Woolgathering Crossword Quotes

Sorry, it's all those crossword puzzles I do. I love words ... ~ Dakota Cassidy

I do the 'New York Times' crossword puzzle every morning to keep the old grey matter ticking. ~ Carol Burnett

Dr. Finch clenched his hands and tucked them under his chin. "Human birth is most unpleasant. It's messy, it's extremely painful, sometimes it's a risky thing. It is always bloody. So is it with civilization. The South's in its last agonizing birth pain. It's bringing forth something new and I'm not sure I like it, but I won't be here to see it. You will. Men like me and my brother are obsolete and we've got to go, but it's a pity we'll carry with us the meaningful things of this society - there were some good things in it." "Stop woolgathering and answer me!" Dr. Finch stood up, leaned on the table, and looked at her. The lines from his nose sprang to his mouth and made a harsh trapezoid. His eyes blazed, but his voice was still quiet: "Jean Louise, when a man's looking down the double barrel of a shotgun, he picks up the first weapon he can find to defend himself, be it a stone or a stick of stovewood or a citizens' council. ~ Harper Lee

Some people like doing crossword puzzles or Sudoku. I love auditioning. On camera, I hated auditioning. But voiceovers I like trying to figure it out, then getting in there and seeing how close you can get. ~ Tom Kenny

She's holding a crossword magazine in her hand. Britt-Marie likes crosswords very much because there are very clear rules about how to do them, She only ever does them in pencil, though - Granny always said Britt-Marie was the sort of woman who would have to drink two glasses of wine and feel really wild and crazy to be able to fantasise about solving a crossword in ink. ~ Fredrik Backman

Winning an award is a great feeling but winning the Vodafone Crossword Popular Choice Award is particularly exhilarating because it is based upon public voting. I find it a strange quirk of fate that Chanakya's Chant, a political tale, should end up winning an election! ~ Ashwin Sanghi

Turn your obstacles to your advantage. If you can find a plus out of a negative, then it cannot weigh you down. I like to think I have a superpower called dyslexia. I am creative, intuitive, and empathetic. I am great with problem-solving, and I can think outside the box. Just the other day, I was helping my daughter with a crossword puzzle, and she said, "Dad, how do you find the answers so fast? And I said, "I have dyslexia, and it helps me see things differently. To which she replied, "Aw, I want that." If we can see our differences or unique qualities as gifts, we can bypass the stigmas that come with them and impress upon ourselves and society we can do anything any other person can do, just differently, and sometimes better. ~ Lorin Morgan-Richards

Fighting with him was like trying to solve a crossword and realizing there's no right answer ~ Taylor Swift

The Dark Prophecy
The words that memory wrought are set to fire,
Ere new moon rises o'er the Devils Mount.
The changeling lord shall face a dire,
Till bodies fill the Tiber beyond count.

Yet southward the sun now trace its course,
Through mazes dark to lands of scorching death
To find the master of the swift white horse
And wrest from him the crossword speaker's breath.

To westward palace must the Lester go;
Demeter's daughter finds her ancient roots.
The cloven guide alone the way does know,
To walk the path in thine own enemy's boots.

We three are known and Tiber reached alive,
'Tis only then Apollo starts to jive. ~ Rick Riordan

Inside a wool jacket the man had made a pocket for the treasure and from time to time he would jiggle the pocket, just to make sure that it was still there. And when on the train he rode to work he would jiggle it there also, but he would disguise his jiggling of the treasure on the train by devising a distraction. For example, the man would pretend to be profoundly interested in something outside the train, such as the little girl who seemed to be jumping high up on a trampoline, just high enough so that she could spy the man on the train, and in this way he really did become quite interested in what occurred outside the train, although he would still jiggle the treasure, if only out of habit. Also on the train he'd do a crossword puzzle and check his watch by rolling up his sleeve; when he did so he almost fell asleep. Antoine often felt his life to be more tedious with this treasure, because in order not to be overly noticed he had deemed it wise to fall into as much a routine as possible and do everything as casually as possible, and so, as a consequence, despite the fact that he hated his wife and daughter, he didn't leave them, he came home to them every night and he ate the creamed chicken that his wife would prepare for him, he would accept the large, fleshy hand that would push him around while he sat around in his house in an attempt to read or watch the weather, he took out the trash, he got up on time every morning and took a quick, cold shower, he shaved, he acce ~ Justin Dobbs

