The Trouble With Faking Quotes

Two imperfect people can make a perfect moment. ~ Rachel Morgan

What did you do?" said Charles.

"You know that night all our shoes went into the hall," said Nirupam. "Well, we had a feast that night. Dan Smith made me get up the floorboards and get the food out. He says I have no right to be so large and so weak," Nirupam said resentfully, "and I was hating him for it, when I took the boards up and found a pair of running shoes, with spikes, hidden there with the food. I turned those shoes into a chocolate cake. I knew Dan was so greedy that he would eat it all himself. And he did eat it. He didn't let anyone else have any. You may have noticed that he wasn't quite himself the next day."

So much had happened to Charles that particular day, that he could not remember Dan seeming anything at all. He didn't have the heart to explain all the trouble Nirupam had caused him. "Those were my spikes," he said sadly. He wobbled along on the mop rather awed at the thought of iron spikes passing through Dan's stomach. "He must have a digestion like an ostrich!"

"The spikes were turned into cherries," said Nirupam. "The soles were the cream. The shoes as a whole became what is called a Black Forest gateau. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Off with you" is a phrase used by people who lack the courtesy to say something more polite, such as "If there's nothing else you require, I must be going," or "I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you to leave, please," or even "Excuse me, but I believe you have mistaken my home for your own, and my valuable belongings for yours, and I must ask you to return the items in question to me, and leave my home, after untying me from this chair, as I am unable to do it myself, if it's not too much trouble. ~ Lemony Snicket

I thought if you knew. you'd kill him.
I nearly did. I nearly killed you too. The trouble with death is - his lips twisted - it's so final. ~ Marie Treanor

The trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide. ~ Hannah Arendt

I loved work and I loved pouring myself into the work, you know. It was the real life that I had trouble with. ~ Roseanne Barr

But if you could just pay her some small attention-or better yet, escort her yourself-it would be ever so helpful, and I would be grateful forever."
"Alex, if you were married to anyone but Jordan Townsende, I might consider asking you how you'd be willing to express your gratitude. However, since I haven't any real wish to see my life brought to a premature end, I shall refrain from doing so and say instead that your smile is gratitude enough."
"Don't joke, Roddy, I'm quite desperately in need of your help, and I would be eternally grateful for it."
"You are making me quake with trepidation, my sweet. Whoever she is, she must be in a deal of trouble if you need me."
"She's lovely and spirited, and you will admire her tremendously."
"In that case, I shall deem it an embarrassing honor to lend my support to her. Who-" His gaze flicked to a sudden movement in the doorway and riveted there, his eternally bland expression giving way to reverent admiration. "My God," he whispered.
Standing in the doorway like a vision from heaven was an unknown young woman clad in a shimmering silver-blue gown with a low, square neckline that offered a tantalizing view of smooth, voluptuous flesh, and a diagonally wrapped bodice that emphasized a tiny waist. Her glossy golden hair was swept back off her forehead and held in place with a sapphire clip, then left to fall artlessly about her shoulders and midway down her back, where it ended in luxurious waves and curls ~ Judith McNaught

The trouble with the jokes is that once they're written, I know how they're supposed to work, and all I can do is not hit them. I'm more comfortable improvising. If I have just two or three ideas and I know how the character feels, what the character wants, everything in between is like trapeze work. ~ Stephen Colbert

If we expect perfection from man instead of God, we are indeed in trouble, and our personal problems, with others and with ourselves, are many. Our lives will then be easily soured.
Take, for example, a common situation: wedding invitations. More than a few people are annoyed when they get one, because it means a gift, and they "feel cheap" sending just a card, even though only casual friends. However, if they do not get an invitation, they are then hurt or offended. In brief, sinful man will always milk trouble out of any situation.
What then do you do? "It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes," that is, men at their highest and best are still not to be trusted, for they are sinners. Our trust or dependence must be in the Lord.
Thus remember, people are sinners. If they hurt and disappoint you, it is because there is first of all something with you: you have put your trust in the creature rather than the Creator. We can enjoy people, be good friends and neighbors, and live best with them if we know ourselves and them as alike sinners, either saved or lost, but even as saved, still very capable of thoughtlessness and sin. Our trust must be in the Lord. ~ Rousas John Rushdoony

Obviously, the first place I go is Sanctuary. The omegas scatter like flies as I stalk through the doors, pausing to inspect the fact one is hanging precariously to the side.

