Fifty Quotes - Page 13

• There's a reason why forty, fifty, and sixty don't look the way they used to, and it's not because of feminism, or better living through exercise. It's because of hair dye. In the 1950's only 7 percent of American women dyed their hair; today there are parts of Manhattan and Los Angeles where there are no gray-haired women at all.

  Nora Ephron

  Exercise, Hair, Feminism

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• ...if fifty bands of men surrounded us/ and every sword sang for your blood,/ you could make off still with their cows and sheep.

  Homer

  Men, Sheep, Blood

  Homer (1998). “The Odyssey: The Fitzgerald Translation”, p.355, Macmillan

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• I noticed that all the prayers I used to offer to God, and all the prayers I now offer to Joe Pesci, are being answered at about the same 50% rate. Half the time I get what I want, half the time I don't... Same as the four-leaf clover and the horseshoe...same as the Voodoo Lady who tells you your fortune by squeezing the goat's testicles, it's all the same: 50-50. So just pick your superstition, sit back, make a wish, and enjoy yourself.

  George Carlin

  Funny, Sarcastic, Witty

  "You Are All Diseased". Book by George Carlin, 1999.

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• There were always men looking for jobs in America. There were always all these usable bodies. And I wanted to be a writer. Almost everybody was a writer. Not everybody thought they could be a dentist or an automobile mechanic but everybody knew they could be a writer. Of those fifty guys in the room, probably fifteen of them thought they were writers. Almost everybody used words and could write them down, i.e., almost everybody could be a writer. But most men, fortunately, aren't writers, or even cab drivers, and some men - many men - unfortunately aren't anything.

  Charles Bukowski

  Jobs, Writing, Men

  "Factotum". Book by Charles Bukowski, Ch. 73, 1975.

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• Put him in there and chain him up," he ordered curtly. "Yes, that chain, you fool - do you see any other chain in that cell? Peaceable Sherwood? I'm tired of hearing about Peaceable Sherwood! Turn him loose in the cell for the night. - Which one of you said 'Where'll he be by morning?' Where does he look like he's going to be by morning, I ask you - a hundred and fifty miles away?" I was, to be exact, only seven and a half miles away by morning.

  Elizabeth Marie Pope

  Morning, Tired, Night

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• Salvador Dali and fifty cents will get you a cup of clock melt.

  Tom Robbins

  Cups, Clock, Cents

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• It is photography itself that creates the illusion of innocence. Its ironies of frozen narrative lend to its subjects an apparent unawareness that they will change or die. It is the future they are innocent of. Fifty years on we look at them with the godly knowledge of how they turne dout after all - who they married, the date of their death - with no thought for who will one day be holding photographs of us.

  Ian Mcewan

  Photography, Godly, Years

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• Worst of all, the inner vault is guarded by a live dragon, attended by fifty naked women armed with poisoned spears, each of them sworn to die in Requin's service. All redheads. -You're just making that up, Jean.

  Scott Lynch

  Dragons, Naked, Vaults

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• I write, not for children,but for the child-like, whether they be of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.

  George MacDonald

  Children, Writing, Five

  George MacDonald, (2013). “The Day Boy and the Night Girl (Fantasy and Horror Classics)”, p.4, Read Books Ltd

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• There will be all these fifty-year-old women wearing hot pants and squeezing themselves into pretzel shapes and then there will be me. Just reaching for my toes like they're China. 'Hello there! You're so far away, I can't get to you! Can you even hear me?

  E. Lockhart

  Years, Hot, Shapes

  E. Lockhart (2014). “The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks”, p.143, Hot Key Books

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• When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

  C. S. Lewis

  Fear, Children, Growing Up

  C. S. Lewis (2002). “On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature”, p.56, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Fifty years," I hackneyed, "is a long time." "Not when you're looking back at them," she said. "You wonder how they vanished so quickly.

  Isaac Asimov

  Years, Long, Wonder

  Isaac Asimov (1950). “I, Robot”, Roc

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• We only came close to dying six or seven times, which I thought was pretty good. Once, I lost my grip and found myself dangling by one hand from a ledge fifty feet above the rocky surf. But I found another handhold and kept climbing. A minute later Annabeth hit a slippery patch of moss and her foot slipped. Fortunately, she found something else to put it against. Unfortunately, that something was my face. "Sorry," she murrmured. "S'okay," I grunted, though I'd never really wanted to know what Annabeth's sneaker tasted like.

