“
It no longer matters who consider themselves the masters of events. Events no longer obey their masters.
”
”
Dan Simmons (Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #1))
“
Do you believe we are masters of ourselves, or merely dance like puppets on strings having the illusion of independence?
”
”
Winston Graham (Jeremy Poldark (Poldark, #3))
“
We all learn here by the honorable path of horrible mistakes.
”
”
Katherine Paterson (The Master Puppeteer)
“
So tired of Noam and Herod and Sir and Angra and all these arrogant, puppet-master men who hold all the strings and refuse to give them up.
”
”
Sara Raasch (Snow Like Ashes (Snow Like Ashes, #1))
“
Someone is out there," I said. "Someone who has been manipulating the events. Playing puppet master, stirring the pot, stacking the deck - "
"Mixing metaphors?" Thomas suggested.
”
”
Jim Butcher (Cold Days (The Dresden Files, #14))
“
Politicians and corporate leaders who appeared to rule over their fellow humans were actually only puppets for the Masters, who used them to implement all their agendas to ensure a continuation of separation and control. In this way, when the populace became irate at a politician or corporate leader, the Masters would force them to resign from their position and have another puppet take their place. The populace would believe the problem had been taken care of and real change had occurred, that the root of the problem had been fixed, so they would rejoice and become complacent. When in actuality, the same old revolving-door record would play over and over again, with the real root of power, the Masters, staying at the helm of the ship.
”
”
Jasun Ether (The Beasts of Success)
“
You’ve thrown down the gauntlet. You’ve brought my wrath down upon your house. Now, to prove that I exist I must kill you. As the child outlives the father, so must the character bury the author. If you are, in fact, my continuing author, then killing you will end my existence as well. Small loss. Such a life, as your puppet, is not worth living.
But… If I destroy you and your dreck script, and I still exist… then my existence will be glorious, for I will become my own master.
”
”
Chuck Palahniuk (Damned (Damned, #1))
“
Time was when I was immune to emotional shocks. But as I get older, I don't get tougher; I get softer.
”
”
Robert A. Heinlein (The Puppet Masters)
“
Everyone who loves pro basketball assumes it's a little fixed. We all think the annual draft lottery is probably rigged, we all accept that the league aggressively wants big market teams to advance deep into the playoffs, and we all concede that certain marquee players are going to get preferential treatment for no valid reason. The outcomes of games aren't predeteremined or scripted but there are definitely dark forces who play with our reality. There are faceless puppet masters who pull strings and manipulate the purity of justice. It's not necessarily a full-on conspiracy, but it's certainly not fair. And that's why the NBA remains the only game that matters: Pro basketball is exactly like life.
”
”
Chuck Klosterman (Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto)
“
In the real world, speechwriters are more like personal trainers than puppet masters. They can help you present the most attractive version of yourself to the public. They can’t turn you into someone you’re not.
”
”
David Litt (Thanks, Obama: My Hopey, Changey White House Years)
“
I feel sorry for people who maintain relationships and friendships detrimental to their mental health.
Everyone is guilty of it at one time or another- but the idea is to strive to be your best; right?
So, meanwhile why are so many people faking it? Security? Fear of loneliness? Fears of independence? Fears of being self ? Or just the idea that you can make someone change?
Regardless of the justifications you give & treat yourself to... , I hope all of you - "new year -new me types" strive for self care , honest and pure friendships and relationships based of love- and not based off the fake realities of your mind. These delusions of what you hope for instead of what's there, where you and your puppet show master focus more on everyone else and less on self. To change the world you must start within. But you must first BE HONEST with yourself.
My new year started a few months ago-- and it was the best choice I ever made- and
I hope your recreations are progressive and successful in THE NEW YEAR
”
”
Tiffany Luard
“
Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves,
And ye that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him
When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,
Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm’d
The noontide sun, call’d forth the mutinous winds,
And ‘twixt the green sea and the azured vault
Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire and rifted Jove’s stout oak
With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory
Have I made shake and by the spurs pluck’d up
The pine and cedar: graves at my command
Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let ‘em forth
By my so potent art. But this rough magic
I here abjure, and, when I have required
Some heavenly music, which even now I do,
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I’ll drown my book.
”
”
William Shakespeare (The Tempest)
“
I’m his puppet and he is my invisible master, holding my strings from miles away.
”
”
Saffron A. Kent (The Unrequited)
“
corporations have become the puppet masters behind the government.
”
”
Michael C. Grumley (Breakthrough (Breakthrough, #1))
“
The problem with dictatorships—as I read somewhere recently—and with poisonous ideologies, too, is that they are like sharks. They must keep moving forward or die. What caused their aggression is not what you did. It's who they are.
”
”
Robert A. Heinlein (The Puppet Masters)
“
You know, it sounds like you guys didn’t really think this all the way through. You plugged us into an equation and predicted outcomes. Well, I got news for you, nimrod. In this equation of yours, we’re variables. We’re going to vary. What you sick jerks don’t seem to get is that I’m an actual person. She’s real too. She’s a person. All of us are! And I’m done jumping through your hoops. You can tell yourselves that you’re doing all this to save the world, but really you’re just a bunch of psycho puppet-masters who probably didn’t date enough in high school.
”
”
Maximum Ride in Maximum Ride School's Out - Forever by James Patterson
“
But it was not the boyish grin she had known when he bounded along the low-gravity inner corridors of Battle School. This smile had weariness in it, and old fears long mastered but still present. It was the smile of wisdom.
