Times Before Quotes

I've been called crazy many times before. ~ Tom Shadyac

I didn't just wake up one morning and think, "I'm a boy!" It sort of crept up on me and tapped me on the shoulder a few times before I started to pay attention I began to think that the word "girl" didn't quite fit me. It was like a shoe that was too small -- it pinched me. ~ Cat Clarke

I understood these things intellectually, the way I understand that the world is round or that gravity is a universal force. But it took me a long time to truly grasp what Dr. Summer had told me many times before: "To survive a violent childhood, you created aspects of your consciousness that held information about the violence away from you. That's why you remember it as if it happened to someone else. You have many ways of being you. ~ Olga Trujillo

Marry me." A statement. Not a question. It came again. "Marry. Me." His eyes burned into
mine. I breathed in, my ears ringing. My pulse sped up, my heart raced, I was trying to remember exactly what breathing meant. I was wet, and I was gasping.
"I want you. I want that, what they had today. I want it all, and I want it with you. I want you, want you to be my wife. I've got a ring, I'll give it to you right now if you'll say yes." With every
word, his hands tightened on my hips, desperate, crazy, longing. "I had this all planned out, so much smoother and romantic and everything you deserve. But my head's been spinning since
yesterday, when I saw my best friend steal a van to go meet his new family. And all I want, all I've ever wanted, is exactly that. Exactly you. And when I walked up those stairs, and heard the
shower go on, and knew you were in here all naked and wet and waiting for me, I knew I couldn't wait another day, another hour, another minute, without asking you to be my wife. So. Marry. Me."
He knelt. Christ on a crutch, he knelt on the shower floor, where he had knelt countless times before . . . ahem . . . took my hand, and repeated those words
again. Finally, with a question mark at the end. "Marry me?"
And in that moment, I realized all the worrying, all the hand wringing and wonder ponder, all the thoughts about who says what's right for a couple, and when is it too soon, and when is it the right time, and if it ain't b ~ Alice Clayton

No matter how old we get, life's always got a lesson for you. Most likely one you've learned ten times before. ~ Barbara Neely

As always, Adam was reminded of how Ronan belonged in this place. Something about the familiar way he stood as he searched for ripe fruit implied that he had done it many times before. It made it easy to understand that Ronan had grown up here and would grow old here. Easy to see how to exile him was to excise his soul. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

You don't go to other books and take little pieces because although say a romantic scene may have been many times before all the details of who it is, where it is, are so intertwined in that text that it's easier to write it from scratch. ~ Bill Gates

Dale forced me the two steps to the truck and pushed me into the drivers' seat. The moment he started around to the passenger's side I got out and ran. He caught up with me easily and with the barrel of the gun drew me back to the truck. We did that dance three times before he figured out to push me in through the passenger's side ~ Lisa Regan

Like I've said before, so many times before, I'm not a good person, I'm not a hero. I'm a criminal, a liar, a cheat, a killer. It was them or me and I wanted to live. ~ Alexander Gordon Smith

Plot-wise, there's nothing particularly groundbreaking about 'Scalped.' It starts off as something we've seen plenty of times before: the story of an undercover FBI agent infiltrating a criminal organization and the story of the guy at the head of that organization. The twist was always the setting: a modern-day Native American reservation. ~ Jason Aaron

Nimrod began to understand that what he was experiencing was, in spite of its appearance of novelty, something which had existed before–many times before. His body began to recognize situations, impressions, and objects. In reality, none of there astonished him very much. Faced with new circumstances, he would dip into the fount of his memory, the deep-seated memory of the body, would search blindky and feverishly, and often find ready made within himself a suitable reaction: the wisdom of generations, deposited in his plasma, in his nerves. He found actions and decisions of which he had not been aware but which had been lying in wait, ready to emerge. ~ Bruno Schulz

George's voice became deeper. He repeated his words rhythmically as though he had said them many times before. 'Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place. They come to a ranch an' work up a stake, and the first thing you know they're poundin' their tail on some other ranch. They ain't got nothing to look ahead to. ~ John Steinbeck

