Spun Quotes - Page 5

• A friend of mine who writes history books said to me that he thought that the two creatures most to be pitied were the spider and the novelist - their lives hanging by a thread spun out of their own guts. But in some ways I think writers of fiction are the creatures most to be envied, because who else besides the spider is allowed to take that fragile thread and weave it into a pattern? What a gift of grace to be able to take the chaos from within and from it to create some semblance of order.

  Katherine Paterson

  Book, Writing, Thinking

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• The US have dealt with Iran. I'm not saying attack it; I'm saying we should have taken it seriously. The Iranian connection to 9/11 is much stronger than the Iraqi one ever was. That was the big lie: That Saddam had something to do with 9/11 - not the WMD - the connection between Saddam and bin Laden. We were spun on that and we were spun on the famous Prague meeting between Mohammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence, which was a complete lie. Both the CIA and the FBI came out and said that never happened.

  Robert Baer

  Lying, Taken, Stronger

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• There should be a name for this, for the process whereby one knows one is being yanked and concedes it has been done successfully - that one is grateful to have been spun. In the theater, it is called the willing suspension of disbelief. That's what allows the play to make an impact on the audience: they have to be able to make believe that what's happening on the stage is really happening. Maybe to a degree it is a requirement for all political participation, all effective political communication, too.

  Peggy Noonan

  Communication, Grateful, Believe

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• Growing up north of San Francisco, I immersed myself in the local landscape and in books about Native Americans, cowboys, and pioneers that seemed to ground me in it, but to pursue culture in those days meant being spun around until dizzy and then pushed east.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Growing Up, Book, Native American

  Source: therumpus.net

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• One day as a young man, I was walking down the streets. And a group of Zulu guys was walking behind me closing in on me. And I could hear them talking to one another about how they were going to mug me. (Speaking Zulu). Let's get this white guy. You go to his left, and I'll come up behind him. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't run.So I just spun around real quick and said (speaking Zulu). Yo, guys, why don't we just mug someone together? I'm ready.

  Trevor Noah

  Running, Real, Men

  Source: www.npr.org

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• Finally, one night we were smoking pot [with Michael O'Donoghue] and talking about the people that are invariably in high school, whether you go to prep school or public school or ghetto school or rich suburban school. And actually, it spun off from a Kurt Vonnegut quote.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  School, Ghetto, Night

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• There isn't a clear goal in sight. Osama bin Laden's organization has spun out from him and is now probably independent of him. There will be others who will appear and reappear. This is why we need a much more precise, a much more defined, a much more patiently constructed campaign, as well as one that surveys not just the terrorists' presence but the root causes of terrorism, which are ascertainable.

  Edward Said

  Independent, Clear Goals, Sight

  Source: www.progressive.org

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• I'm a morning "spinner." That's usually when my brain is thinking too much and I don't necessarily see things positively. So I sit myself down and remember that I'm making it up. I believe we are creating in every moment - making up our reality, so to speak - so when anything gets chaotic or I feel spun out, I remind myself that everything is an interpretation. I can look at it differently and make it work for me in a more positive light.

  Dash Mihok

  Morning, Believe, Reality

  "Dash Mihok Interview: Maranda Pleasant". www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• We did Twitter, and Twitter grew so fast, and in 2006 we spun it out into Twitter, Inc.

  Biz Stone

  Grew

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I'm the guy who will persist in his path. I'm the guy who will make you laugh. I'm the guy who strives to be open. I'm the guy who's been heartbroken. I'm the guy who has been on his own, and I'm the guy who's felt alone. I'm the guy who holds your hand, and I'm the guy who will stand up and be a man. I'm the guy who tries to make things better. I'm the guy who's the whitest half Cuban ever. I'm the guy who's lost more than he's won. I'm the guy who's turn, but never spun. I'm the guy you couldn't see. I'm that guy, and that guy is me.

  Blake Jenner

  Heartbroken, Men, Hands

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• Pain reconciles one to existence. Infinite resignation is that shirt in the old fable. The thread is spun with tears, bleached by tears, the shirt sewn in tears, but then it also gives better protection than iron. The secret in life is that everyone must sew it for himself.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Pain, Iron, Giving

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• The movement of a single atom from one known position to another known position changes an experience from nothing to overwhelming. This means that mind and matter at the quantum mechanical level are all spun together.

  Terence McKenna

  Mean, Mind, Together

  Terence McKenna (1998). “True Hallucinations: And, the Archaic Revival”, M J F Books

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• My mind spun for a second before it drifted, and in that second I knew that of all pleasures a drink of cold water when you are thirsty, liquor when you are not, sex, a cigarette after many days without one there is none of them can compare with sleep. Sleep is best.

