The String Diaries Quotes

Even now, over a half-century later, the engraved words stirred emotions in him he would rather not confront. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

He felts as if a tumour had burst inside his skull, ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

Yes, yes. I've heard the argument. If we all lived as long as you, we'd be in crisis. Population explosion. The stability of our society would fracture. Chaos. Anarchy. And perhaps there's a shred of truth in that. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

She fought black tears. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

The pain would be awful , but at least she would be free. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

She may be close. She may have crawled into the bushes. She may be dying there, wanting to find somewhere peaceful, somewhere away from the sharp metal and the stink of burning and the violence and the madness. Or she's died already, alone and frightened, and wondering where you were, why you broke your promise, why you allowed this to happen. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

Hunched forward, feeling his ears burning, his hands shaking. Tried to concentrate. Found his eyes flickering over sentences and phrases, retaining nothing. [Charles Meredith] ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

Those final moments, while horrific in one sense, were intimate in another. Perhaps when you finally realized were beaten - that there really was no hope - something was triggered in the mind, allowing you to expunge, accept. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

Their touch triggered an electric spasm of agony. He felt the gushing warmth of blood on his fingers. [Charles Meredith] ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

He grinned, the skin of his mouth streching far wider that it should have done, exposing teeth as far back as his molar. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

You want to run. I understand that. I do believe you almost found the courage just then, until cowardice unmanned you. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

() Teeth clenched, she heard herself snarl out words in a voice feral in its savagery (...) ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

A lot of mistakes, but all of them in the past. Some made with worthy intentions, some without. When you live a long time you get to collect a lot of mistakes. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

She did not know how the figure was, but she knew it was damaged too badly to live. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

He fell to the floor a second time, accompanied by a rain of books. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

(He) found that articulating those feelings made him feel morose. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

Yet surely no afterlife could be cruel enough to accept not just her soul but all her agony. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

You're starting to have doubts, aren't you? twenty years of having this tale drip-fed to you is beginning to have its effects. You've polluted your mind with it and now you can't sort myth from reality. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

There have been so many untruths, I don' blame you for being confused. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

She stopped, and he knew she had caught herself, dismayed a what she had been about to reveal. [Nicole Dubois] ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

Those were the black ears; the lost years. He had allowed himself to become the victim of events, rather than their master. [Jakab] ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

Do I even want this burden any more? Probably not, I'm too old, too tired. And what, after all. have I achieved in all this time? ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

He knew she had been telling the truth when she told him she seldom asked for help. It was clear in her every interaction with him - in her speech , even in the way she held herself- that she was used to standing alone. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

He smiled. Rather, he widened his mouth, exposing teeth. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

It's a difficult thing to offer leadership to a people who have lost control over their future. But offer it I must. And when I look around me and see the dignity displayed by our last generation, see their elegance and their grace, it fills me with pride even as it tears at my heart. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

Knowledge had always been the most important weapon in all of this. [Hannah Wilde] ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

Her expression was distant and he was ashamed to find himself hunting for sings of pain in her features, some evidence of heartache. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

There's Moses (...) Better company that some humans I've known [Sebastien] ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

Yet she felt no horror at what she had witnessed, no nausea. their lives - and their deaths - had not mattered. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

Five years ago I was in love with you so utterly I thought I might go mad from it. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

And suddenly, magically, as she started at the single enameled button, she felt as if a plug ad been pulled somewhere deep within her, and all of her emotions - her terror and her rage and her guilt and her hate - were spiraling, draining out of her like poison from an abscess. What remained was the clarity of a single thought. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

The rush of emotion unbalanced him, his initial outrage eclipsed by an all-consuming grief. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

I'm impressed by your protectiveness over them, but I'm only asking for an introduction. Are they so fragile they need an old man as chaperon? Do they have no tongues? ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

Cotswold stone framed tiny sash windows gleaming with pale green paint. Wisteria vines twisted about the stone, bunches of purple flowers hanging thick and heavy with pollen. Above it all a tiled roof sagged with sage. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

