At Once Quotes & Sayings

A child in its greed for love does not enjoy having to share the affection of its parents with its brothers and sisters; and it notices that the whole of their affection is lavished upon it once more whenever it arouses their anxiety by falling ill. It has now discovered a means of enticing out its parents' love and will make use of that means as soon as it has the necessary psychical material at its disposal for producing an illness. — Sigmund Freud

I wanted to quit and to do this forever, sleep in a bed and in a tent, see what was over the next hill and never see a hill again. All of this all at once, every moment, on the trail or off. — Bill Bryson

But what stuck in her mind was the way Lord Hamlin had looked at her. Thinking of that, her face began to burn once again. — Melanie Dickerson

Biting enemies seems to be acceptable in a surprisingly narrow range of circumstances, or so a ninja shouted at me once — Steve Aylett

During the 1920s New York Yankee owner Jacob Ruppert once described his perfect afternoon at Yankee Stadium. 'It's when the Yankees score eight runs in the first inning,' Ruppert said, 'and then slowly pull away.' — Peter Golenbock

It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual. — Thomas Jefferson

Order is important. In language classes, you'll typically learn words in thematic order because it's a comfortable way to organize classes ("Today, we're going to learn about animals!") and it's a comfortable way to learn ("Today, I learned about animals!"). But there's an unintended consequence of doing this: you get your words mixed up. I learned all of my French numbers and colors at the same time, and I still have problems remembering whether sept is six or seven, or whether jaune is yellow or green. This is borne out by the research: when you learn a bunch of similar words at once, you'll have a harder time remembering which one is which. — Gabriel Wyner

No, take more! What may be sworn by, both divine and human, Seal what I end withal! This double worship, Where [one] part does disdain with cause, the other Insult without all reason; where gentry, title, wisdom, Cannot conclude but by the yea and no Of general ignorance - it must omit Real necessities, and give way the while To unstable slightness. Purpose so barr'd, it follows Nothing is done to purpose. Therefore beseech you - You that will be less fearful than discreet; That love the fundamental part of state More than you doubt the change on't; that prefer A noble life before a long, and wish To jump a body with a dangerous physic That's sure of death without it - at once pluck out The multitudinous tongue; let them not lick The sweet which is their poison. Your dishonor Mangles true judgment, and bereaves the state Of that integrity which should become't; Not having the power to do the good it would, For th' ill which doth control't. — William Shakespeare

I'm from Minnesota! I used to work Knuckleheads at the Mall of America as a stand-up. I spent New Year's there once. I'm not trying to namedrop. — Billy Gardell

What a splendid thing is literature, what a splendid thing! It strengthens and instructs the heart of man. Literature is a sort of picture. It connotes at once passion, expression, fine criticism, good learning, and a document. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

He held me against his body and his upper arm was close to my face, so I turned and bit him. He was so startled he actually released me and I tried to jab him with the knife, but he gripped my wrist.

"Did you bite me?" he asked as he stared at my teeth marks on his bicep.

"Not hard enough. There isn't even blood," I said. Luca's shoulders twitched once, then again. He was fighting laughter. Not the effect I'd intended when I bit him but I had to admit I loved the sound of his deep chuckle.

"I think you've done enough damage for one day," he said. — Cora Reilly

Oh, it doesn't work at all. That's the problem! It's an endless, halting parade of inspections, bribes, and nonsense - but if you're aboard a Texas vessel, you'll find less inconvenience along the way."
"It's because of their guns!" declared Mr. Henderson, once more escaping his reverie, bobbing out of it as if to gasp for air.
"Concise, my love." Mrs. Henderson gave him a smile. "And correct. Texans are heavily armed and often impatient. They don't need to be transporting arms and gunpowder to create a great nuisance for anyone who stops them, so they tend to be stopped ... less often. — Cherie Priest

160 million-plus people call themselves Christians. They go to church once a month at least. That's a lot of people. — David A.R. White

