Where You Been Quotes & Sayings

Every generation has its war. I have just been reminded of mine. It ended in 1989, 43 years after it began, the longest war Britain fought and certainly the most expensive. Its climax was total victory. Yet there was no parade, no medals, no colours hung in cathedrals. The Cold War saw no battles and cost almost no blood. Where there is no blood there is no glory and hence no history. Asked What did you do in the war, Daddy?, I could say only that I paid my taxes and left it at that. — Simon Jenkins

Some of the companies we helped start are names you know. An office supply company called Staples - where I'm pleased to see the Obama campaign has been shopping; The Sports Authority, which became a favorite of my sons. We started an early childhood learning center called Bright Horizons that First Lady Michelle Obama rightly praised. — Mitt Romney

You mean when we discovered the secret lair under the hangar where I'd been kept comatose for eight years of my life, then turned into a cyborg by some mystery surgeon before being given away to a family who didn't really want me? Yeah, Thorne, those were the good old days. — Marissa Meyer

Eddis looked around as if recalling a question that had nagged at her for several hours. "Where's Eugenides?" she asked.
For a moment the Attolian queen was immobile, her smile gone as if it had never been. The horse under her threw up its head as if the bit had twitched against its delicate mouth.
"Locked in a room," Attolia said flatly. "In Ephrata."
The smile faded from Eddis' face.
"I ordered the other prisoners released," Attolia explained. "I forgot that I had him locked up separately. I doubt my sensechal will have released him without my specific instruction to do so."
"You forgot?" Eddis asked.
"I forgot," Attolia said firmly, daring Eddis to contradict her.
"You will marry him?" Eddis asked, hesitant again.
"I said I would," snapped Attolia, and turned her horse away. Eddis followed. When they joined their officers, Attolia gave brisk orders and then rode on, heading back toward Ephrata without waiting for Eddis. — Megan Whalen Turner

He paused, then looked up at her. "It hurts, did you know that? Growing." She shook her head. "How?" That smile again, the one that made her want to hold him until they were old. "Physically. You ache. Like your bones cannot keep up with themselves. But now that you ask, I suppose it hurts in every other way, as well - there's a keen sense that where you have been is no longer where you are. And certainly nothing like where you are going." He stopped, then whispered, "Nothing like where I was going." "Alec - — Sarah MacLean

My life hasn't been conventional and it hasn't been linear. I've had to make it up as I've gone along, which has taught me a lot. If you don't accept the obvious options that are laid out for you, it's up to you to work out where you're going and to create your own specific rules and goals. — Beth Ditto

You can tell when someone has been on steroids A guy bulks up, has a new body and never gets tired ... You see these guys or girls who come onto the tour talking about their new training programs and their diets where they eat this or that new thingbut they'll never tell you about the drugs they took. — John McEnroe

Naboo: "You've read all the books, but when it comes to the crunch, where are you?"
Saboo: "The crunch! How dare you speak to me of the crunch? You know nothing of the crunch. You've never even been to the crunch!"
Naboo: "Been there once."
Saboo: "Oh, a little day trip 'round the crunch, we can all go there as tourists. 'Ooh, that's a bit of crunch-'"
Naboo: "Shut it! — Julian Barratt

I'll always remember being called by my mother who beckoned me to look at the screen where a young man was being tortured by the church. Bag over his head, rolling on the ground, crying, suffocating, vomiting while the congression continues yelling chants, "God will save you!" treating him like the devil's child.

It was the first time I've ever doubted God. First time I've ever heard the terms 'Gays, and 'Queers.' I went through a lot in my childhood, but this was the first I've ever been so traumatized. My mom tells me they deserved it and the church tries to justify their actions as if it was the most intelligent excuse in the world. At 12 years old, I knew only one thing. I would never be like them. — Merlin

Why would you believe such things?" he asks. "What good does it do you?" "The world we see with our eyes is not the whole truth. Dreams and visions are just as real as matter. What we can imagine or think exists as truly as anything we can touch or smell. Where do our thoughts come from, if not from God?" "They come from our experience," Sumner says, "from what we've heard and seen and read, and what's been told to us." Otto shakes his head. "If that were true, then no growth or advancement would be possible. The world would be stagnant and unmoving. We would be doomed — Ian McGuire

Then you wake up in Barstow California. Another dissociative fugue. It's like time traveling. It's late November now. What ever happened at teresa is a mystery to you. In Godforsaken Barstow, where the golden state shits itself into the desert, people are eatting each other. Has it always been this way? — Lost Zombies

