Come Back Barbara Quotes & Sayings

A slight smile curved the corners of Genevieve's lips as she lay back into the perfumed water. What would it be like to live her days in this exotic setting? To never again have to whistle down a taxi, make a mad rush for the subway or try to eat a sandwich at her desk in between telephone calls? What would it be like to awake when she chose? To sun and swim, to have someone draw her bath and prepare her for the evening to come?

What would it be like to be sent for by a man like Ali Ben Hari, to go silently down the long corridors to his chambers? To have him come to hers at night, when the air was scented with orange blossoms and jasmine? — Barbara Faith

The path to our destination is not always a straight one. We go down the wrong road, we get lost, we turn back. Maybe it doesn't matter which road we embark on. Maybe what matters is that we embark. — Barbara Hall

Still there were times, as Jill whirled through her final preparations, when Emily stood watching her, wondering where the years had gone, wishing them back. — Barbara Delinsky

Being a novelist and being a mother have exactly coincided in my life: the call from my agent saying that I had a contract for my first novel - that was on my answering phone message when I got back from the hospital with my first child. — Barbara Kingsolver

It's the same struggle for each of us, and the same path out: the utterly simple, infinitely wise ultimately defiant act of loving one thing and then another, loving our way back to life ... Maybe being perfectly happy is not really the point. Maybe that is only some modern American dream of the point, while the truer measure of humanity is the distance we must travel in our lives, time and again, "twixt two extremes of passion
joy and grief," as Shakespeare put it. However much I've lost, what remains to me is that I can still speak to name the things I love. And I can look for safety in giving myself away to the world's least losable things. — Barbara Kingsolver

What I wanted from people was simple enough. I wanted them to rush up to me and to each other and say, "Oh my God, what is this? What is happening here?" I wanted them to come pouring out of their houses and cars calling out, "Look at this! Just look at this! Do you see what I see? The strange juice rising in the grass and the trees, the great freely given, unearned beneficence of the sun?" In my fantasy some of them would buttonhole strangers for the first serious conversations of their lives. Others would throw their arms out and their heads back and scream at the sky in alternating terror and ecstasy. Passersby would hug. Tears of recognition and amazement would be shed. It would be the end of loneliness and falsity and the beginning, after all these wasted years, of whatever it is we are supposed to be doing here. And if they didn't want to respond so demonstratively, then all I asked was a wink here and there, a carefully folded note. — Barbara Ehrenreich

I went to Hollywood to test for Martha Ivers and I thought I was going to play the part that Van Heflin played.But they wanted me to play the part of Barbara Stanwyck's husband, so I played that. Then when I finished the movie, I went back to Broadway and did another flop. — Kirk Douglas

U.S. policies restrict feeding cow tissue directly to other cows, but still allow cows to be fed to other animals (like chickens) and the waste from the chickens to be fed back to the cows. — Barbara Kingsolver

I will fight in the United States Senate this year to fund a servicing mission to Hubble by 2008, a mission that would potentially increase Hubble's power and efficiency by a factor of 10 and allow us to look back almost to the beginning of the universe. — Barbara Mikulski

Barbara appraised her with critical eyes. 'Oh my. Well, this is going to need some work.' She went right to Carmen's hips and pulled the unfinished seams open. 'Yes, we'll have to take this way out. I'm not sure I have enough fabric. I'll check when I get back to my office.'
You are a horrible witch, Carmen thought.
She knew she looked absolutely awful in the dress. She was part Bourbon Street whore and part Latina first-communion spectacle. — Ann Brashares

"I always read everything when I was a kid-and I do mean everything, from Nancy Drew to Dickens to my dad's John D. MacDonald-but then I went to regular school and the English teachers started telling me to read 'real' books, so I tried. And you know, I kinda went off reading for a while. I had already been reading literary novels and the classics mixed in with whatever else, but-" She waved a hand. "So I went back to reading whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted to-reading had been my greatest pleasure in all the world. I mean I never really watched all that much television, because we were moving around, never really had solid digs until I was thirteen, so reading was everything. — Barbara O'Neal

I look back on my life like everybody does but not just career. I mean I look back on my life as a whole, so I don't think that I dwell there or anything and in terms of work I hope that there is a lot in front of me. — Barbara Hershey

Why didn't you call?" Taylor asked.
"I did. No one answered." Roo bent to refill her handbag.
Ah. "So how were going to get in the house?"
"I thought I'd just wait for you to come back." She started to tap her foot.
"Why didn't you go home and call a locksmith?" Taylor asked.
Roo glared. "What is this? The Spanish Inquisition?" Then she grinned. "Oh, I've waited years to say that."
Taylor bit back his laugh. — Barbara Elsborg

