Quotes about top
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“I laid my hand on top of theirs, and all I could think was, Is this how revolutions begin? Not with a proclamation or a riot, but with a few people in a room somewhere with their hands clasped and a purpose.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Bullet

Source: Bullet

People, Thinking

“The thing about mountains is that you have to keep on climbing them, and that it's always hard, but there's a view from top every time when you finally get there.”

Nancy Garden book Annie on My Mind

Source: Annie on My Mind

Mountain, Time

“The rich and powerful always seem to prefer the tops of buildings. Hasn't anyone ever explained to them that higher just means you have farther to fall? -- Anita Blake”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

“Say you’ll marry me when I come back or, before God, I won’t go. I’ll stay around here and play a guitar under your window every night and sing at the top of my voice and compromise you, so you’ll have to marry me to save your reputation.”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

God, Singing, Night

“Blay said roughly,"I'm still in love with him"
Saxton dropped his eyes and brushed at the top of his thigh, as if there might have been a tiny piece of lint there. " I know. You thought you weren't?”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Reborn

Love

“I'm Irish!… When I feel well I feel better than anyone, when I am in pain I yell at the top of my lungs, and when I am dead I shall be deader than anybody.”

Morgan Llywelyn (1937) Irish writer

Pain, Feeling, Dead

“Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge. The bridge was being repaired: she went right through the Danger sign. The car fell a hundred feet into the ravine, smashing through the treetops feathery with new leaves, then burst into flames and rolled down into the shallow creek at the bottom. Chunks of the bridge fell on top of it. Nothing much was left but charred smithereens.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin (2000) first lines

War, Cars, Sister

“I felt like I'd been swimming so hard, and the water growing warmer and warmer the closer I got to the top. I wasn't there yet, but now I could see the surface, rippling just beyond my fingers.”

Sarah Dessen book Dreamland

Source: Dreamland (2000)

Water

“I am wary of the whole dreary deadening structured mess we have built into such a glittering top-heavy structure that there is nothing left to see but the glitter, and the brute routines of maintaining it.”

John D. MacDonald (1916–1986) writer from the United States

Travis McGee series, The Deep Blue Good-by (1964)
Source: The Deep Blue Good-By
Context: I am wary of a lot of things, such as plastic credit cards, payroll deductions, insurance programs, retirement benefits, savings accounts, Green Stamps, time clocks, newspapers, mortgages, sermons, miracle fabrics, deodorants, check lists, time payments, political parties, lending libraries, television, actresses, junior chambers of commerce, pageants, progress, and manifest destiny. I am wary of the whole dreary deadening structured mess we have built into such a glittering top-heavy structure that there is nothing left to see but the glitter, and the brute routines of maintaining it.

“Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test that it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

Mountain

“But I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Thinking, Time

“You forget who submits, Eva,” he said gruffly. “I’ve given up control for you. I’ve bent and adjusted for you. I’ll do anything to keep you and make you happy. But I can’t be tamed or topped. Don’t mistake indulgence for weakness.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

Forgetting, Happiness

“the way to create art is to burn and destroy
ordinary concepts and to substitute them
with new truths that run down from the top of the head
and out of the heart”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Truth, Art, Way, Heart

“One must fight to get to the top, especially if one starts at the bottom.”

Franz Kafka book The Castle

Source: The Castle (1926)

Fight

“The top two movies at the box office this weekend were 'High School Musical 3' and 'Saw V.'

One movie features gruesome onscreen torture that is difficult to watch and the other is about a guy with a saw.”

