Thin Air Quotes

• Do you think a champion is made out of thin air? It’s through the hardships you endure that you’ll gain real strength.

  Gail Tsukiyama

  Real, Thinking, Air

  Gail Tsukiyama (2007). “The Street of a Thousand Blossoms”, p.178, Macmillan

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• In climbing, having confidence in your partners is no small concern. One climber's actions can affect the welfare of the entire team.

  Jon Krakauer

  Team, Climbing, Action

  Jon Krakauer (2011). “Into Thin Air: A personal account of the Everest disaster”, p.36, Pan Macmillan

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• We tell ourselves stories in order to live.

  Joan Didion

  Writing, Order, Stories

  1979 The White Album,'The White Album, 1'.

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• We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images.

  Joan Didion

  Lines, Narrative, Imposition

  Joan Didion (2013). “The White Album”, p.5, Zola Books

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• I've found that worry and irritation vanish into thin air the moment I open my mind to the many blessings I possess.

  Dale Carnegie

  Blessing, Irritation, Air

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• You can't write a song out of thin air. You have to feel and know what you are writing about. ... Talent is only a starting point. You've got to keep working that talent. Someday I'll reach for it and it won't be there. ... Life is 10 percent what you make it, and 90 percent how you take it. ... The toughest thing about success is that you've got to keep on being a success. ... After you get what you want you don't want it. ... Listen kid, take my advice, never hate a song that has sold half a million copies. ... The song is ended, but as the songwriter wrote, the melody lingers on.

  Irving Berlin

  Song, Hate, Writing

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• The firelight magnified our shadows, glinted off the silver, flickered high upon the walls; its reflection roared orange in the windowpanes as if a city were burning outside. The whoosh of the flames was like a flock of birds, trapped and beating in a whirlwind near the ceiling. And I wouldn't have been at all surprised if the long mahogany banquet table, draped in linen, laden with china and candles and fruit and flowers, had simply vanished into thin air, like a magic casket in a fairy story.

  Donna Tartt

  Wall, Flower, Reflection

  Donna Tartt (2011). “The Secret History”, p.85, Vintage

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• The great liability of the engineer compared to men of other professions is that his works are out in the open where all can see them. His acts, step by step, are in hard substance. He cannot bury his mistakes in the grave like the doctors. He cannot argue them into thin air or blame the judge like the lawyers. He cannot, like the architects, cover his failures with trees and vines. He cannot, like the politicians, screen his shortcomings by blaming his opponents and hope the people will forget. The engineer simply cannot deny he did it. If his works do not work, he is damned.

  Herbert Hoover

  Mistake, Men, Doctors

  Herbert Hoover (1952). “Memoirs: Years of adventure, 1874-1920”

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• The truth is that only 1% of all new words are totally new, and of those an even smaller percentage are conjured up out of thin air. The vast majority of coinages are the product of some kind of repurposing, and the result has always been a mix of tradition and innovation.

  Susie Dent

  Air, Innovation, Majority

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• He's like one of those weird birds in India who dissolve themselves into thin air and nip through space in a sort of disembodied way and assemble the parts again just where they want them. I've got a cousin who's what they call a Theosophist, and he says he's often nearly worked the thing himself, but couldn't quite bring it off, probably owing to having fed in his boyhood on the flesh of animals slain in anger and pie.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Cousin, Animal, Air

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• The way to start writing isn't by writing at all. But by living. It isn't about creating something from thin air, but about documenting our personal feelings about the things that we see. Or to put it crudely, how are you going to be a storyteller if you have no story to tell? Perhaps, in the end, there are no such things as creative people; they are only sharp observers with sensitive hearts.

  Yasmin Ahmad

  Writing, Heart, Air

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• Big mountains are a completely different world: snow, ice, rocks, sky, and thin air. You cannot conquer them, only rise to their height for a short time; and for that they demand a great deal. The struggle is not with the enemy, or a competitor like in sports, but with yourself, with the feelings of weakness and inadequacy. That struggle appeals to me. It is why I became a mountaineer.

  Anatoli Boukreev

  Sports, Struggle, Rocks

  Anatoli Boukreev (2015). “Above the Clouds: The Diaries of a High-Altitude Mountaineer”, p.4, St. Martin's Griffin

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• There can be no possible question that cold is felt much more keenly in the thin air of nineteen thousand feet than it is below.

