I Realized Quotes & Sayings

At her easiest, she was hard, because her brain was always working, working, working - I had to exert myself just to keep pace with her. I'd spend an hour crafting a casual e-mail to her, I became a student of arcana so I could keep her interested: the Lake poets, the code duello, the French Revolution. Her mind was both wide and deep, and I got smarter being with her. And more considerate, and more active, and more alive, and almost electric, because for Amy, love was like drugs or booze or porn: There was no plateau. Each exposure needed to be more intense than the last to achieve the same result.
Amy made me believe I was exceptional, that I was up to her level of play. That was both our making and undoing. Because I couldn't handle the demands of greatness. I began craving ease and averageness, and I hated myself for it, and ultimately, I realized, I punished her for it. I turned her into the brittle, prickly thing she became. — Gillian Flynn

About twenty pages into Luke B. Goebel's Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours, I realized I was reading with one hand holding my forehead and one balled at my waist, kind of clenched, and gazing down into the paper like a man soon to be converged upon. Goebel's testimony comes on like that: engrossing, fanatical, full of private grief, and yet, at the same time, charismatic, tender, and intrepid, aglow with more spirit than most Americans have the right to wield. — Blake Butler

I soon realized that no journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within. — Lillian E. Smith

I had my knife in hand before I realized I'd reached for it and had kicked open the ... front door before it ever occurred to me that it might have already been unlocked. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

As a teenager, I developed a great interest in not only horse breeding but also horse racing and used to bet based on red-hot tips. I realized that becoming a bookmaker would be very lucrative, but Dad put his foot down, saying it was an inappropriate career. — Cyrus S. Poonawalla

Not long after the book came out I found myself being driven to a meeting
by a professor of electrical engineering in the graduate school I of MIT. He said that after reading the book he realized that his graduate students were using on him, and had used for the ten years and more he had been teaching there, all the evasive strategies I described in the book - mumble, guess-and-look, take a wild guess and see what happens, get the teacher to answer his own questions, etc.
But as I later realized, these are the games that all humans play when others
are sitting in judgment on them. — John Holt

I realized marvelling at nature was a deep pleasure of mine. — Paul McCartney

There are a lot of things that are personally uncomfortable to show, especially me without makeup and completely bloated or crying. But I've realized that it's time for me to show my audience that you don't have to be perfect to achieve your dreams. Because nobody relates to being perfect. — Katy Perry

I'd always wanted to think that love could heal anything. But I realized lying there, eyes closed, listening to Asher breathe, that really love is what happens when you find out that it can't. — Cassie Alexander

That was when I realized we weren't born to be
slaves. It was ignorant for any man to think he could be the master of another. We were all meant to be free, and somewhere there were good people helping to heal this broken world. — Jay Grewal

God's purpose for the Christian's involvement in the church was radically different from my gas-station approach. The church wasn't merely a place to swing by for a fill-up. The journey of the Christian faith was supposed to be made with other believers. The church isn't a gas station, I realized. It's the bus I'm supposed to be traveling on. — Joshua Harris

This morning I awoke and was reminded of the preciousness of life. I realized I should express my gratitude to those who are so very important to me. Thank you for all you have done and have a great day! — Swapna Rajput

I realized that life isn't something to be scared of. That you don't have to hold on so tightly that you can't breathe. — Carrie Ryan

I only say this because a positive evolution happened in my life when I realized healthy relationships happen best between healthy people. — Donald Miller

I mean, I guess I realized subconsciously that this is what I should be doing before I realized it, consciously. Verbally, I don't think I had committed to it, even though I was driving everywhere, every night, just trying to get on stage. — Todd Barry

When I was in art school, I thought art was something I would learn how to do, and then I would just do it. At a certain point I realized that it wasn't going to work like that. Basically, I would have to start over every day and figure out what art was going to be. — Bruce Nauman

