Sykes Quotes

Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We all could.

I don't believe in love at first sight because it means you're falling in love with someone's looks, not personality.

Follow the dream, work hard, inspire and be inspired.

I used to feel like I was drowning. So I stopped trying to swim.

I'm so glad to be grouped with the men you've seen in rotten shape. My hope is that someday I will reach the pinnacle of that appalling list.

For the love of god, will you bite your tongue?

You know you've checked into Heartbreak Hotel for real when you feel less desirable than uncooked fish.

For a moment you forget how much the loss hurts. Then you remember and it buries you.

No, he’s made a very good point,’ said Bashford provocatively. ‘Women are just vessels, you know.’ ‘That’s very true,’ said Sykes, smiling angelically at him. ‘I myself am a seventeen-thousand-ton Dreadnought class battleship with enough firepower to destroy a medium-sized city.

Seriously, I don't need a gun. I'm easily annoyed. I would shoot people in my house that I invited over.

It's chic to be shy.

Myths have a very long memory.

Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping; they called it opportunity.

Life is not fair; get used to it.

Oral myths are closer to the genetic conclusions than the often ambiguous scientific evidence of archaeology.

Where Eve chooses to go, Adam is bound to travel.

Women and our right to choose were going to be challenged with Ashcroft around. When Bush appointed Ashcroft, I went out and got me four abortions. I stocked up. The doctor was like, 'Listen, you're not pregnant.' I said, 'Hey, just shut up and do your job. I'm exercising my right while I can, dammit.

It must be love,love,love!

See, to appreciate a woman you have to appreciate a woman’s right to change. And to appreciate a woman’s right to change, you have to realize that she’ll do it with maddening frequency, usually just to confuse you so that you’ll never see her coming when she decides to rip your throat out and drink your blood.

Uh-oh! BEWARE!!!" said Fensler. "Never, ever marry the best sex of your life. It only happens with someone who is very dangerous for you. It's passionate, exciting, but it generally indicates that you are pushing each other's dysfunctional buttons. Be very wary of men you are crazily sexually attracted to-they're the dangerous ones for you. That's what all analysis says in one form or another.

Half-drunken poetry is the most honest kind of poetry. Too slurred to be eloquent, not slurred enough to be witless.

I asked my publisher what would happen if he sold all the copies of my book he'd printed. He said "I'll just print another ten.

Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

On May 9, 1916, the British and French entered into a clandestine treaty on how they intended to carve up the region. The treaty was the Sykes-Picot, named for the negotiators. Always described as infamous, the treaty ignored both Jewish aspirations and Sharif Husain’s personal ambitions. And so Palestine became the ‘twice promised land.

If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

He hadn't meant to do it. That is to say, he hadn't set out in his car with the /intent/ to kill the janitor. But he /had/ unearthed Sykes's rotation schedule, and he /had/ gotten in his car at the same time that Sykes clocked out of his once-a-week night shift, and he /had/ seen him crossing the road, and he /had/ sped up.

There is nothing like desire for preventing the things one says from bearing any resemblance to what one has in one's mind.

Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future,’33 noted the writer Kahlil Gibran, ‘but from wanting to control it.

Charlotte Sykes approaching from the washrooms. She had changed into high heels and a tangerine-colored blouse that clashed with all her best intentions.

How can you be so sure?” Lenk asked. “That there’s no plan?” “Because,” Mocca said as he eyed the bottle, “I can’t imagine any God would be boring enough to want to know how everything ends.

Our DNA does not fade like an ancient parchment; it does not rust in the ground like the sword of a warrior long dead. It is not eroded by wind or rain, nor reduced to ruin by fire and earthquake. It is the traveller from an ancient land who lives within us all.

Imogen sometimes wondered if people weren't letting social media dictate their entire lives. Did they choose to go to one party over another because it would look better on Instagram? Did they decide to read a store just so they could tweet about it? Have we all become so desperate to share everything that we've stopped enjoying our lives?

If you only get hypoglycemia around one person, the chances are actually much greater that you might be falling in love than that you have suddenly contracted a nasty sugar condition.