John Lennon at his best despised cheap sentiment and had to learn the hard way that once you've made your mark on history those who can't will be so grateful they'll turn it into a cage for you. — Lester Bangs

Stories are there to be told, and each story changes with the telling. Time changes them. Logic changes them. Grammar changes them. History changes them. Each story is shifted side-ways by each day that unfolds. Nothing ends. The only thing that matters, as Faulkner once put it, is the human heart in conflict with itself. At the heart of all this is the possibility, or desire, to create a piece of art that talks to the human instinct for recovery and joy. — Colum McCann

So much of what I love about poetry lies in the vast possibilities of voice, the spectacular range of idiosyncratic flavors that can be embedded in a particular human voice reporting from the field. One beautiful axis of voice is the one that runs between vulnerability and detachment, between 'It hurts to be alive' and 'I can see a million miles from here.' A good poetic voice can do both at once. — Tony Hoagland

We all want to believe that we can do many things at once and that our attention is infinite, but this is a persistent myth. — Daniel J. Levitin

I burnt for the more active life of the world--for the more exciting toils of a literary career--for the destiny of an artist, author, orator; anything rather than that of a priest: yes, the heart of a politician, of a soldier, of a votary of glory, a lover of renown, a luster after power, beat under my curate's surplice. I considered; my life was so wretched, it must be changed, or I must die. After a season of darkness and struggling, light broke and relief fell: my cramped existence all at once spread out to a plain without bounds--my powers heard a call from heaven to rise, gather their full strength, spread their wings, and mount beyond ken. — Charlotte Bronte

I find it hard to sleep trying to capture so many ideas at once while awake. — Jerome D. Williams

Art keeps its newness because it's at once unforgettable and impossible to remember entirely. Art is too volatile, multiple and evaporative to hold on to. It's more chemical reaction, one you have to re-create each time, than a substance. Art's discoveries are also, almost always, counter to ordinary truths. — Jane Hirshfield

And he absolutely had to find her at once to tell her that he adored her, but the large audience before him separated him from the door, and the notes reaching him through a succession of hands said that she was not available; that she was inaugurating a fire; that she had married an american businessman; that she had become a character in a novel; that she was dead. — Vladimir Nabokov

Charles, a footman who had once worked on his father's farm and who loved animals, appeared and came over to help her prepare dishes of boiled chicken and brown rice for the cats and dogs waiting eagerly at their feet.
When guests were staying, Charles often assisted with the care of her furry brood. Without asking, he set to work, even taking a few moments to gather fresh meat scraps for Aeolus, her wounded hawk, and cut-up apple and beetroots for Poppy, a convalescing rabbit who had an injured leg. He gave her several more apple quarters for the horses, who got jealous if she didn't bring them treats as well.
Once all her cats and dogs were fed, Esme set off for the stables, laden pail in hand, Burr trotting at her heels. She stopped along the way to chat with the gardener and his assistant, who gave her some timothy grass, comfrey and lavender to supplement the hay she regularly fed Poppy. — Tracy Anne Warren

Maybe it's the fact the most of the arts here are produced by world-weary and sophisticated older people and then consumed by younger people who not only consume art but study it for clues on how to be cool, hip - and keep in mind that, for kids and younger people, to be hip and cool is the same as to be admired and accepted and included and so Unalone. Forget so-called peer-pressure. It's more like peer-hunger. No? We enter a spiritual puberty where we snap to the fact that the great transcendant horror is loneliness, excluded encagement in the self. Once we've hit this age, we will now give or take anything, wear any mask, to fit, be part-of, not be Alone, we young. The U.S. arts are our guide to inclusion. A how-to. We are shown how to fashion masks of ennui and jaded irony at a young age where the face is fictile enough to assume the shape of whatever it wears. And then it's stuck there, the weary cynicism that saves us from gooey sentiment and unsophisticated naivete. — David Foster Wallace