How can you possibly hope to reform her after the life she's been leading?'
'It's not her I'm wanting to reform - it's me,' he replied. 'Besides, it's taking me into a world where I can do some good.'
'I can't imagine you happy.'
'That's not the point.'
'Of course it isn't. But if she has a heart, she can't be happy either. She can't want you to do that.'
'No, she doesn't.'
'I see. But life ... '
'What about life?'
'Life demands something different.'
'Life only wants us to do the right things,' said Nekhlyudov.
-Resurrection — Leo Tolstoy

We live in a world of terrorism where evil acts are being regularly perpetrated in the name of your faith. And because it is your faith that is being invoked as justification for these evil acts, it is your problem. You can't wish it away, or ignore it, just because it has been caused by others. Instead, speak up and condemn terrorism, defend your role in the way of life that we all share here in Australia. — Andrew Robb

Her rage flopped awkwardly away like a duck. She felt as she had when her cold, fierce parents had at last grown sick and old, stick-boned and saggy, protected by infirmity the way cuteness protected a baby, or should, it should protect a baby, and she had been left with her rage
vestigial, girlhood rage
inappropriate and intact. She would hug her parents good-bye, the gentle, emptied sacks of them, and think Where did you go? — Lorrie Moore

Barrons Books and Baubles had been ransacked!

Tables were overturned, books torn from shelves and strewn everywhere, baubles broken. Even my little TV behind the counter had been destroyed.

"Barrons?" I called warily. It was night and the lights were on. My illusory Alina had told me more than an hour had passed. Was it the same night, nearly dawn? Or was it the night following our theft attempt? Had Barrons come back from Wales yet? Or was he still there, searching for me? When I'd been so rudely ripped from reality, who or what had come through those basement doors?

I heard footsteps, boots on hardwood, and turned expectantly toward the connecting doors.

Barrons was framed in the doorway. His eyes were black ice. He stared at me a moment, raking me from head to toe. "Nice tan, Ms. Lane. So, where the fuck have you been for the past month? — Karen Marie Moning

There's something that just happens to you when you have a baby, and you look at their little eyes for the first time when you're holding them. They've been safe inside your belly for almost 10 months, and now they're in your arms. Intuition kicks in, where you will do anything for them and you have all the tools inside of you to take care of them. — Hilary Duff

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

No news conferences? Interviews now only with friendly journalists? You can't be president or vice president and govern in that style, as a sequestered figure. This has been Mr. Bush's style the past few years, and see where it got us. You must address America in its entirety, not as a sliver or a series of slivers but as a full and whole entity, a great nation trying to hold together. When you don't, when you play only to your little piece, you contribute to its fracturing. — Peggy Noonan

You have to give credit where credit's due. Steve [Jobs] has been probably the single hardware/software forward-looking thinker and executor in our lifetime as an individual. He's quite a brilliant innovator. — Christopher Galvin

Kaidan had been captivated by the store owner's deep Texan accent. He asked a ridiculous number of questions just to keep the man talking. He then tried to repeat the man's accent when we got in the car. "Where are y'all young'uns headed? We got us some maps over yonder by them there h-apples."
I laughed out loud as he butchered the man's beautiful drawl.
"He did not say 'over yonder'!"
"I've always wanted to say that. I love Americans. You've got a nice little accent, though not nearly as wicked as his."
"I do?"
He nodded.
Aside from the occasional y'all, I didn't think I sounded Southern, but I guess it's hard to say about your own self. — Wendy Higgins

There is one thing where people are always right. It is when they are describing what they have been feeling when watching your film. You cannot say: No, you did not feel like that! — Pirjo Honkasalo

You could spend hours following the trail of a single dispute, through smoking battlefields of interlinked comments threads and screen shots and blogs where the message "this post has been deleted by its author" stands like a tombstone over the grave of the one witness who can tell you what really happened. I know, because I've wandered extensively over this blasted heath in the past couple of weeks. — Laura Miller

We gotta have a toast." Rocky on her pins, Peabody used the table for balance. She managed to raise her glass without spilling more than half its contents on Eve's head. "To the best fucking cop in the whole stinking city, who's gonna marry the sexiest sumbitch I, personally, have ever laid eyes on, and who, because she's so goddamn smart, has seen to it that I'm perman'ly attached to Homicide. Which is where any half-blind asshole could tell you I belong. So there." She downed the rest of her drink, fell backward into her chair, and grinned foolishly.
"Peabody," Eve said and flicked a finger under her eyes. "I've never been more touched."
"I'm shit faced. Dallas."
"The evidence points to it. — J.D. Robb

