Seconds Quotes - Page 29

She studied him for a few more seconds. “You look too pretty to be useful.” I gasped in spite of myself. Adrian chuckled and shook her hand. “Truer words were never spoken,” he said.

Richelle Mead

Hands, Looks, Said

Richelle Mead (2011). “Bloodlines”, p.264, Penguin

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If the regular length of a shot is increased, one becomes bored, but if you keep on making it longer, a new quality emerges, a special intensity of attention.' At first there can be a friction between our expectations of time and Tarkovsky-time and this friction is increasing in the twenty-first century as we move further and further away from Tarkovsky-time towards moron-time in which nothing can last—and no one can concentrate on anything—for longer than about two seconds.

Geoff Dyer

Moving, Two, Bored

"Danger! High-radiation arthouse!" by Geoff Dyer, www.theguardian.com. February 5, 2009.

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Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds.

Malcolm Gladwell

Giving Up, Hard Work, Persistence

"Outliers". Book by Malcolm Gladwell, November 18, 2008.

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It's the silliness--the profligacy, and the silliness--that's so dizzying: a seven-year-old will run downstairs, kiss you hard, and then run back upstairs again, all in less than 30 seconds. It's as urgent an item on their daily agenda as eating or singing. It's like being mugged by Cupid.

Caitlin Moran

Running, Kissing, Years

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...Having no recourse, I feel back on Shakespeare. Leif would recognize it and understand the context properly. With my remaining few seconds of consciousness, I quoted Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing, who spoke these words to his former friend: "you are a Villain: I jest not." and then I collapsed into a pool of my own blood.

Kevin Hearne

Blood, Consciousness, Pool

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For a moment, Jason could only stand there in the hallway with his nose pressed up against the cold wood of her door. After a few seconds, he knocked politely. Taylor whipped open the door, unamused. Jason grinned at her. “I just gotta ask: Where did you get the whole ‘all the cute girls run around naked’ thing?” “I defend sexual harassment cases, Mr. Andrews,” she replied coolly. "I’ve seen and heard things even you haven’t thought of.” “Care to test out that theory?” She slammed the door in his face again.

Julie James

Cute, Girl, Running

Julie James (2008). “Just the Sexiest Man Alive”, p.84, Penguin

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Isaac out of surgery. It went well. He's officially NEC. NEC meant "no evidence of cancer." A second text came a few seconds later. I mean, he's blind. So that's unfortunate.

John Green

Cancer, Mean, Blind

John Green (2012). “The Fault in Our Stars”, p.48, Penguin

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My good lady,’ interrupted Clent, ‘are you telling me that he is not the Luck? That you have in some way obfuscated the chronology of his nativity?’ Seconds passed. A beetle flew into Mistress Leap’s hair while she stared at Clent, then it struggled free and flew off again. ‘Did you lie about when he was born?’ translated Mosca.

Frances Hardinge

Lying, Hair, Luck

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He’s sort of a homeless horse,” I said. “I’m leaving for the airport in two seconds, and I won’t be back for a couple days. You can put the horse in the garage, but I don’t want that horse in my apartment.” “Who would put a horse in an apartment? That’s dumb.” “Where’s the horse staying now?” “My apartment.” “I can always count on you to brighten my day,” Ranger said. And he disconnected.

Janet Evanovich

Horse, Couple, Airports

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Sometimes--and I know it doesn't last for anything more than a second--sometimes there can be perfect understanding between two people who can't stand each other. He smiled, and I smiled, and we put the Timex watches on, and we watched the seconds flit by.

Gary D. Schmidt

Two, People, Perfect

Gary D. Schmidt (2011). “Okay for Now”, p.156, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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I'm gone, lost, floating away into nothingness like I am in my dream, but this time it's a good feeling - like soaring, like being totally free, and I can feel the impression of his fingers everywhere that they touch, and I think of stars streaking through the sky and leaving burning trails behind them, and in that moment - however long it lasts, seconds, minutes, days - while he's saying my name into my mouth and I'm breathing into him, I realize this, right here, is the first and only time I've ever been kissed in my life.

Lauren Oliver

Dream, Stars, Thinking

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[Jules] slides into a seat beside me with her hot lunch tray, sighing. “Four hours, thirty-six minutes, and twelve seconds till we’re out of purgatory for the weekend.” “Maybe later,” I murmur, still distracted by the day’s previous events. “So, let me show you how a conversation works. I say something, and then you say something back that actually relates to what I was talking about, as if you were even the least bit interested.” “Huh?” I say.

