First Person Quotes

{On to contributions to evolutionary biology of 18th century French scientist, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon}

He was not an evolutionary biologist, yet he was the father of evolutionism. He was the first person to discuss a large number of evolutionary problems, problems that before Buffon had not been raised by anybody.... he brought them to the attention of the scientific world.

Except for Aristotle and Darwin, no other student of organisms [whole animals and plants] has had as far-reaching an influence.

He brought the idea of evolution into the realm of science. He developed a concept of the "unity of type", a precursor of comparative anatomy. More than anyone else, he was responsible for the acceptance of a long-time scale for the history of the earth. He was one of the first to imply that you get inheritance from your parents, in a description based on similarities between elephants and mammoths. And yet, he hindered evolution by his frequent endorsement of the immutability of species. He provided a criterion of species, fertility among members of a species, that was thought impregnable. ~ Ernst W. Mayr

Coming in second place just means you were the first person to lose ... ~ Jeff Hawkins

The earliest intelligence of the travellers' safe arrival at Antigua, after a favourable voyage, was received; though not before Mrs. Norris had been indulging in very dreadful fears, and trying to make Edmund participate them whenever she could get him alone; and as she depended on being the first person made acquainted with any fatal catastrophe, she had already arranged the manner of breaking it to all the others, when Sir Thomas's assurances of their both being alive and well made it necessary to lay by her agitation and affectionate preparatory speeches for a while. ~ Jane Austen

Sir Roderick Glossop, Honoria's father, is always called a nerve specialist, because it sounds better, but everybody knows that he's a sort of janitor to the looney-bin. I mean to say, when your uncle the Duke begins to feel the strain a bit and you find him in the blue drawing room sticking straws in his hair, old Glossop is the first person you send for. ... Practically every posh family in the country has called him in at one time or another, and I suppose that, being in that position - I mean, constantly having to sit on people's heads while their nearest and dearest phone to the asylum to send round the waggon - does tend to make a chappie take what you call a warped view of humanity. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

There was one story that anger certainly lit the fuse of. In the 1960's, in my home town of Jackson, the civil rights leader Medgar Evers was murdered on night in darkness and I wrote a story that same night about the murderer (identity unknown) called "Where Is The Voice Coming From?" But all that absorbed me, though it started as outrage, was the necessity I felt for entering into the mind and inside the skin of a character who could hardly have been more alien or repugnant to me. Trying for my utmost, I wrote in the first person. I was wholly vaunting the prerogative of the short-story writer. It is always vaunting, of course, to imagine yourself inside another person, but it is what a story writer does in every piece of work; it is his first step, and his last too, I suppose. I'm not sure this story was brought off; and I don't believe that my anger showed me anything about human character that my sympathy and rapport never had. ~ Eudora Welty

First person narrative is a very effective tool but you have to know as a writer how to make it work. ~ James McBride

By putting the first-person point of view in a naturalistic perspective, I believe that we may genuinely come to understand it for the first time. ~ Hilary Kornblith

Once we acquired the power to destroy ourselves, the very notion of human life had been altered; even the air we breathed was contaminated with the stench of death. Sachs was hardly the first person to come up with this idea, but considering what happened to him nine days ago, there's a certain eeriness to the obsession, as if it were a kind of deadly pun, a mixed-up word that took root inside him and proliferated beyond his control. ~ Paul Auster

USAGE, n. The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and Third being Custom and Conventionality. Imbued with a decent reverence for this Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to produce books that will live as long as the fashion. ~ Ambrose Bierce

I think that devices like Glass are going to do a terrific job of capturing your first-person perspective. And that's what people first think of when they think of GoPro. ~ Nick Woodman

The people were all busy in their cars, listening to the radio, so there was no one to smile at, so I just sent my love to the traffic lights. No one ever appreciates them, all day long, working so hard to turn red and yellow and green, right in time with us to make sure we don't crash into each other. If there was any tiny chance, even the tiniest chance, that they happened to be alive, I bet I was the first person ever to tell them they were special. You are special, I said out loud in my car, but in case they couldn't hear, I cracked my window open. "You are special," I said, to the night air.
And just like that, a green light. ~ Aimee Bender

Totally serious. I want to be the only guy who fucks you against windows, and also the first person you see in the morning-from where you lie, having stolen my pillow. I'd also like to be the person who gets you lime Popsicles when you've had bad sushi. We only have a few months left where it's potentially complicated. ~ Christina Lauren

