The Only Story Quotes

Once bitten, twice shy; twice bitten, forever shy. ~ Julian Barnes

I am the girl who spends hours huddled in a corner of a library, trying to find what you love the most about Marlowe, just so I can write you a poem worthy of Shakespeare. I've made books my lovers, hours my enemies and you the only story. ~ Nikita Gill

I think there's a different authenticity to memory, and not an inferior one. Memory sorts and sifts according to the demands made on it by the rememberer. ~ Julian Barnes

The problem with stereotypes is not because they are untrue, its because they are incomplete; they make one story, the only story ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The Christian story, centered as it is on the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, is the only story for making sense of desire and loss. ~ Jen Pollock Michel

Religion provides the only story that is fundamentally consoling in the face of the worst possible experiences - the death of a parent, for instance. In fact, many religions take away the problem entirely, because their adherents ostensibly believe that they're going to be reunited with everyone they love, and death is an illusion. ~ Sam Harris

Sometimes a book isn't a heartbreaking work of staggering genius.
Sometimes it's the only story you knew how to tell. ~ Tahereh Mafi

I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell. ~ Donna Tartt

The story it told was unremarkable: a tale of love found and lost- the oldest story in the world. The only story. ~ Anita Diamant

Each of us is born with a series of built-in confusions that are probably somehow Darwinian. These are: (1) we're central to the universe (that is, our personal story is the main and most interesting story, the only story, really); (2) we're separate from the universe (there's US and then, out there, all that other junk - dogs and swing-sets, and the State of Nebraska and low-hanging clouds and, you know, other people), and (3) we're permanent (death is real, o.k., sure - for you, but not for me). ~ George Saunders

The only story that seems worth writing is a cry, a shot, a scream. A story should break the reader's heart. ~ Susan Sontag

You're still in it. You'll always be in it. No, not literally. But in your heart. Nothing ever ends, not if it's gone that deep. You'll always be walking wounded. That's the only choice, after a while. Walking wounded, or dead. Don't you agree? ~ Julian Barnes

He sometimes asked himself a question about life. Which are truer, the happy memories, or the unhappy ones? He decided, eventually, that the question was unanswerable. ~ Julian Barnes

Life is like that. Death sweeps it away. That's what death is for. That's why they keep telling this story. It's the only story. ~ Catherynne M Valente

Everyone has their love story. Everyone. It may have been a fiasco, it may have fizzled out, it may never even have got going, it may have been all in the mind, that doesn't make it any less real. Sometimes, it makes it more real. Sometimes, you see a couple, and they seem bored witless with one another, and you can't imagine them having anything in common, or why they're still living together. But it's not just habit or complacency or convention or anything like that. It's because once, they had their love story. Everyone does. It's the only story. ~ Julian Barnes

If the hour comes, and there's no-one to beg or blame but yourself, you learn that what we have in the end is just a handful more than what was born in us. That unique handful, what we add to what we are, is the only story of us that isn't told by someone else. ~ Gregory David Roberts

To say a thing simply: I am my history, but the story of my life is always guarded, self-conscious. It is finally the only story we give to someone we love. ~ Maureen Howard

Of course, in a hundred years, no one will remember any of us and our story will be lost in obscurity, but for us, for all these years when we were kids and then grown-ups, when you were young parents and then grandparents, this is the only story that ever mattered, and it was such a marvelous one. The best story I ever imagined. ~ Jen Hatmaker

The only story my grandfather tells me about his days in the NFL is how much better he was than me. ~ Clay Matthews III

I choose to write because it's perfect for me. It's an escape, a place I can go to hide. It's a friend, when I feel out casted from everyone else. It's a journal, when the only story I can tell is my own. It's a book, when I need to be somewhere else. It's control, when I feel so out of control. It's healing, when everything seems pretty messed up.
And it's fun, when life is just flat-out boring. ~ Alysha Speer

The best story in life, is your own.
The only story that you truly lived and died for. ~ Kay

Because once you had been through certain things, their presence inside you never really disappeared. ~ Julian Barnes

William Faulkner said, "The only story worth telling is that of the human mind in conflict with itself". ~ Miles Skedsvold

You see - I hope you never get there yourself - but some of us get to the point in life where we realise that nothing matters. Nothing fucking matters. ~ Julian Barnes

It's easy to allow the world to collapse down to our own stories. To see ourselves as the central figure in the only story worth knowing and forget that every person we encounter is living their own, is the center of their own universe. But that's the nature of the human experience. ~ Shaun David Hutchinson

