Trick Quotes

The trick to saying the word cock, is to do it like you have one in your mouth. ~ Geoffrey Knight

The trick in life is to hang out until the miracles come. ~ Attica Locke

Wasn't that the trick, though? Life was one long series of efforts to reach the golden mean, where everything was the way that it was supposed to be. ~ Seanan McGuire

The birth of excellence begins with our awareness that our beliefs are a choice. We usually don't think of it that way, but belief can be a conscious choice. You can choose beliefs that limit you, or you can choose beliefs that support you. The trick is to choose the beliefs that are conducive to success and the results you want and to discard the ones that hold you back. ~ Anthony Robbins

Smell the aroma of beautiful food, then
go to the latrine and sniff. "What happened to you?" Your dung will answer,
"My beauty was a lure, a trick to get inside you."
Every matter particle does the same
enchantment. Try to see the beginning and end at once. Would you willingly wear manacles
just because they're made of gold? Admire the genius of an artist, but also watch what
happens to him or her in old age, how the expert craftsman's craft diminishes. ~ Rumi

Why so many other stab wounds if any of the first five did the trick?"
"He, or they were just having fun. ~ Kenneth Eade

It was impressive, but, pretty much like the man with the exploding head, it was a one-time trick. When ~ Eoin Colfer

By all means, stay," Anne said. "Have a seat. We'll take care of you next."
"Yeah, see, I think someone else is going to be on trial next." Baring my teeth at her in a grin I pulled out my file folder. "I've got some interesting reading here. And I even brought copies for everyone so you don't have to share."
A distinguished-looking South American man on the end shook his head. "What is this? Another farce?"
"No, but bonus points for using a funny word. You really want to read what I have here. Anne, you'll be especially interested, since you have a starring role."
"Enough. Rhia - "
Reth quickly flicked his wrist at her; her mouth kept moving, but no sound came out. It was one of the most satisfying things I'd ever seen. Sure, that trick had sucked when he used it on me, but I wholly approved of it now. ~ Kiersten White

God will help you in a way you will not know he did. at's his trick. ~ Ben Tolosa

The voice came first, then the chill across her skin. A moment later, Noah Czerny joined her, dressed as always in his navy Aglionby sweater. Joined was perhaps the wrong verb. Manifested was better. The phrase trick of the light was even more superior. Trick of the mind was the best. Because it was rare that Blue noticed the moment Noah actually appeared. It wasn't that he gently resolved into being. It was that somehow her brain rewrote the minute before to pretend that Noah had been slouching beside her all along. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

The trick was not simply to write the code that turned information into pictures but to find the best pictures to draw - shapes and colors that led the mind to meaning. ~ Michael Lewis

Dogs live in the moment, and don't have a concept of past or future. That's why you must immediately correct your dog if it breaks the rules. The old trick of rubbing your puppy's face in his poop or urine is not effective - your dog will have no idea why it is being punished. ~ Tom Ester

He sometimes felt that life was something that had already risen, and all of this, the Jackson Pollack of spring, summer, and fall, the vague refrigeration and tinfoiled sky of wintertime, was just a falling, really, originward, in a kind of correction, as if by spritual gravity, towards the wiser consciousness
or consciousnessless, maybe; could gravity trick itself like that?
of death. It was a kind of movement both very slow and very fast; there was both too much and not enough time to think. ~ Tao Lin

Life is a trick, and you get one chance to learn it. ~ Terry Pratchett

I think relationships are very difficult. It's very easy to get swept away with excitement, glamour, and passion. I think the trick is to look for friendship rather than passion. ~ Jane Green

Regrets ... Regrets are bootless. A vain trick of the mind. An impotent raging against what cannot be changed anyway. A distraction from the moment. ~ Andrew Ashling

Money is a sort of instinct. It's a sort of property of nature in a person to make money. It's nothing you do. It's no trick you play. It's a sort of permanent accident of your own nature; once you start, you make money, and you go on ... But you've got to begin ... You've got to get in. You can do nothing if you are kept outside. You've got to beat your way in. Once you've done that, you can't help it! ~ D.H. Lawrence

The trick, he supposed, was never to lose sight of the theoretical possibility while not for a moment taking the idea remotely seriously. ~ Iain M. Banks

And I would sit there, smiling stupidly and realizing they had no idea how rare and lucky they were, and realizing further that this ignorance of their great good fortune could well be the whole trick of achieving it in the first place. ~ Ron Currie Jr.