Jeremy Popkin's collection of first-person narratives of the Haitian Revolution is an extremely valuable work, accessible, sound and intelligent. I only wish such a book had been available fifteen years ago when I was in the early stages of researching my series of novels. Popkin has been deft and tactful in stitching together these excerpts, and as a result, he manages to tell a complete version of the Revolution almost entirely in the words of the people who experienced it-this book engaged me deeply. ~ Madison Smartt Bell

She opened her eyes and looked into his rather intensely.
"What?" Alex asked.
"This cannot be."
"What can't be?" Alex asked her, more bafflement in his voice this time.
"I have been reading people all my life. I can even read cats and dogs. I've been doing it all my life and i've been here longer than the two of you put together."
"And?" Alex wanted to get to the point. Whatever the truth may be, he just wanted to hear it, wanted it on the table before them so he could get this over with and they can go home.
"AND ... you are the first person that has nothing for me to see."
"And here I was hoping you'd say I'd win the lottery or get married to a supermodel or something." Alex said, starting to laugh.
"You don't understand. I don't see anything, anything at all. There is nothing to you, nothing but what I see before me."
"So ... what does that mean?"
"It means you don't exist. ~ J.C. Joranco

Overdrive for a girl I barely know, all because she's the first person I've met who seems to speak my language. A few words of it anyway. ~ Jennifer Niven

He who harbors hate is the first person to be injured by it.
He who harbors love is the first person to benefit from it. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

If there's a character type I despise, it's the all-capable, all-knowing, physically perfect protagonist. My idea of hell would be to be trapped in a four-hundred page, first-person, first-tense, running monologue with a character like that. I think writers who produce characters along those lines should graduate from high school and move on. ~ Craig Johnson

Skaz is a rather appealing Russian word (suggesting "jazz" and "scat", as in "scat-singing", to the English ear) used to designate a type of first-person narration that has the characteristics of the spoken rather than the written word. ~ David Lodge

If you read philosophical texts of the tradition, you'll notice they almost never said 'I,' and didn't speak in the first person. From Aristotle to Heidegger, they try to consider their own lives as something marginal or accidental. What was essential was their teaching and their thinking. Biography is something empirical and outside, and is considered an accident that isn't necessarily or essentially linked to the philosophical activity or system. ~ Jacques Derrida

A forecasting game is a kind of simulation, a kind of scenario, a kind of teleconference, a kind of artifact from the future - and more - that enlists the participants as 'first-person forecasters.' ~ Howard Rheingold

If I ever woke up with a dead hooker in my hotel room, Matt would be the first person I'd call. ~ Ben Affleck

The novels of Daniel Defoe are fundamental to eighteenth-century ways of thinking. They range from the quasi-factual A Journal of the Plague Year, an almost journalistic (but fictional) account of London between 1664 and 1665 (when the author was a very young child), to Robinson Crusoe, one of the most enduring fables of Western culture. If the philosophy of the time asserted that life was, in Hobbes's words, 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short', novels showed ways of coping with 'brutish' reality (the plague; solitude on a desert island) and making the best of it. There was no questioning of authority as there had been throughout the Renaissance.
Instead, there was an interest in establishing and accepting authority, and in the ways of 'society' as a newly ordered whole.

Thus, Defoe's best-known heroine, Moll Flanders, can titillate her readers with her first-person narration of a dissolute life as thief, prostitute, and incestuous wife, all the time telling her story from the vantage point of one who has been accepted back into society and improved her behaviour. ~ Ronald Carter

Are you the first person to have this problem? You have to get up and hustle. Everybody is hustling, Lagos is about hustling, Nneoma said. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

There's a theory in gameplay, particularly in first person shooters, that sometimes you don't want to have that much of a character because then it destroys the experience of the player being that character. ~ David S.Goyer

Thank you, Caleb said, and hugged me once more. Part of me wanted to stay in Caleb's arms, because he'd always had this grounding effect on me. Caleb was my rational side. He was more than that; other than my mother, he was the first person I'd ever truly loved.
Caleb would always be my best friend. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

The first person that I ever heard sing a song I wrote was Jason Derulo. I was in the studio when he was doing it, and I mean, I've heard that guy's voice my whole life. When he was singing words I wrote, I started kind of choking up, but I tried to be all manly and puff my chest up and be all, 'Yeah, it's not a big deal.' ~ Charlie Puth

