Standing In Line Quotes

But I can also write in crappy motel rooms, while standing in line, or sitting in the dentist's chair. ~ Augusten Burroughs

Time and space float and dissolve like sugar in wine. You are already dead, even though you haven't yet been born. You're nothing but a drop on the tip of your father's crooked cod, a sigh in your mother's sore throat. And yet the worms are standing in line, waiting for their feast to fester. Why should you dread your death? ~ Andre Solnikkar

For work: I bought some pens. Normally, I used makeshift pens, the kind of unsatisfactory implements that somehow materialized in my bag or in a drawer. But one day, when I was standing in line to buy envelopes, I caught sight of a box of my favorite kind of pen: the Deluxe Uniball Micro. "Two ninety-nine for one pen!" I thought. "That's ridiculous." But after a fairly lengthy internal debate, I bought four. It's such a joy to write with a good pen instead of making do with an underinked pharmaceutical promotional pen picked up from a doctor's office. My new pens weren't cheap, but when I think of all the time I spend using pens and how much I appreciate a good pen, I realize it was money well spent. Finely made tools help make work a pleasure. ~ Gretchen Rubin

You fall into thought while staring at the green foliage back here - so much damn green that it envelops you in its cruddy fist - and the thoughts aren't too good, either - thoughts of sitting on the toilet - eating a sandwich - standing in line at a grocery store - watching an episode of Cheaters - doing laundry - staring at your face in a mirror - shaving it - snorting crushed pills - falling in love - death - all death - and the green shrubbery carries you away with it. ~ Brian Alan Ellis

The commercial flight thing, it just gets a little weird when you're standing in line and suddenly you're not just a guy standing in line anymore - you become sort of 'novelty boy.' ~ Johnny Depp

Nellie's brow furrowed. "The great Mr. Hip-Hop Mogul standing in line with the common peasants? How do you figure that?"
Dan grinned. "I'm starting to dig this 'no cars' thing. It's a great equalizer. ~ Gordon Korman

My father was never the Pilot, but he was one of the people standing in line. ~ Ally Condie

For a moment, they simply stared at each other. Hunter was about to assure the man that Gabi was safe with him, when his temporary brother-in-law delivered a threat Hunter hadn't seen coming. "If you hurt her . . . one hair . . . I will kill you." Kill? Not, come after you . . . make you regret it . . . but kill? "Don't you have a new wife that would be disappointed if you landed in jail for murder?" "My wife would be standing in line to finish the job should I fail," Masini told him. "And she's an excellent shot. ~ Catherine Bybee

The store was filled with hollow-eyed people standing in line: at the sandwich counter, at the soda fountain, at the register. All of them waiting, waiting, their hands full of candy, chips, cups of coffee, money. It was like purgatory, with snacks. Not just the customers; the employees, too. They worked the registers, squirted ketchup on hot dogs, piled limp lettuce onto flaccid lunch meat and waited for it to be over, waited until they could go home. ~ Kelly Braffet

Once I was standing in line to buy a telephone and Senator Wirth was in line with me. The next day the New York Times reported that we'd both purchased telephones and what price we'd paid! ~ Harold H. Greene

He said that life boils down to standing in line to get shit dropped on your head. Everyone's got a place in the queue, you can't get out of it, and just when you start to congratulate yourself on surviving your dose of shit, you discover that the line is actually circular. ~ Scott Lynch

I love getting attention, just like a child loves it, and it's never worn off. So when people say, oh the book signings go on, why would I shoo away someone who's giving me attention? What part of standing in line for 10 hours to say how much they love you is bad to you? ~ David Sedaris

I always imagined that when I got pregnant it would be awesome and everything would go perfectly, and I'd pose for all those artfully naked, pregnant Demi Mooresque pictures and put them all over my house, and suddenly I'd have less cellulite, and then I'd go into labor while I was standing in line at the bank, but it would be okay because the baby would get stuck in my pants leg, so it totally wouldn't slam into the floor. Thank God for skinny jeans with maternity panels; am I right? ~ Jenny Lawson

