Ticking Time Bomb Quotes

Are you kidding? That guy was a mystery wrapped in an enigma and crudely stapled to a ticking fucking time bomb. He was either going to hit somebody or start a blog.

All emotions, even those that are suppressed and unexpressed, have physical effects. Unexpressed emotions tend to stay in the body like small ticking time bombs—they are illnesses in incubation.

Suddenly it felt like there was a ticking time bomb in the house. I didn’t have all the time in the world to make you love me again; I had only a few short months.

And this note was a jittery time bomb, ticking beneath my normal life, in my pocket all day firecely reread, in my purse all week until I was afraid it would get crushed or snooped, in my drawer between two dull books to escape my mother and then in the box and now thunked back to you. A note, who writes a note like that? Who were you to write one to me? It boomed inside me the whole time, an explosion over and over, the joy of what you wrote to me jumpy shrapnel in my bloodstream. I can't have it near me anymore, I'm grenading it back to you, as soon as I unfold it and read it and cry one more time. Because me too, and fuck you. Even now. I can’t stop thinking about you.

Ticking time bomb, never ending wonderland.

Beautiful but defeated and damaged. Damaged for the rest of her life and no amount of emotional mutilation will ever fully give her back her innocence. The girl is a ticking time bomb, a danger to herself and very possibly to others. I wasn’t sure before, but now I know that she is more unstable than I ever could have imagined. And because she is so skilled at hiding it, not only from me but also from herself, she is more dangerous than I am.

There was a ticking time bomb inside my head and the one person I trusted to go in and get it out hadn’t shown up or spoken to me for more than a year.

The rash assertion that "God made man in His own image" is ticking like a time bomb at the foundation of many faiths.

Ticking time bomb

I was starting to fall in love with Michael Boutilier. Quickly, violently. It was a love that was both armed and dangerous, a ticking time-bomb of destruction that threatened to send my whole world up in flames--and it felt good.

That guy was a mystery wrapped in an enigma and crudely stapled to a ticking fucking time bomb. He was either going to hit somebody or start a blog.

Writers get ideas all day every day. The FedEx guy delivers a package from Sears and the writer is thinking how it could actually be a ticking time bomb.

That guy was a mystery wrapped in an enigma and crudely stapled to a ticking fucking time bomb. He was either going to hit somebody or start a blog. To tell you the truth I’m kind of glad he hit you.

You’re a ticking time bomb,” I hear myself say, my voice distant even to my own ears. “One that just keeps fucking rebuilding itself after every explosion, over and over and over again. But I don’t. I don’t rebuild. I don’t heal. I just keep taking it. But I can’t anymore. There’s not enough left of me to take any more shrapnel and walk out alive.

I was wrong about you, Izabel,” I whisper near her ear; the pain engulfing my insides. “I am the ticking time bomb. I am more unstable than I ever could have imagined. You are discipline, and I am rage. And the only way I know to control the chaos inside, is to eradicate the things that control me.

The current Pandora's box of revelations about sexual crimes committed within the walls of so many of America's families reveals the nuclear family to be cruelly, aptly named. Patriarchy, sexism, and the culture of capitalism have created a "family" that too often is no more than a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.

Harb was a ticking time bomb. It was like watching a preacher with Tourette syndrome. You knew the "Shit! Balls!" was coming at some point during the sermon, probably while he was slapping you on the forehead during a faith healing.

Some of us fall through the unseen cracks in the world of health on a bright summer’s day through a run-in with machine or microbe, like Alice down the rabbit hole. Some of us were born this way. And some find out that our genes have hidden within them a ticking time bomb. Waiting. Silently. However we got here, we are now inhabitants of the state of sickness. Our papers for the world of health have been rescinded without notice. Our body-world has been colonised by patriarchs, and we, the natives, should know our place: small folded patient, compliant, silent, not defiant. They seem to believe that our bodies are just an errant version of theirs. That our souls are not woman-shaped on the inside. That it’s not our place to take our space and insist on our inner difference. Their gospel is scribbled down on prescription pads in spider scrawl. They are not to be questioned, especially not with our own heresy.

when the universe exploded like a bomb, it started ticking like a bomb too. we know our sun will die, in another hundred million years or so, then the lights will go out and there will be no light to read by anymore.

She had become a master at hiding her true feelings, and as some would say, she was now a ticking time bomb.

Most people do not realize the aftermath of a COVID infection can be like a ticking time bomb! It is going to kill a lot of people before their retirement age.

The baby was a ticking time bomb. One false move and it was over.

High Altitude Observatory Disease (HAOD) is like a ticking time bomb that explodes many years later.