„I bet she's hot,” Sykes said. „Most demonesses are total babes,” He and Remy bumped first. I shook my head. They really had one-track minds. „She's okay, if you like big boobs and girls who curse like sailors.” „Me like.. me like,” Sykes said, bobbing up and down. I glared at him. „Too bad. Next time we meet, I'm vanquishing her.” Izzy grinned. „That's the spirit.

white criminals commit the biggest crimes.a brother might rob a bank. a white man will rob a pension fund. the brother is going to get ten to fifteen years because he had a gun. the white guy is going to get a congressional hearing because he had a job and a nice suit.

The Stain That Conner left on our lives will not vanish as easily. I don’t care about Mom and her birds. Their estimation of my brother doesn’t bother me at all. Neither do I worry about Dad and what his lobbyist buddies think. His political clout has not diminished. As twins go, Conner and I don’t share a deep affection, but we do have a nine-months-in-the-same-womb connection. Not to mention a crowd of mutual friends. God, I’ll never forget going to school the day after that ugly scene. The plan was to sever the gossip grapevine from the start with an obvious explanation— accident. Mom’s orders were clear. Conner’s reputation was to be protected at all costs. When I arrived, the rumors had already started, thanks to our neighbor, Bobby Duvall. Conner Sykes got hurt. Conner Sykes was shot. Conner Sykes is in the hospital. Is Conner Sykes, like, dead? I fielded every single question with the agreed fabrication. But eventually, I was forced to concede that, though his wounds would heal, he was not coming back to school right away. Conner Sykes wasn’t dead. But he wasn’t exactly “okay.

Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.

Courageous read a lot of books. That’s probably why he was so angry all the time.

Had it not been for that apartment and that sense of ambition that can only be born out of struggle, she wouldn’t be who she was today.

We should perhaps ask why the idea of enthusiastic partners driven by desire and even emotional attachment is regarded as more of a fairy tale than other explanations.

No one ever gets the death they want,” I replied. “Just the one they deserve.

People were noisome, demanding, judgmental. Books gave everything and asked nothing more than to be taken care of.

Sykes-Picot is breaking; putting it back together, even in a different shape, will be a long and bloody affair.

Holly Sykes," says Publicity Girl, falling down the sar-chasm.

You wear ignorance like a crown as you feast upon a thickheaded fantasy of lies,

Ironically, although the Y-chromosome has become synonymous with male aggression, it is intrinsically unstable. Adam is as much cursed as cursing.

One show, I did a benefit for a feminist organziation....So it's all feminsts. Gloria Steinem is sitting right up front. I walked out and said, "Look here, I can't stay around here too long with you broads because I gotta get home and cook my man a nice hot dinner. Plus, he likes his blow job by nine forty-five." I though it was funny. They didn't. They didn't find anything funny. I thought, Oh Lord, I made these women mad. I stepped over the line. I continued. "Ladies, calm down. I'm just joking. He likes a blow job anytime.

I always say, waste not, want not, which is a terrible cliche the British invented during the war to get kids to eat their whole-wheat bread, but when I say it I mean, waste not money on boring old rent when it can be un-wasted on Chloe jeans.

But then you ... you come along. You screwed up my plan. Suddenly my life’s not liveable, it’s not fine and I’m no longer happy. My life’s worse, much more worse than before ... and it’s all because of you. I’m scared of you. I run from you. And I push you away ... but why? Because I am scared of you, I’m scared of my feelings for you ... I’m scared of losing you. But mostly ... mostly I’m scared that if I don’t hold on too tight ... I’m scared that I’ll lose you forever.

Now, it’s certainly not true for *every* woman, but the ones I have had the good fortune to know in my life have all followed this rule. If you need a favor, you bring her flowers. If you need her forgiveness, you bring her jewelry. And if you need both, you bring her a book.

That is to say, he hadn’t set out in his car with the intent to kill the janitor. But he had unearthed Sykes’s rotation schedule, and he had gotten in his car at the same time that Sykes clocked out of his once-a-week night shift, and he had seen him crossing the road, and he had sped up. But it was a series of circumstances lined up in such a way that any one of them could so easily have shifted in a matter of seconds and spared the man’s life.