I think that there is an ongoing conspiracy in the philosophical community, an organized form of self-deception, as in a cult, to simply all together pretend that we knew what "first-person perspective" (or "quale" or "consciousness") means, so that we can keep our traditional debates running on forever. ~ Thomas Metzinger

Alex: Rosie, I wanted you to be the first person to no that I've decided to
become a heart surgeon!
Rosie: Cool, does it pay well?
Alex: Rosie, it's not about the money.
Rosie: Where I come from, it's all about the money. Probably because I
don't have any. ~ Cecelia Ahern

I definitely try to eat a healthy diet, but I am the first person to say I love unhealthy food. I would never tell you I don't. I love fried chicken or mac and cheese. Do I order them all the time when I'm out at restaurants? No, though I do have one splurge meal a week. ~ Rachel Nichols

The earth has been cultivated before it has been divided; the cultivation itself having been the only motive for a division, and for that law which secures to every one his property. For the first persons who have employed themselves in cultivation, have probably worked as much land as their strength would permit, and, consequently, more than was necessary for their own nourishment. ~ Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Baron De Laune

Contemplation is not and cannot be a function of this external self. There is an irreducible opposition between the deep transcendent self that awakens only in contemplation, and the superficial, external self which we commonly identify with the first person singular. ~ Thomas Merton

I am not the first person to give birth naturally. Billions of other women have come before me and have done this - so why can't I do it? ~ Gisele Bundchen

You're the first person I've seen here who's actually dressed like a monk." "It's a bathrobe. ~ Peter Watts

These notes are little pieces of history no one cares about, but they remind you that you're not the first person to hold that book. Someone else owned it first and read the exact same words, and one way or another, it impacted them. We're all connected. ~ Chelsea Sedoti

When it comes to exploring the mind in the framework of cognitive neuroscience, the maximal yield of data comes from integrating what a person experiences - the first person - with what the measurements show - the third person. ~ Daniel Goleman

Don't be fearful about the journey ahead; don't worry about where you are going or how you are going to get there. If you believe in the first person of the Trinity, God the Father, also believe in the second person of the Trinity, the one who came as the Light of the World, not only to die for people, but to light the way ... This one, Jesus Christ, is himself the Light and will guide your footsteps along the way. ~ Edith Schaeffer

However, she wouldn't be the first person to mistrust her nearest and dearest yet confide in the first stranger who comes along: a strange but true quirk of behaviour, whose root is easily traced to the human heart. Some people perhaps have nothing left to gain from those they live with; having revealed the emptiness of their souls, they secretly feel themselves to be judged with deserved severity; however, as they have a powerful craving for the flattery they need but lack, or a burning desire to appear to possess qualities they do not have, they hope to take by surprise the heart and esteem of those who are strangers to them, at the risk of one day falling from grace. ~ Honore De Balzac

The whole atmosphere of the book, the tone of 'The Hobbit,' is of a kid's adventure story, told in the first person by Tolkien, who is introducing young people to the notion of Middle-earth. A lot of it is very light-hearted. ~ Ian McKellen

Songwriters I've always been drawn to are people who deal with something of depth in the lyric writing ... I've always been influenced by the folk song, the storytelling tradition in folk music. And so for years I wrote mostly story songs. I still do that, but as I've gone on, it's gotten a little more personal. I used to write mostly in the third person. I write a little more in the first person now. ~ Bruce Hornsby

September put her hand on the grip of the Rivet Gun. She'd only just gotten it, and she'd promised to take copious notes for Belinda Cabbage, which probably did not mean handing it over to the first person who asked and taking notes on what she got for it. But more than that, she wanted it with her. It had chosen her. She felt safer with it, even though she knew it was probably quite dangerous.
"No," she said finally. "I can't. What if I need it?"
"Good girl," said the Minotaur. "A warrior never gives up her weapon. ~ Catherynne M Valente

How funny your name would be if you could follow it back to where the first person thought of saying it, naming himself that, or maybe some other persons thought of it and named that person. It would be like following a river to its source, which would be impossible. Rivers have no source. ~ John Ashbery

If I'm doing some weird tick with my mouth, or not standing still or something, I'll be the first person to notice it, and then want to change that. I think it's important just to maintain trajectory, to not just use your same tricks over and over. ~ Neil Patrick Harris

From a craft standpoint, telling a story in the first-person present tense over the course of 500 pages is a daunting challenge. ~ Joseph Boyden

