wind in his face now. The wind that lifts his brother. ~ Michael Hainey

The poems ... are moments when I had the intensity to see, and the energy to build, some careful analog that completed the seeing ... All I have been left is the exhausting habit of trying to tack up the slack in my life with words. ~ Samuel R. Delany

I rarely in a working day go more than 10 minutes without looking at Slack. ~ Stewart Butterfield

About me as a drinker: I wasn't much of one and had a short, bad history of doing it. The few times I'd tried drinking I either became too much like myself or not enough, but either way it was always calamity on top of calamity and I found myself saying way too much about too little and doing the wrong things in the wrong places. Once, at my boss's Christmas party, I passed out for a minute - passed out but still, like a zombie, remained fully ambulatory and mostly functional - and when I came to, I found myself in my boss's kitchen, the refrigerator door open and me next to it at the counter, spreading mayonnaise onto two slices of wheat bread and licking the knife after each pass before I stuck it back in the jar. I heard someone cough or gag, looked up, and saw the kitchen's population staring at me, all of their mouths open and slack, obviously wondering what I thought I was doing, exactly, and all I could think to say was, "Sandwich." Which is what I said. And then, to prove my point, whatever the point was, I ate it. The sandwich, that is. ~ Brock Clarke

When authors write from personal experiences,straight from the heart,it touches the readers. Their work speaks out to all who read it,and most of the time,people can relate to what was written. I have always believed that books can change people's lives. Especially ones where the author is sincere,and writes deep,thoughtful,touching things from their hearts.-Nina Jean Slack ~ Nina Jean Slack

If a man brings a good mind to what he reads he may become, as it were, the spiritual descendant to some extent of great men, and this link, this spiritual hereditary tie, may help to just kick the beam in the right direction at a vital crisis; or may keep him from drifting through the long slack times when, so to speak, we are only fielding and no balls are coming our way. ~ Rudyard Kipling

Stop!" she screamed. "Don't hurt him."
"Back off!" Billy shouted.
She yanked harder on Billy's arm.
"He isn't a vampire anymore, idiot. Look! Do you see that big, yellow thing up in the sky? That's called the sun. It's shining down on him, and he isn't exploding. His fangs are gone. He's as human as we are. Case closed."
Billy stared up at the sky, his jaw slack. "Not possible."
Jack mumbled, "They don't call me Jackpot for nothing."
"What?" Billy blinked at him.
"Private joke. ~ Kasi Blake

Several fireboat men were trying to board the burning ferry. They had no apparent reason to do so, for all the passengers were either dead or saved and the firemen could not hope to extinguish the flames simply by being closer to them. Why then were they working their way hand over hand on an alternately slack and taut rope that had started to burn, and dipped them now and then into the freezing river as the crowd took in its breath all at once? Peter Lake knew. They took power from the fire. The closer they fought it, the stronger they became. The firemen knew that though it sometimes killed them, the fire gave them priceless gifts. ~ Mark Helprin

Yukiko stared back at him. Slurred words and a soft stare, that stupefied, slack-jawed look slinking over his face and turning his skin to gray. An anesthetic, numbing the pain of well deserved loss. ~ Jay Kristoff

You're staring at me," I protest between bites of crawfish etouffee.
Asher lifts a shoulder. "Just watching in case you get foodgasmic again."
I hum as I swallow a particularly decadent bite. "I'm close. You like to watch, huh?"
His pupils dilate and his jaw goes a little slack as his gaze drops to my mouth. Just like that, we're not talking about food anymore. Maybe we never were. ~ Lexi Ryan

I'm at a stage in my career where I don't expect or get too much editorial input into what I'm doing. I have a proven track record of success, so my editors are willing to cut me some slack even when a particular approach is not to their personal taste. ~ Grant Morrison

Her face was slack with decay, the lower half slewed to one side, her grin wider than ever. It was a knowing grin, and why not? The dead understand everything. She was surrounded by her loyal court. ~ Stephen King

