#you are actually 100% sure walt whitman said that

[betweengenesisfrogs]

A HOMESTUCK MANIFESTO

I want to think about what comes next after Homestuck.

That’s a challenge to the world as much as a personal mission statement.

I want to see writers and artists and creators making the next Homestuck, taking its themes and binding them into new fabrics, giving life to new creatures even more beautiful and uncanny than the original species.

I hunger to see new forms of story and image evolving with Homestuck in their DNA.

This process is already underway. Homestuck is a massive boulder dropped into the waters of culture, and the full wake of its ripples is still to be felt. But let’s call attention to this process and ask: what would happen if we engaged in it more consciously? If we sifted through our feelings about Homestuck to create something new, deliberately, with great and wonderful purpose?

The tools we need are within our grasp. Homestuck presents itself as magic, but it’s a work constructed in time out of specific storytelling choices. So let’s understand those choices. Let’s understand how Homestuck did what it did, and use Homestuck’s tools to build art that grips the soul of future generations as strongly as Homestuck did ours.

What follows is not a traditional literary analysis. It does not cite its sources; it does not seek to give us a comprehensive understanding of Homestuck. If it does, it does so only to the extent it suits its larger purpose.

Our goal here, our quest, if you will, is not to understand the Homestuck that exists, but the Homestuck that comes next.

Let's begin.

0. THE WILD GARDEN

Let’s lay the absolute groundwork here.

Homestuck is constructed as a re-appropriation of itself. Or to put it another way, it’s a big improvisational move, a process of “yes and”-ing so hard it develops a sprawling continuity.

Tiny details are constantly re-contextualized to become part of something else. A joke might turn tragic. A silly aside might turn into something profound.

But it didn’t have to be that way.

It’s crucial to understand that what we experience as continuities were in fact choices made at specific times. Homestuck is a garden where seeds were scattered in every direction, grown en masse, then weeded down to create patterns and forms.

The shape of the garden is designed to conceal the gardener’s hand. But the gardener’s choices are there, every step of the way.

If we are to follow in its footsteps, what choices should we make?

Let’s talk about themes.

1. THE MEANING CRISIS

Nobody in Homestuck knows what they’re doing.

And neither do we.

All the old idols have broken down. The values we were taught in our childhood fail to measure up to the problems of the world we live in. We grasp after careers and lives we were told would make us happy and wonder why we’re left empty. The selves that we were told were us now fit us about as well as clothing we’ve outgrown. Crises loom, political, economic and environmental, and everywhere it feels like the people who are supposed to guide and lead us aren’t doing enough.

It's widening gyres and slouching beasts all the way from here to Bethlehem, is what I’m saying.

The reason people go absolutely insane for Homestuck is that it depicts this crisis of meaning. It shows the questions we might want to ask, and attempts to provide some kind of answer.

The protagonists of Homestuck struggle with what I’ve called “received narrative.” That is, they’ve inherited stories from their families, from the world, that they try to use to define their lives, and it doesn’t work. But these stories are so familiar that it’s hard to think outside them. They have to develop new stories by which to live. Sometimes they succeed, but other times they can’t escape the gravity of the ones they were given.

With me so far?

Great. Now understand that all this was improvised and discovered largely accidentally over the course of ten years.

Here’s a seed that became quite an impressive tree:

The streets are empty. Wind skims the voids keeping neighbors apart, as if grazing the hollow of a cut reed, or say, a plundered mailbox. A familiar note is produced. It's the one Desolation plays to keep its instrument in tune.

It’s a joke. But it was never just a joke. There’s an idea here of dissatisfaction with the stereotypical idea of American suburban life. Egbert here is looking for something more, dissatisfied for reasons they can’t fully articulate. This is typical fantasy protagonist stuff, but there’s something more here, too.

Eventually it’s redirected towards the idea that there really is an unseen riddler. But let’s put that aside for now.

This page, in its moment, says: your life is not the full picture. There’s something else out there, waiting, that’s going to change everything.

That's a potential set-up for a very powerful payoff. It gives us the sense that Egbert and all their friends are going to have to rethink what they know. That this suburban life is not going to be enough for them, that somehow or other they’re going to encounter something they aren’t prepared for, and they’ll have to find a new way of acting and being. That, try as they might to avoid it, they’re going to change over the course of this journey.

But to understand how they change, we need to talk about SBURB.

2. THE PORTAL FANTASY OF IT ALL

A lot of people like to joke that Homestuck is an isekai. I think it might clarify things to use the term portal fantasy instead.

Portal fantasy is simply the fantasy subgenre of characters, usually kids, going to a magical other world. Maybe they make friends, maybe they learn lessons and stuff. You know the drill. I don’t have to to tell you more because the story structure is already so familiar. That’s what gives it power.

Portal fantasy differs from the related Japanese genre of isekai in that isekai in its current form is much more heavily based on video games such as MMORPGs. In the most pervasive isekai narratives, protagonists are rewarded not so much for achieving personal growth as being able to exploit the game mechanics of a game-like system. That’s pretty different from your typical Narnia scenario.

The influence of portal fantasy is everywhere in Homestuck, especially in the beginning. We have nods to the fantasy films of the 1980s that gave us our contemporary idea of this story structure, such as The Neverending Story (itself, in its original book incarnation, a phenomenal commentary on the genre). Our protagonists are genre savvy; they recognize what’s happening here.

But it doesn’t fit quite right. The odd note is first sounded when Egbert asks Nanasprite if what they’re doing is going to save the world. They’re bit unsettled to learn the answer’s no, that something else is going on here. Next we have the fantasy worlds: the planetary lands each present a veneer of exciting adventure. But their inhabitants, the consorts, aren’t fully-realized people, they’re largely cute animals going through the motions, not really understanding the story they’re telling. The carapacians are a little better, but they’re still trapped in a fatalism that feels uncomfortable.

As things rev up in Act 4, we learn about doomed timelines from alt-timeline Dave and Rose, how your entire existence in this setting may be fodder for something other than you. When we learn the true purpose of SBURB and its froggy details in Act 5, we see that SBURB is more like a biological creature, mainly interested in its own reproductive desires. It was never really about the portal fantasy at all. The kids are just along for the ride.

So when we see that Rose wants to tear through SBURB, find out a way to escape fate, and snatch meaning from the jaws of futility, it makes sense. We’ve been given hints already that this is the conflict at hand: the characters vs the story that’s telling them. 

(Note: it’s certainly possible to have a reading that SBURB is not evil so much as empty, that it reflects what you bring into it, that its will for you is your will for you. But that’s also a difficult thing, right? If you lack self-understanding, it’s a struggle to bring about your ideal reality.)

What we haven’t mentioned yet is that this is all mediated through the lens of video games. Which makes perfect sense. Because where do we seek meaning, especially as kids? In imaginary worlds that make more sense to us than real life, that give us achievements to take pride in and clear objectives to pursue.

SBURB evokes mechanics from games like Final Fantasy. We see its players complete objectives, cast magic spells, gain power-ups with colorful costume changes. But unlike the narratives implied by traditional video game progressions, leveling up doesn’t mean you grow as a person or process your trauma. Later, in Act 6, when we meet a player who has made his life about winning the game (Caliborn), it’s horrific to behold. 

Homestuck is a portal fantasy, but it’s fundamentally a portal fantasy about games. It’s a portal fantasy that shows us how characters seek meaning in being the best at arbitrary game mechanics, but ultimately fail to find it.

So I guess…it actually is an isekai? Huh. Wild.

(But seriously, Homestuck is actually fairly prescient in predicting the ideas that come out of isekai and LitRPG. It’s engaging consciously and deconstructively with the weird ideas of self-fulfillment these genres are drowning in.)

So what might a Homestuckian work look like? It will almost certainly critique a false narrative we live by. It may comment on portal fantasy, or our personal satisfaction that comes as easily as playing a video game. But it doesn’t have to be limited to these things. It might talk about our popular TV shows and movies. It may take apart what’s flawed in Marvel, the latest triple-A game, or the modern dark fantasy novel. 

Among its tools will be discomfort. Showing a disconnect early on between our character’s expectations and their happiness can serve as foundation to build on, so that when the flaws of the genre narrative are revealed, it feels like the truth. We may see characters who accept their narratives passively, or rebels like Rose Lalonde, who chose to rip everything apart in search of something better.

These are only some of the possibilities.

When I tell you the stories we live by mislead us, what is your relationship to that? If you were to tear these received narratives apart, what would you focus on, what would you try to say? The art that comes out of this question will be deeply personal to the soul who makes it.

But here’s another question:

Just who is giving us all these narratives, anyway?

3. THE PARENT FLIP

The world we live in was not made by us. It was shaped by forces that predate us, over which we have no control and are born into the grasp of without the knowledge of how to escape.

For instance, our parents.

The guardians who raise us provide our template for how to interpret life. We spend a large part of our lives immersed in the world they built, believing as they believe, living by the values that they instruct us in, so that we might carry their goals forward to the future.

This is an effort that is certain to fail.

Because the problems of today aren’t the problems of twenty or thirty years ago.  At best, their messages can only to help in a limited way with the crises we go through as we live our lives. At worst, they actively hinder us from dealing with them productively.

If we are to escape the broken patterns of our world, then we need break out of the stories an earlier generation gave us.

How are parents discussed in Homestuck?

Initially? As jokes.

If we take our “future knowledge” goggles off for a moment, we can see that the early depictions of the kids’ parents are a goofy parody of standard parental tropes. Mom and Dad are nameless, faceless, exaggerated cartoon stereotypes, and conflict between them and their children is initially expressed through a silly video game fight.

There’s a seed of something real here, though. What we’re parodying is a familiar trope of tension between parents and children in kids’ fiction and YA fiction. But that trope exists for a reason. This conflict is rich with potential for any story about growing up. And Homestuck has smuggled the idea of it in as a silly RPG parody.

So we can extrapolate, for instance, that there’s tension between Egbert and their father in part because Egbert doesn’t know yet who they want to be, and that Rose and Mom’s relationship is awkward and contentious, with alcohol involved. We see that there’s something profoundly uncomfortable going on between Dave and his Bro, and Jade’s life in the shadow of a dead Grandpa suggests a psychology that’s not entirely a healthy one.

Understand that I’m not saying that all this was there from the start. Rather, a choice was made to develop these interesting possibilities out of the jokes, to tell a story about how parents that act like these ones might have affected their children.

A major turning point in this regard is when Egbert learns their father’s seeming clown obsession was the result of a failed attempt to connect with them. It’s quite silly, but it plays around with the idea of a gap in perception between parent and child. It’s also a sign the story’s starting to take more of an interest in character psychology, suggesting that what Egbert processes consciously is not the same as their deeper unconscious feelings. This in turn can become a setup for a portrait of Egbert as someone who represses things they don’t want to think about. From this moment, in the long term, comes June Egbert.

When the psychology machine revs up for all the characters in Act 4 and Act 5, it’s able to do so because this foundation was laid.

We also, as early as Act 3, get hints that the parents have intentions and personalities outside of how the kids perceive them. The original purpose is to hint at a larger conspiracy around SBURB, with Mom building a secret lab, Dad trying to investigate the mystery, and Grandpa jumping in and out of time. But what this suggests is that the psychology of the parents might at some point come into play.

But the most exciting development in the relationship between parents and children is Act 6.

The great role reversal. The parent and child flip.

How do you make your faceless parent figures into characters?

By making them kids.

We’re so used to this concept now t that it’s hard to remember how wild it is that Roxy is a teen version of a main character's mom. But the concept is genius. Meeting these characters on the same level forces our protagonists to understand them as people and reflect on their fallibility.

For us as readers, it adds detail and nuance to the cartoonish portraits we got in the beginning. Conversely, we also see what our protagonists might have been like as parents themselves—and turns it from a story of “parents just don’t understand” to a story of how people, despite their best intentions, can wound each other.

(The Homestuck Epilogues are a difficult text to evaluate, but one of the best things within them is Egbert’s arc in Candy, where we see how Egbert might have done as a parent, how their struggles with finding purpose in the world might lead them to embrace a narrative of parenthood yet struggle to have a good relationship their kid. It’s brilliant, and the culmination of everything we’ve talked about here.)

Thus the Homestuckian work of art will be concerned with themes of parents and children. It will play with the boundary between what children understand about their parents and what they don’t. It will show parents as people—fallible people, who make mistakes with severe costs, whose stories fail their children and themselves. It may build from a simple base of what children understand, or it may weave parent and child perspectives together. It may even show us how children fail when they become parents themselves.  It will show us the cycles we are trapped in, how we wound and are wounded by our context.

And it will force us to look for a way out.

4. CLASSPECTS AS SIGNPOSTS

Hey. You want to know a secret?

Come closer, and I’ll whisper it to you.

Classpects aren’t actually all that complicated. Ultimately, they boil down to one thing:

Symbols we can use to construct a self.

If Homestuck is about a crisis of meaning, then classpects are part of its answer.

What do we do, when the world gives us no story we can live by?

We make one. We make one out of whatever symbols and messages we can find and put together from the stories we’ve read, from the people who teach and inspire us. Such collages are powerful things. They give us a way out of the dark, they give us a sense of something we are and can be, where there was nothing before.

They give us, in short, a personal mythology.

Classes and Aspects have often been read as codes to be unpacked and solved. It might be more productive to see them as creative tools, signposts designed not to narrow down meaning, but to allow us to explore it.

For instance, the portrayal of Light in Homestuck is unique. As a symbol, it combines notions of brightness, knowledge, future, luck, wealth, and narrative focus. These things aren’t inherently linked out in the world, but they are here, and that’s a choice, and an interesting one. It encourages us to imagine connections between these concepts, and to see if they have any relevance to ourselves. Identifying with the concept of Light, in other words choosing to value clarity, luck, and importance, might be a powerful tool for finding one’s way in the world.

Classes play with signposts at an even more basic level. Sure, we can talk about what a Knight does in the context of the story.

But a knight is already a powerful symbol. We bring so much cultural context to it. The word conjures up images and narratives of devotion, duty, violence, the slaying of dragons, armoring oneself against the world, and the rescuing of princesses. If we put that together with a concept like Time, we get a distinct character. If we put that together with our own experience of the world, we can create powerful concepts for who we want to be.

Interestingly, this complicates what we said about SBURB. As much as our protagonists struggle to find meaning within it, there’s still something there that they can latch onto. Classes, aspects, denizens, even consorts and lands—these things don’t have to be devoid of meaning. We can choose to affirm them; we can build something out of them, and say, yes, this is me, this is myself.

But it’s a double-edged sword.

We are responsible for the narratives we choose to live by. And we may find ourselves falling into a narrative that hinders us more than helps us, that creates a self-destructive self.

What does it mean to believe deeply that you are a thief, that taking from others to benefit yourself is the best way or comes to you the most naturally? What does it mean to tell yourself over and over that you’re a prince, with all the attendant baggage of power and grim responsibility that comes with that concept? Or, to follow the path further, what does it mean to tell yourself over and over that you are a destroyer or must be destroyed?

If we are to escape the story we’re trapped in, we must take care, lest we trap ourselves in a story of our own making.

Homestuck never quite resolves the ambiguity around these symbols of self, around whether SBURB hurts or helps, whether classpects are things you create or things that create you. But this ambiguity is a productive one. It gives us symbolic tools we can use in the creation of meaning, and it shows us the side of them that should make us wary.

The work that is to come after Homestuck will be about symbols. It may show us how we seek them in popular culture, or the people around us. It may use some of the clusters of meaning that that we see in Homestuck, but it will not be limited to them. It will write its own language of symbols, joining Light and Time to notions like Memory, Need, Rupture, and War, and be filled not just with knights and princes but brigadiers, lancers, healers, druids, taxidermists, sentries and waifs.  It will build with tarot cards, enneagram types, and Babylonian gods. It will place all the signposts we’ve created in millennia of existence into new contexts and meanings.  

By such means will it show us a way forward.

There’s one kind of symbol we haven’t talked about yet, however.

The kind that holds a mirror up to the world.

5. THE POWER OF ALTERNIA

There’s a reason dystopias have been so popular in young adult fiction. Sure, they’re cliché now, but they speak to something raw and visceral.

When you’re growing up into a world that doesn’t make sense, it’s natural to find refuge in emotional extremes. Stories of blood and violence, fates worse than death, and governments that demand horrific things of their citizens speak to the anxieties of the adolescent mind. They validate the feeling that something is wrong—that the world we’ve inherited is broken and unfair and has no place for us. And they’re right.

Alternia taps into these dystopian feelings perfectly. What makes it so fun is that it’s an inversion of a teenage fantasy. It’s a world where there are no parents, where kids can have access to power and violence, where you can sit around and play video games and design your own house. It almost feels like a response to the “parents don’t understand” themes of the early acts.

But the dystopia’s there, and it’s sneaky. A land of lost boys and girls isn’t actually all that great to live in. It’s lawless, survival of the fittest, with children killing each other left and right. And the future adult roles most of the troll kids aspire to are a glamorous veneer over competition for slots in a fascist military hierarchy. Which is to say nothing of the blood caste system as a way in which the kids are taught by their world to abuse and exploit each other. Crushes, personal slights, competition for status, group dynamics, attempts to define identity – all these familiar teenage dynamics play out on a backdrop of maiming and murder.

Which is perfect. Because when you’re young, all those social interactions genuinely do feel like life or death, and adulthood a regime of exploitation and horror bearing down on you. Alternia is a heightened, exaggerated version of reality. It expresses an emotional truth, not a literal one, validating our most intense feelings and giving us a road map to understanding them.

No wonder so many people wanted to skip to Act 5 and get to the trolls.

(See also Hiveswap Friendsim and Pesterquest, which explore these themes really really well.)

And Alternia, for a world where parents aren’t really a thing, tells us a surprising amount about the parental generation. In mid Act 5-2, Ancestors are added to Alternia’s wordbuilding, and we learn that as much as the trolls skipped having traditional parental figures, they were never devoid of role models. The deeds and exploits of notable figures throughout ancient Alternia gave them models to think about each other and themselves—even when those models were toxic ones. In a way, this isn’t so far from the human kids at all.

Furthermore, as time goes on, we acquire an origin for Alternia’s fascist worldview. Doc Scratch, manipulator of society, stands in for all those aspects of the world that work to create the false narratives we are born into, a true evil father figure – or uncle, if you prefer. And he's an extension of the ultimate evil father figure, Lord English, who controls not just Alternia but the timelines of the human children as well, whose belligerence and apathy give us aeons of toxic narratives and abuse. We see that story played out in Alternia in every interaction, in every moment, the beliefs its architects live by.

This is the power of dystopia—it can hold a broken mirror up to the world we live in.

Therefore the Homestuck that will come after Homestuck will worldbuild gardens of horror. It will not pull its punches but show us insidious societal systems and the effect they have on the people who live under them. It may depict fascism, authoritarianism, feudalistic tyranny, or all three. It will be unafraid to evoke blood and guts but use them to paint a picture of what we want, what we fear, and how we break under our false horizons.

As it depicts the path out, so, too, will it have its reverse side—it will show us all the hells and purgatories we’re trapped in.

6. SAILS TO THE WIND

Much has been written (including by this very author) about Homestuck’s metafictional aspects – the way it comes to foreground a more direct clash between character and narrative.

But the point I want to make here is that the metafictional angle wouldn’t work without these earlier choices. They allow the comic to talk about these concerns long before any notion of canon rears its head.

There are many ways of approaching these themes, and we don’t have to be limited to notions of Ultimate Selves and Beyond Canon to explore them. Such things are valuable, but they are only one retelling of the myth. If we are to make the next Homestuck, we must make our own.

I want to illustrate the space of possibility by offering some examples of works that explore similar themes. Note that I’m not saying these works were influenced by Homestuck in any way, but rather that they use some of the same tools to speak to the same questions, anxieties and concerns.

In trying to make what comes after Homestuck, we might consider:

Revolutionary Girl Utena, which foregrounds the archetype of the Prince as duelist, tyrant, and hero and dares its characters to break free from the false reality that shapes even these aspirations and dreams.

The Familiar by Mark Z. Danielewski, author of Houseof Leaves, whose core narrative concerns an twelve-year-old girl in thrall to an entity whose intentions are unclear but may be shaping the fabric of reality itself; which depicts the inner lives and uncertainties of her parents with just as much detail as they struggle, and sometimes fail, to make the right choices to help her; a story which, even in its incomplete form, explores a notion of a greater S.E.L.F that is not just you but also those who share something with you, where characters from other realities blur into transcendent archetypes in this one.

Digimon, perhaps the quintessential work of portal fantasy, not only Digimon Tamers, which steers the genre into a place of trauma, cosmic horror, and adults horrified by children saving the world, but also Digimon Adventure, which creates strong character arcs for eight very different children as they try to navigate a strange alien world, and shows us their struggle to reconcile with their parents as part of the process of understanding themselves.

The Neverending Story by Michael Ende,foundational text for Homestuck, which tells us not only about the rich possibilities inherent in reading oneself into fantasy worlds, but also the terrible potential for harm in making oneself an emperor over them.

Pale, by Wildbow, author of Worm, an urban fantasy story about three teenagers thrust into a world of magic and murder, a world where symbols literally create reality, where concepts like Carmine and Aurum have a powerful pull, where the Self is something that can be nourished or taken apart and put back together, a story where the parents are not just supporting cast but fully realized people forced to reckon with the ways in which they have deeply failed their children, and which contains perhaps the most thorough investigation of the question of “is it good for children to go on magical adventures?” ever committed to the page.

Heaven Will Be Mine, by Aevee Bee,in which the giant robots we pilot through space become the symbolic manifestation of our inner selves and our way of bringing about our ideal reality, and, relatedly, We Know the Devil, in which the repression of those selves causes them to burst out from us in terrifying and glorious new forms.

Crow Cillers, by Cate Wurtz, an often trauma-filled horror comic in which a group of kids and, eventually, adults, tries to fight back against an ever-present death cult that has its grips on every corner, all the while encountering Psyforms, beings made of pure mind, while characters from television and cartoons dance in the margins and all the while the line blurs between audience and art until it becomes difficult to tell who created who—a story that asks what it means to find meaning in stories when the corporate entities that own them are trying to devour us.

It's a tragically short list, I know. But perhaps it conveys some of the angles we might take.

We can also look at works that are known to have inspired by Homestuck. There aren’t many yet, but there are a few.

Undertale is famous for its Homestuck influences, with parallel timelines, an idea of agency that persists across them, and a contentious relationship between player and character, but for my part, I’m just as interested if not more so in Deltarune, which seems to be slowly building a grand thesis about portal fantasy, where the kids' adventures in the Dark Worlds seems to be offering them an escape and helping them become their best selves—but hints at a coming challenge to that simple worldview in the question of who’s really experiencing that escape.

The Locked Tomb, by Tamsin Muir – This is the big one, that really shows what building on Homestuckian themes can achieve. It turns out there really is an audience for weird aggro formalism in scifi publishing if you make it sufficiently gay. But smartly, like Homestuck, the Locked Tomb builds its weird mysteries gradually, adding on layer after layer on the solid foundation of characters we can follow and get invested in. There’s so much to notice – there’s the highly categorized teenagers involved in a murder feud, there’s the constant whiplash of humor and tragedy, there’s the endlessly open spaces in the story to interpret and project on to.

