Quotes about twist (323 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“they say that time heals all things,
they say you can always forget;
but the smiles and the tears across the years
they twist my heart strings yet!”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Smile , Tear , Time , Heart

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Childhood , Personality , Forgetting , Pain

“You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.”

Maya Angelou And Still I Rise

"Still I Rise" - Full text online at poets.org http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15623
And Still I Rise (1978)

History

“We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"In Front of Your Nose" http://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/nose/english/e_nose, Tribune (22 March 1946)
Context: The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.

“And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if there weren't any other people living in the world.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

People , World , Way , Heart

“You cannot hope
to bribe or twist,
thank God! the
British journalist.

But, seeing what
the man will do
unbribed, there's
no occasion to.”

Humbert Wolfe (1885–1940) English poet

"Over the Fire", from The Uncelestial City (London: Victor Gollancz, 1930) p. 30.

God , Hope

“I concluded that women are flawed. There is something mentally wrong with the way their brains are wired, as if they haven’t evolved from animal-like thinking. They are incapable of reason or thinking rationally. They are like animals, completely controlled by their primal, depraved emotions and impulses. That is why they are attracted to barbaric, wild, beast-like men. They are beasts themselves. Beasts should not be able to have any rights in a civilized society. If their wickedness is not contained, the whole of humanity will be held back from advancement to a more civilized state. Women should not have the right to choose who to mate with. That choice should be made for them by civilized men of intelligence. If women had the freedom to choose which men to mate with, like they do today, they would breed with stupid, degenerate men, which would only produce stupid, degenerate offspring. This in turn would hinder the advancement of humanity. Not only hinder it, but devolve humanity completely. Women are like a plague that must be quarantined. When I came to this brilliant, pefect revelation, I felt like everything was now clear to me, in a bitter, twisted way. I am one of the few people on this world who has the intelligence to see this. I am like a god, and my purpose is to exact ultimate Retribution on all of the impurities I see in the world.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Building to Violence

God , Freedom , Intelligence , People

“Physical experiences, lacking the joys of love, depend on twists and perversions of pleasure. Abnormal pleasures kill the taste for normal ones.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Love , Pleasure , Joy , Dependency

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes

Source: Sherlock Holmes

“The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.”

Terry Pratchett book Lords and Ladies

Source: Lords and Ladies

Change

“Your twisting is done--you have the last thread of my heart. I wonder: when the thread grows slack, will you feel it?”

Sarah Waters Affinity

Source: Affinity

Feeling , Heart

“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to… fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

For Wife , Relationship , Love

“Will rolled up his sleeves. "We'll probably have to knock down the door--"
"Or," said Jem, reaching out and giving the knob a twist, "not."
The door swung open onto a rectangle of darkness.
"Now, that's simply laziness," said Will.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“Conditioning obstructs our view of reality. — We do not see IT in its suchness because of our indoctrination, crooked and twisted.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 19

Reality

“In this way, a philosophy which veiled the Philistine confessions of its founder beneath neat twists and flourishes of language proceeded further to discover a formula for the canonization of the commonplace. It expatiated upon the rationalism of all reality, and thus ingratiated itself with the Culture-Philistine, who also loves neat twists and flourishes, and who, above all, considers himself real, and regards his reality as the standard of reason for the world. From this time forward he began to allow every one, and even himself, to reflect, to investigate, to aestheticise, and, more particularly, to make poetry, music, and even pictures—not to mention systems of philosophy; provided, of course, that … no assault were made upon the “reasonable” and the “real”—that is to say, upon the Philistine.”

Friedrich Nietzsche Untimely Meditations

(A. Ludovici trans.), “David Strauss,” § 1.2, p. 17
Untimely Meditations (1876)

Love , World , Music , Way

“I do not think it can be questioned that sympathy is a genuine motive, and that some people at some times are made somewhat uncomfortable by the sufferings of some other people. It is sympathy that has produced the many humanitarian advances of the last hundred years. We are shocked when we hear stories of the ill-treatment of lunatics, and there are now quite a number of asylums in which they are not ill-treated. Prisoners in Western countries are not supposed to be tortured, and when they are, there is an outcry if the facts are discovered. We do not approve of treating orphans as they are treated in Oliver Twist.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)

People , Motivation , Question , Thinking

“Oh, eternal mother of mysteries
who, in suffering and lust, conceives
numerous lives, who creates
a thousand twists, a thousand hues, and shades,
what is the spring of these eternal rhythms?”

