Slam Shut Quotes

I think a lot about Big Mind-Small Mind, expansive, wide-lens consciousness and contracted, introverted consciousness. I have moments-we all do-when just being alive is a pleasure and a miracle. They feel like moments when the shutters of the mind are open so I can look out. It also feels as if those same shutters have no hooks to fix them in an open position. One small wind and bang-they slam shut. ~ Sylvia Boorstein

If emotional pain or problems have cropped up in your life, you must insist on getting closure. Closure means you don't carry the problem or the pain. You address the issue, then you slam shut the book and put it away. ~ Phillip C. McGraw

Because the night you asked me,
the small scar of the quarter moon
had healed - the moon was whole again;
because life seemed so short;
because life stretched out before me
like the halls of a nightmare;
because I knew exactly what I wanted;
because I knew exactly nothing;
because I shed my childhood with my clothes -
they both had years of wear in them;
because your eyes were darker than my father's;
because my father said I could do better;
because I wanted badly to say no;
because Stanly Kowalski shouted "Stella...;"
because you were a door I could slam shut;
because endings are written before beginnings;
because I knew that after twenty years
you'd bring the plants inside for winter
and make a jungle we'd sleep in naked;
because I had free will;
because everything is ordained;
I said yes. ~ Linda Pastan

I feel for you man. Put a ring on it and bam, the legs slam shut. ~ Sylvia Day

Always walk towards open doors. And if they slam shut in your face, kick that sucker in and keep going. ~ Richard Gere

Maybe some doors that slam shut behind you and can't ever be opened again aren't the scariest things in the world after all. Maybe some doors are better off closed. That way we can focus on the ones still open in front of us. ~ Shaun David Hutchinson

I let the front door slam shut behind me and the fly screen rattle. It was as if each door was kicking me out of the old life I'd lived in that house. I was being thrown out into the world, new. The broken, leaning gate creaked open, let me out, and I gently placed it shut. I was gone, and from down the street, maybe fifty yards away, I looked back for a second at the house where I lived. It wasn't the same any more. It never would be. I kept walking. ~ Markus Zusak

Rather than allowing a book's intelligence to speak through our mouths, we replace it with our own intelligence as we talk about it. Rather than acting as emissary for the book, we become guardians of the temple, boasting of its wonders in the very words that slam shut it's doors: Reading matters! Reading matters! ~ Daniel Pennac

Privately, she was proud of her Oscar for The Big House because she had conquered a variety of obstacles to create a realistic film where for the first time audiences heard prison doors slam shut, inmates' steps shuffle down the corridors, and metal cups bang on the mess tables. ~ Cari Beauchamp

You are the most stubborn woman I've ever met, Bailey Hart."

"You should probably get out and meet more women then," she muttered, letting the screen door slam shut behind her. ~ T.J. Kline

When I was in Beck's world, I felt like the little sister. I'm in the big brother's room with all his friends. You just hang out and keep your mouth shut so they don't realize you're there and kick you out. I like being in situations where I can be an underdog, where I can be in the corner and observe and soak it in. ~ Feist

A dam inside my own heart opened up, and the feelings of heaviness and unease lifted like wind against the winter sky. I loved him. I loved his slow wit and his gruff demeanor and his tender disposition. I loved his endless empathy and his world-weary cynicism and his innocence. I loved that he was a walking, breathing paradox. I loved his lank hair and his iron earring and the tooth missing at the back of his mouth. I loved the way he laughed, music incomparable to any song, and the way he smiled, like you could see the child in him and the animal in him and the man in him all at once. I loved that he listened to crappy music, the kind that made me want to put my head through a wall, and I loved the charcoal stains on his knuckles and the pencils he tucked behind his ears. I loved that he told me to shut up as though I could actually say anything. I loved that he made me feel as though I could. I loved his short fingers and his rough palms and his long legs and his flat belly. I loved that he liked to read Kerouac but didn't know how to pronounce Kerouac. I loved his brown skin and his blue tattoos and his tempestuous blue eyes. I loved that he loved the land. I loved him. I loved him. Oh, God. I loved him. ~ Rose Christo

Life's inevitable changes are like a compulsory roller-coaster ride. You can cower and shut your eyes tight, or you can exult in the thrills. ~ Roger Crawford

How did you learn to stop crying? (Leta)
I nailed my heart shut and learned to stop caring about anyone except me. They can't make you cry when you don't give a shit about them or their opinions. You can only be hurt by the ones you love. (Aiden) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Come on, she's gorgeous. Guys in Richmond would be drooling right now."

