Ambrosio Quotes & Sayings

She sighed. Ignatius, do you know what the opposite of love is?
Hate, I said.
Despair, Sister said. Despair is the opposite of love. — Charles D'Ambrosio

Ambrosio, learn to know me better. I love you for your virtues: Lose them, and with them you lose my affections. I look upon you as a Saint; Prove to me that you are no more than Man, and I quit you with disgust. — Matthew Gregory Lewis

I am extremely excited to develop and design a brand representative of my life, experiences and style. Working closely with Cherokee will help establish a worldwide presence with best-in-class retailers and category leaders. — Alessandra Ambrosio

My little girl, Anja, is really excited. We had a baby shower yesterday and she took the presents from everyone for me and was telling them, 'No, it's my baby.' — Alessandra Ambrosio

You want to find your self in the flow of time, miraculously relieved of your irrelevance . . . I saw the pursuit of historical beauty, the yearning for those higher essences other people had staked their lives on, as the hope for some kind of voice, a chance to join the chorus. I was mad for relevance, connection, some hint that I was not alone. I started scribbling in notebooks in part just so I'd have an excuse, a reason for sitting where I sat, an alibi for being by myself. — Charles D'Ambrosio

Trying to change someone only makes them cling to their existing behavior with brutish, primal force. — Brian D'Ambrosio

I don't really drink sodas, but when I have popcorn or pizza I need a little. It's the perfect combination. — Alessandra Ambrosio

Mommy. Do you ever wish a book will never end? — Angela D'Ambrosio

It isn't hard to stay in shape. — Alessandra Ambrosio

This again was the curious thing about Ambrosio, his willingness to live fully inside the moment, whatever its virtue or folly, without regard for the future. — Michael Paterniti

As long as you could fall farther you distinguished yourself from the fallen. Loss reinstated possibility, but possibility without hope. And perhaps this explains how all of us blithely — Charles D'Ambrosio

Meanwhile, back in the real world, my first instinct is a sort of stupid ducking motion I've learned from the movies, and I have the sure sense I'm going to be shot in the neck, where I feel particularly exposed and vulnerable. — Charles D'Ambrosio

Professional people make everything look perfect, they make everything that you're wearing look great, if it's in a picture or on the runway. — Alessandra Ambrosio

I like Victoria Beckham - she has really good taste. Also, Natasha Poly, Miranda Kerr, and Alessandra Ambrosio. They know how to dress effortlessly sexy, but still cool. — Ieva Laguna

I'll never forget my little city! I could talk a whole day about it! — Alessandra Ambrosio

You know, I have a kid on my own, and I know how busy it is, the first weeks and the first month. — Alessandra Ambrosio

Take care of yourself, be healthy, and always believe you can be successful in anything you truly want — Alessandra Ambrosio

I try to do yoga once a week. — Alessandra Ambrosio

I speak to my childhood friends almost every day over the Internet. — Alessandra Ambrosio

Boxing begins in illusion and ends in real blood and tears. That's what makes it so beautiful. — Brian D'Ambrosio

One thing that unites triumphant entrepreneurs, whether in Brooklyn, San Francisco or Great Falls, Montana, is strength of character.Individuality is the goal that we all strive to excel at in some way; the notion that we are distinct, special, that there is something teachable about our wisdom, something remarkable about our outlook. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Rome herself was no longer new. She had grown old and decrepit. The republic of Cicero had degenerated into the despotism of Caesar. Tyrant after tyrant had seized power at the price of much bloodshed. Devotion to family, hard work, and frugality had been replaced by an addiction to pleasure and power. A welfare state based on conquest and slave labor bought the loyalty of the mob with free bread and gladiator games. The people were all too ready to trade their liberty for creature comforts. — Marcellino D'Ambrosio

My favourite part ... I guess it's my legs. — Alessandra Ambrosio

We are more intimately bound to one another by our kindred doubts than our brave conclusions. — Charles D'Ambrosio

In the short stories - if I can make a very lumpy contrast - in the short stories I feel like the lives of the people have a kind of prior desperation and a prior need and my longing is for the story and their lives to somehow come together, even if not finally or forever, to face something; and it felt like a lot of the time with the essays I was wading into situations where there was an assumption of finality of understanding, and I felt like I could wade into any understood moment and tear it apart and make it fall apart. — Charles D'Ambrosio

Old and cold. High rates of suicide and prescription drug abuse. Look at the inbred faces at the grocery stores and coffee shops, the exercise-deficient kids, the routinized state workers, the sun-deprived adults and isolated third and fourth generation sad cases who've never experienced a meal outside of Lewis and Clark County. Make no mistake; Helena, Montana is old and cold and the rigid, sick antithesis of living. — Brian D'Ambrosio

