Long Ago And Today Quotes & Sayings

Looking at him she felt she knew what the people of antiquity had been like. Thirty centuries or more were effaced, and there he was, the alert and predatory sub-human, further from what she believed man should be like than the naked savage, because the savage was tractable, while this creature, wearing the armor of his own rigid barbaric culture, consciously defied progress. And that was what Stenham saw, too; to him the boy was a perfect symbol of human backwardness, and excited his praise precisely because he was "pure": there was no room in his personality for anything that mankind had not already fully developed long ago. To him he was a consolation, a living proof that today's triumph was not yet total; he personified Stenham's infantile hope that time might still be halted and man sent back to his origins. — Paul Bowles

In 1650 Bishop Ussher dated the creation from the genealogy given in the Bible at 4004 B.C.; for a long time (even for some people today) this was accepted as "gospel truth." However, if you accept a miracle such as this, what's wrong with creation 5 minutes ago? It would be scarcely more difficult for the Creator to create all of us sitting here, with our memories of events that never really happened, with our worn shoes that were never really new, with spots of soup that were never really spilled on our ties, and so on. Such a beginning is logically possible, but extremely hard to believe! — Leigh Page

In my long career in this historical fiction business, though, I've found that the most effective storytelling concept is this: Once upon a time it was now.
That has become my credo and my method as a longtime historical novelist.
It's quite simple, if you see as Janus sees:
Today is now.
Yesterday was now.
Tomorrow will be now.
Three hundred years ago, the eighteenth century was now.
You, as a historical novelist, can make any time now by taking your reader into that time. Once you grasp that, the rest is just hard work.
Stay with me, and you'll see how such work is done. — James Alexander Thom

Sometimes I get caught up in a kind of puzzled wonder at things, and think of all the work and effort and unlimited money that is used today to destroy, and not so long ago there was no money or work, and it seems so wrong somehow, that money and effort could always be found to pull down and destroy rather than build up. — Max Hastings

Long ago Mars was an oasis of running water.Today the Martiansurfaceis a sterile,barren desert. Here on Earth, who knows what climactic knobs we unwittingly turn,which might one day render Earth as dry and lifeless as Mars. (From the cover of Old Poison by Joan Francis) — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Because none of us is anything but what we remember about ourselves, okay? That's how we arrived at our very worst moment, our rock bottoms, and through all of that, we were also arrive here, today. Recovering. The events to get you here were set in motion long, long ago and you had very, very little to do with them, and it would have been just as easy for you to never arrive here and still be suffering out there, or just to have not existed at all. — Heather Chase

Long ago when men cursed and beat the ground with sticks, it was called witchcraft. Today it's called golf. — Will Rogers

Why did you take so much trouble with me today? I know how you hate to move out of that house." "Because you're my child. You and Jem were the children I never had. You two gave me something long ago, and I'm trying to pay my debts. You two helped me a - " "How, sir? — Harper Lee

No problem, dear," Phil said with a smile. It was a nice smile. A few years ago, it might have been returned, but nope, not today. Phil kept his eyes on her for maybe a second too long, though Wendy didn't think the girl noticed. Once the waitress was out of sight, Phil lifted his bottle toward Wendy. She picked up hers and clinked bottles and decided to stop this dance. "Phil, — Harlan Coben

It sometimes seems that we live as if we wonder when life is going to begin. It isn't always clear just what we are waiting for, but some of us sometimes persist in waiting so long that life slips by - finding us still waiting for something that has been going on all the time ... This is the life in which the work of this life is to be done. Today is as much a part of eternity as any day a thousand years ago or as will be any day a thousand years hence. This is it, whether we are thrilled or disappointed, busy or bored! This is life, and it is passing. — Richard L. Evans

