Young Once Quotes & Sayings

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

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

Young people were once considered relatively safe from HIV/AIDS. Today, their lives and futures are at risk throughout the world because of this disease. I believe it is young people throughout the world who offer us the greatest hope for defeating this deadly pandemic. — Liam Neeson

How plants grow: Quickly. Most plants grow fast and die young. People get seventy years, a bean plant gets four months, maybe five. Once the itty-bitty baby plant peeks out of the ground, it sprouts leaves, so it can absorb more sun. Then it sleeps, eats, and sunbathes until it's ready to flower - a teenage plant. This is a bad time to be a rose or a zinnia or a marigold, because people attack with scissors and cut off what's pretty. But plants are cool. If the rose is picked, the plant grows another one. It needs to bloom to produce more seeds. — Laurie Halse Anderson

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

And speaking of options ,these kids [the ones who attend elite universities] have all been told that theirs are limitless. Once you commit to something, though, that ceases to be true. A former student sent me an essay he wrote, a few years after college, called "The Paradox of Potential." Yale students, he said, are like stem cells. They can be anything in the world, so they try to delay for as long as possible the moment when they have to become just one thing in particular. Possibility, paradoxically, becomes limitation. — William Deresiewicz

When the bald associate had mentioned a sleeping beauty, he was referring to a fairy tale that you have probably heard one thousand times. Like all fairy tales, the story of Sleeping Beauty begins with 'Once upon a time,' and continues with a foolish young princess who makes a witch very angry, and then takes a nap until her boyfriend wakes her up with a kiss and insists on getting married, at which point the story ends with the phrase 'happily ever after.' The story is usually illustrated with fancy drawings of the napping princess, who always looks very glamorous and elegant, with her hair neatly combed and a long silk gown keeping her comfortable as she snores away for years and years. — Lemony Snicket

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

Outside the station of Santa Maria Novella Isabella has to stand aside while a line of prisoners are marched into the terminus by armed Fascist guards. They pass within touching distance of her, carrying bags and bundles. There are old people and some children too. They all seem swamped by their clothes, disembodied by them somehow. Then she catches the eye of Ezra, a young Jewish man who once worked in the arts material shop where she buys most of her pigments and brushes. He is almost at the back of the line. The veins are high and urgent on his hand. His trousers are held up with a dirty piece of string. His cobalt blue eyes hold hers for the barest beat of a moment but some essence of his being conveys itself to her and her blood quickens in sympathy for him. She has the feeling of looking into the eyes of a ghost. — Glenn Haybittle

Doris Day started performing at a young age, had a tough road to success, and once she achieved it delivered the goods 100 percent and brilliantly, always making difficult work look as easy as breathing. — Robert Osborne

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

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

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

what secular avocation on earth was there for a young man (whose friends could not get him an 'appointment') which was at once gentlemanly, lucrative, and to be followed without special knowledge? — George Eliot

When we're young we think everything has to be wrapped up in a month. But you should take the long view on this one. Before you make a move, be sure, Anya. And even once you're sure, tread carefully. And remember you don't have to do what they expect you to do" -Charles Delacroix — Gabrielle Zevin

Once I thought I saw you in a crowded hazy bar,
Dancing on the light from star to star.
Far across the moonbeam I know that's who you are,
I saw your brown eyes turning once to fire.
I am just a dreamer, but you are just a dream,
You could have been anyone to me.
Before that moment you touched my lips
That perfect feeling when time just slips
Away between us on our foggy trip. — Neil Young

My parents, Romanian immigrants, struggled to provide me a better life than the ones they had left in their homeland. They worked hard to give me every opportunity in life, and once I showed natural talent as a young gymnast, they spent every last penny on my training. — Dominique Moceanu

Maybe it's the fact the most of the arts here are produced by world-weary and sophisticated older people and then consumed by younger people who not only consume art but study it for clues on how to be cool, hip - and keep in mind that, for kids and younger people, to be hip and cool is the same as to be admired and accepted and included and so Unalone. Forget so-called peer-pressure. It's more like peer-hunger. No? We enter a spiritual puberty where we snap to the fact that the great transcendant horror is loneliness, excluded encagement in the self. Once we've hit this age, we will now give or take anything, wear any mask, to fit, be part-of, not be Alone, we young. The U.S. arts are our guide to inclusion. A how-to. We are shown how to fashion masks of ennui and jaded irony at a young age where the face is fictile enough to assume the shape of whatever it wears. And then it's stuck there, the weary cynicism that saves us from gooey sentiment and unsophisticated naivete. — David Foster Wallace

