Z Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with Z. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Zoe stopped one last time in front of the mirror, adjusting her new American dress. She didn’t see the dress, however. She saw what the big Russian did to her. She saw what al-Qaeda did to her. She saw a person shunned by her Persian village. She saw ugliness. Every time she looked in the mirror she saw deficiency.”
“zoegirl: have u named the chicks? SnowAngel:yes, but i keep getting them mixed up. so now i call all of them "squishy." they're the collective squishy. zoegirl: *r* they squishy? SnowAngel: when you squeeze them,yes. but not in a yucky way. SnowAngel: they're growing on me, the little squishies. altho 1 of them pooped on my pillow. zoegirl: u let them on your bed? SnowAngel: they like it when i bounce them.”
“Zoey picked up her spoon and tasted it, and she was immediately and startlingly transported to a perfect autumn childhood day, the kind of day when sunlight is short but it's still warm enough to play outside.
For the second course, the chilled crab cake was only the size of a silver dollar and the mustard cream and the green endive were just splashes of color on the plate. The visual experience was like dreaming of faraway summer while staring at Christmas lights through a frosty window.
The third course brought to mind the first hot day of spring, when it's too warm to eat in the house so you sit outside with a dinner plate of Easter ham and corn on your lap and a bottle of Coca-Cola sweating beside you. Zoey could feel the excitement of summer coming, and she couldn't wait for it.
And then summer arrived with the final course. And, like summer always is, it was worth the wait. The tiny container looked like a miniature milk glass, and the whipped milk in it reminded her of cold, sweet soft-serve ice cream on a day when the pavement burns through flip-flops and even shade trees are too hot to sit under. The savory bits of crispy cornbread mixed in gave the dessert a satisfying campfire crunch.”
Source: Other Birds
“Zoey: Wait! Don't go yet. I have so many questions. Nyx: Life will reveal to you the choices you must make to answer them.”
“Zog loved learning about new worlds. On Luminos, everyone—from the youngest Questling to the oldest and wisest of the Inlightened—was a seeker of knowledge.”
“Zoiets?
(door Ema Loer)
Een peuter poept een spiraal in de wc,
kijkt op — verwachtingsvol,
alsof het een bloem is.
Of een code.
Of een oerknal in bruin.
“Zoiets?” vraagt hij,
alsof hij eeuwen
van menselijke verwarring
per ongeluk heeft afgevoerd.
De moeder —
deel tijd, deel terp,
deel theezakje met geheugen —
knikt.
Maar traag.
Alsof ze zich herinnert
dat ze dit ooit ook vroeg
bij haar eerste gedachte.
De wc ruikt naar waarheden
die zich niet laten ventileren.
De spiraal dampend van betekenis
en totaal betekenisloos.
Want wat is het ook eigenlijk?
Een glijbaan van vezels?
Een dalai lama van de dikke darm?
Een kosmische afdruk
in de porseleinen tijd?
“Zoiets,” zegt de moeder
uiteindelijk hardop.
Niet als antwoord,
maar als mantra.
Als verzachting voor alle keren
dat iets groots begon
met iets kleins
dat niemand durfde erkennen
omdat het stonk.
En het kind
spoelt zichzelf weg
in lachen.”
“Zoki walks into the classroom, puts a piece of paper down on the teacher’s desk, and shouts: “Everyone write your name.”
There are three columns: Muslim / Serb / Croat.
We all gather round, we all hesitate.
“Come on, guys.” Zoki writes his name under Serb.
Kenan takes the pen from Zoki and writes his name under Muslim.
Both Gorans put their names under Serb.
Edin puts his name under Muslim.
Alen puts his name under Muslim.
Marica puts her name under Serb.
Goca puts her name under Serb.
Kule asks what this is all about.
Zoki says: “So we know.”
Kule says: “Fuck you.”
Zoki says: “Anyway, you’re Muslim.”
“What I am is Fuck you,” Kule says.
Elvira makes a new column, writes Don’t know at the top, and puts her name there. Alen takes the pen back and crosses his name out and writes it again under Don’t know. Goca too.
Marko puts his name under Serb.
Ana puts her name under Don’t know, thinks for a second, crosses it out, adds Yugoslav as a fifth heading, and puts her name there.
Zoki writes Kule under Muslim.