”
”
Orson Scott Card (Shadow Puppets (The Shadow Series, #3))
“
What are the unreal things, but the passions that once burned one like fire? What are the incredible things, but the things that one has faithfully believed? What are the improbable things? The things that one has done oneself. No, Ernest; life cheats us with shadows, like a puppet- master. We ask it for pleasure. It gives it to us, with bitterness and disappointment in its train. We come across some noble grief that we think will lend the purple dignity of tragedy to our days, but it passes away from us, and things less noble take its place, and on some grey windy dawn, or odorous eve of silence and of silver, we find ourselves looking with callous wonder, or dull heart of stone, at the tress of gold-flecked hair that we had once so wildly worshipped and so madly kissed.
”
”
Oscar Wilde (The Critic As Artist: With Some Remarks on the Importance of Doing Nothing and Discussing Everything (Green Integer))
“
Horace was a nice little guy who looked like one of his own baboons; he turned me over to a Doctor Vargas who was a specialist in exotic biologies--the same Vargas who was on the Second Venus Expedition. He told me what had happened and I looked at the gibbons, meantime rearranging my prejudices.
”
”
Robert A. Heinlein (The Puppet Masters)
“
True power lies in the ability to harness energy and wield it like a sword, becoming the puppeteer that masters all the strings instead of the marionette being forced to dance.
”
”
Emily McIntire (Scarred (Never After, #2))
“
His hands manipulated me. I was a puppet and he was the master. Any string he tugged at brought me nearer to him.
”
”
Kenya Wright (Theirs to Play (Billionaire Games, #1))
“
You are all lost, for the many houses of human religion are all held by the strings of the same master puppeteer.
”
”
T.M. Lakomy
“
What is a writer?
A writer is a magician who can create a masterpiece
With a wave of a pencil
A writer has the key to a new world
Capturing readers and taking them on a roller coaster ride away from reality
But a writer can be a commanding tyrant
Or a hypnotist stealing minds
What is a writer?
A writer is a powerful being, an intelligent thinker
And an artist creating mind pictures through words.
A writer is a keeper of secrets
Or like a roomful of words waiting for a book
But a writer is also a puppet master taking control
With no strings attached
What is a writer?
A writer is a true friend
Using words to spread smiles to the world
A writer is…..
The voice of the hear
”
”
Carol Archer
“
My strings are being pulled, this time by a different puppet master.
”
”
Emilyann Allen (The Labyrinth Wall)
“
Cue the cruel and mocking laughter from the puppet master of this fucked up sideshow.
”
”
A. Zavarelli (Stutter (Bleeding Hearts #2))
“
Darkness drives us all into agonizing madness.
”
”
Brandi Elise Szeker (The Master and the Marionette (The Pawn and The Puppet #2))
“
A crude puppet impaled by her puppet master.
”
”
Alex Adams
“
This ridiculous object has been strutting around saying I this and I that and all the while it has no more I than a scarecrow and no more will than a puppet.
”
”
Robert S. de Ropp (The Master Game: Pathways to Higher Consciousness (Consciousness Classics))
“
The feet and their tapping
Write many a lovely couplet
The body dances to your rhythm O lord
After all, you are the master and I a puppet
”
”
Neelam Saxena Chandra
“
The puppet masters only concern is how well they can manipulate their marionettes.
”
”
Steven Redhead (Life Is a Dance)
“
I had concluded that I no longer shared her faith in a God who controlled the universe like a puppet master pulling and tugging strings and making us all dance. Our lives, I believed, were more like billiard balls on a pool table, ricocheting randomly with the impact of the cue ball. To believe otherwise was to believe that a God to whom my mother had devoted her life had responded by striking down her husband and causing her so much pain. I couldn’t accept that.
”
”
Robert Dugoni (The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell)
“
We are raised from when we are little to be generous and helpful, but the interception of greed in a select few as they rise to the top results in a society puppet-mastered by selfishness.
”
”
Anthony Karakai (The End of Athens)
“
At my age, one realizes that time is a cruel and fickle master, for the more you want it, the faster it appears to vanish, and vice versa: the more you want to escape it, the more stagnant it becomes. We are its slaves—or its puppets, if you prefer—and it moves or paralyzes us at its whim.
”
”
Sofía Segovia (The Murmur of Bees)
“
After they had gone another mile, Pinocchio heard the same little low voice saying to him:
'Bear it in mind, simpleton! Boys who refuse to study, and turn their backs upon books, schools, and masters, to pass their time in play and amusements, sooner or later come to a bad end... I know it by experience... and I can tell you. A day will come when you will weep as I am weeping now... but then it will be too late!...'
On hearing these words whispered very softly, the puppet, more frightened than ever, sprang down from the back of his donkey and went and took hold of his mouth.
Imagine his surprise when he found that the donkey was crying... and he was crying like a boy!
”
”
Carlo Collodi (Pinocchio)
“
Moments like that, I thought maybe there was a God, a fickle puppet-master who decided it was time to remind us that life isn't just an echo of the Big Bang - that we're here, with beating hearts.
”
”
Vikki Wakefield (Friday Brown)
“
gold light burned faintly.
From his cosy window seat, Mario was tracing a frost-flower on the windowpane with an unsure finger. Were its perfectly-rendered geometric patterns a product of nature, or were they an artefact of metaphysics? Was the frost-flower to the Masters what a work of Art was to him? Did the Masters of Strings truly control every aspect of reality?
The fractal flower slowly melted under Mario’s fingertip.
“No work of chance here,” he bitterly thought. “This was by design.
”
”
Louise Blackwick (The Underworld Rhapsody)
“
You’re not too tall,” Dunk blurted out. “You’re just right for …” He realized what he had been about to say, and blushed furiously. “For?” said Tanselle, cocking her head inquisitively. “Puppets,” he finished lamely.
