Asterisk Quotes

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I will love you with too many commas, but never any asterisks.
Sarah Kay (No Matter the Wreckage: Poems)
Whenever I'm out-of-doors and find myself wanting to have a first-rate think, I fling myself down on my back, throw my arms and legs out so that I look like an asterisk, and gaze at the sky.
Alan Bradley (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce, #1))
Without involvement, there is no commitment. Mark it down, asterisk it, circle it, underline it. No involvement, no commitment.
Stephen R. Covey
Well when I write my book, and tell the tale of my adventures--all these little stars that shake out of my cloak-- I must save those to use for asterisks!
Edmond Rostand (Cyrano de Bergerac)
If I was gay, I wouldn't need an asterisk beside my name. I could stop worrying if the girl I like will bounce when she finds out I also like dick. I could have a coming-out party without people thinking I just want attention. I wouldn't have to explain that I fall in love with minds, not genders or body parts. People wouldn't say I'm 'just a slut' or 'faking it' or 'undecided' or 'confused.' I'm not confused. I don't categorize people by who I'm allowed to like and who I'm allowed to love. Love doesn't fit into boxes like that. It's blurry, slippery, quantum. It's only limited by our perceptions and before we slap a label on it and cram it into some category, everything is possible.
Leah Raeder (Black Iris)
Marginalia Sometimes the notes are ferocious, skirmishes against the author raging along the borders of every page in tiny black script. If I could just get my hands on you, Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien, they seem to say, I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head. Other comments are more offhand, dismissive - Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" - that kind of thing. I remember once looking up from my reading, my thumb as a bookmark, trying to imagine what the person must look like who wrote "Don't be a ninny" alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson. Students are more modest needing to leave only their splayed footprints along the shore of the page. One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's. Another notes the presence of "Irony" fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal. Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers, Hands cupped around their mouths. Absolutely," they shout to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin. Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!" Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points rain down along the sidelines. And if you have managed to graduate from college without ever having written "Man vs. Nature" in a margin, perhaps now is the time to take one step forward. We have all seized the white perimeter as our own and reached for a pen if only to show we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages; we pressed a thought into the wayside, planted an impression along the verge. Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria jotted along the borders of the Gospels brief asides about the pains of copying, a bird singing near their window, or the sunlight that illuminated their page- anonymous men catching a ride into the future on a vessel more lasting than themselves. And you have not read Joshua Reynolds, they say, until you have read him enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling. Yet the one I think of most often, the one that dangles from me like a locket, was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye I borrowed from the local library one slow, hot summer. I was just beginning high school then, reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room, and I cannot tell you how vastly my loneliness was deepened, how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed, when I found on one page A few greasy looking smears and next to them, written in soft pencil- by a beautiful girl, I could tell, whom I would never meet- Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love.
Billy Collins (Picnic, Lightning)
Numbersign questionmark you" and "Asterisk exclamation point the world.
Daniel Handler (Why We Broke Up)
Perhaps the window is not a sun but an asterisk, interrupting the grammar of the sky, with me sitting below it like a footnote.
China Miéville (Looking for Jake and Other Stories)
Well — when I write my book, and tell the tale Of my adventures — all these little stars That shake out of my cloak — I must save those To use for asterisks...
Cyrano de Bergerac
The dedication of passwords was the new fellowship of marriage. To each other, couples had become furtive asterisks
Manu Joseph (Serious Men)
As dawn leaks into the sky it edits out the stars like excess punctuation marks, deleting asterisks and periods, commas, and semi-colons, leaving only unhinged thoughts rotating and pivoting, and unsecured words.
Ann Zwinger (Downcanyon: A Naturalist Explores the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon)
Look, the world is everywhere: satellites, end tables, the pink and white poinsettias outside the church; reunions and degrees. All those radiant asterisks . . . Soon it will all make sense.
Terrance Hayes (Wind in a Box)
Words. Words. I play with words, hoping that some combination, even a chance combination, will say what I want. Perhaps better with music? But music attacks my inner ear like an antagonist, it's not my world. The fact is, the real experience can't be described. I think, bitterly, that a row of asterisks, like an old-fashioned novel, might be better. Or a symbol of some kind, a circle perhaps, or a square. Anything at all, but not words. The people who have been there, in the place in themselves where words, patterns, order, dissolve, will know what I mean and others won't. But once having been there, there's a terrible irony, a terrible shrug of the shoulders, and it's not a question of fighting it, or disowning it, or of right or wrong, but simply knowing it is there, always. It's a question of bowing to it, so to speak, with a kind of courtesy, as to an ancient enemy: All right, I know you are there, but we have to preserve the forms, don't we? And perhaps the condition of your existing at all is precisely that we preserve the forms, create the patterns - have you thought of that?
Doris Lessing (The Golden Notebook)
I will love you with too many commas, but never any asterisks.
Sarah Kay (No Matter the Wreckage: Poems)
That guy,” Lindsey said, “is a douche. Asterisk, I hate him. Footnote, he can suck it.
Chloe Neill (House Rules (Chicagoland Vampires, #7))
There are no asterisks here. Your feelings are completely valid, you are under no obligation to pardon me, I have yet to earn it for putting you through fear.   What I am trying to say is, I know now that becoming kind is worth every single exhausting effort and sometimes it takes a thousand years.   Today, I apologised to someone I owe an ocean full of amends to.
Nikita Gill (Fierce Fairytales: Poems and Stories to Stir Your Soul)
That night, side by side, we drifted among the galaxies of sea-stars, while far, far above us the asterisks of light marked out the footnotes on the page of eternity.
Tan Twan Eng (The House of Doors)
You and I We do not talk anymore And all our asterisks Are turning Into flowers.
