How Do You Set Up Quotes

“Aurelius says that one reason it doesn't matter how long you live is that this is not theatre, that the whole is not the thing. Each moment is the thing. The soul obtains its own end, wherever the limit of life may be fixed. Not as ... in a play ... where the whole action is incomplete if anything cuts it short; but in every part and wherever it be stopped, it makes what has been set before it full and complete, so that it can say, 'I have what is my own.”

— Jennifer Michael Hecht

“Crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, at high speed, her eyes fixed on the road, Abigail asked, a little loudly above the hum, 'Do you think that neurosis is when you lie to yourself so much that other people start to notice?' Christopher, who'd been looking through the blurred bridge railing down to the boats on the bay, turned and responded, 'I think it's when your past is like a floor set on water and it won't right itself, so you're shifting your weight and contorting yourself in ways that only make sense to you because no one else can see how you're trying to balance yourself, how you're trying just to stand.”

— Lindsay Hill

“You and I will be dust and half-remembered tales before they even start to build that city. But it will come, and when it does, this sword will still be there to see it. Kiriath steel - built to harm, built to last. When all the damage it's done and the grief it's caused have been forgotten, even by the gods, when the Kiriath themselves have passed into discredited myth, this murderous fucking ... thing ... will hang unused, and harmless, and gaped at by children. That's how it ends, Gil. With no one to remember, or care, or understand what this thing could do when you set it free.”

— Richard K. Morgan

“I am a sailor, you're my first mate
We signed on together, we coupled our fate
Hauled up our anchor, determined not to fail
For the heart's treasure, together we set sail
With no maps to guide us, we steered our own course
Rode out the storms when the winds were gale force
Sat out the doldrums in patience and hope
Working together, we learned how to cope.
Life is an ocean and love it a boat
In troubled waters it keeps us afloat
When we started the voyage there was just me and you
Now gathered round us we have our own crew
Together we're in this relationship
We built it with care to last the whole trip
Our true destination's not marked on any chart
We're navigating the shores of the heart”

— John McDermott

“Here's another analogy. Human beings bring only a handful of facial features to the blueprint of how we look-two eyes, two eyebrows, a nose, a mouth, a pair of cheekbones, and two ears, all pasted onto a somewhat ovular-to-round face. That particular blueprint doesn't often vary much, either. Interestingly enough, this is about the same number of essential storytelling parts and milestones that each and every story needs to showcase in order to be successful. Now, consider this: With only these eleven variables to work with, ask yourself how often you see two people who look exactly alike. In a crowd of ten thousand faces, you would be able to differentiate each and every one of them, other than a set of twins or two in attendance. Where we humans are concerned, the miracle of originality resides in the Creator, who applies an engineering-driven process-eleven variables- to an artistic outcome. Where art is concerned, there is something to be learned from that.”

— Larry Brooks

“Seeing modern health care from the other side, I can say that it is clearly not set up for the patient. It is frequently a poor arrangement for doctors as well, but that does not mitigate how little the system accounts for the patient's best interest. Just when you are at your weakest and least able to make all the phone calls, traverse the maze of insurance, and plead for health-care referrals is that one time when you have to — your life may depend on it.”

— Ross I. Donaldson

“Without electricity or gas, the kitchen became a twilight mausoleum of dead appliances. One day, Natasha had an idea. Wearing latex gloves she found in Sonja's room, she scrubbed the innards of the oven and refrigerator with steel wool and bleach. She cut a broomstick to the width of the refrigerator compartment, jammed it in below the thermostat control, and pulled out the plastic shelves. In her bedroom, she gathered clothes from the floor in sweeping armfuls and deposited them before the refrigerator and the oven. Ever since she had begun working for the shuttle trader, her wardrobe exceeded her closet space. She hung silk evening dresses and cashmere sweaters on the broomstick bar, set folded jeans and blouses on the oven rack. When finished, she opened the doors to her new closet and bureau and felt pleased with her ingenuity. This is how you will survive, she told herself. You will turn the holes in your life into storage space.”