If God on the Cross is God shamming a human tragedy, it turns the Passion of Christ into the Farce of Christ. The death of the Son must be real. Father Martin assured me it was. But once a dead God, always a dead God, even resurrected. The Son must have the taste for death forever in His mouth. The Trinity must be tainted by it; there must be a certain stench at the right hand of God the Father. The horror must be real. Why would God wish that upon Himself? Why not leave death to the mortals? Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? Love. That was Father Martin's answer. — Yann Martel

I get offered a World War II movie at least once a week just because I speak German and was born there. I have always stayed away from it because I didn't want to be put into that box. — Diane Kruger

The human sensory system sends the brain about eleven million bits of information each second.9 However, anyone who has ever taken care of a few children who are all trying to talk to you at once can testify that your conscious mind cannot process anywhere near that amount. The actual amount of information we can handle has been estimated to be somewhere between sixteen and fifty bits per second. — Leonard Mlodinow

I went to a party at the Playboy Mansion once. For a Halloween Party. And everyone wasn't in costume, or if they were they were little bunnies or something, and I went as Michael Jackson. — January Jones

Well - I was lucky once, wasn't I?" said Harry, pointing at his scar. "I might get lucky again. — J.K. Rowling

It occurred to her, sadly, and not for the first time, that as you grew older you became busier, and time went faster and faster, the months pushing each other rudely out of the way, and the years slipping off the calendar and into the past. Once, there had been time. Time to stand, or sit, and just look at daffodils. Or to abandon housekeeping, on the spur of the moment, walk out of the back door and up the hill, into the lark-song emptiness of a summer morning. — Rosamunde Pilcher

Can you imagine a demon auction? Serial killer going once ... twice ... sold to the drama queen at the corner. — P.C. Cast

I can remember as a college student writing stories and novels, some of which ended up getting published and some that didn't. It was like my head was going to burst - there were so many things I wanted to write all at once. I had so many ideas, jammed up. It was like they just needed permission to come out. — Stephen King

With that, I hurled the slipper at him, not caring if I caused his decapitation. (I did not.) Marshaling what little dignity I yet possessed, I stomped down the corridor - challenging indeed with one shoe - and around the corner. I lay awake for hours. The prince had no right, not one, to indict me so, and if I had held the slightest hope of the book's assistance, I would have climbed at once to my wizard room for a spell with which to punish him. Death, perhaps, or humiliation. A croaking frog would be nice, particularly a frog that retained Florian's dark eyes. I should keep it in a box and poke it occasionally with a stick; that would be satisfying indeed. — Catherine Gilbert Murdock

At the logic of fashion, such once-popular perversions as pedophilia and sodomy will become derided cliches, as amusing as pottery ducks on suburban walls. — J.G. Ballard

A friend of mankind with shaky moral foundation is a cannibal of mankind, to say nothing of his vainglory; insult the vainglory of one of these numberless friends of mankind, and he is ready at once to set fire to the four corners of the world out of petty vengence — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I would like it if four people did a cartwheel all at once ... so I can make a cart. — Mitch Hedberg

Sophistry, like poison, is at once detected and nauseated, when presented to us in a concentrated form; but a fallacy which, when stated barely in a few sentences, would not deceive a child, may deceive half the world, if diluted in a quarto volume. — Richard Whately

I only got interested in radio once I talked my way into an internship at NPR's headquarters in Washington, D.C. in 1978, never having heard the network on the air. — Ira Glass

I believe you can have whatever you really want in this life, in one form or another, sooner or later. All you have to do is take care of your health and be lucky enough to live for a while. But you can't have it all at once and you can't have it forever. No life has the room for everything in it, not on the same day. — Barbara Sher

He was too many things at once - a boy, a man, and everything in between - and the differing parts of himself seldom came into balance. She found him attractive in that way. Yet the perception saddened her: she herself wasn't too many things, but too few. — Stephen R. Donaldson

