Quotes About Step Back

“Because,' Quince says, leaning forward until I step back, 'he's a little boy who doesn't like other people playing with his toys.”

— Tera Lynn Childs

“Don't forget that your happiness is the most important thing, and that you should never equate your GPA or school with your sense of self-worth ... If you're feeling overwhelmed, take a step back and remind yourself that you are not your grades.”

— Stefanie Weisman

“One cringes to hear scientists cooing over the universe or any part thereof like schoolgirls over-heated by their first crush. From the studies of Krafft-Ebbing onward, we know that it is possible to become excited about anything-from shins to shoehorns. But it would be nice if just one of these gushing eggheads would step back and, as a concession to objectivity, speak the truth: THERE IS NOTHING INNATELY IMPRESSIVE ABOUT THE UNIVERSE OR ANYTHING IN IT.”

— Thomas Ligotti

“What do we do while we wait for my parents to find Jersey?" She let him go, took a step back.
"We live a normal life."
The words left his lips without emotion or meaning, because at this point he knew there was no such thing as a normal life for him.
Deep in his heart, he was still a vampire.”

— Kasi Blake

“Today a great shot for freedom was heard. I think it stands a chance of being heard forever. It marls a turning point in the history of the Jewish people. The beginning of the return to a statues of dignity we have not known for two thousand years. Yes, today was the first step back. My battle is done. Now I turn the command over to the soldiers.”

— Leon Uris

“The determination that is his biggest strength ... is also at times his fatal flaw. Like an unthinking machine, he'll just keep shoving, not realizing a step back, a one-night pause, could let some obstacle move out of the way and smooth his path.”

— Lin Pardey

“A retreat from someone or something isn't unusual. Just as how you edge closer to see better, at times you may need to take a step back to get a clearer view.”

— Rajuda

“Sharp. Intense. Powerful. Intoxicating.
Just like Killian.
Damn it all.
Before she could stop herself, Sadie took an involuntary step back.
Killian countered, taking one step closer, and his lips tilted into a lopsided grin.
Shit on a stick.
How annoying.”

— Sara Humphreys

“I actually took a step back as each of their eyes met mine. Evan's was sympathetic; that scared me. Matt's was appraising; that concerned me. Griffins's was irritated; that ... was really nothing new.”

— S.C. Stephens

“Lily stopped dead in the doorway to her room and then took a step back. Apollo cocked his head. It'd been a very long day full of trepidation mixed with tediousness and he'd used up all his patience. "If you leave, I'll follow you out and we'll have this discussion in the hallway where everyone can hear." She scowled ferociously at him, but came all the way in the room and shut the door. "What do you want to talk about?" "Us." "There's nothing to discuss." "Yes," he said patiently, "there is.”

— Elizabeth Hoyt

“I've always believed that to some extent you get to decide for yourself what your life will be like. You can either look at the world and say "Oh, isn't it all so tragic, so grim, so awful." Or you can look at the world and decide that it's mostly funny.
If you step back far enough from the details, everything gets funny. You say war is tragic. I say, isn't it crazy the way people will fight over nothing? People fight wars to control crappy little patches of empty desert, for crying out loud. It's like fighting over an empty soda can. It's not so much tragic as it is ridiculous. Asinine! Stupid!
You say, isn't it terrible about global warming? And I say, no, it's funny. We're going to bring on global warming because we ran too many leaky air conditioners? We used too much spray deodorant, so now we'll be doomed to sweat forever? That's not sad. That's irony.”

— Katherine Applegate

“Stop it!'
He relented, so far as he could, stepping forward to take my head into his hands. 'Russell, once, only once, I was taken and suffered for it. Please, my dear wife, believe me, this is not the same situation ... ' ... I turned back to Holmes and hissed, 'If you're wrong, I shall be extremely angry with you.' Then O kissed him hard on the lips, more threat than affection, and let him step back into his cell ... 'However, Russ? I think that, all in all, given the choice, I prefer you with the hair and without the moustache.”

