Going Back To Square One Quotes & Sayings

When things are finally falling into the right places, something happens that puts you back to square one. — Christine Celis

Love isn't always pretty, Tate. Sometimes you spend all your time hoping it'll eventually be something different. Something better. Then, before you know it, you're back to square one, and you lost you heart somewhere along the way — Colleen Hoover

Then he came back through the Square late that Saturday afternoon (there had been a ball game on the High School field) and he heard that Lucas had killed Vinson Gowrie out at Fraser's store; — William Faulkner

She has the sort of body you go to see in marble. She has golden hair. Quickly, deftly, she reaches with both hands behind her back and unclasps her top. Setting it on her lap, she swivels ninety degrees to face the towboat square. Shoulders back, cheeks high, she holds her pose without retreat. In her ample presentation there is defiance of gravity. There is no angle of repose. She is a siren and these are her songs. — John McPhee

Alec?" Magnus was staring at him. He had dispatched the remaining Iblis demons, and the square was empty but for the two of them. "Did you just- did you just save my life?"
Alec knew he ought to say something like, Of course, because I'm a Shadowhunter and that's what we do, or That's my job. Jace would have said something like that. Jace always knew the right thing to say. But the words that actually came out of Alec's mouth where quite different- and sounded petulant, even to his own ears. "You never called me back," he said. "I called you so many times and you never called me back."
Magnus looked at Alec as if he'd lost his mind. "Your city is under attack," he said. "The wards have broken, and the streets are full of demons. And you want to know why I haven't called you? — Cassandra Clare

I folded my hands back on my desk, and as I did, I saw Paul's slanted handwriting standing out against my blocky, square printing on my skin. He'd managed to find room to squeeze in the words females hurt my brain on my left hand. I raised an eyebrow at him and he gave me a look like, well it's true, isn't it? — Maggie Stiefvater

... and Brian Dooher is down injured. And while he is, I'll tell ye a little story. I was in Times Square in New York last week, and I was missing the Championship back home. So I approached a newsstand and I said 'I suppose you wouldn't have the Kerryman would you?' To which the Egyptian man behind the counter replied 'do you want the North Kerry edition or the South Kerry edition?'. He had both, so I bought both. And Dooher is back on his feet... — Micheal O Muircheartaigh

I had traveled eight thousand miles around the American continent and I was back on Times Square; and right in the middle of a rush hour, too, seeing with my innocent road-eyes the absolute madness and fantastic hoorair of New York with its millions and millions hustling forever for a buck among themselves, the mad dream-grabbing, taking, giving, sighing, dying, just so they could be buried in those awful cemetery cities beyond Long Island City. — Jack Kerouac

When I was on Broadway when I was little, I remember always driving through Times Square with my dad to the theater. Now when I go back, you can't even drive on Broadway in the 40s. New Times Square is too touristy to me. — Jenna Ushkowitz

I'm no high judge of righteousness."
"Who is?"
"But I find this to be a good thing."
"Don't let anyone know, it might ruin my reputation."
Yarvi saw an old woman glaring at him from across the square, and he smiled back, and waved, and watched her scuttle away.
"It seems I've become the villain of this piece. — Joe Abercrombie

Oh, Anyone can make a quilt,' she said modestly. 'It's just scraps, from the clothes you've sewn.'
'Yes, but the talent is in joining the pieces, the way you have.'
'Look,' Om pointed, 'look at that - the poplin from our very first job.'
'You remember,' said Dina, pleased. 'And how fast you finished those first dresses. I thought I had two geniuses.'
'Hungry stomachs were driving our fingers,' chuckled Ishvar.
'Then came that yellow calico with orange strips. And what a hard time this young fellow gave me. Fighting and arguing about everything.'
'Me?Argue?Never.'
...
He steeped back, pleased with himself, as though he had elucidated an intricate theorem. 'So that's the rule to remember, the whole quilt is much more important than the square'. — Rohinton Mistry

I sought Him where my logic led.
"This friend is always sure and right;
His lantern is sufficient light.
I need no Star," I said.

I sought Him in the city square.
Logic and I went up and down
The marketplace of many a town,
But He was never there.

I tracked Him to the mind's far rim.
The valiant intellect went forth
To east and west and south and north,
But found no trace of Him.

We walked the world from sun to sun,
Logic and I, with Little Faith,
But never came to Nazareth,
Nor met the Holy One.

We sought in vain. And finally,
Back to the heart's small house I crept,
And fell upon my knees, and wept;
And Lo! He came to me! — Sara Henderson Hay

I think I'm alright as a lyricist, you know? But then what will happen every couple of months or so is that I'll hear a song I've never heard before and feel I've gone right back to square one. — Alex Turner

And the Blue Angels are coming back to scare the local population. I remember seeing old Vietnamese women ducking under the benches in Washington Square; they thought they were back in the war. — Lawrence Ferlinghetti

And so now I'd like to say - people can change anything they want to. And that means everything in the world. People are running about following their little tracks - I am one of them. But we've all got to stop just following our own little mouse trail. People can do anything - this is something that I'm beginning to learn. People are out there doing bad things to each other. That's because they've been dehumanised. It's time to take the humanity back into the center of the ring and follow that for a time. Greed, it ain't going anywhere. They should have that in a big billboard across Times Square. Without people you're nothing. That's my spiel. — Joe Strummer

None of it made any difference. The hollow feeling refused to go away. The next days were very hard. I found myself in the grip of a crippling ennui. I was back at square one, but I couldn't bring myself to resume my job hunt; it was all I could do to drag myself from the bedroom floor to the sofa. With every passing day my financial affairs grew more ruinous, and it became harder and harder even to conceive of how I might dig myself out of the hole I was in - which only compounded my ennui, and my disinclination to do anything about it. — Paul Murray