Yeghishe Charents (1897–1937) Armenian poet

Dantesque Legend (1916)

Spring , Suffering

“At that time (last spring) [U. S., 1928] I did not consider this medium to be of any signal importance in the world of art; merely a very amusing stunt cleverly executed.... however, wishing to return to Paris, I felt it would be quite justifiable to have an exhibition here, where "clever stunts" are highly appreciated, so I came over 3 months ago and set to work, carving wood and twisting wire. These new studies in wire, however, did not remain the simple modest little things I had done in New York. They are still simple, more simple than before; and therein lie the great possibilities which I have only recently come to feel for the wire medium.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

1920s, Statement on Wire Sculpture' (1929)

Lie , World , Art , Feeling

“It is only in sleep that true imagination ever stirs within us. Awake, we never imagine anything; we merely alter, vary, or transpose. We give another twist to the kaleidoscope of the things we see around us, and obtain another pattern; but not one of us has ever added one tiniest piece of new glass to the toy.”

Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) English humorist

Dreams http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/jjdrm10.txt

Imagination , Sleep

“At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress. In our day it appears as the struggle of freemen to gain and hold the right of self-government as against the special interests, who twist the methods of free government into machinery for defeating the popular will. At every stage, and under all circumstances, the essence of the struggle is to equalize opportunity, destroy privilege, and give to the life and citizenship of every individual the highest possible value both to himself and to the commonwealth.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)

Life , Men , Appearance

“I guess it's you I miss.
'Cause I just stare at the ceiling.
My stomach knots and twists.
You've created this feeling.
And I may be out of style.
But do you know what true love is? I'll make this all so worthwhile.
So let's rise above this. Let's rise above this.”

Ed Harcourt (1977) British musician

Until Tomorrow Then

Love , Feeling

“I'll plead no more! I see now your spirit twists around the single error of my life, and I will never tear it free!”

Arthur Miller The Crucible

John Proctor
The Crucible (1953)

Life , Error , Tear

“If you’ve ever sat in a room with twins, immediately you’re forced to deal with this confusion. You’re afraid to call them by name because you’re afraid you’re going to get it wrong. At first being a twin is a source of power, you can switch, you can fool people—but then it becomes a vulnerability because people confuse you when you don’t want them to. The famous story of the twins who were both spanked when either one of them did something wrong because the parents wanted to make sure they got the right twin. So that would immediately make each twin totally responsible for the other one’s actions and therefore would make you want to control the other twin’s actions. It gets quite twisted and the confusion of identities becomes quite intense.”

David Cronenberg (1943) Canadian film director, screenwriter and actor

People , Fools , Parent

“As we focus on destroying ISIL, over-the-top claims that this is World War III just play into their hands. Masses of fighters on the back of pickup trucks and twisted souls plotting in apartments or garages pose an enormous danger to civilians and must be stopped. But they do not threaten our national existence. That’s the story ISIL wants to tell; that’s the kind of propaganda they use to recruit. We don’t need to build them up to show that we’re serious, nor do we need to push away vital allies in this fight by echoing the lie that ISIL is representative of one of the world’s largest religions. We just need to call them what they are — killers and fanatics who have to be rooted out, hunted down, and destroyed.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, State of the Union address (January 2016)

War , Lie , World , Religion

“It is a crime that those people who wish to see a generous France take her place as leader of all the free and just nations are being accused of fomenting turmoil in the country, denounced by the very plotters who are conniving so shamelessly to foist this miscarriage of justice on the entire world. It is a crime to lie to the public, to twist public opinion to insane lengths in the service of the vilest death-dealing machinations. It is a crime to poison the minds of the meek and the humble, to stoke the passions of reactionism and intolerance, by appealing to that odious anti-Semitism that, unchecked, will destroy the freedom-loving France of the Rights of Man. It is a crime to exploit patriotism in the service of hatred, and it is, finally, a crime to ensconce the sword as the modern god, whereas all science is toiling to achieve the coming era of truth and justice.
Truth and justice, so ardently longed for! How terrible it is to see them trampled, unrecognized and ignored!”

Emile Zola J’accuse…!