Jodi Picoult

Weekend, Talking, Lunch

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There is no immortality that is not built on friendship and work done with care. All the secrets in the world worth knowing are hiding in plain sight. It takes forty-one seconds to climb a ladder three stories tall. It's not easy to imagine the year 3012, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. We have new capabilities now—strange powers we're still getting used to. The mountains are a message from Aldrag the Wyrm-Father. Your life must be an open city, with all sorts of ways to wander in.

Robin Sloan

Father, Mean, Knowing

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Every moment of life mattered. Even the perfect snowflake that alighted on his palm and melted in seconds.

Kristen Britain

Perfect, Snowflake, Moments

Kristen Britain (2011). “The High King's Tomb”, p.429, Hachette UK

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So, tell me,” he whispers. “How fast did you climb those fourteen stories?” Thomas makes a disapproving sound in his throat, but I break into a grin. Storm’s past. Metias loves me again. “Six minutes,” I whisper back to my brother. “And forty-four seconds. How do you like that?” “That must be some sort of record. Not that, you know, you’re supposed to do it.

Marie Lu

Brother, Past, Storm

Beth Revis, Jessica Spotswood, Marie Lu, Ally Condie, Andrea Cremer (2012). “Breathless Reads Sampler”, p.74, Penguin

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And then they were kissing. Something exploded within his chest burning away the tension and confusion and fear. Burning away the hurt of seconds earlier. For a moment it felt like nothing mattered anymore. Like nothing would matter ever again.

James Dashner

Hurt, Kissing, Confusion

James Dashner (2014). “The Maze Runner Trilogy”, p.416, Scholastic UK

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A short story is a sprint, a novel is a marathon. Sprinters have seconds to get from here to there and then they are finished. Marathoners have to carefully pace themselves so that they don't run out of energy (or in the case of the novelist-- ideas) because they have so far to run. To mix the metaphor, writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage.

Jonathan Carroll

Running, Writing, Ideas

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Renata reached out for the gun nearest to her and a full magazine of rounds. She had the weapon loaded, locked and ready for action in three seconds flat. Niko had never seen anything sexier in his life.

Tina St. John

Gun, Three, Magazines

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It was one of those dreams that invade the space between seconds, proving sleep has its own physics- where time shrinks and swells, lifetimes unspool in a blink, and cities burn to ash in a mere flutter of lashes.

Laini Taylor

Dream, Sleep, Cities

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Prison is a second-by-second assault on the soul, a day-to-day degradation of the self, an oppressive steel and brick umbrella that transforms seconds into hours and hours into days.

Mumia Abu-Jamal

Self, Soul, Steel

Mumia Abu-Jamal (1995). “Live from Death Row”, Addison Wesley Publishing Company

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To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier. When he presses himself down upon her long and powerfully, when he buries his face and his limbs deep in her from the fear of death by shell-fire, then she is his only friend, his brother, his mother; he stifles his terror and his cries in her silence and her security; she shelters him and releases him for ten seconds to live, to run, ten seconds of life; receives him again and again and often forever.

Erich Maria Remarque

Mother, Running, Brother

Erich Maria Remarque (2013). “All Quiet on the Western Front: A Novel”, p.43, Random House

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I am closest of all to happiness—although I won’t attempt to define just what it is—when I turn away from the window and am aware, with the edge of my consciousness, that a moment ago I was not here, there was simply the world outside the window, and something beautiful and incomprehensible, something which there is absolutely no need to ‘comprehend,’ existed for a few seconds instead of the usual swarm of thoughts, of which one, like a locomotive, pulls all the others after it, absorbs them all and calls itself ‘I’.

Victor Pelevin

Beautiful, World, Usual

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If we become skilled in giving ourselves empathy, we often experience in just a few seconds a natural release of energy which then enables us to be present with the other person. If this fails to happen, however, we have a couple of other choices.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

Couple, Giving, Choices

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In 1968 I ran into Steve Lacy on the street in Rome. I took out my pocket tape recorder and asked him to describe in fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation. He answered: "In fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation is that in composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in fifteen seconds, while in improvisation you have fifteen seconds." His answer lasted exactly fifteen seconds.

Frederic Rzewski

Music, Rome, Differences

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A user interface should be so simple that a beginner in an emergency can understand it within ten seconds.

Ted Nelson

Simple, Beginners, Emergencies

"A different vision of the computer world". sydney.edu.au. April 4, 2011.

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