Quotes About Tension

On occasions the war was like a Ping-Pong ball. You could put fancy spin on it, you could make it dance.

His brain had the bends.

So we had some blues, me and Fintan. He said we were merely conducting civilised conversation. But sometimes it was like he didn't know how close he was to getting his head stove in. Or maybe he didn't care. Even so, everything was peaceful more or less. Until the wind came round from the north.

When the first force, social feeling and community expectation, is ignored or affronted, the person concerned will reveal certain aggressive character traits: vanity, ambition, envy, jealousy, playing God, or greed; or nonaggressive traits: withdrawal, anxiety, timidity, or absence of social graces. When any of these forces gains the upper hand, it is usually because of deep-seated feelings of inadequacy. Yet the forces also create an intensity or tension that can give tremendous energy.

Diplomatic exchange combined the worst aspects of explaining things to a toddler and talking with a mother-in-law. It was dull, it was tedious, it was exasperating, and it was necessary.

Hitting an airliner was like having a shoot-out in a grammar school, just more crowded.

Like I keep telling people, the more thinking you do before things get exciting, the less exciting things will be. And they get plenty exciting enough.

Damn, guys, for about three minutes there it was just a little hairy, y'know?

room stood Spector with a gun in his hand, pointed at the studio ceiling. Pang says, "John had his fingers in his ears, going, 'Phil, if you

It's like the Stone Age over there, just sand and rubble and IEDs.

How we shape our understanding of others' lives is determined by what we find memorable in them, and that in turn is determined not by any potentially accurate overview of another's personality but rather by the tension and balance that exist in our daily relationships.

Some families ran their own little version of the Middle East.

The international situation is desperate, as usual.

He was as nervous as a praying mantis at an atheists' picnic...

Family trouble was the worst kind. Some families ran their own little versions of the Middle East.

So nowadays hard-minded men with hard muscles and hard hats are relieved from their jobs

There is an art to the building up of suspense.

A poisoned silence floated through the rooms like a big fishnet that Violet alone slashed through with loud recriminations.

His business was dread. People came to him in dread, whispered in dread, wept and pleaded in dread. And dread was what he counseled.

They did everything but slap each other, and finally they did that. What postponed the inevitable were loves forlorn and a very young girl in too tight clothes tapping on the screen door.

prestressed concrete and steel contained anger, folded it back on itself to become a craving for things rather than vengeance

between 1983 and 2001, mistrustfulness increased markedly in the US, the UK and Ireland—three

She'd had a terrible time with his brothers' wives : seeing her with them was like watching someone pet a cat against its fur.

We humans are destined to live with our feet on the earth and our heads in the heavens, and we can never be at peace because we are pulled both ways.