This household is like a pocketful of coins that jingled together for a time, but now have been slapped on a counter to pay a price. The pocket empties out, the coins venture back into the infinite circulation of currency, separate, invisible, and untraceable. — Barbara Kingsolver

Damned thing, self-consciousness, like a pitiful stray dog tagging you down the road - so hard to shake off. So easy to get back. — Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Bush has her finger on the pulse of America. Im so glad shes back and more compassionate than ever, ... Thats right, of course people just sat around New Orleans, boring, uninspired, soulless New Orleans, and dreamed of someday relocating to the Astrodome. Oh, dear Lord, if only I could leave my unhappy existence and head on up to wonderful Houston and live with my friends side by side in a spacious football stadium, my life would be so much richer and complete. — Sandra Bernhard

Today at the Melchor market, a fantastical sight. A servant girl with a birdcage on her back, full of birds. She wore her blue shawl wrapped around the cage and tied in front to hold it. The willow cage must have been very light because she was not bent over, yet it towered over her head, with turrets like a Japanese pagoda. And full of birds: green and yellow, flapping about like dreams trying to escape from a skull. — Barbara Kingsolver

I feel that I can't do certain things that have sent to me, scripts, because I think that really - I've been June Cleaver for so many years, because we went back, you know, and we did - 20-year hiatus we had - and we went back and made 105 new ones. And so I really feel very strongly that there are certain things I won't do. — Barbara Billingsley

His books distracted him for a while. They were like the aspirins you take when you've got a headache. They kill the pain for two hours and then it comes back. — Barbara Vine

While we watched without comprehension, she moved away to where none of us wanted to follow. Ruth May shrank back through the narrow passage between this brief fabric of light and all the rest of what there is for us: the long waiting. Now she will wait the rest of the time. It will be exactly as long as the time that passed before she was born. — Barbara Kingsolver

Who are we really? Combinations of common chemicals that perform mechanical actions for a few years before crumbling back into the original components? Fresh new souls, drawn at random for some celestial cupboard where God keeps an unending supply?
Or the same soul, immortal and eternal, refurbished and reused through endless lives, by that thrifty Housekeeper? In Her wisdom and benevolence She wipes off the memory slates, as part of the cleaning process, because if we could remember all the things we have experienced in earlier lives, we might object to risking it again. — Barbara Michaels

Art is the antidote that can call us back from the edge of numbness, restoring the ability to feel for another. — Barbara Kingsolver

Hospitality, or flinging wide the door to friends and wayfarers alike, was once important, back in a world without motels or safety nets, where a friend might find his castle burnt down or a wayfarer find bandits on his trail. — Barbara Holland

That," he added before she could, "because someone needs to be around here to buy the food and see to the house and the kids." He patted the air. "I know that, Sarah. I'm the first one to say that your role is as important as mine, it's just that the demands are different." He put a hand on the back of his neck. — Barbara Delinsky

Don't touch," she cautioned as she had before. She pulled her mind back down. "I'm fine. — Barbara Delinsky

Look, Charlie," said Vince leaning back in his chair. "It's real simple. We will be four people
two men and two women
I figure it's better to have two women instead of three men and one woman so she'll have someone she can confide in and all. Women need that kind of thing. Anyway, we'll be four people
friends
housemates
equal partners. We'll be an alliance. We'll be just like family. And we'll help take care of one another. We'll have a nice home, each with our own private bedroom and bathroom, and a nice yard with flowers."
"And maybe a vegetable garden," added Charlie.
"That's it," grinned Vince. — Barbara Casey

He looked up at the rain and closed his eyes, his hands still wrapped around her back. Mattie knew with an acute awareness that she would always remember this moment: both of them nude in the falling twilight of a mountain summer, sated and yet still hungry, Zeke's strong face tipped to received the gift of rain, his broad hands warm on her. — Barbara Samuel

Looking back I can see that there have been no breaks from one departure to the next; I start planning again before we've even arrived back home. — Barbara Hodgson

The difference is an objective phenomenon of soil science; what we call "soil" is a community of living, mostly microscopic organisms in a nutrient matrix. Organic farming, by definition, enhances the soil's living and nonliving components. Modern conventional farming is an efficient reduction of that process that adds back just a few crucial nutrients of the many that are removed each year when biomass is harvested ... Chemicals that sterilize the soil destroy organisms that fight plant diseases, aerate, and manufacture fertility. Recent research has discovered that just adding phosphorus (the P in all "NPK" fertilizers) kills the tiny filaments of fungi that help plants absorb nutrients. — Barbara Kingsolver