”
”
Robert Silverberg (Legends: Stories By The Masters of Modern Fantasy (Legends, #1))
“
Did you think I was joking about killing Simon? Read it and weep, kids. Everyone in detention with Simon last week had an extraspecial reason for wanting him gone. Exhibit A: the posts above, which he was about to publish on About That. Now here’s your assignment: connect the dots. Is everybody in it together, or is somebody pulling strings? Who’s the puppet master and who’s the puppet? I’ll give you a hint to get you started: everyone’s lying. GO!
”
”
Karen M. McManus (One of Us Is Lying (One of Us is Lying, #1))
“
It is genes that allow the human mind to learn, to remember, to imitate, to imprint, to absorb culture, and to express instincts. Genes are not puppet masters or blueprints. Nor are they just the carriers of heredity. They are active during life;
”
”
Matt Ridley (The Agile Gene: How Nature Turns on Nurture)
“
That is what it is all about. Making you my puppet. This is my aim. This is the means to my end of obtaining my fuel from you. As you will no doubt becoming familiar with, the means always justifies the end. Accordingly, by ensuring you become my puppet I am in the optimum position to control you to extract every drop of fuel I can from you. I need to control you so that you admire me when I want it. I need to control you so that I can pull the strings and make you jerk to my tune. I am the puppet master.
”
”
H.G. Tudor (Confessions of a Narcissist)
“
If I had had any sense, I'd have quit and taken a working job. The only trouble with that would be that I wouldn't have been working for the Old Man any longer. That made the difference. Not that he was a soft boss. He was quite capable of saying, "Boys, we need to fertilize this oak tree. Just jump in that hole at its base and I'll cover you up." We'd have done it. Any of us would. And the Old Man would bury us alive, too, if he thought that there was as much as a 53 percent probability that it was the Tree of Liberty he was nourishing.
”
”
Robert A. Heinlein (The Puppet Masters)
“
So, too, with the caste system as it goes about its work in silence, the string of a puppet master unseen by those whose subconscious it directs, its instructions an intravenous drip to the mind, caste in the guise of normalcy, injustice looking just, atrocities looking unavoidable to keep the machinery humming, the matrix of caste as a facsimile for life itself and whose purpose is maintaining the primacy of those hoarding and holding tight to power.
”
”
Isabel Wilkerson (Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents)
“
The sovereignty of God matters to Christianity, and we could go as far as to say that it is un-Christian to deny the sovereignty of God. The prosperity gospel certainly denies the sovereignty of God to the extent that it demeans God to the position of a puppet and elevates man to the position of a puppet master who makes confessional demands by faith. It does this by considering faith as a force and God as the one who must respond to our faith. This is a heretical twisting of true faith.
”
”
Costi W. Hinn (God, Greed, and the (Prosperity) Gospel: How Truth Overwhelms a Life Built on Lies)
“
My dear Lord Krishna, you are so kind upon this useless soul, but I do not know why you have brought me here. Now you can do whatever you like with me. But I guess you have some business here, otherwise why would you bring me to this place? Somehow or other, O Lord, You have brought me here to speak about you. Now, my Lord, it is up to you to make me a success or failure as you like. O spiritual master of all the worlds. I can simply repeat your message; so if you like you can make my power of speaking suitable for their understanding. Only by Your causeless mercy will my words become pure. I am sure that when this transcendental message penetrates their hearts they will certainly feel engladdened and thus become liberated from all unhappy conditions of life. O Lord, I am just like a puppet in your hands. So if you have brought me here to dance, then make me dance, make me dance, O Lord, make me dance as you like. I have no devotion, nor do I have any knowledge, but I have strong faith in the holy name of Krishna. I have been designated as Bhaktivedanta, one who possesses devotion and knowledge, and now, if you like, you can fulfill the real purport of Bhaktivedanta. Signed, the most unfortunate, insignificant beggar, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, On board the ship Jaladuta, Commonwealth Pier, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. 18th of September, 1965
”
”
Radhanath Swami (The Journey Home: Autobiography of an American Swami)
“
Have you beauty, that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and stone to the holy mountain? Tell me, have you these in your houses? Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and becomes a host, and then a master? Ay, and it becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires. Though its hands are silken, its heart is of iron. It lulls you to sleep only to stand by your bed and jeer at the dignity of the flesh. It makes mock of your sound senses, and lays them in thistledown like fragile vessels. Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral. But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped nor tamed. Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast. It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but an eyelid that guards the eye. You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through doors, nor bend your heads that they strike not against a ceiling, nor fear to breathe lest walls should crack and fall down. You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living. And though of magnificence and splendour, your house shall not hold your secret nor shelter your longing. For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night.
”
”
Kahlil Gibran (The Prophet)
“
There are puppet-masters, but they are systems and ideologies, not people. As
”
”
Charles Eisenstein (Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition)
Brandi Elise Szeker (The Master and the Marionette (The Pawn and The Puppet #2))
“
So, man is an individual only because of his intangible memory... and memory cannot be defined, but it defines mankind.
”
”
The Puppet Master
“
We all emerged from our trauma with adverse strengths. It happens that mine is planning, human behavior observation, deduction, and deception.
”
”
Brandi Elise Szeker (The Master and the Marionette (The Pawn and The Puppet #2))
“
My movements control him, and it’s wildly addicting. To the man who controls all, knows all—I am his downfall.
”
”
Brandi Elise Szeker (The Master and the Marionette (The Pawn and The Puppet #2))
“
But why do you want to?” He pauses. “I like the control of it. Teaching you how to erupt from our touch excites me.
”
”
Brandi Elise Szeker (The Master and the Marionette (The Pawn and The Puppet #2))
“
The moon has no master," said the owl. "The moon is its own king."
"Or queen," said the girl.
The moon rose higher.
”
”
Kate DiCamillo (The Puppets of Spelhorst)
“
In this arena, I was the puppet master. They were the dolls.