(2002) In Rome, month upon month, I struggled with how to structure the book about my father (He already had the water, he just had to discover jars). At one point I laid each chapter out on the terrazzo floor, eighty-three in all, arranged them like the map of an imaginary city. Some of the piles of paper, I imagined, were freestanding buildings, some were clustered into neighborhoods, and some were open space. On the outskirts, of course, were the tenements--abandoned, ramshackled. The spaces between the piles were the roads, the alleyways, the footpaths, the rivers. The bridges to other neighborhoods, the bridges out...In this way I could get a sense if one could find their way through the book, if the map I was creating made sense, if it was a place one would want to spend some time in. If one could wander there, if one could get lost.

Before the prospect of an intelligence explosion, we humans are like small children playing with a bomb. Such is the mismatch between the power of our plaything and the immaturity of our conduct. Superintelligence is a challenge for which we are not ready now and will not be ready for a long time. We have little idea when the detonation will occur, though if we hold the device to our ear we can hear a faint ticking sound. For a child with an undetonated bomb in its hands, a sensible thing to do would be to put it down gently, quickly back out of the room, and contact the nearest adult. Yet what we have here is not one child but many, each with access to an independent trigger mechanism. The chances that we will all find the sense to put down the dangerous stuff seem almost negligible. Some little idiot is bound to press the ignite button just to see what happens.

Late twenties, single, female. Do the math. Flirty flings were fabulous until you hit the big three-O, all downhill from there. Biological clocks started ticking like time bombs waiting to detonate, gravity exerted more force on your life than your mom, and suddenly, the dog-ugliest creep looked like Jake Gyllenhaal.

she would abuse me, then the very next day hug me or tell me how I was her baby and she loved me blah, blah. I think it worked like any abusive relationship . . . a person feels trapped, nowhere to go . . . they are abused and then the abuser reins them back in with kindness and the person being abused settles, not quite thinking about the next time they are beat etc. just relieved the abuse is over (for now). My mother was a ticking time bomb . . .

Many of these men, and the women too, sometimes even more so, would like to use your heart against you,” she says. “They think it’s a ticking time bomb in your chest, waiting to explode.” “Maybe it is,” Diane blurts out. I look at her. Severin smiles. “Maybe that’s our strength.

If you didn’t already know this, the sun is going to die. When I think about the future, I don’t think about inescapable ends. But even if we solve global warming and destroy nuclear bombs and control population, ultimately the human race will annihilate itself if we stay here. Eventually, inevitably, we will no longer be able to live on Earth: we have a giant fireball clock ticking down twilight by twilight. In many ways, I think mortality is more manageable when we consider our eternal components, our genetics and otherwise that carry on after us. Still, soon enough, the books we write and the plants we grow will freeze up and rot in the darkness. But maybe there’s hope. What the universe really boils down to is whether a planet evolves a life-form intelligent enough to create technology capable of transporting and sustaining that life-form off the planet before the sun in that planet’s solar system explodes. I have a limited set of comparative data points, but I’d estimate that we’re actually doing okay at this point. We already have (intelligent) life, technology, and (primitive) space travel. And we still have some time before our sun runs out of hydrogen and goes nuclear. Yet none of that matters unless we can develop a sustainable means of living and traveling in space. Maybe we can. What I’ve concluded is that if we do reach this point, we have crossed a remarkable threshold—and will emerge into the (rare?) evolutionary status of having outlived the very life source that created us. It’s natural selection on a Universal scale. “The Origin of the Aliens,” one could say; a survival of the fittest planets. Planets capable of evolving life intelligent enough to leave before the lights go out. I suppose that without a God, NASA is my anti-nihilism. Alone and on my laptop, these ideas can humble me into apathy.

Indeed, antibiotic resistance, a fear predicted by Alexander Fleming when accepting his Nobel Prize for penicillin, is a huge concern for many infectious bacterial diseases in the twenty-first century and has been described as a ‘ticking time bomb’ and the greatest ‘global threat’ of our time.

This note was a jittery bomb ticking beneath my normal life, in my pocket all day fiercely reread, in my purse all week until I was afraid it would get crushed or snooped, in my drawer between two dull books to escape my mother and then in the box and now thunked back to you. A note, who writes a note like that? Who were you to write one to me? It boomed inside me the whole time, an explosion over and over, the joy of what you wrote to me jumpy shrapnel in my bloodstream. I can't have it near me anymore, I'm grenading it back to you, as soon as I unfold it and read it and cry one more time. Because me too, and f--- you. Even now.

For those united to him, the heart of Jesus is not a rental; it is your new permanent residence. You are not a tenant; you are a child. His heart is not a ticking time bomb; his heart is the green pastures and still waters of endless reassurances of his presence and comfort, whatever our present spiritual accomplishments. It is who he is.