So what exactly would an ecological detective set loose in an American supermarket discover, were he to trace the items in his shopping cart all the way back to the soil? The notion began to occupy me a few years ago, after I realized that the straightforward question 'What should I eat?' could no longer be answered without first addressing two other even more straightforward questions: 'What am I eating? And where in the world did it come from?' Not very long ago an eater didn't need a journalist to answer these questions. The fact that today one so often does suggests a pretty good start on a working definition of industrial food: Any food whose provenance is so complex or obscure that it requires expert help to ascertain. — Michael Pollan

When we are sad - at least I am like this - it can be comforting to cling to familiar objects, to the things that don't change. Your descriptions of the desert - that oceanic, endless glare - are terrible but also very beautiful. Maybe there's something to be said for the rawness and emptiness of it all. The light of long ago is different from the light of today and yet here, in this house, I'm reminded of the past at every turn. But when I think of you, it's as if you've gone away to sea on a ship - out in a foreign brightness where there are no paths, only stars and sky. — Donna Tartt

There is no comparing the brutality and cynicism of today's pop culture with that of forty years ago: from High Noon to Robocop is a long descent. — Charles Krauthammer

I had long ago learned that books are the best presents you can buy for a person
except me. I like toys. But the point is books last longer, and aren't as easy to break, like almost everything else you can buy in today's free market. Call me an English major, but I happen to believe that books are more substantial than pet rocks, hula hoops, and most fruitcakes. — Gary Reilly

As a shy, introverted, scholarly child (long ago) I don't know what I would have done without libraries! My family moved often. I was always the new kid in town. The library always offered me my first and most important friendship: the place where I felt right at home. I still feel that way today, about libraries. — Lois Lowry

Because that happened to me when I was little, this is how I will now treat other people"; "Because so and so beat me up and hurt me a long time ago, that gives me the right to treat people the way I treat them, today"; "Because life was hard on me, life should be hard on everyone else around me" - does this sound/ look familiar? It's called victim mentality. When people choose to be the direct product of everything that happened to them, the direct product of every single pair of hands that hurt them. And the world, to these people, must bend over backwards in order to accommodate their wounds. Some people don't want to be loved; they just want to make the world pay. — C. JoyBell C.

Hoping to see karate included in the universal physical education taught in our public schools, I set about revising the kata so as to make them as simple as possible. Times change, the world changes, and obviously the martial arts must change too. The karate that high school students practice today is not the same karate that was practiced even as recently as ten years ago [this book was written in 1956], and it is a long way indeed from the karate I learned when I was a child in Okinawa. — Gichin Funakoshi

Golf courses are becoming far too long. Twenty years ago we played three rounds of golf a day and considered we had taken an interminably long time if we took more than two hours to play a round. Today it not infrequently takes over three hours. — Alister MacKenzie

The light of long ago is different from the light of today, and yet here, in this house, I'm reminded of the past at every turn. — Donna Tartt

Subjectively, a gnat doubtless feels that its span of a few days is a reasonably long lifetime. A tortoise, with its span of several hundred years, would feel subjectively the same as the gnat. Not so long ago the life expectancy of the average man was about forty-five years. Today it is from sixty-five to seventy years, but subjectively the years are faster, and death, when it comes, is always all too soon. — Alan W. Watts

The principle factor in my success has been an absolute desire to draw constantly. I never decided to be an artist. Simply, I couldn't stop myself from drawing. I drew for my own pleasure. I never wanted to know whether or not someone liked my drawings. I have never kept one of my drawings. I drew on walls, the school blackboard, odd bits of paper, the walls of barns. Today I'm still as fond of drawings as when I was a kid - and that was a long time ago - but, surprising as it may seem, I never thought about the money I would receive for my drawings. I simply drew them. — Winsor McCay

In spite of all the progress we seem to have made, human emotions stay the same. Deep inside our hearts, we don't change very much. This poem was written two thousand years ago or more. It's from a time long before the quatrains and other formal styles you've learned in school were established. And yet, even today, we can understand the feelings of people from that time. You don't need education or scholarship for that. These feelings can be understood by anybody, I think. — Kyoichi Katayama