Joe's brows shot up, and he turned as if expecting to see someone new behind him. "Sid?"

"You'd have to be a eunuch not to see that."

Joe looked insulted by that insinuation.

"You know what I mean. Who is she anyway?"

"She's my boat mechanic. A pain in the ass, but she can fix anything you put in front of her."

Beth couldn't respond. She'd need to lift her jaw off the floor to do that.

"What?" Joe asked, looking perplexed again.

"That is your boat mechanic? You work with a woman Hugh Hefner would pay a million bucks for, yet you claim not to notice she's the slightest bit attractive?" Beth pulled the tray to her now inferior-feeling chest and wrapped her arms around it. "Is that why you're so cranky all the time?"

Joe's mouth clamped shut and his eyes narrowed. "You're out of your mind. Sid isn't…" He trailed off as he looked again to the woman in question and got a straight shot of a well-shaped bottom. "You're nuts," he said, stomping out of the room. Before Beth could follow behind him, he leaned back in to yell, "And I'm not cranky! ~ Terri Osburn

Until that moment I'd thought I could have it both ways; to be one of them, and also my husband's wife. What conceit! I was his instrument, his animal. Nothing more. How we wives and mothers do perish at the hands of our own righteousness. I was just one more of those women who clamp their mouths shut and wave the flag as their nation rolls off to conquer another in war. Guilty or innocent, they have everything to lose. They are what there is to lose. A wife is the earth itself, changing hands, bearing scars. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

In training, you listen to your body. In competition, you tell your body to shut up. ~ Rich Froning Jr.

Marlon [Brando] showed me that you could do the work and not have to shut yourself off from people or your family. ~ Johnny Depp

Sometimes I get drunk and I get into arguments with taxi drivers. And I get out the cab and I slam the door. That's not the way to win an argument with a taxi driver. The way to win is you get out of the cab and you leave the door open. And then he has to step out and come around and close that door. And while he's doing that, I'm on the other side opening the other doors-and we just go around and around and around, and I got my own Benny Hill situation going on in life. ~ Hannibal Buress

Make no mistake about it, my friends - Republicans, the American people are never going to forget that it was you who shut down the government of the people. ~ David Scott

Magnus looked at her meditatively. 'I think,' he said, 'there isn't much that Jace wouldn't do for you, if you asked him.'
Clary opened her mouth and then shut it again. She thought of the way Magnus had always seemed to know how Alec felt about Jace, how Simon felt about her. Her feelings for Jace must be written on her face even now, and Magnus was an expert reader. She glanced away. ~ Cassandra Clare

Law and order is a social service. Crime and the fear which the threat of crime induces can paralyse whole communities, keep lonely and vulnerable elderly people shut up in their homes, scar young lives and raise to cult status the swaggering violent bully who achieves predatory control over the streets. I suspect that there would be more support and less criticism than today's political leaders imagine for a large shift of resources from Social Security benefits to law and order - as long as rhetoric about getting tough on crime was matched by practice. ~ Margaret Thatcher

11-His days in Shadbagh were numbered, like Shuja's. He knew this now. There was nothing left for him here. He had no home here. He would wait until winter passed and the spring thaw set in, and he would rise one morning before dawn and he would step out the door. He would choose a direction and he would begin to walk. He would walk as far from Shadbagh as his feet would take him. And if one day, trekking across some vast open field, despair should take hold of him, he would stop in his tracks and shut his eyes and he would think of the falcon feather Pari had found in the desert. He would picture the feather coming loose from the bird, up in the clouds, half a mile above the world, twirling and spinning in violent currents, hurled by gusts of blustering wind across miles and miles of desert and mountains, to finally land, of all places and against all odds, at the foot of that one boulder for his sister to find. It would strike him with wonder, then, and hope too, that such things happened, And though he would know better, he would take heart, and he would open his eyes, and walk. ~ Khaled Hosseini

