All At Once Quotes

Just one word, infused with naked desperation; half prayer, half enchantment. It felt like a freezing charm on her soul making her his prisoner, yet setting her free all at once. ~ Genevieve Dewey

Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth. ~ Diane Ackerman

Since Monday, it has been raining buoyant summer rain shot through with sun, but dark at night and full of sound, full of dripping leaves, watery chimings, sleepless scuttlings. Billy Bob is wide-awake, dry-eyed, though everything he does is a little frozen and his tongue is as stiff as a bell tongue. It has not been easy for him, Miss Bobbit's going. Because she'd meant more than that. Than what? Than being thirteen years old and crazy in love. She was the queer things in him, like the pecan tree and liking books and caring enough about people to let them hurt him. She was the things he was afraid to show anyone else. And in the dark the music trickled through the rain: won't there be nights when we will hear it just as though it were really there? And afternoons when the shadows will be all at once confused, and she will pass before us, unfurling across the lawn like a pretty piece of ribbon? ~ Truman Capote

Then all at once there was a flutterment and a scufflement and a loud "Squeak!"

The other squirrels scuttered away into the bushes.

When they came back very cautiously, peeping round the tree--there was Old Brown sitting on his door-step, quite still, with his eyes closed, as if nothing had happened.

But Nutkin was in his waistcoat pocket!

This looks like the end of the story; but it isn't. ~ Beatrix Potter

Everything makes sense a bit at a time. But when you try to think of it all at once, it comes out wrong. ~ Terry Pratchett

You want waffles?" I tried to keep the skepticism from my voice. "No firstborn or a pot of gold?"
"I'm not a leprechaun, Sam. And what would I do with a baby?" Her eyebrow shot back up, and she crossed her arms. "I want waffles. Take it or leave it."
I glanced at Brid, who was staring at Ashley shrewdly.
"Let's talk numbers," she said. "Are we talking, like, twenty waffles all at once? Or a waffle a week for six months? What?"
"Every day for two years," Ashley said.
"That's outrageous," Brid sputtered. ~ Lish McBride

To celebrate my first hour of freedom. It's been going on nearly six months, and all at once I've thrown it off. I could never have guessed, even yesterday how easy it would be to put an end to it if I wanted. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Let us therefore reject all superstition in order to become more human; but in speaking against fanaticism, let us not imitate the fanatics: they are sick men in delirium who want to chastise their doctors. Let us assuage their ills, and never embitter them, and let us pour drop by drop into their souls the divine balm of toleration, which they would reject with horror if it were offered to them all at once. ~ Voltaire

In the first place I spent most of my time at home, reading. I tried to stifle all that was continually seething within me by means of external impressions. And the only external means I had was reading. Reading, of course, was a great help--exciting me, giving me pleasure and pain. But at times it bored me fearfully. One longed for movement in spite of everything, and I plunged all at once into dark, underground, loathsome vice of the pettiest kind. My wretched passions were acute, smarting, from my continual, sickly irritability I had hysterical impulses, with tears and convulsions. I had no resource except reading, that is, there was nothing in my surroundings which I could respect and which attracted me. I was overwhelmed with depression, too; I had an hysterical craving for incongruity and for contrast, and so I took to vice. I have not said all this to justify myself .... But, no! I am lying. I did want to justify myself. I make that little observation for my own benefit, gentlemen. I don't want to lie. I vowed to myself I would not. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

The paths we take in our lives are also in the hands of God, and He can guide our steps. Elder Richard G. Scott said, "The Lord has a purpose for you, individually. . . . Discover it and fulfill it. It will likely not be revealed all at once but will be unfolded line upon line. As you pray and work hard, you will find threads of understanding that will lead you to the path the Lord wants you to follow for the greatest enduring, meaningful attainment, contribution, joy, and peace of mind. Faithfully and courageously follow those threads of understanding and direction."2 ~ Brad Wilcox

What Jessica said - hair much shorter, wearing a darker mouth of different outline, harder lipstick, her typewriter banking in a phalanx of letters between them - was: "We're going to be married. We're trying very hard to have a baby."
All at once there is nothing but his asshole between Gravity and Roger. "I don't care. Have his baby. I'll love you both - just come with me Jess, please ... I need you ... "
She flips a red lever on her intercom. Far away a buzzer goes off. "Security." Her voice is perfectly hard, the word still clap-echoing in the air as in through the screen door of the Quonset office wth a smell of tide flats come the coppers, looking grim. Security. Her magic word, her spell against demons. ~ Thomas Pynchon