Sometimes kids ask how I've been able to write so many books. The answer is simple: one word at a time. Which is another good lesson, I think. You don't have to do everything at once. You don't have to know how every story is going to end. You just have to take that next step, look for that next idea, write that next word. — Andrew Clements

She was a daughter of the Virgin of Montserrat, and she felt instinctively and of course heretically that the Virgin herself was only a symbol of a yet greater sister-mother who was carefree and sorrowful all at once, a goddess who didn't guide you or shield you but only went with you from place to place and added her tangible presence to your own when required. — Helen Oyeyemi

The core of sin is a lack of self-esteem ... Sin is psychological self-abuse ... the most serious sin is one that causes me to say, 'I am unworthy. I may have no claim to divine sonship if you examine me at my worst.' For once a person believes he is an 'unworthy sinner,' it is doubtful if he can really honestly accept the saving grace God offers in Jesus Christ. — Robert H. Schuller

Och, Christ, woman," he hissed. Devouring the space between them in two strides, he cupped her jaw with one big hand, tipped her face up, and claimed her mouth in a kiss. Once, twice, three times. Then he drew back and glared down at her. "I thought you were dead. I couldn't fucking get out of there and I thought of a thousand things I'd done wrong and imagined a million deaths for you. Kiss me, Jessica. Show me you're alive. — Karen Marie Moning

We can't expect everybody to be there for us, all at once. So it's a lucky thing that really, all you need is someone. — Sarah Dessen

How many memories can come through at once before they are just jumbled words and faces mixed together by years of pain? — Rebecca Maizel

Because that's what unfaithfulness is, isn't it? A cancer that's always there in the back of your mind, eating away at the foundations of the relationship. It's happened once, it could happen again, so you're always looking for telltale signs or symptoms to show that it's reappeared ... — Matt Dunn

Everybody stumbles across a golden opportunity at least once in a lifetime. Unfortunately most people just pick themselves up, dust themselves down, and walk away from it. — Winston Churchill

You get the idea. Every business, like a painting, operates according to its own rules. There are many ways to run a successful company. What works once may never work again. What everyone tells you never to do may just work, once. There are no rules. You don't learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over, and it's because you fall over that you learn to save yourself from falling over. It's the greatest thrill in the world and it runs away screaming at the first sight of bullet points. — Richard Branson

The advice of his father came back to
him, never to take your eyes off a
wounded boar: that once you
engaged an animal in the hunt, you must
fight it to the finish, and that when a boar
was wounded, that was when it the most
dangerous animal of all.
That thought nagged at him. — C.S. Pacat

Every time I make a new game, I put all of my effort completely into that game. It's like putting all your effort into a new child that's being born. Once the project is done, I can step back and look at it objectively, which is when I can see a lot of flaws. That's when I start to make a new game that tries to fix some of those flaws. — Hideo Kojima

Le Tub is a Miami oceanside restaurant that uses old bath tubs and toilets as decoration. If you're really lucky, you get a table by the water where you can see the manatees as they swim by. Someone once told me that it was one of Oprah's favorite restaurants, but seriously, Oprah has a lot of favorite things--it all sounds like lies at this point. — Tarryn Fisher

Jack, who apparently always had to be moving in some way, had made up for the missing knife by grabbing a half loaf of French bread and methodically ripping it into tiny pieces.
"What," I said, narrowing my eyes. "Why don't faeries like bread?"
"Hmm?" Jack looked up, then shrugged. "I dunno."
Lend picked up a piece, crumbling it. "My dad said he thought it was because it was the staff of life for people."
"Nasty stuff tastes like mold," Jack said. "I tried a piece once a while ago when I was still trying to force myself to eat normal food so I could stay here. It was like a shock to my whole system." He shuddered at the memory. — Kiersten White

I'd say that that is a challenge, but it also is, again, it's helpful. It's helpful to have the discipline of, okay, I'm doing, I'm doing something that's quite precise over here, working the puppet, and I'm doing something that's very imprecise and creative and unleashed over here, which is the comedy side. And it's kind of nice to allow your brain to be doing those two things at once. — Brian Henson