But to me, what stands out the most is the portrait of God and his court as every bit as emotionally chaotic as the sniping teenagers. You go to heaven, and God’s making out in the corner with his friend group, and you look for the adult in the room but the adults in the room don’t know what they’re doing and they never really did. It’s a portrait of the parents, it’s a portrait of the Ancestors, it’s a portrait of the gods of the new world, and it’s exquisite.

The Locked Tomb gives us a world at war with its own mythological narrative, rich with angst and irony. It’s a worthy successor to everything Homestuck was doing. It shows us how much these themes can say to us, and it gives us a hint at how powerful Homestuck's legacy might be.

7. THE APOTHEOSIS OF HOMESTUCK

There’s a lot of discussion about how to continue Homestuck. How to do it justice. What post-canon might look like, and what it might not. What fan comics, what fan fics, what semi-official works truly live up to the spirit of its characters and its multiverse.

To be clear, those discussions are awesome. I’m so glad those things exist, and it’s wonderful to see them unfolding.

But I don’t want the process to stop there. I'd be disappointed if it was only about adding to and re-articulating Homestuck itself.

I want this—

—This multifaceted, complicated, emotionally laden thing that is the experience of engaging with and creating with and interpreting Homestuck—

To go out into the world and to be infused into the world, to become waves spreading further and further. I want to experience the Homestuck artistic movement, the Homestuck school of thought. I want it to be an influence on the fiction of the coming generation of authors, and the next, and the next.

I want Homestuck to be one of those albums that's too obscure to be known by the general public, but everyone who listened to it went on to start an enormously successful band.

Homestuck can appear like a thing that was conjured out of the ether, but it isn’t. It’s a product of a particular time.

But that in itself is profound. When you create art, you reach back to all the things that have shaped you, and you listen to what the world around you needs, and you try to say what needs to be said. Which means you're a part of a history and culture that needs to say those things, which will be different from the things that needed to be told yesterday, and different from the stories that will be needed tomorrow.

There’s no otherworldliness to it, no platonic other reality. But for all I've talked about art being made of choices, there's still something transcendent here.

To make Homestuck—and to make art inspired by Homestuck—means being a node in a web formed of millions of people, where a light passes down the chain to you, and for the briefest of moments, you get to be filled with its presence, before it moves on to the next person in the chain.

That light isn't yours. Not really.

But at the same time, you do get to choose how that light manifests.

And to engage with that process consciously—to think deliberately about what we want to create—that gives us power and agency over that process, our sense of the world, and ourselves.

So let’s do this. Let’s make the thing that Homestuck is telling us can exist, the thing it’s paving the way for, the thing we know in our soul can come to be.

Let’s make the next Homestuck happen.

—Ari

POSTSCRIPT

“To put out a manifesto you must want: ABC

to fulminate against 1, 2, 3

to fly into a rage and sharpen your wings to conquer and disseminate little abcs and big abcs, to sign, shout, swear, to organize prose into a form of absolute and irrefutable evidence, to prove your non plus ultra and maintain that novelty resembles life… I write a manifesto and I want nothing, yet I say certain things, and in principle I am against manifestoes, as I am also against principles… I write this manifesto to show that people can perform contrary actions together while taking one fresh gulp of air…”

— Tristan Tzara, “Dada Manifesto 1918”

"The cyborg is resolutely committed to partiality, irony, intimacy, and perversity. It is oppositional, utopian, and completely without innocence....the cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of re-turning to dust...This is a dream not of a common language, but of a powerful infidel heteroglossia. It means both building and destroying machines, identities, categories, relationships, space stories...I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess."

— Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto"

“What we need is works that are strong straight precise and forever beyond understanding... let each man proclaim: there is a great negative work of destruction to be accomplished. We must sweep and clean…to divest one's church of every useless cumbersome accessory; to spit out disagreeable or amorous ideas like a luminous waterfall, or coddle them—with the extreme satisfaction that it doesn't matter in the least…freedom: Dada Dada Dada, a roaring of tense colors, and interlacing of opposites and of all contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE.”

— Tristan Tzara, “Dada Manifesto 1918”

“These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me,

If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing,

If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing,

If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.”

—Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

𖤓

#homestuck #homestuck analysis #what comes next after homestuck #the future of homestuck #homestuckian art #you are actually 100% sure walt whitman said that

[amarriageoftrueminds]

Now now, we all know how Bucky's been in love with Steve (and known about his feelings) his whole life, but what about Steve? I've always swayed towards the theory 'Steve's been in love with Bucky his whole life as well, he only realised after Bucky fell from the train', but what if Steve's known he's in love with Bucky since their Brooklyn days? That would shed an entirely different light on his interactions with Miss Nazis Hirer and the whole 'right partner' talk

Going by canon, I think there must've been either: a declaration of mutual feelings, or; the first foray into a sexual relationship in their late teens, because one of Bucky's trigger words was 'seventeen', and Steve said he felt like a 16 year old again when he heard Bucky's name.

What's interesting is, at that time, and especially in that place*, there wasn't the idea that gay sex acts made you gay, because there were loads of 'straight' men around (eg. sailors.) going with other men just for sex. This was pre pill, pre sex-before-marriage for most, especially for Catholics like Steve.

So it might be that Bucky and Steve were doing the do with each other looong before either of them came to the realisation that they were also, coincidentally, in love.

I agree that Bucky, simply because he's exposed to dating women more than Steve is, has more of an opportunity to Realise before Steve. He'd have the benefit of being able to contrast his experience of feelings with Steve, with his experience of feelings for others, leading him to a lightbulb moment.

And he'd cover this up (and keep up the pretense of believing both he and Steve are really straight) by going out with girls in the meantime; in a period-appropriate gentlemanly way, not bedding them. Also to protect him and Steve from any potentially dangerous accusations.

I don't see Steve as not knowing precisely that he is in love with Bucky; I think he knew before the events of CATFA started, and it was a big part of his motivation for wanting to go to war.

But I do think it hadn't occurred to Steve that he might only be attracted to Bucky / men until after he got serum -- because, before then, his health would've been a limiting factor.

Before then, I can see him thinking 'well it's no wonder I have no libido like Bucky does around women, I'm just too unwell!' and not connecting the dots.

This would explain why he seems so panicked when sexual situations arise with women, after the serum; because he's realising 'oh shit! actually, I don't even like this when I have Perfect Health!' and hastily trying to backpedal himself out of an unwanted situation.

My HC is both of them thinking they're the only male-attracted one in the relationship and they're just engaging in sex acts together for convenience' sake but the other one's only going to keep doing it until he can get a girl.

So when Steve shows up all heterosexual-passing, looking like he can get any girl he wants, Bucky looks devastated because he thinks that signals the end of his physical (in his head unrequited romantic) relationship with Steve.

(But then between Peggy showing up and he and Steve going to the Continent together with the Howlies, Bucky mysteriously seems to perk up!)

By which point Steve, with his strong moral instincts and anti-Fascism, has come to the conclusion that if he's a physically perfect man, and he's still in love with and attracted to Bucky, then there must by definition be nothing wrong with feeling physically attracted to Bucky.

IDK if it makes it better or worse to imagine that they finally confessed to each other before the fall?

Maybe it'd be nice if they saved that for Post-WS, especially since Bucky might be then in even more doubt as to Steve's feelings for him. It's a common choice in fic for a reason!

There are two ways to read the 'right partner' talk Steve has with Peggy.

One is:

Steve's a straight man acting like an incel and attempting to pull pick-up artist tricks on Peggy which don't work, because she's not interested in him, and so doesn't take the bait (we only don't notice he's being a creep because Cevans and HA play it as benign, and because the writers, being themselves douchebags, don't realise what they've written; and probably wouldn't care even if they did.)

Two is: (particularly egregious if you flip the genders and imagine a woman saying this to a man) 

Steve going out of his way to make it clear that he doesn't want to date, isn't interested in dating right now, while there's a war on, and finds women terrifying. 

And yet as soon as he's fuckable, Peggy pulls a 180 and starts claiming she always liked him as he was, despite the fact that her actions directly disprove this; she didn’t ask him out when she had the chance and the encouragement. 

Naturally, her arrogance leads her to the immediate assumption that if Steve is waiting for The One, then she must be the One to whom he was referring. 

The fact that his wording either means he’s already found the One and is waiting for them, OR that he hasn’t met them yet, both exclude her from the running (since he’s known her a week) is...  immaterial. She never asks if he has his eye on someone, does she? Would Steve being already married stop her? 

(You don’t say ‘I don’t want to date because I’m waiting for the One’ to the person who IS the One, or whom you suspect may be the One. This ain’t rocket science!) 

And hey, did you notice, that Peggy is just so important and special and perfect that her sudden interest in Steve means that Steve's stated wishes are now irrelevant? 

The staggering hubris of waltzing up to him to go ‘hey, by the way, one day... when all this is over... I will allow you to date me.’ 😘😌 

Too bad he didn’t ask! 

The fact that Steve explicitly told her he isn't interested in dating and didn’t specify he’d be interested in her is invalidated by his new looks and her desire. 

Sheesh. These Carter girls sure are rapey as hell.

(Also, in characteristic NOT-A-FEMINIST Peggy Style, the first thing she does upon seeing Big Steve is yank a t shirt out of the hands of a waiting nurse, because Saint Poppins is apparently so good at everything without training or experience that she can do nursing better than an actual nurse, too? (Could be she's also being characteristically territorial, pissing a circle round her chosen prey.) While simultaneously, out of nowhere, affecting a  dumb ‘oh I’m so soft-and-feminine’ voice she didn’t have before?? Does that sounds like someone Steve ‘son of a nurse’ Rogers would admire? UGH.)

The irony of all this is ^ you can read Steve as 100% gay and not have to change a single piece of his characterisation or interactions with women at any point.

I've touched on this in other asks, but:

He never asks Peggy out when he has the opportunity; only when he knows it's too late and he won't be expected to follow through (due to him being dead.)

He never makes a move on any of the chorus girls or his female fans (no matter what those creeps M&M claim). Or Private Lorraine. Or Nat. He has to be nagged to make one on Sharon (while Peggy's body's barely had time to cool, and looks fine about never seeing her again lol!) But he goes out of his way to befriend Sam, and waay out of his way to get Bucky back.

Throughout all his films he's consistently assaulted by women, even friends, and never looks happy about it; he also never looks upset when he's rejected or cut off from women love interests, or when he's able to dodge flirting (by, eg. jumping out of a frickin' plane!?)

It's 'his choice', in his own words.

He seems his happiest with women in platonic situations, and only sad about them when it's a question of a shirked duty, a bereavement, or him feeling he's let them down; eg. when Nat dies, when his mother dies, when he's unable to deliver a promised dance to Peggy, etc.

(But it makes people uncomfortable to address this since many of his fans are female.)

But even marrying a woman (albeit the most OOC choice it's physically possible for a Captain America to make, not to mention that it involves abandoning our-Bucky alone in the future). It doesn't preclude Steve from being gay, since lavender marriages were hella common (doubly so for famous gay men).

He could be gay and still in a relationship with Bucky, and married to Peggy. I mean, he's guaranteed a wife who'll spend most of the time away at work, able to use her connections to squash any inconvenient press; and unable to out him or Bucky without ruining her own prestige. Perfect!

Still makes EG Steve a douchebag tho. 😒

.

*we know they frequented north Brooklyn, because Steve said 'I know this neighborhood!' while the Brooklyn Bridge was in sight behind him; but, they got the street angle wrong, cuz they made it look like the BKB has a street which looks right at it, when in fact the street with that famous view is of the Manhattan Bridge. The places Steve describes being beat up; a parking lot, alleyway, and diner, are also all places you'd go while you're Out, rather than where you live. So IMO Steve and Bucky lived somewhere near DUMBO, but not so far east that their view was of the Manhattan Bridge; either Brooklyn Heights or Downtown. So that puts them right in the heart of Gay Brooklyn (as in, Truman Capote had a house there, because Walt Whitman wrote a famous poem about there; that level of gay), next to the Navy Yard and Sands Street (gay cruising central) and they also frequented gay cruising mecca Coney Island (big burlesque hot spot).

#mcu meta #antipeggy #toAyourQ #hey nonny #steve meta #bucky meta #p*ggy meta #anti st*ggy #endgame steve is a skrull #antiendgame #dat's me #bucky barnes #meta #mcu #yet each man queues the thing he loves

[ladykissingfish]

Konoha Nin and Akatsuki Members as Quotes

Kakashi

“People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.” — Logan Pearsall Smith

Sasuke

“I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don’t believe I deserved my friends.” — Walt Whitman

Naruto

“My life feels like a test I didn’t study for.” — Anonymous

Sakura

“Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.” — Joan Crawford

Sai

“Laughing at our mistakes can lengthen our own life. Laughing at someone else’s can shorten it.” — Cullen Hightower

Yamato

“I always wanted to be somebody; but now I realize I should have been more specific.” — Lily Tomlin

Asuma

“If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don't actually live longer; it just seems longer.” — Clement Freud

Choji

“Inside me there’s a thin person struggling to get out, but I can usually sedate him with four or five cupcakes.” — Bob Thaves

Shikamaru

“Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.” — Mark Twain

Ino

“Whoever said money can’t buy happiness didn’t know where to shop.” — Gertrude Stein

Guy Sensei

“A few harmless flakes working together can unleash an avalanche of destruction.” — Justin Sewell

Neji

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has it’s limits.” — Albert Einstein

Lee

“Whatever you do, always give 100%. Unless you’re donating blood.” — Anonymous

Ten Ten

“A woman’s mind is cleaner than a man’s: She changes it more often.” — Oliver Herford

Kiba

“According to a new survey, 90% of men say their lover is also their best friend. Which is really kind of disturbing when you consider man’s best friend is his dog.” — Jay Leno

Shino

“Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self esteem, first make sure that you are not in fact, just surrounding yourself with assholes.” — Unknown

Hinata

“A diamond is simply a lump of coal that did well under pressure.” — Unknown

Jiraiya

“Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.” — Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Tsunade

“Age is just a number. It’s totally irrelevant unless, of course, you happen to be a bottle of wine.” — Joan Collins

Orochimaru

“When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.” — Mark Twain

Konan

“A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong she is until you put her in hot water.” — Eleanor Roosevelt

Nagato

“People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov

Itachi

“Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.” — Stephen Hawking

Kisame

“Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.” — Mark Twain

Deidara If at first you don’t succeed, fix your ponytail, and try again.” — Anonymous

Sasori

“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.” — Oscar Levant

Hidan

“If you find it hard to laugh at yourself, I would be happy to do it for you.” — Groucho Marx

Kakuzu

“Money is not the most important thing in the world. Love is. Fortunately, I love money.” — Jackie Mason

Zetsu

“I intend to live forever. So far, so good.” — Steven Wright

Obito

“I want to be 14 again and ruin my life differently. I have new ideas.” — Unknown

#naruto shippuden #naruto #sasuke #sakura #kakashi #quotes #the akatsuki #deidara #sasori #pein #obito #itachi #konan #kakuzu #hidan #kisame #zetsu #konoha

[ohnohetaliasues]

Stones to Abbigale {Ch. 1}

(Kat)

This is going to be the worst thing I’ve ever read, isn’t it?

Am I going to actively want to die? Yes, most likely. But apparently, because I run a blog like this, I can endure suffering.

Flashbacks to Blood Raining Night.

Here we go. We will start with the introduction, written by the onion lord himself.

I want to be direct, my name is Greg. I go by “Onision” online.

Okay, I dunno what it is, but something feels off about this sentence.

This book is made up of events that occurred in my own life mixed with fiction from the made up life of James. James is essentially a better version of myself.

I can’t imagine how good that could be, seeing as the man who wrote this is a child predator and is just an overall piece of hot garbage.

His home, his school & his life all resemble my own at his age.

Don’t ever use a fucking ampersand instead of the word ‘and.’ It’s just bad grammar.

The people James analyzes and is surrounded by are not so unlike those I’ve known as well.

Analyzes?

Why?

I have experienced much of the loss James has however his happier moments are more often than not also mine.

Then write a memoir. Not this.

I want to share my story without it being purely non-fiction.

I mean, some people do this with books about their lives, but this feels... Odd?

I simply felt this approach would make for a far better book. At points I cried while writing this, at others I laughed.

Congratulations.

I don’t care.

Stones To Abbigale is not just a book I wrote, it is a piece of who I am.

That’s a given for all writers, but I still don’t care. 

I’m going to rip this book to shreds.

Okay here we go.

I was asleep until I met her, but when I woke, I learned the meaning of "perfect imperfection."

Is this Onion boy trying to be poetic?

It actually made me want to die.

I've always been the type of person to focus on stars as we spin beneath them, the cool breeze on a sunny day, scattered patches of grass under my feet, the world around me, often forgetting to even glance at the one within.

‘The one within.’

Okay so the way this is written makes those three things seem disconnected. I often do stuff like this when I write, but I’d write it like ‘as we spin beneath them, focus on the breeze on a sunny day, on the scattered patches of grass, etc.’

You couldn’t pay me all the money in the world to rewrite that garbage sentence. This is all very waxing poetic and not in a good well structured way.

I had remained emotionally unexplored for so much of my life.

That must’ve been boring, not experiencing human emotions like the rest of us.

You sociopath, you.

It's painful knowing some can go an entire lifetime without understanding their own heart, an internal lock waiting for the right key to change everything.

Yeah, whatever, shut the hell up, you whiny idiot.

This is like an introduction by a teenager who just opened a poetry book and was like ‘yup. I wanna write like that.’

Except you aren’t William Blake or Walt Whitman and you never will be.

Sorry, Onion boy.

Except I’m not.

Die mad about it, grease ball.

It was the first Monday of November. I opened my eyes, blinded by my recently painted wall-to-wall white room. Even my bed frame, constructed of purely metal, was painted white.

Okay, cool. I’m a descriptive writer and I take every chance I can get to mention details, but even I find this description awkward. It feels irrelevant in this situation.

It bounced off the walls causing my eyelids to desperately clamp together. Painting my room like this was a clear act of subtle self-inflicted psychological torture.

Then why in the sweet hell did you do it? Do you enjoy suffering?

Actually, he probably does.

Because this is edgy as hell.

I was going through another phase, from darkness to light, and repeat. Seemed like the story of my life.

This is so edgy I am in physical pain.

You know your symbolism is good when it’s so random that you have to point it out and explain it to your audience.

My mom could see the darker colors were depressing me, I felt comforted by them, but found there were good aspects of both extremes. I was happy to visit either side, they are both so simple. But right now the intense light bouncing from wall to wall felt like it was ripping my mind in two.

Am I an idiot or is that just... word salad?

My mom didn't wake me. My alarm clock sat on my dresser with no explanation for it's failure to function. The clock only illuminated a blank stare with 8:17 written all over it's face. While entirely robotic, I imagined the clock to have the dumbest possible expression, one complementing its failure to behave any way outside its random glitch-infested nature.

That was the worst way to write a personification ever, but okay.

In the reflection of it's plastic face I could see myself unconsciously making the dumb expression I was imaging the clock to have. I laughed in my casual dorky tone and began to get ready to leave home.

I’m not laughing, idiot.

Without breakfast, I left for school with a bogus note in hand to idealistically explain my tardiness.

You... You wrote a fake note?

Do you realize you could get in trouble for that?

You’re an idiot.

I think most of my teachers were too exhausted to worry about small variances in our appearance from time to time. With how low their pay likely was, I imagined there were very few rules most teachers cared about.

That isn’t true at all. Teachers have to pay attention to rules unless they want to get, I dunno, fired.

It was another cold day in Lakewood. The wind hit my eyes forcing tears to form in the corners as I sped along the sidewalk at a no-doubt unreasonable speed.

I cannot imagine any good imagery for this scene. I’m just imagining this gif:

I passed Lauren and Raymon walking the opposite direction, no doubt headed toward the nearby church where all the students go to smoke, make out and hide out till school ends.

Um okay. Does this guy know that if characters don’t have relivance to the story, if they have no reason to be named, than they don’t have to be?

No.

Because he’s a 34 year old man baby.

They seemed so childish as they held hands and smiled excitedly as if they had gotten away with some tremendous crime.

That sentence seems so robotic I genuinely can’t.

Mr. Hanson, my heavy-set, middle-aged history teacher, rolled his eyes as I walked into class. "James, talk to me after class" he said quickly, looking away from me as if I were an undervalued employee who was barely important enough to make eye contact with let alone deliver a full sentence to.

It bothers me so deeply that a new paragraph wasn’t started when this character talked.

"I have a note," I said. He ignored me, and continued his lecture on yet another topic that would not only be completely useless later in life, but wasn't even relevant for even a few seconds after the words left his mouth.

Why is this teacher acting like a petty teenager?

I’m deeply annoyed by this.

And yeah, it’s relevant. You have tests, you idiot. Take notes. And it’s also history, which is, again, relevant.

In conclusion, shut your mouth and stop bitching.

There was only 15 minutes left in the class, but I felt it would be more stimulating to integrate myself into the room to yet again study my classmates' behavior than to sit in a hall watching the rows of scum covered tiles inevitably slide off the decaying walls.

That’s a health code violation, friends.

Or Onion is an awful writer and he thinks describing a school like this is a good idea. My money is on that.

For as long as I remember I've enjoyed seeing how people move around and talk to each other, like they're all animals at the zoo.

Something is wrong with you, friend. Liking to people watch is one thing, but doing shit like this is something else entirely.

Uh, try sociopath-like?

Creepy as hell?

We’ll go with both.

I would try to deliver a more accurate analogy if I felt there was one

Bitch, there is. I can’t name one off the top of my head because reading this makes me feel like my brain is melting out of my ears, but I’m 100% sure there is a better analogy. Even though this feels more like a simile.

but so many of them seemed incredibly unaware of themselves, just living life as if it were some generic predefined routine.

Oh, and you’re so much better obviously, you pretentious bastard.

Sometimes I felt like an alien who had a VIP pass to submerge myself in primitive human culture just for entertainment.

Congratulations, that’s also what you sound like.

I sense everything I can take in around me. The seemingly limitless audible tones, tremors in the voices of growing children rang in my ears. In studying people, I found myself gradually learning to literally feel the various personality types I encountered.

Do you... Do you have psychic powers?

If not, shut your damn mouth.

I hyper analyzed every inconsistent smell, the seemingly random clothing styles, freckles, and assorted hairstyles filled my mind with questions. Trying to rationalize and understand what sequence of events led them to decide who they would become.

You are the most pretentious protagonist I have ever read. I’m half a chapter in and I already fucking hate you.

This character is so poorly written and immediately unlikable. i cannot relate to him at all and if someone does, I suggest you go get some help because how this asshole is behaving doesn’t sound human.

I took favor of categorizing most everyone around me. The socially inept know-it-all, the dumb attention-seeking drama kid

On behalf of all drama kids, go fuck yourself.

and the bleach blonde bimbo who gets overly defensive at the slightest hint of criticism.

Do you mean you?

Onion obviously didn’t let anyone edit this garbage.

Then there were the kids who just hoped no one noticed them at all. There was so much to be seen, to be considered and organized in my mind.

Mhm.

I don’t care.

Class had just ended so I walked over to Mr. Hanson's' desk &

And*

placed the tardy note down in passing. As I walked out with the rest of my class, he called after me. "James! We still need to talk!" I responded but continued to walk outside the room. "I have to be early to my next class! Let's talk tomorrow!"

You’re an asshole.

And I hate you.

I walked quickly down the hall towards my art class, which was awkwardly placed in a trailer outside my clearly poorly funded high school.

