I Can Only Be Me Quotes

Look at me. Please." It was more than a whisper but less than a shout. She got quieter. "Blake, please."
His green eyes found hers. She spoke as if they were alone.
"I made a mistake," Livia began. "I know you overheard me talking to my dad. I needed him to understand who you are, but I had to talk on his level. As a father he needed to know I was being decisive. I don't think you heard the last part when I told him you were the path I wanted to take."
A flicker. Was it hope? Livia smiled.
Blake's lips moved, and she knew he'd counted her smile.
"I'll make mistakes. I know I will," she continued. "I want to be perfect for you. But I'm human. I can only be me. That probably isn't enough for a soul as beautiful as yours. But if I hurt you by accident, can't we stay and hold hands until we fix it? Can't we fix it?" Livia now spoke louder than she wanted to, but she had to be heard over the cacophony.
Blake bit his lip. "You're perfect."
"No, sweetheart. I can't even pretend to be perfect. Look where we are right now. That's my fault, Blake."
Here. I need to tell him now. "Blake, I love you," Livia confessed quietly.
The tears in her eyes had nothing to do with smoke this time.Livia leaned toward Blake and tried again, louder still.
"Blake, I love you."
Livia shouted in the silence because now her soul was free. "I love you, Blake!"
She smiled as he mouthed the words back to her. ~ Debra Anastasia

Live your life with the will, to understand life. ~ Jonathan Anthony Burkett

I can only be me not thee, as far as the eyes can see! ~ Jonathan Anthony Burkett

I'd hate it if everyone in the world liked me, my music and what I wore. It'd make it boring, and I wouldn't have anything to work towards. It's not to everyone's taste, but I can only be me. ~ Jessie J.

I fell through a crack for years. Historically, I am a nothing because I fit in no category. I can only be me. ~ Howard Hodgkin

I can only be me. I do what I do, I'm not a jazz player ... I don't play jazz standards, at least not in any recognizable way. It's not my turf but I have plenty of respect for that style of playing. ~ Jorma Kaukonen

I can only be me. ~ Jonathan Anthony Burkett

I can only be me. I have a hard time being a chameleon as a singer. ~ Chris Stapleton

Raising children I've decided is a lot sadder than I expecte4d. Seeing them grow up brightly and vividly is tempered by the knowledge that each year brings another share of lasts. The last time I push my daughter on a swing. The last time I play Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus. The last time I read a bedtime story. If I could give my daughters one piece of advice I would tell them to make the most of the first times -their first kiss, their first date, their first love, the first smile of their first child…There can only be one. ~ Michael Robotham

But the man who, by dint of long study and sober reflection, has succeeded in training his mind not to detect evil in anything, to consider all human actions with the utmost indifference, to regard them all as the inevitable consequences of a power - however it's defined - which is sometimes good and sometimes perverse but always irresistible, and gives rise to both what men approve and to what they condemn and never allows anything to distract or thwart its operations, such a man, I say, as you will agree, sir, may be as happy behaving as I behave as you are in the career which you follow. Happiness is an abstraction, a product of the imagination. It is one manner of being moved and depends exclusively on our way of seeing and feeling. Apart from the satisfaction of our needs, there is no single thing which makes all men happy. Every day we observe one man made happy by the circumstance which makes his neighbour supremely miserable. There is therefore nothing which guarantees happiness. It can only exist for us in the form given to it by our physical constitution and our philosophical principles. [...] Nothing in the world is real, nothing which merits praise or blame, nothing deserving reward or punishment, nothing which is unlawful here and perfectly legal five hundred leagues away, in other words, there is no unchanging, universal good. ~ Marquis De Sade

The only way I can be there and really get into the character is if I'm her. ~ Lacey Chabert

i can kill my literary agent's entire family
just kidding
some of you just thought, 'it's wrong to kill the wife and the children'
but really i'm kidding
even though i shouldn't be
since it's probably philosophically sound to kill people
because life is suffering and suffering is the only real evil
and if you want to have meaning then that's pretty much all you get
to make it your goal to wake up and kill people
not just select kinds of people, like hitler did, but all people, like the universe did in the future ~ Tao Lin

The last time I went to a festival without a hat, two things happened. One: I got sunstroke. Secondly, I had to buy what can only be described as a Jamiroquai hat, which was sartorially incorrect - I'm saying that as a Jamiroquai fan. That was a disaster. I looked like a small clown. ~ Jamie Cullum

I would like you to understand completely, also emotionally, that I'm a political detainee and will be a political prisoner, that I have nothing now or in the future to be ashamed of in this situation. That, at bottom, I myself have in a certain sense asked for this detention and this sentence, because I've always refused to change my opinion, for which I would be willing to give my life and not just remain in prison. That therefore I can only be tranquil and content with myself. ~ Antonio Gramsci

Happy are those who live under a discipline which they accept without question, who freely obey the orders of leaders, spiritual or temporal, whose word is fully accepted as unbreakable law; or those who have, by their own methods, arrived at clear and unshakeable convictions about what to do and what to be that brook no possible doubt. I can only say that those who rest on such comfortable beds of dogma are victims of forms of self-induced myopia, blinkers that may make for contentment, but not for understanding of what it is to be human. ~ Isaiah Berlin

No, Susanna, " he said. "I cannot love you just a little. If that's what you want, you must find a different man." His green eyes were breathtaking in their intensity. His thumb brushed her bottom lip. "Because I can only love you entirely. With everything I am, and everything I ever will be. Body, mind, heart, soul. ~ Tessa Dare

I think our lives are mapped out for us. They are too complex, too perfect to be an accident of randomness. They have an inescapable narrative - a beginning , middle and end - unnecessary except by design. Birth, life and death, neatly seperated and sequenced. Authored, if you will, by the universe's own hand. We are gifted existence in three acts, but we can only ever understand our middle third. We cannot control our birth, yet though we have no power over this first act of ours we believe we can manipulate our second act, our life, to control our death. We cannot choose either, and it is right we cannot. We think we are the lightning or the thunder, but we're merely raindrops in a storm. We forget we are ordained a time to live and a time to die. They are chosen for us, only when that time is right. ~ Tom Wood

My opinion is that it is a very extraordinary thing for anyone to be upset by such a topic. Why should anyone be shattered by the though of hell? It is not compulsory for anyone to go there. Those who do, do so by their own choice, and against the will of God, and they can only get into hell by defying and resisting all the work of Providence and grace. It is their own will that takes them there, not God's. In damning them He is only ratifying their own decision
a decision which He has left entirely to their own choice. Nor will He ever hold our weakness alone responsible for our damnation. Our weakness should not terrify us: it is the source of our strength. Libenter gloriabor in infirmitatibus meis ut inhabitet in me virtus Christi. Power is made perfect in infirmity, and our very helplessness is all the more potent a claim on that Divine Mercy Who calls to Himself the poor, the little ones, the heavily burdened. ~ Thomas Merton

We think that the problems of the world and of ourselves can only be solved through "doing," not realizing that it is this focus on ceaseless activity that has created much of our present imbalance. Rather than always asking, "What should I do?," we can learn to reflect, "How should I be? ~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

The older I get, the more vegetables I eat. I can't stress that more. Eating healthy really affects my work. You not only need to be physically prepared, but mentally and spiritually. ~ James Badge Dale

And those who can see the departed usually see only a gray mist where you might be. Or they'll feel a rush of cold air when you walk past. But I can see you, touch you, hear you, pretty much anything you. ~ Darynda Jones

I am not a Tory moderniser for I believe marriage can only be between a man and a woman. I shall not surrender my principles. I believe this bill is wrong. The consultation process was a complete sham. It is opposed by the established church. It has caused deep and needless divisions within the Conservative Party. There is no mandate for it. There are huge potential consequences ... and the nation faces much more serious challenges which the government needs to address ~ Gerald Howarth

What is the matter with her?" Lillian asked Daisy, bewildered by her mother's docile manner. It was nice not to have to scrap and spar with Mercedes, but at the same time, now was when Lillian would have expected Mercedes to mow her over like a charging horse brigade.
Daisy shrugged and replied puckishly, "One can only assume that since you've done the opposite of everything she has advised, and you seem to have brought Lord Westcliff up to scratch, Mother has decided to leave the matter in your hands. I predict that she will turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to anything you do, so long as you manage to keep the earl's interest."
"Then… if I steal away to Lord Westcliff's room later this evening, she won't object?"
Daisy gave a low laugh. "She would probably help you to sneak up there, if you asked." She gave Lillian an arch glance. "Just what are you going to do with Lord Westcliff, alone in his room?"
Lillian felt herself flush. "Negotiate."
"Oh. Is that what you call it?"
Biting back a smile, Lillian narrowed her eyes. "Don't be saucy, or I won't tell you the lurid details later."
"I don't need to hear them from you," Daisy said airily. "I've been reading the novels that Lady Olivia recommended… and now I daresay I know more than you and Annabelle put together."
Lillian couldn't help laughing. "Dear, I'm not certain that those novels are entirely accurate in their depiction of men, or of… of that."
Daisy frowned. "In what ~ Lisa Kleypas

Shashank glanced at Rihaan. "What I mean is, that a time will come when you'll find an empty space inside that can only be filled with love. Mark my words." And on that cryptic note he pulled to a halt. Rihaan adjusted the ubiquitous ~ Simi K. Rao

But this time I can be gratefuk (really, I am) that I don't have anything to throw overboard. A great feeling. The only thing I could possibly throw overboard would be myself. Not such a bad idea, throwing myself overboard. No, this is getting to sound pathetic. The idea itself, though, isn't pathetic in the least. I'm not feeling sorry for myself. It only sounds that way when I write it down. ~ Haruki Murakami

My childhood should have taught me lessons for my own fatherhood, but it didn't because parenting can only be learned by people who have no children. ~ Bill Cosby

I can be of no real help to another unless I see that the two of us are in this together, that all of our differences are superficial and meaningless, and that only the countless ways we are alike has any importance at all. ~ Gerald G. Jampolsky

Articulation! There, by Joe, was MY absolute, if I could be said to have one. At any rate, it is the only thing I can think of about which I ever had, with any frequency at all, the feelings one usually has for one's absolutes. To turn experience into speech - that is, to classify, to categorize, to conceptualize, to grammarize, to syntactify it - is always a betrayal of experience, a falsification of it; but only so betrayed can it be dealt with at all, and only in so dealing with it did I ever feel a man, alive and kicking. ~ John Barth

Sorry about that. I hope I didn't damage you down there. That would be a crime. I love bright red, by the way. Is that a thong? I can only see the front." Her ~ Laurann Dohner

I quickly became aware that the phrase "it can only get better" could very quickly turn into "it could always be worse," because it was. ~ Savannah Grace

I have bad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight.

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort.

In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black--considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible--you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization--black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.

Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.
For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult ti ~ Robert F. Kennedy

I'm pretty good with languages. I know a bit of French and actually want to live in France some day so that I can get fluent. I think it'd be tragic to go through life only knowing one language. ~ Juliana Hatfield

If I can write just one poem that will turn the minds of a few to a more decent outlook...what does it matter if I compose a bad line or lose my reputation as a craftsman?...I used to think it very important to write only good poetry. Over and over I worked it to make it as flawless as I could. What does it matter now, when men are dying for their hopes and their ideals? If I live or die as a poet it won't matter, but anyone who believes in democracy and freedom and love and culture and peace ought to be busy now. He cannot wait for the tomorrow. ~ Nancy Milford