I'd shut myself out for so long that I had forgotten how wonderful it felt to be included, to be seen, to be heard. ~ Savannah Brown

I pretend not to teach, but to inquire; and therefore cannot but confess here again,–that external and internal sensation are the only passages I can find of knowledge to the understanding. These alone, as far as I can discover, are the windows by which light is let into this DARK ROOM. For, methinks, the understanding is not much unlike a closet wholly shut from light, with only some little openings left, to let in external visible resemblances, or ideas of things without: which, would they but stay there, and lie so orderly as to be found upon occasion, it would very much resemble the understanding of a man, in reference to all objects of sight, and the ideas of them. ~ John Locke

You talk like somebody's grandmother, you know." "Shut ~ Santino Hassell

Now, the last one was that the demon king can't stand either in heaven or on the earth. Urga set the demon on his lap, which means I guess I'll have to…sit on your back."
Awkward. Even though Ren was a big tiger and it would be like riding a small pony, I was still conscious that he was a man, and I didn't feel right about turning him into a pack animal. I took off my backpack and set it down wondering what I could do to make this a bit less embarrassing. Mustering the courage to sit on his back, I'd just decided that it wouldn't be too bad if I sat sidesaddle, when my feet flew out from under me.
Ren had changed into a man and swept me up into his arms. I wiggled for a minute, protesting, but he just gave me a look-the don't-even-bother-coming-up-with-an-argument look. I shut my mouth. He leaned over to pick up the backpack, let it dangle from his fingers, and then said, "What's next?"
"I don't know. That's all that Mr. Kadam told me."
He shifted me in his arms, walked over to stand in the doorway again, then peered up at the statue. He murmured, "I don't see any changes."
He held me securely while looking at the statue and, I have to admit, I totally stopped caring about what we were doing. The scratches on my arm that had been throbbing a moment ago didn't bother me at all. I let myself enjoy the feeling of being cuddled up close to his muscular chest. What girl didn't want to be swept up in the arms of a drop-dead gorgeous man? I allowed my gaze t ~ Colleen Houck

You're looking for a man who can fix you?"
"No! I don't expect a man to fix me! I'm not an idiot. I just want a man I can hide behind."
Chase's eyebrows flew high. His mouth twitched up, and Jane felt her mouth twitch, too.
"Jane, I'm no Dr. Phil, but I'm pretty sure you're certifiably fucked-up."
"Shut up!"
"It's true. Man, if I wasn't already in love with you, I'd be out of here. ~ Victoria Dahl

Chloe kept her expression bland. He looked immensely pleased with himself this morning, and there was no way
she was letting him know she'd had even one nocturnal thought about him. "I can't remember," she said, blinking
guilelessly. "In fact, I slept so deeply I don't think I dreamt at
all."
"Indeed," he murmured. When he moved forward, she nearly jumped out of her skin, but he simply reached behind
her and pulled the door to her bedchamber shut.
Then backed her against it.
"Hey," she snapped.
"I sought but to give you a good morrow kiss, lass. 'Tis a Scots custom."
She craned her neck, scowling up at him, and gave him a look that said Yeah, right, nice try.
"A wee one. No tongue. I promise," he said, his lips curving faintly.
"You never give up, do you?"
"I never will, sweet. Doona you know that by now?"
Oooh, that was beginning to take on shades of her dream.
And he'd called her "sweet," a little endearment. She damped her mouth shut and shook her head. ~ Karen Marie Moning

A typical thought by way of example: at night, when we say we're going to sleep, and we get into bed and shut our eyes, we're not really asleep. We're just pretending. We shut our eyes and breathe rhythmically, pretending to be asleep, until the deceit grows slowly real. And maybe that's how it is with death. ~ Etgar Keret

