Stalling Quotes

The whole weekend turned out to be one giant round of excruciating foreplay, and if he doesn't stop stalling and give me some relief pretty damn pronto, there's going to be a girl-parts rebellion the likes of which he's never seen. I'm wound tighter than Jane Fonda's latest facelift, goddammit. ~ Leisa Rayven

The secret of surviving housework is simply to do it. Pull the plug on the part of your brain that always wants to negotiate everything. You need to change a diaper, rinse a bottle, clean a spill, fluff a pillow? Consider it done. It's a no-brainer. End of conversation. End of story.
Not postponing chores-and not spending any mental energy equivocating, temporizing, or stalling-is actually a lot more restful than worrying about what needs to be done. ~ Veronique Vienne

For one thing, everyone would insist that assumptions be stated explicitly and tested rigorously not as a stalling tactic or a form of make-work but out of a genuine desire to discover the truth that underlies every project's vision. ~ Eric Ries

Anderson's papers and slide shows have become more alarming. Under titles such as "Climate Change: Going Beyond Dangerous . . . Brutal Numbers and Tenuous Hope," he points out that the chances of staying within anything like safe temperature levels are diminishing fast. With his colleague Alice Bows-Larkin, an atmospheric physicist and climate change mitigation expert at the Tyndall Centre, Anderson argues that we have lost so much time to political stalling and weak climate policies - all while emissions ballooned - that we are now facing cuts so drastic that they challenge the core expansionist logic at the heart of our economic system. ~ Naomi Klein

Nykyrian shifted to one side of the door frame. "Stop stalling, asshole. Do you honestly think I'd be stupid enough to stand here until your partner comes up behind me?" He snapped his fingers.
An unconscious man was shoved through the door. Pitala cursed.
"I really hate taking out the trash." Syn joined Nykyrian as he wiped his hands together.
-Nykyrian, Pitala, & Syn ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Starting means you're going to finish. If it doesn't ship, you've failed. You haven't poked the box if the box doesn't realize it's been poked. To merely start without finishing is just boasting, or stalling, or a waste of time. I have no patience at all for people who believe they are doing their best work but are hiding it from the market. If you don't ship, you actually haven't started anything at all. At some point, your work has to intersect with the market. At some point, you need feedback as to whether or not it worked. Otherwise, it's merely a hobby. ~ Seth Godin

I'm always moving forward creatively and don't like stalling, trying to find the perfect snare drum sound. ~ Mark Kozelek

You're not pushing but I'm falling you're soaring and I'm stalling and it's not a secret that my strength is your weakness the beauty you have inside shines out through your eyes you wear your heart on your sleeve your wings flutter and you leave and when you fly can I be your blue sky when your heart beats alone let my arms be your home if I say it first will you say it second if I give you this verse will you feel protected I need you could you need me too..." He ~ Heidi Hutchinson

Keep your hand moving. (Don't pause to reread the line you have just written. That's stalling and trying to get control of what you're saying.) ~ Natalie Goldberg

Don't stay in this now. You'll fall behind. ~ Brian Spellman

I thought you'd be halfway to Tokyo by now," she said, stalling.
"Not without you."
Oh, man, she was so screwed. He was bad enough when he was giving her shit. Right now he was looking at her as if
she was the most precious thing on earth, and she knew what she looked and smelled like. The world had turned upside
down.
"I don't suppose you love me," she said. "Even a little bit?"
"Don't be an idiot, Ji-chan. Why else would I be here? Now, do you want to stay here or do you want to prove you're really
crazy and come with me?"
"Will you grow your hair again?"
"If you want me to."
"Then tell me."
"You're not going to make this easy, are you? Su-chan warned me about you."
"She warned me, too. Tell me."
He let out a long-suffering sigh. "Aishiteru," he muttered.
"In English."
"I love you. ~ Anne Stuart

And, again, this story needs to be revised, is under revision as I type these words. The only way to write an autobiography, I suppose, is to keep writing indefinitely. As soon as your fingers stop moving, this act - your fingers stalling on the keyboard - changes the story. There. I can't keep up. And this idea that it should all be working toward something, that the autobiographical subject in the present tense should be working through the biggest puzzle of her life and arriving somehow at... something. Something big. At what? Happiness? Understanding? Forgiveness? A baby? A book?