Ian stood. “I’m taking a short walk in the park. Stay here.” I stood. “Like hell.” “Then stay behind me.” “Could you at least say ‘cover my six’? Give me a little dignity here.” “Okay. Cover my six—just don’t shoot me in the ass.” “How about I kick it?” Sykes wasn’t the only one asking for it. I heard the grin in his voice. “You’re always welcome to try.

on what we heard—” “Now don’t you be so confident, Mr. Jem, I ain’t ever seen any jury decide in favor of a colored man over a white man. . . .” But Jem took exception to Reverend Sykes, and we were subjected to a lengthy review of the evidence with Jem’s ideas on the law regarding rape: it wasn’t rape if she let you, but she had to be eighteen—in Alabama,

...Once again confirms that there is no such thing as genetically pure classification into different races.

Buy my book.

If I had it my way I'd slit your throat with the knife that you left in my back.

Regardless, my most horrific discovery has been that society is nothing more than a series of carefully calculated choices based solely around economics.

The best defense to inquiry was semi-coherent rants and accusations.

Did they decide to read a story just so they could tweet about it?

In an age when we are ever more targeted and profiled and mined for information, reading a book allows you to be, for so long as the covers hold you, truly quiet and undisturbed.

Just because something is religious does not necessarily make it insane.” She studied the writing and hummed. “Though this particular something is decidedly fucking nuts.

DNA is the messenger which illuminates that connection,handed down from generation to generation,carried,literally,in the bodies of my ancestors.

to say that man is a social animal is also to say that man never lives in a world completely of his own choosing.

Wow. Forty, getting divorced, and out of a job. It's like you're the poster girl for sadness.

Hold that thought. This sounds like the kind of conversation I’ll need pants for.” It

You've got a mouth like a razor blade, it cuts so deep. So kiss my wrists and my neck, give me eternal sleep.

What doesn't kill you makes you wish you were dead.

I’ll leave you choking on every word you left unspoken, rebuild all that you’ve broken.

Crime and religion are the only two things that people are willing to both die for and kill over.

Have we all become so desperate to share everything that we've stopped enjoying our lives?

The one question I specifically recall being asked was how a man as evil as Hitler could paint such delightful watercolors.

Start a second act. This is New York City. If you don’t reinvent yourself, you get left behind.

If she was friends with them on Twitter that was equal to being besties in real life.

Until a Drag Queen walks into a school and beats eight kids to death with a copy of 'To Kill a Mockingbird' I think you're focusing on the wrong shit.

Life is funny, you know. It isn't a running text. It has chapters. You might have a different ending than the one you imagined.

The woman that does not require validation from anyone is the most feared individual on the planet. Our desire for validation is far older than the internet.

There are others, but the end result is that most Vagrants showing up where you live will ruin your day. Not me, of course. A girl like me tends to ruin your whole week.

Well, excuse me for trying to make a joke,” Robbie retorted. “You’ll never give up

While violence was almost certainly the solution, Lenk knew he needed to apply it selectively.

Professionals knew that the most dangerous men in the world were accountants.

I think the worst one [indian mascot] is the Cleveland Indians' Big Chief Wahoo. It's just a red face on a baseball with a big, toothy grin. It's the Sambo of all other offensive mascots. I have never seen a Native American smile that hard before, not even at a casino opening.

We need to be happy in order to be productive. We need to push the boundaries of the workplace and allow adults to tap into their inner child in order to maximize success and innovation.

We are all a complete mixture;yet at the same time,we are all related.Each gene can trace its own journey to a different common ancestor.This is a quite extraordinary legacy that we all have inherited from the people who lived before us.Our genes did not just appear when we were born.They have been carried to us by millions of individual lives over thousands of generations.

