I Was Never There Quotes & Sayings

I do not know what she was thinking, but I was remembering the years we have lived together, yet never together, and what a waste they have been
of each other, and of love, which is the most unpardonable waste there is. Love and time, those are the only two things in all the world and all of life that cannot be bought, but only spent. — Gary Jennings

I began to understand that there were certain talkers
certain girls
whom people liked to listen to, not because of what they, the girls, had to say, but because of the delight they took in saying it. A delight in themselves, a shine on their faces, a conviction that whatever they were telling about was remarkable and that they themselves could not help but give pleasure. There might be other people
people like me
who didn't concede this, but that was their loss. And people like me would never be the audience these girls were after, anyway. — Alice Munro

My brother was a year younger than I am and he was never in the home with me hardly at all, ... My mom had to take him to every school there possibly was to get him some education. He ended up first in Columbus, Ohio, for grade school, then went to a high school for the deaf and Galludet in Washington. — Les Miles

I have never really got used to being on this earth. Sometimes I think our presence here is due to a cosmic blunder, that we were meant for another planet altogether, with other arrangements, and other laws, and other, grimmer skies. I try to imagine it, our true place, off on the far side of the galaxy, whirling and whirling. And the ones who were meant for here, are they out there, baffled and homesick, like us? No, they would have become extinct long ago. How could they survive, these gentle earthlings, in a world that was made to contain us. — John Banville

I never liked hearing anyone say I was the new George Gershwin, because I knew I could have never even carried that man's music case. If George Gershwin hadn't died when he was thirty-nine years old, there is no knowing how much more great music he would have written. — Burt Bacharach

If I fell down and hurt myself, I never cried. There was no one to hear me. — Louise Fletcher

How the hell could Rhiannon keep people loyal to her if she was such a bitch?"
Alanna gave me a knowing look.
"I mean female people. It's obvious how she kept her men happy." My hands were planted on my
hips and I was tapping my foot in time with my anger. (I looked very teacherish - as a matter of fact, I felt the sudden desire to reprimand a teenager. But there's never one around when you need one.) — P.C. Cast

I was trying so hard to find the single pivotal moment that set my life on its path. The moment that answered the question, 'How did I get here?'

But it's never just one moment. It's a series of them. And your life can branch out from each one in a thousand different ways. Maybe there's a version of your life for all the choices you make and all the choices you don't. — Nicola Yoon

Oh, 1994, April 27. There won't be a day like that ever again. I mean, the sky was blue, with a blueness that had never been there before. — Desmond Tutu

I was facing him before the last word was out, but I should have been dead by then. In a way I did die, right there, all that time ago, and this is a ghost who has been telling you stories and drinking your wine. You don't understand. Never mind. — Peter S. Beagle

That was the week you learned that the killers of Michael Brown would go free. The men who had left his body in the street like some awesome declaration of their inviolable power would never be punished. It was not my expectation that anyone would ever be punished. But you were young and still believed. You stayed up till 11 P.M. that night, waiting for the announcement of an indictment, and when instead it was announced that there was none you said, "I've got to go," and you went into your room, and I heard you crying. I came in five minutes after, and I didn't hug you, and I didn't comfort you, because I thought it would be wrong to comfort you. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Do you love me?"
There was an awkward silence for a moment. Then Father gave a little chuckle. "Jonas. You, of all people. Precision of language, please!"
"What do you mean?" Jonas asked. Amusement was not at all what he had anticipated.
"Your father means that you used a very generalized word, so meaningless that it's become almost obsolete," his mother explained carefully.
Jonas stared at them. Meaningless? He had never before felt anything as meaningful as the memory.
"And of course our community can't function smoothly if people don't use precise language. You could ask, 'Do you enjoy me?' The answer is 'Yes,'" his mother said.
"Or," his father suggested, "'Do you take pride in my accomplishments?' And the answer is wholeheartedly 'Yes.'"
"Do you understand why it's inappropriate to use a word like 'love'?" Mother asked.
Jonas nodded. "Yes, thank you, I do," he replied slowly.
It was his first lie to his parents. — Lois Lowry

I was a workhorse; there was never a practice that I didn't enjoy. — Joe Namath

Let me tell you how at one time the famous mathematician Euclid became a physician. It was during a vacation, which I spent in Prague as I most always did, when I was attacked by an illness never before experienced, which manifested itself in chilliness and painful weariness of the whole body. In order to ease my condition I took up Euclid's Elements and read for the first time his doctrine of ratio, which I found treated there in a manner entirely new to me. The ingenuity displayed in Euclid's presentation filled me with such vivid pleasure, that forthwith I felt as well as ever. — Bernard Bolzano