Tita Lacambra-Ayala
I hate reading poems—school made me hate them. I’d spend hours interpreting one, just to read the memorandum and realize I’d be fucked during exams. I remember making a little asterisk next to every question I struggled with, and at the end of the paper, I’d realize I was looking at the fucking Milky Way.
Danielle Esplin (Give It Back)
The flakes stuck in my eyelashes. They fell on my sleeves. Huge. Flowers and stars. They fell onto each other, held their shapes, became small piles of perfect asterisks and blooms tumbled together in their discrete geometries like children’s blocks.
Peter Heller (The Dog Stars)
Frank's bio prompts us to to ask ourselves why we seem to require of our art an ironic distance from deep convictions or desperate questions, so that contemporary writers have either to make jokes of them or else try to work them in under cover of some formal trick like intertextual quotation or incongruous juxtaposition, sticking the really urgent stuff inside asterisks as part of some multivalent defamiliarization flourish or some shit...Our intelligentsia distrust strong belief, open conviction. Material passion is one thing, but ideological passion disgusts us on some deep level.
David Foster Wallace (Consider the Lobster and Other Essays)
I will wake you up early even though I know you like to stay through the credits. I will leave pennies in your pockets, postage stamps of superheroes in between the pages of your books, sugar packets on your kitchen counter. I will Hansel and Gretel you home. I talk through movies. Even ones I have never seen before. I will love you with too many commas, but never any asterisks. There will be more sweat than you are used to. More skin. More words than are necessary. My hair in the shower drain, my smell on your sweaters, bobby pins all over the window sills. I make the best sandwiches you've ever tasted. You'll be in charge of napkins. I can't do a pull-up. But I'm great at excuses. I count broken umbrellas after every thunderstorm, and I fall asleep repeating the words thank you. I will wake you up early with my heavy heartbeat. You will say, Can't we just sleep in, and I will say, No, trust me. You don't want to miss a thing.
Sarah Kay (No Matter the Wreckage: Poems)
Side note: Down here, you're either an Amundsen guy, a Shackleton guy, or a Scott guy. Amundsen was the first to reach the Pole, but he did it by feeding dogs to dogs, which makes Amundsen the Michael Vick of polar explorers: you can like him, but keep it to yourself, or you'll end up getting into arguments with a bunch of fanatics. Shackleton is the Charles Barkley of the bunch: he's a legend, all-star personality, but there's the asterisk that he never reached the Pole, i.e. won a championship. How this turned into a sports analogy, I don't know. Finally, there's Captain Scott, canonized for his failure, and to this day never fully embraced because he was terrible with people. He has my vote, you understand.
Maria Semple (Where'd You Go, Bernadette)
You opted in. You didn’t tell them about your asterisks, how you were secretly and privately better than the world you participated in, despite all outward appearances. You thought you could be part of it just a little.
Taffy Brodesser-Akner (Fleishman Is in Trouble)
He gets back to the Casino just as big globular raindrops, thick as honey, begin to splat into giant asterisks on the pavement, inviting him to look down at the bottom of the text of the day, where footnotes will explain all. He isn't about to look. Nobody ever said a day has to be juggled into any kind of sense at day's end. He just runs. Rain grows in wet crescendo. His footfalls send up fine flowers of water, hanging a second behind his flight.
Thomas Pynchon (Gravity’s Rainbow)
She finished her drink and put it down. "It's getting chilly out here." "Yes." "Let us repair within." "I'd like to repair." I put down my cigar and we stood and she kissed me. So I put my arm around her trim and sparkling, blue-kept waist and we moved away from the bar, toward the archway, through the archway and beyond, into the house we were leaving. Let's make it a triple-asterisk break: ***
Roger Zelazny (Isle of the Dead)
Damn, the good words are all asterisked!” “The men only understand the asterisks. My worry is if they understand the rest!
Pawan Mishra (Coinman: An Untold Conspiracy)
I function as an asterisk in the limbic system.
S. Kelley Harrell
In the novels I had read whenever lovely woman stooped to folly she had a baby. The cause was put with infinite precaution, sometimes indeed suggested only by a row of asterisks, but the result was inevitable.
W. Somerset Maugham (Cakes and Ale)
He gets back to the Casino just as big globular raindrops, thick as honey, begin to splat into giant asterisks on the pavement, inviting him to look down at the bottom of the text of the day, where footnotes will explain all.
Thomas Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow)
The early Sumerian pictograph for god was an asterisk, the symbol of the stars. The early Aztec word for god was Teotl, and its glyph was a representation of the Sun. The heavens were called Teoatl, the godsea, the cosmic ocean.
Carl Sagan (Cosmos)
Donald Trump is a terrible, horrible, no-good president. He’ll go down in history with asterisks next to his name for endemic corruption, outrageous stupidity, egregious cruelty, and inhumanity, for diminishing the presidency and the nation, and for being a lout with a terrible wig.
Rick Wilson (Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America from Trump--and Democrats from Themselves)
would read through one of Chris’s books until my eyes gave in to my exhaustion and I could no longer focus. One night as I read from Leo Tolstoy’s Family Happiness, I came across a section where Chris had placed an asterisk in the margin and brackets around the following excerpt: “It is a bad thing,” he said, “not to be able to stand solitude.
Carine McCandless (The Wild Truth: The secrets that drove Chris McCandless into the wild)
The growth of his power and fame was matched, in my imagination, by the degree of the punishment I would have liked to inflict on him. Thus, at first, I would have been content with an electoral defeat, a cooling of public enthusiasm. Later I already required his imprisonment; still later, his exile to some distant, flat island with a single palm tree, which, like a black asterisk, refers one to the bottom of an eternal hell made of solitude, disgrace, and helplessness. Now, at last, nothing but his death could satisfy me.