  Rick Riordan

  Sorry, Sneakers, Feet

  Rick Riordan (2007). “The Sea of Monsters”, Disney-Hyperion

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• And do you know a funny thing? I'm almost fifty years old and I've never understood anything in my whole life.

  Richard Yates

  Years, Funny Things, Whole Life

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• The back windows looked out over the fields, then the Atlantic, maybe a hundred yards away. Actually, I'm just making that bit up. I had no idea how far away the sea was. Only men could do things like that. "Half a mile." "Fifty yards." Giving directions, that sort of thing. I could look at a woman and say "Thirty-six C." Or "Let's try it in the next size up." But I had no idea how far away Tim's sea was except that I wouldn't want to walk to it in high heels.

  Marian Keyes

  Men, High Heels, Sea

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• The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant people are. With anyone over fifty you can be fairly confident what's been taught and what's been left out. But these young people have such an intelligent, knowledgeable surface, and then the crust suddenly breaks and you look down into depths of confusion you didn't know existed.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Intelligent, People, Confusion

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• Sometimes, the Angel [of Music] leans over the cradle... and that is how there are little prodigies who play the fiddle at six better than men of fifty, which, you must admit is very wonderful. Sometimes, the Angel comes much later, because the children are naughty and won't learn their lessons or practice their scales. And sometimes, he does not come at all, because the children have a wicked heart or a bad conscience.

  Gaston Leroux

  Children, Angel, Heart

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• Was the majority right when they stood by while Jesus was crucified? Was the majority right when they refused to believe that the earth moved around the sun and let Galileo be driven to his knees like a dog? It takes fifty years for the majority to be right. The majority is never right until it does right.

  Henrik Ibsen

  Dog, Jesus, Believe

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• I am dying a thousand cruel and unusual deaths as fifty pairs of eyes take me in, size me up like something that should be hanging over a fireplace in a gentleman's den.

  Libba Bray

  Eye, Gentleman, Dying

  Libba Bray (2010). “A Great and Terrible Beauty”, p.37, Simon and Schuster

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• Can you believe it? Fifty miles from McDonald's. I didn't think there was anywhere in the world that was fifty miles from McDonald's.

  Neil Gaiman

  Believe, Thinking, Mcdonalds

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• I breathe deeply, taking in the fresh spring air. Though Beaufort has changed and I have changed, the air itself has not. It’s still the air of my childhood, the air of my seventeenth year, and when I finally exhale, I’m fifty-seven once more. But this is okay. I smile slightly, looking towards the sky, knowing there’s one thing I haven’t told you: I now believe, by the way, that miracles can happen.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Spring, Believe, Air

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• If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell you it again when you're fifty, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you're reading a whole new book.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Book, Reading, Fifteen

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2016). “Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016, with a Journal of a WriterÕs Week”, p.77, Small Beer Press

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• And without thinking, without planning it, without worrying about the fact that fifty people were watching, Harry kissed her.

  J. K. Rowling

  Kissing, Thinking, People

  "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince". July 16, 2005.

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• When people say, "I've told you fifty times," They mean to scold, and very often do; When poets say, "I've written fifty rhymes," They make you dread that they'll recite them too; In gangs of fifty, thieves commit their crimes; At fifty love for love is rare, 't is true, but then, no doubt, it equally as true is, a good deal may be bought for fifty Louis.

  Lord Byron

  Mean, Love Is, People

  "Don Juan". Poem by Lord Byron, 1818-1824.

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• ... It's perfect! Locke would appreciate it." "Bug," Calo said, "Locke is our brother and our love for him knows no bounds. But the four most fatal words in the Therin language are 'Locke would appreciate it.'" "Rivalled only by 'Locke taught me a new trick,'" added Galo. "The only person who gets away with Locke Lamora games ..." "... is Locke ..." "... because we think the gods are saving him up for a really big death. Something with knives and hot irons ..." "... and fifty thousand cheering spectators.

  Scott Lynch

  Brother, Cheer, Thinking

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