Stump Quotes

There's no amount of money that makes you feel better when people think of you as a joke or a hack or a failure or ugly or stupid or morally empty. ~ Patrick Stump

I'm thinking we ought to rethink the whole self-esteem thing. It should almost be a dirty word. I mean, look at Kayla. She has the intelligence of a tree stump, and its sense of humour. She's less about real attractiveness than she is about advertising ... She's the kind of girl who shows how hot she is because she has nothing else to offer, who doesn't realise that hotness has an expiration date. Yet, I'm still a little nervous talking to her like she's holding a lottery ticket she just might or might not decide to hand over to me. It is nuts, if you stop to think about it. I give give her this power, and it's kind of like voting some idiot into office. But hey, we're good at that, too. ~ Deb Caletti

The man would fight with a stump. ~ Terri Osburn

Prying out a stump reminded him of how deeply a tree clung to the ground, how tenacious a hold it had on a place. Though he was not a sentimental man - he did not cry when his children died, he simply dug the graves and buried them - James was silent each time he killed a tree, thinking of its time spent in that spot. He never did this with the animals he hunted - they were food, and transient, passing through this world and out again, as people did. But trees felt permanent - until you had to cut them down. ~ Tracy Chevalier

Did you see it?" asked Yarvi.
"I had that questionable privilege."
"What do you think?"
"She is wretched. She is all pride and anger. She has too much confidence and too little. She does not know herself." The figure pushed back her hood. A black-skinned old woman with a face lean as famine and hair shaved to gray fuzz. She picked her nose with one long forefinger, carefully examined the results, then flicked them away "The girl is stupid as a stump. Worse. Most stumps have the dignity to rot quietly without causing offense."
"I'm right here," Thorn managed to hiss from her hands and knees.
"Just where the drunk boy put you." The woman flashed a smile at Brand that seemed to have too many teeth. "I like him, though: he is pretty and desperate. My favorite combination. ~ Joe Abercrombie

If bumblebee leavings and stump paste are so good for you, why can't any of those guys (in the health stores) grow full beards? ~ Calvin Trillin

You call me castoff," Mahlia said, "Chinese throwaway, whatever." Amaya was trying to look away, but Mahlia had her pinned, kept her eye to eye. "My old man might have been peacekeeper, but my mom was pure Drowned Cities. You want to war like that, I'm all in." Mahlia lifted the scarred stump of her right hand, shoved it up in Amaya's face. "Maybe I cut you the way the Army of God cut me. See how you do with just a lucky left. How'd you like that? ~ Paolo Bacigalupi

I'm really attracted to music that sort of toes that line between pop and avant-garde, that pushes the envelope of what you can get in a pop song. ~ Patrick Stump

Old Timer Farmer's Wisdom in Haiku
Keep skunks, city slickers,
Jews, lawyers at a distance
Or else ya' get fucked.

Life is simpler when
You plow around the stump
Or else ya' get fucked.

If you don'tknow bees
Are faster than your tractor
Ya' gonna'get fucked.

Do your pissing down
Stream and your drinking upstream
Or else ya' get fucked.

Fences need to be
Horse-high, pig-tight,bull-strong
Or else ya' get fucked

Cheat an Indian
Out of his liquor money
Ya' gonna get stabbed. ~ Beryl Dov

I never did understand
why the tree was still happy
at the end. The little boy
used her until she was
nothing but a stump.
She couldn't even run away.
But the ending was always the same:
And the tree was happy. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Alexander smoked and watched her from his tree stump bench. What are you doing? she would ask him.
Nothing, he would reply. Nothing but growing my pain into madness. ~ Paullina Simons

Even if you don't mind Romneycare, or the abortion flip-flop, or any of the rest, there's a more basic problem: He's not a natural campaigner, and on the stump he instinctively recoils from any personal connection with the voters. ~ Mark Steyn

In reply to "Why are people at school such d*cks"
Cause they're sad and scared and insecure. Don't let them spread it to you. Try and spread confidence and kindness ~ Patrick Stump

Eventually Theo would pick up their daughter, kiss the top of her head, and carry her to an old spruce stump. He'd crouch down, gather up the beach glass that was still scattered there, and whisper in her ear. "Let's build a fairy house. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

