Once I Was Young Quotes & Sayings

When I was young I once found a book in a Dutch translation, 'The leaves of Grass'. It was the first time a book touched me by its feeling of freedom and open spaces, the way the poet spoke of the ocean by describing a drop of water in his hand. Walt Whitman was offering the world an open hand (now we call it democracy) and my 'Monument for Walt Whitman' became this open hand with mirrors, so you can see inside yourself. — Karel Appel

I know a song about him. But I thought he lived a hundred years ago.
We all did. Once I was as young as you. — George R R Martin

I had already been a young singer. And once, as a profession, I was a young singer, what you would call a soprano in England, but I was an alto in singing Jewish music in bar mitzvahs and weddings and synagogues throughout New York City because, after Israel, New York is probably the biggest Jewish community in the world. — Charlemagne Palestine

So I spoke to my old friend Bruce and told him I was feeling it, his loss of Clarence. We talked for quite a while, and there is no need to go into what two old friends had to say to each other at this point, except to say that two old friends spoke to each other about their music, their muses, their partners in crime, their proof, their friendship, their souls and their lives. Ben Keith was my Clarence Clemons. Clarence Clemons was Bruce's Ben Keith. When he died last year it touched me to the core. I don't want to ever think of any one else playing his parts or occupying his space. No one could. I can't do those songs again unless it's solo. So I told Bruce, "Waylon once looked at me and said, 'There's very few of us left.'" He liked that. I told him when he looked to his right I would be there. That's enough. I'm not talking about that anymore. — Neil Young

I remember once when I was young, and I was coming back from some place, a movie or something.
I was on the subway and there was a girl sitting across from me and she was wearing this dress that was bottoned queer up right to here, she was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
And I was shy then, so when she would look at me I would look away, then afterwards when I would look back she would look away.
Then I got to where I was gonna get off, and got off, the doors closed, and as the train was pulling away she looked right at me and gave me the most incredible smile. It was awful, I wanted to tear the doors open.
And I went back every night, same time, for two weeks, but she never showed up.
That was 30 years ago and I don't think that theres a day that goes by that I don't think about her, I don't want that to happen again.
Just one dance ?. — Jack Engelhard

I couldn't help wondering, is my husband so unattractive that no woman has ever wanted him? Except me, of course. I must have wanted him, in a way, once, but I've forgotten why, and I was too young to know what I was choosing. — Graham Greene

Why did you take this job?" I ask. "It doesn't make sense. You're so young - "
"It was an honor to be promoted," she says, but the words have a hollow ring. I can see her drawing back into herself, into her role.
"Who did you lose?" I ask.
Carmen flashes a smile that is at once dazzling and sad. "I'm a Librarian, Miss Bishop. I've lost everyone. — Victoria Schwab

Once, when I was young and true. Someone left me sad - Broke my brittle heart in two; And that is very bad. Love is for unlucky folk, Love is but a curse. Once there was a heart I broke; And that, I think, is worse. — Dorothy Parker

I was a young person once, shortly after the polar ice caps retreated, and I distinctly recall believing that virtually all adults were clueless goobers. — Dave Barry

When about fifteen I once made a great scandal by taking out my knife in prayer meeting and assaulting a young man who, while I was kneeling down during the prayer, stood above me and squeezed my neck. — Simon Newcomb

But inside of me I knew that the Olympics were still there. I was still young enough. I knew that once I transitioned out of hockey, it would be really hard to go back. — Angela Ruggiero

I was a young, & had deep loves, & my heart would overflow with enthusiasm! And I mingled with the crowd, I mixed with my fellow men, speaking my thought out loud! And they gaped back at me, without understanding. And I withdrew from them, & they said to me: Arrogant one! And from time to time in my solitude, my loves, my repressed enthusiasms broke out into odes, conversation; & my companions laughed and used to point at me as a madman. So I suffered, doubted, cursed, & no one believed me sincere. It's as if this heart, once so full of strength & love were annihilated. — Comte De Lautreamont

Most of my teachers wanted to send me to the principal's office. But my fourth-grade teacher once put her arms around me and said, 'You sure write well.' And I've had good penmanship until this day. She was the only one who ever said anything nice to me. That's the kind of motivation that students need. — Andrew Young

Of course I am thinking the Lord was once young and will never in fact be old.
And who else could this be, who goes off down the green path,
Carrying his sandals, and singing? — Mary Oliver

Our group pressed west on what was left of Highway 93, toward the pass leading to Las Vegas. Sand covered the road in loose drifts so deep the horses' hooves sank into them. The metal highway signs were bent low by the strong wind, and above us, billboards that once screamed ads for the casinos were now stripped of their promises of penny slots and large jackpots. The raw boards underneath were exposed, like showgirls without their makeup. Some signs had been blown over completely and lay half-buried under mounds of sand, like sleeping animals.
Cars dotted the highway, their paint scoured off and dead tumbleweeds caught underneath them. Their windows were fogged with death, and despite my effort not to look, my eyes were drawn to the blurred images of the still forms inside. I tried to concentrate on the dark road ahead of us instead. — Kirby Howell