As long as you want me with you."
"I want me with you," she said at once. She heard the mix-up of her words - me with you - but didn't correct herself. It was exactly what she meant. — Laini Taylor

Sighing, he rubbed his forehead, leaving a smear of black ash. "I've temporally blocked the collective because I can't answer that many calls at once, but pretty soon, I'm going to be entertaining. Lots and lots of irate, angry demons in my tiny little living room. It will be embarrassing. My reputation will be utterly ruined. I don't have enough chairs," he finished nlightly, turning his lip in and chewing on it. (Al) — Kim Harrison

Always preoccupied with his profound researches, the great Newton showed in the ordinary-affairs of life an absence of mind which has become proverbial. It is related that one day, wishing to find the number of seconds necessary for the boiling of an egg, he perceived, after waiting a minute, that he held the egg in his hand, and had placed his seconds watch (an instrument of great value on account of its mathematical precision) to boil!
This absence of mind reminds one of the mathematician Ampere, who one day, as he was going to his course of lectures, noticed a little pebble on the road; he picked it up, and examined with admiration the mottled veins. All at once the lecture which he ought to be attending to returned to his mind; he drew out his watch; perceiving that the hour approached, he hastily doubled his pace, carefully placed the pebble in his pocket, and threw his watch over the parapet of the Pont des Arts. — Camille Flammarion

A tureen of tragedy was best allotted by the spoonful. Only a few patients demanded the whole at once; most needed time to digest. — Paul Kalanithi

In Syria, once, at the head-waters of the Jordan, a camel took charge of my overcoat while the tents were being pitched, and examined it with a critical eye, all over, with as much interest as if he had an idea of getting one made like it; and then, after he was done figuring on it as an article of apparel, he began to contemplate it as an article of diet. He put his foot on it, and lifted one of the sleeves out with his teeth, and chewed and chewed at it, gradually taking it in, and all the while opening and closing his eyes in a kind of religious ecstasy, as if he had never tasted anything as good as — Mark Twain

It is the fear of the past; a fear not merely of the evil in the past, but of the good in the past also. The brain breaks down under the unbearable virtue of mankind. There have been so many flaming faiths that we cannot hold; so many harsh heroisms that we cannot imitate; so many great efforts of monumental building or of military glory which seems to us at once sublime and pathetic. The future is a refuge from the fierce competition of our forefathers. — G.K. Chesterton

I know about an actual murder over a watch, it's in all the newspapers now. If a writer had invented it, the critics and connoisseurs of popular life would have shouted at once that it was incredible; but reading it in the newspapers as a fact, you feel that it is precisely from such facts that you learn about Russian reality. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It is the habit of the unthinking to turn to the illusions of economic magic. These unhappy times call for the building of plans that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Then he looked up, despite all best prior intentions. In four minutes, it would be another hour; a half hour after that was the ten-minute break. Lane Dean imagined himself running around on the break, waving his arms and shouting gibberish and holding ten cigarettes at once in his mouth, like a panpipe. Year after year, a face the same color as your desk. Lord Jesus. Coffee wasn't allowed because of spills on the files, but on the break he'd have a big cup of coffee in each hand while he pictured himself running around the outside grounds, shouting. He knew what he'd really do on the break was sit facing the wall clock in the lounge and, despite prayers and effort, count the seconds tick off until he had to come back and do this again. And again and again and again. — David Foster Wallace

a book is both medic and medicine at once. — Nina George

You don't have to get in or out of a position all at once. Avoid the temptation of wanting to be completely right. — Jack D. Schwager

I think musically, there's always the stuff you're into that you've always been into but every once in a while there's a new band that kind of stokes you out a little, at least for me. — Dusty Redmon

Even to this day it is easier than it ought to be for me to get a rise out of an American by telling him something about himself which is equally true about every human being on the face of the globe. He at once resents this as a disparagement and an assertion on my part that people in other parts of the globe are not like that, and are loftily superior to such weaknesses. — George Bernard Shaw

