It Boston Quotes & Sayings

Believing, repenting, and the like, are the product of the new nature; and can never be produced by the old corrupt nature ... as the child cannot be active in his own generation, so a man cannot be active in his own regeneration. The heart is shut against Christ: man cannot open it, only God can do it by his grace. — Thomas Boston

Between 8:25 and 8:32, in accordance with the FAA protocol, Boston Center managers started notifying their chain of command that American 11 had been hijacked.At 8:28,Boston Center called the Command Center in Herndon to advise that it believed American 11 had been hijacked and was heading toward New York Center's — Anonymous

[On being asked how it felt to be the first female conductor of the Boston Symphony:] I've been a woman for a little more than fifty years, and I've gotten over my original astonishment. — Nadia Boulanger

There is nothing like Ruth ever existed in this game of baseball. I remember we were playing the White Sox in Boston in 1919, and he hit a home run off Lefty Williams over the left-field fence in the ninth inning and won the game. It was majestic. It soared. — Waite Hoyt

He was unafraid of death, understanding it was only the seamless moment that takes you to somewhere else. — Boston Teran

It's been the toughest week of my life, not touching you. Not talking to you. Waiting to see what you were going to do." He kissed her again, a warm, damp touch of lips, exquisitely controlled. "But it doesn't matter whether you stay or go. I'll still need you. So if you want to go off to Boston, Ill wait. Right here, whenever you need me. — Rachel Caine

Five days after the Tsarnaev brothers blew up Boston's most sacred event, and just 24 hours after one brother was killed and the other was caught, everyone decided that it was OK to play baseball at Fenway again. The game happened on a Saturday afternoon, preceded by an emotional ceremony and many prayers. — Bill Simmons

I ran track in high school very competitively, and then ran it D-1 at Boston University. I ran there on an athletic scholarship and chose BU because they had both a good track program and an arts program. — Uzo Aduba

My dad was all about music. He was a musician, leading a band when I was born. His band was active all through the 40s. He'd started it in the late 20s and 30s. According to the scrapbook, his band was doing quite well around the Boston area. During the Depression they were on radio. It was a jazz-oriented band. He was a trumpet player, and he wrote and arranged for the band. He taught me how to play the piano and read music, and taught me what he knew of standard tunes and so forth. It was a fantastic way to come up in music. — Chick Corea

We could spend time together during the day and just kind of talk and enjoy each other and enjoy the moment. But it was interesting we both knew that once you walk through the gates of that stadium, then it was on, the game was on. — Ralph Boston

Now then, Mr. Crab," said the zebra, "here are the people I told you about; and they know more than you do, who live in a pool, and more than I do, who live in a forest. For they have been travelers all over the world, and know every part of it."
"There's more of the world than Oz," declared the crab, in a stubborn voice.
"That is true," said Dorothy; "but I used to live in Kansas, in the United States, and I've been to California and to Australia
and so has Uncle Henry."
"For my part," added the Shaggy Man, "I've been to Mexico and Boston and many other foreign countries."
"And I," said the Wizard, "have been to Europe and Ireland."
"So you see," continued the zebra, addressing the crab, "here are people of real consequence, who know what they are talking about. — L. Frank Baum

And for the city's birthday, we will host events in every neighborhood of the city, inviting all of our residents to share in the celebration of Boston's great epic - the story of neighbors who support one another where it matters most. — Thomas Menino

I've been working with Operation Smile for a number of years, and $240 changes and saves, in many cases, saves a child's life. But one of the things I'm super excited about is my partnership with Boston Market this holiday season and we've partnered up not only to help everybody out during the holidays because we know how crazy it gets. — Kate Walsh

I seem to be one of the few people in journalism who never worked or wrote for the 'Boston Phoenix.' I certainly read and admired it, and feel the same general malaise at news that it is gone. — James Fallows

Thanks to aid, a distressing number of African leaders care little about what their citizens want or need - after all it's the reverse of the Boston tea-party - no representation without taxation. — Dambisa Moyo

Marathon Day in Boston and all of Massachusetts, it's Patriot's Day, and it's a big celebration for us. It's a day when we're kind of the whole world's city there. — Elizabeth Warren