Don't wait for Tomorrow, as tomorrow might be too late- Tylia Flores

Harrison is wearing a fitted black T-shirt that shows off the tattoos on his arms and charcoal-gray jeans and dark work boots. He's so ruggedly dressed down that I hardly recognize him, though of course he's wearing his aviators. He wouldn't be Harrison without them. To say he looks hot is an understatement. He looks ridiculously hot. Like, a whole other level of handsome, a whole other league of gorgeousness. For once I'm looking at him not as a bodyguard extraordinaire to the royals but as a man who has turned my ovaries into a ticking time bomb, a man who makes me want to climb him like a jungle gym, turn him into a ride I never want to get off. Except that I do want to get off. "Hi," I say brightly. Too brightly. It's like he's hypnotized me with his sex appeal. Sexnotized me.

Before the prospect of an intelligence explosion, we humans are like small children playing with a bomb. Such is the mismatch between the power of our plaything and the immaturity of our conduct. Superintelligence is a challenge for which we are not ready now and will not be ready for a long time. We have little idea when the detonation will occur, though if we hold the device to our ear we can hear a faint ticking sound.

The world was in a confused turmoil-wars, H-bombs, confrontations, fear, hate, hate. And Hollywood was feeding the confusion with a steady diet of sex, violence, and lewdness. What wisdom needed, to catch up with our runaway technology, was time. And time might be bought not with violence, but with compassion-that divine unguent that lubricates and soothes our abrasive human hates. Compassion might just possibly slow down the ticking till we could defuse the world with reason. And we had an outside chance of buying a little precious extra time by filming the life of Schnozzola, the great compassionate clown. A chance that got lost among stars and their satellites. Pity Pity. Now what would I do? Certainly the world didn't need more films about sex, violence, and lewdness. Judging by contemporary Hollywood films, the United States was made up of sexpots, homosexuals, lesbians, Marquis de Sades, junkies too! too! beautiful people, country-club liberals, draft-card burners, and theatrical and religious figures bleeding make-believe blood for cause and camera. "Shock films," they called them; "skin flicks" that dealt not with the humorous, honest, robust, Rabelaisian earthiness that nurtures life, but with the cologned, pretentious, effete, adulterated crud that pollutes life.

But when my mom got sick, all I could focus on was time. And not having enough of it. For so long that had been at the forefront of my mind. And I still felt it. A ticking time bomb waiting to explode. But hadn’t it already exploded when I’d buried my mother? When I’d moved here? When I started going to this school where I so blatantly didn’t belong? But still I felt the ticking. Like the next bad thing was about to happen. Another explosion when I was barely holding on from the first one.

I'm surprised when I walk right into yet another abandoned hunters' camp. Tattered plastic sheeting still hangs askew here and there. Blackened aerosol cans of Cheez Whiz sit in the fire pit, which sits in the middle of the trail. Assorted Styro-ware. Rotten leather boots. Where are these people? Are they back in civilization now, appearing to all observers to be as normal as pie, but inwardly ticking like time bombs and spreading their hot poisonous seed through the world like black-breathed plague?

In Sulla’s estimation the political upheavals that wracked Rome from the time of his birth in 138 until his death in 78 were the result of the Senate losing their dominant position. But what he did not realize is that the senatorial domination he had grown up with was a recent development. In fact, that domination was a leading cause of the problem, not a solution. Sulla thought he was resetting the constitutional balance to its natural state. Instead he was just winding back the clock on a ticking time bomb.

playing juvenile pranks. In twelfth grade he built an electronic metronome—one of those tick-tick-tick devices that keep time in music class—and realized it sounded like a bomb. So he took the labels off some big batteries, taped them together, and put it in a school locker; he rigged

We’ve all seen the headlines implying that people with PTSD are dangerous. We must not resort to thinking, due to fear, that a person with PTSD equals a ticking time bomb. The stigma surrounding PTSD is so negative. It arouses concerns and provokes whispers and worried glances. People don’t understand it at all. They assume I’m a potential powder keg just waiting for a spark to set me off into a rage, and that’s just not true, about me or any person with PTSD. I have never physically assaulted anyone out of anger or rage. I'm suffering with it and people are afraid to ask me about it.

A few more seconds of silence tick by, and then Eriksson pipes up again. “It was the shirt, huh?” I blink in confusion, and he gestures to the green button-down I have on. “I knew it. Made you gay,” he says gleefully. “Matt,” one of our teammates chides, but it’s too late, other guys are already snickering, and hell, so am I. “How many times do I have to tell you?” I grumble. “This shirt is the da bomb dot com. No, dot edu—because it’s damn near enlightening.” Forsberg snorts. “It’s blinding me, that’s what it is.” He

Over the past six years, living and working in this city had turned the funny, charismatic girl I´d loved with every cell of my body into a jaded, hard-edged loner I still couldn´t look at without catching my breath. I´d never felt more alive, watching Liv to prepare to charm-or maybe force- her way into some stranger´s apartment. Olivia was a wire wound too tight, always about to snap, but she lived on excitement and thrived under pressure. Being with her was like holding a bomb in both hands, watching the numbers tick back toward zero. I knew she´d eventually explode, and this time it might kill me. But it was hard to care about the potential for collateral damage when just being near her again felt so good.