When anger comes to you, it is not going to kill you. It has been with you many times before, and you have survived perfectly well. It is the same anger that you have been through before. Just do one thing new, which you have never done. Instead, every time you get involved with it, fight with it. This time just watch as if it does not belong to you, as if it is somebody else's anger. And you are in for a great surprise: it will disappear within seconds. ~ Osho

I was up really early. It was the day of my selection tests and interviews to become a Prison Officer. The recruitment process was an absolute joke ... Everyone could have travelled round the world seven fucking times before they hear[d] back from the Service's recruitment cowboys. ~ Ronnie Thompson

These inventions became, incidentally, increasingly revolting to me, for I was ineradicably marked by a touch of the old cavalryman's primitive evaluation. I admit that in the earliest times the horseman had a considerable advantage over the foot soldier. (On the other hand considerably higher expenses were involved.) But the advantage was balanced by the invention of gunpowder, so rightly lamented by Ariosto. It was the end of glorious armies like those led by Charles the Bold. Cavalry charges still took place of course – and I cannot consider it unfair for the infantryman to load and fire two or three times before he received his comeuppance – but after that, death came to the cavalry.

The old Centaurs were overpowered by the new Titan. I had seen my own conqueror at close hand when I lay bleeding on the grass. He had unhorsed me – a sickly fellow, a pimply lad from the suburbs, some cutler from Sheffield or weaver from Manchester. He cowered behind his rubble heap, one eye shut, the other aiming at me across the machine gun, which did the damage. In a pattern of red and gray, he wove an evil cloth. This was the new Polyphemus or, rather, one of his lowest messenger boys with a wire mask before his one-eyed face. This was how the present masters looked. The beauty of the forests was past. ~ Ernst Junger

I have been broken down many times before - and I am always the one who is left to pick up the pieces. Most of the time, there are too many pieces to pick up, so I leave them where they lay and never look back. I have to be honest with myself, that is one of my mistakes, instead of walking away, I should have picked up the pieces. That way, I would have learned and grown from what was left behind."
~Love is respect ♥~ ~ Charlena E. Jackson

Die Before You Die

Ironic, but one of the most intimate acts
of our body is
death.

So beautiful appeared my death - knowing who then I would kiss,
I died a thousand times before I died.

"Die before you die," said the Prophet
Muhammad.

Have wings that feared ever
touched the Sun?

I was born when all I once
feared - I could
love. ~ Rabia Al Basri

And then the years were gone, and he was back at Winterfell once more, wearing a quilted leather coat in place of mail and plate. His sword was not made of wood, and it was Robb who stood facing him, not Iron Emmett.
Every morning they had trailed together, since they were big enough to walk; Snow and Stark, spinning and slashing about the wards of Winterfell, shouting and laughing, sometimes crying when there was no one else to see. They were not little boys when they fought, but knights and mighty heroes. "I'm Prince Aemon the Dragonknight," Jon would call out, and Robb would shout back, "Well, I'm Florian the Fool." Or Robb would say, "I'm the Young Dragon," and Jon would reply, "I'm Ser Ryam Redwyne."
That morning he called it first. "I'm Lord of Winterfell!" he cried, as he had a hundred times before. Only this time, this time, Robb had answered, "You can't be Lord of Winterfell, you're bastard-born. My lady mother says you can't ever be the Lord of Winterfell. ~ George R R Martin

An apple a day might have kept the doctor away prior to the industrialization of food growing and
preparation. But, according to research compiled by the United States Drug Administration (USDA) today's apple contains residue of eleven different neurotoxins - azinphos, methyl chloripyrifos, diazinon, dimethoate, ethion, omthoate, parathion, parathion methyl, phosalone, and phosmet - and the USDA was testing for only one category of chemicals known as organophosphate insecticides. That doesn't sound too appetizing does it? The average apple is sprayed with pesticides seventeen times before it is harvested. ~ Michelle Schoffro Cook