J'accuse! (1898)

Love , Death , God , People

“The very sun of heaven seemed distorted when viewed through the polarising miasma welling out from this sea-soaked perversion, and twisted menace and suspense lurked leeringly in those crazily elusive angles of carven rock where a second glance shewed concavity after the first shewed convexity.
Something very like fright had come over all the explorers before anything more definite than rock and ooze and weed was seen.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Fiction, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

Sun , Sea

“The truth is that, promoting science isn't just about providing resources, it's about protecting free and open inquiry. It's about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It's about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it's inconvenient, especially when it's inconvenient. Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us. That will be my goal as President of the United States, and I could not have a better team to guide me in this work.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

President-elect Obama's Weekly Address (20 December 2008) http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/barackobama/barackobamaweeklytransition7.htm
2008

Truth , World , Search , Understanding

“…Does your Excellency know the spirit of (my) country? If you did, you would not say that I am "a spirit twisted by a German education," for the spirit that animates me I already had since childhood, before I learned a word of German. My spirit is "twisted" because I have been reared among injustices and abuses which I saw everywhere, because since a child I have seen many suffer stupidly and because I also have suffered. My "twisted spirit" is the product of that constant vision of the moral ideal that succumbs before the powerful reality of abuses, arbitrariness, hypocrisies, farces, violence, perfidies and other base passions. And "twisted" like my spirit is that of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos who have not yet left their miserable homes, who speak no other language except their own, and who, if they could write or express their thoughts, would make my Noli me tangere very tiny indeed, and with their volumes there would be enough to build pyramids for the corpses of all the tyrants…”

José Rizal (1861–1896) Filipino writer, ophthalmologist, polyglot and nationalist

Open letter to Barrantes on the Noli, published in La Solidaridad (15 February 1890)

Education , Home , Reality , Suffering

“How dare those girls give their love and sex to those other men and not me, I constantly think when I see young couples. There is nowhere in the world I can go anymore. There is no more life to live. The Day of Retribution is all I have. It is the final solution to all of the injustices of this twisted world. By doing this, I will set right all of the wrongs I’ve had to face in my sorry excuse of a life.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), Final Days

Love , Life , Men , World

“One might ask why Senhor José needs a hundred-yard-long piece of string if the length of the Central Registry, despite successive extensions, is no more than eighty. That is the question of a person who imagines that one can do everything in life simply by following a straight line, that it is always possible to proceed from one place to another by the shortest route, perhaps some people in the outside world believe that they have done so, but here, where the living and the dead share the same space, sometimes, in order to find one of them, you have to make a lot of twists and turns, you have to skirt round mountains of bundles, columns of files, piles of cards, thickets of ancient remains, you have to walk down dark gulleys, between walls of grubby paper which, up above, actually touch, yards and yards of string will have to be unravelled, left behind, like a sinuous, subtle trail traced in the dust, there is no other way of knowing where you have to go next, there is no other way of finding your way back.”

José Saramago book All the Names

Source: All the Names (1997), pp. 140–141

Life , People , World , Way

“Let the man of learning, the man of lettered leisure, beware of that queer and cheap temptation to pose to himself and to others as a cynic, as the man who has outgrown emotions and beliefs, the man to whom good and evil are as one. The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. There are many men who feel a kind of twisted pride in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt. There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life's realities — all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affection of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves in their own weakness. The role is easy; there is none easier, save only the role of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, Citizenship in a Republic (1910)

Life , Men , Way , Feeling

“Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

One of the most controversial statements Lennon ever made, this was published in England's Evening Standard newspaper (4 March 1966) as part of an interview with writer Maureen Cleave.
Context: Christianity will go.. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first — rock and roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.

“They pervert the most admirable of moral principles. How many are the crimes of which they have made virtues merely by dowering them with the word "national"? They distort even truth itself. For the truth which is eternally the same they substitute each their national truth. So many nations, so many truths; and thus they falsify and twist the truth.”

