Seconds Quotes (page 71)
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I also thought about that seminar classmate on Adam's ninth birthday. Adam had insisted on going to a pizza-and-games arcade for his party. The only person he'd invited besides his sisters was someone I'll call Lonnie, whom Adam claimed to be his girlfriend. Although I had often heard Adam sing about Lonnie, I had never met her, or seen Adam interact with any girl. I was afraid that he would start humping her leg the second she came in range. These were fears I'd sustained since before he was...
Martha Beck
Gosh, what a gripping story. You must have been simply terrified. Meanwhile we went to Godric's Hollow and, let's think, what happened there, Harry? Oh yes, You-Know-Who's snake turned up, it nearly killed both of us, and then You-Know-Who himself arrived and missed us by about a second. Imagine losing fingernails, Harry! That really puts our sufferings into perspective, doesn't it?
J. K. Rowling
When a destitute mother starts earning an income, her dreams of success invariably center around her children. A woman's second priority is the household. She wants to buy utensils, build a stronger roof, or find a bed for herself and her family. A man has an entirely different set of priorities. When a destitute father earns extra income, he focuses more attention on himself. Thus money entering a household through a woman brings more benefits to the family as a whole.
Muhammad Yunus
Let us simmer over our incalculable cauldron, our enthralling confusion, our hotchpotch of impulses, our perpetual miracle - for the soul throws up wonders every second. Movement and change are the essence of our being; rigidity is death; conformity is death; let us say what comes into our heads, repeat ourselves, contradict ourselves, fling out the wildest nonsense, and follow the most fantastic fancies without caring what the world does or thinks or says. For nothing matters except life.
Virginia Woolf
Let me tell you something you haven’t learned yet, something you learn only by living awhile. As you get older, you find that life begins to wear you down. Doesn’t matter who you are or what you do, it happens. Experience, time, events—they all conspire against you to steal away your energy, to erode your confidence, to make you question things you wouldn’t have given a second thought to when you were young. It happens gradually, a chipping away that you don’t even notice at first, and then...
Terry Brooks
So it is best to keep an open mind and be agnostic. At first sight that seems an unassailable position, at least in the weak sense of Pascal's wager. But on second thoughts it seems a cop-out, because the same could be said of Father Christmas and tooth fairies. There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?
Richard Dawkins
I didn't have to say another word, and I had the sense not to. I had gained Sumner's full attention, and that was all I needed. He looked at me; he really saw me, for perhaps the first time, and Pa thereafter got only his second glances. I won't say that I caught Sumner with three words, but they gave me a start. To keep up his image of the bright and thoughtful woman he had idealized for himself I had only to let him develop his own conception. I wouldn't have to do a thing until we get...
Louis Auchincloss
I was going to suggest some hard-won guidelines for responsible reviewing. For instance: First, as in Hippocrates, do no harm. Second, never stoop to score a point or bite an ankle. Third, always understand that in this symbiosis, you are the parasite. Fourth, look with an open heart and mind at every different kind of book with every change of emotional weather because we are reading for our lives and that could be love gone out the window or a horseman on the roof. Fifth, use theory only as...
John Leonard