Wooden Quotes

Lincoln himself once said, "The worst things you can do for those you love are the things they could and should do for themselves." He fiercely believed in self-sufficiency, and in the maturity and character that struggles and hardships can bring. ~ John Wooden

After many ponderous experiments the first crematorium was opened in December 1920 in Petrograd. It could manage barely 120 bodies a month, and, in February 1921, cremated itself when the wooden roof caught fire. ~ Martin Amis

The one thing emphasized in any creative writing course is 'write what you know,' and that automatically drives a wooden stake through the heart of imagination. If they really understood the mysterious process of creating fiction, they would say, 'You can write about anything you can imagine.' ~ Tom Robbins

The general feeling is, if you don't treat everyone the same you're showing partiality. To me, that's when you show the most partiality, when you treat everyone the same. You must give each individual the treatment that you feel he earns and deserves, recognizing at all times that you're imperfect and you're going to be incorrect oftentimes in your judgment. ~ John Wooden

Already it is twilight down in the Laredito. Bats fly forth from their roostings in courthouse and tower and circle the quarter. The air is full of the smell of burning charcoal. Children and dogs squat by the mud stoops and gamecocks flap and settle in the branches of the fruit trees. They go afoot, these comrades, down along a bare adobe wall. Band music carries dimly from the square. They pass a watercart in the street and they pass a hole in the wall where by the light of a small forgefire an old man beats out shapes of metal. They pass in a doorway a young girl whose beauty becomes the flowers about.

They arrive at last before a wooden door. It is hinged into a larger door or gate and all must step over the foot-high sill where a thousand boots have scuffled away the wood, where fools in their hundreds have tripped or fallen or tottered drunkenly into the street. They pass along a ramada in a courtyard by an old grape arbor where small fowl nod in the dusk among the gnarled and barren vines and they enter a cantina where the lamps are lit and they cross stooping under a low beam to a bar and belly up one two three.

There is an old disordered Mennonite in this place and he turns to study them. A thin man in a leather weskit, a black and straightbrim hat set square on his head, a thin rim of whiskers. The recruits order glasses of whiskey and drink them down and order more. There are monte games at tables by the wall and there are whores at another ~ Cormac McCarthy

Make each day a masterpiece. ~ John Wooden

We don't have to be superstars or win championships ... . All we have to do is learn to rise to every occasion, give our best effort, and make those around us better as we do it. ~ John Wooden

Ernst Dwinger in his Siberian Diary
mentions a German lieutenant - for years a prisoner in a camp where cold and hunger were almost
unbearable - who constructed himself a silent piano with wooden keys. In the most abject misery,
perpetually surrounded by a ragged mob, he composed a strange music which was audible to him alone.
And for us who have been thrown into hell, mysterious melodies and the torturing images of a vanished
beauty will always bring us, in the midst of crime and folly, the echo of that harmonious insurrection
which bears witness, throughout the centuries, to the greatness of humanity. ~ Albert Camus

I was usually on xylophone. On my worst days she gave me a wooden block and a drumstick and tried to convince me that was a valid musical instrument. ~ Corey Ann Haydu

I didn't blame Wes. I actually didn't blame anybody except myself. Really, what did I have in my life that was so bad it raced under my skin until I couldn't stand it anymore and I had to give it a place to come out? I didn't know. At moments like this, when my flesh cried out for relief, I didn't have to know. I just needed to make it stop. I lifted the pleated bed skirt and pulled out the wooden box. Inside, the instruments were lines up on a folded snowy white pillowcase, still sterile and gleaming from Eater night. ~ Nancy Rue

Beware the wooden horse, Agamemnon King, Conqueror, for it will roar to the skies on wings of thunder and herald the death of nations. ~ David Gemmell

Whatever you're doing, you must have patience. ~ John Wooden

Her maternal feelings were unlikely to be assuaged by hearing that the marriage had been performed in the middle of the night on a West Indian beach by a disgraced - if not actually defrocked - priest, witnessed by twenty-five seamen, ten French horses, a small flock of sheep - all gaily beribboned in honor of the occasion - and a King Charles spaniel, who added to the generally festive feeling by attempting to copulate with Murphy's wooden leg at every opportunity. The only thing that could make things worse, in Laoghaire's view, would be to hear that I had participated in the ceremony. ~ Diana Gabaldon