Kule says: “Zoki, you dumb horse, I’ll fuck your mother.”
The Gorans plant themselves in front of Kule and the one with the long incisors says: “What’s wrong, Kule? Shoes too tight?”
Kule grabs the pen out of Zoki’s hand and tries to scribble something on Goran’s forehead. Goran shoves him, Kule shoves back, and we move between them.
Everyone’s shouting all at once until Kule raises his arm—the gesture says, Everything’s cool, I’m cool. He goes up to the desk and makes a sixth column. On top it says, Fuck all of you. Kule writes Kule in that column, stomps on the pen, which breaks, and leaves the classroom.
No one follows Kule. The list disappears.
A couple months later, Muslims in several cities are ordered to wear white armbands.
An Eskimo family lived in Višegrad at the time, above the supermarket on Tito Street. Actually they had no connection with the Inuit—it was just a joke answer on the 1991 census, which was included in the actual statistics and then recognized by the state. The father repeated it during the Serbian occupation, but no one laughed. So he left the city, with his wife and baby daughter. Today they live closer to the North Pole and speak decent Swedish.”
Source: Herkunft
“Zola Budd: so small, so waif-like, you literally can't see her. But there she is”
“Zolang d'r leven is, is d'r hoop.”
“Zolang de internationale coalitie weigert grondtroepen in te zetten om overal in Syrië verscholen zelfmoordterroristen uit te roeien zal dit soort aanslagen verder toenemen. Volgens SOHR heeft het kalifaat nog een arsenaal potentiële zelfmoordterroristen van minstens 1250 man, goed voor nog minstens 600 aanslagen. Toch weigert Obama, onder druk van het Amerikaanse militair industrieel complex, om op de grond special forces in te zetten die ter plaatse tabula rasa gaan maken van de Augiasstallen boordenvol zelfmoordterroristen. Hoeveel winstgevender is het voor de Amerikaanse wapenhandel niet uit de lucht te bombarderen in plaats van op de grond efficiënt te gaan vechten? Bommen brengen de wapenhandel nu eenmaal zoveel meer op dan de verkoop van doelgerichte kogels.”
Source: ISIS & Het Kalifaat
“Zolang dit bestaat, en ik het mag beleven, deze zonneschijn, die hemel waar geen wolk aan is, zo lang kan ik niet treurig zijn.”
“Zoltán looked at them through the window. He hated the man. Now he hated work. Work for these? Work with these? He saw before him the great puszta. Here the long, cracked stripe of a ditch once again stole the blue of the sky, transforming it into a deeper colour, renewing it, like an artist's palette: every pool on the meadows, every clump of flowers, was a jewel on the bosom of nature, a diadem, a string of pearls: oh, nature was lovely... That is, it would be if it could... But mankind... Among these? Struggle, fight, this greedy little piece of meat... Dark furrows on the wondrous surface, the many-branched, tufted promise of the maize, jewelled patches on God's regal robe: why was the world so lovely? to cover up the ugliness of man?”
“Zombie books were going to be my passion projects, but certainly not pay the bills. I thought I was going to have to get a real job on a sitcom or something, and have my zombie books to remind myself I was still a writer at heart. I never thought I could actually pay my bills and write what I wanted.”
“ZOMBIE.exe —
[SYSTEM OVERLOAD]
[BOOTING...]
Memory check: corrupted.
Signal: unstable.
Language: infected.
— “Selamat malam pemirsa—” suara terdistorsi —
“—Kami tidak bertanggung jawab
atas isi siaran ini—”
Glitch. Noise. Histeria pixel.
Layar menyala, lalu melahap wajah penonton.
— (BREAKING NEWS) —
Layar mengklaim netralitas.
Netralitas mengangguk,
lalu mencabut pisau.
NOTIF: 47 pesan belum dibaca.
Setiap nada: pentungan besi.
Setiap kata: selipan baja.
“Kebenaran” (dicetak tebal, lalu dipotong).
“Maaf” (dikirim sekali, dibalas dengan screenshot).
[potongan siaran]
Pewara muncul—
tapi kini matanya layar,
suaranya iklan deterjen.
Ia membaca berita:
“Seorang anak bunuh diri setelah dibully
di kolom komentar.”
Semua tepuk tangan.
Emoji hati berhamburan.
—“Terima kasih sudah menonton tragedi ini dalam kualitas HD.”—
[INTERFERENCE]
Gambar macet.
