Standing Up High Quotes

“My name is Lev," said Lev.
"My name is Lydia," said the woman. And they shook hands, Lev's hand holding the scrunched-up kerchief and Lydia's hand rough with salt and smelling of egg, and then Lev asked, "What are you planning to do in En gland?" and Lydia said, "I have some interviews in London for jobs as a translator."
"That sounds promising."
"I hope so. I was a teacher of English at School 237 in Yarbl, so my language is very colloquial."
Lev looked at Lydia. It wasn't difficult to imagine her standing in front of a class and writing words on a blackboard. He said, "I wonder why you're leaving our country when you had a good job at School 237 in Yarbl?"
"Well," said Lydia, "I became very tired of the view from my window. Every day, summer and winter, I looked out at the schoolyard and the high fence and the apartment block beyond, and I began to imagine I would die seeing these things, and I didn't want this. I expect you understand what I mean?”

— Rose Tremain

“Art can model the more difficult dynamic of transfiguring one's life, but at some point the dynamic reverses itself: life models, or forces, the existential crisis by which art-great art-is fully experienced. There is a fluidity between art and life, then, in the same way that there is, in the best lives, a fluidity between mind and matter, self and soul, life and death. Experience seems to stream clearly through some lives, rather than getting slowed and clogged up in the drift-waste of ego, or stagnating in little inlets of despair, envy, rage. It has to do with seizing and releasing as a single gesture. It has to do with standing in relation to life and death ... owning an emptiness that, because you have claimed it, has become a source of light, wearing your wound that, like a ramshackle house on some high exposed hill, sings with the hard wind that is steadily destroying it.”

— Christian Wiman

“This is how great intellectual breakthroughs usually happen in practice. It is rarely the isolated genius having a eureka moment alone in the lab. Nor is it merely a question of building on precedent, of standing on the shoulders of giants, in Newton's famous phrase. Great breakthroughs are closer to what happens in a flood plain: a dozen separate tributaries converge, and the rising waters lift the genius high enough that he or she can see around the conceptual obstructions of the age.”

— Steven Johnson

“The pursuit of science has often been compared to the scaling of mountains, high and not so high. But who amongst us can hope, even in imagination, to scale the Everest and reach its summit when the sky is blue and the air is still, and in the stillness of the air survey the entire Himalayan range in the dazzling white of the snow stretching to infinity? None of us can hope for a comparable vision of nature and of the universe around us. But there is nothing mean or lowly in standing in the valley below and awaiting the sun to rise over Kinchinjunga.”

— Subrahmanijan Chandrasekhar

“Heartache often drives us to consume things we wouldn't otherwise, such as an entire pint of Caramel Pecan Perfection high-fat ice cream, covered in ganache, the crack cocaine of frozed dairy. Twelve hundred calories per pint, six hundred and eighty of which are fat calories, but is only dulls the pain for the moment, there's that carb fog while you're standing at the sink shoving it in your face, and then it's over and you feel ... used. Like a cheap pickup the Dove people seduced and abandoned in your kitchen, leaving you with sticky hands and an empty cup and a still-broken heart, except now you're mad at Dove, too.”

— Jennifer Crusie

“Logan licked a glob of strawberry jelly from her lower lip and smiled up
at Odin. Only one comment seemed to perfectly fit her current situation. "I
see dead people."
He leaned forward, hands on his hips. "Me, too. It's the only explanation
for what's standing in front of me. Unless some high school kids broke into
the anatomy closet and stole the classroom skeleton, stretched some cadaver
skin over that bitch then cast an ancient ritual to animate it.”

— Jennifer Turner

“Nathan laughed with little real humor. "Maybe that's because I was," he said. "I disapproved of the way Andrew treated you. And i really disapproved of the way I felt about you. You were my roommate's high school sweetheart, and even now, when you're crying over him, I just ... " I felt like I was standing on the precipice, and my decision to jump or not was the most important one I could make in my life. "What?" I whispered. He look at me, and his eyes were very, very serious. "I just want to kiss you," he said.”

— Alicia Thompson

“After he got hammered one night at a high place about Lens Lake called the Grade, his parents found him standing in the kitchen.
"What if there was a language with only one word in it?" he asked.
"It would be easy to learn," said his mother.
"And with that word they would say everything every time they spoke," said Pierre.
"Yeah, that would be some language," said his father. "What are you on?"
"Just drinking," said Pierre. "Just good old American drinking.”