A daunting example of the impact that the loose talk and heavy rhetoric of the Sixties had on policy can be seen in the way the black family—a time-bomb ticking ominously, and exploding with daily detonations—got pushed off the political agenda. While Carmichael, Huey Newton and others were launching a revolutionary front against the system, the Johnson administration was contemplating a commitment to use the power of the federal government to end the economic and social inequalities that still plagued American blacks. A presidential task force under Daniel Patrick Moynihan was given a mandate to identify the obstacles preventing blacks from seizing opportunities that had been grasped by other minority groups in the previous 50 years of American history. At about the same time as the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Moynihan published findings that emphasized the central importance of family in shaping an individual life and noted with alarm that 21 percent of black families were headed by single women. “[The] one unmistakable lesson in American history,” he warned, is that a country that allows “a large number of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future—that community asks for and gets chaos. Crime, violence, unrest, disorder—most particularly the furious, unrestrained lashing out at the whole social structure—that is not only to be expected; it is very near to inevitable.” Moynihan proposed that the government confront this problem as a priority; but his conclusions were bitterly attacked by black radicals and white liberals, who joined in an alliance of anger and self-flagellation and quickly closed the window of opportunity Moynihan had opened. They condemned his report as racist not only in its conclusions but also in its conception; e.g., it had failed to stress the evils of the “capitalistic system.” This rejectionist coalition did not want a program for social change so much as a confession of guilt. For them the only “non-racist” gesture the president could make would be acceptance of their demand for $400 million in “reparations” for 400 years of slavery. The White House retreated before this onslaught and took the black family off the agenda.

Girls in love are like ticking time bombs. You never know what they would do next.

Please have several seats on a ticking time bomb. Matter of fact, have a seat on several ticking time bombs,” she fired off even more exasperated.

Because I have within me every manner of psychosis that exists in psychopaths. I’m considered…” he aimed his gaze up, contemplating before turning to her. “A ticking time-bomb. Perhaps with age, or the right situation, I will come into my full, lethal potentials and gifts.” Her heart was officially hammering even though he said it like a joke. “But you… you don’t agree?” He shrugged. “I’ve been diagnosed three times. Maybe I wouldn’t mind a fourth opinion.

Having a conversation with unfiltered thought is a ticking time bomb.

When people are not educated enough for the job market, it is like a time bomb ticking away which could explode in the streets.

We are all mutants with ticking time bombs hidden inside

Unless, of course, there’s no such thing as chance; in which case Musa—for all his age and servility—was nothing less than a time-bomb, ticking softly away until his appointed time; in which case, we should either—optimistically—get up and cheer, because if everything is planned in advance, then we all have a meaning, and are spared the terror of knowing ourselves to be random, without a why; or else, of course, we might—as pessimists—give up right here and now, understanding the futility of thought decision action, since nothing we think makes any difference anyway; things will be as they will.

The rest of the time, all she knew was that he was a time bomb, primed and ticking.

You are scared to relive them, the vulnerability of succumbing. So you think to shove them into a box at the back of your closet makes them less of a ticking time bomb?

Come on, time is a ticking time bomb, and there's a whole world out there to see and very little time to see it in.

Doubt was a ticking time bomb that wiped out everything in its blast

...he knew that a warning, no matter how stark, how clear, was never a comfort; it was only the slow drip of fear through all the good and all the bad times. A ticking time bomb.

The myth of the crack baby was widely accepted as gospel, it seems, because it mapped so well onto existing ideas of Black biological inferiority and cultural pathology, and it stoked anxieties regarding violent crime and the cost of America’s social safety net. Indeed, in the form of the crack baby, America was delivered a perfect symbol for its animosity toward Black America—a ticking time bomb of violence and expense created because Black mothers cared too little about themselves and their offspring.

The Night Bomber by Stewart Stafford Stefan and Elyse came home by rote, To find a stranger's chilling note, "I’m going to kill you" scrawled in red, Pranks locked out with nothing said. Then the hall window smashed, In a firework’s screaming flash, They threw it out before it burned, Danger had not passed, they learned. A ticking device left behind, Elyse kicked it away just in time, A garden explosion's massive bang, Their ears and windows loudly rang. They wondered what psycho did this deed, And how they'd crossed this evil breed, Then they heard them bomb their neighbours who thought Stefan and Elyse were perpetrators. Then another blast three doors down, Stefan ran to help with a worried frown, Concerned to see who else got hit, Seeing their attacker was still at it. A bomber in a ski mask did a backflip, To dodge their lunging, angry grip, He swung on ropes and vaulted high, An acrobat mocking with a stylish eye. The bomber fled in his getaway car, A neighbour leapt on before he got far, He held on tight but got dragged along, Rolled to the kerb, he couldn't hold on. The Night Bomber of Sheila’s Cabin On the loose, an explosive phantom, Stalking without any reason or pity, His laughter echoed across the city. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

