Quotes & Sayings About My First Born

And so, in silence, we walked the surface of a dying world, but in the breast of one of us at least had been born that which is ever oldest, yet ever new.
I loved Dejah Thoris. The touch of my arm upon her naked shoulder had spoken to me in words I would not mistake, and I knew that I had loved her since the first moment my eyes had met hers that first time in the plaza of the dead city of Korad. — Edgar Rice Burroughs

Rick told me, a little later, I should be living in community. He said I should have people around bugging me and getting under my skin because without people I could not grow
I could not grow in God, and I could not grow as a human. We are born into families, he said, and we are needy at first as children because God wants us together, living among one another, not hiding ourselves under logs like fungus. You are not a fungus, he told me, you are a human, and you need other people in your life in order to be healthy. — Donald Miller

When he was born, I looked at my little boy and felt an unconditional love I never knew was inside me. As he grew, and I watched him stagger about, squeak his first words, and turn into a beautiful little boy, that feeling did not change. — Tony Parsons

Born on an island, I could swim before I could walk, thrown many times into swimming pools and warm transparent Caribbean waters: sink or swim, that was my first lesson. While I'm not a natural athlete, I'm still a strong swimmer and feel a great affinity with the sea. — Monique Roffey

There's a lot of influences that I have from Detroit that are subliminal. I mean, I spent the first 10 years of my life there. My mom and dad were born and raised there, so a lot of that rubbed off on me. When I get angry, sometimes a Detroit accent comes out. — Lizzo

I'm really connected to people, and my relationships with people are paramount, so I write about relationships, particularly strong female ones. In my family, there were six girls born in five years. We were best friends. And my parents raised all of us as first-class citizens. — Alane Ferguson

I was born 50 years after slavery, in 1913. I was allowed to read. My mother, who was a teacher, taught me when I was a very young child. The first school I attended was a small building that went from first to sixth grade. There was one teacher for all of the students. There could be anywhere from 50 to 60 students of all different ages. — Rosa Parks

MACBETH
I will not yield,
To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet,
And to be baited with the rabble's curse.
Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last. Before my body
I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,
And damn'd be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough! — William Shakespeare

Although they arrived in New York penniless, my parents scraped together enough savings to establish the first of several small businesses just after I was born. — Robert Fogel

It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man! — Ralph Ellison

People used to say my son looked like a Mexican Biggie. And when he was first born, memories of Biggie ... you know, we didn't always have the greatest days. For at least half the length of our marriage we were separated, so everyday was definitely not a good day. — Faith Evans

TINY (singing): I was born this way Big-boned and happily gay I was born this way. Right here in the U.S. of A It's pointless to wonder why I ended up so G-A-Y From the very first day The rainbow's come my way I've got brown hair, big hips, blue blue eyes. And one day I'm gonna make out with guys, guys, guys! — John Green

I'll impose upon you the same arrogance that was imposed on me, and on my mother, my grandmother, my grandmother's mother: all the way back to the first human born of another human being, whether he liked it or not. Probably, if he or she had been allowed to choose, he would have been frightened and answered: No, I don't want to be born. But no one asked their opinion, and so they were born and lived and died after giving birth to another human being who was not asked to choose, and that one did likewise, for millions of years, right down to us. — Oriana Fallaci

I have the feeling we just made a deal with the devil, and he's going to come back and want our first-born child or something."
Daemon waggled his brows. "You want kids? Because you know, practice makes
"
"Shut up." I shook my head and started walking. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Dennis's superior mental health was obvious from the first date, like a cleft palate. The other thing about him was that he had shapely, muscular legs. His calves were so sculpted they looked artificial, like silicone implants. This is a look I'm fond of. In fact, if I had been born a girl there is no doubt in my mind that my chest cavity would have been stuffed with two softball-sized orbs of silicone before my eleventh birthday. In this way my own mental health is somewhat like a cleft palate. — Augusten Burroughs

My real mom died when I was born - hemorrhaged to death while giving birth to
me, which has never been one of my favorite memories - and Dad married Denise before I'd turned a year. Without even asking my opinion on the
matter. Denise and I never really clicked. — Darynda Jones

My name is Natasha Trethewey, and I was born in Gulfport, Mississippi, in 1966, exactly 100 years to the day that Mississippi celebrated the first Confederate Memorial Day, April 26, 1866. — Natasha Trethewey

