Quotes about line
page 4

“KISS is the number-one American band in gold-record sales. In the world, only the Beatles and the Stones are ahead of us. Every other band should be wiping my ass. The line forms over there to the left.”

Gene Simmons (1949) Israeli-born American rock bass guitarist, singer-songwriter, record producer, entrepreneur, and actor

What I've Learned (July 2002)

World, Kiss

“The great line of demarcation in modern politics, Eric Voegelin used to point out, is not a division between liberals on one side and totalitarians on the other. No, on one side of that line are all those men and women who fancy that the temporal order is the only order, and that material needs are their only needs, and that they may do as they like with the human patrimony. On the other side of that line are all those people who recognize an enduring moral order in the universe, a constant human nature, and high duties toward the order spiritual and the order temporal.”

Eric Voegelin (1901–1985) American philosopher

Russell Kirk, " Ten Conservative Principles http://www.kirkcenter.org/index.php/detail/ten-conservative-principles/" (1993)

Women, Men, People, Nature

“All we are doing is looking at the time line, from the moment the customer gives us an order to the point when we collect the cash. And we are reducing the time line by reducing the non-value adding wastes.”

Taiichi Ohno (1912–1990) Japanese businessman and engineer

Time

“The line about Muslims not tolerating a Muslim girl marrying a Hindu boy even in a movie refers to Mani Ratnam's movie Bombay, a target of Muslim protests for showing just such an affair.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

Source: 1990s, BJP vis-à-vis Hindu Resurgence (1997)

Girl, Boy

“The very conception of a Chosen People implies a lost religious ethnicity. Most likely religions do not in fact cross national and ethnic lines without losing their power and identity. It is probably more in the nature of things to have different groups with different religions”

Vine Deloria Jr. (1933–2005) American writer

Source: God Is Red (1973), p. 293

People, Religion, Nature

“Everything in the universe goes by indirection. There are no straight lines.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Universe

“In a battle, as in a siege, the art consists in concentrating very heavy fire on a particular point. The line of battle once established, the one who has the ability to concentrate an unlooked for mass of artillery suddenly and unexpectedly on one of these points is sure to carry the day.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

Art

“Friendship only exist during happy times. There lies a betrayal line beyond those happy moments.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Friendship, Happiness, Betrayal, Time

“There is a thin line between respect and fear. Some people end up confusing or mixing the two.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

People, Fear

“I'm not loving you, way I wanted to
I can't keep my cool, so I keep it true
I got something to lose, so I gotta move
I can't keep myself and still keep you too No more wasting time, you can't wait for life
We're just racing time, where's the finish line?”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

Love Lockdown
Lyrics, 808s & Heartbreak (2008)

Love, Life, Way, Time

“And I'm back on my grind
A psychic read my lifeline, told me in my lifetime
My name would help light up the Chicago skyline
And that's why I'm
Seven o'clock, that's primetime
Heaven'll watch, God calling from the hotlines
Why he keep giving me hot lines?
I'm a star, how could I not shine?”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

I Wonder
Lyrics, Graduation (2007)

God, Star, Light, Reading

“People spend too much time finding other people to blame, too much energy finding excuses for not being what they are capable of being, and not enough energy putting themselves on the line, growing out of the past, and getting on with their lives.”

J. Michael Straczynski (1954) American writer and television producer

People, Time, Past

“Between childhood, boyhood, adolescence and manhood (maturity) there should be sharp lines drawn with tests, deaths, feats, rites, stories, songs, and judgments.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

Death, Childhood

“You’re beautiful because when you were born, undiscovered planets lined up to peep over the rim of your cradle and lay gifts of gravity and light at your miniature feet”

Simon Armitage (1963) Poet, playwright, novelist

Beauty, Light

“Emma, your granddad’s on the line,” says Artemis, putting her hand over the receiver. “Something about the night bus and he’ll never trust you again?”