They were quiet for a time, alone with their thoughts, but then John sat up straight, struck by a thought. "There's a passage in Exodus - God tells Moses, 'No one can see My face, but I will protect you with My hand until I have passed by you, and then I will remove My hand and you will see My back.' Remember that?"
Emilio nodded, listening.
Well I always thought that was a physical metaphor," John said, "but, you know - I wonder now if it isn't really about time? Maybe that was God's way of telling us that we can never know His intentions, but as time goes on ... we'll understand. We'll see where He was: we'll see His back. — Mary Doria Russell

Umm, there are so many people that I've never had one person that I've particularly idolised or I thought "Wow, I want to be just like them". It used to be when I was younger, Julia Roberts, I used to just love her. There is something so appealing about her. — Emma Watson

That was with me for years
feeling I wasn't myself. And I do think I wasn't my real self then. Of course, I'm not sure there is such a thing as a real self. You could ransack your innards looking for the real you and never find it
slice yourself open and all you'll find is blood and muscle and bone. — Ryu Murakami

Natural childbirth - I would never understand it. It was like going to the dentist and saying, "Novocain? No thanks. Just go in there Doc and rip that sucker right out! — J.L. Berg

Later, the talk turned to all the other guys/girls who were currently hot for the two of them. 'There's this total dweeb named Robert who's always calling me, and I feel bad because he's really nice, but I'm totally not interested,' Phoebe told Pablo.

'Believe me, I know what that's like,' Pablo told Phoebe. 'There's this girl at Hunter who's, like, obsessed with me. She's, like, this big fat girl. Ass like a truck. She's always writing me these love letters. Maybe I should fuck her. You know, just to be nice.' (Smile, smile.)

'You're so bad.' (Phoebe shaking her head; Pablo loving it; Phoebe loving it, too. What was more ego-enhancing than making dumb jokes at the expense of ugly women? Phoebe could never decide whom she hated more--other people or herself.) — Lucinda Rosenfeld

When 'Twilight' hit the New York Times bestseller list at number 5, for me that was the pinnacle, that was the moment. I never thought I would be there. And I keep having moments like that where you just stop and say, wait a minute - how is this still going up? I'm waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under me. — Stephenie Meyer

Despair is the state in which anxiety and restlessness are immanent to existence. Nobody in despair suffers from "problems", but from his own inner torment and fire. It's a pity that nothing can be solved in this world. Yet there never was and here never will be anyone who would commit suicide for this reason. So much for the power that intellectual anxiety has over the total anxiety of our being! That is why I prefer the dramatic life, consumed by inner fires and tortured by destiny, to the intellectual, caught up in abstractions which do not engage the essence of our subjectivity. I despise the absence of risks, madness and passion in abstract thinking. How fertile live, passionate thinking is! Lyricism feeds it like blood pumped into the heart! — Emil M. Cioran

We've never been in a time where mothers - parenthood, but particularly motherhood - is so fetishized. There's a whole industry around motherhood and mother-daughter bonds. And certainly when my mother was sick I found there was an incredible expectation for me to tell everybody how we were having this bonding experience and how healing it was. — Meghan Daum

I knew I was in love with Lorri when I started to wake up in the middle of the night furious and cursing her for making me feel the way she did. It was pain beyond belief. Nothing has ever hurt me that way. I tried to sleep as much as possible just to escape. I was grinding my teeth down to nubs. Now, years later, it's exactly the opposite. Now there is no pain, yet she still makes my heart explode. Now there is only fun and love and silliness. She drives me to frenzy, because I can never get enough. — Damien Echols

Paradise was always over there, a day's sail away. But it's a funny thing, escapism. You can go far and wide and you can keep moving on and on through places and years, but you never escape your own life. I, finally, knew where my life belonged. Home. — J. Maarten Troost

He could be anywhere by now, so that is where I look for him. Anywhere...
There are times when I don't recognize this woman who plays with such self-possession. She is something that I have faked. She is William Tyne's daughter, I supposed; his idea of her. I put her forward when I am performing so that he will approach me. I strive to make her taller than she is, more graceful, less unsure. I don't think other people have to try so hard in their lives. Or do they? Are we all living like this? So close to this mesh of nerves?
So I played for my father another concerto, though he was never one for sitting still in a chair. He would make an exception for me, though, his firstborn. He would see the progress I have made. — Claire Kilroy

Someone once asked me if I knew the feeling of fear. Oh, I knew fear. Well, really speaking I never feared any fucker at that time; I've got to be honest. But I knew fear, the fear of losing! There was never any fear of combat! My father instilled that fear in to me and that was what drove me on to win ... the fear of what was to come after you went home saying you'd lost! — Stephen Richards

My parents split up when I was young, and I was living with my mom for a little while, then I was kind of just on my own really young. It wasn't some kind of global tragedy, it was just never really a very close-knit family. So there was support in the sense that they didn't stand in my way. — Ani DiFranco

I don't know what I was looking for . . . I felt empty. I guess. Not hearing from you made it all seem surreal, like you were never there, a dream, a figment of my imagination.

I went to your site that day to . . . I guess, double-check.

I thought. . . maybe you wrote something, a new story . . . a message . . . anything.