I didn't understand time, either, when I was young. How could I know that after I died, Parchman would pull me from the sky? How could I imagine Parchman would pull me to it and refuse to let go? And how could I conceive that Parchman was past, present and future all at once? That the history and sentiment that carved the place out of the wilderness would show me that time is a vast ocean, and that everything is happening at once? ~ Jesmyn Ward

One problem with how we think about the Bible is that people tend to jam it into narrower categories, when in fact it is many things all at once. ~ David Plotz

Early in the summer of 1980, shortly after his son turned three, A. and the boy spent a week together in the country, in a house owned by friends who were off on vacation. A. noticed that Superman was playing in a local theater and decided to take the boy, on the off-chance that he would be able to sit through it. For the first half of the film, the boy was calm, working his way through a bin of popcorn, whispering his questions as A. had instructed him to do, and taking the business of exploding planets, rocket ships, and outer space without much fuss. But then something happened. Superman began to fly, and all at once the boy lost his composure. His mouth dropped open, he stood up in his seat, spilled his popcorn, pointed at the screen, and began to shout: Look! Look! He's flying! ~ Paul Auster

Still, we took what we could get. We were wrapped up in each other, feeling happy and sad all at once, pretty much all the time ~ Tahereh Mafi

When someone beats a rug with a stick, he is not beating the rug – his aim is to get rid of the dust. Your inward is full of dust from the veil of 'I'-ness, and that dust will not leave all at once. With every cruelty and every blow, it departs little by little from the heart's face, sometimes in sleep and sometimes in wakefulness. ~ Rumi

She tried to think about what lay ahead, but soon gave up. 'Words turn into stone,' Nimit had told her. She settled deep into her seat and closed her eyes. All at once the image came to her of the sky she had seen while swimming on her back. And Erroll Garner's 'I'll Remember April.' Let me sleep, she thought. Just let me sleep. And wait for the dream to come. ~ Haruki Murakami

Defiance. He swallowed. It wasn't enough for him - not anymore. He wanted to be more than her defiance. He wanted to be her strength, her amusement. He wanted to be her lover. He wanted to be her every wicked desire and her safe haven, all at once. ~ Courtney Milan

Drama and comedy, to me, are all about being surprising, coherent, and true, all at once. ~ Tim Blake Nelson

It is one of their beauties, the Irish, the way they crush and expand the language all at once How they mangle it and revere it. How they color even their silences. ~ Colum McCann

A group of people shouldered their way up to the bar counter at Neil's back, pushing him into Andrew. Andrew didn't budge beneath his weight. He was something solid to lean against, something violent and fierce and unmoving. Neil couldn't remember what it felt like to have someone hold him up. It was terrifying and liberating all at once. His life was out of his control now; he was giving it to Andrew and hoping Andrew would keep it safe. ~ Nora Sakavic

This summer night deep down under the stars was all the things you would ever feel or see or hear in your life, drowning you all at once. ~ Ray Bradbury

He kisses me like he's giving me every kiss he wishes he could have given me the past, and every kiss he'll wish he could give me in the future.
All at once. ~ Colleen Hoover

Each would collapse beneath the process. We've just wrongly assumed that it has to happen all at once, and we give up at the thought of it. We are A-to-Z thinkers, fretting about A, obsessing over Z, yet forgetting all about B through Y. We ~ Ryan Holiday

Time was such an element, she now believed. The stretch of existence between events, consisting of countless other events, all strung together in complex patterns of cause and effect, all laid out like images sewn onto a tapestry, creating a sequence of scenes that, once one stood back, was revealed to be co-existing. Present all at once. ~ Steven Erikson

The near future? Pop will go down into the tube station at midnight and have sex. Lots of sex. And all those genres I listed earlier? Every single year will generate a list of new genres like that. Then every six months. Then every month. Then every week. Pop will fuck and mutate and survive. The new sounds will be everywhere, in too many places for us to notice them all at once. A million glorious bursts of incoherent noise. ~ Warren Ellis

It is funny how when you have been hurt in love and you fall in love again, every reason you have for loving that person is both enough and not, all at once. ~ R. YS Perez

When a person cares for another, he wants to know everything about her all at once. ~ Heather W. Petty