But are you glad you went to college? Was it a good experience?"
I suppose it was. Althought I can't remember a single thing I learned. Except for Latin, and that's only because the nuns literally beat it into us and I use it sometimes for the crossword."
There were nuns at Radcliffe?"
Yes, it was all nuns."
Are you sure? At Radcliffe?"
Maybe it was high school."
But you aren't Catholic," I said. "I don't think you ever went to a parochial school."
Well, I distinctly remember nuns with sticks walking up and down the aisles as we recited Latin. Maybe it was a show I was in, but I doubt it because nuns don't beat children in musicals. ~ Peter Cameron

Yes, I was a twenty-nine year old woman who lived with her mother. One who didn't do drugs, party, or have sex. I read books, drank the occasional beer on a hot afternoon, and did the Times crossword puzzle on Sunday afternoons. I hadn't attended college, I wasn't particularly gorgeous, and I often forgot to shave my legs. On the upside, I could cook some mean dumplings and bring myself to orgasm within five minutes. Not at the same time, mind you. I wasn't that talented. ~ Alessandra Torre

The great god Ra, whose shrine once covered acres, is filler now for crossword puzzle makers. ~ Keith Preston

Because I can't help doing it," he said with a shrug. "And hey, if I keep loving you, maybe you'll eventually crack and love me too. Hell, I'm pretty sure you're already half in love with me."
"I am not! And everything you just said is ridiculous. That's terrible logic."
Adrian returned to his crossword puzzle. "Well, you can think what you want, so long as you remember-no matter how ordinary things seem between us-I'm still here, still in love with you, and care about you more than any other guy, evil or otherwise, ever will."
"I don't think you're evil."
"See? Things are already looking promising. ~ Richelle Mead

I never just sit down and see what's on TV anymore. And also, I hate almost everything, so that keeps you reading magazines and doing crossword puzzles or whatever. ~ Andy Richter

When asked "What do we need to learn this for?" any high-school teacher can confidently answer that, regardless of the subject, the knowledge will come in handy once the student hits middle age and starts working crossword puzzles in order to stave off the terrible loneliness. ~ David Sedaris

I would prefer to live forever in perfect health, but if I must at some time leave this life, I would like to do so ensconced on a chaise longue, perfumed, wearing a velvet robe and pearl earrings, with a flute of champagne beside me and having just discovered the answer to the last problem in a British cryptic crossword. ~ Olivia De Havilland

Whatever wisdom I have has been hard-earned – each meaning carefully culled out of the dictionary of human experiences and emotions and put in its precise place in the matrix. Meaning doesn't come easy. The Great Crossword Setter in the Sky is capricious and wilful, demanding absolute obedience. You can waste the better part of a lifetime arguing about the randomness of the clues, the setting of the squares, why a certain square is black and not white as you need it to be, question the whole point of doing the crossword – what, after all, is to be gained by solving it. Only after all the chattering is over and you give your complete attention to it, does the perfection of the pattern reveal itself. As is, where is, everything fits. And at the end, when it's all done, there is no reward to be had – the joy of doing it right is all the reward there ever is. (A Deepavali Gift) ~ Manjul Bajaj

Some grow very attached to a modern diversion known as the 'Crossword Puzzle.' We've had several come ~ Brandon Sanderson

He poked her shoulder. 'Ellie? Ellie?'
'What? Oh, I'm sorry.' Her face colored, even though she knew he couldn't possibly read her thoughts. 'Just woolgathering.'
'Darling, you were practically hugging a sheep. ~ Julia Quinn

But I'm really enjoying my retirement. I get to sleep in every day. I do crossword puzzles and eat cake. ~ Derek Landy