Vladimir Nabokov
Antarctica is the highest, driest, coldest, and windiest place on the planet. The South Pole averages sixty below zero, has hurricane-strength winds, and sits at an altitude of ten thousand feet. In other words, those original explorers didn’t have to just get there, but had to climb serious mountains to do so. (Side note: Down here, you’re either an Amundsen guy, a Shackleton guy, or a Scott guy. Amundsen was the first to reach the Pole, but he did it by feeding dogs to dogs, which makes Amundsen the Michael Vick of polar explorers: you can like him, but keep it to yourself, or you’ll end up getting into arguments with a bunch of fanatics. Shackleton is the Charles Barkley of the bunch: he’s a legend, all-star personality, but there’s the asterisk that he never reached the Pole, i.e., won a championship. How this turned into a sports analogy, I don’t know. Finally, there’s Captain Scott, canonized for his failure, and to this day never fully embraced because he was terrible with people. He has my vote, you understand.)
Maria Semple (Where'd You Go, Bernadette)
Most rightists wanted an autocracy without asterisk—that is, a mystical unity of monarch and folk—and they rejected anything more than a consultative Duma, but the autocrat himself had created the Duma. This
Stephen Kotkin (Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928)
Shackleton is the Charles Barkley of the bunch: he’s a legend, all-star personality, but there’s the asterisk that he never reached the Pole, i.e., won a championship. How this turned into a sports analogy, I don’t know.
Maria Semple (Where'd You Go, Bernadette)
Long deep lines, chapters carved in his face by age, question marks, mysterious tales, asterisks, all that the sirens had forgot in the far-reaching solitude of his soul, all that fell from the starry sky, was traced in his face.
Pablo Neruda (All the Odes)
I reckon you must get bored more easily than other people.” He came up onto one elbow and looked at her. “Yes. You’ll have your hands full, keeping me excited.” “I don’t remember anything about that in the marriage vows,” she said. “There was obey—I noticed that came first—but I privately added a lengthy footnote to that item.” “This surprises me not at all. But there was the part about serving me.” “It, too, needed a footnote. Then love and honor and keeping you and sticking with you and nobody else. I remember all those. But I don’t recall the minister mentioning anything about keeping you excited.” “That was the serve part. It had an asterisk and some fine print.” “I did not hear any fine print.
Loretta Chase (Dukes Prefer Blondes (The Dressmakers #4))
the genie’s in the steam People wonder how to make it in life. First of kin with innate ability and a lotta hard work. Yes. But don’t forget the steam. The undefined asterisk and intangible. Some call it juice. Some call it magic. The genie’s in the magic. The magic’s in the steam.
Matthew McConaughey (Greenlights)
Unconditional love is a gift of the heart. It’s a gift that we can both give and receive that comes with no strings attached, no qualifications, reservations, footnotes, asterisks, objections, judgments, or other kinds of fine print legalese that later have to be uncovered, argued over, or cried about.
Catherine Carrigan (What Is Healing?: Awaken Your Intuitive Power for Health and Happiness)
As much as it was like anything, magic was like a language. And like a language, textbooks and teachers treated it as an orderly system for the purposes of teaching it, but in reality it was complex and chaotic and organic. It obeyed rules only to the extent that it felt like it, and there were almost as many special cases and one-time variations as there were rules. These Exceptions were indicated by rows of asterisks and daggers and other more obscure typographical fauna which invited the reader to peruse the many footnotes that cluttered up the margins of magical reference books like Talmudic commentary.
Lev Grossman (The Magicians (The Magicians, #1))
By a divine miracle, the pope of Vatican II taught that Vatican II contained no extraordinary dogma and did not carry the mark of infallibility — meaning the documents of Vatican II are fallible and may contain error. Unlike the previous twenty ecumenical councils, the pope placed an asterisk next to Vatican II.
Taylor R. Marshall (Infiltration: The Plot to Destroy the Church from Within)
Is that a tentative yes?” “No.” She shook her head. “It’s more like a yes with an asterisk.” “What’s the footnote?” “It’s like ‘yes,’ asterisk, and then ‘Let the record show I think this is probably a bad idea.’” He took her hand again. “But you still want . . . to be with me?” “Cary,” she said, chastising him, “I always want that. I’m obviously in love with you.” “Obviously?” She nodded her head. His eyes were wide again. “Shiloh . . . will you marry me?” “Yes,” she whispered. “Asterisk.” Cary whispered, too: “Let the record show you think this is a bad idea.” “Let the record show I’m terrified of losing you completely.
Rainbow Rowell (Slow Dance)
Use the semicolon like you would use any powerful weapon (your best pick-up line or your most effective push-up bra): carefully and sparingly.
Jenny Baranick (Kiss My Asterisk: A Feisty Guide to Punctuation and Grammar)
Is it only an hour, he wondered, that encompassed three people’s four orgasms? Now I know why, though foreplay can be delineated in all its fascinating and psychotropic detail, a poet must use asterisks or blank paper for orgasmic mechanics that satisfying: they open to something so wide you can now understand why, when sex is that good, you may say, “The sex is not the most important part,” and feel these words analog some shadow of truth.
Samuel R. Delany (Dhalgren)
when certain married words neglect to wear their apostrophes, they might be mistaken for their single friends: The identity of he’ll just went to hell. She’ll is like a shell of its former self. We’ll looks like it wishes it were a well.