Ritual abuse is highly organised and, obviously, secretive. It is often linked with other major crimes such as child pornography, child prostitution, the drugs industry, trafficking, and many other illegal and heinous activities. Ritual abuse is organised sexual, physical and psychological abuse, which can be systematic and sustained over a long period of time. It involves the use of rituals - things which the abusers 'need' to do, or 'need' to have in place - but it doesn't have to have a belief system. There doesn't have to be God or the Devil, or any other deity for it to be considered 'ritual'. It involves using patterns of learning and development to keep the abuse going and to make sure the child stays quiet.
There has been, and still is a great deal of debate about whether or not such abuse exists anywhere in the world. There are many people who constantly deny that there is even such a thing as ritual abuse. All I can say is that I know there is. Not only have I been a victim of it myself, but I have been dealing with survivors of this type of abuse for almost 30 years.
If there are survivors, there must be something that they have survived.
The things is, most sexual abuse of children is ritualised in some way. Abusers use repetition, routine and ritual to forced children into the patterns of behaviour they require. Some abusers want their victims to wear certain clothing, to say certain things. They might bathe them or cut them, they might burn them o ~ Laurie Matthew

Don't tell me that definition of madness,
doing the same thing over again etcetera.
The definition of madness
is a certain enthusiasm, then there has
to be another person there
to not share it in--who is oppressed by it
who can only stare into it. ~ Bianca Stone

I watched them carefully, as always, searching for a sign of mental weakness. But there was none. Every man was coping well with the hardship, each one of them locked into his task. But it is one thing to practice, and quite another to race. And the trouble is, you never know who, on the day, will find it within his soul to give more than he has ever given before. It takes a kind of madness to compete like that, because of the will power and the ego, and his loyalty. And while some men have it, others have yet to find it. And a coach can only use his best judgement as to who those men will be. ~ Daniel Topolski

Enough, both of you,' Clary said. 'You can't be complete jerks to each other forever, you know.'
Technically,' said Simon, 'I can.'
Jace made an inelegant noise; after a moment Clary realized that he was trying not to laugh, and only semi-succeeding. ~ Cassandra Clare

Only comedians can talk about death, life, God and Virgin Mary. If I was a tragic actor, I couldn't allow myself. But with this accent I can do it. I can talk with death in person because I am a clown. Yes. And I am proud to be a clown - very much. ~ Roberto Benigni

A few words before we attack," Surplus said. "I know that I can trust you all to be terrifying..."
"Yasss!" his mountain horse said.
"Be quiet, Buttercup. However, please remember to only knock down things that are not difficult to repair – porches are fine; pottery is not. ~ Michael Swanwick

I'm tired of having such a happy, perfect life. And that can only be a sign of mental illness. That's what I fall asleep thinking. Perhaps I really do have a serious problem. ~ Paulo Coelho

Punctuation! We knew it was holy. Every sentence we cherished was sturdy and Biblical in its form, carved somehow by hand-dragged implement or slapped onto sheets by an inky key. For sentences were sculptural, were we the only ones who understood? Sentences were bodies, too, as horny as the flesh-envelopes we wore around the house all day. Erotically enjambed in our loft bed, Clea patrolled my utterances for subject, verb, predicate, as a chef in a five-star kitchen would minister a recipe, insuring that a soufflé or sourdough would rise. A good brave sentence ("I can hardly bear your heel at my nape without roaring") might jolly Clea to instant climax. We'd rise from the bed giggling, clutching for glasses of cold water that sat in pools of their own sweat on bedside tables. The sentences had liberated our higher orgasms, nothing to sneeze at. Similarly, we were also sure that sentences of the right quality could end this hideous endless war, if only certain standards were adopted at the higher levels. They never would be. All the media trumpeted the Administration's lousy grammar. ~ Jonathan Lethem

This shift that grows bigger and bigger each day, like two fault-lines sliding against each other, inches at first until, over time, you can't bridge the gap. You can only fall into the void between the people you used to be to each other.
Marina will never stop being everything to me. She always was. But now…she's becoming more. She's no longer a part of my life, she is my life. ~ Karina Halle

One could not imagine a process more open to the elephantine logic of the Bible-smasher than this: that the sun should be created after the sunlight. The conception that lies at the back of the phrase is indeed profoundly antagonistic to much of the modern point of view. To many modern people it would sound like saying that foliage existed before the first leaf ; it would sound like saying that childhood existed before a baby was born. The idea is, as I have said, alien to most modern thought, and like many other ideas which are alien to most modern thought, it is a very subtle and a very sound idea. Whatever be the meaning of the passage in the actual primeval poem, there is a very real metaphysical meaning in the idea that light existed before the sun and stars. It is not barbaric; it is rather Platonic. The idea existed before any of the machinery which made manifest the idea. Justice existed when there was no need of judges, and mercy existed before any man was oppressed.

