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Present Tense Quotes

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Present Tense Quotes

“I'm sitting at the bar, rearranging the order of my jokes. I'm under the delusion that I'm having bad shows because of some cosmic misalignment of words, phrases, and ideas. I may as well have cast runes into a spirit bowl, hoping that the collective heart of the audience would open to my necromantic call. Maybe that's how jugglers do it. Those guys never have shitty sets.”

JokesStand UpPresent TenseJugglersCasting RunesPatton OswaltNecromantic ComedySpirit Bowl
Book:Zombie Spaceship Wasteland
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“Several times over the years Kate would tell me how she saw Grady in her dreams. In the dream Kate would say to her, “You can't be here, Grady, you died.” Inevitably as she said that, Grady would disappear, poof, just like that. I tried to explain to her that she needed to accept Grady into her dreams. She needed to give Grady permission to stay. Until she did, Grady would have to honor what Kate believed to be true. When Kate said, “You can’t be here,” Grady could not stay. That’s the way it works. A loyal dog obeys its master, even beyond the grave.”

FaithBeliefRelationshipsDreamsAcceptanceObedienceDogsPetsPresent TensePower Of Dreams
Book:JACK McAFGHAN: Reflections on Life with my Master
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“The condition of the theater is always an accurate measure of the cultural health of a nation. A play always exists in the present tense (if it is a valuable one), and its music -- its special noise -- is always contemporary. The most valuable function of the theater as an art form is to tell us who we are, and the health of the theater is determined by how much of that we want to know.”

IfsKnowsWantArtPlayFormNationsSpecialConditionsFunctionTheaterValuableDeterminedTheatreContemporaryNoiseWho We AreAccurateTensePresent Tense
Book:Stretching My Mind: The Collected Essays of Edward Albee
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“Almost by definition, secularism cannot be a future: it's a present-tense culture that over time disconnects a society from cross-generational purpose. Which is why there are no examples of sustained atheist civilizations. "Atheistic humanism" became inhumanism in the hands of the Fascists and Communists and, in its less malign form in today's European Union, a kind of dehumamism in which a present-tense culture amuses itself to extinction. Post-Christian European culture is already post-cultural and, with its surging Muslim populations, will soon be post-European.”

KindHandsTodayChristianFormPurposeCultureExampleCivilizationCrossesUnionsAtheistHumanismPopulationDefinitionsPostsCommunistExtinctionSecularismTenseFascistsEuropean UnionAtheisticPresent Tense
Author:Mark Steyn
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“For children, childhood is timeless. It is always the present. Everything is in the present tense. Of course, they have memories. Of course, time shifts a little for them and Christmas comes round in the end. But they don't feel it. Today is what they feel, and when they say 'When I grow up,' there is always an edge of disbelief - how could they ever be other than what they are?”

FeelsChildrenLittlesEndsTodayCoursesGrowsMemoriesGrowing UpChildhoodRoundsEdgesTimelessTenseDisbeliefPresent Tense
Author:Ian Mcewan
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“And the first till last alshemist wrote over every square inch of the only foolscap available, his own body, till by its corrosive sublimation one continuous present tense integument slowly unfolded all marryvoising moodmoulded cyclewheeling history.”

FirstsBodyLastsAvailableSquaresInchesTensePresent Tense
Book:FINNEGANS WAKE & EXILES (Complete Edition): Experimental Novel and Play from the Author of Ulysses, Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man & Chamber Music
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“I think everybody came into it with the understanding that they would go through an experience that is literally not by the book, that is not executing the script and then going home, but living and breathing these characters and being in the moment with each other, and improvising and creating a lot of present-tense intensity between characters.”

ThinkingBookMomentsCharacterHomeUnderstandingCreatingScriptsBreathingIntensityTenseGoing HomeImprovisingExecutingPresent Tense
Author:Oren Moverman
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“You don’t want a general houseworker, do you? Or a traveling companion, quiet, refined, speaks fluent French entirely in the present tense? Or an assistant billiard-maker? Or a private librarian? Or a lady car-washer? Because if you do, I should appreciate your giving me a trial at the job. Any minute now, I am going to become one of the Great Unemployed. I am about to leave literature flat on its face. I don’t want to review books any more. It cuts in too much on my reading.”

IfsWantGivingShouldBookJobsFacesReadingLiteratureSpeakToo MuchCuttingMinutesCarQuietAppreciateTrialsFlatsCompanionMakersReviewsLibrarianTenseAssistantsRefinedUnemployedFluentPresent Tense
Book:A month of Saturdays: thirty-one famous pieces by
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“Walking along past the store windows, into which she peers with her usual eagerness, her usual sense that maybe, today, she will discover behind them something that will truly be worth seeing, she feels as if her feet are not on cement at all but on ice. The blade of the skate floats, she knows, on a thin film of water, which it melts by pressure and which freezes behind it. This is the freedom of the present tense, this sliding edge.”

IfsKnowsFeelsTodayPastFilmWaterBehindsSeeingFeetWalkingWindowPressureEdgesStoresIceUsualPeersFloatsBladesTenseFreezeSkatesCementEagernessPresent Tense
Book:Bluebeard's Egg
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“The bowed head, the buried face. She is silent, she will never speak, never forgive, never reach a hand, never leave this frozen present tense. All waits, suspended. Suspended the autumn trees, the autumn sky, anonymous people. A blackbird, poor fool, sings out of season from the willows by the lake. A flight of pigeons over the houses; fragments of freedom, hazard, an anagram made flesh. And somewhere the stinging smell of burning leaves.”

PeopleMadeHandsFacesHouseSpeakWaitingPoorTreeSkyFoolSeasonsForgivingSilentSmellFleshFlightBurningLakesAutumnBuriedFrozenFragmentsTenseHazardsSuspendedPigeonsNever ForgivePresent TenseBlackbirdsAnagrams
Author:John Fowles
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“Trust perfected is prayer perfected. Trust looks to receive the thing asked for and gets it. Trust is not a belief that God can bless or that He will bless, but that He does bless, here and now. Trust always operates in the present tense. Hope looks toward the future. Trust looks to the present. Hope expects. Trust possesses. Trust receives what prayer acquires. So, what prayer needs, at all times, is abiding and abundant trust.”

NeedsLooksDoeBeliefPrayerAll TimeAcquireBlessHere And NowTenseAbidingPresent Tense
Author:Edward McKendree Bounds
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“What libraries give you is all three tenses - the past tense - the present tense in which we live and the future that we can only imagine. These places have teachers who are living and dead and we are lucky to have them. If I sit here and read Aristotle, he is speaking to me across a thousand years - more than a thousand years. That sense that I am in the company of the great greatest people who ever lived is a humbling experience but a liberating experience.”

PeopleIfsGivingYearsPastThreeCompanyTeacherImagineThousandLuckyLibraryThousand YearsLiberatingTenseHumblingPresent TenseHumbling Experiences
Author:Pete Hamill
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