Um.

Okay.

On my way to the class a fight had already broken out between two jocks who, no doubt, both had controlling, iron-fisted fathers who brainwashed them into believing conflicts between men are best resolved with the bloodying of their fists.

That’s a bold thing to assume, dear Onion.

These kinds of men plagued my mind with wonder. I could not conceive a scenario in which they could justify their primitive & pointless mentalities yet they would always continue to perpetuate their self-destructive attitudes as if it offered the slightest legitimate benefit.

Oh, shut your pretentious mouth.

Most everyone nearby crowded around the fight. None of them likely cared who was winning, what it was about or how far it went. All they ever seemed to show concern for was their own amusement, always excited to see violence without having to pull out their wallets to pay for it.

Are you joking?

Where are the teachers?

This is complete bullshit.

This is high school, not a fucking fight club.

Does Onion even try to make this believable? Or is he just vomiting all over his keyboard and just accepting whatever nonsense that makes?

As the sounds of flesh collided fist to cheek & chest quickly followed the howls from the surrounding students. They would scream "Oooohhhh!" as if it were sincerely delightful to witness creatures like themselves suffer & fall apart before their eyes.

The use of ampersands is making me lose my goddamn mind.

Even if I had time to stop, I never really took pleasure in seeing strangers hurt each other. Most all fights seemed avoidable and were often initiated for a senseless reason.

Go choke on air. This protagonist annoys me more than any protagonist has. I’m not joking. Fuck this dickwad.

I know, you could say it's more complicated than that, I would like to think it were as well, but reality trumps the way I wish things would be. There's no sense in fighting it when doing so rarely helps anyone.

While this is true, this is worded in a way that’s so pretentious it’s painful and also in a way that paints this protagonist in such a white knight-y way that it makes me want to die.

As I approached my next class the image of Abbi's face illuminated the neon walls of my mind like a projector teasing a theatre screen with fleeting moments of depth & purpose.

That is complete and utter word salad. Stop immediately.

Ever since I met her, she had occupied a part of my consciousness; whenever I wasn't near her I missed her to an unrealistic extent. You could call my longing sad especially considering we had barely talked; she just had a strange effect on me, one no doubt similar to a willful addiction.

That’s called a crush, but the way that was just described is so creepy.

There are people in life which we pass by on a daily basis, barely aware of their existence, but on an exceptionally rare occasion you can find a person who fills an area inside your little world you didn't even realize needed filling.

While that’s technically not untrue, it feels like a lizard person is trying to tell me what having a crush on someone is like.

As I walked up the creaking stairs into my art class trailer I could see Abbi was sitting at her shared-desk, alone, same makeup, hairstyle & general appearance I had thought about repeatedly over the last couple days. She was drawing pictures on her blue-lined paper, distracting herself from the cold that filled the oddly glowing room.

This... This imagery is so fucking weird.

I smiled slightly trying not to be too obvious and sat down on my chilled metal chair positioned a few seats to the left in front of her. Glancing over, I could see she hadn't moved at all, I felt like she didn't even notice me come in.

You aren’t the center of her world, so yeah, she’s focused on something else. That’s just how it is, asshat.

I wanted to inspire some acknowledgment of my existence from Abbi so I opened my mouth to greet her when my fingers brushed up against freshly smeared gum under my desk. "Eeew!" I shouted out on impulse. She looked up at me with a blank expression.

I’ve accidentally touched gum on the bottom of my desk before, as I can imagine everyone has, but I’ve never shouted about it like a lunatic.

Bursting into the room came a group of boys. "Dude I think John's done bro!" one of the other boys laughed, saying "Won't see them for a week at least."

Nobody talks like this. Have you ever spoke to another human?

I looked back at Abbi to see she also didn't react to their outburst. Strangely knowing that her apathy was generalized and impersonal gave me comfort.

There needs to be a comma after ‘strangely,’ but whatever.

Her influence on how I felt was obviously dangerous but I didn't care as no matter how fond I was of the idea that I was not of the world, I knew my place and had no real interest in pretending otherwise.

Explain to me how in the hell that’s dangerous.

Jason, one of the boys energetically praising the fight they had just seen, sat in his seat next to Abbi. I smirked watching her shoulders shift away from him. Her body language sent a loud message that she had the same impression of Jason as I did. He was just another moron, placed on this Earth to live his life completely unexamined,

That word is not used properly in that sentence.

a pawn that had no awareness of its own role let alone that it was just another tiny component within a massive unstoppably twisted game.

Shut your pretentious mouth because that doesn’t make any goddamn fucking sense.

I know it sounds morbid and condescending but my attitude was just something that naturally developed the more I studied human behavior.

Bullshit.

I would be more optimistic but I find doing so would be like walking into a room with no windows and turning out the light. If you refuse to see the world around you for what it is you're just wasting your eyes.

Being optimistic means looking on the good side of things. You’ve heard the glass half empty or half full thing. it’s that. And as someone who jumps between optimism and pessimism, being optimistic isn’t like this at all.

Don’t try to be poetic or funny, Onion. Those are two things that you aren’t.

Art class was about to begin. My teacher, Mrs. Stanley, who looked like she should have retired a ridiculous thirty years ago, approached the front of the room talking about how art is sacred. She also discussed the random object she had us all draw the previous school day and ironically graded it by using her own narrow-minded definition of art.

That isn’t ironic.

I always wondered how teachers could even attempt objectively grading art. Is there any logic behind validating a form of self-expression using a cold black and white mathematical system?

It’s a class where you have to follow the curricula. Shut your damn mouth.

And this is coming from someone who hated her art teacher. But this art teacher was so utterly closed minded that she didn’t accept anyone else’s creative process. She basically told us that if we didn’t follow her process, we weren’t real artists.

"Today I'm going to place you with partners" Mrs. Stanley said as she pulled out sheets of paper outlining our activities to come. "To keep this simple, I'm going to partner you with the person you are currently assigned to share a desk with" she said. I sighed knowing I was bound to be paired up with Alex, a guy I had specifically asked to be seated away from ever since he peed in a jar literally right next to me under our desk, acting like he was so cool for publicly exposing himself while simultaneously urinating.

That... He expected to be treated like he was cool for this?

That’s fucking disgusting.

It happened weeks ago and I still can't figure out what kind of crazy it takes for you to, in the presence of people you barely know but have to see nearly on a daily basis, pee in a jar held in your hand just beneath your desk in the middle of a classroom.

At first when I read this, I thought that the wayit was worded made it sound like Alex forced James to hold the jar while he peed in it, but okay, whatever.

What then? You show it off like you will be praised and accepted as if it were an accomplishment? Alex, despite being borderline mental, was one of my least favorite people to study.

It is actually physically exhausting to read this shit. James is a pretentious asshole.

I couldn't help but feel there was some defect in his mind that invalidated the point of conducting a thorough analysis of him.

This just makes it seem like James has mind reading powers.

He was completely irrelevant when considering the realities of normal human behavior.

Behavior you don’t act according to, you lizard person sociopath.

As I was off on a tangent in my own mind I heard a familiar voice ring out, one that inspired the very same emotion you experience when a song you had forgotten you loved, randomly plays in the background of your daily life. "Can I be paired up with James?" her voice was just as I remembered.

Is this Abbi?

I have a friend who spells her name like this, so I really hate that there’s a character in this shitty book who shares a name with her.

Despite her having not spoken in class in some time, she hadn't changed a note. Abbi had interrupted the teacher just to partner with me, but I asked myself if was it really just to work with me or just to get away from Jason.

Um. Okay.

The teacher, looking irritated but understanding Abbi's discomfort with Jason responded "Alex and Jason, you'll be partners. James, switch seats with Jason" "Thank you!" Abbi said with a slight smile. With a cocky grin Jason stood up and in a comedic fashion smelled his armpit. "Wow, I didn't know I smelled that bad" Jason said as he walked over to sit by Alex.

That isn’t funny and Onion boy isn’t funny.

Approaching Abbi was no doubt a way scarier act in my mind than it was to everyone around me, I felt like my head was burning from the inside out.

That’s a little extreme.

Nevertheless I continued to remind myself that her public outcry to partner with me could have meant nothing. I sat down next to her and did all I could not to turn into a complete dork on her. She reached out and grabbed the project outline that was being passed out. Mrs. Stanley began to read the description of the assignment. "Today you will both be taking something meaningful, but expendable, from your own homes."

If something is meaningful it isn’t expendable. Stop.

Mrs. Stanley looked up and emphasized, "That you own!" then looked back down at her paper. "You will tear those items apart here in class. You will then take those items and, using the adhesives, staples and the strings available in class, find a way to create something new out of those possessions."

That’s actually kind of an interesting idea. But like. Maybe with a cup? I don’t wanna rip apart something I care about.

She looked up and said in a low voice sounding somewhat like Dracula "Two, will become one."

That is unnecessarily creepy. It reads like an innuendo.

Also, what in fresh hell does Dracula’s voice sound like?

Did she say it with a Transylvanian accent? I’m confused.

Jason raised his hand objecting, "All due respect Mrs. Stanley I'm not breaking something of mine for this class."

Jason has the right idea.

She replied putting her hands on her hips, "That's fine Jason. We'll supply you with a toilet paper rolls, we have plenty of extras around here." Jason suddenly looked disturbed and sarcastically spouted "Freaking great!"

Why???

That’s better than ripping apart a t-shirt.

Mrs. Stanley asked, "Are you sure? Your grade shouldn't suffer that much if you two just take Alex's piss jar and tape it to a toilet paper roll. You're already failing this class."

What in the literal fuck?!

You cannot say that to students. No, you can’t say that to anyone.

Jason couldn't believe what she had just said

Same.

and Alex maintained an awkward frozen facial expression with his mouth slightly open in his normal weirdo somewhat robotic fashion.

"Oh my god" Abbi whispered under her breath with a slight smirk. I grinned uncontrollably; just seeing her amused was amazing to me.

That wasn’t really funny, it was just shocking.

I could hear a scream in the back of my mind reminding me my dorkiness and borderline obsession was escaping through my face.

It's not that I couldn't help being in awe of Abbi and basically every little thing she did, I simply didn't want to change how I felt. In a way, she was like your favorite song or book, you could pretend not to like it and in time with the right mental coaching maybe you would sincerely dislike it, but life just felt so much better embracing your condition entirely, letting all your nerdy admiration flow freely.

This just reads like an obsession. I don’t have the energy to actually express how romantic feelings actually feel, but this is terrifying.

Mrs. Stanley continued, "If there's anyone else who has an issue, please take it up with my 1800 number which is?" She put her hand up to the air signaling the students to react but only a couple kids replied aloud with her catch phrase. "1-800-BOO-HOOO" they mumbled.

Sweet Jesus.

So this is what it feels like to lose my mind.

She continued, "Good, now for the rest of class please work with your partner on what you plan to bring and draw up a prototype sketch of what you feel your final piece of art will look like." Mrs. Stanley walked to the back of her room and sat down at her 1950's looking rust-infested desk.

Is this school just a giant health code violation? And what the hell do you mean by ‘1950′s desk?’ All I got when I googled that were pictures of wooden desks.

I would always laugh internally when I looked at the old thing. Maybe it was my way of coping with the fact I attended one of the most run down schools in the state.

I have nothing that isn’t full of curse words and fact checking to say here.

"What are you going to bring James?" Abbi asked.

This sentence is put so Abbi looks like she’s asking if James is going to bring himself without the comma after the word ‘bring.’ Did Onion really not edit his book at all? These are simple and fixable grammatical mistakes.

It was amazing hearing my name pass her lips but I had no time to think, if I didn't respond right away she would think I was totally awkward. "I... have no idea..." I responded. Smiling she said, "I'm going to bring my hamster cage", I asked, "Did he die or something?" she laughed, "No, I never got one, the cage was just a gift from my dad."

But you’re supposed to cut it up.

Hamster cages are made of metal.

Does Abbi just have superhuman strength? Is she going to bring a pair of bolt cutters?

"Your dad didn't get you a hamster... for the cage?" I asked.

My question exactly.

Sometimes you just...

You just gotta give your daughter a hamster cage but no hamster.

She paused and started to lose her smile.

Oh fabulous, she’s one of those characters.

At the first sign of her smile fading I felt a crushing pressure in my chest. "Hopefully you can find something that will work with that," she said. I couldn't help but feel like a total jerk despite not even knowing what I did wrong.

That interaction was so... Weird? Robotic? i don’t know. Something felt wrong about it.

I had the overwhelming urge to fix how she felt so I took a gamble, "Well, I could always bring that weird vibrating thing my mom hides in her drawers all wrapped up in a cloth" I said.

What is wrong with you?

I cannot fathom what made Onion think this joke was funny.

She busted out laughing hysterically as a huge grinned filled my face. I was so happy I could get her to smile again. "Eeew! James!" she continued to laugh as the extent of my grin began to stress my cheeks. I couldn't remember a time when I was this obvious about how I felt.

This... Something is wrong with just... all the dialogue.

And with the formatting. You make a new paragraph when someone starts talking. A 34 year old man should know this. He writes like me when I first started writing, and while this probably means he just started writing, I was 11 years old when I wrote like this.

He is a 34 year old adult. There is no excuse for how bad this formatting and how generally terribly written these interactions are.

Abbi's laughing trailed off and she paused. Turning to me she said, "You... you didn't actu- ally... your moms?"

*Pained groaning.*

I responded, "No, I wouldn't know about that, but I'm glad it made you laugh." She responded, returning to a soft laugh "You're more goofy than I thought James." I sat next to her looking at my fingers interlaced in front of me; my wide smile relaxed but still filled my cheeks with warmth.

This entire chapter, everything here, is so awkwardly written.

As class came to a close Abbi patted me on my arm. I turned and she handed me a note. Instinctively I put it in my pocket and said "See ya tomorrow", she just smiled and walked away.

????

On my way to my next class, I opened the note. I didn't understand why, but it read "NISEONE."

Not knowing what to make of it and with little time, I stuffed it back in my pocket to look over later.

Yeah, that’s cryptic as hell.

Not feeling like skating home,

Oh, we’re really getting into edgy 2000′s shit now.

I got on the bus to see all the normal rejects and misfits waiting. Davis, a short and scrawny kid who had been my best friend since middle school despite being one grade behind me excitedly waved me over.

Oh, good, more terrible characters.

"James! Nice to seeeee you!"

Oh, this bitch needs to die.

he said in seemingly the dorkiest way possible. I smiled as he stood up giving me the window seat, knowing very well by then that I preferred it.

Um. Okay.

As I sat down I began looking out the window, analyzing the little humans running left and right to get on their busses.

Buses*

And I am going to eventually kick your ass for this pretentious bullshit.

Something reached out and caught the corner of my eye. I immediately shifted my head to see what it was and quickly realized it was Abbi standing in the parking lot by some beat-up sedan.

"What'cha looking at James?" Davis asked. Without hesitation I began to respond, "Oh, it's Abbi, she's in my art..." my heart sank as I witnessed a boy I barely knew, named Seth, walk up and kiss Abbi on the lips.

Oh, boo fucking hoo. Get over the fact that she has a life outside of your crush on her.

"James?" Davis said, but by that point his voice was a faint echo in the darkness my mind instantaneously lost itself in. I felt like after a life of numbness I was finally about to truly feel warmth for the first time only to have it all taken away in an instant, leaving me hopeless in the shadows, alone once again.

Cry me a goddamn river.

You angsty pretentious idiot.

Don’t give me angsty word salad about how sad this makes you, I don’t actually care at all.

I looked down at my knees feeling as if I lost all muscle control in my neck.

That isn’t a thing that happens ever when someone is upset.

"Are... you ok?" Davis asked. I responded with hesitation "...I'm... just stupid."

You spoke to her once, you fucking dumbass.

"No you're not. You're one of the coolest guys I know!" Davis replied. I continued my silence as he offered words of encouragement. "Okie dokie, well, you're awesome and should be super happy so if you want to talk, I'm your buddy so... so I'm here to talk."

That’s uh, nice of him.

But the way he’s talking sounds like... almost mechanical? All he’s done since he was introduced has been compliment James.

I was too focused on the con- flict raging in my mind to hear anyone at that point. I couldn't think about anything but Seth kissing Abbi the entire trip home.

Oh, get the fuck over it.

That night my mom was literally just serving lentil beans she prepared on her crock-pot for the billionth time, a fair exaggeration but still, it was excessive to say the least. My sister was behaving as she usually did at the dinner table, talking about how stupid she thought school was and how she couldn't wait for college. "How was work mom?"

I mean, I’m also tired of high school. I’m really done with judge-y teenagers.

I asked trying to keep my mind off the haunting images looping in my mind.

YOU HAVE HAD ONE FUCKING CONVERSATION WITH HER. CRY ME A FUCKING RIVER, YOU BITCH.

Any normal person would express disappointment over the fact that a person they like has a boyfriend or girlfriend or partner in general, not go into a damn depression about it.

"Well, no one at work respects me or listens to me and I generally can't stand it, but you know, we still have food on the table" she said in a stern tone.

That

That is weirdly passive aggressive and mechanical.

My sister barked as food flew out of her mouth, "Well at least it's not high school. I'm learning how to be a successful person from a bunch of low-income losers."

Oh, I guess bitching runs in the family.

My mom replied "Whatever your teachers are, they have full-time jobs, which is more than a lot of people can say." My mom gave my sister Lisa a disap- pointed look. Lisa was well known for showing little respect for hard-working people. To her it didn't matter how much you gave back to society, it only mattered how much money you made.

That’s a very black and white way to look at things.

After the rerun of lentil soup I washed the dishes per my mom's orders and headed to the shower. I sat on the floor of the tub thinking about Abbi, barely feeling the water as it hit my chest.

Sat on the floor... while water hits your chest? Are you like sitting with your back arched so the water can hit your chest?

This imagery is so odd.

I was so consumed with what I had seen that I had completely forgotten the note until that moment. I quickly reached over to my pants resting on the toilette.

Why the fuck did you spell toilet like that?

That’s literally the word for ‘toilet’ but in French. It isn’t a spelling used in English. It just makes you sound even more pretentious.

Also, he reached over to the toilet to grab the note from his pants while he’s in the shower?

It’s gonna get wet, you idiot.

I had hoped I read it wrong the first time and that it would make sense with a second look only to see it read exactly what I gathered in my initial passing glance. "NISEONE"

I fucking hate you, Onion.

This literally looks like you scrambled your screen name up.

Die.

In a fire.

I mumbled to myself. I joked with the idea in my head that she handed me the wrong note but still assumed it wasn't a failed attempt to say "Nice one," which could be taken as a compliment if you were desperate enough.

That joke, while just a little funnier, is still fucking lame.

Seconds into looking at the note my eyes widened, having figured out what it meant, I jumped up slipping to my feet and screamed "YEAH!!!" I had cracked it, only to immediately after feel completely stupid for not having figured it out sooner.

I’m just done functioning.

My mom screamed through the door from her bedroom "WHAT?" I responded "Sorry! Nothing!" I hurried to finish showering.

I’d just assume he got really into jerking off.

I’ll see myself out.

Staring at my phone wearing only a towel, I smiled as I typed in "NISEONE" or "647-3663" into the number keys.

That is the most cryptic and strange way to give someone your phone number.

I assumed we shared the same area code otherwise she likely would have given me a longer sequence of letters and I was right. After two rings I got an answer.
"What do you want?" a disgruntled man's voice asked.

This... This girl gave this guy a home phone number?

I guess that’s fine since this is probably set in the early 2000′s, but it’s still odd.

Like a bad engine struggling to start in a monster movie I clumsily belted out a response "I... uh... I was looking for..." An unenthusiastic female voice in the background said, "Give me the phone." "Whatever" he said dropping phone in front of her.

James can apparently see through the phone, or he wouldn’t know that probably Abbi’s dad did this.

"Hello?" I could recognize the voice now it was Abbi.

Trying to hide my excitement by maintaining a normal tone I said, "This is James." Abbi excitedly screamed

Like how girls screamed in Disney Channel shows?

That’s ridiculous.

and responded "Oh my god you figured it out!" Hearing her optimistic tone I laughed saying, "So... why..." She interrupted. "I was hoping to find out if you figured out what you're bringing to art class."

Why the hell didn’t you just fucking ask? Or give him your regular phone number? This is just unnecessarily complicated.

I said "Oh!" and looked quickly around my room. I couldn't see anything immediately so I just said, "I'll... surprise you!" She then replied "Oh come on, tell me." My eyes locked on to a plausible item for the project. "How about my... bear... I'll bring my bear!"

You’re okay with destroying a teddy bear? Okay, I guess.

I said. She replied "Oh, ok, oh! I have an idea. Instead of the cage, I'll bring in a stuffed animal of mine and we'll make like, a zombie bear."

Sounds fine.

I don’t care.

You guys are fucking boring.

I laughed "Awesome" I said. "Ok, I'll see you tomorrow ok?" she replied happily. I answered "Ok, byeee."

I would appreciate it if you would fuck off.

I can’t believe this shit is on GoodReads.

Just before she hung up I could still hear her laughing, leaving me with a sense of accomplishment and a lasting smile as if it were painted across my face.

That’s the end of chapter one?

Oh god, okay.

That was.

Terrible.

The characters are bland and flavorless and I cannot get attached to any of them. I can already tell I’m going to completely despise this.

I’ll see you next time. I need to go think about my life.

~Kat

#self-insert #onision #i want to scream #mod kat #i'm dyin here #what is this #Why am I doing this to myself? #this is terrible #burn this #in a fire #end it #I like literally none of these garbage characters #mary sue #gary stu #huge self insert #like actually end my suffering now #i want to die #Mod Kat reviews stuff #Mod Kat reviews things #stones to abbigale #bad fanfiction #except it's a bad book #bad books

[trojanjean]

Okok so for i whisper with my lips close to your ear 3, 4, 7, and 11

viiktornikiforovs said:Actually for that same fic 9 and 13 as well lol sorry i rlly loved the fic and wanna kno it aaaaallllll but obvs if someone else already asked its no biggie

i’m 100% sure that i answered some of this for the same fic earlier this week but i can’t find the reply so it’s very possible that i accidentally deleted it or answered privately to them or something oops i’m a computer techie yes okay shh i’m just gonna answer again 

 3: What’s your favorite line of narration?

“It got always like this; Yuuri’s gentle, loving power she had over her leading her home, with her soft voice and assertive eyes.

Her beacon in the night.”

I just love how much Vik loves Yuuri, alright? I’ll never shut up about it. Aaand since I struggle with smut scenes, I think this was a nice way to describe an orgasm. 

4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue?

“I-”, Vik tugged Yuuri’s jeans and underwear down her things, “- find it absolutely ridiculous.” Yuuri gasped and her grip on Vik’s hair tightened.

“Why?”

“Because”, Vik said and pushed Yuuri’s pants down her legs and helped her step out of her shoes, then pants. She slid her other hand down to cup her buttock. It was a bit cold, so Vik rubbed it, warming the skin. Then she slid her fingers lower, trailing her forefinger along the crease of Yuuri’s buttock. Her ass was a piece of art.

Vik kissed her dark, curly pubic hair, breathing deep. The hand on her shoulder clenched and Yuuri made an embarrassed sound.

“Because I love you more every single day. It shouldn’t be possible. Every day I keep thinking, “this is the most I’ve loved you”, and yet every morning when I wake up, I think, “no, this is the most I’ve loved you”. My love for you keeps expanding and expanding, like the universe.”

