Tight Circle Quotes

“SAVICH STOOD OVER the metal parcel cage he'd been told was called an OTR, looked at the boxes scattered around it on the floor, streaked and smudged with blood like abstract paintings. Only the packages beneath the body had kept the blood from dripping out of the OTR. He looked down to see the body of an older man with a circle of gray hair around his head. He was torqued into a tight fetal position-difficult because he was heavy-his arms pulled between his legs. No deputy's uniform. He wore a long-sleeved flannel shirt, old jeans, and ancient brown boots. Impossible to tell what sort of man he'd been-if he'd enjoyed jokes, if he'd loved his family, if he'd been honorable-that was all wiped away, gone in an instant, when the Athame was stuck into his heart. There had to be people out there already worrying about Kane Lewis, wondering where he was. They'd find out soon enough. Savich imagined he'd been a pleasant-looking man, but not in death. No, not in death.”

— Catherine Coulter

“In a small town, unexplained tragedy can only go so long before it grows teeth, sprouts sharp claws, and turns, snarling, on its own self. Before fragments of gossip become rumors, and the rumors become suspicions. Before neighbors start eyeing each other with the mistrustful narrowness of oft-kicked dogs. Inside the safe shelter of their homes, husbands and wives draw the blinds tight and turn to each other, worrying at small bits of information and wondering who, who among their shrinking circle of trusted friends, might still know something he isn't telling.”

— Kat Rosenfield

“I laughed as we turned in a tight circle ... "Tonight you're all mine."
Jake smiled but looked me dead in the eye. "No. From now on."
My heart skipped. "What?"
"Yours," he said simply, "from now on.”

— Kieran Scott

“Raj leaned over from the driver's seat to give her a quick, hard kiss. 'Don't think so hard sweetheart. I'm not dangerous.' He spun the wheel in a tight circle, taking them past the startled valets and out of the parking lot. 'Not to you anyway,' he muttered.”

— D.B. Reynolds

“So Captain Jack's come a-courtin'." Her hands stilled on the basket. "Who?" "The tall Shawnee who come by your cabin." The tall one. Lael felt a small surge of triumph at learning his name. Captain Jack. Oddly, she felt no embarrassment. Lifting her shoulders in a slight shrug, she continued pulling the vines into a tight circle. "He come by, but I don't know why." "Best take a long look in the mirror, then." Lael's eyes roamed the dark walls. Ma Horn didn't own one. "Beads and a blanket, was it?" She nodded and looked back down. "I still can't figure out why some Shawnee would pay any mind to a white girl like me." Ma Horn chuckled, her face alight in the dimness. "Why, Captain Jack's as white as you are." "What?" she blurted, eyes wide as a child's. Ma Horn's smile turned sober. "He's no Indian, Shawnee or otherwise, so your pa says. He was took as a child from some-wheres in North Carolina. All he can remember of his past life is his white name-Jack.”

— Laura Frantz

“What he'd do, he'd never go out to the length of the chain. He'd never even get out to where the chain got tight. Even if the mailman pulled up, or a salesman. Out of dignity, this dog pretended like he chose this one area to stay in that just happened to be inside the length of the chain. Nothing outside of that area right there interested him. He just had zero interest. So he never noticed the chain. He didn't hate it. The chain. He just up and made it not relevant. maybe he wasn't pretending
maybe he really up and chose that little circle for his own world. He had a power to him. All of his life on that chain.”

— David Foster Wallace

“Trust is hard to come by. That's why my circle is small and tight. I'm kind of funny about making new friends.”

— Eminem

“The most fantastic parking-lot attendant in the world, he can back a car forty miles an hour into a tight squeeze and stop at the wall, jump out, race among fenders, leap into another car, circle it fifty miles an hour in a narrow space, back swiftly into tight spot, hump, snap the car with the emergency so that you see it bounce as he flies out; then clear to the ticket shack, sprinting like a track star, hand a ticket, leap into a newly arrived car before the owner's half out, leap literally under him as he steps out, start the car with the door flapping, and roar off to the next available spot, arc, pop in, brake, out, run; working like that without pause eight hours a night, evening rush hours and after-theater rush hours, in greasy wino pants with a frayed fur-lined jacket and beat shoes that flap.”

