Where We Came Quotes & Sayings

I've started a project called Planet Art. The purpose will be to remind people where I really believe we came from, which was a creative planet, and that everybody can be autonomous through their art. — Meredith Brooks

We came to fear something more complicated than death, an annihilation less final but more complete, and we got out. Becausewe all knew that if you stayed too long you became one of those poor bastards who had to have a war on all the time, and where was that? — Michael Herr

It is a machine which I invented, designed and built. It is a way of gaining access to a variety of realities. As I say, at the moment it leads to a world created from Henry's imagination.' 'Does he know?' 'No, and I'd prefer it if you didn't tell him. He might be offended.' 'What do you mean by variety of realities?' 'It means that for any given state of the universe, there are an infinite number of other possibilities. For example, we came to this restaurant and you ordered chicken. You could have ordered fish. A universe where you did order fish is a viable alternative to this one. One where you ordered roast Brontosaurus is more distant and more difficult to access.' Rosie's — Iain Pears

It's also hard for me to understand growing up not knowing where I came from. I searched for my parents - I started when I was twenty; I found both my mother and my father when I was twenty-two. Trying to catch up on twenty-two years that we can never get back, trying to reconcile that - that's a hard thing for me. — Michael Franti

No matter what happens to you in life, you just roll with it. And then, when we went back to shoot Eclipse, I went to Quileute and taught some acting to the kids, and just got to spend some time in the community, which was great because it gave me an idea of where Emily came from. — Tinsel Korey

The music echoes in the emptiness. It reminds us where we came from and where we're bound. — David Mutti Clark

We could've been a still photo, the kind from a booth at the mall where two dollars went in and a strip of three shots came out. Our image wasn't the first shot, the one that was always frantic and unfocused. It wasn't the second shot either--laughing and silly. No, this was the final image--the serious shot--where the couple realized they wanted a good picture to remember the moment by and couldn't afford to screw the last one up. — Elizabeth Langston

We tend to become social core groups, whatever our similar interest and background where we came through. It tends to be a filter through which people see themselves. It can be all different ethnicities. They can see themselves as San Franciscans, or Warriors fans. You want to build a tribe of viral advocates for that team. — Peter Guber

Alec?" Magnus was staring at him. He had dispatched the remaining Iblis demons, and the square was empty but for the two of them. "Did you just- did you just save my life?"
Alec knew he ought to say something like, Of course, because I'm a Shadowhunter and that's what we do, or That's my job. Jace would have said something like that. Jace always knew the right thing to say. But the words that actually came out of Alec's mouth where quite different- and sounded petulant, even to his own ears. "You never called me back," he said. "I called you so many times and you never called me back."
Magnus looked at Alec as if he'd lost his mind. "Your city is under attack," he said. "The wards have broken, and the streets are full of demons. And you want to know why I haven't called you? — Cassandra Clare

Evolution isn't just a story about where we came from. It's an epic at the center of life itself. Far from robbing our lives of meaning, it instills an appreciation for the beautiful, enduring, and ultimately triumphant fabric of life that covers our planet. Understanding that doesn't demean human life - it enhances it. — Kenneth R. Miller

When I noticed that some of the gray-haired ladies had tears in their eyes, I understood for the first time why music matters so much, how it reminds us of who we are and where we came from, of all the good times and the sadness, too. — Dean Koontz

That's when we decided to stop in '66. Everyone thought we toured for years, you know, but we didn't. I joined in '62, and we'd finished touring in '66 to go into the studio where we could hear each other ... and create any fantasy that came out of anybody's brain. — Ringo Starr

The breakdown of mummies and daddies was an important part of lesbian relationships in the Bagatelle ... For some of us, however, role-playing reflected all the depreciating attitudes toward women which we loathed in straight society. It was the rejection of these roles that had drawn us to 'the life' in the first place. Instinctively, without particular theory or political position or dialectic, we recognized oppression as oppression, no matter where it came from.
But those lesbians who had carved some niche in the pretend world of dominance/subordination rejected what they called our 'confused' lifestyle, and they were in the majority. — Audre Lorde

Lex jogged up to her uncle. "Why are we heading for DeMyse if they're just going to arrest us the minute we get there?"
"They won't. The mayor and I go way back. Trust me, you'll be safe."
"I have trusted you implicitly ever since I came to Croak, and look where it's gotten me."
"Strolling through Death Valley on Thanksgiving," he said with a wink. "Don't say I never show you a good time. — Gina Damico

We may not need God to tell us where the world came from, but we need God to be able to live moral lives and for there to be morality in the first place. — Rebecca Goldstein