I did find a new story . . .

It wasn't about us . . .

And I ended up feeling even emptier. — Stjepan Sejic

In 1995, each cast at The Second City was made up of four men and two women. When it was suggested that they switch one of the companies to three men and three women, the producers and directors had the same panicked reaction. 'You can't do that. There won't be enough parts to go around. There won't be enough for the girls.' This made no sense to me, probably because I speak English and have never had a head injury. We weren't doing _Death of a Salesman._ _We were making up the show ourselves. How could there not be enough parts?_ If everyone had something to contribute, there would be enough. The insulting implication, of course, was that the women wouldn't have any ideas. — Tina Fey

Swann's father, an excellent but an eccentric man in whom the least little thing would, it seemed, often check the flow of his spirits and divert the current of his thoughts. Several times in the course of a year I would hear my grandfather tell at table the story, which never varied, of the behaviour of M. Swann the elder upon the death of his wife, by whose bedside he had watched day and night. My grandfather, who had not seen him for a long time, hastened to join him at the Swanns' family property on the outskirts of Combray, and managed to entice him for a moment, weeping profusely, out of the death-chamber, so that he should not be present when the body was laid in its coffin. They took a turn or two in the park, where there was a little sunshine. Suddenly M. Swann seized my grandfather — Marcel Proust

It was really over, I thought. There was no way to go back, to make it stay. There was never that. — Cheryl Strayed

There was, I think, never any reason to believe in any innate superiority of the male, except his superior muscle. — Bertrand Russell

Don't look so worried. I've sailed the seven seas, and I've never had an unsuccessful adventure yet!"
"Really? You've sailed all seven seas?" asked Darwin admiringly.
"Every last one!"
"What are the seven seas? I've always wondered."
"Aaarrr. Well, let's see ... " said the Pirate Captain, scratching his craggy forehead. "There's the North Sea. And that other one, the one near Mozambique. And ... what's that one in Hyde Park?"
"The Serpentine?"
"That's the one. How many's that then? Three. Um. There's the sea with all the rocks in it ... I think they call it Sea Number Four. Then that would leave ... uh ... Grumpy and Sneezy ... "
Darwin was starting to look a little less impressed.
"Would you look at that big seagull!" said the Pirate Captain, quickly ducking into a beach hut. — Gideon Defoe

But you're so easy to sneak up on." He crossed his arms, leaning back against the wall. "You should be honored that I bother, since there's no challenge to it."
"Right," I said dryly.
Tybalt has never made a secret of his contempt for changelings in general and me in particular. Not even the years I spent missing could change that. If anything, it made things worse, because when I came back, I promptly removed myself from all the places he was accustomed to finding me. Hating me suddenly took effort - an effort he's proved annoying glad to make. On the other hand, it's actually been something of a relief, because it is something I can count on. Dawn comes, the moon rises and Tybalt hates me. — Seanan McGuire

I was not a happy runner. I did it to stay interested in my body, to stay informed, and to set up clear lines of endeavor, a standard to meet, a limit to stay within. I was just enough of a puritan to think there must be some virtue in rigorous things, although I was careful not to overdo it. I never wore the clothes. the shorts, tank top, high socks. Just running shoes and a lightweight shirt and jeans. I ran disguised as an ordinary person. — Don DeLillo

There are ways in which we're so alike. We're reckless. We don't think before we act. We'll do anything for people we love. And I never thought how scary that was for the people who loved me until I saw — Cassandra Clare

My best day ever. Got up. Had breakfast. Came to school. Bored, as usual. Wishing I wasn't there, like usual. Kids ignoring me, suits me fine. Sitting with the other retards - we're so special. Wasting my time. Yesterday was the same, and it's gone, anyway. Tomorrow may never come. There is only today. This is the best day and the worst day. Actually it's crap. — Rachel Ward

One day, Buckley came home from the second grade with a story he'd written: Once upon a time there was a kid named Billy. He liked to explore. He saw a hole and went inside but he never came out. The End. — Alice Sebold

While Diana finds the monarchy as presently organized a crumbling institution, she has a deep respect for the manner in which the Queen has conducted herself for the last forty years. Indeed, much as she would like to leave her husband, Diana has emphasized to her: "I will never let you down." Before she attended a garden party on a stifling July afternoon last year, a friend offered Diana a fan to take with her. She refused saying: "I can't do that. My mother-in-law is going to be standing there with her handbag, gloves, stockings and shoes." It was a sentiment expressed in admiring tones for the Sovereign's complete self-control in every circumstance, however trying. — Andrew Morton

I was actually pretty miserable in high school. I couldn't wait for it to be over. And when it finally was, I remember sitting at graduation with all these classmates getting nostalgic and emotional already and all I could think was, "Get me out of here. I never want to see you people again." So it's ironic that I spend half my day putting myself back there by choice [while writing]. — Sarah Dessen