Hildy has resigned herself to this, that life is a series of sudden disappearences, leavetakings without the proper good-byes. Someday she too might vanish. Some days she looks forward to learning this trick. ~ Kelly Link

God, could that dopey girl dance. Buddy Singer and his stinking band was playing 'Just One of Those Things' and even they couldn't ruin it entirely. It's a swell song. I didn't try any trick stuff while we danced
I hate a guy that does a lot of show-off tricky stuff on the dance floor
but I was moving her around plenty, and she stayed with me. The funny thing is, I thought she was enjoying it, too, till all of a sudden she came out with this very dumb remark. "I and my girl friends saw Peter Lorre last night," she said. "The movie actor. In person. He was buyin' a newspaper. He's cute."
"You're lucky," I told her. "You're really lucky. You know that?" She was really a moron. But what a dancer. ~ J.D. Salinger

I was trying to discover examples of a living restoration, trying to go beyond discussions about correct historic colors, materials, and techniques.
I looked to the past for guidance, to find the graces we need to save. I want to be an importer. This is not nostalgia; I am not nostalgic. I am not looking for a way back. "From where will a renewal come to us, to us who have devastated the whole earthly globe?" asked Simone Weil. "Only from the past if we love it."
What I am looking for is the trick of having the same ax twice, for a restoration that renews the spirit, for work that transforms the worker. We may talk of saving antique linens, species, or languages; but whatever we are intent on saving, when a restoration succeeds, we rescue ourselves.
Howard Mansfield, The Same Ax Twice: Restoration and Renewal in a Throwaway Age ~ Howard Mansfield

Love is like a magic trick
You know you are getting fooled, but still, you stand in line
And pay to see it again and again. ~ Yarro Rai

You and Beatrix haven't known each other long enough to consider matrimony. A matter of weeks, to my knowledge. And what about Prudence Mercer? You're practically betrothed, aren't you?"
"Those are valid points," Christopher said. "And I will answer them. But you should know right away that I'm against the match."
Leo blinked in bemusement. "You mean you're against a match with Miss Mercer?"
"Well…yes. But I'm also against a match with Beatrix."
Silence fell over the room.
"This is a trick of some sort," Leo said.
"Unfortunately, it's not," Christopher replied.
Another silence.
"Captain Phelan," Cam asked, choosing his words with care. "Have you come to ask for our consent to marry Beatrix?"
Christopher shook his head. "If I decide to marry Beatrix, I'll do it with or without your consent."
Leo looked at Cam. "Good God," he said in disgust. "This one's worse than Harry."
Cam wore an expression of beleaguered patience. "Perhaps we should both talk to Captain Phelan in the library. With brandy."
"I want my own bottle," Leo said feelingly, leading the way. ~ Lisa Kleypas

When a man died, there had to be blame. Jimmy Cross understood this. You could blame the war, You could blame the idiots who made the war. You could blame Kiowa for going to it. You could blame the rain. You could blame the river. You could blame the field, the mud, the climate. You could blame the enemy. You could blame the mortar rounds. You could blame people who were too lazy to read a newspaper, who were bored by the daily body counts, who switched channels at the mention of politics. You could blame whole nations. You could blame God. You could blame the munitions makers or Karl Marx or a trick of fate of an old man in Omaha who forgot to vote. ~ Tim O'Brien

