Familiar Faces Quotes

For a moment, I'll just stand there, looking. Taking in the sight of so many familiar faces, the face of the mam I love. The person who taught me what it was to be honestly generous, to give without expectation or resentment. Whose steady demeanor and realism helped me to learn that attempting to achieve perfection with every decision is a sure path to unhappiness; that when it comes to choosing a house or a car or a television or a loaf of bread, good enough really is good enough. Whose cereal-slurping helped me learn that being irritated at someone isn't the same as ceasing to love him, a distinction that I know should be obvious but which has always troubled me. Who taught me that together is better than alone, even if it's sometimes harder, even if I sometimes forget. ~ Alexandra Oliva

People with a condition called prosopagnosia cannot distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar faces. They rely entirely on cues such as hairlines, gait, and voices to recognize people they know. Pondering this condition led researchers Daniel Tranel and Antonio Damasio to try something clever: even though prosopagnosics cannot consciously recognize faces, would they have a measurable skin conductance response to faces that were familiar? Indeed, they did. Even though the prosopagnosic truly insists on being unable to recognize faces, some part of his brain can (and does) distinguish familiar faces from unfamiliar ones. ~ David Eagleman

I walked around Soho's street for over an hour, running into familiar faces but never once stopping to chat. It was then that I felt something discomforting and comforting all at once. I didn't want to be here, in this city, anymore. ~ Tablo

When you see the same familiar faces, it's nice when you get a chance to play with the same musicians. You start to develop this shorthand so everybody knows where you're at and where you're going, but then again, there are always surprises. But the more people are comfortable with the material, the more free you can be with the music. ~ David Sanborn

not that I'd even been thinking about Cinzia until the moment before, but it had all seemed so solid, so immutable, the whole social system of the building, a nexus where I could always stop in and see people, say hello, find out what was going on. People who had known my mother. People who had known my dad. And the farther I walked away, the more upset I got, at the loss of one of the few stable and unchanging docking-points in the world that I'd taken for granted: familiar faces, glad greetings: hey manito! For ~ Donna Tartt

I hadn't thought that as well as the obvious fears about money, and your future, losing your job would make you feel inadequate, and a bit useless. That it would be harder to get up in the morning than when you were rudely shocked into consciousness by the alarm. That you might miss the people you worked with, no matter how little you had in common with them. Or even that you might find yourself searching for familiar faces as you walked the high street. ~ Jojo Moyes

And the farther I walked away, the more upset I got, at the loss of one of the few stable and unchanging docking-points in the world that I'd taken for granted: familiar faces, glad greetings ... ~ Donna Tartt

Down in the deep, up in the sky , I see them always, far or nigh, And I shall see them till I die The old familiar faces. ~ Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

The place is changed now, and many familiar faces are gone, but the greatest change is myself. I was a child then, I had no idea what the world would be like. I wished to trust myself on the waters and the sea. Everything was romantic in my imagination. The woods were peopled by the mysterious good folk. The Lords and Ladies of the last century walked with me along the overgrown paths, and picked the old fashioned flowers among the box and rose hedges of the garden. ~ Beatrix Potter

...they were always going somewhere yet seemingly nowhere, some house, some club, some river, some place, all fixed by a nowhere ring of familiar faces. ~ Ivor W. Hartmann

Reality TV has blown away the need for a roster of familiar faces in films. Plus, films became franchise and didn't need stars. But the real difference between stars and celebrities is that stars have training and talent, and celebrities just have exposure. ~ Christopher Fowler

Father and Mother had told their own little lies very well, and I realized immediately that the Gerrisens didn't know a thing. And yet, my realization that they didn't know what I'd been through was like a cold shower for just a moment. Here I was looking at the first really familiar faces I'd seen in over a year, and they acted as though I'd merely been on vacation. ~ Diet Eman

Even among familiar faces, people often feel invisible and desolate, like an island in cold waters or a shadow apart from the crowd. Be the reason another never feels alone. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

I have had playmates, I have had companions; In my days of childhood, in my joyful school days - All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. ~ Charles Lamb