We define ourselves by our sense of self and our sense of body, the two things that give a constant to our subjective experience,” she explained. “One feels at home in one’s body with all its peculiarities. It changes successively throughout life, at least through normal aging.” She looked at the leaves rustling back and forth in the light wind high above them in the treetops. “But the ‘I’ feeling always stays the same. You have felt like you—mentally, I mean—as an observer of the world you perceive through your eyes, always, regardless of your age. You have learned, had experiences, but the feeling of ‘being you’ has always been the same. When you know you don’t have long, that your belly is made of pain and is a ticking time bomb, it doesn’t change that constant, but it does change the relationship of the sense of I to the body. Without that, I’m still me, but I’ve changed again. You know what I mean?” “I’m not entirely sure.” Without looking, she could tell from the sounds he was making that he was sitting up and looking at her. “But I’m glad you’re feeling better.” “I’m not so sure,” she whispered, thinking of her mother and Yuri and Lyudmila. “I’m not sure.

Beautiful but defeated and damaged. Damaged for the rest of her life and no amount of emotional mutilation will ever fully give her back her innocence. The girl is a ticking time bomb, a danger to herself and very possibly to others. I wasn’t sure before, but now I know that she is more unstable than I ever could have imagined. And because she is so skilled at hiding it, not only from me but also from herself, she is more dangerous than I am. I am discipline. Sarai is rage. I am aware of my choices at all times. Sarai’s choices are more aware of her, lying in wait to decide for her based on the severity of her mood with no intention in leaving her any conscious control over it.

This

This requirement of annual RMDs within the 10-year period stems from an old rule in the tax code called the “at least as rapidly rule” (ALAR). While many originally

Word to the wise: The IRA custodian is not required to notify your beneficiaries of these rules, and many will not. It’s up to you to let your heirs know about these requirements so that they don’t make an error and get stuck with unnecessary missed RMD penalties.

Her smile was brittle. "Well, I know Kieran's achieving something if someone like you is willing to be in a relationship with him." "Someone like me?" She gestured to me from head to toe. "Respectable. Elegantly dressed, if a little flamboyant with color. Beautiful manners, well-spoken. Clearly you listened to your parents when they told you how to behave." I choked back a snort at the thought of my biological father being Mr. Manners. The sheer audacity of it. "Kieran probably hasn't told you about all the times we had to get him out of trouble," she continued. I blinked, confused. "No." She ticked off on her fingers as she spoke. "He skipped classes, he stole money out of my wallet, he crashed our cars more than once. Not to mention the drinking, my God. He couldn't hold his liquor at all. We were so ashamed." I held back my eye roll. It was like having a conversation with a steamroller. As she continued to list Kieran's crimes, I realized that she relished this monologue, all the ways he'd done them wrong. Like she never wanted him to grow up because then she'd have to stop being a martyr. "But anyway, that's all in the past. Finally, he's become who we always wanted him to be, and we can hold our heads up." The thought of being a source of pride to these snobby, plastic people made me want to drink ten flutes of prosecco, climb onto their dining room table, and do Amy Winehouse karaoke, Diane's advice about polish and presentation be damned. But all I needed to shock them was the truth. "I haven't seen my father in over twenty years," I began. "As far as I know he's still the lead singer of the second-best hair metal band in Spokane. My mother's salary was for keeping herself in clothes and boyfriends. Sometimes I had to break into my piggy bank so that I could by Cup O' Noodles at 7-Eleven for my brother and me. I've made a good life in spite of my parents, not because of them. It's one of the reasons I fell in love with your son. I knew he was a survivor, too. But thank you for the compliments. Now, if you'll excuse me.

Of the two parents, it was clear Paige was the stricter—a role she seemed to both embrace and resent. And judging by her silver cross necklace, she was more devout too. But there were contradictions in Paige’s actions, her body language. She had a timid, almost docile demeanor that would slip away when she had to break up a fight between the kids or make a sly comment toward her husband. Eve sensed a great deal of suppressed anger simmering beneath Paige’s surface. A tick-tick-ticking time bomb.