— Anthony Marra

“My daddy always told me to just do the best you knew how and tell the truth. He said there was nothin to set a man's mind at ease like wakin up in the morning and not havin to decide who you were. And if you done somethin wrong just stand up and say you done it and say you're sorry and get on with it. Don't haul stuff around with you.”

— Cormac McCarthy

“You call forth the world which God has formed and that world only. Nor is this life of yours by which you set such store your doing, however you may choose to tell it. Its shape was forced in the void at the onset and all talk of what might otherwise have been is senseless for there is no otherwise. Of what could it be made? Where be hid? Or how make its appearance? The probability fo the actual is absolute. That we have no power to guess it out beforehand makes it no less certain. That we may imagine alternate histories means nothing at all.”

— Cormac McCarthy

“He remembered how nice the kids at Camp Half-Blood had been to him after the war with Kronos. Great job, Nico! Thanks for bringing the armies of the Underworld to save us! Everybody smiled. They all invited him to sit at their table. After about a week, his welcome wore thin. Campers would jump when he walked up behind them. He would emerge from the shadows at the campfire, startle somebody and see the discomfort in their eyes: Are you still here? Why are you here? It didn't help that immediately after the war with Kronos, Annabeth and Percy had started dating ... Nico set down his fartura. Suddenly it didn't taste so good.”

— Rick Riordan

“Give me yourself, O my God, give yourself back to me. Lo, I love you, but if my love is too mean, let me love more passionately. I cannot gauge my love, nor know how far it fails, how much more love I need for my life to set its course straight into your arms, never swerving until hidden in the covert of your face. This alone I know, that without you all to me is misery, woe outside myself and woe within, and all wealth but penury, if it is not my God.”

— Augustine Of Hippo

“The labor of self-love is a heavy one indeed. Think whether much of your sorrow has not arisen from someone speaking slightingly of you. As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal, how can you hope to find inward peace.”

— A.W. Tozer

“Did you imagine that you would make me believe ill of Sophy with your foolish and spiteful letter!' he demanded. 'You have tried to set me against her from the outset, but you over-reached yourself today, my girl! How dared you write in such terms to me! How could you have been so crassly stupid as to suppose that Sophy could ever need your countenance to set her right in the eyes of the world, or that I would believe one word of slander against her?”

— Georgette Heyer

“Don't talk about shit you don't know, Billy thinks, and therein lies the dynamic of all such encounters, the Bravos speak from the high ground of experience. They are authentic. They are the Real. They have dealt much death and received much death and smelled it and held it and slopped through it in their boots, had it spattered on their clothes and tasted it in their mouths. That is their advantage, and given the masculine standard America has set for itself it is interesting how few actually qualify. Why we fight, yo, who is this we? Here in the chicken-hawk nation of blowhards and bluffers, Bravo always has the ace of bloods up its sleeve.”

— Ben Fountain

“My jaw dropped. What the hell? "She's my friend. Of course we haven't." Was I the only sane, rational person left on the planet?
"So you didn't last night either?" Caroline broke in. "Yes!" She punched Ten in the arm. "I win. You lose. Sucka!"
Ten rubbed his arm and scowled at me. "Damn it, what is wrong with you? You seriously turned down the black and red panty set? Dude." He blew out a low whistle as if he was either impressed or severely disappointed by my willpower.
Unable to take it a second longer, I exploded. "How the fuck do you even know what color of underwear Sarah was wearing last night?”

— Linda Kage

“It's amazing how much you can absorb on a film set.”

— Mia Wasikowska

“I never set out to become 'famous.' I mean, when you're 14 you think 'I'm gonna become a writer and people will want my autograph and that'll be cool,' but you grow up and you learn that's just not how the world works. I resigned myself to the fact that I would probably never be published and if I did it probably wouldn't be a big deal.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

“I told you I don't want to meet 'girls' and I'm not going to find a woman of any substance at the bars where you yahoos hang out."
"Then set up one of those online dating accounts. They have them for older folks now."
"Older folks?" Rohn let out a snort as that hit him hard, like a punch to the gut.
"Great. Thanks a lot." How the hell old did these kids think he was, anyway? Rohn had quite a few years left before he turned fifty ...”