I think that it's a space that there are a lot of projections onto - the soon-to-be sexualized and already-sexualized young woman. There are so many outside perceptions grafted onto her, that she feels all at once completely blank and completely full. I noticed that a lot in your book, as well, this repetition of a shallowness. But there is also depth in the constant repetition of this shallowness. — Tamara Faith Berger

Because Marian was the love of my life. For a long time. And that's the kind of information you share when you're young and stupid and hoping that you're in something that is going to be even bigger and better than what you once lost. It's the kind of shit you waste your time thinking about. Lemme tell you
it does no good. — Emily Giffin

I remember reading a fascinating article in the New York Times Magazine once where this guy said... Every woman has the exact love life she wants — Elizabeth Young

Once more the legend flourished that the number of years lived constitutes some kind of temperamental bond, so that people of the same age are many minds with but a single thought, bearing one to another a close resemblance. The young were commented on as if they were some new and just discovered species of animal life, with special qualities and habits which repaid investigation. — Rose Macaulay

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

In fact, once when I imprinted on a young lady's lips a chaste and fatherly kiss for about five minutes, I stopped and said, sorrowfully, "Wouldn't you rather be kissed by a twenty-one-year-old boy?"
She frowned and said, "Of course not. If you'd ever been kissed by a twenty-one-year-old boy you'd know better than to ask."
Remember that. In any direct competition, the old man is bound to win and the young man knows it. — Isaac Asimov

I once had a young musician come to me and say that he wanted to be a professional musician. I asked him to write his list. When he came back to me, the three things in his life he most wanted were: to be paid for his music; to travel around the world; to meet new people. We came to the decision, after thinking really creatively, that if he got a job on a cruise ship, he would fulfill those goals. — Phil Keoghan

I had good intentions once upon a time. Well, September. — Claire Hennessy

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

Obi-Wan's young face clouded. "Some secrets are best left concealed, Master." He shook his head. "Besides, why must you always be the one to do the uncovering? You know how the Council feels about these ... detours. Perhaps, just once, the uncovering should be left to someone else."
Qui-Gon looked suddenly sad. "No, Obi-Wan. Secrets must be exposed when found. Detours must be taken when encountered. And if you are the one who stands at the crossroads or the place of concealment, you must never leave it to another to act in your place. — Terry Brooks

The giant, once well buried, now stirs. When soon he rises, as surely he will, the friendly bonds between us will prove as knots young girls make with the stems of small flowers. — Kazuo Ishiguro

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

As a child, young William alarmed his parents by reporting that he experienced visions. In later life he told his friends that he had seen angels among the haymakers in the fields, which still lay in easy walking distance from Broad Street. when he got home and reported the vision, he barely escaped a thrashing for telling a lie. More disturbingly, his wife once remarked, "You know, dear, the first time you saw God was when you were four years old and he put his head to the window and set you screaming. — Leo Damrosch

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

He didn't need to get up and look in the ornate, gilt-edged mirror over the massive fireplace to know that calamitous was the accurate word for his face. His right eye drooped, and the right half of his face was a gnarled mess of scar tissue. He was missing a small chunk of his nose on the right side, and he wore his hair shaggy to conceal the scar where his right ear used to be. But no amount of hairstyling could conceal the fact that his right arm was missing below the elbow. And his right leg, also injured in the blast, would always cause him to walk with a slight limp. Once a handsome young man, he was now a monster. A beast. — Katy Regnery

I ask, I demand to be respected! Shatov went on shouting. Not for my person
to hell with it
but for something else, just for now, for a few words ... We are two beings, and we have come together in infinity ... for the last time in the world. Abandon your tone and take a human one! At least for once in your life speak in a human voice. Not for my sake, but for your own. Do you understand that you should forgive me that slap in the face if only because with it I gave you an opportunity to know your infinite power ... Again you smile that squeamish, worldly smile. Oh, when will you understand me! Away with the young squire! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Pause and remember - When you fight reality, you will lose every time. Once you accept the situation for what it truly is, not what you want it to be, you are then free to move forward. - Jenni Young — Bryant McGill