A few years have gone and come around when we were sittin' at our favorite spot in town and you looked at me, got down on one knee. Take me back to the time when we walked down the aisle; the whole town came and our mammas cried. And you said "I do.", and I did, too. Take me home where we met so many years before; we'll rock our babies on the very front porch. After all this time, you and I. And I'll be eighty-seven you'll be eighty-nine, I'll still look at you like the stars that shine. In the sky. Oh, my my my. — Taylor Swift

Most of all, however, critics of black conservatives say we've forgotten where we came from. I may forget a federal budget number or, God forbid, to set the alarm clock for my weekly 6 a.m. flight to Washington, but I know exactly where I came from. — J. C. Watts

I came from a family where, you know, we sat down at the table every night, and you better have a story to tell. My father never wrote his stories down. And you know, I learned that they went farther if you wrote them down. — Ruth Reichl

NBC's pilot season of 1994 is legendary in the business. In a world where failure is commonplace, we midwifed the birth of both 'Friends' and 'ER'. While 'ER' came essentially out of the blue, we'd been casting around for a 'Friends'-like show for some time at the network. — Warren Littlefield

I love my country, by which I mean I am indebted joyfully to all the people throughout its history, who have fought the government to make right. Where so many cunning sons and daughters, our foremothers and forefathers came singing through slaughter, came through hell and high water so that we could stand here, and behold breathlessly the sight; how a raging river of tears cut a grand canyon of light. Why can't all decent men and women call themselves feminists, out of respect for those that fought for this? — Ani DiFranco

We all hurt. We all love. We're the same. And your past, who you live with, where you came from, it doesn't have to matter. You're creating your own future, and I want to see where the road forward takes you. — Elle Kennedy

I gaze out, to the stars. I remember the first time I saw real stars, through the hatch window. They were beautiful then, but now, seeing them here, all around me, beautiful feels like an inadequate word. I see the stars as a part of the universe, and having spent my life behind walls, suddenly having none fills me with both awe and terror. Emotion courses through my veins, choking me. I feel so insignificant, a tiny speck surrounded by a million stars.
A million suns.
Centuries away is Sol. Circling around it is Sol-Earth, the planet Amy came from. And one of these other stars is the Centauri binary system, where the new planet spins, waiting for us.
And here we are, in the middle, surrounded by a sea of stars.
Any of them could hold a planet. Any of them could hold a home.
But all of them are out of reach. — Beth Revis

That it doesn't matter why I ran," he said, staring at me without blinking, "because I came back. I'll always come back, Luce. No matter how many rip-roaring fights we have and no matter how many miscommunications we have. I'll always come back because you're where I belong. — Nicole Williams

I would very honestly just tell you that what I tried to do was simply respond to inquiries from people as they came in. Where I've thought I could say something useful, I've tried to add a voice that was, frankly, a dissident voice earlier on, but one that I think has become a more mainstream voice-and not because I've shifted. I think that the critique I had of what was going on in our financial system from six, eight years ago-after seeing some of what we've suffered through and even since the cataclysm itself-in terms of the structural changes. — Eliot Spitzer

You know the irony of life is that you have like this big dream to get where you wanna be. But once you get there you start to dream about where you came from. I guess that's the part of the circle of our lives, like the hands of a clock going round. If only we could wind them back and return to a time where the dream began. It's all too soon that's all we'll be is a dream in someone's mind. — Insane Clown Posse

At this point they came in sight of thirty forty windmills that there are on plain, and as soon as Don Quixote saw them he said to his squire, "Fortune is arranging matters for us better than we could have shaped our desires ourselves, for look there, friend Sancho Panza, where thirty or more monstrous giants present themselves, all of whom I mean to engage in battle and slay, and with whose spoils we shall begin to make our fortunes; for this is righteous warfare, and it is God's good service to sweep so evil a breed from off the face of the earth." "What giants?" said Sancho Panza. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

One day a few houses appeared," said Toshaway. "Someone had been cutting the trees. Of course we did not mind, in the same way you would not mind if someone came into your family home, disposed of your belongings, and moved in their own family. But perhaps, I don't know. Perhaps white people are different. Perhaps a Texan, if someone stole his house, he would say: 'Oh, I have made a mistake, I have built this house, but I guess you like it also so you may have it, along with all this good land that feeds my family. I am but a kahuu, little mouse. Please allow me to tell you where my ancestors lie, so you may dig them up and plunder their graves.' Do you think that is what he would say, Tiehteti-taibo?"
That was my name. I shook my head.
"That's right," said Toshaway. "He would kill the men who had stolen his house. He would tell them, 'Itsa nu kahni. Now I will cut out your heart. — Philipp Meyer