I liked writing this because Vik is sooo sappy and cheesy and doesn’t hesitate to tell Yuuri how much she loves her. 

And, in all its simplicity: 

“ “You’re the only one I love being with”, Vik said. “Did you know?”

“Hmm. Maybe. Some days”, Yuuri admitted.”

7: Where did the title come from?

it’s from Walt Whitman’s poem To You. i LOVE it and i use a lot of song lyrics and poems in my titles. Here are a few lines from the poem: 

Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you   be my poem,I whisper with my lips close to your ear,I have loved many women and men, but I love none better   than you.

isn’t that fucking amazing

9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?

Well, originally I just wanted to write about Yuuri’s thighs and how weak Vik is for them. And at first I didn’t think of them as women but I realised in the middle of it that goddamn we need more genderbend Viktuuri. The original idea was more smut and less feelings but I can’t write anything about Vik and Yuuri without it turning fluffy so here we are. 

11: What do you like best about this fic?

i’m actually pretty happy with how the whole fic turned out! I like how in love they are and how it’s possible to find some comfort and feel good even though everything’s stressful and busy? I always think I can do better, but right now I’m quite glad how I managed to write about Vik’s feelings towards Yuuri! Also, I just really like writing about lesbians. 

13: What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?

I don’t actually listen to music while writing because it makes me lose focus, but there are songs that inspire me to write/get me thinking about themes and feelings and scenes for my stories. So, here are a few songs I listened to when I was planning this fic: 

Jon Bellion - Carry Your Throne (yes, because of that “your legs are the north star” line) 

Jon Bellion - Overwhelming 

The Woodlands - Making Love on the Mountain 

Disclosure & London Grammar - Help Me Lose My Mind 

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ASKING THESE OMFG  

Also, the fic in question is here!  

Ask me about my fanfiction!

#asks #writing #fanfiction #thank you sooo much!!!!! #personal #also i spotted like 100000 mistakes when i scanned through the fic #fuck i need a beta

[networkingdefinition]

Heartbeat Quotes

Official Website: Heartbeat Quotes

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• A Dirty Shame was a crazy movie. I don’t understand that movie at all. I don’t get it, but I’d work with John Waters again in a heartbeat. He’s just a delight. – Selma Blair • A human life is just a heartbeat in heaven. – Robin Williams • A hundred hundred heartbeats…” whispered Sabriel, tears falling down her face. – Garth Nix • A scary dream makes your heart beat faster. Why doesn’t the part of your brain that controls your heartbeat realize that another part of your brain is making the whole thing up? Don’t these people communicate? – George Carlin • A sermon is no sermon in which I cannot hear the heartbeat. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • A span of a few heartbeats can make for a greater memory than the sum of a mundane year.-Catti-brie – R. A. Salvatore • A successful song comes to sing itself inside the listener. It is cellular and seismic, a wave coalescing in the mind and in the flesh. There is a message outside and a message inside, and those messages are the same, like the pat and thud of two heartbeats, one within you, one surrounding. The message of the lullaby is that it’s okay to dim the eyes for a time, to lose sight of yourself as you sleep and as you grow: if you drift, it says, you’ll drift ashore: if you fall, you will fall into place. – Kevin Brockmeier • A weak but steady throb lay beneath Kev’s searching fingertips. Win’s heartbeat…the pulse that sustained his universe. – Lisa Kleypas • Abraham Lincoln is resolute, honest, has the best interest of the nation at heart, and he’s as ugly as homemade Sunday sin, so he is modest, too. I’d vote for that in an undead heartbeat. – Bill Oberst Jr. • Alexia gave in to his demanding touch, but only, of course, because he sounded so pathetic. It had nothing, whatsoever to do with her own quickening heartbeat. – Gail Carriger • All these weirdos, and me getting a little better every day right in the midst of them. I had never known, never even imagined for a heartbeat, that there might be a place for people like us. – Denis Johnson • And at any moment it all ends with a heartbeat…just one heartbeat, and there’s no more time. One heartbeat and the chance to be saved is gone. One heartbeat and there’s no more choosing—it’s all sealed for eternal life or eternal death. – Jonathan Cahn • And since time sets its own tempo, like a heartbeat or an ebb tide, timepieces don’t really keep time. They just keep up with it, if they’re able. – Dava Sobel • Any chance he’s turned a new leaf and taken up sailing for real?” “About as likely as me doing it.” Hadrian eyed Royce for a heartbeat. “I put him at the top of the list. – Michael J. Sullivan • Anything I’ve asked of MGM Grand, they’ve done for me in a heartbeat. They’re all about making entertainers and athletes happy. – Floyd Mayweather, Jr. • Around us, life bursts with miracles–a glass of water, a ray of sunshine, a leaf, a caterpillar, a flower, laughter, raindrops. If you live in awareness, it is easy to see miracles everywhere. Each human being is a multiplicity of miracles. Eyes that see thousands of colors, shapes, and forms; ears that hear a bee flying or a thunderclap; a brain that ponders a speck of dust as easily as the entire cosmos; a heart that beats in rhythm with the heartbeat of all beings. When we are tired and feel discouraged by life’s daily struggles, we may not notice these miracles, but they are always there. – Nhat Hanh • As he gave a sleepy, growling groan, that hand disappeared under the sheet. Arizona’s lips parted, and her heartbeat tripped up. She cleared her throat. “Spencer?” Freezing, without moving any other body part, he opened his eyes and met her gaze. She frowned at him. He didn’t look super-startled, and he said nothing. He just started at her. With his hand still under there. “Yeah…” Semi-satisfied with his frozen reaction, she nodded at his lap. “You weren’t going for a little tug, were you? Because as your spectator, I’d just as soon not see it.” -Arizona and Spencer – Lori Foster • Assured of your salvation by the unique grace of our Lord Jesus Christ” is the heartbeat of the gospel, joyful liberation from fear of the Final Outcome, a summons to self-acceptance, and freedom for a life of compassion toward others. – Brennan Manning • Athletic ability can be taken away like that. It can all end in a heartbeat. – Tim Tebow

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Heartbeat', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_heartbeat').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_heartbeat img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Basketball is a beautiful game when the five players on the court play with one heartbeat. – Dean Smith • Because it was starting to get dark, and because the streets were crowded, I bumped into a googolplex people. Who were they? Where were they going? What were they looking for? I wanted to hear their heartbeats, and I wanted them to hear mine. – Jonathan Safran Foer • Being the foundation is what I live for, some people call it being in the pocket, some people call it a groove. I think it’s the heartbeat. There’s nothing that feels better than that. – Tommy Shannon • Breath and brevity are sisters; the long-winded is an enemy who muffles your heartbeat. – Shirley Geok-lin Lim • By writing at the instant, the very heartbeat of life is caught. – Walt Whitman • Can I be blamed for wanting a real body, to put my arms around? Without it I too am disembodied. I can listen to my own heartbeat against the bedsprings…but there’s something dead about it, something deserted. – Margaret Atwood • Christ used the flesh and blood of Mary for his life on earth, the Word of love was uttered in her heartbeat. Christ used his own body to utter his love on earth; his perfectly real body, with bone and sinew and blood and tears; Christ uses our bodies to express his love on earth, our humanity. A Christian life is a sacramental life, it is not a life lived only in the mind, only by the soul… Our humanity is the substance of the sacramental life of Christ in us, like the wheat for the host, like the grape for the chalice. – Caryll Houselander • Dance is your pulse, your heartbeat, your breathing. It’s the rhythm of your life. It’s the expression in time and movement,in happiness, joy, sadness and envy. – Jacques d’Amboise • Dance is your pulse, your heartbeat, your breathing. It’s the rhythym of your life. – Jacques d’Amboise • Do I miss football in Scotland? It keeps you really alive, that’s for sure. Your heartbeat fluctuates. I’m flatlining at the moment which is actually quite nice but you need to go up and down to stay alive. – Gordon Strachan • Do not leave me, hide in my heart like a secret, wind around my head like a turban. “I come and go as I please,” you say, “swift as a heartbeat.” You can tease me as much as you like but never leave me. – Rumi • Don’t do it for the money. Follow the path to do what makes your heartbeat faster. Follow your passion. – Lynn Tilton • Even still, we run. We have not reached our average of 57.92 years without knowing that you run through it, and it hurts and you run through it some more, and if it hurts worse, you run through it even more, and when you finish, you will have broken through. In the end, when you are done, and stretching, and your heartbeat slows, and your sweat dries, if you’ve run through the hard part, you will remember no pain. – Lauren Groff • Everybody gave 100%. I mean everyone, because they all knew that the film had the bones and the heartbeat of something that could be good. And everyone was in on it and wanted it for me and wanted it for Roger and Beau. – Pierce Brosnan • Felt my heartbeat falter, hesitate, then stumble awkwardly forward, tripping on the next beat, then the next, faster and faster until each one tumbled into the other like the drumroll of dominoes crashing together. Funny how time stands still when death is imminent. – Darynda Jones • Find a guy who calls you beautiful instead of hot, who calls you back when you hang up on him, who will lie under the stars and listen to your heartbeat, or will stay awake just to watch you sleep…wait for the boy who kisses your forehead, who wants to show you off to the world when you are in sweats, who holds your hand in front of his friends, who thinks you’re just as pretty without makeup on. One who is constantly reminding you of how much he cares and how lucky his is to have you….The one who turns to his friends and says, ‘that’s her.’ – Chuck Palahniuk • Firepaw held the menacing amber gaze for few moments. Warrior and apprentice, for a heartbeat their eyes were locked as enemies. – Erin Hunter • Five is for five heartbeats, the length of time it takes to breathe in or out. For that is how quickly a life may change, for better or for ill. The time it takes to make up, or change, your mind. – Cameron Dokey • For at no time are any events predestined. There should be no such word in your vocabulary, for with every moment you change, and every heartbeat is an action, and every action changes every other action. – Seth • For God’s sake, Stiff,” he says. “You don’t have to follow me,” I say staring at the maze of bars above me. I shove my foot onto the place where two bars cross and push myself up, grabbing another bar in the process. I sway for a second, my heart beating so hard I can’t feel anything else. Every thought I have condenses into that heartbeat, moving at the same rhythm. “Yes, I do,” he says. – Veronica Roth • Genetics and beats? I feel like the drumbeat is a natural thing. Our heartbeat moves at a certain BPM. The drumbeat, being the first instrument, the platform for us, being that we all kind of come from that – it’s all beats. – Q-Tip • God had a heartbeat for 18-25 years old…the vast majority of whom don’t have a clue why they are on this planet. – Louie Giglio • God has called us into a place of tenderness, when nobody is looking, when there are no great decisions to make, when it’s just him and me in a hotel room, with no one to pray for, no one to preach to. When it is just two people in a room, that’s where you learn. That’s where you learn his heartbeat. That’s where you learn the presence. That’s where you learn the voice. It’s in the moments when nobody is watching, nobody is evaluating how good you’re doing. When it is just you and him. – Bill Johnson • He got right down in the dark between heartbeats, and rested there. And then he saw that another one wasn’t going to come. That’s it. That’s the last. He looked at the dark. I would like to take this opportunity, he said, to pray for another human being. – Denis Johnson • He had also the reputation of being a bit of a lady killer. But that probably accrued to him from his possession of a laughing, velvety voice which no girl could hear without a heartbeat, and a dangerous way of listening as if she were saying something that he had longed all his life to hear. – Lucy Maud Montgomery • He had on bunny slippers. These had fangs. They all stared at them in silence for about a heartbeat, and then Shane said, “That is impressively wicked. Crazy, but wicked. – Rachel Caine • He took both of my hands, twisting to face me more fully on the flattened box beneath us, and again the colors in his irises seemed to pulse with my heartbeat. – Rachel Vincent • He was afraid that the secrets she’d kept would always be here, inside him, an ugly malignant thing lodged near enough to his heart to upset its rhythm, and though it could be removed, cut out, there would always be scars; bits and pieces of it would remain in his blood, making it wrong somehow, so that if he accidentally sliced his skin open, his blood would–for one heartbeat–flow as black as India ink before it remembered that it should be red. – Kristin Hannah

• He’d half meant to speak but those eyes had altered the world forever in the space of a heartbeat. – Cormac McCarthy • Her heartbeat was in her hands, her heart beat the way she moved her head, her whole body was her heart beating. – Tom Spanbauer • Her mind emptied of everything but the gusting wind and how fragile Wolf looked in that heartbeat, like one movement could break him open. – Marissa Meyer • Here’s what I love: when a great writer turns me into a Jew from Chicago, a lesbian out of South Carolina, or a black woman moving into a subway entrance in Harlem. Turn me into something else, writers of the world. Make me Muslim, heretic, hermaphrodite. Put me into a crusader’s armor, a cardinal’s vestments. Let me feel the pygmy’s heartbeat, the queen’s breast, the torturer’s pleasure, the Nile’s taste, or the nomad’s thirst. Tell me everything that I must know. Hold nothing back. – Pat Conroy • His eyes search the crowd until they find my face. My heartbeat lives in my throat; lives in my cheeks. “I still don’t understand,” he says softly, “how she knew that it would work. – Veronica Roth • His gaze was a lot steadier than her heartbeat. “She’s the reason for those whispered phone calls I used to overhear, isn’t she?” “Don’t be silly. I was talking to my lover.” “She told me she lives at a place called Brookdale. After I hung up, I did a little research on the Web. Your talent for obfuscation continues to amaze me.” “Hey, I haven’t obfuscated in weeks. Makes you go blind. – Susan Elizabeth Phillips • Holding Eleanor’s hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive. As soon as he touched her, he wondered how he’d gone this long without doing it. He rubbed his thumb through her palm and up her fingers, and was aware of her every breath. – Rainbow Rowell • Holding Eleanor’s hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive. – Rainbow Rowell • How do you know that? (Stryker) I know everything. I feel every heartbeat in the universe. Hear every scream for mercy and feel every tear of pain. (Jared) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • How was it that, even in the common tasks of an ordinary life, Jesus drew the praise of heaven? At the core of His being, He only did those things which pleased the Father. In everything, He stayed true, heartbeat to heartbeat, with the Father’s desires. Jesus lived for God alone; God was enough for Him. Thus, even in its simplicity and moment-to-moment faithfulness, Christ’s life was an unending fragrance, a perfect offering of incomparable love to God. – Francis Frangipane • I asked Chief Justice John Roberts about this definition of life – you know, what is life? The Supreme Court can’t figure it out or doesn’t want us to figure it out; the fact that we know that there is no life if there’s no heartbeat and brainwaves. – Tom Coburn • I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises. – Neil Armstrong • I believe that the Good Lord gave us a finite number of heartbeats and I’m damned if I’m going to use up mine running up and down a street. – Neil Armstrong • I can hear sweat trickling down your cheek. Your heartbeat sound like Sasquatch feet. Thundering, shaking the concrete. – The Notorious B.I.G. • I come prepared with the white suit and stethoscope, Listen to your heartbeat, delete beep beep BEEP. Your insurance is high, but my price is cheap. – Kool Keith • I could fall for you in a heartbeat – Ken Follett • I could take you down on this sidewalk and be up that skirt of yours in a heartbeat. And you wouldn’t fight me, would you? No, she probably wouldn’t. Wrath and Beth – J.R. Ward • I didn’t mean to send love letters, but that is what they became. On their way to you, my words turned into heartbeats on the page. – Lisa Kleypas • I don’t audition for “on-air” commercials – the ones where your face can be seen. I’ve auditioned for voiceover campaigns that I haven’t gotten, but I don’t really want to be seen in a commercial unless it’s a product that I really love. Like, if Adidas asked me, I would do it in a heartbeat. But I did a Reebok commercial, one for Pep Boys, one for Dunkin’ Donuts. I auditioned for commercials, but I really couldn’t stomach it. It just didn’t feel right. – Michael Showalter • I don’t have any choice any more. I am in a choiceless awareness. I don’t have to be aware. I am simply aware. Now it is just like my heartbeat or like my breathing. Even if I try not to be aware, it is not possible; the very effort will make me more aware. Awareness is not a quality, a characteristic; it is your whole being. When you become aware, there is no choice left to be otherwise. – Rajneesh • I dreamed you a field of running horses, Selah. For you, Bianca, a balloon the size of the sky, my body a kite you can throw into the air.Pull me by string and horse.Tell me everything won’t end in death. That everything doesn’t end with February. Dead wildflowers wrapped around a crying baby’s throat.I’ve slowed my heartbeat to three beats a minute. I’ve redrawn the clouds into birds, a fox chasing them into the mountains.I’m going to move my hand today.I vomit ice cubes.There’s a ghost next to me.Get up, Dad.(Light Boxes) – Shane Jones • I endorse only products I actually use. Like Wheaties keeps offering me money, but I don’t eat Wheaties, so I can’t do it. Now, if Rice Krispies or Frosted Flakes offered me a deal, I’d take it right away. Apple Jacks, I’d be on the box in a heartbeat. Apple Shaqs. Yeah. – Shaquille O’Neal • I feel his heartbeat against my cheek,as fast as my own. “Are you afraid of me, too, Tobias?” “Terrified,” he replies with a smile. – Veronica Roth • I feel like I’ve gotten an extraordinary opportunity to experience a sort of collective humanity. If you hug many people in such a short period of days you pick up on a communal energy, almost like feeling a giant heartbeat that everyone is beating together. – Rob Bell • I feel the flatline of my existence disrupting, forming heartbeat hills and valleys – Isaac Marion • I folded myself against her body, breathing in the smell of my new life and matching my heartbeat to hers” Sam, Linger – Maggie Stiefvater • I grew up among strong women so I know what it’s like to be loved and humiliated in a heartbeat. – Chris O’Dowd • I have this great fear of people – not when I’m on the runway, but backstage. In a room full of people, I really suffer. I sort of go into a tunnel and I feel very removed. I get so tense, I can’t swallow, and my heartbeat goes way up. It still happens now, although I’m better at controlling it. – Linda Evangelista • I hear my heartbeat. I have been looking at him too long, but then, he has been looking back, and I feel like we are both trying to say something the other can’t hear, though I could be imagining it. Too long – and now even longer, my heart even louder, his tranquil eyes swallowing me whole. – Veronica Roth • I knew there was only one place to go. I sank down into the center of my soul, grew still, and listened to the Rabbi’s heartbeat. – Brennan Manning • I know I hated magic for a reason,” Janco said. “Congratulations. This is the first time you’ve had a VALID reason to hate something,” Ari countered. “Remember your campaign against sand?” “Sand! Horrid little stuff. Gets everywhere. I had a perfectly good argue–” “Janco.” Ari’s voice rumbled deep in his throat. In a heartbeat, Janco switched gears. “Well, this blood magic sounds worse than sand. – Maria V. Snyder • I know there’s some poetry that sort of sounds like daisies, but most of the good poetry is also [political], you can feel the heartbeat; it’s about some situation that concerns human beings under duress. It’s suggesting a solution, or just acknowledging that [the situation] exists. Art does that. – Toni Morrison • I leapt eagerly into books. The characters’ lives were so much more interesting than the lonely heartbeat of my own. – Ruta Sepetys • I listened to the wind bury winter; and when I tasted his grace, his grace had no name; only, night became something else in his presence, as though darkness had a soul, here, swaying to heartbeats roaring. – Marjorie M. Liu • I love you,” she whispered. He stroked his hand down her back. “Yep, you do.” “You’re supposed to say it back,” she said, pretending to be offended because the silliness kept the fear/hope at bay. “Why?” He scowled down at her. “You know you’re my heartbeat. – Nalini Singh • I loved the idea that people dressed up to go to the gardens. Our work always has a utility point of view at its heartbeat and then other things come around it, so it really allowed us to use denims and suedes and gauzes, and those sorts of hard-working fabrics – workwear fabrics – and then contrast them with crepe de chine, beautiful florals and big jewelry. – Karen Walker • I measure the moment in the heartbeats I skip – David Levithan • I most resemble Benjamin Button. I evolve. I attach myself to the heartbeat of whatever is going on at that particular time, or I just chart a new path. – J. B. Smoove • I need music. It’s like my heartbeat, so to speak. It keeps me going no matter what’s going on – bad games, press, whatever! – LeBron James • I stare at him. I feel my heartbeat everywhere, even in my toes. I feel like doing something bold, but I could just as easily walk away. I am not sure which option is smarter, or better. I am not sure that I care. – Veronica Roth • I think my heartbeat might be the Morse code for ‘inappropriate.’ – Rives • I thought that you had stood up for the free will & rights of humans in this town.” “Depends on the human,” Claire said. “As far as I know, Hitler had a heartbeat, and I wouldn’t vote him to be in charge. – Rachel Caine • I try hard to hold fast to the truth that a full and thankful heart cannot entertain great conceits. When brimming with gratitude, one’s heartbeat must surely result in outgoing love, the finest emotion we can ever know. – Bill W. • I used to skip school to go there when I was growing up in Newark, … I saw the Flamingos, the Heartbeats, Jackie Wilson, Chuck Jackson. – George Clinton • I was a barmaid for my mum for years, as we lived above a pub. I still can’t hear the Heartbeat theme tune without breaking into a cold sweat, as it used to start at the same time as my shift. – Sara Cox • I work between my heartbeat. I have one-and-a-half seconds to actually move. And at the same time I have to watch I don’t inhale my own work. – Willard Wigan • I would rather have strong enemies than a world of passive individualists. In a world of passive individualists nothing seems worth anything simply because nobody stands for anything. That world has no convictions, no victories, no unions, no heroism, no absolutes, no heartbeat. That world has rigor mortis. – Criss Jami • I would’ve done it for you in a heartbeat. – Julie James • If I could be a country music star, I’d do it in a heartbeat. I’d hit the road and just jam out. – Justin Deeley • If I had to give up cheese or chocolate, I’d give up chocolate in a heartbeat. – Amanda Peet • If I have to remove one to save ten, I’ll do it in a heartbeat. If I have to waterboard somebody to save a thousand people, I’ll do it in a heartbeat. – Sean Patrick Flanery • If it came down to that, I’d protect you in a heartbeat. – Nicholas Sparks • If there was another Dr. Quinn movie, I would do it in a heartbeat. – Joe Lando • If they asked me if I wanted to go into space tomorrow, I’d do it in a heartbeat. On the other hand, if they asked me if I wanted to go into training for three years and then go into space again, I’d probably say no. – Sally Ride • If you have a heartbeat, there’s still time for your dreams. – Sean Stephenson • If you put two brigades on the ground right now with U.S. forces, they would push ISIS back into Syria in a heartbeat. – Anthony Zinni • If you want to say something profound, writing from your heartbeat is different than writing from the loud voices you get from music. If they’re rapping from noise, it’s about robbing people. It’s that simple. – Russell Simmons • If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats. – Richard Bach • I’m a really athletic person – I’m not that coordinated, but I’m really athletic, so I would play a superhero doing my own stunts in a heartbeat. But hopefully not taking swings at people. That’s not a good idea for me. – Selma Blair • I’m not sure that people want to go back to the womb. People want to go back to the teats of your mother and hear your mother’s heartbeat. – Gaspar Noe • I’m on a Mission, that niggaz say is Impossible, But when I swing my swords they all choppable, I be the body dropper, the heartbeat stopper, Child educator, plus head amputator. – GZA • I’m sure you would have stopped it if you could have.” “In a heartbeat. – Kiera Cass • I’m the ruler in my kingdom and my dark seat is hot. Step into my world and your heartbeat stop! – Aaron Dontez Yates • I’m very proud to be Canadian, but I would move to New York in a heartbeat. – Lexa Doig • In a heartbeat, a thousand voices took up the chant. King Joffrey and King Robb and King Stannis were forgotten, and King Bread ruled alone. “Bread.” they clamored. “Bread, Bread! – George R. R. Martin • In order to terminate a pregnancy, you have to still a heartbeat, switch off a developing brain. – Christopher Hitchens • In the end mortals always expired before faeries. They were such finite creatures. Their first heartbeat and breath were but a blink from death. To add the weight of nourishing his insatiable court in a time of peace was to hasten that unconscionably. – Melissa Marr • In the silence between your heartbeat bides a summons. Do you hear it? Name it if you must, or leave it forever nameless, but why pretend it is not there? – Rumi • In the time just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when Perfidia opens, we were pre-psychologized. There were no concepts of identity, no politics of victimization. Reparation wasn’t in the language. Nobody thought about giving the great grandchildren of black slaves so much as $1.98. And all of a sudden the bombs hit, interventionism versus isolationism became a dead issue, and it was us-versus-them in a heartbeat. – James Ellroy • In this world, there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body time.” “They do not keep clocks in their houses. Instead, they listen to their heartbeats. They feel the rhythms of their moods and desires.” “Then there are those who think their bodies don’t exist. They live by mechanical time. They rise at seven o’clock in the morning. They eat their lunch at noon and their supper at six. They arrive at their appointments on time, precisely by the clock.- Alan Lightman • In your hands The dog, the donkey, surely they know They are alive. Who would argue otherwise? But now, after years of consideration, I am getting beyond that. What about the sunflowers? What about The tulips, and the pines? Listen, all you have to do is start and There’ll be no stopping. What about mountains? What about water Slipping over rocks? And speaking of stones, what about The little ones you can Hold in your hands, their heartbeats So secret, so hidden it may take years Before, finally, you hear them? – Mary Oliver • It is a real issue, a measurement of our society, when we say it’s fine to destroy unborn life who has a heartbeat at 16 days post-conception. – Tom Coburn • It only takes one mistake,’ the Dan Banyan guy says, ‘and nothing else you ever do will matter.’ With his empty hand, he takes one of my hands. His fingers feel hot, fever-hot, and pounding with his heartbeats. He turns my hand palm-up saying, ‘No matter how hard you work or how smart you become, you’ll always be known for that one poor choice.’ He sets the blue pill on my palm, saying, ‘Do that one wrong thing- and you’ll be dead for the rest of your life.- Chuck Palahniuk • It took my breath away, that evening. If you’ve ever dreamed that you walked into your best-loved book or film or TV program, then maybe you’ve got some idea how it felt: things coming alive around you, strange and new and utterly familiar at the same time; the catch in your heartbeat as you move through the rooms that had such a vivid untouchable life in your mind, as your feet actually touch the carpet, as you breathe the air; the odd, secret glow of warmth as these people you’ve been watching for so long, from so far away, open their circle and sweep you into it. – Tana French • It’s time we put thoughts of lack behind us. It’s time for us to discover the secrets of the stars, to sail to an uncharted land, to open up a new heaven where our spirits can soar. But first we’ll have to make changes. And lasting change does not happen overnight. Lasting change happens in infinitesimal increments: a day, an hour, a minute, a heartbeat at a time… – Sarah Ban Breathnach • It’s weird how your perspective changes. At the start of your career, you think, ‘I just want to do cutting-edge work that makes people think.’ Now, I would do a blockbuster in a heartbeat. – Matthew Rhys • I’ve learned that I can’t do it all at once. So, you have to figure out your angle of attack. Coming in on the acting front, acting is a passion of mine. It’s a true love. Dancing, I kind of just fell into. Choreographing, the same thing. But making films, producing and directing, that’s the heartbeat of my existence. – Columbus Short • Laughter is the best way To make somebody’s heart beat – Robert Holden • Let me say, it’s – what a commentary it is on American media that you have to go to Russian television in order to get covered as a candidate in this election. It’s pretty outrageous. And our media could solve that in a heartbeat if they actually opened it up, you know, but they don’t. So I think that’s more commentary on the crisis in our media. – Jill Stein • Liam in Taken has been great to see. My boys love it. They love him. And there’s just the gravitas to it. It’s believable. You know the guy’s endured. You know the guy’s lived some life. Someone like Liam has lived a lot of life. Myself, I’ve lived a lot of life. There’s loss. There’s success. There’s loss. There’s doubts. And there’s some heartbeat there. – Pierce Brosnan • Lies were like acid, corrosive: They could dissolve trust in a heartbeat. – Rob Thurman • Life is a disease, brother, and death begins already at birth. Every breath, every heartbeat, is a moment of dying – a little shove toward the end. – Erich Maria Remarque • Life is more than breath and a heartbeat; meaning and purpose are the life of life. – Desmond Tutu • Life isn’t measured in minutes, but in heartbeats. – Joan Lowery Nixon • Like a heartbeat. Something inside me. Some dream. I think it’s being a dreamer as a child. Dreamy kids become actors, don’t they? – Michael Gambon • Louis-Cesare’s anger suddenly filled the small room like water, and in a heartbeat his eyes went from silver tinged to as solid as two antique coins. I sat frozen, awash in a sea of power. I was beginning to understand why Mircea had wanted him along, only Daddy had failed to mention anything about the hair-trigger temper. I guess he assumed the red hair would clue me in. – Karen Chance • Love is connected to the heart. When the Name of God Allah is synchronized with the heartbeat, it then travels through the blood to all the veins, reaches the spirits and awakens them. Then the spirits are rejuvenated and go into the Love of God. – Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi • Love is the heartbeat of all life. – Paramahansa Yogananda • Maybe, he said hesitantly, maybe there is a beast. The assembly cried out savagely and Ralph stood up in amazement. You, Simon? You believe in this? I don’t know, said Simon. His heartbeats were choking him. […] Ralph shouted. Hear him! He’s got the conch! What I mean is . . . maybe it’s only us. Nuts! That was from Piggy, shocked out of decorum. – William Golding • Music gets inside you, music captures you. Music becomes your heartbeat. It’s a drug and makes you feel whatever the song’s about. – Ed Westwick • music is about as physical as it gets: your essential rhythm is your heartbeat; your essential sound, the breath. We’re walking temples of noise, and when you add tender hearts to this mix, it somehow lets us meet in places we couldn’t get to any other way. – Anne Lamott • Music is the elixir of life. It can mimic the heartbeats of our bodies and heal like a magic wand… The resonance it creates in our bodies cannot be replicated by any medicine. – Walter Mikac • My heart beat Beats me senselessly Why’s everything Gotta be so intense with me. – Katy Perry • My heart is fluid and soaring. There’s no longer any space between heartbeats. – Lauren Oliver • My little dog – a heartbeat at my feet. – Edith Wharton • My loving sister Mary has always shared the pain and pleasure of my heartbeat in a unique and special way. We have sung our sad and warm songs together. – John Henrik Clarke • Namby-pamby little routines that don’t speed up your heartbeat and make you sweat aren’t worth your while. – Jane Fonda • No, there is literally nothing on the business side that I wouldn’t sacrifice in a heartbeat to have an extra couple of hours’ writing. Nothing. – J. K. Rowling • Nothing endures except change; nothing is constant except death. Every heartbeat wounds us, and life would be an eternal bleeding to death, were it not for literature. It grants us what nature does not: a golden time that doesn’t rust, a springtime that never wilts, cloudless happiness and eternal youth. [my translation] – Ludwig Borne • Oh, honey, if he swung batter-batter for my team, I’d be all over that in a heartbeat. – J. Lynn • Okay, okay.” I set my hand on top of his and guide it to my chest, so it’s right over my heart. “Feel my heartbeat. Can you feel it?” “Yes.” “Feel how steady it is?” “It’s fast.” “Yes, well, that has nothing to do with the box.” I wince as soon as I’m done speaking. I just admitted to something. Hopefully he doesn’t realize that. – Veronica Roth • Once I was lost in a forest. I was so afraid. My blood pounded in my chest and I knew my heart’s strength would soon be exhausted. I saved myself without thinking. I grasped the two syllables closest to me, and replaced my heartbeat with your name. – Anne Michaels • One has to reach to the absolute state of awareness: that is Zen. You cannot do it every morning for a few minutes or for half an hour and then forget all about it. It has to become like your heartbeat. You have to sit in it, you have to walk in it. Yes, you have even to sleep in it. – Rajneesh • One’s life story cannot be told with complete veracity. A true autobiography would have to be written in states of mind, emotions, heartbeats, smiles and tears; not in months and years, or physical events. Life is marked off on the soul by feelings, not by dates. – Helen Keller • Our breath, like our heartbeat, is the most reliable rhythm in our lives. When we become attuned to this constant rhythm, our breath can gradually teach us to come back to the original silence of the mind. – Donna Farhi • Our story opens in the mind of Luther L. (L for LeRoy) Fliegler, who is lying in his bed, not thinking of anything, but just aware of sounds, conscious of his own breathing, and sensitive to his own heartbeats. Lying beside him is his wife, lying on her right side and enjoying her sleep. – John O’Hara • Over the past year I’vediscovered if you keep on giving and giving, you end up losing yourself. I think that learning to give and receive is the trick. Perfect happiness is also a feeling, and the most amazing thing is that we were all born with the gift to make it happen in a heartbeat. Putting on certainmusic, reading something can make us feel a certain way. I think the key to happiness is allowing ourselves to not feel bad or guilty for feeling it, and letting it be contagious. And to not be dependent on other people to create your own happiness. – Brittany Murphy • Patients know in a heartbeat if they’re getting a clumsy exam. – Abraham Verghese • People who are in it for their own good are individualists. They don’t share the same heartbeat that makes a team so great. A great unit, whether it be football or any organization, shares the same heartbeat. – Bear Bryant • Perhaps the Wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silence that reminds us we live by grace. – Terry Tempest Williams • Promise to my momma I’ma make it to the Top..So I’ma keep climbing til my heartbeat drop – J. Cole • Raindrops are my only reminder that clouds have a heartbeat. That I have one, too. – Tahereh Mafi • Remember that reputation and integrity are your most valuable assets – and can be lost in a heartbeat. – Charlie Munger • Remember, we could solve this in a heartbeat with ranked-choice voting. The Democrats won’t pass it. This allows you to rank your choices and eliminates the intimidation and the fear. They won’t pass it; I know because I helped file the bill. Sixteen years ago in Massachusetts they could have solved the spoiler problem. They won’t do it because they rely on fear. The fact that they rely on fear tells you something very important. They are not on your side. For that reason alone, they do not deserve your vote. – Jill Stein • Reshaping life! People who can say that have never understood a thing about life—they have never felt its breath, its heartbeat—however much they have seen or done. They look on it as a lump of raw material that needs to be processed by them, to be ennobled by their touch. But life is never a material, a substance to be molded. If you want to know, life is the principle of self-renewal, it is constantly renewing and remaking and changing and transfiguring itself, it is infinitely beyond your or my obtuse theories about it. – Boris Pasternak • Reyes, what happened?” He‘d been busy nibbling his way to my collarbone, his hot mouth evoking seismic activity at each point of contact. I really hated to interrupt, but … “Reyes, are you listening to me?” He raised his head, a sensual grin playing at the corners of his mouth, and said, “I‘m listening.” “To what? The sound of blood rushing to your nether regions?” “No,” he said with a husky chuckle that made me tingle everywhere. “To your heartbeat. – Darynda Jones • Right now there’s a man on the street outside my door with outstretched hands full of heartbeats no one can hear. He has cheeks like torn sheet music every tear-broken crescendo falling on deaf ears. At his side there’s a boy with eyes like an anthem no one stands up for. – Andrea Gibson • Sarah Palin lacked the preparation or temperament to be one heartbeat away from the presidency, but what she possessed in abundance was the ability to inflame political passions and energize the John McCain campaign with star quality. – Roger Ebert • Scientists say every action initiates an equal and opposite reaction. I say that’s just the start. I say every action initiates a most unequal and upredictable chain reaction, that every filament of living becomes part of a larger weave, while remaining identifiable. That every line of latitude requires several stripes of longitude to obtain meaning. That every universe is part of a bigger heaven, a heaven of rhythm and geometry, where a heartbeat is the apex of a triangle. – Ellen Hopkins • Sean reaches out between us and takes my wrist. He press his thumb on my pulse. My heartbeat trips and surges against his skin. I’m pinned by his touch, a sort of fearful magic. We stand and stand, and I wait for my pulse against his finger to slow, but it doesn’t Finally, he releases my wrist and says,” I’ll see you on the cliffs tomorrow. – Maggie Stiefvater • She closes the door completely, and I crouch there. I allow myself to fall forward and rest my head on the door frame. My breath bleeds. My heartbeat drowns my ears. – Markus Zusak • She moved nearer, leaned her shoulder against me — and we were one, and something flowed from her into me, and I knew: this is how it must be. I knew it with every nerve, and every hair, every heartbeat, so sweet it verged on pain. And what joy to submit to this ‘must’. A piece of iron must feel such joy as it submits to the precise, inevitable law that draws it to a magnet. Or a stone, thrown up, hesitating a moment, then plunging headlong back to earth. Or a man, after the final agony, taking a last deep breath — and dying. – Yevgeny Zamyatin • She was my dream. She made me who I am, and holding her in my arms was more natural to me than my own heartbeat. I think about her all the time. Even now, when I’m sitting here, I think about her. There could never have been another. – Nicholas Sparks • Some emotions don’t make a lot of noise. It’s hard to hear pride. Caring is real faint – like a heartbeat. And pure love – why, some days it’s so quiet, you don’t even know it’s there. – Erma Bombeck • Sometimes I heard voices muttering in my head, and a lot of the time the world seemed to smolder around its edges. but I was in a little better physical shape every day, I was getting my looks back, and my spirits were rising, and this was all in all a happy time for me. All these weirdos, and me getting a little better right in the midst of them. I had never known, never even imagined for a heartbeat, that there might be a place for people like us. – Denis Johnson • Sometimes when you are standing still and it’s snowing, you think that you hear music. You can’t tell where it’s coming from either. I wondered if we all really did have a soundtrack, but we just get so used to it that we can’t hear it anymore, the same way that we block out the sound of our own heartbeat. – Heather O’Neill • Sometimes, when a person is truly lost in this world, suffocating inside her private bubble where all she can hear is her own droning heartbeat, a touch can be enough. – Walter Kirn • Such was a poet and shall be and is -who’ll solve the depths of horror to defend a sunbeam’s architecture with his life: and carve immortal jungles of despair to hold a mountain’s heartbeat in his hand. – e. e. cummings • Tell me what it’s like. The race.” “What it’s like is a battle. A mess of horses and men and blood. The fastest and strongest of what is left from two weeks of preparation on the sand. It’s the surf in your face, the deadly magic of November on your skin, the Scorpio drums in the place of your heartbeat. It’s speed, if you’re lucky. It’s life and it’s death or it’s both, and there’s nothing like it. – Maggie Stiefvater • That he’ll never let you down. That boy’s got a heart the size of Kentucky, and he loves you. That’s important. Take it from someone who knows. My mom used to tell me that whatever you do, marry someone who loves you more than you love him. And I listened to her. Why do you think Henry and I get along so well? I’m not saying that I don’t love him, because I do. But if I ever left Henry or something, God forbid, ever happened to me, I don’t think he’ll be able to go on. And that guy would risk his life for mine in a heartbeat. – Nicholas Sparks • That is where my dearest and brightest dreams have ranged — to hear for the duration of a heartbeat the universe and the totality of life in its mysterious, innate harmony. – Hermann Hesse • That’s my favorite thing about him. I like to lie next to him when it’s late, dark, and so quiet I can hear my own heartbeat. It’s times like that when I’m sure that I’m in love. – Lauren Oliver • The difference between deafness and any other disability is that there is no way to put yourself in a position of knowing what it would be like because you can’t stop yourself from hearing your own breath or your own heartbeat. You can not remove sound entirely from your life. You can get a sense of what being blind is like by closing and covering your eyes which provides a source of empathy because we can all project ourselves to that. But people who think they can project themselves into deafness are mistaken because you can’t. – Richard Masur • The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint, that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come. To protect what is wild is to protect what is gentle. Perhaps the wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silent space that says we live only by grace. Wilderness lives by this same grace. Wild mercy is in our hands. – Terry Tempest Williams • The final heartbeat for the Christian is not the mysterious conclusion to a meaningless existence. It is, rather, the grand beginning to a life that will never end. – James Dobson • The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature. – Joseph Campbell • The government is a heartbeat away from nationalizing health care based on deliberate misinformation about the nation’s uninsured and despite the 100 percent failure rate of such fantastic reforms elsewhere on the globe. – David Limbaugh • The great event on Calvary . . . is an eternal reminder to a power drunk generation that love is the most durable power in the world, and that it is at bottom the heartbeat of the moral cosmos. Only through achieving this love can you expect to matriculate into the university of eternal life. – Martin Luther • The greatest attribute of God is Love. The Tree of Life is located in the very depth of our soul. The most perfect and abundant fruit that grows and ripens is Life giving Love; it is the great healing force in the world. Love never fails to meet every demand of the human heart. The Divine principal of Love may be used to eliminate every sorrow, infirmity, in-harmony, ignorance and all mistakes of mankind. Love is God; eternal, limitless, changeless, infinite. It is the pulse of the world, the heartbeat of the Universe. – Baird T. Spalding • The heartbeat of your originality is deep within a body of thought that continually wrestles with the contradictions and limitations that we’re constantly trying to overcome, the curiosities and the ignorances of the people we seek to help. – Michael Eric Dyson • The myth of this world is that the way to transformation is through power, but God choose to enter the world in a weak manner, gentle and tender through the heartbeat of a child. – Rick Dees • The phone is gonna disappear. Maybe it will be a bracelet. After the bracelet it will be a blood cell sized device that maybe gets installed. We already have people with Parkinson’s that have chips installed in their brain to control their tremors. We already see people have pacemakers to help their heartbeats. I mean we’re already putting these technologies into our bodies. It is only going to deepen. – Jason Silva • The principles of the United States Constitution are, because of Senator Byrd, still the heartbeat of the US Senate. – David C. Hardesty, Jr. • The revolution is like a vessel filled with the pulsating heartbeat of millions of working people. – Ernst Toller • The secret of it all, is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood, of the moment – to put things down without deliberation – without worrying about their style – without waiting for a fit time or place. I always worked that way. I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote – wrote, wrote…By writing at the instant the very heartbeat of life is caught. – Walt Whitman • The soundtrack in the poetry is the soundtrack from your own heartbeat. – Russell Simmons • The thing about physicists is that they tend to think that everything is physics. I don’t. That’s not what music is to me. You can explain aspects of it in physical terms, including the physics of anatomy: how our bodies move, the torsional moment of inertia, the way you move your body to a beat, the inherent periodicities of the heartbeat, the gait. That’s physics, too, I guess – maybe they’d call it biophysics. – Vijay Iyer • The truth is, we live in deeds, not days; in actions and thoughts and feelings, not heartbeats. – Michael Mullen • The type of girls that would sleep with you in a heartbeat aren’t the type of girls I’d want to take home anyway. – Niall Horan • The whole universe was stilled as if listening for a voice. For the space of one heartbeat there was peace on earth. For one fraction of a moment there was no deed of violence wrought on earth, no hatred, no fire, no whirlwind, no pain, no fear. Existence rested against the heart of God, then sighed and journeyed again. – Elizabeth Goudge • The young earth-solution to reconciling the order of creation with natural history makes good exegetical and theological sense. Indeed, the overwhelming consensus of theologians up through the Reformation held to this view. I myself would adopt it in a heartbeat except that nature seems to present such strong evidence against it. – William A. Dembski • There are people we meet in life who miss being important to us by inches, days, or heartbeats. Another place or time or a different emotional frame of mind and we would willingly fall into their arms; gladly take up their challenge or invitation. But as it is, we encounter them when we are discontent or content and they are not. Whatever they are, we are not and vice versa. Two trains going in different directions that pass for a few powerful moments at full speed, blasting noise and wind but then they are gone. Whatever serious chemistry might have been possible if, isn’t. – Jonathan Carroll • There came a moment in the middle of the song when he suddenly felt every heartbeat in the room & after that he never forgot that he was part of something much bigger – Brian Andreas • There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment. – Sarah Dessen • There is no other closeness in human life like the closeness between a mother and her baby – chronologically, physically, and spiritually they are just a few heartbeats away from being the same person. – Susan Cheever • There was something unbearably sexy about cars at night, Ronan thought. The way the fenders twisted the light and reflected the road, the way every driver became anonymous. The sight of them knocked his heartbeat askew. – Maggie Stiefvater • There would be no chance at all of getting to know death if it happened only once. But fortunately, life is nothing but a continuing dance of birth and death, a dance of change. Every time I hear the rush of a mountain stream, or the waves crashing on the shore, or my own heartbeat, I hear the sound of impermanence. These changes, these small deaths, are our living links with death. They are death’s pulses, death’s heartbeat, prompting us to let go of all the things we cling to. – Sogyal Rinpoche • There’s no conscious thing on the face of the world that doesn’t know dread more intimately than its own heartbeat. – Clive Barker • There’s a heartbeat in any country that carries on regardless – at least in Europe. That’s what worries me about America, because I’m not sure what that heartbeat is – unless it’s the heartbeat of someone who’s just arrived, who just ran over the border two weeks ago. – Helen Mirren • There’s a moment on the arch of a jump, when you are neither rising nor falling. All you can see is the sky. All you can feel is the air and all you can hear is your heartbeat. That is all you are. Muscle and motion. It’s called the deadpoint. I live for that. – Rhianna Pratchett • Things could change so entirely, in a heartbeat; the world could be made entirely anew, because someone was kind. – Jo Baker • This body is fragile. It is just flesh. Listen to the heartbeat. Life depends on the pumping of a muscle. – Stephen Batchelor • This country will kill you in a heartbeat and still people love it. • This is my heartbeat like yours, it is a hatchet It can build a house or tear one down. – Andrea Gibson • Time becomes a stutter-the space between drumbeats, splintered into fragments, and also endlessly long, as long as soaring guitar notes that melt into one another, as full as the dark mass of bodies around me. I feel like the air downstairs has gone to liquid, to sweat and smell and sound, and I have broken apart in it. I am wave: I am pulled into the everything. I am energy and noise and a heartbeat going boom, boom, boom, echoing the drums. – Lauren Oliver • To be in a body is to hear the heartbeat of death at every moment. – Andrew Harvey • To listen to the silence is to hear the heartbeat of the Universe. – Laurence Overmire • Together, we can bring our planet’s heartbeat back. – Ian Somerhalder • True observers of nature, although they may think differently, will still agree that everything that is, everything that is observable as a phenomenon, can only exhibit itself in one of two ways. It is either a primal polarity that is able to unify, or it is a primal unity that is able to divide. The operation of nature consists of splitting the united or uniting the divided; this is the eternal movement of systole and diastole of the heartbeat, the inhalation and exhalation of the world in which we live, act, and exist. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe • Vishous’s chest expanded. . . and his diamond stare slowly swung to Butch. There was a heartbeat of intensity. Then V reached out and repositioned the cross so it once again hung over Butch’s heart. “You did well, cop. Congratulations, true? – J.R. Ward • Vulnerability is the absolute heartbeat of innovation and creativity. There can be zero innovation without vulnerability. – Brené Brown • Waves are the voices of tides. Tides are life,” murmured Niko. “They bring new food for shore creatures, and take ships out to sea. They are the ocean’s pulse, and our own heartbeat. – Tamora Pierce • We all have music in us – your heartbeat is your drum, your voice is your sound – and music is supposed to put you in tune with nature. – Randy Weston • We are born to love as we are born to die, and between the heartbeats of these two great mysteries lies all the tangled undergrowth of our tiny lives. There is nowhere to go but through. And so we walk on, lost, and lost again, in the mapless wilderness of love. – Tim Farrington • We are tiny flames, Helikaon, and we flicker alone in the great dark for no more than a heartbeat. When we strive for wealth, glory and fame, it is meaningless. The nations we fight for will one day cease to be. Even the mountains we gaze upon will crumble to dust. To truly live we must yearn for that which does not die. – David Gemmell • We conclude that the concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable, and is periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution. In this view all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive redistribution. – Will Durant • We each have a finite number of heartbeats, a finite amount of time. But we have enough heartbeats and enough time to do what is important. – Susan L. Taylor • We have our own little heartbeat, too. We already have what I would call polyrhythms going on. – John Densmore • We left no doubt that we are one heartbeat And something like that is pretty hard to stop Once it gets going – Oscar Lua • We like to think of life as a constant … Yet it can be ended in a heartbeat. – David Gemmell • We tell stories. We talk about statistics. And in 1978, we added an element of the show that gave it its heartbeat: the long distance dedication. – Casey Kasem • What interests Sam Mendes are characters and relationships, and he was a genius at giving you the freedom to create the type of character you want, and also to explore and have fun with your fellow actors. For him, characters and relationships are really the heartbeat of the film, and then the action is the backdrop. By developing the characters, he makes you care that much more about the action and going on a journey with the characters. – Naomie Harris • What was time itself but the bloom, the sheath enfolding experience? Within time, and with time alone, there was life – the gleam, the quiver, the heartbeat, the immeasurable joy and anguish of being. – Ellen Glasgow • When I was nine, I was diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat and was prescribed beta blockers, which had the side effect of turning my skin green. Looking like Shrek’s little sister at school wasn’t the easiest thing. – Jessie J • When we have heartbeat and brain waves, we refuse to accept it as the presence of life – this lack of logic of which we approach this issue because we like and we favor convenience over ethics. We favor convenience over the hard parts of life that actually make us grow. – Tom Coburn • When you do take the home pregnancy test, it doesn’t quite seem real. But when you see the baby and the heartbeat on the ultrasound, it’s so incredible. – Danica McKellar • Yes, God wants you to do signs and wonders. But the love of God manifested through you is what people really need. So you first must see His face. You must become so close to His very heartbeat that you can feel what others feel. – Heidi Baker • You are in a place that has not been seen for tens of thousands of years, because it was so sealed off. There is such silence that when you hold your breath you can hear your own heartbeat. Everything is so fresh that you have the sensation that the painters have merely retreated deeper into the dark and that they are looking at you. – Werner Herzog • You can hear the Celtic heartbeat all over Europe and America, from Bing Crosby to Jack White, from the Smiths to My Bloody Valentine, from House of Pain to Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. – Rob Sheffield • You can hold a secret, hold it so far in that it drives nearly every thought and every move you make- your very heartbeat, almost. – Deb Caletti • You had me tied in knots. You saved Belen’s life, and I wanted to kill and thank you all at the same time. And during those nights when we didn’t know if you’d live or die, I went from being angry, to worried to frustrated to scared all within a single heartbeat. If you had die, I would have killed you.- Maria V. Snyder • You kind of can’t help who you’ll fall in love with. I’d date someone who isn’t in the business in a heartbeat. – Selena Gomez • You know love is everything you say A whisper, a word Promises you give You feel it in the heartbeat of the day You know this is the way love is – Enya • You must learn how to hold a team together. You must lift some men up, calm others down, until finally they’ve got one heartbeat. Then you’ve got yourself a team. – Bear Bryant • You must never check for a person’s pulse using your thumb, or you’ll feel your own heartbeat. Actually, I plan on doing that if I’m the one who’s here when Ruth dies. I plan on giving her my heartbeat before I let her go. – Elizabeth Berg • You think I’d cheat on you?” I demanded with all the innocent outrage I could muster. “With another guy, no. With a cheeseburger . . . in a heartbeat. – Lisa Kleypas • You turn on the television, it’s like, “Woah is me! God almighty, we’re awful.” We are so down and out we are – name me a country in the world, name me one leader anywhere in the world who wouldn’t trade places in a heartbeat. We by far, we’re going to own the 21st century. – Joe Biden • Your mother’s heartbeat is the first sound you ever hear and your own heartbeat is the last. – Dave Brubeck