There was so much pressure by myself and everyone else and I can't handle this by myself. It's not good for me so I made the decision never go to a ski coach for mental help. I said last season I will try a mental coach and see how it works. — Michaela Dorfmeister

I never taught people where to step on '2', because when I learned how to dance there was no '2'. We just danced to the music. — Frankie Manning

No man is an island, as they say. No. I've tried it. I've gone on retreats at various times in my life for three or four or five days. I was desperate to get out of there and talk to somebody. But I fly fish a lot, and I can only do that really by myself. I find I'm never lonesome when I'm on a river, far from it, but it's a lonely practice. — Liam Neeson

I will go," he said. "I will go to Troy."
The rosy gleam of his lip, the fevered green of his eyes. There was not a line anywhere on his face, nothing creased or graying; all crisp. He was spring, golden and bright. Envious death would drink his blood, and grow young again.
He was watching me, his eyes as deep as earth.
"Will you come with me?" he asked.
The never-ending ache of love and sorrow. Perhaps in some other life I could have refused, could have torn my hair and screamed, and made him face his choice alone. But not in this one. He would sail to Troy and I would follow, even into death. "Yes," I whipsered. "Yes."
Relief broke in his face, and he reached for me. I let him hold me, let him press us length to length so close that nothing might fit between us.
Tears came, and fell. Above us, the constellations spun and the moon paced her weary course. We lay stricken and sleepless as the hours passed. — Madeline Miller

He wonders if it's some sort of twisted joke the adults are having, shoving hormonal teens into tight quarters but making it impossible to do anything but breathe.
"I wouldn't mind suffocating if it was with you," the girl says, which is flattering, but makes him even less interested in her.
"There'll be a better time," he tells her, knowing that such a time will never come - at least not for her - but hope is a powerful motivator.
Eventually they settle into a sort of symbiotic breathing rhythm. He breathes in when she breathes out, so their chests don't fight for space.
After a while, there's a jarring motion. With his arm now around the girl, he holds her a little more tightly, knowing that easing her fear somehow eases his own. — Neal Shusterman

I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me.
If I had had words to speak such a thing, I would have. But there were none that seemed big enough for it, to hold that swelling truth.
As if he had heard me, he reached for my hand. I did not need to look; his fingers were etched into my memory, slender and petal-veined, strong and quick and never wrong.
"Patroclus," he said. He was always better with words than I. — Madeline Miller

Does not Eternity appear dreadful to you. I often get to thinking of it and it seems so dark to me that I almost wish there was no Eternity. To think that we must forever live and never cease to be. It seems as if Death would be a relief to so endless a state of existence. — Emily Dickinson

If I became lost in the multiverse, exploring infinite parallel dimensions, my only criterion for settling down somewhere would be whether or not I could find you: and once I did, I'd stay there even if it was a world ruled by giant spider-priests, or one where killer robots won the Civil War, or even a world where sandwiches were never invented, because you'd make it the best of all possible worlds anyway, and plus we could get rich off inventing sandwiches. — Tim Pratt

There are people who think that Malina and I are married. We never considered that we might be married, that such a possibility could exist, nor even the idea that other people might think that we were married. For the longest time it never crossed our minds that, like other people, we appear as man and wife wherever we go. This was a complete surprise for us, but we had no idea what to make of it. We laughed a lot. — Ingeborg Bachmann

I drew a line for myself. I never dated anyone that could hire me when I was first in Hollywood, and I think that kept me focused on what I was there to do and how I wanted to go about it. I took it a step at a time. — Cheryl Ladd

If Daddy could see me now. I spent the morning with Rebecca at the Indianapolis Speedway, at an auto museum filled with Nascars and racing paraphernalia. Do you remember when we used to watch all five hundred laps with him, every year? I never understood what it was that made auto racing such a biggie for him - it's not like he ever tried the sport himself. He told me once when I was older that it was the absolute speed of it all. I liked to watch for crashes, like you. I liked the way there'd be a huge explosion on the track and billows of ebony smoke, and the other cars would just keep a straight course and head right for the spin, into this sort of black box, and they'd come out okay. I — Jodi Picoult

Because I never set out to be an actress, I always feel so lucky and grateful. There are so many people who are really desperate to be stars, and it was completely the opposite for me - I fell into it. — Sophia Myles

When I look over my past, I see that the stages in my life are like the phases of the moon. I've had periods where I was the waxing gibbous: fat with wealth and success. There have been other seasons when my happiness was like the waning crescent and I watched my joy fade away slowly, merging with the atmosphere around me as if it never existed. Then I felt as if I was left with nothing more than an illusion, but happiness returns in time and glows once more in corpulent fullness. It's time that makes the difference. — Amy Neftzger