So are you comin' back with me or what?"
Megan lifted her head and sighed. "I have a few conditions."
"Shoulda known," Doug said, rolling his eyes.
"First of all, I did not sign up for a truck stop bathroom," Megan said. "You guys need to start cleaning up after yourselves in there. No more blood, no more hair, no more stains that I don't even want to identify."
"All right, all right," Doug said. "That it?"
"Hardly," Megan said. "I want a hands-off rule on all my stuff. Including my bike."
"Okay ... "
"And I want everyone to stop calling me Megan C Cups behind my back."
Doug's jaw went slack as he flushed. "How did you know about that?"
Megan raised her eyebrows.
"All right, fine. ~ Kate Brian

Show me you care about our common tongue. Bring to your [writing] passion, deeply informed by knowledge of your subject. Stay me, not with apples and flagons, but with wit and grace, humor and intense caring about your discipline. Don't slack, don't give it a lick and a promise, don't make it evident that you posted what was 'good enough for government work,' don't try and fake it. Give it your best, your all, not for pence, but for the love of the craft.
Do these things, as these writers and scores I have not named do, bring to your work your self, your heart, your voice, motherly or youthful, lawyerly or priestly, conservative or liberal, it matters not. Do this and I and hundreds of others will return again and again to your work, not merely because we may have a burning need for a new printer or an abiding interest in college newspapers or what have you, but because we wish to spend time with your mind and voice. ~ Markham Shaw Pyle

Why are you making that face, Fern?" Bailey asked.
"What face?"
"That face that looks like you can't figure something out. Your eyebrows are pushed down and your forehead is wrinkled. And you're frowning."
Fern smoothed out her face, realizing she was doing exactly what Bailey said she was doing. "I was thinking about a story I've been writing. I can't figure out how to end it. What do you think this face means?" Fern gave herself an underbite and crossed her eyes.
"You look like a brain-dead cartoon character," Bailey answered, snickering.
"What about this one?" Fern pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows while wincing.
"You're eating something super sour!" Bailey cried. "Let me try one." Bailey thought for a minute and then he made his mouth go slack and opened his eyes as wide as they could go. His tongue lolled out the side of his mouth like a big dog.
"You're looking at something delicious," Fern guessed.
"Be more specific," Bailey said and made the face once more.
"Hmm. You're looking at a huge ice cream sundae," Fern tried again. Bailey pulled his tongue back into his mouth and grinned cheekily.
"Nope. That's the face you make every time you see Ambrose Young."
Fern swatted Bailey with the cheap stuffed bear she'd won at the school carnival in fourth grade. The arm flew off and ratty stuffing flew in all directions. Fern tossed it aside.
"Oh yeah? What about you? This is the face you make whenever Rita comes ~ Amy Harmon

I must endure, fighting the temptation simply to become slack-jawed like most of my school 'peers' (they wish!), who will themselves into a collective, vacant, trancelike state for the duration of each class. (Although I sometimes secretly envy their ability to empty their minds completely for a full fifty minutes, reanimating only at the sound of a bell, like Pavlov's dogs ... ) ~ Beth Fantaskey

Many systems require slack in order to work well. Old reel-to-reel tape recorders needed an extra bit of tape fed into the mechanism to ensure that the tape wouldn't rip. Your coffee grinder won't grind if you overstuff it. Roadways operate best below 70 percent capacity; traffic jams are caused by lack of slack. In principle, if a road is 85 percent full and everybody goes at the same speed, all cars can easily fit with some room between them. But if one driver speeds up just a bit and then needs to brake, those behind her must brake as well. Now they've slowed down too much, and, as it turns out, it's easier to reduce a car's speed than to increase it again. This small shock - someone lightly deviating from the right speed and then touching her brakes - has caused the traffic to slow substantially. A few more shocks, and traffic grinds to a halt. At 85 percent there is enough road but not enough slack to absorb the small shocks. ~ Sendhil Mullainathan