”
”
Tillie Cole (A Wish For Us)
“
The wife drives the ship. She is the puppet master. But in order to maintain a happy home, you must let the man believe that he calls the shots.
”
”
S.L. Jennings (Taint (Sexual Education, #1))
“
The legal Puppet Master pulling the strings of the dirty elite. Just who is Alexander James Henley Jnr?
”
”
Jade West (Buy Me, Sir)
“
Her continued devotion in the face of all that had happened amazed me, but at this point I had concluded that I no longer shared her faith in a God who controlled the universe like a puppet master pulling and tugging strings and making us all dance. Our lives, I believed, were more like billiard balls on a pool table, ricocheting randomly with the impact of the cue ball.
”
”
Robert Dugoni (The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell)
“
Because we suddenly see that making everything all right would NOT make everything all right. We would not be human beings. We would then be no more than puppets obeying the strings of the master puppeteer. We agree sadly that it is a good thing that we are not God; we do not have to understand God's ways, or the suffering and brokenness and pain that sooner or later come to us all.
”
”
Madeleine L'Engle (Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage (Crosswicks Journals, #4))
“
At my age, one realizes that time is a cruel and fickle master, for the more you want it, the faster it appears to vanish, and vice versa: the more you want to escape it, the more stagnant it becomes. We are its slaves—or its puppets, if you prefer—and it moves or paralyzes us at its whim. Today, for instance, I would like to reach the end of this story, so I wish I could have more time—that time would slow down. You, on other hand, might want this old man you’ve just met to be quiet so that you can put on your music or think about something else, so perhaps your journey is taking forever. But let me tell you what I know, what I’ve concluded: it doesn’t matter whether time passes slowly or quickly. What you can be sure of is that, in the end, all you want is to have more. More of those lazy afternoons when nothing happens, despite your best efforts to the contrary. More of those annoying arms that picked you up to stop you doing something crazy. More tellings-off from the mother who you thought was a nag. More glimpses, even, of your father hurrying somewhere, always busy. More soft embraces from the wife who loved you all your life, and more trusting looks from your children’s young eyes.
”
”
Sofía Segovia (The Murmur of Bees)
“
For my number-one favorite kill, I almost went with Johnny Depp being eaten alive and then regurgitated by his own bed in A Nightmare on Elm Street, but the winner, by a finger blade’s width, has to be the death of that feisty Tina (Amanda Wyss), who put up such a fight while I thrashed her about on the ceiling of her bedroom. Freddy loves a worthy adversary, especially if it’s a nubile teenaged girl.
A close second goes to my hearing-impaired victim Carlos (Ricky Dean Logan) in Nightmare 6. In these uber-politically-correct times, it’s refreshing to remember what an equal opportunity killer Freddy always was. Not only does he pump up the volume on the hearing aid from hell, but he also adds a nice Latino kid to his body count. Today they probably wouldn’t even let Freddy force-feed a fat kid junk food.
Dream death number three is found in a sequence from Nightmare 3. Freddy plays puppet master with victim Phillip (Bradley Gregg), converting his arm and leg tendons into marionette strings, then cutting them in a Freddy meets Verigo moment.
The kiss of death Profressor Freddy gives Sheila (Toy Newkirk) is great, but not as good as Al Pacino’s in The Godfather, so my fourth pick is Freddy turning Debbie (Brooke Theiss) into her worst nightmare, a cockroach, and crushing her in a Roach Motel. A classic Kafka/Krueger kill.
For my final fave, you will have to check out Freddy vs. Jason playing at a Hell’s Octoplex near you. Here’s a hint: the hockey-puck guy and I double team a member of Destiny’s Child. Yummy! Now where’s that Beyonce…
”
”
Robert Englund (Hollywood Monster: A Walk Down Elm Street with the Man of Your Dreams)
“
He wore boots, but they were mostly covered by coarse woad-coloured trousers made of homespun wool. Elizabeth suspected that wherever he came from, they did not have a spinning wheel but still used the drop spindle with a whorl.
”
”
Elin Eriksen (Master of Puppets: A Pride and Prejudice variation)
“
It had all been lies. My connection might have been real, but the lion, the dragon, the great beast that encompassed the all-knowing, master manipulator, the strong-willed warrior he has always been to me… has been a lie. A LIE.
”
”
Brandi Elise Szeker (The Master and the Marionette (The Pawn and The Puppet #2))
“
you feel what else is there to do in life apart from living? And even that is out of your control; it depends on an infinite number of factors. Everything is in your unconscious mind. Why sex desire arose in you, why you raised a family, how greed and anger entered you, why you were dishonest, why you accumulated wealth, why you made enemies – you have no idea! You are just like a puppet, whose strings are being pulled by someone else. You imagine you are dancing, but in fact it is someone else who is making you dance.
Look closely at your life and you will find that you are nothing more than a puppet. How can anything real happen in the life of a man who is not his own master, but merely a puppet?
”
”
Osho (Bliss: Living beyond happiness and misery)
“
I could do that. Interrogate him. Use torture methods to get him to talk.” (...) "Not to mention, that kind of interrogation isn’t effective. Manipulation is a powerful tool to get someone to talk and share even the secrets you don’t know they are keeping.
”
”
Brandi Elise Szeker (The Master and the Marionette (The Pawn and The Puppet #2))
“
Back in the twentieth century, they had established to everybody’s satisfaction that ‘I was just following orders’ was an inadequate excuse for inhuman contact … but what can you do when the orders come from deep down in that puppet master of the unconscious?
”
”
Joe Haldeman (The Forever War)
“
he was the indisputable master of the night, bopping as he churned out an endless assortment of music designed to trigger the primal human instinct to rock and roll. He was a puppeteer, pulling the strings on a mob of puppets seeking mindless respite from teenage angst.
