Stressful Quotes

Musical auditions are always the worst because you have to sing and act, and that's so stressful. ~ Jonathan Groff

As a woman, for example, I live and work very much like a man. I take a lot of things from the man's world and I have to do that if I want to survive modern life. Conversely, men have to take things from the woman's world to survive. It's a very beautiful thing that you have to mold your own gender nowadays. But it's a very stressful thing for us. ~ Pernille Fischer Christensen

Life can be stressful! When the world Shouts "Chaos" God's messages of Love whisper "Seek My Peace" Encourage Children to search out God's Blessings in life! ~ Dianna Wyles

I find it a little stressful when you're in a really nice studio and you feel time ticking and the bill getting higher. ~ Yukimi Nagano

I don't think a director should have any kids. I don't even think it's good for your physical health. Even guys in their 30s look exhausted because directors never get enough sleep. What I do is stressful enough. ~ Tom Berenger

Apathy is, too often, a result of overexposure to stressful, highly emotional situations. To rekindle empathy, sometimes we need some space. It's okay to walk away so that you can feel love for someone again. Sometimes for a moment. Sometimes forever. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

According to Berkeley sociologist Arlie Hochschild, if you're feeling an intense emotion like anxiety or anger, there are two ways to manage it: surface acting or deep acting. Surface acting involves putting on a mask--modifying your speech, gestures, and expressions to present yourself as unfazed...In deep acting, known as method acting in the theater world, you actually become the character you wish to portray. Deep acting involves changing your inner feelings, not just your outer expressions of them...Deep acting turns out to be a more sustainable strategy for managing emotions than surface acting. Research shows that surface acting burns us out: Faking emotions that we don't really feel is both stressful and exhausting. If we want to express a set of emotions, we need to actually experience them. ~ Adam Grant

No matter how strong or strong-willed you are, you cannot live a stressful, maxed-out life without that pace eventually biting you in the butt. It is necessary to take breaks, set parameters, and be kind to yourself if you want to continue making an impact in your little corner of the world. ~ Cynthia Mendenhall

When my life is stressful, my favorite game is called 'Pop It,' where you pop balloons and prizes fall out. It's a five-minute game that focuses my mind and gives me extra attention when I'm stressed. ~ Jane McGonigal

Dollar for dollar, no other society approaches the United States in terms of the number of square feet per person, the number of baths per bedroom, the number of appliances in the kitchen, the quality of the climate control, and the convenience of the garage. The American private realm is simply a superior product. The problem is that most suburban residents, the minute the leave this refuge, are confronted by a tawdry and stressful environment. They enter their cars and embark on a journey of banality and hostility that lasts until they arrive that interior of their next destination. Americans may have the finest private realm in the developed world, but our public realm is brutal. ~ Andres Duany

Whenever I'm making a feature film, I wish I were filming a documentary, because making feature films is so stressful. It happens every time. ~ Fatih Akin

Ank froze. The moaning became more stressful and a little bit louder. "I think its coming from the basement."
Without warning, Ank grabs a pool stick and starts banging on the floorboards. "Would you shut up! It four o'clock in the morning and people are trying to get their beauty sleep! ~ Khalia Hades

A person can hurry through or sleep walk through life, but whenever they stop to catch their breath or awaken from a long nap, they will find apprehension, disquiet, and fretfulness waiting their directed attention. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Kane kept his cool, letting all those long-standing walls drop into place as he walked through the restaurant. His outward calm showed nothing of the panic raging through his mind. The only clue he gave that something might be wrong was when he bypassed his waitstaff, not listening or answering one of their questions as he made a beeline directly to the kitchen. His pleasant facade was nothing more than his body's natural defense mechanism kicking into place. Calm, cool, and collected were always what he projected to the world when his heart and mind raced completely out of control. And dear Lord did the greeting with Avery Adams, aka table thirty-four, seriously qualify as one hell of a stressful situation. ~ Kindle Alexander

There is nothing better than getting something in front of an audience in a less stressful setting than previews! ~ Michael Patrick Walker

Breath control training will change your body and mind in remarkably positive ways. It will tune your nervous system and allow you to activate the parasympathetic or sympathetic nervous systems at will, helping you to perform in a stressful environment or to excel in competition. ~ Mark Divine

Every (stressful thought) is a variation on a single theme: This shouldn't be happening. I shouldn't be having this experience. God is unjust. Life isn't fair. ~ Byron Katie

Being a movie star is stressful as hell. You've got to do crunches all day long. You've got to get up and learn lines. ~ Thomas Lennon