The woman was silent, her eyes on the floor. Shimamura had come to a point where he knew he was only parading his masculine shamelessness, and yet it seemed likely enough that the woman was familiar with the failing and need not be shocked by it. He looked at her. Perhaps it was the rich lashes of the downcast eyes that made her face seem warm and sensuous. She shook her head very slightly, and again a faint blush spread over her face. ~ Yasunari Kawabata

Cope? Adapt? Uh, no. These are military kids. They roll with it. I once asked a new student, 'See any familiar faces?' She pointed out various kids and replied, 'Seattle, Tampa, Okinawa, New Jersey.' For military dependents school is literally a non-stop revolving door of old and new friends. ~ Tucker Elliot

N the harshest days of leaf-bare clanmate turns upon clanmate danger lurks behind familiar faces and one more warrior may be lost forever ~ Erin Hunter

Five days later, I'm on the same journey, edging down the turnpike with the scrim of sunset lowering in the west, passing through Florida City, strip malls and car dealerships, melting into swampland and fishing tackle shops, past Manatee Bay onto the Overseas Highway. It's drifter territory, where people go to forget and to be forgotten. I've come to think of this land as a second home. The prison motel; the familiar faces though few of us have exchanged names. Each of us serving our sentence, waiting, waiting, because prison has made us more patient than we ever knew we could be, until we get the call that it's time; the end of the sentence, or just the end. ~ Patricia Engel

Groupies to me, were people who followed you around. Familiar faces who were always there, asking for autographs. We have more of those now, but they're not sexual. ~ Davy Jones

Emily Klein doesn't know she has killed him until the day of his funeral. Her loved ones, including, of course, her husband, are all at the church rather than at her bedside. That explains why there are no familiar faces around her this time when she regains consciousness. The ~ Diane Jeffrey

Women formed from black smoke come to me at night and they scream for me to not cut their throats or twist those tiny necks. They beg and cry. Then right at the moment when I can't take anymore, I rush up to them, slashing at the smoke with my hands. Do they go away? Never. They turn into familiar faces. ~ Kenya Wright

I fight for the men I've held in my arms, dying on foreign soil. I fight for their wives and children, who's names I heard whispered in their last breaths. I fight for we few who did come home, only to find our country full of strangers wearing familiar faces. I fight for my people impoverished to pay the debts of an Empire too weak to rule them, yet brands them criminals for wanting to rule themselves! I fight so that all the fighting I've already done hasn't been for nothing. I fight... because I must." ―Ulfric Stormcloak ~ Skyrim

We often take for granted those familiar faces and places, the repetitive nature of something once new, excitement wanes. To capture that early moment and hold onto it for all our days, true bliss. Looking at the old in in a different way, making it new once again. ~ Jonathan P. Lamas

The situation at Buffalo was a rough situation, and I appreciate the opportunity, but going back to Seattle was a better situation, even though I'm not the starter. I've got a chance to get back with some familiar faces, back at a place I'm familiar with. ~ Tarvaris Jackson

It is a sad but unavoidable fact of life," he began, "that as we age our social circles grow smaller. Whether from increased habit or diminished vigor, we suddenly find ourselves in the company of just a few familiar faces. ~ Amor Towles

London is my home ... I know what's right and wrong here, and it's nice to have somewhere familiar to go back to. ~ Jude Law

The real issue has nothing to do with whether women wear makeup or don't, gain weight or lose it, have surgery or shun it, dress up or down, make our clothing and faces and bodies into works of art or ignore adornment altogether. The real problem is our lack of choice. ~ Naomi Wolf

Musically, it's difficult to believe Jim has only two hands and one set of vocal cords. You would think that there were a dozen of him if you closed your eyes and listened. From a visual artist's standpoint, Jim is a man of a thousand faces, all spellbinding. ~ Jeff Mathews

There are so many issues that this country [the U.S.] has, and that the world faces, that it's important that we sit down and recognize our commonality. When we do that, we can actually work together to overcome some of the problems that we have. That, to me, is just a good starting place. ~ Paul Blackthorne