Forty minutes later, my hatred for field hockey was in full bloom, courtesy of Nikki. Whoever thought it was a good idea to combine Tag with wooden golf clubs and a rodent-size ball should be beaten senseless. ~ K.R. Conway

Before success comes patience ... when we add to our accomplishments the element of hard work over a long period of time, we'll place a far greater value on the outcome. When we are patient, we'll have a greater appreciation of our success. ~ John Wooden

There is a Rainbow Bridge. It's like dog heaven. We run and play and never get fat. The sun is always warm but not hot, the water is fresh and cold, and we get to just be dogs. We all take turns waiting. The bridge is a beautiful wooden structure that crosses over from dog land to the other side when our owners come. Time means nothing to us, which is hard for humans to understand. ~ Jennifer Probst

Later, at the sink in our van, Mama rinsed the blue stain and the odd spiders, caterpillars, and stems from the bucket.
"Not what we usually start with, but we can go again tomorrow. And this will set up nicely in about six, eight jars."
The berries were beginning to simmer in the big pot on the back burner. Mama pushed her dark wooden spoon into the foaming berries and cicrcled the wall of the pot slowly.
I leaned my hot arms on the table and said, "Iphy better not go tomorrow. She got tired today." I was smelling the berries and Mamaa's sweat, and watching the flex of the blue veins behind her knees.
"Does them good. The twins always loved picking berries, even more than eating them. Though Elly likes her jam."
"Elly doesn't like anything anymore."
The knees stiffened and I looked up. The spoon was motionless. Mama stared at the pot.
"Mama, Elly isn't there anymore. Iphy's changed. Everything's changed. This whole berry business, cooking big meals that nobody comes for, birthday cakes for Arty. It's dumb, Mama. Stop pretending. There isn't any family anymore, Mama."
Then she cracked me with the big spoon. It smacked wet and hard across my ear, and the purple-black juice spayed across the table. She started at me, terrified, her mouth and eyes gaping with fear. I stared gaping at her. I broke and ran.
I went to the generator truck and climbed up to sit by Grandpa. That's the only time Mama ever hit me and I knew I deserve ~ Katherine Dunn

God save me ere I have any babies. They are grabby, clingy creatures who steal your figure and always want a ribbon or a wooden sword. And who sometimes make you die bearing them. ~ J. Anderson Coats

For me, it started as a child with one of those little wooden jigsaw maps of the U.S., where's there's crocodiles on Florida and apples on Washington state. That was my very first map. ~ Ken Jennings

A Coach must never forget that he is a leader and not merely a person with authority. ~ John Wooden

Sara fled upstairs as if the devil himself had been after her, leaning, gasping for breath against the thick wooden door that had no lock on the inside
symbolic of her position here and a reminder of another age when women had been OWNED like property, and used according to the dictates of the men who possessed them. ~ Rosemary Rogers

The four laws of learning are: the first is demonstration of what you want. The second is the criticism of the demonstration. The third is the imitation of the correct model, and the fourth is repetition, over and over until it becomes habit where is you don't think about it. ~ John Wooden

If any one premise typifies my teams in all the years I've coached, it is this concept. Often as a player, I'd tell myself, "I may play someone better than I am, but I'll never run against one who is going to be in better condition" And I never played against a man in my life I felt was in better shape, and Lambert often cited me as an example of top conditioning. ~ John Wooden

Cross my wooden leg, swear on my glass eye. ~ Tom Waits

Joy makes the longest journey too short. ~ John Wooden

Worry more about your character than your reputation. Character is what you are, reputation merely what others think you are. ~ John Wooden

The wooden shelves were tall and packed with worn covers of books read many times over. Pages were yellowed and paperbacks had arched spines like old sway-backed horses. It was an old folks' home for secondhand books, with that smell of old newsprint and slightly musty wood smell. ~ Nathan Fillion

When opportunity comes it is too late to prepare. ~ John Wooden

You should never try to be better than someone else, you should always be learning from others. But you should never cease trying to be the best you could be because that's under your control and the other isn't. ~ John Wooden

Christmas in Barbados

I miss being in Barbados in December,
That is a time I always remember,
The smell of varnish on the wooden floors
and the smell of paint on the wooden floors.
The smell of cloves as the ham was baked
And the smell of the rum in mother's fruit cake
The smell of coconut as she bake de sweetbread,
And the smell of the cloth, as she made up de bed ~ Charmaine J Forde

Lion which was nailed to the wall to the bowl of apple cores which sat on a small wooden table. ~ Lemony Snicket