Sometimes a savage beauty lured me into the sun and I would start to love the danger a little. On these occasions I felt the reluctant love drained painfully from me as blood drains from a deep wound. The tigers lapped my love's blood and remained enemies. The inhabitants of the day laughed at the gift I wanted to bring them, and I shut myself in my inner room to escape the betrayal of their arrogant mouths. ~ Anna Kavan

O,speak to me no more;these words like daggers enter my ears.(a fancy way of saying SHUT UP!)"
- William Shakespeare "hamlet ~ William Shakespeare

If you're a writer, the problem is that, when you try to call a halt to thinking about your novel-in-progress, your imagination still keeps going; you can't shut it off. ~ John Irving

Even through the shut window pane, the world looked cold. ~ George Orwell

A little way down the road I turned, and saw how his wife and daughter took him up. And I thought to myself: no, 'tis not all roses when one goes a-wandering. At the next place I came to I learned that he had been with the army, as quartermaster-sergeant; then he went mad over a lawsuit he lost, and was shut up in an asylum for some time. Now in the spring his trouble broke out again; perhaps it was my coming that had given the final touch. But the lightning insight in his eyes at the moment when the madness came upon him! I think of him now and again; he was a lesson to me. 'Tis none so easy to judge of men, who are wise or mad. And God preserve us all from being known for what we are! ~ Knut Hamsun

All scars tell a story, beautiful girl," he said, releasing me to trace the marks on my stomach. "Yours are tellin' me how healthy and f*ckin' perfect my kid is gonna be."

A tear slid out of the corner of my eye. "Shut up," I whispered.

"And mine," he said softly, grabbing my hand, trailing my palm across his cheek and then his chest. "Tell the story of how I found you. ~ Madeline Sheehan

Brenda burst in. "Do you know what some people do? They charge something and wear it, and then take it back and say it didn't fit or something. The stores don't give 'em no trouble." Her father turned in a kind of roar. "I never heard such a fool thing in my life. Didn't you hear your mother tell you to shut your mouth, girl! ~ Katherine Paterson

I feel called to minister to telephone marketers. You know, the kind who call at inconvenient hours and deliver their spiel before you can say a word." Immediately I flashed back to the times I have responded rudely or simply hung up. "All day long these sales callers hear people curse at them and slam the phone down," she continued. "I listen attentively to their pitch, then I try to respond kindly, though I almost never buy what they're selling. Instead, I ask about their personal life and whether they have any concerns I can pray for. Often they ask me to pray with them over the phone, and sometimes they are in tears. They're people, after all, probably underpaid, and they're surprised when someone treats them with common courtesy. ~ Philip Yancey

The Eleven king looked sternly upon Thorin, when he was brought before him, and asked him many questions. But Thorin would only say that he was starving.
"Why did you and your folk three times try to attack my people at their merrymaking?" asked the king.
"We did not attack them," answered Thorin, "we came to beg because we were starving."
"Where are your friends now, and what are they doing?"
"I don't know, but I expect that they're all starving in the forest."
"What were you doing in the forest?"
"Looking for food and drink, because we were starving."
"And what brought you into the forest at all?" asked the king angrily.
At that Thorin shut his mouth and would not say another word. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

And what am I doing?"
"You?" he eyed me appreciatively. "You'd just stand around and look pretty."
"And?"
"Give me blow jobs."
I punched him in the arm.
"What?" he laughed. "I know you love the cock."
"Shut up. ~ Karina Halle

Her blue, almond-shaped eyes - now even more elongated - had altered in appearance; they were indeed of the same colour, but seemed to have passed into a liquid state. So much so that, when she closed them, it was as though a pair of curtains had been drawn to shut out a view of the sea. ~ Marcel Proust

I guess my main worry is that people will start hating what I hate about myself. I worry that everyone will think I am really annoying and just want me to shut up. Which would make so much sense because I annoy myself ... I guess I want people to know that if they are annoyed with me, I get it, it's totally cool. Please forgive me. ~ Jennifer Lawrence

