The Rubber Band Quotes

The avoidance of idiocy should be the primary and constant concern of every intelligent person, - Nero Wolfe ~ Rex Stout

In 1994 another bombshell was dropped. Edward Witten of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study and Paul Townsend of Cambridge University speculated that all five string theories were in fact the same theory-but only if we add an eleventh dimension. From the vantage point of the eleventh dimension, all five different theories collapsed into one! The theory was unique after all, but only if we ascended to the mountaintop of the eleventh dimension.

In the eleventh dimension a new mathematical object can exist, called the membrane (e.g., like the surface of a sphere). Here was the amazing observation: if one dropped from eleven dimensions down to ten dimensions, all five string theories would emerge, starting from a single membrane. Hence all five string theories were just different ways of moving a membrane down from eleven to ten dimensions.

(To visualize this, imagine a beach ball with a rubber band stretched around the equator. Imagine taking a pair of scissors and cutting the beach ball twice, once above and once below the rubber band, thereby lopping off the top and bottom of the beach ball. All that is left is the rubber band, a string. In the same way, if we curl up the eleventh dimension, all that is left of a membrane is its equator, which is the string. In fact, mathematically there are five ways in which this slicing can occur, leaving us with five different string theories in ten dimensions.) ~ Michio Kaku

We can stretch our personalities, but only up to a point. Our inborn temperaments influence us, regardless of the lives we lead. A sizable part of who we are is ordained by our genes, by our brains, by our nervous systems. And yet the elasticity that Schwartz found in some of the high-reactive teens also suggests the converse: we have free will and can use it to shape our personalities.
These seem like contradictory principles, but they are not. Free will can take us far, suggests Dr. Schwartz's research, but it cannot carry us infinitely beyond our genetic limits. Bill Gates is never going to be Bill Clinton, no matter how he polishes his social skills, and Bill Clinton can never be Bill Gates, no matter how much time he spends alone with a computer.
We might call this the "rubber band theory" of personality. We are like rubber bands at rest. We are elastic and can stretch ourselves, but only so much. ~ Susan Cain

Some of the best trades come when everyone gets very panicky. The crowd can often act very stupidly in the markets. You can picture price fluctuations around an equilibrium level as a rubber band being stretched
if it gets pulled too far, eventually it will snap back. As a short-term trader, I try to wait until the rubber band is stretched to its extreme point. ~ Linda Bradford Raschke

But persistent name calling? that prolongs hurt. It stretches out. Each nasty word stretches the rubber band further away until finally, one day, it snaps back at you with maximum impact ~ Randa Abdel-Fattah

Anybody have any money?"
Frank checked his pockets. "Three denarii from Camp Jupiter. Five dollars Canadian."
Hedge patted his gym shorts and pulled out what he found. "Three quarters, two dimes, a rubber band and - score! A piece of celery."
He started munching on the celery, eyeing the change and the rubber band like they might be next. ~ Rick Riordan

And I don't know who you're calling little."
I knew one way to solve this argument. I carefully tore the whole article out of the front page,then rolled up the newspaper and slid the rubber band back on. "Doofus," I whispered. Poor Doofus, behind us in the mud room, stood up in a rush of jingling dog tags and slobber. I slipped the paper into his mouth and whispered, "Take this to Dad."
Doofus wagged his tail and trotted into the kitchen. We heard Dad say, "Did you bring me the paper? Good dog.Wait a minute.Bad dog! ~ Jennifer Echols

The sight of a pretty woman had an airborne chemical effect, like nerve gas. It relaxed the rubber band around his wallet. ~ A.J. Liebling

What it meant." "That's fine." Bosch moved to the drawer and looked in. There were two thin manila files and two packs of envelopes with rubber bands holding them together. The first file he looked through contained Eno's birth certificate, passport, marriage license and other personal records. He put it back in the drawer. The next file contained LAPD forms and Bosch quickly recognized them as the pages and reports that had been removed from the Marjorie Lowe murder book. He knew he had no time to read them at the moment and put the file in the beer box with the other files. The rubber band on the first package of envelopes snapped when he tried to remove it and he was reminded of the band that had been around the blue binder that contained the case files. Everything about this case was old and ready to snap, he thought. The envelopes were all from a Wells Fargo Bank branch in Sherman Oaks and each one contained a statement for a savings account in the name of McCage ~ Michael Connelly