I'm not a cop. I'm just a tattoo artist. I'm just a guy who used to be in love with a girl. I'm just a fool who's been fooled too many times before. I'm just a man who's finally getting his revenge. ~ Karina Halle

Help, I have done it again I have been here many times before Hurt myself again today And the worst part is There's no-one else to blame. ~ Sia Furler

I'm about to take a shower because I smell like an all-nighter, then I think I'll take a bath so I can have a faucet orgasm. After all, I didn't get any last night. A faucet orgasm is pretty much the same principle as a bidet orgasm except upside-down. When we were growing up we had bidets in all the bathrooms and when I was about ten I accidentally discovered one of the things they were good for. After that I used to spend hours on the damn thing. This dump we rent doesn't have a bidet so I have to get in the tub and slide up toward the front, running my legs up the wall on either side of the faucet. Turn on the warm water and smile. Actually, you've got to get the water temperature just right first or you could really be in for a nasty shock. I've made that mistake a few times. This time I get it just right and I come three times before I get around to actually taking a bath. ~ Jay McInerney

Have you ever stepped outside and looked around, and even though it's very familiar territory - you've seen it a dozen times before - it instantly looks different? The trees are more vibrant, the view is clearer, the sky is bluer, and everything is just brighter. That's what I feel right now. It's soothing and breathless and beautiful. ~ E.L. Montes

Before every game I used to go out and shot the same shots over and over and over. In the summer time I spent a lot of time just shooting. So really it just came natural. Whether it's a tie game or down by 1 or up by five, it was always the same shot. So I always felt comfortable with the ball in my hands because it was in there a million times before. ~ Larry Bird

I Had Experienced Lust Many Times Before..I Had Experienced Desires Before..But This Was Beyond That..This Was Like A Headon Collision..This Was Like Being Pulled Up In A Tornado, And This Was Like The Feeling Of Taking A Bungee Jump In An Unknown Valley!! ~ Shanaya Taneja

Listen you have to read a book three times before you know it. ~ Sherman Alexie

And I want you all to remember - that you must not dream yourselves back to the times before the war, but the dream for you all, young and old, must be to create an ideal of human decency, and not a narrow-minded and prejudiced one. That is the great gift our country hungers for, something every little peasant boy can look forward to, and with pleasure feel he is a part of - something he can work and fight for. ~ Lois Lowry

I've done this a thousand times before, watching the crowd like a wolf does a flock of sheep. Looking for the weak, the slow, the foolish. Only now, I am very much the prey. ~ Victoria Aveyard

When my mind tells me there's no possible way ahead, Beloved, may Love whisper to me, "Yes, there is a way! I've gone that way a thousand times before." When my mind says, "Danger lies ahead. It will hurt too much, if you surrender all," let me hear Love's laughter, as I hear Love say, "The pain is only in your mind." Teach me to find the roses hidden in my pain, so that I may discover within my inner self, rose garden after rose garden. ~ Devon Holcombe

I … There is no one I want more; there is nothing I want more than to be overwhelmed by you."
"But you don't want to kiss me?"
He inhaled slowly, trying to bring order to his thoughts. This was all wrong. "In Fjerda - " he began. "We're not in Fjerda." He needed to make her understand. "In Fjerda," he persisted, "I would have asked your parents for permission to walk out with you."
"I haven't seen my parents since I was a child."
"We would have been chaperoned. I would have dined with your family at least three times before we were ever left alone together."
"We're alone together now, Matthias."
"I would have brought you gifts."
Nina tipped her head to one side. "Go on."
"Winter roses if I could afford them, a silver comb for your hair."
"I don't need those things."
"Apple cakes with sweet cream."
"I thought drüskelle didn't eat sweets."
"They'd all be for you," he said.
"You have my attention."
"Our first kiss would be in a sunlit wood or under a starry sky after a village dance, not in a tomb or some dank basement with guards at the door. ~ Leigh Bardugo