Jenny Baranick (Kiss My Asterisk: A Feisty Guide to Punctuation and Grammar)
Well, first of all,” Langdon said, “Edmond inscribed this piece in clay as an homage to mankind’s earliest written language, cuneiform.” The woman blinked, looking uncertain. “The three heavy markings in the middle,” Langdon continued, “spell the word ‘fish’ in Assyrian. It’s called a pictogram. If you look carefully, you can imagine the fish’s open mouth facing right, as well as the triangular scales on his body.” The assembled group all cocked their heads, studying the work again. “And if you look over here,” Langdon said, pointing to the series of depressions to the left of the fish, “you can see that Edmond made footprints in the mud behind the fish, to represent the fish’s historic evolutionary step onto land.” Heads began to nod appreciatively. “And finally,” Langdon said, “the asymmetrical asterisk on the right—the symbol that the fish appears to be consuming—is one of history’s oldest symbols for God.” The Botoxed woman turned and scowled at him. “A fish is eating God?” “Apparently so. It’s a playful version of the Darwin fish—evolution consuming religion.” Langdon gave the group a casual shrug. “As I said, pretty clever.
Dan Brown (Origin (Robert Langdon, #5))
Somehow I knew all things were connected, everything but a point on some continuum. This felt more real to me than anything I was ever to learn in any class or read in any book. This feeling of resonance became my standard, so when a teacher told me something or I read something in a book, if I didn’t feel the depth of resonance I found in the woods I never completely accepted what I was reading or being taught. I learned to give the right answers to pass tests and complete assignments, but if I didn’t feel resonance, I posted a mental asterisk on that fact or concept.
Kevin Behan (Your Dog Is Your Mirror: The Emotional Capacity of Our Dogs and Ourselves)
We preach grace, but we don’t always practice it. We talk about God’s mercy, but we don’t always want the people who need it most to know it or get in on it. We say we are in the redemption business, but the door to that redemption is often locked by us from the inside. We say, “Come in! All are welcome!” but “all” is often marked with an asterisk. How, I ask, can the world change – how can heaven come to earth – if we stingily protest against God for his grace to others, grace we have freely received ourselves? How can we pray “thy kingdom come,” and be resentful toward God and those he allows to enter the kingdom in his way and his timing?
Ronnie McBrayer (How Far Is Heaven?: Rediscovering the Kingdom of God in the Here and Now)
God loves everybody, exactly the same. No matter what you do. If you grew up like me, then you are waiting for the asterisk to that sentence. Sure, God loves everybody the same. *But he really likes it when you go to Africa. Or start a food kitchen. Or adopt through foster care. Or buy cool, overpriced shoes that may or may not give an orphan in some nameless country a complimentary pair. Or turn your TV into a garden for succulents. Or whatever it is that we believe we must do in order to be fully loved. God took away my asterisk, and now I don’t know how to classify myself anymore. I’m just a sheep of his hand, and it is more lowly and lovely than I could have ever imagined.
D.L. Mayfield (Assimilate or Go Home: Notes from a Failed Missionary on Rediscovering Faith)
Oftentimes, people meet our writing before they meet us; our writing is our first impression.People read our résumés, cover letters, proposals, and emails, and that's the basis on which we are judged first. If our writing is full of grammar and punctuation errors, even though the content may be great, it’s like wearing a beautifully made Prada dress that has deodorant stains
Jenny Baranick (Kiss My Asterisk: A Feisty Guide to Punctuation and Grammar)
I am in awe of Sam's decision to abandon capitals and punctuation but am not brave enough to do the same. I like to imagine the day he, as the Americans say, made the change he wished to see in the world. I like to think it came to him suddenly. Perhaps he was swimming - no, too active - or napping indoors on a hot day - no, too bourgeois - probably he was in Scotland during the midge season and he left the desk lamp on and the window open when he went out for a meaningful walk. It was dark and the midges were drawn to the lamplight and - thinking it was the moon - fried themselves against the bulb, falling in their tens and tens, cooked on the pages of Sam's poems. So when he returned some time later, with bites on his neck, he found his poems loaded with punctuation, asterisks, grammar lying dead on his manuscript and his instant reaction was disgust, a feeling that then infected his whole aesthetic.
Joe Dunthorne (The Truth About Cats & Dogs)
My appreciation for order and regularity, even if it inconvenienced me, meant I never had much trouble with one of the main traditional objections to Christianity (or any religion that posits a loving God): the problem of evil - the question of how any pain and suffering could be countenanced by an all-powerful, all-good God. Consider the simpler problem of natural evils and accidents (falling masonry, flooding, car crashes, virulent flus, etc.). For God to deliver us from all natural pains, the laws of physics would have to be studded with asterisks specifying all the times that flying, twisted metal would need to flout the conservation of linear momentum to stop just short of breaking our bones. I knew what such a world would look like, for it had already been imagined in the sagas of Norse mythology. In one legend, the godling Baldr prophesies his own death, and all the other gods of the Norse pantheon try to save him. The gods and goddesses of Asgard travel the world, extracting a vow from every natural and created thing, be it bird, plant, stone, or sword, never to do Baldr any harm. Once his safety is secured, the Asgardians amuse themselves at feasts by throwing knives and other weapons at Baldr, in order to watch the objects keep their promises, defy their natures, and leave him unhurt. Blades blunt themselves, stones soften, and poison neutralizes itself, all to avoid inflicting any pain on Baldr. To preclude the problem of evil, it seemed, any god would have to give us the same guarantee afforded Baldr. The world around us would have to warp itself to shield us from the weather, from accidents, from gravity, until the laws of physics were unworthy of the name. There couldn't be scientists or empiricism in this kind of world, since the nature of matter would be too protean for us to gain intellectual purchase on. The problem of evil has always seemed to me to be the price we pay for having an intelligible world, one that we can investigate, understand, and love. If miracles were to be possible, they would have to stay below some threshold level of frequency so that they remained clear exceptions to the general course of causality (as in the case of poor, strange Baldr) instead of undoing the rule entirely.
