Everything You Thought You Knew Quotes & Sayings

It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing ... A door like this has cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It's the best possible time of being alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong. — Tom Stoppard

As I would soon learn myself, cleaning up what a parent leaves behind stirs up dust, both literal and metaphorical. It dredges up memories. You feel like you're a kid again, poking around in your parents' closet, only this time there's no chance of getting in trouble, so you don't have to be so sure that everything gets put back exactly where it was before you did your poking around. Still, you hope to find something, or maybe you fear finding something, that will completely change your conception of the parent you thought you knew. — Roz Chast

When I was a child, I thought grown-ups and teachers knew the truth, because they told me they did. It took years for me to discover that the first step in finding out the truth is to begin unlearning almost everything adults had taught me, and to start doing all the things they'd told me NOT to do. Their main pitch was that achievement equaled happiness, when all you had to do was study rock stars, or movie stars, or them, to see that they were mostly miserable. They were all running around in mazes like everyone else. — Anne Lamott

Destiny is real. And she's not mild-mannered. She will come around and hit you in the face and knock you over and before you know what hit you, you're naked- stripped of everything you thought you knew and everything you thought you didn't know- and there you are! A bloody nose, bruises all over you, and naked. And it's the most beautiful thing. — C. JoyBell C.

I mean, i was into their music and everything way before I knew what they looked like, but they had their pictures in the CD insert and when Victoria and I got it, we were both like, "Why, hellooooo there." Plus, they were British. I'm a sucker for cute boys with guitars, as you may have noticed, but throw in a London accent and I'll happily sell my soul without a second thought. — Robin Benway

Charles's conversation was commonplace as a street pavement, and everyone's ideas trooped through it in their everyday garb, without exciting emotion, laughter, or thought. He had never had the curiosity, he said, while he lived at Rouen, to go to the theatre to see the actors from Paris. He could neither swim, nor fence, nor shoot, and one day he could not explain some term of horsemanship to her that she had come across in a novel.
A man, on the contrary, should he not know everything, excel in manifold activities, initiate you into the energies of passion, the refinements of life, all mysteries? But this one taught nothing, knew nothing, wished nothing. He thought her happy; and she resented this easy calm, this serene heaviness, the very happiness she gave him. — Gustave Flaubert

Got nothing out of it. They either knew the lessons and were already living them, or, more commonly, they thought they already knew everything and didn't want to learn. They couldn't see why so many others were benefitting from it. "When one of our senior executives, who was having difficulty adapting, said the story was a waste of time, other people kidded him saying they knew which character he was in the story - meaning the one who learned nothing new and did not change." "What's the story?" Angela asked. "It's called, Who Moved My Cheese?" The group laughed. "I think I like it already," Carlos said. "Would you tell us the story? Maybe we can get something from it." "Sure," Michael replied. "I'd be happy to-it doesn't take long." And so he began: — Spencer Johnson

Valancy was perfectly happy. Some things dawn on you slowly. Some things come by lightning flashes. Valancy had had a lightning flash. She knew quite well now that she loved Barney. Yesterday she had been all her own. Now she was this man's. Yet he had done nothing - said nothing. He had not even looked at her as a woman. But that didn't matter. Nor did it matter what he was or what he had done. She loved him without any reservations. Everything in her went out wholly to him. She had no wish to stifle or disown her love. She seemed to be his so absolutely that thought apart from him - thought in which he did not predominate - was an impossibility. — L.M. Montgomery

Wizards, she thought, when she gained her composure. What good were they if they couldn't tell you how to do stuff, if they were always talking in riddles and saying they knew everything before it even happened? It wasn't very helpful.
If she were a wizard, she'd write reports for people. She'd make sure everything was very clear. She'd write, Looking for a magical sword? No problem. Go to the fifth floor, turn left, open a large wooden chest, et cetera, et cetera. She'd have check boxes. Found your magical sword? Place X here. — Karen Foxlee

Of course I didn't think I'd heard him correctly. Why would he have told me something so important now, so casually, in the middle of a street fair?
Before I could stop myself, I blurted out the first thing I thought.
"Just one?"
The look he gave me was shattering.
Given everything I knew about him, though, I'd expected him to have killed a man.
It was the fact that his having taken a single life had resulted in his banishment to the Underworld for all eternity that I found so astonishing.
"I had no idea," he said, with a dry smile, "that you were so bloodthirsty, Pierce. Should we try to find you one of those pirate costumes? — Meg Cabot

There is the devil at the door. I'm nearly going under, can't help but wonder who am I working for? No one's more enslaved now then the ones who falsely feel they are free. I've come to terms with the fact that nothing is what it seems. This life is an illusion. And everything you thought you knew isn't what it seems. Only truth will set you free. This new world has begun. — Tinashe

Robin didn't like that idea very much-Jules spending time with Adam? "I get jealousy too, you know. You used to be in love with him."

