Been Broke Before Quotes & Sayings

... he had never once been frightened of a living one before. They were too fragile, too easily broken and dismantled: They had bones that broke and skin that tore and hearts that gave up with a sigh and rolled over. — Lauren Oliver

My life was such a careful balance, a fragile nexus of work and attention and preparation and planning, like the old vaudeville trick of spinning plates on poles all over a stage, running from one to another to another, not letting any of them fall. I'd been so good at it, the running and the spinning. I'd been getting up before dawn and staying late after school and running and spinning the plates for as long as I could remember. I was getting so tired. I didn't want to run and spin anymore. But I didn't know what would happen, I didn't know who I would be, if one of the plates broke. — Katherine Howe

He broke off his explanation, seeing in his daughter's eyes the exact moment that a child first understands there are limits on what her parents can do, rather than just limits on what they choose to do. He knelt before her in a moment's silence, somewhat less than he had been just seconds before, and Emy a half step closer to the woman she would one day become. — Mark Lawrence

I thought of kissing Astrid under the fire escape. I thought of Norm's rusty microbus and of his father, Cicero, sitting on the busted-down sofa in his old trailer, rolling dope in Zig-Zag papers and telling me if I wanted to get my license first crack out of the basket, I'd better cut my fucking hair. I thought of playing teen dances at the Auburn RolloDrome, and how we never stopped when the inevitable fights broke out between the kids from Edward Little and Lisbon High, or those from Lewiston High and St. Dom's; we just turned it up louder. I thought of how life had been before I realized I was a frog in a pot. I shouted: "One, two, you-know-what-to-do!" We kicked it in. Key of E. All that shit starts in E. — Stephen King

An ache filled my chest, so sharp that I gasped out loud. Was this what a broken heart felt like? Was it possible to die from the pain? I'd always thought the girls at school so dramatic; when they broke up with their boyfriends, they cried and carried on for weeks. I didn't think they needed to throw such a fuss. But I'd never been in love before. — Julie Kagawa

Aidan," ...
He held up his finger. "One second, babe. I gotta finish telling Pesh this story."
"But my water broke."
Without taking his eyes of Pesh, Aidan slid his glass of water over to her. "Here take mine."
If the situation hadn't been dire, Megan would have laughed at how oblivious Aidan was. Pesh leaned forward in his seat. "Um, Aidan, I think-"
He didn't get a chance to finish. Instead, water splashed across the side of Aidan's face. He shot out of his chair before whirling around to Emma. "What the hell, Em?"
"My. Water. Broke," she muttered through gritted teeth.
"Oh shit," he replied. — Katie Ashley

The morning of that day, as Gabriel rose and started out to work, the sky was low and nearly black and the air too thick to breath. Late in the afternoon the wind rose, the skies opened, and the rain came. The rain came down as though once more in Heaven the Lord had been persuaded of the good uses of a flood. It drove before it the bowed wanderer, clapped children into houses, licked with fearful anger against the high, strong wall, and the wall of the lean-to, and the wall of the cabin, beat against the bark and the leaves of trees, trampled the broad grass, and broke the neck of the flower. The world turned dark, forever, everywhere, and windows ran as though their glass panes bore all the tears of eternity, threatening at every instant to shatter inward against this force, uncontrollable, so abruptly visited on the earth. — James Baldwin

When she was six, she and her mother had been shopping for groceries when they'd been hit by a drunk driver. It had killed her mother instantly and put Cat in the hospital for days. When she was finally dismissed, her mother's funeral was over, and she and her father were on their own.

Over the years, she learned to adjust, and she and her father grew closer. Then, just before her thirteenth birthday, and only days before she and her father were planning to leave on vacation, a man with a tattooed face broke into their house, stabbed her father and cut her throat, leaving her unable to scream as she watched him die.

After that, the Texas Social Services system finished the raising of Catherine Dupree, during which time she'd acquired the nickname Cat. — Sharon Sala

Come on. We've just time to find you a doll before the shops close.'
Rose sat up directly. 'But the ribbon broke on my right slipper and Mrs. Stella said I can't go outside until I have new shoes.'
...
He stood, and she looked up at him. She did not hold out her arms, but it seemed he was expected to pick her up.
'Didn't you announce that you don't like to be carried?'
'I make exceptions when I am ill shod.'
The child stared back at Thorn as if there was nothing odd about her speech. He gathered her up into his arms and remarked, 'At least you smell better now.'
He glanced down in time to see cool gray eyes narrow.
'So do you,' she said.
Thorn stared down at her. Had she? Yes, she had. 'That was not a polite comment,' he told her.
She looked off, into the corner of the bedchamber, but her implication was obvious: *he* had been impolite to point out her former odor. — Eloisa James