To be honest with you, I walked into media day (in February at Daytona), and there were two people standing in line to conduct interviews, so from day one of this year, everybody's kind of written us off. ~ Kevin Harvick

Truthfully though, there are some advantages to being on antipsychotics. This might seem silly but when you go to the pharmacy and you're standing in line with twenty germy people sneezing all over the place you can honestly say, "Would you mind if I went first? I have to pick up my antipsychotic meds and I REALLY needed them yesterday." This tactic also works for grocery lines, the DMV, and some buffets. ~ Jenny Lawson

New skin, a new land! And a land of liberty, if that is possible! I chose the geology of a land that was new to me, and that was young, virgin, and without drama, that of America. I traveled in America, but instead of romantically and directly rubbing the snakeskin of my body against the asperities of its terrain, I preferred to peel protected within the armor of the gleaming black crustacean of a Cadillac which I gave Gala as a present. Nevertheless all the men who admire and the women who are in love with my old skin will easily be able to find its remnants in shredded pieces of various sizes scattered to the winds along the roads from New York via Pittsburgh to California. I have peeled with every wind; pieces of my skin have remained caught here and there along my way, scattered through that "promised land" which is America; certain pieces of this skin have remained hanging in the spiny vegetation of the Arizona desert, along the trails where I galloped on horseback, where I got rid of all my former Aristotelian "planetary notions." Other pieces of my skin have remained spread out like tablecloths without food on the summits of the rocky masses by which one reaches the Salt Lake, in which the hard passion of the Mormons saluted in me the European phantom of Apollinaire. Still other pieces have remained suspended along the "antediluvian" bridge of San Francisco, where I saw in passing the ten thousand most beautiful virgins in America, completely naked, standing in line on ~ Salvador Dali

If you're really in love, you don't care about all the other girls that are standing in line for you. ~ Bill Kaulitz

When you're standing in line at the airport, and your shoes are off, your belt is off, and your personal belongings are being closely scrutinized, and you're standing with your hands in the air, waiting to be patted down, do you feel protected? I don't. I feel like I'm the enemy. ~ John McAfee

I support legal immigration. I don't support amnesty because it is not fair to people standing in line at consulates around the world. ~ Heather Wilson

I was in line at a store and there was a little girl, she was standing in line next to me and some other girls had come up to me and recognized me from 'Pretty Little Liars.' When they walked away, this girl was staring at me, and her eyes got so big, and she started crying. It was, like, the cutest thing. ~ Bianca Lawson

Standing in line to vote! We can do anything! ~ Corey Hill

Wherever you go at SXSW, there you are standing in line. Or watching other people stand in line. ~ Kara Swisher

Oh, I have plenty of problems with Rabbit, it's just that my comfort level with his name is standing in line behind about a hundred more important things. ~ Elle Lothlorien

Be like Grace: Wear large, dark glasses and a filmy scarf over your hair next time you go out in public. People will totally wonder who the mysterious beauty is, standing in line behind them at Blockbuster. ~ Meg Cabot

I have a deep, scratchy voice. Boys would call me Froggy, and my father would often tell me to shut my 'big bazoo.' I remember standing in line for confession. After I walked out, the other kids were like, 'You punched your sister in the face?' Because of my voice, my confession was like speaking into a loudspeaker. ~ Siobhan Fallon Hogan

My idea of a real treat is Magic Mountain without standing in line. ~ Alan Rickman

There are people everywhere standing in line at the movies, buying curtains, walking dogs, while inside, their hearts are ripping to shreds. ~ Jandy Nelson

Amber, you could never embarrass me."
"Never?" she asked.
"Never."
"One time, I yelled across the store to Mom and asked her if she wanted the regular or the super-absorbent tampons. I added that, according to the box, the super-absorbent were for those heavy days. Then I asked her to rate her heaviness on a scale of one to ten."
"Okay, you could."
"Then while we were standing in line, I asked her why she was buying three boxes of Summer's Eve in the middle of winter."
I set her at arm's length. "Wow."
"I know, right? I had no idea a person could turn so red. ~ Darynda Jones