We scoffed at the kids who weren't like us, the ones who already talked about careers, or bliddy mortgages and pensions. Kids wanting to be old before they were young. Kids wanting to be dead before they'd lived. They were digging their own graves, building the walls of their own damn jails. Us, we hung to our youth. We were footloose, fancy free. We said we'd never grow boring and old. We plundered charity shops for vintage clothes. We bought battered Levis and gorgeous faded velvet stuff from Attica in High Bridge. We wore coloured boots, hemp scarves from Gaia. We read Baudelaire and Byron. We read our poems to each other. We wrote songs and posted them on YouTube. We formed bands. We talked of the amazing journeys we'd take together once school was done. Sometimes we paired off, made couples that lasted for a little while, but the group was us. We hung together. We could say anything to each other. We loved each other. — David Almond

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

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

Caesar once, seeing some wealthy strangers at Rome, carrying up and down with them in their arms and bosoms young puppy-dogs and monkeys, embracing and making much of them, took occasion not unnaturally to ask whether the women in their country were not used to bear children; by that prince-like reprimand gravely reflecting upon persons who spend and lavish upon brute beasts that affection and kindness which nature has implanted in us to be bestowed on those of our own kind. With like reason may we blame those who misuse that love of inquiry and observation which nature has implanted in our souls, by expending it on objects unworthy of the attention either of their eyes or their ears, while they disregard such as are excellent in themselves, and would do them good. — Plutarch

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

According to St. Augustine, the left hand represented the temporal, the mortal, and the bodily, as opposed to the right, which stood for "God, eternity, the years of God which fail not."25 For centuries the preference for the right hand over the left governed how people fished, ploughed fields, twisted rope, and ate their meals. The Greeks and Romans, for example, always reclined on the left side, propped on the left elbow, leaving the right hand free for the business of eating and drinking. Plutarch noted that parents taught children to eat right-handed from a young age, and "if they do put forth the left hand, at once we correct them."26 The prejudice against the left hand persisted during the Renaissance, with parents freeing a child's right hand from its swaddling clothes to ensure right-handedness at the dinner table as well as at the writing desk. — Ross King

Because they were young. Because one is young only once in a life lived only once. Because recklessness is the only fist to throw at nothingness. How much aliveness can one bear? — Jonathan Safran Foer

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

No one will ever understand like I do. You're so different with me, baby. You take care of me. You make me feel safe. You're not who you think you are. Didn't you once tell me that people aren't just one thing? You're so much more to me than anything you might have done in the past. — Samantha Young

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

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

Saint-Just read for the next two hours his report on the plots of the Dantonist faction. He had imagined, when he wrote it, that he had the accused man before him; he had not amended it. If Danton were really before him, this reading would be punctuated by the roars of his supporters from the galleries, by his own self-justificatory roaring; but Saint-Just addressed the air, and there was a silence, which deepened and fed on itself. He read without passion, almost without inflection, his eyes on the papers that he held in his left hand. Occasionally he would raise his right arm, then let it fall limply by his side: this was his only gesture, a staid, mechanical one. Once, towards the end, he raised his young face to his audience and spoke directly to them: "After this," he promised, "there will be only patriots left. — Hilary Mantel

When women think of power, we shouldn't think of it only for ourselves. We should be thinking about what we're going to do with power, once we have it. Women should be standing up powerfully and passionately for the care and protection of children, as well as the care and protection of the Earth itself. Women's voices should be front and center in protecting both our young and our habitat. That's the way it is in any species that survives. — Marianne Williamson