And don't succumb too much to the spell of these cases. I have seen many other fragments of the cross, in other churches. If all were genuine, our Lord's torment could not have been on a couple of planks nailed together, but on an entire forest.'
'Master!' I said, shocked.
'So it is, Adso. And there are ever richer treasuries. Some time ago, in the cathedral of Cologne, I saw the skull of John the Baptist at the age of twelve.'
'Really?' I exclaimed, amazed. Then, siezed by doubt, I added, 'But the Baptist was executed at a more advanced age!'
'The other skull must be in another treasury,' William said, with a grave face. I never understood when he was jesting. — Umberto Eco

But how much love, oh, Lord, how much love I experienced at times in those dreams of mine, in those "escapes into everything beautiful and sublime." Even though it was fantastic love, even though it was never directed at anything human, there was still so much love that afterward, in reality, I no longer felt any impulse to direct it: that would have been an unnecessary luxury. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I guess I had never bothered to consider that there might such a thing as a boy, but now that I had found one, I thought it was just about the most wonderful concept in the world. He smelled of mud and sugar and an animal I'd never scented before, and a faint meaty odor clung to his fingers, so I licked them. — W. Bruce Cameron

When we got to the Lock-Horne Building on Park Avenue - again Win's full name is Windsor Horne Lockwood III, so you do the math - Dad said, "You want me to just drop you off?" Sometimes my father leaves me awestruck. Fatherhood is about balance, but how can one man do it so well, so effortlessly? Throughout my life he pushed me to excel without ever crossing the line. He reveled in my accomplishments yet never made them seem to be all that important. He loved without condition, yet he still made me want to please him. He knew, like now, when to be there, and when it was time to back off. "I'll be okay." He — Harlan Coben

My dad was never married. He was kind of a rolling stone. But he was never disrespectful. At the same time, even though he had women in his life when I was a kid, there wasn't any consistency. — Kevin Hart

Zoroastrianism? Oh, there's never been but a few hundred thousand of them at any one time, mostly located in Iran and India, but that's it. The one true faith. If you're not a Zoroastrian, I'm afraid you are bound for Hell."
The man looked stunned and shocked. "It's not fair."
The demon gave a mirthful laugh. "Well, it was fair when you were sending all the Chinese to Hell who had never heard of Jesus. Wasn't it? — Steven L. Peck

I ain't never heardin' of a place called Odin."

Now Mazda knew. Hillbilly. A fucking hillbilly. If there was one thing that Mazda disliked more than Greeks, it was hillbillies. He grabbed the slack-jawed yokel by the throat and lifted him off the ground, "Not a place. A who."

The man had a difficult time speaking, "Awho? Who's Awho? Is he at Odin? — Dylan Callens

You didn't like him, did you, Dad?"
"It wasn't that I didn't like him," my dad says slowly. "It was just that he lives in a completely different world, and I worried that he didn't really approve of you the way you are, that he was trying to change you into something else."
God, I never realized my dad was that perceptive..
"You see, the thing is," he says after we've both sat for a while in the sunshine, "the thing is that love is really the most important thing. I know it's hard for you to see it now" - he chuckles quietly- "but when I first laid eyes on your mother I thought she was fantastic, and I've never stopped loving her, not for a second. Oh yes, we've had our rough patches, and she can be a bit of an old battle-ax at times, but I still love her. That in-love feeling at the beginning settles down into a different, familiar sort of love, but it has to be there right from the start, otherwise it just won't work. — Jane Green

I have never met a simple man. Not even in the confessional, though I used to sit there for hours on end. Man was not created simple. When I was a young priest, I used to try to unravel what motives a man or woman had, what temptations and self-delusions. But I soon learned to give all that up, because there was never a straight answer. No one was simple enough for me to understand. In the end I would just say, 'Three Our Fathers, Three Hail Marys. Go in peace. — Graham Greene

I think of how she lives alone, just like me, and how she never had any real family, and how she only has sex with people. She never lets any love get in the way. I think she had a family once, but it was one of those beat-the-crap-out-of-each-other situations. There's no shortage of them around here. I think she loved them, and all they ever did was hurt her. — Markus Zusak

Some of the books the Ministry's confiscated - Dad's told me - there was one that burned your eyes out. And everyone who read Sonnets of a Sorcerer spoke in limericks for the rest of their lives. And some old witch in Bath had a book that you could never stop reading! You just had to wander around with your nose in it, trying to do everything one-handed. And - "
"All right, I've got the point," said Harry. — J.K. Rowling

Please, help me. Young werewolves in love. I turned to walk into the house, moving carefully.
I had never much believed in God. Well, that's not quite true. I believed that there was a God, or something close enough to it to warrant the name if there were demons, there had to be angels, right? If there was a Devil, somewhere, there had to be a God. But He & I had never really seen things in quite the same terms.
All the same. I flashed a look up at the ceiling. I didn't say or think any words, but if God was listening, I hoped he got the message nonetheless. I didn't want of these children getting themselves killed. — Jim Butcher