People try to change too much at once and it becomes overwhelming, and they end up falling off the program. So gradually changing bad habits makes much more of a difference than trying to change them all at once. ~ Ian K. Smith

She spoke quietly then, the tiniest crack in her voice, and all at once Lacey Pemerton was not Lacey Pemberton. She was just - like, a person. ~ John Green

The dining room was formidably elegant--I couldn't take it in all at once. A swift glance gave the impression of the family colors, augmented by gold, blended with artistry and grace. The table was high, probably to accommodate the elderly Prince. The chairs, one for each diner, were especially fine--no angles, everything curves and ovals and pleasing lines.
The meal, of course, was just as good. Again I left the others to work at a polite conversation. I bent my attention solely to my food, eating a portion of every single thing offered, until at last--and I never thought it would happen again, so long it had been--I was truly stuffed.
This restored to me a vestige of my customary good spirits, enough so that when the Prince asked me politely if the dinner had been sufficient, and if he could have anything else brought out, I smiled and said, "It was splendid. Something to remember all my life. But--" I realized I was babbling, and shut up.
The Prince's dark eyes narrowed with amusement, though his mouth stayed solemn--I knew I'd seen that expression before. "Please. You have only to ask."
"I don't want a thing. It was more a question, and that is: If you can eat like this every day, why aren't you fatter than five oxen?"
Bran set his goblet down, his eyes wide. "Burn it, Mel, I was just thinking the very same!"
That was the moment I realized that, though our rank was as high as theirs, or nearly, and our name as old, Branaric and I must have s ~ Sherwood Smith

You do not die all at once. Some tissues live on for minutes, even hours, giving still their little cellular shrieks, molecular echoes of the agony of the whole corpus. ~ Richard Selzer

Injuries, therefore, should be inflicted all at once, that their ill savour being less lasting may the less offend; whereas, benefits should be conferred little by little, that so they may be more fully relished. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

His voice was like a warm tea laced with arsenic, all at once soothing me and killing me. ~ Cassia Leo

Suddenly, all at once, she knows, knows that he doesn't understand her, that he never will, that he lacks the power to understand such perverseness. And that he can never move fast enough to catch her. ~ Marguerite Duras

Now it was every guilty breath sucked in after a sort-of-lie. It was the drop of the stomach after finding a body. It was the gnawing suspicion that you were leasable, that you were too much trouble, that you were better off dead. It was the shame of wanting something that you shouldn't; it was the ugly thrill of nearly being dead. It was all of those things, all at once. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

He had murdered any illlusion of Alex Remington. The golden pendant had been replaced by a spiked dog collar, and he was wearing a black T-shirt that hugged his form and showed off the many designs on his arms: Fenris on the right wrist, and Echidna, the greek mother of monsters, high on his left arm. The norse world serpent was wrapped around his left wrist, and a new design had recently been added: Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guarded the gates of Hades. The world serpent was partially obscurred by a black leather knife sheath, which held a silver knife Aubrey had taken from a vampire hunter a few thousand years earlier.
His hair was slightly touseled, as if he'd been running, and a few strands fell across his face.
Looking at him now, Jessica couldn't imagine how she had ever mistaken him for a human. But illusion was Aubrey's art. And it was simple to fool people who expected nothing else.
For the moment, Aubrey appeared to be exactly what he was: stunning, michievous, and completely deadly all at once ~ Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

...the capacity to identify with others is definitely not gained all at once or from the start. The mind has to increase its capacity for inclusiveness through a slow and arduous growth process, and thus this capacity gets a little bigger (moving from egocentric to ethnocentric - from "me" to "us"), then a little bigger (from ethnocentric to worldcentric - from "us" to "all of us"), and a little bigger still (from worldcentric to integral, which starts to include even other species, resulting eventually in a "cosmic consciousness" - from "all of us" to "all of reality). ~ Ken Wilber

In a universe in which past, present, and future came into existence all at once, complete from beginning to end, with all possible outcomes of every life woven through the tapestry, there is no chance, only choice, no luck, but only consequences. ~ Dean Koontz

The days of infinity are endless. Its hours cannot be counted or found on a clock. There is no north, south, east, or west. These are just concepts. Infinity is forever, everywhere all at once. And that's all there is. ~ Frederick Lenz