(...) Stage fright, if you like. Easier to hide behind a persona than to bare one's soul. I'm really not the monster you think I am. I just wanted to talk to you unencumbered by all this complications, all this ... history. [Jakab] ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

(...) Try not to speak ill of people in the future. You never know when they might be listening (...) ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

Think of a musical as a string of pearls. If you don't have a string, you can't put the pearls around your neck. ~ Marsha Norman

Curran smiled. It was a happy, genuine smile and it catapulted him from attractive into irresistible territory. He didn't smile very often in public. That intimate smile was usually reserved for private moments when we were alone. I pulled the band off my still-damp braid and slid my fingers through it, unraveling the hair. Curran's gaze snagged on my hands. He focused on my fingers like a cat on a piece of foil pulled by a string. I shook my head and my hair fell over my shoulders in a long dark wave. There we go. Now we were both private in public. ~ Ilona Andrews

At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book - that string of confused, alien ciphers - shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader. ~ Alberto Manguel

I will tie the glass and stone with string, hang the shards above my bed, so that they will flash in the dark and tell the story of Katrina, the mother that swept into the Gulf and slaughtered. Her chariot was a storm so great and black the Greeks would say it was harnessed to dragons. She was the murderous mother who cut us to the bone but left us alive, left us naked and bewildered as wrinkled newborn babies, as blind puppies, as sun-starved newly hatched baby snakes. She left us a dark Gulf and salt burned land. She left us to learn to crawl. She left us to salvage. Katrina is the mother we will remember until the next mother with large, merciless hands, committed to blood, comes. ~ Jesmyn Ward

We've been performing with symphonies all of our career and it sounds so wonderful when they play 'My Girl' with the large string section, I want to turn around and look. ~ Otis Williams

Student today don't mean na', but in a Latin America whipped into a frenzy by the Fall of Arbenz, by the Stoning of Nixon, by the Guerrillas of the Sierra Madre, by the endless cynical maneuverings of the Yankee Pig Dogs - in a Latin America already a year and half into the Decade of the Guerrilla - a student was something else altogether, an agent for change, a vibrating quantum string in the staid Newtonian universe. ~ Junot Diaz

If the American people knew what we have done, they would string us up from the lamp posts. ~ George H. W. Bush

Which end of the needle are you going to be- the side held by string or the point that pierces the cloth? ~ Sue Monk Kidd

It was clear to me that it wouldn't matter what I did - they would never truly appreciate me or learn what I had to offer. They were far beyond fickle - they were insensible, like kittens,predatory little things, distracted by the first bit of string or shiny bauble that rolled across the floor, and nothing I could ever say or do could possibly make any kind of dent in their willful ignorance. ~ Jeff Lindsay

... The wonders of life and the universe are mere reflections of microscopic particles engaged in a pointless dance fully choreographed by the laws of physics. ~ Brian Greene

I like to think about stringing songs together like a string of pearls, or a string of beads, but ultimately it has to be stuff that really works with the band, and gives a spin to the older material. ~ Emmylou Harris

Now the Fox Moth 83 was by no means an aeroplane designed for passenger comfort. It only had enough room for two seats, a stretcher and the doctor. What's more, it was held together with little more than wood, cloth, string and wire. So they set off at top speed, which was about 80 miles an hour, in the old money; about a four-hour trip it was. ~ Bill Marsh

Then that did very well at the box office, so before you knew it, we were in a string of feature motion pictures. Then they announced that they were going to do some spinoffs of us. ~ George Takei

Terry Pratchett lives in England, an island off the coast of France, where he spends his time writing Discworld novels in accordance with the Very String Anthropic Principle, which holds that the entire Purpose of the Universe is to make possible a being that will live in England, an island off the coast of France, and spend his time writing Discworld novels. Which is exactly what he does. Which proves the whole business true. Any questions? ~ Terry Pratchett