Inspiration is a tool and a trap. If you're going to be inspired by anyone, be inspired by people who have been exactly where you are now. — Douglas Copeland

We had the great depression, we had two world wars, we had the flu epidemic. We had oil shock. We had all these terrible things happen. But something about the American system unleashed more and of a potential to human beings over that hundred years so that we had a seven for one improvement in - there's never been any - I mean, you have centuries where if you've got a 1 percent improvement, then it's something. So we've got a great system. And we've got more productive capacity now than we ever have. — Howard Warren Buffett

Where have you been?"
I stepped into my apartment and met Uncle Bob's glare with one of my own. "Out trying to pass myself off as a movie producer to get hot guys to sleep with me. Where have you been? — Darynda Jones

How do you know where you're going if you don't know where you've been — Todd Stocker

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

There aren't a lot of female story artists, and it's baffling to me. There are a lot of kids in school that are female and I wonder, 'Where did they all go?' People have brought it up, asking me, 'What did you do?' I don't really know. I puttered along, did my thing and gender has really never been an issue. — Jennifer Yuh Nelson

What's so fun when you shoot in a car is you get to research all the other road movies that have ever been done, and you try to figure out where do they place the cameras and how many shots can you get with your people in the car. So just doing the research on the films is so fun. — Tamra Davis

It's complicated. I think when bad things happen - whether someone dies or people argue or split up - you get to a point where it's just too hard to go back. There's so much lost. So many versions of the truth. So many versions of how things might've turned out differently. We all long for what could have been. For some people, it's just easier to move forward and try to forget. — Sarah Ockler

If I am alive this is my book, and my father lives now in the afterlife that is a book, a thing not vague or virtual but something you can hold and feel and smell because to my mind heaven like life must be a thing sensual and real. And my book will be a river and have the Salmon literal and metaphoric leaping inside it and be called History of the Rain, so that his book does not perish, and you will know my book exists because of him and because of his books and his aspiration to leap up, to rise. You will know that I found him in his books, in the covers his hands held, the pages they turned, in the paper and the print, but also in the worlds those books contained, where now I have been and you have been too. You will know the story goes from the past to the present and into the future, and like a river flows. — Niall Williams

Create a Chocolate Factory There may be as many different types of playrooms as there are families, but every one of them should have the following design element: lots of choices. A place for drawing. A place for painting. Musical instruments. A wardrobe hanging with costumes. Blocks. Picture books. Tubes and gears. Anything where a child can be safely let loose, joyously free to explore whatever catches her fancy. Did you see the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? If so, you may have been filled with wonder at the chocolate plant, complete with trees, lawns, and waterfalls - a totally explorable, nonlinear ecology. That's what I mean. I am focusing on artistic pursuits because kids who are trained in the arts — John Medina

Do you know Camille Desmoulins?" he asked. "Have you seen him? He's one of these law-school boys. Never used anything more dangerous than a paper knife." He shook his head wonderingly.
"Where do they come from, these people? They're virgins. They've never been to war. They've never been on the hunting
field. They've never killed an animal, let alone a man. But they're such enthusiasts for murder. — Hilary Mantel

I've been offered 'Celebrity Fit Club', where you have to take off your shirt and get on a scale. I got kids, man. I'm not going to humiliate myself. I'd rather drive a cab. — Steve Schirripa

I've never been in jeopardy, but being an actor is a pretty shady place to be because you never know where your next job is. — Kat Dennings

Where are you going?" Millie whispered, although why she was whispering was a bit of a mystery since the sound of yelling, along with a lot of cursing, was flowing into the house. "I'm not just going to sit here while everyone else is fighting my battle." She made it all the way to the door, crawling on her stomach, no less, before she was forced to stop when she encountered a pair of shoes. They were nice shoes, a little dusty, and unfortunately, they belonged to none other than Bram. "You weren't trying to sneak out to help, were you?" he asked, squatting down next to her. "I might have been." "There's no need. Silas has been secured." Lucetta frowned. "He came down here on his own?" Holding out a hand, Bram helped her to her feet before he smiled. "Apparently, yes. I imagine those women he hired weren't too keen to travel the country with him. Aiding and abetting men on the run usually results in a stint behind bars, and they must have decided he wasn't worth that." "I — Jen Turano