Real gold doesn't start its journey in a display window at Tiffany. It's dug out of the dirty earth. Sometimes true gold doesn't glitter. It may need a little polishing, but don't let that bit of needed patience or effort trick you into discarding what could be the greatest treasure of your life. ~ Cleo Coyle

You don't have to believe in coincidences because they happen every day. The trick is to be able to discern when something is more than coincidence. ~ Glenn Jones

Cheap Trick has played with every band on the planet. ~ Adam Schlesinger

McCoy, drained and hollow-eyed, couldn't take his eyes off the life vest belonging to the boy who'd slipped away from the group during the night. The empty vest spooked McCoy. All its straps were still tightly tied-it looked like some trick that Houdini might've played. Then McCoy peered into the water and got another shock: the boy was floating below him, spread-eagled, about fifteen feet below the surface. He lay motionless until a current caught him; then it was as if he were flying in the depths. Jesus, McCoy thought, Mother of God. He started saying the rosary over and over. McCoy had never been overly religious; his mom was the spiritual one in the family. But now he began the process of what he'd later call his purification; he'd started asking God to forgive him of his sins. He was resolved to live but he was getting ready to die. ~ Doug Stanton

When life belittle and trick you, you will forget protocol... ~ Ikechukwu Joseph

So what's the test?"
"Ah, that's the trick of it. It's not a test. It's real life. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold

Incessant smiling is one of the deadly tools used by someone whose intent is to make others cry. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

A log-in simulator is a program to trick some unknowing user into providing their user name and password. ~ Kevin Mitnick

…Maybe that's what matters. Maybe that's what being "alive" is. It's not some trick. There's no magic chemical that gives something a soul. It's about being loved and loving in return. ~ Lauren James

The younger man stepped away from the table and came toward me, his whole posture radiating menace. Every Darre woman is taught to deal with such behavior from men. It is an animal trick that they use, like dogs ruffling their fur and growling. Only rarely is there an actual threat behind it, and a woman's strength lies in discerning when the threat is real and when it is just hair and noise. ~ N.K. Jemisin

By now the streets of Kalaupapa were filled with people racing for high ground - sick people crying
"Tsunami!" as nature played yet another mean trick on them, God's last best joke at their expense. It was,
after all, April Fool's Day. ~ Alan Brennert

The trick of the internet, I had learned, was not being unapologetically yourself or completely unfiltered; it was mastering the trick of appearing that way. It was spiking your posts with just the right amount of real... which meant, of course, that you were never being real at all. ~ Jennifer Weiner

Truth didn't help. Everything that had ever happened could never be integrated into something coherent. The trick was picking the right moments. The trick was knowing when to lie. ~ Miranda Popkey

When you have to play a character that seems to be a relatively decent person and seems to be like yourself, I think the trick in that kind of character, so that you don't become a cliche, is to find where their weaknesses are. ~ Jennifer Beals

Even the girl he'd danced with had thought it was some marvelous trick. She had been enveloped in real, bright fire and she had tipped back her head and laughed, the tumble of her black hair becoming a crackling waterfall of light, the heels of her shoes striking sparks like glittering leaping dust all over the floor, her skirt trailing flame as if he were following a phoenix tail. Magnus had spun and swung with her, and she'd thought he was marvelous for a single moment of bright illusion.
But, like love, fire didn't last. ~ Cassandra Clare

Zimmermann employed a neat trick that used asymmetric RSA encryption in tandem with old-fashioned symmetric encryption. ~ Simon Singh

Being yourself is an old myth,
being fake in this world of cruelness is a new trick ~ Srishti

Thinking leads inexorably to the abyss. It did not work for Tolstoy. It might not even have worked for Nietzsche, who arguably thought more clearly about such things than anyone in history. But if it is not thinking that can be relied upon in the direst of situations, what is left? Thought, after all, is the highest of human achievements, is it not?
Perhaps not.
Something supersedes thinking, despite its truly awesome power. When existence reveals itself as existentially intolerable, thinking collapses in on itself. In such situations - in the depths - it's noticing, not thinking, that does the trick. ~ Jordan B. Peterson