Henri Barbusse book Under Fire

Under Fire (1916), Ch. 24 - The Dawn
Context: There are all those things against you. Against you and your great common interests which as you dimly saw are the same thing in effect as justice, there are not only the sword-wavers, the profiteers, and the intriguers.
There is not only the prodigious opposition of interested parties — financiers, speculators great and small, armorplated in their banks and houses, who live on war and live in peace during war, with their brows stubbornly set upon a secret doctrine and their faces shut up like safes.
There are those who admire the exchange of flashing blows, who hail like women the bright colors of uniforms; those whom military music and the martial ballads poured upon the public intoxicate as with brandy; the dizzy-brained, the feeble-minded, the superstitious, the savages.
There are those who bury themselves in the past, on whose lips are the sayings only of bygone days, the traditionalists for whom an injustice has legal force because it is perpetuated, who aspire to be guided by the dead, who strive to subordinate progress and the future and all their palpitating passion to the realm of ghosts and nursery-tales.
With them are all the parsons, who seek to excite you and to lull you to sleep with the morphine of their Paradise, so that nothing may change. There are the lawyers, the economists, the historians — and how many more? — who befog you with the rigmarole of theory, who declare the inter-antagonism of nationalities at a time when the only unity possessed by each nation of to-day is in the arbitrary map-made lines of her frontiers, while she is inhabited by an artificial amalgam of races; there are the worm-eaten genealogists, who forge for the ambitious of conquest and plunder false certificates of philosophy and imaginary titles of nobility. The infirmity of human intelligence is short sight. In too many cases, the wiseacres are dunces of a sort, who lose sight of the simplicity of things, and stifle and obscure it with formulae and trivialities. It is the small things that one learns from books, not the great ones.
And even while they are saying that they do not wish for war they are doing all they can to perpetuate it. They nourish national vanity and the love of supremacy by force. "We alone," they say, each behind his shelter, "we alone are the guardians of courage and loyalty, of ability and good taste!" Out of the greatness and richness of a country they make something like a consuming disease. Out of patriotism — which can be respected as long as it remains in the domain of sentiment and art on exactly the same footing as the sense of family and local pride, all equally sacred — out of patriotism they make a Utopian and impracticable idea, unbalancing the world, a sort of cancer which drains all the living force, spreads everywhere and crushes life, a contagious cancer which culminates either in the crash of war or in the exhaustion and suffocation of armed peace.
They pervert the most admirable of moral principles. How many are the crimes of which they have made virtues merely by dowering them with the word "national"? They distort even truth itself. For the truth which is eternally the same they substitute each their national truth. So many nations, so many truths; and thus they falsify and twist the truth.
Those are your enemies. All those people whose childish and odiously ridiculous disputes you hear snarling above you — "It wasn't me that began, it was you!" — "No, it wasn't me, it was you!" — "Hit me then!" — "No, you hit me!" — those puerilities that perpetuate the world's huge wound, for the disputants are not the people truly concerned, but quite the contrary, nor do they desire to have done with it; all those people who cannot or will not make peace on earth; all those who for one reason or another cling to the ancient state of things and find or invent excuses for it — they are your enemies!
They are your enemies as much as those German soldiers are to-day who are prostrate here between you in the mud, who are only poor dupes hatefully deceived and brutalized, domestic beasts. They are your enemies, wherever they were born, however they pronounce their names, whatever the language in which they lie. Look at them, in the heaven and on the earth. Look at them, everywhere! Identify them once for all, and be mindful for ever!

Truth

“Adopt the character of the twisting octopus, which takes on the appearance of the nearby rock.”

Theognis of Megara (-570–-485 BC) Greek lyric poet active in approximately the sixth century BC

Source: Elegies, Line 215.
Context: Adopt the character of the twisting octopus, which takes on the appearance of the nearby rock. Now follow in this direction, now turn a different hue.

Appearance

“There has been no step forward in history that has been easy. We have gone through many twists and turns in the past century.”

Ren Zhengfei (1944) Chinese businessman

Speech at Huawei’s internal online forum (June 26, 2021)

History , Past

“You know why my spirit's callin'
Darkness can't take light from me
Haven't you gone far enough?
Sacrificed the ones you love
Gave up on your sanity
Like some twisted fantasy
What would I say to everything?
Your actions cost everything.”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

Never Abandon Your Family
Lyrics, Donda (2021)

Light , Love

“Also … the plan sounded exactly like the sneaky, twisted, ridiculously annoying and noble sort of thing Leo Valdez would do.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

“Something inside me twists as I remember another voice. Rue. In the arena. When I gave her the leg of groosling. “Oh, I've never had a whole leg to myself before.” The disbelief of the chronically hungry.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

“Make it bend — trees are flexible, so they don’t snap. Scar it, give it a twisted branch — perfect trees don’t exist. Nothing is perfect. Flaws are interesting. Be the tree.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Tree , Perfection