Losing the Internet has forced them to interact verbally instead of microblogging their lives, but a lot of them still talk in Tweets:
"Ugh! I'm standing in line at the post office."
"I'm not eating the crusts on my sandwich because apparently I'm five. ~ Wayne Gladstone

Weren't many forms of large-scale protest realistically available to most citizens, but one of them was standing in line when you didn't actually need to. ~ Ann Leckie

Take three conscious breaths. Just pause. Let it be a contrast to being all caught up. Let it be like popping a bubble. Let it be just a moment in time, and then go on. Maybe you are on your way to whatever you need to do for the day. You are in your car, or on the bus, or standing in line. But you can still create that gap by taking three conscious breaths and being right there with the immediacy of your experience, right there with whatever you are seeing, with whatever you are doing, with whatever you are feeling. ~ Pema Chodron

Please do not go to Kmart and buy twenty pairs of jeans because each costs five dollars. The jeans are not running away. They will be there tomorrow at an even more reduced price. You are now in America: do not expect to have hot food for lunch. That African taste must be abolished. When you visit the home of an American with some money, they will offer to show you their house. Forget that in your house back home, your father would throw a fit if anyone came close to his bedroom. We all know that the living room was where it stopped and, if absolutely necessary, then the toilet. But please smile and follow the American and see the house and make sure you say you like everything. And do not be shocked by the indiscriminate touching of American couples. Standing in line at the cafeteria, the girl will touch the boy's arm and the boy will put his arm around her shoulder and they will rub shoulders and back and rub rub rub, but please do not imitate this behavior. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The atmosphere [in the school lunchroom] is not quite that of a prison, because the students are permitted to talk quietly, under the frowning scrutiny of teachers standing around on duty, during their meal-they are not supposed to talk while standing in line, though this rule is only sporadically enforced. ~ Edgar Friedenberg

Value your time poorly and you will be poor. When time is wasted as a lifestyle choice you will be stranded in places you don't want to be.
Take a look around. How do your friends, family, and peers value their time? Are they standing in line to save four bucks? Are they driving 40 minutes to save 10 dollars? Are they parked on the sofa anxiously waiting to see who wins Dancing With the Stars? ~ M.J. DeMarco

I'm really still a child of the Forties. I still think about it a lot, about the repercussions of armed conflict. Until 1953 we had rationing. We couldn't buy meat, we couldn't buy pleasurable goods like cigarettes and sweets. I didn't starve - my family were lucky - but I knew what it was like standing in line waiting for foodstuffs. ~ Eric Burdon

Didn't Chains tell you about the Golden Theological Principle?"
"The what?"
"The single congruent aspect of every known religion. The one shared, universal assumption about the human condition."
"What is it?"
"He said that life boils down to standing in line to get shit dropped on your head. Everyone's got a place in the queue, you can't get out of it, and just when you start to congratulate yourself on surviving your dose of shit, you discover that line is actually circular. ~ Scott Lynch

We will cut programs, we will try to rein in the size of the bureaucracy. We will bring federal pay scales that have become so exaggerated into line with market rates. ~ Eric Cantor

Tarantulas have also received a lot of
bad press in the movies. Many movies
and television programs starring such
noted actors as Sean Connery, The
Three Stooges, Harrison Ford, and
William Shatner, have featured tarantulas
as dangerous to humans or menaces to
civilization. The Tarantula That Ate Tokyo
is a long-standing joke among horrormovie buffs. The fact is that these
movies play with the ignorance and fears
passed on for generations by unenlightened people. Nobody would pay to see
the movie The Beagle That Ate Boston
since everybody knows what a beagle
really is. Few know tarantulas as well. ~ Stanley A Schultz

She looks tan ... -ish."
"There's a fine line between 'tan', and looking like you just rolled around in a giant bag of Doritos. And Miranda seems to prefer the nacho cheese variety. ~ Jena Leigh

If I got lost along the way I had a compass that I had found embedded in a pile of wet leaves I was kicking my way through. The compass was old and rusted but it still worked, connecting the earth and stars. It told me where I was standing and which way was west but not where I was going and nothing of my worth. ~ Patti Smith