I finally realized that no one is perfect and that I like the fact that I look different and don't have the perfect body. No one does! — Shay Mitchell

I realized early on in writing the book that it needed to be from a family point of view, and that nobody outside the family would weigh in. And then well into writing it, the question became how to balance the perspectives; how to switch between chapters. — Mary Kay Zuravleff

'Boom' is my heart. The 'kack' is my soul. Apparently when I choreographed I didn't realize that I said 'boom-kack' 'boom-kack.' I had no idea I was doing it and then I realized that it's every time I felt like the fight in my soul - the boom and the kack - was like my heart. It was like the love of it - my heart and soul. — Laurieann Gibson

I had never fully understood our tradition- why women wailed so loudly and for so long after someone died. It was only now I realized that women wailed more on account of everything they never had a chance to say. All the questions they never asked. All the times we never really talked about the things that mattered most.
It was the one time that women could be angry. Be loud. Say anything. Yell. Purge the soul. And no one thought less of them. Everyone expected it. — Eucabeth A. Odhiambo

And then he did rise from his wheelchair. But there was something odd about the way he did it. His blanket fell away from his legs, but the legs didn't move. His waist kept getting longer, rising above his belt. At first, I thought he was wearing very long, white velvet underwear, but as he kept rising out of the chair, taller than any man, I realized that the velvet underwear wasn't underwear; it was the front of an animal, muscle and sinew under coarse white fur. And the wheelchair wasn't a chair. It was some kind of container, an enormous box on wheels, and it must've been magic, because there's no way it could've held all of him. A leg came out, long and knobby-kneed, with a huge polished hoof. Then another front leg, then hindquarters, and then the box was empty, nothing but a metal shell with a couple of fake human legs attached. — Rick Riordan

I've got a black woolen hat and it's got Pervert written across the front of it. It's the name of the clothing label. And I was with my wife and my baby at the supermarket and I didn't think. I just put my hat on Clara's head, because it was cold. And the looks. I couldn't figure out why I was getting death looks. And then I realized my 10-month old baby's wearing a hat with the word Pervert written on it and these people were like, 'There's Satan! There's Satan out with his kid!' And then I made a point of her wearing it every time we went there. — Ewan McGregor

Now I wonder whether I have sufficiently realized that during all this time God has been trying to find me, to know me, and to love me. The question is not 'How am I to find God?' but 'How am I to let myself be found by him?' The question is not 'How am I to love God?' but 'How am I to let myself be loved by God?' — Henri Nouwen

I don't know how my face conveyed that information, or what kind of internal wiring in my grandmother's mind enabled her to accomplish
this incredible feat. To condense fact from the vapor of nuance.
Condense fact from the vapor of nuance. Hiro has never forgotten the sound of her speaking those words, the feeling that came over him as he realized for the first time how smart Juanita was. — Neal Stephenson

I realized that you didn't have to make self-deprecating remarks or turn yourself into the butt of some unspoken joke. I also discovered that being big didn't deter possible suitors. — Maeve Binchy

When I was young, my mom realized I could dance and hold a beat, and I really danced just for fun. It was good exercise. — Tom Holland

I'd realized then just how strong our connection was, how perfectly we understood each other. I'd been skeptical about people being soul mates in the past, but at that moment, I knew it was true. And the emotional connection had come a physical one. Dimitri and I had finally given in to the attraction. We'd sworn we never would, but... well, our feelings were just too strong. Staying away from each other had turned out to be impossible. ~Rose, Pg.74 — Richelle Mead

Keep at it! Remember marketing is building a relationship! If you use marketing for a year and stop, you cut off your relationship with the larger community. Then you will have to re-start the relationship all over again. The old adage "it takes six to stick" is proven true over and over again. I realized this in year three of our church plant. I think of the hundreds of people that came to our services that had no connection with me or our people because we were willing to build a sustained relationship with them through marketing. — Gary Rohrmayer

