Precise Quotes - Page 4

• The nerve. Threatening you and not being precise about it.

  Karen Marie Moning

  Nerves, Threatening

  Karen Marie Moning (2016). “The Fever Series 7-Book Bundle: Darkfever, Bloodfever, Faefever, Dreamfever, Shadowfever, Iced, Burned”, p.841, Dell

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I looked him in the eye, "I will always love you." Then plunged the stake into his chest. It wasn't as precise a blow as I would have liked, not with the skilled way he was dodging. I struggled to get the stake in deep enough to his heart, unsure if I could do it from this angle. Then, his struggles stopped. His eyes stared at me, stunned, and his lips parted, almost into a smile, albeit a grisly and pained one. "That's what I was supposed to say..." he gasped out.

  Richelle Mead

  Struggle, Love You, Heart

  5 Copy quote

• And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter... Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle.

  Alan Moore

  Daughter, Mother, Children

  "Watchmen". Comic book limited series by Alan Moore, September 1986 – October 1987.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Devil is precise; the marks of his presence are definite as stone.

  Arthur Miller

  Crucible, Devil, Stones

  Arthur Miller (2015). “The Penguin Arthur Miller: Collected Plays (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.315, Penguin

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• We have such a terrible, terrible misconception of science. We think it involves the definite, the precise, the known; it is a horrid series of gates to an unknown as vast of the universe; which means endless.

  Anne Rice

  Mean, Thinking, Endless

  Anne Rice (1993). “Lasher”, Alfred A. Knopf Canada

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• All of her heart, a meaningless phrase, but correct and precise, too. She used her heart to love him, not her head, and not her words and not her thoughts or ideas or feelings or any other vehicle or object or device people use to deliver love or love-like things.

  Charles Yu

  Heart, Ideas, People

  Charles Yu (2010). “How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe: A Novel”, p.124, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Clockwork could not run counter to its nature. The seconds, minutes, and hours moved only forward. Patient, precise, and unstoppable. Memory was an indulgence, an illusion that broke like a wave upon the juggernaut of time. The past remained the past.

  Matthew J. Kirby

  Running, Memories, Past

  Matthew J. Kirby (2012). “The Clockwork Three”, p.155, Scholastic Inc.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The whole terrible fight occured in the area of imagination. That is the precise location of our battlefield. It is there, that we experience our victories and defeats.

  Haruki Murakami

  Fighting, Victory And Defeat, Imagination

  6 Copy quote

• I find the treatment of royalty distinctly peculiar. The royal family lives in palaces heavily screened from prying eyes by fences, grounds, gates, guards, all designed to ensure the family absolute privacy. And every newspaper in London carried headlines announcing PRINCESS ANNE HAS OVARIAN CYST REMOVED. I mean you're a young girl reared in heavily guarded seclusion and every beer drinker in every pub knows the precise state of your ovaries.

  Helene Hanff

  Girl, Princess, Eye

  5 Copy quote

• Nothing endures, nothing is precise and certain (except the mind of a pedant), perfection is the mere repudiation of that ineluctable marginal inexactitude which is the mysterious inmost quality of Being

  H. G. Wells

  Perfection, Mind, Quality

  H. G. Wells (2016). “A Modern Utopia”, p.31, H. G. Wells

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Of course all such conclusions about appropriate actions against the rich and powerful are based on a fundamental flaw: This is us, and that is them. This crucial principle, deeply embedded in Western culture, suffices to undermine even the most precise analogy and the most impeccable reasoning.

  Noam Chomsky

  Powerful, Principles, Western Culture

  "Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians". Book by Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky, January 20, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• ...In little more than a single century from 1820 to 19450, no less than fifty-nine million human animals were killed in inter-group clashes of one sort or another.... We describe these killings as men behaving "like animals," but if we could find a wild animal that showed signs of acting this way, it would be more precise to describe it as behaving like men.

  Desmond Morris

  Animal, Men, Acting

  48 Copy quote

• A great deal has been said about love at first sight; I am perfectly aware of love's retrospective tendency to make a legend of itself, turn its beginnings into myth; so I don't want to assert that it was love; but I have no doubt there was a kind of clairvoyance at work: I immediately felt, sensed, grasped the essence of Lucie's being or, to be more precise, the essence of what she was later to become for me; Lucie had revealed herself to me the way religious truth reveals itself.