I learned something from a string of failed relationships. You don't see a pattern quickly. You see it over time. I learned to stop jumping in at the first sign of attraction. As soon as you're attracted to someone, you go for it - whether or not it's a good idea. Basically, just going out and getting laid. ~ James McAvoy

The family historian must master the art of storytelling. What, after all, is truth without anecdote, history without events, explanation without narration--or yet life itself without a story? Stories are not just the wells from which we drink most deeply but at the same time the golden threads that hold and bind--Ariadne's precious string that leads us through the labyrinth that connects living present and the living past. ~ Joseph A. Amato

Filled with determination, she pounded on Leo's door. "Wake up, slugabed!"
A string of foul words filtered through the heavy oak panels.
Grinning, Amelia went into Poppy's room. She pulled the curtains open, releasing clouds of dust that caused her to sneeze. "Poppy, it's ... achoo! ... time to get out of bed."
The covers had been drawn completely over Poppy's head. "Not yet," came her muffled protest.
Sitting on the edge of the mattress, Amelia eased the covers away from her nineteen-year-old sister. Poppy was groggy and sleep-flushed, her cheek imprinted with a line left by a fold of the bedclothes. Her brown hair, a warmer, ruddier tint than Amelia's, was a wild mass of tangles.
"I hate morning," Poppy mumbled. "And I'm sure I don't like being awakened by someone who looks so bloody pleased about it."
"I'm sorry." Continuing to smile, Amelia stroked her sister's hair away from her face repeatedly. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Saying things we don't really mean becomes a habit when we practice it long enough. The real problem is that when you don't keep your word, you lose credibility. When you lose credibility, you break the bonds of trust. And breaking the bonds of trust ultimately leads to a string of broken relationships. To ~ Robin S. Sharma

You think I'm with you out of guilt?"
"No, you ass. Of course not. I just mean - "
"You're a nut, MacAllister. I'm with you because I love you."
There it was, out. Three little words. Three of the most common words in the world, but string them together and they were more powerful than any warrant, any extradition papers, or even treaty. Stronger than any magical spell. Had he really never said them aloud to Taylor? ~ Josh Lanyon

I am not your Doll, and I will not take it easy. The more you fight the more pain I will bring to you. There is no longer a string that can be pulled to make me all cute and cuddly again. ~ Kerri E. Lorenz

I have had much experience with the unclean and uncivilized in the recent past. Shall I tell you what I discovered? I am not the state of my feet. I am not the dirt on my hands or the hygiene of my private parts. If I were these things, I would not have been at liberty to pray at any time since my arrest. But I did pray, because I am not these things. In the end, I am not even myself. I am a string of bones speaking the word God. ~ G. Willow Wilson

String theorists have found special pairs of geometrical shapes for space that have completely different features when each is probed by unwrapped strings. They also have completely different features when each is probed by wrapped strings. But-and this is the punch line-when probed both ways, with wrapped and unwrapped strings, the shapes become indistinguishable. what the unwrapped strings see on one space, the wrapped strings see on the other, and vice versa, rendering identical the collective picture gleaned from the full physics of string theory. ~ Brian Greene

The weak may not be admired and hero-worshipped; but they are by no means disliked or shunned; and they never seem to have the least difficulty in marrying people who are too good for them. They may fail in emergencies; but life is not one long emergency: it is mostly a string of situations for which no exceptional strength is needed, and with which even rather weak people can cope if they have a stronger partner to help them out. ~ George Bernard Shaw

You can spend all day trying to think of some universal truth to set down on paper, and some poets try that. Shakespeare knew that it's much easier to string together some words beginning with the same letter. ~ Mark Forsyth

That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
I warily oped her lids: again
Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
And I untightened the next tress
About her neck; her cheek once more
Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss ... ~ Robert Browning