Bobo rounds the corner with a toolbox, smiling over at me before, he bows at the waist.

"What happened here?" I ask when he straightens from the weird bow.

He shrugs, and I remember he's fucking mute.

Right.

Guess I'll get answers elsewhere.

Leiza freezes when she rounds the corner and spots me.

"What happened to the front door?" I ask her.

She turns and darts inside a wall. Bloody hell. I'm not wearing an angry expression, am I?

I check the mirror, finding no major scare factor. I'm fucking devilishly good looking and my smile is positively charming.

Usually she's less skittish around me. At least in recent days.

Shera is coming down the stairs, but she oddly pales when she sees me.

What happened to front door?" I ask her.

I've never seen my beta run so fast.

"I'll let Violet tell you about it," she calls over her shoulder. "Gotta run, Boss."

Again, I check the mirror.

Good hair.

Perfect teeth.

Excellent outfit.

Not a fucking clue what's going on.

Typically, I enjoy instilling that sort of terror, but I'm still in trouble with Violet, and she doesn't like her Sanctuary members feeling sc ~ Kristy Cunning

Farmers, merchants, manufacturers, and the traveling public have all had their troubles with the transportation lines, and the difficulties to which these struggles have given rise have produced that problem which is even now apparently far from solution. ~ John Moody

The trouble with me is that I'm an outsider. And that's a very hard thing to be in American life. ~ Jackie Kennedy

But though the essential of the woman's task is universality, this does not, of course, prevent her from having one or two severe though largely wholesome prejudices. She has, on the whole, been more conscious than man that she is only one half of humanity; but she has expressed it (if one may say so of lady) by getting her teeth into the two or three things which she thinks she stands for. I would observe here in parenthesis that much of the recent official trouble about women has arisen from the fact that they transfer to things of doubt and reason that sacred stubbornness only proper to the primary things which a woman was set to guard.
One's own children, one's own altar, ought to be a matter of principle--
or if you like, a matter of prejudice. On the other hand, who wrote Junius's Letters ought not to be a principle or a prejudice, it ought to be a matter of free and almost indifferent inquiry. But take an energetic modern girl secretary to a league to show that George III wrote Junius, and in three months she will believe it, too, out of mere loyalty to her employers. Modern women defend their office with all the fierceness of domesticity. They fight for desk and typewriter as for hearth and home, and develop a sort of wolfish wifehood on behalf of the invisible head of the firm. That is why they do office work so well; and that is why they ought not to do it. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Green-tinted with chlorophyll from crying. "Percy," she sniffled. "I was just asking about Grover. I know something's happened. He wouldn't stay gone this long if he wasn't in trouble. I was hoping that Leneus - " "I told you!" the satyr protested. "You are a better off without that traitor." Juniper stamped her foot. "He is not a traitor! He's the bravest satyr ever, and I want to know where he is!" "WOOF!" Leneus's knees started knocking. "I ... I won't answer questions with this hellhound sniffing my tail!" Nico looked like he was trying to not crack up. "I'll walk the dog," he volunteered. ~ Rick Riordan

Do not go out of your way to do good whenever it comes your way. Men who make a business of doing good to others are apt to hate others in the same occupation. Simply be filled with the thought of good, and it will radiate you do not have to bother about it, any more than you need trouble about your digestion. ~ Elbert Hubbard

I watched them carefully, as always, searching for a sign of mental weakness. But there was none. Every man was coping well with the hardship, each one of them locked into his task. But it is one thing to practice, and quite another to race. And the trouble is, you never know who, on the day, will find it within his soul to give more than he has ever given before. It takes a kind of madness to compete like that, because of the will power and the ego, and his loyalty. And while some men have it, others have yet to find it. And a coach can only use his best judgement as to who those men will be. ~ Daniel Topolski

That was the trouble with explaining with words. If you explained with gunpowder, people listened. ~ Dean F. Wilson

Good luck "You will be the better for it," he returned. "I believe I've allus been the better for any trouble as ever I had to go through with. I couldn't quite say the same for every bit of good luck I had; leastways, I consider trouble the best luck a man can have." Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood, ch. 33 ~ George MacDonald