“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves and not to twist them to fit our own image.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Variant: The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image.
Source: The Way of Chuang Tzu

For Wife , Relationship , Love

“Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It's loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Way , Loss , Happiness

“He lunged again. This time I stood my ground and he checked his leap at the last second…. and toppled sideways. I didn't hide my laugh that time. His face twisted fast, grabbed my pajama leg and wrenched, and down I went.
"Bully”

Kelley Armstrong The Reckoning

Source: The Reckoning

Time

“When you see the Crooked Warden," said Locke, twisting something in his hands, "tell him that Lock Lamora learns slowly, but he learns well. And when you see my friends, you tell them that there are more of you on the way.”

Scott Lynch The Lies of Locke Lamora

Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora

Way , Learning

“Stories took twists and turns down fairy-tale paths or down very human everyday ones. You think you’re at the end of the book, and it’s only the end of a chapter.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Story of Us

Books , Thinking

“Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted apples.”

Sherwood Anderson book Winesburg, Ohio

"Paper Pills"
Source: Winesburg, Ohio (1919)
Context: On the trees are only a few gnarled apples that the pickers have rejected. They look like the knuckles of Doctor Reefy's hands. One nibbles at them and they are delicious. Into a little round place at the side of the apple has been gathered all of its sweetness. One runs from tree to tree over the frosted ground picking the gnarled, twisted apples and filling his pockets with them. Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted apples.

“Oh-do be careful with that! That's my Buddha hand grenade. Twist the head twice and throw it and anyone within ten yards can say their prayers.”

Anthony Horowitz Alex Rider

Source: Snakehead

“The odd thing in this world is that an eager-beaver type, with no original ideas, who mimes those in authority above him right to the last twist of necktie and scrape of chin, always gets noticed. Gets selected. Rises.”

Philip K. Dick book Time Out of Joint

Source: Time Out of Joint

World , Idea

“You can wipe your feet on me, twist my motives around all you like, you can dump millstones on my head and drown me in the river, but you can’t get me out of the story. I’m the plot, babe, and don’t ever forget it.”

Margaret Atwood book Good Bones

Source: Good Bones

Motivation , Forgetting

“That strange, twisted, torn love.

That conflict between what your heart knows is right and what your mind is told is right.”

David Levithan Boy Meets Boy

Source: Boy Meets Boy

Love , Heart

“I think of how life takes unexpected twists and turns, sometimes through sheer happenstance, sometimes through calculated decisions. In the end, it can all be called fate, but to me, it is more a matter of faith.”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

Source: Love the One You're With

Life , Fate , Faith , Thinking

“I suffer migraines. I do not suffer fools. I like a twist of meaning. I endure.”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Variant: I suffer migraines. I do not suffer fools.
Source: We Were Liars

Fools , Suffering

“The more beautiful the skin is, the more deadly it is. That's what Will's like. All that pretty face and whatnot just hides how twisted up and rotten he is on the inside.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Beauty

“No, women like you don't write. They carve onion sculptures and potato statues. They sit in dark corners and braid their hair in new shapes and twists in order to control the stiffness, the unruliness, the rebelliousness.”

Edwidge Danticat Krik? Krak!

Source: Krik? Krak!

Women

“No, this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. Reality itself is too twisted.”

Hunter S. Thompson book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Source: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Reality

“Prisons are the temples where devils learn to prey. Every time we turn the key we twist the knife of fate, because every time we cage a man we close him in with hate.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Hate , Fate , Learning , Time

“Good things come, but they're never perfect; are they? You have to twist them into something perfect.”

Maud Hart Lovelace (1892–1980) American writer

Source: Betsy and the Great World / Betsy's Wedding

Perfection

“there's nothing in the human heart or mind, no place no matter how twisted or secret, that can't be endured - if you have someone to share it with.”

Spider Robinson book Callahan's Crosstime Saloon

Source: Callahan's Crosstime Saloon

Secret , Heart

“It was maddening how your best friend could twist the knobs inside of you so much that it hurt.”

Melissa de la Cruz Blue Bloods

Source: Blue Bloods

Hurt

“Grace is the most perplexing, powerful force in the universe, and, I believe, the only hope for our twisted, violent planet.”