You can never win as a sight-seer. Somebody else, more often than not the first person you meet when you get back home, has been there before you. ~ Alan Brien

The first person besides my mother who believed in me was a man whose last name I never knew. He was my boss, the manager of Swenson's Ice Cream shop. ~ Mona Simpson

I think it's the best thing I've ever done. I think it's realistic, and it's true to the me that has been developing over the years. I like first-person music. ~ John Lennon

She was the first person on either side of her family to go to college, and she held herself to insanely high standards. She worried a lot about whether she was good enough. It was surprising to see how relieved she seemed whenever I told her how amazing she was. I wanted her to feel strong and free. She was beautiful when she was free. ~ Rob Sheffield

Many BrainPal users find it useful to give their BrainPal a name other than BrainPal. Would you like to name your BrainPal at this time?
"Yes," I said.
Please speak the name you would like to give your BrainPal.
"Asshole," I said.
You have selected "Asshole," the BrainPal wrote, and to its credit it spelled the word correctly. Be aware that many recruits have selected this name for their BrainPal. Would you like to chose a different name?
"No," I said, and was proud that so many of my fellow recruits also felt this way about their BrainPal.
Your BrainPal is now Asshole, the BrainPal wrote. You may change this name in the future if you like. Now you must choose an access phrase to activate Asshole. While Asshole is active at all times it will only respond to commands after it has been activated. Please choose a short phrase. Asshole suggests "Activate Asshole" but you may choose another phrase. Please say your activation phrase now.
"Hey, Asshole," I said.
You have choosen "Hey, Asshole." Please say it again to confirm. I did. Then it asked me to choose a deactivation phrase. I chose (of course) "Go away, Asshole."
Would you like Asshole to refer to itself in the first person?
"Absolutely." I said.
I am Asshole.
"Of course you are. ~ John Scalzi

If we're reading a first-person account, we know that each and every one of us, myself included, have a great desire to be seen in a certain way, or to be perceived in a certain way. It's unavoidable. ~ Errol Morris

There has certainly been a great deal of work addressing the relationship between naturalism and the first-person perspective. Quite a number of philosophers have suggested that there are features of the first-person perspective that naturalism just cannot accommodate, whether it be qualitative character, or consciousness, or simply the ability we have to think of ourselves in a distinctively first-person manner. ~ Hilary Kornblith

I thought it was time to get a group together and the first person I thought of was Wayne Shorter. I called Wayne and in the meantime, Wayne called me to make an album with him, which was Super Nova. ~ Miroslav Vitous

During World War II, there had been a project to sabotage the Nazi nuclear weapons program. Years earlier, Leo Szilard, the first person to realize the possibility of a fission chain reaction, had convinced Fermi not to publish the discovery that purified graphite was a cheap and effective neutron moderator. Fermi had wanted to publish, for the sake of the great international project of science, which was above nationalism. But Szilard had persuaded Rabi, and Fermi had abided by the majority vote of their tiny three-person conspiracy. And so, years later, the only neutron moderator the Nazis had known about was deuterium.

The only deuterium source under Nazi control had been a captured facility in occupied Norway, which had been knocked out by bombs and sabotage, causing a total of twenty-four civilian deaths.

The Nazis had tried to ship the deuterium already refined to Germany, aboard a civilian Norwegian ferry, the SS Hydro.

Knut Haukelid and his assistants had been discovered by the night watchman of the civilian ferry while they were sneaking on board to sabotage it. Haukelid had told the watchman that they were escaping the Gestapo, and the watchman had let them go. Haukelid had considered warning the night watchman, but that would have endangered the mission, so Haukelid had only shaken his hand. And the civilian ship had sunk in the deepest part of the lake, with eight dead Germans, seven dead crew, and three dead civilian bystanders. S ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

HE WAS KNOWN As DJANGO, a Gypsy name meaning "I awake." His legal name-the name the gendarmes and border officials entered into their journals as his family crisscrossed Europe in their horsedrawn caravan-was jean Reinhardt. But when the family brought their travels to a halt alongside a hidden stream or within a safe wood to light their cookfire, they called him only by his Romany name. Even among his fellow Gypsies, "Django" was a strange name, a strong, telegraphic sentence due to its first-person verb construction. It was a name of which Django was exceedingly proud. It bore an immediacy, a sense of life, and a vision of destiny. ~ Michael Dregni

With the adult ones, I feel I need to get as deep inside the psychology of a character as I can, and that needs to be first-person. In the children's books, I feel I need some distance. I don't want to be the nine-year-old at the center of the story. I need to have some type of narrative voice. ~ John Boyne