A player who makes a team great is better than a great player. ~ John Wooden

Nobody used to look at George Washington, with his wooden teeth, in his powdered wig, and say, Fashion Victim. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

I've used the common wooden pencil in some of my writing as an example. When I ask audiences which is "simpler", a digital pencil like Microsoft Word or a wooden pencil, people agree the wooden variety is simpler. Until I point out that Microsoft Word was written by eight programmers, while the wooden variety involved thousands, none of whom could appreciate the full complexity of harvesting lumber, mining graphite, smelting metals, making lacquer, growing rapeseed for oil, etc. The complexity was there in the pencil, but hidden from the user. ~ Brad Cox

They'd reached St Thomas's and climbed the half-dozen wooden steps to the small veranda. Gamache ~ Louise Penny

It is most difficult, in my mind, to separate any success, whether it be
in your profession, your family, or as in my case, in basketball, from
religion. ~ John Wooden

Obviously, our children, who have been playing with their computers since the age of five or six, don't have quite the same brain as those who were brought up on wooden or metal toys, whose brains are certainly atrophied by comparison. ~ Claude Vorilhon

My dress is caught in the settee. And I would be much obliged if you would help me out of it!" "The dress or the settee?" the stranger asked, sounding interested. "The settee," Pandora said irritably. "I'm all tangled up in these dratted - " she hesitated, wondering what to call the elaborate wooden curls and twists carved into the back of the settee. " - swirladingles," she finished. "Acanthus scrolls," the man said at the same time. A second passed before he asked blankly, "What did you call them?" "Never mind," Pandora said with chagrin. "I have a bad habit of making up words, and I'm not supposed to say them in public." "Why not?" "People might think I'm eccentric." His quiet laugh awakened a ticklish feeling in her stomach. "At the moment, darling, made-up words are the least of your problems. ~ Lisa Kleypas

His great carved wooden head was marked with a black eye that was more yellow than black and from this spectacular bed of bruised flesh the eye itself, sand irritated, bloodshot, as wild as a currawong's, stared out at a landscape in which the tops of fences protruded from windswept sand. ~ Peter Carey

In front of a big aluminum building with a plywood cross on the roof, I kneel in a puddle and splash water on my face. I wash my mouth out with dirty gutter runoff and spit until I can't taste anything. That holy wooden "t" looms overhead, and I wonder if the Lord might ever find cause to approve of me, wherever and whatever he is.
Have you met him yet, Perry? Is he alive and well? Tell me he's not just the mouth of the sky. Tell me there's more looking down on us than that empty blue skull. ~ Isaac Marion

The winter light, tinted by the bright colors in the street, plays on the go-board. All these festivities cut me off from the rest of the world. My loneliness is like a bolt of crimson silk stowed in the bottom of a wooden chest. ~ Shan Sa

Totem poles and wooden masks no longer suggest tribal villages but fashionable drawing rooms in New York and Paris. ~ Mason Cooley

Today I believe that man cannot escape his destiny to create whatever it is we make - jazz, a wooden spoon, or graffiti on the wall. All of these are expressions of man's creativity, proof that man has not yet been destroyed by technology. But are we making things for the people of our epoch or repeating what has been done before? And finally, is the question itself important? We must ask ourselves that. The most important thing is always to doubt the importance of the question. ~ Orson Welles

I almost wish that I could replace their hideous flok dolls, as a gesture of my gratitude. Could you, perhaps, have one of the local women fashion a crude poppet out of, say, a wooden spool and some scraps of wool? Nothing fancy. Aesthetic standars for this particular collection were not high, believe me. "Ugly" and "ill-crafted" seem to be part of the key criteria. ~ Beth Fantaskey

Remember this, the choices you make in life, make you. ~ John Wooden

Adversity often produces an unexpected opportunity. Look for it ! Appreciate and utilize it! This is difficult to do if you're feeling sorry for yourself because you're faced with adversity. ~ John Wooden

I've never stopped trying to do what's right. I'm not doing it to earn favor with God. I'm doing it because it's the right thing to do. ~ John Wooden

The two hardest things to handle in life are failure and success. ~ John Wooden

Make every day your masterpiece. ~ John Wooden

It isn't what you do, but how you do it. ~ John Wooden

Even though we couldn't find anything else in the darkness, we had no trouble finding each other. His hands fell to my hips, like they belonged there. I felt myself being pressed against the rickety wooden shelves, the firm, warm heat of his bare chest against my damp skin. His breath bathed my face, nervous, and sweet, and excited. ~ Karole Cozzo