Am I emotional? Yes, my first born was murdered. Am I angry? Yes, he was killed for lies and for a PNAC [Project for the New American Century] Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel. Am I stupid? No, I know full well that my son, my family, this nation, and this world were betrayed by George [W.] Bush who was influenced by the neo-con PNAC agenda after 9/11. — Cindy Sheehan

I was around computers from birth; we had one of the first Macs, which came out shortly before I was born, and my dad ran a company that wrote computer operating systems. I don't think I have any particular technical skills; I just got a really large head start. — Aaron Swartz

When I first started shooting 'Sharpe,' back in the early 1990s, I'd kiss my two elder daughters goodbye at the end of August - Evie wasn't even born then - and I wouldn't see them again until Christmas. That was tough. They were hard times. — Sean Bean

She isn't a storm or a leader or a king or a war or anyone whose life and death makes noise. The problem is words. There is skin, yes. And then, inside that, there is your language, the casual, inherited magic spells taht make your skin real. It's too late now
even if we could say "Shut up" or "Where's my dinner?" in the first language, the real language, the words weren't born in us. And unless your skin and your language touch each other without interruption, there is no word strong enough to make you understand that it matters that you live. The things that really "stay" are an Orisha, a kind night, a pretended boy, a garden song that made no sense. Those come closer to being enough. — Helen Oyeyemi

All my family back to the 1700s were water Gypsies. My brothers and me, we were the first ones to be born on dry land. All the rest of them were born on barges in the canals. — Ronnie Wood

He's kissing me and though this is the first time, it feels like recovering a long-forgotten memory. My body seems to say, "Yes, this," and then I'm kissing him back as if I were born to be in his arms. I never realized how tightly guilt and fear had been wound about me until this moment, when they unwind into the air and fly away, leaving me with nothing but this guileless delight. — Rosamund Hodge

My adoptive mother tirelessly worked most of her life to build up my self-esteem. So what happened was finding her started to shed light and destroy my mythos. So for the first year of knowing [biological mother], my mom kind of actually literally visited me in Detroit and kind of gave me a tour of my life - where I was conceived, where I was born, where she found out she was pregnant. It was amazing and very emotional. — Keegan-Michael Key

Every morning, when people are getting up in the tent, the babies are crying, people are pushing each other at the taps outside and some children are already pulling the crusts of porridge off the pots we ate from last night, my first-born brother and I clean our shoes. Our grandmother makes us sit on our mats with our legs straight out so she can look carefully at our shoes to make sure we have done it properly. No other children in the tent have real school shoes. When we three look at them it's as if we are in a real house again, with no war, no away. — Nadine Gordimer

Oh, you should have been born with my abilities, if only to have felt the rage that seeped from him."
I didn't want to think much about his abilities. "Who's to say he won't splatter you as well?"
"Perhaps he'll try- but I have a feeling he'll kill Amarantha first. — Sarah J. Maas

When Hailey was born my first thought was that I needed a drink and that hospitals should have bars in them. — Jenny Lawson

There aren't many ways to find comfort in this world. We must take it where we can get it, even in the darkest, most disgusting places. Nobody asks to be born. No one signs a form that says, You have my permission to make me exist. Babies are born, because parents feel that they themselves are not enough. So, parents, never condemn us for trying to fill our existential holes, when we are but the fruit of your own vain attempts to fill yours. It's your fault we're here to deal with the void in the first place. — Melissa Broder

I was born and raised in the Bronx and my grandfather and my brother Garry were huge Yankees fans. One of my first memories is of them listening to a game on the radio and screaming at the radio. My brother would cry when they lost, and when I was really little, I didn't know why he was crying. — Penny Marshall

My partner and I had our first son in 1996, and the office became the baby's room. Our second son was born in 2001, and the office became the kids' room. — Judy Gold

The truth is, I wanted to watch you for a time before pledging you my sword. To make certain that you were not ... "
" ... my father's daughter?" If she was not her father's daughter, who was she?
" ... mad," he finished. "But I see no taint in you."
"Taint?" Dany bristled.
"I am no maester to quote history at you, Your Grace. Swords have been my life, not books. But every child knows that the Targaryens have always danced too close to madness. Your father was not the first. King Jaehaerys once told me that madness and greatness are two sides of the same coin. Every time a new Targaryen is born, he said, the gods toss a coin in the air and the world holds its to see how it will land. — George R R Martin