The trade-off between speed and image quality is a key constraint of first-person action games, and the job of developing a workable engine involves constantly optimizing both elements. Gamers dream of the day they'll be able to haul their arsenals through three-dimensional environments of photographic clarity, playing 'Myst' with a meat ax. ~ Marc Laidlaw

The first person I knew who died was Beth March. I cried for three days. ~ A. Louise Robertson

It's finally happened; scientists claim to have discovered the very first person in history who doesn't like french fries.
Just imagine the implications! ~ Graham Parke

Mamma was the first person who had given her the pleasure of feeling that her peasant existence, with its simple joys and sorrows, might offer some interest, might be a source of grief or pleasure to some one other than herself. My ~ Marcel Proust

Hello, there should be more advice about dealing with depression when you're stupid and worthless, so here is a self help exercise.
Today's assignment is simple. Just go out and get on the bus.
It doesn't matter which bus. Whichever bus comes next. Get on, and just go. You could ride that bus to the very end, thank the driver, and then walk into the woods and just die. Just lay down right there and wait and wait until you were dead. Who is going to miss you?
Really, think about it. If you went out to the middle of nowhere and just sat down in a ditch and cried by yourself until you were dead, who would be the first person to wonder where you'd gone?
Call them up! Maybe they want to get ice cream? ~ Joey Comeau

It is said to be the age of the first person singular ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are certain things in 'Twilight' ... As much as I'm proud of that movie and I do like it, I feel like maybe I brought too much of myself to the character. I feel like I really know Bella now. But most readers feel like they know Bella because it's a first-person narrative. ~ Kristen Stewart

Because I write fiction, I don't write autobiography, and to me they are very different things. The first-person narrative is a very intimate thing, but you are not addressing other people as 'I' - you are inhabiting that 'I.' ~ Kate Atkinson

Sometimes shutting off the sound on the television can allow you to actually watch the game and take it in in an entirely different and more direct way - a first-order, first-person experience - rather than filtered through the mind of another. ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

How do you define a boyfriend? If a boyfriend is the first person you think about when you wake up in the morning and the last face you see before you fall asleep, then I was in love with Jonah. But if a boyfriend had to involve physical chemistry and kissing and sex and stuff, then, no, he wasn't that. ~ Natalie Standiford

I welcome anyone that wants to come into the WWE and try it, because, I was the type of person that was not welcome with open arms. People didn't want me to come in because I was from a Reality background. But I'm the first person that says, bring anybody in. ~ The Miz

The loudness of tone in Jane Eyre is undoubtedly effective in communicating tension and frustration, but the style does of course have its related limitations. It precludes the use of the small suggestive detail or the quiet but telling observation that Mrs Gaskell and George Eliot are so good at. In such a fortissimo performance
as this, the pianissimo gets drowned out, or noted only as an incongruity (which helps to account for the book's moments of unintended comic bathos). Again, it makes the whole question of modulation of tone a difficult one,6 and it is also hard to manage irony elegantly, as the Brocklehurst and Ingram portraits show.
There is unconscious ambiguity but little deliberate irony in Jane Eyre. Hence the remarkable unity of critical interpretation of the book - the reader knows all too well what he is meant to think about the heroine and the subsidiary characters. The novel does not merely request our judicious sympathy for the heroine, it demands
that we see with her eyes, think in her terms, and hate her enemies, not just intermittently (as in David Copperfield) but in toto. It was, incidentally, because James Joyce recognised the similar tendency of Stephen Hero that he reshaped his autobiographical material as A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, retaining the 'first-person effect' but building in stylistic and structural
irony that would guard against the appearance of wholesale authorial endorsement of Stephen. ~ Ian Gregor

The first person to love the other is considered as a loser. -Hikari ) ~ Maki Minami

I would go so far as to say I would not have the life that I have right now if it wasn't for Gabe Liedman. He is the first person I met in my adulthood that I felt was truly delighted by me and understood me and also was curious about me. ~ Jenny Slate

Because secrecy can become an addiction. That's been a problem as long as people have tried to covet power for themselves. Sure, governments need to keep some secrets, but too often the people inside the government create for themselves the illusion that because they know things nobody else does, it makes them more powerful. That kind of thinking creates a kind of contempt for anyone on the outside. It's born from a belief that their own power will diminish in direct proportion to the transparency of their actions. So secrets become the currency that buys them membership into a club so exclusive that their agendas are never shared, and the value of what the hold is measured only from a first-person perspective. ~ Jonathan Maberry