Cahaya menyala, berubah jadi serpihan suara.
“Lihat! Mereka menari di atas algoritma!”
Darah... darah... darah...
Menggenang di mana-mana.
Hatimu: pop-up iklan.
Pikiranmu: buffering.
“Maaf”—tidak terkirim.
“Doa”—ditandai sebagai spam.
GIF: wajah tertawa tanpa suara.
MEME: potongan doa jadi lelucon.
“Kebenaran”—file corrupt.
“Empati”—file missing.
Zzzttt... connection lost.
[REBOOT SYSTEM]
Pewara berita: “...dan kita semua tahu—”
suara dipotong, dijahit kembali menjadi cercaan.
Di sebelahnya, seorang badut menempelkan stiker “BERITA”.
Ia tertawa—ketika mulutnya terbuka,
keluar emoji palu gada.
Setiap emoji = jeritan.
Setiap trending topic = kuburan massal.
(CUT TO COMMERCIAL BREAK)
Kopi sachet rasa opini publik.
Dijual dengan tagline:
“Bangkitkan Pagi Tanpa Nurani!”
JUNGKAT-JUNGKIT: naik turun, lumba-lumba melompat dari layar.
Yang naik memegang mikrofon,
yang turun memegang batu.
Keduanya tersenyum saat pengarah acara berseru: "Camera action!"
BISIK: tempat adab dulu disimpan.
BISIK hilang.
Kini ada retweet yang mengikat leher dengan dasi warna-warni.
Headline: “Skandal! — Klik di sini untuk nyatakan kemarahan”
Isi: amunisi.
Komentar: senapan.
Share: bom...
Kamu bicara.
Kamu menendang.
Kamu memposting.
Kamu menghakimi.
Semua terjadi dalam satu detik —
dunia disulap jadi arena melempar pisau.
Ada yang meludah kata-kata,
kata-kata itu membeku dan menjadi es.
Ada yang tersenyum,
seringainya adalah cermin berlumut
yang menitikkan darah.
[intermezzo — iklan kopi]
Minum saja. Lupakan.
Efeknya: kenyamanan.
Side effect: kehilangan empati.
DI SINI, sekali lagi bahasa kehilangan adab:
kata-kata tak lagi dipakai untuk berjabat tangan,
melainkan untuk menonjok wajah.
Aku muak.
Aku menahan letupan di dada:
bukan karena takut,
tapi khawatir bila amarah itu salah sasaran
karena di antara begitu banyak suara, hampir semuanya adalah gema
bunyi gergaji.
Tapi dengar:
ketika notifikasi menjadi peluru,
ketika like mengukur derajat kriminalitas: penghakiman, pembunuhan—
seseorang menjerit,
yang lain berlarian.
Dari layar simulakra bermunculan:
zombie-zombie bergentayangan
Dengan mulut menganga buas
siap menggigit siapa saja.
— (END OF TRANSMISSION) —
Layar pecah. Pisau jatuh.
Darah muncrat!
2025”
“Zombie nerds. They probably had the flyers already made up for this. There was nobody creepier than the zombie nerds, college guys who not only watched zombie movies and read zombie novels and played zombie video games, but actually formed clubs and collected zombie-killing weapons. Gun shops around there actually stocked zombie targets, and special zombie bullets with glow-in-the-dark tips. Not toy bullets, mind you. These guys would go out in the woods and train and shoot and defend to the death their right to stay in childhood until age thirty-five.”
Source: This Book Is Full of Spiders
“Zombie!” Sammy calls. “I knew it was you.”
Zombie?
“Where are you taking him?” Ben says to me in a deep voice. I don’t remember it being that deep. Is my memory bad or is he lowering it on purpose, to sound older?
“Zombie, that’s Cassie,” Sam chides him. “You know—Cassie.”
“Cassie?” Like he’s never heard the name before.
“Zombie?” I say, because I really haven’t heard that name before.
I pull off the cap, thinking it might help him recognize me, then immediately regret it. I know what my hair must look like.
“We go to the same high school,” I say, drawing my fingers hastily through my chopped-off locks. “I sit in front of you in Honors Chemistry.”
Ben shakes his head like he’s clearing out the cobwebs.
Sammy goes, “I told you she was coming.”