I remember my mother would get upset with me 'cause she said I walked like my dad. But I think it was more like, there's something about you that's not quite ladylike and femme. And then when I got older - once I came out, my mom and grandma were horrified and just kind of like, where did we go wrong? — Jacqueline Woodson

We used to live in a world where the price of resources came down steadily, and now the world has changed. You have a great mismatch between finite resources and exponential population growth. — Jeremy Grantham

The table is the number one place we pass on family stories and it's the knowledge of where your family came from that helps build self-esteem and resiliency in kids. When we stop having dinners, we stop passing on those stories. And, of course, when you make food at home you actually know what's in the food you are eating. It is the healthiest, greenest thing you can do! — Laurie David

Everyone will have gone then except us, because we're tied to this soil by a roomful of trunks where the household goods and clothing of grandparents are kept, and the canopies that my parenrs' horses used when they came to Macondo, fleeing from the war. We've been sown into this soil by the memory of the remote dead whose bones can no longer be found twenty fathoms under the earth. The trunks have been in the room ever since the last days of the war; and they'll be there this afternoon when we come back from the burial, if that final wind hasn't passed, the one that will sweep away Macondo, its bedrooms full of lizards and its silent people devastated by memories. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I believe the Visa Waiver Program, it essentially is the soft underbelly of the visa system. Now we have 35 countries in it. We have 16 million people coming in. I believe the overstays still run about 40 percent of the undocumented population. In other words, there's 40 percent that you really don't know where it came from is what I'm trying to say. And I've always suspected people come in on a visitor's visa and they just decide to stay, and that's a large part of the undocumented population. — Dianne Feinstein

When I first came in the business, I had a couple of close calls on planes going to London for shows. There was one time where the plane had to fly around until a storm ended, and then we started having a question about fuel, so we had to go through the storm. It was the worst thing that ever happened in my life. That really messed me up. — R. Kelly

We went far down the garden to the farthest end, where the children and the nurse and the puppy and I used to play in the summer in the shade of a great elm, and there the footman dug a hole, and I saw he was going to plant the puppy, and I was glad, because it would grow and come up a fine handsome dog, like Robin Adair, and be a beautiful surprise for the family when they came home; so I tried to help him dig, but my lame leg was no good, being stiff, you know, and you have to have two, or it is no use. When the footman had finished and covered little Robin up, he patted my head, and there were tears in his eyes, and he said: Poor little doggie, you saved HIS child! — Mark Twain

My father got a job at Bradford University in textiles. And he came for - I guess, you know, why do people immigrate? - like, for a better life to find, you know, a new world. And, you know, I think he always - he saw it as an opportunity. And so yeah so we came to this coal mining town in the north of England and that's where I grew up. — Aasif Mandvi

Customers came - whites, Negroes and Latin Americans. Well-dressed tourists mingled with the derelicts of the quarter. When we shined their shoes we talked. The whites, especially the tourists, had no reticence before us, and no shame since we were Negroes. Some wanted to know where they could find girls, wanted us to get Negro girls for them. We learned to spot these from the moment they sat down, for they were immediately friendly and treated us with the warmth and courtesy of equals. I mentioned this to Sterling. "Yeah, when they want to sin, they're very democratic," he said. — John Howard Griffin

And then came a time when I could no longer say 'We,' and I found myself in a lonesome land where no one remembered that I had ever been young, or called me by my given name. — Candace Wheeler

when we're done, I'll be where the night never stops
cradling a bruise that's shaped like you
wondering why sleep never came to me
wondering how I still dreamed — Alicen Grey

I was born in St. Louis and lived in Pittsburgh for a bit, before my family moved to Nigeria, where they're from. We lived there for three or four years and came back to the States when I was about ten. I realised that I'd gone from place to place not fitting in. The thing that helped me fit in when moving around and not having a ton of friends was that I could make art. That was the through-line. — Babatunde Adebimpe

Hey! look at us
We're digging and digging
Into stubborn, ancient earth;
We're discovering
Where we came from,
and how we came.

"but where are you going?"

Hey! look at us
We're learning and learning
Into stubborn laws
Of nature and space
And non-nature and non-space;
We're discovering
All there is to know.

"but where are you going?"

Hey! look at us
We're planning and planning
Into stubborn years
Of education and training
And hopes and dreams;
We're discovering
How not to waste any time.

"but where are you going?"