Jules turned his head to look at him. "That was before I knew what love really was". He smiled. "When I met you, Robin, God.... I had to redefine everything. You know, there was this country song my mother really liked. It used to annoy me, I was in my technopop phase, but lately I just... I find myself thinking about the lyrics all the time. That was a river, this is the ocean.... I thought I loved Adam, and I did, but... it wasn't even close to this incredible ocean that I feel for you". — Suzanne Brockmann

She rounded on him. "You wouldn't, you giant ass." To be honest, she didn't understand, either. But that didn't stop her from putting several days' worth of fear and stress on the table. "I'm scared, okay? I'm lost. I don't know where I am, and everyone here looks at me like they want to eat me or torture me. Maybe both. I want to go home, but then I don't want to go home because everything I thought I knew is one big lie. The people I trusted have turned against me, and even my own brother is afraid to help me." She paused to take a breath, fresh fuel for her tirade. "I should hate you, but instead, I'm attracted to you, which is beyond twisted, especially since I know that after I get Neriya back, I'm probably going to die." She dashed away tears with the back of her hand. "So forgive me if I'm a little emotionally unstable right now." She sniffed. "Ass. — Larissa Ione

It wasn't that we didn't know history. Even if you only count the real world, we knew more history than most people. We'd been taught about cavemen and Normans and Tudors. We knew about Greeks and Romans. We knew masses of personal stories about World War II. We even knew quite a lot of family history. It just didn't connect to the landscape. And it was the landscape that formed us, that made us who we were as we grew in it, that affected everything. We thought we were living in a fantasy landscape when actually we were living in a science fictional one. In ignorance, we played our way through what the elves and giants had left us, taking the fairies' possession for ownership. I named the dramroads after places in The Lord of the Rings when I should have recognized that they were from The Chrysalids. — Jo Walton

Together. The fact that one single word could send my heart aflutter was utterly ridiculous. I didn't fall for boys I hardly knew. At least, I hadn't until I met Glate.
The night in the shack, things changed between us. The walls I'd built up once the Sectors were formed? Glate had torn them down, and I knew that Lex could see that by the daggers he kept shooting our way.
Was I in love with Glate? No, though I was sure Lex thought otherwise.
Glate was the stability I sought in a world of discord; being with him made things easier to handle. I wasn't weak, but even I had my breaking point, and when I was ready to break, he was there to pick up all of the pieces. He was there, something I could never say for Lex.
"Thank you," I said after a few moments of silence. "For everything."
"Everyone needs a shoulder to lean on," he said. "I'm more than willing to be that shoulder for you, Taylen. I'm willing to be whatever you need me to be. Just know that. — Nicole Sobon

She loved sinking into her bed on evenings like this, but apparently she shouldn't, because it worried her aunts, who thought she ought to be out dancing. It worried her a little bit, too, because what if they were right, and because sometimes a great loneliness welled up in her and threatened all the dams she built to hold it back. You couldn't cure loneliness by wallowing in it, up above the world, on an island removed from everything. She knew that. But she had such a hard time with all the cures. They seemed rough and brusque and brutal, as if they abused her skin with a pot scrubber ... forcing herself into a mass of people, a stranger among strangers ... But it was much more tempting to curl up with a book under her thick white comforter.
Still, sometimes after she curled up, she regretted her lack of courage and felt bleakly lonely.
It was important to have a really good book. — Laura Florand

I will love you, Meena," he said fiercely, "until the end of time. I will never stop loving you. My life, before I met you, was nothing. Can you understand that? My life was nothing, meant nothing, even if I may not have known it. And then you came along, and suddenly, everything I knew, or thought I knew, was turned upside down. I will never be the same again. How could I be? You have shown me what it is to love, to feel and laugh and, yes, even to feel alive again. So whether you choose to be one with me or not, I will go on loving you, Meena, even after you are a rotting corpse in the ground. But, Meena, I would like to do whatever I can to prevent you from turning into a corpse. I think I mentioned that before. — Meg Cabot

In the end, it doesn't matter, but I wanted you to know; I needed you to know because I read your text to Sarah. You told her I was everything you never thought you could have, and I'm telling you, you're everything I never knew I wanted, but I'm so glad you're here. — Cate Beauman

I thought I knew everything about love and relationships in my 20s, the ignorance of youth is bliss. As you get older, you start to realise that you don't really know anything and life is a great traveling journey. Life is unexpected ... you just never know whats going to happen. — Reese Witherspoon

I knew Kristy was probably exacting
the revenge she thought I
was due, while Delia moved right behind her, making apologies and smoothing
rough edges. Monica was
most likely following her own path, either oblivious or deeply emotionally
invested, depending on what
you believed, while Wes worked the perimeter, always keeping an eye on
everything. There was a whole
other world out there, the Talbots' world, where I didn't belong now, if I ever
had. But it was okay not to
fit in everywhere, as long as you did somewhere. So I picked up my tray, careful
to keep it level, and
pushed through the door to join my friends. — Sarah Dessen