— Jack Kerouac

“Know yourself; keep your circle tight. Keep your friends and your work circle tight.”

— Rita Ora

“Now, whenever I need to go online, I confine myself to a tight circle: Gmail, MLB.com, NYTimes.com, Slate and maybe Facebook.”

— J.R. Moehringer

“I have very, very few friends. I live in a very tight circle and emotionally I'm probably not as generous as I once was. In an average week I probably meet 150 new people and that's uncomfortable sometimes.”

— Veronica Webb

“There is a particular circle of hell not mentioned in Dante's famous book. It is called comportment, and it exists in schools for young ladies across the empire. I do not know how it feels to be thrown into a lake of fire. I am sure it isn't pleasant. But I can say with all certainty that walking the length of a ballroom with a book upon one's head and a backboard strapped to one's back while imprisoned in a tight corset, layers of petticoats, and shoes that pinch is a form of torture even Mr. Alighieri would find too hideous to document in his Inferno.”

— Libba Bray

“Be helpless, dumbfounded,
Unable to say yes or no.
Then a stretcher will come from grace
to gather us up.
We are too dull-eyed to see that beauty.
If we say we can, we're lying.
If we say No, we don't see it,
That No will behead us
And shut tight our window onto spirit.
So let us rather not be sure of anything,
Beside ourselves, and only that, so
Miraculous beings come running to help.
Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute,
We shall be saying finally,
With tremendous eloquence, Lead us.
When we have totally surrendered to that beauty,
We shall be a mighty kindness.”

— Rumi

“There isn't one tight little circle of cheaters and one tight little circle of honest students. Some kids cheat at home but not at school; some kids cheat at school but not at home. Whether or not a child cheated on, say, the word completion test was not an iron-clad predictor of whether he or she would cheat on, say, the underlining A's part of the speed test. If you gave the same group of kids the same test, under the same circumstances six months apart, Hartshorne and May found, the same kids would cheat in the same ways in both cases. But once you changed any of those variables-the material on the test, or the situation in which it was administered-the kinds of cheating would change as well.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

“I stomp through the water in a tight circle, kicking against the salt spray, wanting to pull the world apart piece by piece.”

— Carrie Ryan

“Hey Bil-!'
Just then my air choked off- Jacob grabbed me up in a bear hug too tight to breathe and swung me around in a circle.
'Wow, it's good to see you here!'
'Can't ... breathe,' I gasped.
He laughed and put me down.”

— Stephenie Meyer

“You don't have to be young. You don't have to be thin. You don't have to be "hot" in a way that some dumbfuckedly narrow mindset has construed that word. You don't have to have taut flesh or a tight ass or an eternally upright set of tits. You have to find a way to inhabit your body while enacting your deepest desires. You have to be brave enough to build the intimacy you deserve. You have to take off all of your clothes and say, "I'm right here." There are so many tiny revolutions in a life, a million ways we have to circle around ourselves to grow and change and be okay. And perhaps the body is our final frontier. It's the one place we can't leave. We're there till it goes. Most women and some men spend their lives trying to alter it, hide it, prettify it, make it what it isn't, or conceal it for what it is. But what if we didn't do that? That's the question you need to answer,”

— Cheryl Strayed

“What makes a tight circle or a tight little square box more of an intellectual statement than something done emotionally, I don't know. Art is an essence, a center.”

— Eva Hesse

“I leave my circle tight in keep my family close.”

— Meek Mill

“Severe illness isolates those in close contact with it, because it inevitably narrows the focus of concern. To a certain extent this can lead to healing, but not if the circle of concern is so tight that it cannot be broken into, or out of.”

— Madeleine L'Engle