...to understand who a person really was, what his or her life really meant, the speaker for the dead would have to explain their self-story–what they meant to do, what they actually did, what they regretted, what they rejoiced in. That's the story that we never know, the story that we never can know–and yet, at the time of death, it's the only story truly worth telling. ~ Orson Scott Card

I have problems with the violence and the torture on '24.' What I'm trying to say is that that's not the only story, and I think that the cognitive complexity is as important. ~ Steven Johnson

Though sometimes, first love cauterises the heart, and all any searcher will find thereafter is scar tissue. ~ Julian Barnes

She'd found that holding on to him was the easiest and simplest thing to do, not thinking about the bomb, not thinking about the people it killed, not thinking about her family, and not thinking about whether or not she would die. Instead, she'd held tightly around his neck, burying her face in his shoulder. She'd thought the entire world was coming to an end and holding on to him seemed to be the only thing she wanted to acknowledge as real. ~ Jettie Necole

The brain is the only organ that tries to make sense of its pain. It is as if the bone were trying to understand the break, as if the blood vessel could comprehend its rupture. But this is also its greatest impediment to understanding. The mind clings fiercely to any alternative to chaos, even if that alternative is self-destruction. ~ Tracy Thompson

Skiing is my favorite sport, because, that's the only sport that is actually better to watch the worst the person is at it. "That guy won a gold medal in the Olympics" "Oh yeah, that's cool, i wanna watch the fat guy" "Come on dude, you can take that hill" ~ Demetri Martin

The only person to blame for your situation is you. ~ Fennel Hudson

What is Obamacare doing? It's destroying the only kind of plans people without insurance ever get. And nobody seems to be noticing except the people who are being canceled and then can't find a replacement because it's too expensive. ~ Rush Limbaugh

I don't know that you'll understand this, but once upon a time, long ago, I was a scholar and a marathon man, but that fella's gone now, dead I suppose, but I remember something he thought, which was that if you don't learn the mistakes of the past, you'll be doomed to repeat them. Well we've been making a mistake with people like you, because public trials are bullshit and executions are games for winners - all this time we should have been giving back pain. That's the real lesson. That's the loser's share, just pain, pure and simple, pain and torture, no hotshot lawyers running around trying to see that justice is done. I think we'd have a nice peaceful place here if all you warmakers knew you better not start something because if you lost, agony was just around the bend. That's what I'd like to give you. Agony. Not what you're suffering now. I mean a lifetime of it, 'cause that's the only degree of justice I think we're ready for down here yet, and I know any humanist might disagree with me too, but I don't think you will, because you had a lot to do with educating me, I'm like you now, except I'm better at it, because you're going to die and I've still got a long way to go. ~ William Goldman

People of all faiths are responsible to help the weak, the downtrodden, the sick, and the helpless, especially children. And of all the religions in the world, Christians are the only ones that are commanded not to judge, yet we do every day
gay people, ethnicities different from our own, people in mixed relationships, people with gifts they were born with, power they were born with, genetic mutations they were born with, illnesses of the brain and body. I've got a little girl's mother to save, and, yes, she's a witch. Are you gonna make it possible for me to save her? ~ Faith Hunter

For within you is the light of the world - the only light that can be shed upon the Path. ~ Mabel Collins

That was what life was: a process of destruction, a disintegration from what at the outset was perfect. The only suspense involved was whether we would be destroyed in one sudden act or slowly. ~ Jo Nesbo

She was glad she didn't know where it would take her. Because sometimes the only thing that
got you through hell was that you were in too deep to pull out.
[Ehlena] ~ J.R. Ward

Holy shit, are you guys some kind of radical feminist cult?"
Diana frowned. "Not exactly?"
"Are you all lesbians?"
"Of course not."
"It's cool if you are. Nim's gay. Maybe bi. She's figuring it out."
"Who's Nim?"
"My best friend." My only friend, Alia did not add.
"Some like men, some like women, some like both, some like nothing at all."
"But why no guys, then?"
"It's a long story. ~ Leigh Bardugo

The only difference between your local college and a Christian seminary is that the latter is more honest. ~ Dennis Prager

Man is the only animal species capable of conceiving the notion of his own disappearance, and the only one capable of the despair that notion brings. What a strange race: so savagely determined to destroy itself, so savagely intent on preserving itself. ~ Robert Merle

Consider this 're-make' business that is taking away opportunities for new ideas and new films to happen. If the movie was made right the first time, why make it again? The only reason this is happening is it has become a safer way for the Studios. ~ Bernie Brillstein