We live and learn, change and grow. Older, but not always wiser. Stronger but not necessarily smarter. Life is a dance of steps taken forward and backwards, time spent standing still, and twirling in circles as we follow our own shadows. ~ A.J. Compton

I think as a Canadian hockey player, you go through it in your mind so many times, being able to stand on that blue line and hear your national anthem play and being a gold medal champion, you dream of that. And then to be able to accomplish that and actually win a gold medal and represent your country its an amazing feeling. ~ Sidney Crosby

Well I listened to mostly rock music, and I felt like hip hop was like an extension of rock music when it was done well. So energetically, again I felt like it was in line with punk rock and maybe hard rock, more than it was in line with R&B, which I never really liked. ~ Rick Rubin

Villanelle for my valentine
Old love, I thought I'd never see the time
because of all we've done and often said
when I'd be yours, my dear, and you'd be mine.
And what relief to soften, and resign
the battle of the heart over the head.
old love, I thought I'd never see the time
when qualms and cold feet that could undermine
all we've held out for, dissipate instead
now that I'm yours, my dear and you are mine.
I'm still amazed how our two lives align
the two of us! A pair! Take it as read,
old love, I thought I'd never see the time
The tangle of our jumpers in the line,
the battle for the blankets in our bed
confirm that I am yours, and you are mine.
So then, this is my pledge, my valentine:
my hand's in yours for all that lies ahead.
Oh love, there's never been a better time
now that I'm yours, and finally, you're mine. ~ Elise Valmorbida

I see my life flashing before me when I see people in the audience singing along to something I wrote in the '80s, and they're maybe standing next to someone who knows the more recent stuff. ~ Dave Pirner

Well, the black man has functioned in the white man's world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar: and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations. You, don't be afraid. I said that it was intended that you should perish in the ghetto, perish by never being allowed to go behind the white man's definitions, by never being allowed to spell your proper name. You have, and many of us have, defeated this intention; and, by a terrible law, a terrible paradox, those innocents who believed that your imprisonment made them safe are losing their grasp of reality. But these men are your brothers - your lost, younger brothers. And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it. For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become. It will be hard, James, but you come from sturdy, peasant stock, men who picked cotton and damned rivers and built railroads, and, in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity. You come from a long line of great poets, some of the greatest poets since Homer. One of them said, The very time I thought I was lost, My dungeon shook and my chains fell off. ~ James Baldwin

Standing on the podium at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta and receiving a gold medal was the crowning jewel in a successful gymnastics career and, most certainly, the confirmation that my parents' sacrifices were not in vain. ~ Dominique Moceanu

Give me bullet power. Give me power over angels. Even when you're standing up
you look like you're lying down, but will you let me kiss your neck, baby? Do I have to
tie your arms down?
Do I have to stick my tongue in your mouth like the hand of a thief, like a burglary
like it's just another petty theft? It makes me tired, Henry. Do you see what I mean?
Do you see what I'm getting at?
You swallowing matches and suddenly I'm yelling Strike me. Strike anywhere.
I swear, I end up feeling empty, like you've taken something out of me, and I have to search
my body for the scars, thinking
Did he find that one last tender place to sink his teeth in? I know you want me to say it, Henry,
it's in the script, you want me to say Lie down on the bed, you're all I ever wanted
and worth dying for too
but I think I'd rather keep the bullet this time. It's mine, you can't have it, see,
I'm not giving it up. This way you still owe me, and that's
as good as anything. ~ Richard Siken

Television is more interesting than people. If it were not we should have people standing in the corner of our room. ~ Alan Coren

Free Falling
She's a good girl, loves her mama
Loves Jesus and America too
She's a good girl, crazy 'bout Elvis
Loves horses and her boyfriend too
It's a long day livin' in Reseda
There's a freeway runnin' through the yard
I'm a bad boy, 'cause I don't even miss her
I'm a bad boy for breakin' her heart
And I'm free, I'm free fallin'
All the vampires walkin' through the valley
Move west down Ventura Blvd
All the bad boys are standing in the shadows
All the good girls are home with broken hearts
And I'm free, I'm free fallin'
I wanna glide down over Mulholland
I wanna write her name in the sky
I wanna free fall out into nothin'
Gonna leave this world for a while
And I'm free, I'm free fallin ~ Tom Petty