I was dating my first boyfriend in high school for a long time, and we broke up before prom. I hadn't met anyone else that I really wanted to go with, and my friends have always been amazing. So I went with my friends and got a million photos with them! — Shay Mitchell

As a matter of fact, I've been to Italy many times before I met my husband, which he can't even imagine that I could possibly know anything about Italian food. But, you know, Italian food's really basic, and there's so many different variations on it that what my husband did is he broke it down for me. — Debi Mazar

Shakespeare broke a mold. After about five years of writing, he saw women as women, including the bind they had been put into. No other playwright, writing before Shakespeare or at the same time as Shakespeare, had ever seen women as women. — Tina Packer

Gary didn't get up until 11:30, but I managed to squeeze ten minutes alone with him in the kitchen before Chris drove me home. Asked him how things had gone with Samantha.
'Not entirely successful.'
'Told you so.'
'Might have been better if I hadn't spotted the open balcony door and decided to climb up and sneak in.'
'You idiot Gary. Bet Samantha freaked out.'
'Actually, no, she didn't. But the girl whose flat I broke into did. Those balconies all look the same you know.'
'Oh my God.'
'Yeah she made quite a fuss. Wouldn't let me explain- just ran out screaming and called the police. Thank God Samantha was next door and heard her. She managed to convince the girl I wasn't a vampire or pervert prowler but an upright citizen who'd made an honest mistake.'
'Idiot, you mean.'
Gary grinned. 'She may have used that term. — Liz Rettig

In the late fifties Romney had been a forceful advocate of breaking up GM. That, he believed, would make everyone leaner and more competitive. In 1957 he went before the Kefauver Senate committee on monopolies. Before he testified he was summoned to the Ford headquarters by Henry Ford and Ernie Breech, the chairman of the company, who were nervous about what he was going to say and wanted to get some idea of his thrust. Romney explained what he wanted: the breaking up of GM and perhaps even Ford. "But that would just make the competition tougher," Ford had said. "If you broke up GM the rest of us would suffer." "That's exactly what I mean," Romney had said. "Listen, I think it's tough enough the way it is - it's a damn hard dollar," Ford had answered. — David Halberstam

As a matter of fact, we had already been warned against sliding down the marble banisters, not out of fear that we might break a leg or an arm, for that never worried our parents-which was, I think, why we never broke anything-but because they feared that since we were growing up and gaining weight, we might knock over the busts of ancestors placed by our father on the banisters at the turn of every flight of stairs. Cosimo had, in fact, once brought down a bishop, a great-great-great-grandfather, miter and all; lie was punished, and since then he had learned to brake just before reaching the turn of a flight and jump off within a hair's-breadth of running into a bust. — Italo Calvino

Stephen and the others at the table broke the bread in the baskets before them, and one of the others then prayed about a broken vessel, a perfect sacrifice. Words Linux knew he should have understood, because Stephen had spent their last two sessions explaining what would happen during the communion service. How they followed a pattern that had been set in place at their last meal with the Messiah during the Passover feast, the night before he had been taken from them. Linux knew all these things, yet he was unprepared for what was happening. Not there at the front table, as next the wine was poured and blessed and shared. No, what was happening inside him. — Janette Oke

The evening prayer service began with a sharing of the bread and the wine. An everyday occurrence for most there, but for Jacob, this prayerful remembrance of their Lord's last supper with his disciples held a singular intensity. It had been a long while since he'd had this opportunity. He watched as the elders of their group stood before the table and Josiah again prayed, lifting the bread and the cup in turn as he blessed them, then broke the bread into small pieces for distribution. Jacob thought about the incongruity of the most revered in the group, who normally were the ones being honored and served, to now be carrying the plates of bread and the goblet of wine to each participant. He was reminded of the story he'd heard of Jesus kneeling to wash his disciples' dirty feet. A servant ... kept whispering through his mind as the words of the sacrament were recited. On the night when he was betrayed, Jesus took the cup ... — Davis Bunn

The last man she'd dated said something to her, shortly before they broke up: 'I don't know, maybe I'm boring, but I never really feel like you're there when we're out to dinner. You live in your head. I can't. No room for me in there. I don't know, maybe you'd be more interested in me if I were a book.'