When people nowadays say that Elvis was the first white guy to sound black, I have to shake my head; what can you do? At the time of 'That's My Desire' 1947 they were saying that I was the only white guy around who sounded black. ~ Frankie Laine

Comfort is the only thing our civilisation can give us. ~ Oscar Wilde

Of all the Islamic organizations in America, CAIR has risen to the top as the most visible, most outspoken defender of Muslims in the United States. Masquerading as a civil rights organization, CAIR has had a hidden agenda to Islamize America from the start. Its cofounder and chairman, Omar Ahmad, a Palestinian American, told a Muslim audience in Fremont, California, in 1998: 'Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.' Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR's national spokesman, is on record stating: 'I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic.' Three of CAIR's officials have already been convicted of terror-related crimes. One even worked for Hooper. He's now in prison for conspiring to kill Americans. ~ Brigitte Gabriel

Drama is made up of what people most fear and deny in themselves. The taboos. The secrets. The devils and the demons. The only reason they let us live, I suppose, is because somebody has to confront what those things are like and tell other people about them. ~ Elizabeth Ashley

What's changed is that your high-minded morality is suddenly faced with consequences. Every choice has them.
Sometimes with the stakes this high a choice you would never make before, that you would never consider in any other circumstances, becomes the only moral option. The only action you can take and still live with yourself in the morning. ~ Dan Wells

Groceries, you need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select what clothes you're gonna wear every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That's the only thing you should be trying to control. Drop everything else but that. Because if you can't learn to master your thinking, you're in deep trouble forever. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I know a few things about ghosts. The only way to stop them getting inside you is to spend every second of the day thinking about something else. Fighting like that makes you tired, and it doesn't matter how hard you fight anyway. They chip till they make a crack, and before you know it there's a ghost squatter in your living room. It's hard to get them out. Hard because they settle in. Hard because you like the company. ~ Cath Crowley

Some postdivorce statistics:
* James saw the children 75 percent less than before.
* He missed 85 percent of their afterschool woes.
* He was absent for 99 percent of their family dinners.
Screw statistics. ONe hundred percent of Charlotte's marriage had ended in divorce, and for her, that was the only number that meant anything at all. ~ Shannon Hale

The only happy people I know are the ones who are working well at something they consider important. ABRAHAM MASLOW ~ Mark Sanborn

The streets will teach you about racism and capitalism and survival of the fittest. Don't worry about that. The only thing you've got to worry about is if you've got enough cold-blooded ambition to apply the lessons you get taught. ~ Snoop Dogg

The only thing that was sort of Asian [as a role model] was Hello Kitty. I don't want to model myself after Hello Kitty. She has no mouth. ~ Margaret Cho

The sexual mechanisms of the two genders are just not compatible, that's the horrible truth of it. ( ... )
This is a truth we dare not acknowledge these days - because sameness is our religion and heretics are no more welcome now than they ever were - but I'm going to acknowledge it, because I've always felt that humility before the facts is the only thing that keeps a rational man together. Be humble in the face of facts, and proud in the face of opinions, as George Bernard Shaw once said.
He didn't, actually. I just wanted to put some authority behind this observation of mine, because I know you're not going to like it. ~ Hugh Laurie

Yet I am incapable of writing the only kind of novel which interests me: a book powered with an intellectual or moral passion strong enough to create order, to create a new way of looking at life. It is because I am too diffused. I have decided never to write another novel. I have fifty 'subjects' I could write about; and they would be competent enough. If there is one thing we can be sure of, it is that competent and informative novels will continue to pour from the publishing houses. I have only one, and the least important, of the qualities necessary to write at all, and that is curiosity. It is the curiosity of the journalist. ~ Doris Lessing

Campaign season is the only time of public debate about what we want for the future. It can change consciousness even more than who gets elected. In short, campaigns may be the closest thing we have to democracy itself. ~ Gloria Steinem

The only time I think about life beyond F1 is when I contemplate becoming a dad. But there's no way that's going to happen while I'm still racing. To be successful in F1 you need to be very selfish in lots of ways and you're away from home for long periods. That's not the kind of father I want to be. ~ Jenson Button

So the only environment the artist needs is whatever peace, whatever solitude, and whatever pleasure he can get at not too high a cost. All the wrong environment will do is run his blood pressure up; he will spend more time being frustrated or outraged. My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey. ~ William Faulkner

I'm a competitive person and it is in my nature to try hard in every match I play. The only time I'm not competitive is when I'm playing against my mom. ~ Michael Chang

She was the only person who he could not dazzle, and he loved her for it. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

I don't have a type. I've dated so many different types, different personalities, different looks - from athletic to very non-athletic. The only thing I have to have is someone who is really motivated in life and challenges me. If I don't have that, I get bored. ~ Jill Wagner

The great thing, and the only thing, is to adore and praise GOD. ~ Thomas Merton

I'm the only fire that can live in the rain ~ Lil' Wayne

Most churches do not grow beyond the spiritual health of their leadership. Many churches have a pastor who is trying to lead people to a Savior he has yet to personally encounter. If spiritual gifting is no proof of authentic faith, then certainly a job title isn't either.

