The First Straw Quotes

I used to think love was two people sucking
on the same straw to see whose thirst was stronger,

but then I whiffed the crushed walnuts of your nape,
traced jackals in the snow-covered tombstones of your teeth.

I used to think love was a non-stop saxophone solo
in the lungs, till I hung with you like a pair of sneakers

from a phone line, and you promised to always smell
the rose in my kerosene. I used to think love was terminal

pelvic ballet, till you let me jog beside while you pedaled
all over hell on the menstrual bicycle, your tongue

ripping through my prairie like a tornado of paper cuts.
I used to think love was an old man smashing a mirror

over his knee, till you helped me carry the barbell
of my spirit back up the stairs after my car pirouetted

in the desert. You are my history book. I used to not believe
in fairy tales till I played the dunce in sheep's clothing

and felt how perfectly your foot fit in the glass slipper
of my ass. But then duty wrapped its phone cord

around my ankle and yanked me across the continent.
And now there are three thousand miles between the u

and s in esophagus. And being without you is like standing
at a cement-filled wall with a roll of Yugoslavian nickels

and making a wish. Some days I miss you so much
I'd jump off the roof of your office building

ju ~ Jeffrey McDaniel

The particular, eternally persisting, elementary physical stuff of the world, according to the standard presentations of relativistic quantum field theories, consists (unsurprisingly) of relativistic quantum fields ... they have nothing whatsoever to say on the subject of where those fields came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular kinds of fields it does, or of why it should have consisted of fields at all, or of why there should have been a world in the first place. Period. Case closed. End of story. ~ David Albert

The first step of any journey must be taken with daring in your heart. Don't let fear clog your arteries. ~ T.S. Welti

The essay I had to read was called, "An Essay on Criticism" by Alexander Pope.
The first challenge was that the essay was, in fact, a very long poem in "heroic couplets". If something is called an essay, it should be an essay. ~ Maureen Johnson

I just have a hard time with small talk. My friend Jocelyn says I'm too quiet. But I'm really not quiet. I just tend to come across that way to new people because I don't like to talk first. What if the other person doesn't want to be bothered? ~ Lauren Barnholdt

Budget the luxuries first. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

It thrilled through him when he first felt the keel answer to his hand on the spokes and slide over the long hollows as the foresail scythed back and forth against the blue sky. ~ Rudyard Kipling

At the start of the twenty-first century, the advertising industry is guiding one of history's most massive stealth efforts in social profiling. ~ Joseph Turow

[Christians] are commanded to love our neighbors, and the first step in doing this is to show a watching world that Christ reigns within us. ~ Billy Graham

What's first?" He took another swig.
"I don't know. You're the one fucking this chicken. I'm just holding it's wings. ~ J.L. Langley

Why are Scots so attracted to the secret world? Smiley wondered, not for the first time in his career. Ships' engineers, Colonial administrators, spies. . . . Their heretical Scottish history drew them to distant churches, he decided. "George! ~ John Le Carre

June 27: Sidney Fields is the first columnist to write about Marilyn, commenting in the New York Mirror: "Marilyn is a very lovely and relatively unknown movie actress. But give her time; you will hear from her. ~ Carl Rollyson

The true battle is in your mind and the first step of success is to win that battle with right mindset. ~ Amit Ray

Annabeth came up to me. She was dressed in black camouflage with her Celestial bronze knife strapped to her arm and her laptop bag slung over her shoulder - ready for stabbing or surfing the Internet, whichever came first. ~ Rick Riordan

When you go to take someone's picture, the first thing they say is, what you want me to do? Everyone is very awkward. ~ Annie Leibovitz

The first time I saw Marcey Parker she was happily firing a submachine gun through a window. ~ Dan Baum

An unconditional right to say what one pleases about public affairs is what I consider to be the minimum guarantee of the First Amendment. ~ Hugo Black

Remember that government doesn't earn one single dollar it spends. In order for you to get money from the government, that money must first be taken from somebody else. ~ Jesse Ventura