Suicide. It's something I've been thinking about. Not too seriously, but I have been thinking about it.
That's the note. Word for word. And I know it's word for word because I wrote it dozens of times before delivering it. I'd write it, throw it away, write it, crumple it up, throw it away.
But why was I writing it to begin with? I asked myself that question every time I printed the words onto a new sheet of paper. Why was I writing this note? It was a lie. I hadn't been thinking about it. Not really. Not in detail. The thought would come into my head and I'd push it away.
But I pushed it away a lot. ~ Jay Asher

Lila had discovered that the hardest part of her charade was pretending that everything was old hat when it was all so new, being forced to feign the kind of nonchalance that only comes from a lifetime of knowing and taking for granted. Lila was a quick study, and she knew how to keep up a front; but behind the mask of disinterest, she took in everything. She was a sponge, soaking up the words and customs, training herself to see something once and be able to pretend she'd seen it a dozen - a hundred - times before. ~ V.E Schwab

It was something they'd done a thousand times before. If Jamie went surfing with a mate and paddled in first, he always took time for that final wave. And there was something so familiar in the ritual that for a moment he felt like everything was right.

He felt forgiven. ~ Kirsty Eagar

Dragonsbane stares at me for a few moments, her mouth hanging open. She starts to speak, then cuts herself off, then tries again. It happens a few times before she finally manages to say words.

"Are you mad?" she asks me. There's no accusation in her voice - she sounds genuinely curious.

"I'm desperate," I say. "But I suppose the two are close enough. ~ Laura Sebastian

Winston points at my face. His eyes are a little unfocused, and he has to blink a few times before saying, I like you. It's pretty nice you're not dead. ~ Tahereh Mafi

What's not right about her, Farley?" she asked curiously.
An annoyed humph. A few ahems, then a thoroughly miffed, "She's a fine enough lass, that is, when one is able to actually look at her, but"
he broke off with a deeply aggrieved sigh and cleared his throat several times before continuing
"'twould appear she's haveing, er ... solidity problems. ~ Karen Marie Moning

A filmmaker has to have great vision in order to tell a compelling story that is both distinctive and stylistic. I remember playing all movies in my head hundreds of times before they were ever made. You have to see it in your imagination. It has to be real to you. ~ Nicholas Ozeki

There are some composers - at the head of whom stands Beethoven - who not only do not know when to stop but appear to stop many times before they actually do. ~ Virginia Graham

I stopped walking. I stood still in the middle of the track and I surveyed the landscape around me and I understood that the eyes which did this had lived a million times before. The way I scanned this horizon was the way the horizon had been scanned by my ancestors fifty thousand years ago as they walked the savannahs with spears between their toes. They had made me. I had learned it from them. Everything my body did the way I curled my fingers and bent my elbows the way I turned my head when I heard a sound. I had learned it from them and they had learned it from the apes before them and the apes had learned it from the fish and all of us had comes through this together. Everything led up to me and everything I was would lead beyond me there was this great chain and I was a link in it. The past and the future they were nothing they came together and parted again and everything was rising and falling and swirling around everything else. ~ Paul Kingsnorth

It was the cowards who died many times before their death. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Afterwards, the princeps asked the science consul, "Did we destroy a civilization in the microcosmos in this experiment?" "It was at least an intelligent body. Also, Princeps, we destroyed the entire microcosmos. That miniature universe is immense in higher dimensions, and it probably contained more than one intelligence or civilization that never had a chance to express themselves in macro space. Of course, in higher dimensional space at such micro scales, the form that intelligence or civilization may take is beyond our imagination. They're something else entirely. And such destruction has probably occurred many times before." "Oh?" "In the long history of scientific progress, how many protons have been smashed apart in accelerators by physicists? How many neutrons and electrons? Probably no fewer than a hundred million. Every collision was probably the end of the civilizations and intelligences in a microcosmos. ~ Liu Cixin

What would she think if I told her we had had this almost exact conversation many times before? As before, I decided not to argue with her. To her, the answer was simple and she wouldn't see it any other way. I truly believed that my father, to the contrary of her suggestion, would not understand and might never. ~ Sarah M. Cradit