Sophie Kinsella book Can You Keep a Secret?

Source: Can You Keep a Secret?

Night

“You know I used to be the back porch poet with my book of lines, always hoping knowing all the time, I'm probably never gonna find the perfect rhyme… For heavier things”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

Books, Hope, Time, Perfection

“That is our Fairy Tail!! We don't live like we have already died, like you do!! We live with our lives on the lines, you bastard!! If you don't have the courage to change things then you might as well just die!!!”

Hiro Mashima (1977) Japanese manga artist

Courage, Change

“In that moment, the machinery of the world lined up. Somewhere a clock struck midnight, and Hugo's future seemed to fall perfectly into place.”

Brian Selznick book The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Source: The Invention of Hugo Cabret

World, Future

“The growth of love is not a straight line, but a series of hills and valleys.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage

Love

“One always dies too soon — or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.”

Jean Paul Sartre No Exit

On meurt toujours trop tôt - ou trop tard. Et cependant la vie est là, terminée : le trait est tiré, il faut faire la somme. Tu n'es rien d'autre que ta vie.
Inès, Act 1, sc. 5
No Exit (1944)

Life

“There are too many books in the world to read in a single lifetime; you have to draw the line somewhere.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

Books, World, Reading, Drawing

“it was possible to grow up in an instant, that you could look down and see the line in the sand dividing your life now from what it used to be.”

Jodi Picoult book The Tenth Circle

Source: The Tenth Circle

Life

“Your face is marked with lines of life, put there by love and laughter, suffering and tears. It's beautiful.”

Lynsay Sands Canadian writer

Love, Life, Beauty, Tear

“His eyes met mine at the soft touch, and a chime seemed to shake the ley line, realigning the universe.

He was mine.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Ever After

Universe

“The truth is, there is no line. There's only your life, how you mess it up, and who is there to save you.
Or who isn't.”

Mitch Albom For One More Day

Source: For One More Day

Life, Truth

“But the bottom line is that, as humans, we are by nature selfish creatures. The only way we care about anything, really, is by making it about us.”

Sarah Dessen book The Moon and More

Source: The Moon and More

Way, Nature, Selfishness

“We're both looking at the same moon, in the same world. We're connected to reality by the same line. All I have to do is quietly draw it towards me.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

World, Reality, Drawing

“What you forget when you're planning a hijack by yourself is somewhere along the line, you might need to neglect your hostages just long enough so you can use the bathroom.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Survivor

Source: Survivor

Forgetting

“Hal: "… Then we'll leave in a huff, taking you with us."
"I've always wanted to travel in a huff," Ingvar mused. "It sounds very comfortable. I imagine they're well padded."
"Lined with feathers, in fact," Gilan put in.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: Slaves of Socorro

Travel, Imagination

“You're really spread out now, you've got stuff all over the WORLD! You've got stuff at home, stuff in storage, stuff in Honolulu, stuff in Maui, stuff in your pockets… supply lines are getting longer and harder to maintain.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

World, Home

“When honor and the Law no longer stand on the same side of the line, how do we choose[? ]”

Anne Bishop (1955) American fiction writer

Source: Heir to the Shadows

Law

“There is no real direction here, neither lines of power nor cooperation. Decisions are never really made – at best they manage to emerge, from a chaos of peeves, whims, hallucinations and all around assholery.”

Thomas Pynchon book Gravity's Rainbow

Source: Gravity's Rainbow

Decision

“As impossible, in fact, as keeping the moon… So I looked down the line at all my friends, knowing I would always remember this. And then I turned my gaze back up to the sky, and put my faith in that moon and its return.”