Because I first made my name as a rapper claiming South Central L.A., people often assume I'm strictly a West Coast cat. But my family was actually from back East. I was born in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in Summit, an upscale town in north Jersey. — Ice-T

When my first daughter was born, my husband held her in his hands and said, 'My God, she's so beautiful.' I unwrapped the baby from her blankets. She was average size, with long thin fingers and a random assortment of toes. Her eyes were close set, and she had her father's hooked nose. It looked better on him. — Ayelet Waldman

I was born in London, England, in 1938, a few months before the war, and spent the first years of my life there, although I was evacuated a couple of times for short periods. My schooling was very interrupted, both by frequent moves and by ill health. — Anne Perry

My own musical ambitions were born when I was five, watching the Ed Sullivan Show on TV. When Elvis Presley burst on to the screen, singing 'Don't Be Cruel,' I felt my first sexual thrill, though I didn't know what it was at the time. — Suzi Quatro

In these days Melissa's absorbed and provoking gentleness had all the qualities of a rediscovered youth. Her long uncertain fingers - I used to feel them moving over my face when she thought I slept, as if to memorize the happiness we had shared. In her there was a pliancy, a resilience which was Oriental - a passion to serve. My shabby clothes - the way she picked up a dirty shirt seemed to engulf it with an overflowing solicitude; in the morning I found my razor beautifully cleaned and even the toothpaste laid upon the brush in readiness. Her care for me was a goad, provoking me to give my life some sort of shape and style that might match the simplicity of hers. Of her experiences in love she would never speak, turning from them with a weariness and distaste which suggested that they had been born of necessity rather than desire. She paid me the comlpiment of saying: "For the first time I am not afraid to be light-headed or foolish with a man". — Lawrence Durrell

I remember the first year after my second child was born, what I can remember of it at all, as a year of disarray, of overturned glasses of milk, of toys on the floor, of hours from sunrise to sunset that were horribly busy but filled with what, at the end of the day, seemed like absolutely nothing at all. What saved my sanity were books. What saved my sanity was disappearing, if only for fifteen minutes before I inevitably began to nod off in bed ... and as it was for me when I was young and surrounded by siblings, as it is today when I am surrounded by children, reading continues to provide an escape from a crowded house into an imaginary room of one's own. — Anna Quindlen

I was the first face you saw when you were born, you were bald as my hair ran black. Now yours the last face I saw before I died, your hair ran black, as I was bald. — Anthony Liccione

I thank God for all the victories and conquests I've had this year as a player and I bring to the altar two prizes. This is first my son who is about to be born. The other is my trophy from Fifa, which I want to dedicate to God. — Kaka

Linda was just born when I had my first miscarriage, and for a while, six months maybe, the sight of those two babies, whom I had loved and cared for with real interest and satisfaction, affected me like a poison. All my tissues hurt when I saw them, when I saw Rose with them, as if my capillaries were carrying acid into the furthest reaches of my system. I was so jealous, and so freshly jealous every time I saw them, that I could hardly speak, and I wasn't very nice to Rose, since some visceral part of me simply blamed her for having what I wanted, and for having it so easily — Jane Smiley

When my daughter was born, I was a stay-at-home dad for the first two years. — Sean Maher

I was born in New York, but I was only here for two months. My parents are German, and I grew up in Germany for my first 10 years. — Peter Hermann

There was no denying that in our short time together Lena had struck hard and deep, carving out a space in my heart alongside my father - she was my first surrender to someone other than him. Like a fever reaching down every limb and muddling my mind, the ache of abandonment weakened my grip on the steering wheel and fuzzed the lanes of the highway. Loving my father was something innate - there when I was born, like the sun - but loving Lena took a leap of faith, and now that I'd lost her there were no bloodlines or primal bonds to harness the free fall. — Norman Ollestad

