Something That Could Have Been Quotes

Over the last month I had pulled a woman from a blazing inferno. I had called fire and lighting down on assassins and escaped to safety. I had even killed something that could have been either a dragon or a demon, depending on your point of view. But there in that room was the first time I actually felt like any sort of hero. If you are looking for a reason for the man I would eventually become, if you are looking for a beginning, look there. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

though? Not something expensive or impossible to find; not something encoded in DNA or hardwired into the circuits of their brains. They lacked something that could have been given to them if we'd only known they needed it: a community around them that prepared them properly ~ Malcolm Gladwell

When I arrived home from Boston, I realized there were no pictures on my mantel. I set down my suitcase and walked into the living room and looked across to the fireplace, and it felt empty. Empty of real stories. I went to my bedroom where the bed was made, and on my desk there were no pictures in frames and on the end tables there were no pictures. There was a framed picture of Yankee Stadium above the toilet in the bathroom, and there was some art I'd picked up in my travels, but there was little evidence of an actual character living an actual life. My home felt like a stage on which props had been set for a face story rather than a place where a person lived an actual human narrative.

It's an odd feeling to be awakened from a life of fantasy. You stand there looking at a bare mantel and the house gets an eerie feel, as though it were haunted by a kind of nothingness, an absence of something that could have been, an absence of people who could have been living here, interacting with me, forcing me out of my daydreams. I stood for a while and heard the voices of children who didn't exist and felt the tender touch of a wife who wanted me to listen to her. I felt, at once, the absent glory of a life that could have been. ~ Donald Miller

But Mary had not come into the world to be sad or to help another to be sad. Sorrowful we may often have to be, but to indulge in sorrow is either not to know or to deny God our Saviour. True, her heart ached for Letty; and the ache immediately laid itself as close to Letty's ache as it could lie; but that was only the advance-guard of her army of salvation, the light cavalry of sympathy: the next division was help; and behind that lay patience, and strength, and hope, and faith,and joy. This last, modern teachers, having failed to regard it as a virtue, may well decline to regard as a duty; but he is a poor Christian indeed in whom joy has not at least a growing share, and Mary was not a poor Christian--at least, for the time she had been learning, and as Christians go in the present aeon of their history. ~ George MacDonald

I am glad you are pleased," said Mma Ramotswe. "You have broken the glass ceiling that stops secretaries from reaching their full potential."
Mma Makutsi looked up, as if to search for the ceiling that she had broken. There were only the familiar ceiling boards, fly-tracked and buckling from the heat. But the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel itself could not at that moment have been more glorious in her eyes, more filled with hope and joy. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

When an experience is so powerful that it motivates people to change the whole pattern of their lives, we call that a breakthrough, or an epiphany. The value of an epiphany doesn't lie just in some new or exciting insight. You might be walking down the street and pass a stranger. Your eyes meet, and for some reason there is a connection. It isn't sexual or romantic or even a suspicion that this person could mean something in your life. Instead, the epiphany is that you are that stranger - your experiencer merges with his. Call this a feeling or a thought, it doesn't matter which - it's the sudden expansion that counts. You are flung outside your narrow boundaries, if only for a moment, and that makes all the difference. You have tasted a hidden dimension. Compared to the habit of shutting yourself behind the walls of ego, this new dimension feels freer and lighter. You have a sense that your body can't contain you anymore. ~ Deepak Chopra

Oh shut your yap. You know the Fosters could care less if you drink while you're on the job. You're like the daughter they never had."

Those eyes. There was something about them that made it impossible for me to look away.

"Liz, the Fosters have a daughter."

"Patty plays softball and can bench press two hundred and fifty pounds. Her dick is probably bigger than this guy's," she said, hooking her thumb towards Drew. ~ Tara Sivec

We felt that the public, and especially the children, like animals that are cute and little. I think we are rather indebted to Charlie Chaplin for the idea. We wanted something appealing, and we thought of a tiny bit of a mouse that would have something of the wistfulness of Chaplin- a little fellow trying to do the best he could. ~ Walt Disney

I Never Told You
You can fill a book with everything I never said
Or the lines of a poem
Or an Empty pool
Or an empty bedroom, the candles all blown out
I never told you how the reflection of myself in your eyes
Was the only mirror I could bear to look at
Or how I fought every day
To transfuse the girl I saw there with the girl I am
I tried to breathe in the words you made me:
beautiful
good
brave
I tried to be them for you even though they were weighted with impossibility
I never told you
how I always feared the rough edges of myself were too sharp for you
and how I fought everyday to blunt them
To bring down the walls
To let you in
without cutting you because I could never bear to hurt you like the others did
Every day
a fierce pride roared in me
I was so lucky to know the truth
I was the beneficiary of your radiance
I basked in it and felt special
And if not for the pain of your solitude
I would have been content to be the only one
I never told you
How your touch made me feel like laughing and crying and singing all at once
How your hand passing over my skin where atrocities
Had not yet sloughed off,
Skin cells remembering the worst touches
Was like a tide washing over the ruddy sand
And leaving it whole and smooth
You made my skin forget
Gave me new memories
New sensations that didn't drag th ~ Emma Scott

Can't machines build these faster?" he asked the woman, looking around the starship shell."Why, of course!" she laughed."Then why do you do it?""It's fun. You see one of these big mothers sail out those doors for the first time, heading for deep space, three hundred people on board, everything working, the Mind quite happy, and you think, I helped build that. The fact a machine could have done it faster doesn't alter the fact that it was you who actually did it."
"Hmm," he said.
"Well, you may 'hmm' as you wish," the woman said, approaching a translucent hologram of the half-completed ship, where a few other construction workers were standing, pointing inside the model and talking. "But have you ever been gliding or swum underwater?"
"Yes," he agreed.
The woman shrugged. "Yet birds fly better than we do, and fish swim better. Do we stop gliding or swimming because of this?"
He smiled. "I suppose not."
"You suppose correctly," the woman said. "And why?" She looked at him, grinning. "Because it's fun. ~ Iain M. Banks

I'll be giving a speech at the randomest place, like a bank or something, and a guy in a suit will say, 'I'm totally freaked out that I'm talking to the girl from 'Cremaster.' For the rest of my life, that movie will be playing in a museum somewhere. I never could have expected that huge response. ~ Aimee Mullins

Ryan looked almost eye-to-eye with the lifelike statue. The warrior's noble and steady gaze stared back at him. Ryan thought that the way the man's thin moustache curved above his unsmiling mouth made him look like he was hiding a secret. He wore no helmet, but his torso and arms had been intricately chiseled to display fine armour. He was poised to fight.
Ryan, Alex and Hong Mei moved forward, studying each sculpture that they passed. Just like real people, some were tall and slim while others were short and heavy. They wore different uniforms and hairstyles, and on some, Ryan could see remnants of the coloured lacquer that once would have covered them. ~ B.L. Sauder

You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded woman... I have been traveling over the old world during the last few years and have found new food for thought. What power is it that makes the Hindoo woman burn herself upon the funeral pyre of her husband? Her religion. What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of polygamy? By their religion/ Man, of himself, could not do this; but when he declares, 'Thus saith the Lord,' of course he can do it. So long as ministers stand up and tell us Christ is the head of the church, so is man the head of woman, how are we to break the chains which have held women down through the ages? You Christian women look at the Hindoo, the Turkish, the Mormon women, and wonder how they can be held in such bondage...

Now I ask you if our religion teaches the dignity of woman? It teaches us the abominable idea of the sixth century--Augustine's idea--that motherhood is a curse; that woman is the author of sin, and is most corrupt. Can we ever cultivate any proper sense of self-respect as long as women take such sentiments from the mouths of the priesthood? ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

So, have you been enjoying yourself these days, Kazami?'
I'm having lots of fun.'
It was true. That made the sense of regret even keener, that this time in my life would soon be a thing of the past. I felt as if I could understand a little of what my mother had been through, and the feelings she may have had at different times. I wasn't a child anymore, and this made me feel awfully lonesome, and utterly alone. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

The Romantic journey was usually a solitary one. Although the Romantic poets were closely connected with one another, and some collaborated in their work, they each had a strong individual vision. Romantic poets could not continue their quests for long or sustain their vision into later life. The power of the imagination and of inspiration did not last. Whereas earlier poets had patrons who financed their writing, the tradition of patronage was not extensive in the Romantic period and poets often lacked financial and other support. Keats, Shelley and Byron all died in solitary exile from England at a young age, their work left incomplete, non-conformists to the end. This coincides with the characteristic Romantic images of the solitary heroic individual, the spiritual outcast 'alone, alone, all, all alone' like Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and John Clare's 'I'; like Shelley's Alastor, Keats's Endymion, or Byron's Manfred, who reached beyond the normal social codes and normal human limits so that 'his aspirations/Have been beyond the dwellers of the earth'. Wordsworth, who lived to be an old man, wrote poems throughout his life in which his poetic vision is stimulated by a single figure or object set against a natural background. Even his projected final masterpiece was entitled The Recluse. The solitary journey of the Romantic poet was taken up by many Victorian and twentieth-century poets, becoming almost an emblem of the individual's search for identity in an ever more confu ~ Ronald Carter

The boy continued to listen to his heart as they crossed the desert. He came to understand its dodges and tricks, and to accept it as it was. He lost his fear, and forgot about his need to go back to the oasis, because, one afternoon, his heart told him that it was happy. "Even though I complain sometimes," it said, "it's because I'm the heart of a person, and people's hearts are that way. People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don't deserve them, or that they'll be unable to achieve them. We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren't, or of treasures that might have been found but were forever hidden in the sands. Because, when these things happen, we suffer terribly. ~ Paulo Coelho

None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different. Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don't understand but in the dream it feels as if it had some enormous meaning--either a terrifying one which turns the whole dream into a nightmare or else a lovely meaning too lovely to put into words, which makes the dream so beautiful that you remember it all your life and are always wishing you could get into that dream again. It was like that now. At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in it's inside. Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror. Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous. Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her. And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realize that it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of Summer. ~ C.S. Lewis

We'll stick close together, but make no sign we are acquainted. The girls should go ahead so that they get through first. We'll follow close behind to be there for any trouble."

"Don't worry, my dears," said the professor gallantly, "I'll rescue you from any difficulties."

Yelena laughed and kissed the old man on the cheek. "Of course you will. I don't know why we bother with these other men, do you, Tashi?"

"But they are decorative, aren't they?" the Princess replied archly. It was fun to have a girl with whom she could gang up against the boys--she'd never had a friend like that before. "They give us something to look at on the boring stretches of the road." She let her eyes linger on Ramil, who appeared very warm all of a sudden.

Yelena swung herself into the saddle. "My, my, Princess, I didn't know you could flirt."

"I'm learning from a master--or should I say mistress--of that art," Tashi said with a bow. ~ Julia Golding

A lot of the literature available concerning depression is, as I say, breezily optimistic, spreading assurances that nearly all depressive states will be stabilized or reversed if only the suitable antidepressant can be found; the reader is of course easily swayed by promises of quick remedy...I am hardly able to believe that I possessed such ingenuous hope, or that I could have been so unaware of the trouble and peril that lay ahead. ~ William Styron

It's easy to look back and say if things had been perfect, I could have accommodated all of those things into my life. But as a therapist I do not allow that word to be uttered in my office after the first session, because I believe the only reason for the existence of that word is to make us feel bad. It's the only word in the language (that I know of) that is defined in common usage by what can't be. It sets a vague standard that can't be met because it is never truly characterized. I prefer to think that we're all out here doing our best under the circumstances, looking at our world through the only eyes through which we can look at it: our own. ~ Chris Crutcher

In the garden there was nothing which was not quite like themselves - nothing which did not understand the wonderfulness of what was happening to them - the immense, tender, terrible, heart-breaking beauty and solemnity of Eggs. If there had been one person in that garden who had not known through all his or her innermost being that if an Egg were taken away or hurt the whole world would whirl round and crash through space and come to an end ... there could have been no happiness even in that golden springtime air. ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett

And the point of Rachel the Film should really have been to express how awful and shitty that loss was, that she would have become a person with a long awesome life if she had been allowed to continue living, and that this was just a stupid meaningless loss, a motherfucking loss, a loss loss loss fucking loss, there was no fucking meaning to it, there was nothing that could come out of it ... ~ Jesse Andrews

I keeled over sideways.
The world turned fluffy, bleached of all color. Nothing hurt anymore.
I was dimly aware of Diana's face hovering over me, Meg and Hazel peering over the goddess's shoulders.
"He's almost gone," Diana said.
Then I was gone. My mind slipped into a pool of cold, slimy darkness.
"Oh, no, you don't." My sister's voice woke me rudely.
I'd been so comfortable, so nonexistent.
Life surged back into me - cold, sharp, and unfairly painful. Diana's face came into focus. She looked annoyed, which seemed on-brand for her.
As for me, I felt surprisingly good. The pain in my gut was gone. My muscles didn't burn. I could breathe without difficulty. I must have slept for decades.
"H-how long was I out?" I croaked.
"Roughly three seconds," she said. "Now, get up, drama queen."
She helped me to my feet. I felt a bit unsteady, but I was delighted to find that my legs had any strength at all. My skin was no longer gray. The lines of infection were gone. The Arrow of Dodona was still in my hand, though he had gone silent, perhaps in awe of the goddess's presence. Or perhaps he was still trying to get the taste of "Sweet Caroline" out of his imaginary mouth.
I beamed at my sister. It was so good to see her disapproving I-can't-believe-you're-my-brother frown again. "I love you," I said, my voice hoarse with emotion.
She blinked, clearly unsure what to do with this information. "You really have changed."
"I ~ Rick Riordan

I have always been convinced that if a woman once made up her mind to marry a man, nothing but instant flight could save him. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

When Harry told of Wormtail piercing his arm with the dagger, however, Sirius let out a vehement exclamation; and Dumbledore stood up so quickly that Harry started. Dumbledore walked around the desk and told Harry to stretch out his arm. Harry showed them both the place where his robes were torn, and the cut beneath them.

'He said my blood would make him stronger than if he'd used someone else's,' Harry told Dumbledore. 'He said the protection my – my mother left in me – he'd have it, too. And he was right – he could touch me without hurting himself, he touched my face.'

For a fleeting instant, Harry thought he saw a gleam of something like triumph in Dumbledore's eyes. But next second, Harry was sure he had imagined it, for when Dumbledore had returned to his seat behind the desk, he looked as old and weary as Harry had ever seen him. ~ J.K. Rowling

It is often thought that the life of the hunter-gatherer was one of feast and famine. But most available data suggest that they were surprisingly healthy and had a fairly stable diet and lifestyle. Not so the primitive farmers. In years when the crops failed, in settlements where the population density was high and where disease weakened the ability to cope even further, life would have been very hard indeed. The settled population could not migrate to follow the food supply as could hunter-gatherers. They were trapped. ~ Peter Gluckman

We of the present day, who love our machines, cannot quite imagine how people in the old days could live without them. But we could not make the Athanasian Creed, or the technique of the Mass, or of a five-act tragedy, and perhaps not even of a sonnet. And if we had not found them there ready for our use, we should have had to do without them. Still we must imagine, since they have been made at all, that there was a time when the hearts of humanity cried out for those things, and when a deeply felt want was relieved when they were made. ~ Karen Blixen