Hey! look at us
We're shiny and bright
And clever and sophisticated
And witty and well-read;
We're discovering
How to really fill up
This old life.

"but where are you going?"

where?

"Yes; where? — Lois A. Cheney

Arista," the wizard said, "sharks don't eat seafood because they like it, but because chickens don't swim. We all do the best we can with the tools we have, but at some point you have to ask yourself where the tools came from. — Michael J. Sullivan

I was brought up in black neighborhoods in South Baltimore. And we really felt like we were very black. We acted black and we spoke black. When I was a kid growing up, where I came from, it was hip to be black. To be white was kind of square. — Jerry Leiber

My parents are both very funny but they're also relatively soft-spoken, normal human beings while I'm just a lunatic. I don't know where this loud, ballsy, hammy ridiculousness came from. I'm just glad I followed my goals and my parents did too. It's not like we even had a plan when I dragged my mom to Los Angeles. — Emma Stone

The hyphenated American is ridiculous. But that's what we have to put up with. I think that any person that's in the United States is better off here than they would be where they came from. — John Wayne

Let me love you, girl who came from the sea. Let us swim to the bottom of the ocean where we can be anything and where no one can find us. We will grow gills and breathe salt water. We will sprout fins and scales and make our home in underground caves. Or else will drown there. But either way, i will be happy — Carolee Dean

When I came here [to Malaysia] I heard that there is a problem with the concept of pluralism whereby pluralism is understood in a very narrow way, which I think is wrong. This is not to diminish your sense of truth in what you believe but to acknowledge the fact that we live in a world where we need to deal with pluralism. It's a fact. — Tariq Ramadan

When I came to Detroit, if you threw a stone up in the air and it came down, it would hit an autoworker because the Chrysler Jefferson plant where my husband worked was very close also to where we lived. — Grace Lee Boggs

Our father came to sleep in our house that night. He carried a small suitcase with a black mourning suit and a pair of polished shoes. Corrigan stopped him as he made his way up the stairs. 'Where d'you think you're going?'Our father gripped the bannister. His hands were liverspotted and I could see him trembling in his pause. 'That's not your room,' sad Corrigan. Our father tottered on the stairs. He took another step up. 'Don't,' said my brother. His voice was clear, full, confidant. Our father stood stunned. He climbed one more step and then turned, descended, looked around, lost.
'My own sons,' he said.
We made a bed for him on a sofa in the living room, but even then Corrigan refused to stay under the same roof; he went walking in the direction of the city center and I wondered what alley he might be found in later that night, what fist he might walk into, whose bottle he might climb down inside. — Colum McCann

It is said, and it is true, that just before we are born, a cavern angel puts his finger to our lips and says, "Hush, don't tell what you know." This is why we are born with a cleft on our upper lips and remembering nothing of where we came from". — Roderick MacLeish

'I went to one acting coach when I first started who told me that acting is reacting to the stimuli we are presented with. Does that make sense?' John nodded. 'But really, that's life now, isn't it? Because we are not a product of where we came from or what was done to us. We are what we choose to be in every situation that God delivers. And that's why when a thing of beauty enters my life, I rise to the occasion with everything I have. Some people are humbled by beautiful things, John. I'm not. I'm inspired. I go after them with everything I have. Everything.' — Christopher Rice

How came she by her death? How came she there? Was she slain by accident, or had she met with violence? were the questions that pressed upon our thoughts. But we said little then and after a time left her where we found her. It mattered not to her that the bed was hard or the air cold.
("A Night In An Old Castle") — George Payne Rainsford James

Owen was so tiny, we loved to pick him up; in truth, we couldn't resist picking him up. We thought it was a miracle: how little he weighed. This was also incongruous because Owen came from a family in the granite business. The Meany Granite Quarry was a big place, the equipment for blasting and cutting the granite slabs was heavy and dangerous-looking; granite itself is such a rough, substantial rock. But the only aura of the granite quarry that clung to Owen was the granular dust, the gray powder that sprang off his clothes whenever we lifted him up. He was the color of a gravestone; light was both absorbed and reflected by his skin, as with a pearl, so that he appeared translucent at times - especially at his temples, where his blue veins showed through his skin (as though, in addition to his extraordinary size, there were other evidence that he was born too soon). — John Irving

You think I don't know pain?" Puck shook his head at me. "Or loss? I've been around a lot longer than you, prince! I know what love is, and I've lost
my fair share, too. Just because we have a different way of handling it, doesn't mean I don't have scars of my own."
"Name one," I scoffed. "Give me one instance where you haven't - "
"Meghan Chase!" Puck roared, startling me into silence. I blinked, and he sneered at me. "Yeah, your highness. I know what loss is. I've loved that
girl since before she knew me. But I waited. I waited because I didn't want to lie about who I was. I wanted her to know the truth before anything else.
So I waited, and I did my job. For years, I protected her, biding my time, until the day she went into the Nevernever after her brother. And then you
came along. And I saw how she looked at you. And for the first time, I wanted to kill you as much as you wanted to kill me. — Julie Kagawa

I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. Particularly when one can't see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window - no, I don't feel how small I am - but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body. — Ayn Rand

I used to live at the Cecil Hotel, which was next door to Minton's [Playhouse]. We used to jam just about every night when we were off. Lester [Young], Don Byas and myself - we would meet there all the time and like, exchange ideas. It wasn't a battle, or anything. We were all friends. Most of the guys around then knew where I lived. If someone came in Minton's and started to play - well, they'd give me a ring, or come up and call me down. Either I'd take my horn down, or I'd go down and listen. Those were good days. Had a lot of fun then. — Ben Webster

We came from some place and we are trending in a particular direction. Without memories, we do not know where we come from, and we cannot project our future trajectory. Without a keen awareness of our history, we cannot pose any meaningful hypothesis or engage in any useful speculation regarding the future of humankind. Without knowing where humankind came from and failing to contemplate where humankind is going, we could never touch upon a comprehensive understanding of the mythology and mystery of human nature. Such a spectacle would preclude us from comprehending what it truly means to be human. Melodious memories assist us to feel in our bones what being actually entails in its full aesthetic splendor. — Kilroy J. Oldster

We [me and Jennifer Salke] talked about the characters and different kinds of families and where are we today. We certainly pitched the gay couple, but we also talked about what it was like to be a single mother with a young daughter, what is it like to be a woman in your 50's who is completely starting over and dating again and having to go online to date again. We talked about the whole spectrum of the characters, but I don't think it ever came up about whether people are ready for it or not. — Ryan T. Murphy

Half a dozen fingers pointed at the amputated wheel
he stared at it for a moment and then looked upward as though he suspected that it had dropped from the sky. "It came off," some one explained. He nodded. "At first I din' notice we'd stopped." A pause. Then, taking a long breath and straightening his shoulders he remarked in a determined voice: "Wonder'ff tell me where there's a gas'line station?" At least a dozen men, some of them little better off than he was, explained to him that wheel and car were no longer joined by any physical bond. "Back out," he suggested after a moment. "Put her in reverse." "But the WHEEL'S off!" He hesitated. "No harm in trying," he said. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Understanding who we are, where we came from, and why we are upon the earth places upon each of us a great responsibility both to learn how to learn and to learn to love learning. — David A. Bednar

When I came to America from Sweden, Mother and I, we went to Chicago where our relatives lived. — Ann-Margret

We came to the house, and it is an old house, full of great chimneys where wood is burnt on ancient dogs upon the hearth, and grim portraits (some of them with grim legends, too) lower distrustfully from the oaken panels of the walls. — Charles Dickens

The space center's proximity to my backyard came to signify an intersection between heaven and hell. Florida was somewhere between the two; it was America's phantom limb, a place where spaceships were catapulted out into the cosmos. Alligators emerged from brackish water. Vultures and hawks circled above. Mosquitoes patrolled the atmosphere at eye level. We shared an ocean with sharks and dolphins. There were no seasons, only variations of humidity. Time slithered, festering in a damp wake of recollections.

I believed in the Bermuda Triangle. I thought it would move in over Florida one night. By dusk an unknown force would vaporize us through a tear in the atmosphere. We'd be stuck, wandering in a parallel version of the same place, unaware that we were dead but dreaming.

People came here to vanish. — Paul Kwiatkowski

Lily stopped dead in the doorway to her room and then took a step back. Apollo cocked his head. It'd been a very long day full of trepidation mixed with tediousness and he'd used up all his patience. "If you leave, I'll follow you out and we'll have this discussion in the hallway where everyone can hear." She scowled ferociously at him, but came all the way in the room and shut the door. "What do you want to talk about?" "Us." "There's nothing to discuss." "Yes," he said patiently, "there is. — Elizabeth Hoyt

Bodybuilders party a lot, and once, in Gold's
the gym in Venice, California, where all the top guys train there was a black girl who came out naked. Everybody jumped on her and took her upstairs, where we all got together. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

We're headed for Aleph-7. Panty raid. New slang term for the type of operation whose main object was to gather Tauran artifacts, and prisoners if possible. I tried to find out where the term came from, but the one explanation I got was really idiotic. — Joe Haldeman

d'Artagnan is right," said Athos; "here are our three leaves of absence which came from Monsieur de Treville, and here are three hundred pistoles which came from I don't know where. So let us go and get killed where we are told to go. Is life worth the trouble of so many questions? — Alexandre Dumas

Even though he had admitted to her that he used to watch me shower through a hole in the bathroom wall back when I was thirteen. She blamed us both for what we had "done" to her. But it sounds like she got over being mad at him pretty quick. She later told me that she had to go back and have sex with him one more time, just to make sure that there was nothing left between the two of them and to get some closure. That almost made me want to vomit. The only interaction between us after that was her showing up at the courthouse when I had to sit in front of a grand jury of twelve strangers and tell them what had happened. She came into the waiting room where I was sitting and started screaming that I was a whore and that I'd fucked her husband. She had to be escorted out of the court by two officers. That's what I got from her. — Ashly Lorenzana

My sons last summer, they won a trophy from their surfing camp and they came home and went right over to the shelf and put it up next to my Oscar. That's where we put our trophies. — Geena Davis

I wanted to pull away, remind him that I was a big girl, a highly trained operative, a spy - that I'd been training for this mission my entire life, and I wasn't going to be left on the sidelines. But in the dim space with Zach pressed tightly against me, only one thought came to mind. I kissed him - longer and deeper than I ever had before. The school was not watching us this time. There was nothing playful in the tone. We were just two people kissing as if for the first time, as if it might be the last.
And then I broke away. "So," I asked, as if I got kissed like that all the time (which, believe me, I don't), "where is it you're taking me again?"
"The tombs. — Ally Carter

Then came the march past the victims. The two men were no longer alive. Their tongues were hanging out,
swollen and bluish. But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing ...
And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes.
And we were forced to look at him at close range. He was still alive when I passed him. His tongue was still
red, his eyes not yet extinguished.
Behind me, I heard the same man asking:
"For God's sake, where is God?"
And from within me, I heard a voice answer:
"Where He is? This is where
hanging here from this gallows ... "
That night, the soup tasted of corpses. — Elie Wiesel

Pug said: "I'm trying to think of the best way of knocking you off."
"The Chinese do it with rats," I said. "They let 'em eat the victim."
"Where am I going to get the rats?"
"Well," I said, "there're three in the car now."
I don't know which one hit me; Pug or the guy with the garlic breath. It was the barrel of a pistol and it cooled me for a couple of minutes. When I came to we had stopped by a small shack. I was alone with the guy on my left. — Jonathan Latimer

I came from the last couple of years in a generation where we didn't have a computer around so we didn't waste as much time on the internet as we do now so I had large chuncks of time which to devote to doing something. — John Mayer

I really did grow up in a world where we were taught that crime doesn't pay and we stood up when the teacher came into the room. — Stanley R. Jaffe

A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do. We are trying to do a futile thing if we do not know where we came from or what we have been about. — Woodrow Wilson

The best place to play' means you love the guys you're playing with. It means you develop deep relationships that go well beyond soccer. It means you have awesome team chemistry where what the team needs is more important than what you need - and you fully buy-in to that. It means you fight for game time but you don't hold that against your teammate - that you're not mad when you're subbed out, but instead, you're excited for the guy who came in for you. And it means we have each other's back. — Michael A. Zigarelli

What matters is the character of ... stereotypes, and the gullibility with which we employ them. And these in the end depend upon ... our philosophy of life. If in that philosophy we assume that the world is codified according to a code which we possess, we are likely to make our reports of what is going on describe a world run by our code. But if our philosophy tells us that each man is only a small part of the world, that his intelligence catches at best only phases and aspects in a coarse net of ideas, then, when we use our stereotypes, we tend to know that they are only stereotypes, to hold them lightly, to modify them gladly. We tend, also, to realize more and more clearly when our ideas started, where they started, how they came to us, why we accepted them. All useful history is antiseptic in this fashion. It enables us to know what fairy tale, what school book, what tradition, what novel, play, picture, phrase, planted one preconception in this mind, another in that mind. — Walter Lippmann

Inner peace begins when we stop saying of things, 'I have lost it' and instead say, 'It has been returned to where it came from.' Why should it be any concern of yours who gives your things back to the world that gave them to you? The important thing is to take great care with what you have while the world lets you have it. — Epictetus

When launching a product called an Energy Drink and named Red Bull, a product that stimulates body and mind, it is a short step to the roots where Red Bull came from. We have been doing this for 20 years - now it's called adventure sports, extreme sports, and outdoor sports. — Dietrich Mateschitz

The weary Italian woman nodded at her children behind her. "Where we came from, everybody lives only one kind of life. Alessandro said he wanted his children to choose the life, not the life to choose the children. And also," she added, panting, slowing down and wiping her brow, "he said America is the only place in the world where even the poor can be smart. — Paullina Simons

I remember in 2000, when President Clinton came to Cartagena just before Plan Colombia started, the country was on the verge of becoming a failed state. Today, we are one of the most solid democracies, where institutions are working, where the scandals such as false positives have come to light because of those functioning institutions. — Juan Manuel Santos

When I said that something was going to cost a certain amount of money, I actually knew what I was talking about. The biggest problem that we were having on the financing front was people with lots of money saying "you need more money to make this film [Moon]," and us saying "no this is the first feature film we want to do it at a budget where we sort of prove ourselves at the starting end of making feature films; we can do this for $5 million." That is where the convincing part between me and Stuart came, we had to convince people with money that we could do it for that budget. — Duncan Jones

The poet's role has changed over the centuries, the ages. The poets, the griots, used to be the keepers of the facts; they were the story tellers, and the stories were allegorically written truths: where we came from, how we migrated over this river, got with this tribe, became this nation, and tamed the mountains. It changed from that to being purely entertainment. And once it became purely entertainment, it lost something. — Malik Yusef

If he could have his way, Satan would distract us from our heritage. He would have us become involved in a million and one things in this life-probably none of which is very important in the long run-to keep us from concentrating on the things that are really important, particularly the reality that we are God's children. He would like us to forget about home and family values. He'd like to keep us so busy with comparatively insignificant things that we don't have time to make the effort to understand where we came from, whose children we are, and how glorious our ultimate homecoming can be! — Marvin J. Ashton

It's finding out where we came from that helps guide us to where we are going. — Mona Rodriguez

What is faith? It is a memory. Of a time when all was perfect in the world. When there was no fear and no judgment and no death. It is a memory of a time before we were born, a beacon to guide us back from the end to the beginning, to the memory of where we came from. It is a memory of a promise made before the earth was formed, before the stars glittered in the primordial sea. A promise that says that we will remember what we have learned on this journey so that we may return full circle, the same and yet different. Older. Wiser. Filled with compassion for others. And for ourselves. What is faith? It is the memory of love. — Kamran Pasha

There's something inherent in human nature that has us constructing narratives to explain a world that is otherwise chaotic and opaque. Life is little more than a series of overlapping stories about who we are, where we came from, and how we struggle to survive. What we call news isn't news at all: wars, murders, famines, plagues - death in all its forms. It's folly to assign meaning to every chance event, yet we do it all the time. — Sue Grafton

One of the significant facts about the moment of birth is that it is an unconscious moment. No one ever knows when he is being born that the event is actually taking place, and sometimes we don't find out about it until quite a long time afterward. Sometimes, we never do really find out that we have been born. So frequently, we don't know why we were born; we don't know where we came from; we don't know what the purpose of life is; nor do we understand the possibilities of our godly destiny. — Sterling W. Sill

I think music changed when Bruce Springstee came on the scene. I think if it wasn't for Bruce Springstee, music would have gone in a very scary direction. We may have gotten to where disco music ruled - and I would've had to quit. — Jeff Baxter

Here," Trey says, fumbling for his cell phone on the bedside table. "You should call me.
Ben turns and looks at him, a small smile still playing around his lips. "Oh, should I? What's your number?"
Trey tells him, and Ben enters it into is phone, and then he takes Trey's and enters his number. "Okay," Ben says a little cautiously, "well, we'd love to have you come for a meeting. Are you seriously considering U of C? Even after what happened?"
"Oh yeah. I totally am. "What's your name again?"
Ben laughs and tells him.
I frown. Trey knows U of C is a private school. Mucho big bucks. But hey ... there's always the power of morphine to make you forget about the minor details of your life, like living above a restaurant that struggles monthly to pay bills, and considering returning to the place where some lunatic outsider came in and fucking shot you because you're gay. — Lisa McMann

Hen Anne stopped and talked to me for the first time. I can't remember what we said, maybe our names and where we came from. at the end of the conversation I invited her to dinner at my house that night. It was Christmastime, or nearly, and I made a pizza and bought a bottle of wine. We talked until very late. That was when Anne told me she'd been to Mexico several times. Overall, her adventures were very similar to mine. Anne thought this was because the lives or the youths of any two individuals would be fundamentally alike, in spite of the obvious or even glaring differences. I preferred to think that somehow she and I had both explored the same map, fought the same doomed campaigns, received a common sentimental education. At five in the morning, or perhaps later, we went to med and made love. — Roberto Bolano

We all have a tiny whispery voice inside of us, but the bad ones are usually at a lower register and come through a little clearer. I don't know where the good voice came from. It was a mix of loving parents, luck, and me. But ever since I was a small child, I would look at places where I wanted to be and believe I would eventually be on the other side of the glass. — Amy Poehler

I know that of all the great shifts that have occurred in America
the freedom of slaves, the rights of women, the equality of gays and lesbians
none has happened easily, and certainly none has happened instantly and without serious attacks and backlash. But the reason we have these things is because the fair-minded people who came before us would not give up. In my life, I have seen elections stolen
either outright or through the electoral college. I have seen wars fought because there was no other way to get peace. I have seen the rich get richer and I have seen the poor get poorer. I have seen facts get harder and harder to hide
and easier and easier to manipulate. I have been angry and I have been frustrated and I have been ecstatic and I have been proven right and wrong and back again. I have given up on some things, but I have refused to give up on most things. And I can honestly say that all of it
all of it
seems to have led me to where we are, here and now. — David Levithan

On our flight back from Arizona where we adopted our daughter three years after our ungreen one-headed son a stewardess ... paused to to adore the little girl my wife was holding. The woman was very attractive and seemed happy and easy with herself - confident enough to say to my wife 'Well congratulations and my don't you look terrific too.' My wife said 'Well we've just adopted her.' And the stewardess said 'How wonderful Congratulations again I was adopted too.' Happily the enthusiastic remark was not lost on our three-year-old boy nor was it lost on him that in Pheonix we had stayed in a close to luxurious resort hotel. He didn't know or care about the dreary heavy rain that fell in Atlanta when he came into our lives - all he knew about adoption at this point really was that it involved a warm whirpool tub cornucopian buffet breakfasts and a fascinating differently private-partsed baby. — Daniel Menaker

You know where the people who killed people in San Bernardino came from. You know where people who did 9/11 came from. You know where the people who did Paris came from, where they transited, where they went. None of them even set foot in Iran. So why are you punishing people who are visiting Iran for that? ... We're not going to radicalize them. We never have. Your allies have radicalized people who visited. — Mohammad Javad Zarif

Everything wrong with America led to the point where the country built that tower of Babel, which consequently had to be destroyed. And then came the next shock. We had to realize that the people that did this were brilliant. It showed that the ego we could hold up until September 10 was inadequate. — Norman Mailer

We gathered up the kids and sat up on the hill. We had no time to get our chickens and no time to get our horses out of the corral. The water came in and smacked against the corral and broke the horses' legs. The drowned, and the chickens drowned. We sat on the hill and we cried. These are the stories we tell about the river," said [Ladona] Brave Bull Allard. The granddaughter of Chief Brave Bull, she told her story at a Missouri River symposium in Bismark, North Dakota, in the fall of 2003.

Before The Flood, her Standing Rock Sioux Tribe lived in a Garden of Eden, where nature provided all their needs. "In the summer, we would plant huge gardens because the land was fertile," she recalled. We had all our potatoes and squash. We canned all the berries that grew along the river. Now we don't have the plants and the medicine they used to make. — Bill Lambrecht

It's rural America. It's where I came from. We always refer to ourselves as real America. Rural America, real America, real, real, America. — Dan Quayle

By the time [of modern] generation was coming of age sexually, there was already this idea of safe sex. But that didn't exist for me. I came out of the free-swinging '60s and '70s. It was free love, baby. That was it. We had very liberal sex-ed classes in 1973, a yearlong environmental science class, and then Women's Lib and Gay Liberation. So it's insane to go from that to Reagan and AIDS. It was like, "What happened? Where's my future?" — Michael Stipe

What was that about?" Henry's voice came out higher than he would have liked.
"Shh." Peter's eyes shifted around the square.
"I thought you cared about her," Henry said, careful to steady his voice this time.
Peter rubbed his eyes and hen opened them, hoping to find that Henry had gone. He hadn't.
"I do care." Peter sighed, seeing that we would have to give a genuine answer, that Henry wouldn't take anything less. "But" - Peter nodded in the direction of the tavern, where the Captain was - "I'm trying to be smart about it. — Sarah Blakley-Cartwright

If we enter into the kind of world that Google likes, the world that Google wants, it's a world where information is copied so much on the Internet that nobody knows where it came from anymore, so there can't be any rights of authorship. — Jaron Lanier