Being true to ourselves doesn't make us people of integrity. Charles Manson was true to himself, and as a result, he rightly is spending the rest of his life in prison. Ultimately, being true to our Creator gives us the purest form of integrity. ~ John Wooden

Be true to yourself, help others, make each day your masterpiece, make friendship a fine art, drink deeply from good books - especially the Bible, build a shelter against a rainy day, give thanks for your blessings and pray for guidance every day. ~ John Wooden

It was baking hot in the square when we came out after lunch with our bags and the rod-case to go to Burguete. People were on top of the bus, and others were climbing up a ladder. Bill went up and Robert sat beside Bill to save a place for me, and I went back in the hotel to get a couple of bottles of wine to take with us. When I came out the bus was crowded. Men and women were sitting on all the baggage and boxes on top, and the women all had their fans going in the sun. It certainly was hot. Robert climbed down and fitted into the place he had saved on the one wooden seat that ran across the top. Robert Cohn stood in the shade of the arcade waiting for us to start. A Basque with a big leather wine-bag in his lap lay across the top of the bus in front of our seat, leaning back against our legs. He offered the wine-skin to Bill and to me, and when I tipped it up to drink he imitated the sound of a klaxon motor-horn so well and so suddenly that spilled some of the wine, and everybody laughed. He apologized and made me take another drink. He made the klaxon again a little later, and it fooled me the second time. He was very good at it. The Basques liked it. The man next to Bill was talking to him in Spanish and Bill was not getting it, so he offered the man one of the bottles of wine. The man waved it away. He said it was too hot and he had drunk too much at lunch. When Bill offered the bottle the second time he took a long drink, and then the bottle went all over that part of ~ Ernest Hemingway

It is difficult for young players to learn - because of the great emphasis on records - but, ideally, the joy and frustration of sport should come from the performance itself, not the score. While he is playing, the worst thing a player can think about in terms of concentration - and therefore of success - is losing. The next worst is winning. ~ John Wooden

Good values are like a magnet, they attract good people. ~ John Wooden

Many building custodians across the country would tell you that UCLA left the shower and dressing room the cleanest of any team. We picked up all the tape, never there soap on the shower floor for someone to slip on, made sure all the showers were turned off and all towels were accounted for. The towels were always deposited in a receptacle, if there was one, or stacked nearly near the door. It seems to me that this is everyone's responsibility-not just the mangers's. Furthermore, I believe it is a form of discipline that should be a way of life, not to please some building custodian, but as an expression of courtesy and politeness that each of us owes to his follow-man. These little things establish a spirit of togetherness and consideration that help unite the team into a solid unit. ~ John Wooden

GCHQ has traveled a long and winding road. That road stretches from the wooden huts of Bletchley Park, past the domes and dishes of the Cold War, and on towards what some suggest will be the omniscient state of the Brave New World. As we look to the future, the docile and passive state described by Aldous Huxley in his Brave New World is perhaps more appropriate analogy than the strictly totalitarian predictions offered by George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Bizarrely, many British citizens are quite content in this new climate of hyper-surveillance, since its their own lifestyle choices that helped to create 'wired world' - or even wish for it, for as we have seen, the new torrents of data have been been a source of endless trouble for the overstretched secret agencies. As Ken Macdonald rightly points out, the real drives of our wired world have been private companies looking for growth, and private individuals in search of luxury and convenience at the click of a mouse. The sigint agencies have merely been handed the impossible task of making an interconnected society perfectly secure and risk-free, against the background of a globalized world that presents many unprecedented threats, and now has a few boundaries or borders to protect us. Who, then, is to blame for the rapid intensification of electronic surveillance? Instinctively, many might reply Osama bin Laden, or perhaps Pablo Escobar. Others might respond that governments have used these villains as a convenient ex ~ Richard J. Aldrich

Never try to be better than somebody else. But most importantly, never cease trying to be the best you can be. ~ John Wooden

If there's anything you could point out where I was a little different, it was the fact that I never mentioned winning. ~ John Wooden

Don't give up on your dreams, or your dreams will give up on you. ~ John Wooden

A breath? she asked. She didn't want to kiss just any wooden man. He looked nice enough, but he might not be like his looks. A kiss seemed very forward. He might remember it, and make assumptions. ~ Garth Nix