Sarah Dessen book Keeping the Moon

Source: Keeping the Moon

Faith

“And bottom line, without John by her side, everything seemed to be just a big, resounding meh.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Reborn

“There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Love, Life

“Has that line ever worked for anyone?”
“I’m not feeding you lines. I mean every word.”
…
“Day One of my life was the day I met you.”
“Okay, that’s a winner. You can put it in.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Entwined with You

Life

“Standing in front of a line up of Lay's potato chips, Qhuinn looked overhead to the speaker inset into the ceiling tiles. Next to him John Matthew signed”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover at Last

“Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry. I who don't know the
secret wrote
the line.”

Denise Levertov (1923–1997) Poet

O Taste and See : New Poems (1964), The Secret
Source: Poems, 1960-1967

Life, Secret, Girl

“Social scientists sometimes talk about the concept of "identity". It is the idea that you have a particular vision of the kind of person you are, and you feel awful when you do things that are out of line with that vision.”

Steven D. Levitt (1967) American economist

Source: Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Feeling, Idea, Personality

“It was common enough, to see so much death and want a child. Common, therefore human, and he wanted it all the more. When the wounded were screaming, you dreamed of sharing a little house somewhere, of an ordinary life, a family line, connection.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Life, Death, Family, Dreams

“It's often said that a traumatic experience early in life marks a person forever, pulls her out of line, saying, "Stay there. Don't move.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

Source: Middlesex

Life, Personality

“Every fairy tale had a bloody lining. Every one had teeth and claws.”

Alice Hoffman book The Ice Queen

Source: The Ice Queen

“Before him he saw two roads, both equally straight; but he did see two; and that terrified him--he who had never in his life known anything but one straight line. And, bitter anguish, these two roads were contradictory.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Life

“Hey girl," he said, wiggling his eyebrows. "You must be the riptide, 'cause you sweep me off my feet."
He'd be practicing that pickup line for years. He was glad he finally got yo use it.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Source: Percy Jackson's Greek Gods

Girl

“Shakespeare said it best,' Tamaru said quietly as he gazed at that lumpish, misshapen head. 'Something along these lines: if we die today, we do not have to die tomorrow, so let us look to the best in each other”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

“I read my books at night, like that, under the quilt with the overheated reading lamp. Reading all those good lines while suffocating. It was magic.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Books, Reading, Night

“If the Lord hasn't got a boyfriend lined up for me to marry, that's his business.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Business

“In another time and place, she might have felt differently, but thinking along those lines was pointless now.”

Nicholas Sparks book True Believer

Source: True Believer

Thinking, Time

“If I didn't know the ending of a story, I wouldn't begin. I always write my last lines, my last paragraph first, and then I go back and work towards it. I know where I'm going. I know what my goal is. And how I get there is God's grace.”

Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist

God

“Today the devil as a wolf in supposedly a new suit of sheep’s clothing is enticing some men to parrot his line by advocating planned government guaranteed security at the expense of our liberties.”

Ezra Taft Benson (1899–1994) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Men, Wolf, Clothes

“The Dude just pounded his way in a straight line, convinced that the lion was a figment of his imagination and that the vampire ahead of him was just Grendel's deformed mutant brother.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Gifts

Way, Imagination

“We’re a different sort of thief here, Lamora. Deception and misdirection are our tools. We don’t believe in hard work when a false face and a good line of bullshit can do so much more.”

Scott Lynch The Lies of Locke Lamora

Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora

Falseness

“Draw a line; draw a line that pleases you. And remember that it is not the artist's role to copy the outlines of things but to create a world of his own lines on paper." (pp.28-29)”

Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech author of Czech and French literature

Source: Life is Elsewhere

World, Drawing

“Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
With silken lines, and silver hooks.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

The Bait, stanza 1

Love, Pleasure, For Him, For Boyfriend

“By the time Alec came back into the training room, Jace was lying on the floor, envisioning lines of dancing girls in an effort to ignore the pain in his wrists. It wasn’t working.
~pg. 317~”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Pain, Girl, Lying, Effort

“Until this moment, I had not realized that someone could break your heart twice, along the very same fault lines.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Heart, Heartbreaking

“The stems stood tall and straight, one series arranged in a single line, the other in a crudely shaped heart, the final one in the shape of the letter U. I love you.”