Every major difficulty you face in life is a fork in the road. You choose which track you will head down, toward breakdown or breakthrough. ~ John C. Maxwell

This street-this whole town-was so familiar that I looked straight through it, as if it were no longer a place unto itself but merely an opening onto the past. ~ Adam Haslett

Obviously, it has taken time to work with the players around me and with so many new faces coming in the summer, in a way it's been more difficult. ~ Frank Lampard

I won't lie to you - it was hilarious. Yes, we were in trouble, yes, this was a disaster, and so one and so forth, but I have to say, seeing those upturned faces, the looks, was bout the best thing that happened to us since we'd come to New York. ~ James Patterson

I was crying for joy, my Sassenach,' he said softly. He reached out slowly and took my face between his hands. And thanking God that I have two hands. That I have two hands to hold you with. To serve you with, to love you with. Thanking God that I am a whole man still, because of you. ~ Diana Gabaldon

Do not limit the limitless God! With Him, face the future unafraid because you are never alone. ~ Lettie Cowman

First you look for discipline and control. You want to exercise your will, bend the language your way, bend the world your way. You want to control the flow of impulses, images, words, faces, ideas. But there's a higher place, a secret aspiration. You want to let go. You want to lose yourself in language, become a carrier or messenger. ~ Don DeLillo

Listening to her, one experienced a deep uneasiness as of having avoided an urgent responsibility, like someone who, walking at night along the banks of a stream, catches a glimpse in the water of a white face or a moving limb and turns quickly away, refusing to help or to search for help. We all see the faces in the water. We smother our memory of them, even our belief in their reality, and become calm people of the world; or we can neither forget or help them. Sometimes by a trick of circumstances or dream or a hostile neighborhood of light we see our own face. ~ Janet Frame

Our culture is intent on taking the lines out of people's faces - surgically, with costly creams, and with fear and trembling - when, in fact, the opposite should be the case. As artists know, if there is anything behind a face, that face improves with age. ~ Karen DeCrow

Then she'd looked at him, and Finn saw something he'd seen on a thousand faces in the last six and a half years. Beat-down, hopeless, finished, blank. It was a look he had battled in his own reflection. ~ Amy Harmon

Now, as Mandelbrot points out, ... Nature has played a joke on the mathematicians. The 19th-century mathematicians may not have been lacking in imagination, but Nature was not. The same pathological structures that the mathematicians invented to break loose from 19th-century naturalism turn out to be inherent in familiar objects all around us. ~ Freeman Dyson

He lives to build, not boast, a generous race; No tenth transmitter of a foolish face. ~ Richard Savage

We don't know where we're going, but we're not going to stray from familiar paths. ~ Gary Hamel

Grinding the faces of the poor seems to be the policy of the Greens. ~ Jerry Pournelle

Will none wipe the sneer of the face of the cosmos? ~ Poul Anderson

I like people who would rather something be discovered than shoved in your face. ~ Amy Sedaris

Love. Gratitude. Humility. Service.
Do these look familiar?
Combined, they are the recipe for happiness. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Here was the real scandal of On Our Backs photography: We were women shooting other women - our names, faces, and bodies on the line - and we all brought our sexual agenda to the lens. Each pictorial was a memoir. That is quite the opposite of a fashion shoot at Vogue or Playboy, where the talent is a prop ...
When we began our magazine, female fashion and portrait models - all of them - were shot the same way kittens and puppies are photographed for holiday calendars: in fetching poses, with no intentions of their own. ~ Susie Bright

I don't like the gringos at all. They are very boring and all have faces like unbaked rolls. ~ Frida Kahlo

Goat face is a horrible insult. My face is practically perfect in every way. In fact, from now on I demand to be called Beautiful Bryan. ~ Daniel Bryan

To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Hands are difficult. You would think they would be just five quick lines, but no, they have personalities as intimate as faces. Elizabeth's hands, for instance - they are fine hands, with long fingers that remind me of tapered candles. A person one has loved - the memory of their hands. Did they flutter or sit still? Dry? Moist? Cool on a hot forehead? What? That is what I wish to express in my paintings. The memory - of the movement - of very particular hands, even though they appear to be unmoving on canvas. ~ Sarah Ruhl