That is, adoration was patient and waiting while love or, if you liked, plain sexual passion banged everything about. It either shouted or thought it knew too much, and it had always left him cold and had not involved his heart. Therefore, if he wanted to get involved now it would be on his own terms and at his own pace. — Bessie Head

"Why are you so nice? It doesn't make sense. I'm not your woman. I'm not your people"
"We're all each other's people. Just like we're all our brothers' keepers. We forget it sometimes. When everything's going to pieces, people can forget. But in the end? We're all in it together ... "
"I used to know this Indian guy ... the thing he said that stuck with me was that people are one here in America. They're all alone. And they don't trust anyone except themselves, and they don't rely on anyone except themselves. He said that was why he thought India would survive all this apocalyptic shit, but America wouldn't. Because here, no knew their neighbors." He laughed at that. "I can still remember his head wagging back and forth, 'No one is knowing their neighbors. — Paolo Bacigalupi

I know you were mad and scared, and I guess I don't blame you. But you were my dream, too, Mia, for a long time. I thought that if I had you, I could do anything. And then when I had you, I knew I had everything. It took you walking away to make me realize that a dream doesn't change even if you can't have it. It just waits. — Kristen Kehoe

I've been thinking a lot about the word "everything." Whenever something horrible happens, you hear people say they "lost everything." They lost their house or their car or their stuff or whatever, and to them it feels like everything. But they have no idea what it's like to lose everything. I thought I knew, but now I realize even I haven't lost everything, because I still have that polka-dot swimsuit in my memory. I still have those ice cream nights and the scorpion that scared Marin and the Barking Bulldogs sweatshirt and the robins-egg-blue nail polish. Somehow having those things makes the other things matter less.
I'm wondering if it's even possible to lose "everything" or if you just have to keep redefining what "everything" is. — Jennifer Brown

In college, I had a course in Latin, and one day the word "divorce" came up. I always figured it came from some root that meant "divide." In truth, it comes from "divertere," which means "to divert."
I believe that. All divorce does is divert you, taking you away from everything you thought you knew and everything you thought you wanted and steering you into all kinds of other stuff, like discussions about your mother's girdle and whether she should marry someone else. — Mitch Albom

I don't know. We have everything we need to be happy, but we're not happy. Something's missing. I looked around. The only thing I positively knew was gone was the books I'd burned in ten or twelve years. So I thought books might help."
"You're a hopeless romantic," said Faber. "It would be funny if it were not serious. It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the "parlour families" today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not. No, no, it's not books at all you're looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. — Ray Bradbury

And everything I thought I knew - you made me trade it all for you...but, frankly, you're not worth it. — Phar West Nagle

You mean I might end up like you one day?" I asked, alarmed at the thought of sounding so serious and stuffy.
"You might," Mr Crepsley said, "though I would not bet on it. Seba commanded my utmost respect, so I tried hard to copy what he did. You, on the other hand, seem to be determined to do the opposite of everything I say."
"I'm not that bad," I grinned, but there was some grain of truth in his words. I'd always been stubborn. I admired Mr Crepsley more than he knew, but hated the idea of looking like a pushover who did everything he was told. Sometimes I disobeyed the vampire just so he wouldn't think I was paying attention to what he said! — Darren Shan

As soon as I knew that the bullet had gone clean through my neck I took it for granted that I was done for. I had never heard of a man or an animal getting a bullet through the middle of the neck and surviving it. The blood was dribbling out of the corner of my mouth. 'The artery's gone,' I thought. I wondered how long you last when your carotid artery is cut; not many minutes, presumably. Everything was very blurry. There must have been about two minutes during which I assumed that I was killed. And that too was interesting - I mean it is interesting to know what your thoughts would be at such a time. My first thought, conventionally enough, was for my wife. My second was a violent resentment at having to leave this world which, when all is said and done, suits me so well. I had time to feel very vividly. The stupid mischance infuriated me. The meaninglessness of it! — George Orwell

Here I was with Barrons dead. Again.
I knew he wasn't really dead, or at least he wouldn't be for long, but my grief was too fresh and my emotions too complicated.
"How long until he - " I broke off, horrified to hear the catch of a sob in my voice.
"Why do you give a fuck?"
"I don't, I mean, I just - shit!" I turned and beat at the wall with my fists. I didn't care that my parents could hear the dull thud or that the wall shuddered beneath my blows. I didn't care what Lor thought of me. I hated Barrons being dead. Hated it. Beyond reason. Beyond my understanding.
I punched until Lor caught my bloody fists and pulled me away.
"How long?" I demanded. "I want to know! Answer me or else!"
He grinned faintly. "What, you gonna feed me bloody runes?"
I scowled. "Do you guys tell each other everything?"
"Not everything. Pri-ya sounded pretty fucking fascinating to me. Never did get all the details. — Karen Marie Moning