Can we just do this?" Ray asked tightly, clinging to Zheng's already slightly elongated arm. Because Louis-Cesare wasn't the only one with a master power around here.
"Let go," Zheng told him. "I'm the rubber band; you're the spitball. And spitballs don't hold on to rubber bands."
"Die in a fire," Ray told him savagely. But he let go. ~ Karen Chance

Quite often, little germs of ideas have come from something that I've observed or someone's told me. The process of it becoming fiction is expanding and extending it: stretching the rubber band of reality. ~ Laura Wade

I'm supposed to spread my fingers as wide as they were with the rubber band, mash my palms hard into the floor, and pull myself down. When I do, I surprise even myself when my elbows straighten with barely any effort. ~ Christopher McDougall

engine, picked up the pages, ripped off the rubber band, and ~ David Baldacci

I am a hair-lock; I am floating in the gutters to meet the rubber-band. ~ Amaan Ahmad

I collected the papers, wrapped them back in the rubber band, and felt a small grief, like a person who discovers, upon returning from a trip, that something has been left behind and there is no way now to retrieve it. ~ Mitch Albom

Without asking for permission, I tugged her hair out of the rubber band and ran it through my finger, savoring the silky feel. "It's perfect. Men are suckers for long hair. I think it goes back to the early days when cavemen would grab women by the hair and tug them back to their hay beds and make sweet love to them." "That's" -Blake shook her head- "probably one of the most offensive things I've ever heard. ~ Rachel Van Dyken

Monkeys"
"You can buy cooler, more humdrum pets
a monkey deprived of his mother in the cradle
feels the want of her affection so keenly
he either pines away or masters you
by literally hanging on your neck
no ounce of your patience or courage is misplaced;
the worst is his air of boredom and neglect,
manifested in tail-chewing and fur plucking.
The whole species is vulnerable to killing colds,
likes straw, hay or bits of a torn blanket,
a floortray thinly covered with sawdust,
they need trapezes, shelves, old rubber tires
any string or beam will do to set them swinging
these charming youngsters tend to sour with age ~ Robert Lowell

Tied to my reading lamp was a single balloon. Filled with helium, it floated in a morning sunray which slanted in through one of the high windows.

On it was a picture of my face, the eyes gone, blood running down from the ragged sockets, a scream distorting the mouth on the balloon's thin and bulging rubber skin.

I looked at it and I screamed. ~ Stephen King

We cannot be free of nagging desires through suppression. This is like trying to keep a rubber boat beneath the water. But we remove compulsive desires altogether by understanding their nature. ~ Vernon Howard

On 'Ant-Man', I took a rubber stamp from the office of Hank Pym, who's played by Michael Douglas. ~ Evangeline Lilly

I watch the waves swell and break down the coastline, swell and break. My chest threatens to crack on the left side.
The heart is such a strange little beast - a lump of thick muscle with pipes sticking out. Sometimes I think my heart is made of rubber, and the world stretches it and twists so that it writhes in my chest and aches. This is why I have spent most of my time on this planet here but hurting. Sometimes I think a hear of porcelain would be easier. Let it drop out of my rib cage and break on the floor, no heartbeat, the end. Instead, I get a bouncy heart that bleeds when the world claws at it but keeps beating though the pain. ~ Emery Lord

They were big and black and rubber - the kind of boots you might be wearing as you came in the kitchen door, shaking off your rain slicker and saying, Grab the young'uns, Ma. Crick's a-rising. ~ Suzanne Brockmann

No one just starts giggling and wearing black and signs up to become a villainous monster. How the hell do you think it happens? It happens to people. Just people. They make questionable choices, for what might be very good reasons. They make choice after choice, and none of them is slaughtering roomfuls of saints, or murdering hundreds of baby seals, or rubber-room irrational. But it adds up. And then one day they look around and realized that they're so far over the line that they can't remember where it was. ~ Jim Butcher

Since that era the question "Do you have any food restrictions?" has become a part of the etiquette of a dinner invitation, and participants at conference dinners can now tick a box that will replace a plate of rubber chicken with a plate of sodden eggplant. ~ Steven Pinker