Suddenly William loomed over him, scowling, snarling and bloody, his suit dirt-stained and ripped. "Do you know. How many strands. Of hair I lost. On my way down?"
Whatever. "Math was never my thing, but I'm gonna say you lost…a lot."
Electric-blues glittered with menace. "You are a cruel, sadistic bastard. My hair needs TLC and you…you… Damn you! I've gutted men for less."
"I know. I've watched you." Paris lumbered to his feet and scanned the rocky bank they stood upon, the crimson ocean lapping and bubbling in every direction. The drawbridge was only a fifty-yard dash away. "Don't kill the messenger, but I'm thinking you should change your dating profile to balding."
Masculine cheeks went scarlet as the big bad warrior struggled for a comeback.
…
"One of these days you're going to wake up," William finally said, "and I will have shaved you. Everywhere."
"Won't make a difference. Women will still want me. But you know what else? What I did to you wasn't cruel, Willy." He offered the warrior a white-flag grin. A trick. A lie. "This, however, is."
He grabbed William by the wrist, swung the man around and around before at last releasing him and hurling his body directly onto the bridge. ~ Gena Showalter

In his way and in his day he was a very modern father. "I want you to see all kinds," he would say to her. "I want you to realize that this whole thing is just a grand adventure. A fine show. The trick is to play in it and look at it at the same time."
"What whole thing?"
"Living. All mixed up. The more kinds of people you see, and the more things you do, and the more things that happen to you, the richer you are. Even if they're not pleasant things. That's living.... ~ Edna Ferber

Never talk to them when they're human, or they'll trick you. You'll get confused and sympathetic. That was what his mom always said. She was probably right. Last time he talked to a werewolf, he ended up dating her. ~ S.M. Reine

How confusing the beams from memory's lamp are; One day a bachelor, the next a grampa. What is the secret of the trick? How did I get so old so quick? ~ Ogden Nash

But when reflexion begins to play upon these objects ... like some trick of magic each object is loosed into a group of impressions - colour, odour, texture ... And if we continue to dwell in thought on this world ... the whole scope of observation is dwarfed into the narrow chamber of the individual mind. ~ Walter Pater

I think the trick of writing a good picture book manuscript is to leave that space for illustration. An illustrated novel can do the same thing. ~ Mac Barnett

A lifetime in the business had taught her that, apart from the few good people that work along-side you,nobody is to be trusted,ever,because sooner or later they'll let you down,sure as God made little green apples. And, when you came to think of it,hadn't that been the dirtiest trick of them all? ~ Tom Holt

The gospel of Jesus Christ solves the innate problem we have of "glory greed." We are, every one of us from birth, incompetent thieves of the glory that belongs only to God. We know in our insidest insides that we fall short of his glory, and so we are constantly clawing and scratching to make up that difference in some way. This is how all sin is fundamentally idolatry and how all accumulations of worldly treasures - be they material goods or religious merit - are fundamentally acts of self-worship. Then in the gospel of Christ, God forgives our petty theft, sets us free from the bondage of our idols, and unites us Spiritually, irrevocably, and satisfyingly to himself. Now the glory we tried to steal is shared with us freely, and it is real glory this time, not these pathetic knockoffs we think will do the trick. ~ Jared C. Wilson

So I devised a way for you to create anew, and Know, Who You Are in your experience. I did this by providing you with: 1. Relativity - a system wherein you could exist as a thing in relationship to something else. 2. Forgetfulness - a process by which you willingly submit to total amnesia, so that you can not know that relativity is merely a trick, and that you are All of It. 3. Consciousness - a state of Being in which you grow until you reach full awareness, then becoming a True and Living God, creating and experiencing your own reality, expanding and exploring that reality, changing and re-creating that reality as you stretch your consciousness to new limits - or shall we say, to no limit. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