It wasn't as if she was a silly, naive miss who knew nothing of the way of things
heaven knows, she had been to Boston! — Katie MacAlister

In Boston, they love their sports celebrities. And it's great. — Tom Brady

Yeah, well, it's not like the old days." I bit into my lobster roll. Maybe the best lobster roll in Boston, which made it, arguably, the best lobster roll in the world. "It's — Dennis Lehane

You have in Vegas the most heterogeneous audience you're gonna get anywhere in the country. In Boston, Chicago, Miami, you know who goes to the theater. In Vegas, you have people who only see one theater show a year, and it's in Vegas. — Penn Jillette

Cookery means the knowledge of Medea and of Circe and of Helen and of the Queen of Sheba. It means the knowledge of all herbs and fruits and balms and spices, and all that is healing and sweet in the fields and groves and savory in meats. It means carefulness and inventiveness and willingness and readiness of appliances. It means the economy of your grandmothers and the science of the modern chemist; it means much testing and no wasting; it means English thoroughness and French art and Arabian hospitality; and, in fine, it means that you are to be perfectly and always ladies - loaf givers. — John Ruskin

The point is not that books, magazines, and DVDs are dead - far from it. At places such as the redesigned Boston Public Library, popular publications and media materials in physical form circulate rapidly from prominent spaces close to the building's entrance. The point is that people's information habits have undergone a sea change - a major shift toward the digital. Libraries are trying to serve a wide range of patrons at many different points along an "adoption curve," with all-print at one end and all-digital at the other. — John Palfrey

Sometimes I felt that there was something physical connecting us, a long rope that stretched between Boston and Portland: when she tugged on her end, I felt it on mine. Wherever she went, wherever I went, there it would be, that shining twined string that stretched and pulled but never broke, our every movement reminding us of what we would never have again. — Hanya Yanagihara

Home.
Home was BAMA, the Sprawl, the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis.
Program a map to display frequency of data exchange, every thousand megabytes a single pixel on a very large screen. Manhattan and Atlanta burn solid white. Then they start to pulse, the rate of traffic threatening to overload your simulation. Your map is about to go nova. Cool it down. Up your scale. Each pixel a million megabytes. At a hundred million megabytes per second, you begin to make out certain blocks in midtown Manhattan, outlines of hundred-year-old industrial parks ringing the old core of Atlanta ... — William Gibson

I ain't got no problem in Boston, I especially like the attention. I know that I'm one of the top guys in this game and all the attention is on me, I got a lot of people on my shoulder but I'm human. I like to go. I like to have fun. I like to do this and that but I gotta represent Boston and the Red Sox in every way that I do outside this game ... Like I said I get paid to play baseball no [matter] where I go to play I still gotta go and perform even if I like it or not. — Manny Ramirez

Derek Jeter is one who played for such a long time, and David Ortiz in Boston is doing it right now. — Tom Brady

Since first hearing the story as a child, any mention of the 'Boston Tea Party' has elicited in me an excitement that is uniquely American. When I heard rumblings that there was a new Tea Party, I got goose bumps. I love tea, I love parties, I hate taxes; I'm in! It seemed that most of America joined in my excitement! — Greg Fitzsimmons

The water still flows swiftly, and silently, toward Boston Harbor. The water soaks the shoreline, making the summer grasses grow thick, which help feed the waterfowl, and it flows languidly, ceaselessly, under the old bridges, reflecting clouds in summer and bobbing with floes in winter - and silently heads toward the ocean. — Haruki Murakami

Nobody loves the Boston Marathon as much as the people who make fun of it year after year. This was the race that previously offered as a prize a not particularly expensive medal, a laurel wreath, and a bowl of beef stew. This was the race that, on one memorable occasion, nobody knew who actually won. — Charlie Pierce

What an honourable thing is it to be fishers of men! How great an honour shouldst thou esteem it, to be a catcher of souls! We are workers together with God, says the apostle. If God has ever so honoured thee, O that thou knewest it, that thou mightst bless his holy name, that ever made such a poor fool as thee to be a co-worker with him. God has owned thee to do good to those who were before caught. O my soul, bless thou the Lord. Lord, what am I, or what is my father's house, that thou hast brought me to this? — Thomas Boston

