Shifting Quotes - Page 5

• ‎What color is a chameleon placed on a mirror? ... The chameleon responding to its own shifting image is an apt analog of the human world of fashion. Taken as a whole, what are fads but the response of a hive mind to its own reflection? In a 21st-century society wired into instantaneous networks, marketing is the mirror; the collective consumer is the chameleon.

  Kevin Kelly

  Fashion, Taken, Reflection

  Kevin Kelly (1995). “Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World”, p.70, Basic Books

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• look, getting bitten doesn't make you into a monster. It just makes you a wolf. You are what you are. When you're a wolf, or when you're shifting, you don't have human inhibitions, so if you're naturally angry or violent, you get worse.

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Monsters, Looks, Violent

  Maggie Stiefvater (2011). “Shiver Trilogy (Shiver, Linger, Forever)”, p.198, Scholastic Inc.

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• They had become a fixed star in the shifting firmament of the high school's relationships, the acknowledged Romeo and Juliet. And she knew with sudden hatefulness that there was one couple like them in every white suburban high school in America.

  Stephen King

  Stars, Couple, School

  Stephen King (2008). “Carrie”, p.29, Anchor

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• For the photograph's immobility is somehow the result of a perverse confusion between two concepts: the Real and the Live: by attesting that the object has been real, the photograph surreptitiously induces belief that it is alive, because of that delusion which makes us attribute to Reality an absolute superior, somehow eternal value; but by shifting this reality to the past ("this-has-been"), the photograph suggests that it is already dead.

  Roland Barthes

  Real, Past, Two

  "Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography". Essay by Roland Barthes (translated by R. Howard), 1980.

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• With me, the present is forever, and forever is always shifting, flowing, melting. This second is life. And when it is gone it is dead. But you can't start over with each new second. You have to judge by what is dead. It's like quicksand... hopeless from the start.

  Sylvia Plath

  Starting Over, Judging, Forever

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.9, Anchor

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• sometimes the shifting of rocks is deep, deep below, and it's powerful and scary down there, but that all we feel on the surface is a slight tremor. Only a slight tremor.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Powerful, Rocks, Scary

  Khaled Hosseini (2009). “A Thousand Splendid Suns”, p.204, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• There are some things in this world you rely on, like a sure bet. And when they let you down, shifting from where you've carefully placed them, it shakes your faith, right where you stand.

  Sarah Dessen

  Disappointment, World, Disillusionment

  Sarah Dessen (2004). “Someone Like You”, p.134, Penguin

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• Most of the girls my age, or even younger, have babies. They appear way too young to be married, till you look in their eyes. Then you'll see it. Their eyes look happy and sad at the same time, but unexcited by anything, shifting easily off to the side as if they've already seen most of what there is. Married eyes.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Girl, Baby, Eye

  Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.94, Faber & Faber

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• Stubborness is also determination. It's simply a matter of shifting from "won't power" to "will power.

  Peter McWilliams

  Determination, Matter, Will Power

  Peter McWilliams (1997). “Life 101: Everything We Wish We Had Learned about Life in School--but Didn't”, Mary Book / Prelude Press

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• I sat on the bench outside of class today and talked to Jon. I read to him from my journal, it was the part about the accordian player I was watching on the street last weekend. He said that an accordian is such a perfect metaphor for Love, because you are always opening, and closing, shifting, and getting air, and that's how the music happens. True.

  Sabrina Ward Harrison

  Weekend, Player, Air

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• One of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  Albert Einstein (2011). “Essays in Science”, p.11, Open Road Media

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• She stepped out from among their shifting confusion of lovely lights and shadows. A circle of grass, smooth as a lawn, met her eyes, with dark trees dancing all around it. And then --Oh Joy! For he was there: the huge Lion, shining white in the moonlight, with his huge black shadow underneath him.

  C. S. Lewis

  Eye, Dark, Light

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• What we have been living for three decades is frontier capitalism, with the frontier constantly shifting location from crisis to crisis, moving on as soon as the law catches up.