Mate. He’d told Hayden he would stick to his routine. That meant watching the game at her apartment on Sunday and maintaining their friendship. His logical mind fought against his growing urges. Last night, he couldn’t have a simple conversation without touching her. And she didn’t make things any easier. He could smell the desire pouring out of her. It took every ounce of his self-control to hold himself back. At times, it was painful. “I know what I’m doing. I’ve got the situation under control.” Cam laughed. “Like you did yesterday? Dude, we both know it’s only going to get worse. You’re like a ticking sex bomb.” Deep down, Kaden knew he was right. Annabelle would become an irresistible, unquenchable thirst. Ordinarily, she would feel the same pull, but there was no way to know how a human would react. “There’s no such thing as a sex bomb.” Cam spread himself flat across the sofa with his arms crossed behind his head. “Yeah, well, there definitely should be.” “Be serious.” He sat up. “I’m trying to tell you, it’s foolish to fight the bond between you. You’d be better off going with it and letting the panties drop where they may.” And what would happen if he did bond with her? There was no chance it would ever work out between them. He had to hide who he was from the world. A life with him meant Annabelle would have to lie to her friends and family about their relationship. He would never be able to marry her or give her the children she wanted. They’d talked about her dreams for a white picket fence and a family. Even if she were willing to give up those things, wouldn’t he be putting her life in danger? A dull ache formed in the pit of his chest. “You know that’s not possible.” If he could somehow push away these human emotions of his, maybe he stood a chance of keeping her in his life. Maybe someday he could actually be happy for her if she found a suitable mate. He dug his fingernails into the palms of his hands at the thought of her with a human. “I have to go. She’s waiting for me.” “Don’t forget the condoms,” Cam shouted out. “Matter of fact, you might want to double up. With all your pent-up frustration, there’s bound to be an explosion.” “Hilarious,” he replied, shutting the door behind him as he made his way toward his truck. Once inside, he slid his seat belt on and leaned back against the head cushion with his eyes closed. Filled with self-doubt, he worried that he wouldn’t be able to handle it. But he had to. For the sake of everyone he loved, he had to find a way.

Ever since we’d found Wilson, his cousin’s calmness bothered me. I realized now I felt less unease with angry outbursts from grieving relatives, than I had with the slow, ticking time bomb of the quiet and collected. --Prepped for Kill, Marjorie Gardens Mystery Book 2

the female teenager may be the most foreign creature on this planet. That includes zombies, vampires and now even Lycans and werewolves. They were an emotional bundle of drama, and I dreaded being around the ticking time bombs.

Maybe the Society was right all along. From the very beginning, that’s what they called her. A time bomb. Tick, tick, tick.

Blessing wasn’t taking any chances with Lyric, knowing she was still a ticking time bomb.

Lies and secrets are only ticking time bombs, waiting for the moment they can wreak the most havoc.

A firecracker between the sheets and a ticking time bomb in the streets.

Favorable tax treatment isn’t a holy writ. But before saving money over decades in a special account, people need to have faith that future politicians won’t rewrite the rules…. Congress has shown how carelessly it is willing to break its end of the bargain.” —The Wall Street Journal, December 23, 2019

Every time I so much as smile at a man, you bulldoze your way between us like a territorial bear. Why is that, Mr. Larsen? Especially when you told me in no uncertain terms when we first met that you don’t get involved in your clients’ personal lives.” I didn’t answer, but my jaw continued to tick in rhythm with my pulse. Tick. Tick. Tick. A bomb waiting to go off and blow up our lives as we knew it. “Maybe…” Bridget’s expression turned contemplative as she took a step toward me. Mistake number one. “You want to be in their place. Do you want me, Mr. Larsen? The princess and the bodyguard. It would make a nice story for your buddies.” Mistake number two. “You want to stop talking now, Your Highness. And be very, very, very careful what you do next.” “Why? I’m not afraid of you. Everyone else here is, but I’m not.” She placed her hand on my chest. Mistake number three.

Most things in the world aren’t dangerous in their own right. It’s when people take those things, use them to further their own agenda, warp them to serve themselves rather than others, that turns something good, decent, or neutral into a devastating force. The entire world was a ticking time bomb. The digital world wasn’t all bad. It was neutral, really. But it also fueled polarization, discontent, and angst. It made things accessible that you used to have to find in dusty tomes, or had to research in libraries or at universities. You don’t need to travel the world to consult an expert any more. A bastardized version of almost any expertise was posted online for all the world to use and abuse. What should have united people, giving us access to information to understand other people, cultures, and worldviews, has instead become bent by the human pathology— the disease of narcissism— to do the opposite. We used the digital sphere to close our minds to anything that challenged our assumptions. People found it easier to congregate among the like- minded. It’s reached a point of absurdity. Rather than consider views that challenge one’s perspective of the world, people search out those who will ratify and confirm their biases. As such, rather than bringing people together, or debating their ideas in the public square, people on either extreme of any situation only grow more polarized, stretching the civilized world like a criminal on a medieval rack. All because everyone’s too damn blind to consider their own error, how they might be wrong, or to critically reconsider their own insecurities and fears. Understanding the other has never been more possible due to the accessibility of information. Anyone who genuinely wants to understand alternate lifestyles or views can do so quite easily— but no one wants to. Because when our idols fail, when our false- gods betray us, it leaves us grasping at straws. Even those like my father, who use religion to serve their own insecurities, and reforge their deity into an idol in their own image— worship at the altar of the unholy trinity of me, myself, and I. That’s always been the state of the world, in truth. Whatever we fear, love, or trust the most. That’s our god. And most people trust “number one” above all else, they prioritize themself over all others, and since they’ve become gods unto themselves, anyone who disagrees with them is no longer viewed as a dignified person with a right to their own opinions and choices. If their opinion contradicted and violated my divine me, then anyone who disagrees with me is by definition a heretic. And the world has only ever had one way of dealing with those they deem heretics. One thing I’ve learned more than anything else over the last century and a half of my existence is that being wrong isn’t a bad thing. We can’t grow at all if we can’t admit our error. We will never advance if we don’t grant ourselves permission to be wrong— if we aren’t thankful for being disproven, that we might evolve, adapt, and grow in our wisdom. That’s what’s crazy about the world. It’s spinning out of control, ready to tear itself apart. All it would take is a simple recognition that it’s okay to be wrong, that it’s a necessary part of life, and a realization that we can all learn something from anyone and everyone else. But we’ve all become zealots in the religion of self. We’re all staunch defenders of our personal dogma. The problem is that we all nod along to those insights— so long as they convict everyone else. While the god of “self” is weak, an idol no more trustworthy than gods of wood or stone, it doesn’t die easily. Who was I to think I could save the world ever? All I’d ever done was delay the inevitable. That didn’t mean I wouldn’t keep trying… I wouldn’t keep fighting. Because when we stop fighting for others we end up stuck in that damned religion of me. And I was never very religious. Why change now?