For sure we live in a youth-obsessed culture that is constantly trying to tell us that if we're not young and glowing and "hot," we don't matter. But I refuse to buy into such a distorted view of reality. And I would never lie about or deny my age. To do so is to contribute to a sickness pervading our society - the sickness of wanting to be what you're not. I know for sure that only by owning who and what you are can you step into the fullness of life. I feel sorry for anyone who buys into the myth that you can be what you once were. The way to your best life isn't denial. It's owning every moment and staking a claim to the here and now. You're not the same woman you were a decade ago; if you're lucky, you're not the same woman you were last year. The whole point of aging, as I see it, is change. If we let them, our experiences can keep teaching us about ourselves. I celebrate that. Honor it. Hold it in reverence. And I'm grateful for every age I'm blessed to become. — Oprah Winfrey

Dancing is at once rational & healthful: it gives animal spirits; it is the natural amusement of young people, & such it has been from the days of Moses. — William Cobbett

- the rusalka was kneeling beside Plain Kate on the deck. She was made of fog and shadow until Kate caught her eye, and then, all at once, she became human. She was young, mischievously sad, a fox in a story. Kate fell in love with her. And then she was gone. — Erin Bow

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

HALT AND WILL HAD BEEN TRAILING THE WARGALS FOR three days. The four heavy-bodied, brutish creatures, foot soldiers of the rebel warlord Morgarath, had been sighted passing through Redmont Fief, heading north. Once word reached the Ranger, he had set out to intercept them, accompanied by his young apprentice. — John Flanagan

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

Rilke wrote in one of my favourite books [Letters to a Young Poet], "Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love." It takes courage to live as our true selves; especially when doing so can be faced with such unkindness. But I believe the more we show of ourselves, the more we make space for positive change in the world. I feel so grateful I get to be a part of a series that is contributing to that change. — Elise Bauman

You were right once, young man," Anapol said. "That may be all the being right you get. — Michael Chabon

You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame, back home to exile, to escape to Europe and some foreign land, back home to lyricism, to singing just for singing's sake, back home to aestheticism, to one's youthful idea of 'the artist' and the all-sufficiency of 'art' and 'beauty' and 'love,' back home to the ivory tower, back home to places in the country, to the cottage in Bermude, away from all the strife and conflict of the world, back home to the father you have lost and have been looking for, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time
back home to the escapes of Time and Memory. — Thomas Wolfe

Mr. [Aldous] Huxley has been the alarming young man for a long time, a sort of perpetual clever nephew who can be relied on to flutter the lunch party. Whatever will he say next? How does he think of those things? He has been deplored once or twice, but feeling is in his favor: he is steadily read. He is at once the truly clever person and the stupid person's idea of the clever person; he is expected to be relentless, to administer intellectual shocks. — Elizabeth Bowen

Then the concerts came to an end, the weather turned bad and my girls left Balbec, not all at once, as the swallows leave, but within the same week. — Marcel Proust

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

When we are young we cannot know
what it is like to bigger grow
but why do grown-ups great and tall
so soon forget they once were small. — Marta Moran Bishop

She remembered Fiona saying something once, there was nothing more attractive than a competent man. At the time she'd been a young girl, without true understanding, but now she agreed. — Lily Blackwood

It's been said that she was young once, but never beautiful. — Cherie Priest

We can heal. Perhaps we can return to that same place we once stood, when we were both young and innocent. — Marie Lu

We met with more closed doors than open ones
and the people who answered our knocks were invariably older. Young people didn't aswner the door to strangers, who would undoubtedly be trying to sell something, any more than they would answer the telephone to telemarketers once Caller ID came along. The only people we encountered going door-to-door were the ones old enough to remember when that's the way the world worked. — J. Mark Bertrand

Ah man. I remember the days of lying to my mother about a boy. Once I had a boy hidden in the closet and of course Mom wouldn't leave, so I finally had to pretend to get sick to my stomach just to get her out of the room long enough for him to climb out the window and down the tree. He fell, broke his leg. Ah, to be young again. — Amy Sherman-Palladino

Most good roles are written for young men. We are fixated on youth. So however much people say there is nothing wrong with being bald, the reality is once the hair is gone, you might not get the parts. — Ian Hart

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

Once, when the days were ages, And the old Earth was young, The high gods and the sages From Nature's golden pages Her open secrets wrung. — Richard Henry Stoddard

The real problem devolves around class lines once again: it's the street hormones that folks without insurance, or folks who are too young for prescriptions without parental okay, use. Sometimes those hormones can be pretty rough. — Kate Bornstein