I remember the beginnings of the Kurzweil reading machine. I was one of the first to meet Ray Kurzweil and purchase the reading machine in Boston. To think that the machine was at least two and a half large suitcases at the time, and now you have a camera and it takes a picture and you have sound. — Stevie Wonder

I recently did a piece for the Boston Pops and John Williams, and I hope that it's as well a composed piece as I've ever done for any other medium or occasion. — Peter Maxwell Davies

Two days after the Boston marathon bombings, there was a drone strike in Yemen attacking a peaceful village, which killed a target who could very easily have been apprehended. But, of course, it is just easier to terrorise people. The drones are a terrorist weapon; they not only kill targets but also terrorise other people. — Noam Chomsky

Boston is a great center of learning. That surgeon was a tantric Buddha," said Ram in admiration, "The smell of cautery is the finest incense. It sharpens the mind. — Joe Niemczura

It's all about hustling, whether it's in Boston or the film industry. I've been hustling my entire life - acting my way into trouble and acting my way back out again. I'm just fortunate to have had the opportunity to apply it in a different direction. — Mark Wahlberg

When Boston and Orlando told me they were going to pick me at 21 and 22, I figured I don't need to do a workout for a second -round team. Boston and Orlando never drafted me because they said I was too skinny and no European point guard will make it in the League. — Tony Parker

Until we fully understand what turned two brothers who allegedly perpetrated the Boston Marathon bombings into murderers, it is hard to make any policy recommendation other than this: We need to redouble our efforts to make America stronger and healthier so it remains a vibrant counterexample to whatever bigoted ideology may have gripped these young men ... And the best place to start is with a carbon tax. — Thomas Friedman

You tell me why the government needs this information on every Verizon customer but they don't need to know who's coming across our border? They don't need to know where the 15,000 foreign nationals are that skipped out on their visa, just didn't show up to school but they're here in the United States. You tell me why they need my grandmother's phone records but they don't need to know where the Saudi nationals are. Why they don't need - why they need to know who's calling who inside the United States of America. They need to know who's calling who, how long the phone conversations were lasting, the GPS locators for all of the cellphones, when those phones, when that phone call was made. Why do they need all of that for domestic terror but they can't seem to get it right with the Boston bombers? They don't know where that guy was. You tell me why they need all of this information. Why do you need to go for the AP? You don't need to go for the AP and target the reporters. — Glenn Beck

I went to Boston College. It's a Catholic college, yeah I had a nickname there: Jew. — Gary Gulman

A woman gets into a taxi in Boston's Logan airport and asks the driver, 'Can you take me somplace where I can get scrod?' He says, 'Gee, that's the first time I've heard it in the pluperfect subjunctive. — Steven Pinker

The priesthood is not dying, but the clerical state is dead. It needs to be buried, preferably with a Viking funeral in Boston Harbor so nobody can miss the spectacle of its passing. — Eugene Kennedy

The Jews believed Jerusalem to be the centre. I have seen a kratometric chart designed to show that the city of Philadelphia was in the same thermic belt, and, by inference, in the same belt of empire, as the cities of Athens, Rome, and London. It was drawn by a patriotic Philadelphian, and was examined with pleasure, under his showing, by the inhabitants of Chestnut Street. But, when carried to Charleston, to New Orleans, and to Boston, it somehow failed to convince the ingenious scholars of all those capitals. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I know this year hasn't gone as we'd all like it. But please, please, everyone do not forget about that 2013 season - the worst to first, the tragedy of the Boston Marathon, everyone rallying around the city, the finish line, the duck boats, everything, celebrating at home. Might be down a little bit in the win/loss column right now, but do not let that erase any of those memories from last year that I get to wear a ring on my finger for. I'm proud to be a Red Sox for those times. — Jonny Gomes

You hire the best people you can possibly find. Then it's up to you to create an environment where great people decide to stay and invest their time. — Rich Lesser

Since you are now studying geometry and trigonometry, I will give you a problem. A ship sails the ocean. It left Boston with a cargo of wool. It grosses 200 tons. It is bound for Le Havre. The mainmast is broken, the cabin boy is on deck, there are 12 passengers aboard, the wind is blowing East-North-East, the clock points to a quarter past three in the afternoon. It is the month of May. How old is the captain? — Gustave Flaubert

Today I prayed for Boston, for America, my home away from home. Today, I realized how lucky we Sri Lankans are to have peace in our country. How I feel today, hearing of the bombs going off in the city brings back memories of how I used to feel four years ago in Sri Lanka when the LTTE was setting off bombs all around Colombo. That feeling I used to get when I hear about a bomb blast, the goosebumps, the school evacuation drills, the breaking news footage, and most of all, that fear we Sri Lankans used to feel, every second of everyday, it all came back to me today. Thank you God for bringing peace to my country, look after America the way you did Sri Lanka. — Thisuri Wanniarachchi

I'm definitely nervous and excited. I feel like I've been playing off-Broadway, not to say that Boston doesn't have a great theatre district or great theatre, but it's not going to Broadway; it's just a different city. — Todd English

There's no such thing as great art or poor art. Art is subjective expression. As such, it can be judged only as popular or unpopular. What is banned in Boston may one day receive a million-dollar bid at Christie's. Art has, therefore, no use for critics but frequently finds itself amused by commentators. — Ron Brackin

It's a bit scary to see my book come true: the recent (if minor) LA earthquakes, Hurricane Sandy, the Boston bomber, and so on - much of it stoppable, I think, and yet I, too, am also guilty of passivity. — Edan Lepucki

Joe DiMaggio batted safely in 56 consecutive games in 1941, the same season Ted Williams batted .406 - but did you know that also in 1941, Jeff Heath, an outfielder who spent a decade playing for the Indians, became the first player in AL history to hit 20 doubles, 20 triples, and 20 home runs in the same season? It's true. — Tucker Elliot

I can't even think about what life "could
have been" like in Boston, without crying. It's like deja-vu, I don't think me
and Boston were ever meant to be. — Cecelia Ahern

I had loved Portland. It was a clean city, with weather so delicate that at night you had to look at the streetlights to tell whether it was raining or snowing. Everything was heavier near Boston: air, accents, women. — Elizabeth McCracken

I'm certainly aware of the fans. I'm always hoping that what I'm doing is something they'll like, because I do appreciate them. But, no, when I get into the studio, it's all about what I like. It's the same thing that led me to the possibility of making that first Boston album, which was to divorce myself from all other influences. — Tom Scholz

Two of the most powerful of these power places are located in the Boston and Los Angeles areas. Highly evolved souls tend to be drawn to these areas because it's easier for them to increase their awareness there. — Frederick Lenz

The world, with all its impossible variegation and the basic miracle of its existence, draws most mourners out of their grief and back into itself. The homosexual forsythia blooms; the young Irish dancers in Killarney dance, their arms as rigid as shovel handles; secret deals are done involving weapons or office space or crude oil or used cars or drugs; new lovers, believing they will never really have to get up, lie down together; the Large Hadron Collider smashes the Higgs boson into view; snow drapes its white stoles on the bare limbs of winter; the crack of the bat swung by a hefty Dominican pulls a crowd to its feet in Boston; bricks for the new hospital in Phnom Penh are laid in true courses; the single-engine Cessna lands safely in an Ohio alfalfa field during a storm. How can you resist? The true loss in only to the dying, and even the won't feel it when the dying's done. — Daniel Menaker

Boston was a great city to grow up in, and it probably still is. We were surrounded by two very important elements: academia and the arts. I was surrounded by theater, music, dance, museums. And I learned how to sail on the Charles River. So I had a great childhood in Boston. It was wonderful. — Leonard Nimoy

A guided missile corrects its trajectory as it flies, homing in, say, on the heat of a jet plane's exhaust. A great improvement on a simple ballistic shell, it still cannot discriminate particular targets. It could not zero in on a designated New York skyscraper if launched from as far away as Boston. — Richard Dawkins

I can remember back as far as age 8, performing with the Boston Folk Song Society. It was a Woody Guthrie song. — Frank Black

Sinners in their natural state lie dead, lifeless, and moveless; they can no more believe in Christ, nor repent, than a dead man can speak or walk: but, in virtue of the promise, the Spirit of life from Christ Jesus, at the time appointed, enters into the dead soul, and quickens it; so that it is no more morally dead, but alive, having new spiritual powers put into it, that were lost by Adam's fall. — Thomas Boston