Every web began with a single thread that connected everything. He thought about the spider as patient and persistent, picking its way along delicate threads around the world. And he knew well what happened when you tried to forget about that connection or try to inflict your own will too much. You just got tangled in the spiderweb. He'd had his years of fighting the world, and that had landed him in juvie and back to drinking. You think you're punching at the world but all you're doing is knocking yourself out. — Lynn Lipinski

Have you ever stopped to think that maybe you were wrong? Maybe, you only saw your point of view and you never once put yourself in the other person's shoes. Maybe, walking away from the senseless drama and spiteful criticism isn't the best thing to do. Maybe, for just once in your life you could wear another person's confusion, pain or misunderstanding. Maybe, your future doesn't require explaining yourself or offering an explanation for your indifference, but your character and reputation does. What if one day you find out that you didn't have all the information you thought you did? What if you find out that your presence was needed for healing? What if you only knew half of it and the other half was just your fear and anger translating everything you experienced? What if you were wrong? What if the same thing happened to you? — Shannon L. Alder

Hunger can change everything you ever thought you knew about yourself. — Suraj Sharma

The light. The light is so bright that all that remains is you and the darkness. You can feel the audience breathing. It's like holding a gun or standing on a precipice and knowing you must jump. It feels slow and fast. It's like dying and being born and fucking and crying. It's like falling in love and being utterly alone with God; you taste your own mouth and feel your own skin and I knew I was alive and I knew who I was and that that wasn't who I'd been up till then. I'd never been so far away but I knew I was home. "I know everything," I thought. — Anonymous

I know now that everything after the accident was merely a tactic to indulge in escapism and self-delusion. When you are hit by a streetcar that almost smashes you to a pulp, when you experience your own end...there is no recovery, only temporary respite, she thought.

Pain made me aware of my body. My body made me aware of deterioration and death. That awareness made me old. My death sentence may have been deferred, but I now had to live with a twofold realization. Not only was I going to die - there was nothing unusual about that except that I was made to realize it at a tender age - but I knew exactly what that meant. Because I had already been through it. Unlike other condemned people for whom death is an abstraction because they have no idea what really awaits them, my stay of death came with a constant reminder, the presence of pain. — Slavenka Drakulic

Alec pulled his knees up to his chest and looked thoughtfully at Jace. "I know," he said. "I'm not jealous. I always knew, from the first, that everyone thought you were better than me. My dad thought it. The Clave thought it. Izzy and Max looked up to you as the great warrior they wanted to be like. But the day you asked me to be your parabatai, I knew you meant that you trusted me enough to ask me to help you. You were telling me that you weren't this lone and self-sufficient warrior able to do everything alone. You needed me. So I realized that there was one person who didn't assume you were better than me. You. — Cassandra Clare

To change, it takes a decision based on faith, faith takes forgetting everything you thought you knew. — Shannon Leto

Zelda was very beautiful and was tanned a lovely gold colour and her hair was a beautiful dark gold and she was very friendly. Her hawk's eyes were clear and calm. I knew everything was all right and was going to turn out well in the end when she leaned forward and said to me, telling me her great secret, 'Ernest, don't you think Al Jolson is greater than Jesus?'
Nobody thought anything of it at the time. It was only Zelda's secret that she shared with me, as a hawk might share something with a man. But hawks do not share. Scott did not write anything any more that was good until after he knew that she was insane. — Ernest Hemingway,

People change. I mean you barely know who you are when you enter, and you spend that time figuring out what you want from life, and who you want in it. The next thing you know, the people you always thought would be there, aren't. A nd the person you thought you could trust with everything, isn't the person you ever knew at all. — Rebecca Donovan

I think when you start to do well and get your confidence back, everything becomes more fun. When you're playing with not your full capacity of confidence, I think things get a little tough. I knew I could be doing better than what I was doing. Even though I was ranked 5 or 4 or whatever it was, I wanted to get back to the level I thought I could play at. — Lindsay Davenport

My mom,Sarah used to tell me that you could be anywhere when you life begins but you wouldn't know it until it changed everything you thought you knew — Shey Stahl

I thought everything I knew about you might have been a lie, but since meeting him and your parents, I've realized that the parts of you I knew weren't untrue; they were only part-truths. There were lots of things about you that I didn't know, and learning those things has actually been comforting in a way. They make me feel closer to you. And I can see that actually there's one real truth, and that is you loved me enough to do anything it took to protect me. I think that's something I've known my whole life. I'm thankful for it. — Jennifer Brown

It's the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew was wrong. The — James Gleick

Just when you thought you knew everything about someone, they had to go one better. — Lindsey Kelk

There's blood pounding through the Duke's head.
Knighthood is glory, he's thinking, not just grace in the saddle and at swordplay, but courage enough to give your life to defend what you hold dear. A noble reward, for noble men. A badge of honour.
He'd never ennoble a merchant. Even Chaucer, whom he admires, but knows to be a fool on a battlefield. Not Chaucer's fault, that; just his merchant blood.
Knighthood's not for the likes of these people; for Madame Perrers' brood. He thought she knew her place. But she's overreached herself; she's as grasping as the rest of them, after all. Do these people think they can buy or steal everything? — Vanora Bennett