The trouble with being a ghostwriter or artist is that you must remain rather anonymously without credit. If one wants the credit, one has to cease being a ghost and become a leader or innovator. ~ Bob Kane

Bury the embers, extinguish the spark
We plunge ourselves in the well of dark
Far from voices that trouble and chatter
Down, deep down, where worries don't matter
Our minds all teem with the unseen thing
But night is a blink and sleep but a dream
Wake, wake, see things as they seem ~ Shannon Hale

Although I'd had no trouble looking at the casket the day before, on that Saturday I did my best to keep my eyes averted. I stared instead at the stained-glass window behind the altar and imagined shooting the panes out with a slingshot. ~ William Kent Krueger

Did you ever think much about jobs? I mean, some of the jobs people land in? You see a guy giving haircuts to dogs, or maybe going along the curb with a shovel, scooping up horse manure. And you think, now why is the silly bastard doing that? He looks fairly bright, about as bright as anyone else. Why the hell does he do that for living?
You kind grin and look down your nose at him. You think he's nuts, know what I mean, or he doesn't have any ambition. And then you take a good look at yourself, and you stop wondering about the other guy…

You've got all your hands and feet. Your health is okay, and you make a nice appearance, and ambition-man! You've got it. You're young, I guess: you'd call thirty young, and you're strong. You don't have much education, but you've got more than plenty of other people who go to the top. And yet with all that, with all you've had to do with this is as far you've got And something tellys you, you're not going much farther if any.

And there is nothing to be done about it now, of course, but you can't stop hoping. You can't stop wondering…

…Maybe you had too much ambition. Maybe that was the trouble. You couldn't see yourself spending forty years moving from office boy to president. So you signed on with a circulation crew; you worked the magazines from one coast to another. And then you ran across a little brush deal-it sounded nice, anyway. And you worked that until you found something better, something tha ~ Jim Thompson

I took the steps down Angel's Flight to Hill Street: a hundred and forty steps, with tight fists, frightened of no man, but scared of the Third Street Tunnel, scared to walk through it – claustrophobia. Scared of high places too, and of blood, and of earthquakes; otherwise, quite fearless, excepting death, except the fear I'll scream in a crowd, except the fear of appendicitis, except the fear of heart trouble, even that, sitting in his room holding the clock and pressing his jugular vein, counting out his heartbeats, listening to the weird purr and whirr of his stomach. Otherwise, quite fearless. ~ John Fante

The real trouble with the Jews at the time of our Lord was that they stopped at the letter and never arrived at the spirit. ~ D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

The trouble with being on the wrong side of the law was the kind of company you had to keep. ~ Louis L'Amour

You from?" the driver asked with a complete lack of interest. "Liverpool." "Limey, huh? Well, you'll be all right. It's the goddamn New York Jews cause all the trouble." I found myself with a British inflection and by no means one of Liverpool. "Jews - what? How do they cause trouble?" "Why, hell, mister. We know how to take care of this. Everybody's happy and getting along fine. Why, I like niggers. And them goddamn New York Jews come in and stir the niggers up. They just stay in New York there wouldn't be no trouble. Ought to take them out. ~ John Steinbeck

My interest in theatre started in high school, mostly because my dean forced me to do it. I was creating trouble in the hallways, so he demanded that I do something with my spare time. ~ Michael Weston

That's the trouble with living things. Don't last very long. Kittens one day, old cats the next. And then just memories. And the memories fade and blend and smudge together. ~ Neil Gaiman

Tell me this. What is it with men and feeling like they have to act like self-destructive superheroes whenever trouble shows up?"
"It's the only way we know how to love. ~ Andrew Pyper

The Arcturan megafreighters used to carry most of the bulky trade between the Galactic Center and the outlying regions. The Betelgeuse trading scouts used to find the markets and the Arcturans would supply them. There was a lot of trouble with space pirates before they were wiped out in the Dordellis wars, and the megafreighters had to be equipped with the most fantastic defense shields known to Galactic science. They were real brutes of ships, and huge. In orbit round a planet they would eclipse the sun. One day, young Zaphod here decides to raid one. On a tri-jet scooter designed for stratosphere work, a mere kid. I ~ Douglas Adams