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists, as the mother can love the unborn child. In creative art the essence of a book exists before the book or before even the details or main features of the book; the author enjoys it and lives in it with a kind of prophetic rapture. He wishes to write a comic story before he has thought of a single comic inciden ~ G.K. Chesterton

Winter Liar by Liam Doyle the Incubus
What come once here will never come again,
no matter monument nor memory;
all sunwarmed green succumbs to winter's wind.
And you, my love, were also my best friend,
and had your life to live. The tragedy
was not just my youth's recklessness, although
I trusted much to impulse, whim, freedom,
a destiny excluding doom. Frankly,
youth can be our insanity. But now I'm cured
of that fever, although the price was high;
and chilly April wind can only sigh
at my regrets, yet sun will brighten wind so,
one knows that soon green stirs, and wild bees hum.
And summer once more will make winter liar,
but I won't warm. You're all I'll ever desire. ~ Juliet Dark

His maniacal laugh caused the troubled Keeley to rise, terror in her eyes as they darted around the room. She couldn't see him, of course. He stepped closer and ran his hand through her hair and whispered, "Your knight will not save you. Love isn't what you desire. Only I can give you what you need. Mark my words, beauty, he shall die. And you will be the one to destroy him." Keeley ~ Lora Ann

I can remember when believing in conspiracies wasn't cool. Now, in the
second decade of the twenty-first century, more people are starting to
sense that things may not be as they appear to be. The truth in Lord Acton's
classic axiom that "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"
becomes more self-evident every day. Politicians from the only two parties
we have to choose from break promises, are unresponsive to the will of the
people, and opt for war, austerity measures, and state control over and over
again. Gary Allen, author of the book None Dare Call It Conspiracy, defined
things perfectly when he wrote, "It must be remembered that the first job of
any conspiracy, whether it be in politics, crime or within a business office, is
to convince everyone else that no conspiracy exists. ~ Donald Jeffries

A good song can only do good, and I am proud of the songs I have sung. I hope to be able to continue singing these songs for all who want to listen, Republicans, Democrats, and independents. ~ Pete Seeger

I do not believe that a moral philosophy can ever be founded on a scientific basis. ... The valuation of life and all its nobler expressions can only come out of the soul's yearning toward its own destiny. Every attempt to reduce ethics to scientific formulas must fail. Of that I am perfectly convinced. ~ Albert Einstein

her name is Dulcinea, her kingdom, Toboso, which is in La Mancha, her condition must be that of princess, at the very least, for she is my queen and lady, and her beauty is supernatural, for in it one finds the reality of all the impossible and chimerical aspects of beauty which poets attribute to their ladies: her tresses are gold, her forehead Elysian fields, her eyebrows the arches of heaven, her eyes suns, her cheeks roses, her lips coral, her teeth pearls, her neck alabaster, her bosom marble, her hands ivory, her skin white as snow, and the parts that modesty hides from human eyes are such, or so I believe and understand, that the most discerning consideration can only praise them but not compare them. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Politically I also don't believe anymore that we can only have one voice to a story, it's like having one radio station to represent a country. You want the politics of any complicated situation to be complicated in a book of fiction or nonfiction. ~ Michael Ondaatje

Right, then, mate, terribly sorry for my unspeakable rudeness, and I do beg your pardon. I can only say that it was caused by my natural affront to the notion of her as my sister. Since I'll be shagging her tonight, you can imagine how I'd be distressed at the thought of rogering my sibling"
"You shmuck! The only thing you'll be shagging tonight is yourself!"
"You wanted sincerity, well, luv, I was sincere. ~ Jeaniene Frost