Leah Libresco (Arriving at Amen)
regression line will have larger standard deviations and, hence, larger standard errors. The computer calculates the slope, intercept, standard error of the slope, and the level at which the slope is statistically significant. Key Point The significance of the slope tests the relationship. Consider the following example. A management analyst with the Department of Defense wishes to evaluate the impact of teamwork on the productivity of naval shipyard repair facilities. Although all shipyards are required to use teamwork management strategies, these strategies are assumed to vary in practice. Coincidentally, a recently implemented employee survey asked about the perceived use and effectiveness of teamwork. These items have been aggregated into a single index variable that measures teamwork. Employees were also asked questions about perceived performance, as measured by productivity, customer orientation, planning and scheduling, and employee motivation. These items were combined into an index measure of work productivity. Both index measures are continuous variables. The analyst wants to know whether a relationship exists between perceived productivity and teamwork. Table 14.1 shows the computer output obtained from a simple regression. The slope, b, is 0.223; the slope coefficient of teamwork is positive; and the slope is significant at the 1 percent level. Thus, perceptions of teamwork are positively associated with productivity. The t-test statistic, 5.053, is calculated as 0.223/0.044 (rounding errors explain the difference from the printed value of t). Other statistics shown in Table 14.1 are discussed below. The appropriate notation for this relationship is shown below. Either the t-test statistic or the standard error should be shown in parentheses, directly below the regression coefficient; analysts should state which statistic is shown. Here, we show the t-test statistic:3 The level of significance of the regression coefficient is indicated with asterisks, which conforms to the p-value legend that should also be shown. Typically, two asterisks are used to indicate a 1 percent level of significance, one asterisk for a 5 percent level of significance, and no asterisk for coefficients that are insignificant.4 Table 14.1 Simple Regression Output Note: SEE = standard error of the estimate; SE = standard error; Sig. = significance.
Evan M. Berman (Essential Statistics for Public Managers and Policy Analysts)
agitron: a wiggly line that means an object is shaking briffit: a cloud of dust that means a character has left in a rush emanata: lines emanating from a character’s head that means he or she is surprised plewd: a drop of sweat that means a character is hot or stressed squeans: asterisks that mean drunkenness or dizziness waftarom: a wavy line that means something smells foul
Pseudonymous Bosch (Bad Magic (Bad, #1))
Line 10: The fact that the inhabitants of the Netherworld are said to be clad in feather garments is perhaps due to the belief that after death, a person's soul turned into a spirit or a ghost, whose nature was wind-like, as well as bird-like. The Mesopotamians believed in the body (*pagru*) and the soul. the latter being referred to by two words: GIDIM = *et.emmu*, meaning "spirit of the dead," "ghost;" and AN.ZAG.GAR(.RA)/LIL2 = *zaqi_qu*/*ziqi_qu*, meaning "soul," "ghost," "phantom." Living beings (humans and animals) also had ZI (*napis\/tu*) "life, vigor, breath," which was associated with the throat or neck. As breath and coming from one's throat, ZI was understood as moving air, i.e., wind-like. ZI (*napis\/tu*) was the animating life force, which could be shortened or prolonged. For instance...Inanna grants "long life (zi-su\-ud-g~a/l) under him (=the king) in the palace. At one's death, when the soul/spirit released itself from the body, both *et.emmu* and *zaqi_qu*/*ziqi_qu* descended to the Netherworld, but when the body ceased to exist, so did the *et.emmu*, leaving only the *zaqi_gu*. Those souls that were denied access to the Netherworld for whatever reason, such as improper buriel or violent or premature death, roamed as harmful ghosts. Those souls who had attained peace were occasionally allowed to visit their families, to offer help or give instructions to their still living relatives. As it was only the *et.emmu* that was able to have influence on the affairs of the living relatives, special care was taken to preserve the remains of the familial dead. According to CAD [The Assyrian Dictionary of the University of Chicago] the Sumerian equivalent of *zaqi_qu*/*ziqi_qu* was li/l, which referred to a "phantom," "ghost," "haunting spirit" as in lu/-li/l-la/ [or] *lilu^* or in ki-sikil-li/l - la/ {or] *lili_tu*. the usual translation for the word li/l, however, is "wind," and li/l is equated with the word *s\/a_ru* (wind) in lexical lists. As the lexical lists equate wind (*s\/a_ru* and ghost (*zaqi_qu*) their association with each other cannot be unfounded. Moreover, *zaqi_qu* derives from the same root as the verb *za^qu*, "to blow," and the noun *zi_qu*, "breeze." According to J. Scurlock, *zaqi_qu* is a sexless, wind-like emanation, probably a bird-like phantom, able to fly through small apertures, and as such, became associated with dreaming, as it was able to leave the sleeping body. The wind-like appearance of the soul is also attested in the Gilgamesh Epic XII 83-84, where Enkidu is able to ascend from the Netherworld through a hole in the ground: "[Gilgamesh] opened a hole in the Netherworld, the *utukku* (ghost) of Enkidu came forthfrom the underworld as a *zaqi_qu." The soul's bird-like appearance is referred to in Tablet VII 183-184, where Enkidu visits the Netherworld in a dream. Prior to his descent, he is changed into a dove, and his hands are changed into wings. - State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts Volume VI: The Neo-Assyrian Myth of Istar's Descent and Resurrection {In this quote I haven't been able to copy some words exactly. I've put Assyrian words( normally in italics) between *asterisks*. The names of signs in Sumerian cuneiform (wedge-shaped writing) are normally in CAPITALS with a number slightly below the line after it if there's more than one reading for that sign. Assyriologists use marks above or below individual letters to aid pronunciation- I've put whatever I can do similar after the letter. E.g. *et.emmu" normally has the dot under the "t" to indicate a sibilant or buzzy sound, so it sounds something like "etzzemmoo." *zaqi_qu* normally has the line (macron) over the "i" to indicate a long vowel, so it sounds like "zaqeeqoo." *napis\/tu* normally has a small "v" over the s to make a sh sound, ="napishtu".}
Pirjo Lapinkivi
Imagine a fade-out here, if you please, or one of those discreet rows of asterisks, to indicate the passage of time—not very much time, admittedly, as one of us was out of practice and perhaps a little overexcited— anyway, we return to the scene with the two participants lying back on their pillows, bedsheets now chastely drawn up to their chins, watched silently through the doorway by a stuffed otter and the head of a china basset hound, half-hidden under a frayed gingham tablecloth. Everything was perfectly still; it felt like no one in the whole wide world was awake but us—like we had stolen a march on time, and although our problems waited for us on the other side, these moments were ours to let float by as we pleased. How sweet it was, after so much turbulence, not even to have to talk, or think.