— Laurie R. King

“But before we get up close to the trees, we should step back and make sure we are gazing upon the same forest. As is so often the case with controversial matters, we will never agree on the smaller subplots if it turns out we aren't even telling the same story. The Bible says something about homosexuality. I hope everyone can agree on at least that much. And I hope everyone can agree that the Bible is manifestly not a book about homosexuality.”

— Kevin DeYoung

“When God does not answer your prayers, step back and wait. He is giving you an opportunity to trust Him in the midst of the uncertainty and ambiguity you may be feeling.”

— Stormie Omartian

“In the search for truth human beings take two steps forward and one step back. Suffering, mistakes and weariness of life thrust them back, but the thirst for truth and stubborn will drive them forward. And who knows? Perhaps they will reach the truth at last.”

— Anton Chekhov

“I realized I had a novel on my hands, but didn't know where it was going to go. So I thought, 'I'm going to do everything that you're not supposed to do when you plan a novel; I'm going to step back and let this thing take itself wherever it wants to go, and I'm not going to worry about how things connect until later on.'”

— Hari Kunzru

“It's just cool for a girl to be able to do her own thing. I do a lot of movies, and I'm very lucky, and I'm not complaining. But in movies, alongside big action men, we've always got to take a step back and let the men shine.”

— Maggie Q

“When I step back and look at all of these really successful people that I've worked with, one thing I do take away from it is how hard they work and how focused they are.”

— Mia Wasikowska

“When I see my staff take a step back because I've lost my cool about something food-related, I say never apologise for your standards. If someone doesn't meet them, then you should explain that and that you want it changed. I want my staff to be like that, too.”

— Curtis Stone

“Food is meant to be used as fuel for our bodies. If you're using it for any other reasons, take a step back and ask yourself, 'What's up.'”

— Jennifer Hudson

“Winners have the ability to step back from the canvas of their lives like an artist gaining perspective. They make their lives a work of art - an individual masterpiece.”

— Denis Waitley

“I always appreciate people's opinions, but sometimes I have to take a step back and remember why I'm writing and what I want to do with it. Shutting out the voices is difficult but it's been good for me.”

— Veronica Roth

“I have to strive to go two steps forward and realize that, sometimes, there will be one step back.”

— Victoria Moran

“All I had done for five years was work 18 hours a day all over the world. I needed to step back and distance myself from it.”

— David Cassidy

“It's a shame," I said, the words nearly gobbled up by the sound of the city music. "That others in Prythian don't know. A shame that you let them think the worst." He took a step back, his wings beating the air like mighty drums. "As long as the people who matter most know the truth, I don't care about the rest.”

— Sarah J. Maas

“History is a set of repeating circles, like the tide. The wind does blow through the ruins of tomorrow. But it is more a question of two steps forward, one step back. Humans and dragons make the same mistakes, again and again, but things do get better over time”

— Cressida Cowell

“I sat out a few years because I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do next. So many things were changing in music and in culture, so it seemed like a good time to step back.”

— Beck

“When I first started making music, I didn't really know what I was doing. I just wanted to write songs. I didn't have a concept. I didn't think it through. I was just flailing around doing what comes naturally. It took me a really long time to step back and deal with what I was doing with any kind of perspective or self-awareness.”

— Juliana Hatfield

“If there had been another female for him since we arrived in Salvation, I needed to cut off all her hair and beat her half to death. The strength of that impulse scared me, and I took a step back. Deuce the girl was every bit as vicious as the Huntress, it seemed”

— Ann Aguirre

“Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people's approval
and you will be their prisoner. Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.”

— Lao Tzu

“I got dragged to Hell by demons from the dawn of time. While I was down there, I killed monsters and became a hit man for the devil's friends. How have you been?" The guy's smile curdles. He takes a step back. "Don't let me catch you hanging around the halls anymore, okay? I'll have to call the manager." "No problem, Brenda. You have an extra cigarette?" "My name's Phil." "You have an extra cigarette, Chet?" He walks away and gets a good twenty feet before he mumbles "Fuck you," sure I can't hear him.”