Conan O'Brien (1963) American television show host and comedian

School, Music, Guy, Box

“Mary-Lynnette had an inexplicable impulse to knock Ash flat and fall down on top of him. She'd never felt that for any boy before.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Night World, No. 1

Boy

“She went from angry to calm so fast that he wondered if she wasn’t the Ferrari of moms. Her top speed had to be.65 nanoseconds.’ (Nick)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

Moms, Speed

“Mini-Hedge would stomp around on Buford’s top, randomly saying things like “CUT THAT OUT!” “I’M GONNA KILL YOU!” and the ever-popular “PUT SOME CLOTHES ON!”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Clothes

“Love was a feeling completely bound up with color, like thousands of rainbows superimposed one on top of the other.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Love, Color, Feeling

“I don't like having feelings," Eric said coldly, and he left.
That was a tough exit line to top.”

Charlaine Harris book Club Dead

Source: Club Dead

Feeling

“It was like being in an elevator cut loose at the top. Falling, falling, and not knowing when you will hit.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

“Certificates from top US universities adorned the walls like tiger head in a hunter’s home.”

Chetan Bhagat book 2 States: The Story of My Marriage

Source: 2 States: The Story of My Marriage

Home, Universe

“How do you forget something? You just walk away from it, those who are still alive. There are so few clearings in our hearts and minds, so few places where something can't grow on top of whatever happened to us before, and this is love too.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Source: Adverbs

Love, Heart, Forgetting

“When you're climbing Mount Everest, nothing is easy. You just take one step at a time, never look back and always keep your eyes glued to the top.”

Jacqueline Susann book Valley of the Dolls

Source: Valley of the Dolls

Time

“Dennis Hutch had stepped up into the top seat when its founder had died of a lethal overdose of brick wall, taken while under the influence of a Ferrari and a bottle of tequila.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 23

“A two-year old is kind of like having a blender, but you don't have a top for it.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

Funny

“The arrangements that couples make in order to maintain civility in the midst of their journey to divorce are often most elaborate when the professed top priority is to protect a child.”

John Irving (1942) American novelist and screenwriter

“There is perhaps nothing worse than reaching the top of the ladder
and discovering that you’re on the wrong wall.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

“Jacoblike a totally normal young man. He's clearly intelligent. But having his day disrupted probably makes him feel the same way I would if I was suddenly told to bungee off the top of the Sears Tower.”

Jodi Picoult book House Rules

Source: House Rules

Way, Feeling, Intelligence

“It's the climbing that makes the man. Getting to the top is an extra reward.”

Robert Lipsyte book The Contender

Source: The Contender

“Win told me that one isn’t improved by being at the top of the mountain, one is improved by the climb.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Married By Morning

Mountain

“Maureen clapped her hands together. "Oh," she said in her elfin little voice. "It's pretty."
"Pretty?" Simon looked quickly at the hunched shape on top of the concrete block. "Maureen, what the hell-”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Hell

“Getting to the top of any given mountain was considered much less important than how one got there: prestige was earned by tackling the most unforgiving routes with minimal equipment, in the boldest style imaginable.”

Jon Krakauer (1954) American outdoors writer and journalist

Source: Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster

Imagination, Mountain

“To be both rich and handsome was bad enough. But to have a voice like honey over warm bread on top of that was simply inexcusable.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

“Grief is a curious thing, when it happens unexpectedly. It is a Band-aid being ripped away, taking the top layer off a family. And the underbelly of a household is never pretty, ours no exception.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Family

“I know up on top you are seeing great sights,
But down here on the bottom,
We too should have rights.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Yertle the Turtle (1958)
Source: Yertle the Turtle and Gertrude McFuzz

“You know the legend. Stab them in the heart and they’ll die. (Ravyn)
Call me Buffy. I’m even blond, but don’t ask me to wear a halter top. Or corset. (Susan)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dark Side of the Moon

Heart

“emotions really exist at the bottom of the personality or at the top. in the middle they are acted. this is why all the world is a stage.”

Iris Murdoch book The Sea, the Sea

Source: The Sea, the Sea

World, Personality

“You’re playing the creepy vibe a little hard,” I said. “Might as well go for broke, put on a black top hat and pipe in some organ music.”