Philip Yancey (1949) American writer

Hope , Universe

“She wants you to be a god," I told him.
"I know." His face twisted with embarrassment, and in spite of itself my heart lightened. It was such a boyish response. And so human. Parents, everywhere.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

God , Parent , Heart

“Authority allows two roles: the torturer and the tortured. Twists people into joyless mannequins that fear and hate, while culture plunges into the abyss.”

Alan Moore V for Vendetta

Source: V for Vendetta

Hate , People , Fear

“I needed her to stop. Needed not to hear the pain in her voice--to see the way she was twisting the pocketbook strap. If she kept talking, she might break down and tell me everything.”

Wally Lamb book I Know This Much Is True

Source: I Know This Much Is True

Pain , Way

“Some men got excited by white lace and a translucent negligee. My love muffin got excited by a woman dressed to murder. There was probably something deeply twisted about that. Lucky for me, negligees were never my thing.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Gifts

Love , Men

“It's strange how memory gets twisted and pulled like taffy in its retelling, how a single event can mean something different to everyone present.”

Lisa Unger book Beautiful Lies

Source: Beautiful Lies

Memory

“2 November. This morning, for the first time in a long time, the joy again of imagining a knife twisted in my heart.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Source: Diaries of Franz Kafka

Imagination , Time , Heart , Joy

“They were the screams of riders torn apart by the twisted reflections of their own inner selves.”

Neal Shusterman Full Tilt

Source: Full Tilt

“The choices we make within the boundaries of the twists of fate determines who we are”

John Perkins book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Source: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Fate

“We're all kind of weird and twisted and drowning.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

“You are mine-you know you're mine!" he cried wildly… the moonlight twisted in through the vines and listened… the fireflies hung upon their whispers as if to win his glance from the glory of their eyes.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book This Side of Paradise

Source: This Side of Paradise

“Be careful of love. It'll twist your brain around and leave you thinking up is down and right is wrong.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

Love , Thinking

“The simple things come back to us. They rest for a moment by our ribcages then suddenly reach in and twist our hearts a notch backward.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Heart

“Girls can be so petty and jealous. I swear they're worse than guys sometimes. Except they're all quiet about it. They sugarcoat it or else they talk behind each other's backs. It's seriously twisted.”

Melody Carlson (1956) American writer

Source: The Jerk Magnet

Guy , Girl

“Beware the dark pool at the bottom of our hearts. In its icy, black depths dwell strange and twisted creatures it is best not to disturb.”

Sue Grafton (1940–2017) American writer

Source: I is for Innocent

Heart

“That's what fiction is about, isn't it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence?”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Reality

“Insecurity is the worst sense that lovers feel: sometimes the most humdrum desireless marriage seems better. Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Variant: Insecurity is the worst sense that lovers feel; sometimes the most humdrum desireless marriage seems better. Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust.
Source: The End of the Affair

Marriage , Feeling , Lovers , Sense

“I'm sitting at the dinner table, wearing my future mother-in-law's underwear. It's like some twisted dream that you wake up and thinkL Crikey Moses! Thank God that didn't really happen!”

Sophie Kinsella book I've Got Your Number

Source: I've Got Your Number

God , Law , Dreams , Future

“The best secrets are the most twisted”

Sara Shepard (1973) Author

Source: Twisted

Secret

“Most people tend to think the best of those who are blessed with beauty; we have difficulty imagining that physical perfection can conceal twisted emotions or a damaged mind.”

Dean Koontz Odd Thomas

Source: Odd Thomas

People , Beauty , Imagination , Thinking

“Every discussion which is made from an egoistic standpoint is corrupted from the start and cannot yield an absolutely sure conclusion. The ego puts its own interest first and twists every argument, word, even fact to suit that interest.”

Paul Brunton (1898–1981) British philosopher

Source: The Notebooks of Paul Brunton

“People could bear so much, but Simon did not know how much of the original you was left when the world had twisted you into a whole different shape.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Bitter of Tongue

People , World

“But I have my life, I’m living it. It’s twisted, exhausting, uncertain, and full of guilt, but nonetheless, there’s something there.”

Banana Yoshimoto book The Lake

Source: The Lake

Life

“Twisted and perverse are the ways of the human mind," Jane intoned. "Pinocchio was such a dolt to try to become a real boy. He was much better off with a wooden head.”

Orson Scott Card book Speaker for the Dead

Source: Speaker for the Dead

Way , Boy

“According to Dickens, the first rule of human nature is self-preservation and when I forgive him for writing a character as pathetic as Oliver Twist, I'll thank him for the advice.”

Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road

Source: On the Jellicoe Road

Forgiveness , Nature

“why can't you just get out of here and leave me alone?"i bellowed.
"i can't!" dylan shouted back, his face twisted with an anger i'd never seen from him.
"you can,"i said through gritted teeth."just point your wings that way and flap!”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Angel

Way , Anger

“Memory warps time, as it does the sights and sounds and smells of reality; for what shapes it is emotion, which can twist what seems clear, just as the surface of a pond seems to bend the stick thrust into the water.”

Sherwood Smith book Crown Duel

Source: Crown Duel (Crown & Court #1 - 2, 1997)

Reality , Water , Memory , Time

“Wouldn't that put a twist in your toga?”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

“Love -- not dim and blind but so far-seeing that it can glimpse around corners, around bends and twists and illusion; instead of overlooking faults love seesthem to the secret inside.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: Salt of the Air

Love , Secret

“What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Trump: Surviving at the Top (1990), p. 3; https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/550046337547665409

Courageous , Fate , Personality

“Facts are simple and facts are straight.
Facts are lazy and facts are late.
Facts all come with points of view.
Facts don't do what I want them to.
Facts just twist the truth around.
Facts are living turned inside out.”

David Byrne (1952) Scottish alternative rock musician and promoter of world music

Truth

“There was a silence. Hannah's own heart was twisted with the force of her love for him. Her eyes were full.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Night World, No. 2

Love , Silence , Heart

“‎"You want more?" she asked a bit breathlessly. "Even after what we did?"
His mouth took on a sardonic twist. "I'm afraid quantity usually matters for me…"
--THE PRINCESS'S ASSASSINS”

Emma Holly (1961) American writer

Princess

“That’s how stories happen — with a turning point, an unexpected twist. There’s only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Happiness

“He glanced over at me, a smile twisting his lips. "Hey, no advice, Ghost Girl. Guardians should be seen and not heard."
I flipped him off for the "Ghost Girl" comment but he didn't notice because Lissa was talking to him again.”

Richelle Mead Shadow Kiss

Source: Shadow Kiss

Smile , Girl

“Even the gods couldn't devise a fates so twisted.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

God , Fate

“Being pretty-minded is simply the natural state for most people. Theyto be vapid and lazy and vain… and selfish. It only takes a twist to lock in that part of their personalities.”

Scott Westerfeld book Pretties

Source: Pretties

People , Nature , Parting , Personality

“Junk does that. Junk is a forge. You enter the fire and come out twisted.”

Lisa Mason book Summer of Love

Source: Summer of Love (1994), Chapter 15 “Over Under Sideways Down” (p. 329)

“The Christian is today the villain. It is his morality which is regarded as degenerate and perverted and twisted, and the pervert is regarded as the misunderstood, sensitive soul. I can spend hours citing various modern writers who play variations of that theme.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Homosexuality (n. d.)

Soul

“In 1956 I was doing good until I hurt my back. Since then I step to the side with my left foot faster so I don't have to twist my body so much.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

On how stepping in the bucket of necessity became a familiar part of Clemente's batting form, as quoted in "Clemente Unorthodox?" Well, He Gets Results" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=e5ooAAAAIBAJ&sjid=k8wEAAAAIBAJ&pg=816%2C1870316 by Ed Schuyler, Jr. (AP), in The Daytona Beach Morning Journal (August 11, 1964)
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1964</big>

Hurt

“Rising and leaping,
Sinking and creeping,
Swelling and sweeping,
Showering and springing,
Flying and flinging,
Writhing and ringing,
Eddying and whisking,
Spouting and frisking,
Turning and twisting,
Around and around
With endless rebound:
Smiting and fighting,
A sight to delight in;
Confounding, astounding,
Dizzying and deafening the ear with its sound.”

Robert Southey (1774–1843) British poet

St. 4.
The Cataract of Lodore http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/652.html (1820)

Spring , Fight , Flying

“To depart while seated or standing is all one.
All I shall leave behind me
Is a heap of bones.
In empty space I twist and soar
And come down with the roar of thunder
To the sea.”

Koho Kenichi (1241–1316) Japanese sangha of Rinzai school in Kamakura era

Japanese Death Poems. Compiled by Yoel Hoffmann. ISBN 978-0-8048-3179-6

Sea