Quotes About Tension

They are not naturally fools, it is only that they are caught between two scorpions.

He watches me. It seems that he is waiting. I shift, an infinitesimal movement, towards him. It is like the leap from a waterfall. I do not know, until then, what I am going to do.

I moved straight-backed, as if a great brimming bowl rested in my hands. The dark liquid rippled as I walked, always at the point of overflow, yet never flowing.

I thought of telling him about the quarrel with Pasiphaë, but I did not want her there with us.

There's a thin line between love and hate, and it's easy to cross.

Without missing a beat, Brad pulled her close and Kate found herself at eye level with his shirt pocket.

The previous day and the day yet to come hang in a balance, each waiting for the other to make a move.

Far above in the building, a door slams, muffled voices are heard and there is the sound of feet rapidly descending a staircase. The café seems to listen attentively. The dried glasses on the shelves vibrate against each other, in sympathy with the crashing footsteps. The contracting metal of the cappuccino machine clicks. A drop of water falls from the tap, spreads over the bowl of the sink, then trickles towards the plughole.

Suzy Zeus is tense as stemware, not explosive, just on edge— needs a ten-foot wall around her, or at least a ten-foot hedge, Suzy's straining, teeth to toenails, easing backward on the ledge.

I am besieged by contradiction.

All the while, Everett felt both the threat of disorder and the steady, thrumming promise of having everything he wanted, all at once.

Shit! Those sons a bitches Russians!

The USA and the Soviet Union each had the ability to annihilate the other. Therefore- in theory at least-neither of these growling superpowers would dare attack the other, because to do so would result in its own immolation.

Kennedy was not perfectly sure that Khrushchev was an entirely rational being. He was not absolutely certain that the Soviet Union wouldn't be happy to rule a world that was half toxic ash.

For a time they confronted each other like two mute unspeaking forts.

Everthing is fear in love and war

In spite of the escalation, there was as yet no sense of an impending crisis.

You gotta love the cops. They start the night ready to shoot someone's eyes off and at the same time ready to carry a child with a grandmother's tenderness. Ready to shatter and ready to soothe at the touch of a trigger, a good cop is an amazing animal.

In reality, there is in love a permanent strain of suffering which happiness neutralises, makes potential only, postpones, but which may at any moment become, what it would long since have been had we not obtained what we wanted, excruciating.

rejoicing in a peace which brings only an increase of anxiety,...

In my most desperate moments, I have never conceived of anything more horrible than a law office.

For what can war, but endless war, still breed?

They hate us because we don't even know why they hate us.

Schiffer recoiled: "Oh, Jesus Christ, Taryn, don't give me a heart attack," she said, clutching at her chest. "Remember: no sense of humor. How many times do I have to tell you that: No sense of humor. Humor can get you in all kinds of shit and we've got this won, if we don't get funny.