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[equitiesstocks]

Heartbeat Quotes

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• A Dirty Shame was a crazy movie. I don’t understand that movie at all. I don’t get it, but I’d work with John Waters again in a heartbeat. He’s just a delight. – Selma Blair • A human life is just a heartbeat in heaven. – Robin Williams • A hundred hundred heartbeats…” whispered Sabriel, tears falling down her face. – Garth Nix • A scary dream makes your heart beat faster. Why doesn’t the part of your brain that controls your heartbeat realize that another part of your brain is making the whole thing up? Don’t these people communicate? – George Carlin • A sermon is no sermon in which I cannot hear the heartbeat. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • A span of a few heartbeats can make for a greater memory than the sum of a mundane year.-Catti-brie – R. A. Salvatore • A successful song comes to sing itself inside the listener. It is cellular and seismic, a wave coalescing in the mind and in the flesh. There is a message outside and a message inside, and those messages are the same, like the pat and thud of two heartbeats, one within you, one surrounding. The message of the lullaby is that it’s okay to dim the eyes for a time, to lose sight of yourself as you sleep and as you grow: if you drift, it says, you’ll drift ashore: if you fall, you will fall into place. – Kevin Brockmeier • A weak but steady throb lay beneath Kev’s searching fingertips. Win’s heartbeat…the pulse that sustained his universe. – Lisa Kleypas • Abraham Lincoln is resolute, honest, has the best interest of the nation at heart, and he’s as ugly as homemade Sunday sin, so he is modest, too. I’d vote for that in an undead heartbeat. – Bill Oberst Jr. • Alexia gave in to his demanding touch, but only, of course, because he sounded so pathetic. It had nothing, whatsoever to do with her own quickening heartbeat. – Gail Carriger • All these weirdos, and me getting a little better every day right in the midst of them. I had never known, never even imagined for a heartbeat, that there might be a place for people like us. – Denis Johnson • And at any moment it all ends with a heartbeat…just one heartbeat, and there’s no more time. One heartbeat and the chance to be saved is gone. One heartbeat and there’s no more choosing—it’s all sealed for eternal life or eternal death. – Jonathan Cahn • And since time sets its own tempo, like a heartbeat or an ebb tide, timepieces don’t really keep time. They just keep up with it, if they’re able. – Dava Sobel • Any chance he’s turned a new leaf and taken up sailing for real?” “About as likely as me doing it.” Hadrian eyed Royce for a heartbeat. “I put him at the top of the list. – Michael J. Sullivan • Anything I’ve asked of MGM Grand, they’ve done for me in a heartbeat. They’re all about making entertainers and athletes happy. – Floyd Mayweather, Jr. • Around us, life bursts with miracles–a glass of water, a ray of sunshine, a leaf, a caterpillar, a flower, laughter, raindrops. If you live in awareness, it is easy to see miracles everywhere. Each human being is a multiplicity of miracles. Eyes that see thousands of colors, shapes, and forms; ears that hear a bee flying or a thunderclap; a brain that ponders a speck of dust as easily as the entire cosmos; a heart that beats in rhythm with the heartbeat of all beings. When we are tired and feel discouraged by life’s daily struggles, we may not notice these miracles, but they are always there. – Nhat Hanh • As he gave a sleepy, growling groan, that hand disappeared under the sheet. Arizona’s lips parted, and her heartbeat tripped up. She cleared her throat. “Spencer?” Freezing, without moving any other body part, he opened his eyes and met her gaze. She frowned at him. He didn’t look super-startled, and he said nothing. He just started at her. With his hand still under there. “Yeah…” Semi-satisfied with his frozen reaction, she nodded at his lap. “You weren’t going for a little tug, were you? Because as your spectator, I’d just as soon not see it.” -Arizona and Spencer – Lori Foster • Assured of your salvation by the unique grace of our Lord Jesus Christ” is the heartbeat of the gospel, joyful liberation from fear of the Final Outcome, a summons to self-acceptance, and freedom for a life of compassion toward others. – Brennan Manning • Athletic ability can be taken away like that. It can all end in a heartbeat. – Tim Tebow

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Heartbeat', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_heartbeat').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_heartbeat img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Basketball is a beautiful game when the five players on the court play with one heartbeat. – Dean Smith • Because it was starting to get dark, and because the streets were crowded, I bumped into a googolplex people. Who were they? Where were they going? What were they looking for? I wanted to hear their heartbeats, and I wanted them to hear mine. – Jonathan Safran Foer • Being the foundation is what I live for, some people call it being in the pocket, some people call it a groove. I think it’s the heartbeat. There’s nothing that feels better than that. – Tommy Shannon • Breath and brevity are sisters; the long-winded is an enemy who muffles your heartbeat. – Shirley Geok-lin Lim • By writing at the instant, the very heartbeat of life is caught. – Walt Whitman • Can I be blamed for wanting a real body, to put my arms around? Without it I too am disembodied. I can listen to my own heartbeat against the bedsprings…but there’s something dead about it, something deserted. – Margaret Atwood • Christ used the flesh and blood of Mary for his life on earth, the Word of love was uttered in her heartbeat. Christ used his own body to utter his love on earth; his perfectly real body, with bone and sinew and blood and tears; Christ uses our bodies to express his love on earth, our humanity. A Christian life is a sacramental life, it is not a life lived only in the mind, only by the soul… Our humanity is the substance of the sacramental life of Christ in us, like the wheat for the host, like the grape for the chalice. – Caryll Houselander • Dance is your pulse, your heartbeat, your breathing. It’s the rhythm of your life. It’s the expression in time and movement,in happiness, joy, sadness and envy. – Jacques d’Amboise • Dance is your pulse, your heartbeat, your breathing. It’s the rhythym of your life. – Jacques d’Amboise • Do I miss football in Scotland? It keeps you really alive, that’s for sure. Your heartbeat fluctuates. I’m flatlining at the moment which is actually quite nice but you need to go up and down to stay alive. – Gordon Strachan • Do not leave me, hide in my heart like a secret, wind around my head like a turban. “I come and go as I please,” you say, “swift as a heartbeat.” You can tease me as much as you like but never leave me. – Rumi • Don’t do it for the money. Follow the path to do what makes your heartbeat faster. Follow your passion. – Lynn Tilton • Even still, we run. We have not reached our average of 57.92 years without knowing that you run through it, and it hurts and you run through it some more, and if it hurts worse, you run through it even more, and when you finish, you will have broken through. In the end, when you are done, and stretching, and your heartbeat slows, and your sweat dries, if you’ve run through the hard part, you will remember no pain. – Lauren Groff • Everybody gave 100%. I mean everyone, because they all knew that the film had the bones and the heartbeat of something that could be good. And everyone was in on it and wanted it for me and wanted it for Roger and Beau. – Pierce Brosnan • Felt my heartbeat falter, hesitate, then stumble awkwardly forward, tripping on the next beat, then the next, faster and faster until each one tumbled into the other like the drumroll of dominoes crashing together. Funny how time stands still when death is imminent. – Darynda Jones • Find a guy who calls you beautiful instead of hot, who calls you back when you hang up on him, who will lie under the stars and listen to your heartbeat, or will stay awake just to watch you sleep…wait for the boy who kisses your forehead, who wants to show you off to the world when you are in sweats, who holds your hand in front of his friends, who thinks you’re just as pretty without makeup on. One who is constantly reminding you of how much he cares and how lucky his is to have you….The one who turns to his friends and says, ‘that’s her.’ – Chuck Palahniuk • Firepaw held the menacing amber gaze for few moments. Warrior and apprentice, for a heartbeat their eyes were locked as enemies. – Erin Hunter • Five is for five heartbeats, the length of time it takes to breathe in or out. For that is how quickly a life may change, for better or for ill. The time it takes to make up, or change, your mind. – Cameron Dokey • For at no time are any events predestined. There should be no such word in your vocabulary, for with every moment you change, and every heartbeat is an action, and every action changes every other action. – Seth • For God’s sake, Stiff,” he says. “You don’t have to follow me,” I say staring at the maze of bars above me. I shove my foot onto the place where two bars cross and push myself up, grabbing another bar in the process. I sway for a second, my heart beating so hard I can’t feel anything else. Every thought I have condenses into that heartbeat, moving at the same rhythm. “Yes, I do,” he says. – Veronica Roth • Genetics and beats? I feel like the drumbeat is a natural thing. Our heartbeat moves at a certain BPM. The drumbeat, being the first instrument, the platform for us, being that we all kind of come from that – it’s all beats. – Q-Tip • God had a heartbeat for 18-25 years old…the vast majority of whom don’t have a clue why they are on this planet. – Louie Giglio • God has called us into a place of tenderness, when nobody is looking, when there are no great decisions to make, when it’s just him and me in a hotel room, with no one to pray for, no one to preach to. When it is just two people in a room, that’s where you learn. That’s where you learn his heartbeat. That’s where you learn the presence. That’s where you learn the voice. It’s in the moments when nobody is watching, nobody is evaluating how good you’re doing. When it is just you and him. – Bill Johnson • He got right down in the dark between heartbeats, and rested there. And then he saw that another one wasn’t going to come. That’s it. That’s the last. He looked at the dark. I would like to take this opportunity, he said, to pray for another human being. – Denis Johnson • He had also the reputation of being a bit of a lady killer. But that probably accrued to him from his possession of a laughing, velvety voice which no girl could hear without a heartbeat, and a dangerous way of listening as if she were saying something that he had longed all his life to hear. – Lucy Maud Montgomery • He had on bunny slippers. These had fangs. They all stared at them in silence for about a heartbeat, and then Shane said, “That is impressively wicked. Crazy, but wicked. – Rachel Caine • He took both of my hands, twisting to face me more fully on the flattened box beneath us, and again the colors in his irises seemed to pulse with my heartbeat. – Rachel Vincent • He was afraid that the secrets she’d kept would always be here, inside him, an ugly malignant thing lodged near enough to his heart to upset its rhythm, and though it could be removed, cut out, there would always be scars; bits and pieces of it would remain in his blood, making it wrong somehow, so that if he accidentally sliced his skin open, his blood would–for one heartbeat–flow as black as India ink before it remembered that it should be red. – Kristin Hannah