It's all so verbal in the Protestant church. You've heard these words a million times before. Maybe people are leaving the church because they find the church has nothing that they're looking for. ~ Frederick Buechner

And while I could sit here and feel sorry for myself, wondering why all of this happened to me..I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to wish for a perfect life. The things that knock you down in life are tests, forcing you to make a choice between giving in and remaining on the ground or wiping the dirt off and standing up even taller than you did before you were knocked down. I'm choosing to stand taller. I'll probably get kicked down a few more times before this life is through with me, but I can guarantee you I'll never stay on the ground. ~ Colleen Hoover

George, we've slept together plenty of times before. We should be able to do it for a few nights without your penis ending up in my vagina. ~ Cassia Leo

Jorgen reached out to her and, moving as if in a dream, she placed her hand in his. He raised it to his lips and kissed her knuckles. She had been kissed on the hand numerous times before and never felt a thing. So why did his lips on her skin send a tingle through her, across her shoulders and down her back? ~ Melanie Dickerson

Drink," he said.
I pressed my mouth to the wound, first lapping up the blood as it flowed out, and then sucking deeply from it. I had only tasted blood a few times before, when I had sucked on an injured fingertip. The blood I now imbibed was nothing like the mild, slightly salty liquid that ran in my own veins. Dracula's blood was delicious. It tasted like a deep, rich, full-bodied wine, with a dark, delectable tang. It was ambrosia; I felt as if I could not get enough of it. As I drank, I heard him give an ecstatic little moan. His hand cradled the back of my head and held it there, urging me to continue, while his other hand found and clasped both my hands lovingly in his. ~ Syrie James

A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come. ~ William Shakespeare

For once I didn't look away immediately. I forced myself to meet her contemptuous gaze. I allowed myself be swept away by it, to drown in it - the way I'd done so many times before. The way I would willingly do again. Because at least she was here to hate me. At least I had that. I watched my daughter conjure up the filthiest look in her vast arsenal before she turned away with complete disdain. I didn't mind that so much. It meant I could watch her, drink her in without her protest.
Look at our daughter, Callum. Isn't she beautiful, so very beautiful? She laughs like me, but when she smiles ... Oh Callum, when she smiles, it's picnics in Celebration Park and sunsets on our beach and our very first kiss all over again. When Callie Rose smiles at me, she lights up my life.
When Callie Rose smiles at me. ~ Malorie Blackman

Think Thousand times before taking a decision But - After taking decison never turn back even if you get Thousand difficulties!! ~ Adolf Hitler

I had been struggling to get roles in Hollywood for three and a half years after leaving the WWE. Then I finally got an agent - the agent I have now. He's a great guy, but he turned me down three times before he even decided to take me on a as a client. ~ Dave Bautista

And so, perhaps, I must once again accept
what I used to suspect about my birth:
that I had been here many times before and would come again
regardless of how unhappily, unwillingly,
and to exactly this same place. ~ Henrik Nordbrandt

I know you can't wash in the same river even once
I know the river will bring new lights that you will not see
I know we live slightly longer than a horse and not nearly as long as a crow
I know this has troubled people before and will trouble those after me
I know all this has been said a thousand times before and will be said after me
I didn't know I like the sky
cloudy or clear
the blue vault that Andrei watched on his back on the battlefield at Borodino
... ~ Nazim Hikmet

We do have trouble dealing with death, but it's the one thing that is guaranteed we are all going to have to do, and we are going to have to face it many times before we die ourselves. ~ Katherine Paterson

When she awoke there was a melody in her head she could not identify or recall ever hearing before. 'Perhaps I made it up,' she thought. Then it came to her - the name of the song and all its lyrics just as she had heard it many times before. She sat on the edge of the bed thinking, 'There aren't any more new songs and I have sung all the ones there are. I have sung them all. I have sung all the songs there are. ~ Toni Morrison

When you're dating someone, you need to have intercourse at least ten times before you start talking about The Future. ~ Mimi Strong