She had hated him at the time, and hated herself a little, but later, looking back, Hutter had decided that even if that particular boyfriend had been a book, he would've been one from the Business & Finance aisle and she would've passed him by and looked for something in SF & Fantasy. — Joe Hill

Simple accident: a zombie-crewed containership from Southern Kath wrecked in a storm. The containership had been hired to transport a horror from beyond the stars, but the horror broke free and twisted a few hundred miles of Kathic coastline into unearthly geometries before the Coast Guard caught it. Resulting market fluctuations broke the Great Squid. Steve, the priest responsible, was promoted after the event, for exceptional skill managing a crisis, — Max Gladstone

I was attached to star in a project that was going to be an unbelievable character piece, to be showcased all over the world. It was everything I had been working toward and had suffered for. I had two months to prep and pretty much bankrupted myself in the process. A week before I was supposed to get on the plane, the whole project fell apart. Not only did it leave me completely broke and out of work, but I felt as if I had been betrayed by acting. Acting is not just something I love but a part of who I am. I was shattered. Thankfully, the love of those around me helped push me forward. — Jonathan Keltz

A lot of the early jazz artists, of course, couldn't even walk through the front door of the hotels and clubs they were playing in and had to enter through back doors and kitchens, and I think Jean felt this was a metaphor for his place in the art world: he had entered through the back door. He broke into the white art world in a way that had never been done before by any black. — Jennifer Clement

Sir Gordon Richards was the most successful jockey - flat or jumps - there's ever been: champion jockey for 26 years. He set a record of 269 winners in the season 55 years before I broke it. That was my greatest achievement. — Tony McCoy

Finally realizing what a broken heart really feels like. I'd thought before that I'd known. When Luke broke up with me by text message, when other people had let me down as a child, it had hurt. A lot. But I'd been wrong about those painful moments. They had bruised my heart, yes. But this right here? This was real pain. This was true heartache. — Elle Casey

There are more serious problems in life than financial ones, and I've had a lot of those. I've been broke before, and will be again. — Willie Nelson

Bowman, too, had been born in a great city, in the French Hospital in Manhattan, in the burning heat of August and very early in the morning when all geniuses are born, as Pearson once told him. There had been an unbreathing stillness, and near dawn faint, distant thunder. It grew slowly louder, then gusts of cooler air before a tremendous storm broke with lightning and sheets of rain, and when it was over, — James Salter

It was hard to understand, and all I knew was that you had to run, run, run without knowing why you were running, but on you went through fields you didn't understand and into woods that made you afraid, over hills without knowing you'd been up and down, and shooting across streams that would have cut the heart out of you had you fallen into them. And the winning post was no end to it, even though crowds might be cheering you in, because on you had to go before you got your breath back, and the only time you stopped really was when you tripped over a tree trunk and broke your neck or fell into a disused well and stayed dead in the darkness forever. — Alan Sillitoe

To paraphrase Hemingway, people go broke slowly and then all at once. We've been slowly going broke for years, but now it's happening all at once as the world's capital markets are demanding action from us, yet Obama assumes we'll just go borrow another cup of sugar from some increasingly impatient neighbor. We cannot knock on anyone's door anymore. And we don't have any time to wait for Washington to start behaving responsibly. We'll be Greece before these D.C. politicians' false promises are over. We must force government to live within its means, just as every business and household does. — Sarah Palin

Sure, she was going to turn eighteen in less than a year. She'd been in the system long enough to know that eighteenth birthdays weren't marked by celebrations. When the checks stopped coming, she'd be on her own. "Aging out" of foster care meant becoming homeless. She'd heard stories of kids ending up in jail and hospital emergency rooms, selling drugs, living on welfare and food stamps. How desperate did a person have to become before they broke the law to survive? For now, things were good, and she didn't want to mess that up. — Ellen Marie Wiseman

Brother I've been right where you are now
And my heart was broke
Cause I never spoke
Those healing words out loud

But I've learned my lesson well
And now every night
Before I close my eyes
I look at my woman and
I ask myself did you

Tell her that you love her
Tell her that you need her
Tell her that you want her to stay
Reassure her with a kiss
She may never know unless you
Show her what your feeling
Tell her you're believing
Even though it's hard to say
'Cause she needs to know you're thinking of her
So open up and tell her that you love her — Lonestar

A lot of guys in the prison think they're bad. Some of them are, but when it comes to being bad in every sense of the word, I have been bad before and I can play the role pretty good. When I killed those people, they didn't exactly stand there and not do anything. I stabbed that guy [Frykowski] fifty-one times in the chest. I stabbed him so many times in the chest that my hand was sinking into it up to my elbow. I stabbed him so hard that the handle of the knife broke off. These people don't know what bad is. I wrote the book on bad and I did it more than once. — Tex Watson