Choosing to act like you don’t care or you don’t feel anything, meanwhile you do. It is what will hurt you the most. It is like being next to a ticking time bomb and thinking it won't hurt you if you are ignoring it. Never choose to ignore the things that matters to you. They will haunt you.

I was asked to do a lot of things by the Weather Underground leadership over the years and, toward the end, asked to do many things I didn’t even believe at the time were right, but I did them anyway. I let my friends talk me into doing them. Those acts mainly amounted to lying to people, rather than potentially injuring them. When I finally quit it was not just because I realized that the vision was unconnected to reality. Even then, as ever, I was acting more from emotion than ideology. Mostly I was angry at having been manipulated, and humiliated for allowing myself to be manipulated, and mortified at then manipulating others in turn. But no one ever asked me to carry out a bombing. Grown-up me wants to think that even if they had, as late in the process, say, as the moment when dressed in the bland costume of an office worker I had been handed the attaché case containing the ticking device, I would have hesitated, considered the implications, and declined to go through with it. But I was still a child during those years, who needed to tag along after the big boys, take their dare, win their approval. Yes, almost certainly, I would have done it.

It’s confusing and frightening, because their relationship feels like a ticking time bomb, and I don’t want to be the one to set it off.

The universal justification for torture is the ticking-time-bomb excuse. As the columnist Charles Krauthammer put it, "A terrorist has planted a nuclear bomb in New York City. It will go off in one hour. A million people will die. You capture the terrorist. He knows where it is. He's not talking. Question: If you have the slightest belief that hanging this man by his thumbs will get you the information to save a million people, are you permitted to do it?" Yes, says Krauthammer, and not only are you permitted to, it's your moral duty. You don't have time to call the Geneva Convention people and ask them if it's okay; you will do whatever you can to get the terrorist to tell you the bomb's location. Few deny that the ticking-time-bomb justification for torture would be reasonable under those circumstances. The trouble is that those circumstances are very rare, so the "saving lives" excuse starts being used even when there is no ticking and there is no bomb.

For those united to him, the heart of Jesus is not a rental; it is your new permanent residence. You are not a tenant; you are a child. His heart is not a ticking time bomb; his heart is the green pastures and still waters of endless reassurances of his presence and comfort, whatever our present spiritual accomplishments. It is who he is. 1

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.

She was a ticking bomb, and it was only a matter of time before she exploded.

The time bomb of a poor self-concept may tick silently for years while an individual, driven by a passion for success and exercising genuine ability, may rise higher and higher in his profession.

The reality of toddlerhood hit me hard. Not only did my child not listen to me, she actively resisted nearly every single thing I said. We butted heads daily. My naturally chill husband and I started to see her as a tiny ticking time bomb.

In this fast-paced era, standing still means going backward. But in your quest for progress, be wise not to become a person of questionable character. A flawed character is like a ticking time bomb waiting to destroy hard earned progress.

He hurt me once before. He threatened me. He’s a ticking time bomb, ready to go off. None of those red flags seem to impact me.

Some of these organisms were photosynthesizing bacteria and cyanobacteria. Others were Archaea, an ancient lineage of single-celled organisms without nuclei long believed to be bacteria but recently put in a kingdom all their own.

Writing to the Washington Post in 2007, two top U.S. generals drew upon their years of command experience to warn of such a slippery slope. “As has happened with every other nation that has tried to engage in a little bit of torture,” the generals wrote, “the abuse spread like wildfire, and every captured prisoner became the key to defusing a potential ticking time bomb. Our soldiers in Iraq confront real ‘ticking time bomb’ situations every day, in the form of improvised explosive devices, and any degree of ‘flexibility’ about torture at the top drops down the chain of command like a stone—the rare exception fast becoming the rule.