You mustn't touch me." Very slowly, he lowered his hand. "You need to be touched, Caitlin MacBride. You need it very badly." She girded herself with denial. "Even if it were so, I would not need it from an Englishman." "Think again, my love. We're easy with one another despite our differences. Remember our first meeting - the shock of it, the knowing? We could be good for each other." "And when, pray, has an Englishman ever been good for Ireland?" A lazy grin spread over his face. "Even I know that, Caitlin. St. Patrick himself was English born, was he not?" "But he had the heart of Eireann." "So might I, Caitlin MacBride. So might I. — Susan Wiggs

For 'American Born Chinese,' my first graphic novel with First Second Books, I did mostly 'memory' research. It's fiction, but I pulled heavily from my own childhood. — Gene Luen Yang

I just want out. Out of my existence. I find myself wishing that a lot lately. Not to be dead. Or kill myself. Or any of that kind of stupid shit. It's more I can't help think what if I hadn't been born in the first place ... — Gayle Forman

My favorite book is 'Redeeming Love.' It was my first as a born-again Christian, my statement of faith, and the most exciting year I've spent writing anything. — Francine Rivers

With all its imperfections lying heavy on its head, I can't help being attached to it because in the writing of it I first heard the sound of my own voice, lame and halting perhaps, but nevertheless my very own. This is an experience no artist ever forgets - the birth cry of a newly born baby of letters, the genuine article. — Lawrence Durrell

Ghosts can haunt damned near anything. I have heard them in the breathy voice of a song and seen them between the covers of a book. They have hidden in trees so that their faces peer out of the bark, and hovered beneath the silver surface of water. They disguise themselves as cracks in concrete or come calling in a delirium of fever. On summer days they keep pace like the shadow of our shadow. They lurk in the breath of young girls who give us our first kiss. I've seen men who were haunted to the point of madness by things that never were and things that should have been. I've seen ghosts in the lines on a woman's face and heard them in the jangling of keys. The ghosts in fire freeze and the ghosts in ice burn. Some died long ago; some were never born. Some ride the blood in my veins until it reaches my brain. Sometimes I even mistake myself for one. Sometimes I am one. — Damien Echols

Though I am born into a film family, I hardly had much exposure to shooting during my growing
years. My first film actually taught me about the breakdown of shots in a film. My aim is to do three
memorable roles in the next five years; films I can be really proud of. And I want to work with the best. — Alia Bhatt

Whores, instead of claiming what's rightfully yours. Pierced a hole in my heart from all the pain you caused, with no direction you left your first born lost. — Ja Rule

Today I arrived by train in New York City, which I'd never seen before, walked through the grandeur of Grand Central Terminal, stepped outside, got my first look at the city and instantly fell in love with it. Silently, inside myself, I yelled: I should have been born here! — Edward Robb Ellis

My entire life has really revolved around music that was written about the time that I was born, 1908, to just before the First World War and shortly after it. This music I've always known, and it is that music that's most important to me. — Elliott Carter

Be quiet, or my wife will take away your first born and make him or her work in one of her sweatshops! — Marc Anthony

I have lifted my plane ... for perhaps a thousand flights and I have never felt her wheels glide from the Earth into the air without knowing the uncertainty and the exhilaration of first-born adventure. — Beryl Markham

When my first child was born in 1962, I wrote a letter to my grandfather telling him how happy I was but how concerned; concerned because there were so many visions which were not very good. — Harri Holkeri

I'm 14 years in the game, ... There's some kids that weren't even born when my first album came out. I wanted to draw a timeline between my old stuff and my new stuff and bridge it to where there's a level of continuity. — DJ Quik

I was the first person in my family born in the United States. My mom is from Croatia, and my dad is from Iran. They met at music school in Belgium. I grew up as a pianist. — Ottessa Moshfegh

My children were born into this. They will always be the grandchildren of the President and First Lady of the United States. — Columba Bush

I was born and raised in North Little Rock, Arkansas. I was 15 when I got my first job serving food to the residents in a retirement home - 22 years later I would shoot my first film in one. — Joey Lauren Adams

I was born in Munich, and my father was stationed in Salzburg. For the first three years of my life, I lived in Austria back when the American Army was still in Austria. I grew up subsequently in posts around the country around veterans. — Rick Atkinson

The first thing which I can record concerning myself is, that I was born. These are wonderful words. This life, to which neither time nor eternity can bring diminution - this everlasting living soul, began. My mind loses itself in these depths. — Groucho Marx