I have not arrived. ~ Jill Christman

The trick in that town was getting through a night at all without stalling in the sludge of your own thoughts. ~ Mary Karr

Caleb pushed back his chair and fetched his hat from the bed, but not before he put his hand on the mattress and pressed to make the bedsprings squeak. The sound was so loud that Lily cringed, knowing what Wilbur and his men would think. "Caleb, stop!" she cried angrily. Caleb only grinned at her and repeated the process, once, then again, then again and again. "Damn you," Lily whispered, "stop it." He paused, watching the color climb her face. After deliberately stalling for several minutes he put on his hat, swatted Lily on the bottom as he passed her, and left the shack whistling. Loudly. Lily was so mortified that she could not bring herself to go outside, even after she heard Caleb riding away. ~ Linda Lael Miller

Stop stalling and spill the beans. What's up?"

Alexi tossed down her fork and leaned in close so no one else could possibly hear. "What's not up? We're like rabbits on Viagra. ~ Jennifer Saints

Raffin appeared again, a floor above her, on the balconied passageway that ran past his workrooms. He leaned over the railing and called down to her. "Kat!"
"What is it?"
"You look lost . Have you forgotten the way to your rooms?"
"I'm stalling."
"How long will you be? I'd like to show you a couple of my new discoveries."
"I've been told to make myself pretty for dinner."
He grinned. "Well in that case, you'll be ages."
His face dissolved into laughter, and she tore a button from one of her bags an hurled it at him. He squealed and dropped to the floor, and the button hit the wall right where he'd been standing. When he peeked back over the railing, she stood in the courtyard with her hands on her hips, grinning. "I missed on purpose," she said.
"Show off! Come if you have time." He waved, and turned into his rooms. ~ Kristin Cashore

She gave Cooper a quick nod, indicating she was going out the back, and didn't wait around to see if he understood her meaning. She pushed through the swinging doors to the small kitchen in the back, snagged the keys to her truck from the hook, and replaced them with her apron. She gave a quick glance to the grill, making sure Sandy hadn't left anything to burn on it when he'd been pulled out front, but everything looked in order. Stop stalling.
She sighed, shook her head, but the rueful smile that accompanied the movement was fleeting. For what might be the first time in her life, she had absolutely no idea how she was going to handle what came next.
"Only one way to find out," she murmured. Tightening her grip on her keys, if not her emotions, she let herself out the back door of the pub and found herself staring straight up into the crystalline blue eyes of Cooper Jax. ~ Donna Kauffman

See the look on my face
From staying too long in one place
But every time I try to leave
I find I keep on stalling
Feel like a big old stone
Standing by a strength of my own
But every time the morning breaks
I know I'm closer to falling ~ K.T. Tunstall

This list of names was a record of those that Adam gave the animals in the Garden as an expression of his covenantal dominion, the authority that the namer had over the named. "You have two days," said Yahweh Elohim. Enoch knew the Accuser had no intent of reading the genealogies and names. But even in the face of this obvious stalling tactic, Yahweh Elohim went out of his way to be fair and impartial, even to his own disadvantage. ~ Brian Godawa

You don't wanna know the sinner.
You don't wanna know the killer. Because it's you.
Television is stalling evolution.
Medication is stalling evolution.
Evolution is stalling revolution. Evolution, revolution.
Collaboration, the start of revolution.
My decision, the start of revolution.
Revolution, the start of evolution. Revolution, evolution. ~ Tablo

We just lost our electricity. You want to tell me what's so funny about that?"
"It's not exactly funny. It's more of a good news/bad news situation."
"In that case, hit me with the good news first."
"They're both sort of rolled up into one."
"Stop stalling."
"All right. Now don't get mad, but ... " Smothered laughter drifted toward him. "Cal ... I'm naked. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

The Government set the stage economically by informing everyone that we were in a depression period, with very pointed allusions to the 1930s. The period just prior to our last 'good' war. ... Boiled down, our objective was to make killing and military life seem like adventurous fun, so for our inspiration we went back to the Thirties as well. It was pure serendipity. Inside one of the Scripter offices there was an old copy of Doc Smith's first LENSMAN space opera. It turned out that audiences in the 1970s were more receptive to the sort of things they scoffed at as juvenilia in the 1930s. Our drugs conditioned them to repeat viewings, simultaneously serving the ends of profit and positive reinforcement. The movie we came up with stroked all the correct psychological triggers. The fact that it grossed more money than any film in history at the time proved how on target our approach was.'