  Milan Kundera

  Religious, Sight, Essence

  4 Copy quote

• Emotions weren’t created to just lie around. You should experience things to the full. I’ve got a sense of the clock ticking. We have to feel all those things to the maximum. Like, I don’t eat a lot but I really love eating. And I like being precise and particular. There is a certain respect in that. If you can do your day depending on how you feel, and enjoy things as well.

  Bjork

  Lying, How You Feel, Emotion

  15 Copy quote

• He's one of those smart, drifty young people who, after certain deliberations, decides he wants to do Something in the Arts but won't, possibly can't, think in terms of an actual job; who seems to imagine that youth and brains and willingness will simply summon an occupation, the precise and perfect nature of which will reveal itself in its own time.

  Michael Cunningham

  Art, Jobs, Thinking

  Michael Cunningham (2010). “By Nightfall: A Novel”, p.12, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The saddest journey in the world is the one that follows a precise itinerary. Then you're not a traveler. You're a f@@king tourist.

  Guillermo del Toro

  Kings, Journey, Tourists

  4 Copy quote

• She moved nearer, leaned her shoulder against me — and we were one, and something flowed from her into me, and I knew: this is how it must be. I knew it with every nerve, and every hair, every heartbeat, so sweet it verged on pain. And what joy to submit to this 'must'. A piece of iron must feel such joy as it submits to the precise, inevitable law that draws it to a magnet. Or a stone, thrown up, hesitating a moment, then plunging headlong back to earth. Or a man, after the final agony, taking a last deep breath — and dying.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Sweet, Pain, Men

  Yevgeny Zamyatin “We”, Two-Gunner Pulp Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I do shodo magic,” Dali said. “I curse through calligraphy. I have to write the curse out on a piece of paper and I can’t move while I do it. One smudge, and I might kill the lot of us.” Oh good. “But don’t worry.” Dali waved her arms. “It’s so precise, it usually doesn’t work at all.” Better and better.

  Ilona Andrews

  Moving, Writing, Worry

  Ilona Andrews (2010). “Magic Strikes: A Kate Daniels Novel: 3”, p.168, Hachette UK

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Perhaps we all lose our sense of reality to the precise degree to which we are engrossed in our own work, and perhaps that is why we see in the increasing complexity of our mental constructs a means for greater understanding, even while intuitively we know that we shall never be able to fathom the imponderables that govern our course through life.

  W. G. Sebald

  Mean, Reality, Understanding

  W. G. Sebald (2016). “The Rings of Saturn”, p.106, New Directions Publishing

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• True heroism is minutes, hours, weeks, year upon year of the quiet, precise, judicious exercise of probity and care—with no one there to see or cheer. This is the world.

  David Foster Wallace

  Cheer, Exercise, Years

  David Foster Wallace (2011). “The Pale King”, p.19, Penguin UK

  36 Copy quote

  Show source

• we must be precise with love, its language and its gestures. If it is to save us, we must look at it as clearly as we should learn to look at death

  Julian Barnes

  Looks, Gestures, Language

  4 Copy quote

• If prayer stands as the place where God and human beings meet, then I must learn about prayer. Most of my struggles in the Christian life circle around the same two themes: why God doesn't act the way we want God to, and why I don't act the way God wants me to. Prayer is the precise point where those themes converge.

  Philip Yancey

  Christian, Prayer, Struggle

  Philip Yancey (2011). “Prayer”, p.18, Hachette UK

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Language always betrays us, tells the truth when we want to lie, and dissolves into formlessness when we would most like to be precise.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Lying, Want, Language

  Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Sexing the Cherry”, p.100, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• You are always looking at people like this.” And then she made a face, one he couldn’t possibly begin to describe. “If I ever look like that,” he said dryly, “precisely like that, to be more precise, I give you leave to shoot me.

  Julia Quinn

  Giving, People, Looks

  Laurie Paige, Julia Quinn (2015). “Something to Hide”, p.80, Harlequin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The only thing that makes one an artist is making art. And that requires the precise opposite of hanging out; a deeply lonely and unglamorous task of tolerating oneself long enough to push something out.

  David Rakoff

  Lonely, Art, Opposites

  FaceBook post by David Rakoff from Oct 23, 2016

  19 Copy quote

  Show source