I don't mind if someone thinks I'm a sell out. I go to bed happy knowing I do what I do and I'm not doing anything for reasons of money, and if I were trying to pick up chicks, I'm doing a horrible job. And if I wanted to drive awesome cars, I'm doing a really bad job there too. ~ Patrick Stump

It has been quite a weight, hasn't it?" Tam asked. "What weight?" Rand replied. "That lost hand you've been carrying." Rand looked down at his stump. "Yes. I believe it has been at that. ~ Robert Jordan

You could be your own spotlight! ~ Patrick Stump

How time packs new years over the old ones but how those old years are still in there, like the earliest, tightest rings centering a tree, the most hidden, enclosed in darkness and shielded from weather. But then a saw screams in and the tree topples and the circles are stricken by the sun and the sap glistens and the stump is laid open for the world to see. ~ Tom Franklin, Crooked Letter Crooked Letter

I glance at the stump that remains of my arm. "Damn it, Megan. You made me forget my hand! ~ Daryl Banner

[Stump speeches] are to oratory what a stump is to a tree. ~ Jon Stewart

He had been so busy decking himself with the qualities he lacked that he had not had time to take note of those he possessed, but now he began to piece his own self together from scattered memories and impressions of his childhood and from the most vivid moments of his life. He saw with pleased surprise how it all fitted together, bit by bit, and was welded into a much more familiar personality than the one he had chased after in his dreams. This figure was far more genuine, far stronger, and more richly endowed. It was no mere dead stump of an ideal, but a living thing, full of infinite shifting possibilities playing through it and shaping it to a thousand fold unity. ~ Jens Peter Jacobsen

The problem with modern politics is everybody is doing sound bite stuff. In my stump speech, I give 20 minutes on why I think we're off track. And I think people do really want to engage in a serious high-level discussion on how to get the country back on track because people care about their own country. ~ Dave Brat

Watch the dog! His hands actually hesitated, and I think he realized for the first time that PC was there. The dog's presence seemed to stump him. What, he's never seen a dog in a purse before? That or he thought PC was some sort of hairless rat - that happened. ~ Kalayna Price

Trousers rolled to the knee but still they got wet. They tied the rope to a cleat at the rear of the boat and rowed back across the lake, jerking the stump slowly behind them. By then it was already evening. Just the slow periodic rack and shuffle of the oarlocks. The lake dark glass and windowlights coming on along the shore. A radio somewhere. Neither of them had spoken a word. This was the perfect day of childhood. This is the day to shape the days upon. ~ Cormac McCarthy

Joe Lieberman may be Moses on the stump, but when it comes to policies and votes, he boogies with the Golden Calf. ~ Don Feder

Becoming a successful professional writer implies that one's own mind is entertaining enough to keep the work interesting. ~ Robert Stump

Revolutionaries - true revolutionaries - are aggressive, ruthless, and generally seize the main chance, as William Henry Drayton did when he saw that stump-speaking was getting him nowhere. But defenders of the status quo tend toward caution and legalisms and inaction until it is too late ~ John Buchanan

Look for a tree stump in the woods. Compare it to love. ~ Colette Inez

Everyday you gotta wake up and be yourself, even if you suck, especially if you suck, because no one sucks like you suck. ~ Patrick Stump-Fall Out Boy

Fear is killing us, but true love can survive. If we cooperate, we can beat doubt. But first, rebuild trust. Take responsibility. Happiness is still free, though not always apparent when it's right in front of us. So keep calm, it's gonna get better. ~ Patrick Stump

The poet Robert Browning caused considerable consternation by including the word twat in one of his poems, thinking it an innocent term. The work was Pippa Passes, written in 1841 and now remembered for the line "God's in His heaven, all's right with the world." But it also contains this disconcerting passage:
Then owls and bats
Cowls and twats
Monks and nuns in a cloister's moods,
Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry!
Browning had apparently somewhere come across the word twat
which meant precisely the same then as it does now
but pronounced it with a flat a and somehow took it to mean a piece of headgear for nuns. The verse became a source of twittering amusement for generations of schoolboys and a perennial embarrassment to their elders, but the word was never altered and Browning was allowed to live out his life in wholesome ignorance because no one could think of a suitably delicate way of explaining his mistake to him. ~ Bill Bryson