His eyes hold mine as he lifts his Scotch to his lips and takes a sip, emotionless and cold. He’s fucking pissed. Out-of-control Elliot Miles is manageable. Cold and calculating Elliot Miles is a completely different story. This situation is a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.

Once you have a body filled with nutritional deficiencies, you may be on a ticking time bomb to disease.

Everyone has a reaction to my hijab, like Layla’s mother who gently grabs both my hands and pulls me close to her, kissing me on each cheek and greeting me like I am a brand-new person. And then there are the people on the street who never used to notice me before when I glided down Ludlow in my beautiful coat but now stop and turn their heads, their eyes watching me like I am a ticking time bomb.

must safeguard the woman from his past who is nurturing a ticking time bomb of a secret. The momentum keeps building as Sylvie Kurtz launches

Seeking his approval puts a ticking time bomb on his feelings and attraction toward a woman.

Everyone knew he had become the equivalent to a ticking time bomb. The only question was when?

Because I can show you what the other guys missed and you know that," Sadie said. "And I figure that you're a hero, Gage, and there's a killer still out there. That's a ticking time bomb waiting to go off and I'm at the center of that explosion once he learns I survived. Now what are you going to do about it?

Nell lay, arms curled around her knees, imagining herself as round as a snail. In this very room hiding behind this very sofa, she had heard her mother and Mrs Rossiter talk about atkon bombs. Everyone, everyone, everyone in the whole world would die. And all the animals. And no one would ever be born again. Or if they were they’d be peculiar shapes and be so ill they’d just die almost at once. The only thing alive would be grasshoppers. She’d seen a grasshopper in Cornwall. Perhaps the whole world would be like a beach, dead sand and big green things that leapt, and had hard bodies, and horrid tickly legs. She couldn’t believe it. If it was true then why weren’t Mummy and Mrs R crying? She sometimes thought about old people and wondered why they weren’t all crying all the time because they much know they were going to die quite soon. But if everyone … The thought was too laborious to complete.

When you have no one to blame but yourself, you have no choice but to internalize that anger, and having no clue how to release it in a productive way…I knew I was a ticking time bomb.

these holes have become more and more dangerous lately—sometimes to the extent that assembly has to deviate significantly from their scheduled sequence. And it’s become apparent that the foremen of the CCRs have more and more difficulty supplying on time. Ralph was telling me that these work centers still have enough capacity, and maybe on the average he’s right, but I’m afraid that any additional increase in sales will throw us into chaos.” So here’s a bomb, ticking below our feet, and I didn’t even realize it. I’m pressing so hard on marketing to bring more sales, and according to what Stacey’s just revealed that might blow up the whole plant.

If what you suspect is true, perhaps we need to conduct a search for likely candidates. We could take out single ads in newspapers across the world for all Carpathians.” “Your woman would like that,” Gregori agreed. Mikhail nodded. “She says we need to be brought into this century.” Mikhail’s laughter was genuine. “All my latest technology has failed to convince her that I am a modern man.” Without thought, his mind reached for Raven’s to share the joke. Instantly Raven flooded his mind with her soft musical laughter. For a moment, the severity of his people’s problems slipped away, and he was surrounded by her love. Gregori’s silver eyes glittered ominously, dragging Mikhail back to their present dilemma. He sighed softly and reiterated. “Raven has to feel I have reverence for human life.” He offered the explanation by way of an apology. “You do,” Gregori snapped, his voice terse. “More than you probably should. You also have a responsibility to our people. Romanov is very dangerous to us. To leave him alive is to leave a time bomb ticking.” “Yet to kill him would drive a huge wedge between Raven and me.” Gregori heaved a sigh. “Take command of your woman, Mikhail. That is the best advice I can give you.

Romanov is very dangerous to us. To leave him alive is to leave a time bomb ticking.” “Yet to kill him would drive a huge wedge between Raven and me.” Gregori heaved a sigh. “Take command of your woman, Mikhail. That is the best advice I can give you.” “She needs to feel free.” Gregori’s eyebrow shot up. “She is essential to the existence of our species. You need to keep her under tight protection.” He meant under control, and disapproval tinged his tone. Mikhail burst out laughing. “I want to see you find a lifemate, Gregori, one like Raven. She will hold you in the palm of her hand.” “If I ever find what you have, I will never allow her to risk herself. She will never go near danger, not even to feed. And she will not defy me.” “You cannot keep a lifemate prisoner, Gregori.” There was a hint of amusement in Mikhail’s voice. “She will do as she is told.” Mikhail turned away to conceal his grin. Gregori had no idea how a woman could twist a man’s insides and make it impossible to breathe without her. If Gregori ever found his lifemate, he was in for a shock.