”
”
Zita Harrison (Ink: Beneath the Stain)
“
one realizes that time is a cruel and fickle master, for the more you want it, the faster it appears to vanish, and vice versa: the more you want to escape it, the more stagnant it becomes. We are its slaves—or its puppets, if you prefer—and it moves or paralyzes us at its whim.
”
”
Sofía Segovia (The Murmur of Bees)
“
People thank God when God no longer sits on the throne. The angels descend down to deliver miracles because they are trying to maintain the face of God. In the end, you must place your hopes and prayers with the angels. It has become quite sad in Heaven without its puppet master.
”
”
Lionel Suggs
“
Are we running hot or something?" Peabody demanded. "So a person can't take a minute to have a cup of coffee and maybe a small bite to eat, especially when the person got off a full subway stop early to work off the anticipated bite to eat."
"If you're finished whining about it, I'll fill you in."
"A real partner would have brought me a coffee to go so I could drink it while being filled in."
"How many coffee shops did you pass on your endless and arduous hike from the subway?"
"It's not the same," Peabody muttered. "And it's not my fault I'm coffee spoiled. You're the one who brought the real stufff made from real beans into my life. You addicted me." She pointed an accusing finger at Eve. "And now you're withholding the juice."
"Yes, that was my plan all along. And if you ever want real again in this lifetime, suck it up and do my bidding."
Peabody stared. "You're like Master Manipulator. An evil coffee puppeteer."
"Yes, yes, I am. Do you have any interest, Detective, in where we're going, who we're going to see, and why?"
"I'd be more interested if I had coffee.
”
”
J.D. Robb (Salvation in Death (In Death, #27))
“
The year Alicia Gris arrived in Madrid, her mentor and puppet master Leandro Montalvo taught her that to keep your sanity, you must have a place in the world where you can lose yourself if necessary. That place, that last refuge, is a small annex of the soul, and when the world reverts to its absurd comedy, you can always run there, lock yourself in, and throw away the key.
”
”
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
“
And while God could control anything and everything, he had given his creation the freedom to choose. God could intervene, but then he’d be no more than a master puppeteer. A puppet couldn’t love back. And that was what God asked. His children had to choose whether they’d love him enough to obey or whether they’d go the other way. I had to accept that God gave everyone the same freedom. I
”
”
Ginny Aiken (Design on a Crime (Deadly Décor Mysteries #1))
“
Collectivism is history’s utmost elusive criminal mind game, created by a syndicate of self-pitying parasitical narcissists who feel excessively entitled. They so much believe themselves to be right that they presume the authority to force their views upon others. It has resulted in an infinite evil circle of emotional terrorism. Those who foster manipulism are masters at creating puppeteers who in turn create more puppets. The puppeteer is the collectivist’s everyday occupation.
”
”
Mikkel Clair Nissen (Manipulism and the Weapon of Guilt: Collectivism Exposed)
“
God is not a puppeteer who pulls all the strings, controlling everything that happens. A real puppet master controls the puppets from outside and is therefore the 'outer cause' of the puppet's movements. But that is not the way God controls the world. God controls the world through natural laws. So God -- or nature -- is the 'inner cause' of everything that happens. This means that everything in the material world happens through necessity. Spinoza had a determinist view of the material, or natural, world.
”
”
Jostein Gaarder (Sophie’s World)
“
For what becomes clear – without falling into the mistake of presuming that he was no more than the puppet of the ‘ruling classes’ – is that Hitler would have remained a political nonentity without the patronage and support he obtained from influential circles in Bavaria. During this period, Hitler was seldom, if ever, master of his own destiny. The key decisions – to take over the party leadership in 1921, to engage in the putsch adventure in 1923 – were not carefully conceived actions, but desperate forward moves to save face – behaviour characteristic of Hitler to the end.
”
”
Ian Kershaw (Hitler)
“
Only on how we are becoming more and more commercial with each project. Corporations are driving it all with their friends in Washington beating their ‘in the interest of national security’ drums which means that anything connected to energy these days, especially the black liquid kind, is considered national security. Most of our projects in the last few years have been soil and drilling samples thinly disguised as marine research which really means looking for new oil reserves for the conglomerates.” He leaned back in his chair unable to hide his irritation. “I’ll tell you this, corporations have become the puppet masters behind the government.
”
”
Michael C. Grumley (Breakthrough (Breakthrough, #1))
“
From the perspective of my old laptop,
I am a numbers man,
something like that
every instruction he gives me is a one or a zero
I remember well
I have information about him
before he left for his new toy
thinner,
younger,
able to keep up with him,
I have information about him
may 15th 2008, he listened to a song
five times in succession
it was titled
Everybody, open parenthesis, Backstreet's Back, close parenthesis
it included the lyric
'Am I sexual, yeaaaaah'
He said once,
computers like a sense of finality to them
when I write something I don't want to be able to run from it
this was a lie
he was addicted to my ability to keep his secrets
I am a numbers man,
every instruction he gives me is a one, or a zero
I remember well
January, 7th 2007
I was young
just two week awake
he gave me, a new series of one's and zeros
the most sublime sequence I have ever seen
it had curves,
and shadow,
it was him
he gave his face in numbers
and trusted me to be the artist, and I was
do not laugh
I have read about your God
you kill each other over your grand fathers memory of him
I still remember the fingertips of my God dancing across my body
After I learnt to draw him
he trusted with more art rubric
jpeg 1063 was his favourite
Him,
and that woman,
resting her head in the curve of his nick
I read his correspondence
she hasn't written him back in years
but he asks for it,
constantly,
jpeg 1063, jpeg 1063, jpeg 1063
it was my master piece
it looked so, .., life like
I wanted to tell him
That's not her
that is me
that is not her face
those are my ones and zeros
waltzing in space for you
she is nothing more than my shadow puppet
you do not miss her,
you miss me,
I am a numbers man,
every instruction he gives is a one or a zero
I remember well
but he taught me to be a Da Vinci
and I sit here, with his portraits
waiting for him to return
I do not think he will
Is that what it means to be human
to be all powerful,
to build a temple to yourself
and leave
only the walls to pray
”
”
Phil Kaye
“
I laid out the charges against him of subversion, conspiracy, and murder, but emphasized that he was innocent until proven guilty, which made him laugh. Your American puppet masters like to say that, but it's stupid, he said. History, humanity, religion, this war tells us exactly the reverse. We are all guilty until proven innocent, as even the Americans have shown. Why else do they believe everyone is really Viet Cong? Why else do they shoot first and ask questions later? Because to them all yellow people are guilty until proven innocent. Americans are a confused people because they can't admit this contradiction. They believe in a universe of divine justice where the human race is guilty of sin, but they also believe in a secular justice where human beings are presumed innocent. You can't have both. You know how Americans deal with it? They pretend they are eternally innocent no matter how many times they lose their innocence.