The person who hurt you
who raped you or killed your family
is also here. If you are still angry at that person, if you haven't been able to forgive, you are chained to him. Everyone could feel the emotional truth of that: When someone offends you and you haven't let go, every time you see him, you grow breathless or your heart skips a beat. If the trauma was really severe, you dream of revenge. Above you, is the Mountain of Peace and Prosperity where we all want to go. But when you try to climb that hill, the person you haven't forgiven weighs you down. It's a personal choice whether or not to let go. No one can tell you how long to mourn a death or rage over a rape. But you can't move forward until you break that chain. — Leymah Gbowee

And now it's been half a winter since Harry vanished, and I can finally rest my thoughts. I ought to feel relief. Of this I'm sure. But do you know what it's like to hold proof of the last heartache you'll ever know in your own raw hands? I hadn't known, either, not until Gus delivered Harry's red hat yesterday morning, a cork bobber sewed on where the pompom should've been. — Peter Geye

I think that everybody's worked on shows where you feel like maybe a divide has happened between the talent and the crew. Those are the hardest jobs to do your best in, because as you're performing, you're aware that the people around you, because they haven't been afforded the respect that they deserve, they're not as invested. — Jessalyn Gilsig

The real problem here is a massive elephant in the room: our own culture. Our social values, our media - so influential on impressionable young girls - that have been allowed, for millenia, to send out this powerful, alienating message about girls and sport: that sport is unfeminine, that sport makes you sweaty and muscular, that sport is swearing and violence, that sport is ugliness in a world where women's sole priority, value and focus should be beauty and becoming an object of desire. — Anna Kessel

Or, suppose you want to motivate your managers to ship products on time, so you conspicuously promote each manager whose product goes out the door on schedule. All goes as planned until the situation arises in which one of your managers has a project where the testers are reporting numerous problems. Because managers who have shipped products on time have been promoted, this manager thinks, I want that promotion so I need to ship this on time, but those bug reports are getting in the way. I know what I'll do! I'll put the testers on another project until the developers have a chance to catch up. — Gerald M. Weinberg

As a writer myself, my job has very often been to also write on the job. So you get the script and a vague idea of how the scene might work, and you then add funny words or change the script. I'm not the world's best writer or the world's best actor, but I can do that thing where I can fix - or ruin - fix-slash-ruin, add quirk, add value. — Sally Phillips

Where did you learn to use a gas cooker?" Sam asked ... "And couldn't you just, you know, use magic or something?" He wriggled his fingers dramatically.
Gabriel smiled ... "I've been around for a long, long time. Thousands of years, in fact. Don't you think I would've spent at least some of that time here on earth amongst you humans? — Phillip W. Simpson

If you've ever been in a position in your life where you just can't take any more, you just have to get through the next second, and the next second after that. — Michael Novak

Identifying as a writer is a matter of self-acceptance. It's not a thing that can be given to you, or bestowed upon you. You are a writer if you write. That's it. If what you are seeking is to be acknowledged as a writer by other people, many of them strangers, you're in for a demoralizing journey. It is a silly club where those who have been 'accepted' are loathe to permit others into. It's sort of like how we Americans love denying our own immigrant origins while railing against immigration. — Vincent Louis Carrella

The girl's arms jutted out at awkward angles, not quite hands on the hips belligerent but not relaxed either, as if they weren't all the way under the girl's control. "I came to find you."
"I didn't know. If I'd known ... "
"It doesn't matter now." The girl's attention was unwavering. "This is where you are."
"It is at that."
The girl looked sad. Her soil-dark eyes were clouded over by tears she hadn't been able to shed. "I came here to find you."
"I couldn't have known." Maylene reached out and plucked a leaf from the girl's hair.
"Doesn't matter." She lifted a dirty hand, fingernails flashing chipped red polish, but she didn't seem to know what to do with her outstretched fingers. Little girl fears warred with teenage bravado. Bravado won. "I'm here now."
"All right, then." Maylene walked down the path toward one of the gates. She pulled the key from her handbag, twisted it in the lock, and pushed open the gate. — Melissa Marr

Lilly Marshall's girl?" Julie cut in.
"Yes,and presently-your daughter-in-law."
The older woman should have been bowled over, but Julie St. John did no more than set down her fork to ask in a somewhat aggrieved tone, "Which one married you?"
"Your eldest. It was a brief ceremony performed at sea just last week."
A big smile formed on her mother-in-law's face, shocking Rebecca. "I must say, girl, you have succeeded where all others have failed.I commend you! — Johanna Lindsey

If they'd been dogs, they would have all been in the yard eating grass and trying to yak up whatever was making them feel so lousy. Not a bone gnawed, not a ball chased-all tails went unwagged. Oh, life is a fast cat, a short leash, a flea in that place where you just can't scratch. — Christopher Moore