The gods do not exists, and even if they exist they do not trouble themselves about people, and we have nothing in common with them. The piety and devotion to the gods that the majority of people invoke is a lie devised by swindlers and con men and, if you can believe it, by legislators, to keep criminals in line by putting the fear of God into them. ~ Epictetus

I thought of all the women my family had lost, the horrible things they'd witnessed, the acts they simply endured. Sabrina had become another face in a line of tragedies that stretched back generations. And soon, when the mood hit my grandmother just right, she'd sit at her kitchen table, a Styrofoam cup of lemonade in her warped hand, and she'd tell the story of Sabrina Cordova - how men loved her too much, how little she loved herself, how in the end it killed her. The stories always ended the same, only different girls died, and I didn't want to hear them anymore. ~ Kali Fajardo-Anstine

Delete anything that has to do with love, respect, or joy and I'll sign in the dotted line. ~ Marissa Meyer

Let's hope the institution of marriage survives its detractors, for without it there would be no more adultery and without adultery two thirds of our novelists would stand in line for unemployment checks. ~ Peter S. Prescott

Della & I are drunk at the top of Mont-Royal. We have an open blue plastic thermos of red wine at our feet. It's the first day of spring & it's midnight & we've been peeling off layers of winter all day. We stand facing each other, as if to exchange vows, chests heaving from racing up & down the mountain to the sky. My face is hurting from smiling so much, aching at the edges of my words. She reaches out to hold my face in her hands, dirty palms form a bowl to rest my chin. I'm standing on a tree stump so we're eye to eye. It's hard to stay steady. I worry I may start to drool or laugh, I feel so unhinged from my body. It's been one of those days I don't want to end. Our goal was to shirk all responsibility merely to enjoy the lack of everyday obligations, to create fullness & purpose out of each other. Our knees are the colour of the ground-in grass. Our boots are caked in mud caskets. Under our nails is a mixture of minerals & organic matter, knuckles scraped by tree bark. We are the thaw embodied.

She says, You have changed me, Eve, you are the single most important person in my life. If you were to leave me, I would die.

At that moment, our breath circling from my lungs & into hers, I am changed. Perhaps before this I could describe our relationship as an experiment, a happy accident, but this was irrefutable. I was completely consumed & consuming. It was as though we created some sort of object between us that we coul ~ Zoe Whittall

Just Keep Writing! Who cares if it's a Saturday, or if you left your laptop at home, or if you're around people? Just write one word, one line, jot down one idea. No matter how little you write, it's movement in the right direction. Forward. Toward completion. ~ Tammy Ferebee

What's amazing is that I'm recognized all over the world through 'Red Dwarf.' British fans are exceptional, but the American fans are something else. Some of them fly 500 miles to stand in line for three hours, just to meet me, then when they do they collapse. It makes you feel like a rock star! ~ Craig Charles

You are now 18
standing on the precipice,
trembling before your own greatness.

This is your call to leap.

There will always being those
who say you are too young and delicate
to make anything happen for yourself.
They don't see the part of you that smolders.
Don't let their doubting drown out
the sound of your own heartbeat.

You are the first drop of a hurricane.

Your bravery builds beyond you
You are needed by all the little girls
still living in secret, writing oceans
made of monsters and
throwing like lightening.

You don't need to grow up to find greatness.