I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me anything to the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it. If I have any experience which I think valuable, I am sure to reflect that this my Mentors said nothing about ~ Henry David Thoreau

Nonviolence first changes the individual. ~ Coretta Scott King

It was written by a doctor, but I've no idea whether it was accurate: the author claimed that blacking out wasn't simply a matter of forgetting what happened, but having no memories to forget in the first place. His theory was that you get into a state where you no longer make short term memories. And while you're there, in deepest black, you don't behave as you usually would, because you're simply reacting to the very last thing you think happened, because---since you aren't making memories---you might not actually know what the last thing to happen really was. ~ Paula Hawkins

I have had some sorry-ass looks, but I'm the first one to laugh. I'm either to credit or to blame for the '80s. ~ Jon Bon Jovi

I arrived at my hut in Beverly Hills just in time to keep real estate men from plotting off and selling my front yard. They will sell you anything or anybody's in the world as long as they can get a first payment ... It used to be only Iowa that was out here but now they have three or four adjoining states interested and they are here, too. Real estate agents - you never saw as many in your life; they are as thick as bootleggers. ~ Will Rogers

Again and again, our goddesses and heroines travel to the underworld. Again and again, we descend in our own lives. Why do we tell this story over and over again? The underworld is where we confront the wounded, exiled pieces of ourselves. The pieces we'd forgotten, hidden, or didn't want to see in the first place. ~ Amanda Yates García

First, be aware of this: scoffers will come in the last days to scoff, following their own lusts. 2 Peter 3:3 ~ Beth Moore

The recovery movementis not primarily addressed to people who always knew about their sexual victimization. Its main intendedaudience is women who aren't at all sure that they were molested, and its purpose is to convince them of that face and embolden them to act upon it. As for genuine victims, the comfort they are proffered may look attractive at first, but it is of debatable long value. ~ Frederick Crews

Every first-rate editor I have ever heard of reads, edits and rewrites every word that goes into his publication ... Good editors are not 'permissive'; they do not let their colleagues do 'their thing'; they make sure that everybody does the 'paper's thing.' A good, let alone a great editor is an obsessive autocrat with a whim of iron, who rewrites and rewrites, cuts and slashes, until every piece is exactly the way he thinks it should have been done. ~ Peter Drucker

I was first elected to public office when the Reagan revolution was in full swing. Maximizing freedom guided the policies of that era, with tremendous success. ~ Jon Kyl

You're my last thought of the day and my first thought when I awake. ~ Kristen Painter

Saphira waved her tail, the tip whistling loudly. "I'm not asking you to. However, if we attack first, we may gain the advantage."
"Have you gone crazy? They'll ... " Eragon's voice trailed off as he thought about it. "They won't be able to do a thing."
"Exactly," said Saphira. "We can inflict lots of damage from a safe height."
"Let's drop rocks on them! ~ Christopher Paolini

I'd like to issue a call to realism for those of us in so-called developed industrial nations, who indulge in great horror at the gradual collapse of our own pathologically unsustainable mode of existence while ignoring the reality of the majority of this planet's residents, who do not in fact share the same dread or anxiety about losing what most of them, frankly, never had to squander in the first place. ~ Brian Awehali

All right. Go and find them. I'll come in the morning - at first light. Meet me where I found you, all right?" "Awright," she whispered, and laid a small white hand on his chest, just over his heart. "Sank you, Wiyum. ~ Diana Gabaldon

I'll never forget my first time with you' Min said as she edged the doughnut off her finger. 'The earth moved, and then my mother asked my father who he was going down on at lunch. ~ Jennifer Crusie

If we're going to improve the environment, the first thing we should do is duck the government. The second thing we should do is quit being moral. Screw the rights of nature. Nature will have rights as soon as it get duties. The minute we see birds, trees, bugs, and squirrels picking up litter, giving money to charity, and keeping an eye on our kids at the park, we'll let them vote. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

Self-parody is the first portent of age. ~ Larry McMurtry

Two simple ways to win a war against the world:
First, find the faults within;
Second, there is no war. ~ Kunal Narayan Uniyal