I only wear heels when it's 100-percent required, and even sometimes not then. I have to talk myself into a bra. I've done an hour of standup where I've been like, "I don't have to wear a bra tonight." If you're going to be on camera, you have to get it together, but other than that, I am pretty lazy as a woman. — Amy Schumer

It sucks because you're trying to do the right thing, but the result isn't showing it. You're at the stage where good intentions meet crappy abilities. Welcome to my first eleven months as a vampire." "You've only been a vampire for ten months." "My point exactly. — Chloe Neill

There has long been a bemoaning of the lack of opportunity to make films that are anything but explosions or the ladling on the pea soup or whatever you want to call it. You can hardly make a movie where somebody isn't a murderer or a rapist or, if it's a "Fried Green Tomatoes" that isn't some wistful thing on this, that or the other thing. — Jack Nicholson

A couple months after school started that year, I just plain stopped going to see the Maje. I remember coming home one day and checking the answering machine in my bedroom. The first message was from the Maje. He was waiting for me to come over. He sounded feeble and desperate: "Steve, where are you? I need you? Are you coming? Please . . ." I deleted it. The next message was also from the Maje and said pretty much the same thing. Delete. There must have been a dozen messages on that machine from the Maje, all begging me, pleading with me, to come help him. I deleted every single one of them. To this day, I have no idea what happened to the Maje, no idea if he ever got that cataract surgery. That's how our relationship ended. It still makes me feel horrible to think about now: I just deleted the Maje. — Stephen "Steve-O" Glover

Elinor," cried Marianne, "is this fair? is this just? are my ideas so scanty? But I see what you mean. I have been too much at my ease, too happy, too frank. I have erred against every common-place notion of decorum; I have been open and sincere where I ought to have been reserved, spiritless, dull, and deceitful:- had I talked only of the weather and the roads, and had I spoken only once in ten minutes, this reproach would have been spared. — Jane Austen

Procrastinating is number three on my Stupid List. You still end up exactly where you didn't want to be, doing exactly what you didn't want to do, withe the only difference being that you lost all that time in between, during which you could have been doing something fun. Even worse, you probably stayed in a stressed-out, crappy mood the whole time you were avoiding it. If you know something is inevitable, do it and get it over with. Move on. Life is short. — Karen Marie Moning

It's not really much good tearing out a page because you can see the place where it's been torn. [ ... ] You can pull a stamp out,' she said with terrible youthful clarity, 'and you don't know that it's ever been there. — Graham Greene

I spent four minutes yesterday looking for the halfway point between where I am & where I want to be. I found the city - you just have to tell me if you want pizza, coffee or strange street meat. Just four minutes searching, but all day (really all week), I've been thinking of this letter & you. — Darnell Lamont Walker

I think that there have been times, especially with writing songs, where you sit in a room with somebody, and they could be a very well-respected songwriter, but for whatever reason, the chemistry is just not right. — Dave Koz

Sirius looked out of the fire at Harry, a crease between his sunken eyes.
"You're less like your father than I thought," he said finally, a definite coolness in his voice. "The risk would've been what made it fun for James."
"Look - "
"Well, I'd better get going ... I'll write to tell you a time I can make it back into the fire, then, shall I? If you can stand to risk it?"
There was a tiny pop, and the place where Sirius's head had been was flickering flame once more. — J.K. Rowling

I've been working a lot with identity and roots, being part of your roots. I went into this topic where I was trying to break the stereotype of Arabic language. The non-translation work, this is where I make the switch, where you don't need to translate. — EL Seed

Lord, you will have to be our teacher, because the dignity has been drained out of us in so many ways. We have been treated like dirt, and that has stuck on us. We've put ourselves against standards of our own making, because we thought it would give us worth. Please touch each person with how unique they are in your eyes and how their dignity in your eyes is so great that you will not even override them; you will woo them and pursue them and help them to accept that you are seeking them and you will allow yourself to be found by them if they simply cry out for help. I pray that great freedom will come across them because of their awareness of where they stand in your kingdom. That will make Jesus very happy, and the angels in heaven will jump up and down. And so we say, Let it be so, and that's what we mean by amen. Amen. Dallas Willard — Dallas Willard

May ya have the hindsight ta know where you've been, the foresight ta know where where you're going, and the insight ta know when you're going too far... — Shirley Bourget