Darcy: 'I certainly have not the talent which some people possess, of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done.'
Elizabeth:'My fingers do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women's do. They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault
because I would not take the trouble of practicing. It is not that I do not believe my fingers as capable as any other woman's of superior execution. ~ Jane Austen

I have decided that the trouble with print is, it never changes its mind. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

She wants me to take what magic I have left and blot every memory of this evening from their minds. To make them forget so that they can carry on as before. There will always be Cecilys, Marthas, and Elizabeths of the world - those who cannot bear the burden of truth. They will drink their tea. Weigh their words. Wear hats against the sun. Squeeze their minds into corsets, lest some errant thought should escape and ruin the smooth illusion they hold of themselves and the world as they like it.
It is a luxury, this forgetting. No one will come to take away the things I wish I had not seen, the things I wish I did not know. I shall have to live with them.
I wrench away from her grip. "Why should I?"
I do it anyways. Once I am certain the girls are asleep, I creep into their rooms, one by one, and lay my hands across their furrowed brows, which wear the trouble of all they've witnessed. I watch while those brows ease into smooth, blank canvases beneath my fingers. It is a form of healing, and I am surprised by how much it heals me to do it. When the girls awake, they will remember as strange dream of magic and blood and curious creatures and perhaps a teacher they knew whose name will not spring to their lips. They might strain to remember it for a moment, but then they will tell themselves it was only a dream best forgotten.
I have done what Mrs. Nightwing said I should do. But I do not take all their memories from them. I leave them with one small token of ~ Libba Bray

So it can be seen that the trouble with the motion picture art was (and is) that it is too much an industry; and the trouble with the motion picture industry is that it is too much an art. It is out of this basic contradiction that most of the ills of the form arise. ~ Garson Kanin

Can you sleep-deprive your way out of a depressed episode? Some researchers think that it may be possible. Using a technique called TSD (total sleep deprivation), researchers subjected depressed bipolar patients to three cycles of sleep deprivation, each consisting of a 36-hour period of sleeplessness followed by a 12-hour sleep-in. After the sessions, over half the participants reported feeling less depressed. The trouble is, TSD runs about a 10 percent risk of kicking a bipolar sufferer into hypomania or mania - about the same rate as SSRI antidepressants. In addition, the positive effects of TSD generally wear off as soon as you return to your normal sleep/wake cycle. Researchers continue to study the potential benefits of TSD when used in combination with other therapies, but the only solid conclusion that researchers have reached is that TSD is definitely not something you should try on your own. ~ Candida Fink

The trouble with being educated is that it takes a long time; it uses up the better part of your life and when you are finished what you know is that you would have benefited more by going into banking. ~ Philip K. Dick

The trouble is, when you gift a girl with flowers your choice can be construed so many different ways. A man might give you a rose because he feels you are beautiful, or because he fancies their shade or shape or softness similar to your lips. Roses are expensive, and perhaps he wishes to show through a valuable gift that you are valuable to him.
When a man gives you a rose what you see may not be what he intends. You may think he sees you as delicate or frail. Perhaps you dislike a suitor who considers you sweet and nothing else. Perhaps the stem is thorn, and you assume he thinks you likely to hurt a hand too quick to touch. But if he trims the thorns you might think he has no liking for a thing that can defend itself with sharpness. There's so many ways a thing can be interpreted. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

There seems to be an inborn drive in all human beings not to live in a steady emotional state, which would suggest that such a state is not tolerable to most people. Why else would someone succumb to the attractions of romantic love more than once? Didn't they learn their lesson the first time or the tenth time or the twentieth time? And it's the same old lesson: everything in this life - I repeat, everything - is more trouble than it's worth. And simply being alive is the basic trouble. This is something that is more recognized in Eastern societies than in the West. There's a minor tradition in Greek philosophy that instructs us to seek a state of equanimity rather than one of ecstasy, but it never really caught on for obvious reasons. Buddhism advises its practitioners not to seek highs or lows but to follow a middle path to personal salvation from the painful cravings of the average sensual life, which is why it was pretty much reviled by the masses and mutated into forms more suited to human drives and desires. It seems evident that very few people can simply sit still. Children spin in circles until they collapse with dizziness. ~ Thomas Ligotti