”
”
Viet Thanh Nguyen (The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer, #1))
“
Take George W. Bush: He was an unpopular two-term president. Three times, his approval rating dropped to 25 percent. [To be fair, he also had the highest approval rating of all time, very briefly. But that was immediately after 9/11 — and in the wake of domestic terrorism, a well-dressed mannequin’s approval rating might have hovered around 50.] During his last two years in office, he was hammered nonstop, periodically classified as the worst U.S. president since Ulysses Grant or James Buchanan. Yet was Bush a villain? No. He was not. He was never, ever calculating. He didn’t know the most (which is not to say he was dumb), and he didn’t care the least (which is not to say he was a paragon of empathy). He was just the guy who ended up with the job. The villain of his administration ended up being Vice President Dick Cheney, a frosty puppet master who radically expanded the powers of the presidency even though he was not the president.
”
”
Chuck Klosterman (I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling With Villains (Real and Imagined))
“
SOMETIMES ON A PORCH in June, a girl begins to plunk her banjo; and after a spell of stillness, while the sound travels down their ear crinkles into their inmost feeling-chambers, the music starts to dance the people passing by. They toss like puppets on a bouncing sheet; like boys without a boat; they swing like weeds in the wind; they leap heptangularly about, dancing eccentric saltarellos, discovering that their springs are not so rusty. For even if you have built masterful aspen castles in your mind, have toppled whole forests to throttle the writhing elements into a liveably serene personal pond; if you have longtime sculled your ingenious fins to withstand the tumble-crazy currents; there is music that will dissolve your anchors, your sanctuaries, floating you off your feet, fetching you away with itself. And then you are a migrant, and then you are amuck; and then you are the music’s toy, juggled into its furious torrents, jostled into its foamy jokes, assuming its sparklyblue or greenweedy or brownmuddy tinges, being driven down to the dirgy bottom where rumble-clacking stones are lit by waterlogged and melancholy sunlight, warping back up to the surface, along with yew leaves and alewives and frog bones and other strange acquisitions snagged and rendered willy-nilly by the current, straggling away on its rambling cadenzas, with ever-changing sights—freckled children on the bank, chicken choirs, brewing thunderclouds, june bugs perched in wild parsley—until it spills you into a place whose dimensions make nonsense of your heretofore extraordinary spatial intelligence.
”
”
Amy Leach (Things That Are)
“
Enoch almost laughed out loud. The absurd lengths to which the Accuser would go to construct an entire paradigm of delusion to suit his purposes amazed the human. He wondered if anyone would ever actually believe this combination of insanity and iniquity. Ironically, he could see where the Accuser was going with it, and it was truly evil. He would make sure to address it in his rebuttal. The Accuser ended with a rising plea. “Does your unfair favoritism and partiality know no bounds, Elohim? You choose who rules over whom, who is forgiven and who is not, you elect one man over another to carry your purposes forward. These are not the actions of a fair and impartial Creator, these are the actions of — dare I say it again — a tyrant and puppet master! But of course, if the sandal fits, wear it. Your honor. Amen.” The Accuser bowed and went back to his team of Watchers.
”
”
Brian Godawa (Enoch Primordial (Chronicles of the Nephilim #2))
“
The Accuser carried on his argument. “But this covenant maker is not merely a tyrant, he is a totalitarian puppet master who is the author of evil. What kind of creator makes earthquakes that demolish entire cities and kills the populace under mountains of rubble? Or a hurricane that drowns shiploads of sailors and devastates port cities under tsunamis of water.” It did not bother the Accuser that his comrade, the god Enki, had claimed the same powers to make the earth tremble and quake, or that Enlil claimed to be the source of hurricane storms and lightning and thunder. Consistency was not the Accuser’s strong suit, emotional appeal was.
”
”
Brian Godawa (Enoch Primordial (Chronicles of the Nephilim #2))
“
Everyone is a puppet, but there are no puppet-masters.
”
”
Charles Eisenstein (Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition)
“
You’re a puppet master. You make unworthy, uninteresting, vapid people sound like paragons of virtue.” “I’m a writer and a successful one, and I’m sorry I can’t help you.
”
”
A.A. Paton (Captive (The Bliss King #1))
“
Some thing were just meant to be felt rather than understood.
”
”
Joel Abernathy (Puppet/Master (The Vale Chronicles, #1))
“
Today we are suffering because those who know better choose not to entertain politics and those who don’t know. The ones without integrity choose to sing the tune and praises of the one who gives them money, who feeds them or who promised to give them something. They see corruption as connections.
Oppositions as spies, agencies, puppet masters, proxies, sellouts, stogies or clever blacks.