Look at the children of the land leaving in droves, leaving their own land with bleeding wounds on their bodies and shock on their faces and blood in their hearts and hunger in their stomachs and grief in their footsteps. Leaving their mothers and fathers and children behind, leaving their umbilical cords underneath the soil, leaving the bones of their ancestors in the earth, leaving everything that makes them who and what they are, leaving because it is no longer possible to stay. They will never be the same again because you cannot be the same once you leave behind who and what you are, you just cannot be the same. — NoViolet Bulawayo

Life's a freaking mess ... there's not one truth ever, just a bunch of stories, all going on at once, in our heads, in our hearts, all getting in the way of each other. It's all a beautiful calamitous mess. — Jandy Nelson

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation./He went flying down the river in his boat/with his video camera to his eye, making/a moving picture of the moving river/ ... [At the end of his vacation,]/With a flick of the switch, there it would be./But he would not be in it. He would never be in it. — Wendell Berry

Meditate?" I took my head out from under the pillow, shook dark hair back from my face, and rolled over on my side to look at him. "Excuse me, but the closest I ever got to having a spiritual awakening was dating a yoga instructor. Once. — Rachel Caine

My father once told me that American democracy is a people's democracy at heart, and that it therefore can be as great as the American people, or as fallible. It depends on all of us. But our system is more fragile than we know. To sustain it, we must always cherish the ideals on which it was founded, remain vigilant against the dark forces that threaten it, and actively engage in the process of making it work. — George Takei

My friend Wicker once said to be careful what and how you say what you're really thinking to a woman. After much screwing up in that department with Emma, I've learned it's not what you should hide, but what you say that makes her react the way she does. If I am unable to make myself clear, as I so often do, it's more likely going to go to pot if I try to explain how I really feel. Instead, I rework in my brain what she needs to hear. I don't always nail it, but I'm getting better at it. And it's always the truth even if it isn't how I see it.
Is it deceiving? No. It's being considerate and aware that she is an emotional creature, and that for some crazy reason, craves my attention. I love to make her happy. My jumbled up mess of a mind isn't important in the long run if it just confuses her. So I chose words carefully. When something goes right, I use it over and over again. -Ames — Cyndi Goodgame

What are the unreal things, but the passions that once burned one like fire? What are the incredible things, but the things that one has faithfully believed? What are the improbable things? The things that one has done oneself. No, Ernest; life cheats us with shadows, like a puppet- master. We ask it for pleasure. It gives it to us, with bitterness and disappointment in its train. We come across some noble grief that we think will lend the purple dignity of tragedy to our days, but it passes away from us, and things less noble take its place, and on some grey windy dawn, or odorous eve of silence and of silver, we find ourselves looking with callous wonder, or dull heart of stone, at the tress of gold-flecked hair that we had once so wildly worshipped and so madly kissed. — Oscar Wilde

Ecologist Paul Ehrlich stressed that people who hold opposing opinions need to engage in open discussion with well-reasoned dissent. Positions should be questioned and criticized, not the people who hold them. Personal attacks preclude open discussion because, once someone is put on the defensive, fruitful exchanges are impossible, at least for the moment. — Marc Bekoff

I am going to explain to you why we went to war. Why mankind always does to war. It is not social or political. It is not countries that go to war, but men. It is like salt. Once one has been to war, one has salt for the rest of one's life. Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because it is the one thing that stops women from laughing at them. — John Fowles

If we are to survive the Atomic Age, we must have something to live by, to live on, and to live for. We must stand aside from the world's conspiracy of fear and hate and grasp once more the great monosyllables of life: faith, hope and love. Men must live by these if they live at all under the crushing weight of history. — O. P. Kretzmann

If you try to avoid every instance of peer pressure you will end up without any peers whatsoever, and the trick is to succumb to enough pressure that you do not drive your peers away, but not so much that you end up in a situation in which you are dead or otherwise uncomfortable. This is a difficult trick, and most people never master it, and end up dead or uncomfortable at least once during their lives. — Lemony Snicket