I felt that way not because I never once discovered any palpable hard young throat to crush among the masculine mutes that flickered somewhere in the background; but because it was to me "overwhelmingly obvious" (a favorite expression with my aunt Sybil) that all varieties of high school boys - from the perspiring nincompoop whom "holding hands" thrills, to the self-sufficient rapist with pustules and a souped-up car - equally bored my sophisticated young mistress. — Vladimir Nabokov

Perhaps one day in the far-off future, when I'm about eighty-nine, I might look back and say, "When I was a young-ish woman I fell in love with an intense charismatic man. He was way out of my league and when it ended it nearly killed me, but every woman should experience that sort of love once in their lives. Only once, mind, you mightn't survive a second bout. A bit like dengue fever, that way." I — Marian Keyes

I was young once, you know. Truth be told, I still am. Now, if I can convince my mirror. — Julie Lessman

More than once I should have lost my soul to radicalism if it had been the originality it was mistaken for by its young converts. — Robert Frost

Uh, Miss Carlson," I said, standing at her desk after everybody else had gone on to their next class, "somebody told me you went to that guy's funeral the one the highway patrol shot."
"Yes," SHe said. "I did."
She didn't look like she was mad at me about it. She had real long eyelashes. I bet she was good-looking when she was young.
"Was he a relative or something?" That was what I was afraid of.
"No. Not even a friend really." She paused, like she was hunting for the right words. Finally she said, "I read a book once that ended with the words 'the incommunicable past' You can only share the past with someone who's shared it with you. So I can't explain to you what Mark was to me, exactly. I knew him a long time ago. — S.E. Hinton

Jo told me once that she was an old woman everywhere but in her studio. "There I'm only myself," she'd said. Standing in the middle of masterpieces that only Jo had ever seen and touched, I knew what she meant. — Laura Anderson Kurk

Living with myself wasn't all that easy. I was not the young girl I once was. Once upon a time when I looked in the mirror, I saw this happy glow. Now nothing glowed except the leftover face cream from the night before. — Brenda Perlin

She once told me of a night that fumed with escapes and was filled with bedsides reeking of ecstasy; she told me the stars cast not judgments, but blessings, knowing full well the disastrous outcomes of the deeds they cradled with the strings of their young hearts. She'd inhaled the night itself, those around her doing the same, and so all become one. No disharmony. No discordance. Nothing to shatter the cause; nothing to unearth the beauty. So as we together ascended that front porch, allowing the glow behind the blown-out windows and the odious steams plunder us from through the cracks ... time forgot to distill us, and our steps became as silver as glass. I could no longer deny the boiling words of my blood: tonight would be the beginning of a very long road indeed. — Dave Matthes

... it is a matter of record that in our sorry age with its prejudice in favour of male children many poor families donated to their favoured cult-temple the daughters they could not afford to marry off or feed, in the hope that they might live in holiness as servants or, if they were fortunate, as dancers; vain hopes, alas, for in many cases the priests in charge of these temples were men in whom the highest standards of probity were mysteriously absent, a failing which laid them open to offers of cash on the nail for the young virgins and not-quite-virgins and once-again-virgins in their charge. Thus Abraham the spice merchant was able to use his widespread Southern connections to harvest a new crop, entered in his most secret ledgers as 'Garam Masala Super Quality', and also, I note with some embarrassment, 'Extra Hot Chilli Peppers: Green. — Salman Rushdie

Why is it that at a bachelor's establishment the servants invariably drink the champagne? I ask merely for information.
I attribute it to the superior quality of the wine, sir. I have often observed that in married households the champagne is rarely of a first-rate brand.
Good Heavens! Is marriage so demoralizing as that?
I believe it is a very pleasant state, sir. I have had very little experience of it myself up to the present. I have only been married once. That was in consequence of a misunderstanding between myself and a young person. — Oscar Wilde

Oh, I remember, I remember all those moments! And I want to add, too, that when such young creatures, such sweet young creatures want to say something so clever and profound, they show at once so truthfully and naively in their faces, "Here I am saying something clever and profound now" - and that is not from vanity, as it is with any one like me, but one sees that she appreciates it awfully herself, and believes in it, and thinks a lot of it, and imagines that you think a lot of all that, just as she does. Oh, truthfulness! It's by that they conquer us. How exquisite it was in her! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Once I became a photographer, it stopped me being scared or intimidated by gangs of young men of whatever stripe. Initially, I could hide behind my camera but eventually I came to realize that if I was polite and friendly to them, then they probably would be to me too - a good life lesson. — Derek Ridgers