Lurlene McDaniel (1944) American writer

Source: Don't Die, My Love

Love, Heart

“The straight line, a respectable optical illusion which ruins many a man.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Time

“Crowds of questions stream through me like lines of people exiting a soccer ground or a concert. They push and shove and trip. Some make their way around. Some remain in their seats, waiting for their opportunity.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: I Am the Messenger

People, Way, Question, Waiting

“The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and the vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. Loving makes love. Loving makes itself. We waste time looking for the perfect lover instead of creating the perfect love.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Leigh-Cheri to Bernard, in Phase III, Ch. 46.
Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
Context: I’m not quite twenty, but, thanks to you, I’ve learned something that many women these days never learn: Prince Charming really is a toad. And the Beautiful Princess has halitosis. The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and the vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. Loving makes love. Loving makes itself. We waste time looking for the perfect lover instead of creating the perfect love. Wouldn’t that be the way to make love stay?

Love, People, Making love, Way

“Want to come back to the morgue with me after lunch? (Tate)
I shudder at the thought of the pickup line you must have used the night you met LaShonda. Come with me, baby, and see my collection of stiffs. (Simone)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dream Chaser

Baby, Night

“You realize that people take drugs because it's the only real personal adventure left to them in their time-constrained, law-and-order, property-lined world. It's only in drugs or death we'll see anything new, and death is just too controlling.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Survivor

Source: Survivor

Death, People, World, Law

“Perfection is the satin-lined casket of creativity and originality. If you are a perfectionist, at least stop telling everybody you're one and try to get over it yourself, alone in your home with the lights off”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

Source: This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.

Home, Light, Perfection

“… she studied his clothes, his top hat. “And you’ve just come from Parliament? How are you finding that?”

“It’s much like piracy. You tell your enemies that if they don’t fall in line, you’ll leave them to die.”

Meljean Brook (1977)

Source: The Iron Duke

Study, Clothes

“I deciced if I were ever to get into booze and women, my line would be, 'Excuse me, madam, but I would really love to bed and muss you…. Are you perchance free this evening?”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Love, Women

“There is a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Fish

“There is a thin line between attraction and repulsion”

Candace Bushnell (1958) American author

Source: Unknown Book 11676291

“The bottom line is that we never fall for the person we're supposed to.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Variant: The bottom line is that we never fall for the people we're supposed to.
Source: My Sister's Keeper

Personality

“It had been so good to see his enemy again. Positively heartwarming.

Hallmark really needed to start up a line of revenge cards, the kind that let you reach out to those you were going to come after with a vengeance.

- Lash”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Enshrined

Revenge

“…books are always good company if you have the right sort. Let me pick out some for you.' And Mrs. Jo made a bee-line to the well-laden shelves, which were the joy of her heart and the comfort of her life.”

Louisa May Alcott book Jo's Boys

Source: Jo's Boys

Life, Books, Bee, Heart

“> CracKing: No need to yell.
> FtLouie: I’m not yelling!!!
> CracKing: You’re using excessive amounts of punctuation, and on-line, that’s like yelling.”

Meg Cabot The Princess Diaries

Source: The Princess Diaries

“Blake took a small roll from the tray on the table, then put it back in favor of a larger one. And maybe a little butter. It certainly couldn't hurt. And jam… no, he drew the line at jam. She was a spy, after all.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: To Catch an Heiress

Hurt

“The at-home mother's life: it was a race with no finish line.”

Kristin Hannah (1960) American writer

Source: Firefly Lane

Life, Home

“You can't kill us all, human.'
He was right. I raised the machine gun a little. 'True, but who's going to be first in line?”

Laurell K. Hamilton book The Killing Dance

Source: The Killing Dance

“There's a fine line between criminality and genius."
-Dan Cahill”

Jude Watson book A King's Ransom

Source: A King's Ransom

“Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull.”