— Richard Kadrey

“I'm always cautious about overstepping any boundaries. At the end of the day, it's a director's medium, and if they don't want to hear from me I just step back.”

— Matt Damon

“Sometimes, it is necessary for me to step back from my emotions and my life. I need to be the outsider looking in, sitting in the objective chair, as a witness. As opposed to being so entangled in my feelings, that they become a noose around my neck.”

— Jaeda DeWalt

“When something like that comes along, whether it's an accident or a savvy or a very first kiss, life takes a turn and you can't step back. All you can do is keep moving forward and remember what you've learned.”

— Ingrid Law

“At present I am using a good sized bedroom in the 2 bedroom house here as a studio, and it is large enough to step back from my canvases, and has a good north light. It should serve very well until I can afford to have the storeroom half of the back building lined and insulated and a chimney put in. That may be in about two years.”

— E. J. Hughes

“It took some time before the public learned that to appreciate an Impressionist painting one has to step back a few yards, and enjoy the miracle of seeing these puzzling patches suddenly fall into one place and come to life before our eyes.”

— Ernst Gombrich

“In a real relationship, you take two steps forward, one step back. So just because we take two steps forward and get all the benefit from that doesn't mean we can't go back or to the side.”

— Shelley Long

“You kind of gotta step back from your dreams and your passions once in a while, and kind of do something else for a minute so that you can come back to it with a fresh outlook, and be real inspired by something else, so you can give something back to your dreams and your passions.”

— Tristan Prettyman

“I realized that was what was happening in my work already. I think that's where, as artists, we begin to master our craft: when we're able to step back and understand things.”

— Kalup Linzy

“One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is that we lie to ourselves. We don't step back and look at ourselves like a competitor would.”

— Mark Cuban

“Sometimes, you just let the country have its way, and you don't try to determine the shape of the country. You sort of modestly step back and let the country figure out what it believes.”

— Mark Shields

“We're really at this point where we can take a step back and think about the next big things that we want to do.”

— Mark Zuckerberg

“Choice is the key, because human beings are the only creatures who can choose to evolve, who can shape their destiny. Furthermore, we have been given the gift of "self-awareness," which allows us to step back into our true selves to observe and use our brains to create the world we wish to live in.”

— Deepak Chopra

“To be honest, at that point, just being so fresh to L.A., I was in the mind-set of just getting work, at all costs. But, if you take a step back from it, it's just such a blessing to be able to play somebody like Glenn. Me being Asian American, it's nice to have something to play that's not so very stereotypical. It's also nice to have somebody that I identify with.”

— Steven Yeun

“This is the key. If you get into deep water with these substances, this is true of psilocybin as well, you don't want to clench, you don't want to assume the fetal position and stop breathing. You want to sit up straight and breathe, and sing, and sing it back, and it will step back. You can take control of your situation ... most of the time.”

— Terence McKenna

“While you'll feel compelled to charge forward it's often a gentle step back that will reveal to you where you and what you truly seek.”

— Rasheed Ogunlaru

“As much as you need a strong personality to build a business from scratch, you also must understand the art of delegation. I have to be good at helping people run the individual businesses, and I have to be willing to step back. The company must be set up so it can continue without me.”

— Richard Branson

“When we can't marry the person we had in mind, our inability to look beyond may even blind sight us from someone who is in fact better for us. When we don't get hired, or we lose something dear to us, it's hard to take a step back and notice the bigger picture. Often Allah takes things away from us, only to replace them with something greater.”

— Yasmin Mogahed

“I have always been fiery; I go after things. But what I learned from my mother is to step back and actually experience things that are happening. So for me, it's about meditating. My Everest is to have that become a real part of my life.”

— Kate Hudson

“Can you step back from your own mind and thus understand all things?”

— Laozi