There are certain people in our business that you don't replace - Bob Knight, Dean Smith, Mike Krzyzyewski, and you don't replace John Wooden, either. ~ Steve Alford

Reaching back, he gripped the thick, wooden headboard, stretching himself out before her, leaving himself vulnerable. ~ Amanda J. Greene

It's a fine line. If you withhold too much, you come across as wooden - as I've often been described in some movies. Fair enough. I believe that the best performances are the ones that an audience has to search for. ~ Sam Worthington

Opposite the Half-Axe was the narrow-fronted entrance to a shop devoted to short lengths of rope and wooden poles a man and a half high. Tehol had no idea how such a specialized enterprise could survive, especially in this unravelled, truncated market, yet its door had remained open for almost six centuries, locked up each night by a short length of rope and a wooden pole. ~ Steven Erikson

On the heels of his words, the front window exploded. As if time slowed down, he watched the shards of glass scatter across the floor, luminous crystals dancing about the wooden slats of the floor like insects scurrying in choreographed retreat. ~ Barry Brennessel

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it ...
It wasn't only the sand drifts and the mud and the narrow, winding, broken roads up in the mountains. There was all that business at the frontier posts, all that haggling in the forest outside wooden huts that flew strange flags. I had to talk myself and my Peugeot past the men with guns
just to drive through bush and more bush. And then I had to talk even harder, and shed a few more bank notes and give away more of my tinned food, to get myself
and the Peugeot
out of the places I had talked us into.
Some of these palavers could take half a day ... ~ V.S. Naipaul

I found golf was too time consuming, but I did enjoy it. ~ John Wooden

It is harmful to compare yourself to others. Others will do that for you. ~ John Wooden

The puppet dances, He turns flips and he jigs. His painted red smile looks happy but he is screaming, for he performs on red-hot coals. His wooden feet begin to smoke. A man comes in with a shining axe. He swings it. I think he will cut off the puppet's burning feet, but instead the axe cuts all his strings. But the man with the axe falls just as swiftly as the puppet leaps away, free. ~ Robin Hobb

Yet it is something deeper that brings me unease; the true reason that portraits are so jarring. It is, of course, the possibility that we are the portraits. Perhaps we hang on their walls. In that initial instant of confrontation, we wait for the face in the wooden frame to begin moving and speaking, and to find ourselves frozen into place. ~ Talos

Or if this did not help, one stormy night I would let the fire approach the buckling wooden walls and let it ravage everything, so that people might no longer be enticed to dwell in this home of misfortune. Then no one would be able to enter this doomed place, only the church steeple's black jackdaws would found a colony in the large chimney, rising, blackened and eerie, over the desolate ground.
Yet I would surely be anxious when I saw the flames intertwined over the roof, when thick smoke, reddened by the firelight and interspersed with sparks, poured forth out of the old count's estate. In the crackling and sighing I would think I heard the lament of homeless people; at the blue tips of the flames I would think I saw disturbed phantasms hovering. I would think about how sorrow beautifies, how misfortune adorns, and weep, as if a temple to old gods had been doomed to disintegration. ~ Selma Lagerlof

What is right is more important than who is right. ~ John Wooden

I found myself thinking of an ocean running beneath the whole universe, like the dark seawater that laps beneath the wooden boards of an old pier: an ocean that stretches from forever to forever and is still small enough to fit inside a bucket, if you have Old Mrs. Hempstock to help you get it in there, and you ask nicely. ~ Neil Gaiman

What really matters in a pencil is not its wooden exterior, but the graphite inside. So always pay attention to what is happening inside you. ~ Paulo Coelho

A short poem from my new book, The Lost Journal of my Second Trip to Pergatory,
Thorny Crowns
Of course the gold one was for special occasions, weddings, etc,
silver for family reunions, office-casual type affairs.
Bronze was a everyday choice; during yard work its burnished surface shone in sunlight.
There were various colors and holiday appropriate ones.
I could never find the hatboxes they were stored in.
But the wooden one was reserved for the long suffering caused by family.
Stevie's funeral, my hospital trips and sister's rebellion rated real wood.
One tip filed extra sharp produced a fine and dramatic line of blood droplets on her brow. ~ Michelle Hartman

Humans have learned to split the atom. Instead of killing ten or twenty people with a wooden club, one person can now kill a million just by pushing a button. Is that real change? ~ Eckhart Tolle

Promise to be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit trouble to press on you. ~ John Wooden