God speaks to man through the Scriptures, and He does not reveal normative truth except as it is already revealed in the Scriptures themselves. The test of truth must remain not what man experiences today but what the Scriptures have stated long ago. — John F. Walvoord

I heard today (April 5) was the day Kurt passed away 17 years ago. Can't believe it's been that long. So grateful for his contribution and inspiration. Not sure I'd be doing this if it weren't for him. He gave us all permission to create no matter what our skill set and reminded me that dreams are possible. Thanks for that. This made me recall a short piece of film I shot when I heard they were making a film celebrating his life. I made it to explore the character and explore creative possibilities. I never sent it to the studio or to anyone but thought I'd share it now — Jared Leto

Lou took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of just-cut flowers, fresh tamales from the food stands, and sunshine. She preferred the West Allis farmers' market to all others in the area, with its open sides, wide walkways, and rows of stalls. More recently, small tents serving hot sandwiches and fresh Mexican food had popped up outside the brick walls. It all looked so good, she'd learned long ago to come with limited funds or she would buy more produce than she could possibly use. She relished talking to the farmers, learning about what they grew and where. She liked to search for farmers growing something new and interesting she could use at Luella's.
But today's visit was personal, not business. Sue had dragged her out to West Allis for a little lunch and some girl time with fall squash and Honeycrisp apples. — Amy E. Reichert

It's old, very old I think. Made up long ago in our hills. What my music teacher calls a mountain air. But the words are easy and soothing, promising tomorrow will be more hopeful than this awful piece of time we call today. — Suzanne Collins

The thunderbirds, like dinosaurs, were now creatures of the past: lost long ago, with the coming of disease and famine brought by hairy strangers. Except, in today's world dinosaurs were celebrated by palaeontologists and thunderbirds by cultural anthropologists. But John still remembered them, those magnificent creatures. (...) They, like the man on the motorcycle, had been born in an age when gods, monsters, humans and animals ate at the same table. Now man ate alone, while animals begged for scraps. The others were unable to survive in the new times and had disappeared into the folds of time. Who knew gods and monsters could and did fall victim to evolution? — Drew Hayden Taylor

I want to be doing things today, not just flipping through crinkled and yellowed mental pictures of what happened a long time ago. — Bob Goff

Our enemies send other people's children on missions of suicide and murder. They embrace tyranny and death as a cause and a creed. We stand for a different choice - made long ago, on the day of our founding. We affirm it again today. We choose freedom and the dignity of every life. — George W. Bush

To doubt the literal meaning of the words of Jesus or Moses incurs hostility from most people, but it's just a fact that if Jesus or Moses were to appear today, unidentified, with the same message he spoke many years ago, his mental stability would be challenged. This isn't because what Jesus or Moses said was untrue or because modern society is in error but simply because the route they chose to reveal to others has lost relevance and comprehensibility. "Heaven above" fades from meaning when space-age consciousness asks, Where is "above"? But the fact that the old routes have tended, because of language rigidity, to lose their everyday meaning and become almost closed doesn't mean that the mountain is no longer there. It's there and will be there as long as consciousness exists. — Robert M. Pirsig

Finally, let me share a feeling of mine, I hope it will not be misinterpreted as pride. I am seventy four now. But still, if they give me a duty in the wooden hut where I used to stay when I was a mentor long years ago, I will gladly run there and try to fulfill that duty. Perhaps, some of our friends can see that task as a simple and trivial one. But I have not underestimated this duty and would never do so. Even today, some people may consider our having lessons with the small circle of young scholars here as a simple and trivial job. However, in my opinion, this is the most important occupation that can take human to the highest levels. — M. Fethullah Gulen

We fully realize today that victory in war requires a mighty united effort. Certainly, victory in peace calls for, and must receive, an equal effort. Man has learned long ago, that it is impossible to live unto himself. This same basic principle applies today to nations. We were not isolated during the war. We dare not now become isolated in peace. — Harry S. Truman

There have been vast changes in the composition and role of the news media over the decades, and that is a cause for concern as well. When I first entered government nearly forty-eight years ago, three television networks and a handful of newspapers dominated coverage and, to a considerable degree, filtered the most extreme or vitriolic points of view. Today, with hundreds of cable channels, blogs, and other electronic media, too often the professional integrity and long-established standards and practices of journalists are diluted or ignored. Every point of view - including the most extreme - has a ready vehicle for rapid dissemination. And it seems the more vitriolic the opinion, the more attention it gets. This system is clearly more democratic and open, but I believe it has also fueled the coarsening and dumbing down of our national political dialogue. — Robert M. Gates

Cease your weeping!" he said. "It is I, Loki, here to rescue you!"
Idunn glared at him with red-rimmed eyes. "It is you who are the source of my troubles." she said.
"Well, perhaps. But that was so long ago. That was yesterday's Loki. Today's Loki is here to save you and take you home. — Neil Gaiman

She stared at me "You have a message," she said. "On you machine."
I looked over at my answering machine. Sure enough, the light was blinking. The woman really was a detective.
"It's some girl," La Guerta said. "She sounds kind of sleepy and happy. You got a girlfriend, Dexter?" there was a strange hint of a challenge in her voice.
"You know how it is," I said. "Women today are so forward, and when you are as handsome as I am they absolutely fling themselves at your head." Perhaps an unfortunate choice of words; as I said it I couldn't help thinking of the woman's head flung at me not so long ago.
"Watch out," La Guerta said. "Sooner or later one of them will stick." I had no idea what she thought that meant, but it was a very unsettling image.
"I'm sure you're right," I said. "Until then, carpe diem."
"What?"
"It's Latin," I said. "It means, complain in the daylight. — Jeff Lindsay

My fight isn't so simple, it has very deep roots, from long ago, from earlier generations. Life weighs on me with the weight of my family history, my genes drag along a race of sons of plenty and sons of bitches who with a blade of a machete cleared the pathways of life. They're still doing it. They ate with the machete, they worked, they shaved, killed, and settled differences with their wives with machete. Today the machete is a shotgun, a nine-millimeter, a chopper. The weapon has changed but not its use. The story has changed, too, has become terrifying. Once proud, we are now ashamed, without understanding how, why, and when it all happened. We don't know how long our history is, but we can feel its weight. — Jorge Franco

Two centuries ago our nation's birth was a milestone in the long quest for freedom, but the bold and brilliant dream which excited the founders of our nation still awaits its consummation. I have no new dream to set forth today, but rather urge a fresh faith in the old dream. — Jimmy Carter

Not long ago, a novelist could believe he could have an effect on our consciousness of terror. Today, the men who shape and inflence human consciousness are the terrorists. — Don DeLillo

One of us hadn't finished, why did the other one go? And why without warning? Even death after long illness is without warning. The moment you had prepared for so carefully took you by storm. The troops broke through the window and snatched the body and the body is gone. The day before the Wednesday last, this time a year ago, you were here and now you're not. Why not? Death reduces us to the baffled logic of a small child. If yesterday why not today? And where are you? — Jeanette Winterson

He had drawn many a thousand of these rations in prisons and camps, and though he'd never had an opportunity to weight them on scales, and although, being a man of timid nature, he knew no way of standing up for his rights, he, like every other prisoner, had discovered long ago that honest weight was never to be found in the bread-cutting. There was short weight in every ration. The only point was how short. So every day you took a look to soothe your soul - today, maybe, they haven't snitched any. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

A long time ago, when all the grandfathers and grandmothers of today were little boys and little girls or very small babies, or perhaps not even born, Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura and Baby Carrie left their little house in the Big Woods of Wisconsin. — Laura Ingalls Wilder

These are universals, as is the fear women feel during times of political upheaval that occur in what could still be called the outside world of men--whether during the Taiping Rebellion so many years ago or today for women in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Sudan, or even right here in this country in the post-9/11 era. On the surface, we as American women are independent, free, and mobile, but at our cores we still long for love, friendship, happiness, tranquility, and to be heard. — Lisa See

In a world where news of inhumanity bombards our sensibilities, where grasping for things goes so far beyond our needs, where time is squandered in busyness, it is a pleasure and a privilege to pause for a look at handiwork, to see beauty amidst utility, and to know that craft traditions begun so long ago serve us today. — John Wilson

We have reason. It is the entire meaning and purpose of Shangri-La. It came to me in a vision long, long ago. I foresaw a time when man exalting in the technique of murder, would rage so hotly over the world, that every book, every treasure would be doomed to destruction. This vision was so vivid and so moving that I determined to gather together all things of beauty and culture that I could and preserve them here against the doom toward which the world is rushing. Look at the world today. Is there anything more pitiful? What madness there is! What blindness! A scurrying mass of bewildered humanity crashing headlong against each other. The time must come, my friend, when brutality and the lust for power must perish by its own sword. For when that day comes, the world must begin to look for a new life. And it is our hope that they may find it here. — James Hilton

I think the American people should see that the corporations abandoned them long ago. That people will have to build their own economies and rebuild democracy as a living democracy. The corporations belong to no land, no country, no people. They have no loyalty to anything apart from their profits. And the profits today are on an unimaginable scale; it has become illegitimate, criminal profit - profits extracted at the cost of life. — Vandana Shiva

Not long ago, someone who was dissatisfied with his or her spouse and wanted a divorce had to justify that decision. Today it's the opposite: If you're not fulfilled by your marriage, you have to justify staying in it, because of the tremendous cultural pressure to be good to one's self. — Anonymous

When I go into a museum and see the mummies wrapped in their linen bandages, I see that the lives of men began to need reform as long ago as when they walked the earth. I come out into the streets, and meet men who declare that the time is near at hand for the redemption of the race. But as men lived in Thebes, so do they live in Dunstable today. — Henry David Thoreau

Who Moved My Cheese?: The Story ONCE, long ago in a land far away, there lived four little characters who ran through a Maze looking for cheese to nourish them and make them happy. Two were mice, named "Sniff" and "Scurry" and two were Littlepeople - beings who were as small as mice but who looked and acted a lot like people today. Their names were "Hem" and "Haw." Due to their small size, it would be easy not to notice what the four of them were doing. But if you looked closely enough, you could discover the most amazing things! Every day the mice and the Littlepeople spent time in the Maze looking for their own special cheese. The mice, Sniff and Scurry, possessing simple brains and good instincts, searched for the hard — Spencer Johnson

I come and stand at every door
But none can hear my silent tread
I knock and yet remain unseen
For I am dead for I am dead

I'm only seven though I died
In Hiroshima long ago
I'm seven now as I was then
When children die they do not grow

My hair was scorched by swirling flame
My eyes grew dim my eyes grew blind
Death came and turned my bones to dust
And that was scattered by the wind

I need no fruit I need no rice
I need no sweets nor even bread
I ask for nothing for myself
For I am dead for I am dead

All that I need is that for peace
You fight today you fight today
So that the children of this world
Can live and grow and laugh and play

- The Girl Child — Nazim Hikmet

Maybe. Maybe not. Look, the Latin name for this fish is Carcharodon carcharias, okay? The closest ancestor we can find for it is something called Carcharodon megalodon, a fish that existed maybe thirty or forty thousand years ago. We have fossil teeth from megalodon. They're six inches long. That would put the fish at between eighty and a hundred feet. And the teeth are exactly like the teeth you see in great whites today. What I'm getting at is, suppose the two fish are really one species. What's to say megalodon is really extinct? Why should it be? — Peter Benchley

Today's middle class lives better than did the Royalty of not so long ago, and yet humans today don't seem very happy. — Russ Harris

The distance runners were serene messengers. Gliding along wooded trails and mountain paths, their spiritual ancestors kept their own solitary counsel for long hours while carrying some message the import of which was only one corner of their considerable speculation. They lived within themselves; long ago they did so, and they do today. There — John L. Parker Jr.

There is not a moment that passes where you don't make me feel more alive than I ever thought I could, and today you gave me something I thought was lost a long time ago for the both of us. You've given me peace, babe. You've given me everything. — Samantha Young

I'm here, Papa," she whispered, saying the words she had longed to say for her entire life. "I'm here, and I'm never going to leave you again."
He made a sound of contentment and closed his eyes. Just as Evie thought he had fallen asleep, he murmured, "Where shall we walk first today, lovey? The biscuit baker, I s'pose..."
Realizing that he imagined this was one of her long-ago childhood visits, Evie replied softly, "Oh, yes." Hastily she knuckled away the excess moisture from her eyes. "I want an iced bun... and a cone of broken biscuits... and then I want to come back here and play dice with you."
A rusty chuckle came from his ravaged throat, and he coughed a little. "Let Papa take forty winks before we leaves... there's a good girl..."
"Yes, sleep," Evie murmured, turning the cloth over on his forehead. "I can wait, Papa. — Lisa Kleypas

Social cohesion was built into language long before Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter - we're tribal by nature. Tribes today aren't the same as tribes thousand of years ago: It isn't just religious tribes or ethnic tribes now: It's sports fans, it's communities, it's geography. — Peter Guber

In the course of therapy, we often witness clients' capacities to report abuse stories with intellectualized, detached demeanors. And they are quick to add disclaimers that minimize their experiences such as "It wasn't so bad," "I probably deserved it anyway," "I know my parents did the best they could," "It didn't have any negative effect on me," or "That was a long time ago, and it can't be relevant to my life now." Many clients expend tremendous amounts of energy disavowing traumatic or abusive histories, believing that revisiting old feelings and thoughts will keep them stuck or are irrelevant to who they are today. — Lisa Ferentz

Truth is the same yesterday, today, and forevermore. Truth has no need to adapt to the changing times, for it is timeless. Time must adapt to it. What is Truth today, was so long ago and will remain so long from now. Truth does not change, only living beings' understanding of Truth changes. Living beings speak and live according to their own understanding. Yet our understanding is subject to the time in which we live. This is how we may recognize Truth, it is true no matter when it is spoken and no matter who speaks it. — C W Newman

Yesterday and today and tomorrow are not an arrow that shoots from past to present to future; rather all tenses, and sleeping and waking, mix and cohabit in an atemporal duration beyond clocks and calendars. The Aboriginal world began long ago when the Ancestors sang in Dreamtime the cosmic rhythms that give shape to the things we see, and it is the beginning right now, when a living Tiwi sings the Dream songs that continue, or are, the world. — Huston Smith

Are you in pain, Frodo?' said Gandalf quietly as he rode by Frodo's side.
'Well, yes I am,' said Frodo. 'It is my shoulder. The wound aches, and the memory of darkness is heavy on me. It was a year ago today.'
'Alas! there are some wounds that cannot be wholly cured,' said Gandalf.
'I fear it may be so with mine,' said Frodo. 'There is no real going back. Though I may come to the Shire, it will not seem the same; for I shall not be the same. I am wounded with knife, sting, and tooth, and a long burden. Where shall I find rest?'
Gandalf did not answer. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town. A great black stove is its main feature; but there is also a big round table and a fireplace with two rocking chairs placed in front of it. Just today the fireplace commenced its seasonal roar. A woman with shorn white hair is standing at the kitchen window. She is wearing tennis shoes and a shapeless gray sweater over a summery calico dress. She is small and sprightly, like a bantam hen; but, due to a long youthful illness, her shoulders are pitifully hunched. Her face is remarkable - not unlike Lincoln's, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind; but it is delicate, too, finely boned, and her eyes are sherry-colored and timid. "Oh my," she exclaims, her breath smoking the windowpane, "it's fruitcake weather! — Truman Capote