Listen to me, you bastard."
"No," Gabriel said.
This simple response left Ash nonplussed. But fuming.
"I'm listening to exactly one person in this room," Gabriel said evenly. "It isn't you. The lady can speak for herself."
Oh. Penny's heart fluttered in her chest.
If by chance, he did mean to seduce her, repeating that sentence fifty times over might do the trick. ~ Tessa Dare

[ ... ] under the guise of caring only for intrinsic values Osmond lived exclusively for the world. Far from being its master as he pretended to be, he was its very humble servant, and the degree of its attention was his only measure of success. He lived with his eye on it from morning till night, and the world was so stupid it never suspected the trick. Everything he did was pose - pose so subtly considered that if one were not on the lookout one mistook it for impulse. Ralph had never met a man who lived so much in the land of consideration. ~ Henry James

I realized that I could have done more for him if I had been in his house. I would have pushed morphine--large doses. Morphine disconnects the head from the body, makes the isthmus of a neck vanish and diminishes the awareness of suffering. It is like a magic trick: the head on the pillow, at peace, while the chest toils away. ~ Abraham Verghese

A lot of the people in San Francisco think of themselves as healers - not just as people delivering this base service, but giving their clients spiritual help. It's almost like being an actor, playing a different part for each trick. ~ James Franco

Vonnegut was talking," I say today, "about the psychic effects of trauma." There's a sentence of Alice Miller's looping in my mind, about grandiose people and depressives, Narcissus and Echo: "Neither can accept the truth that this loss or absence of love has already happened in the past, and that no effort whatsoever can change this fact." It's the main thing I've learned from reading all this psychology: the future is always trying to feel like the past. When it does, it feels like selfishness, hurt, loss at the hands of others. The trick is to let it empty. Maybe this is another way to come unstuck in time. ~ Kristin Dombek

Every magic trick consists of three parts, or acts. The first part is called the Pledge. The magician shows you something ordinary. The second act is called the Turn. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it into something extraordinary. But you wouldn't clap yet, because making something disappear isn't enough. You have to bring it back. ~ Michael Caine

The worst thing you could do is scare a kid or trick them. Never, ever, ever do that. ~ Julianne Moore

No matter how lonely you get or how many birth announcements you receive, the trick is not to get frightened. There's nothing wrong with being alone. ~ Wendy Wasserstein

An illusion has three stages.
"First there is the setup, in which the nature of what might be attempted at is hinted at, or suggested, or explained. The apparatus is seen. volunteers from the audience sometimes participate in preparation. As the trick is being setup, the magician will make use of every possible use of misdirection.
"The performance is where the magician's lifetime of practice, and his innate skill as a performer, cojoin to produce the magical display.
"The third stage is sometimes called the effect, or the prestige, and this is the product of magic. If a rabbit is pulled from a hat, the rabbit, which apparently did not exist before the trick was performed, can be said to be the prestige of that trick. ~ Christopher Priest

Don't let your mind talk you out of your dreams, trick you into giving up; don't let your mind become the greatest obstacle to success. To get your mind on the right track, the rest will follow. ~ Roy Bennett

Whoever thinks algebra is a trick in obtaining unknowns has thought it in vain. No attention should be paid to the fact that algebra and geometry are different in appearance. Algebras (jabbre and maqabeleh) are geometric facts which are proved by propositions five and six of Book two of Elements. ~ Omar Khayyam

Not my mother. Just a trick. Never deal with the devil - that much he knew. Live like a king. Right. The king of a ruined world. The king of nothing. But down here, he was alive. An agent of chaos. Caca grande. The shit in the Master's soup. Gus's reverie was interrupted by footfalls in the tunnels. He went to the door and saw artificial light coming around the corner. Fet came first, Goodweather behind him. Gus had seen Fet a month or two before, but the doctor he had not seen in quite some time. Goodweather looked the worst he'd ~ Guillermo Del Toro