He was watching me, and he chuckled.
"Do you know how a man tames a wolf?" he asked me.
"No," I said.
"You get some clothing that you've been wearing for a while, and you toss it in with her. In the cage or the cavern where she sleeps. That first one, she rips up, shreds it to nothing. The second one, she just mouths it a bit, gets a taste. Inhales, like you're doing there. The third but of clothing, she starts dragging it around, loving on it, sleeping with it. And then you've got her under your spell. She's got the scent of you, wants to keep it around. She'll follow you everywhere."
"Are you calling me a wolf?" I asked.
"Are you calling me a man?" he said. — Delilah S. Dawson

It's always been the case that you have the really rich, and the really poor. But hey, look, all the great empires have their periods where they rule the world, and then they crumble. — Mickey Rourke

Imagine a very long time passing - and I find my way out, following someone who already knows how to leave Hell. And God says to me on Earth for the first time, "Xas!" in a tone of discovery, as if I'm a misplaced pair of spectacles or a stray dog. And he puts it to me that he wants me in Heaven. But Lucifer has doubled back - it was him I followed - to find me, where I am, in a forest, smitten, because the Lord has noticed me, and I'm overcome, as hopeless as your dog Josie whom you got rid of because she loved me.' Xas glared at Sobran. Then he drew a breath - all had been said on only three. He went on: 'Lucifer says to God the He can't have me. And at this I sit up and tell Lucifer that I didn't even think he knew my name, then say to God no thank you - very insolent this - and that Hell is endurable so long as the books keep appearing. — Elizabeth Knox

Till now, my conception of love has been based entirely on what I have seen in Hindi films, where the hero and the heroine make eye contact, and whoosh, some strange chemistry sets their hearts beating and their vocal chords tingling, and the next you see of them they are off singing songs in Swiss Villages and American shopping malls. — Vikas Swarup

I know, for me, you know, my generation - I never would have known anything about Robert Preston's performance in 'The Music Man' if there hadn't been a film where he played the part. I just heard how great he was on Broadway way before my time. — John Lloyd Young

I had grown up in a house with a fence around it, and in this fence was a white smooth wooden gate, two holes bored round and low together so the dog could see through. One night, the moon high, late for me home from the school dance, I remember that I stopped, hand on the gate, and spoke so quietly to myself and to the woman that I would love that not even the dog could have heard.
I don't know where you are, but you're living right now, somewhere on this earth. And one day you and I are going to touch this gate where I'm touching it now. Your hand will touch this very wood, here! Then we'll walk through and we'll be full of a future and of a past and we'll be to each other like no one else has ever been. We can't meet now, I don't know why. But some day our questions will be answers and we'll be caught in something so bright ... and every step I take is one step closer on a bridge we must cross to meet. — Richard Bach

You look at today, it's a different situation. You have a game that has been transformed into a game where almost every shot is either an outside shot - a three-point shot - or a dunk. — Oscar Robertson

The three of us stood there for a minute. I don't know what Stew was thinking, and the filing cabinet wasn't thinking anything. But I was thinking, is this the world? Is this really the place in which you've ended up, Snicket? It was a question that struck me, as it might strike you, when something ridiculous was going on, or something sad. I wondered if this was really where I should be, or if there was another world someplace, less ridiculous and less sad. But I never knew the answer to the question. Perhaps I had been in another world before I was born, and did not remember it, or perhaps I would see another world when I died, which I was in no hurry to do. In the meantime, I was stuck in the police station, doing something so ridiculous it felt sad, and feeling so sad it was ridiculous. The world of the police station, the world of Stain'd-by-the-Sea and all of the wrong questions I was asking, was was the only world I could see. — Lemony Snicket

The worst part is wondering how you'll find the strength tomorrow
to go on doing what you did today and have been doing for much
too long, where you'll find the strength for all that stupid running around, those projects that come to nothing, those attempts to escape from crushing necessity, which always founder and serve only to convince you one more time that destiny is implacable, that every night will find you down and out, crushed by the dread of more and more sordid and insecure tomorrows. And maybe it's treacherous old age coming on, threatening the worst. Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn't enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I've never been able to kill myself. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I moan with pleasure.
"Did you just have a foodgasm?" he asks, wiping ricotta from his lips.
"Where have you been all my life?" I ask the beautiful panini. — Stephanie Perkins

What kind of movies have you been watching?" asked Ralph with surprised interest. "The kind where girls actually keep their hairpins," said Donald gloomily. "And are useful. — Ness Kingsley

Finally, one day, I couldn't stand it anymore: I walked into the kitchen, laid my head on the table, and asked my father, "How are we supposed to live every day if we know we're going to die?" He looked at me, clearly pained by the dawning of my genetically predestined morbidity. He had been the same way as a kid. A day never went by where he didn't think about his eventual demise. He sighed, leaned back in his chair, unable to conjure a comforting answer. "You just do. — Lena Dunham

