Brian Behnken > Brian's Quotes

“Most of us knew in our bones that things with the world weren’t right, long before it became a crisis.”
― Pernell Plath Meier, In Our Bones

“You need to allow yourself at least one or two grand extravagances in your life. Not extras, I’m talking big enchilada extravagances. If you have a dream item, one you’ve always wanted—a fancy car, a vacation home, a luxurious trip—if you can afford it, go for it. You need to get it out of your system, love it, and then move on with life.”
― Art Rios, Let's Talk: ...About Making Your Life Exciting, Easier, And Exceptional

“We don't have adoption issues, we have an issue with adoption.”
― Janine Myung-Ja, Adoptionland: From Orphans to Activists

“Time travel was troubling. I did not understand it completely: I only knew that it was possible because I did it all the time without thought, although it could lead to complications. My revered ancestor, after whom Rael’s hill had been named, had spent a long and interesting life travelling backwards and forwards through time, eventually concluding that the human brain could not deal with this process except to start at the beginning, awaiting what followed – the normal way of things.”
― Aaron D. Key, Damon Ich

“Monique bit at the side of lip. “He’s pretty active, I don’t want to impose…”
Tony stood and scooped up the puppy. “No, seriously, I’d love a little company.”
― Kirsten Fullmer, Problems at the Pub

“Isn't it pretty to think so.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“A man can stand up”
― Esther Forbes, Johnny Tremain

“Now at this hour, when the cirrus clouds stretched like crimson ribbons high across the southwest sky, in such a hush that not even a playful eddy dared stir moss or palm fronds, the day died in calm and in beauty.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“However, there is a way to know for certain that Noah’s Flood and the Creation story never happened: by looking at our mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA).  Mitochondria are the “cellular power plants” found in all of our cells and they have their own DNA which is separate from that found in the nucleus of the cell.  In humans, and most other species that mitochondria are found in, the father’s mtDNA normally does not contribute to the child’s mtDNA; the child normally inherits its mtDNA exclusively from its mother.  This means that if no one’s genes have mutated, then we all have the same mtDNA as our brothers and sisters and the same mtDNA as the children of our mother’s sisters, etc. This pattern of inheritance makes it possible to rule out “population bottlenecks” in our species’ history.  A bottleneck is basically a time when the population of a species dwindled to low numbers.  For humans, this means that every person born after a bottleneck can only have the mtDNA or a mutation of the mtDNA of the women who survived the bottleneck. This doesn’t mean that mtDNA can tell us when a bottleneck happened, but it can tell us when one didn’t happen because we know that mtDNA has a rate of approximately one mutation every 3,500 years (Gibbons 1998; Soares et al 2009). So if the human race were actually less than 6,000 years old and/or “everything on earth that breathed died” (Genesis 7:22) less than 6,000 years ago, which would be the case if the story of Adam and the story of Noah’s flood were true respectively, then every person should have the exact same mtDNA except for one or two mutations.  This, however, is not the case as human mtDNA is much more diverse (Endicott et al 2009), so we can know for a fact that the story of Adam and Eve and the story of Noah are fictional.   There”
― Alexander Drake, The Invention of Christianity

“Haunted

Gulp down your wine, old friends of mine,
Roar through the darkness, stamp and sing
And lay ghost hands on everything,
But leave the noonday's warm sunshine
To living lads for mirth and wine.

I met you suddenly down the street,
Strangers assume your phantom faces,
You grin at me from daylight places,
Dead, long dead, I'm ashamed to greet
Dead men down the morning street.”
― Robert Graves

“I love you forever, my baby you'll be”
― Robert N. Munsch, Love You Forever

“The spectre of an absolute menace that requires absolute eradication binds leader and people in a hermetic utopian embrace, and the individual - always an annoyance to totality - ceases to exist.”
― Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families

“One of the things that confuses me is never really knowing when something comes up from my past, whether it really happened that way, or if that was the way it seemed to be at the time, or if I’m inventing it. I’m like a man who’s been half-asleep all his life, trying to find out what he was like before he woke up.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“Don't move," said Sprockett."Mimes don't generally attack unless they are threatened.”
― Jasper Fforde, One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

“God permits suffering. He permits injustice. I know your father can be cruel and selfish at times. But there were tender moments in the beginning. He lives with bitter disappointment. He’s never learned to count his blessings. If you are to rise above your circumstances, you”
― Francine Rivers, Her Mother's Hope

“Punch a man on the nose, kick an old man downstairs, shoot somebody or any old thing like that, that’s my job. But argue with women in love—no thank you!”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“Thoughts -- just mere thoughts -- are as powerful as electric batteries -- as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“While most of us wouldn’t write ourselves a nasty letter, read it, and then feel offended, this is precisely what we do with regard to our thinking. We”
― Richard Carlson, Slowing Down to the Speed of Life: How to Create a more Peaceful, Simpler Life from the Inside Out

“Three times Jan had been called to the colours (the army), but each time had been deferred because of his deplorable physical condition..when every male who could stand halfway erect was being shipped to Verdun to undergo a radical change in posture from the vertical to the eternal horizontal”
― Günter Grass, The Tin Drum

“And as to me, I know nothing else but miracles”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“Truly great men must, I think, experience great sorrow on the earth.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Faith is taking the first step even when you can't see the whole staircase.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Have you ever wondered what a human life is worth? That morning, my brother's was worth a pocket watch.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Between Shades of Gray

“Until the August 1 story about the Dahlberg check, the working relationship between Bernstein and Woodward was more competitive than anything else. Each had worried that the other might walk off with the remainder of the story by himself. If one had gone chasing after a lead at night or on a weekend, the other felt compelled to do the same.

-- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward”
― Carl Bernstein, All the President’s Men

“I have been trying to think clearly about everything and to use all this distance to advantage. And here is what I've discovered. I don't love you, Ishmael.”
― David Guterson

“I thought sooner or later someone would start saying it had gone too far, but it just kept on, and no one said anything. I”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“I'm playing 'chicken' with a kid called 'Robin.' I don't know why he's showing off. I don't know why I'm going along with it. I don't even know where we're going. It could be a robbery. Or prison break. A gang war. Or free donuts at Lenny's. He sees that Bat-signal in the sky and takes off. Like a bird out of Hell. And he just expects me to follow him. And I do.”
― Chuck Dixon, Batgirl: Year One

“There was in the mountains, and perhaps in the world at large, a theory of compensation that held that for everything given something else was immediately and visibly lost. "Well, you've got the smarts even if your cousin did get the looks." Compliments, seductive as flowers, thorny with their opposites: "Yes, you may be smart but you sure are ugly; You may look nice but you didn't get a brain." Compensation; balance in the universe.”
― Kim Edwards, The Memory Keeper's Daughter

“They sat smoking the dead mans dope until the chopper came”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried