Sibelius First Quotes

The fact that you couldn't see Alfred Hitchcock's first film The Mountain Eagle, or that you couldn't see so many of F.W. Murnau's masterpieces, or that you couldn't see so many of Oscar Micheaux's really intriguing race melodramas, made with fierce independent spirit against all odds in '20s and '30s America. That stuff haunted me. They really did bring to life a sense of 20th Century history: cultural history, pop history, gender politics and race politics, socio economic history, all that stuff. It was bracing and instructive. ~ Guy Maddin

The sin of Book I is at first sight more obscure, but it is particularly significant. We have seen that there appear to be two very important episodes showing the Red-Crosse a prey to Despair. When we find, further, that of the three Paynim Brethren, Sansfoy, Sansloi and Sansjoy, it is the last who is the Red-Crosse's most formidable enemy, we are driven to assume that there is some special significance in this stressing of a tendency to melancholy. Such a tendency is not now regarded as a serious sin, but in mediaeval times melancholy leading to inertia and in extreme cases to suicide was under the name of accidie one of the recognized Deadly Sins. By Elizabeth's day the much less pregnant term Sloth had been substituted in the usual catalogue, and Spenser nowhere uses the word accidie. But the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were much preoccupied with the subject. They regarded the sufferers from it as at once in a highly dangerous spiritual state and as intensely interesting. It was the favourite pose of fashionable young men. Hamlet is the supreme treatment of it in literature, but most of the dramatists of the day are interested in it. I suggest that the first Book of the original Faerie Queene treated of the sin of accidie. ~ Janet Spens

In those days, we imagined ourselves as being kept in some kind of holding pen, waiting to be released into our lives. And when the moment came, our lives
and time itself
would speed up. How were we to know that our lives had in any case begun, that some advantage had already been gained, some damage already inflicted? Also, that our release would only be into a larger holding pen, whose boundaries would be at first undiscernible. ~ Julian Barnes

Even putting aside the culturally indoctrinated terror that someone in America will assume that two men engage in sodomy behind barely closed doors, there simply isn't an elegant way of asking someone of your gender to hang out for the first time. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

I was eighteen when I first read Joseph Heller's stunning work 'Catch-22,' and was at that time close to being drafted for the fruitless and unenlightened war in Viet Nam. ~ Thomas Steinbeck

You will learn about pain, fear, rage, and control. You will learn how to balance the first three to achieve the fourth. And you will cary those lessons into Grey Class where I will put weapons in your hands and teach you what it is to be a Red Sister. In Grey Class I will teach you how to make the fuckers bleed ~ Mark Lawrence, Red Sister

I think that's possibly the nicest thing you have said to me. Ever."
I laughed. "No it's not. I've said nice things to you before."
"Like what?"
There had to be another situation when I'd said something nice. "Like ... when ... " I couldn't think of anything. Jeez, I was a bitch. "Okay. That is the first nice thing I've said to you."
"I think I need a moment to recognize and cherish this. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

Sorry. Was it awful?"
"Being a rat? No. First it was disorienting. I was suddenly at ankle-level with everyone. I thought I'd drunk a shrinking potion, but I couldn't figure out why I had this urge to chew used gum wrappers. ~ Cassandra Clare

When I first sat down with my oncologist the day before Thanksgiving, and she told me I would need 8 rounds of chemo, one of my first questions admittedly was: 'Will I lose my hair?' It sounds shallow, I know, but it was a very scary image to me. ~ Amy Robach

The first thing you must do is forget that I'm Black. Second, you must never forget that I'm Black. ~ Pat Parker

You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It's never been anything but your religion. Never. I'm a little over-excited now. Since it is your religion, do you know what you will be asked when you die? But let me tell you first what you won't be asked. You won't be asked if you were working on a wonderful moving piece of writing when you died. You won't be asked if it was long or short, sad or funny, published or unpublished. You won't be asked if you were in good or bad form while you were working on it. You won't even be asked if it was the one piece of writing you would have been working on if you had known your time would be up when it was finished--I think only poor Soren K. will get asked that. I'm so sure you'll get asked only two questions.' Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out? If only you knew how easy it would be for you to say yes to both questions. If only you'd remember before ever you sit down to write that you've been a reader long before you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind, then sit very still and ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world Buddy Glass would most want to read if he had his heart's choice. The next step is terrible, but so simple I can hardly believe it as I write it. You just sit down shamelessly and write the thing yourself. I won't even underline that. It ~ J.D. Salinger

For a lot of the players it was their first exposure to the Southern female - the most flagrant cheater in the mutual disarmament pact known as feminism. Lipstick! Hairdos! Submissiveness! ~ Michael Lewis

Maybe someday I can find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but will lack the strength to lift it anymore. Then, I will think to empty the coin from the pot, but will lack the genius to carry out the said act. Later, I will be approached by someone who will ask me about the story of the pot of gold. I will attempt to explain the story to them in the best way that I can.
The person might then ask me, "How much of it was true?" and to them I shall respond with a question.
"How much do you have believed of it to be of truth and be not farce?"
They will ponder over what has been asked of them. They will solemnly look first to the ground, and then to the sky, seeking the divine answer to disarm, or perhaps the answer to their own question. After much time spent rehearsing the question and answer in their head, they will have finally reached the answer.
"Half - half of it I believe were true." They will say to me with complete confidence, and then that confidence will subside assertively into a question. Feeling flustered and unsure of themselves, with their face representing melting wax, they will again look to me for an answer.
"Half of it was true then," I will reply to them with my assertiveness.
Puzzled and dumbfounded, the person will ask me, "How was half of it true then?"
I will reply to this person in a sincere attempt to gain their confidence and instill wisdom in them.
"I cannot tell you what is right or wrong, only what ~ Phil Volatile

Among the gods, there is a dispute as to which one of them originally thought of Christianity; or, as they call it, the Great Leg Pull. Apollo has the best claim, but a sizeable minority support Pluto, ex-God of the Dead, on the grounds that he has a really sick sense of humour.
How would it be, suggested the unidentified god, if first we tell them all to love their neighbour, pack in the killing and thieving, and be nice to each other. Then we let them start burning heretics. ~ Tom Holt

Nothing will ever equal that moment of joyous excitement which filled my whole being when I felt myself flying away from the earth. It was not mere pleasure; it was perfect bliss. Escaped from the frightful torments of persecution and of calumny, I felt that I was answering all in rising above all.
[Said after making man's first ascent by hydrogen balloon in 1783] ~ Jacques Charles

Bran knew. "She's a child. A child of the forest." He shivered, as much from wonderment as cold. They had fallen into one of Old Nan's tales.
"The First Men named us children," the little woman said. "The giants called us wok dak nag gran, the squirrel people, because we were small and quick and fond of trees, but we are no squirrels, no children. Our name in the True Tongue means those who sing the song of the earth. Before your Old Tongue was ever spoken, we had sun our songs ten thousand years."
Meera said, "You speak the Common Tongue now."
"For him. The Bran boy. I was born in the time of the dragon, and for two hundred years I walked the world of men, to watch and listen and learn. I might be walking still, but my legs were sore and my heart was weary, so I turned my feet for home."
"Two hundred years?" said Meera.
The child smiled. "Men, they are the children. ~ George R R Martin

My first priority is my children. If at any moment I put aside something that I want to do to be a better parent than that is more than okay for me. ~ Monica Denise Brown

She remained silent. There was nothing left to say. He'd said it all the night before. He had to end it. He could never leave his wife. And, in fact, she had known this. Although she loved him - and truly she did - he wasn't hers. He belonged to his wife. She'd earned him. It didn't matter that he was her first love or that she was his passion. It didn't matter that they had loved one another for more than half their lives. It didn't matter that he had married his wife on the rebound. It didn't matter that he didn't love the woman. It didn't even matter that they had turned into some soap-opera cliche. He was married to someone else and that meant that she was leftovers and destined to remain on the periphery in the shadow of another woman's marriage. But no more. She was well and truly sick of it. ~ Anna McPartlin

Mindfulness can have a sobering effect on the restless, jittery psyche. The stiller and more focused it becomes, the more I am able to peer into the sources of my febrile reactivity, to catch the first stirring of hatred before it overwhelms me with loathing and spite, to observe with ironic detachment the conceited babbling of the ego, to notice at its inception the self-demeaning story that could tip me into depression. And ~ Stephen Batchelor

I decided that now is the time to start doing the things that really interest me and I find important. It was in the 10 years of the MacArthur grant that I began working on my first book ... and I began putting more work into environmental history. ~ Jared Diamond

Teresa stood up, surprising Thomas with her confidence.
"Guess he forgot to tell the little part about me kicking him in the groin and climbing out the window."
Thomas almost laughed as Newt turned to an older boy standing nearby, whose face had turned bright red.
"Congrats, Jeff," Newt said. "You're officially the first guy here to get your butt beat by a girl. ~ James Dashner

Never, ever, take a "no" from someone who's not empowered to give you a "yes" in the first place. ~ Peter Greenberg

My fear has brazenly taken pen in hand and redefined a horizon as the termination of everything instead of the beginning of many things. And the first thing I need to do is get my pen back. ~ Craig D Lounsbrough

I know they say that's the way the cookie crumbles and all. But you can't help but wonder why there's any cookie-crumbling going on in the first place. ~ Andrea Portes

LOVE'S BAPTISM. I'm ceded, I've stopped being theirs; The name they dropped upon my face With water, in the country church, Is finished using now, And they can put it with my dolls, My childhood, and the string of spools I've finished threading too. Baptized before without the choice, But this time consciously, of grace Unto supremest name, Called to my full, the crescent dropped, Existence's whole arc filled up With one small diadem. My second rank, too small the first, Crowned, crowing on my father's breast, A half unconscious queen; But this time, adequate, erect, With will to choose or to reject. And I choose - just a throne. ~ Emily Dickinson

... and all of them are children of parents that pressure the shit out of them to be the best and then all of a sudden you don't get into your first choice, or your second choice, or your safety, and you end up going to community college and discovering that doesn't really make any difference! It's what you do with it that matters! It's all the goddamn same!! ~ Abbi Waxman

Motion pictures are of course a different medium of expression than the public speech, the radio, the stage, the novel, or the magazine. But the First Amendment draws no distinction between the various methods of communicating ideas. ~ William O. Douglas

During the war in the Persian Gulf, massive bombing attacks became "efforts." Thousands of "weapons systems" or "force packages" "visited a site." These "weapons systems" "hit" "hard" and "soft targets." During their "visits," these "weapons systems" "degraded," "neutralized," "attrited," "suppressed," "eliminated," "cleansed," "sanitized," "impacted," "decapitated" or "took out" targets. A "healthy day of bombing" was achieved when more enemy "assets" were destroyed than expected.

If the "weapons systems" didn't achieve "effective results" during their first "visit," a "damage assessment study" determined whether the "weapons systems" would "revisit the site." Women, children or other civilians killed or wounded during these "visits," and any schools, hospitals, museums, houses or other "non-military" targets that were blown up, were "collateral damage," which is the undesired damage or casualties produced by the effects from "incontinent ordnance" or "accidental delivery of ordnance equipment. ~ William D. Lutz

Things are not always as they seem; the first appearance deceives many. ~ Phaedrus

I wrote my first song when I was seven and that was kind of country. Now I'm just like 'No! Why did I play country?' ~ Cody Simpson

Only in very rare circumstances will you see something cut out of my first drafts. Maybe it's because of the way I write. I'm very focused on the logical progression of the story, and every character has a role to play. ~ R.A. Salvatore

Quite simply, I was in love with New York. I do not mean "love" in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and you never love anyone quite that way again. I remember walking across Sixty-second Street one twilight that first spring, or the second spring, they were all alike for a while. I was late to meet someone but I stopped at Lexington Avenue and bought a peach and stood on the corner eating it and knew that I had come out out of the West and reached the mirage. ~ Joan Didion

I had been coming to America very frequently for many, many years, so I had plenty of exposure - and maybe the best kind of exposure, because I think first impressions are very important. Maybe I notice stuff that is just subliminal to people who live here all the time. ~ Lee Child

The first Elizabeth film was an absolute travesty historically. It really was sloppy. Things like 'The Other Boleyn Girl' and 'The Tudors,' people's perception is distorted because of these. It matters to me as a historian, because I spend my life trying to get it right. ~ Alison Weir

I'm serious!" the bearded guy said. With his eyes bright like that, Nicky saw that he wasn't as old as he had seemed at first. She wasn't used to seeing young guys with beards. "I know it was ego too, and they didn't think of it like that, exactly - but that's the beautiful thing about it. It was all accidental, kinda. And to get to your question, the traditional graf scene died out with the flashing technology. 'Cause it was super hard to get paint, and even if you did get a piece up it'd be flashed off in a second. There were a few writers who got into flash pieces- ~ Jim Munroe

Ten or twelve men, especially between brothers and between fathers and sons; but the offspring of these unions are counted as the children of the man with whom a particular woman cohabited first. ~ Winston S. Churchill

When I first got the news, I was devastated," Annie said. And then her chin tilted in a defiant gesture, as if daring him to begrudge her her fear. "Actually, I was scared out of my wits." Gabe heard the tremble in her voice, but he gave her no evidence ~ Sharon Sala

The first time I met Wayne Gretzky ... he never said anything back. ~ Gordie Howe

I simply cannot stand by and watch a right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States come under attack from those who either can't understand it, don't like the sound of it, or find themselves too philosophically squeamish to see why it remains the first among equals: Because it is the right we turn to when all else fails. That's why the Second Amendment is America's first freedom. ~ Charlton Heston

Not for the first time in my life I had made it to the top. For some reason this made me hanker for a chili dog with chopped onions under a blanket of processed American cheese. ~ Walter Mosley

I was really the first-line editor of the 'House of Night' series. I didn't write that much of the story, and I didn't know what was happening until my mom finished the book and sent it to me because I wanted to read it with fresh eyes as a general reader would. ~ Kristin Cast