I love Israel, I go back all the time. I just love New York a little more. My workers are Arabs, my best friend is a black man from Alabama, my girlfriend's a Puerto Rican, and my landlord is a half-Jew bastard. You know what I did this morning? I read in the paper yesterday that the circus is setting up in the Madison Square Garden, they said the elephants would be walking through the Holland Tunnel at dawn. I'm a photographer a little too, you know? So I get up at five o'clock, bike over to the tunnel, and wait. It turns out the paper got it wrong, they came through the Lincoln, but still, you know? This is a hell of a place. — Richard Price

As he wrote, the candle in the window kept flickering, and despite his desk lamp the flickering distracted him. He sat back in the old wooden school chair he'd had since college and heard the reassuring squeak of the wood under him. At the firm he was failing to even register what was needed of him. Daily now he faced column after of column of meaningless numbers he was supposed to make square with company claims. He was making mistakes with a frequency that was frightening, and he feared, more than he had in the first days following my disappearance, that he would not be able to support his remaining children.

~pgs 135-136; Susie's father on death — Alice Sebold

Food is something I am going to have to face at least three times a day for the rest of my life. And I am not perfect. But one really bad day does not mean that I am hopeless and back at square one with my eating disorder. Olympic ice skaters fall in their quest for the gold. Heisman Trophy winners throw interceptions. Professional singers forget the words. And people with eating disorders sometimes slip back into an old pattern. But all of these individuals just pick themselves back up and do the next right thing. The ice skater makes the next jump. The football player throws the next pass. The singer finishes the song. And I am going to eat breakfast. — Jenni Schaefer

Being Lulu, it made me realize that all my life I've been living in a small, square room, with no windows and no doors. And I was fine. I was happy, even. I thought. Then someone came along and showed me there was a door in the room. One that I'd never even seen before. Then he opened it for me. Held my hand as I walked through it. And for one perfect day, I was on the other side. I was somewhere else. Someone else. And then he was gone, and I was thrown back into my little room. And now, no matter what I do, I can't seem to find that door. — Gayle Forman

I do not enlighten those who are not eager to learn, nor arouse those who are not anxious to give an explanation themselves. If I have presented one corner of the square and they cannot come back to me with the other three, I should not go over the points again. — Confucius

You earned him fair and square. He's not mine to take back." He rose to get himself a drink. The peaty odour of scotch flickered up and stung my nose. "I'd like one of those." He looked at me, surprised. "You'll have to go for water." I shook my head. "All right," he said. "I guess you've earned that, too." He handed me the rounded heavy glass, and we sat in silence as the sun retreated. I'd had wine and champagne, but this was different. It made me feel older. — Paula McLain

But seriously Poirot, what a hobby! Compare that to
" his voice sank to an appreciative purr
"an easy chair in front of a wood fire in a long low room lined with books
must be a long room
not a square one. Books all round one. A glass of port
and a book open in your hand. Time rolls back as you read. — Agatha Christie

If you give me Times Square, I want to give it back to the people. — JR

I remember what a thrill it was to go from the back streets of Birmingham to Madison Square Garden in New York ... it's like playing on Mars. You can't buy that. — Ozzy Osbourne

Is this what it means to go back to square one? Most likely. He had nothing left to lose, other than his life. — Haruki Murakami

I took my right hand off the wheel and reverse-punched him square between the eyes. It was a good solid smack. It put him right back to sleep. Manual anesthetic. He stayed out all the way back to the post. — Lee Child

Our exertions generally find no enduring physical correlatives. We are diluted in gigantic intangible collective projects, which leave us wondering what we did last year and, more profoundly, where we have gone and quite what we have amounted to ...
How different everything is for the craftsman who ... can step back at the end of a day or lifetime and point to an object
whether a square of canvas, a chair or a clay jug
and see it as a stable repository of his skills and an accurate record of his years, and hence feel collected together in one place, rather than strung out across projects which long ago evaporated into nothing one could hold or see. — Alain De Botton

But again that sense of peace descended, that spell of perfect happiness, and I was traveling back through the years to the little French church of my childhood as the hymns began. Through my tears I saw the shining altar. I saw the icon of the Virgin, a gleaming square of gold above the flowers; I heard the Aves whispered as if they were a charm. Under the arches of Notre Dame de Paris I heard the priests singing Salve Regina. — Anne Rice

He nodded them a good evening, but instead unhitched the horses and brought them back to a trough in the Market Square. When they had drunk, breaking the moon into shards and ripples, he led them back to the coach, to wait. There — Jo Baker

Whatcha got there?" I asked, looking at the crumpled piece of paper in his hands. As we walked through the quiet halls, he folded it into a small square and tucked it into his back pocket. He turned to look at me, and then his grin grew wider. "It's an article." "About what?" "Nothing special. Just a Mandy Parker original." "It's — Tracie Puckett

Most sitcoms and cartoons, especially, you can rely on, because they go back to square one at the beginning of every episode. — Scott Adsit

Love isn't always pretty. Sometimes you spend all your time hoping it'll eventually be something different. Something better. Then, before you know it, you're back to square one, and you lost your heart somewhere along the way. — Colleen Hoover

Nobody wants to hear that any aspect of my awesome life is bad. I get that. But there are days, maybe two or three times a year, when I get completely overwhelmed by my job and go to my office, lie on the floor, and cry for ten minutes. Then I think: Mindy, you have literally the best life in the world besides that hot lawyer who married George Clooney. This is what you dreamed about when you were a weird, determined little ten-year-old. There are more than a thousand people in one square mile of this studio who would kill to have this job. Get your ass up off the floor and go back into that writers' room, you weakling. Then I get up, pour myself a generous glass of whiskey and club soda, think about the sustained grit of my parents, and go back to work. — Mindy Kaling