Curran lunged through the window
He was huge, neither a man, nor a lion. Curran's usual warrior form stood upright. This creature moved on all fours. Enormous, bulging with muscle under a gray pelt striped with whip marks of darker gray, six hundred pounds at least. His head was lion, his eyes were human, and his fangs were monster.
So that's what the Beast Lord with no brakes looked like.
He landed on the floor of my living room. Muscles twisted and crawled, stretching and snapping. The gray fur melted, fading into human skin, and Curran stood on my carpet, nude and pissed off, his eyes glowing gold.
His voice was a deep snarl. "I know he's here. I can smell him."
I felt an irresistible urge to brain him with something heavy. "Did you lose your sense of smell? Saiman's scent is two hours old."
Golden eyes burned me. "Where is he?"
"Under my bed."
The bed went airborne. It flew across the living room and slammed into the wall with a thud.
That was just about enough of that. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"Saving you from whatever mess you got yourself into this time."
Why me? "There is no mess! It's a professional arrangement."
"He's paying you?" Curran snarled.
"No. I'm paying him."
He roared. His mouth was human, but the blast of sound that shot out of it was like thunder.
"Ran out of words, Your Majesty?"
"Why him?" he growled. "Of all the men you could have, why would you hire him ~ Ilona Andrews

My application's not bought,' I am telling them, calling into the darkness of the red cave that opens out before closed eyes. 'I am not just a boy who plays tennis. I have an intricate history. Experiences and feelings. I'm complex.
'I read,' I say. 'I study and read. I bet I've read everything you've read. Don't think I haven't. I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM-drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it." My instincts concerning syntax and mechanics are better than your own, I can tell, with due respect. But it transcends the mechanics. I'm not a machine. I feel and believe. I have opinions. Some of them are interesting. I could, if you'd let me, talk and talk. Let's talk about anything. I believe the influence of Kierkegaard on Camus is underestimated. I believe Dennis Gabor may very well have been the Antichrist. I believe Hobbes is just Rousseau in a dark mirror. I believe, with Hegel, that transcendence is absorption. I could interface you guys right under the table,' I say. 'I'm not just a creatus, manufactured, conditioned, bred for a function.'

I open my eyes. 'Please don't think I don't care. ~ David Foster Wallace

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries you have these great nation states hurling their young men at one another. The victory was really going to rest on who could do the best job of bringing up their kids to become efficient and effective soldiers. That's pretty grandiose, I guess, but I do think that, and thank God it's been the armies of democracy that have emerged from this as the triumphant armies. ~ Stephen Ambrose

How did she die?" Grey finally asks.
"Painfully." I hurl the word, dagger sharp, because I'm angry. And hurt ...
Grey's face crumbles. "Oh God." He presses a hand over his eyes as he doubles over, falling to his knees in the surf.
For a moment I stand over him, watching the way that he's broken. Knowing that I'm broken in the same way. My stomach roils at what I say next - at my capacity for cruelty. At my need to hurt him.
But it's the only way I know to save myself. Truth and revenge, my only lifelines. I let myself slip until I'm kneeling next to him. I place my arms around him. Comforting him.
"There's nothing you could have done." I say the words softly, knowing the aching brutality of them.
Because there was something he could have done to save her. He could have told the truth. ~ Carrie Ryan

And indeed, that IS the question: whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal. It is a choice we must all make consciously or unconsciously at one time in our lives. So few people understand this! Think of any decision you've ever made which had a bearing on your future: I may be wrong, but I don't see how it could have been anything but a choice however indirect - between the two things I've mentioned: the floating or the swimming. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

How did men believe in something that preached love on one hand, yet taught destruction of unbelievers on the other? How did one rationalize belief with no proof? How could they honestly expect him to have faith in something that taught of miracles and wonders in the far past, but carefully gave excuses for why such things didn't occur in the present day? ~ Brandon Sanderson

But this has brought about [98]everything that makes the life of humans so rich, so cultivated, and so terrible, that here in the West, which has made them pale and white, and where the ancient, true, profound, original religionsb of their homeland could not follow, humans no longer recognize animals as their brothers, but believe them to be something fundamentally different from themselves; and to maintain this illusion, humans call animals beasts, assigning derogatory terms to all the vital functions which humans have in common with them, considering ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