Our faces will become works of art that our grandchildren will treasure. ~ Adriana Trigiani

Ordinarily, a person leaving a courtroom with a conviction behind him would wear a somber face. But I left with a smile. I knew that I was a convicted criminal, but I was proud of my crime. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

You must ingratiate yourself with those who can help you. Flatter them to their faces. Praise them to others who will carry your words back to them. ~ Chin-Ning Chu

You try to squeeze a little more Charmin in the pads when you face him. ~ Kevin Hodson

Working with Katherine Hepburn, she said to me, "Don't act." She said, "Read the lines. Just be. Just speak the lines." I said, "Okay." She said, "You look good. You got a good pair of shoulders, you got a good head, good face." ~ Anthony Hopkins

Truth, and goodness, and beauty, are but different faces of the same All ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Well, there is a piece of famous advice, grand advice even if it is German, to forget what you can't bear. The strong can forget, can shut out history.
Very good. Even if it is self-flattery to speak of strength--these aesthetic philosophers, they take a posture, but power sweeps postures away. Still, it's true you can't go on transposing one nightmare into another, Nietzsche was certainly right about that. The tender-minded must harden themselves. Is this world nothing but a barren lump of coke? No, no, but what sometimes seems a system of prevention, a denial of what every human being knows.
I love my children, but I am the world to them, and bring them nightmares.
I had this child by my enemy. And I love her. The sight of her, the odor of her hair, this minute, makes me tremble with love. Isn't it mysterious how I love the child of my enemy?
But a man doesn't need happiness for himself.
No, he can put up with any amount of torment--with recollections, with his own familiar evils, despair.
And this is the unwritten history of man, his unseen, negative accomplishment, his power to do without gratification for himself provided there is something great, something into which his being, and all beings can go. He does not need meaning as long as such intensity has scope. Because then it is self-evident; it is meaning. ~ Saul Bellow

In the face of death, especially violent death, things don't make sense anymore. So death is the dissolution of either physical form or psychological form. And when a form dissolves, always something shines through that had been obscured by the form. This is the formless One Life, the formless One Consciousness. ~ Eckhart Tolle

It was a rustling sound that woke me up. Because I'd had my eyes closed, the whiteness of the room seemed even brighter than before. There wasn't a shadow anywhere in front of me, and every object, every angle and curve stood out so sharply it made my eyes hurt. That's when Maman's friends came in. There were about ten in all, and they floated into the blinding light without a sound. They sat down without a single chair creaking. I saw them more clearly than I had ever seen anyone, and not one detail of their faces or their clothes escaped me. But I couldn't hear them, and it was hard for me to believe that they really existed. Almost all the women were wearing aprons, and the strings, which were tied tight around their waists, made their bulging stomachs stick out even more. I'd never noticed what huge stomachs old women can have. Almost all the men were skinny and carried canes. What struck me most about their faces was that I couldn't see their eyes, just a faint glimmer in a nest of wrinkles. When they'd sat down, most of them looked at me and nodded awkwardly, their lips sucked in by their toothless mouths, so that I couldn't tell if they were greeting me or if it was just a nervous tic. I think they were greeting me. It was then that I realized they were all sitting across from me, nodding their heads, grouped around the caretaker. For a second I had the ridiculous feeling that they were there to judge me. ~ Albert Camus

In every twenty-four hours there is always one which is full of anguish and self-pity and confusion and the desire to see other faces, but an hour passes quickly enough. ~ Tariq Ali

You have plenty of courage, I am sure," answered Oz. "All you need is confidence in yourself. There is no living thing that is not afraid when it faces danger. The true courage is in facing danger when you are afraid, and that kind of courage you have in plenty. ~ L. Frank Baum

Time Does Not Bring Relief
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go, - so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, "There is no memory of him here!"
And so stand stricken, so remembering him. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay