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Quotes About Tension

Nadashe propped herself up and smiled at her mother. "Hi, Mom," she said. The Countess Nohamapetan slapped her daughter hard across the face. "That's for killing your brother," she said. Then she slapped Nadashe again. "What's that one for?" Nadashe asked. "For getting caught.
~ John Scalzi
You want explanations," Colonel Abel Rigney said to Coloma from behind his desk at Phoenix Station. In a chair in front of the desk, Colonel Liz Egan sat, watching Coloma. "What I want is to walk you out of an airlock," Coloma said, to Rigney. She glanced over to Egan in her chair. "And possibly walk you out after him." She returned her gaze to Rigney. "But for now, an explanation will do.
~ John Scalzi
We're not military," Sharan said. "And I'm sure that will make a huge difference to whoever is attacking the base," Cainen said, and offered the gun to Sharan.
~ John Scalzi
The verses build up the tension, and the choruses release it, letting the joy in. After two choruses, there's usually a bridge, also known as "the middle eight," which is a variation on the verse melody, followed by the final chorus and coda.
~ John Seabrook
In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God. This in my time is the danger. There is great tension in the world, tension toward a breaking point, and men are unhappy and confused. At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?
~ John Steinbeck
In marching, in mobs, in football games, and in war, outlines become vague; real things become unreal and a fog creeps over the mind. Tension and excitement, weariness, movement--all merge in one great gray dream, so that when it is over, it is hard to remember how it was when you killed men or ordered them to be killed. Then other people who were not there tell you what it was like and you say vaguely, yes, I guess that's how it was.
~ John Steinbeck
The women watched the men, watched to see whether the break had come at last. The women stood silently and watched. And where a number of men gathered together, the fear went from their faces, and anger took its place. And the women sighed with relief, for they knew it was all right—the break had not come; and the break would never come as long as fear could turn to wrath.
~ John Steinbeck
About Cal she couldn't decide. He disturbed her sometimes with anger, sometimes with pain, and sometimes with curiosity. He seemed to be in a perpetual contest with her. She didn't know whether he liked her or not, and so she didn't like him. She was relieved when, calling at the Trask house, Cal was not there, to look secretly at her, judge, appraise, consider, and look away when she caught him at it.
~ John Steinbeck
Even Juan laughed then. Everyone laughed. And suddenly the bus was not full of strangers. Some chemical association was formed. Norma laughed hysterically. All the tension of the morning came out in her laughter.
~ John Steinbeck
When two men live together they usually maintain a kind of shabby neatness out of incipient rage at each other. Two men alone are constantly on the verge of fighting, and they know it.
~ John Steinbeck
And the anger began to ferment.
~ John Steinbeck
WHEN TWO MEN LIVE TOGETHER they usually maintain a kind of shabby neatness out of incipient rage at each other.
~ John Steinbeck
Purtiest goddamn country you ever seen, but they ain't nice to you, them folks. They're so scairt an' worried they ain't even nice to each other.
~ John Steinbeck
I like middles. . . It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules.
~ John Updike
And suddenly she was at him, after him with her fists, her struggling weight; he squeezed her against him, regretfully conscious even now, as her pinned fists flailed his shoulders and her face crumpled into contorted weeping and the sharp smell of perfume was scalded from her, that the expression, of serene superiority, of a beautiful secret continually tasted, was still on his face.
~ John Updike
But my main debt, which may not be evident, was to Hemingway; it was he who showed us all how much tension and complexity unalloyed dialogue can convey, and how much poetry lurks in the simplest nouns and predicates.
~ John Updike
Without death, now, there couldn't be life. Health," he said with a little smiling roll of his lower lip, "is an animal condition. Now most of our ill-health comes from two places-the brain and the back. We made two mistakes; one was to stand up and the other was to start thinking. It strains the spine and the nerves. It makes tension and the brain makes the body.
~ John Updike
Piet wondered what barred him from the ranks of those many blessed who believed nothing. Courage, he supposed. His nerve had cracked when his parents died. To break with a faith requires a moment of courage, and courage is a kind of margin within us, and after his parents' swift death Piet had no margin. He lived tight against his skin, and his flattish face wore a look of tension. Also, his European sense of order insisted that he place his children in Christendom.
~ John Updike
It's the truth. It just felt like the whole business was fetching and hauling, all the time trying to hold this mess together she was making all the time.
~ John Updike
He must try to stop swearing; he wonders why he's doing it. To keep them apart, maybe; he feels a dangerous tug drawing him toward this man.
~ John Updike
In the 1970s, after the Damansky Island clashes, a joke began circulating: 'Optimists study English; pessimists study Chinese; and realists learn to use a Kalashnikov.
~ John Vaillant
For a few moments in the evening, then, they talked quietly and casually, as if they were old friends or exhausted enemies.
~ John Williams
Even something as simple as relaxation can be frustratingly elusive if you are unaware of your body. The stress of daily living often produces tension that tends to localize in particular muscle groups, such as the shoulders, the jaw, and the forehead.
~ Jon Kabat-Zinn
There's a lot of conflict and darkness inside everybody's family. We all pretend to outsiders that it's not so but behind locked doors there are usually high emotions running.
~ Salman Rushdie