I like to edit my sentences as I write them. I rearrange a sentence many times before moving on to the next one. For me, that editing process feels like a form of play, like a puzzle that needs solving, and it's one of the most satisfying parts of writing. ~ Karen Thompson Walker

You saying you can't handle that? Kelly needled, grinning. Nick could see that grin in the moonlight, had seen that grin a thousand times before. Now, though, he wanted to wipe it away with another kiss. Jesus, if they didn't do something about this now, it was going to linger. ~ Abigail Roux

I am about to say something that must have been said by men to women several times before"I informed her , "However, I don't believe that these words have ever carried quite the freight they carry now."
"Oh?"
I spread my hands, "Here we are. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Apple is in a position they've been in a lot of times before. They're like Moses showing the way to the promised land, but they don't actually go there. ~ Tim O'Reilly

the air just went cold, as it did those times before, and started sticking to my skin, on my arms and legs and face, everywhere. I had seen a marble statue in a museum, a well built man doubled over throwing something, and the feeling reminded me of him. It was as if I was starting to be made of marble. ~ Ian Cross

He walked me to the door--the same one to which I'd been escorted many times before by pimply high school boys and a few miscellaneous suitors along the way. But this time was different. Bigger. I felt it. I wondered for a moment if he felt it, too.
That's when the spike heel of my boot caught itself on a small patch of crumbling mortar on my parents' redbrick sidewalk. In an instant, I saw my life and any ounce of pride remaining in my soul pass before my eyes as my body lurched forward. I was going to bite it for sure--and right in front of the Marlboro Man. I was an idiot, I told myself, a dork, a klutz of the highest order. I wanted desperately to snap my fingers and magically wind up in Chicago, where I belonged, but my hands were too busy darting in front of my torso, hoping to brace my body from the fall.
But someone caught me. Was it an angel? In a way. It was Marlboro Man, whose tough upbringing on a working cattle ranch had produced the quick reflexes necessary to save me, his uncoordinated date, from certain wipeout. Once the danger was over, I laughed from nervous embarrassment. Marlboro Man chuckled gently. He was still holding my arms, in the same strong cowboy grip he'd used to rescue me moments earlier. Where were my knees? They were no longer part of my anatomy.
I looked at Marlboro Man. He wasn't chuckling anymore. He was standing right in front of me…and he was still holding my arms. ~ Ree Drummond

The virus seemed to be thriving on his misery, relentlessly tearing through his insides.
Every day it made its rounds through his body. It started at his fingers, making them itch to touch her until he could almost feel her fleshy lips beneath his thumb, the silky strands of her hair sliding through his fingers. It would then move up to his arms, creating an urge to hold her, an urge that could not be fulfilled.
Next it went for his eyes, causing him to see her everywhere, in every little thing. He would see her in the kitchen, making coffee. He would see her cuddled up on the sofa, watching T.V. He had to blink several times before he realised that she wasn't really there. It would then move to his heart, ruthlessly choking it until it was so heavy and so sore, he could feel the pain of losing her in every beat.
And then, finally, just as night fell, it would attack his brain, invoking images of her.
Thoughts and memories and dreams. He could not take much more. It was slowly driving him insane. He could not break out of these shackles. ~ Jacqueline Francis - The Journal

Each morning when you wake up, bow three times before the mirror and say, "The world is a better place because I am here. ~ Virginia Satir

Grace had torn me apart and put me back together so many times that I'd started to believe that was what I wanted. A kintsukuroi relationship, more beautiful for having been broken. But something can only be shattered so many times before it becomes irreparable... ~ Krystal Sutherland

I had seen that once before, bleeding water. A little baby I worked on as a resident in training. That poor kid had been shot as well - his father had blasted away the top of his head with a shotgun - and we couldn't begin to stop the bloodletting in that case. "Looking pretty thin down here," I hollered when the stuff coming out his wounds was no more than pink salt water. That baby's heart stopped, started, stopped and started a dozen times before it finally gave up the ghost and we pronounced him. I could have read a newspaper through the watery stuff coming out his veins by then. ~ Edison McDaniels