— Tom Drury

“A few birds flew out from the mountains and glided for a while without sound. Standing out against the sky on high slopes beyond a range of low hills, they saw an endless herd of deer, rendered mute by distance. The landscape was reminiscent of a cardboard cutout, but on a huge scale, which gave the impression they were the ones who had become miniatures ... All three of them were equally lost.”

— César Aira

“Georgie?" He reached out with both hands to steady her-and himself. His mind had trouble focusing. He couldn't believe Georgie was actually standing in front of him. She looked liked an angel-in knee-high biker boots. Those boots looked even better in real life than in his imagination. He gazed into her eyes and was filled with so many emotions, so many things he wanted to say to her, he didn't know where to start. "I like your shoes," he said.”

— Jennifer Shirk

“Jesus was standing on the high place of the stronghold of supernatural evil next to the Prince of the Power of the Air. Belial swiped his hand and the clouds appeared to part, enabling Jesus the ability to see all the known world below and their cities of men. Belial's contempt melted into a seductive whisper in Jesus's ear. Do you see all these kingdoms and their glory? They have been delivered to me, and I give them to whom I will.”

— Brian Godawa

“She then figured Cash would catch her. His legs were longer and even though he was standing behind the counter and she couldn't see it was unlikely he was wearing high heels.”

— Kristen Ashley

“I turned at this new voice, a female voice with a deep country twang. My mouth dropped open at what I saw. Dolly Parton, or a fair impersonation of her, was standing in the doorway. Big blonde hair, tiny body, enormous knockers, wearing a pink negligee set, complete with marabou feathers, even on the high-heeled slippers she wore. I realized she wasn't Dolly because she had to be my age, or maybe a year or two older.”

— Kristen Ashley

“[T]he going-in attitude of many people is highly predetermined. Some are convinced that eyewitness testimony is reliable, that people do not make things up, that hallucinations or hoaxes on such a scale are impossible, and that there must be a long-standing, high level [ ... ] conspiracy to keep the truth from the rest of us.”

— Carl Sagan

“If we allow our "high creativity" to remain alive, we will never be bored. We can pray, standing in line at the super market. Or we can be lost in awe at all the people around us, their lives full of glory and tragedy, and suddenly we will have the beginnings of a painting, a story, a song.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

“Life-standing under the high heat of the desert sun, without a cloud in the bright”

— Lauren Blakely

“Two free days like an open mouth. They drank beer all day in the sun and passed out, and when she woke, she was burnt all over, and it was sunset, and Lotto had started building something enormous with sand, already four feet high and ten feet long and pointing toward the sea. Woozy, standing, she asked what it was.
He said, 'spiral jetty.'
She said, 'In sand?'
He smiled and said, 'That's its beauty.'
A moment in her bursting open, expanding. She looked at him. She hand't seen it before, but there was something special here. She wanted to tunnel inside him to understand what it was. There was a light under the shyness and youth, a sweetness, a sudden surge of the old hunger in her to take a part of him into her and make him briefly hers.
Instead, she bent and helped, they all did. And deep into the morning, when it was done, they sat in silence, huddled against the cold wind and watched the tide swallow it whole. Everything had changed somehow”

— Lauren Groff

“Where is it I've read that someone condemned to death says or thinks, an hour before his death, that if he had to live on some high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he'd only room to stand, and the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting tempest around him, if he had to remain standing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live so than to die at once. Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Where is it that I've read that someone condemned to death says or thinks, an hour before his death, that if he had to live on some high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he'd only got room to stand, with the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting tempest around him, if he had to remain standing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live like that than to die at once! Only to live, to live and live!”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“What never fails to astonish at Skara Brae is the sophistication. These were the dwellings of Neolithic people, but the houses had locking doors, a system of drainage and even, it seems, elemental plumbing with slots in the walls to sluice away wastes. The interiors were capacious. The walls, still standing, were up to ten feet high, so they afforded plenty of headroom, and the floors were paved. Each house has built-in stone dressers, storage alcoves, boxed enclosures presumed to be beds, water tanks, and damp courses that would have kept the interiors snug and dry. The houses are all of one size and built to the same plan, suggesting a kind of genial commune rather than a conventional tribal hierarchy. Covered passageways ran between the houses and led to a paved open area-dubbed "the marketplace" by early archaeologists-where tasks could be done in a social setting.”

— Bill Bryson

“My first published novel was 'Mother of Demons,' which is simply 'The High Crusade' standing on its head. Poul Anderson placed his medieval human heroes in a futuristic alien setting; I placed my futuristic human heroes in a bronze age alien setting.”

