Trapeze Quotes

Writing, you are a girl on a trapeze, swinging high in the air. you know there is no one on the other side to catch you. but your costume is spangly and all eyes are on you and at some point you'll leap
at some point you'll flip. and there may be no net
though it may also be intact, you can't see
but at this point the jumping is everything
it's all that you've got. and as you write you understand this, you understand you won't hit send, but for now you are swinging, swinging, swinging wildly in the air. your eyes are open, your arms are outstretched. ~ Terra Elan McVoy

There was one where Gomez was on a Trapeze hanging by the legs upside down. I remember how much the backs of my knees would hurt until I got used to it. It was hard. ~ John Astin

Setting aside the puppet shows, the only thing that matters is who will be ruling, who will have the keys to the cash register, and how they're going to split up other people's money among themselves. On their way to the booty they'll spruce everything up, which is badly needed. New Scoundrels will appear, new leaders, and a whole choir of jnnocents with no memory will come out into the streets, ready to believe whatever they want or need to believe. They'll follow whichever Pied Piper flatters them most and promises them some shotty paradise... This is what it is... with its highs and lows, and it's only as good as it gets, which is better than nothing. There are those who see it coming and go far away... And there are those of us who stay with our feet stuck in the mud, because anyhow we don't have anywhere better to go. But don't worry about the circus. We've now come to the clown acts, and the trapeze artists will take a while to arrive. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I don't call myself a poet, because I don't like the word. ~ Bob Dylan

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

There are so many quiet times you spend as a mother that aren't glorified but are a foundation for your kids. No matter what, there was always a thick safety net under this trapeze. ~ Tina Fey

Ah, Chantal... Now I think I know how it feels to fly on a trapeze. ~ Madeleine Brent

I did a lot of trapeze stuff when I did 'Pippin' and continued to do it afterward. Flying is so fun, and I was used to the harness idea, but these harnesses are like intense, full bodysuit things. ~ Ciara Renee

A Timid Trapeze Artist Is a Dead Trapeze Artist ~ Seth Godin

The trapeze was my first love. To me, it's normal. It's all I've ever known. But when I see other people's upbringings, I think, 'Hmm ... mine was rather unconventional. Quite different!' ~ Neon Hitch

My circus train pulls through the night
Full of lions and trapeze artists
I'm done with elephants and clowns
I want to run away and join the office ~ Mike Doughty

It is a cliche that human beings are fascinated by size
mountain peaks, high buildings, and whales. We are also amazed by miniatures
a flea on a mouse, a flea on a trapeze, the Last Supper carved on the head of a pin. ~ Rosamond Purcell

A mystery reader, confronted with a large mass of sudden detail, is going to go - subconsciously, at least - "Aha! somewhere in all of this the writer has planted a Clue!", and look for that; a reader trained exclusively in mainstream literary fiction is likely to say, "Aha! all this emphasis must point to something of Thematic Importance!", but an experienced reader of science fiction is going to assume that he or she is meant to take all of those details and out of them construct a world.

Which is why the writer of a science-fiction mystery with literary ambitions is trying to do a quadruple somersault off the trapeze without a net. ~ Debra Doyle

Human thought, flying on the trapezes of the star-filled universe, with mathematics stretched beneath, was like an acrobat working with a net but suddenly noticing that in reality there is no net. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

My mother was a Chinese trapeze artist in pre-war Paris Smuggling bombs for the underground. And she met my father at a fete in Aix-en-Provence; He was disguised as a Russian cadet in the employ of the Axis. ~ Colin Meloy

A man's body is like a circus. You can swing off his trapeze arms, lay your head on thighs like fresh-blown balloons while his cock performs tricks, soft to hard, a burst like a cannon if you treat him right. ~ Bojan Veljanov

The experience of being in between-between the time we leave home and arrive at our destination; between the time we leave adolescence and arrive at adulthood; between the time we leave doubt and arrive at faith. It is like the time when a trapeze artist lets go the bars and hangs in midair, ready to catch another support: it is a time of danger, of expectation, of uncertainty, of excitement, or extraordinary aliveness. ~ Paul Tournier

