Quotes About Tension

and with great solemnity, 'I'm glad yer stopped 'em fighting. I'm scared

There was a pause. She said, "I hate you." I nodded. "I know.

Three meters. I felt a fresh adrenaline dump in my torso, my limbs. His partners must have seen his face. Their shoulders tensed, their heads began to turn. Two meters. The guy to my right was closest. He was turning to his left, toward whatever had made his partner start to bug out. I saw the left side of his face as he came around, everything moving slowly through my adrenalized vision.

He stumbled and managed to get out a suppressed pistol, trying at the same time to regain his balance. But his motor skills were suffering from a large and probably insufficiently familiar dose of adrenaline, and the long suppressor made for an equally long draw. He bobbled the gun, and in that second I was on him.

The facility occupied the ground floor of a gray commercial building hemmed in by rusting fire escapes and choked with high-tension wires that clung to the structure's façade like rotting vegetation.

He exchanged a few words with Washio, who looked around and then pointed at me. I had the sudden sense that this was more attention from Murakami than I really wanted. I watched him nudge his two men. The three of them started moving toward me. Adrenaline dumped into my veins. I felt the surge. I looked around casually, searching for a weapon of convenience. There was nothing handy. They walked up and stood in front of me, three abreast, Murakami slightly in front of the other two.

For the first time I saw her lose a little poise. Her head retracted a fraction in a movement that was not quite a flinch, and her eyes dilated in a way that told me she'd just received a little helping of adrenaline.

The clock's second hand swept past the twelve. I unloaded a final flurry of elbow strikes and stepped back. The adrenaline dump was largely depleted, but I still felt tense. Usually a workout helps with that. Not this time.

The second guy moved the gun, trying to track me, the movements overlarge and shaking. Then, maybe because he saw the cool bead I was drawing on him, his nerve broke. He started shooting in a spray-and-pray pattern, his eyes closed, his body hunching forward involuntarily. Pffft. Pffft. Pffft. Small clouds of dust kicked up along the concrete around me, puffing out lazily in my adrenalized slow-motion vision. I heard the sounds of ricochets. Someone screamed.

It was that kind of story. The kind that's like a sneeze which threatens but never quite arrives.

When people begin to lose hope, there's bound to be explosions.

A crazy certainty had arisen in his mind: a hand - or perhaps a claw - was going to swim up from the grayness of the Kindle's screen, grab him by the throat, and yank him in.

gunfight with a Yardie posse.' He

He seemed to need conflicts. His sense of his own uselessness required an outlet.

9mm was ready. But

I am the moment in which explodes the Twentieth Century's great menage à trois between chaos and faith and memory.

My plan was to walk by on my side of the street and not look over her way. This, I felt, was a very clever masculine move: to meet and ultimately seduce through no contact at all. She would be made aware of me as a mysterious figure, someone with no need of her whatsoever. This is compelling to a woman.

The tradition of the commonplace book contains a central tension between order and chaos, between the desire for methodical arrangement, and the desire for surprising new links of association.

PRESSURE COOKER (1679)

The United States is in a tough spot.

This isn't just your mind paying more attention—suddenly your entire body is paying attention. When this happens, it's outside our conscious capabilities. There are no words. Our language becomes that of the river. All the features of the river speak to you and you to them through motion. There is tension, threat, there is joy and release, and overall, a deep, deep sense of flow. You are literally part of the flow of the world.

As Winston Churchill noted, "Always remember, however sure you are that you can easily win, that there would not be a war if the other man did not think he also had a chance.

We see the clash between nationalism and humanism in morbid patriotic slogans like "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" (Sweet and right it is to die for your country) and "Happy those who with a glowing faith in one embrace clasped death and victory."4 Even John F. Kennedy's less gruesome "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country" makes the tension clear.

inequality is generally a better predictor of violence than unemployment.