It was 1999, and we were building a way for college kids to create online profiles for the purpose of sharing ... with employers. Oops. I vividly remember the moment I realized my company was going to fail. My co-founder and I were at our wits' end. By 2001, the dot-com bubble had burst, and we had spent all our money. — Eric Ries

Even after going to law school, following the footsteps of my father (an accomplished lawyer and judge at the time); I realized that the suit would never replace the kimono! — Carlos Machado

My idol was Johann Cruyff (a Dutch soccer player) and I wanted to be like him. But when I realized that I would never be, I decided to do something else. I met the kitchen by chance and quickly became completely enamoured by it. — Ferran Adria

I love you," she whispered, gazing up into his pale gray eyes.
He smiled crookedly, for a moment looking at her with a dazzled air. He had, she realized sadly, no experience hearing those words. He didn't know how to react. "I figured as much."
This time, she didn't hit him. — Connie Brockway

The first time that I entered through the double-locked doors of the psych ward I was terrified, believing for no real reason that such places harbored evil souls ready to assault me at any moment. But once inside I found it to be the slowest-moving place on Earth, and I saw that these patients were unique only in that time had stopped inside their wounds, which were seemingly never to heal. The pain was so thick and palpable in the psych ward that a visitor could breathe it like the heavy humidity of summer air, and I soon realized that the challenge would not be to defend myself from patients, but to defend myself against my own increasing indifference toward them. What originally struck me as cryptic in chapter fifty-nine was now mundane: they are turned inward, to feed upon their own hearts, and their own hearts are very bad feeding. — Hope Jahren

That morning I realized I would probably spend the rest of my professional life trying to unravel the mysteries of trauma. How do horrific experiences cause people to become hopelessly stuck in the past? What happens in people's minds and brains that keeps them frozen, trapped in a place they desperately wish to escape? Why — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

As much as I loved the model of St. Francis, I realized that I couldn't afford to be poor, because unlike St. Francis, I'm not celibate. I was enlightened that God's call to me was not poverty but generosity and simplicity. And I had to go back to the lesson I learned from my parents: that is, simplicity. — Bo Sanchez

It was then Jessica realized he wasn't using his left hand at all, and that he held the arm oddly, as though something were wrong with it. There shouldn't be except for a minor bullet wound. She'd aimed carefully, and she was an excellent markswoman. Not to mention he was a very large target.
He looked her way then, and caught her staring. Admiring your handiwork, are you? I daresay you'd like a better look. Regrettably, there's nothing to see. There's nothing wrong with it, according to the quacks. Except that it doesn't work. Still, I count myself fortunate, Miss Trent, that you didn't aim a ways lower. I'm merely disarmed, not dismanned. But I have no doubt that Herriard here will see to the emasculation. — Loretta Chase

I'm feeling really hopeful about it, like maybe I actually have a chance to get better. To be happy. It's funny, I just realized that my whole life, the whole time I've been trying to be perfect, I never once considered happiness as part of the equation. I guess it seemed so impossible I couldn't even let myself fantasize about it. But now, I don't know, things feel different somehow. Like impossible things might not be so impossible. — Amy Reed

My mom always wanted a bunch of kids, but they stopped after me. I never understood why."
His voice was wistful. Haven closed the distance between them and wrapped her arms around his neck. "Maybe they realized they created perfection when they made you and didnt need anymore. — J.M. Darhower

Now I have realized what the lie is. If I became a tsar, no one would ever dare to tell me a lie. I would have gotten the country under control. — Alexei Nikolaevich

That's when I started to leave it behind. I realized that I got my entire validation from women. Women became like gods to me, but false gods. — Neil Strauss

And indeed, there are innumerable cases of important discoveries being made because the failed experiment revealed a new set of possibilities that you hadn't even realized were there. This is sometimes mistaken for serendipity, a notion that, since it's come up, I would like to take a moment to dispute. — Stuart Firestein