June 28, 1983 Mianus River Bridge Greenwich, Connecticut George Tesla was drunk. This wasn't new for him, but the reason was. He was going to be a father. Fifty years old, and he'd knocked up a thirty-year-old carnie. Someone careful enough to live through a trapeze act ought to be careful enough to not get pregnant. But she hadn't been. Tatiana flat-out refused to talk about abortion or adoption or any sensible solution to the problem. She was perfectly willing to talk about leaving him to raise the baby alone, but nothing else. Her mind was set. He leaned against the cold side of the bridge and took a long sip of Jack Daniel's from his silver hip flask. He'd bought the flask when he was first made professor of mathematics at New York University. Another thing that would have to change, since Tatiana had told him she had no intention of giving up performing to move to New York ~ Rebecca Cantrell

Art is constant tension and release. That is where artists live, between the two, or at times, submerged in either. The challenge is never ending perfection is impossible, it could always be different, better, or worse. It's not important, just process and striving to be like the man who walks the trapeze maintaining balance. ~ Dave Liebman

Muhammad, my friend, I'm getting very scared. Teach me how to love my brothers who don't know the law, and what about the deal on the flying trapeze? ~ Tori Amos

He said that academia reminded him of a badly run circus. The faculty members were like underfed animals
weary of their cages, which were never large enough to begin with
and they responded sluggishly to the whip. The trapeze artists fell with monotonous regularity into poorly strung nets. The clowns looked hungry. The tent leaked. The crowd was inattentive, shouting incoherently at inappropriate moments. And when the show was over, no one cheered. ~ Susan Hubbard

Jackie wears even more makeup than those scary circus people. You know, when you go to the circus and you accidentally see a trapeze artist close-up and they are orange. ~ Louise Rennison

I am a collection of oddities, a circus of neurons and electrons: my heart is the ringmaster, my soul is the trapeze artist, and the world is my audience. It sounds strange because it is, and it is, because I am strange. ~ David Arnold

Lena?" He glanced at the dictionary. "Are you 'pleased, contented, joyful, delighted'? Do you feel 'Lucky, fortunate'? Are things 'clever and fitting,' 'successful and suitable' for you?"

Lena stopped slicing vegetables and closed her eyes. "Read me the list again, please," she said.

He shut the book.

"What have I done, you got to stop and think an hour before you can tell me. All I ask is a simple yes or no! You're not contented, delighted, joyful?"

"Cows are contented, babies and old people in second childhood are delighted, God help them," she said. "As for 'joyful,' Lee? Look how I laugh scrubbing out the sink . . ."

He peered closely at her and his face relaxed. "Lena, it's true. A man doesn't appreciate. Next month, maybe, we'll get away."

"I'm not complaining!" she cried. "I'm not the one comes in with a list saying/stick out your tongue. Lee, do you ask what makes your heart beat all night? No! Next will you ask, What's marriage? Who knows, Lee? Don't ask. A man who thinks like that, how it runs, how things work, falls off the trapeze in the circus, chokes wondering how the muscles work in the throat. Eat, sleep, breathe, Lee, and stop staring at me like I'm something new in the house! ~ Ray Bradbury

Jake the trapeze artist was a man who stared death in the face, while most nights I stared television in the face. ~ David Nicholls

These words on the screen represented her latest project, an attempt at a series of commercial, discreetly feminist crime novels. She had read all of Agatha Christie at eleven years old, and later lots of Chandler and James M.Cain. There seemed no reason why she shouldn't try writing something in between, but she was discovering once again that reading and writing were not the same-you couldn't just soak it up then squeeze it out again. She found herself unable to think of a name for her detective, let alone a cohesive original plot, and even her pseudonym was poor: Emma T. Wilde? She wondered if she was doomed to be one of those people who spend their lives trying things. She had tried being in a band, writing plays and children's books, she had tried acting and getting a job in publishing. Perhaps crime fiction was just another failed project to place alongside trapeze, Buddhism and Spanish. She used the computer's word counter feature. Thirty-five words, including the title page and her rotten pseudonym. Emma groaned, released the hydraulic lever on the side of her office chair and sank a little closer to the carpet. ~ David Nicholls

Just as most of us prefer to watch a trapeze artist work without a net, we like to be absolutely sure that a virtuoso is giving us our money's worth, and a seemingly effortless performance, no matter how spectacular it may be, deprives us of that slightly sadistic thrill. ~ Terry Teachout