Let's be very honest about what this is about. It's not about bashing Democrats, it's not about taxes, they have no idea what the Boston tea party was about, they don't know their history at all. This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. — Janeane Garofalo

I moved from a mountain with one traffic light to New York City when I was 17, and it was an amazing, eye opening, creative adventure. I would walk through the streets of Manhattan looking up at these huge buildings, amazed that I didn't know a single person in any of them. — Rachel Boston

If I were starting now I would do things very differently. I didn't know anything. In Silicon Valley, you get this feeling that you have to be out here. But it's not the only place to be. If I were starting now, I would have stayed in Boston. [Silicon Valley] is a little short-term focused and that bothers me. — Mark Zuckerberg

Boston got Roberts on the July 31 trade deadline - exchanging prospect Henri Stanley for the fleet-footed outfielder. Roberts fittingly got 86 at bats for Boston, but it was his speed on the bases that the Red Sox sought - and it was his speed that brought to an end 86 years of frustration for the Fenway Faithful. — Tucker Elliot

I can't say Boston is 'home-home.' It's definitely a place I'm growing accustomed to. It's such a great sports town. — Wes Welker

My phone buzzes, and I shut off YouTube so I can access my messages.

Logan: Just found the perfect xmas present for you in Boston.

A photo promptly appears, summoning a loud groan from my throat. The asshole sent me a pic of a novelty My Little Pony dildo. Damn thing is bright pink, with rainbow sparkles on the handle.

Logan: And it's rechargeable! U don't have to buy batteries. THAT'S handy!

Me: Hardy-har-har. You = comedian.

Then I message Grace: Tell your BF to stop being mean to me.

She texts back a smiley face. Traitor. — Elle Kennedy

It's bright pinky-white sand was made entirely of shell dust, like star dust, among which, if you sifted it with your fingers, were infant shells as small as the grains but perfectly shaped. Scattered over the surface were larger shells of many kinds and shapes, some as delicate as flower petals, others, though small, built to withstand any battering sea. — L.M. Boston

Boston: Clear out eight hundred thousand people and preserve it as a museum piece. New York: Prison towers and modern posters for soap and whiskey. Pittsburgh: Abandon it. — Frank Lloyd Wright

I've always been a quitter. I quit the Boy Scouts, the glee club, the marching band. Gave up my paper route, turned my back on the church, stuffed the basketball team. I dropped out of college, sidestepped the army with a 4-F on the grounds of mental instability, went back to school, made a go of it, entered a Ph.D. program in nineteenth-century British literature, sat in the front row, took notes assiduously, bought a pair of horn-rims, and quit on the eve of my comprehensive exams. I got married, separated, divorced. Quit smoking, quit jogging, quit eating red meat. I quit jobs: digging graves, pumping gas, selling insurance, showing pornographic films in an art theater in Boston. When I was nineteen I made frantic love to a pinch-faced, sack-bosomed girl I'd known from high school. She got pregnant. I quit town. — T.C. Boyle

My favorite band at the moment is the Dresden Dolls, they're from Boston. It's a guy and a girl. She plays piano and he plays the drums and she also sings. You can find them on the web they're incredible. — Gerard Way

I am always surprised to go into a bar in Boston and three televisions are playing different channels, all at once. We are constantly surprised by this noise and television. It means that's what we are going to get, because we always get everything eventually. — John Gimlette

People saying, 'Life didn't turn out the way I wanted it to.' Welcome to the club. I wanted to be the starting center-fielder for the Boston Red Sox, for chrissakes! — Denis Leary

An alloy of innocence and arrogance, young (Ted) Williams came to Boston when it had four morning and four evening local newspapers engaged in perpetual circulation wars. He became grist for their mills, and his wars with the sportswriters brought out the worst in him, and cost him. He won two Most Valuable Player Awards and finished second four times. Several of those times he would have won had he not had such poisonous relations with the voting press. — George Will