  Roger Zelazny

  Sex, Sleep, Water

  Roger Zelazny (2016). “This Immortal”, p.218, ibooks

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• Life is but a web spun of ghosts and dreams and illusions.

  Robert E. Howard

  Life, Dream, Ghost

  Robert E. Howard (2007). “The Best of Robert E. Howard Volume 1: Volume 1: The Shadow Kingdom”, p.117, Del Rey

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• What I remember best from those times is the music itself. When it succeded, we took hold of the audience's attention, working it from a distracted, unshaped mass into spun beauty, passing the fine strands back and forth until we wove together something grander, not only music but memory, too-the particulars of past and present, stretched taut across a loom of timeless ideals. Harmony. Symmetry. Order.

  Andromeda Romano-Lax

  Memories, Past, Order

  Andromeda Romano-Lax (2008). “The Spanish Bow”, p.279, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Tyson charged at the Cyclops leader, Ma Gasket, her chain-mail dress spattered with mud and decorated with broken spears. She gawked at Tyson and started to say, “Who—?” 463/508 Tyson hit her in the head so hard, she spun in a circle and landed on her rump. “Bad Cyclops Lady!” he bell owed. “General Tyson says GO AWAY!” He hit her again, and Ma Gasket broke into dust.

  Rick Riordan

  Dust, Circles, Broken

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• Sometimes the simplest and best use of our will is to drop it all and just walk out from under everything that is covering us, even if only for an hour or so—just walk out from under the webs we've spun, the tasks we've assumed, the problems we have to solve. They'll be there when we get back, and maybe some of them will fall apart without our worry to hold them up.

  Mark Nepo

  Life, Fall, Worry

  FaceBook post by Mark Nepo from Jul 24, 2012

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• It is sweet to feel by what fine spun threads our affections are drawn together.

  Laurence Sterne

  Sweet, Together, Engagement

  Laurence Sterne, Melvyn New, Geoffrey Day (2006). “A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy: And, Continuation of the Bramine's Journal : with Related Texts”, p.95, Hackett Publishing

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• ...mathematics is distinguished from all other sciences except only ethics, in standing in no need of ethics. Every other science, even logic, especially in its early stages, is in danger of evaporating into airy nothingness, degenerating, as the Germans say, into an arachnoid film, spun from the stuff that dreams are made of. There is no such danger for pure mathematics; for that is precisely what mathematics ought to be.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Dream, Math, Science

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1931). “Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce”

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• There had been a frozen mist here, and the trees were spun into feathers. Their fragile brilliance made me wonder why, into the spotlessness of Creation, God had seen fit to introduce soiling, twisting, rampaging, Man.

  Maria McCann

  Men, Tree, Frozen

  Maria McCann (2010). “The Wilding”, p.263, Faber & Faber

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• (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorred shears And slits the thin-spun life.

  John Milton

  Life, Thinking, Mind

  'Lycidas' (1638) l. 64

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• This can never become popular, and, indeed, has no occasion to be so; for fine-spun arguments in favour of useful truths make just as little impression on the public mind as the equally subtle objections brought against these truths. On the other hand, since both inevitably force themselves on every man who rises to the height of speculation, it becomes the manifest duty of the schools to enter upon a thorough investigation of the rights of speculative reason, and thus to prevent the scandal which metaphysical controversies are sure, sooner or later, to cause even to the masses.

  Immanuel Kant

  School, Men, Hands

  Immanuel Kant (1855). “Critique of pure reason, tr. by J.M.D. Meiklejohn”, p.37

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• Summers was simply a master explainer, able to deftly boil down the complexities of economic and financial, and to put them in terms the non-expert could understand. He was brilliant at cultivating a sense of control, even as events spun far beyond what could be managed with any certainty. He could will into being the confidence that eluded others, those less self-assured and, maybe sensibly, on humbler terms with the world.

  Ron Suskind

  Summer, Self, Events

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• A fine shiver coursed over my skin. "Seth?" "Yeah?" "You were in my dream." One amber-colored eye opened. "Please tell me we were naked." I rolled my eyes. "You're such a perv." He sighed mournfully as he wiggled closer. "I'll take that as a no." "You'd be correct." Unable to fall back to sleep, I started chewing on my lip. So many worries surfaced at once that my brain spun.

  J. Lynn

  Dream, Fall, Sleep

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• It is no coincidence that a rebirth of psychedelic use is occuring as we acquire the technological capability to leave the planet. The mushroom visions and the transformation of the human image precipitated by space exploration are spun together. Nothing less is happening than the emergence of a new human order. A telepathic, humane, universalist kind of human culture is emerging that will make everything that preceded it appear like the stone age.

  Terence McKenna

  Order, Mushrooms, Space

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