He kissed me again, farther up my neck, and I pushed him back against the wall.
My mind searched for the logical thought, a rational life raft before I drowned in wanting to hiss him. I managed, "We've only met a few days ago. We don't know each other."
Luke released me. "How long does it take to know someone?"
I didn't know. "A month? A few months?" It sounded stupid to quantify it, especially when I didn't want to believe my own reasoning. But I couldn't just go kissing someone I knew nothing about
it went against everything I'd ever been told. So why was it so hard to say no?
He took my fingers, playing with them in between his own. "I'll wait." He looked so good in the half-light under the trees, his light eyes nearly glowing against his shadowed skin. It was useless.
"I don't want you to." I whispered the words, and before I'd even finished saying them, his mouth was on mine and I was melting under his lips. — Maggie Stiefvater

The next thing you know, the people you always thought would be there, aren't. And the person you thought you could trust with everything, isn't the person you knew at all. — Rebecca Donovan

Sometimes you find that one person, and you just know. And even if you don't love them right away, you know you will. It's just a matter of time. Because no one you've ever known has come close to making you feel the way they do. It keeps you up at night and drives you fucking crazy, but you pray to God the feeling never goes away no matter how much it's killing you." Sloane stared at him. "Wow." "Shut up," Ash mumbled, looking embarrassed. Like he hadn't realized what he'd said until then. "I've never heard you talk like this." He thought he knew everything there was to know about his best friend. Apparently he was wrong. Ash shrugged. "Yeah, well, almost dying makes you think." "About Cael?" Sloane asked quietly. Ash let out a weary sigh, his gaze falling to his hands. "Like I don't think about him every other day." "What are you going to do about him?" "I don't know. I really thought he'd give me some time, but he's going out for drinks with Seb this Friday." "And? — Charlie Cochet

You had to stay awake married to him [Humphrey Bogart]. Every time I thought I could relax and do everything I wanted, he'd buck. There was no way to predict his reactions, no matter how well I knew him. As he'd said before our wedding, he expected to be happily married and stay that way, but he never expected to settle down. He liked keeping people off balance. He was good for me
I could never be quite sure what he would do. — Lauren Bacall

His statement flew in the face of everything I knew. He thought of relationships as finite, like a pie that could only be cut into so many pieces. Take a piece away, and there was that much less for him. I knew, however, that relationships are more like muscles - the more you work them, the stronger they become. — Keith Ferrazzi

The world ain't so bad, when you got Japhies, I thought, and felt glad. All the aching muscles and the hunger in my belly were bad enough, and the surroundant dark rocks, the fact that there is nothing to soothe you with kisses and soft words, but just to be sitting there meditating and praying for the world with another earnest young man
'twere good enough to have been born just to die, as we all are. Something will come of it in the Milky Ways of eternity stretching in front of all our phantom unjaundiced eyes, friends. I felt like telling Japhy everything I thought but I knew it didn't matter and moreover he knew it anyway and silence is the golden mountain. — Jack Kerouac

Everything move ... you wonder how it all knows where to go. Einstein wondered how birds knew where to migrate to. He thought they might follow lines of light in the sky. He saw everything as lines of light. That's how he was built. So we don't know how he moved, either. Any more than the birds. — Geoff Ryman

I hate it, all of this," I screamed, my voice breaking. "I even hate him, even him." A huge sob came up from my chest.
And I did, right then. I hated you for everything; for making me feel so helpless everywhere I went, for making me lose control. I hated you for all the emotions in my head, for the confusion ... for the way I was suddenly doubting everything. I hated you for turning my life upside down and then smashing it into shards. I hated you for making me stand with a whirring fan in my hand, screaming at my mum.
But I hated you for something else, too. Right then, and at every moment since you'd left me, all I could think about was you. I wanted you in that apartment. I wanted your arms around me, your face close to mine. I wanted your smell. And I knew I couldn't-shouldn't-have it. That's what I hated most. The uncertainty of you. You'd kidnapped me, put my life in danger ... but I loved you, too. Or thought I did. None of it made sense. — Lucy Christopher

Life is funny. You start out with limitless potential, but time is always shaving away the possibilities. Every choice you make is the choice not to do a thousand other things. What's important, when all is said and done, is that you made a difference. Your choices, and everything undone, have to mean something. Otherwise, what was the point? I'm lucky that way. My path was already there. I had only to walk it. I often thought even if no one knew of the good I had done with my life, it didn't matter. That it was done is all that counts in the end. But then I died. And I hadn't gotten to do any of it yet. — Brian Clevinger