Mick Jagger once boasted that 'I'd rather be dead than still singing 'Satisfaction' when I'm forty-five.' But now he's over sixty and still singing 'Satisfaction'. Some people might find this funny, but not me. When he was young, Mick Jagger couldn't imagine himself at forty-five. When I was young, I was the same. Can I laugh at Mick Jagger? No way. I just happen not to be a young rock singer. Nobody remembers what stupid things I might have said back then, so they're not about to quote them back at me. That's the only difference. — Haruki Murakami

I am a star at rest, my daughter," answered Ramandu. "When I set for the last time, decrepit and old beyond all that you can reckon, I was carried to this island. I am not so old now as I was then. Every morning a bird brings me a fire-berry from the valleys in the Sun, and each fire-berry takes away a little of my age. And when I have become as young as the child that was born yesterday, then I shall take my rising again (for we are at earth's eastern rim) and once more tread the great dance." "In our world," said Eustace, "a star is a huge ball of flaming gas." "Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of. And in — C.S. Lewis

I came to regard my body in a new light. For the first time I apprehended the little mounds on my chest as teats for the suckling of young, and their physical resemblance to udders on cows or the swinging distensions on lactating hounds was suddenly unavoidable. Funny how even women forget what breasts are for.
The cleft between my legs transformed as well. It lost a certain outrageousness, an obscenity, or achieved an obscenity of a different sort. The flaps seemed to open not to a narrow, snug dead end, but to something yawning. The passageway itself became a route to somewhere else, a real place, and not merely to a darkness in my mind. The twist of flesh in front took on a devious aspect, its inclusion overtly ulterior, a tempter, a sweetener for doing the species' heavy lifting, like the lollipops I once got at the dentist. — Lionel Shriver

Poor Metias. He's not supposed to be a father. He's supposed to be out on his own, independent and free to concentrate on his job as a young captain. But somebody has to take care of me, and I make his life so much harder than it needs to be. I wonder what things must have been like for him back when our parents were still alive, when I was a toddler and Metias was a teenager and he could focus on growing up instead of helping someone else grow up. Still, Metias hasn't complained once. Not a single time. And even though I wish our parents were here, sometimes I'm really happy that this is our little family unit, just me and my brother, each watching out for no one but the other. We do the best we can. — Marie Lu

43. To his friend a man should bear him as friend,
to him and a friend of his;
but let him beware that he be not the friend
of one who is friend to his foe.
44. Hast thou a friend whom thou trustest well,
from whom thou cravest good?
Share thy mind with him, gifts exchange with him,
fare to find him oft.
45. But hast thou one whom thou trusbut falsely think,
and leasing pay for a lie.
47. Young was I once, I walked alone,
and bewildered seemed in the way;
then I found me another and rich I thought me,
for man is the joy of man.
50. The pine tree wastes which is perched on the hill,
nor bark nor needles shelter it;
such is the man whom none doth love;
for what should he longer live? — Havamal - The Sayings Of The High One

I looked at her dress and I thought, Oh no, it's awful. Because it was all scrunched up, it looked terrible. I just remember thinking, It doesn't look like it's been ironed. The Emanuels reacted the same way and dashed to the rescue. Once the train was properly spread out on the carpeted steps, it looked as dazzling as the young woman who was wearing it. — Tim Clayton

Such is life. And it does go on, in the young ones and the things we leave behind. Is the pain of losing them not worth the delight it was having them?" said Grandma Lilly when I was finished.
"I don't know," I said. "This feels pretty bad."
She wrapped her thin arm around my shoulder and held it firmly. "Of course it does, but that is because you are in the throes of it, like you were once in the throes of love. Would you take it back? — Clare Bohning

A young man, just beginning the study of musical composition, once went to Mozart and asked him the formula for developing the theme of a symphony. Mozart suggested that a symphony was rather an ambitious project for a beginner: perhaps the young man might better try his hand at something simpler first. "But you were writing symphonies when you were my age." the student protested. "Yes, but I didn't have to ask how." — James Keller

The dark held new meaning for me now. There was a whole other world out there that I was just beginning to discover ... A world that had once been only farce was now very real. -Abby Sullivan; Redemption — Kellie Thacker

I was young once and slender and pretty and I made the most of it. It's somebody else's turn now. — Abigail Thomas

I love athletics. As an athlete, I like to believe I can still do the things I used to do when I was once young. — Dominique Dawes

I shall be as willing as the next man to fall down in worship before the System, if only I can manage to set eyes on it. Hitherto I have had no success; and though I have young legs, I am almost weary from running back and forth ...
Once or twice I have been on the verge of bending the knee. But at the last moment, when I already had my handkerchief spread on the ground, to avoid soiling my trousers, and I made a trusting appeal to one of the initiated who stood by: "Tell me now sincerely, is it entirely finished; for if so I will kneel down before it, even at the risk of ruining a pair of trousers (for on account of the heavy traffic to and from the system, the road has become quite muddy)," - I always receive the same answer: "No, it is not yet quite finished." And so there was another postponement - of the system, and of my homage.
System and finality are pretty much one and the same, so much so that if the system is not finished, there is no system. — Soren Kierkegaard