Left alone, I am overtaken by the northern void-no wind, no cloud, no track, no bird, only the crystal crescents between peaks, the ringing monuments of rock that, freed from the talons of ice and snow, thrust an implacable being into the blue. In the early light, the rock shadows on the snow are sharp; in the tension between light and dark is the power of the universe. This stillness to which all returns, this is reality, and soul and sanity have no more meaning than a gust of snow; such transience and insignificance are exalting, terrifying, all at once ... Snow mountains, more than sea or sky, serve as a mirror to one's own true being, utterly still, utterly clear, a void, an Emptiness without life or sound that carries in Itself all life, all sound. ~ Peter Matthiessen

Men were not as disciplined or as smart as women, she though: men almost always took what they were offered, their appetites too crude and raw to put up much resistance. There were like children, gobbling down their candy all at once, with no thought about the consequences of their greed. ~ Lauren Groff

In my head I know I've been in love before, but it doesn't feel like it. Being in love with you is better than the first time. It feels like the first time and the last time and the only time all at once. ~ Nicola Yoon

Very few women manage to have it all; certainly not all at once. ~ Gail Sheehy

New York remains what it has always been : a city of ebb and flow, a city of constant shifts of population and economics, a city of virtually no rest. It is harsh, dirty, and dangerous, it is whimsical and fanciful, it is beautiful and soaring - it is not one or another of these things but all of them, all at once, and to fail to accept this paradox is to deny the reality of city existence. ~ Paul Goldberger

They were contemplating moving into another house or, more exactly, loudly saying to each other, so as to be overheard by anyone who might be listening, that they were contemplating moving, when all at once the fiend was gone, as happens with the moskovett, that bitter blast, that colossus of cold air that blows on our eastern shores throughout March, and then one morning you hear the birds, and the flags hang flaccid, and the outlines of the world are again in place. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Language is like a road, it cannot be perceived all at once because it unfolds in time, whether heard or read. This narrative or temporal element has made writing and walking resemble each other. ~ Rebecca Solnit

Human beings don't work like this in China. Time goes slower there. Here we have to hurry, feed the hungry children before we're too old to work. I feel like a mother cat hunting for its kittens. She has to find them fast because in a few hours she will forget how to count or that she had any kittens at all. I can't sleep in this country because it doesn't shut down for the night. Factories, canneries, restaurants - always somebody somewhere working through the night. It never gets done all at once here. Time was different in China. One year lasted as long as my total time here; one evening so long, you could visit your women friends, drink tea, and play cards at each house, and it would still be twilight. It even got boring, nothing to do but fan ourselves. Here midnight comes and the floor's not swept, the ironing's not ready, the money's not made. I would be still young if we lived in China. (1983: 98) ~ Maxine Hong Kingston

We are all caught in the stream of a complicated legacy - a proof of the limits of human reason, a proof of our boundlessness. A declaration that were were down here on this crowded, lonely planet, a declaration that we mattered, we living clumps of ash, that each of us was once somebody, that we strove for what we could never have, that we could admit as much. That was us - funny and lousy and great all at once. ~ Janna Levin

This was combat. You created the chaos, but at the same time, tried not to be a part of it, tried not to be affected by it. It was a strange mix of hot-blooded instinct, and cold-blooded logic. It was fighting with emotion, but thinking with your head, almost as though your mind was the handler and your body the beast, the two of them at odds, and yet oddly the same. And when the two forces fell into step with each other, it was sickening and exhilarating all at once. ~ D.J. Molles

Love is an endless drive on a winding road. You can't see everything about another person all at once. ~ Lauren Kate

But we cannot do it all at once; it is a sequence. An unfolding process. We can only control the end by making a choice at each step. ~ Philip K. Dick

Whatever may be our natural talents, the art of writing is not acquired all at once. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I can be glib and truthful all at once. ~ Richard Russo

I used my arm to crush her against me, enjoying the harsh gasp that escaped her lips. A part of me relished the thought of hurting her even just a little. It's how she affected me. She made me want to hurt her and protect her all at once. ~ B.B. Reid

But it must be hard living the Lily Maid, the Goddess-Virgin, and the other all at once. Humans just do smell bad sometimes. ~ John Steinbeck

Do not be discouraged because you cannot learn all at once; learn one thing
at a time, learn it well, and treasure it up, then learn another truth and
treasure that up, and in a few years you will have a great store of useful
knowledge ... ~ Wilford Woodruff

