a rocket QUOTES

1 " And one cried wee, wee, wee, all the way—" Jessica breaking down in a giggle as he reaches for the spot along her sweatered flank he knows she can't bear to be tickled in. She hunches, squirming, out of the way as he rolls past, bouncing off the back of the sofa but making a nice recovery, and by now she's ticklish all over, he can grab an ankle, elbow— But a rocket has suddenly struck. A terrific blast quite close beyond the village: the entire fabric of the air, the time, is changed—the casement window blown inward, rebounding with a wood squeak to slam again as all the house still shudders. Their hearts pound. Eardrums brushed taut by the overpressure ring in pain. The invisible train rushes away close over the rooftop..... "

2 " The idea of going to the movies made Hugo remember something Father had once told him about going to the movies when he was just a boy, when the movies were new. Hugo's father had stepped into a dark room, and on a white screen he had seen a rocket fly right into the eye of the man in the moon. Father said he had never experienced anything like it. It had been like seeing his dreams in the middle of the day. "

― Brian Selznick , The Invention of Hugo Cabret

3 " When I applied to graduate school many years ago, I wrote an essay expressing my puzzlement at how a country that could put a man on the moon could still have people sleeping on the streets. Part of that problem is political will; we could take a lot of people off the streets tomorrow if we made it a national priority. But I have also come to realize that NASA had it easy. Rockets conform to the unchanging laws of physics. We know where the moon will be at a given time; we know precisely how fast a spacecraft will enter or exist the earth's orbit. If we get the equations right, the rocket will land where it is supposed to--always. Human beings are more complex than that. A recovering drug addict does not behave as predictably as a rocket in orbit. We don't have a formula for persuading a sixteen-year-old not to drop out of school. But we do have a powerful tool: We know that people seek to make themselves better off, however they may define that. Our best hope for improving the human condition is to understand why we act the way we do and then plan accordingly. Programs, organizations, and systems work better when they get the incentives right. It is like rowing downstream. "

― Charles Wheelan , Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science

4 " There's a way to preach the Bible unbiblically...You can use the Bible as the springboard for all kinds of ideas, can't you? Look around in here and find something that fits your fancy and then launch a rocket off it. People say, 'That was amazing, wasn't it? Remarkable what he got out of that.' Well of course it is because he put it in before he got it out. "

― Alistair Begg

5 " As Stephanie and Lula were going after the bad guys, Lula was making preparations from the trunk of her Firebird. Stephanie looked inside and stopped breathing for a beat. " That's a rocket launcher!" " Yep," Lula said. " It's a big boy. I got it at a yard sale in the projects. "

6 " My hands are in his hair and his arms wrap around my waist tighter. I know what Henry does to me. I’m space bound. A rocket about to blast off. And I want Henry to send me to the moon. "

― Lauren Hammond , He Loves Me...He Loves You Not...

7 " I'm seventeen. Seems like I only blinked and here I am. I'm speeding like a rocket toward death. I'm spiraling toward the end of now and the start of infinity. It's a countdown. But to what? Can't gift wrap eternity. "

8 " The coast redwood is the tallest species of tree on earth. The tallest redwoods today are between 350 and close to 380 feet in height--thirty-five to thirty-eight stories tall. The crown of a tree is its radiant array of limbs and branches, covered with leaves. The crowns of the tallest redwoods can sometimes look like the plume of exhaust from a rocket taking off. "

― Richard Preston

9 " What is pride? A rocket that emulates the stars. "

10 " Time travel used to be thought of as just science fiction, but Einstein's general theory of relativity allows for the possibility that we could warp space-time so much that you could go off in a rocket and return before you set out. "