Rod Serling (1924–1975) American screenwriter

Rod Serling Vogue https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0313304300. <br class="br">Other

“Menacing lines of black tomorrows on the horizon.”

Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848–1907) French novelist and art critic

Source: Becalmed

“(opening lines) The terror, which would not end for another 28 years-if it ever did end-began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.”

Stephen King book It

Source: It (1986)

“Sure, this will probably end up being another in a long line of emotionally crippling misadventures… but let's try to have some fun along the way.”

Brian K. Vaughan (1976) American screenwriter, comic book creator

Way

“All my life, my heart has sought a thing I cannot name.

Remembered line from a long-
forgotten poem”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Source: Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga

Life, Heart

“My life didnʹt need to be on the line for me to enjoy dessert.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

Life

“Scarcely anything in literature is worth a damn except what is written between the lines.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

Literature

“I didnt pay atteniton to times or distance, instead focusing on how it felt just to be in motion, knowing it wasn't about the finish line but how I got there that mattered.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Time

“History, the way the teachers liked it, was a racetrack, a straight shot from start to finish line; life itself was more of a maze.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Evil We Love

Life, Way, History, Teachers

“There is the old catch-22 line that a mentally unstable person can't know, as per their illness, that they are unstable. But that was wrong. You can and do have the insight to see your own crazy.”

Harlan Coben Hold Tight

Source: Hold Tight

Personality

“and don’t start your own line of glitter and try to sell it at Sephora.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

“My trouble is insomnia. If I had always slept properly, I'd never have written a line.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Death on Credit

Source: Death on the Installment Plan

“The secret of high finance… if you really need a loan, you won't qualify. And if you don't need a loan, all the lenders will line up to give you money.”

Joanne Fluke (1943) writer

Source: Peach Cobbler Murder

Money, Secret

“Every journey conceals another journey within its lines: the path not taken and the forgotten angle.”

Jeanette Winterson book Sexing the Cherry

Source: Sexing the Cherry (1989)

“there is a fine line between sarcasm and hostility, you seemed to have crossed it. What's up?”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Hostility

“Lines don’t make beautiful women less beautiful”

Isabel Wolff

A Vintage Affair

Women, Beauty

“He just didn't look like the kind of creep that would messily murder a woman in her hotel room; he looked like the kind of creep that could line her up in the sights of an assassins rifle without a shred of emotion.”

Karen Marie Moning book Darkfever

Source: Darkfever

“So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line I decided to come back home.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Home

“Sometimes, everything in the world seems to be lined up against you. All the evidence says you ought to run the other way. Make the bravest choice, not the safest. It's not the best advice, but it's all I have to offer”

Linda Lael Miller (1949) American writer

Source: The Rustler

World, Way

“The optimum population is modeled on the iceberg — eight ninths below the water line, one ninth above.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

The Controller, Mustapha Mond, in Ch. 16
Source: Brave New World (1932)

Water

“The stars we are given. The constellations we make. That is to say, stars exist in the cosmos, but constellations are the imaginary lines we draw between them, the readings we give the sky, the stories we tell.”

Rebecca Solnit (1961) Author and essayist from United States

Wanderlust: A History of Walking (2001)
Source: Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics
Context: Walking has been one of the constellations in the starry sky of human culture, a constellation whose three stars are the body, the imagination, and the wide-open world, and though all three exist independently, it is the lines drawn between them—drawn by the act of walking for cultural purposes—that makes them a constellation. Constellations are not natural phenomena but cultural impositions; the lines drawn between stars are like paths worn by the imagination of those who have gone before. This constellation called walking has a history, the history trod out by all those poets and philosophers and insurrectionaries, by jaywalkers, streetwalkers, pilgrims, tourists, hikers, mountaineers, but whether it has a future depends on whether those connecting paths are traveled still.

Star, Reading, Drawing