Paralyzed Quotes - Page 3

You're looking, sir, at a very dull survivor of a very gaudy life. Crippled, paralyzed in both legs. Very little I can eat, and my sleep is so near waking that it's hardly worth the name. I seem to exist largely on heat, like a newborn spider.

William Faulkner

Sleep, Names, Legs

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My arm is paralyzed; my voice that once could be heard all along the line, is gone; I can scarcely speak above a whisper; my hearing is very much impaired, and sometimes I feel as if I wished the end would come; but I have some misrepresentations of my battles that I wish to correct, so as to have my record correct before I die.

James Longstreet

Voice, Wish, Battle

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I have more self-doubt than any writer I've ever known.... The positive aspect of self-doubt - if you can channel it into useful activity instead of being paralyzed by it - is that by the time you reach the end of a novel, you know precisely why you made every decision in the narrative, the multiple purposes of every metaphor and image.

Dean Koontz

Self, Decision, Doubt

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Many writers are paralyzed by the thought that they are competing with everybody else who is trying to write and presumably doing it better.... Forget the competition and go at your own pace. Your only contest is with yourself.

William Zinsser

Writing, Competition, Trying

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The images of his infinite pasts and infinite futures washed over him as he waited, paralyzed, in the present.

Jonathan Safran Foer

Past, Infinite

Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Everything Is Illuminated”, p.264, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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His vision, from the constantly passing bars, has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else. It seems to him there are a thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world. As he paces in cramped circles, over and over, the movement of his powerful soft strides is like a ritual dance around a center in which a mighty will stands paralyzed. Only at times, the curtain of the pupils lifts, quietly. An image enters in, rushes down through the tense, arrested muscles, plunges into the heart and is gone.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Powerful, Heart, Circles

Rainer Maria Rilke, Walter W. Arndt (1989). “The Best of Rilke: 72 Form-true Verse Translations with Facing Originals, Commentary, and Compact Biography ; Translated by Walter Arndt ; Foreword by Cyrus Hamlin”, p.161, UPNE

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If I decided to send this to you, where would I send it? When I think of writing the whole address on the envelope I am paralyzed. It's too painful to think of you in the same place with your life going on in the same way, minus me. And to think of you not there, you somewhere else but I don't know where that is, is worse.

Alice Munro

Writing, Thinking, Somewhere Else

Alice Munro (1999). “The love of a good woman: stories”, Penguin, 1999

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I'm trying..." How could I put it? "I'm trying to get far enough down the line so that I can remember." I stopped, then continued: "so that I can remember without the pain killing me" And the days were stacking up. And weeks. And months. It was now almost the middle of June and he'd died in February, but I still felt like I'd just woken from a horrible dream, that I was suspended in that stunned, paralyzed state between sleep and reality where I was grasping for, but couldn't get a handle on normality.

Marian Keyes

Dream, Pain, Sleep

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The words are clear as in the reflection of the world on the water. Therefore write the Word at once, everywhere, from now till your hand is paralyzed, for THERE will be your work for GOD, since you can not work for God in other ways, and would not, & don't know how, or bend that way, from habit, & from talent in the use & signification & arrangement of the Word.

Jack Kerouac

Writing, Reflection, Hands

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Like the diminishing beauty returns for a facially paralyzed Botox addict, the more forcefully we attempt to stop the passage of time, the less available we are to the very moment we seek to preserve.

Douglas Rushkoff

Botox, Return, Moments

Douglas Rushkoff (2013). “Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now”, p.8, Penguin

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With all her masculine vigour and glory, Greece fell, gradually atrophied, because one half of her had been, of set purpose, intellectually and politically paralyzed.

Tennessee Celeste Claflin

Purpose, Half, Glory

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It is not death to have the body called back to the earth, and dissolved into its kindred elements, and mouldered to dust, and, it may be, turn to daisies, in the grave. But it is death to have the soul paralyzed, its inner life quenched, its faculties dissipated; that is death.

Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Death, Dust, Soul

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When it is winter and we must walk in the blizzard snow do not our fingers and toes whisper death And when winter is at last over. . .can we not hear our bellies whisper death to us In the dark don't we know And when we are paralyzed by nightmares We know what you are. With our first cries we rail against you. We see you in every drop of blood in every tear.

Martine Leavitt

Dark, Winter, Blood

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What do--" Tobias's voice. Tobias! "Oh my God. Oh--" "Spare me your blubbering, okay? Peter says. "She's not dead; she's just paralyzed. It'll only last for about a minute. Now get ready to run." I don't understand. How does Peter know? "Let me carry her," Tobias says. "No. You're a better shot than I am. Take my gun. I'll carry her.

Veronica Roth

Running, Gun, Voice

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When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away - even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.

Kurt Vonnegut

Writing, Character, Glasses

Kurt Vonnegut (1982). “Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage”, Dell Books

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If we actually thought about every decision we made, we'd be paralyzed ... You have to decide which decisions you're actually going to make, and then you have to let the rest of them go.

David Levithan

Decision, Made, Ifs

Rachel Cohn, David Levithan (2014). “Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List”, p.14, Egmont UK

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[Mouse is] with us. The dog is a handicap-assist animal." The kid lifted his eyebrows. "My mouth is partially paralyzed," I said. "It makes it hard for me to rea. He's here to help me with the big words. Tell me if I'm supposed to push or pull on doors, that kind of thing.

Jim Butcher

Dog, Kids, Animal

Jim Butcher (2010). “The Dresden Files Collection 7-12”, p.1679, Penguin

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We often feel paralyzed by choice and make no choice. But the thing is, no choice is a choice. If you’re not doing something about it, you’re doing something about it.

Chris Guillebeau

Choices, Feels, Ifs

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My heart throbs and aches and, for once, it's not for myself. It's for all of us. It's for everyone who knows what it's like to be helpless, to have to watch on the sidelines, to be paralyzed, literally unable to do anything.

Sarah Wylie

Heart, Watches, Ache

Sarah Wylie (2012). “All These Lives”, p.243, Macmillan

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Many people say, "Well, I'd love to make a decision like that, but I'm not sure how I could change my life." They're paralyzed by the fear that they don't know exactly how to turn their dreams into reality. And as a result, they never make the decisions that could make their lives into the masterpieces they deserve to be. I'm here to tell you that it's not important initially to know how you're going to create a result. What's important is to decide you will find a way, no matter what.

Tony Robbins

Inspirational, Dream, Reality

Tony Robbins (2012). “Awaken The Giant Within”, p.43, Simon and Schuster

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Are you paralyzed with fear? That’s a good sign. Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember one rule of thumb: the more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.

Steven Pressfield

Motivational, Self, Doubt

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I write. I imagine. The act of imagining in itself enlivens me. I am not frozen and paralyzed before the predator. I invent characters. At times I feel as if I am digging up people from the ice in which reality enshrouded them, but maybe, more than anything else, it is myself that I am now digging up.

David Grossman

Writing, Character, Reality

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The people who have the power want you scared. They want you walking around paralyzed by the notion that you could die at any moment.

Mira Grant

People, Want, Scared

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I never understood people who said their greatest fear was public speaking, or spiders, or any of the other minor terrors. How could you fear anything more than death? Everything else offered moments of escape: a paralyzed man could still read Dickens; a man in the grips of dementia might have flashes of the must absurd beauty.

David Benioff

Men, Greatest Fear, People

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Nothing in life is unfair. It's just life. To the extent that I had any inner turmoil, I had only myself to blame. I also thought of my two boys and what kind of example I hoped to be. I would always want them to take charge of their own futures and not be paralyzed by the comfort and certainty of the status quo or be cowed by the judgment of those on the outside looking in.

Rob Lowe

Boys, Two, Comfort

Rob Lowe (2011). “Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography”, p.303, Macmillan

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