I only wanted books - nothing more - only books, only words, it was never anything but words - give them to me, I don't have any! Look, see, I don't have any! Look, I'm naked, barefoot, I'm standing before you - nothing in my pants pockets, nothing under my shirt or under my arm! They're not stuck in my beard! Inside - look - there aren't any inside either - everything's been turned inside out, there's nothing there! Only guts! I'm hungry! I'm tormented!...
What do you mean there's nothing? Then how can you talk and cry, what words are you frightened with, which ones do you call out in your sleep? Don't nighttime cries roam inside you, a thudding twilight murmur, a fresh morning shriek? There they are words - don't you recognize them? They're writhing inside you, trying to get out! There they are! They're yours! From wood, stone, roots, growing in strength, a dull mooing and whining in the gut is trying to get out; a piece of tongue curls, the torn nostrils swell in torment. That's how the bewitched, beaten, and twisted snuffle with a mangy wail, their boiled white eyes locked up in closets, their vein torn out, backbone gnawed; that's right, that's how your pushkin writhe, or mushkin - what is in my name for you? - pushkin-mushkin, flung upon the hillock like a shaggy black idol, forever flattened by fences, up to his ears in di, the pushkin-stump, legless, six-fingered, biting his tongue, nose in his chest - and his head can't be raised! - pushkin, tearing off the pois ~ Tatyana Tolstaya

When you're a little kid, you just like music that makes you happy and is fun. As you get older, you reach college or your 20s and you decide that music should be challenging and all art should be smart. So you start to think it makes you like high art more to put down things you consider low art. I don't even think things are low art. ~ Patrick Stump

I am genuinely into soul, R&B and hip hop - all these genres that get slapped under the 'soul' genre. That spoke to me more than it did to my punk-rock friends. And punk spoke more to me than it did to my soul friends. I basically didn't fit comfortably in either world. ~ Patrick Stump

The blue sky adds Dont call me eternity, call me God if you like, sll of you talkers are in paradise: the leaf is paradise, the tree stump is paradise, the paper bag is paradise, the man is paradise, the sand is paradise, the sea is paradise, the man is paradise, the fog is paradise ~ Jack Kerouac

What," she barked, "is that?" "We have a guest for supper tonight," Miss Stump replied, and as she glanced back at him he thought he saw a mischievous glint in her eye. "Indio's monster, in fact - though Indio now calls him Caliban." "Caliban?" Maude narrowed her eyes, cocking her head as she examined him critically. "Aye, I can see that, but is he safe in the theater with us is what I'm wanting to know?" Apollo felt a tug on his hand. He looked down at Indio, who whispered, "She's nice. Truly. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

He felt something on his neck. Warmth.
He hesitated, then turned weary eyes toward the sky. Sunlight bathed his face. He gaped; it seemed so long since he'd seen pure sunlight. It shone down through a large break in the clouds, comforting, like the warmth of an oven baking a loaf of Adrinne's thick sourdough bread.
Almen stood, raising a hand to shade his eyes. He took a deep, long breath, and smelled… apple blossoms? He spun with a start.
The apple trees were flowering.
That was plain ridiculous. He rubbed his eyes, but that didn't dispel the image. They were blooming, all of them, white flowers breaking out between the leaves.
[...] What was happening? Apple trees didn't blossom twice. Was he going mad?
Footsteps sounded softly on the path that ran past the orchard. Almen spun to find a tall young man walking down out of the foothills. He had deep red hair and he wore ragged clothing: a brown cloak with loose sleeves and a simple white linen shirt beneath. The trousers were finer, black with a delicate embroidery of gold at the cuff.
"Ho, stranger," Almen said, raising a hand, not knowing what else to say, not even sure if he'd seen what he thought he'd seen. "Did you… did you get lost up in the foothills?"
The man stopped, turning sharply. He seemed surprised to find Almen there. With a start, Almen realized the man's left arm ended in a stump.
The stranger looked about, then breathed in deeply. "No. I'm not lost. Finally. It fe ~ Robert Jordan