The here and now is only the smallest part of who we are, each of us is all that we have been, all our stories, all that we could be. ~ Patricia Forde

I knew, of course, that I should be well paid for my services, but I would gladly have accepted half the sum I expected if I could have had it that night, for our little treasury was wholly exhausted, and we had not sixpence to purchase a breakfast for the following day. When the great hall door shut upon me, and I found myself on the pavement, with all the luxury and splendour on one side, and I and my desolation on the other, the contrast struck me cruelly, for I too, had been rich, and dwelt in illuminated palaces, and had a train of liveried servants at my command, and sweet music had echoed through my halls. I felt desperate, and drawing my hat over my eyes I began pacing the square, forming wild plans for the relief or escape from my misery. ("The Italian's Story") ~ Catherine Crowe

In later life the idea of a moveable feast for Hemingway became something very much like what King Harry wanted St. Crispin's Feast Day to be for "we happy few": a memory or even a state of being that had become a part of you, a thing that you could have always with you, no matter where you went or how you lived forever after, that you could never lose. An experience first fixed in time and space or a condition like happiness or love could be afterward moved or carried with you wherever you went in space and time. ~ Patrick Hemingway

In spite of being happier than I ever dreamed I could be, I'm also soberer. The fear that something may happen to you rests like a shadow on my heart. Always before I could be frivolous and carefree and unconcerned, because I had nothing precious to lose. But now
I shall have a Great Big Worry all the rest of my life. Whenever you are away from me I shall be thinking of all the automobiles that can run over you, or the signboards that can fall on your head or the dreadful, squirmy germs that you may be swallowing. ~ Jean Webster

I followed the older woman out to the foyer. Taking the stairs, I scanned each painting that lined the walls. I stilled as I found a portrait that could only have been Nathaniel. He looked young and brash, no more than fifteen. His suit was painted in a regal colour, it set off his tanned skin and sky blue eyes.
"Handsome devil was he not?" Bess chuckled. "Or should I say, 'is he not'?"
I fought the urge to blush as I trailed after the housekeeper. ~ Freedom Matthews

If," ["the management consultant"] said tersely, "we could for a moment move on to the subject of fiscal policy. . ."
"Fiscal policy!" whooped Ford Prefect. "Fiscal policy!"
The management consultant gave him a look that only a lungfish could have copied.
"Fiscal policy. . ." he repeated, "that is what I said."
"How can you have money," demanded Ford, "if none of you actually produces anything? It doesn't grow on trees you know."
"If you would allow me to continue.. ."
Ford nodded dejectedly.
"Thank you. Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich."
Ford stared in disbelief at the crowd who were murmuring appreciatively at this and greedily fingering the wads of leaves with which their track suits were stuffed.
"But we have also," continued the management consultant, "run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship's peanut."
Murmurs of alarm came from the crowd. The management consultant waved them down.
"So in order to obviate this problem," he continued, "and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and. . .er, burn down all the forests. I think you'll all agree that's a sensible move under the circumstances."
The crowd seemed a little uncertain about th ~ Douglas Adams

Ah!" said the doctor, in his most complacent manner, "here is the opportunity I have long been waiting for. I have often desired to test and taste the indian mode of cooking. What do you suppose this is?" holding up the dripping morsel.

Unable to obtain the desired information, the doctor, whose naturally good appetite had been sensibly sharpened by his recent exercise á la quadrupède, set to with a will and ate heartily of the mysterious contents of the kettle.

"What can this be?" again inquired the doctor. He was only satisfied on one point, that it was delicious - a dish fit for a king.

Just then Gurrier, the half-breed, entered the lodge. He could solve the mystery, having spent years among the Indians. To him the doctor appealed for information.

Fishing out a huge piece and attacking it with the voracity of a hungry wolf, he was not long in determining what the doctor had supped so heartily upon.

His first words settled the mystery: "Why this is dog."