I worry that business leaders are more interested in material gain than they are in having the patience to build up a strong organization, and a strong organization starts with caring for their people. ~ John Wooden

Only a fool will deny that an abundance of flowers can quicken a woman's blood, and that continuing sun can burn years off a man's back. The poverty of life here augments the power of those influences. We lose our vision, and move like wooden toys: one year we wash the curtains, the next we plant a row of cabbages behind the house; and then comes a summer like that one, with grass soft as rabbit fur, and flowers. ~ Joe Ashby Porter

A dedication is a wooden leg. ~ Edward Young

One of my prized possessions is a small wooden box with a special lock on it that is more than five hundred years old and works according to a secret code that my grandfather taught me. My grandfather learned it from his grandfather, and his grandfather learned it from his grandfather, and I would teach it to my grandchild if I thought that I would ever have a family of my own instead of living out the remainder of my days all alone in this world. ~ Lemony Snicket

I sprinkle some flour on the dough and roll it out with the heavy, wooden rolling pin. Once it's the perfect size and thickness, I flip the rolling pin around and sing into the handle - American Idol style.

"Calling Gloriaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa . . ."

And then I turn around.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Without thinking, I bend my arm and throw the rolling pin like a tomahawk . . . straight at the head of the guy who's standing just inside the kitchen door.

The guy I didn't hear come in.

The guy who catches the hurling rolling pin without flinching - one-handed and cool as a gorgeous cucumber - just an inch from his perfect face.

He tilts his head to the left, looking around the rolling pin to meet my eyes with his soulful brown ones. "Nice toss."

Logan St. James.

Bodyguard. Totally badass. Sexiest guy I have ever seen - and that includes books, movies and TV, foreign and domestic. He's the perfect combo of boyishly could-go-to-my-school kind of handsome, mixed with dangerously hot and tantalizingly mysterious. If comic-book Superman, James Dean, Jason Bourne and some guy with the smoothest, most perfectly pitched, British-Scottish-esque, Wessconian-accented voice all melded together into one person, they would make Logan fucking St. James.

And I just tried to clock him with a baking tool - while wearing my Rick and Morty pajama short-shorts, a Winnie-the-Pooh T-shirt I've had sinc ~ Emma Chase

The splendid wooden mosque - which you can find if you search - nobody would think of showing you, being less aware of what they have than what they lack. They lack technology: we want to get out of the impasse into which too much technology has led us, our sensibilities saturated to the nth degree with Information and a Culture of distractions. We're counting on their formulae to revive us; they're counting on ours to live. Our paths cross without mutual understanding, and sometimes the traveler gets impatient, but there is a great deal of self-centeredness in such impatience. ~ Nicolas Bouvier

Dracula, who said while they drove a wooden stake into his heart, Boy, I sure hope this is heartburn. Never got a dinner! ~ Red Buttons

I paid the taxi driver, got out with my suitcase, surveyed my surroundings, and just as I was turning to ask the driver something or get back into the taxi and return forthwith to Chillán and then to Santiago, it sped off without warning, as if the somewhat ominous solitude of the place had unleashed atavistic fears in the driver's mind. For a moment I too was afraid. I must have been a sorry sight standing there helplessly with my suitcase from the seminary, holding a copy of Farewell's Anthology in one hand. Some birds flew out from behind a clump of trees. They seemed to be screaming the name of that forsaken village, Querquén, but they also seemed to be enquiring who: quién, quién, quién. I said a hasty prayer and headed for a wooden bench, there to recover a composure more in keeping with what I was, or what at the time I considered myself to be. Our Lady, do not abandon your servant, I murmured, while the black birds, about twenty-five centimetres in length, cried quién, quién, quién. Our Lady of Lourdes, do not abandon your poor priest, I murmured, while other birds, about ten centimetres long, brown in colour, or brownish, rather, with white breasts, called out, but not as loudly, quién, quién, quién, Our Lady of Suffering, Our Lady of Insight, Our Lady of Poetry, do not leave your devoted subject at the mercy of the elements, I murmured, while several tiny birds, magenta, black, fuchsia, yellow and blue in colour, wailed quién, quién, quién, at which point a cold win ~ Roberto Bolano

Beyond it was the entrance to Bell's Amusement Park. That adjunct to the Tulsa State Fair is gone now, but in September of 1992, Bell's was blasting away full force. Both roller coasters - the wooden Zingo and the more modern Wildcat - were whirling and twirling, trailing happy screams behind each hairpin turn and suicidal plunge. ~ Stephen King