You must have a clear sense of calling before you enter ministry. Being a called man is a lonely job, and many times you feel like God has abandoned you in your ministry. Ministry is more than hard. Ministry is impossible. And unless we have a fire inside our bones compelling us, we simply will not survive. Pastoral ministry is a calling, not a career. It is not a job you pursue.

If you don't think demons are real, try planting a church! You won't get very far in advancing God's kingdom without feeling resistance from the enemy.

If I fail to spend two hours in prayer each morning, the devil gets the victory through the day. Once a month I get away for the day, once a quarter I try to get out for two days, and once a year I try to get away for a week. The purpose of these times is rest, relaxation, and solitude with God.

A pastor must always be fearless before his critics and fearful before his God. Let us tremble at the thought of neglecting the sheep. Remember that when Christ judges us, he will judge us with a special degree of strictness.

The only way you will endure in ministry is if you determine to do so through the prevailing power of the Holy Sp ~ Darrin Patrick

We have to HIDE from each other because we think that we are the only ones BROKEN. We think we're the only ones whose original selves we ground up and smashed under the jack-booted heel of cultural lies and superstition, patriotism, war lust, war hunger, and a denial of AGGRESSION AGAINST CHILDREN THAT IS THE FOUNDATION OF CULTURE. Culture is everything that is NOT TRUE. If it's true, it's called 'math' or 'science' or 'facts'. Culture is the Stockholm syndrome we have with the historical lies that are convenient to the rules. We love the lies, because we don't think we can be loved if we don't. ~ Stefan Molyneux

I know for my family, the only question that we will be answering is how many people are in our home. We won't be answering any information beyond that, because the Constitution doesn't require any information beyond that. ~ Michele Bachmann

I'd like to say that was the only time Demeter got into a bad situation with a man. Unfortunately, it wasn't. ~ Rick Riordan

The word "art" is something the West has never understood. Art is supposed to be a part of a community. Like, scholars are supposed to be a part of a community ... Art is to decorate people's houses, their skin, their clothes, to make them expand their minds, and it's supposed to be right in the community, where they can have it when they want it ... It's supposed to be as essential as a grocery store ... that's the only way art can function naturally. ~ Amiri Baraka

I called Isaac, who cursed life and the universe and God Himself and who said where are the goddamned trophies to break when you need them, and then I realized there was no one else to call, which was the saddest thing. The only person I really wanted to talk to about Augustus Waters's death was Augustus Waters. ~ John Green

I know change is possible, I know there is an alternative, because I live a completely different life to the one I was born with. I also know that the solution is not fame or money or any transient adornment of the individual. The only Revolution that can really change the world is the one in your own consciousness, and mine has already begun. ~ Russell Brand

I think love's kiss kills our heart of flesh.

It is the only way to eternal life,

Which should be unbearable if lived

Among the dying flowers

And the shrieking farewells

Of the overstretched arms of our spoiled hopes.

-Book III ~ Herbert Mason

Man is the only creature disposed to kill huge numbers of members of his own species, and his instrument is usually the state. ~ Joseph Sobran

I'm not some possession." I pushed at his chest once more. "No, you're not." His mouth returned to mine. "You are my wife." I continued to struggle with the mass of him. He pulled his head back. "You're the only woman I've loved since I lost my mother and sister." His eyes intent on mine. Torn by my anger and his admission, I stopped protesting. His mouth moved against my neck and his body pressed into mine. "I have loved you for so long. ~ Saewod Tice

You say men ought to be hung for the way they are executing the law; I say the way it is being executed is quite as good as any of its antecedents. It is being executed in the precise way which was intended from the first, else why does no Nebraska man express astonishment or condemnation? Poor Reeder is the only public man who has been silly enough to believe that anything like fairness was ever intended, and he has been bravely undeceived. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Archaeology is the only branch of Anthropology where we kill our informants in the process of studying them. ~ Kent V. Flannery

The rulers of the state are the only persons who ought to have the privilege of lying, either at home or abroad; they may be allowed to lie for the good of the state. ~ Plato