When Surkov finds out about the Night Wolves he is delighted. The country needs new patriotic stars, the great Kremlin reality show is open for auditions, and the Night Wolves are just the type that's needed, helping the Kremlin rewrite the narrative of protesters from political injustice and corruption to one of Holy Russia versus Foreign Devils, deflecting the conversation from the economic slide and how the rate of bribes that bureaucrats demand has shot up from 15 percent to 50 percent of any deal. They will receive Kremlin support for their annual bike show and rock concert in Crimea, the one-time jewel in the Tsarist Empire that ended up as part of Ukraine during Soviet times, and where the Night Wolves use their massive shows to call for retaking the peninsula from Ukraine and restoring the lands of Greater Russia; posing with the President in photo ops in which he wears Ray-Bans and leathers and rides a three-wheel Harley (he can't quite handle a two-wheeler); playing mega-concerts to 250,000 cheering fans celebrating the victory at Stalingrad in World War II and the eternal Holy War Russia is destined to fight against the West, with Cirque du Soleil–like trapeze acts, Spielberg-scale battle reenactments, religious icons, and holy ecstasies - in the middle of which come speeches from Stalin, read aloud to the 250,000 and announcing the holiness of the Soviet warrior - after which come more dancing girls and then the Night Wolves' anthem, "Slavic Skies":
We are be ~ Peter Pomerantsev

Know Thyself, a wise old Greek once said. Know Thyself. Now what does this mean, boys and girls? It means, be what you are. Don't try to be Sally or Johnny or Fred next door; be yourself. God doesn't want a tree to be a waterfall, or a flower to be a stone. God gives to each one of us a special talent." Janice and Rabbit become unnaturally still; both are Christians. God's name makes them feel guilty. "God wants some of us to become scientists, some of us to become artists, some of us to become firemen and doctors and trapeze artists. And He gives to each of us the special talents to become these things, provided we work to develop them. We must work, boys and girls. So: Know Thyself. Learn to
understand your talents, and then work to develop them. That's the way to be happy. ~ John Updike

People don't always go down in history for the vigor with which they perform their jobs. We remember Louis the Fifteenth . . . for his furniture; we remember Pierre Léotard, despite his being the greatest trapeze artist ever, for his leotard. The idea is to give your name to something, like the zeppelin, the newton, Morse code, the chicuelina. ~ David Toscana

A circus of stars,
your dreams a trapeze, faces
lift like mirrored moons. ~ Imtiaz Dharker

According to them, the poet is confined to the provinces with his mouth broken on his own syllabic trapeze. ~ Salvatore Quasimodo

I have swung on a flying trapeze, explored a glacier, and been hit in the face by a shark's tail while scuba diving. I like to throw myself fully into projects and adventures, which is probably how I managed to publish a book in the first place. ~ Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

Being on a trapeze is like dreaming. I feel totally outside of myself when I'm flying. You know, designing shoes, my imagination is flying in my drawings. ~ Christian Louboutin

Not that he had come anywhere near attaining her skill at managing hope. She could balance it like a juggler -- let it soar and curb it and pass it from hand to hand. She could spin hope and spin herself through it. Forget mere juggling; she was a veritable trapeze artist with this hope thing. ~ Sonali Dev

She's a shiksa goddess and a trapeze artist, all of that. She can fix the truck ... she's outta this world ... she's bold, inventive and fearless. That's who you wanna go in the woods with, right? Somebody who finishes your sentences for you. ~ Tom Waits

I'm a weak character, without guts or ambition. I caught the brass ring and it shocked me to find out it wasn't gold. A guy like me has one big moment in his life, one perfect swing on the high trapeze. Then he spends the rest of his time trying not to fall off the sidewalk into the gutter. ~ Raymond Chandler

I've been doing lots of trapeze, and so much of it is holding your own weight. ~ Patina Miller

I'm never gonna be somebody who's gonna fall down from the sky on a trapeze. That's not me. I really want to make sure that my focus stays on connecting with the audience. ~ Sara Bareilles

My friend and coach reminded me this week that there is a moment when the acrobat lets go of one trapeze and is completely suspended in mid-air before she catches the incoming rung. You have to let go to get there. ~ Danielle LaPorte