Real life is all beginnings. Days, weeks, children, journeys, marriages, inventions. Even a murder is the beginning of a criminal. Perhaps even a spree. Everything is prologue. Every story has a stutter. It just keeps starting and starting until you decide to shut the camera off. Half the time you don't even realise that what you're choosing for breakfast is the beginning of a story that won't pan out till you're sixty and staring at the pastry that made you a widower. No, love, in real life you can get all the way to death and never have finished one single story. Or never even get one so much as half-begun. ~ Catherynne M Valente

Is it or is it not a matter of importance that a young man starts out in life with an ability to shut his jaw hard and say "I will," or "I will not," and mean it? ~ John William Heisman

...if I do not take my intellectual vocation seriously, putting it before everything else even at the risk of appearing inhuman, then I am also incapable of helping people in more concrete and proximate ways. Conversely, if I am not alert and ready to save people from a conflagration, that is to say, if I do not take my spiritual calling in all earnestness, sacrificing to it all else, even my own life, then I shall be unable to help in rescuing the manuscript. If I do not involve myself in the concrete issues of my time, and if I do not open my house to all the winds of the world, then anything I produce from an ivory tower will be barren and cursed. Yet if I do not shut doors and windows in order to concentrate on this work, then I will not be able to offer anything of value to my neighbors. ~ Raimon Panikkar

Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently these days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people to communicate with the people they love; husbands and wives who can't communicate, children who can't communicate with their parents, and so on. And the characters in these books and plays and so on (and in real life, I might add) spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up. ~ Tom Lehrer

[Conservation] Barring that, just yell at people randomly to stop killing whales. It could catch on. Really.
("Would you like fries with that?"
"Shut up and stop killing whales!"
"Thank you. Drive through, please.") ~ Christopher Moore

For some, religion is the cement that seals shut their door on the world ~ Carol Shields

In the middle of this tenderness she shivers because she knows the truth even as she tries to shut it out: he is terrible to her. It's not that he is outwardly cruel but that he almost never considers her heart. He lives his life, full of swing sets and barrier planks and responsibilities to his wife. Lina is a bobcat in the woods; as it cries you feel sad in the moment but later on you sit down to dinner, you hold a child, you pick a piece of gristle out of your teeth. You watch a game. You forget to reply to a text. You fall asleep. ~ Lisa Taddeo

It's hard to be decent in a money world. We want to shut down all repetitious jobs, automate it, free people. ~ Jacque Fresco

Shut up, lumpen-head," Billy had said, setting the stage for our future amicable relationship.
I remembered that very well too. That had been a first too. Nobody had called me a lumpen-head before that. Tavi had had to explain what it meant, and then I had punched Billy in the stomach. People had to help Pradyun separate us and one of the ladies had exclaimed, "But she looked like such a sweet, little girl too!"
"She's not a girl," Billy had said. "She's an ugly lumpen-head, and her parents found her under a toadstool."
Billy had been a sweet, little boy himself. Still was. Hadn't changed a bit over the years. ~ Sonal Panse

Kota!" I said, stepping away from my sisters and Lucy.
"You can sleep on the couch or in the garage or in the tree house for all I care; but if you don't check your attitude, I'll send you back to your apartment right now! Have some gratitude for the security you've been offered. Need I remind you that tomorrow we're burying our father? Either stop the bickering or go home." I turned on my heel and headed down the hall. Without checking, I knew Lucy was right behind me, suitcase in hand.
I opened the door to my room, waiting for her to come in with me. Once her skirts swished past the frame, I slammed it shut, heaving a sigh. "Was that too much?" I asked.
"It was perfect!" she replied with delight.
"You might as well be the princess already, miss. You're ready for it. ~ Kiera Cass

When people start talking about enjambment and line endings, I always shut them up. This is not something to talk about, this is a private matter, it's up to the poet. ~ James Tate

Why do you allow yourselves to be shut up?'

'Because it cannot be helped as they are stronger than women.'

'A lion is stronger than a man, but it does not enable him to dominate the human race. You have neglected the duty you owe to yourselves and you have lost your natural rights by shutting your eyes to your own interests. ~ Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain

Charles Simic, when asked what he thought of Slam Poetry events: "They are fun, but they have as much to do with poetry as Elvis Presley had to do with Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk". ~ Charles Simic