However, the more stressful my situation is, the less I think about it, or anything related to it. At present , I thought about how the elevators were like mechanical horses, and I wondered if anyone loved them or named them. ~ Penny Reid

There are some people I've met and it's stressful just speaking to them, because they're really pretentious and I don't know how to talk to them without being pretentious back. ~ Frankie Cosmos

I suppose it's no surprise that we feel the need to dehumanize the people we hurt - before, during, or after the hurting occurs. But it always comes as a surprise. In psychology it's known as cognitive dissonance. It's the idea that it feels stressful and painful for us to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time (like the idea that we're kind people and the idea that we've just destroyed someone). And so to ease the pain we create illusory ways to justify our contradictory behavior. ~ Jon Ronson

The importance of patience and communication. Having a child and husband, working crazy and unpredictable times for shows, and traveling to teach dance around America can make life a bit stressful. I have had to learn to communicate with everyone attached to my life no matter what the circumstance. ~ Allison Holker

There are so many rules in Judaism, and if you get into them and you get obsessed and you have the kind of life that I have, it can make you a very unhappy person. It can make everything complicated and more stressful than it needs to be, so I kind of loosened the knots a little bit. ~ Matisyahu

Dance is such a stressful environment. ~ Mia Wasikowska

The most stressful and difficult part of steering a large movie is that you are taking on the responsibility of communicating with a very wide audience. You can't ever hide behind the notion of, 'Okay, they just don't get it,' or, 'Certain people just don't get it.' You have to be mindful of the size of your audience, and you have to communicate in a way that lets them in. ~ Christopher Nolan

First things first: studies show policing is hard. At a minimum, they prove many LEO's struggle to cope with what they are exposed to. For example, research indicates that while 8.2% of the general population suffers from an active alcohol or substance abuse addiction, up to 23% of public safety personnel, including law enforcement officers, are engaged in the same struggle. Furthermore, due to the constant exposure to violence, conflict, death, pain and suffering, coupled with the extremely stressful and draining nature of their work, police run a significant risk of experiencing Post-Traumatic Stress Injuries (PTSI)/Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Lastly, research by Dr. John Violanti in 2004 indicates a combination of alcohol use and PTSD produces a tenfold increase in the risk of suicide. This small snapshot of research paints a grim picture on how policing can negatively impact those that take up its calling. ~ Karen Rodwill Solomon

Even if we don't want to admit it, the ability to overcome most obstacles is within our hands. We can't blame family, society, or history if our work is meaningless, dull, or stressful. Admittedly, there are not too many options when we realize that our job is useless, or actually harmful. Perhaps the only choice is to quit as quickly as possible, even at the cost of severe financial hardship. In terms of the bottom line of one's life, it is always a better deal to do something one feels good about than something that may make us materially comfortable but emotionally miserable. Such decisions are notoriously difficult, and require great honesty with oneself. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

In stressful situations, people often talk about a fight-or-flight response. Which, in my opinion, doesn't give enough credit to the more common reaction of curling up into a little ball. [ ... ] For once, I made the decision to play it cool. Or stupid. Whichever came first.
-"Le Paris!" in How Did You Get This Number, by Sloane Crosley (2010), P. 219-220 ~ Sloane Crosley

I don't think I realised how stressed I was, being a single parent. It was really, really stressful. It's not easy on anybody. ~ Reese Witherspoon

The stressful part of that is that you're not a chef. People who have learnt to be chefs have spent years in kitchens just on the vegetable section and then move up to the fish section, etc, whereas you have to do everything and it's really full on, but it's an amazing experience. ~ Jayne Middlemiss

You know what it's like to feel anxious - it's horrible feeling anxious. It's stressful having that feeling, having butterflies in your stomach, even for a day, and you don't sleep at night. ~ Damian Lewis

Any kind of creative activity is likely to be stressful. The more anxiety, the more you feel that you are headed in the right direction. Easiness, relaxation, comfort - these are not conditions that usually accompany serious work. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

I look after my skin quite a lot because in this job, it can get stressful. Pimples come out! I cleanse and moisturize, sometimes do face masks. I've also got a Clarisonic, which is good. ~ Jess Glynne

The truth is that there is no actual stress or anxiety in the world; it's your thoughts that create these false beliefs. You can't package stress, touch it, or see it. There are only people engaged in stressful thinking. ~ Wayne Dyer