I remembered what it was like to die-the pain, the fear, the doubt, and the unknown. Somehow I had cheated death once. Now I was about to try again. — Rick Chiantaretto

There are so many things to grieve ... All the dogs & cats & birds & snakes we have loved & lost, & old lovers, but what else? ... it took me forever to see that one of them was my own daughter, my baby, a young woman I thought of only as a girl, a child, & there she was, suddenly a woman, & I felt this ache gnaw at me as if I hadn't eaten in a year ... I stood there watching my daughter gesture & move & laugh with the grace of a grown-up, & I just started crying like a baby. It wasn't unlike the same type of sorrow we all feel when we realize something we once had that was very precious is not longer there. That it is forever lost, changed, deceased. Like a baby, gone, except in your memory ... My own daughter is now a woman. I get it. Another passage, another form of loss, another reason to grieve, another part of this life process. — Kris Radish

I sat next to a young woman on a plane once who bombarded me for five hours with how she had decided to be born again and so should I. I told her I was glad for her, but I hadn't used up being born the first time. — Alan Alda

The same thing happened to me that, according to legend, happened to Parmeniscus, who in the Trophonean cave lost the ability to laugh but acquired it again on the island of Delos upon seeing a shapeless block that was said to be the image of the goddess Leto. When I was very young, I forgot in the Trophonean cave how to laugh; when I became an adult, when I opened my eyes and saw actuality, then I started to laugh and have never stopped laughing since that time. I saw that the meaning of life was to make a living, its goal to be- come a councilor, that the rich delight oflove was to acquire a well-to-do girl, that the blessedness of friendship was to help each other in financial difficulties, that wisdom was whatever the majority assumed it to be, that enthusiasm was to give a speech, that courage was to risk being fined ten dollars, that cordiality was to say "May it do you good" after a meal, that piety was to go to communion once a year. This I saw, and I laughed. — Soren Kierkegaard

All I had to see was his face. Unaware of an audience, lost in the repeated rhythm of the piano riff, lit by the evening, it was like all of Cole's armor had fallen off. This was not the aggressively handsome, cocky guy that I had met a few days ago. This was just a boy getting to know a tune. He looked young and uncertain and endearing, and I felt betrayed that he was somehow getting himself together when I couldn't.
Somehow, he was yet again being honest, sharing another secret, when I didn't have anything I was willing to give in return. For once, I saw something in his eyes. I saw that he was feeling again, and that whatever he was feeling was hurting him.
I wasn't ready to hurt. — Maggie Stiefvater

I was once young and now I am old, but not once have I been witness to God's failure to supply my need when first I had given for the furtherance of His work. He has never failed in His promise, so I cannot fail in my service to Him. — William Carey

I do not comment on my client's personal lives in the media. As for Luke, he did so once, a long time ago when he was an inexperienced, young actor and now with maturity and hindsight, he has learned not to engage the press in his personal life again. — Luke Evans

I lived here once," the author said after a moment.
"Here? For a long time?"
"No. For just a little while when I was young."
"It must have been rather cramped."
"I didn't notice."
"Would you like to try it again?"
"No. And I couldn't if I wanted to."
He shivered slightly and closed the windows. As they went downstairs, the visitor said, half apologetically: "It's really just like all houses, isn't it?"
The author nodded.
"I didn't think it was when I built it, but in the end I suppose it's just like other houses after all. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Kosciusko. - The hero of Poland once wished to send some bottles of good wine to a clergyman at Solothurn; and as he hesitated to trust them by his servant, lest he should smuggle a part, he gave the commission to a young man of the name of Zeltner, and desired him to take the horse which he himself usually rode. On his return, young Zeltner said that he never would ride his horse again unless he gave him his purse at the same time. Kosciusko enquiring what he meant, he answered, "As soon as a poor man on the road takes off his hat and asks charity, the horse immediately stands still, and will not stir till something is given to the petitioner; and as I had no money about me, I was obliged to feign giving something, in order to satisfy the horse." Mysterious — Various

I think about something I once heard on the radio. About Abraham and Isaac."
"I was afraid you'd say something like that."
"You asked."
"So what about them? I don't really know much about that kind of stuff."
"There was a pastor on the radio who said nobody should ever preach that story. Do you remember how it goes? God tells Abraham that he has to sacrifice his son to prove his faith."
"I agree with the pastor. It sounds like a sick story. Ban that shit."
"But isn't that exactly what we do? Send young men off to a war in the desert and ask them to sacrifice themselves for a belief? — A.J. Kazinski

If I'd had a mirror I'd have looked at the whole of myself, though, as a matter of fact, I knew what I looked like already. A fat man of forty-five, in a grey herring-bone suit a bit the worse for wear and a bowler hat. Wife, two kids, and a house in the suburbs written all over me. Red face and boiled blue eyes. I know, you don't have to tell me. But the thing that struck me, as I gave my dental plate the once-over before slipping it back into my mouth, was that it doesn't matter. Even false teeth don't matter. I'm fat - yes. I look like a bookie's unsuccessful brother - yes. No woman will ever go to bed with me again unless she's paid to. I know all that. But I tell you I don't care. I don't want the women, I don't even want to be young again. I only want to be alive. And I was alive that moment when I stood looking at the primroses and the red embers under the hedge. It's a feeling inside you, a kind of peaceful feeling, and yet it's like a flame. — George Orwell

He's visitin' an old friend," supplied Eragon, dropping his voice into a thick accent. "I'm along t' make sure he don't get lost, if y' get m'meaning. He ain't as young as he used to be - had a bit too much sun when he was young'r. Touch o' the brain fever, y' know." Brom bobbed his head pleasantly. "Right. Go on through," said the guard, waving his hand and dropping the pike. "Just make sure he doesn't cause any trouble." "Oh, he won't," promised Eragon. He urged Cadoc forward, and they rode into Teirm. The cobblestone street clacked under the horses' hooves. Once they were away from the guards, Brom sat up and growled, "Touch of brain fever, eh?" "I couldn't let you have all the fun," teased Eragon. Brom harrumphed and looked away. — Christopher Paolini

I once mentioned in a school report, how a young man in one of our English training colleges having to paraphrase the passage in Macbeth beginning,

Can'st thou not minister to a mind diseased?

turned this line into, "Can you not wait upon the lunatic?" And I remarked what a curious state of things it would be, if every pupil of our national schools knew, let us say, that the moon is two thousand one hundred and sixty miles in diameter, and thought at the same time that a good paraphrase for

Can'st thou not minister to a mind diseased?

was, "Can you not wait upon the lunatic?" If one is driven to choose, I think I would rather have a young person ignorant about the moon's diameter, but aware that "Can you not wait upon the lunatic?" is bad, than a young person whose education had been such as to manage things the other way — Matthew Arnold

Several weeks of summer vacation in the Thirties I spent working at $15 a week in the FORBES office ... I worked in the mail cage, where envelopes were slit and subscription payments extracted. Dad used to come pounding down the office aisle and pause long enough to ask, How much today? Inevitably the answer was inadequate-except once. That day the controller said excitedly, Mr. Forbes, the ledger shows a slight profit this month! ... My father turned to him and said, Young man, I don't give a damn what your books show. Do we have any money in the bank? — Malcolm Forbes

That had been the end of Communism. I had a feeling watching the tape that America would be next, but for once I kept my mouth shut. In my silence I felt our common ground: here we were, two men, neither young, neither with money, neither earning a penny or holding down a job or owning a house, both thoroughly confused by the way the world was turning. — Don J. Snyder

Henry Ward Beecher, so the story goes, was once asked by a young preacher how he could keep his congregation wide awake and attentive during his sermons. Beecher replied that he always had a man watch for sleepers, with instructions, as soon as he saw anyone start nodding or dozing, to hasten to the pulpit and wake up the preacher. Aren't you and I usually less sensible? Would we not be inclined to have the watcher wake up not ourselves but the fellows caught sleeping? In other words, aren't we disposed always to blame others? — B.C. Forbes

I loved the idea of recording. The idea of sound-on-sound-recording captured me as a young kid, and once I realized what it was I had an epiphany. Before I was even playing the guitar, I would create these lists of how I would record things and overdub them, like Led Zeppelin song, 'I could put this guitar on this track ... ' and so on. — Steve Vai

Once upon a time there was an island visited by ruin and inhabited by strange peccant creatures. "It's a sad place," I say, "and too much like my own life." He nods. "You mean, the losing struggle against inscrutable blind forces, young dreams brought to ruin." "Yes," I tell Coover, "my young dreams are gone. I lost the struggle a long, long time ago. — Rabih Alameddine

Naught but leaves brushed in the wind, stemming from the forest behind my house. Oh, and of course, the wildlife seized every chance to tell the stars who they were; they hooted, howled, and growled. And deep under the roots of trees in little holes lived rabbits, cuddling next to their young. All the while Mr. Ant and his colony were dragging a once boisterous Nocturnal Cicada to the nest; a feast for days! I suppose my daydreaming occasionally did extend into the night. I've spent countless hours I'll never regain, but for the off-chance I was right just once, it was worth every second. — Kevin Focke

I was quite cocky, but having been hailed as this great young golfer, I couldn't even make the high school golf team once I got there. I had a big dose of humble pie then, and ever since, I've always known that there is always someone out there better than you, more talented. Always. — David Chang

I remember a television program I once saw [ ... ] I must have been seven or eight, too young to understand it. It was the sort of thing my mother liked to watch: historical, educational. She tried to explain it to me afterwards, to tell me that the things in it had really happened, but to me it was only a story. I thought someone had made it up. I suppose all children think that, about any history before their own. If it's only a story, it becomes less frightening. — Margaret Atwood

Our task is to implement Jesus' unique achievement. We are like the musicians called to play and sing the unique and once-only-written musical score. We don't have to write it again, but we have to play it. Or, in the image Paul uses in I Corinthians 3, we are now in the position of young architects discovering a wonderful foundation already laid by a master architect and having to work out what sort of building was intended. — N. T. Wright

I once knew a girl who was like a dying rainbow. Her colors were incomparable, her countenance a whirlwind of brilliance. As much as she shone, however, she faded into nothingness, at times so quickly that I was unsure whether she had existed at all. — Charity Santiago

I was a Great Society liberal on domestic issues. People ask me, 'How do you go from Walter Mondale to Fox News?' The answer is, 'I was young once.' End of answer. — Charles Krauthammer

He was talking. I tried not to think of how he looked and instead of what he was telling me. Once I accomplished that, my brain couldn't get past the 'running' part.
"I don't run." I walked the mile run at school. True story.
I abhorred any kind of physical exercise. I wasn't good at it. I was skinny, but I was soft; had absolutely no muscle mass at all. That's the way I liked it. Who was he to try to change that, change me? I wouldn't let him. No way, no how.
One half of his mouth lifted. He seemed to be enjoying this a little too much. "You do now. You have to be fit, you have to be strong, Taryn, if you're to stand any chance of surviving this. Come on, we'll start with stretching."
He forced me to twist my body into unimaginable positions. I even had to touch my toes. The agony. Luke took pleasure from my pain; even laughing as I moaned and groaned through it all.
Then, the worst came about. He. Made. Me. Run. — Lindy Zart

When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age.In middle age I was assured greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ships's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage. In other words, once a bum always a bum. I fear this disease incurable. I set this matter down not to instruct others but to inform myself ... A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we not take a trip; a trip takes us. — John Steinbeck

I found out the differences between "the truth" and "all the truth." You can know some pretty terrible things about a person, and you can know they're true. But sometimes it makes a huge difference if you know what else is true too. I read something in a book once about an old lady who was walking along the street minding her own business when a young guy came charging along, knocked her down, rolled her in a mud puddle, slapped her head and smeared handsful of wet mud all over her hair. Now what should you do with a guy like that?
But then if you find out that someone had got careless with a drum of gasoline and it ignited and the old lady was splashed with it, and the guy had presence of mind enough to do what he did as fast as he did, and severely burned his hands in the doing of it, then what should you do with him?
Yet everything reported about him is true. The only difference is the amount of truth you tell. — Theodore Sturgeon

What I found fascinating was just how quickly the best of the young Negro League players were drafted into the major leagues once Branch Rickey broke the color line by hiring Jackie Robinson. It was clear that all of the major league owners already knew the talents of the black ballplayers that they had refused to let into their league. — Walter Dean Myers

I do not mean to say that I viewed those desires of mine that deviated from accepted standards as normal and orthodox; nor do I mean that I labored under the mistaken impression that my friends possessed the same desires. Surprisingly enough, I was so engrossed in tales of romance that I devoted all my elegant dreams to thoughts of love between man and maid, and to marriage, exactly as though I were a young girl who knew nothing of the world. I tossed my love for Omi onto the rubbish heap of neglected riddles, never once searching deeply for its meaning. Now when I write the word love, when I write affection, my meaning is totally different from my understanding of the words at that time. I never even dreamed that such desires as I had felt toward Omi might have a significant connection with the realities of my life. — Yukio Mishima

I lied to you,' she said, hanging her head in shame, 'more than once. In fact, I swore that my lies were truth. I can't understand how it could have happened. It just came out of my mouth and by the time I realised what I'd done, it was too late.
'It's never too late to realise that you were mistaken, Sophiel. — A.O. Esther

There is no greater paradox in the cosmos," the deceased had written, "than the apparent contradiction of our helplessness ('without me, you can do nothing') alongside God's 'helplessness.' Oh, I know, God is all-powerful, and so on; but he cannot undo what he has done, and what he once did was to make men free. This means that he 'needs' us in order to get us to Heaven as his lovers, and in order to do his will in the world. All we have to do in order to frustrate those wishes - to render God 'helpless' - is to say No. But God is not helpless, really, because he has mercy - himself. And what mercy does is convert, change our hearts. Which God never stops trying to do until we are dead. This means continued suffering for him, which is what Christ is all about." Young — William F. Buckley Jr.

I remember once, when I lived in the Capital for a month and bought the paper fresh each day, I went wild with love, anger, irritation, frustration; all of the passions boiled in me. I was young. I exploded at everything I saw. But then I saw what I was doing: I was believing what I read. Have you noticed? You believe a paper printed on the very day you buy it? This has happened but only an hour ago, you think! It must be true.' He shook his head. 'So I learned to stand back away and let the paper age and mellow. Back here, in Colonia, I saw the headlines diminish to nothing. The week-old paper - why, you can spit on it if you wish. It is like a woman you once loved, but you now see, a few days later, she is not quite what you thought. She has rather a plain face. She is no deeper than a cup of water. — Ray Bradbury

To see what books were available for my older students, I made many trips to the library. If a book looked interesting, I checked it out. I once went home with 30 books! It was then that I realized that kids' novels had the shape of real books, and I began to get ideas for young adult novels and juvenile books. — Cynthia Voigt

Here's a question we all ask ourselves at least once when we're young: Where does that starlight come from? It's been there before I was born, and before my grandmother, and her grandmother were born. So just how far is that star from Earth? — Kim Young-ha

Algernon. Good heavens! Is marriage so demoralising as that? Lane. I believe it is a very pleasant state, sir. I have had very little experience of it myself up to the present. I have only been married once. That was in consequence of a misunderstanding between myself and a young person. Algernon. — Oscar Wilde

I once asked a young dissertation writer whether her suddenly grayed hair was due to ill health or personal tragedy; she answered: "It was the footnotes". — Joanna Russ

Duran Duran blared from the car stereo. The woman, two silver bracelets on the hand she dangled out the window, cast a glance in my direction. I could have been a Denny's restaurant sign or a traffic signal, it would have been no different. She was your regular sort of beautiful young woman, I guess. In a TV drama, she'd be the female lead's best friend, the face that appears once in a cafe scene to say, What's the matter? You haven't been yourself lately. — Haruki Murakami

The mist covered the ground like the white veil over a new bride's face. The air was thick with smoke - smelling of death and decay. The birds were no longer singing their sweet songs, nor were there any immediate signs of life in the area. The charred ground crunched under my feet and I realized it was the only sound I could hear in the eerie silence. I looked up at the once milky moon and cringed at its new bright crimson color. What could've possibly caused the moon to turn blood red? I thought to myself as I continued to walk cautiously through the unrecognizable forest. — Christine Gabriel

I think it says something that I have never had an obscene letter. A young man once attempted one, but it was so totally illiterate and hopeless that it made me laugh. — Ruth Rendell

Really?" Catherine didn't look at all appalled. "What was it like to wear trousers in public?"
"Quite ... liberating, actually."
"I daresay, I think we wear far too many layers of clothes."
"I agree," both men said at once.
Olivia and Catherine giggled like young girls. — Lorraine Heath

My friend Emma, who likes things to add up neatly, claims that this is because my parents died when I was too young to take it in: they were there one day and gone the next, crashing through that fence so hard and fast they left it splintered for good. When I was Lexie Madison for eight months she turned into a real person to me, a sister I lost or left behind on the way; a shadow somewhere inside me, like the shadows of vanishing twins that show up on people's X-rays once in a blue moon. Even before she came back to find me I knew I owed her something, for being the one who lived. — Tana French

Late-Flowering Lust

My head is bald, my breath is bad,
Unshaven is my chin,
I have not now the joys I had
When I was young in sin.
I run my fingers down your dress
With brandy-certain aim
And you respond to my caress
And maybe feel the same.
But I've a picture of my own
On this reunion night,
Wherein two skeletons are shewn
To hold each other tight;
Dark sockets look on emptiness
Which once was loving-eyed,
The mouth that opens for a kiss
Has got no tongue inside.
I cling to you inflamed with fear
As now you cling to me,
I feel how frail you are my dear
And wonder what will be--
A week? or twenty years remain?
And then--what kind of death?
A losing fight with frightful pain
Or a gasping fight for breath?
Too long we let our bodies cling,
We cannot hide disgust
At all the thoughts that in us spring
From this late-flowering lust. — John Betjeman

For me, it's been a treat to interact with authors who were publishing when I was a young reader. Judy Blume once gave me a pep talk at a writing conference. I had a short story featured in the same anthology as Beverly Cleary. Magic. — Cynthia Leitich Smith

When I was young, because I was young once like you, I heard many organ grinders play, and I can assure you no two tunes ever sounded the same, even on the same instrument. That's how it is, isn't it? The less love you put into things the more they resemble one another. The same goes for stories, everyone knows them by heart, but when someone tells them with love, I don't know, they seem new. — Andres Neuman

I went on Ellen once, and even then, I was just a bad performer. It was nerve-racking at first playing in front of all her fans who really wanted to see her. Her fans are so young and accepting to new people, and it helped that they knew 'Marvin Gaye,' too. — Charlie Puth

I will miss myself in relation to others. The rareness. The exceptional differences. I will miss the gift that comes with hardship and paying the price. I will miss the tragedy of my own life. As I once spoke...emphatically, but I now repeat here, quietly - the pain, the pain is what made it so God damn beautiful. I endured. You can wait a lifetime for thirty seconds, five minutes, or for an hour to come into your life - a brief interval that makes all the suffering purposeful. In such moments of splendor and rapture - even if the rapture be stilled, the private hours and years of reckoning are unloaded, a burden lifted and the spirit feels as it did on the happiest day of its life when it was young and untormented Or rather, unconscious of the torment waiting to be ignited. — Wheston Chancellor Grove

I have more enemies than I deserve," I said. "I am fighting a losing battle, me against the world. The next century is at stake. Time is running out and my optimism is sorely strained."
"Yeah?" he said. "I was young once too. — Felix Gilman

On a personal note, I was born in Brooklyn. My folks moved out to Long Island when I was quite young, but once a Brooklynite, always a Brooklynite. — Mitch Kapor

A first-rate college library with a comfortable campus around it is a fine milieu for a writer. There is, of course, the problem of educating the young. I remember how once, between terms, not at Cornell, a student brought a transistor set with him into the reading room. He managed to state that one, he was playing "classical" music; that two, he was doing it "softly"; and that three, "there were not many readers around in summer." I was there, a one-man multitude. — Vladimir Nabokov

I once choked on a chip at a friend's birthday when I was seven and had to be sent home, as I'd broken my collarbone coughing. — Stella Young

I tried to picture a young, insecure Edward and couldn't, but it was nice to know that once he'd been a boy. Sometimes it felt like Edward had sprung full grown from the head of some violent deity,like a vicious version of Athena. — Laurell K. Hamilton

I was interested when Mr. Morton talked in this manner, giving his thoughts on the way of the world. I knew that most men of his generation fumed at what they considered lack of propriety and dangerous freedom of modern young women, but Mr. Morton was above all a fair and just man, without prejudices. I had once overheard him saying to Colonel Rodsley, 'Certainly I agree with you that women are not the equals of men, Colonel. But neither are men the equals of women. They are quite simply different creatures, thank God, and not to be compared. But that one should be subordinate to the other in the eyes of the law is an injustice I hope to see rectified before I die. — Madeleine Brent

He was still so very young. Faeries - true faeries, not their changeling throwaways - live forever, and when you have an eternity of adulthood ahead of you, you linger over childhood. You tend it and keep it close to your heart, because once it ends, it's over. Quentin was barely fifteen. He'd never seen the Great Hunt that came down every twenty-one years, or been present for the crowning of a King or Queen of Cats, or announced his maturity before the throne of High King Aethlin. He was a child, and he should have had decades left to play; a century of games and joy and edging cautiously toward adulthood.
But he didn't. I could see his childhood dying in his eyes as he looked at me, silently begging me to answer for him. — Seanan McGuire

Once he saw a young girl with a small black satchel descend from a train, and she seemed so lonely and frightened that he wanted to shout to her and run down to her and smile and tell her, My name is Joe Silvera. I was born in this town, but I went away when I was seventeen and stayed away seven years. I've been back four months. I live across the street. I'm a painter. Come on up to my place and rest; I've got some wine.
All he did, though, was stare at her, and finally when she disappeared, walking down Tulare Street, he wanted very much, even then, to run down to the street and catch up with her; and a day later he wanted to look for her all over town; and a week later he wondered where she might be. — William, Saroyan

The idea that the Lord our God is not a personage of tabernacle is entirely a mistaken notion. He was once a man. Brother Kimball quoted a saying of Joseph the Prophet, that he would not worship a God who had not a Father; and I do not know that he would if be had not a mother; the one would be as absurd as the other. If he had a Father, he was made in his likeness. And if he is our Father we are made after his image and likeness. — Brigham Young

It turned out to be a young Dasypus novemcinctus, a nine-banded armadillo, about the size of a small loaf of bread. Although they were becoming more common in Texas, I'd never seen one up close before. Anatomically speaking, it resembled the unhappy melding of an anteater (the face), a mule (the ears), and a tortoise (the carapace). I thought it overall an unlucky creature in the looks department, but Granddaddy once said that to apply a human definition of beauty to an animal that had managed to thrive for millions of years was both unscientific and foolish. — Jacqueline Kelly

My father once told me when I was a young girl that I was destined to do great things. His belief in my abilities and ambition is rooted deeply in the spirit of Malawians; resilient and determined for a better Malawi and a better Africa. — Joyce Banda

I saw Deep Purple live once and I paid money for it and I thought, 'Geez, this is ridiculous.' You just see through all that sort of stuff. I never liked those Deep Purples or those sort of things. I always hated it. I always thought it was a poor man's Led Zeppelin. — Angus Young

I know that as a very young child, I was afraid of death. Many children become aware of the notion of death early and it can be a very troubling thing. We're all in this continuum: I'm this age now, and if I live long enough I'll be that age. I was 20 once, I was 10, I was 4. People who are 20 now will be 50 one day. They don't know that! They know it in the abstract, but they don't know it. I'd like them to know it, because I think it gives you compassion. — Charlie Kaufman

I thought once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young;
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightaway I was 'ware,
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,
Guess now who holds thee?
Death, I said, But, there,
The silver answer rang,
Not Death, but Love. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Once, and only once, I walked on stage and my mind went utterly blank! I had no idea why I was there! My fellow actors had to rescue me. I was very young and new to the business, so I'm glad it didn't give me stage fright for the rest of my life! — Laura Donnelly