His face churned. That was the point, before he said a word, that he broke her heart. The contortion of those muscles paraded a decision over whether to tell her the truth. Once he finally spoke, Lawrence's opting for the honesty route didn't nearly compensate for the fact that candor had been a choice. For an alternative direction to have beckoned, it was probably well trod. — Lionel Shriver

Long, dark, and lovely she had been, in those days before her mind broke and the parts scattered and she let them go. — Daniel Woodrell

It turned out to be a war which, unfortunately for Comrade Pillai, would end almost before it began. Victory was gifted to him wrapped and beribboned, on a silver tray. Only then, when it was too late, and Paradise Pickles slumped softly to the floor without so much as a murmur or even the pretense of resistance, did Comrade Pillai realize that what he really needed was the process of war more than the outcome of victory. War could have been the stallion that he rode, part of, if not all, the way to the Legislative Assembly, whereas victory left him no better off than when he started out.
He broke the eggs but burned the omelette. — Arundhati Roy

Before either of us knew it, we were in the same room and in each other's arms. I kissed and held my wife for the first time in all these many years. It was a moment I had dreamed about a thousand times. It was as if I were still dreaming. I held her to me for what seemed like an eternity. We were still and silent except for the sound of our hearts. I did not want to let go of her at all, but I broke free and embraced my daughter and then took her child into my lap. It had been twenty-one years since I had even touched my wife's hand. — Nelson Mandela

What will you do if you lose your real estate license?"
"I've been trying to figure that out. I need to have a plan. So far, nothing's been coming to me. I was talking to Manny about it and--" She broke off. "Just so you know, Manny doesn't answer."
"Good thing. If he did, I'd worry about you both."
"I would hope so. Anyway, I don't have a plan yet. I always thought I'd stay in LA, but having been out here has shown me that maybe I'd like something different. Fool's Gold seems like a special place." She smiled. "Think I could get a job rustling cattle?"
"Rustling? That's stealing."
"Oh. I mean taking care of them."
"You'd better learn your terms before you apply. — Susan Mallery

Now, I did know a certain young lady of the 'romantic' generation of not so long ago who, after being mysteriously in love for several years with a certain gentleman whom she could have married at any time without the least difficulty, suddenly broke off their relationship, inventing for herself all manner of insurmountable obstacles, and one stormy night plunged from a high, precipitous cliff into a fairly deep and fast-flowing river, where she perished from her own caprice solely through her attempt to imitate Shakespeare's Ophelia, for, had the precipice, which she had long before singled out and been compulsively drawn to, been less picturesque, and had there been only a prosaically flat bank in its stead, perhaps there would have been no suicide at all. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Once the kiss finally broke he dropped his head to Ty's shoulder, turning his face into Ty's neck, and he clutched him tightly, unwilling to let go. Not just yet. Not until the lonely ache that had been building the past four months faded.
Ty gave a little whuff of surprise when Zane clung to him, but he slowly slid his arms around him and hugged him, resting his chin against Zane's cheek. "You okay?" he asked in a whisper.
Zane slowly nodded, waiting a few heartbeats before admitting, "I am now. — Abigail Roux

You broke me up there in the mountains. You cracked something in my head, I don't know. I have never been obsessed with another person before or after. You just drilled your way in and since then, I've been yours. You got to a place that I didn't know existed ... and all that has changed me, taken the stuff away I thought was true about me. In some weird, weird way, started something that turned me into more than a goodlooking bastard. — Aleksandr Voinov

Did you know we were leaving for Idris?" "Catarina told me she'd been summoned to make a portal. I guessed," Magnus said wryly. "I was a little surprised you hadn't called or texted to tell me you were going away."
"You never answer my calls or texts," said Alec.
"That hasn't stopped you before."
"Everyone gives up eventually," Alec said. "Besides, Jace broke my phone."
Magnus huffed a laughter. "Oh, Alexander."
"What?" alec asked, honestly puzzled.
"you're just
You're so
I really want to kiss you," Magnus said abruptly, and then shook his head. "See this is why I haven't been willing to see you. — Cassandra Clare

I wanted to pull away, remind him that I was a big girl, a highly trained operative, a spy - that I'd been training for this mission my entire life, and I wasn't going to be left on the sidelines. But in the dim space with Zach pressed tightly against me, only one thought came to mind. I kissed him - longer and deeper than I ever had before. The school was not watching us this time. There was nothing playful in the tone. We were just two people kissing as if for the first time, as if it might be the last.
And then I broke away. "So," I asked, as if I got kissed like that all the time (which, believe me, I don't), "where is it you're taking me again?"
"The tombs. — Ally Carter