I've always been singing. Since day one. I started doing musical theater and you have to sing in musical theater and so that's where I got most of my training. So singing on stage, you just inevitably, when you're around other vocal artists, you get better at singing. — Zac Efron

Diamonds are held under tons and tons of pressure, extremely high temperatures of fire and shuffled under shifting of tectonic plates, for a long, long time! Yet when they come out from there and are put on display for their beauty; does anybody stop to evaluate the diamond based upon all the shit it's been through and say "Remember that disgusting hole it used to be in? I bet it was hell in there!" No, people don't remember where a diamond has come from; they just see the beauty of it now. But it wouldn't have become so beautiful, you know, if not for all of that! So why should we look at other people, or at ourselves and evaluate them/ourselves based upon their/our pasts? Shouldn't we forget that? And only see the beauty that is in front of our eyes? Whatever it was, it made you beautiful! And that is what matters! — C. JoyBell C.

May you have the hindsight to know where you've been, the foresight to know where you are going, and the insight to know when you have gone too far. — Heather Lyons

The music defied classification. If I had been writing a
review of the show, I would have labeled it progressive,
guitar-driven rock 'n' roll. But the guitars made sounds guitars
didn't always make. Symphonic sounds. Sacred sounds.
The music dug in so deep you didn't hear it so much as feel
it, reminding me of a dream I used to have when I was a kid,
where I would be standing on a street corner, I would jump
into the air, flap my arms, and soar up into the sky.
That's the only way I could describe the music.
It was the sonic equivalent of flight. — Tiffanie DeBartolo

this is real, and it is happening now, just as it happened before: We are under the big tree in my backyard, on that patch of dirt where we used to build fairy houses from moss and sticks and scraps of birch. It is late afternoon. All around us is golden light. We have been together all day, in our cutoff shorts and bare feet. It is the start of fifth grade, the start of being the oldest in the school. Next year, we will be the youngest all over again. But not yet. We are playing that hand-slapping game, the one we like to play at recess. You hold your hands out, palms up, and I place mine lightly on top. You pull yours out and try to slap mine. You hit air three times. On the fourth try, your — Ali Benjamin

In the midst of this utopia, which only your fellow lone voyagers would perceive, you used to transgress society's rules unknowingly, and no one would hold you accountable for it. You would mistakenly enter private residences, go to concerts to which you had not been invited, eat at community banquets where you could only guess the community's identity when they started giving speeches. Had you behaved like this in your own country, you would have been taken for a liar or a fool. But the improbable ways of a foreigner are accepted. Far from your home, you used to taste the pleasure of being mad without being alienated, of being an imbecile without renouncing your intelligence, of being an impostor without culpability. — Edouard Leve

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

You are so terribly nimble, so clever. I distrust your cleverness. You make a wonderful pattern, everything is in its place, it looks convincingly clear, too clear. And meanwhile, where are you? Not on the clear surface of your ideas, but you have already sunk deeper, into darker regions, so that one only thinks one has been given all your thoughts, one only imagines you have emptied yourself in that clarity. But there are layers and layers
you're bottomless, unfathomable. Your clearness is deceptive. You are the thinker who arouses most confusion in me, most doubt, most disturbance. — Anais Nin

Christian Grey: [answers phone] Anastasia.
Anastasia Steele: Yeah, this is me. I'm sending back your expensive books because I already have copies of those. Thanks though for the kind gesture.
Christian Grey: You're welcome. Where are you?
Anastasia Steele: Oh, I'm in line because I have to pee really bad.
Christian Grey: Anastasia, have you been drinking?
Anastasia Steele: [laughs] Yeah! I have, Mr. Fancy Pants. You hit ... you hit the hail on the nead. I mean the head right on the nail.
Christian Grey: Listen to me. I want you to go home right now.
Anastasia Steele: You're so bossy! Ana, let's go for a coffee. No, stay away from me Ana! I don't want you! Get away. Come here, come here! Go away! — E.L. James

As a teacher myself I've been in situations where parents come at you, and sometimes parents come across like the teacher doesn't want the best for their kid and it can be really, really hurtful. — Rosalind Wiseman

God, you mean I lost my virginity to the apocalypse?"
Morgan sighed again. "The whole thing was really embarrassing; my parents sent me to Brooklyn when they found out." She shrugged. "I thought I'd be safe in a gay bar, okay? What were you doing in there anyway?"
Lace looked at me sidelong. "You were where?"
I took a sip of beer, swallowed it. "I, uh, hadn't been in the city ... very long. I didn't know. — Scott Westerfeld