Aurora once told me that she knew I was different within the first few months after I was born, because as a baby, I never cried. She had no way of knowing if I was hungry or if my stomach hurt until I was old enough to point and talk. Even when I fell and it was obvious that I had hurt myself, I did not cry. When I didn't get my way, I would go off by myself and sulk or have a tantrum. But I never cried. Later, when I was eleven and Abba died, I didn't cry. When Joseph, my best friend at St. Elizabeth's, died, I didn't cry. Maybe I don't feel what others feel. I have no way of knowing. But I do feel. It's just that what I feel does not elicit tears. What I feel when others cry is more like a dry, empty aloneness, like I'm the only person left in the world.
So it is very strange to feel my eyes well with tears as I read Jasmine's list. — Francisco X Stork

My daughter Karen was born in 1958, the year my first Paddington book came out, so she grew up with him. — Michael Bond

I was born into a middle class family in New Jersey. My dad came home from serving in the Army after having lost his father, worked in the Breyers ice cream plant in Newark, New Jersey. Was the first person to graduate from college. — Chris Christie

Layla had always just been there. In my life. I wasn't sure who said, 'hi,' first, or maybe who smiled at who first - all I really remembered was staring at her, and her staring back at me, neither of us looking away. Both of us standing frozen, and life falling into the background with a distant hum. As if the world had stopped spinning. Just for us.
I remembered not caring if it had. She'd seemed so familiar, and even as a little kid, I'd known she was special. Like something bigger than me, older than me, had taken over my emotions in a way I didn't understand. She just felt like ... home.
I could have gazed into her eyes forever. Happy to stand in that powerless state for the rest of my life — Laney McMann

I didn't grow up wealthy. We couldn't even afford spaghetti sauce when I was first born, but my mom and dad worked really hard and came from the bottom up. — Charlie Puth

I'm a born-again Christian. I was raised Episcopalian - I've always been of a Christian faith, but I became much more active in it when I married my first husband, Marvin. I changed from Episcopalian to Baptist. — Natalie Cole

It sometimes happens that the town child is more alive to the fresh beauty of the country than a child who is country born. My brother and I were born in London ... but our descent, our interest and our joy were in the north country'.
Quoted in The Tale of Beatrix Potter a Biography by Margaret Lane, First Edition p 32-33 — Beatrix Potter

I was born Joseph Lane, but when I applied to the actors union, they said they already had a Joe Lane on the books and I'd have to change my last or first name. I had played the character of Nathan Detroit, whom I liked very much, in 'Guys and Dolls,' so I took the name Nathan. — Nathan Lane

The Duke would later name me a Shadow, and after his naming, life itself wore me away to make his words true. I have been a Shadow for years upon years now. And yet, I think if I were to trace back to the moment I started to fade away from the world, it would not be when I began my training, or when I first killed, or when I first spied upon my King. It would be the moment that I looked around myself, in that cold mountain village, and realized that I might never have been born and no one would ever have missed me. — Moira Katson

I might screw up, I might embarrass you, I might yell at you, but I will never, ever stop loving you. You're my first born. The first time I held you ... I fell in love so hard it cracked my bones. — Kristin Hannah

I remember, the first time I came to the United States in 1996, I didn't speak a word of English at the beginning. I am very thankful for this country and the opportunity music has given me ... My three kids were born here in Miami; they speak Spanish at home, but English with all their friends. — Juanes

When my son will be born, my first goal will be for him. The rest, will be as always for my grandmother. — Lionel Messi

This is the first time I have heard 'ethics' in the mouth of a man. You and I are the only men on this ship that know its meaning. At one time in my life, I dreamed that I might someday talk with men who used such language, that I might lift myself out of the place in life in which I had been born, and hold conversation and mingle with men who talked about just such things as ethics. — Jack London

I am a woman first of all. At the core of my work was a journal written for the father I lost, loved and wanted to keep. I am personal. I am essentially human, not intellectual. I do not understand abstract act. Only art born of love, passion, pain. — Anais Nin

Why do I need TV when I have forty-eight apartment windows to watch across the vacant lot, and a sliver of Lake Erie? I've seen history out this window. So much. I was four when we moved here in 1919. The fruit-sellers' carts and coal wagons were pulled down the street by horses back then. I used to stand just here and watch the coal brought up by the handsome lad from Groza, the village my parents were born in. Gibb Street was mainly Rumanians back then. It was "Adio" - "Good-bye"- in all the shops when you left. Then the Rumanians started leaving. They weren't the first, or the last. This has always been a working-class neighborhood. It's like a cheap hotel - you stay until you've got enough money to leave. — Paul Fleischman