Were on a journey to visit our relatives, our nephews and nieces, and first, second, and third cousins, and the other descendants of our grandfathers, who live on the East side of these truly hospitable mountains, said Thorin, not quite knowing what to say all at once in a moment, when obviously the exact truth would not do at all. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

You learn to forgive (the South) for its narrow mind and growing pains because it has a huge heart. You forgive the stifling summers because the spring is lush and pastel sprinkled, because winter is merciful and brief, because corn bread and sweet tea and fried chicken are every bit as vital to a Sunday as getting dressed up for church, and because any southerner worth their salt says please and thank you. It's soft air and summer vines, pine woods and fat homegrown tomatoes. It's pulling the fruit right off a peach tree and letting the juice run down your chin. It's a closeted and profound appreciation for our neighbors in Alabama who bear the brunt of the Bubba jokes. The South gets in your blood and nose and skin bone-deep. I am less a part of the South than it is part of me. It's a romantic notion, being overcome by geography. But we are all a little starry-eyed down here. We're Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara and Rosa Parks all at once. ~ Amanda Kyle Williams

I dont ever want to do anything mediocre. I hear the music in the charts and I dont mean to be rude, but those people have no soul. Learning from music is like eating a meal - you have to pace yourself. You cant take everything from it all at once. I want to be different, definitely. Im not a one trick pony. Im at least a five-trick pony. ~ Amy Winehouse

Then all at once he´d hear his own voice enunciating clearly and firmly, feel its reverberance along the walls and ceiling, feel ears growing tense, men and women leaning forward in their chairs, see the rows of faces quite clearly, the groups of people who couldn´t find seats crowding at the doors. Phrases like `protest, massaction, united working-class of this country and the world, revolution´, would light up the eyes and faces under him like the glare of a bonfire. ~ John Dos Passos

Jeff didn't believe in work-life balance," says Kim Rachmeler. "He believed in work-life harmony. I guess the idea is you might be able to do everything all at once. ~ Brad Stone

In a flash, at a trumpet crash, I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, Is immortal diamond. ~ Wesley Hill

The AIDS epidemic has rolled back a big rotting log and revealed all the squirming life underneath it, since it involves, all at once, the main themes of our existence: sex, death, power, money, love, hate, disease and panic. No American phenomenon has been so compelling since the Vietnam War. ~ Edmund White

But Finn was like no one else. He could be funny, teasing, informative all at once. I was discovering that smart, engaged dialogue with a man is extremely erotic. Cleverness is an aphrodisiac. ~ Jane Lotter

Time Dreams. They are dreams, like any other dream. They are dreams about space and Time. They are reoccurring. They don't happen all at once, or in any particular order. They are random. They seem real, but so does life. What sense is it that ~ Tom Stafford

Oh sure, some people give a little bit each day. But there are one or two special souls who, when you least expect it, give an entire life's worth all at once. ~ Pleasefindthis

The pressure in the airlock grew, and the folds of her suit found every raised scar across her body, wrinkles pressing where wrinkles had once burned. It was a million pricks from a million gentle needles, every sensitive part of her touched all at once, as if this airlock remembered, as if it knew her. A lover's apology. ~ Hugh Howey

The behavior of the crowd at Churchill Downs is like 100,000 vicious Hyenas going berserk all at once in a space about the size of a 777 jet or the White House lawn. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Wonder at what point a child becomes a person. Does it happen all at once, or slowly, in stages? Is there an age, a week, a moment, at which all the secrets of the universe are revealed and adulthood descends on a cloud from heaven, altering the brain forever? Will the child-me slink off one day, never to return? ~ Meg Rosoff

Our bodies are garbage heaps: we collect experience, and from the decomposition of the thrown-out eggshells, spinach leaves, coffee grinds, and old steak bones out of our minds, come nitrogen, heat, and very fertile soil. Out of this fertile soil bloom our poems and stories. But this does not come all at once. It takes time. Continue to turn over and over the organic details of your life until some of them fall through the garbage of discursive thoughts to the solid ground of black soil. ~ Natalie Goldberg

THEY bury their dead in vaults, above the ground. These vaults have a resemblance to houses - sometimes to temples; are built of marble, generally; are architecturally graceful and shapely; they face the walks and driveways of the cemetery; and when one moves through the midst of a thousand or so of them and sees their white roofs and gables stretching into the distance on every hand, the phrase 'city of the dead' has all at once a meaning to him. ~ Mark Twain

Our life comes in segments, and we have to understand that we can have it all if we're not trying to do it all at once. ~ Madeleine Albright

I think, maybe,
I fell in love with your
patterns and inconsistencies,
like the way you squeak
in your sleep.
And the way your heart beats.

