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1 " Information about time cannot be imparted in a straightforward way. Like furniture, it has to be tipped and tilted to get it through the door. If the past is a solid oak buffet whose legs must be unscrewed and whose drawers must be removed before, in an altered state, it can be upended into the entryway of our minds, then the future is a king-size waterbed that hardly stands a chance, especially if it needs to be brought up in an elevator.Those billions who persist in perceiving time as the pursuit of the future are continually buying waterbeds that will never make it beyond the front porch or the lobby. And if man's mission is to reside in the fullness of the present, then he's got no space for the waterbed, anyhow, not even if he could lower it through a skylight. "
― Tom Robbins , Skinny Legs and All
2 " I crawled back to bed, knowing I was done for. Hours later, the phone in our room started ringing. It was George. He was not happy." Room 312. Now!" he shouted.Bouldy got up. I tried to pull myself together, splashing my face with water and hauling on my shorts and flip flops. It was a lovely day outside, the sun was scorching hot and there wasn't a cloud in the sky, but it might as well have been a pissing wet morning in St Albans for all I cared. I felt sick to the pit of my stomach as we made the Walk of Death to Room 312, which I knew was Paul and Gus's room.When we walked in, I thought I'd arrived in downtown Baghdad. Water dripped from the ceiling. The board games were in pieces and all the plastic parts were scattered over the floor. The balcony window was wide open and I could see a bed upended by the pool outside. "
3 " By all accounts Rafe's life had been shattered by the loss of his brother Peter. But whereas she turned away from drink when Draven died, Rafe had simply upended a barrel of brandy on his head and hadn't taken that hat off since. "
― Eloisa James , The Taming of the Duke (Essex Sisters, #3)
4 " Our sense of what American English is has upended our relationship to articulateness, our approach to writing, and how (and whether) we impart it to the young, our interest in poetry, and our conception of what it is, and even our response to music and how we judge it. "
― John McWhorter , Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care
5 " Centrally planned economies are upended by out of control population. Their escape valve is eugenics. "
― A.E. Samaan