I was born in Faridabad but brought up in Delhi and Mumbai. My father had been living hand-to-mouth and literally slept on railway platforms when he came to Mumbai for the first time to become a film singer. My parents were both singers; they sang together and fell in love due to their singing. — Sonu Nigam

My daughter is full energy, like my wife and I, and strong-minded and has an opinion, like we do. And my boys, one's a bit more calm and chill, and the other is much more sensitive to things. You see this right away, when they're first born. One cried, one didn't, with the boys. — Chris Hemsworth

South Africa is a whole other world. I went to grade school there and high school in Johannesburg, and before that, my family lived in Kenya in Nairobi where my brother was actually born, and my sister was born in Capetown. I spent the first 10 years of my life in South Africa. — Jann Klose

I was born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite. Imagine signing that autograph! You'd get a broken arm. So I changed my name to Michael Caine after Humphrey Bogart's 'The Caine Mutiny,' which was playing in the theater across from the telephone booth where I learned that I'd gotten my first TV job. — Michael Caine

I'm a first - I was the first person in my family born in the United States. My mom is from Croatia, and my dad is from Iran. They met at music school in Belgium. I grew up as a pianist. I was really interested in piano and sort of discovered that I was a writer when I was about 13 and started writing. — Ottessa Moshfegh

I was born in Orange County - in Santa Ana. My dad is from California. I was raised on the East Coast. My first two years were in California, but I claim East Coast. I'm sorry, I don't rep California. — Michael B. Jordan

I've been very, very lucky in my career, in my life - from day one. When aspiring directors say, 'What's your advice?' first I say, 'Be born the son of a famous director. It's invaluable.' — Jason Reitman

My mother was the first woman in the county in Indiana where we were born, in Jay County, to have a college degree. She was educated as a pianist and she wanted to concertize, but when the war came she was married, had a family, so she started teaching. — Twyla Tharp

In my opinion miracles will never confound a realist. It is not miracles that bring a realist to faith. A true realist, if he is not a believer, will always find in himself the strength and ability not to believe in miracles as well, and if a miracle stands before him as an irrefutable fact, he will sooner doubt his own senses than admit the fact. And even if he does admit it, he will admit it as a fact of nature that was previously unknown to him. In the realist, faith is not born from miracles, but miracles from faith. Once the realist comes to believe, then, precisely because of his realism, he must also allow for miracles. The Apostle Thomas declared that he would not believe until he saw, and when he saw, he said: "My Lord and My God!" Was it the miracle that made him believe? Most likely not, but he believed first and foremost because he wished to believe, and maybe already fully believed in his secret heart even as he was saying: "I will not believe until I see. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Shall I be able to understand the sense of what you have written?

No, King, what a poet writes is not meant to have any sense.

What then?

To have the tune itself.

What do you mean? Is there no philosophy in it?

No, none at all, thank goodness.

What does it say, then?

King, it says "I exist." Don't you know the meaning of the first cry of the new-born child? The child, when it is born, hears at once the cries of the earth and water and sky, which surround him,--and they all cry to him, "We exist," and his tiny little heart responds, and cries out in its turn, "I exist." My poetry is like the cry of that new-born child. It is a response to the cry of the Universe. — Rabindranath Tagore

Being a parent is not for the faint of heart. I may joke about knowing fear, but the fact is, the first time I ever knew real fear was the day Charlotte, my first child, was born. Suddenly there is someone in the world you care about more than anything. — Harlan Coben

What am I to call it? Diffidence? The fear of ridicule? Inverted vanity? What matters names, if it has brought me to this? I could never bear to be bustling about nothing; I was ashamed of this toy kingdom from the first; I could not tolerate that people should fancy I believed in a thing so patently absurd! I would do nothing that cannot be done smiling. I have a sense of humour, forsooth! I must know better than my Maker. And it was the same thing in my marriage," he added more hoarsely. "I did not believe this girl could care for me; I must not intrude; I must preserve the foppery of my indifference. What an impotent picture!"
"Ay, we have the same blood," moralised Gotthold. "You are drawing, with fine strokes, the character of the born sceptic."
"Sceptic? - coward!" cried Otto. "Coward is the word. A springless, putty-hearted, cowering coward! — Robert Louis Stevenson

Like a researcher in his laboratory, I am the first spectator of the suggestions drawn from the materials. I unleash their expressive possibilities, even if I do not have a very clear idea of what I am going to do. As I go along with my work I formulate my thought, and from this struggle between what I want and the reality of the material - from this tension - is born an equilibrium. — Antoni Tapies

I started out in silence, writing as quietly as I had read, and then eventually people read some of what I had written, and some of the readers entered my world or drew me into theirs. I started out in silence and traveled until I arrived at a voice that was heard far away
first the silent voice that can only be read, and then I was asked to speak aloud and to read aloud. When I began to read aloud, another voice, one I hardly recognized, emerged from my mouth. Maybe it was more relaxed, because writing is speaking to no one, and even when you're reading to a crowd, you're still in that conversation with the absent, the faraway, the not yet born, the unknown, and the long gone for whom writers write, the crowd of the absent who hover all around the desk. — Rebecca Solnit

When my sister and I came along, my father's political life was completely over. He ran for president the year I was born. So that was the end of it. He had been congressman first, then governor, before all that. So when we came along, he was running the Dayton newspaper. — Anne Cox Chambers

You're imprinted all over me. I see my life and you're always there. When you were born, when you moved away, and my world became nothing but shades of gray. Then you came back, and I didn't understand then like I do now why I suddenly came back to life. The first night we kissed, the first night we made love. — Marie Hall

I was born and raised Catholic, so it's in my blood. I don't go to church ... I was born and raised Catholic, which is about the extent of my religion. My parents made one request: that I have my first Holy Communion. — Tom Araya

My first language is both English and Spanish. My mom was raised in Los Angeles, so with her we spoke English, but my father was born in Cuba, so with him we spoke Spanish. — Jencarlos Canela

My first sight of the fabled warrior was a surprise. He was not a mighty-thewed giant, like Ajax. His body was not broad and powerful, as Odysseos'. He seemed small, almost boyish, his bare arms and legs slim and virtually hairless. His chin was shaved clean, and the ringlets of his long black hair were tied up in a silver chain. He wore a splendid white silk tunic, bordered with a purple key design, cinched at the waist with a belt of interlocking gold crescents ... His face was the greatest shock. Ugly, almost to the point of being grotesque. Narrow beady eyes, lips curled in a perpetual snarl, a sharp hook of a nose, skin pocked and cratered ... A small ugly boy born to be a king ... A young man possessed with fire to silence the laughter, to stifle the taunting. His slim arms and legs were iron-hard, knotted with muscle. His dark eyes were absolutely humourless. There was no doubt in my mind that he could outfight Odysseos or even powerful Ajax on sheer willpower alone. — Ben Bova

At that time I was too young for some of the troubles I was having, and I had not yet learned what to do with them. It no longer can matter what kind of troubles they were, or what finally became of them, though all my tradition, background, and training had taught me unanswerably that no one except a coward ever runs away from anything. What nonsense! They should have taught me the difference between courage and foolhardiness, instead of leaving me to find it out for myself. I learned finally that if I still had the sense I was born with, I would take off like a deer at the first warning of certain dangers. — Katherine Anne Porter

My first intervention is to say, when your baby is born, just don't jump on your kid at night," Cohen says, "Give your baby a chance to self-soothe, don't automatically respond, even from birth. — Pamela Druckerman

Lucien: And Flowers
but only Anya can call me that.
William: Fine. I'll call you Roses.
Lucien: You won't.
William: I will. Zodiac sign, Roses?
Lucien: First, how does my woman stand you? Second, I don't think I have a sign. I was created rather than born, and I am unsure of the day, much less the month.
William: I'll just mark your sign as "Roses". Choice of weapon, Roses?
Lucien: You are a bastard. But I like knives. I like to get up close and personal with my kills. Care for a demonstration?
William: Later. What are you looking for in a woman, Roses?
Lucien: Why don't I just call you Moron? Anya does ... — Gena Showalter

My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected onto a screen, come to life again like flowers in water. — Robert Bresson