What if you could take everything you were looking for in a person and whisper it into someone's ear, and they brought that person to you? And then, when you saw them for the first time, even if you didn't know they were the one for you, you suddenly knew it anyway?"
His finger traced my eyebrows, my cheekbones, as he thought a moment.
"What if your heart stopped when you saw that person, and only after that did you realize that they truly were everything you ever wanted? — Delilah S. Dawson

Clearing your head of everything you thought you knew, even your most
cherished ideas, will give you the mental space to be educated by your present experience
the best school
of all. You will develop your own strategic muscles instead of depending on other people's theories and books. — Robert Greene

When the world you're used to, that same old world you thought you knew so well, turns itself suddenly upside down, what can you do? Everything comes tumbling off the shelves of your expectations; nothing fits anymore. — Natalie Babbitt

Love and death are everything, Jenny. Danger is the best part of the game. I thought you knew that.
-Julian — L.J.Smith

Everything has changed since I met you. I thought I knew who I was, what I was, but being with you, I've learned about the kind of man I want to be. — Jane Harvey-Berrick

It was easy to find things she would like. Our taste was the same, it had been from the first. It would be impossible to live with someone otherwise. I've always thought it was the most important single thing, though people may not realize it. Perhaps it's transmitted to them in the way someone dresses or, for that matter, undresses, but taste is a thing no one is born with, it's learned, and at a certain point it can't be altered. We sometimes talked about that, what could and couldn't be altered. People were always saying something had completely changed them, some experience or book or man, but if you knew how they had been before, nothing much really had changed. When you found someone who was tremendously appealing but not quite perfect, you might believe you could change them after marriage, not everything, just a few things, but in truth the most you could expect was to change perhaps one thing and even that would eventually go back to what it had been. — James Salter

Give me everything you have," I told [Preston].
"Really, Cammie. I never knew you thought of me that way. — Ally Carter

Whenever I thought about dying, I always thought that you would remember me. I thought about living on in your mind. I knew I would be safe there, that I would be good there, remembered as better than I had been. I know all you have lost. I know everything is changed, but when I thought of death I didn't think of going away. I always thought of it as still being with you. — Sarah Rees Brennan

The only writing that was any good was what you made up, what you imagined. That made everything come true. Everything good he had ever written he'd made up. None of it had ever happened. Other things had happened. Better things, maybe. That was what the family couldn't understand. They thought it was all experience. Nick in the stories was never himself. He made him up. Of course he had never seen an Indian woman having a baby. That was what made it good. Nobody knew that. — Ernest Hemingway,

Killing someone is different in practice than it is in theory. There are factors you can't prepare for, feelings in the moment where you'll question everything you thought you knew about yourself, other feelings that might follow you long after the deed is done. — Paula Stokes

It's actually quite the contrary. It's time to freak the fuck out, and that's not just acceptable, it's obligatory. The rug has just been pulled out from beneath your feet, and everything you thought you knew with absolute certainty has vanished. Absolute hysteria is just the beginning - you're about to embark on an entire roller coaster of crazy-ass emotions. — Brandi Glanville

This boy," he said, indicating the paintings with one sweep of his arms, "was romantic. He thought that it was beauty that bound everything together. And for him it was true. Life had been beautiful for him. He was very young. He knew very little of life. He saw beauty but he did not feel any true passion. How could he? He did not know. He had not really encountered the force of beauty's opposite."
"Are you more cynical now, then?" she asked him.
"Cynical," he frowned, "No, not that. I know that there is an ugly side of life-and not just human life. I know that everything is not simply beautiful. I am not a romantic as this boy was. But I am not a cynic either. There is something enduring in all of life, Anne, something tough. Something. Something terribly weak yet incredibly powerful ... — Mary Balogh

I loved them in the way one loves at any age - if it's real at all - obsessively, painfully, with wild exaltation, with guilt, with conflict; I wrote poems to and about them; I put them into novels (disguised of course); I brooded upon why they were as they were, so often maddening, don't you know? I wrote them ridiculous letters. I lived with their faces. I knew their every gesture by heart. I stalked them like wild animals. I studied them as if they were maps of the world - and in a way, I suppose they were." She had spoken rapidly, on the defensive ... if he thought she didn't know what she was talking about! "Love opens the doors into everything, as far as I can see, including and perhaps most of all, the door into one's own secret, and often terrible and frightening, real self. — May Sarton

I was well aware of her ghosts. I'd met them, once or twice, during her darkness nights. "I knew you were my one when you wouldn't run," she said. How could I? Of course I stayed, when her ghosts scared my own away. What others were too afraid to see, meant everything to me. — J. Raymond

I thought I knew what love was, that I understood its depth, its importance, its beauty and the happiness and the heartache it brings." He huffed - a small sound of amusement. "I wasn't even close. When I look at you, I see radiance. I know pure happiness. Everything else pales in comparison. The thought of living a single moment without you tears me apart inside. Just when I think I love you as much as possible, you open your heart to me a little more, and my love expands - grows - wanting to fill every emptiness inside you. — Olivia Cunning