I've been tiny since I was four, and I eat whatever I want. — Alessandra Ambrosio

I would like to have a big white wedding and eventually have a family. — Alessandra Ambrosio

In these shallow arroyos
and grease-covered hills,
blowing dust zones,
the Christmas spirit of cotton bales,
fried in butter
and sweeping heat,
life,
spaciously allotted.
Catching our breath,
smiling in silence,
with the lowering sun in our faces. — Brian D'Ambrosio

We shoot our heroes and enjoy peripeteia as a spectacle akin to sport and perhaps harshly disavowing the past protects us from the disappointment of our outsized hopes--who knows, really, but shifts in taste don't fully account for the phenomenon. At any rate, nearly everything urgent and alive becomes doo-wop down the road, at least in this country's pop culture, and along the way a somewhat self-hating irony lays waste not only to the work but to the desires it once carried. It's like we die into adulthood. — Charles D'Ambrosio

Life is calmness with squabbling,
accumulating traditions and self-consciousness.
elaborate meals, medicine, law,
pretty pictures unspoiled,
rocking the cradle and holding the hammer,
impressive skies of gray and blue,
believing in what we can't settle,
the mystery of iniquity,
the absolutely sincere predictions of fools,
lighter moods like these. — Brian D'Ambrosio

I have been lucky enough to work with the world's best designers and top stylists - who have been my mentors. — Alessandra Ambrosio

I've always stressed the value of autonomy for intellectual and moral development. Autonomy provides us with a sphere of discretion which we all require. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Where exactly do you put your hands on somebody who hurts everywhere? — Charles D'Ambrosio

To be a boxer is to be within yourself, inside your thoughts and feelings. — Brian D'Ambrosio

In the summer I wear shorts with a bright top and ankle boots or just sandals. I'll add a nice scarf, maybe a hat, some cool sunglasses. It's all about the accessories. — Alessandra Ambrosio

Really, I think among the many mistakes I've made over my life, one of them was caring so much about the short story. — Charles D'Ambrosio

it's nearly impossible to convey our deepest passions yet damned easy to share what's dullest and worst about ourselves. — Charles D'Ambrosio

Every woman has a different metabolism and different genetics, so rather than compete with one another, concentrate on yourself and be the best you can be. — Alessandra Ambrosio

The stony silence of death,
trapped by the original gravity of our sins,
and the perpetuity of a long, leisurely yawn,
a world where blood and bone no longer matter. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Happiness is a habit,
it's more than fleeting,
more than a disintegrating lozenge. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Short lives,

bouncing harmlessly as a cloth doll on grandma's lap.

Small helpless states,

pretentiousness garbed in the unintelligible,

makers of disposable art,

the zeal to make a scoop unstoppable,

pacified by fresh news,

of scrabbling sexy movements. — Brian D'Ambrosio

I'm not thinking about me that much anymore. Every time I look, I'm looking for my daughter, you know? If I'm in a store, I'm looking at baby clothes. It's so much cuter to find things for her than to find things for me. — Alessandra Ambrosio

And my daughter really likes Justin Bieber, so I think she'll have fun watching him. But I think Rihanna is the perfect match for the Victoria's Secret show because she's really beautiful, she's really sexy, and she's really talented. — Alessandra Ambrosio

Yeah, well, I wanted to be a screenwriter, and guess what? I am one. That's the other tragedy in life. — Charles D'Ambrosio

I've often thought that the unit of measure that best suits prose is the human breath — Charles D'Ambrosio

Ambrosio was yet to learn, that to an heart unacquainted with her, Vice is ever most dangerous when lurking behind the Mask of Virtue. — Matthew Gregory Lewis

I'm a migrant worker picking frozen peas,
and a clodhopper hiding behind a white sheet.
I'm a shootout at Ruby Ridge,
and a freefall of flames.
I am closed for the winter,
and crawling in my playpen.
I am cold,
and quick chatter and beautiful smiles.
I am a man missing a limb,
and lettuce and tomatoes.
I am a palace,
and fresh milk and goat cheese.
I'm the great emptiness among Cubans,
and a job that requires the auditing of truth and lies.
I'm a confounding calm that will shatter fear and complacency,
and a town full of self-defined renegades and recluses.
I'm a public execution,
and a lanky husband waiting by the checkout. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Folks double my age and older often run down a conversation tracking a vanishing world that will, with the passing of their memory, vanish entirely. — Charles D'Ambrosio

Manassa naught,
a padded white envelope
with no return address,
landlocked and antiseptic,
exploited like a gas station.
Beauty
passes through in the briefest of cameos. — Brian D'Ambrosio