He especially enjoyed watching Mrs. Sen as she chopped things, seated on newspapers on the living room floor. Instead of a knife she used a blade that curved like the prow of a Viking ship, sailing to battle in distant seas. The blade was hinged at one end to a narrow wooden base. ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

I wanted to tell them that, in Kabul, we snapped a tree branch and used it as a credit card. Hassan and I would take the wooden stick to the bread maker. He'd carve notches on our stick with his knife, one notch for each loaf of naan he'd pull for us from the tandoor's roaring flames. At the end of the month, my father paid him for the number of notches on the stick. That was it. No questions. No ID. ~ Khaled Hosseini

The following story is true. There was a little boy, and his father said, "Do try to be like other people. Don't frown." And he tried and tried, but could not. So his father beat him with a strap; and then he was eaten up by lions.

Reader, if young, take warning by his sad life and death. For though it may be an honour to be different from other people, if Carlyle's dictum about the 30 million be still true, yet other people do not like it.

So, if you are different, you had better hide it, and pretend to be solemn and wooden-headed. Until you make your fortune. For most wooden-headed people worship money; and, really, I do not see what else they can do. In particular, if you are going to write a book, remember the wooden-headed. So be rigorous; that will cover a multitude of sins. And do not frown. ~ Oliver Heaviside

We had fallen in love; that was still true. But given the right psychological conditions, a person could fall in love with anyone or anything. A wooden desk - always on all fours, always prone, always there for you. What was the lifespan of these improbable loves? An hour. A week. A few months at best. The end was a natural thing, like the seasons, like getting older, fruit turning. That was the saddest part - there was no one to blame and no way to reverse it. ~ Miranda July

It's technically impossible for a woman to argue against feminism. Without feminism you wouldn't be allowed to have a debate on a woman's place in society. You'd be too busy giving birth on the kitchen floor
biting down on a wooden spoon, so as not to disturb the men's card game
before going back to hoeing the rutabaga field. ~ Caitlin Moran

When I saw this Broken Kilometer, it reminded me of these 1,000 Buddhas. That piece is 1,000 one-meter gold rods, and this is 1,000 pieces of gold gilded wooden sculpture. In terms of design, it's up to the space's character. ~ Hiroshi Sugimoto

The dream I have when I go to sleep involves me crawling through a very narrow wooden corridor for a very long time. ~ Sam Pink

What you are as a person is far more important than what you are as a basketball player. ~ John Wooden

She shakes the little house, though she knows it will not give itself away. He went back for it. Carried it out. Died with it. What sort of a boy was he? She remembers how he sat and paged through that book of Etienne's. Birds, he said. Bird after bird after bird. She sees herself walk out of the smoking city, trailing a white pillowcase. Once she is out of his sight, he turns and lets himself back through Hubert Bazin's gate. The rampart a huge crumbling bulwark above him. The sea settling on the far side of the grate. She sees him solve the puzzle of the little house. Maybe he drops the diamond into the pool among the thousands of snails. Then he closes the puzzle box and locks the gate and trots away. Or he puts the stone back into the house. Or slips it into his pocket. From her memory, Dr. Geffard whispers: That something so small could be so beautiful. Worth so much. Only the strongest people can turn away from feelings like that. She twists the chimney ninety degrees. It turns as smoothly as if her father just built it. When she tries to slide off the first of the three wooden roof panels, she finds it stuck. But with the end of a pen, she manages to lever off the panels one two three. Something drops into her palm. An iron key. ~ Anthony Doerr

At the Unitarian Universalist Christmas pageant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it didn't matter that Mary insisted on keeping her nails painted black or that Joseph had come out of the closet. On December 25 at seven and nine p.m., three wise women would follow the men down the aisle -- one wearing a kimono and another, African garb; instead of myrrh they would bring chicken soup, instead of frankincense they'd play lullabies. The shepherds had a line on protecting the environment and the innkeeper held a foreclosure sign. No one quite believed in God and no one quite didn't -- so they made it about the songs and the candles and the pressing together of bodies on lacquered wooden pews. ~ Marina Keegan

I came to that wooden marching band. I stopped and looked. There was a trumpet, trombone, clarinet, and drum. Birds don't live alone, I told myself. They live in flocks. Like people. People are always in a group. Like that little wooden band. ~ Paul Fleischman

The star of the team IS the team. 'We' supercedes 'me'. ~ John Wooden