Blood brothers in desperation
Oath of silence for the voice of a generation ~ Fall Out Boy

And then she would put her hand over the bird's face like she was hiding it from seeing something, and then she would grab and twist. Break the neck. Slice the head off on the stump. ~ Jesmyn Ward

He [Patrick Stump] is been a friend of ours for a long time, and when we were talking about working with different producers and songwriters for the record, Patrick's name came up. We were excited to work with him - he's a very gifted lyricist and songwriter, and a really cool guy and it was a pleasure to work with him in the studio. ~ Mark Hoppus

Good! Hang in there! It's normal! [Low self-esteem] Often it's a sign of intelligence (but don't let that go to your head haha) ~ Patrick Stump

You really can't be a control freak and garden happily. After many years, I have finally allowed my garden to rescue me from rigidity. No longer do I feel compelled to create utter neatness and order in my garden - or in my life. "Organized chaos" is more like it, and I like it more that way. Nor do I have to be constantly moving and doing in my garden - or in my life. Today, I actually can (and do) stay put, seated quietly on a tree stump near the brook or on the front lawn under our now majestic oak. I'm perfectly content to allow my mind to drift and my body to rest. ~ Barbara Pearlman

Among them is a renegade king, he who sired five royal heirs without ever unzipping his pants. A man to whom time has imparted great wisdom and an even greater waistline, whose thoughtless courage is rivalled only by his unquenchable thirst.

At his shoulder walks a sorcerer, a cosmic conversationalist. Enemy of the incurable rot, absent chairman of combustive sciences at the university in Oddsford, and the only living soul above the age of eight to believe in owlbears.

Look here at a warrior born, a scion of power and poverty whose purpose is manifold: to shatter shackles, to murder monarchs, and to demonstrate that even the forces of good must sometimes enlist the service of big, bad motherfuckers. His is an ancient soul destined to die young.

And now comes the quiet one, the gentle giant, he who fights his battles with a shield. Stout as the tree that counts its age in aeons, constant as the star that marks true north and shines most brightly on the darkest nights.

A step ahead of these four: our hero. He is the candle burnt down to the stump, the cutting blade grown dull with overuse. But see now the spark in his stride. Behold the glint of steel in his gaze. Who dares to stand between a man such as this and that which he holds dear? He will kill, if he must, to protect it. He will die, if that is what it takes.

"Go get the boss," says one guardsman to another. "This bunch looks like trouble."

And they do. T ~ Nicholas Eames

Confederate surgeons usually performed "circular" amputations. They made a 360-degree cut through the skin, then scrunched it up like a shirt cuff. After sawing through the muscle and bone, they inched the skin back down to wrap the stump. This method led to less scarring and infection. Union surgeons preferred "flap" amputations: doctors left two flaps of flesh hanging beside the wound to fold over after they'd sawed through. This method was quicker and provided a more comfortable stump for prosthetics. Altogether, surgeons lopped off 60,000 fingers, toes, hands, feet, and limbs during the war. ~ Sam Kean

Fenella Doorn watched the unfamiliar wreck of a ship ghosting into her bay. Crippled by cannon fire, she thought. What else could do such damage? The foremast was blown away, as well as half the mainmast where a jury rig clung to the jagged stump, and shot holes tattered the sails on the mizzen. And yet, to Fenella's experienced eye the vessel had an air of defiance. Demi-cannons hulked in the shadowed gun ports. This ship was a fighter, battered but not beaten. With fight still in her, was she friend or foe? ~ Barbara Kyle

There are no words and there is no singing, but the music has a voice. It is an old voice and a deep voice, like the stump of a sweet cigar or a shoe with a hole. It is a voice that has lived and lives, with sorrow and shame, ecstasy and bliss, joy and pain, redemption and damnation. It is a voice with love and without love. I like the voice, and though I can't talk to it, I like the way it talks to me. It says it is all the same, Young Man. Take it and let it be. ~ James Frey