Accountability to them means they are being targeted and hated. They choose to see themselves and those they support as victims when they must answer for their crimes or wrongdoings.
”
”
D.J. Kyos
“
it is bewitching to watch both men [Burton and Gielgud] struggle for Shakespeare's meaning while they squirm as individuals beneath the weight of their own psychologies. This is the problem for every interpretive artist who ever drew breath. He must be true to the writer and true to himself. He literally serves two masters. To expect the interpreter to be a puppet who conceives and executes the ideal Hamlet (or Puck or Lady Macbeth or Merton of the Movies) is to deny the human condition. An actor can discipline his effects in order to avoid distortion of the play - giving up, sometimes, his most popular tricks - but to expect him to reject the totality of his personality in order to imitate The Character is madness.
The actor is stuck with the character, but the character is also stuck the actor. Directors sometimes pretend that the character is everything and that the actor must adjust no matter how uncomfortable it makes him, but the actors job is to preserve himself somehow - not by distorting the play... but by admitting his own limitations, by knowing what he can make real for the audience and what he can't. If the actor has been miscast, he cannot compensate for the error by destroying his God-given nature on the stage. It is the producer's job to know beforehand how flexible the actor is.
”
”
William Charles Redfield (Letters from an Actor)
“
All reaction is unconscious. If you are conscious you never react. You act. Action is conscious, reaction is unconscious. Reaction means that that man became the master of the situation: he pushed the button and you became angry. You became a puppet in his hands. But if you remain patient, if you smile, suddenly you are out of the vicious circle of unconsciousness.
”
”
Osho (Nirvana: The Last Nightmare: Learning to Trust in Life)
“
there are no bad guys, any more than there are good guys. There are only smart people, and stupid ones; puppets, and puppet masters
”
”
Barry Eisler (Graveyard of Memories (John Rain, #8))
“
CONTRARY TO THE BELIEFS of many in the Arab world (and more than a few American reporters), the United States is not a grand puppet master whimsically pulling the strings of the countries with which it does business. Even governments that rely on our military and economic assistance think first and foremost of their own survival, and the Mubarak regime was no exception. After
”
”
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
“
Never before has so much power been concentrated into the hands of such a few number of people, who literally can decide what countries live or die on a minute by minute basis. Never before has all the world’s wealth been subject to the decisions of such a small clique of individuals, who can, as we said earlier, completely alter the economic, sociological, and legislative landscape of entire nations as if with the wave of a magic wand. And if this situation weren’t bad enough, what makes it worse is the fact that the mental condition of this clique is such that makes the whole situation a ticking time bomb. It’s true, on it’s face, that such a threat from such a statistically small number of people makes no sense, except when considering what possibilities exist when this small number of people have the ear of the President of the United States, the most powerful man in the world. And, if these people can literally make the president dance on strings like a puppet, (as has obviously been the case with every American president since Lyndon Johnson) then it becomes apparent how such machinery can be made to operate. We are talking about an unprecedented concentration of the world’s power in the hands of a few individuals who are, by any standards that can be used to measure, criminally insane. They possess 90% of the world’s wealth, control the political machinery of the world’s most powerful nations, control the informational infrastructure of these nations, and are imbued with the mindset that they have a right to possess all of this by virtue of:
A: Their superiority, and by
B. The inferiority of the rest of the world’s inhabitants.
This situation does not paint a pretty picture, even to the most shallow-minded of thinkers.
When it is reduced to its irreducible minimum, the program under which such individuals have deluded themselves is that it is impossible that evil in any form may emanate from the Jewish quarter, and, conversely, that the only evil that can exist is that which works against the Jewish agenda. Like Pavlov’s dogs, the sentiments of such individuals can be turned on like a light switch in defending the agenda of their masters, sentiments completely disconnected with any true intellectual processes and which vary between loyalty for the hand that feeds them and fear of the hand that can grab them by the throat. And thus it is in this manner therefore that we must view the intellectual parrying that takes place by today’s skeptics as but a magic act, and particularly so when the other side of the coin is discussed.
”
”
Mark Glenn
“
I fell forever, until it felt as though I were no longer falling at all but suspended in the darkness, a puppet waiting for her strings to be jerked by a cruel master.
”
”
Steffanie Holmes (Initiated (Kings of Miskatonic Prep, #2))
“
The word team indicates members of equal standing. Individuals working together with one common goal. Ours has been more of a master and puppet situation.
”
”
Angela Marsons (Stolen Ones (D.I. Kim Stone, #15))
“
In the imagination of two late-twentieth-century filmmakers, an unseen force of artificial intelligence has overtaken the human species, has managed to control humans in an alternate reality in which everything one sees, feels, hears, tastes, smells, touches is in actuality a program. There are programs within programs, and humans become not just programmed but are in danger of and, in fact, well on their way to becoming nothing more than programs. What is reality and what is a program morph into one. The interlocking program passes for life itself. The great quest in the film series The Matrix involves those humans who awaken to this realization as they search for a way to escape their entrapment. Those who accept their programming get to lead deadened, surface lives enslaved to a semblance of reality. They are captives, safe on the surface, as long as they are unaware of their captivity. Perhaps it is the unthinking acquiescence, the blindness to one’s imprisonment, that is the most effective way for human beings to remain captive. People who do not know that they are captive will not resist their bondage. But those who awaken to their captivity threaten the hum of the matrix. Any attempt to escape their imprisonment risks detection, signals a breach in the order, exposes the artifice of unreality that has been imposed upon human beings. The Matrix, the unseen master program fed by the survival instinct of an automated collective, does not react well to threats to its existence. In a crucial moment, a man who has only recently awakened to the program in which he and his species are ensnared consults a wise woman, the Oracle, who, it appears, could guide him. He is uncertain and wary, as he takes a seat next to her on a park bench that may or may not be real. She speaks in code and metaphor. A flock of birds alights on the pavement beyond them. “See those birds,” the Oracle says to him. “At some point a program was written to govern them.” She looks up and scans the horizon. “A program was written to watch over the trees and the wind, the sunrise and sunset. There are programs running all over the place.” Some of these programs go without notice, so perfectly attuned they are to their task, so deeply embedded in the drone of existence. “The ones doing their job,” she tells him, “doing what they were meant to do are invisible. You’d never even know they were here.” So, too, with the caste system as it goes about its work in silence, the string of a puppet master unseen by those whose subconscious it directs, its instructions an intravenous drip to the mind, caste in the guise of normalcy, injustice looking just, atrocities looking unavoidable to keep the machinery humming, the matrix of caste as a facsimile for life itself and whose purpose is maintaining the primacy of those hoarding and holding tight to power.