On the perfect night there is nothing more transcendent or terrifying than boxing. It's the ultimate representation of the guilty pleasure. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Life,
perhaps less a document than an impression,
conveyed through partial glances,
stream-of-consciousness juxtapositions,
unpredictable rhythms,
a collage of sound,
a conscientious diarist,
a career of blackmail and scandal culminated in murder,
a blind man with a will of iron and a nervous system of gossamer. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Seriously, I like to wear hats so I don't get super tan. You have to protect the face. — Alessandra Ambrosio

Feel good. Once you feel good, you look good, too. — Alessandra Ambrosio

One of the truths about suicide is that it's hardly ever about the future. It's the past the suicide can't face, and although disgrace appears to be the exception, the one instance where suicide seems to be about the future, even in Oedipus, it's her past Jocasta can't accept, once it's come to light. — Charles D'Ambrosio

I have seven different jewels for my piercing. Every day I wear a different one, according to the clothes I am wearing. — Alessandra Ambrosio

The designers usually don't like to say until we're on the runway. Like when I did Prada last year, I couldn't mention doing Prada or even Tweet or take a picture and put it on Twitter saying I was backstage at the Prada show. And Dolce was the same thing. They like to keep a little surprise, I guess, a little secret for everybody. — Alessandra Ambrosio

Endings are thus formally unappealing to me, more than beginning or ending, in life, I enjoy continuing. Continuing is my only focus or concern. — Brian D'Ambrosio

I never trust a man who tucks in his shirt by choice or neglects coffee in favor of tea. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Butterflies,
the embodiment of myth,
the articulation of the past,
first for the elite,
then for the rest of us. — Brian D'Ambrosio

At the same time, Ambrosio had given me a brief glimpse of a different, compelling sort of life, a life in which there seemed to be more time for family and conversation, for stories and food, a life I was desperate to lead now as an antidote to my own. It was okay to squander a day, a week, a year, sitting in that telling room, summoning ghosts, because no one saw it as squandering. No, if you squinted a little bit, maybe what seemed like wasted time was, in fact, true happiness. — Michael Paterniti

...the boy saw faces disinigrate before his eyes, faces that fell to pieces, then disappeared, leaving a hole. — Charles D'Ambrosio

Mornings are cool like a spy,
cool like a rebel,
cool like a rhetorical street fighter,
cool like an unfilled spot where wit and joy once stood,
cool like the man who can make productive use of his demons,
cool like the deciphered eccentricities of good friends,
cool like the later protest-and-psychedelic era. — Brian D'Ambrosio

I love to eat and I love sweets ... like chocolate. But I do work out. — Alessandra Ambrosio

When you're pregnant you just want to be comfortable - but I wear more or less the same as I do when I'm not pregnant: pregnancy denim with normal tops and flat shoes. But when the belly starts to really stick out, I'll want the floaty dresses! — Alessandra Ambrosio

One of my favorite beauty products is Vincent Longo Water Canvas creamy blush. I have it in every color and I've been using it for 5 years and that's all I put on when I leave the house. It looks so natural I just put a little bit on my cheeks to give them some color. — Alessandra Ambrosio

Boxing encompasses the very worst and very best of human nature and its beautiful brutality is a marvelous contradiction for a writer. It conjures up so many irreconcilably antagonistic feelings. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Pay phones,
relics of an almost-vanished landscape,
always a touch of seediness and sadness,
and a sense of transience,
sweaty phones used by men outside maternity wards,
feeding them fistfuls of change. — Brian D'Ambrosio

It's hard to kill yourself by taking Tylenol. You die from liver failure, which takes a long time... — Charles D'Ambrosio

I was inspired to write (Life Continues) to tell people dealing with MS or any other illness that if opening your eyes, or getting out of bed, or holding a spoon, or combing your hair is the daunting Mount Everest you climb today, that is okay. — Carmen Ambrosio

Force, not persuasion, not discussion, is the legitimate instrument for influencing and policing the hockey mind. Fighting in hockey is one of the most magnificent and eloquent displays of refinement in all of sports. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Being suicidal is really tiring. A lot of suicides are so lacking in affect and so lethargic that they aren't able to kill themselves until their mood improves - spring, for that reason, has the highest rate of what people in the business call "completed" suicides. — Charles D'Ambrosio

Believe in yourself. Listen to the photographers you work with, and try to be professional at all time. — Alessandra Ambrosio

She lives in a town of sorry history,
indifferent to ethical perspectives,
apathetic to female attributes,
cargo and trunk liners,
spilled oil in the garage,
telephone poles shaped like liquor bottles,
sustaining burly weather,
cardiac distressing cold,
tobacco and mortality,
lying face-up on the bar's concrete floor,
no one can waste a life
faster than a Montana redneck. — Brian D'Ambrosio