Hey, girls, you're beautiful. Don't look at those stupid magazines with sticklike models. Eat healthy and exercise. That's all. Don't let anyone tell you you're not good enough. You're good enough, you are too good. Love your family with all your heart and listen to it. You are gorgeous, whether you're a size 4 or 14. It doesn't matter what you look like on the outside, as long as you're a good person, as long as you respect others. I know it's been told hundreds of times before, but it's true. Hey, girls, you are beautiful. ~ Gerard Way

And as to you life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths, / No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before. ~ Walt Whitman

I failed on a climbing problem eight times before realizing I was climbing as high as I knew I could and then letting go. On my next try I climbed with no thought of failure and reached the top. We cannot know what we can do in advance. The only way to find out is to go all-out trying, thinking only of success. ~ Royal Robbins

I failed, I think, seven [or] eight times before I finally got my first [championship]. It was just, you know, just about me growing up. Now that I'm an old, old veteran-age 29-I do things a lot differently. I don't go to the gentlemen's clubs anymore. I had to slow that down. ~ Shaquille O'Neal

I thought of the words of an old song, a sad song, that I had sung for him once: Oh, my love, I would shatter my own heart a thousand times before I hurt yours. But I had already shattered my own heart, and it had made no difference. ~ Zoe Marriott

But that's always a certain way to recognise a facist: when he's more powerful he kills everything that's different from him, he uses only brute force while law breaks like glass under his boots. And then, when he loses and when he's weak, he invokes the law and tolerance of differences. All of a sudden, he knows by heart every single human rights convention he broke so many times before. ~ Andrej Nikolaidis

On this Sunday morning in May, this girl who later was to be the cause of a sensation in New York, awoke much too early for her night before. One minute she was asleep, the next she was completely awake and dumped into despair. It was the kind of despair that she had known perhaps two thousand times before, there being 365 mornings in a calendar year. ~ John O'Hara

She smoothed the long sleeve of her tight, orange t-shirt. "What? You've never seen a woman wear more than one shirt before?"
Odin's mouth closed and opened a few times before words finally came out. "She's like a fuckin' seven layer burrito someone forgot was in the back of the fridge for six months."
She had to laugh. How could she not with such vivid imagery coming from someone who dressed like he was going on an unholy crusade at any moment? ~ Jennifer Turner

In ancient times before the divine sojourn of the Savior took place, even to the saints death was terrible; all wept for the dead as though they perished. But now that the Savior has raised his body, death is no longer terrible; for all who believe in Christ trample on it as it were nothing and choose rather to die than deny their faith in Christ. And that devil that once maliciously exulted in death, now that its pains were loosed, remained the only one truly dead. ~ Athanasius Of Alexandria

Until my thirtieth year, I lived in a state of almost continuous anxiety interspersed with periods of suicidal depression. It feels now as if I am talking about some past lifetime or somebody else's life.

One night not long after my twenty-ninth birthday, I woke up in the early hours with a feeling of absolute dread. I had woken up with such a feeling many times before, but this time it was more intense than it had ever been. The silence of the night, the vague outlines of the furniture in the dark room, the distant noise of a passing train – everything felt so alien, so hostile, and so utterly meaningless that it created in me a deep loathing of the world. The most loathsome thing of all, however, was my own existence. What was the point in continuing to live with this burden of misery? Why carry on with this continuous struggle? I could feel that a deep longing for annihilation, for nonexistence, was now becoming much stronger than the instinctive desire to continue to live.

'I cannot live with myself any longer.' This was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. 'Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the 'I' and the 'self' that 'I' cannot live with.' 'Maybe,' I thought, 'only one of them is real.'