There were friends all over London who would welcome his eagerly to their homes, who would throw open their guest rooms and their fridges, eager to condole and to help. The price of all of those comfortable beds and home-cooked meals, however, would be to sit at kitchen tables, once the clean-pajamaed children were in bed, and relive the filthy final battle with Charlotte, submitting to the outraged sympathy and pity of his friends' girlfriends and wives. To this he preferred grim solitude, a Pot Noodle and a sleeping bag. — Robert Galbraith

Children are like the zombies I once saw in a film at Dad's. We have to do as we're told and obey like our brains have got eaten. — Kate Hamer

There is always the risk: something is good and good and good and good, then all at once it gets awkward. — John Green

Once a week i have to do my radio show, 'A State of Trance', usually on Wednesday night. I try to go running at least three times a week and spend at least a day without turning my laptop on and spend it with my wife and daughter. — Armin Van Buuren

And more than once in the course of time, the same theme reappears: among the mystics of the fifteenth century, it has become the motif of the soul as a skiff, abandoned on the infinite sea of desires, in the sterile field of cares and ignorance, among the mirages of knowledge, amid the unreason of the world - a craft at the mercy of the sea's great madness, unless it throws out a solid anchor, faith, or raises its spiritual sails so that the breath of God may bring it to port. — Michel Foucault

Someone said to me once that a cigarette at the right moment is better than all the ideals in the world. — Erich Maria Remarque

It was dark in the corridor; they were standing near a light. For a minute they looked silently at each other. Razumikhin remembered that minute all his life. Raskolnikov's burning and fixed look seemed to grow more intense every moment, penetrating his soul, his consciousness. All at once Razumikhin gave a start. Something strange seemed to pass between them . . . as if the hint of some idea, something horrible, hideous, flitted by and was suddenly understood on both sides . . . Razumikhin turned pale as a corpse.
"You understand now? — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Artemis grabbed her shoulders, for once abandoning his shell of icy composure. "Holly, Holly, speak to me. Your finger is it okay?"
Holly wiggled her fingers, then curled them into a fist.
"I think so," she said, and whacked Artemis right between the eyes. The surprised boy landed in a snowdrift for the third time that day.
Holly winked at an amazed butler.
"Now we're even," she said.
Commander Root didn't have many treasured memories. But in future days, when things were at their grimmest, he would conjure up this moment and have a quiet chuckle. — Eoin Colfer

Edith's clothes were flung in disarray on the floor beside the bed, the covers of which had been thrown back carelessly; she lay naked and glistening under the light on the white unwrinkled sheet. Her body was lax and wanton in its naked sprawl, and it shone like pale gold. William came nearer the bed. She was fast asleep, but in a trick of the light her slightly opened mouth seemed to shape the soundless words of passion and love. He stood looking at her for a long time. He felt a distant pity and reluctant friendship and familiar respect; and he felt also a weary sadness, for he knew that he would never again be moved as he had once been moved by her presence. The sadness lessened, and he covered her gently, turned out the light, and got in bed beside her. — John Edward Williams

Vicky had once told her that she should not be ashamed of her pubic hair. Pubic hair was what men expected to see on women. Vicky said that there was a young prostitute at the Centre who had no pubic hair & many customers were known to shy off her because they thought that she was diseased. So Phyllis was resigned to displaying her pubic hair to all who wanted to see it.[MMT] — Nicholas Chong

I think you just complimented me," said Jane. "You should take better care next time."
The music had started, the couples had begun a promenade, but Mr. Nobley paused to hold Jane's arm and whisper, "Jane Erstwhile, if I never had to speak with another human being but you, I would die a happy man. I would that these people, the music, the food and foolishness all disappeared and left us alone. I would never tire of looking at you or listening to you." He took a breath. "There. That compliment was on purpose. I swear I will never idly compliment you again."
Jane's mouth was dry. All she could think to say was, "But ... but surely you wouldn't banish all the food."
He considered, then nodded once. "Right. We will keep the food. We will have a picnic."
And he spun her into the middle of the dance. — Shannon Hale