Merlin, do you mind?' It was the King who asked me, a man as old and wise as myself; a man who could see past his own crowding problems, and guess what it might men to me, to walk in dead air where once the world had been a god-filled garden. — Mary Stewart

I know how you feel. I've been analyzed to death as well. Not, like, professionally, though I did date a psych major who said I had attention issues. Or at least that's what I think he said. I wasn't really paying attention. Anyway, where was I? — Darynda Jones

I once did an event with Ian Rankin where he said he didn't really need to do much background research because his books are set in the present, and I just thought: 'You lucky, lucky beast!' because as a historical novelist, I live constantly on the edge of wondering whether tissues had been invented. — Sara Sheridan

All the experiences in your life- from single conversations to your broader culture- shape the microscopic details of your brain. Neurally speaking, who you are depends on where you've been. Your brain is a relentless shape-shifter, constantly rewriting its own circuitry- and because your experiences are unique, so are the vast detailed patterns in your neural networks. Because they continue to change your whole life, your identity is a moving target; it never reaches an endpoint. — David Eagleman

I think we choose who we are and what we do about life events. Paige, isn't that what you've been doing since Kevin threw you out of the company? You've been stepping out in faith, trusting God to help you make your own life. Working at life is what matters most. What we do for a living is a component. Where we come from, who's in our lives, our families, our pets, and the people we decide we want to grow old with are all about life, but we make our own choices and build from the materials we've been given. — Lynette Endicott

What does a haunting feel like? Some say that they feel as though they have been watched. Others say that they have seen figures. Have you ever felt as though you are not alone in your house? Weird creaks? Footsteps in the dark? A laugh where there should never have been a voice. A man standing in your room? A figure? A shadow? A phantom? Your house may well be haunted, if you can say yes to any of those questions. The stories you are about to read are all true. All — B. Perry E. Scarze

Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five. — C.S. Lewis

In the struggle to remain a complete person and to love from her fullness instead of her inadequacy a woman may appear hard. She may feel her early conditioning tugging her in the direction of surrender, but she ought to remember that she was originally loved for herself; she ought to hang on to herself and not find herself nagging, helpless, irritable and trapped. Perhaps I am not old enough yet to promise that the self-reliant woman is always loved, but she cannot be lonely as long as there are people in the world who need her joy and her strength, but certainly in my experience it has always been so. Lovers who are free to go when they are restless always come back; lovers who are free to change remain interesting. The bitter animosity and obscenity of divorce is unknown where individuals have not become Siamese twins. A lover who comes to your bed of his own accord is more likely to sleep with his arms around you all night than a lover who has nowhere else to sleep. — Germaine Greer

The funny thing is that making a pilot is sort of an audition, at least for me. There's something psychological there, where you're sort of asking for the job while you're acting. And then when it's been picked up, it's a completely different psychological dynamic. — Justin Kirk

When people start to write articles about what might be wrong with the 'Today' show you know where you should point the finger, point it at me because I have been there the longest. And it's my responsibility. — Matt Lauer

I've always been able to see the savageness beneath the veneer of society. It's not so very far beneath the surface, no matter where you go. — Lily King

Not everything about where you're headed ... has to be about where you've been. — Kimberly McCreight

Imagine you're copying a very long document, and occasionally you'll put an A where there should be a C. And that mistake has been translated down through the generations, and more mistakes have accumulated. So the longer the lineage has been in existence, the more mistakes the sequence is going to have. — Spencer Wells

This was a really amazing part of your adventure, Hamlet. You're sure that, should you ever one day write a book about this story or perhaps a stage production, you'd DEFINITELY include this scene. Why, you'd have to be literally crazy to write a story where you journey to England, get attacked by pirates - actual pirates! - but then just sum up that whole adventure in a single sentence. Hah! That'd be the worst. Who puts a pirate-attack scene in their story and doesn't show it to the audience? Hopefully nobody, that's who! Even from a purely structural viewpoint, you've got to give the audience something awesome to make up for all the introspection you've been doing; that just seems pretty obvious is all. — Ryan North

Do you mean to say," asked Caspian, "that you three come from a round world (round like a ball) and you've never told me! It's really too bad for you. Because we have fairy-tales in which there are round worlds and I have always loved them ... Have you ever been to the parts where people walk about upside-down?"
Edmund shook his head. "And it isn't like that," he added. "There's nothing particularly exciting about a round world when you're there. — C.S. Lewis