Jim Butcher book Small Favor

Source: Small Favor

Music

“She can shoot like a dream and she carries tiny grenades in her top, a bit of my addled mind thought. I think I might be in love.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: Steelheart

Love, Dreams, Thinking

“I am not plain, or average or - God forbid - vanilla. I am peanut butter rocky road with multicolored sprinkles, hot fudge and a cherry on top.”

Wendy Mass book Every Soul a Star

Source: Every Soul a Star

God

“I like that people can just look at you and know that you are taken, that you are mine.” He closed his eyes and laughed. “And yes, I know that sentiment is at the top of the Women’s Liberation Movement’s list of things not to say to a modern woman.”

Patricia Briggs book River Marked

Source: River Marked

Women, People

“I expect that you must receive top marks at school, young lady."
Madeleine smiled as she stirred her tea. "There are always rewards for those who state the obvious frequently and with conviction.”

Scott Westerfeld book Touching Darkness

Source: Touching Darkness

School, Smile, Tea

“No, I don't think you understand just how stupid goblins are. Let me give you an example. One of the B'wa Kell generals, and this is their top fairy, was caught caught trying to pass off forged credit slips by signing his own name.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Arctic Incident

Stupidity, Understanding, Thinking

“Heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Source: Wuthering Heights

Angels, Home, Heart, Joy

“It was a fine cry — loud and long — but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.”

Toni Morrison book Sula

Source: Sula (1973)

Sad, Cry

“Maybe that is the best lesson I learned in my first semester at Yale, because if I had gone to a less-demanding school and continued to sail along on the top, I am sure I would never have attained the subsequent achievements in my life.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

Life, School, Learning

“When in doubt, start from the top.
-Jason Grace”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

“Being average means you are as close to the bottom as you are to the top.”

John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach

Source: Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court

“I wish to cry. Yet, I laugh, and my lipstick leaves a red stain like a bloody crescent moon on the top of the beer can.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Beer, Cry

“If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter and bread with only the scent of jam spread on top of it. It was the best time of her life.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Love, Life, Feeling, Laughter

“I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like a child stringing beads in kindergarten - happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.”

Brenda Ueland (1891–1985) Journalist and writer

Feeling, Mountain, Learning, Happiness

“The world is really wild at heart and weird on top.”

Barry Gifford book Wild at Heart

Source: Wild at Heart

World, Heart

“The great motherhood friendships are the ones in which two women can admit [how difficult mothering is] quietly to each other, over cups of tea at a table sticky with spilled apple juice and littered with markers without tops.”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

Women, Friendship, Tea

“Flip-flop, hippety-hop, offa your rocker and over the top, life's a fiction and the world's a lie, so put on some Creedence and let's get high.”

Stephen King book The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three

Source: The Drawing of the Three

Life, Lie, World

“Can you turn so you’re not pressed against me?”

“I could,” he said, his voice amused. “But then you would have to lie on top of me.”

My brain said, “NO.” My body went, “Wheee!”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Burn for Me

Lie

“You may not agree, you may not care, but
if you are holding this book you should know that of all the sights I love in this world — and there are plenty — very near the top of the list is this one: dogs without leashes.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: Dog Songs

Love, Books, World, Dogs

“She crawled on top of him, naked and warm and soft, smelling like a miracle that had saved him from a lifetime of aloneness.”

Patricia Briggs book Fair Game

Source: Fair Game

“Life is like a stew, you have to stir it frequently, or all the scum rises to the top.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Source: Still Life with Woodpecker

Life

“She'd rather hoped for something simple, like a lined piece of notebook paper with MY EVIL PLAN written across the top, but no luck.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Hope, Evil

“My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

“It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Life, Mountain

“Wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.”

A.A. Milne book The House at Pooh Corner

Source: The House at Pooh Corner (1928)
Context: Then Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh walked hand in hand down the forest path and they said goodbye. So they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the forest a little boy and his bear will always be playing.

Way, Boy

“No. really, what was the point? She could hardly top Version Fifteen, which had featured both vivisection and wild boar.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: What Happens in London

“For, though the room was silent, the silence of half a hundred cats is a peculiar thing, like fifty individual silences all piled one on top of another.”

Susanna Clarke book Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Source: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Cats, Silence

“It's only adults who read the top layers most of the time. I think children read the internal meanings of everything.”

Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) American illustrator and writer of children's books

Source: The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to Present

Children, Thinking, Time, Reading

“… though I cannot promise to take you home," said North Wind, as she sank nearer and nearer to the tops of the houses, "I can promise you it will be all right in the end. You will get home somehow.”

George MacDonald book At the Back of the North Wind

Source: At the Back of the North Wind

Home, Housing

“WE ARE THE KOURETES!" one shouted at the top of his lungs "WE WILL HELP!"
"Thank you," Rhea said, "Do you have to speak so loudly?"
"THIS IS MY INSIDE VOICE!" the warrior yelled.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Source: Percy Jackson's Greek Gods

Help

“Somewhere far away a bittern cried, a hollow, melancholy sound like a cow shut up in a barn. The cry of that mysterious bird was heard every spring, but no one knew what it was like or where it lived. At the top of the hill by the hospital, in the bushes close to the pond, and in the fields the nightingales were trilling. The cuckoo kept reckoning someone's years and losing count and beginning again. In the pond the frogs called angrily to one another, straining themselves to bursting, and one could even make out the words: "That's what you are! That's what you are!" What a noise there was! It seemed as though all these creatures were singing and shouting so that no one might sleep on that spring night, so that all, even the angry frogs, might appreciate and enjoy every minute: life is given only once.”

Anton Chekhov book In the Ravine

Source: In the Ravine (1900), Ch. 8, pp. 224

Life, Spring, Bird, Sleep

“The twentieth century has witnessed with surprise, not merely the promulgation of these ferocious doctrines, but their enforcement with brutal vigour by the Government and by the populace. No past services, no proved patriotism, even wounds sustained in war, could procure immunity for persons whose only crime was that their parents had brought them into the world. Every kind of persecution, grave or petty, upon the world-famous scientists, writers, and composers at the top down to the wretched little Jewish children in the national schools, was practised, was glorified, and is still being practised and glorified.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

"Hitler and His Choice", The Strand Magazine (November 1935), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 681
The 1930s

War, Children, World, School

“Have I ever remarked on how completely ridiculous it is to ask high school students to decide what they want to do with the rest of their lives and give them nearly no support in doing so? Support like, say, spending a day apiece watching twenty different jobs and then another week at their top three choices, with salary charts and projections and probabilities of graduating that subject given their test scores? The more so considering this is a central allocation question for the entire economy?”

Eliezer Yudkowsky (1979) American blogger, writer, and artificial intelligence researcher

A comment on Memetic Hazards in Videogames (September 2010) http://lesswrong.com/lw/2pe/memetic_hazards_in_videogames/2l8y

School, Question, Support

“I think Ramos has sorted their (Tottenham Hotspur) defense out and if he can hold of Berbatov then i can see them threatening the top four next season.”

Simon Hill (1967) Australian television presenter

January 2008, Tottenham Hotspur Subsequently lost Dimitar Berbatov and made their worst start for 53 years in the 2008/09 Premier League season
Quotes from His time at Foxsports

Thinking, Season

“What is actually happening now is that monoploy capitalism needs the state to disempower ordinary people's institutions and lives. What we are actually developing in modern Europe is a post-democratic society. We are creating an oligarchical elite structure where moneyed elites, the elites of industry cohabit with political elites and they move into each other's regimes and spaces. So we have now produced what I would call a market state, and the market state really just exists for the benefit of those in the top. And there is clear economic and social evidence for this, it is very clear that only those at the very top of society in the developed world have really benefited from the last thirty years.”