— Eric Flint

“She felt as if she had somehow failed him and herself by allowing his mother's behavior to upset her. She should be above it; she should shrug it off as the ranting of a village woman; she should not keep thinking of all the retorts she could have made instead of just standing mutely in that kitchen. But she was upset, and made even more so by Odenigbo's expression, as if he could not believe she was not quite as high-minded as he had thought.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“Do not consider despair as a thick and high wall standing on your way; it is just a darkness and you can still walk in the darkness till you reach the light!”

— Mehmet Murat Ildan

“I think it is fair to say that during World War II there was a high sense of purpose. The country had a very clear vision of its own standing, of its own morality. It was not an ambiguous time. Today, we live in a world that is highly ambiguous, very fractured, with many of the historical, traditional values in a state of collapse, really.”

— Friedrich St. Florian

“Raven, lying on the sandy ground, covered in creepy-crawlies. Spiders, cockroaches, termites, ants, crickets-they smother her, nibble on her, devouring her from hair to toenails in seconds, leaving just a skeleton behind. Apple, standing at the podium on Legacy Day. Poof, she disappears. And reappears in a goblin cave. The goblin troop moves in, brandishing salad bowls and chopping knives. Daring Charming, no story to call home, thins and melts into a wisp of a ghost, swimming endlessly through walls. The crowded Charmitorium at Ever After High, Headmaster Grimm on the stage. "And remember, students, no matter what you do, don't follow the example of the worst, most despised, most selfish character in all of Ever After history-Raven Queen!" "Boo!" the students yell. "Boo!" says the Daring ghost. Apple's head in a goblin bowl opens her eyes and looks straight at Raven. "Boo!”

— Shannon Hale

“I have vertigo. Vertigo makes it feel like the floor is pitching up and down. Things seem to be spinning. It's like standing on the deck of a ship in really high seas.”

— Laura Hillenbrand

“I was blown away by the standing ovation. I've had tributes before, sure, but I don't retain that feeling, and I wasn't prepared for it on Tuesday. But maybe you shouldn't retain these things or you'd be on a permanent high.”

— Burt Bacharach

“There was a huge wire fence that ran along the length of the house and turned in at the top, extending further along in either direction, further than she could possibly see. The fence was very high, higher even than the house they were standing in, and there were huge wooden posts, like telegraph poles, dotted along it, holding it up. At the top of the fence enormous bales of barbed wire were tangled in spirals, and Gretel felt an unexpected pain inside her as she looked at the sharp spikes sticking out all the way round it.”

— John Boyne

“I get standing ovations at meetings when I say Britain should be involved in human spaceflight. Unfortunately, that goal has been blocked by a handful of people in high office.”

— Helen Sharman

“I've sort of made a reputation by high-stepping my way out of genre. As soon as somebody says, 'He does this,' I'm not standing there anymore.”

— Christopher Moore

“He was a relentlessly cheerful presence, talked only of himself but so good-naturedly that she indulged him. He certainly laughed a good deal. Something about his laugh made her feel more alone than if she were standing on a high cliff at the end of the world, shouting her name into the void to hear it echo back at her.”

— Julie Anne Long

“I was ordained one of the standing High Council in Zion, under the hands of President Joseph Smith.”

— Orson Pratt

“I once tried standing up on my toes to see far out in the distance, but I found that I could see much farther by climbing to a high place.”

— Xun Zi

“Now look, she said, stretched out on the bed, I don't want anything personal, let's just do it, I don't want to get involved, got it? she kicked off her high-heeled shoes ... sure, he said, standing there, let's just pretend that we've already done it, there's nothing less involved than that, is there? what the hell do you mean? she asked. I mean, he said, I'd rather drink anyhow. and he poured himself one. it was a lousy night in Vegas and he walked to the window and looked out at the dumb lights. you a fag? she asked, you a god damned fag? no, he said. you don't have to get shitty, ...”

— Charles Bukowski

“Got places - striding. Walking was for ordinary people. Standing beside him, Blue found the church eerier in the daylight, as she always did. Growing inside the ruined walls among collapsed bits of roof, knee-high grass and trees as tall as her strove toward the sunlight. There was no evidence there had”

— Maggie Stiefvater

“When we forgive we are telling God that we have faith in him to fight our injustices. It might not seem possible when you are standing in a storm, but when you take the high road you can see farther than you can now.”

— Shannon L. Alder

“He was standing on the little ledge of reality he had left, but it seemed to me that he wasn't getting high, just getting level. He had an affinity with pain. If he couldn't cure it, he took it on.”