I always loved song writers who wrote songs in the first person, so it's kind of like that. ~ Cameron Crowe

Jarod Kintz likes writing about himself in the third person, because he really relates to the third person. The odd man out. If two is company, then the first person and the second person are just fine together. But why is the third person always hanging around? Jarod often feels like that outsider, the person on the smallest pedestal, the bronze medalist of personal pronouns. If the third person makes you feel like she-it, then maybe you can relate to some of Jarod's work. ~ Jarod Kintz

If there were a verb meaning "to believe falsely," it would not have any significant first person, present indicative. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Sometimes the novelist feels himself like God and is prepared to tell you everything about his characters; sometimes, however, he does not; and then he tells you not everything that is to be known about them but the little he knows himself; and since as we grow older we feel ourselves less and less like God I should not be surprised to learn that with advancing years the novelist grows less and less inclined to describe more than his own experience had given him. The first person singular is a very useful device for this limited purpose. ~ Maugham W. Somerset

I was the first person to come into New York with a Latin American point of view which was also very much influenced by political happenings in Latin America. ~ Ruben Blades

When you're reading, like, a character's thoughts, or when it's in first person, you're reading kind of their own story, so you have the opportunity to see what makes that character complex or complicated. And to me, that's what the whole point of fiction is. ~ Joe Meno

Voltaire," says M. Guizot, "was the first person in France who spoke of Shakespeare's genius; and although he spoke of him merely as a barbarian genius, the French public were of the opinion that he had said too much in his favor. Indeed, they thought it nothing less than profanation to apply the words genius and glory to dramas which they considered as crude as they were coarse. ~ William Shakespeare

My daughter has probably gotten some benefit of being inspired by a woman who is willing to take on things. We travel. We travel to exotic places. I'm the first person to jump in the ocean with a whale. Even if I'm scared, I'll do it anyway, because I never wanted her to see fear, especially when she was younger. ~ Teri Hatcher

First-person narrators can't die, so as long as we keep telling the story of our own lives we're safe. Ha bloody fucking Ha. ~ Pat Barker

Lillian frowned up at him. "Before you start to criticize, Wes'cliff, I should like to point out that I am not the first person ever to get her finger stuck in a bottle. It happens to people all the time."
"Does it? You must be referring to Americans. Because I've never seen an Englishman with a bottle stuck on his finger. Even a foxed one."
"I'm not foxed, I'm only - where are you going?"
"Stay there," Marcus muttered, striding from the room. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Now consider this: the first person to hold the newborn Christ was Mary of Nazareth, and the first person to touch the newly risen Christ, however briefly, was Mary of Magdala. God placed himself in a woman's care when he came to earth, then entrusted a woman to announce his resurrection when he came back to life. ~ Liz Curtis Higgs

I will now claim - until dispossesed - that I was the first person in the world to apply the typewriter to literature ... The early machine was full of caprices, full of defects- devilish ones. It had as many immoralities as the machine of today has virtues. After a year or two I found that it was degrading my character, so I thought I would give it to Howells ... He took it home to Boston, and my morals began to improve, but his have never recovered. ~ Mark Twain

Just being the first person to bring the character to life is really fun and exciting. ~ Robbie Amell

She ran as the first maples started to change color, then the oak.
She jumped over roots, she sidestepped brambles, her footfalls echoing off plank bridges traversing streams.
She was the first person at practice. The last to go home.
She ran for speed. She ran for distance. She stretched carefully first thing in the morning and last thing before bed. ~ C.D. Bell

Fortunately I am not the first person to tell you that you will never die. You simply lose your body. You will be the same except you won't have to worry about rent or mortgages or fashionable clothes. You will be released from sexual obsessions. You will not have drug addictions. You will not need alcohol. You will not have to worry about cellulite or cigarettes or cancer or AIDS or venereal disease. You will be free. ~ Cookie Mueller

Combat duty is strenuous and physically demanding, and I'm not the first person to notice that men and women are built differently. And while many will argue that women will only be allowed into combat arms units under the same requirements as their male counterparts, count me as skeptical. ~ Pete Hegseth

I was so blessed.
The first person
I gave my heart to
was an angel
who plucked the feathers
off his wings
and built a nest for it. ~ Kamand Kojouri