— Cat Johnson

“It's just incredible how people come up to me and say, 'Gabby, you inspire me to do anything I can set my mind to.' It's truly an honor.”

— Gabby Douglas

“How is it that one day life is orderly and you are content, a little cynical perhaps but on the whole just so, and then without warning you find the solid floor is a trapdor and you are now in another place whose geography is uncertain and whose customs are strange?
Travellers at least have a chose. Those who set sail know know that things will not be the same as at home. Explorers are perpared. But for us, who travel to cities of the interior by chance, there is no preparaton. We who are fluent find liffe is a foreign language. Somewhere beween the swamp and the mountains. Somewhere beween fear and sex. Somewere beween God and the Devil passion is and the way there is sudden and the way back worse.”

— Jeanette Winterson

“Jace set what he was holding down on the windowsill and reached out to her. She came to lean against him, and his hand slid up under her t-shirt and rested caressingly, possessively, on the small of her back. He bent to kiss her, gently at first, but the gentleness went quickly and soon she was pressed up against the glass of the window, his hands at the hem of her shirt - his shirt
"Jace." She moved a little bit away. "I'm pretty sure people down there in the street can see us."
"We could ... " He gestured toward the bed. "Move ... over there."
She grinned. "You said that like it took you a while to come up with the idea."
When he spoke, his voice was muffled against her neck. "What can I say, you make my thought processes slow down. Now I know what it's like to be a normal person."
"How ... is it?" The things he was doing with his hands under the t-shirt were distracting.
"Terrible. I'm already way behind on my quota of witty comments for the day.”

— Cassandra Clare

“If you set a clear standard for yourself; for how you wish to be treated - people take note.”

— Bryant McGill

“I've never like had a system or a program, I always think that I don't know how to act. I'll adapt to any director because I don't really have a set way that I do things. If a director hires me and says, "I want you to get started right now and do this research, this research, this research and I want you to have every line memorized before you ever show up for the first day," then that's what I'll do.”

— Jennifer Lawrence

“Optimism and pessimism are mere matters of optics, of how you look at things, and that can change from day to day, or with a new prescription for your glasses - or with a new set of ideological filters.”

— George Weigel

“God often has to untangle some things in you to help you see Him. Even if this process takes months, it's not because he is waiting to see how sincere you are; it's because he is working deep inside you to sort out those things that crowd him out of your heart and set your focus on your own efforts or your own failures.”

— Wayne Jacobsen

“I see how complicated it is to make a film and how many people are involved and I love the fact that I get to sit in a room on my own and the set costs nothing and the actors cost nothing and I'm the director and it's so simple. You just need a pen and paper to make a book. You don't need a huge budget or a gaffer or a best boy.”

— Markus Zusak

“Todd's mother had several children by different fathers, and Todd [Willingham] had been abandoned in California ... He's a good-looking man. He was a witty man, you know? Funny, caring. He wasn't arrogant, but he was kind of set in his ways. If he thought something, it was one way. You could show him an alternative, but he was still going to stick by his particular view. But I could see how to women he could be a very charming, good-looking guy, especially when he was younger.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

“If you can learn to like how you look, and not the way you think you look, it can set you free.”

— Gloria Steinem

“Think of all the years passed by in which you said to yourself "I'll do it tomorrow," and how the gods have again and again granted you periods of grace of which you have not availed yourself. It is time to realize that you are a member of the Universe, that you are born of Nature itself, and to know that a limit has been set to your time. Use every moment wisely, to perceive your inner refulgence, or 'twill be gone and nevermore within your reach.”

— Marcus Aurelius

“Just because you're a belter doesn't make you funny; it just means that's how your pipes are set up.”

— Laura Benanti