Phillip Blond (1966) British philosopher

Money, People, World

“I had written a beautiful piece for today. It was a rant about how much I despise Halloween. It was witty, well-written and a shining example of a writer at the top of his form. Then I tried to save it, and my computer crashed. So I guess you won't get to read it. Out of all the people in the world, I am the only one who had the opportunity to read my brilliant Halloween article, and now the text is already fading from my cruel, cruel short-term memory, the paragraphs lost in a whirling sea of data, never to be seen again.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

31 October 2002
Fully Ramblomatic

People, World, Beauty, Memory

“When you're on Earth, if you go to the top of a mountain, the stars look much brighter than they do at sea level. And because the space shuttle is above Earth's atmosphere, it's like being on a very, very high mountain. So they look brighter, but not bigger.”

Sally Ride (1951–2012) American physicist and astronaut

Scholastic interview (1998)

Mountain, Star, Sea

“For me, I have seen worlds and people begin and end, actually and metaphorically, and it will always be the same. It’s always fire and water.
No matter what your scientific background, emotionally you’re an alchemist. You live in a world of liquids, solids, gases and heat-transfer effects that accompany their changes of state. These are the things you perceive, the things you feel. Whatever you know about their true natures is rafted on top of that. So, when it comes to the day-to-day sensations of living, from mixing a cup of coffee to flying a kite, you treat with the four ideal elements of the old philosophers: earth, air, fire, water.
Let’s face it, air isn’t very glamorous, no matter how you look at it. I mean, I’d hate to be without it, but it’s invisible and so long as it behaves itself it can be taken for granted and pretty much ignored. Earth? The trouble with earth is that it endures. Solid objects tend to persist with a monotonous regularity.
Not so fire and water, however. They’re formless, colorful, and they’re always doing something. While suggesting you repent, prophets very seldom predict the wrath of the gods in terms of landslides and hurricanes. No. Floods and fires are what you get for the rottenness of your ways. Primitive man was really on his way when he learned to kindle the one and had enough of the other nearby to put it out. It is coincidence that we’ve filled hells with fires and oceans with monsters? I don’t think so. Both principles are mobile, which is generally a sign of life. Both are mysterious and possess the power to hurt or kill. It is no wonder that intelligent creatures the universe over have reacted to them in a similar fashion. It is the alchemical response.”

Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 6 (pp. 137-138)

Life, God, Hate, People

“In my little box
At the top of the stair
With my Indian rug
And a pipe to share.”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

Pocahontas
Song lyrics, Rust Never Sleeps (1978)

Box

“Good marriages seem to function something like a buddy system-- the people in them swim in their own waters but keep a protective eye on each other, and should the whistle blow, turn up quickly to hold each other's hand. It's more important today than ever before to know what your priorities are because life links us with more people than our hearts can hold, so men who know what they will go to the wall for, as well as for whom, are the ones whom it is nicest to be married to, presuming you're the one they have at the top of their list.”

Merle Shain (1935–1989) Canadian writer

Some Men are More Perfect Than Others (1973)

Life, Men, Marriage, People

“I’m sick of hearing how far we’ve come. I’m sick of hearing how in some cases women are superseding men, progressing to positions of middle and upper management. Above all, I’m sick of hearing about the pipeline, about the path to the top supposedly thick with women who will, in the fullness of time, be rewarded for their patience and virtue. The following figures speak for themselves: Three percent of Fortune 500 companies are headed by women; 16.8 percent of members of the U. S. Congress are women; 7 percent of tenured engineering faculty in four-year institutions are women. The fact is that so far as leadership is concerned, women in nearly every realm are hardly any better off than they were a generation ago.”

Barbara Kellerman (1939) American academic

Barbara Kellerman in Harvard Business Review; Cited in " Quote of the week: Barbara Kellerman http://theweek.com/articles/494754/quote-week-barbara-kellerman," at theweek.com, April 30, 2010.

Women, Men, Time, Patience