If I'd thought I would regret it," he said calmly, "I never would have made that oath. I knew what becoming a knight would mean. And if you asked me again, the answer would still be the same." He sighed, framing my face with his hands. "My life ... everything I am ... belongs to you. — Julie Kagawa

First, you need to realize everything you thought you knew about yourself, about me, is a lie. — Angela Parkhurst

Who was he?" "A magician who took me in after I left the Bone-master. On his good days, he tried to teach me everything he knew." "What about his bad days?" "On his bad days, he generally thought he was an onion." "That's awful," said Jinx. "No, it's not. What was awful was when he thought he was a potato masher." "Oh." "He always said to me, 'Mildred, one day this will all be yours.'" Simon made a wide gesture, encompassing books, cats, and the door to Samara. "Er, he called you Mildred?" "Often as not." "Maybe he really meant to leave everything to Mildred," said Jinx. "If she ever shows up, we'll talk," said Simon. "But I think she may have been a dog he once had. — Sage Blackwood

I love you Tory. I know I say it a lot, but ... "
"I know baby. I feel the same way about you. Those words never convey what goes through my mind and heart every time I look up and see you sitting in my house. Funny thign is, I always thought my house was full and that there was nothing missing in my life. I had a job I loved. Family who loved me. Good friends to keep me sane. Everything a human could want. And t hen I met an infuriating, impossible man who added the one thing I didn't know wasn't there."
"Dirty socks on the floor?"
She laughed. "No, the other part of my heart. The last face I see before I go to sleep and the first one I see when I get up. I'm so glad it was you."
Those words both thrilled and scared him. Mostly because he knew firsthand that if love went untended it turned into profound hatred.
Tory and Acheron — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Look out the window behind her. "I see trees, the sky, and some clouds. Some birds on tree branches." "Nothing out of the ordinary. Right?" "That's right." "But if you knew you might not be able to see it again tomorrow, everything would suddenly become special and precious, wouldn't it?" "I suppose so." "Have you ever thought about that?" "I have." A surprised look comes over her. "When?" "When I'm in love," I tell her. — Haruki Murakami

The important thing for me is that I try to understand the culture. Everything I thought I knew about the country was either through TV, music, movies or hopping in and out when I did shows. You can't just get the US through being in Miami, LA and New York. Middle America is the place to understand real America. — Dizzee Rascal

I just wondered where you - " Ron broke off, shrugging. "Nothing. I'm going back to bed."
"Just thought you'd come nosing around, did you?" Harry shouted. He knew that Ron had no idea what he'd walked in on, knew he hadn't done it on purpose, but he didn't care - at this moment he hated everything about Ron, right down to the several inches of bare ankle showing beneath his pajama trousers. — J.K. Rowling

I hated when people thought they knew everything there was to know about a person. There was no room to be anything different in their minds. Once someone else decided who you were, you had to be that person forever, even if it wasn't really who you wanted to be. How could anyone be. How could anyone know who they really were with all of this outside pressure to be what others expected? — Shana Norris

It could be that the wildest, strangest things in the Bible were the places where it touched earth. Doane said once that he saw a cyclone cross a river. It took the water in its path up into itself and crossed on dry ground, and it was just as white as a cloud, white as snow. Something like that would only last for a minute, but it showed you what kind of thing can happen. It would shed that water and take up leaves and branches, cats and dogs, cows if it wanted to, grown men, and it would change everything they thought they knew. — Marilynne Robinson

Heart as collapsed time, as a dug-up grave, as simple machine. Heart as big black bugs bleed blue blood. Heart as MI frozen as seen from airplane, everything still and white and beautiful. Heart as the Day the Music Died. Heart as love being made, as fucking, as a pleasantly haunted house. Heart as a dim memory of a dark room in which you're molded wetasscracked into a beanbag chair, fumbling for wetness. Come hither. Heart as a cunt's supposed to smell like tuna. Heart as the star of the sea. Heart as a pussy in permanent bloom. Heart as doxycycline. Heart as waxwings, as a fudge round, as the phone rings once and then stops. Heart as throw your hands in the air, throw your art at the stars, stutter and stare. Heart as a Stratocaster. Heart as Twin Reverb. Heart as I heart you so much. Heart as all that we thought we knew in the world disappears into vapor. Heart as the rest of your life times the weight of the world squared. — Bryan Charles

When I saw you at the graveyard, looking so white, I knew something was wrong. I knew it."
Azalea stared at him, the fire flickering highlights in his eyes.
"So ... I thought I should do something," he finished lamely.
"You saw everything?"
Mr. Bradford gave a half of a crooked smile. "I did knock."
"You didn't see Mr ... Mr.-"
"Mr. Keeper?" Mr. Bradford spat the name. "Oh yes, I saw Mr. Keeper. Rather hard not to. I saw him try to kiss you. Or what he said was a kiss. I want to snap his head off!"
Azalea had her hand over her mouth, shocked that someone as solemn and dignified as Mr. Bradford could have such venom. He took her hands, gently, and pushed up her sleeved, revealing her swollen wrists. His fringers traced the bruises.
"You stopped him," said Azalea. She bowed her head, shy. "You kept him from-from-"
"Ah, yes, my lady!" Mr. Bradford smiled a crooked smile in full. "His ponytail was simply begging to be yanked. — Heather Dixon