Change the setting, change the mood ... She'd taught him to make himself go outside if he was in, or inside if he was out, to interrupt the plummet with something as simple as making a cup of tea or spending a few minutes working on crossword puzzles. ~ Jennifer Weiner

The multiplication of technologies in the name of efficiency is actually eradicating free time by making it possible to maximize the time and place for production and minimize the unstructured travel time in between ... Too, the rhetoric of efficiency around these technologies suggests that what cannot be quantified cannot be valued-that that vast array of pleasures which fall into the category of doing nothing in particular, of woolgathering, cloud-gazing, wandering, window-shopping, are nothing but voids to be filled by something more definite, more production, or faster-paced ... I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought or thoughtfulness. ~ Rebecca Solnit

My being a writer and playing Scrabble are connected. If I have a good writing day, I'll take a break and play online Scrabble. My favorite word as a child was 'carrion,' before I knew what it meant. I later created crossword puzzles, which was a lot about puns, and how words would create these strange, strange things. ~ Meg Wolitzer

Certainly not! I didn't build a machine to solve ridiculous crossword puzzles! That's hack work, not Great Art! Just give it a topic, any topic, as difficult as you like..."
Klapaucius thought, and thought some more. Finally he nodded and said:
"Very well. Let's have a love poem, lyrical, pastoral, and expressed in the language of pure mathematics. Tensor algebra mainly, with a little topology and higher calculus, if need be. But with feeling, you understand, and in the cybernetic spirit."
"Love and tensor algebra?" Have you taken leave of your senses?" Trurl began, but stopped, for his electronic bard was already declaiming:

Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to n,
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!

Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.

In Reimann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.

I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thou'lt tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove,
And in bound partition never part.

For what did Cauchy know, or Christoffel,
Or Fourier, or any Boole or Euler, ~ Stanisław Lem

At night his most frequent recurring dream was of doing The Times crossword puzzle; his most disagreeable that he was reading a tedious book aloud to his family. ~ Evelyn Waugh

There's this moment sometimes, when you do a crossword puzzle and you have the one really long word. And once you get that, the whole thing kind of comes into focus. Sometimes it's just working things over in your mind and then finding that one line that kind of ties the song together, and now it works. It's a puzzle of sorts. ~ Craig Finn

I was fortunate to be able to do two movies with Harold Ramis. He was the kindest of any director with whom I worked. Harold was a genius. On top of his talent, he could do the 'New York Times' crossword puzzle faster than anyone! I am lucky to have known him as well as I did. I will miss him. ~ Andie MacDowell

I'm patient with crossword puzzles and the most impatient golfer. ~ Brett Hull

Within the same hour as the murder took place, Isabel Trumbo sat in her armchair dozing, the Alaskan Outdoor magazine on her lap. Her kid sister Alma fidgeted in the other armchair, from time to time picking up her newspaper folded over to the day's crossword puzzle. ~ Ed Lynskey

She nods, turning the silver bangle around on her wrist.
"She came from some village north of here, a few hours away. She traveled all the way to the city just to…"
She trails off, feeling a lump grow in her throat.
"…to take you to that orphanage?" Sanjay finishes for her.
Asha nods.
"And she gave me this."
She slides the bangle back on her wrist.
"They gave you everything they had to give," Sanjay says. He reaches across the table for her hand. "So how do you feel, now that you know?"
Asha gazes out the window.
"I used to write these letters, when I was a little girl," she says. "Letters to my mother, telling her what I was learning in school, who my friends were, the books I liked. I must have been about seven when I wrote the first one. I asked my dad to mail it, and I remember he got a really sad look in his eyes and he said,
'I'm sorry, Asha, I don't know where she is.'"
She turns back to face Sanjay.
"Then, as I got older, the letters changed. Instead of telling her about my life, I started asking all these questions. Was her hair curly? Did she like crossword puzzles? Why didn't she keep me?"
Asha shakes her head.
"So many questions."
"And now, I know," she continues. "I know where I came from, and I know I was loved. I know I'm a hell of a lot better off now than I would have been otherwise."
She shrugs.
"And that's enough for me. Some answers, I'll just have to figure ou ~ Shilpi Somaya Gowda