When I am trying to understand the method of winning in the endgame with two bishops against the knight, chess is a science, when I admire a beautiful combination or study, then chess is art, and when I am complicating position in the approaching time trouble of my opponent, then chess is sport. ~ Ashot Nadanian

The quest for knowledge is what makes humans survive, even if it hurts." I have trouble imagining that this éminence grise was once a sixteen-year-old Hungarian boy in a death camp. "There's a troublesome verse from Ecclesiastes about this," he tells me. "It says that the more we know, the more pain we have. But because we are human beings, this must be. Otherwise we become objects rather than subjects." He pauses for a moment to let this sink in. "Of course, it hurts when we see pictures of people throwing themselves out of windows, children who are orphaned, the widows," Wiesel says. "But there is no way out of what we've seen." "And how do we live with what we know?" I ask "How can we live with not knowing? ~ Mark Matousek

Dr. Breed keeps telling me the main thing with Dr. Hoenikker was truth."
"You don't seem to agree."
"I don't know whether I agree or not. I just have trouble understanding
how truth, all by itself, could be enough for a person. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Lisbeth, though disposed always to take the negative side in her conversations with Seth, had a vague sense that there was some comfort and safety in the fact of his piety, and that it somehow relieved her from the trouble of any spiritual transactions on her own behalf. ~ George Eliot

The guys in the saloons shoving free ones across the bar and saying happy new year and many more of them kid you been a good customer have one on the house happy new year and the hell with the prohibitionists some day the bastards are going to give us trouble. The girls from the hash houses and the girls from the hotels and the guys swarming out of dirty little apartment bedrooms and music and dancing and smoke and somebody with the ukulele and have another and the feeling of being lonesome that everybody has inside him and people bouncing against you and off you and have another one and a girl passing out at the bar and a fight and happy new year. ~ Dalton Trumbo

One of the biggest lessons we can learn in life is to do everything possible to reach an accord with the individual we are having trouble with. ~ Harold Klemp

All my main characters are people I'd love to sit around having coffee with. They are people who will tell you honestly about the things that scare them and worry them and trouble them. Because those moments of connection between women-when they really decide to be honest with each other about their lives-are some of the best things in life. ~ Katherine Center

That's the trouble with anything which essentially has a lot of bits that are physically impossible: You're left, stuck, in the studio. And that's a shame. You're making a movie. You don't want it to stay put, you want it to be a movie - to move. ~ Robbie Coltrane

The marketing geniuses on the corporate side of the country music labels had decided to start using focus groups to test their products before they were developed or released. An example of this would be to ask the focus group whether they liked sad songs or happy songs. "We like happy songs!" the focus group would chirp, and the word would go back to the writers and producers to come up with "happy" songs to record. This made it especially hard on the songwriters, who rarely feel a need to write when they are happy, as then they are busy luxuriating in the pleasure of happiness. When something bad happens, they want to find a way to transcend it, so they write a song about it. When Hank Williams, one of the greatest and most successful country artists of all time, wrote a song like "Your Cheatin' Heart" or "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," he wasn't writing "happy" songs, yet they made the listener feel better. The listener could feel that someone else had gone through an experience similar to the listener's own, and then went to the trouble and effort to write it down accurately and share the experience like a compassionate friend might do. In this way, hearing a song like "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" could make the listener feel better, or "happy. ~ Linda Ronstadt

While most science moves in a sort of curve, being constantly corrected by new evidence, this science flies off into space in a straight line uncorrected by anything. But the habit of forming conclusions, as they can really be formed in more fruitful fields, is so fixed in the scientific mind that it cannot resist talking like this. It talks about the idea suggested by one scrap of bone as if it were something like the aeroplane which is constructed at last out of whole scrapheaps of scraps of metal. The trouble with the professor of the prehistoric is that he cannot scrap his scrap. The marvellous and triumphant aeroplane is made out of a hundred mistakes. The student of origins can only make one mistake and stick to it. ~ G.K. Chesterton

From time to time I have come across personalities stuck in dilemmas. They were so enmeshed into the pain or drama that even death did not ease the pain. Ghosts are earthbound, with some issue or trouble holding them down. Surprisingly, sometimes this wayward journey was experienced before and after death. ~ Stephen Poplin