  Hudson Stuck

  Air, Feet, Nineteen

  Hudson Stuck (2007). “Ascent of Denali”, p.63, Cosimo, Inc.

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• A fraudulent vote is a stolen vote. It steals a vote from the thin air and nullifies the legal and legitimate vote of a tax-paying citizen, whose rights to a fair election shouldn’t be tampered with. Winning an election is important, but winning it honestly is imperative in a Constitutional Republic.

  Mike Huckabee

  Winning, Rights, Air

  "Huckabee: Is asking for voter ID really 'too much'?" by Mike Huckabee, www.foxnews.com. October 27, 2012.

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• The most sinister of all taxes is the inflation tax and it is the most regressive. It hits the poor and the middle class. When you destroy a currency by creating money out of thin air to pay the bills, the value of the dollar goes down, and people get hit with a higher cost of living. It's the middle class that's being wiped out. It is most evil of all taxes.

  Ron Paul

  Cost Of Living, Air, Class

  Ron Paul at GOP primary debate at the Maytag Auditorium in Johnston, Iowa, www.nytimes.com. December 12, 2007.

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• The Drop's unpredictability is organic rather than sensationalistic. The movie doesn't pull surprises out of thin air for the sole purpose of shocking an audience - it lets them develop naturally.

  James Berardinelli

  Air, Purpose, Surprise

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• Originally, the atoms of carbon from which we're made were floating in the air, part of a carbon dioxide molecule. The only way to recruit these carbon atoms for the molecules necessary to support life-the carbohydrates, amino acids, proteins, and lipids-is by means of photosynthesis. Using sunlight as a catalyst the green cells of plants combine carbon atoms taken from the air with water and elements drawn from the soil to form the simple organic compounds that stand at the base of every food chain. It is more than a figure of speech to say that plants create life out of thin air.

  Michael Pollan

  Taken, Mean, Simple

  Michael Pollan (2009). “The Omnivore's Dilemma: The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World”, p.15, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• At the base of the Fed pyramid, and therefore of the bank system's creation of "money" in the sense of deposits, is the Fed's power to print legal tender money. But the Fed tries its best not to print cash but rather to "print" or create demand deposits, checking deposits, out of thin air, since its demand deposits constitute the reserves on top of which the commercial banks can pyramid a multiple creation of bank deposits, or "checkbook money."

  Murray Rothbard

  Money, Air, Commercial Banks

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• Mmmm... the comedy that matters is the comedy you pull out of thin air. It's a bit like when something funny has happened and you try to explain it to someone else and end up saying, 'You had to be there'.

  Jack Dee

  Air, Trying, Matter

  "I'm not an interesting celebrity. I don't snort cocaine or wear women's underwear" by Patrick Barkham, www.theguardian.com. December 4, 2007.

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• Investment bubbles and high animal spirits do not materialize out of thin air. They need extremely favorable economic fundamentals together with free and easy, cheap credit, and they need it for at least two or three years. Importantly, they also need serial pleasant surprises in such critical variables as global GNP growth.

  Jeremy Grantham

  Animal, Air, Years

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• I don't have a fear factor. Well, not much of one. And I'm willing to risk quite a lot - as a comedian, you're always risking a lot. You're risking failure, especially if you're improvising and going on TV shows trying to make comedy out of thin air. That is quite a risky business.

  David Walliams

  Air, Tv Shows, Risk

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Nothing is more rewarding than to take a song, create it out of thin air and then watch it affect people.

  Luke Bryan

  Song, Air, People

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• Grief is depression in proportion to circumstance; depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance. It is tumbleweed distress that thrives on thin air, growing despite its detachment from the nourishing earth. It can be described only in metaphor and allegory

  Andrew Solomon

  Depression, Grief, Air

  Andrew Solomon (2014). “The Noonday Demon: An Atlas Of Depression”, p.16, Simon and Schuster

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• Unlike the days of the gold standard, it is impossible for the Federal Reserve to go bankrupt; it holds the legal monopoly of counterfeiting (of creating money out of thin air) in the entire country.

  Murray Rothbard

  Country, Money, Air

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• You can't write a song out of thin air you have to feel and know what you are writing about.

  Irving Berlin

  Song, Writing, Air

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