Think of music as being a great snarl of a city [ ... ]. In the years I spent living there, I came to know its streets. Not just the main streets. Not just the alleys. I knew shortcuts and rooftops and parts of the sewers. Because of this, I could move through the city like a rabbit in a bramble. I was quick and cunning an clever.
Denna, on the other hand, had never been trained. She knew nothing of shortcuts. You'd think she'd be forced to wander the city, lost and helpless, trapped in a twisting maze of mortared stone. But instead, she simply walked through the walls. She didn't know any better. Nobody had ever told her she couldn't. Because of this, she moved through the city like some faerie creature. She walked roads no one else could see, and it made her music wild and strange and free. — Patrick Rothfuss

She wasn't too big, heroic, what they call Junoesque. It was that there was just too much of what she was for any one human female package to contain, and hold: too much of white, too much of female, too much of maybe just glory, I don't know: so that at first sight of her you felt a kind of shock of gratitude just for being alive and being male at the same instance with her in space and time, and then in the next second and forever after a kind of despair because you knew there would never be enough of any one male to match and hold and deserve her; grief forever after because forever after nothing less would ever do. — William Faulkner

For me, embalming was a form of meditation; it brought a sense of peace that I had never found in any other aspect of my life. I loved the stillness of it, the quietness. The bodies never moved or yelled; they never fought or left. The dead simply lay there, at peace with the world, and let me do whatever I needed to do. I was in control of myself. — Dan Wells

Why?" His question was almost buried by my heavy breathing.
I think I understood the question now. I could only hope I had the right answer. If there was one.
"Because I want to trust, be trusted. I want someone I can count on, someone who can count on me. I want somewhere safe. I want a home. But that can only happen if I'm with you."
"I'm never going to be like other men, Grant."
I wasn't sure what he meant until I turned enough to see his expression. The knowledge in his eyes spoke of those places he looked into. The windows or portals he disappeared into when he followed the light.
"I can give you what I have, but I can never give you everything." It wasn't Morgan didn't want to, he couldn't. I could see that too. He could never give me all of himself because he didn't control everything he had.
Could I live with that? — Adrienne Wilder

Then, as in the middle of the bridge, in the middle of a walk, in the middle always, whether of a book, a conversation, or making love, it was borne in on me again that I had never done what I wanted and out of not doing what I wanted to do there grew up inside me this creation which was nothing but an obsessional plant, a sort of coral growth, which was expropriating everything, including life itself, until life itself became this which was denied but which constantly asserted itself, making life and killing life at the same time. — Henry Miller

I always drank, from when it was legal for me to drink. And there was never a time for me when the goal wasn't to get as hammered as I could possibly afford to. I never understood social drinking, that's always seemed to me like kissing your sister. — Stephen King

I asked myself what I believed. I had never prayed a lot. I hoped hard, wished hard, but I didn't pray. I had developed a certain distrust of organised religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptised. — Lance Armstrong

Every time I go to Europe, I remember that James Dean never saw Europe, but yet I see his face everywhere. There's James Dean, Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe - windows of the Champs Elysees, discos in the south of Spain, restaurants in Sweden, t-shirts in Moscow. My life was confused and disoriented for years by his passing. My sense of destiny destroyed - the great films he would have directed, the great performances he would have given, the great humanitarian he would have become, and yet, he's the greatest actor and star I have ever known. — Dennis Hopper

It's true I've been hurt a few times after revealing myself. There are people who lie in wait for the vulnerable and pounce as a way to feel powerful. But God forgive them. I'm willing to take the occasional blow to find people I connect with. As long as you're willing to turn the other cheek with the mean ones, vulnerability can get you a wealth of friends. Can you imagine coming to the end of your life, being surrounded by people who loved you, only to realize they never fully knew you? Or having poems you never shared or injustices you said nothing about? Can you imagine realizing, then, it was too late? How can we be loved if we are always in hiding? — Donald Miller

I was a book lover from the beginning. I loved, love, words and images and ideas, the ways a book can make you feel things deeply or help you understand something you never even knew there were words for. — Deb Caletti

I could never plan to have a career that went this well ... you know, there were times when it didn't: when it went into the toilet, or ducked, or was difficult to get moving. — Peter Capaldi

The three of us stood there for a minute. I don't know what Stew was thinking, and the filing cabinet wasn't thinking anything. But I was thinking, is this the world? Is this really the place in which you've ended up, Snicket? It was a question that struck me, as it might strike you, when something ridiculous was going on, or something sad. I wondered if this was really where I should be, or if there was another world someplace, less ridiculous and less sad. But I never knew the answer to the question. Perhaps I had been in another world before I was born, and did not remember it, or perhaps I would see another world when I died, which I was in no hurry to do. In the meantime, I was stuck in the police station, doing something so ridiculous it felt sad, and feeling so sad it was ridiculous. The world of the police station, the world of Stain'd-by-the-Sea and all of the wrong questions I was asking, was was the only world I could see. — Lemony Snicket