— Colum McCann

“Some make their worlds without knowing it. Their universes are just sesame seeds and three-day weekends and dial tones and skinned knees and physics and driftwood and emerald earrings and books dropped in bathtubs and holes in guitars and plastic and empathy and hardwood and heavy water and high black stockings and the history of the Vikings and brass and obsolescence and burnt hair and collapsed souffles and the impossibility of not falling in love in an art museum with the person standing next to you looking at the same painting and all the other things that just happen and are.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

“We left about midnight and walked down the hill in silence. the night was muggy, and all around me i felt the same pressure, a sense of time rushing by while it seemed to be standing still. whenever i thought of time in puerto rico, i was reminded of those old magnetic clocks that hung on the walls of my classrooms in high school. every now and then a hand would not move for several minutes
and if i watched it long enough, wondering if it had finally broken down, the sudden click of the hand jumping three for four notches would startle me when it came.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

“Standing on the roof at night, beside the golden ship
I look across the city and I dream a wild trip.
The waves are high, the wind is strong, the moon is white and full.
I smell the salt upon the sea, a strong magnetic pull.
I shout into the endless dark, awaiting the reply:
'Away! Away' It says: 'Away! Now spread your wings and fly.”

— Brian Selznick

“This was my first time in Govan. You could smell and taste the thick smog in the air. The Blue Triangle was a new high-tech building, and it didn't look right standing there in front of older and more historical buildings. The Blue Triangle may have looked great from the outside, but once inside, to my horror, it was full of young teenage boys and girls full of deep and dark depression”

— Stephen Richards

“What's that poem again?" Will, who had been twirling his empty teacup around his fingers, stood up straight and declaimed:
"Each spake words of high disdain,
And insult to his heart's best brother-"
"Oh, by the Angel, Will, do be quiet," said Charlotte, standing up. "I must go and write a letter to Aloysius Starkweather that drips remorse and pleading. I don't need you distracting me." And, gathering up her skirts, she hurried from the room.
"No appreciation for the arts," Will murmured, setting his teacup down.”

— Cassandra Clare

“A long time later, after the bath had cooled, Lottie dressed in a fresh white nightgown and approached the bedroom table, where Nick was standing. She felt herself color as he stared at her with a half-smile. "I like the way you look in this," he said, brushing his fingers over the high-necked bodice of the gown. "Very innocent."
"Not any longer," Lottie said with an abashed smile.
He lifted her against his body, his face rubbing into the cool dampness of her hair. His beguiling mouth found her neck. "Oh, yes, you are," he said. "It's going to require a great deal of time and effort to debauch you completely."
"I have every faith you'll succeed," she said, and sat before a plate loaded with ham, vegetable pudding, potatoes, and open-faced tarts.
-Nick & Lottie”

— Lisa Kleypas

“This all came of a conversation I had with [John] Steinbeck once when we were standing in a men's room somewhere. Steinbeck asked me why I didn't play the banjo any more and I told him that went out with the high-button shoes.”

— Eddie Condon

“If you have a big splash of ecstasy in your life every day you are going to teach students something finer than "buy low/sell high". Maybe you'll teach them, not by what you say but by who you are, to live their lives as a standing affront to the ravaging mercantile mentality.”

— Mary Rose O'Reilley

“Today, refuse to see yourself as a recipient of negative vibrations or as a victim of subtle or gross influence around you. Practice broadcasting the high vibrations of your inner radiance remembering all the while that the place upon which you stand is holy simply because you are standing there.”

— Michael Beckwith

“If anyone ever wonders why there's nothing coming from me, it's not my fault. I'm doing the work. No, I haven't deteriorated or gone insane. Suddenly, I just can't get anything into print. And apparently I'm not alone in this. There are people of very high standing, authors who are having problems. So I have been told. In my own case, the more disturbing element is the editor-in-chief who said to me, "I think this book is terrific. It ought to be in print. I can't publish it
I've been told I mustn't." The indication is that I'm not writing what people want to read, but I never did.”

— Tanith Lee

“Alas! What is man? Whether he be deprived of that light which is from on high, of whether he discard it, a frail and trembling creature; standing on time, that bleak and narrow isthmus between two eternities, he sees nothing but impenetrable darkness on the one hand, and doubt, distrust, and conjecture, still more perplexing, on the other. Most gladly would he take an observation, as to whence he has come, or whither he is going; alas, he has not the means: his telescope is too dim, his compass too wavering, his plummet too short.”

— Charles Caleb Colton