You are stronger than the world
has ever believed you to be.
The world is waiting for you to set it on fire
Trust in yourself
and burn. ~ Clementine Von Radics

While most science moves in a sort of curve, being constantly corrected by new evidence, this science flies off into space in a straight line uncorrected by anything. But the habit of forming conclusions, as they can really be formed in more fruitful fields, is so fixed in the scientific mind that it cannot resist talking like this. It talks about the idea suggested by one scrap of bone as if it were something like the aeroplane which is constructed at last out of whole scrapheaps of scraps of metal. The trouble with the professor of the prehistoric is that he cannot scrap his scrap. The marvellous and triumphant aeroplane is made out of a hundred mistakes. The student of origins can only make one mistake and stick to it. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Bethany stands in the middle of the enormous, apparently endless beach surrounded by square miles of damp sand, the surf still some hundred yards off, the light pearly and uniform, the horizon a blurry, darker grey line shading into the clouds. Turning, she sees the black-green jagged stripe of the pines behind the dunes and, beyond that, more unchanging grey sky. A kind of dizziness afflicts her – she senses her insignificance, a small two-legged homunculus in the midst of all this space, a mere speck, a tiny crawling gnat in this elemental simplicity of sand, water and sky.
She squats on her haunches, worried she might fall over, and to distract herself takes out her camera and frames a shot of the beach, the sea and the packed clouds – it looks like an abstract painting. Click. It looks like an abstract painting by – what was his name? Colour-field paintings they are called, the three layers of colour-fields in this case being broad, horizontal bands of dark taupe, slate grey, nebulous tarnished silver. It is rather beautiful. She stands up, feeling equilibrium return – maybe she was hungry, and felt faint for a second or two or maybe, she wonders, maybe she has experienced an actual existential moment – an epiphany – and has seen clearly the reality of her place in the world and has felt the nothingness, the vast indifference of the universe… ~ William Boyd

Habits, though in their commencement like the filmy line of the spider, trembling at every breeze, may in the end prove as links of tempered steel, binding a deathless being to eternal felicity or woe. ~ Lydia Sigourney

The line, Lasko. Do you know anyone in San Francisco? Are you just gonna get off the train and take a streetcar to the swimming pool?" "I might. I could." "You have to have a plan, Lasko." "No, I don't. Not after this. I don't have to have a plan in the world. ~ Armistead Maupin

He stared at it in utter disbelief while his secretary, Peters, who'd only been with him for a fortnight, muttered a silent prayer of gratitude for the break and continued scribbling as fast as he could, trying futilely to catch up with his employer's dictation.
"This," said Ian curtly, "was sent to me either by mistake or as a joke. In either case, it's in excruciatingly bad taste." A memory of Elizabeth Cameron flickered across Ian's mind-a mercenary, shallow litter flirt with a face and body that had drugged his mind. She'd been betrothed to a viscount when he'd met her. Obviously she hadn't married her viscount-no doubt she'd jilted him in favor of someone with even better prospects. The English nobility, as he well knew, married only for prestige and money, then looked elsewhere for sexual fulfillment. Evidently Elizabeth Cameron's relatives were putting her back on the marriage block. If so, they must be damned eager to unload her if they were willing to forsake a title for Ian's money…That line of conjecture seemed so unlikely that Ian dismissed it. This note was obviously a stupid prank, perpetrated, no doubt, by someone who remembered the gossip that had exploded over that weekend house party-someone who thought he'd find the note amusing.
Completely dismissing the prankster and Elizabeth Cameron from his mind, Ian glanced at his harassed secretary who was frantically scribbling away. "No reply is necessary," he said. As he spoke he flipped the message acr ~ Judith McNaught

I started finding hearts in things - whether it was like, a tree I was passing, a straw wrapper on the ground; I think the heart has one continuous line, which is very powerful. ~ Drew Barrymore

You know, sometimes the little victories that I have throughout the season are not necessarily obvious on the track. Maybe they're another aspect of what I'm doing, winning little victories here and there to get everything in line to be able to perform from top to bottom on race day. ~ Danica Patrick

Milo carefully said nothing when Major de Coverley stepped into the mess hall with his fierce and austere dignity the day he returned and found his way blocked by a wall of officers waiting in line to sign loyalty oaths. At the far end of the food counter, a group of men who had arrived earlier were pledging allegiance to the flag, with trays of food balanced in one hand, in order to be allowed to take seats at the table. Already at the tables, a group that had arrived still earlier was singing 'The Star-Spangled Banner' in order that they might use the salt and pepper and ketchup there. ~ Joseph Heller