Paul Murray
*bolding asterisks*
Gretchen McCulloch (Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language)
go through and take out as many section breaks within chapters as I could, deleting the white space and other markings between them. (By section break, I mean the smaller divisions of text that sometimes exist within chapters, usually set off by a string of three asterisks or something similar.) Late in my revision, I found that many of these mid-chapter breaks, all of which had seemed so essential, had become unnecessary and that losing those interruptions let my chapters read as more continuous and seamless.
Matt Bell (Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts)
Pit bulls are not dangerous or safe. Pit bulls aren’t saints or sinners. They are no more or less deserving than others dogs of love and compassion, no more of less deserving of good homes. They didn’t cause society’s ills, nor can their redemption...solve them. There is nothing that needs to be redeemed, anyway; they were never to blame on the first place...there never was a “pit bull problem”. What happened to these animals was a byproduct of human fears, and what humans feared most was one another. After all we have put them through, maybe it is time to let pit bulls show us who they are, to let them have a part in writing their own stories. Pit bulls are not dogs with an asterisk. Pit bulls are just...dogs.
Bronwen Dickey (Pit Bull: The Battle Over an American Icon)
What Beitman is suggesting presupposes either “superpowers” that go well beyond even the unconscious mental feats Freud and his predecessors had posited or, alternatively, some omniscient higher knower capable of aligning our intentions with the infinitely complex webs of material causation governing objectively unfolding events. Once again, the fact that we live in a world of information—including cultural information like books and symbols—does not mean the universe speaks our mental language. At best, both the archetypal and intentional explanations lack parsimony. Fortunately, a causal (with a big asterisk beside the word) explanation for meaningful coincidences is no longer nearly as unthinkable as it was in Jung’s day, thanks to advances in several fields that, as we saw earlier, seem to be converging on a plausible (and indeed even materialistic) answer to how experiences from our future may reflux into our past and inform our dreams, thoughts, and actions. It remains to test these hypotheses, deepen our understanding of physical laws and the brain with new methods and technologies, and persist in our inquiries into psychology and nature with the healthy presumption that we don’t yet know everything about the physical world or how the mind/brain works. We cannot simply reject anomalous phenomena that don’t fit into the current materialist paradigm, but it is also too soon to appeal to explanatory factors beyond physical causation, as the latter is turning out to be far more rich, varied, and interesting than once believed. Causation really seems to go both directions in time.
Eric Wargo (Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious)
[on flat affect] ... worlds and events that would have been expected to be captured by expressive suffering—featuring an amplified subjectivity, violent and reparative relationally, and assurance about what makes an event significant—appear with an asterisk of uncertainty.
Lauren Berlant
I'm not an asterisk or a footnote in my own life. I don't have to hold my tongue here, because I'm the fucking star
Joelle Wellington (Their Vicious Games)
If history is any indication of what to expect should abortion become illegal, we will need to append an asterisk to the promise that women won't be punished for abortion. The truth is, wealthy women won't be punished.
Michelle Oberman (Her Body, Our Laws: On the Front Lines of the Abortion War, from El Salvador to Oklahoma)
Grayson is in training for the Insufferable Olympics, and we really think he can go all the way if he can just jam that stick a little farther up his—” Asterisk,
Jennifer Lynn Barnes (The Inheritance Games (The Inheritance Games, #1))
I like to believe I can go anywhere in this country, but that belief comes with a big asterisk called history.
R. Eric Thomas (Congratulations, the Best is Over!)
I believe in true love," she said. He nodded again. "But I clearly don't know it when I see it. How can I ever say 'I love you' again? I'll have to asterisk it - 'I think I love you, but the only other time I said this, I was wrong. I don't actually know what love looks or feels like. I think I love you, but what do I know?
Rainbow Rowell (Scattered Showers)
Our young girls were told that they have inherent value and worth, but it was often with an asterisk: your inner worth is revealed by what you do with your outer body.
Sheila Wray Gregoire (She Deserves Better: Raising Girls to Resist Toxic Teachings on Sex, Self, and Speaking Up)
I will love you with too many commas, but never any asterisks
No Matter the Wreckage, Sarah Kay
It’s the palette of an A24 movie made flesh, and it feels powerful. I am the main character, whom things are taken from, won then irrevocably lost, but while the open ending isn’t quite hopeful, at least it’s still about me. I’m not an asterisk or a footnote in my own life. I don’t have to hold my tongue here, because I’m the fucking star.
Joelle Wellington (Their Vicious Games)
asterisk
Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson's Greek Heroes)
The short answer is no. But it’s a “no” with an asterisk, a “no” in need of elaboration—and, since the elaboration is a bit arcane, I’ve relegated it to an online appendix. 1 It’s recommended reading, because if you buy the argument it may radically alter your view of the world. But for now the point is just that the ability to intimately comprehend someone’s motivation—to share their experience virtually, and know it from the inside—depends on a moral imagination that naturally contracts in the case of people we consider rivals or enemies
Robert Wright (The Evolution of God)
Ears are impossible to slip.