You find things when you're looking hard for other things. The trick is to be awake- which, granted is harder than it seems. ~ Linda Leaming

The trick to seeing things other people missed was to look for them. ~ Gwenda Bond

Because I have been a magician for many years, people have often asked me whether I ever have sawn a woman in half. I reply, Oh, yes I've sawn over seventy women in half in my lifetime, and I'm learning the second half of the trick now. ~ Raymond Smullyan

If I have a rough day, and I'm angry, I'll just go into Kirk Douglas and throw over a table. And when I need to lift my spirits, Kermit can always do the trick. ~ Rich Little

BOOK BEAUTY

Here's the end of that story about the old woman who wanted to lure a man with strange

cosmetics. She made a paste of pages from the Qur'an to fill the deep creases on her face and

neck with. This is not about an old woman, dear reader. It's about you, or anyone who tries

to use books to make themselves attractive. There she is, sticking scripture, thick with

saliva, on her face. Of course, the bits keep falling off. "The devil," she yells, and

he appears! "This is a trick I've never seen. You don't need me. You are yourself a troop

of demons!" So people steal inspired words to get compliments. Don't bother. Death comes

and all talking, stolen or not, stops. Pity anyone unfamiliar with silence when that happens.

Polish your heart with mediation and quietness. Let the inner life grow generous and handsome

like Joseph. Zuleika did that and her "old woman's spring cold snap" turned to mid-July. Dry

lips wet from within. Ink is not rouge. Let language lie bygone. Now is where love breathes. ~ Rumi

You should have taken me with you, I whisper to him. Then I lean my head against his and begin to cry. In my mind, I make a silent promise to my brother's killer.
I will hunt you down. I will scour the streets of Los Angeles for you. Search every street in the Republic if I have to. I will trick you and deceive you, lie, cheat and steal to find you, tempt you out of your hiding place, and chase you until you have nowhere else to run. I make you this promise: your life is mine. ~ Marie Lu

My whole trick is to keep the tune well out in front. If I play Tchaikovsky, I play his melodies and skip his spiritual struggle. ~ Liberace

Inej nodded. "I gave your letter to the guard at the door, and it did the trick. They brought me directly to two members of the Triumvirate."
"Who did you meet with?" said Kaz.
"Genya Safin and Zoya Nazyalensky."
Wylan sat forward. "The Tailor? She's at the embassy?"
Kaz raised a brow. "What an interesting fact to forget to mention, Nina."
"It wasn't relevant at the time."
"Of course it's relevant!" Wylan said angrily.
Jesper was a little surprised. Wylan hadn't seemed to mind wearing Kuwei's features at first. He'd almost seemed to welcome the distance it gave him from his father. But that had been before they'd gone to Saint Hilde. And before Jesper had kissed Kuwei. ~ Leigh Bardugo

Granny Weatherwax looked out at the multi-layered, silvery world.

"Where am I?"

INSIDE THE MIRROR.

"Am I dead?"

THE ANSWER TO THAT, said Death, IS SOMEWHERE BETWEEN NO AND YES.

Esme turned, and a billion figures turned with her.

"When can I get out?"

WHEN YOU FIND THE ONE THAT'S REAL.

"Is this a trick question?"

NO.

Granny looked down at herself.