He'll also cut you some slack if you're astonishingly stupid in an amusing fashion. Granny claimed that this explains why uncountable millions of breathtakingly stupid people get along just fine in life. ~ Dean Koontz

My day began with me feeling victorious. I feel powerful, blessed & loved. God is rock solid & steady, never waivering or slack in His promise. This day shall be amazing. Why? Because I said so. The words that flow from my mouth will accomplish that in which I sent it & will NOT return unto me void. Have an unforgettable, blessed day beautiful people : ) LK ~ LaNina King

Managerial discretion can take many forms, some very subtle. Individual managers may run slack operations; they may pursue subgoals that are at variance with corporate purposes; they can engage in self-dealing. ~ Oliver E. Williamson

I guess if you're really a friend, you overlook certain things. Its easy to be friends with someone who only says things you want to hear. I guess if you're really a friend, you have to cut a friend some slack. ~ Catherine Ryan Hyde

TIDES Every day the sea blue gray green lavender pulls away leaving the harbor's dark-cobbled undercoat slick and rutted and worm-riddled, the gulls walk there among old whalebones, the white spines of fish blink from the strandy stew as the hours tick over; and then far out the faint, sheer line turns, rustling over the slack, the outer bars, over the green-furred flats, over the clam beds, slippery logs, barnacle-studded stones, dragging the shining sheets forward, deepening, pushing, wreathing together wave and seaweed, their piled curvatures spilling over themselves, lapping blue gray green lavender, never resting, not ever but fashioning shore, continent, everything. And here you may find me on almost any morning walking along the shore so light-footed so casual. ~ Mary Oliver

God doesn't slack his promises because of our sins or hasten them because of our righteousness. He pays no attention to either. ~ Martin Luther

Lila looked to Kell. "You didn't teach me this one."
His jaw was slack. "I … I didn't know it."
Holland gave them both a bland look. "Amazing," he said dryly. "There are still things you haven't learned. ~ V.E. Schwab

We have so little in common, but we were both avid readers growing up. I read almost nonstop when I was little, and it saved me in school. I hated classes, hated teachers. They always wanted me to do things I didn't want to do. But because I was a reader, they knew I wasn't stupid, just different. They cut me slack. It got me through.
Reading couldn't help me make friends, though. I never got the hang of it. I would talk to kids, and over the years a handful of them even seemed to like me enough to ask to come over, but after that first visit to the house they never lasted. Ma told me what I did wrong but I could never manage to do it right. 'Act interested in what they say,' she said, but they never said anything interesting. 'Don't talk too much,' she said, but it never seemed like too much to me. So it wasn't like people threw tomatoes at me, or dipped my pigtails in inkwells, or stood up to move their desks away from mine, but I never really managed to make friends that I could keep.
And I got used to it. I got used to a lot of things. Writing extra papers to make up for falling short in class participation. Volunteering to do the planning and the typing up whenever we had group work assigned, because I knew I could never really work right with a group. And the coping always worked. Up until three years into college, where despite Ma's repeated demands to try harder, I stalled. Every semester since, I was always still trying to finish that last Oral Communicatio ~ Jael McHenry

His bike was lying against the curb, and he righted it, holding the handlebars. "What I do, I do out of hate, not humanity. Because punishing assholes gets me off - not saving victims. And actually all this . . ." He cast his gaze around us. "This isn't doing a fucking thing for me. So if you're not going to jump, I'd just as soon be home in bed."
Home. Well, there was one question answered.
Face burning, I shook my head. "No, I'm not jumping."
"Great." He slung a leg over his crossbar. Face utterly unchanged, the Badger drew his infamous Glock from inside his hoodie, took aim, and shot me in the thigh from five feet.
"Ow, Jesus!" White paint exploded across my favorite jeans, and a bolt of exquisite pain promised a welt.
"That's for wasting my time," he said, replacing the pistol. "I'm too fucking tired for false alarms, so next time have the decency to jump."
My slack mouth produced no words. I watched him glide away, silent and passive once more. As ever.
I glanced at my palm, streaked with white from where I'd grabbed my leg. Looked and felt just like when a bird shits on your hair. You pray it's a raindrop, but it never is.
Fuck you too, Badger. ~ C.M. McKenna