Fearing that Taft would be too reticent on the stump, Roosevelt barraged him with incessant advice. "Do not answer Bryan; attack him!" he counseled in early September, adding, "Don't let him make the issues. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

For there is hope for a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease. Though its root grow old in the earth, and its stump die in the ground, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth branches like a young plant. But man dies, and is laid low; man breathes his last, and where is he? ~ Job

A life devoted to things is a dead life, a stump; a God-shaped life is a flourishing tree. PROVERBS 11:28 ~ Rick Warren

If you put your hand in my pocket, you'll drag back six inches of bloody stump. ~ Harlan Ellison

I would love to hang out with Elvis Costello, to see what he's up to because he seems so fascinating to me. ~ Patrick Stump

Steven Tyler isn't in Aerosmith anymore, but his gravestone will probably say something about Aerosmith. ~ Patrick Stump

I definitely love kimchi. The biggest influence that eating so much Korean food growing up had on me was that I have no limit for spiciness. The hotter the better. ~ Patrick Stump

Replies don't matter unless we have actual conversation though. Like, wouldn't you rather be understood than acknowledged ~ Patrick Stump

The critical habit of thought, if usual in society, will pervade all its mores, because it is a way of taking up the problems of life. Men educated in it cannot be stampeded by stump orators ... They are slow to believe. They can hold things as possible or probable in all degrees, without certainty and without pain. They can wait for evidence and weigh evidence, uninfluenced by the emphasis or confidence with which assertions are made on one side or the other. They can resist appeals to their dearest prejudices and all kinds of cajolery. Education in the critical faculty is the only education of which it can be truly said that it makes good citizens. ~ William Graham Sumner

Everything looked like death to me, a bush was hunched-over grizzly, a skinny tree stump was a wolf staring right at me. My heart was thumping and kicking in me like it was trying to get free a' my stupid. ~ Beth Lewis

Criticism is an alluring substitute for creation, because tearing
things down, unlike building them up, really is as easy as falling off a stump. It's blissfully simple to strike a savvy, sophisticated pose by attacking someone else's creations, but the old adage is right: Any fool can burn down a barn. Building one is something else again. ~ Martha Beck

Assured that there would be a meal set aside for him somewhere, the beagle pulled his mind off the gnawing emptiness in his stomach, mounted the flattened stump, marched into the center and stood, stock-still, on his vein-coiled, burst of speed legs and gnarled paws--listening! ~ Kevin Moccia

In the wake of the Patriot Act, during the second administration of George W., you made a series of small, handheld weapons. The rule was that each weapon had to be assembled from household items within minutes. You'd been gay-bashed before, two black eyes while waiting in line for a burrito (you ran after him, of course). Now you thought, if the government comes for its citizens, we should be prepared, even if our weapons are pathetic. Your art-weapons included a steak knife affixed to a bottle of ranch dressing and mounted on an axe handle, a dirty sock sprouting nails, a wooden stump with a clump of urethane resin stuck to one end with dull bolts protruding from it, and more. ~ Maggie Nelson

Look at life from our perspective, and you eukaryotes will soon cease giving yourselves such airs. You bipedal apes, you stump-tailed tree-shrews, you desiccated lobe-fins, you vertebrated worms, you Hoxed-up sponges, you newcomers on the block, you eukaryotes, you barely distinguishable congregations of a monotonously narrow parish, you are little more than fancy froth on the surface of bacterial life. Why, the very cells that build you are themselves colonies of bacteria, replaying the same old tricks we bacteria discovered a billion years ago. We were here before you arrived, and we shall be here after you are gone. ~ Richard Dawkins

When you have a bad day, a really bad day, try to treat the world better than it treated you. ~ Patrick Stump

I've learned a lot about things because of the Internet. I'm happy with it, but it's a long road for me. I'm still definitely a little anti. ~ Patrick Stump

And there was a tree stump outside the Black Barn everyone called 'Dave's stump' because for over three years, until a few weeks before our arrival, he'd sat on it to read and write, sometimes even when it was raining or cold. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

Bel pointed. "Head. Tail. Pets go here." He pointed to the dog's head again. "Farts come out here." He pointed to the dog's back end. "That's all you need to know about Stump. ~ Lisa Henry