I will not attempt to repeat the few but emphatic words uttered by the heartedly disgusted member of the medical fraternity as he rushed from the lodge. ~ George Armstrong Custer

In another life, I could have been you," she'd say.
"Yeah, but then I wouldn't have been the same person in that life."
"Yeah, that's right. Let's work on it. ~ Bob Dylan

For a moment, I wondered how different my life would have been had they been my parents, but I shook the thought away. I knew my father had done the best he could, and I had no regrets about the way I'd turned out. Regrets about the journey, maybe, but not the destination. Because however it had happened, I'd somehow ended up eating shrimp in a dingy downtown shack with a girl that I already knew I'd never forget. ~ Nicholas Sparks

She knew from listening to her grandmother that old age was made up of such remembrances of youth.
But she didn't want to recall things. She wanted to live things - or as a compromise, re-live rather than reminisce.
She decided to fix this time in her life exactly the way it was this instant. Perhaps that way she could hold on to it as a living thing and not have it become something called a memory. ~ Betty Smith

It's your duty to use what influence you have, unless you want to drift through life like a fish belly-up on the stream"
"I wish I could believe that life really is something more than a stream that carries us along, belly-up"
"Alright, if it's a stream, you're still free to be in this part of it or that part, aren't you? The water will divide again and again. If you bump, and tussle, and fight, and make use of whatever advantages you might have-"
"Oh, that's fine, I'm sure, when you have advantages."
"You'd find them everywhere, if you ever bothered to look! ~ Arthur Golden

Halfway through the decade, we realized that we had a great team and that we could do great things, and that we could probably have something here that we believed we had a chance to reach greatness. ~ Franco Harris

My threshold for human contact had worn painfully thin. I felt like a car that had been running its lights too long on battery alone. I felt fresh out of charge, and as though I needed to plug in for days before I could have one more conversation with one more human being. ~ Catherine Ryan Hyde

That is many poets don't know how to tell a story and they don't have a sense of how to put things in order to tell a story and we thought the poets could learn from fiction writers something about developing a character over time who wasn't just you and also creating a narrative structure. ~ Edward Hirsch

I wish I could take language And fold it like cool, moist rags. I would lay words on your forehead. I would wrap words on your wrists. 'There, there,' my words would say - Or something better. I would ask them to murmur, 'Hush' and 'Shh, shhh, it's all right.' I would ask them to hold you all night. I wish I could take language And daub and soothe and cool Where fever blisters and burns, Where fever turns yourself against you. I wish I could take language And heal the words that were the wounds You have no names for. ~ Julia Margaret Cameron

On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined. ~ Milton Sanford Mayer

I just realized I know nothing about you. Do you have a family? Where are you from?" The idea that I just invited a relative stranger, who owns nothing, to live in my apartment gave me a stomachache, but the weird thing was that I felt like I had known him forever.

"I'm from Detroit; my entire family still lives there. My mom works in a bakery at a grocery store and my dad is a retired electrician. I have twelve brothers and sisters."

"Really? I'm an only child. I can't imagine having a huge family like that - it must have been awesome!"

Relaxing his stance, he leaned his tattooed forearm onto the dresser and crossed his feet. Jackson came over and sat next to him. Will unconsciously began petting Jackson's head. It made my heart warm. "Actually, I don't have twelve brothers and sisters. I have one brother and eleven sisters." He paused. "I'm dead serious. My brother Ray is the oldest and I'm the youngest with eleven girls in between. I swear my parents just wanted to give Ray a brother, so they kept having more babies. By the time I was born, Ray was sixteen and didn't give a shit. On top of it, they all have R names except me. It's a f**king joke."

"You're kidding? Name 'em," I demanded.

In a super-fast voice Will recited, "Raymond, Reina, Rachelle, Rae, Riley, Rianna, Reese, Regan, Remy, Regina, Ranielle, Rebecca, and then me, Will."

"Surely they could have figured out another R name?"

"Well my br ~ Renee Carlino