Have a policy of pre-emptive forgiveness. Refuse to get offended by petty things. Make a decision early on to cut the other person some slack in everyday life. Then you can take comfort in knowing they'll do it for you, as well. Accepting each other, flaws and all, is what love is all about. ~ Gaelen Foley

She watched him surrender his crisp gaze to a softening, a bright-eyed fear that seemed to tunnel out of childhood. It had the starkness of a last prayer. She worked to get at it. His face was drained and slack, coming into flatness, into black and white, cracked lips and flaring brows, age lines that hinge the chin, old bafflements and regrets. ~ Don DeLillo

I come from a musical family. Mom was a piano teacher for a large portion of her life, and Dad is a saxophone hobbyist who grew up in England during the heyday of Tubby Hayes and Ronnie Scott. I started taking piano lessons from my Mom, but it's too easy to slack off with your parent, so she passed me on to a friend of hers, where I got more motivated to play music by playing pop hits and TV themes. I did some classical training, but I was always more into the really thematic stuff. ~ Gerard Cox

And maybe there will be,
after all,
some slack and perfectly balanced
blind and rough peace, finally,
in the deep and green and utterly motionless pools after all that
falling? ~ Mary Oliver

Old age is, it occurs to Busner as he lies stranded on his side staring at the clock radio, a form of institutionalisation
it deprives you of your identity and supplies another, simpler one, it takes away your clothing and issues you with a uniform of slack-waisted trousers, threadbare jackets and moth-eaten cardigans, togs that are either coming from or going to charity shops. This done, it commits you to a realm at once confined and unbounded, an atrophying circuit of corridors that connect strip-lit and overheating rooms where you fade away your days reading day-old newspapers and specialist magazines
albeit not ones relating to the specialty that awaits you. ~ Will Self

You need slack to enable continuous improvement. In order to have slack, you must have an unbalanced value stream with a bottleneck resource. Optimizing for utilization is not desirable. ~ David J. Anderson

I am
Opposite of weak
Opposite of slack
Synonym of heat
Synonym of crack
Closest to the peak
Far from a punk
Y'all ought to stop talking
And start trying to catch up ~ Mike Shinoda

Activity was always to Inspector Slack's taste. To rush off in a car, to silence rudely those people who were anxious to tell him things, to cut short conversations on the plea of urgent necessity. All this was the breath of life to Slack. ~ Agatha Christie

I'm useless when I meet writers I love - I go slack-jawed and stupid with awe. ~ Katherine Boo

Besides, when I take you to bed, we're going to stay there for a long, long time. I don't want the sun to interrupt us, which it would in just a few hours." Did he say hours? Gabriel kissed my slack mouth and asked, "No response?" "Yay? ~ Molly Harper

My husband is exceedingly busy. For some time the talk of his going had been slack, but just now again there seems to be a move to get him sent to the front! ~ Sarojini Naidu

She turned just in time to seize a small boy by the slack of his roundabout and arrest his flight. ~ Mark Twain

I tend to cut David Brooks more slack than most people I know do, and I do it for one main reason. He can write. He's the best writer on that page, and I'd usually rather read him than others on that page I'm more likely to agree with. ~ Michael Tomasky

Pilfering was common in Communist China's state-owned enterprises, as the Party secretaries were slack in guarding properties that belonged to the government and poorly paid workers felt it fair compensation for their low pay. The practice was so widespread that it was an open secret. The workers joked about it and called it "Communism," which in Chinese translation means "sharing property." Pg. 390 ~ Nien Cheng

Slack work is like vandalism because it makes life harder for people - just like vandalism. ~ Matt Perman

He's here," he said, his voice flat. "Best behavior."
"Best behavior? I'm not some teenager you get to order around."
He glanced back at me, his face slack and tired. "Then stop acting like one," he said. "And start seeing the world for what it is, Clair. ~ B. B. Hamel