When you're stuck sitting in a comfort zone, small problems become magnified. Get out of your comfort zone, touch the edge, and you come back with an appreciation for life. — Barbara Warren

She scrunched herself around the tickling and giggled. It was a heavenly sound. He moved the bunny back, hopped it forward, tickled her again. The giggling was precious, both in its lack of guile and its spontaneity. He was amazed at how easily it had come. — Barbara Delinsky

Sculpture is, in the twentieth century, a wide field of experience, with many facets of symbol and material and individual calligraphy. But in all these varied and exciting extensions of our experience we always come back tot the fact that we are human beings of such and such a size, biologically the same as primitive man, and that it is through drawing and observing, or observing and drawing, that we equate our bodies with our landscape. — Barbara Hepworth

We (the left) have to be used to being a minority - a small minority - for some time to come. The odd thing is that the right even when it is in power, likes to think of itself as an embattled minority against this elite that somehow runs everything. Whereas the left, even when it has no power at all, likes to imagine it somehow represents the majority of people. These are mirror-image delusions. It is important to stick to principles, even when some of them may be unpopular now for one reason or another. For example, there has been a tendency for some progressives to look at the power of the right, and say, "Well, all we can focus on is economic justice issues, because other things, whether they are abortion rights or drug law reform, will be less popular and more divisive". And I think that is wrong approach. There are certain core things we stand for, and these include both economic justice and civil liberties, which you can't back away from. — Barbara Ehrenreich

The difference between the real winners is how long they take to feel sorry for themselves. My winners feel it ... but they come back up and say 'hit me again.' — Barbara Corcoran

This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don't consider it rejected. Consider that you've addressed it 'to the editor who can appreciate my work' and it has simply come back stamped 'Not at this address'. Just keep looking for the right address. — Barbara Kingsolver

In my own worst seasons I've come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window. And then another: my daughter in a yellow dress. And another: the perfect outline of a full, dark sphere behind the crescent moon. Until I learned to be in love with my life again. Like a stroke victim retraining new parts of the brain to grasp lost skills, I have taught myself joy, over and over again(15). — Barbara Kingsolver

I look back at photographs and I remember at the time I thought I was not very attractive. — Barbara Cook

Absence of that knowledge has rendered us a nation of wary label-readers, oddly uneasy in our obligate relationship with the things we eat ... Our words for unhealthy contamination
"soiled" or "dirty"
suggest that if we really knew the number-one ingredient of a garden, we'd all head straight into therapy. I used to take my children's friends out to the garden to warm them up to the idea of eating vegetables, but this strategy sometimes backfired: they'd back away slowly saying, "Oh man, those things touched dirt!" Adults do the same by pretending it all comes from the clean, well-lighted grocery store. We're like petulant teenagers rejecting our mother. We know we came out of her, but ee-ew. — Barbara Kingsolver

Saudade is presented as the key feeling of the Portuguese soul. The word comes from the Latin plural solitates, "solitudes," but its derivation was influenced by the idea and sonority of the Latin salvus, "in good health," "safe." A long tradition that goes back to the origins of Lusophone language, to the thirteenth-century cantiga d'amigo, has repeatedly explored, in literature and philosophy, the special feeling of a people that has always looked beyond its transatlantic horizons. Drawn from a genuine suffering of the soul, saudade became, for philosophical speculation, particularly suitable for expressing the relationship of the human condition to temporality, finitude, and the infinite. — Barbara Cassin

BARBARA: Even if things don't work out with you and Marsha. BILL: Cindy. BARBARA: Cindy. BILL: Right. Even if things don't work out. BARBARA: And I'm never really going to understand why, am I? (Bill struggles ... it seems as if he might say something more, but then BILL: Probably not. (Silence. Bill heads for the door. Barbara watches him go and sobs.) BARBARA: I love you ... I love you ... (He stands for a moment, his back to her. He exits. Barbara stands, alone.) — Tracy Letts

Rarely offstage, rarely on hiatus, Fiddler on the Roof has already been back on Broadway for four revivals, played London's West End four times, and remains among Broadway's longest-running shows ever. — Barbara Isenberg

He rolled the other way and watched the digital display of his alarm ticking seconds off he'd never get back. This is the life we're given. One life. One opportunity to be happy, to make others happy, and I'm letting it slip through my fingers because I'm afraid. — Barbara Elsborg