I sat there and my love to him poured out more and more, and, lo, he flew down to a stump, and then to my knee. I knew beyond a shadow of doubt that the important thing is the love that goes out from oneself. ~ Agnes Grinstead Anderson

You, sir, have the manners of a stump. (Nora)
Since I'm as tall as a tree, that would be rather fitting, don't you think? (Ewan) ~ Kinley MacGregor

There's a funny fool. I have a riddle for you, Shagwell. Why do you care if she screams? Oh, wait, I know." He shouted "SAPPHIRES," as loudly as he could.
Cursing, Rorge kicked at his stump again. Jaime howled. I never knew there was such agony in the world, was the last thing he remembered thinking. It was hard to say how long he was gone, but when the pain spit him out, Urswyck was there, and Vargo Hoat himself. "Thee'th not to be touched," the goat screamed, spraying spittle all over Zollo. "Thee hath to be a maid, you foolth! Thee'th worth a bag of thapphireth!" And from then on, every night Hoat put guards on them, to protect them from his own.
Two nights passed in silence before the wench finally found the courage to whisper, "Jaime? Why did you shout out?"
"Why did I shout out 'sapphires,' you mean? Use your wits, wench. Would this lot have cared if I shouted 'rape'?"
"You did not need to shout at all."
"You're hard enough to look at with a nose. Besides, I wanted to make the goat say, 'thapphireth. ~ George R.R. Martin

Touring on 'Folie' was like being the last act at the vaudeville show: We were rotten vegetable targets in clandestine hoods. ~ Patrick Stump

The song that's affected me the most profoundly is probably Michael Jackson's 'Thriller,' or, more specifically, the couple seconds of instrumental break before Vincent Price starts 'rapping.' ~ Patrick Stump

Be yourself! Love your mom, but if she's trying to get you to be someone you're not, she's in the wrong ~ Patrick Stump

If you're trying to open a doorway to perception and it seems to be stuck, try opening it the other way. ~ Robert Stump

deep inside the smoldering stump of Israel, a remnant of life was rising to push back the darkness and break through the crust of the desolation of the people of God to find the light of day. Though they struggled to see it, God loved them. He loved them with an everlasting, unfailing love. Salvation was coming, and when all was said and done, "He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore. " (Rev 21:3-4) "Behold," he says, "I am making all things new. ~ Russ Ramsey

I AM ROWING (a hex poem)

i have cursed your forehead, your belly, your life
i have cursed the streets your steps plod through
the things your hands touch
i have cursed the inside of your dreams

i have placed a puddle in your eye so that you cant see anymore
an insect in your ear so that you cant hear anymore
a sponge in your brain so that you cant understand
anymore

i have frozen you in the soul of your body
iced you in the depths of your life
the air you breathe suffocates you
the air you breathe has the air of a cellar
is an air that has already been exhaled
been puffed out by hyenas

the dung of this air is something no one can breathe
your skin is damp all over
your skin sweats out waters of great fear
your armpits reak far and wide of the crypt

animals drop dead as you pass
dogs howl at night their heads raised toward your house
you cant run away
you cant muster the strength of an ant to the tip of your feet

your fatigue makes a lead stump in your body
your fatigue is a long caravan
your fatigue stretches out to the country of nan
your fatigue is inexpressible

your mouth bites you
your nails scratch you
no longer yours, your wife
no longer yours, your brother
the sole of his foot bitten by an angry snake

someone has slobbered on your descendents
someone has droo ~ Henri Michaux

Just shut up and start sucking each other's faces already," Vida grumbled, leaning awkwardly against the stump. She would never admit it aloud, but I knew the burns on her back her eating her alive with pain. "I'm trying to make up for the sleep I lost when you started screeching at each other like cats in heat."
"Miss Vida," Liam said, "has anyone ever told you that you are positively the whipped cream on the sundae of life?"
She glared at him. "Anyone ever told you your head is shaped like a pencil?"
"That is physically impossible," Chubs groused. "He'd be--"
"Actually," Liam began, "Cole once did try to-- What?"
"Oh, I'm sorry," Chub said, "apparently the middle of my sentence interrupted the beginning of yours. Do continue."
"I'm going to guess you probably don't want to hear about the time he pushed my head through the neighbours fence..."
"Was there a lot of blood?" Vida asked, suddenly interested. "Did you lose an ear?"
Liam held his hands up next to his ears, indicating both were firmly attached to his skull.
"Then, no" she said. "No one wants to hear your boring-ass story. ~ Alexandra Bracken