'Oh my God... said Jonathan, his mouth stalling the open position.

'Six months afterward we ripped ourselves off and got secondary reinforcement onto television. We pulled a 40 share. The year after that we phased in the video games, experimenting with non-narcotic hypnosis, using electrical pulses, body capacitance, and keying the pleasure centers of the brain with low voltage shocks. Jesus, Jonathan, can you *see* what we've accomplished? In something under half a decade we've programmed an entire generation of warm bodies to go to war for us and love it. They buy what ~ David J. Schow

She started shaping the face, using a wire loop to gently carve the slope of the strong forehead and brow, then the nose and the lean angle of the cheekbones. In little time, her fingers were moving on automatic pilot, her mind disengaged and gone into its own flow, her subconscious directly commanding her hands into action.
She didn't know how long she'd been working, but when the hard rap sounded on her apartment door some time later, Tess nearly jumped out of her skin. Sleeping next to her feet on the rug, Harvard woke up with a grunt.
"You expecting someone?" she asked quietly as she got up from her stool.
God, she must have been really zoned out while she was sculpting, because she'd seriously messed up around the mouth area of the piece. The lips were curled back in some kind of snarl, and the teeth . . .
The knock sounded again, followed by a deep voice that went through her like a bolt of electricity.
"Tess? Are you there?"
Dante.
Tess's eyes flew wide, then squeezed into a wince as she did a quick mental inventory of her appearance. Hair flung up into a careless knot on top of her head, braless in her white thermal Henley and faded red sweats that had more than one dried clay smudge on them. Not exactly fit for company.
"Dante?" she asked, stalling for time and just wanting to be sure her ears weren't playing tricks on her. "Is that you?"
"Yeah. Can I come in?"
"Um, sure. Just a sec," she called out, trying to sound c ~ Lara Adrian

I kept picturing the car stalling, zombies breaking through the window; Misty screaming as they dragged her out before I could get it re-started. With that happy thought, I signaled Misty to open the door. ~ M.J. Ware

Ten times as much polishing is definitely not ten times as good. Whether you're polishing a piece of furniture or an idea, the benefits diminish quickly. The polishing turns into stalling. ~ Seth Godin

Sully suffers from a stutter,
simple syllables will clutter,
stalling speeches up on beaches
like a sunken sailboat rudder.
Sully strains to say his phrases,
sickened by the sounds he raises,
strings of thoughts come out in knots,
he solves his sentences like mazes.
At night, he writes his thoughts instead
and sighs as they steadily rush from his head. ~ Bo Burnham

You wouldn't. You're an aberration," he said. "How do I know you won't kill us all anyway?" I said. "You're the one I need to feed to the fire," he said. "Drop the gun and you can save this girl." "Not terribly convincing," I said, stalling for time, hoping for that time to bring something. ~ Jeff Lindsay

Get back in the box. Set it for home, present day. Go see your mom. Bring your dad. Have dinner, the three of you. Go find The Woman You Never Married and see if she might want to be The Woman You Are Going To Marry Someday. Step out of this box. Pop open the hatch. The forces within the chronohydraulic air lock will equalize. Step out into the world of time and risk and loss again. Move forward, into the emily plane. Find the book you wrote, and read it until the end, but don't turn the last page yet, keep stalling, see how long you can keep expanding the infinitely expandable moment. Enjoy the elastic present, which can accommodate as little or as much as you want to put in there. Stretch it out, live inside of it. ~ Charles Yu