You just don't have the time to worry about what others are doing. You just want to take care of your own business. You are focused on that tee shot on the 10th tee and making it to the finish line. It's one of the most stressful moments in professional golf, but you have worked so hard to get to that point, that it really is fun. ~ Mike Weir

People aren't wired to be alone. Even in the stressful population of prison, solitary confinement is still considered a cruel punishment. ~ Richard Paul Evans

Essentially, we humans live well enough and long enough, and are smart enough, to generate all sorts of stressful events purely in our heads. ~ Robert M. Sapolsky

I don't think people understand how stressful it is to explain what's going on in your head when you don't even understand it yourself. ~ Sara Quin

One thing many people who don't live with daily pain don't understand, is that your whole world and your whole attitude shifts when you are in constant pain. There are no rose colored glasses when you wake up and go to sleep in unending pain. It's very stressful and very depressing, and it eventually affects all aspects of your life, whether it want it to or not. ~ Robert D. Graves

Premiering a new opera is probably one of the hardest things in the world to do, and opening nights of any opera are always pretty stressful. ~ Rufus Wainwright

Because here's something that's weird but true: we don't actually know what a positive or negative experience is. Some of the most difficult and stressful moments of our lives also end up being the most formative and motivating. Some of the best and most gratifying experiences of our lives are also the most distracting and demotivating. Don't trust your conception of positive/negative experiences. All that we know for certain is what hurts in the moment and what doesn't. And that's not worth much. Just ~ Mark Manson

Take special note of how people respond to stressful situations - often the mask they wear in public falls off in the heat of the moment. ~ Robert Greene

It was a difficult day. Disorienting. What is it they say? Death, divorce, and moving are the three most stressful events for your heart. And your psyche, too, I'll wager. ~ John Katzenbach

I found it a little bit stressful, because I wasn't used to working with Doctor Who. I got the impression I'd walked into the end of seven years and it was all a bit tense. ~ Sarah Sutton

Deadlines and daily dilemmas are stressful focus on solutions problems concerns don't sweat make best out of the moment. ~ Kishore Bansal

Studies find top 3 most stressful moments in people's lives: death, divorce, and properly pronouncing "Worcestershire sauce." ~ Tony Hsieh

If you don't believe there's some organising principle, or somebody up in the sky pulling the strings, then it can be very stressful. And nature itself is very arbitrary - it's not malevolent or benevolent; it doesn't even know we're here. ~ Michael Shannon

Attempting to succeed in a competitive external environment, we can lose track of how to live without anxiety. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

I think the perception of wealth and power is that things just become easier and easier when in reality as you raise the stakes things become more stressful. ~ Sean Parker

After years of pitched battles, my father was ready for a significantly less stressful career. Unfortunately, he decided to try raising a girl. ~ Brian K. Vaughan

what gets our attention will ultimately determine our direction. If we are obsessed with stressful circumstances, we will constantly be overwhelmed. But if we are obsessed with Christ, we will overcome. ~ Perry Noble

Most bullies are the product of a stressful and often abusive home life. Next time a bully threatens or attacks you, just yell, 'Don't abuse me like your parents abuse you!' Then call children's services and tell them you saw this bully crying in the bathroom and you're worried about him. Bam! He just got moved to a foster home. ~ Eugene Mirman

I think back to our fearsome disaster of a night together, with the Old Yeller and the awkward and her pretty much jumping me in an alley. And then her pretty much jumping me in the car. Me pretty much wanting to jump out of my whole existence. And suddenly, I feel really grateful for that whole crazy-ass experience. I'm not sure where I'd be if it hadn't happened, but … chances are it wouldn't be here. It's not like I know where stuff's going to go from this point. Probably more difficult, scary, confusing, stressful-as-all places. But I've got a crazy old bastard trying to force-feed me citrus in the name of my own health, and that? That's not something I'd trade.

"Thanks, Cora," I say.

"Yeah," she replies, with this little smile that's almost gentle, "sure. ~ Hannah Johnson

Under normal conditions people react to a threat with a temporary increase in their stress hormones. As soon as the threat is over, the hormones dissipate and the body returns to normal. The stress hormones of traumatized people, in contrast, take much longer to return to baseline and spike quickly and disproportionately in response to mildly stressful stimuli. The insidious effects of constantly elevated stress hormones include memory and attention problems, irritability, and sleep disorders. They also contribute to many long-term health issues, depending on which body system is most vulnerable in a particular individual. ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

It's quite stressful knowing that every time you walk out the door, someone is going to be giving you a very good look up and down, judging everything you wear. ~ Emma Watson