After that, all the while Millie was eating the pudding ... we both tore Christopher's character to shreds. It was wonderful fun ... He drove everyone mad in Chrestomanci Castle by insisting on silk shirts and exactly the right kind of pajamas. 'And he could get them right anyway by magic,' Millie told me, 'if he wasn't too lazy to learn how ... But the thing that really annoys me is the way he never bothers to learn a person's name. If a person isn't important to him, he always forgets their name.'
When Millie said this, I realized that Christopher had never once forgotten my name ... — Diana Wynne Jones

Once I began taking calls for cable, I quickly realized that when Americans cannot watch television, all of their repressed marital rage floods the telephone lines. — Anonymous

In the official police account, the plumber was shot and robbed on the street. Not true - guys stick together - the detective didn't want the victim's wife to know he was flagrante delicto with a prostitute when wounded. I didn't want her hurt or embarrassed either. She figured it out herself. I met her later, after their divorce, and she brought up the subject. The hospital returned her injured husband's garments. She was washing them when she realized that, although there were a number of bullet holes in his body, there were none in his clothes. — Edna Buchanan

Finally, though, I arrived at a point where I decided this was bullshit. I stopped feeling as if I didn't belong anywhere, and realized that I belonged anywhere I wanted to be - whether that was a boardroom, business class, or on — Sophia Amoruso

And then I realized that my sister was trying to LIVE a romance novel.
Man, that takes courage and imagination. Well, it also took some degree of mental illness, too, but I was suddenly happy for her.
And a little scared. Well, a lot scared. — Sherman Alexie

I looked into his eyes, and I realized he was the same man I'd seen in my dreams. His face might be totally different, but the same soul was in there, the same intelligence and all the sadness. — Rick Riordan

Finally, I found what seemed at the time to be a lid of some sort. Presuming it was a toilet seat (but not really caring one way or the other) I lifted it up, then dropped my shorts and began to piss. Ahhh ... success. Then I stumbled back to bed and passed out. It wasn't until the next morning that I realized what had actually happened. I woke to the sight of Junior standing over my bed with a look of disgust on his face. Hey, man. Did you pee in my suitcase? — Dave Mustaine

That's when I realized that sex was not necessarily a shared thing. Sex was something you do with someone else, yet you can experience it separately from each other. It didn't necessarily bring you closer. In fact, it could highlight the parts of you that feel most separate. Sex could reveal to you your own isolation. Sam had told me that this act added up to love, but I did not feel loved by Carlos then, nor, in that moment, could I feel my love for him. — Liz Murray

I just realized he was phrasing all of his questions as statements. Wasn't there a character in Alice in Wonderland who did that? Did Alice punch him in the face? — David Wong

In 1980, during my sophomore year at MIT, I realized that the school didn't have a student space organization. I made posters for a group I called Students for the Exploration and Development of Space and put them up all over campus. Thirty-five people showed up. It was the first thing I ever organized, and it took off! — Peter Diamandis

I realized I couldn't have one foot in the fiction world and one foot in the nonfiction world, which is why 'Here I Go Again' is so not me. I didn't graduate from high school in the '90s, I never listened to metal music, and I don't time travel. — Jen Lancaster

Half of what I write is imaginative reality. The other half is realized impossibilities. Blended into one, these make a fantasy. — Nicole Sager

It was on a van ride home from the movie set that everything came together. I realized I had to get off Twitter. It just struck me that I couldn't stop everyone else from doing it, but I could certainly stop myself. — Nick Offerman

I recently realized that Television has influenced a lot of English bands. Echo and the Bunnymen, U2, Teardrop Explodes - it's obvious what they've listened to and what they're going for. When I was sixteen I listened to Yardbirds records and thought, "God, this is great." It's gratifying to think that people listened to Television albums and felt the same. — Tom Verlaine