(Frances has gotten out of bed again and come to her parents' room ... )
'How can the wind have a job?' asked Frances.
'Everybody has a job,' said Father.
'I have to go to my office every morning at nine o'clock. That is my job. You have to go to sleep so you can be wide awake for school tomorrow. That is your job.'
Frances said, 'I know, but ... '
Father said, 'I have not finished. If the wind does not blow the curtains, he will be out of a job. If I do not go to the office, I will be out of a job. And if you do not go to sleep now, do you know what will happen to you?'
'I will be out of a job?' said Frances.
'No,' said Father.
'I will get a spanking?' said Frances.
'Right!' said Father.
'Good night!' said Frances, and she went back to her room. ~ Russell Hoban

Oh, hey," I said, "This is Roger, my new partner. Roger, this is Jacob, my, uh ... " God, could there be a worse word than "boyfriend?" It made us sound like Barbie and Ken. Or Ken and Ken. Or Ken and G.I. Joe. I told my mind to stop stalling and think of a way to say it. "My partner ... at home ~ Jordan Castillo Price

I'm stalling. I know that everything I say is just to put it off-to put off the moment when I'll have to start talking, knowing that there is nothing more for me to say. I'm putting off my silence. Have I been putting off silence for my whole life? but now, in my disparagement of the word, perhaps I'll finally be able to start talking. (14) ~ Clarice Lispector

Marlboro Man's call woke me up the next morning. It was almost eleven.
"Hey," he said. "What's up?"
I hopped out of bed, blinking and stumbling around my room. "Who me? Oh, nothing." I felt like I'd been drugged.
"Were you asleep?" he said.
"Who, me?" I said again, trying to snap out of my stupor. I was stalling, trying my darnedest to get my bearings.
"Yes. You," he said, chuckling. "I can't believe you were asleep!"
"I wasn't asleep! I was…I just…" I was a loser. A pathetic, late-sleeping loser.
"You're a real go-getter in the mornings, aren't you?" I loved it when he played along with me. ~ Ree Drummond

Come on, Kitten, jump. Or I'll throw you off." "You throw me off this bridge, Bones, and you'll have a lot of celibacy in your future!" His lips curled in a way that said he wasn't worried. "Only means I'd have to work harder to change your mind, and you know how I love my work. Now quit stalling. ~ Jeaniene Frost

I'm not really sure what I'm going to do when I get there, but that's why someone invented the fine art of improv. Or, when that fails, stalling. ~ Danielle Ellison

Quit stalling with the good bits! ~ Jennifer DeLucy

In the midnight of a soul's unsleeping, hear the waterfall of women weeping. Hear the distant noise of traffic stalling, hear the prostituted children calling. ~ Pete Townshend

Wait now or wait, wait later. ~ Brian Spellman

We have to think of a question that we wouldn't otherwise want to answer.'
He stood over the pot, looking down at the leaves. 'Something like, Who do you fancy?'
'That might work,' I said, even though it was the last question I wanted to answer. But it was impossible, suddenly, to tell a lie.
Benjamin took a deep sniff over the steam and turned to me. 'All right,' he said. 'So who do you fancy?'
I hesitated. 'Fancy means like, right?' I said stalling.
'Of course.'
I gritted my teeth against the answer coming out. but I couldn't stop myself. 'You,' I said helplessly. ~ Maile Meloy

Adeline is Battered & Threatened

Not knowing the title of this bureaucrat, I addressed him incorrectly as Meine Herrschaften. With this silly fabricated title, I simply tried to explain to him that the corporal was a brave Frontsoldat. My efforts were in vain since he was intent on finding out the corporal's name, and my stalling only made matters worse. "What's his name?" he shouted again and again, this time hitting my breasts and punching me in the stomach, which caused me to vomit all over the floor. It didn't matter to him that my husband was a German soldier fighting for das Vaterland. He continued to beat me and threatened to put me into the terrible prison camp at Schirmeck. Having passed by there recently, the crying and moaning sounds from inside the gates of this prison were still very vivid in my mind. He reached for his telephone and said, "With one call you'll be there if you don't answer me!" "Please, I won't be able to live with myself if I'm the cause of an innocent person's death," I sobbed. I remember him saying, "I remember you! You're the woman from Bischoffsheim who helped with the kindergarten class and did the art work there. You have two little girls, don't you?" How could this man know so much about me? He continued his threats by saying that he would beat my little girls at 3 o'clock every afternoon in the Village center, until I gave him the names he wanted. I formed a mental image of this cruel act, however in spite of this, I firm ~ Hank Bracker