What the string theorists do is arguably physics. It deals with the physical world. They're attempting to make a consistent theory that explains the interactions we see among particles and gravity as well. That's certainly physics, but it's a kind of physics that is not yet testable. ~ Sheldon Lee Glashow

She is possibly the last child they will bring into living, and she is extremely delicate. She dislikes what little food they have but loves chicken and coffee. So, steadily, they have bumped off a long string of chickens to feed her, and she drinks two or three cups of black and parboiled coffee at every meal. Her eyes shine like burning oil and almost continuously she dances with drunkenness. ~ James Agee

There is much modern music that is better adapted to a wind combination than to a string, although for obvious reasons originally scored for an orchestra. If in such cases the interpretation is equal to the composition the balance of a wind combination is more satisfying. ~ John Philip Sousa

A string of bright white buildinh, glistening like teeth over the slurping mouth of the ocean. ~ Lauren Oliver

Children Are Like Kites
You spend years trying to get them off the ground.
You run with them until you are both breathless. They crash ... they hit the roof ... you patch, comfort and assure them that someday they will fly.
Finally, they are airborne.
They need more string, and you keep letting it out.
They tug, and with each twist of the twine, there is sadness that goes with joy.
The kite becomes more distant, and you know it won't be long before that beautiful creature will snap the lifeline that binds you together and will soar as meant to soar ... free and alone.
Only then do you know that you have done your job. ~ Erma Bombeck

As a professional writer of detective stories, I string along with the ballplayers. I love a ball game. ~ Rex Stout

We have one real candidate for changing the rules; this is string theory. In string theory the one-dimensional trajectory of a particle in spacetime is replaced by a two-dimensional orbit of a string. Such strings can be of any size, but under ordinary circumstances they are quite tiny, ... a value determined by comparing the predictions of the theory for Newton's constant and the fine structure constant to experimental values. ~ Edward Witten

Sometimes, when people speak, I cease listening to their words and zoom in instead on the cadence, and it can seem lovely, and at other times absurd, all this verbiage, these seemingly random consonants clattering on the string that is sound. ~ Rosie O'Donnell

Whirs. See?" Heidi grabbed the string and pulled. The snail toppled over. "No, not like that," Vanja said. "I'll show you." She placed the snail upright and slowly dragged it a few meters. "I've got a little sister!" she said aloud. Robin had gone to the window where he stood staring out into the backyard. Stella, who was energetic and presumably extra-lively since it was her party, excitedly shouted something that I didn't understand, pointed to one of the two smaller girls, who handed her the doll she was clutching, took out a little carriage, placed the doll in it, and began to push it down the hall. Achilles had found his way to Benjamin, a boy eighteen months older than Vanja, who usually sat deeply absorbed in something, a drawing or a pile of Legos or a pirate ship with plastic pirates. He was imaginative, independent, and well-behaved, ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

Oh, oh, oh being a soldier... I remember that day... and that time.. and some moments.. I am still confused... as a soldier you could kill first somebody without a reason with soldier way string from piano... as a second... we use codes like

Panda on Black... Black and white... Over the Game... Game the Shit... and many others what do they mean!?!?

- Ohhhhh... you don't want to know, do ya??? ~ Deyth Banger

'9 to 5 the Musical' is perfect for anyone that's ever wanted to string up their boss, which is almost all of us. ~ Dolly Parton

One of the string theory pioneers, the Italian physicist Daniele Amati, characterized it as "part of the 21st century that fell by chance into the 20th century." Indeed, there is something about the very nature of the theory at present that points to the fact that we are witnessing the theory's baby steps. Recall the lesson learned from all the great ideas since Einstein's relativity-put the symmetry first. Symmetry originates the forces. The equivalence principle-the expectation that all observers, irrespective of their motions, would deduce the same laws-requires the existence of gravity. The gauge symmetries-the fact that the laws do not distinguish color, or electrons from neutrinos-dictate the existence of the messengers of the strong and electroweak forces. Yet supersymmetry is an output of string theory, a consequence of its structure rather than a source for its existence. What does this mean? Many string theorists believe that some underlying grander principle, which will necessitate the existence of string theory, is still to be found. If history is to repeat itself, then this principle may turn out to involve an all-encompassing and even more compelling symmetry, but at the moment no one has a clue what this principle might be. Since, however, we are only at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Amati's characterization may still turn out to be an astonishing prophecy. ~ Mario Livio