Oh, man," Xavier groaned. "See what you've done
now I'm stressing."
"You can't! You're the stable one!"
Xavier laughed and I realized his distress had been feigned to illustrate a point. He wasn't worried in the slightest.
"Just relax. Go and run a bath or have a shot of brandy."
"Okay."
"That second bit was a joke. We both know you can't hold your liquor. — Alexandra Adornetto

functioned - I realized that first impressions about hotel rooms are like first loves: neither is based on the concept of how, over time, one can come to appreciate the pleasures of durability over infatuation. — Alice Steinbach

Read Mann's notes, which contain precise accounts of cholera and its symptoms, and observe how careful he is throughout his fiction in getting medical details straight - then you might begin to wonder whether cholera is the only candidate for the cause of Aschenbach's death. What results from this, I think, is a deeper appreciation of Mann's brilliance in keeping so many possibilities in play. The ambiguity is even more artful than people have realized. — Philip Kitcher

It was what Aunty Ifeoma did to my cousins, I realized then, setting higher and higher jumps for them in the way she talked to them, in what she expected of them. She did it all the time believing they would scale the rod. And they did. It was different for Jaja and me. We did not scale the rod because we believed we could, we scaled it because we were terrified that we couldn't. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I think I went into poli-sci because I knew there was a stage, plus I thought I wanted to help people, and I realized in poli-sci that if you want to be a politician you're either born into it, or you've got an amazing brain, which those are rare - and I don't have one. — David Koechner

The shift in my thinking began when I realized that truth sets us free and that Jesus is the truth. In — Neil T. Anderson

After years of finding mathematics easy, I finally reached integral calculus and came up against a barrier. I realized that this was as far as I could go, and to this day I have never successfully gone beyond it in any but the most superficial way. — Isaac Asimov

I can be highly competitive, which is ultimately why I chose yoga as a career. I thought it would drain the competitive drive out of me and allow me to be present and content. The yoga world has become highly competitive since then and it used to drive me crazy until I realized there's work for everyone. — Kathryn Budig

I always imagined that I would learn something each time that I would take to a new project, then I realized that each new project poses a completely different challenge. — Freida Pinto

Oh no, no, a state that adopts Common Core must adopt in its totality the Common Core and can only add 15 percent. It was then that I realized that this initiative, which had been constantly portrayed as state led and voluntary, was really about control. — Glenn Beck

Ever since I was old enough to remember my own actions, I realized that when I am passionate about something, I must do it 130%, regardless of what other passions I may already be pursuing. — Frankie J. Grande

I'd never realized how changeless this changeable island was until it turned into something different than I'd ever known. — Maggie Stiefvater

I've always loved black, and I realized that, from the beginning, man went into completely dark caves to paint. They painted with black too. They could have painted with white because there were white stones all over the ground, but no, they chose to paint with black in the dark. — Pierre Soulages

I hate thinking about writer's block! I don't have writer's block much, knock on wood, but if I do, I think it's usually because I haven't done enough research and am therefore unable to create a fully realized world. — Cynthia Kadohata

I was on the set of the first Powers pilot, and an actor of color came up to me and said, "When I was a kid, my friends wouldn't let me play Batman or Superman, because I wasn't their color. But they would let me play Spider-Man. And that's the difference." And I realized I had heard this story a hundred times from different people, but I wasn't there in my head yet. — Brian Michael Bendis

Wide awake to the presence of God, I realized I had been so focused on asking why a good God allowed bad things to happen that I was missing out on the nearness of God all along. In becoming preoccupied with the why, I was missing the who. — Margaret Feinberg

The thing I'm writing now, I have various characters, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, this couple dies. And they have a daughter ... I thought, 'OK, we have to do something with the daughter' ... then I realized she's not really their daughter. She has her own story. And she's become the most interesting character. She was this throwaway character that I didn't even conceive of before I started writing her into it, and now she's become very important in this book. — Sandra Dallas