"This one," she said. ~ Terry Pratchett

She'd learned the trick of it a long time ago, and she'd do well to remember it now. The key to happiness, or at least, the key to contentment.
Don't want what you can't have ~ Louisa Edwards

He saw her as the passionate spirit of innocent youth, now beleaguered by the trick which is played on youth - the trick of treachery in the body, which turns flesh into green bones. Her stupid finery was not vulgar to him, but touching. The girl was still there, still appealing from behind the breaking barricade of rouge. She had made the brave protest: I will not be vanquished. Under the clumsy coquetry, the undignified clothes, there was the human cry for help. The young eyes were puzzled, saying: It is I, inside here - what have they done to me? I will not submit. Some part of her spirit knew that the powder was making a guy of her, and hated it, and tried to hold her lover with the eyes alone. They said: Don't look at all this. Look at me. I am still here, in the eyes. Look at me, here in the prison, and help me out. Another part said: I am not old, it is illusion. I am beautifully made-up. See, I will perform the movements of youth. I will defy the enormous army of age. ~ T.H. White

We all have at least two sides. The world we live in is a world of opposites. And the trick is to reconcile those opposing things. I've always liked both sides. In order to appreciate one you have to know the other. The more darkness you can gather up, the more light you can see too. ~ David Lynch

He makes me feel like I'm something to reveal, something in which to revel. I'm the reward at the end of his magic trick, exposed beneath the velvet cape. ~ Anonymous

That's the thing about slippery slopes. Take that first step, and the next thing you know, you've completed a jerk-off hat trick to your bestie. ~ Lauren Blakely

I saw the whole man slowly emerge from the window and begin to crawl down the castle wall over the dreadful abyss, face down with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings. At first I could not believe my eyes. I thought it was some trick of the moonlight, some weird effect of shadow, but I kept looking, and it could be no delusion. I saw the fingers and toes grasp the corners of the stones, worn clear of the mortar by the stress of years, and by thus using every projection and inequality move downwards with considerable speed, just as a lizard moves along a wall. ~ Bram Stoker

Driving me nuts, bolts, screws
I got the blues from paying dues
For programmed news of honeycoated lies
Your eyes can't believe
That weave the Devil's magic with the latest gadget
From the Mean Machine
A'running the Same Game with Another Name
Down in your brain, blowing your mind
Stealing your time, smooth and slick
With the latest trick to get rich quick
From nonsense at your mind's expense
As your mind digs the scene
From the Mean Machine
Designed to drive your brain insane

From "Mean Machine" by the Last Poets ~ Jalal Mansur Nuriddin

My husband is stricken with dementia, and it's a trick of his condition that events and people from his past are more real to him than what happened five minutes ago. ~ Laurie Graham

The trick in life is to want nothing. And then work our way towards achieving that. ~ Gregory David Roberts

Sonia envied her, the way she could turn her brain off, think about absolutely nothing. It was a trick Sonia herself had never learned. That was what books did - they turned off your thinking for you, put their thoughts in your head so you wouldn't have your own. ~ Simone St. James

A conjurer gets no credit once he has explained his trick; ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

My favorite chip trick is to make everyone's chip stack disappear. ~ Amarillo Slim

For a few moments, the secrets of the universe are opened to us. Life is a cheap parlor trick. That's the miserable truth. ~ Jonathan Nolan

I find the trick to playing a villain is that you can't be bad for the sake of being bad. It has to be rooted in some sort of heartbreak. ~ Matthew Davis

What we need to do is stop global warming; that's the only way to stop your peanut butter cups from melting. And if that doesn't do the trick, then put them in the fridge. Or better yet, eat them. ~ Rush Limbaugh

My intention all along had been to get my wakeboarding legs back this first day. Maybe I'd do tricks when we went out the next day. I didn't want to get too cocky and bust ass in front of Sean. But as I got more comfortable and forgot to care, I tried a few standbys-a front flip, a scarecrow. There was no busting of ass. So I tried a backroll. And landed it solidly.
Now I got cocky. I did a heelside backroll with a nosegrab. This meant that in the middle of the flip, I let go of the rope handle with one hand, reached down, and grabbed the front of the board. It served no purpose in the trick except to look impressive, like, This only appears to be a difficult trick. I have all the time in the world. I will grab the board. Yawn. And I landed it. This was getting too good to be true.
My brother swung the boat around just before we reached the graffiti-covered highway bridge that spanned the lake. Cameron had spray-painted his name and his girlfriend's name on the bridge, alongside all the other couples' names and over the faded ones. My genius brother had tried to paint his own name but ran out of room on that section of bridge.