Hey Chester. How's it hangin'?"
His mouth went slack, but the corners of his lips were turned up into a smile. His eyes went wide as he said incredulously, "Layla. Effing. Warren. ~ T. Torrest

But sometimes it swings just right and there's a moment of suspension when I can't feel it. The rope goes slack and the laws of physics give me one second of relief. I can laugh and smile and feel something else. But those same laws undo me, and when it swings back there's a sharp tug on my heart to remind me that I forgot. ~ Mindy McGinnis

You must let the color to set for as long as it is possible.The darker the stain,the more that he loves you," she says,her English halting,broken, but the message is clear. Emphasized by the meaningful look she shoots Vane and me.
"Oh,we're not-" I start to say. We're not in love! But Vane's quick to stop me.
Slipping an arm around my shoulder, he presses his lips to my cheek, bestowing on the old woman the kind of smile that encourages her to smile back in a startling display of grayed and missing teeth. His actions stunning me stupid, leaving me to sit slack faced and dumb-with heated cheeks,muddied hands, and a rising young breakout start draped over my back.
Having never been in love,I admit that I'm definitely no expert on the subject. I have no idea what it feels like.
Though I'm pretty sure it doesn't feel like this.
I'm pretty dang positive Vane's just cast himself in yet another starring role-playing the part of my dashing young love interest,if only to appease this strange,Moroccan woman we'll never see again.
Still,Vane is an actor,and an audience is an audience-no matter how small. ~ Alyson Noel

I keep having the same experience and keep resisting it every time. I do not want to believe it although it is palpable: the great majority of people lacks an intellectual conscience. Indeed, it has often seemed to me as if anyone calling for an intellectual conscience were as lonely in the most densely populated cities as if he were in a desert. Everybody looks at you with strange eyes and goes right on handling his scales, calling this good and that evil. Nobody even blushes when you intimate that their weights are underweight; nor do people feel outraged; they merely laugh at your doubts. I mean: the great majority of people does not consider it contemptible to believe this or that and to live accordingly, without first having given themselves an account of the final and most certain reasons pro and con, and without even troubling themselves about such reasons afterward: the most gifted men and the noblest women still belong to this "great majority." But what is goodheartedness, refinement, or genius to me, when the person who has these virtues tolerates slack feelings in his faith and judgments and when he does not account the desire for certainty as his inmost craving and deepest distress - as that which separates the higher human beings from the lower.
Among some pious people I found a hatred of reason and was well disposed to them for that; for this at least betrayed their bad intellectual conscience. But to stand in the midst of this rerum concordia discors and o ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Divorced people try to maintain at least a shred of respect for their former spouses. They say, He or she is the parent of my children and I will do it for that reason. This statement brings me down. I always feel defeated after hearing it. As if that's the only reason there is to err on the side of slack toward this person you once loved, slept next to, cried over, made love to, bought presents for, married. I also think it's a lot of heavy webbing to drape over the kids, as if you're offering your tolerance as some hard-earned prize: See how I sacrifices for my children by continuing to endure that freak show that is the other person?
I always hope there is more to it. This is a person, after all, whom we pluck out of a crowd of possibilities. Magic attends that choice. Or if that word belongs irrevocably to the World of Disney, then use the word mystery. At any rate, it's a remarkable kind of calculus that makes you look at a field of men or women and quickly zero in on the one person who turns you on most. ~ Wendy Plump

If Britain was to close down altogether overnight, then China would take up the slack of carbon emissions in two years. If America closed down, just the growth in China's emissions would replace America's emissions in 12 years. ~ Christopher Monckton

Even if every major government were to slap huge taxes on carbon fuels - which is not going to happen - it wouldn't do much to halt climate change any time soon. What it would do is cost us hundreds of billions - if not trillions - of dollars, because alternative energy technologies are not yet ready to take up the slack. ~ Bjorn Lomborg