Everyday you gotta wake up & be yourself, even if you suck, especially if you suck, because no one else sucks like you suck - Patrick Stump ~ Patrick Stump

I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Besides the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

- The Thought Fox ~ Ted Hughes

No opinions, no ideas, no real knowledge of anything, no ideals, no inspiration; a fat, slothful, querulous, greedy, impotent carcass; a stump, a decaying belly washed up on the shore ... Always tired, always bored, always hurt, always hating. ~ Cyril Connolly

Everyone wants to pretend like they sprang out of the ground with an Animal Collective record in their hands and a David Bowie haircut, and that's just not the case. You discover these things gradually. ~ Patrick Stump

No one's busy thinking bad things about you. They're all too busy thinking bad things about themselves. ~ Patrick Stump

'As Long As I Know I'm Getting Paid' is a satire. Lyrically, I want to be direct. With my history in Fall Out Boy, there's some expectation that I'm going to be lyrically obtuse. But that song is a straight-faced satire of consumerism. ~ Patrick Stump

I don't like to Google myself. I try and avoid it whenever I can. ~ Patrick Stump

It was almost a mystical experience. I do not know how else to put it. My mind outran time as he neared, and it was as though I had an eternity to ponder the approach of this man who was my brother. His garments were filthy, his face blackened, the stump of his right arm raised, gesturing anywhere. The great beast that he rode was striped, black and red, with a wild red mane and tail. But it really was a horse, and its eyes rolled and there was foam at its mouth and its breathing was painful to hear. I saw then that he wore his blade slung across his back, for its haft protruded high above his right shoulder. Still slowing, eyes fixed upon me, he departed the road, bearing slightly toward my left, jerked the reins once and released them, keeping control of the horse with his knees. His left hand went up in a salute-like movement that passed above his head and seized the hilt of his weapon. It came free without a sound, describing a beautiful arc above him and coming to rest in a lethal position out from his left shoulder and slanting back, like a single wing of dull steel with a minuscule line of edge that gleamed like a filament of mirror. The picture he presented was burned into my mind with a kind of magnificence, a certain splendor that was strangely moving. The blade was a long, scythe like affair that I had seen him use before. Only then we had stood as allies against a mutual foe I had begun to believe unbeatable. Benedict had proved otherwise that night. Now that I sa ~ Roger Zelazny

It is wonderful how soon a piano gets into a log-hut on the frontier. You would think they found it under a pine-stump. With it comes a Latin grammar, and one of those tow-head boys has written a hymn on Sunday. Now let colleges, now let senates take heed! for here is one who, opening these fine tastes on the basis of the pioneer's iron constitution, will gather all their laurels in his strong hands. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The redwood is one of the few conifers that sprout from the stump and roots, and it declares itself willing to begin immediately to repair the damage of the lumberman and also that of the forest-burner. ~ John Muir

I always think about opportunity and how you regret the things you don't do. ~ Patrick Stump

If you turned a Labrador into a person you would make Brad Kline. He's happy and gushy and about as interesting and complex as a tree stump. ~ Andrea Portes

But a lot of things probably will never change - like our friendships and our working relationships. As far as me and Patrick [Stump, the singer] and all of Fall Out Boy, it's in a vacuum. ~ Pete Wentz

Hi-YI! YOU'RE up a stump, ain't you! ~ Mark Twain

Let other men gather bright gold to themselves and own many acres of well-ploughed soil, let endless worry trouble them, with enemies nearby, and the peals of the war trumpets driving away sleep: let my moderate means lead me to a quiet life, as long as my fireside glows with endless flame.