I missed the future. Obviously I knew even before his recurrence that I'd never grow old with Augustus Waters. But thinking about Lidewij and her boyfriend, I felt robbed. I would probably never again see the ocean from thirty thousand feet above, so far up that you can't make out the waves or any boats, so that the ocean is a great and endless monolith. I could imagine it. I could remember it. But I couldn't see it again, and it occurred to me that the voracious ambition of humans is never sated by dreams coming true, because there is always the thought that everything might be done better and again. — John Green

Emma," he said, reaching for her hand. "I will never, never give up on you."
It was a strange irony, she thought, a terrible irony that because she loved him so much and knew him so well, she knew exactly what she had to do to destroy everything he felt for her, in a single blow.
She pulled away from him and started back toward the house. "Yes," she said. "You will. — Cassandra Clare

Sylvia loved secrets and even if she didn't have any secrets she made sure that you thought she did. Amelia had no secrets, Amelia knew nothing. When she grew up she planned to know everything and to keep it all a secret. — Kate Atkinson

It was about everything. About life and death, and white and black and gray. It was about having to be tough when you weren't used to it. About having to grow when you'd thought you were done growing. In the back of my head, I knew what I'd said didn't make any damn sense. But how could I explain? How could I begin to tell him that I had lost a part of myself with my brother's death, and I was trying so hard to keep what I had left together with duct tape and paper clips? — Mariana Zapata

It is good," he thought "to taste for yourself everything you need to know. That worldly pleasures and wealth are not good things, I learned even as a child. I knew it for a long time, but only now have I experienced it. And now I know it, I know it not only because I remember hearing it, but with my eyes, with my heart, with my stomach. And it is good for me to know it! — Hermann Hesse

I thought about how it must feel to lose your life so early. Lose your life, as if you held an egg in your hand, and then dropped it, and it fell to the ground and broke, and I knew it could not feel like anything at all. If you were dead, you were dead, but in the fraction of a second just before; whether you realized then it was the end, and what that felt like. There was a narrow opening there, like a door barely ajar, that I pushed towards, because I wanted to get in, and there was a golden light in that crack that came from the sunlight on my eyelids, and then suddenly I slipped inside, and I was certainly there for a little flash, and it did not frighten me at all, just made me sad and astonished at how quiet everything was. — Per Petterson

Bags were shoved on all of our heads once more. Hands grabbed me and spurred me forward. "Rick," Zach said behind us. The hands guiding me stopped. The bag was ripped off my head again, and I found myself looking into Zach's eyes. "Bring the girl tomorrow night," he said.
The last thing I wanted to do was bring Rimmel into a room full of these assholes. "What the fuck for?"
He smiled. It looked more like a sneer. "I'd like to meet the nerd. I hear you've become quite smitten."
The more he talked about her, the more he implied he knew her, the more pissed off I got. I lunged forward and shoved my face right up in his. Satisfaction speared me when his eyes widened just a fraction. He wasn't as tough as he thought he was.
"Well, since you seem to know everything," I said, dead calm, "then you must also know that I take care of what's mine. You might be president of this frat, but I own the campus. Do. Not. Push. Me."
- Zach & Romeo — Cambria Hebert

The truth was, she hadn't felt much like a cop in a long time. That was a place she never thought she'd get to. Be just like the rest of them after ten years. Angry and drunk. Numb to pretty much everything. That wasn't supposed to be her. But she now knew what they all knew: that the very thing you need to stay strong and keep your head, that daily and deliberate apathy you practice like meditation, is the very thing that, in the end, robs you of your desire to get in the car and catch bad guys. Nobody tells you that, once you put on the armor, you can never take it off. — Scott Frank

Charles's conversation was as flat as a sidewalk, and everyone's ideas filed along it in their ordinary clothes, exciting no emotion, no laughter, no reverie. He had never been curious, he said, when he lived in Rouen, to go to the theater and see the actors from Paris. He did not know how to swim, or fence, or fire a pistol, and he could not explain to her, one day, a riding term she had come upon in a novel.

But shouldn't a man know everything, excel at a host of different activities, initiate you into the intensities of passion, the refinements of life, all its mysteries? Yet this man taught her nothing, knew nothing, wished for nothing. He thought she was happy; and she resented him for that settled calm, that ponderous serenity, that very happiness which she herself brought him. — Gustave Flaubert

That's what death did, it treated you like a child, like everything you had ever thought and done and cared about was just a child's game, to be crumpled up and thrown away when it was over. It didn't matter. Death didn't respect you. Death thought you were bullshit, and it wanted to make sure you knew it. — Lev Grossman