McGULLICUDD
Y
Sean wisely never painted his girlfriends' names. He would have had to change them too often. For my part, I was very thankful that when most of this spray-painting action was going on last summer, I was still too short to reach over from the pile and haul myself up on the main part of the bridge. I probably ~ Jennifer Echols

A great trick that I learned having worked as a screenwriter for many years, the way screenwriters work, is they break the project down into three-act structure: Act 1, Act 2, Act 3. I think that is a great way to break down any project, whether it's a new business or anything at all. ~ Steven Pressfield

Charity is an ugly trick. It is a virtue grown by the rich on the graves of the poor. Unless it is accompanied by sincere revolt against the present social system, it is a cheap moral swagger. In former times it was used as fire insurance by the rich, but now that the fear of Hell has gone along with the rest of revealed religion, it is used either to gild mean lives with nobility or as a political instrument. ~ Rebecca West

I guess you can call it the ultimate hat trick, and all the players, myself included, are still reaping the rewards of being three-time national champions.

Dean, one of my fellow defensemen, calls it the Three P's of Victory: parties, praise and pussy.

It's a pretty fair assessment of the situation, because I've been on the receiving end of all three since our big win. ~ Elle Kennedy

I didn't see it happening, but the wheels were falling off of me. I didn't care about responsibilities like paying rent, I was just on a runaway train ride. The horribly ironic cosmic trick of drug addiction is that drugs are a lot of fun when you first start using them, but by the time the consequences manifest themselves, you're no longer in a position to say, 'Whoa, gotta stop that.' You've lost that ability, and you've created this pattern of conditioning and reinforcement. It's never something for nothing when drugs are involved. ~ Anthony Kiedis

That is the trick of good government. To make folk desire to live in such a way that there is no need for its intervention. ~ Robin Hobb

Across a golden Autumn tapestry appear the spirits of our ancient selves demanding recognition and reward for one haunted night. Sated, they retreat from winter's onslaught and retire to subconscious hibernation for another twelvemonth. ~ Stewart Stafford

People are more than you think they are. And they're less, as well. The trick lies in negotiating your way between the two. ~ Michael Cunningham

Trick." I say a little louder.
"Shhh, sleep baby." He mumbles. I laugh and smack his arm.
"Wake up. I can feel your morning wood." This gets his attention and he sits up, taking me with him. The arms wrapped around my middle graze my breasts as he shifts up and a tingle shoots straight between my legs.
"God, Caroline, I'm so ... " He stops, probably realizing that he doesn't have morning wood, "I don't have ... " He's actually pretty cute all sleepy. He laughs.
"I know but I couldn't figure out how else to get your attention." I shrug. ~ K. Larsen

A picture book is a motorcycle: small, loud, fun, and zippy.
An easy reader is a chartered bus: obliged to carry a rather dull passenger roster of sanctioned curriculum, plus the baggage of an approved, limited vocabulary. The trick is to design your chartered bus to be as cool and sexy as a motorcycle. ~ Mo Willems

( ... ) perfectly ordinary books, printed on commonplace paper in mundane ink. It would be a mistake to think that they weren't also dangerous, just because reading them didn't make fireworks go off in the sky. Reading them sometimes did the more dangerous trick of making fireworks go off in the privacy of the reader's brain. ~ Terry Pratchett

Do you want to sit with your boyfriend?" Cooper asked with his gaze on Nick even as his fingers caressed the nape of my neck.
"Maybe, but first I'll copy your stellar notes."
"Bitch."
"Asscrack."
"Nerd."
"Hotstuff."
"The devil disguised as an angel to trick me into losing my heart."
"That one was too long."
Cooper grinned. ~ Bijou Hunter