As this book will show, objectively defined races simply do not exist. Even Arthur Mourant realized that fact nearly fifty years ago, when he wrote: 'Rather does a study of blood groups show a heterogeneity in the proudest nation and support the view that the races of the present day are but temporary integrations in the constant process of . . . mixing that marks the history of every living species.' The temptation to classify the human species into categories which have no objective basis is an inevitable but regrettable consequence of the gene frequency system when it is taken too far. For several years the study of human genetics got firmly bogged down in the intellectually pointless (and morally dangerous) morass of constructing ever more detailed classifications of human population groups.

I consider how you don’t get to choose whom you’re attracted to, you only get to wonder about it, retrospectively. Racial differences I’ve always found to have an aphrodisiac effect on me, but class difference is sexuality’s Berlin Wall. Certainly, I can’t read Holly Sykes as well as I can girls from my own incometax tribe, but you never know. God made the whole Earth in six days, and I’m in Switzerland for nine or ten.

Before the truth will set you free it'll piss you off. Before you find a place to be you're gonna lose the plot. Too late to tell you now, one ear and right out the other one. 'Cause all you ever do is chant the same old mantra.

When Eve explained this aspect to Imogen, she had to stop herself from asking what exactly had happened to the floppy disk. She couldn’t remember the last time she had seen one and yet she didn’t understand exactly what had replaced it or when. The floppy disk was something she could wrap her head around. It was a tangible thing you could touch and smell, just like the pages of a magazine. The Internet and the tiny computers they worked on these days made less sense to her. You couldn’t touch the new Glossy.com—the app or digital

However, in this city (San Francisco) that prides itself in being so progressive, it feels like we need to go back and master something both simple as well as incredibly complex – each other. We can learn to embrace our differences without making them a joke or a spectacle.

Because justice isn’t for the victim, is it? It’s not for the girl crying every night or the boy burying his father. It’s for the killer, it’s for the judge, it’s for the shits like you who want to feel like you’re above it all, like forgiving a killer makes up for not being able to protect his victims.” I spat on the floor. “A man kills and you fawn over him and wonder what went wrong. A man dies and you shrug and step over the corpse.

We simply should not care about politics as much as we do, because it should not be as important as it has become. The question of who serves in political office should not be as consuming as it has become, but is a consequence of the concentration of power and expectations. There is a lesson here for both sides of the political spectrum. Our politics have become too toxic and scary, in large part because our government is too large and consequential.

Feathers glittering the color of amethyst against the dying light of the day, long tails trailing in the breeze like kites, wings shimmering with every beat. They looked so oblivious to their majesty, like flying and painting the sky with purple was just something they did, rather than something that made my knees shake.

The meaning, Captain,” the Quill said softly, “is that death does not stop life.

The song of lightning followed me, an angry, screeching verse torn from twenty ragged throats.

But you don’t get to live through as many battles as Courageous had without being a practical man. And a practical man doesn’t have ethics; he has jobs. And somehow, they’ve got to get done.

One of them stepped from the crowd. It was Zeebo, the garbage collector. “Mister Jem,” he said, “we’re mighty glad to have you all here. Don’t pay no ’tention to Lula, she’s contentious because Reverend Sykes threatened to church her. She’s a troublemaker from way back, got fancy ideas an’ haughty ways—we’re mighty glad to have you all.” With that, Calpurnia led us to the church door where we were greeted by Reverend Sykes, who led us to the front pew. First Purchase was unceiled and unpainted within. Along its walls unlighted kerosense lamps hung on brass brackets; pine benches served as pews. Behind the rough oak pulpit a faded pink silk banner proclaimed God Is Love, the church’s only decoration except a roto-gravure print of Hunt’s The Light of the World.

If you're lucky, you meet a lot of people you like enough to touch them. If you're really lucky, you meet a few who you like enough to let them touch you back. But if you're very luck, you meet that one person who touches you in a way that makes you feel like you're standing up a little straighter, like you're breathing a little clearer, like you were walking hunched over your whole life and you didn't even know it.

Come, squib, sit with Kudj. Engage in beautifully awkward hospitality.” He reached into the pot with a large finger and stirred whatever was inside. “Stew not hot. Fire not big enough. Squib is welcome to some anyway.