“Quiet, Sam,” I scold him.
“Sam?” Ben asks.
“My name is Nugget now, Cassie,” Sam informs me.
“Well, sure it is.” I turn to Ben. “You know my brother.”
Source: The 5th Wave
“Zombieland reference," Jon said, nodding. "How do you know that? That's a thousand-year-old reference!" I looked at laura. "I can't think of a single movie from a thousand years ago." "Uh...Betsy..." "Don't say it." You know how you don't know how stupid something is until you hear yourself say it? That happened to me a lot.”
“Zombies - obviously they're doing it in a much more expansive way on The Walking Dead - basically, what you used to do is you put a bunch of goo on an actor and have them shamble towards you, and it's a very effective creature. It always has tremendous impact, just that feeling of death coming for you; that's universally accepted.”
“Zombies are always moving fast in video games. It makes sense if you think about it. Those games are all about hand-eye coordination and how quickly can you get them before they get you.”
“Zombies are apocalyptic in nature. They belong to a class of monster that doesn't just hunt humans, but seeks to obliterate that entire human race.”
“Zombies are familiar characters in philosophical thought experiments. They are like people in every way except they have no internal experience....
If there are enough zombies recruited into our world, I worry about the potential for a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe if people pretend they are not conscious or do not have free will - or that the cloud of online people is a person; if they pretend there is nothing special about the perspective of the individual - then perhaps we have the power to make it so. We might be able to collectively achieve antimagic.
Humans are free. We can commmit suicide for the benefit of a Singularity. We can engineer our genes to better support an imaginary hive mind. We can make culture and journalism into second-rate activities and spend centuries remixing the detritus of the 1960s and other eras from before individual creativity went out of fashion.
Or we can believe in ourselves. By chance, it might turn out we are real.”
Source: You Are Not a Gadget
“Zombies are the blue-collar monsters”
Source: George A. Romero: Interviews
“Zombies are the liberal nightmare. Here you have the masses, whom you would love to love, appearing at your front door with their faces falling off; and you're trying to be as humane as you possibly can, but they are, after all, eating the cat. And the fear of mass activity, of mindlessness on a national scale, underlies my fear of zombies.”
“Zombies are the new vampire.”
“Zombies are the new vampires.”
“Zombies are the proletariat. Long live the workers!”
“Zombies are the real lower-class citizens of the monster world and that's why l like them.”
“Zombies are then a symbol of our own mad urges to destroy ourselves, and a terrifying portent that we might succeed.”
Source: Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero's Visions of Hell on Earth
“Zombies aren't about zombies. It's not about the dead bodies. I think it's a very hopeful subgenre. It says that regardless of what happens, humanity will get through it. We'll figure out a way to survive.”
“Zombies can't believe the energy we waste on nonfood pursuits.”
Source: Zombie Spaceship Wasteland: A Book by Patton Oswalt
“Zombies charge first, ask questions later,"
--from 'Paranormal Privateers”
Source: Paranormal Privateers
“Zombies, deadheads, corpsicles. What's the difference? They don't care. They don't have feelings to hurt.”
Source: Generation Dead
“Zombies don't exist.”
“Zombies don't run. They don't dance. They don't say, "More brains." There is no Thriller Night. Those are stereotypes that are perpetrated by Hollywood, which I think is very irresponsible because it can get you killed.”
“Zombies dont mess with other zombies.”
“Zombies, ghouls—no matter what their label—these somnambulists are the greatest threat to humanity, other than humanity itself.”
Source: The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead
“Zombies have no memories of their former life. You wont see the undead trying to wash windows or do your taxes. All they know how to do is swarm and feed.”
“Zombies let us explore notions of the apocalypse - no water, food, medical care, the government imploding - while letting us sleep at night.”
“Zombies," Lillian said, and then I heard the screams coming from downstairs.”
Source: Hollow Child
“Zombies never die. They only rest in pieces.”
Source: The Zombie Wizards of Ala-ka
“Zombies smell worse than anything you can imagine if you haven’t been hunting things on the dark side of the world. It’s a ripe, gassy odour, like rotting eggs and meat gone bad, crawling blind with maggots. It’s road kill and decayed food and body odour all rolled into one package and tied up with puke.”