Ah, hell.
His peripheral vision was working far too well tonight.
His slut of a cousin, his cocksucking, suit-wearing, Montblanc-up-the-ass cousin Saxton the Magnificent, was standing next to the queen, looking like a combination of Cary Grant and some model in a goddamn cologne ad.
Not that Qhuinn was bitter.
Because the guy was sharing Blay's bed.
Nah.
Nope. Not at all.
The Cocksucker-
With a wince, he thought maybe he should switch that insult to something a little farther away from what the two of them ...
God, he couldn't even go there. Not if he wanted to breathe. ~ J.R. Ward

Once she'd graduated from Ever After High, she'd open her own chain of bakeries. She'd publish cookbooks and create an entire line of gourmet treats under her label, Ginger's Goodies. By sharing her talents on a larger scale, she'd help make the world a happier place. For Ginger Breadhouse believed, with every ounce, gram, and sprinkle of her soul, that good food was one of the secret ingredients to happiness. Whether in times of celebration or sadness, beautifully prepared goodies had the power to bring people together. ~ Suzanne Selfors

Recalling some of the most spectacular horrors of history
the burning of heretics and witches at the stake, the wholesale massacre of "heathens," and other no less repulsive manifestations of Christian civilization in Europe and elsewhere
modern man is filled with pride in the "progress" accomplished, in one line at least, since the end of the dark ages of religious fanaticism. ~ Savitri Devi

I think there's true drama in the formation of everything that we know and are standing on the shoulders of. ~ Kevin Costner

Those clothes are Susie's,' my father said calmly when he reached him.
Buckley looked down at my blackwatch dress that he held in his hand.
My father stepped closer, took the dress from my brother, and then, without speaking, he gathered the rest of my clothes, which Buckley had piled on the lawn. As he turned in silence toward the house, hardly breathing, clutching my clothes to him, it sparked.
I was the only one to see the colors. Just near Buckley's ears and on the tips of his cheeks and chin he was a little orange somehow, a little red.
Why can't I use them?' he asked.
It landed in my father's back like a fist.
Why can't I use those clothes to stake my tomatoes?'
My father turned around. He saw his son standing there, behind him the perfect plot of muddy, churned-up earth spotted with tiny seedlings. 'How can you ask me that question?'
You have to choose. It's not fair,' my brother said.
Buck?' My father held my clothes against his chest.
I watched Buckley flare and light. Behind him was the sun of the goldenrod hedge, twice as tall as it had been at my death.
I'm tired of it!' Buckley blared. 'Keesha's dad died and she's okay?'
Is Keesha a girl at school?'
Yes!'
My father was frozen. He could feel the dew that had gathered on his bare ankles and feet, could feel the ground underneath him, cold and moist and stirring with possibility.
I'm sorry. When did this happen?'
That's not the point, Da ~ Alice Sebold

The only thing that's worse than betrayal is getting stuck in line between friendship & relationship. ~ Nikhil Kushwaha

Adam's lips are set in a grime line. I can't tell if he's about to cry or about to punch the guard. For his sake, I hope it's the former. For you own, I hope the latter. ~ Gayle Forman

God, what did any of it matter, in the end? You lived; you died. You were as indistinguishable from a distance as one of these blades of grass, and who was to say more important? Growing, surrounded by your kin, you out-living some, some out-living you. You didn't have to adjust the scale much, either, to reduce us to the sort of distant irrelevance of this bedraggled field. The grass was lucky if it grew, was shone upon and rained upon, and was not burned, and was not pulled up by the roots, or poisoned, or buried when the ground was turned over, and some bits just happened to be on a line that humans wanted to walk on, and so got trampled, broken, pressed flat, with no malice; just effect. ~ Iain Banks

I don't think - I begin, but then I stop there. Strangely enough, this sounds like a full, declarative sentence, as if I'm standing in a bar shouting out one of my most obvious character flaws. I don't think! ~ Matthew Norman

