Involved Quotes - Page 24

• As it was, things went from bad to worse, as they often will when amateurs are involved in an activity that they perform in bad temper – or in a hurry.

  John Irving

  Temper, Bad Temper, Activity

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• In politics as in religion, my tenets are few and simple. The leading one of which, and indeed that which embraces most others, is to be honest and just ourselves and to exact it from others, meddling as little as possible in their affairs where our own are not involved. If this maxim was generally adopted, wars would cease and our swords would soon be converted into reap hooks and our harvests be more peaceful, abundant, and happy.

  George Washington

  War, Simple, Justice

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• She seemed glad to see me when I appeared in the kitchen, and by watching her I began to think there was some skill involved in being a girl.

  Harper Lee

  Girl, Thinking, Skills

  Harper Lee (2014). “To Kill A Mockingbird”, p.96, Random House

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• How can I make him understand that he did not create me? He makes the same mistake as the others when they look at a feeble-minded person and laugh because they don't understand there are human feelings involved.

  Daniel Keyes

  Mistake, Laughing, Feelings

  Daniel Keyes (2007). “Flowers for Algernon”, p.145, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• My working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight. I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language. . . . Maybe I was only then becoming aware of the weight, the inertia, the opacity of the world--qualities that stick to the writing from the start, unless one finds some way of evading them.

  Italo Calvino

  Writing, Cities, People

  "Six Memos For This Millennium" by Sam Cooney, therumpus.net. November 22, 2010.

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• The black sky was underpinned with long silver streaks that looked like scaffolding and depth on depth behind it were thousands of stars that all seemed to be moving very slowly as if they were about some vast construction work that involved the whole universe and would take all time to complete. No one was paying attention to the sky.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Stars, Moving, Sky

  Flannery O'Connor (1965). “Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories”, p.26, Macmillan

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• The best books come from someplace deep inside.... Become emotionally involved. If you don't care about your characters, your readers won't either.

  Judy Blume

  Book, Writing, Character

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• People tend to stick to their own size group because it's easier on the neck. Unless they are romantically involved, in which case the size difference is sexy. It means: I am willing to go the distance for you.

  Miranda July

  Sexy, Distance, Mean

  Miranda July (2008). “No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories”, p.2, Simon and Schuster

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• What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory--meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion--is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling. Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end. In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw.

  William Maxwell

  Memories, Lying, Emotional

  William Maxwell (2010). “So Long, See You Tomorrow”, p.28, Random House

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• To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words. Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up.

  George Orwell

  Art, Latin, Struggle

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• MUCKY drawing I AM FeeLing completely mucky today too. everyone at school seems so much tougher + pulled together and not so emotionally involved. I get so mad at MYSELF FOR 'caring so deeply' AND 'MAINTAINING' all this stuff in me that FEELS SO PATHectic. I want to put my tHINKing in HYBernation FOR A WHile.

  Sabrina Ward Harrison

  School, Caring, Thinking

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• it just breaks / a man's heart, watching / a girl so involved with her life, / without him like that.

  Michelle Tea

  Girl, Heart, Men

  Michelle Tea (2004). “The Beautiful: Collected Poems”, Manic d Press

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• A man is involved in life, leaves his impress on it, and outside of that there is nothing.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Men, Impress

  Martin Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre (2016). “The Philosophical Library Existentialism Collection: Essays in Metaphysics, The Ethics of Ambiguity, and The Philosophy of Existentialism”, p.171, Open Road Media

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• A novel is not an allegory.... It is the sensual experience of another world. If you don't enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won't be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience. So start breathing.

  Azar Nafisi

  Heart, Character, Destiny

  Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.111, Random House

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• Part of being a big winner is the ability to be a big loser. There is no paradox involved. It is a distinctly Harvard thing to be able to turn any defeat into victory

  Erich Segal

  Victory, Able, Loser

  Erich Segal (1970). “Love Story”

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• Who you get, and how it works out - there's so much luck involved, as well as the million branching consequences of your conscious choice of a mate, that no one and no amount of talking can untangle it if it turns out unhappily.

  Ian Mcewan

  Talking, Work Out, Choices

  "Enduring Love". Book by Ian Mcewan, 1997.

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• When love is involved no sacrifice is too great.

  David Eddings

  Sacrifice, Love Is

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• For in spite of itself any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an ‘ism becomes so involved in reaction against other ‘isms that it is unwittingly controlled by them. For it then forms its principles by reaction against them instead of by a comprehensive, constructive survey of actual needs, problems, and possibilities.

  John Dewey

  Thinking, Principles, Needs

  John Dewey (2007). “Experience And Education”, p.6, Simon and Schuster

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• The legs, for example, of that chair--how miraculous their tubularity, how supernatural their polished smoothness! I spent several minutes--or was it several centuries?--not merely gazing at those bamboo legs, but actually being them---or rather being myself in them; or, to be still more accurate (for "I" was not involved in the case, nor in a certain sense were "they") being my Not-self in the Not-self which was the chair.

  Aldous Huxley

  Self, Legs, Example

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• Our sadness is an energy we discharge in order to heal. …Sadness is painful. We try to avoid it. Actually discharging sadness releases the energy involved in our emotional pain. To hold it in is to freeze the pain within us. The therapeutic slogan is that grieving is the ‘healing feeling.’

  John Bradshaw

  Pain, Sadness, Healing

  John Bradshaw (2010). “Healing the Shame that Binds You”, p.78, Health Communications, Inc.

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• But when a man suspects any wrong it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the matter he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even from himself. And much this way it was with me. I said nothing and tried to think nothing.

  Herman Melville

  Men, Thinking, Cover Ups

  Herman Melville (2016). “Moby Dick (World Classics, Unabridged)”, p.68, Vij Books India Pvt Ltd

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• My instinct was always have your gun in your hand. Especially when you are telling somebody to do something. But, in fact, the police academy discourages this. They feel your gun should rarely, if ever, be brought out of its holster. Most certainly not when children are involved, which is exactly when I saw myself using my gun most often. A truant teenager loitering outside a movie theater is going to be far more motivated to return to school when he has the barrel of a .45 pressed against his cheek.

  Augusten Burroughs

  Children, Teenager, School

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• If a man wants to be romantically involved with you, he tries to kiss you. That's the entire story, and if he doesn't kiss you, there is never a reason to wait around for him.

  Curtis Sittenfeld

  Kissing, Men, Waiting

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• Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?

  Carl Sagan

  Inspirational, Life, Truth

  Carl Sagan, Tom Head (2006). “Conversations with Carl Sagan”, p.145, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Writing is a lonely job. Even if a writer socializes regularly, when he gets down to the real business of his life, it is he and his type writer or word processor. No one else is or can be involved in the matter.

  Isaac Asimov

  Lonely, Jobs, Real

  Isaac Asimov (2009). “I, Asimov: A Memoir”, p.134, Bantam

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