The Pleiades and northern lights are still above the mountain. The mountain is in the east, and on its slopes there are reindeer. Reindeer always remind me of trees that have taken to moving. They remind me even more of trees than people do. In the distant past, reindeer were trees as people were, but they haven't come such a long way from their origins, and the branches can be seen although they no longer bear leaves.
I have my bedtime book in my hand and my pocket light and walk toward the mountain over the edges of the moorland in rubber boots. The book is a relative of mine, I feel; it is made out of trees and human thought, and thus the relationship becomes twofold. These are ancient poems that I am taking to the mountains and the reindeer. ~ Gyrdir Eliasson

The really great thing about my shop is that there's not one dead animal in it ... Manolo's got a load of fabric shoes as well! We use plastic, fabric, rubber- anything but leather. I almost feel like I've been put here to show everyone that it's unnecessary. ~ Stella McCartney

Civilization sails prettily like a child's rubber balloon until it hits a sharp object; then it is likely to collapse like the balloon. ~ Austin O'Malley

My dad also survived five divorces, and the women he married cleaned his ass out every time. I used to think my dad got divorced because he wanted new furniture. At one point in my life, all we had left was a wooden box, a 12 black-and-white TV, and a four-man rubber raft for a couch. And yet, I was the coolest kid in third grade. Mom, can we have a sleepover in Christopher Titus' house? They have a raft in the living room! We can row to breakfast in the morning. I can actually be Captain Crunch! ~ Christopher Titus

It's not so bad that I can't touch my toes. But I'm not one of the most flexible guys. When you look at Novak Djokovic, you'd probably think he's made of rubber. ~ Tomas Berdych

Ladies, what in the world is wrong with men? I mean besides all the really obvious stuff. They think they have the handle on everything. And if a lady gets in behind the wheel of a sports car, they act all crazy, like we don't belong. Same thing with motorcycles. Let a gal cruise down the highway on her hog and you'd think she was Lady Godiva for all the stares that she gets. I got news for you, just because we don't...doesn't mean that we can't. Seriously, boys, you can be replaced by a few inches of rubber and a couple of D-cell batteries, so I wouldn't be too cocky. ~ T.W. Brown

Whenever you're fighting with weapons, there's a level of reality because people don't understand that these are still metal or hard rubber with sharp points - that if the timing's wrong, you could definitely get hurt. There's nothing like working with an actor who doesn't know what they're doing, because you're always in fear of losing an eye. ~ Will Yun Lee

He just hit himself in the dinger with a rubber. ~ CM Punk

Tell me something true about you."
"Okay …" She mentally rifled through birthplace (Portland, Oregon), college major (sociology), astrological sign (Virgo), favorite movie (The Apple Dumpling Gang - don't judge), until she hit a fact that wasn't completely mundane. "One of my favorite things in the world are those charity events where everyone buys a rubber ducky with a number and the first person's duck to get down the river wins."
"Why?"
"I like seeing the river teeming with all those outrageously yellow and orange ducks. It's so friendly. And I love the hope of it. Even though it doesn't matter if you win, because all that wonderful, candy-colored money is going to something really important like a free clinic downtown or cleft palate operations for children in India, you still have that playful hope that you will win. You run alongside the stream, not knowing which is your duck but imagining the lead one is yours."
"And this is the essence of your soul - the ducky race?"
"Well, you didn't ask for the essence of my soul. You asked for something true about me, and so I went for something slightly embarrassing and secret but true nonetheless. Next time you want the essence of my soul, I'll oblige you with sunsets and baby's laughter and greeting cards with watercolor flowers."
He squinted at her thoughtfully. "No, so far as I'm concerned, the yellow duckies are the essence of your soul. ~ Shannon Hale

When I was a kid, I slept on rubber sheets, but now, I'm a man. And I can take the wetness! ~ Emo Philips

When you talk about state of the art, that doesn't mean a damn thing. Think about it. State of the art. "This is the state of the art brush from Winsor-Newton." Yeah, but the state of the art sucks rubber donkey lungs. ~ Mike Royer

Of the ear, old worrier. Water mollifies the flint lip, And daylight lays its sameness on the wall. The grafters are cheerful, Heating the pincers, hoisting the delicate hammers. A current agitates the wires Volt upon volt. Catgut stitches my fissures. A workman walks by carrying a pink torso. The storerooms are full of hearts. This is the city of spare parts. My swaddled legs and arms smell sweet as rubber. Here they can doctor heads, or any limb. ~ Sylvia Plath