I had learned that there were substitutes
for a mother who couldn't be a mother. You
could find love with other people. You could
find it in places you weren't even looking.
But the original wound would never heal. I
would carry it with me forever, and so would
Tara. That was the trick ... accepting it, going
on with your life, knowing it was part of
you. — Lisa Kleypas

There was no one for you to impress and no one for you to offend. You were right there and I was afraid of how real you were, which made me question my own level of authenticity. I'd take off my clothes on the beach or spill my guts to a girl I'd never met on the bus, thinking I was uncensored and open, but I wasn't always real if I wanted someone to like me. I gravitated to those who withheld or told me who they thought I was. — Mary-Louise Parker

I know, for me, you know, my generation - I never would have known anything about Robert Preston's performance in 'The Music Man' if there hadn't been a film where he played the part. I just heard how great he was on Broadway way before my time. — John Lloyd Young

For a long moment there was only the sound of her soft, half-gasping little breaths, and the thud of his heart, loud in his ears. He had never felt this ... this liberation, this unfettered contentment. Not with another woman, not after a hard day of accomplishment, not after a brilliant business maneuver, not even after beating his brothers at anything. His body was wrung out with physical satisfaction, his mind fely fogged and sluggish, but his head ...
'If this be madness,' came Francesca's weak voice from behind the shining veil of her hair, 'lead me to Bedlam.'
'Perhpas tomorrow. I don't think I can make it further than the bed. — Caroline Linden

It was always about the future of writers, and about the way writers are treated in the future, and I think that was really hurtful to a lot of people in my position who had 160 people who depended on them to get this over with. So there was a lot of pain in it, and in that sense it will never be worth it, but I do think it was important. — Edward Allen Bernero

I use the [vulgar] words because apparently these words do not corrupt morally. I'm from the street in New York, hung around in a tough neighborhood. It was common to curse, you make your point. It's a very effective language. I try not to overdo it. It's never to shock. I know where it fits, it's never to shock. There's no shock value left in words. — George Carlin

So if you love me, let me go.
And run away before I know.
My heart is just too dark to care.
I can't destroy what isn't there.
Deliver me into my fate -
If I'm alone I cannot hate
I don't deserve to have you ...
My smile was taken long ago
If I can change I hope I never know — Slipknot

I happen to love working in cinema, but the theater is always there ... you know, and I would never shut the door on it. Even though it's been quite a bit of time since I've done a play, last one was in New York. — Michael York

It was not just the drink, though, that was making me happy, but the tenderness of things, the simple goodness of the world. This sunset, for instance, how lavishly it was laid on, the clouds, the light on the sea, that heartbreaking, blue-green distance, laid on, all of it, as if to console some lost suffering waybarer. I have never really got used to being on this earth. Somethings I think our presence here is due to a cosmic blunder, that we were meant for another planet altogether, with other arrangements, and other laws, and other, grimmer skies. I try to imagine it, our true place, off on the far side of the galaxy, whirling and whirling. And the ones who were meant for here, are they out there, baffled and homesick, like us? No, they would have become extinct long ago. How could they survive, these gentle earthlings, in a world that was meant to contain us? — John Banville

Kell had told his brother about the deals he struck in Grey London, and in White, and even on occasion in Red, about the various things he'd smuggled, and Rhy had stared at him, and listened, and when he spoke, it wasn't to lecture Kell on all the ways it was wrong, or illegal. It was to ask why.
"I don't know," said Kell, and it had been the truth.
Rhy had sat up, eyes bleary from drink. "Have we not provided?" he'd asked, visibly upset. "Is there anything you want for?"
"No," Kell had answered, and that had been a truth and a lie at the same time.
"Are you not loved?" whispered Rhy. "Are you not welcomed as family?"
"But I'm not family, Rhy," Kell had said. "I'm not truly a Maresh, for all that the king and queen have offered me that name. I feel more like a possession than a prince."
At that, Rhy had punched him in the face.
For a week after, Kell had two black eyes instead of one, and he'd never spoken like that again, but the damage was done. — Victoria Schwab

My memory of the school building itself, its rooms and lockers, blackboards, and hallways, bring on a heavy, oppressive feeling. Whether I was more unhappy in school than any of my friends I don't know. I never would have said I didn't like school, and there are moments I distinctly remember enjoying, but these truths don't alter my memory of that place. — Siri Hustvedt

Writing isn't about creating perfect characters. There's no such thing. It's about creating characters that are real; flawed
yet beautiful, in that they know they need another person. Needing someone else doesn't make them weak; if they believed all they needed was them self, they would be. A strong heroine isn't afraid to admit that a best friend, or soul mate, is exactly what they need at one moment or another. A strong heroine never stands alone. They stand tall; they believe in who they are. They are perfect in every human flaw, because as humans we are flawed. And in every flaw, I see the perfection of their souls. Writers breath life into simple words and create beings
flaws and all. — Cassandra Giovanni

I have often said in answer to inquiries as to how I got away with kidding some of our public men, that it was because I liked all of them personally, and that if there was no malice in your heart there could be none in your "Gags", and I have always said I never met a man I dident like. — Will Rogers