I want to be your heartbeat
just to be that much
closer to you,
living there inside your chest,
making a home
under your flesh.

And waking up to
sunshine is nice,
I guess,
but waking to your smile
is like having sunshine
in my bed every morning,
warmth radiating
from your side
of the mattress.

And I would love to make
you a regular thing;
pillow talk in evenings,
coffee and muffins in the morning,
making everyday
as stunning as this one.

take me in small doses;
I'll take you all at once. ~ Charlotte Scott

One of the strangest catastrophes that is in any history. A great king, with strong armies and mighty fleets, a great treasure and powerful allies, fell all at once, and his whole strength, like a spider's web, was ... irrecoverably broken at a touch. ~ Gilbert Burnet

When my own mother died, there seemed to me to be no answer to anything. For a time the only universality was death. And then I remember walking in the dusk along the quiet little street toward the house now so empty and meaningless. There was light enough from the sky to cast the lattice shadow of leaves on the walk. The sound of the river was steady and swift, and the air smelled of sulphur from the mills beyond it. As I looked up, a delicate petal of moon drifted into the tender blue, and all at once I thought, How beautiful God made the world! How wonderful that the stars still shine! And I was comforted. ~ Gladys Taber

Attempts at description are stupid. Who can all at once describe a human being? Even when he is presented to us we only begin that knowledge of his appearance which must be completed by innumerable impressions under differing circumstances. ~ George Eliot

This household happiness did not come all at once, but John and Meg had found the key to it, and each year of married life taught them how to use it, unlocking the treasuries of real home love and mutual helpfulness, which the poorest may possess, and the richest cannot buy. This is the sort of shelf on which young wives and mothers may consent to be laid, safe from the restless fret and fever of the world, finding loyal lovers in the little sons and daughters who cling to them, undaunted by sorrow, poverty, or age, walking side by side, through fair and stormy weather, with a faithful friend, who is, in the true sense of the good old Saxon word, the 'house-band,' and learning, as Meg learned, that a woman's happiest kingdom is home, her highest honor the art of ruling it not as a queen, but as a wise wife and mother. ~ Louisa May Alcott

Little-boy love ... the cleanest pain I've ever known. Love without desire, conditions, or limits - a pure and radiant glow in the heart that could make me giddy and sad and glorious all at once. Where does it go? Why, in all their experiments, did the Magi never try to capture that purity in a bottle? Perhaps they couldn't. ~ Christopher Moore

So the first step out of childhood is made all at once, without looking before or behind, without caution, and nothing held in reserve. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

( ... ) the train goes fast and is going fast when it crosses a little trestle. You catch the sober, metallic, pure, late-light, unriffled glint of the water between the little banks, under the sky, and see the cow standing in the water upstream near the single leaning willow. And all at once you feel like crying. But the train is going fast, and almost immediately whatever you feel is taken away from you, too. ~ Robert Penn Warren

What makes us humans? We are not good or bad. We are yes, no, and maybe all at once. Machines are neither good or back either. It is the people using them who make the distinction. ~ Jennifer Megan Varnadore

This was the desert, everything all at once, whether it was needed or not. What survived had learned to save, live carefully, and keep a low profile, even appear to be dead for long periods. Perseverance and patience. ~ James Anderson

He never spoke a word; yet my entire body was aflame. With shameful joy in my heart, I trembled as I moved against his hands, seeking more of the delicious rapture he was giving me. He played me like a stringed instrument, awakening within me a harmony that I had never known existed, producing profound and unimagined tunes.
When I felt him enter me I clung to him, pressing him ever closer, our two bodies fused as one. As he moved with me towards the brink of ecstasy, I was overwhelmed by an intense need that until that moment had never been recognized. All at once, just as I heard his own fevered exclamation, I felt the core of my womanhood explode with pleasure, as if my body had splintered into a thousand brilliant fragments of sensation and light. ~ Syrie James