”
”
Isabel Wilkerson (Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents)
“
Only the puppet masters were important. How the puppets moved—that told you what the puppet masters were doing.
”
”
Frank Herbert
“
CONTRARY TO THE BELIEFS of many in the Arab world (and more than a few American reporters), the United States is not a grand puppet master whimsically pulling the strings of the countries with which it does business.
”
”
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
“
To be clear, the best leaders are not instinctively Machiavellian puppet masters, and leading by personal example remains essential and effective, but at the end of the day, leaders don’t actually do very much themselves—they help individuals and organizations perform. And they do this by acknowledging that every situation is different—and context is everything.
”
”
Stanley McChrystal (Risk: A User's Guide)
“
He was now a master puppeteer, adroitly manipulating his marionettes, with the strings artfully concealed.
”
”
Ron Chernow (Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.)
“
The reason we all came to accept this dehumanizing system so wholeheartedly is because society made an implicit promise to its citizens in the Age of Standardization: if you can follow the straight path to its destination, you will be granted employment, social status, and financial security. ... According to the terms of this Standardization Covenant, society will bestow its rewards upon you as long as you abandon the individual pursuit of personal fulfillment for the standardized pursuit of professional excellence. ... The Standardization Covenant demands that we follow the Standard Formula to attain excellence, which will then lead to fulfillment—somehow. Dark horses, meanwhile, harness their individuality in the pursuit of fulfillment, which creates the optimal conditions for attaining excellence. ... The Standardization Covenant is holding all of us back. Though its views of talent and success are easy to grasp and reassuringly familiar, there is no future for a society devoted to the proposition that the pursuit of standardized excellence leads to fulfillment. The dark horse mindset, meanwhile, opens onto an unbounded social universe of achievement and joy. ... Every standardized institution, by definition and design, is focused on efficiency above all else, and generic motives and universal motives are efficient ways of moving the needle—on average, at least. But they’re horrible for your own fulfillment. Not only do standardized views of motivation ignore everything that is important about who you are, but by incessantly focusing all of our attention on a small set of institutionally ordained motives, the Standardization Covenant constrains our thinking about what a personal motive can even be. Fortunately, dark horses reveal the hidden truth about motivation ... Under the covenant, your chosen form of standardized excellence became your destination. Dark horses take a different perspective. When they consider excellence, they presume that individuality matters. ... The Standardization Covenant’s assurance that the pursuit of excellence leads to fulfillment was always a false promise. ... Only by prioritizing your own fulfillment can you advance toward your peak excellence, and only by advancing toward your peak excellence can you experience fulfillment. You need the energy of self-engineered passion and the direction of self-engineered purpose to scale the mountain of excellence, and you need the pride, self-worth, and sense of meaningful accomplishment from self-engineered achievement to experience the full flush of fulfillment. When you apply the four elements of the dark horse mindset in your own life, fulfillment and excellence come under your conscious control. You are no longer a puppet of fate, but the master of your destiny. When you focus on getting better at the things you care about most, you are not wandering. ... Now we have the chance to ratify a Dark Horse Covenant, predicated upon the belief that everyone possesses the potential for their own variety of merit and endorsing a core value of fulfillment, leading to a system of opportunity where anyone and everyone can succeed. This democratic meritocracy will be enforced by individuals, with the consent of individuals.
”
”
Todd Rose (Dark Horse: Achieving Success Through the Pursuit of Fulfillment)
“
She sits like a spider and pulls strings like a puppet master. She watches over all her creatures, and she owns the two of you as surely as she owns me. She has tampered with us for her own purposes.
”
”
John Varley (Titan (Gaea, #1))
“
Non-violent resistance supposes that the almighty enemy, at the very least, considers you to be a human being, capable of logically arguing why you disagree.
It supposes that this enemy is ready to hear your demands and find common ground. Yes, Bamileke maquisards took up arms! But did they have a choice? Colonial masters feigned departure, but their cruel puppets continue to safeguard their interests through murder. We were cheated.
Our struggle has been used to different ends. And, you will see, they will chop off any head that stands out, and then falsify our history. In fact, they won't; they will not even bother to record our history."
"Who is "they?" I asked.
"This 'they' is 'we’,” replied Louis. "We are the ones killing ourselves. Our killers are encouraged, trained, and funded by the former colonial power. But, and this is what makes it worse, we ourselves are the ones doing the dirty work with senseless enthusiasm," he added.
That was how Cameroon—not just myself as an individual, or my village, Ombessa, or Bafia and Yaounde, the places where I had lived, but also this multi-layered, nuanced, bruised entity called my country—took shape in my mind.
”
”
Hemley Boum (Days Come and Go)
“
We stood in the sunlight, staring into the room. The fountain looked dulled, more bone than pearl, more wear and tear than contortion--puppets lose their charm when the master is in view.
”
”
David Aumelas (The Triangle Age)