Although the defects of the Russian Army were notorious, although the Russian winter, not the Russian Army, had turned Napoleon back from Moscow, although it had been defeated on its own soil by the French and British in the Crimea, although the Turks in 1877 had outfought it at the siege of Plevna and only succumbed later to overwhelming numbers, although the Japanese had outfought it in Manchuria, a myth of its invincibility prevailed. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Before that I was a scientist. I did research in population biology. And that's what I always go back to, it helps me to remember that people are not the end of the world, although we may be when it comes to it. We're just one species among millions in this world. — Barbara Kingsolver

In the long run, most of us spend about fifteen minutes total in the entanglements of passion, and the rest of our days looking back on it, humming the tune. — Barbara Kingsolver

You never lose by loving. You always lose by holding back. — Barbara De Angelis

Sometimes writing is pure hell. I'll write something and look at it in a few hours and say, "This is crap. What will I do with my life? I'll never write again." It's a bipolar business, and you bounce back. You become gripped with some new insight that shows the way. — Barbara Ehrenreich

[from an entry by her daughter Camille] American culture doesn't allow much room for slow reflection. I watch the working people who are supposed to be my role models getting pushed to go, go, go and take as little vacation time as possible. And then, often, vacations are full of endless activity too, so you might come back from your "break" feeling exhausted ... Whether you prefer to sit on a rock in a peaceful place, or take a wooden spoon to a simmering pot, it does the body good to quiet down and tune in. — Barbara Kingsolver

There can be no greater spiritual accomplishment than to come through brutal trials and then look back and see that mean times did not render us mean spirits. — Barbara Kingsolver

I'm so lazy as far as liking to get up, go to the office in my pajamas, get dressed about noon. And I hate flying. So I have this really laid-back, good lifestyle, and it's hard to nudge me out of it. — Barbara Park

When you work, you don't have time to do anything stupid. When you work ten hours a day, you forget everything. We have to forget. There is no looking back, only forward." In — Barbara Demick

I look back at that time fondly. It's something I never thought I'd get the chance to do, be in a soap. Working with Barbara Windsor and Steve McFadden - they're legends in their own lifetimes aren't they? — Sophie Thompson

On the day I swore to uphold the Hippocratic oath, the small hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I waited for lightning to strike. Who was I, vowing calmly among all these necktied young men to steal life out of nature's jaws, every old time we got half a chance and a paycheck? ... I could not accept the contract: that every child born human upon this earth comes with a guarantee of perfect health and old age clutched in its small fist. — Barbara Kingsolver

The dog clung to my chest. Without any warning, I started to cry.
Danny put his hand on my back while I sobbed.
"We'll take this dog," he said to the woman.
When everything was settled we got a cab and I cried all the way home. The dog at on my lap, shaking.
"It's okay," I told her. "It's okay. — Lauren Holmes

plants and containers that I know will work in their rooms. Mayer's?" Snorting, she tucked the phone between shoulder and ear; holding the bucket with both hands, she tipped it toward the Ficus benjamina. "Mayer's doesn't do that, but they want to, because their business is static right now. They want me to move right in there and be the centerpiece of their store, and, you know, it might work. I could bring people in, only they won't go any farther than my plants unless the rest of the place is exciting, which right now it is not." When the phone started to slip, she pushed it back up and began on the Ficus lyrata. "They're — Barbara Delinsky

You know what they say, darling. When an older man seeks out younger women, he's virile. When an older woman seeks out younger men, she's desperate. Well, color me desperate, then. Because I want you, Harris Clayton. And I'm a woman who's very good at getting what she wants! Now come back to bed, darling, and let's forget all about everything except the way we feel. — Barbara Taylor Bradford

His lips were practically grazing my nose. His gray eyes were so intense I could feel them reach my soul - if that were possible, anyways. With a smile so devious on his face and in his eyes Xavier whispered, "I can tell that every part of you wants to give in to what I am. The feeling that you feel right now is consuming. I've been there before, Ava. You can't deny everything much longer."
Closing my eyes, and swallowing back every temptation I felt, I backed away from his warmth. I opened my eyes to see his eyes searching my face in pure awe.
"Watch me," I challenged. — Barbara C. Doyle

The good news was that the newspaper he had ordered was right at his door as promised. The bad news was that he had forgotten to buy milk for his breakfast. So he dumped the cereal back into the box, swept the overflow into the sink, and put second best, a bagel, into the toaster while he read the paper. He was barely past the first page when the toaster started to smoke. He pushed up the handle; the bagel stayed down. Smoke continued to curl toward the ceiling, setting off the fire alarm. Swearing broadly, he silenced it by knocking it down with the handle of the mop that had come in so handy the night before. — Barbara Delinsky