Ane bow that is ay bent Worthis ay unsmart and dullis on the string; Sa dois the mynd that is ay diligent In ernistfull thochtis and in studying. ~ Robert Henryson

We did not make ourselves, nor did we fashion a world that could not work without pain, and great pain at that, with a little pleasure, very little, to string us along--a world where all organisms are inexorably pushed by pain throughout their lives to do that which will improve their chances to survive and create more of themselves. Left unchecked, this process will last as long as a single cell remains palpitating in this cesspool of the solar system, this toilet of the galaxy. So why not lend a hand in nature's suicide? For want of a deity that could be held to account for a world in which there is terrible pain, let nature take the blame for our troubles. We did not create an environment uncongenial to our species, nature did. One would think that nature was trying to kill us off, or get us to suicide ourselves once the blunder of consciousness came upon us. What was nature thinking? We tried to anthropomorphize it, to romanticize it, to let it into our hearts. But nature kept its distance, leaving us to our own devices. So be it. Survival is a two-way street. Once we settle ourselves off-world, we can blow up this planet from outer space. It's the only way to be sure its stench will not follow us. Let it save itself if it can--the condemned are known for the acrobatics they will execute to wriggle out of their sentences. But if it cannot destroy what it has made, and what could possibly unmake it, then may it perish along with every other living thing it has introduced t ~ Thomas Ligotti

He went upstairs and opened the telegram; it was addressed to a department in the British Consulate, and the figures which followed had an ugly look like the lottery tickets that remained unsold on the last day of a draw. There was 2674 and then a string of five-figure numerals: 42811 79145 72312 59200 80947 62533 10605 and so on. It was his first telegram and he noticed that it was addressed from London. He was not even certain (so long ago his lesson seemed) that he could decode it, but he recognised a single group, 59200, which had an abrupt and monitory appearance as though Hawthorne that moment had come accusingly up the stairs. Gloomily he took down Lamb's 'Tales from Shakespeare' - how he had always detested Elia and the essay on Roast Pork. The first group of figures, he remembered, indicated the page, the line and the word with which the coding began. 'Dionysia, the wicked wife of Cleon,' he read, 'met with an end proportionable to her deserts'. He began to decode from 'deserts'. To his surprise something really did emerge. It was rather as though some strange inherited parrot had begun to speak. ~ Graham Greene

a flayed body untangled
string by string and hung
to the wall, an agonized banner
displayed for the same reason
flags are. ~ Margaret Atwood

Nor did I grasp the capacity of love's absence to destroy, that my lack of love for myself made my own life unbearable. You take someone whose life experiences have taught them they're worthless, string them out on drugs, and you have one miserable person. How could I have given what I didn't have? It's hard to value another life when you view your own as dispensable, hard to understand how you can have so great an effect on someone else when you don't think you matter. ~ Mia Fontaine

It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself up out of the dark abyss of pish and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash. ~ H.L. Mencken

In spite of all the refinements of civilization that conspired to make art
the dizzying perfection of the string quartet or the sprawling grandeur of Fragonard's canvases
beauty was savage. It was as dangerous and lawless as the earth had been eons before man had one single coherent thought in his head or wrote codes of conduct on tablets of clay. Beauty was a Savage Garden. ~ Anne Rice

She suddenly remembered studying the brain in science class- how a steel rod pierced a man's skull, and he opened his mouth to speak Portuguese, a language he'd never studied. Maybe it would be like this, now, for Josie. Maybe her native tongue, from here on in, would be a string of lies. ~ Jodi Picoult