Judges pretty much act independently once they get on the bench so I'm not really sure why Harper's concerned that the court is currently being stacked with a lot of Liberal appointments. — Alan Young

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

It's an old story; it's as old as our history. The difference between Democrats and Republicans has always been measured in courage and confidence. The Republicans believe that the wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some of the old, some of the young, some of the weak, are left behind by the side of the trail. The strong, the strong they tell us, will inherit the land. We Democrats believe in something else. We Democrats believe that we can make it all the way with the whole family intact, and we have more than once. — Mario Cuomo

A young financial writer once brought ridicule upon himself by stating that a certain company had nothing to commend it except excellent earnings. Well, there are companies whose earnings are excellent but whose stocks I would never recommend. In selecting investments, I attach prime importance to the men behind them. I'd rather buy brains and character than earnings. Earnings can be good one year and poor the next. But if you put your money into securities run by men combining conspicuous brains and unimpeachable character, the likelihood is that the financial results will prove satisfactory. — B.C. Forbes

They were not unfortunate girls who, as outcasts or in the belief that they were cast out by society, grieved wholesomely and intensely and, once in a while at times when the heart was too full, ventilated it in hate or forgiveness. No visible change took place in them; they lived in the accustomed context, were respected as always, and yet they were changed, almost unaccountably to themselves and incomprehensibly to others. Their lives were not cracked or broken, as others' were, but were bent into themselves; lost to others, they futilely sought to find themselves. — Soren Kierkegaard

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

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

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

Was once on trauma duty when a young man about twenty years old was rolled in, shot in the buttock. — Atul Gawande

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

Once the Xerox copier was invented, private diplomacy died. There's no such thing as secrecy. It's just a question of whether it's leaked or revealed openly. — Andrew Young

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

She skinned her hair back into a ponytail, a style she knew was probably too young for her, but she planned to drive with her windows open and she could ditch the elastic band once she got to the lake. — Joanne Fluke

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

Vicky had once told her that she should not be ashamed of her pubic hair. Pubic hair was what men expected to see on women. Vicky said that there was a young prostitute at the Centre who had no pubic hair & many customers were known to shy off her because they thought that she was diseased. So Phyllis was resigned to displaying her pubic hair to all who wanted to see it.[MMT] — Nicholas Chong

Keep close to Nature's heart, yourself; and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean...

[John Muir to Samuel Hall Young] — Samuel Hall Young

Wherever I am, whatever I'm doing, alive or dead, young or old, my heart will always be with yours. Every beat you feel against your fingertips ... " His fingers tapped against my chest, once, twice. " ... is me calling out to you. It's you returning the call. It's us talking, communicating, bonding, sharing, Living
Kiersten, it's us living. — Rachel Van Dyken

I've tried to prepare my daughter for the phenomenon I've experienced of beautiful young women being dismissed and devalued as interchangeable. I tell Rachel that if a relationship doesn't make you feel good about yourself as an individual, then it's not right. My grandmother told me once years ago that if you're ever with somebody who you find embarrasses you in public or private, you're with the wrong person. Walk away. — Kathleen Turner

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

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

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

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

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

I once worked with the nicest young hairdresser and one afternoon when we had nothing to do he explained how to give a blowjob from a man's perspective, and I tell you it changed everything. After that, every man I went with called me 'a goddess', 'a revelation sent from God' and 'an oral-copulating genius'". — Marshall Thornton

It must be observed that fishing with any living bait is to be condemned for the same reason as fishing with a worm: in all such instances we torture two animals at once for our amusement. — Thomas Young

Change appears to us mysterious because it is invisible. It is impossible to see a tree grow tall or a man grow old, except with the precarious imagination of hindsight. A tree is small, and later it is tall. A man is young, and later he is old. A people are at peace, and later they are at war. In each case, the intermediate states are at once infinitely many and infinitely complex, which is why they exceed our finite perceptions. — Daniel Tammet

There is evidence that young men in the big law firms, although they still work harder than most of their clients, do not glory in putting in night work and weekend hours as they once did. — David Riesman

You're only young once, they say, but doesn't it go on for a long time? More years than you can bear. — Hilary Mantel

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

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