• He’d half meant to speak but those eyes had altered the world forever in the space of a heartbeat. – Cormac McCarthy • Her heartbeat was in her hands, her heart beat the way she moved her head, her whole body was her heart beating. – Tom Spanbauer • Her mind emptied of everything but the gusting wind and how fragile Wolf looked in that heartbeat, like one movement could break him open. – Marissa Meyer • Here’s what I love: when a great writer turns me into a Jew from Chicago, a lesbian out of South Carolina, or a black woman moving into a subway entrance in Harlem. Turn me into something else, writers of the world. Make me Muslim, heretic, hermaphrodite. Put me into a crusader’s armor, a cardinal’s vestments. Let me feel the pygmy’s heartbeat, the queen’s breast, the torturer’s pleasure, the Nile’s taste, or the nomad’s thirst. Tell me everything that I must know. Hold nothing back. – Pat Conroy • His eyes search the crowd until they find my face. My heartbeat lives in my throat; lives in my cheeks. “I still don’t understand,” he says softly, “how she knew that it would work. – Veronica Roth • His gaze was a lot steadier than her heartbeat. “She’s the reason for those whispered phone calls I used to overhear, isn’t she?” “Don’t be silly. I was talking to my lover.” “She told me she lives at a place called Brookdale. After I hung up, I did a little research on the Web. Your talent for obfuscation continues to amaze me.” “Hey, I haven’t obfuscated in weeks. Makes you go blind. – Susan Elizabeth Phillips • Holding Eleanor’s hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive. As soon as he touched her, he wondered how he’d gone this long without doing it. He rubbed his thumb through her palm and up her fingers, and was aware of her every breath. – Rainbow Rowell • Holding Eleanor’s hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive. – Rainbow Rowell • How do you know that? (Stryker) I know everything. I feel every heartbeat in the universe. Hear every scream for mercy and feel every tear of pain. (Jared) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • How was it that, even in the common tasks of an ordinary life, Jesus drew the praise of heaven? At the core of His being, He only did those things which pleased the Father. In everything, He stayed true, heartbeat to heartbeat, with the Father’s desires. Jesus lived for God alone; God was enough for Him. Thus, even in its simplicity and moment-to-moment faithfulness, Christ’s life was an unending fragrance, a perfect offering of incomparable love to God. – Francis Frangipane • I asked Chief Justice John Roberts about this definition of life – you know, what is life? The Supreme Court can’t figure it out or doesn’t want us to figure it out; the fact that we know that there is no life if there’s no heartbeat and brainwaves. – Tom Coburn • I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises. – Neil Armstrong • I believe that the Good Lord gave us a finite number of heartbeats and I’m damned if I’m going to use up mine running up and down a street. – Neil Armstrong • I can hear sweat trickling down your cheek. Your heartbeat sound like Sasquatch feet. Thundering, shaking the concrete. – The Notorious B.I.G. • I come prepared with the white suit and stethoscope, Listen to your heartbeat, delete beep beep BEEP. Your insurance is high, but my price is cheap. – Kool Keith • I could fall for you in a heartbeat – Ken Follett • I could take you down on this sidewalk and be up that skirt of yours in a heartbeat. And you wouldn’t fight me, would you? No, she probably wouldn’t. Wrath and Beth – J.R. Ward • I didn’t mean to send love letters, but that is what they became. On their way to you, my words turned into heartbeats on the page. – Lisa Kleypas • I don’t audition for “on-air” commercials – the ones where your face can be seen. I’ve auditioned for voiceover campaigns that I haven’t gotten, but I don’t really want to be seen in a commercial unless it’s a product that I really love. Like, if Adidas asked me, I would do it in a heartbeat. But I did a Reebok commercial, one for Pep Boys, one for Dunkin’ Donuts. I auditioned for commercials, but I really couldn’t stomach it. It just didn’t feel right. – Michael Showalter • I don’t have any choice any more. I am in a choiceless awareness. I don’t have to be aware. I am simply aware. Now it is just like my heartbeat or like my breathing. Even if I try not to be aware, it is not possible; the very effort will make me more aware. Awareness is not a quality, a characteristic; it is your whole being. When you become aware, there is no choice left to be otherwise. – Rajneesh • I dreamed you a field of running horses, Selah. For you, Bianca, a balloon the size of the sky, my body a kite you can throw into the air.Pull me by string and horse.Tell me everything won’t end in death. That everything doesn’t end with February. Dead wildflowers wrapped around a crying baby’s throat.I’ve slowed my heartbeat to three beats a minute. I’ve redrawn the clouds into birds, a fox chasing them into the mountains.I’m going to move my hand today.I vomit ice cubes.There’s a ghost next to me.Get up, Dad.(Light Boxes) – Shane Jones • I endorse only products I actually use. Like Wheaties keeps offering me money, but I don’t eat Wheaties, so I can’t do it. Now, if Rice Krispies or Frosted Flakes offered me a deal, I’d take it right away. Apple Jacks, I’d be on the box in a heartbeat. Apple Shaqs. Yeah. – Shaquille O’Neal • I feel his heartbeat against my cheek,as fast as my own. “Are you afraid of me, too, Tobias?” “Terrified,” he replies with a smile. – Veronica Roth • I feel like I’ve gotten an extraordinary opportunity to experience a sort of collective humanity. If you hug many people in such a short period of days you pick up on a communal energy, almost like feeling a giant heartbeat that everyone is beating together. – Rob Bell • I feel the flatline of my existence disrupting, forming heartbeat hills and valleys – Isaac Marion • I folded myself against her body, breathing in the smell of my new life and matching my heartbeat to hers” Sam, Linger – Maggie Stiefvater • I grew up among strong women so I know what it’s like to be loved and humiliated in a heartbeat. – Chris O’Dowd • I have this great fear of people – not when I’m on the runway, but backstage. In a room full of people, I really suffer. I sort of go into a tunnel and I feel very removed. I get so tense, I can’t swallow, and my heartbeat goes way up. It still happens now, although I’m better at controlling it. – Linda Evangelista • I hear my heartbeat. I have been looking at him too long, but then, he has been looking back, and I feel like we are both trying to say something the other can’t hear, though I could be imagining it. Too long – and now even longer, my heart even louder, his tranquil eyes swallowing me whole. – Veronica Roth • I knew there was only one place to go. I sank down into the center of my soul, grew still, and listened to the Rabbi’s heartbeat. – Brennan Manning • I know I hated magic for a reason,” Janco said. “Congratulations. This is the first time you’ve had a VALID reason to hate something,” Ari countered. “Remember your campaign against sand?” “Sand! Horrid little stuff. Gets everywhere. I had a perfectly good argue–” “Janco.” Ari’s voice rumbled deep in his throat. In a heartbeat, Janco switched gears. “Well, this blood magic sounds worse than sand. – Maria V. Snyder • I know there’s some poetry that sort of sounds like daisies, but most of the good poetry is also [political], you can feel the heartbeat; it’s about some situation that concerns human beings under duress. It’s suggesting a solution, or just acknowledging that [the situation] exists. Art does that. – Toni Morrison • I leapt eagerly into books. The characters’ lives were so much more interesting than the lonely heartbeat of my own. – Ruta Sepetys • I listened to the wind bury winter; and when I tasted his grace, his grace had no name; only, night became something else in his presence, as though darkness had a soul, here, swaying to heartbeats roaring. – Marjorie M. Liu • I love you,” she whispered. He stroked his hand down her back. “Yep, you do.” “You’re supposed to say it back,” she said, pretending to be offended because the silliness kept the fear/hope at bay. “Why?” He scowled down at her. “You know you’re my heartbeat. – Nalini Singh • I loved the idea that people dressed up to go to the gardens. Our work always has a utility point of view at its heartbeat and then other things come around it, so it really allowed us to use denims and suedes and gauzes, and those sorts of hard-working fabrics – workwear fabrics – and then contrast them with crepe de chine, beautiful florals and big jewelry. – Karen Walker • I measure the moment in the heartbeats I skip – David Levithan • I most resemble Benjamin Button. I evolve. I attach myself to the heartbeat of whatever is going on at that particular time, or I just chart a new path. – J. B. Smoove • I need music. It’s like my heartbeat, so to speak. It keeps me going no matter what’s going on – bad games, press, whatever! – LeBron James • I stare at him. I feel my heartbeat everywhere, even in my toes. I feel like doing something bold, but I could just as easily walk away. I am not sure which option is smarter, or better. I am not sure that I care. – Veronica Roth • I think my heartbeat might be the Morse code for ‘inappropriate.’ – Rives • I thought that you had stood up for the free will & rights of humans in this town.” “Depends on the human,” Claire said. “As far as I know, Hitler had a heartbeat, and I wouldn’t vote him to be in charge. – Rachel Caine • I try hard to hold fast to the truth that a full and thankful heart cannot entertain great conceits. When brimming with gratitude, one’s heartbeat must surely result in outgoing love, the finest emotion we can ever know. – Bill W. • I used to skip school to go there when I was growing up in Newark, … I saw the Flamingos, the Heartbeats, Jackie Wilson, Chuck Jackson. – George Clinton • I was a barmaid for my mum for years, as we lived above a pub. I still can’t hear the Heartbeat theme tune without breaking into a cold sweat, as it used to start at the same time as my shift. – Sara Cox • I work between my heartbeat. I have one-and-a-half seconds to actually move. And at the same time I have to watch I don’t inhale my own work. – Willard Wigan • I would rather have strong enemies than a world of passive individualists. In a world of passive individualists nothing seems worth anything simply because nobody stands for anything. That world has no convictions, no victories, no unions, no heroism, no absolutes, no heartbeat. That world has rigor mortis. – Criss Jami • I would’ve done it for you in a heartbeat. – Julie James • If I could be a country music star, I’d do it in a heartbeat. I’d hit the road and just jam out. – Justin Deeley • If I had to give up cheese or chocolate, I’d give up chocolate in a heartbeat. – Amanda Peet • If I have to remove one to save ten, I’ll do it in a heartbeat. If I have to waterboard somebody to save a thousand people, I’ll do it in a heartbeat. – Sean Patrick Flanery • If it came down to that, I’d protect you in a heartbeat. – Nicholas Sparks • If there was another Dr. Quinn movie, I would do it in a heartbeat. – Joe Lando • If they asked me if I wanted to go into space tomorrow, I’d do it in a heartbeat. On the other hand, if they asked me if I wanted to go into training for three years and then go into space again, I’d probably say no. – Sally Ride • If you have a heartbeat, there’s still time for your dreams. – Sean Stephenson • If you put two brigades on the ground right now with U.S. forces, they would push ISIS back into Syria in a heartbeat. – Anthony Zinni • If you want to say something profound, writing from your heartbeat is different than writing from the loud voices you get from music. If they’re rapping from noise, it’s about robbing people. It’s that simple. – Russell Simmons • If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats. – Richard Bach • I’m a really athletic person – I’m not that coordinated, but I’m really athletic, so I would play a superhero doing my own stunts in a heartbeat. But hopefully not taking swings at people. That’s not a good idea for me. – Selma Blair • I’m not sure that people want to go back to the womb. People want to go back to the teats of your mother and hear your mother’s heartbeat. – Gaspar Noe • I’m on a Mission, that niggaz say is Impossible, But when I swing my swords they all choppable, I be the body dropper, the heartbeat stopper, Child educator, plus head amputator. – GZA • I’m sure you would have stopped it if you could have.” “In a heartbeat. – Kiera Cass • I’m the ruler in my kingdom and my dark seat is hot. Step into my world and your heartbeat stop! – Aaron Dontez Yates • I’m very proud to be Canadian, but I would move to New York in a heartbeat. – Lexa Doig • In a heartbeat, a thousand voices took up the chant. King Joffrey and King Robb and King Stannis were forgotten, and King Bread ruled alone. “Bread.” they clamored. “Bread, Bread! – George R. R. Martin • In order to terminate a pregnancy, you have to still a heartbeat, switch off a developing brain. – Christopher Hitchens • In the end mortals always expired before faeries. They were such finite creatures. Their first heartbeat and breath were but a blink from death. To add the weight of nourishing his insatiable court in a time of peace was to hasten that unconscionably. – Melissa Marr • In the silence between your heartbeat bides a summons. Do you hear it? Name it if you must, or leave it forever nameless, but why pretend it is not there? – Rumi • In the time just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when Perfidia opens, we were pre-psychologized. There were no concepts of identity, no politics of victimization. Reparation wasn’t in the language. Nobody thought about giving the great grandchildren of black slaves so much as $1.98. And all of a sudden the bombs hit, interventionism versus isolationism became a dead issue, and it was us-versus-them in a heartbeat. – James Ellroy • In this world, there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body time.” “They do not keep clocks in their houses. Instead, they listen to their heartbeats. They feel the rhythms of their moods and desires.” “Then there are those who think their bodies don’t exist. They live by mechanical time. They rise at seven o’clock in the morning. They eat their lunch at noon and their supper at six. They arrive at their appointments on time, precisely by the clock.- Alan Lightman • In your hands The dog, the donkey, surely they know They are alive. Who would argue otherwise? But now, after years of consideration, I am getting beyond that. What about the sunflowers? What about The tulips, and the pines? Listen, all you have to do is start and There’ll be no stopping. What about mountains? What about water Slipping over rocks? And speaking of stones, what about The little ones you can Hold in your hands, their heartbeats So secret, so hidden it may take years Before, finally, you hear them? – Mary Oliver • It is a real issue, a measurement of our society, when we say it’s fine to destroy unborn life who has a heartbeat at 16 days post-conception. – Tom Coburn • It only takes one mistake,’ the Dan Banyan guy says, ‘and nothing else you ever do will matter.’ With his empty hand, he takes one of my hands. His fingers feel hot, fever-hot, and pounding with his heartbeats. He turns my hand palm-up saying, ‘No matter how hard you work or how smart you become, you’ll always be known for that one poor choice.’ He sets the blue pill on my palm, saying, ‘Do that one wrong thing- and you’ll be dead for the rest of your life.- Chuck Palahniuk • It took my breath away, that evening. If you’ve ever dreamed that you walked into your best-loved book or film or TV program, then maybe you’ve got some idea how it felt: things coming alive around you, strange and new and utterly familiar at the same time; the catch in your heartbeat as you move through the rooms that had such a vivid untouchable life in your mind, as your feet actually touch the carpet, as you breathe the air; the odd, secret glow of warmth as these people you’ve been watching for so long, from so far away, open their circle and sweep you into it. – Tana French • It’s time we put thoughts of lack behind us. It’s time for us to discover the secrets of the stars, to sail to an uncharted land, to open up a new heaven where our spirits can soar. But first we’ll have to make changes. And lasting change does not happen overnight. Lasting change happens in infinitesimal increments: a day, an hour, a minute, a heartbeat at a time… – Sarah Ban Breathnach • It’s weird how your perspective changes. At the start of your career, you think, ‘I just want to do cutting-edge work that makes people think.’ Now, I would do a blockbuster in a heartbeat. – Matthew Rhys • I’ve learned that I can’t do it all at once. So, you have to figure out your angle of attack. Coming in on the acting front, acting is a passion of mine. It’s a true love. Dancing, I kind of just fell into. Choreographing, the same thing. But making films, producing and directing, that’s the heartbeat of my existence. – Columbus Short • Laughter is the best way To make somebody’s heart beat – Robert Holden • Let me say, it’s – what a commentary it is on American media that you have to go to Russian television in order to get covered as a candidate in this election. It’s pretty outrageous. And our media could solve that in a heartbeat if they actually opened it up, you know, but they don’t. So I think that’s more commentary on the crisis in our media. – Jill Stein • Liam in Taken has been great to see. My boys love it. They love him. And there’s just the gravitas to it. It’s believable. You know the guy’s endured. You know the guy’s lived some life. Someone like Liam has lived a lot of life. Myself, I’ve lived a lot of life. There’s loss. There’s success. There’s loss. There’s doubts. And there’s some heartbeat there. – Pierce Brosnan • Lies were like acid, corrosive: They could dissolve trust in a heartbeat. – Rob Thurman • Life is a disease, brother, and death begins already at birth. Every breath, every heartbeat, is a moment of dying – a little shove toward the end. – Erich Maria Remarque • Life is more than breath and a heartbeat; meaning and purpose are the life of life. – Desmond Tutu • Life isn’t measured in minutes, but in heartbeats. – Joan Lowery Nixon • Like a heartbeat. Something inside me. Some dream. I think it’s being a dreamer as a child. Dreamy kids become actors, don’t they? – Michael Gambon • Louis-Cesare’s anger suddenly filled the small room like water, and in a heartbeat his eyes went from silver tinged to as solid as two antique coins. I sat frozen, awash in a sea of power. I was beginning to understand why Mircea had wanted him along, only Daddy had failed to mention anything about the hair-trigger temper. I guess he assumed the red hair would clue me in. – Karen Chance • Love is connected to the heart. When the Name of God Allah is synchronized with the heartbeat, it then travels through the blood to all the veins, reaches the spirits and awakens them. Then the spirits are rejuvenated and go into the Love of God. – Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi • Love is the heartbeat of all life. – Paramahansa Yogananda • Maybe, he said hesitantly, maybe there is a beast. The assembly cried out savagely and Ralph stood up in amazement. You, Simon? You believe in this? I don’t know, said Simon. His heartbeats were choking him. […] Ralph shouted. Hear him! He’s got the conch! What I mean is . . . maybe it’s only us. Nuts! That was from Piggy, shocked out of decorum. – William Golding • Music gets inside you, music captures you. Music becomes your heartbeat. It’s a drug and makes you feel whatever the song’s about. – Ed Westwick • music is about as physical as it gets: your essential rhythm is your heartbeat; your essential sound, the breath. We’re walking temples of noise, and when you add tender hearts to this mix, it somehow lets us meet in places we couldn’t get to any other way. – Anne Lamott • Music is the elixir of life. It can mimic the heartbeats of our bodies and heal like a magic wand… The resonance it creates in our bodies cannot be replicated by any medicine. – Walter Mikac • My heart beat Beats me senselessly Why’s everything Gotta be so intense with me. – Katy Perry • My heart is fluid and soaring. There’s no longer any space between heartbeats. – Lauren Oliver • My little dog – a heartbeat at my feet. – Edith Wharton • My loving sister Mary has always shared the pain and pleasure of my heartbeat in a unique and special way. We have sung our sad and warm songs together. – John Henrik Clarke • Namby-pamby little routines that don’t speed up your heartbeat and make you sweat aren’t worth your while. – Jane Fonda • No, there is literally nothing on the business side that I wouldn’t sacrifice in a heartbeat to have an extra couple of hours’ writing. Nothing. – J. K. Rowling • Nothing endures except change; nothing is constant except death. Every heartbeat wounds us, and life would be an eternal bleeding to death, were it not for literature. It grants us what nature does not: a golden time that doesn’t rust, a springtime that never wilts, cloudless happiness and eternal youth. [my translation] – Ludwig Borne • Oh, honey, if he swung batter-batter for my team, I’d be all over that in a heartbeat. – J. Lynn • Okay, okay.” I set my hand on top of his and guide it to my chest, so it’s right over my heart. “Feel my heartbeat. Can you feel it?” “Yes.” “Feel how steady it is?” “It’s fast.” “Yes, well, that has nothing to do with the box.” I wince as soon as I’m done speaking. I just admitted to something. Hopefully he doesn’t realize that. – Veronica Roth • Once I was lost in a forest. I was so afraid. My blood pounded in my chest and I knew my heart’s strength would soon be exhausted. I saved myself without thinking. I grasped the two syllables closest to me, and replaced my heartbeat with your name. – Anne Michaels • One has to reach to the absolute state of awareness: that is Zen. You cannot do it every morning for a few minutes or for half an hour and then forget all about it. It has to become like your heartbeat. You have to sit in it, you have to walk in it. Yes, you have even to sleep in it. – Rajneesh • One’s life story cannot be told with complete veracity. A true autobiography would have to be written in states of mind, emotions, heartbeats, smiles and tears; not in months and years, or physical events. Life is marked off on the soul by feelings, not by dates. – Helen Keller • Our breath, like our heartbeat, is the most reliable rhythm in our lives. When we become attuned to this constant rhythm, our breath can gradually teach us to come back to the original silence of the mind. – Donna Farhi • Our story opens in the mind of Luther L. (L for LeRoy) Fliegler, who is lying in his bed, not thinking of anything, but just aware of sounds, conscious of his own breathing, and sensitive to his own heartbeats. Lying beside him is his wife, lying on her right side and enjoying her sleep. – John O’Hara • Over the past year I’vediscovered if you keep on giving and giving, you end up losing yourself. I think that learning to give and receive is the trick. Perfect happiness is also a feeling, and the most amazing thing is that we were all born with the gift to make it happen in a heartbeat. Putting on certainmusic, reading something can make us feel a certain way. I think the key to happiness is allowing ourselves to not feel bad or guilty for feeling it, and letting it be contagious. And to not be dependent on other people to create your own happiness. – Brittany Murphy • Patients know in a heartbeat if they’re getting a clumsy exam. – Abraham Verghese • People who are in it for their own good are individualists. They don’t share the same heartbeat that makes a team so great. A great unit, whether it be football or any organization, shares the same heartbeat. – Bear Bryant • Perhaps the Wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silence that reminds us we live by grace. – Terry Tempest Williams • Promise to my momma I’ma make it to the Top..So I’ma keep climbing til my heartbeat drop – J. Cole • Raindrops are my only reminder that clouds have a heartbeat. That I have one, too. – Tahereh Mafi • Remember that reputation and integrity are your most valuable assets – and can be lost in a heartbeat. – Charlie Munger • Remember, we could solve this in a heartbeat with ranked-choice voting. The Democrats won’t pass it. This allows you to rank your choices and eliminates the intimidation and the fear. They won’t pass it; I know because I helped file the bill. Sixteen years ago in Massachusetts they could have solved the spoiler problem. They won’t do it because they rely on fear. The fact that they rely on fear tells you something very important. They are not on your side. For that reason alone, they do not deserve your vote. – Jill Stein • Reshaping life! People who can say that have never understood a thing about life—they have never felt its breath, its heartbeat—however much they have seen or done. They look on it as a lump of raw material that needs to be processed by them, to be ennobled by their touch. But life is never a material, a substance to be molded. If you want to know, life is the principle of self-renewal, it is constantly renewing and remaking and changing and transfiguring itself, it is infinitely beyond your or my obtuse theories about it. – Boris Pasternak • Reyes, what happened?” He‘d been busy nibbling his way to my collarbone, his hot mouth evoking seismic activity at each point of contact. I really hated to interrupt, but … “Reyes, are you listening to me?” He raised his head, a sensual grin playing at the corners of his mouth, and said, “I‘m listening.” “To what? The sound of blood rushing to your nether regions?” “No,” he said with a husky chuckle that made me tingle everywhere. “To your heartbeat. – Darynda Jones • Right now there’s a man on the street outside my door with outstretched hands full of heartbeats no one can hear. He has cheeks like torn sheet music every tear-broken crescendo falling on deaf ears. At his side there’s a boy with eyes like an anthem no one stands up for. – Andrea Gibson • Sarah Palin lacked the preparation or temperament to be one heartbeat away from the presidency, but what she possessed in abundance was the ability to inflame political passions and energize the John McCain campaign with star quality. – Roger Ebert • Scientists say every action initiates an equal and opposite reaction. I say that’s just the start. I say every action initiates a most unequal and upredictable chain reaction, that every filament of living becomes part of a larger weave, while remaining identifiable. That every line of latitude requires several stripes of longitude to obtain meaning. That every universe is part of a bigger heaven, a heaven of rhythm and geometry, where a heartbeat is the apex of a triangle. – Ellen Hopkins • Sean reaches out between us and takes my wrist. He press his thumb on my pulse. My heartbeat trips and surges against his skin. I’m pinned by his touch, a sort of fearful magic. We stand and stand, and I wait for my pulse against his finger to slow, but it doesn’t Finally, he releases my wrist and says,” I’ll see you on the cliffs tomorrow. – Maggie Stiefvater • She closes the door completely, and I crouch there. I allow myself to fall forward and rest my head on the door frame. My breath bleeds. My heartbeat drowns my ears. – Markus Zusak • She moved nearer, leaned her shoulder against me — and we were one, and something flowed from her into me, and I knew: this is how it must be. I knew it with every nerve, and every hair, every heartbeat, so sweet it verged on pain. And what joy to submit to this ‘must’. A piece of iron must feel such joy as it submits to the precise, inevitable law that draws it to a magnet. Or a stone, thrown up, hesitating a moment, then plunging headlong back to earth. Or a man, after the final agony, taking a last deep breath — and dying. – Yevgeny Zamyatin • She was my dream. She made me who I am, and holding her in my arms was more natural to me than my own heartbeat. I think about her all the time. Even now, when I’m sitting here, I think about her. There could never have been another. – Nicholas Sparks • Some emotions don’t make a lot of noise. It’s hard to hear pride. Caring is real faint – like a heartbeat. And pure love – why, some days it’s so quiet, you don’t even know it’s there. – Erma Bombeck • Sometimes I heard voices muttering in my head, and a lot of the time the world seemed to smolder around its edges. but I was in a little better physical shape every day, I was getting my looks back, and my spirits were rising, and this was all in all a happy time for me. All these weirdos, and me getting a little better right in the midst of them. I had never known, never even imagined for a heartbeat, that there might be a place for people like us. – Denis Johnson • Sometimes when you are standing still and it’s snowing, you think that you hear music. You can’t tell where it’s coming from either. I wondered if we all really did have a soundtrack, but we just get so used to it that we can’t hear it anymore, the same way that we block out the sound of our own heartbeat. – Heather O’Neill • Sometimes, when a person is truly lost in this world, suffocating inside her private bubble where all she can hear is her own droning heartbeat, a touch can be enough. – Walter Kirn • Such was a poet and shall be and is -who’ll solve the depths of horror to defend a sunbeam’s architecture with his life: and carve immortal jungles of despair to hold a mountain’s heartbeat in his hand. – e. e. cummings • Tell me what it’s like. The race.” “What it’s like is a battle. A mess of horses and men and blood. The fastest and strongest of what is left from two weeks of preparation on the sand. It’s the surf in your face, the deadly magic of November on your skin, the Scorpio drums in the place of your heartbeat. It’s speed, if you’re lucky. It’s life and it’s death or it’s both, and there’s nothing like it. – Maggie Stiefvater • That he’ll never let you down. That boy’s got a heart the size of Kentucky, and he loves you. That’s important. Take it from someone who knows. My mom used to tell me that whatever you do, marry someone who loves you more than you love him. And I listened to her. Why do you think Henry and I get along so well? I’m not saying that I don’t love him, because I do. But if I ever left Henry or something, God forbid, ever happened to me, I don’t think he’ll be able to go on. And that guy would risk his life for mine in a heartbeat. – Nicholas Sparks • That is where my dearest and brightest dreams have ranged — to hear for the duration of a heartbeat the universe and the totality of life in its mysterious, innate harmony. – Hermann Hesse • That’s my favorite thing about him. I like to lie next to him when it’s late, dark, and so quiet I can hear my own heartbeat. It’s times like that when I’m sure that I’m in love. – Lauren Oliver • The difference between deafness and any other disability is that there is no way to put yourself in a position of knowing what it would be like because you can’t stop yourself from hearing your own breath or your own heartbeat. You can not remove sound entirely from your life. You can get a sense of what being blind is like by closing and covering your eyes which provides a source of empathy because we can all project ourselves to that. But people who think they can project themselves into deafness are mistaken because you can’t. – Richard Masur • The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint, that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come. To protect what is wild is to protect what is gentle. Perhaps the wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silent space that says we live only by grace. Wilderness lives by this same grace. Wild mercy is in our hands. – Terry Tempest Williams • The final heartbeat for the Christian is not the mysterious conclusion to a meaningless existence. It is, rather, the grand beginning to a life that will never end. – James Dobson • The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature. – Joseph Campbell • The government is a heartbeat away from nationalizing health care based on deliberate misinformation about the nation’s uninsured and despite the 100 percent failure rate of such fantastic reforms elsewhere on the globe. – David Limbaugh • The great event on Calvary . . . is an eternal reminder to a power drunk generation that love is the most durable power in the world, and that it is at bottom the heartbeat of the moral cosmos. Only through achieving this love can you expect to matriculate into the university of eternal life. – Martin Luther • The greatest attribute of God is Love. The Tree of Life is located in the very depth of our soul. The most perfect and abundant fruit that grows and ripens is Life giving Love; it is the great healing force in the world. Love never fails to meet every demand of the human heart. The Divine principal of Love may be used to eliminate every sorrow, infirmity, in-harmony, ignorance and all mistakes of mankind. Love is God; eternal, limitless, changeless, infinite. It is the pulse of the world, the heartbeat of the Universe. – Baird T. Spalding • The heartbeat of your originality is deep within a body of thought that continually wrestles with the contradictions and limitations that we’re constantly trying to overcome, the curiosities and the ignorances of the people we seek to help. – Michael Eric Dyson • The myth of this world is that the way to transformation is through power, but God choose to enter the world in a weak manner, gentle and tender through the heartbeat of a child. – Rick Dees • The phone is gonna disappear. Maybe it will be a bracelet. After the bracelet it will be a blood cell sized device that maybe gets installed. We already have people with Parkinson’s that have chips installed in their brain to control their tremors. We already see people have pacemakers to help their heartbeats. I mean we’re already putting these technologies into our bodies. It is only going to deepen. – Jason Silva • The principles of the United States Constitution are, because of Senator Byrd, still the heartbeat of the US Senate. – David C. Hardesty, Jr. • The revolution is like a vessel filled with the pulsating heartbeat of millions of working people. – Ernst Toller • The secret of it all, is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood, of the moment – to put things down without deliberation – without worrying about their style – without waiting for a fit time or place. I always worked that way. I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote – wrote, wrote…By writing at the instant the very heartbeat of life is caught. – Walt Whitman • The soundtrack in the poetry is the soundtrack from your own heartbeat. – Russell Simmons • The thing about physicists is that they tend to think that everything is physics. I don’t. That’s not what music is to me. You can explain aspects of it in physical terms, including the physics of anatomy: how our bodies move, the torsional moment of inertia, the way you move your body to a beat, the inherent periodicities of the heartbeat, the gait. That’s physics, too, I guess – maybe they’d call it biophysics. – Vijay Iyer • The truth is, we live in deeds, not days; in actions and thoughts and feelings, not heartbeats. – Michael Mullen • The type of girls that would sleep with you in a heartbeat aren’t the type of girls I’d want to take home anyway. – Niall Horan • The whole universe was stilled as if listening for a voice. For the space of one heartbeat there was peace on earth. For one fraction of a moment there was no deed of violence wrought on earth, no hatred, no fire, no whirlwind, no pain, no fear. Existence rested against the heart of God, then sighed and journeyed again. – Elizabeth Goudge • The young earth-solution to reconciling the order of creation with natural history makes good exegetical and theological sense. Indeed, the overwhelming consensus of theologians up through the Reformation held to this view. I myself would adopt it in a heartbeat except that nature seems to present such strong evidence against it. – William A. Dembski • There are people we meet in life who miss being important to us by inches, days, or heartbeats. Another place or time or a different emotional frame of mind and we would willingly fall into their arms; gladly take up their challenge or invitation. But as it is, we encounter them when we are discontent or content and they are not. Whatever they are, we are not and vice versa. Two trains going in different directions that pass for a few powerful moments at full speed, blasting noise and wind but then they are gone. Whatever serious chemistry might have been possible if, isn’t. – Jonathan Carroll • There came a moment in the middle of the song when he suddenly felt every heartbeat in the room & after that he never forgot that he was part of something much bigger – Brian Andreas • There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment. – Sarah Dessen • There is no other closeness in human life like the closeness between a mother and her baby – chronologically, physically, and spiritually they are just a few heartbeats away from being the same person. – Susan Cheever • There was something unbearably sexy about cars at night, Ronan thought. The way the fenders twisted the light and reflected the road, the way every driver became anonymous. The sight of them knocked his heartbeat askew. – Maggie Stiefvater • There would be no chance at all of getting to know death if it happened only once. But fortunately, life is nothing but a continuing dance of birth and death, a dance of change. Every time I hear the rush of a mountain stream, or the waves crashing on the shore, or my own heartbeat, I hear the sound of impermanence. These changes, these small deaths, are our living links with death. They are death’s pulses, death’s heartbeat, prompting us to let go of all the things we cling to. – Sogyal Rinpoche • There’s no conscious thing on the face of the world that doesn’t know dread more intimately than its own heartbeat. – Clive Barker • There’s a heartbeat in any country that carries on regardless – at least in Europe. That’s what worries me about America, because I’m not sure what that heartbeat is – unless it’s the heartbeat of someone who’s just arrived, who just ran over the border two weeks ago. – Helen Mirren • There’s a moment on the arch of a jump, when you are neither rising nor falling. All you can see is the sky. All you can feel is the air and all you can hear is your heartbeat. That is all you are. Muscle and motion. It’s called the deadpoint. I live for that. – Rhianna Pratchett • Things could change so entirely, in a heartbeat; the world could be made entirely anew, because someone was kind. – Jo Baker • This body is fragile. It is just flesh. Listen to the heartbeat. Life depends on the pumping of a muscle. – Stephen Batchelor • This country will kill you in a heartbeat and still people love it. • This is my heartbeat like yours, it is a hatchet It can build a house or tear one down. – Andrea Gibson • Time becomes a stutter-the space between drumbeats, splintered into fragments, and also endlessly long, as long as soaring guitar notes that melt into one another, as full as the dark mass of bodies around me. I feel like the air downstairs has gone to liquid, to sweat and smell and sound, and I have broken apart in it. I am wave: I am pulled into the everything. I am energy and noise and a heartbeat going boom, boom, boom, echoing the drums. – Lauren Oliver • To be in a body is to hear the heartbeat of death at every moment. – Andrew Harvey • To listen to the silence is to hear the heartbeat of the Universe. – Laurence Overmire • Together, we can bring our planet’s heartbeat back. – Ian Somerhalder • True observers of nature, although they may think differently, will still agree that everything that is, everything that is observable as a phenomenon, can only exhibit itself in one of two ways. It is either a primal polarity that is able to unify, or it is a primal unity that is able to divide. The operation of nature consists of splitting the united or uniting the divided; this is the eternal movement of systole and diastole of the heartbeat, the inhalation and exhalation of the world in which we live, act, and exist. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe • Vishous’s chest expanded. . . and his diamond stare slowly swung to Butch. There was a heartbeat of intensity. Then V reached out and repositioned the cross so it once again hung over Butch’s heart. “You did well, cop. Congratulations, true? – J.R. Ward • Vulnerability is the absolute heartbeat of innovation and creativity. There can be zero innovation without vulnerability. – Brené Brown • Waves are the voices of tides. Tides are life,” murmured Niko. “They bring new food for shore creatures, and take ships out to sea. They are the ocean’s pulse, and our own heartbeat. – Tamora Pierce • We all have music in us – your heartbeat is your drum, your voice is your sound – and music is supposed to put you in tune with nature. – Randy Weston • We are born to love as we are born to die, and between the heartbeats of these two great mysteries lies all the tangled undergrowth of our tiny lives. There is nowhere to go but through. And so we walk on, lost, and lost again, in the mapless wilderness of love. – Tim Farrington • We are tiny flames, Helikaon, and we flicker alone in the great dark for no more than a heartbeat. When we strive for wealth, glory and fame, it is meaningless. The nations we fight for will one day cease to be. Even the mountains we gaze upon will crumble to dust. To truly live we must yearn for that which does not die. – David Gemmell • We conclude that the concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable, and is periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution. In this view all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive redistribution. – Will Durant • We each have a finite number of heartbeats, a finite amount of time. But we have enough heartbeats and enough time to do what is important. – Susan L. Taylor • We have our own little heartbeat, too. We already have what I would call polyrhythms going on. – John Densmore • We left no doubt that we are one heartbeat And something like that is pretty hard to stop Once it gets going – Oscar Lua • We like to think of life as a constant … Yet it can be ended in a heartbeat. – David Gemmell • We tell stories. We talk about statistics. And in 1978, we added an element of the show that gave it its heartbeat: the long distance dedication. – Casey Kasem • What interests Sam Mendes are characters and relationships, and he was a genius at giving you the freedom to create the type of character you want, and also to explore and have fun with your fellow actors. For him, characters and relationships are really the heartbeat of the film, and then the action is the backdrop. By developing the characters, he makes you care that much more about the action and going on a journey with the characters. – Naomie Harris • What was time itself but the bloom, the sheath enfolding experience? Within time, and with time alone, there was life – the gleam, the quiver, the heartbeat, the immeasurable joy and anguish of being. – Ellen Glasgow • When I was nine, I was diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat and was prescribed beta blockers, which had the side effect of turning my skin green. Looking like Shrek’s little sister at school wasn’t the easiest thing. – Jessie J • When we have heartbeat and brain waves, we refuse to accept it as the presence of life – this lack of logic of which we approach this issue because we like and we favor convenience over ethics. We favor convenience over the hard parts of life that actually make us grow. – Tom Coburn • When you do take the home pregnancy test, it doesn’t quite seem real. But when you see the baby and the heartbeat on the ultrasound, it’s so incredible. – Danica McKellar • Yes, God wants you to do signs and wonders. But the love of God manifested through you is what people really need. So you first must see His face. You must become so close to His very heartbeat that you can feel what others feel. – Heidi Baker • You are in a place that has not been seen for tens of thousands of years, because it was so sealed off. There is such silence that when you hold your breath you can hear your own heartbeat. Everything is so fresh that you have the sensation that the painters have merely retreated deeper into the dark and that they are looking at you. – Werner Herzog • You can hear the Celtic heartbeat all over Europe and America, from Bing Crosby to Jack White, from the Smiths to My Bloody Valentine, from House of Pain to Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. – Rob Sheffield • You can hold a secret, hold it so far in that it drives nearly every thought and every move you make- your very heartbeat, almost. – Deb Caletti • You had me tied in knots. You saved Belen’s life, and I wanted to kill and thank you all at the same time. And during those nights when we didn’t know if you’d live or die, I went from being angry, to worried to frustrated to scared all within a single heartbeat. If you had die, I would have killed you.- Maria V. Snyder • You kind of can’t help who you’ll fall in love with. I’d date someone who isn’t in the business in a heartbeat. – Selena Gomez • You know love is everything you say A whisper, a word Promises you give You feel it in the heartbeat of the day You know this is the way love is – Enya • You must learn how to hold a team together. You must lift some men up, calm others down, until finally they’ve got one heartbeat. Then you’ve got yourself a team. – Bear Bryant • You must never check for a person’s pulse using your thumb, or you’ll feel your own heartbeat. Actually, I plan on doing that if I’m the one who’s here when Ruth dies. I plan on giving her my heartbeat before I let her go. – Elizabeth Berg • You think I’d cheat on you?” I demanded with all the innocent outrage I could muster. “With another guy, no. With a cheeseburger . . . in a heartbeat. – Lisa Kleypas • You turn on the television, it’s like, “Woah is me! God almighty, we’re awful.” We are so down and out we are – name me a country in the world, name me one leader anywhere in the world who wouldn’t trade places in a heartbeat. We by far, we’re going to own the 21st century. – Joe Biden • Your mother’s heartbeat is the first sound you ever hear and your own heartbeat is the last. – Dave Brubeck