A good idea is something that does not solve just one single problem, but rather can solve multiple problems at once. — Shigeru Miyamoto

we had better do what we have to do at once. — C.S. Lewis

My work at MIT had focused on what we could build in space once we had inexpensive space transportation and industrial facilities in orbit. And this led to various sorts of work in space development. — K. Eric Drexler

The debt immense of endless gratitude, So burthensome, still paying, still to owe; Forgetful what from him I still receivd, And understood not that a grateful mind By owing owes not, but still pays, at once Indebted and dischargd; what burden then? — John Milton

They were not unfortunate girls who, as outcasts or in the belief that they were cast out by society, grieved wholesomely and intensely and, once in a while at times when the heart was too full, ventilated it in hate or forgiveness. No visible change took place in them; they lived in the accustomed context, were respected as always, and yet they were changed, almost unaccountably to themselves and incomprehensibly to others. Their lives were not cracked or broken, as others' were, but were bent into themselves; lost to others, they futilely sought to find themselves. — Soren Kierkegaard

A wedding is allegedly one of the most wondrous experiences in a woman's life. All attending her presence are to make the occasion completely about her. Her beauty in that sliver of time is to be suspended in eternity so that ten years, thirty pounds and two kids later, she may sigh at the princess she once was. — Kenn Bivins

Just one word, infused with naked desperation; half prayer, half enchantment. It felt like a freezing charm on her soul making her his prisoner, yet setting her free all at once. — Genevieve Dewey

A condemned man who, at the hour of death, says or thinks that if the alternative were offered him of existing somewhere, on a height of rock or some narrow elevation, where only his two feet could stand, and round about him the ocean, perpetual gloom, perpetual solitude, perpetual storm, to remain there standing on a yard of surface for a lifetime, a thousand years, eternity! - rather would he live thus than die at once? Only live, live, live! - no matter how, only live! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

You, who only know love when in love, do not ask what it is, nor do you look for it. But when a woman once asked you if you were in love with love itself, you were evasive and escaped by answering: I love you. She persisted: Do you not love love? You said: I love you, because of you. She left you, because you could not be trusted with her absence. Love is not an idea. It is an emotion that can cool down or heat up. It comes and goes. It is an embodied feeling and has five, or more, senses. Sometimes it appears as an angel with delicate wings that can uproot us from the earth. Sometimes it charges at us like a bull, hurls us to the ground, and walks away. At other times it is a storm we only recognize in its devastating aftermath. Sometimes it falls upon us like the night dew when a magical hand milks a wandering cloud. — Mahmoud Darwish

This was puzzling, as the standard textbook of psychiatry at the time stated that incest was extremely rare in the United States, occurring about once in every million women.8 Given that there were then only about one hundred million women living in the United States, I wondered how forty seven, almost half of them, had found their way to my office in the basement of the hospital. Furthermore, the textbook said, "There is little agreement about the role of father-daughter incest as a source of serious subsequent psychopathology." My patients with incest histories were hardly free of "subsequent psychopathology" - they were profoundly depressed, confused, and often engaged in bizarrely self-harmful behaviors, such as cutting themselves with razor blades. The textbook went on to practically endorse incest, explaining that "such incestuous activity diminishes the subject's chance of psychosis and allows for a better adjustment to the external world."9 — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Today we all speak, if not the same tongue, the same universal language. There is no one center, and time has lost its former coherence: East and West, yesterday and tomorrow exist as a confused jumble in each one of us. Different times and different spaces are combined in a here and now that is everywhere at once. — Octavio Paz

It is many years ago and at times I know nothing about her anymore who was once all things to me but all things pass. (The Eleventh Psalm) — Bertolt Brecht