There are 10,000 books in my library, and it will keep growing until I die. This has exasperated my daughters, amused my friends and baffled my accountant. If I had not picked up this habit in the library long ago, I would have more money in the bank today; I would not be richer. — Pete Hamill

Annabel was, like the writer, of mixed parentage: half-English, half-Dutch, in her case. I remember her features far less distinctly today than I did a few years ago, before I knew Lolita. There are two kinds of visual memory: one when you skillfully recreate an image in the laboratory of your mind, with your eyes open (and then I see Annabel in such general terms as: "honey-colored skin," "thin arms," "brown bobbed hair," "long lashes," "big bright mouth"); and the other when you instantly evoke, with shut eyes, on the dark innerside of your eyelids, the objective, absolutely optical replica of a beloved face, a little ghost in natural colors (and this is how I see Lolita). — Vladimir Nabokov

Think for a moment about the process that humans have used to record events throughout history. The first evidence we know of is paintings on cave walls. A little further along in time, after many intermediate steps, we see the development of writing. In the more recent past, we see the invention of the camera, audio recording devices, and ultimately video. The manner in which humans have recorded history (and to a lesser extent our own lives) has evolved. We've come a long way. Consider the implications of time. Much of the technology we take for granted today was pure science fiction 50-100 years ago, a dream 200 years ago, and inconceivable 500 years ago. Using these groupings of viewpoints, we can project into the future and categorize the possibilities. In — Todd William

Not so long ago people believed in ideologies, systems, and institutions to save all societies. Today, they have given up such hopes and have returned to relying on the individual, on individual freedom, individual initiative, individual creativity. — Dalai Lama

Now I think, Jean. Jean! You got your wish! The fire drill is finished, but so is everything else. Did we believe we could pick and choose the parts that passed so quickly? Today, even the boring parts, even when it was freezing outside and half the girls were barefoot- all of it was a long time ago. — Curtis Sittenfeld

What is reality today was but a dream and an imagination not that long ago. — Debasish Mridha

Good morning, Sunshine," Alessandro whispered, dragging the satiny soft object across the tip of her nose. Curiosity made her open her eyes. A rose. A blue rose. "I figured a single rose was safer than a dozen considering the massacre of the last blue roses I gave you," he smiled sheepishly. "Happy birthday, darling." Bree blinked and tried to remember what day it was. The fifteenth apparently. She groaned and pulled the blankets back over her head. She was officially thirty today. "Come on now, up we go," Alessandro pulled the blankets off her face and grabbed her arm, bringing her up. "For my birthday, I want sleep," she groaned. Gianni had suffered through a painful night as another tooth was starting to come in and thus his parents had suffered as well. "Nope, we've got a long day ahead of us. Let's go." "Why?" Bree yawned. "Because thirty years ago you were born and my life as I knew it would never be the same," Alessandro explained, nuzzling her neck. — E. Jamie

Reading the Bible responsibly and respectfully today means learning what it meant for ancient Israelites to talk about God the way they did, and not pushing alien expectations onto texts written long ago and far away. — Peter Enns

Then Loki flew as a falcon about the keep, peering into each window as he went. In the farthest room, through a barred window, he saw Idunn, sitting and weeping, and he perched on the bars. "Cease your weeping!" he said. "It is I, Loki, here to rescue you!" Idunn glared at him with red-rimmed eyes. "It is you who are the source of my troubles," she said. "Well, perhaps. But that was so long ago. That was yesterday's Loki. Today's Loki is here to save you and to take you home." "How? — Neil Gaiman