I wanted to come back the minute I'd Disapparated, but I walked straight into a gang of Snatchers, Hermione, and I couldn't go anywhere!"
"A gang of what?" asked Harry, as Hermione threw herself down into a chair with her arms and legs crossed so tightly it seemed unlikely that she would unravel them for several years.
"Snatchers," said Ron. "They're everywhere--gangs trying to earn gold by rounding up Muggle-borns and blood traitors, there's a reward from the Ministry for everyone captured. I was on my own and I look like I might be school age; they got really excited, thought I was a Muggle-born in hiding. I had to talk fast to get out of being dragged to the Ministry."
"What did you say to them?"
"Told them I was Stan Shunpike. First person I could think of."
"And they believed that?"
"They weren't the brightest. One of them was definitely part troll, the smell off him…"
Ron glanced at Hermione, clearly hopeful she might soften at this small instance of humor, but her expression remained stony above her tightly knotted limbs. ~ J.K. Rowling

I'm currently alone in the downstairs bedroom that's closest to the front door, and I'm scared. Why didn't I think of the risks of bed-swapping? I'll be the first person murdered because of Zach and Lucy's horniness. ~ Nina Kenwood

And I don't just mean that they change you. A lot of people can change you - the first kid who called you a name, the first teacher who said you were smart, the first person who crowned you best friend. It's the change you remember, the firsts and what they meant, not really the people. ~ Sara Zarr

In literary representation, the distinction between the genuinely erotic and the licentious is a distinction not of subject-matter, but of perspective. The genuinely erotic work is one which invites the reader to re-create in imagination the first-person point of view of someone party to an erotic encounter. The pornographic work retains as a rule the third-person perspective of the voyeuristic observer. ~ Roger Scruton

Autobiography is awfully seductive; it's wonderful. Once I got into it, I realized I was following a tradition established by Frederick Douglass - the slave narrative - speaking in the first-person singular, talking about the first-person plural, always saying 'I,' meaning 'we.' ~ Maya Angelou

I'd be the first person to say I can't write dialogue. My dialogue is very utilitarian and is designed to move things forward. I'm not Shakespeare. It's not designed to be poetic. ~ George Lucas

I wanted to do something different. Therefore, the first person I thought would have been too exclusionary. It would have said me, me, me, me, me. I, I, I, I, I. As if I were pushing away my experiences from the experiences of others. Because basically what I was trying to do was show our commonality. I mean to say, in the very ordinariness of what I recount I think perhaps the reader will find resonances with his or her own life. ~ Paul Auster

The first person who ever told me that happiness was work was this manic-depressive artist I knew when I was in my 20s. I was like, 'What are you talking about? Happiness just happens. That's even the root of that word. How could it be work?' ~ Ariel Gore

Shake up your life a bit. Get rid of the cobwebs. Take the road less traveled. Most people live within the confines of their comfort zone. Yogi Raman was the first person to explain to me that the best thing you can do for yourself is regularly move beyond it. ~ Robin S. Sharma

I did a lot of reading of first person accounts from Koreans and combatants and aid workers. And I spoke to relatives. A lot of wonderful photographs were made available to me from that period - 1950-1956 - and those were given to me by a Korean newspaper in Seoul. Ruined villages, refugees streaming through a river valley, GI's and orphans and orphanages, those tiny details that you can only see in a picture. ~ Chang-rae Lee

The illusion of 'I' is that you think you are 'I' while you are only 'am'; and that 'am' is the first person singular of the verb 'to be'. Since, for 'to be' you don't need to say 'I', but for to say 'I' you need 'to be', thus you are prior to 'I' as 'am', and that 'am' is 'to be'; therefore, to that note, on the ocean of 'am' alone, 'I' is only a wave. ~ ~Sw. Chidananda Tirtha

Statements of opinion are always more constructive in the first person "I" form. Compare these two statements: "You never take my suggestions seriously" and "I feel frustrated that you have not responded to my last four e-mails, which leads me to believe that my suggestions are not that important to you. Is that so?" The former can elicit a quick and defensive "That's not true!" The latter is much harder to deny. One ~ Sheryl Sandberg

You may be the first person who turns on a light in a dark room. ~ Reese Witherspoon

Every woman treats me that way, Reese. I'm not a person to them. I'm just ... a good time or something vile to be avoided at all costs. And then you came along and you ... you hugged me. You are the first person who sees me, Mason, not sex for sale. ~ Linda Kage