If you're strutting around Beverly Hills and hitting up these big industry parties every night when you're not making movies, then it's going to eventually consume you. But for me, I live most of my life in Boston. I do things no different from the way my buddies back home do them, except when I go to work, I go to a film set. — Chris Evans

Boston is the cream of the crop of the marathon world. It has such history that you feel such honor just being a part of it. All the other races have pacers to get you to a Boston qualifying time. — Summer Sanders

Just to be in Boston, in Cambridge, on a Monday night was very horrifying to me. It frightens me . . . All the stores closing up by 5 or 6, coffeehouses being open maybe until 11, just the sense that the world shuts down and you're left with yourself. — Ann Douglas

Inside the music like this, she understood many things. She understood that Simon was a disappointed man if he needed, at this age, to tell her he had pitied her for years. She understood that as he drove his car back down the coast toward Boston, toward his wife with whom he had raised three children, that something in him would be satisfied to have witnessed her the way he had tonight, and she understood that this form of comfort was true for many people, as it made Malcolm feel better to call Walter Dalton a pathetic fairy, but it was thin milk, this form of nourishment; it could not change that you had wanted to be a concert pianist and ended up a real estate lawyer, that you had married a woman and stayed married to her for thirty years, when she did not ever find you lovely in bed. — Elizabeth Strout

I will now claim - until dispossesed - that I was the first person in the world to apply the typewriter to literature ... The early machine was full of caprices, full of defects- devilish ones. It had as many immoralities as the machine of today has virtues. After a year or two I found that it was degrading my character, so I thought I would give it to Howells ... He took it home to Boston, and my morals began to improve, but his have never recovered. — Mark Twain

Boston fans - and New York fans are the same - it doesn't matter what you do outside of baseball, they don't forgive or forget that you play in pinstripes and they don't care about your interests off the field. — Bronson Arroyo

I got a fan letter on the back of a prison menu. And I remember thinking, 'Well, they get pie. It's not so bad. They get pie on the weekends.' I want to say blueberry and also a Boston cream pie. Not so bad. — Tina Fey

I think I tried to separate indoors and out. And so when he beat me indoors, I did not see that as letting anybody down, I saw it as a good head to head competition, and so it was. It was fine. — Ralph Boston

This wasn't just an attack against the Boston Marathon ... It was an attack against the American public and our democratic use of the streets. We have used our public roadways for annual parades, protest marches, presidential inaugurations, marathons, and all manner of other events. The roads belong to us, and their use represents an important part of our free and democratic tradition. — Amby Burfoot

At Boston University, I motivated negatively, and I found that although it can work at first, by the end of the year everyone is dying for the year to end and you have lost them. The last two years at BU, I motivated positively and got much better results. — Rick Pitino

Once, during the Siege of Boston, when almost nothing was going right and General Schuyler had written from Albany to bemoan his troubles, Washington had replied that he understood but that "we must bear up against them, and make the best of mankind as they are, since we cannot have them as we wish." It was such resolve and an acceptance of mankind and circumstances as they were, not as he wished them to be, that continued to carry Washington through. "I will not however despair," he now wrote to Governor William Livingston. — David McCullough

If she wanted to go back to Boston so damn bad, she should just do it. He said this knowing full well she wouldn't, for it was the particular curse of the Whiting men that their wives remained loyal to them out of spite. By — Richard Russo

It always astounds me that over the course of my career, and having lived in four comedy cities - New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles - there's very few people I haven't run into. — Marc Maron

A little north of Boston, there was something called LOVECRAFT KEYHOLE; it was a crater in the rough shape of a padlock. — Joe Hill

It took Read some twenty years of searching to nail the matter down, but thanks to his efforts we now know that OK first appeared in print in the Boston Morning Post on 23 March 1839, as a jocular abbreviation for 'Oll Korrect'. At — Bill Bryson

The Irish were poor, but not enslaved. He had come here to hack away at the ropes that held American slavery in place. Sometimes it withered him just to keep his mind steady. He was aware that the essence of proper intelligence was the embrace of contradiction. And the recognition of complexity was to be balanced against the need for simplicity. He was still a slave. Fugitive. If he returned to Boston he could be kidnapped at any time, taken south, strapped to a tree, whipped. His owners. They would make a spectacle of his fame. They had tried to silence him for many years already. No longer. He had been given a chance to speak out against what had held him in chains. And he would continue to do so until the links lay in pieces at his feet. — Colum McCann