When we deny our pain, losses, and feelings year after year, we become less and less human. We transform slowly into empty shells with smiley faces painted on them. Sad to say, that is the fruit of much of our discipleship in our churches. But when I began to allow myself to feel a wider range of emotions, including sadness, depression, fear, and anger, a revolution in my spirituality was unleashed. I soon realized that a failure to appreciate the biblical place of feelings within our larger Christian lives has done extensive damage, keeping free people in Christ in slavery. — Peter Scazzero

I didn't say, "I'll call you." I didn't hug her because of the wet clothes. Just a quick kiss. Then I turned and left. I made my way quietly down the hallway to the stairwell. I could tell she thought she wasn't going to see me again. I had to admit she might be right. The knowledge was as damp and dispiriting as my sodden clothes. I came to the first floor and looked out at the entranceway of the building. For a second I pictured the way she had hugged me here. It already seemed like a long time ago. I felt an unpleasant mixture of gratitude and longing, streaked with guilt and regret. And in a flash of insight, cutting with cold clarity through the fog of my fatigue, I realized what I hadn't been able to articulate earlier, not even to myself, when she'd asked me what I was afraid of. It had been this, the moment after, when I would come face to face with knowing that it would all end badly, if not this morning, then the next one. Or the one after that. — Barry Eisler

It started off for me as just wanting to be an actor and sort of resenting in a weird way being expected to write as well as be a comedian and an improviser. And then you think about it for a minute, and I smartened up and realized that the only way to sustain a career is to generate your own material. Or to be in control of your career as best you can. And in allowing yourself to do that it opens up a whole new world of possibilities. And then you're like "Oh, producing is a thing." — Rob Corddry

After I had my kids, I realized it's pretty much all about instinct - you have to do what's right for you. Everyone has an opinion, but it was all about what you do or don't do. I was so overloaded, so I let my children dictate the way things were supposed to go, and things fell into place. — Tori Spelling

I realized that I was writing about folks with lots of skills, especially fix-it skills and survival skills, who were nonetheless not doing well in the new-millennium America. — Bonnie Jo Campbell

I realized I made a big mistake and if I could have it over again, I would do it so much differently. — Hansie Cronje

If in my youth I had realized that the sustaining splendour of beauty of with which I was in love would one day flood back into my heart, there to ignite a flame that would torture me without end, how gladly would I have put out the light in my eyes. — Michelangelo

I took the swab using the collection kit that I'd borrowed from Dominic who, I realized, had left the Boy Scout scale behind and was now verging on Batman levels of crazy preparedness. — Ben Aaronovitch

I think that was when the headmaster realized he had lost; he realized then that he was finished. Because, what could he do? Was he going to tell us to stop praying? We kept our heads bowed; and we kept praying. Even as awkward as he was, the Rev. Mr. Merrill had made it clear to us that there was no end to praying for Owen Meany. — John Irving

I realized that you don't try on a pair of pants, fart in them, and then put them back on the shelf, and the same rough politeness applied here, too. Plain and simple, I bled on it, I bought it. — Laurie Notaro

She realized he wasn't listening to music and gave him a curious look of amusement as she picked up the cover to an audio book. 'What To Expect When You're Expecting.'
God forgive me, I love this man.
"Thought I should be informed, you know?" Alessandro explained sheepishly.
Bree tried to tear her gaze away from his gleaming chest.
"Plus all the lactating and dilating and placenta talk does wonders to crush any man's libido. — E. Jamie

When I was very young, I wanted to be a girl. I was jealous that girls got to be princesses and wear skirts. It tormented me. When I was 6, I even heard that you could change your sex, and I was very intrigued until the moment I realized that if I changed into a girl, I would be an ugly girl, and this is the last thing I wanted to be. — Olivier Theyskens

Since then, I have realized that my tree had been a child once too. The embryo that became my tree sat on the ground for years, caught between the danger of waiting too long and the danger of leaving the seed too early. — Hope Jahren