I think you just complimented me," said Jane. "You should take better care next time."
The music had started, the couples had begun a promenade, but Mr. Nobley paused to hold Jane's arm and whisper, "Jane Erstwhile, if I never had to speak with another human being but you, I would die a happy man. I would that these people, the music, the food and foolishness all disappeared and left us alone. I would never tire of looking at you or listening to you." He took a breath. "There. That compliment was on purpose. I swear I will never idly compliment you again."
Jane's mouth was dry. All she could think to say was, "But ... but surely you wouldn't banish all the food."
He considered, then nodded once. "Right. We will keep the food. We will have a picnic."
And he spun her into the middle of the dance. — Shannon Hale

Russ decided the best defense was a good offense. "I'm Russell Van Alstyne, Millers Kill chrief of police." He held out his hand. She shook firm, like a guy.
"Clare Fergusson," she said. "I'm the new priest at Saint Alban's. That's the Episcopal Church. At the corner of Elm and Church." there was a faint testiness in her voice. Russ relaxed a fraction. A woman priest. If that didn't beat all.
"I know which it is. There are only four churches in town." He saw the fog creeping along the edges of his glasses again and snatched them off, fishing for a tissue in his pocket. "Can you tell me what happened, um ... " What was he supposed to call her? "Mother?"
"I go by Reverend, Chief. Ms. is fine, too."
"Oh. Sorry. I never met a woman priest before."
"We're just like the men priests, except we're willing to pull over and ask directions. — Julia Spencer-Fleming

In all of our experiences together, there always was that moment that I could have turned back and I never ever did. Even if it scared me to the core, to the very soul and fiber of my being, I still went forward into the unknown. Some may call that brave. I don't think I'd call it that. Stubborn beyond repair seemed more fitting. — Karina Halle

Part of my interest was zoological. I's never seen a creature with so many freckles before. A Big Bang had occurred, originating at the bridge of her nose, and the force of this explosion had sent galaxies hurtling and drifting every end of her curved, warm-blooded universe. There were clusters of freckles on her forearms and wrists, an entire Milky Way spreading across her forehead, even a few sputtering quasars flung into the wormholes of her ears. — Jeffrey Eugenides

I never again looked at the sky and saw only vastness and beauty. From that afternoon on I saw that death was also and always there. — Kay Redfield Jamison

A few years after you disappeared, a postal worker named Ben Carver was sentenced to death for murdering six young men. (He is a homosexual, which, according to Huckleberry, means he is not attracted to murdering young women.) Rumors have it that Carver cannibalized some of his victims, but there was never a trial, so the more salacious details were not made public. I found Carver's name in the sheriff's file ten months ago, the fifth anniversary of your disappearance. The letter was written on Georgia Department of Corrections stationery and signed by the warden. He was informing the sheriff that Ben Carver, a death row inmate, had mentioned to one of the prison guards that he might have some information pertaining to your disappearance. — Karin Slaughter

I like things you can touch and things you can keep, because every bit of communication we have is ephemeral in nature. You can just delete an e-mail and it's like it was never there. — Taylor Swift

On a second note, though, I have something to say about pain. There are lots of kinds of pain. Pain of smashing your fingers in a car door, pains of loosing a baby, pain of failing a test. But in their own little ways, these pains are all agonizing. Which is sad, and yet, happy, if you really think about it. If we never lost our car keys, or stepped in gum, or had a bad hair day, what kind of people would we be? In a word? Boring. We wouldn't be passionate; we wouldn't know it was exciting to get pregnant, or score an A on a final. So that's why, today at least, I am grateful for pain. Because it's part of what makes me the whacky, goofy, jaded, person that I am. Peace. — Alysha Speer

I grew up surfing on the north coast of New South Wales, and on most of the beaches, women never wore tops. When we were 10 or 11, me and my mates couldn't drive, so they'd take us surfing and then sit on the beach topless and read a book. I don't know if I quite saw them sexually, but there was physical intrigue. — Simon Baker

They went to the tree. Daemon dismounted and leaned against the tree, staring in the direction of the house. The stallion jiggled the bit, reminding him he wasn't alone. "I wanted to say good-bye," Daemon said quietly. For the first time, he truly saw the intelligence - and loneliness - in the horse's eyes. After that, he couldn't keep his voice from breaking as he tried to explain why Jaenelle was never going to come to the tree again, why there would be no more rides, no more caresses, no more talks. For a moment, something rippled in his mind. He had the odd sensation he was the one being talked to, explained to, and his words, echoing back, lacerated his heart. To be alone again. To never again see those arms held out in welcome. To never hear that voice say his name. To ... Daemon gasped as Dark Dancer jerked the reins free and raced down the path toward the field. Tears of grief pricked Daemon's eyes. The horse might have a simpler mind, but the heart was just as big. — Anne Bishop