An excerpt from “Recess Theory,” by Axelrod MacMurray: We need to be happy in order to be productive. We need to push the boundaries of the workplace and allow adults to tap into their inner child in order to maximize success and innovation. It is important for the adult employee to be given time to be social in an unstructured and creative way during the work day and it is incumbent upon managers to foster this. The focus of the play should not have a goal. Used properly in the workplace, an hour of playtime will ultimately increase your output exponentially.

They aren’t destroying everything, then,” she said. “Yes, how terribly blessed we must be.” Aturach laughed, extending his arms to the sky. “Thank you, O Wise Healer, for in Your infinite wisdom, You have decided to kill only most of the people in this city. Let all who doubt Your mercy hear my cry.” He cupped his hands over his mouth and screamed into the night sky. “It could have been worse, ingrates! Fall to your knees and be grateful that the Gods killed only half of your families!” “You’re not helping.

Still dark. The Alpine hush is miles deep. The skylight over Holly’s bed is covered with snow, but now that the blizzard’s stopped I’m guessing the stars are out. I’d like to buy her a telescope. Could I send her one? From where? My body’s aching and floaty but my mind’s flicking through the last night and day, like a record collector flicking through a file of LPs. On the clock radio, a ghostly presenter named Antoine Tanguay is working through Nocturne Hour from three till four A.M. Like all the best DJs, Antoine Tanguay says almost nothing. I kiss Holly’s hair, but to my surprise she’s awake: “When did the wind die down?” “An hour ago. Like someone unplugged it.” “You’ve been awake a whole hour?” “My arm’s dead, but I didn’t want to disturb you.” “Idiot.” She lifts her body to tell me to slide out. I loop a long strand of her hair around my thumb and rub it on my lip. “I spoke out of turn last night. About your brother. Sorry.” “You’re forgiven.” She twangs my boxer shorts’ elastic. “Obviously. Maybe I needed to hear it.” I kiss her wound-up hair bundle, then uncoil it. “You wouldn’t have any ciggies left, perchance?” In the velvet dark, I see her smile: A blade of happiness slips between my ribs. “What?” “Use a word like ‘perchance’ in Gravesend, you’d get crucified on the Ebbsfleet roundabout for being a suspected Conservative voter. No cigarettes left, I’m ’fraid. I went out to buy some yesterday, but found a semiattractive stalker, who’d cleverly made himself homeless forty minutes before a whiteout, so I had to come back without any.” I trace her cheekbones. “Semiattractive? Cheeky moo.” She yawns an octave. “Hope we can dig a way out tomorrow.” “I hope we can’t. I like being snowed in with you.” “Yeah well, some of us have these job things. Günter’s expecting a full house. Flirty-flirty tourists want to party-party-party.” I bury my head in the crook of her bare shoulder. “No.” Her hand explores my shoulder blade. “No what?” “No, you can’t go to Le Croc tomorrow. Sorry. First, because now I’m your man, I forbid it.” Her sss-sss is a sort of laugh. “Second?” “Second, if you went, I’d have to gun down every male between twelve and ninety who dared speak to you, plus any lesbians too. That’s seventy-five percent of Le Croc’s clientele. Tomorrow’s headlines would all be BLOODBATH IN THE ALPS AND LAMB THE SLAUGHTERER, and the a vegetarian-pacifist type, I know you wouldn’t want any role in a massacre so you’d better shack up”—I kiss her nose, forehead, and temple—“with me all day.” She presses her ear to my ribs. “Have you heard your heart? It’s like Keith Moon in there. Seriously. Have I got off with a mutant?” The blanket’s slipped off her shoulder: I pull it back. We say nothing for a while. Antoine whispers in his radio studio, wherever it is, and plays John Cage’s In a Landscape. It unscrolls, meanderingly. “If time had a pause button,” I tell Holly Sykes, “I’d press it. Right”—I press a spot between her eyebrows and up a bit—“there. Now.” “But if you did that, the whole universe’d be frozen, even you, so you couldn’t press play to start time again. We’d be stuck forever.” I kiss her on the mouth and blood’s rushing everywhere. She murmurs, “You only value something if you know it’ll end.