His jaw was slack and his mouth open, and he wondered if perhaps he would drown eventually; drowned by the falling rain. ~ Iain M. Banks

I'd have to, if on Sunday I wanted to run
off with some "slack-jawed Suzy," some "invertebrate," a "post-pubescent
wasteoid who imagines the Khmer Rouge to be makeup and Guerrilla Warfare
to be that rivalry which occurs between apes. ~ Marisha Pessl

I tend to eat vegetables only when I'm with the kids and the rest of the time, I'm a bit slack. But, I am weight-conscious, so I concentrate on avoiding junk food. ~ Daley Thompson

You probably have your own scenes you've lived through---scenes where you think that if only people knew what was really going on, they might cut you some slack and help you. ~ Dave Furman

Every industry has slack times, and everyone has bad days at work. ~ Patrick DeWitt

For years I have made the point that progress in winding back economic slack is made not by high growth in any individual year, but by maintaining an expansion over a sustained period. ~ Ian Macfarlane

There! There it is again! What language is that?"
From the bed, Roarke shifted. "I believe it's known as rooster."
With the weapon at her side, she stared at him, slack-jawed. "Are you fucking kidding me?"
"Not a bit. It's morning, more or less, and that's a cock signaling the dawn."
"A cock?"
"I'd say. I don't think Sindead and her man want you to stun their rooster, but I have to say, Lieutenant, you make a fascinating picture."
She heaved out a breath, set her weapon down. "Jesus Christ, we may as well be on another planet." She slid back into bed. "And if your cock gets any ideas about signaling the day, remember I've got a weapon. ~ J.D. Robb

She looked at Word. "You asked about X-it. He's sleeping. There are no intruders in his consciousness. I've done a sweep. Several installations, their A-I and Super-Recognizers have all been rendered inoperable, but others will quickly pick up the slack. Some will malfunction. All are on high alert. They know contact has been made, that you are still alive, and a global search has begun. No A-I or human Super-Recognizer can penetrate the room that you were in and in which X-it is now sleeping. But he cannot come out of the room until we are ready to return to the second in time when Death saved you. ~ Denny Taylor

I begin to realize that my memory is a great catacomb, and that below my actual standing-ground there is layer after layer of historical ashes.
Is the life of mind something like that of great trees of immemorial growth? Is the living layer of consciousness super-imposed upon hundreds of dead layers? Dead? No doubt this is too much to say, but still, when memory is slack the past becomes almost as though it had never been. To remember that we did know once is not a sign of possession but a sign of loss; it is like the number of an engraving which is no longer on its nail, the title of a volume no longer to be found on its shelf. My mind is the empty frame of a thousand vanished images. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel

The web is a dangerous place for a mind begging to slack off and be distracted by nonsense. ~ Michelle M. Pillow

She was a wonder junkie. In her mind, she was a hill tribesman standing slack-jawed before the real Ishtar Gate of ancient Babylon; Dorothy catching her first glimpse of the vaulted spires of the Emerald City of Oz; a small boy from darkest Brooklyn plunked down in the Corridor of Nations of the 1939 World's Fair, the Trylon and Perisphere beckoning in the distance; she was Pocahontas sailing up the Thames estuary with London spread out before her from horizon to horizon. been voyaging between the stars when the ancestors of humans were still brachiating from branch to branch in the dappled sunlight of the forest canopy. Drumlin, like many others she had known over the years, had called her an incurable romantic; and she found herself wondering again why so many people thought it some embarrassing disability. Her romanticism had been a driving force in her life and a fount of delights. Advocate and practitioner of romance, she was off to see the Wizard. ~ Carl Sagan

Blind compassion is rooted in the belief that we are all doing the best that we can. When we are driven by blind compassion, we cut everyone far too much slack, making excuses for others' behavior and making nice in situations that require a forceful "no," an unmistakable voicing of displeasure, or a firm setting and maintaining of boundaries. These things can, and often should, be done out of love, but blind compassion keeps love too meek, sentenced to wearing a kind face. This is not the kindness of the Dalai Lama, which is rooted in courage, but rather a kindness rooted in fear, and not just the fear of confrontation, but also the fear of not coming across as a good or spiritual person. When we are engaged in blind compassion we rarely show any anger, for we not only believe that compassion has to be gentle, we are also frightened of upsetting anyone, especially to the point of their confronting us. ~ Robert Augustus Masters

The Fringes are the place of the slack-willed, slack-jawed and slack-hued, remarked Floyd Pinken, who could comfortably boast all three of those attributes, if truth be known. ~ Jasper Fforde

People in L.A. don't have to brace themselves against the cold; they slack off permanently, and their brains turn to mush. ~ Juliana Hatfield

She speaks reverently of her summers here. This is her favorite place in the world, she tells him, and he understands that this landscape, the water of this particular lake in which she first learned to swim, is an essential part of her, even more so than the house in Chelsea. This was where she lost her virginity, she confesses, when she was fourteen years old, in a boathouse, with a boy whose family once summered here. He thinks of himself at fourteen, his life nothing like it is now... He realizes that this is a place that will always be here for her. It makes it easy to imagine her past, and her future, to picture her growing old. He sees her with streaks of gray in her hair, her face still beautiful, her long body slightly widened and slack, sitting on a beach chair with a floppy hat on her head. He sees her returning here, grieving, to bury her parents, teaching her children to swim in the lake, leading them with two hands into the water, showing them how to dive cleanly off the dock. ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

NOT, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist - slack they may be - these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be. ~ Gerard Manley Hopkins

Freedom granted by your rulers is just a chain with a little slack. ~ Seth Dickinson

Holy tit fungus! Did you give Sasquatch an autopsy in here? God almighty, girl." He waddled back into the hallway, this time holding his privates with both hands. "You balded the dick mitten. Nice. Let me see it."
He looked at her like she might drop trou simply because he suggested it.
"I would rather lick a monkey's armpit than show you my vagina." Dove gave him the finger.
"You know what I love best about a naked muff hole? It looks just like a camel's dangly lips." Duke extended his own lips to make them appear gummy and slack. ~ Debra Anastasia

When my life is unraveling, and everything about it is slack, my poems are taut. My poems take the fray and wind it back together. ~ J.A. Huss

All these freshmen have come in here and worked hard from the beginning. I can't say enough good things about them. They were the No. 1 recruiting class in the country and they're confidant. They know they are the best. That doesn't mean they slack off. They work really hard. Now it's time to go out there and compete. ~ Alex Bregman

Margaret Fuller Slack I WOULD have been as great as George Eliot But for an untoward fate. For look at the photograph of me made by Penniwit, Chin resting on hand, and deep - set eyes - Gray, too, and far-searching. But there was the old, old problem: Should it be celibacy, matrimony or unchastity? Then John Slack, the rich druggist, wooed me, Luring me with the promise of leisure for my novel, And I married him, giving birth to eight children, And had no time to write. It was all over with me, anyway, When I ran the needle in my hand While washing the baby's things, And died from lock - jaw, an ironical death. Hear me, ambitious souls, Sex is the curse of life. ~ Edgar Lee Masters

Cabal. Cabal. Cabal. I summon you to me. Now."
Simi and Kody exchanged a look that said he was as crazy as he suddenly felt when nothing happened.
Great, Dad. I can look stupid on my own. Didn't really need you to help out on that front.
That was his thought until he heard a curse and something slammed into him, knocking him against the wall. Nick shoved his attacker away, then froze as he looked into a pair of familiar, startled brown eyes.
Now this was the giant badass-tough demon that Nick was used to.
"Malphas?"
Tense and braced to fight, Caleb turned around slowly, surveying every aspect of his new surroundings. He paused as he faced Kody and Simi. "Where the heck am I? And how did I get here?"
Kody pointed to Nick. "Apparently, Nick summoned you."
"Nick?" Caleb glanced right past Nick and kept searching the room with his gaze. "Our Nick? Where is the little booger?"
She gestured even more exaggeratedly at Nick's position. "Right there."
Caleb's jaw went slack as he faced him."Nick?"
"Caleb?"
The word had barely left his lips before Caleb grabbed him into a bear hug and held him tight. Which was extremely awkward and gross. Completely weirded out by it, Nick tried to disentangle himself from the demon. It wasn't like Caleb to show any emotion toward him other than irritation or frustration. Sometimes anger.
"Stop C! If you're going to hug me like this, you got to buy me dinner first, boy. And it's got to be ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