Asterisk
The sensation of her skin against the material. It felt as if his lungs were filling with tint glowing asterisks.
Luke Kennard (The Transition)
We should have a handout at the door to speed things along, a brief summary of Dad’s illness and all that transpired in the final days, maybe even a photocopy of his charts and a four-color printout of his last CAT scan, because that seems to be what all of his and Mom’s peers want to talk about. And at the bottom of the handout a simple asterisked declaration would state that it’s of absolutely no interest to us where you were when you found out our father/husband had died, like he was John F. Kennedy or Kurt Cobain.
Jonathan Tropper (This is Where I Leave You)
Although earlier computers existed in isolation from the world, requiring their visuals and sound to be generated and live only within their memory, the Amiga was of the world, able to interface with it in all its rich analog glory. It was the first PC with a sufficient screen resolution and color palette as well as memory and processing power to practically store and display full-color photographic representations of the real world, whether they be scanned in from photographs, captured from film or video, or snapped live by a digitizer connected to the machine. It could be used to manipulate video, adding titles, special effects, or other postproduction tricks. And it was also among the first to make practical use of recordings of real-world sound. The seeds of the digital-media future, of digital cameras and Photoshop and MP3 players, are here. The Amiga was the first aesthetically satisfying PC. Although the generation of machines that preceded it were made to do many remarkable things, works produced on them always carried an implied asterisk; “Remarkable,” we say, “. . . for existing on such an absurdly limited platform.” Even the Macintosh, a dramatic leap forward in many ways, nevertheless remained sharply limited by its black-and-white display and its lack of fast animation capabilities. Visuals produced on the Amiga, however, were in full color and could often stand on their own terms, not as art produced under huge technological constraints, but simply as art. And in allowing game programmers to move beyond blocky, garish graphics and crude sound, the Amiga redefined the medium of interactive entertainment as being capable of adult sophistication and artistry. The seeds of the aesthetic future, of computers as everyday artistic tools, ever more attractive computer desktops, and audiovisually rich virtual worlds, are here. The Amiga empowered amateur creators by giving them access to tools heretofore available only to the professional. The platform’s most successful and sustained professional niche was as a video-production workstation, where an Amiga, accompanied by some relatively inexpensive software and hardware peripherals, could give the hobbyist amateur or the frugal professional editing and postproduction capabilities equivalent to equipment costing tens or hundreds of thousands. And much of the graphical and musical creation software available for the machine was truly remarkable. The seeds of the participatory-culture future, of YouTube and Flickr and even the blogosphere, are here. The
Jimmy Maher (The Future Was Here: The Commodore Amiga (Platform Studies))
Please tell me we don’t have to go all the way upstairs for a condom,” she said. “Back pocket.” She leaned with him as he fished it out, then tried to help him get his jeans down over his hips. Her foot hit the coffee table, which snagged on the throw rug and sent the Scrabble tiles sliding all over the board. She laughed as he tore open the condom packet. “Now nobody wins.” “I was ahead.” He put one hand on her hip, using the other to guide himself into her. “So I win.” Emma moaned as he filled her, bracing herself against the couch with a hand on either side of his head. “The game wasn’t over. It’s a draw.” He pulled down on her hips as he drove up into her, making her gasp. “Ties are for pussies. Admit I won.” She looked down into his blue eyes, crinkled with amusement as he grinned at her. God, she loved…having sex with this man. “One good word isn’t a victory.” “That’s not what the score sheet said.” He stopped moving, and when she tried to rock against him, he held down on her hips so she couldn’t move, either. Then he had the nerve to chuckle at her growl of sexual frustration. “Admit it. I can sit here all night.” “Oh, really?” She went straight for a known weak spot—nipping at his earlobe before sucking it into her mouth. He let go of her hips with one hand, intending to push her mouth away, but she rocked her hips. He groaned and put his hand back. She breathed softly against his ear and then ran her tongue along the outside. “Admit I was going to win,” she whispered, “because I can do this all night.” With one leg, he kicked at the table, sending it over and the letter tiles flying. Before Emma could react, she was on her back on the throw rug with Sean between her legs and her hands held over her head. “I don’t lose.” He crossed her wrists so he could hold them with one hand, then used the other to pull her leg up over his hip so he was totally buried in her. “Give up?” She shook her head, but couldn’t hold back the sigh as he oh, so slowly withdrew almost completely and then just as slowly filled her again. “You’re cheating.” He did it again and again, the slow friction delicious and frustrating, until they were both trembling and on the edge. Then, as he was pulling out of her once again with a self-control that made her want to scream, it became a matter of life or death, because she was going to die if she didn’t get what her body was looking for. “Okay, fine. You win.” He drove into her hard, his fingers biting into her wrists before he released them so he could lift her legs to her shoulder. She cried his name as his fingers dug into her hips and he gave them what they both wanted. When he collapsed on top of her, breathing hard against her neck, she wrapped her legs and arms around him, holding him close. “Another one for the win column,” he said once they’d caught their breath. “It has an asterisk, though, because you totally cheated.” “All’s fair in sex and Scrabble, baby.” He propped his head on his hand and smiled down at her. “What should we play next?” “I’ve still got clothes on. You’ve still got clothes on. Maybe we should break out a deck of cards.” “You’re my kinda girl, Emma Shaw,” he said, and thankfully, he was in the process of getting up off the floor, because she didn’t think she did a good job of hiding how happy those words made her.