Abandoning the project was incredibly stressful after having gone through the process of building the room, installing the kiln, collecting the stones, sitting with the kiln day and night as it came to temperature, experiencing the failures. ~ Andy Goldsworthy

Nick will come home, sweaty and salty and beer-loose from a day at the ballpark, and I'll curl up in his lap, ask him about the game, ask him if his friend Jack had a good time, and he'll say, "Oh, he came down with a case of the dancing monkeys - poor Jennifer was having a 'real stressful week' and really needed him at home. ~ Gillian Flynn

Dating' stressful. I'd have to dress up. ~ Danika Stone

Stressful energy arises when you think some future moment is more important than the present moment, and the doing becomes only a means to an end. ~ Eckhart Tolle

One of the central elements of resilience, Bonanno has found, is perception: Do you conceptualize an event as traumatic, or as an opportunity to learn and grow? "Events are not traumatic until we experience them as traumatic," Bonanno told me, in December. "To call something a 'traumatic event' belies that fact." He has coined a different term: PTE, or potentially traumatic event, which he argues is more accurate.

The theory is straightforward. Every frightening event, no matter how negative it might seem from the sidelines, has the potential to be traumatic or not to the person experiencing it. Take something as terrible as the surprising death of a close friend: you might be sad, but if you can find a way to construe that event as filled with meaning - perhaps it leads to greater awareness of a certain disease, say, or to closer ties with the community - then it may not be seen as a trauma. The experience isn't inherent in the event; it resides in the event's psychological construal.

It's for this reason, Bonanno told me, that "stressful" or "traumatic" events in and of themselves don't have much predictive power when it comes to life outcomes. "The prospective epidemiological data shows that exposure to potentially traumatic events does not predict later functioning," he said. "It's only predictive if there's a negative response." In other words, living through adversity, be it endemic to your environment or an acute negative event, doesn't guarant ~ Maria Konnikova

It isn't stress that makes us fall - it's how we respond to stressful events. ~ Wayde Goodall

Several of my family members drain me. I wish it wasn't so, but it is."
"Anything I can do?"
"No. Thank you, though."
"Would fast food make it better?"
"Goodness, no." But she shot him a tiny smile.
"You sure? There goes Whataburger."
The smile grew.
"I could take you horseback riding."
"Possibly one of the only things more stressful than dealing with my family."
"I could telly you a corny joke."
"Hmm."
"I could prank call your family. ~ Becky Wade

Humankind devotes much of its collective energy to managing personal and institutional anxiety and dealing with unsuccessful efforts of its civilians to cope with the tides of shifting social and economic conditions. Every city corridor houses downtrodden citizens whom have given up on life, the dopers, smoke hounds, crack heads, and unrepentant drunkards whom spend their days pushing shopping carts and their nights sleeping in gutters. In marked contrast to these filthy and wretched souls whom inhabit the skid row of every city's streets, all animals display an admirable state of hygiene and a zest for life. Except for poor critters sentenced to live confined in a zoo and domestic animals held captives in deplorable harvesting pens, all animals live a carefree existence that is preferable to living off stress sandwiches of modern humankind. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

I am always on the go; being a photographer, filmmaker, author and a father, things become stressful, and it is important to find time to escape for a few minutes. ~ Nigel Barker

her humor kept tension at bay around the White House. Mrs. Bush was famous for it. Executive life was constantly stressful and it can consume everyone who works at the White House. She knew it and appreciated us, and it meant the world. ~ Gary J. Byrne

You know I used to sit there and I'd go outside and play ball and everything, but now in my free time I just kind of lay back and relax because this atmosphere is so busy and stressful, so anytime I can sleep, you'd best believe I'm sleepin'. ~ Scotty McCreery

It seems highly unlikely that any mother operating within patriarchy has not received sufficiently stressful messaging about her "duties." But the bad mother is patriarchy's saving throw, its ultimate loophole; by moving the blame for male violence back one generation, it makes guilty parties out of the women who are its victims. ~ Sady Doyle

Two Dutch researchers did a study in which they had groups of students answer forty-two fairly demanding questions from the board game Trivial Pursuit. Half were asked to take five minutes beforehand to think about what it would mean to be a professor and write down everything that came to mind. Those students got 55.6 percent of the questions right. The other half of the students were asked to first sit and think about soccer hooligans. They ended up getting 42.6 percent of the Trivial Pursuit questions right. The "professor" group didn't know more than the "soccer hooligan" group. They weren't smarter or more focused or more serious. They were simply in a "smart" frame of mind, and, clearly, associating themselves with the idea of something smart, like a professor, made it a lot easier - in that stressful instant after a trivia question was asked - to blurt out the right answer. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