The only bearable thing about being human is that you can change, the second you feel like. Get it through your head that you changed, and cut yourself some slack before you fucking choke to death from all the apologies in your throat. ~ C.M. McKenna

Yeah, well," Nico said, "not giving people a second thought ... that can be dangerous." "Dude, I'm trying to say thank you." Nico laughed without humor. "I'm trying to say you don't need to. Now I need to finish this, if you could give me some space?" "Yeah. Yeah, okay." Percy stepped back while Nico took up the slack on his ropes. He slipped them over his shoulders as if the Athena Parthenos were a giant backpack. Percy couldn't help feeling a little hurt, being told to take a hike. Then again, Nico had been through a lot. The guy had survived in Tartarus on his own. Percy understood firsthand just how much strength that must have taken. Annabeth walked up the hill to join them. She took Percy's hand, which made him feel better. "Good luck," she told Nico. ~ Rick Riordan

(...) I do think it is their husbands' faults if wives do fall: say that they slack their duties and pour our treasures into foreign laps, or else break out in peevish jealousies, throwing restraint upon us, or say they strike us, or scant our former having in despite. Why, we have galls; and though we have some grace, yet have we some revenge. Let husbands know their wives have sense like them: they see and smell and have their palates both for sweet and sour, as husbands have. What is it that they do when they change us for others? Is it sport? I think it is. And doth affection breed it? I think it doth. Is't frailty that thus errs? It is so too. And have not we affections, desires for sport, and frailty, as men have? Then let them use us well, else let them know the ills we do their ills instruct us so. ~ William Shakespeare

Whenever I may be tempted to slack up and let the business run for awhile on its own impetus, I picture my competitor sitting at a desk in his opposition house, thinking and thinking with the most devilish intensity and clearness, and I ask myself what I can do to be prepared for his next brilliant move. ~ Harry Gordon Selfridge

The job of a friend is not to decide what should be done, not to run interference or pick up the slack. The job of a friend is to understand, and to supply energy and hope, and in doing so to keep those they value on their feet a little longer, so that they can fight another round and grow strong in themselves. ~ Merle Shain

The caretaking has to be done. "Somebody's got to be the mommy." Individually, we underestimate this need, and as a society we make inadequate provision for it. Women take up the slack, making the need invisible as we step in to fill it. ~ Mary Catherine Bateson

They had painted a lady leaning her arms on the sill of the window. This lady was waiting for a husband. Her flesh was slack and she was some forty-five years old. Perhaps she had been waiting since she was fifteen. A rose and mauve lady that had not yet gathered her flesh and her beauty into dark clothes, and still waited, like a rose stripped of its petals, with her faded colors and her artificial smile, bitter as a grimace. ~ Rafael Sanchez Ferlosio

God does not slack his promises because of our sins... or hasten them because of our righteousness and merits. He pays no attention to either. ~ Martin Luther

Attachment exerted an invisible but powerful pull on the child, just as heavenly bodies are connected by gravitational forces. But unlike gravity, attachment makes its presence known by a negative inverse square law: the further the attached person is from their secure base, the greater the pull of attachment. The 'elastic band' which constitutes the attachment bond is slack and imperceptible in the presence of a secure base. If the secure base becomes unreliable or the limits of exploration are reached, the bond tugs at the heartstrings. ~ Jeremy Holmes