For the first time Neil appreciated Andrew's apathy. In a stadium gone mad and with too much on the line tonight, Neil finally saw Andrew as the crucial eye of the storm. Because Andrew refused to get caught up in this, he was the only person on the court with a cool head. ~ Nora Sakavic

Change is the immediate responsibility of each of us, wherever and however we are standing, in whatever arena we choose. ~ Audre Lorde

It's what's in the book that matters. Standing in her daughter's room which also had shelves and shelves filled with books, Tess remembered a character in a favorite story saying that to someone who objected to using the Bible as a fan on a hot summer day. But she could no longer remember which story it was.
Did that mean the book had ceased to live for her? The title she was trying to recall could be in this very room, along with all of Tess's childhood favorites, waiting for Carla Scout to discover them one day. But what if she rejected them all, insisting on her own myths and legends, as Octavia has prophesied? How many of these books would be out of print in five, ten years? What did it mean to be out of print in a world where books could live inside devices, glowing like captured genies, desperate to get back out in the world and grant people's wishes? ~ Laura Lippman

Jeremiah came over after a while. He sat on the edge of my chair and drank from my thermos of Kool-Aid.
"She's pretty," I said.
"Who? Yolie?" He shrugged. "She's nice. One of my many admirers."
"Ha!"
"So what about you? Cam Cameron, huh? Cam the vegetarian. Cam the straight edge."
I tried not to smile. "So what? I like him."
"He's kind of a dork."
"That's what I like about him. He's…different."
He frowned slightly. "Different from who?"
"I don't know." But I did know. I knew exactly who he was different from.
"You mean he's not a dick like Conrad?"
I laughed, and so did he. "Yeah, exactly. He's nice."
"Just nice, huh?"
"More than nice."
"So you're over him, then? For real?" We both knew the "him" he was talking about.
"Yes," I told him.
"I don't believe you," Jeremiah said, watching me closely-just like when he was trying to figure out what kind of hand I had in Uno.
I took off my sunglasses and looked him in the eye. "It's true. I'm over him."
"We'll see," Jeremiah said, standing up. "My break's over. Are you okay over here? Wait around and I'll drive us home. I can put your bike in the back."
I nodded, and watched him walk back to the lifeguard chair. Jeremiah was a good friend. He'd always been good to me, watched out for me. ~ Jenny Han

I carried the books to my room and read through the night. I loved the fiery pages of Mary Wollstonecraft, but there was a single line written by John Stuart Mill that, when I read it, moved the world: "It is a subject on which nothing final can be known." The subject Mill had in mind was the nature of women. Mill claimed that women have been coaxed, cajoled, shoved and squashed into a series of feminine contortions for so many centuries, that it is now quite impossible to define their natural abilities or aspirations.

Blood rushed to my brain; I felt an animating surge of adrenaline, of possibility, of a frontier being pushed outward. Of the nature of women, nothing final can be known. Never had I found such comfort in a void, in the black absence of knowledge. It seemed to say: whatever you are, you are woman. ~ Tara Westover

Where would the would-be "purists" draw the line between native and alien elements? This whole planet was altered by the hand of man.
A birder who scorned the alien Sky Larks might stand on San Juan and salute the native eagles . . . but some of those eagles had been released here; and they were living on an unnaturally high population of rabbits, from another continent, introduced here. The rabbits, in turn, were probably feeding on alien plants from other lands that were naturalized here - if the San Juan roadsides were anything like all the other roadsides in North America. And we birders of European descent were introduced here also, a few generations back. Even my Native American friends of the night before could claim to be "native" in only a relative sense; their ancestors had come across the Bering land bridge from Asia. None of us is native here. ~ Kenn Kaufman

In rich detail, Ken told us that on the second hole of the opening round, Hogan got stuck while standing over a putt. Hogan had the yips. "I can't take it back, Ken," Hogan said. "Nobody gives a shit, Ben," Ken said back. That bit of wise-guy humor was evidently all Hogan needed to hear: At age fifty-three and playing barely any tournament golf, he finished twelfth. Venturi finished three shots behind. Palmer was leading by seven with nine holes left and lost to Billy Casper in a playoff. Ken ~ Michael Bamberger