My life is really stressful and before finding the vlogbrothers, nerdfighteria, you guys, I wasn't you know dead, but I really do feel like I have so much more in my life. ~ Esther Earl

I went to network on a handful of pilots, and going to network is the most stressful situation anybody can ever be in. You're supposed to be on point, you're supposed to be at the top of your game, the funniest you can be, in about five minutes, in front of people wearing suits who really don't care, and they've probably already picked their person, but they have to see a handful just to satisfy the process. It's the most horrible, horrible process known to man. I wouldn't want anybody to go through it. ~ Andy Dick

Stressful conditions from outside school are much more likely to intrude into the classroom in high poverty schools. Every one of ten stressors is two to three times more common in high poverty schools
Student hunger, unstable housing, lack of medical and dental care, caring for family members, immigration issues, community violence and safety issues. ~ Robert D. Putnam

I'm in the camp that needs to discover and take risks, sometimes it's with the promise of something special and new, sometimes it's to stay awake, either way it's much more stressful with all the uncertainty but worth the pain in the end. ~ Karen O

It was awful, but it's over. And now I feel like I'm finally coming up for air."
"Yes, well, it's been a very stressful time for both of us," said Leonard.
"How has it been stressful for you? said Holly.
"I had that move."
Holly just looked at him.
"What," said Leonard.
"You moved apartments" said Holly. ~ Sarah Dunn

There are lots of bad things that can happen to a food economy that's both extensive and centralized. There's no substitute for petroleum. To have a growth economy based on a declining fuel supply is bound to be stressful. ~ Wendell Berry

Most of us encounter a great deal more Mystery than we are willing to experience. Sometimes knowing life requires us to suspend disbelief, to recognize that all our hard-won knowledge may only be provisional and the world may be quite different than we believe it to be. This can be very stressful, even frightening. But if we are not willing to wonder, we may have to hang up the phone on life. ~ Rachel Naomi Remen

Behind every stressful thought is the desire for things to be other than they are. ~ Toni Bernhard

Sorry for being stuck in the traffic
of my mind's stressful road
The world seems very pornographic
I can't carry the load ~ Munia Khan

It was a very intense and stressful situation. There was playing in the Johnny-pump (an opened fire hydrant) and the ice-cream man coming around and all of these games that we'd play, and suddenly it would turn just violent and there would be shootings at 12 in the afternoon on any given day. ~ Jay-Z

Life is stressful. ~ Bethenny Frankel

We drove. Time seemed to pass a little differently when there was nothing to mark how far you had come, or what you were heading to. I would look at my watch, thinking an hour had passed when it had only been five minutes. Or I would catch the car's clock and realized forty-five minutes had gone by in what I would have sworn was fifteen. Now that I knew what to expect from this road, it wasn't so stressful. There were still moments when the sheer aloneness of it all would cause me to have a momentary panic. But then it would subside, and I would look out the window, take in the view, and feel myself calming down. ~ Morgan Matson

I often would think about how we have built our society, and when you describe it out loud, it sounds rather insane. The idea of being funnelled through a conventional life progression of education, work, career, marriage, kids, divorce, retirement and then death doesn't seem that inspiring to me.
Then we're told we have to struggle to make a living, sacrifice enjoyment to have a family, delay our happiness until we're retired, fight the next person for a job, climb the ladder of success to get an even more stressful job,
spend more money than we earn, go into debt, live in fear of being blown up by some terrorist and then have TV passed off as the only way to escape it all. And when all of this gets too much and you can't keep up, you get prescribed antidepressants and made to feel like you've failed. ~ Josh Langley

I find traveling anywhere very stressful. If I ever have to go on tour, I tend to find it all a bit too stressful. I am too much of a control freak with traveling, and nothing is ever on time. The one thing I can't stand is being late. ~ Mark Billingham

Always make sure that the PAST is a Previous Action Successfully Terminated and not a Permanent Application of Stressful Trials. ~ Charbel Tadros

What inspires me is the power of human potential ... the human potential to evolve in our lives, and for profound healing. It's always been there but it's become somewhat obscure to us given the stressful, fast-paced modern culture in which we live. I'm also inspired by how miraculous some of the simplest and most natural aspects of life can be the greatest sources of healing and transformation. ~ Brad Willis