Let me plant the tender vines at the proper time, tall fruit trees, myself a rustic, with skilled hands:nor let hope fail, but deliver the pile-up fruits, and the rich vintage in overflowing vats, since i worship wherever there's a stump left in the fields, or an old stone at the crossroads, wreathed with flowers: and whatever fruit of mine the new season brings I set as an offering before the god of the fields. --Tibullus cca. 55 BC – 19 BC ~ Tibullus

In every stump speech I give, I speak about the fact that people who dream and achieve enormous success do not make us poorer - they make us better off. ~ Mitt Romney

A circle is not absurd, it is clearly explained by the rotation of a straight segment around one of its extremities. But neither does a circle exist. This root, on the other hand, existed in such a way that I could not explain it. Knotty, inert, nameless, it fascinated me, filled my eyes, brought me back unceasingly to its own existence. In vain to repeat: "This is a root" - it didn't work any more. I saw clearly that you could not pass from its function as a root, as a breathing pump, to that, to this hard and compact skin of a sea lion, to this oily, callous, headstrong look. The function explained nothing: it allowed you to understand generally that it was a root, but not that one at all. This root, with its colour, shape, its congealed movement, was . . . below all explanation. Each of its qualities escaped it a little, flowed out of it, half solidified, almost became a thing; each one was In the way in the root and the whole stump now gave me the impression of unwinding itself a little, denying its existence to lose itself in a frenzied excess. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

In reply to 'how do I flirt with people?':
Just be yourself and not want anything out of anybody. Desire is the killer of all smoothness. ~ Patrick Stump

No, my son. Not she. I. I lay on the rocks and the sun gnawed at my flesh. I pleaded for my life with a useless stump of a tongue. I watched your precious Cveti close up my severed breasts in a silver box. And I listened to the soldiers praise her false name - Ghyfran! Ghyfran! The whore who betrayed her god for power. This body is new, but I am Ragnhild, first of my name, and I am the plague which will burn through the marrow of the Anointed City. ~ Catherynne M Valente

I swear, if Dan had claimed he could saw off more of his fingers than I could of my own, then one of us would've pointed a hand-turned-stump at the other and cackled with victory. ~ S. Hart

I was talking to my grandpa last Thanksgiving. He pulled me aside and was like, "This Thanksgiving is the 150th for the Vaughn family in Chicago." I was like, "Cool, whatever," but I think when you have a culture like that, you should have a real appreciation for it. My family's been there forever and I don't want to leave. ~ Patrick Stump

I write really scathing, angry stuff when I'm in a better mood, and then uplifting and happy stuff when I'm at the absolute bottom. ~ Patrick Stump

You can stump any stoner with one question: What were we just talking about? ~ Jim Breuer

Certain kinds of people, and a fortiori certain kinds of writers, have always experienced the world around them in the Gothic manner, I'm almost positive. Perhaps there was even some little stump of an apeman who witnessed prehistoric lightning as it parried with prehistoric blackness in a night without rain, and felt his soul rise and fall at the same time to behold this sublime and terrifying conflict. Perhaps such displays provided inspiration for those very first imaginings that were not born of our daily life of crude survival, who knows? Could this be why all our primal mythologies are Gothic - that is, fearsome, fantastical, and inhuman? ~ Thomas Ligotti

There are Four of Us

I have turned aside from everything,
from the whole earthly store.
The spirit and guardian of this place
is an old tree-stump in water.

We are brief guests of the earth, as it were,
and life is a habit we put on.
On paths of air I seem to overhear
two friendly voices, talking in turn.

Did I say two?...There
by the east wall's tangle of raspberry,
is a branch of elder, dark and fresh.
Why! It's a letter from Marina.


November 1962 (in delirium) ~ Anna Akhmatova

To hell with your money
No no come on I belong to the family now see I know how it is with a young fellow he has lots of private affairs it's always pretty hard to get the old man to stump up for I know haven't I been there and not so long ago either but now I'm getting married and all specially up there come on don't be a fool listen when we get a chance for a real talk I want to tell you about a little widow over in town
I've heard that too keep your damned money
Call it a loan then just shut your eyes a minute and you'll be fifty
Keep your hands off of me you'd better get that cigar off the mantel ~ William Faulkner