I would show my jobs to my mother, and she would always say the same thing: "That's nice dear". And then she would say: "Did you write it or did you do the drawing?" or "Did you take the pictures?" I'd always answer "no", then I realized the problem. My answer was then, "I made this happen". It's called design. — Brian Webb

( ... ) and then I realized there was no one else to call, which was the saddest thing. The only person I really wanted to talk to about Augustus Water's death was Augustus Water. — John Green

When my fingers began, involuntarily, to loose their hold on Hella, I realized that I was dangling from a high place and that I had been clinging to her for my very life. With each moment, as my fingers slipped, I felt the roaring air beneath me and felt everything in me bitterly contracting, crawling furiously upward against that long fall. — James Baldwin

I had never realized before how quickly men deteriorate without razors and clean shirts. They are like potted plants that go to weed unless they are pruned and tended daily. A single day's growth beard makes a man look careless; two days', derelict; and four days', polluted. Blix and Weston hadn't shaved for three. — Beryl Markham

I realized that most thoughts are impersonal happenings, like self-assembling machines. Unless we train ourselves, the thoughts passing through our mind have little involvement with our will. It is strange to realize that even our own thoughts pass by like scenery out the window of a bus, a bus we took by accident while trying to get somewhere else. — Daniel Pinchbeck

I loved him, but I also realized how calm my life was without him. — Consuelo De Saint-Exupery

I have realized that we all have plague, and I have lost my peace. And today I am still trying to find it; still trying to understand all those others and not to be the enemy of anyone. I only know that one must do what one can to cease being plague-stricken, and that's the only way in which we can hope for some peace or, failing that, a decent death. This, and only this, can bring relief to men and, if not save them, at least do them the least harm possible and even, sometimes, a little good. — Albert Camus

Suddenly I realized she was asleep. Exhausted by her flight she had fallen asleep against my shoulder as so many times, in taxis, in buses, on a park-seat. I sat still and let her be. There was nothing to disturb her in the dark church. The candles napped around the virgin, and there was nobody else there. The slowly growing pain in my upper arm where her weight lay was the greatest pleasure I had ever known. — Graham Greene

And then, in shocked disappointment, and stunned horror, I'm sure, Connor Lavender realized he was dead. — Leslye Walton

I've always smiled... And matched with everyone around me. But eventually, I realized that there was no one around me anymore. It's not possible to have people like you when you don't even show the real you. — Kozue Chiba

I was trained to become an economist and I finished my work and I was teaching and did my PhD so I thought I did that. I prepared myself for that kind of road. But then I realized that I had not learned enough to solve the problem of poverty. So I distanced myself from the things that I learned and tried to learn anew about people. — Muhammad Yunus

I went looking for dresses and realized there was a niche I could fill in the wedding dress market. — Monique Lhuillier

I remember my son wanted to go to bed with his cowboy boots on, and we had this fight for like an hour. Then I realized that the only good reason I had for him not to do it is because I didn't want him to. There was really no other reason. And finally I said, "OK, fine." It was a great victory for me, because I realized it doesn't really matter. — Michael J. Fox

Thousands of mosquitoes had already bitten all of us on chest and arms and ankles. Then a bright idea came to me: I jumped up on the steel roof of the car and stretched out flat on my back. Still there was no breeze, but the steel had an element of coolness in it and dried my back of sweat, clotting up thousands of dead bugs into cakes on my skin, and I realized the jungle takes you over and you become it. — Jack Kerouac

In the very early stages of working in sports, I was sick of being referred to as "the Barbie doll" because I had long, blond, fake hair. So I went and bought a boxed hair color, dyed my hair black, and put on glasses. And I looked ridiculous. I looked like a completely different person. I was trying to get away from the stereotype but what I realized in doing that is that what I say and how I conduct myself in what I do will speak for itself, and I don't need to apologize for being a woman in that space. — Charissa Thompson