Getting angry in a stressful situation is like trying to clean something with dirt ~ Urbanky Aurel Petru

I find the older I get, the lower in weight I go. It's harder to recover. Living in New York City, working a job that is unpredictable and at times stressful, you're lifting way more than your max because you need to push some weight around. You put an extra plate on for the release, and then you're sore the next week. Its stress release. ~ Danny Pino

Henry Adams observes that John Hay has the ability to take the world as a whole rather than pulling it to pieces in criticism. He also observes that, in the routine of a stressful job, this perspective is challenged ~ John Taliaferro

Stressful situations cause alterations in behavior that reveal true character, Tibbs. If a person gradually begins acting like someone else altogether, you may very well find that they *are* someone else altogether" -Inspector Percival Pensive ~ Jessica Lawson

Christmas is more stressful with present buying and making sure everyone gets included, but Thanksgiving is really not that. I don't ever really get stressed out about the food. ~ Sandra Lee

I just got back from Hawaii on Saturday, and it's so depressing how quickly all the stresses and the stressful energy of L.A. comes bombarding back. Everyone's in a rush, you're annoying everyone, get out of their way, everyone's most important than you are, has got somewhere more important to be - very draining town. But I still love it in many ways. I wouldn't leave California. I think it's a fantastic state, if you can't be in Hawaii all the time. ~ Natalie Maines

Jobs and money are never the primary cause of stress.
Thinking, negative thinking causes stress.
The real cause of all problems lie in our thoughts, not in things or circumstances.
You and I possess the power to change our thoughts.
It is our greatest power - the power to choose.
If you are feeling stressful, choose to relax.
Look at your problems as a stranger might then do something about them - NOW! ~ Bob Proctor

Seeking can become stressful when you apply the same laws that you apply in the material world - hard work, exacting plans, driving ambition, and attachment to outcome. ~ Deepak Chopra

It's a fun job, but it's stressful because you have to be funny. You have to have punch lines and captions. Be funny now! And if you're not inspired, they don't care - be funny now! They have to fill that hole the next day. ~ Steve Breen

Resiliency is the body's internal response to a stressful situation. ~ Asa Don Brown

I talk to myself quite a lot, and when things get stressful, I just tell myself to breathe. ~ Maisie Williams

Nowadays, people resort to all kinds of activities in order to calm themselves after a stressful event: performing yoga poses in a sauna, leaping off bridges while tied to a bungee, killing imaginary zombies with imaginary weapons, and so forth. But in Miss Penelope Lumley's day, it was universally understood that there is nothing like a nice cup of tea to settle one's nerves in the aftermath of an adventure- a practice many would find well worth reviving. ~ Maryrose Wood

Sometimes I'll be sitting on Facebook at home and see all these people getting married, having kids, having that life that I was told I should have. And sometimes I feel like I'm doing something wrong. Am I the stupid one here? Am I not doing what I'm supposed to do? And that's also equally as stressful. ~ Lilly Singh

To be interested in something is to be involved in what is essentially a stressful relationship with that thing, to suffer anxiety on its behalf. ~ Geoff Dyer

One of the reasons so many people are suffering from stress is not that they are doing stressful things but that they allow so little time for silence. ~ John O'Donohue

She thought she was getting out of the Water Rising clean, because she didn't see her father anywhere around: there was only Ash and Lillian sitting at a table, and a few other patrons at as much of a distance from Ash and Lillian as they could get. She made for the door, at which point Lillian caught her arm.

"Where are you going?"

"Uh," said Kami, eyeballing her wildly. "I'm going to buy some drugs."

Lillian stared. "I beg your pardon?"

"This is a really stressful time for everyone," said Kami. "So I thought maybe I could buy a little weed, take the edge off. I might be a while. This is a very clean-living town, apart from all the murders, so I don't actually know any drug dealers. I realize Jared kind of looks like one, but he's not, which is a shame because I think the drug dealer's girlfriend gets her drugs free."

"I realize you are attempting to be humorous," said Lillian, after a pause during which she stared some more. "I don't understand it."

"Hey, you're not the only family with a legacy. 'Glass' rhymes with 'sass.' Have you met my dad?"

"I have had that dubious pleasure," said Lillian. "He is, in fact, meant to be meeting me in order to, and I quote, 'teach me to integrate better with society, display leadership skills, win over the populace, and stop acting like a robot princess from space.' I admit that the humor in his humor escapes me as well." She paused and suddenly looked determined ~ Sarah Rees Brennan