“Zombies will try to scale any surface no matter how unfeasable or even impossible. In all but the easiest situations, these attempts have met with failure. Even in the case of ladders, when simple hand-over-hand coordination is required, only one in four zombies will succeed.”
Source: The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead
“Zombies, believe me, are more terrifying than colonists.”
Source: The Wretched of the Earth
“Zombies, vampires, Frankenstein's monster, robots, Wolfman - all of this stuff was really popular in the '50s. Robots are the only one of those make-believe monsters that have become real. They are really in our lives in a meaningful way. That's pretty fascinating to me.”
“Zombies, what are you going to do with them? Just keep chopping them up, shooting at them, shooting at them.”
“Zon en zee werden zo vurige krachten op papier.”
Source: Soraia, kind van de zee (ZOMER)
“Zondag en maandag verstreken met horten en stoten.
De minuten sleepten zich voort en de uren vlogen voorbij.”
Source: Red Dragon
“Zonder acceptatie
zal ergernis je woedend maken
Zonder acceptatie
zal verdriet je deprimeren
Zonder acceptatie
zal onzekerheid je angstig maken
Zonder acceptatie
zal ontgoocheling je kwellen
Zonder acceptatie
kan liefde niet liefhebben
Ja zeggen tegen wat je voelt
De eerste stap in geval van lijden (verlies, verdriet, tragedie, ...) is dit lijden voelen in alle cellen van je lichaam.
Als je het voelt, creëer je de gelegenheid je lijden te accepteren, 'ja' te zeggen tegen wat je voelt.
Je maakt er geen mentale verhalen over, maar je voelt het rechtstreeks en je huilt eventueel als dit nodig lijkt.
Je laat het lijden toe er te zijn, in een complete toestand van overgave ten opzichte van wat is.
Maar wat overgave doet, kan je niet volledig in je hoofd uitleggen.
Waarom, waarom, waarom... vraag je je af, maar de overgave komt alleen als je zelfs het vinden van het antwoord op het waarom loslaat!
Het is niet mogelijk te weten: in complete (spirituele) overgave, omarm je de toestand 'niet weten'.
Accepteer dat er diepe pijn is en dat je geen antwoord hebt en ineens komt er een opening. Je vindt ruimte midden in de pijn, een openheid, een enorm gevoel van vrede.
Zo kan lijden een opening zijn naar de spirituele dimensie in haar diepste zin.”
“Zonder acceptatie
zal ergernis je woedend maken
Zonder acceptatie
zal verdriet je deprimeren
Zonder acceptatie
zal onzekerheid je angstig maken
Zonder acceptatie
zal ontgoocheling je kwellen
Zonder acceptatie
kan liefde niet liefhebben
Ja zeggen tegen wat je voelt
De eerste stap in geval van lijden (verlies, verdriet, tragedie, ...) is dit lijden voelen in alle cellen van je lichaam.
Als je het voelt, creëer je de gelegenheid je lijden te accepteren, 'ja' te zeggen tegen wat je voelt.
Je maakt er geen mentale verhalen over, maar je voelt het rechtstreeks en je huilt eventueel als dit nodig lijkt.
Je laat het lijden toe er te zijn, in een complete toestand van overgave ten opzichte van wat is.
Maar wat overgave doet, kan je niet volledig in je hoofd uitleggen.
Waarom, waarom, waarom... vraag je je af, maar de overgave komt alleen als je zelfs het vinden van het antwoord op het waarom loslaat!
Het is niet mogelijk te weten: in complete (spirituele) overgave, omarm je de toestand 'niet weten'.
Accepteer dat er diepe pijn is en dat je geen antwoord hebt en ineens komt er een opening. Je vindt ruimte midden in de pijn, een openheid, een enorm gevoel van vrede.
Zo kan lijden een opening zijn naar de spirituele dimensie in haar diepste zin.
Eckhart Tolle”
“Zonder mijn moeder was ik misschien wel een heel raar kind geworden. Ze bewaakte de rust en regelmaat in het huis. Mijn vader liet geen dag voorbijgaan of hij verzon iets nieuws. De zomerkermis in Beek, zelf pottenbakken in de Preekherengang, de geit van bomma in haar bedstede opsluiten, passanten opwachten achter de Helpoort en 'Boe' roepen. Voor kerst gaf hij me een beeld van een monnik, dat appelsap plaste als je op de kop duwde.”
Source: De Nederlandse maagd