That was a frustrating race for me. I pushed as hard as possible at the start on the medium tyres whilst everyone around me was on the grippier soft compound rubber. Once I moved to the soft tyres I was able to set the race's then fastest lap so things looked good with our strategy. Unfortunately the engine anti-kill triggered when I came in to make my final pit stop which cost me a lot of time. It's frustrating as we should have finished strongly. My focus is now Barcelona where I've delivered very strongly in the past. ~ Pastor Maldonado

Subway tunnels breathe. They exhale when trains come and inhale when they leave. Their concrete lungs fill with smoke and soot and rubber and the scents of a hundred ladies' perfumes. When trains aren't running, the tunnels hold their breath. They might let wisps of warm air drift into the cold night, draw in slow nips of bracing frost, but mostly they sit still, waiting for trains to bring them back to life.
A thousand times a day their breath coursed over Joe Tesla's body. It was not so warm as human breath, nor yet so cold as stone. He was used to it, now.
Because he lived here, underground, in the tunnels of New York City. ~ Rebecca Cantrell

The first time I ever met Stephen King, he came up to me, and we went to shake hands, and he had, like, this fake rubber rat that he kind of, you know, shook at me. You know, and I said, 'No, this is a cliche - this can't be. Stephen King is trying to scare me with a fake rat?' It was just really weird. ~ Rob Reiner

In the jumbled, fragmented memories I carry from my childhood there are probably nearly as many dreams as images from waking life. I thought of one which might have been my earliest remembered nightmare. I was probably about four years old - I don't think I'd started school yet - when I woke up screaming. The image I retained of the dream, the thing which had frightened me so, was an ugly, clown-like doll made of soft red and cream-coloured rubber. When you squeezed it, bulbous eyes popped out on stalks and the mouth opened in a gaping scream. As I recall it now, it was disturbingly ugly, not really an appropriate toy for a very young child, but it had been mine when I was younger, at least until I'd bitten its nose off, at which point it had been taken away from me. At the time when I had the dream I hadn't seen it for a year or more - I don't think I consciously remembered it until its sudden looming appearance in a dream had frightened me awake.

When I told my mother about the dream, she was puzzled.

'But what's scary about that? You were never scared of that doll.'

I shook my head, meaning that the doll I'd owned - and barely remembered - had never scared me. 'But it was very scary,' I said, meaning that the reappearance of it in my dream had been terrifying.

My mother looked at me, baffled. 'But it's not scary,' she said gently. I'm sure she was trying to make me feel better, and thought this reasonable statement would help. ~ Lisa Tuttle

Would my head were a head of lettuce. I drove the last car over the Sagamore Bridge before the state police closed it off. The Cape Cod Canal all atempest beneath. No cars coming, no cars going. The bridge cables flapping like rubber bands. You think in certain circumstances a few thousand feet of bridge isn't a thousand miles? The hurricane wiped out Dennis. Horace thanked God for insurance. I saved our little girl. You want me to say, Hurrah! Hurrah! but I can't, I won't, because to save her once isn't to save her, and still she thumps as if the world was something thumpable. As if it wasn't silence on a fundamental level. Yap on, wife, yap on. Thump, daughter, thump. Louder, Orangutan, louder. I can't hear you. ~ Peter Orner

Every time I toe the rubber, it's no different for me than it was in the World Series. ~ Roger Clemens

How awful is it to be sane enough to be fully aware of the day you realize you are completely losing your grasp on reality. I'm crazy. Not just a little bit, but rubber room ready out of my mind fucked up. ~ Poppet

Believing that the soldiers of the apartheid government really did use rubber bullets and carried batons only for decoration is seriously misguided, though understandable considering that newspapers were strictly censored, while history books abounded with Blatant Boer Bias. ~ Sumayya Lee

Isn't it god's own image? tramping his thirty miles a day
after partridges, or a little rubber ball?
wouldn't you like to be like that, well off, and quite the thing? ~ D.H. Lawrence

I certainly got the jokes within the joke, dressing up in a wet suit, sitting in a Twingo, scaling a rubber mountain, dressing up and stealing a diamond, of course. If not now, when? ~ Pierce Brosnan

I am ready and prepared to work with the President, but I will not be a rubber stamp for any president. ~ Daniel Inouye