“Life is a million different dots making one gigantic picture. And maybe the big picture is nice, maybe it's amazing, but if you're standing with your face pressed up against a bunch of black dots, it's really hard to tell.”
― Rebecca Stead, quote from Liar & Spy
“Boredom is what happens to people who have no control over their minds.”
― Rebecca Stead, quote from Liar & Spy
“Mom. She always says to look at the big picture. How all of the little things don't matter in the long run. . . I know that Mom is right about the big picture. But Dad is right too: Life is really just a bunch of nows, one after the other. The dots matter.”
― Rebecca Stead, quote from Liar & Spy
“Mom's always telling me to smile and hoping I'll turn into a smiley person, which, to be honest, is kind of annoying.”
― Rebecca Stead, quote from Liar & Spy
“If you took every tear cried by everyone on earth on one single day and put them in a container, how big would that container need to be? Could you fill a water tower? Three water towers? It's one of those unknowable things. There has to be an answer, but we'll never know what it is.”
― Rebecca Stead, quote from Liar & Spy
“...if you smile for no reason at all you will actually start to feel happy”
― Rebecca Stead, quote from Liar & Spy
“Blue Team! It's what's for breakfast!”
― Rebecca Stead, quote from Liar & Spy
“Dad is looking at the bookshelves, deep in thought, deciding which book should go where. Once, Mom came home from work and discovered that he had turned all the books around so that the bindings were against the wall and the pages faced out. He said it was calming not to have all those words floating around and "creating static." Mom made him turn them back. She said it was too hard to find a book when she couldn't read the titles. Then she poured herself a big glass of wine.”
― Rebecca Stead, quote from Liar & Spy
“Life is really just a bunch of nows, one after the other.”
― Rebecca Stead, quote from Liar & Spy
“Look, I know Mom talks about the big picture. She wants you to remember that you'll find new friends, that life is always changing, sometimes in really good ways. But life is also what's happening NOW, Georges. What Dallas and Carter are doing is happening NOW, and you can't just wait for it to be over. We have to do something about it. Now.”
― Rebecca Stead, quote from Liar & Spy
“While the rest of the class is hanging on every syllable that comes out of Mr. Landau's mouth, I'm looking at the false tongue poster and I'm kind of wishing it wasn't wrong. There's something nice about those thick black arrows: sour here, salty there, like there's a right place for everything. Instead of the total confusion the human tongue actually turns out to be.”
― Rebecca Stead, quote from Liar & Spy
“Look, I know Mom talks about the big picture. She wants you to remember that you'll find new friends, that life is always changing, sometimes in really good ways. But life is also what's happening now, Georges.”
― Rebecca Stead, quote from Liar & Spy
“It's weird, because I know Mom is right about the big picture. But Dad is right too: Life is really just a bunch of nows, one after the other.
The dots matter.”
― Rebecca Stead, quote from Liar & Spy
Rebecca Stead
Born place: in New York City
Born date January 16, 1968
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“Carroting, you must understand, was a process by which animal fur is bathed in a solution of mercury nitrate, in order to render the hairs more supple, thus producing a superior felt.” At this last word, he threw a significant glance in my direction. “Felt,” I repeated. “You mean, for the making of hats?” “Precisely. The solution is of an orange colour, hence the term carroting. However, this process had rather severe side effects on those who worked with it, which is why its use today is much reduced. When mercury vapours are inhaled over a long enough period of time—particularly, for our purposes, in the close quarters of a hat-making operation—toxic and irreversible effects almost inevitably follow. One develops tremors of the hands; blackened teeth; slurred speech. In severe cases, dementia or outright insanity can occur. Hence the term mad as a hatter.”
― Douglas Preston, quote from White Fire
“The real payoff of a yoga practice, I came to see, is not a perfect handstand or a deeper forward bend—it is the newly born self that each day steps off the yoga mat and back into life.”
― quote from Meditations from the Mat: Daily Reflections on the Path of Yoga
“Abbe Faria: Here is your final lesson - do not commit the crime for which you now serve the sentence. God said, Vengeance is mine.
Edmond Dantes: I don't believe in God.
Abbe Faria: It doesn't matter. He believes in you. ”
― Alexandre Dumas, quote from The Count of Monte Cristo, V1
“If manhood is passed down, if it is a mantle cut from the cloth of one and draped across another, it is not done so using titles or accolades. Not hardly. It occurs there—in that spout now resting neck-high—pouring down the spine and into the belly in a language that has never been transcribed, but that every boy on the planet understands and has always understood.”
― Charles Martin, quote from Chasing Fireflies: A Novel of Discovery
“I was there, the day that Horus killed the Emperor”
― Dan Abnett, quote from Horus Rising
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