I've always wanted to be a cardiologist. If I have time I want to study Medicine someday. — Alessandra Ambrosio

After you have seasoned your gloves with the blood, sweat and tears of your opponents, all else is anticlimactic. — Brian D'Ambrosio

I'm as vain as everybody else, but if I see a mirror I have to look at myself. — Alessandra Ambrosio

For a man to get married and stay married, he must detach from and disavow the three things that bind him to reality: sex, travel, and near-death experiences. — Brian D'Ambrosio

I have a Brazilian trainer here in New York and we do a Brazilian Butt Lift workout. — Alessandra Ambrosio

Needless to say, I personally don't believe fighting should be banned. I don't understand why a relatively small segment of the hockey world feels obligated to ban extracurricular combat when it's so popular elsewhere in American sports. Additionally, the league shouldn't be trying to ban fighting to save the enforcers from hurting themselves. Fighters realize the risks associated with what they do, and they are bound to accept these risks. — Brian D'Ambrosio

We wake out of our dreams and wonder where the blood in our hands came from. — Charles D'Ambrosio

There is such a quiet desperation and chronic sense of dullness to Helena, Montana, which makes it the most socially grotesque and culturally bitter of any of the capital cities. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Her moral obligation
to keep our hearts entwined.
Her preeminent love,
smelling like life,
in a good way,
familiar like an ancient woodcut,
a private postcard in the midst of a crowd,
in an old T-shirt to soak up the memories,
committed to recycling life.

repairing the nucleus. — Brian D'Ambrosio

With what delight did Ambrosio listen to the declaration of her artless gratitude! The natural grace of her manners, the unequalled sweetness of her voice, her modest vivacity, her unstudied elegance, her expressive countenance, and intelligent eyes united to inspire him with pleasure and admiration: While the solidity and correctness of her remarks received additional beauty from the unaffected simplicity of the language, in which they were conveyed. — Matthew Gregory Lewis

You all have stories, Sandy said. And we have secrets — Charles D'Ambrosio

For example, they recently had a piece on a character
I think his name was Ambrosio D'Urbervilles
whose "design statement" was to stuff an entire apartment from floor to ceiling with dark purple cottonballs. He called it "Portrait of a Dead Camel Dancing on the Roof of a Steambath. — Mark Helprin

her knees, which looked, in the faint blue light, as though they'd been carved by water from a bar of soap. — Charles D'Ambrosio

Russell James asked me to shoot underwater. He tied my feet under the water. I don't know how many feet - maybe five, six meters. He tied me underwater and I had no air. Somebody had a tube, and they were giving me some oxygen, but I couldn't really see anything. Everything was blurry. I'm waiting for the oxygen - that was the craziest thing. — Alessandra Ambrosio

I want the attention, I love the attention. — Alessandra Ambrosio

A good haunted house is about the utter collapse of our accidental differences, the uselessness of class, of gender, of education, of personal history, of all the distinctions we cobble together and call the self. Late enough at night none of this stuff protects you, not from the boogeyman. What's haunted or, more accurately, what's uncovered by terror, is the poor forked thing, and the agon of a haunted house isn't between God and Satan, or the righteous and the sinners, but rather between the self and annihilation. — Charles D'Ambrosio

What kind of damage is done to our ability to love or understand and thus fully judge one another when daily we're encouraged to forget that people are people and view them instead as so much pasteboard, scenery, clutter, generalized instances (of murder, of rape, of embezzlement, etc.)? — Charles D'Ambrosio

I like to dress pretty basic during the day, but with a sophisticated bohemian spin, and sometimes a little rock chic. At night I like to go glamorous. — Alessandra Ambrosio

The lonely, wistful revisionism of memories is as gratingly repetitive as snow and ice in Canada. I avoid them both at all costs - memories and Canada. — Brian D'Ambrosio

I think I'm in better shape now than I was 10 years ago, but it takes a bigger toll - I get back pain! — Alessandra Ambrosio

Boxing is beautiful brutality, and the devil is in the duality. Boxing is a tug of war and you recognize the antithetical feelings that are pulling you from the other end. — Brian D'Ambrosio

I love sunglasses, I have all shapes and colors. — Alessandra Ambrosio

Open your eyes, Ambrosio, and be prudent. Hell is your lot; You are doomed to eternal perdition; Nought lies beyond your grave but a gulph of devouring flames. — Matthew Gregory Lewis

Rum is tonic that clarifies the vision,
and sets things in true perspective. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Charisma is a word that erodes stale on the page. When compared with the tangible, flesh experience it tries to label, it falls short. The only way to understand it, is to meet it. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Alone, you're vastly outnumbered; but in the company of another, by some weird miracle of human math, the odds seem wonderfully improved in your favor. — Charles D'Ambrosio