  Naomi Klein

  Moving, Law, Three

  Naomi Klein (2010). “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”, p.306, Macmillan

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• First of all, although men have a common destiny, each individual also has to work out his own personal salvation for himself in fear and trembling. We can help one another to find the meaning of life no doubt. But in the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for "finding himself." If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence. You cannot tell me who I am and I cannot tell you who you are. If you do not know your own identity, who is going to identify you?

  Thomas Merton

  Responsibility, Destiny, Men

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.12, Shambhala Publications

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• Roza, my self-control is ten times stronger than yours." I opened my eyes, shifting to look into his. I brushed his hair back and smiled, certain my heart would expand and expand until there was nothing left of me. "Oh yeah? That's not the impression I just got." "Wait until next time," he warned. "I'll do things that'll make you lose control within seconds.

  Richelle Mead

  Heart, Eye, Hair

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• you mean machines are like humans?" I shook my head. "No, not like humans. With machines the feeling is, well, more finite. It doesn't go any further. With humans it's different. The feeling is always changing. Like if you love somebody, the love is always shifting or wavering. It's always questioning or inflating or disappearing or denying or hurting. And the thing is, you can't do anything about it, you can't control it. With my Subaru, it's not so complicated.

  Haruki Murakami

  Hurt, Mean, Love Is

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• The mountains are so beautiful they make me ache inside because the moment I look away I know I shall need to see them again. And I cannot spend the rest of my life standing on the spot starting at shifting sunlight and mist and shadows across the sea.

  Anne Perry

  Beautiful, Sea, Shadow

  Anne Perry (2010). “A Breach of Promise: A William Monk Novel”, p.57, Ballantine Books

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• Pierce jerked his hand from Trent and pushed himself straight. “Kalamack Industries,” he said, expression twisted as he wiped his hand on his pants. “I knew your father.” “I do not freaking believe this,” I said, shifting to stand where I could see both of them. Al beamed. “Amazing who you can meet in an elevator.

  Kim Harrison

  Father, Believe, Expression

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• He wanted to tell her that he was inspired and vigilant and recklessly alone, that his body contained his unsteady heart and something else, something he felt but could not describe: porous and spiky, shifting with flecks of thought, with urge and memory; salted with brightness, flickerings of white and green and pale gold; something that loved stars because it was made of the same substance.

  Michael Cunningham

  Stars, Memories, Heart

  Michael Cunningham (2007). “Specimen Days: A Novel”, p.4, Macmillan

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• The desert could not be claimed or owned — it was a piece of cloth carried by winds, never held down by stones, and given a hundred shifting names before Canterbury existed, long before battles and treaties quilted Europe and the East ... All of us, even those with European homes and children in the distance, wished to remove the clothing of our countries. It was a place of faith. We disappeared into landscape.

  Michael Ondaatje

  Country, Children, Distance

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• You're not built for riding, either," Horace added. "I'd say more saddle sore than homesick." Svenal sighed ruefully, shifting his buttocks for the twentieth time to find a more comfortable spot. "It's true," he said. "I've been discovering parts of my backside I never knew existed.

  John Flanagan

  Riding, Homesick, Saddles

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• And Egypt ? What is Egypt strenght?her resilience ?her ability to absorb poeple and events into the pores of her being? is that true or is it just a consolation ? a shifting of responsibility? and if it is true , how much can she absorb and still remain Egypt ?

  Ahdaf Soueif

  Responsibility, Egypt, Strenght

  Ahdaf Soueif (2012). “The Map of Love”, p.326, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Miles was still mourning the loss of his Romantic Plan. 'There was going to be champagne, and oysters, and you' - he held out both hands as though shifting a piece of furniture - 'were going to be sitting there, and I was going to get down on one knee, and...and...

  Lauren Willig

  Loss, Hands, Oysters

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• The physical reinvention of the world is endless, relentless, fascinating, exhaustive; nothing that seems solid is. If you could stand at just a little distance in time, how fluid and shape-shifting physical reality would be, everything hurrying into some other form, even concrete, even stone.

  Mark Doty

  Distance, Reality, Would Be

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• For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You'll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly shifts in you. Worse, you'll realize it's always been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark like a room. But you won't understand why or how.

  Mark Z. Danielewski

  Dark, Rooms, Realizing

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