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'a', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_a').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_a img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

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jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'u', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_u').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_u img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

[marcusssanderson]

100 Quotes About Change That Will Inspire You To Live Better

Looking for inspirational quotes about change? Here are some of our favorite change quotes that will help improve your life!

What is it about change that is so hard? Even for the strongest and most self-disciplined of us, it does not come easy.

We change for many reasons, because we need to change, because we want to change, and because it is the right thing to do. What gives us the courage to have the strength and courage to make real and lasting change?

To help make your life better, below is our collection of inspirational, wise, and insightful change quotes, change sayings, and change proverbs, collected from a variety of sources over the years.

Change Quotes for Life, Love and the Art of Letting Go

1.) The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking. ― Albert Einstein

2.) “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”

― Rumi

3.) “One day spent with someone you love can change everything.”

― Mitch Albom, For One More Day

4.) “True life is lived when tiny changes occur.”

― Leo Tolstoy 5.) Your success in life isn’t based on your ability to simply change. It is based on your ability to change faster than your competition, customers, and business.

― Mark Sanborn

6.) “We are products of our past, but we don’t have to be prisoners of it.”

― Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

7.)  “Let him who would move the world first move himself.”

― Socrates

8.) “But you’re so busy changing the world

Just one smile can change all of mine”

― Jack Johnson

9.) “You can’t stop the future

You can’t rewind the past

The only way to learn the secret

…is to press play.”

― Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why

Change Quotes About Life

10.) Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

― Margaret Mead

11.) Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.

― Arnold Bennett

12.) “Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”

― Lao Tzu

13.) “Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.”

― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

14.) “No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side.

Or you don’t.”

― Stephen King, The Stand

15.) If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.

― Maya Angelou

16.) “Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.”

― William Jennings Bryan

17.) “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.”

― Brené Brown

18.) “Sure, everything is ending,” Jules said, “but not yet.”

― Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

19.) “Nothing is as painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”

― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Quotes About Change In the World

20.) Be the change that you wish to see in the world.

― Mahatma Gandhi

21.) Change is inevitable. Change is constant.

― Benjamin Disraeli

22.) “Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby- awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess.”

― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish

23.) Just Because…..“Fashion changes, but style endures.”

― Coco Chanel

24.) “If you love deeply, you’re going to get hurt badly. But it’s still worth it.”

― C.S. Lewis

25.) I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.

― Mother Teresa

26.) “Believe something and the Universe is on its way to being changed. Because you’ve changed, by believing. Once you’ve changed, other things start to follow. Isn’t that the way it works?”

― Diane Duane, So You Want to Be a Wizard

27.) “Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape. ”

― William S. Burroughs

28.) “If you want to change attitudes, start with a change in behavior.”

― Katharine Hepburn

29.) “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

― Nelson Mandela

Quotes About Change and choices

30.) Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.

― John Kenneth Galbraith

31.) When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.

― Benjamin Franklin

32.) “Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

― Barack Obama

33.) “I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.”

― Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point

34.) “Things changed, people changed, and the world went rolling along right outside the window.”

― Nicholas Sparks, Message in a Bottle

35.) The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance. -Nathaniel Branden

36.) “Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.”

― Wayne W. Dyer

37.) “The beautiful journey of today can only begin when we learn to let go of yesterday.”

― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

38.) “Change not only was inevitable, but usually brought its own rewards.”

― Nicholas Sparks, The Last Song

39.) “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

― Margaret Mead

Quotes About Change in Politics and Business

40.) Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future. -John F. Kennedy

41.) The price of doing the same old thing is far higher than the price of change.

― Bill Clinton

42.) “Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

― Barack Obama

43.) “No matter who you are, no matter what you did, no matter where you’ve come from, you can always change, become a better version of yourself.”

― Madonna

44.) “I realized how truly hard it was, really, to see someone you love change right before your eyes. Not only is it scary, it throws your balance off as well.”

― Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever

45.) Change your thoughts and you change your world. –Norman Vincent Peale

46.) “Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.”

― Eckhart Tolle

47.) “Anger, resentment and jealousy doesn’t change the heart of others– it only changes yours.”

― Shannon L. Alder, 300 Questions to Ask Your Parents Before It’s Too Late

48.) “To change one’s life:

Start immediately.

Do it flamboyantly.

No exceptions.”

― William James

49.) “Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.”

― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

Quotes About Change and letting go

50.) People can cry much easier than they can change.

― James Baldwin

51.) The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.

― Charles Kettering

52.) “They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”

― Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

53.) “You cannot change what you are, only what you do.”

― Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass

54.) “Every woman that finally figured out her worth, has picked up her suitcases of pride and boarded a flight to freedom, which landed in the valley of change.”

― Shannon L. Alder

55.) People don’t resist change. They resist being changed.

― Peter Senge

56.) “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.”

― Mother Teresa

57.) “If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door”

― Milton Berle

58.) “Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled “This could change your life.”

― Helen Exley

59.) “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

― Leo Tolstoy

Quotes About Change In Life

60.) Change before you have to.

― Jack Welch

61.) If you don’t like change, you will like irrelevance even less.

― General Eric Shinseki

62.) “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; I am large — I contain multitudes.”

― Walt Whitman

63.) “Growing up happens when you start having things you look back on and wish you could change ― Clary Fray”

― Cassandra Clare, City of Ashes

64.) “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”

― Alan W. Watts

65.) You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

― R. Buckminster Fuller

66.) “We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers – but never blame yourself. It’s never your fault. But it’s always your fault, because if you wanted to change you’re the one who has got to change.”

― Katharine Hepburn, Me: Stories of My Life

67.) “Don’t confuse poor decision-making with destiny. Own your mistakes. It’s ok; we all make them. Learn from them so they can empower you!”

― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

68.) “A bend in the road is not the end of the road…Unless you fail to make the turn.”

― Helen Keller

69.) “Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn’t stop for anybody.”

― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Change quotes about letting go

70.) He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.

― Harold Wilson

71.) Change means that what was before wasn’t perfect. People want things to be better. -Esther Dyson

72.) “The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche

73.) “Change, like healing, takes time.”

― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

74.) “If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.”

― Martin Luther

75.) Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better. -Sydney J. Harris

76.) “And that is how change happens. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time.”

― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

77.) “When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can’t make them change if they don’t want to, just like when they do want to, you can’t stop them.”

― Andy Warhol, Andy Warhol in His Own Words

78.) “I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

― Steve Jobs

79.) “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

― Rob Siltanen

Change quotes about life

80.) I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better.

― Georg C. Lichtenberg

81.) Resistance at all cost is the most senseless act there is.

― Friedrich Durrenmatt

82.) “I have accepted fear as part of life – specifically the fear of change… I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back….”

― Erica Jong

83.) “You never change things by fighting the existing reality.

To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

― R. Buckminster Fuller

84.) “We are the change we have been waiting for.”

― Barack Obama

85.) It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.

― W. Edwards Deming

86.) “Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”

― George Bernard Shaw

87.) “I find the best way to love someone is not to change them, but instead, help them reveal the greatest version of themselves.”

― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

88.) “Stepping onto a brand-new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation, which is not nurturing to the whole woman.”

― Maya Angelou

89.) And just for fun… “Change is inevitable–except from a vending machine.”

― Robert C. Gallagher

Change quotes about people

90.) When people shake their heads because we are living in a restless age, ask them how they would like to life in a stationary one, and do without change.

― George Bernard Shaw

91.) If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living.

― Gail Sheehy

92.) “The present changes the past. Looking back you do not find what you left behind.”

― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

93.) “Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not.”

― Stephen King, The Green Mile

94.) “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”

― Winston S. Churchill

95.) There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction.

― Winston Churchill

96.) “One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.”

― Malala Yousafzai

97.) “Forget yesterday – it has already forgotten you. Don’t sweat tomorrow – you haven’t even met. Instead, open your eyes and your heart to a truly precious gift – today.”

― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

98.) “We are not trapped or locked up in these bones. No, no. We are free to change. And love changes us. And if we can love one another, we can break open the sky.”

― Walter Mosley, Blue Light

99.) To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

― Winston Churchill

100.) Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

― George Bernard Shaw

Did you enjoy these change quotes

Now that you ar

[lucyariablog]

16 More Quotes to Inspire Your Content Marketing

In 2017, I shared a compilation of 23 inspirational quotes, from Rachael Ray to Ann Handley to Andy Weir and many people in between. Each of those quotes continues to inspire me and impact the way I think about content marketing

Today, to kick off the new year, the CMI editorial team asked me to share some more quotes.

I’ve been a quote junkie since I was a kid. Some of the quotes I’ve included this year I picked up recently. Others came from the dog-eared journal I started in 1993, which includes gems like this one:

Embarrassing? Absolutely. But …

My hope is that you pick up some inspiration from these quotes or think about familiar ideas in a new way.

Maintain your energy

Much of the work we need to do as marketers – and, more importantly, as makers – requires us to think and create. And, quite frankly, there is only so much time we can meaningfully write, develop, or create day in, day out.

Michael Simmons captures the idea perfectly in his article aptly titled An Ambitious Person’s Brutally Honest Take On Work-Life Balance:

“In the world of long-distance running, the idea of someone starting off a race by sprinting as fast as they can until they collapse from exhaustion is obviously stupid. Yet, when it comes to our careers, many of us follow this mentality.

Expert marathoners, on the other hand, purposely run slower than their full potential so they can run longer and actually win the race.  

We need to redefine hard work from how many hours we work in a week (the equivalent of our sprinting speed) to how consistently hard we work over a long period of time.”

And, speaking of marathons, we often hear how content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint, and many articles reference 18 to 24 months as the time frame to build a brand with content marketing. But in the last few years, things have gotten more difficult, and, as  Mark W. Schaefer observes, the journey requires more time:

What I determined was that it took, on average, between two and three years for a personal brand to really ignite. Two and half years. Wow. That’s 30 months of patience.

On average, it takes 2-3 years for a personal brand to ignite, says @markwschaefer. #quotes Click To Tweet

Maintaining focus is tough, especially when the work required will take months, if not years. But, this insight from Entrepreneur Editor in Chief Jason Feifer plays in mind to help me stay on track:

I don’t want to work nonstop – that only ends in burnout – but I want to make sure I’m using my time as wisely as possible. So I started measuring time in terms of outcome. I’d ask myself, ‘What do I get for this hour spent? What can I show for it later?’  … There may never be time for everything, but there is always time for plenty. It’s just a question of priorities.

There may never be time for everything, but there is always time for plenty, says @heyfeifer. #quotes Click To Tweet

While maintaining that focus is an ongoing journey (ahem, struggle), the best thing to get me back on track is unadulterated, pure quiet. I emphasized this idea in my previous quote post, and it’s why I was so mesmerized by this quote from Zen master Ryutan:

You are like this cup; you are full of ideas. You come and ask for teaching, but your cup is full; I can’t put anything in. Before I can teach you, you’ll have to empty your cup.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

7 Productivity Killers for Marketers and How to Fix Them

How to Brainstorm and Prioritize Your Best Content Ideas

Do, don’t (over)think

Like many marketers, I love coming up with ideas and starting projects, but I can burn out as the project slogs on. But these next quotes remind me that the actual doing (not the thinking about doing) are most important.

You’d be hard pressed to come up with an idea so bad that it couldn’t succeed with the right execution. And it would be even harder to imagine a great idea that couldn’t fail if the execution were left to morons. Ideas are worthless. Execution is everything. – Scott Adams, Dilbert creator

Ideas are worthless. Execution is everything. @Dilbert_Daily #quotes Click To Tweet

You are not a leader because you have better insight – you are a leader because you make decisions. – David C. Baker, The Business of Expertise

Embrace constraints

Too often we bemoan lack of time or lack of budget or lack of (insert your gripe here). But sometimes, it’s these very constraints that help us focus.

Here’s a fact: Creativity comes easier within constraints …  Constraints make the haiku one of the world’s most moving poetic forms. They give us boundaries that direct our focus and allow us to be more creative. This is, coincidentally, why tiny startup companies frequently come up with breakthrough ideas. They start with so few resources that they’re forced to come up with simplifying solutions. – Shane Snow, Smartcuts

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: The 3 Behaviors Driving the Most Creative Content Marketers

Connect with the (right) people

Another thing that keeps me energized is working with people who challenge me – and whom I enjoy. I have been proactively reaching out to marketers and business owners this year, and while not every conversation has an action, I always learn something new. (And, thus far, everyone has agreed to talk.)

Working with people who challenge me energizes me and my work, says @MicheleLinn. Click To Tweet

Allen Gannett expresses this idea clearly in this quote from his book The Creative Curve (I recommend it):

The point is, don’t wait for someone to take you under their wing; initiate the process yourself. If you meet someone who is successful in a field you want to learn about, approach them. Be curious. Be relentless!

Don’t wait for someone to take you under their wing; initiate the process yourself, says @Allen. #quotes Click To Tweet

My business partner, Clare McDermott, and I often talk about the value of “creative abrasion.” I always look to work with people who ask questions, poke holes in my thinking, or otherwise give me a new perspective. While too much friction isn’t a good thing, embrace what Allen calls the conflicting collaborator:

For this reason, I call the ideal person to work with a conflicting collaborator. Basically, you don’t want to collaborate with someone who is so easy to get along with that they don’t push you. The goal is to find a person who will help you discover and overcome your flaws. 

Here’s another reminder why it’s critical to embrace other perspectives:

Our senses are limited therefore our view of the world is limited. This is not a problem unless we start believing that what we perceive is all there is to be perceived. – Peter McWilliams, self-help author

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: The Secret to Hitting the Creative Sweet Spot

Embrace your own path

One of the drums beating loudly this year is eschewing best practices and forging our own paths (and the more varied perspectives you have, the better).

As such, I can’t help but be reminded of this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson. (Did anyone else go through a transcendentalist phase in high school? Just me? My quote book is littered with ideas from Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.):

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail, says #RalphWaldoEmerson via @MicheleLinn. #quotes Click To Tweet

Taking your own path also means having a point of view, which Meera Kothand summarizes in her book, Your First 100. (Meera is a new-to-me content marketer I stumbled upon this year. I’ve really enjoyed her action-oriented emails and books):

Value doesn’t come from feeding your audience with free tips that everyone else is already saying. You provide value when you’re able to inspire a commitment to change. You add to the content literature in your niche when you have a distinctive point of view. This is also how you build content authority.

You add to the #content literature in your niche when you have a distinctive POV, says @MeeraKothand. #quotes Click To Tweet

This is not to say that we can’t learn from others, but I challenge you to take the best of what you know, apply it, and do you.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Your Brand Needs a Point of View, But Do You?

Start now, from where you are

This last set of quotes (of which there are quite a few) may be the most important and universal. Own where you are and keep moving forward.

I unfortunately don’t know who said this next gem, but I have repeated this quote numerous times since I heard it at Content Marketing World last year:

“You can’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle.”

It echoes these popular Chinese proverbs:

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

“Be not afraid of going slowly, be afraid only of standing still.”

And I leave you with this quote from Jay Acunzo who is talking to all of my marketing friends who experience this sense of paralysis because we think our work can be better:

Perfect isn’t the enemy of good, nor is it the barrier to done. I just think we’re framing the idea all wrong. Aspire to perfection over time, but make sure you’re taking one step forward today.

Aspire to perfection over time, but make sure you’re taking one step forward today, says @jayacunzo. Click To Tweet

Continue to prioritize, do, and own the best possible version of yourself, while making sure you have a hearty dose of quiet, so you can recharge and keep moving forward no matter where you are.

I’d love to hear what you are thinking about as we start the year. Share your favorite quotes – or ideas – in the comments.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: The Best Content Marketing Books of 2017 to Boost Your Creativity and Productivity

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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from https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2019/01/quotes-inspire-marketing/