It is seldom, that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. Slavery has so frightful an aspect to men accustomed to freedom, that it must steal upon them by degrees, and must disguise itself in a thousand shapes, in order to be received. ~ David Hume

My personal belief is that everything is always happening all at once. ~ Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Nothing is accomplished all at once, and it is one of my great maxims, and one of the most completely verified, that Nature makes no leaps: a maxim which I have called the law of continuity. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

I could almost see the resignation on the old man's face. I knew he would draw a breath and sigh that I insisted on stacking all my pain in one pile, facing it all at once."
p. 480 Fitz about Chade ~ Robin Hobb

How trite, but true: things change. Some all at once, some over a lifetime. ~ Mira T. Lee

Henry lifted his head and looked directly at me. I froze where I stood, feeling as if he had just told me a secret with that look. It was new . It was a question and a statement and a quick, hidden secret all at once.. ~ Julianne Donaldson

There are moments in your life when the big pieces slide and shift. Sometimes the big changes dong happen gradually but all at once. That's how it was for us. That was the day we discovered that friends can do things for you that your parents can't. ~ Ann Brashares

Never allow any unnecessary or vain thought to occupy your mind. This is more easily said than done. You cannot make your mind a blank all at once. So in the beginning try to prevent evil or idle thoughts by occupying your mind with the analysis of your own faults, or the contemplation of the Perfect Ones. ~ H. P. Blavatsky

It's not that we have to leave this life one day, it's how many things we have to leave all at once: holding hands, hotel rooms, wine, summertime,
drunkenness, and the physics of falling leaves, clothing, myrrh, perfumed hair, flirting friends, two strangers' glance; the reflection of the moon, with words like, 'Soon' ... 'do you
want me?' ... '...to lie enlaced' ... 'and sleep entwined' thinking ahead, with thoughts behind...?' Ô, Why!
Why can't we leave this life slowly? ~ Roman Payne

Astarte has come again, more powerful than before. She possesses me. She lies in wait for me.

December 97

My cruelty has also returned: the cruelty which frightens me. It lies dormant for months, for years, and then all at once awakens, bursts forth and - once the crisis is over - leaves me in mortal terror of myself.

Just now in the avenue of the Bois, I whipped my dog till he bled, and for nothing - for not coming immediately when I called! The poor animal was there before me, his spine arched, cowering close to the ground, with his great, almost human, eyes fixed on me... and his lamentable howling! It was as though he were waiting for the butcher! But it was as if a kind of drunkenness had possessed me. The more I struck out the more I wanted to strike; every shudder of that quivering flesh filled me with some incomprehensible ardour. A circle of onlookers formed around me, and I only stopped myself for the sake of my self-respect.

Afterwards, I was ashamed.

I am always ashamed of myself nowadays. The pulse of life has always filled me with a peculiar rage to destroy. When I think of two beings in love, I experience an agonising sensation; by virtue of some bizarre backlash, there is something which smothers and oppresses me, and I suffocate, to the point of anguish.

Whenever I wake up in the middle of the night to the muted hubbub of bumps and voices which suddenly become perceptible in the dormant city - ~ Jean Lorrain

Some feelings are quite untranslatable; no language has yet been found for them. They gleam upon us beautifully through the dim twilight of fancy, and yet when we bring them close to us, and hold them up to the light of reason, lose their beauty all at once, as glow worms which gleam with such a spiritual light in the shadows of evening, when brought in where the candles are lighted, are found to be only worms like so many others. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It seemed to him as if he sat behind the tiller of his custom-made unique quibble, facing a red light, green light, amber light all at once; no rational response was possible. Her irrationality made it so. The terrible power, he thought, of illogic. Of the archetypes. Operating out of the drear depths of the collective unconscious which joined him and her - and everyone else - together. In a knot which never could be undone, as long as they lived.
No wonder, he thought, some people, many people, long for death. ~ Philip K. Dick

Her arms reached up to wrap around his neck, holding on as if she would never let go. She kissed him back with an ardor that astonished, gratified, and aroused him all at once, and for a moment, he lost himself in the kiss, and in the woman, thinking to himself, now this, this is magic. ~ Deborah Blake

Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'
'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.
'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'
'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'
'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand. ~ Margery Williams

Sometimes, he said, the important things take time, sometimes they don't just happen all at once, sometimes answers come out of time and struggle, and learning. sometimes you just have to try again in a different way. ~ Lynne Cox