The world is sagging, snagging, scaling, spalling, pilling, pinging, pitting, warping, checking, fading, chipping, cracking, yellowing, leaking, stalling, shrinking, and in dynamic unbalance. ~ Donald Barthelme

The Chinese, on the other hand, were in the position of having an American military spy plane on a Chinese military base and they had their own internal problems to deal with. At first, the Chinese weren't all that belligerent. They were just stalling to get their own bureaucracy in line. ~ Henry A. Kissinger

My father once related how he and his friend Les had come up with a way, when stalling for time in a meeting or deposition (he and Les were lawyers [Les, alive and well, still is a lawyer]), instead of saying "Um . . .," or "Uh . . .," one could say "Now . . .," a word which accomplishes two things: it serves the same stalling purpose as "Um . . .," or "Uh . . .," but instead of being dumb-sounding offputting, it creates suspense for what is coming next, whatever that might be, that which the speaker doesn't yet know. ~ Dave Eggers

Right, what's there possibly to worry about?" she said. "Just some surgery in the garage with a drunk doctor."
Little miss," said Doc, pointing a finger at Cass. "I'm drinking. I'm not drunk. There's a difference." He took another sip from his cup. "But in another ten minutes or so, that might change, so you should stop stalling. ~ Gregg Rosenblum

The pain that's created by avoiding hard work is actually much worse than any pain created from the actual work itself. Because if you don't begin to work on those ideas that God has blessed you with, they will become stagnant inside of you and eventually begin to eat away at you. You might seem OK on the outside, but inside you will be ill from not getting those ideas out of your heart and into the world. Stalling leads to sickness. But taking steps, even baby steps, always leads to success. ~ Russell Simmons

Compromise is a stalling between two fools. ~ Stephen Fry

I feel I'm trying to get this really crap car going, and it just keeps stalling on me. And then other times I feel like my life's a train thundering toward me, and I'm in a car stuck on the crossroads and can't get out. Isn't it great being young! ~ Julie Burchill

Kitten," he growled roughly.
I kissed him softly, sliding my hands into his silky locks, letting the pieces slide through my fingers. I tasted in him my own rising desire, my own need and heartache. Thrilling. Frightening. I pulled back.
"Kitten," he said again, voice strained. "You don't get to do that and then stop. That's not how it works."
I stared at him, my breath stalling in my lungs.
"Not when you're mine." Daemon backed us up and slid down the wall, pulling me on his lap so I was straddling him. "And you're mine. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

Ren crossed his arms over his chest. "is it LoJacked?"
"Of course," Andy said indignantly. "That's my baby. I even have a kill switch on her."
"Then stop the engine."
Andy appeared downright horrified by Ren's suggestion. "Are you out of your mind? What if someone hits it for stalling? I had that thing on order for over a year. Custom hand built. The epitome of German engineering. I even paid extra for the paint on her. Ain't no way I'm going to chance someone denting my baby. Or, God forbid, totaling it."
Jess rolled his eyes at the boy's hissy fit. If he kept that up, he'd be putting Andy back in diapers.
He turned to Ren. "You take the air. I'll get a bike." Then he focused his attention on Andy again. "And you-"
Andy held his cell phone out to him. "Have an app. Track her down, get my car back, and beat the hell out of her ... in that precise order. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

In such troubled times, we must remember the value writers have - the value of inventing new language to keep pace with the rapidly transforming world around us. ~ Jonathan Stalling

Ashes

The tide comes in; the tide goes out again
washing the beach clear of what the storm
dumped. Where there were rocks, today there is sand;
where sand yesterday, now uncovered rocks.

So I think on where her mortal remains
might reach landfall in their transmuted forms,
a year now since I cast them from my hand
- wanting to stop the inexorable clock.

She who died by her own hand cannot know
the simple love I have for what she left
behind. I could not save her. I could not
even try. I watch the way the wind blows
life into slack sail: the stress of warp against weft
lifts the stalling craft, pushes it on out. ~ Paula Meehan

See, all I'm hearing is 'fancy words' and 'stalling'. So I think I'm going to get on with defeating you now, if that's alright. No offense against your storytelling skills or anything. ~ Melody Jackson