Shannon Stacey (Yours to Keep (Kowalski Family, #3))
The boy who had scolded her was Dirk Eberwein, the first non-Genestella in the history of the Le Wolfe Black Institute to reach the rank of student council president. There
Yuu Miyazaki (The Asterisk War, Vol. 3: The Phoenix War Dance)
For years, President Obama and his top officials vehemently denounced China for using its surveillance capabilities for economic advantage while insisting that the United States and its allies never do any such thing. The Washington Post quoted an NSA spokesperson saying that the Department of Defense, of which the agency is a part, “ ‘does engage’ in computer network exploitation,” but “does ***not*** engage in economic espionage in any domain, including ‘cyber’ ” [emphatic asterisks in the original]. That the NSA spies for precisely the economic motive it has denied is proven by its own documents. The agency acts for the benefit of what it calls its “customers,” a list that includes not only the White House, the State Department, and the CIA, but also primarily economic agencies, such as the US Trade Representative and the Departments of Agriculture, Treasury, and Commerce:
Glenn Greenwald (No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the Surveillance State)
Asterisks Placed around a word to indicate emphasis or sarcasm, like you didn’t know *that* already.
Susie Boniface (Bluffer's Guide to Social Media (Bluffer's Guides))
within the asterisks are repeated three times in the sequence they’re given after the first time they’re worked. So, in total, the asterisk section would be repeated four times. Parentheses – Parentheses
Amy Wright (Learn How to Crochet Quick And Easy)
asterisks the number of times called for. Many crochet patterns are also broken down into rows (for flat crochet) and rounds (for circular crochet). Pattern repeats are often made up of a number of rows or rounds, which the designer will indicate in the pattern. At
Amy Wright (Learn How to Crochet Quick And Easy)
You may think that you don't need to worry about actually learning the grammar rules because spell check and grammar check will come to your rescue. And I get it: spell check and grammar check are great. Every time I spot a red or green line in my writing, I check it out, and many times, although I hate to admit it, I have made a mistake. But spell check and grammar check are like vodka: they are definitely helpful but shouldn't be solely relied on to solve our problems.
Jenny Baranick (Kiss My Asterisk: A Feisty Guide to Punctuation and Grammar)
Nature’s asterisk An abandoned nest of twigs Decays over time
Nanette L. Avery
Of course." She smiled slowly. "Well, I didn't need to get all dressed then, did I?" She had a way, all right. The words came out like asterisks, or the dots at the end of jazzy paragraphs in books.
Richard S. Prather (Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Four)
I am the English teacher who teaches the “boring stuff”— I teach a class on grammar called Writing Skills.
Jenny Baranick (Kiss My Asterisk: A Feisty Guide to Punctuation and Grammar)
I am the English teacher who teaches the “boring stuff”— I teach a class on grammar called Writing Skills. My students think I love grammar. That just says one thing to me: I chose the wrong profession— I should have been an actress. I don’t love grammar. Loving grammar is like loving oatmeal.
Jenny Baranick (Kiss My Asterisk: A Feisty Guide to Punctuation and Grammar)
If our writing is full of grammar and punctuation errors, even though the content may be great, it’s like wearing a beautifully made Prada dress that has deodorant stains.
Jenny Baranick (Kiss My Asterisk: A Feisty Guide to Punctuation and Grammar)
But spell check and grammar check are like vodka: they are definitely helpful but shouldn’t be solely relied on to solve our problems.
Jenny Baranick (Kiss My Asterisk: A Feisty Guide to Punctuation and Grammar)
Spelling can be as elusive as the female orgasm.
Jenny Baranick (Kiss My Asterisk: A Feisty Guide to Punctuation and Grammar)
Dictionaries are like vitamins and floss; we buy them and then never use them. Even I, an English teacher, a lover of words, have a huge dictionary on my desk, and I never, ever open it.
Jenny Baranick (Kiss My Asterisk: A Feisty Guide to Punctuation and Grammar)
The difference between lay and lie is like the difference between sadism and masochism: one means doing something to someone (or something) else, while the other means doing it to oneself.
Jenny Baranick (Kiss My Asterisk: A Feisty Guide to Punctuation and Grammar)
(Lay) Yesterday, he laid the leather whip down by the handcuffs. (Lie) Five minutes ago, she told him to lay down on the floor and bark like a dog.
Jenny Baranick (Kiss My Asterisk: A Feisty Guide to Punctuation and Grammar)
Affect: To produce a change in Effect: Something that is produced, a result or consequence
Jenny Baranick (Kiss My Asterisk: A Feisty Guide to Punctuation and Grammar)
Lacks commitment: I suppose I could marry Dan. Acknowledges commitment: I’m supposed to marry Dan.
Jenny Baranick (Kiss My Asterisk: A Feisty Guide to Punctuation and Grammar)
Incorrect: I use to be the most popular guy in school, but now I am the Thursday night trivia king at the local bar. Correct: I used to be the most popular guy in school, but now I am the Thursday night trivia king at the local bar.
Jenny Baranick (Kiss My Asterisk: A Feisty Guide to Punctuation and Grammar)
We use the en dash when we want to express a range of values: Goldilocks will only sleep on Egyptian cotton sheets with a 300–400 thread count. She only eats porridge that is 98–100 degrees.
Jenny Baranick (Kiss My Asterisk: A Feisty Guide to Punctuation and Grammar)
Like an exclamation point, the em dash may be used to provide emphasis, but the exclamation point must go at the end of a sentence—the em dash can go anywhere: There’s a little blonde girl—in my bed. None of my porridge—not even one little drop—is left.
Jenny Baranick (Kiss My Asterisk: A Feisty Guide to Punctuation and Grammar)
The closest we can get to set hyphen rules are that the prefixes ex, self, and all always require hyphens while adverbs ending in ly never do: Goldilocks first told the jury that she had been walking through the dimly lit forest and mistook the three bears’ house for an all-inclusive resort. When the jury seemed skeptical, she changed her story and said she had been in a highly emotional state and was suffering from low self-esteem because her ex-boyfriend Jack left her to climb a beanstalk.
Jenny Baranick (Kiss My Asterisk: A Feisty Guide to Punctuation and Grammar)