This combination of ageism and sexism was also blatant in the Boston Herald's treatment of sixty-three-year-old Elizabeth Warren, whose 2012 Senate bid it sought to undermine by repeatedly dubbing her "Granny" in its pages, as if to imply that an older woman could not possibly be trusted with political responsibility. — Laura Bates

There is a unique energy surrounding the Boston Marathon that you can't help but feel. It includes every runner and every person along the course. It brings every person there together as one. — Amy Hastings

The moon shone in the rocking horsr's eye, and in the mouse's eye, too, when Tolly fetched it out from under his pillow to see. The clock went tick-tock, and in the stillness he heard little bare feet running across the floor, then laughter and whispering, and a sound like the pages of a big book being turned over. — L.M. Boston

Jobs, who could identify with each of those sentiments, wrote some of the lines himself, including "They push the human race forward." By the time of the Boston Macworld in early August, they had produced a rough version. They agreed it was not ready, but Jobs used the concepts, and the "think different" phrase, in his keynote speech there. "There's a germ of a brilliant idea there," he said at the time. "Apple is about people who think outside the box, who want to use computers to help them change the world." They debated the grammatical issue: If "different" was supposed to modify the verb "think," it should be an adverb, as in "think differently." But Jobs insisted that he wanted "different" to be used as a noun, as in "think victory" or "think beauty." Also, it echoed colloquial use, as in "think big. — Walter Isaacson

When I go abroad I always sail from Boston because it is such a pleasant place to get away from. — Oliver Herford

All of my lower-middle-class Boston issues rose to the surface. I don't like it when bratty, privileged old white guys speak to me like I am their mouthy niece. I got that amazing feeling you get when you know you are going to lose it in the best, most self-righteous way. I just leaned back and yelled, "FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOU." Then I chased him as he tried to get away from me. — Amy Poehler

I really feel that's part of why audiences go to movies now is to take you to a world you have no access to, whether it's the world of Avengers or Middle-earth or bars in Boston you would be afraid to go into. You see characters there - they aren't hobbits but they're close. — Ben Affleck

Behind those homes was Mass General, where my father and I had gone together so many times. A phone call had woken us in the early hours one morning, and we had driven down to Boston just as the first light was intruding with harsh orange streaks in the sky. She looked the same as the night before, lying in the bed with her eyes closed, only all the machines were shut off, making the room in which we had spent so many quiet hours all the more silent. Her skin felt chilled when I touched it, as if she had just returned from a brisk walk in winter. I looked up now at the windows of the hospital, but my father turned toward Chitra. — Anonymous

The idea of the camp was to use it as a staging area for soldiers on their way to liberate France. It was much better than putting them in Boston in case the Germans attacked. Allied soldiers from several countries left from Camp Myles Standish to go to England and then on to France. They would only stay for a week or two. One group would go out, and another group would come in. At that camp we were doing everything, all the maintenance. There was a small hospital with nurses and doctors, and we were busy. I worked in the PX. We sold coca-cola, and Narragansett beer was delivered once a month. Cigarettes were five dollars a carton. There was plenty of food. We were glad when they gave us American uniforms; that meant we were something. We had work, and we were doing something good. When Italy got out of the war, and we signed to cooperate, that felt pretty good. — Deborah L. Halliday

I watched Gretzky, I watched Lemieux. Maybe it's the time when you're playing, but for a kid coming into the league, you play the Boston Bruins and you just watched Bobby Orr. — Marcel Dionne

Big Papi placed among the top five in Most Valuable Player balloting during his first five seasons with the Red Sox. His best finish in that span was second place in 2005, just losing out to Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees. It was A-Rod, however, who suggested he'd gladly trade his hardware for the ring Ortiz won in 2004. A-Rod got the hardware for MVP again in 2007, but it was Ortiz who got another ring. — Tucker Elliot

In Boston I got to a point where I thought I was putting out fires more than being a baseball coach. And some of it was my fault. I was getting stubborn. My fuse was a little shorter than it needed to be. And that helps nobody. — Terry Francona