I was so stunned by this strange realization that my mind stopped. I was fully conscious, but there were no more thoughts. Then I felt draw ~ Eckhart Tolle

I know that you are a mere flea! I know that you need only be squashed to be done away with! I know that I have fought this same battle a thousand thousand times before ... but, perhaps this time I can crush you like the insect you are! ~ Marv Wolfman

It's my turn … I've let you go a million times before, and I don't want to miss this chance with you. ~ Claire Contreras

No one says a word that has not been spoken a thousand times before, a thousand thousand times, and even the first of those was a repetition of words that came before. ~ Catherynne M Valente

Think a hundred times before you take a decision, but once that decision is taken, stand by it as one man. ~ Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Idea meets execution. Feeling becomes action.
I don't know why people find this idea so hard to get. I mean, you can throw any two people together, it doesn't mean they'll fall in love. Everyone knows this. No one quite understands how it works. It's just those people, where they are in their lives, how circumstance throws them together. Sure, it's happened before, but never quite in that way. Maybe they seem to come together all wrong. Maybe they've loved others. Maybe they don't always do right by each other ... but it's still there, the love. The event. And no one would dare criticize it just because it's common, it's a little asymmetrical, and anyone can do it. It is unique. It is theirs. It is beautiful. They have made something that has been made a million times before and has also never existed before that moment. ~ Maureen Johnson

I had auditioned for 'Saturday Night Live' two or three times before and never really saw myself there. I looked up to Belushi and Bill Murray and Aykroyd and I never saw myself as in their world. ~ Dana Carvey

He also said we should carve in the year and place where I was born, but I said no. As a man dies many times before he's dead, so does he wend from birth to birth until, by grace, he comes alive at last. ~ Frederick Buechner

I am Frustration. I am Memory-Lost. Sometimes I read a line a dozen times before it sticks. My creative force has slipped. I type slower, speak slower, think at a snail's pace. I'm Life shapeshifted by Post Traumatic Stress, bastardized by Fate. ~ Chila Woychik

I've run the Boston Marathon 6 times before. I think the best aspects of the marathon are the beautiful changes of the scenery along the route and the warmth of the people's support. I feel happier every time I enter this marathon. ~ Haruki Murakami

I'm terrified of missing my call time. I'll check my alarm several times before I fall asleep. ~ J. D. Pardo

I was so moved that she remembered my birthday that I cried harder than I had in years. When I returned her call, she told me her computer was broken and she couldn't afford to replace it. My heart fell. As I had done so many times before, I went to her rescue. Still on the phone, I went online and bought her a new laptop, top-of-the-line. That was what she had really called for, She thanked me and hung up. I went to Casey, sobbing. Soon afterward, I closed the bank account and asked my mom to not ask me for any more gifts or money. Now my relationship with my mom is very limited, and it's still very painful for me. She continues to occasionally send me bills she can't pay. I respond by telling her that I love her but I cannot pay her bills. ~ Olga Trujillo

Now, I'm not going to be misquoted on this like I have numerous times before, so I'll be quite clear. I've never said hitler was my hero, just that if he had focused on more than one race he would have had the right idea. Try to turn that one against me. ~ Zach Braff

I intend to get out of here. It can't last forever. Others have thought such things, in bad times before this, and they were always right, they did get out one way or another, and it didn't last forever. Although for them it may have lasted all the forever they had. ~ Margaret Atwood

Stopping an army, isn't that something you try 300 times before you do it? ~ Gabrielle

To have your life blow up four times before you're thirty would take something out of anyone, and I think it drained from my mom just enough hope that she never quite built her confidence back to what it once had been. ~ Dean Koontz

The Ghost of Sir Felix Finch whines, "But it's been done a hundred times before!"
as if there could be anything not done a hundred thousand times between Aristophanes and Andrew Void-Webber! As if Art is the What, not the How! ~ David Mitchell

Isabelle's clothes looked ridiculous. Clary had to roll the legs on the jeans up several times before she stopped tripping on them, and the plunging neckline of the red tank top only emphasized her lack of what Eric would have called a rack. ~ Cassandra Clare

As a rule it usually takes three or four readings for me to be interested in a script, and if I'm interested I'll read it three or four times before I make a strong decision. ~ Chris Cooper

She licked her lips, swallowing a few times before her soft voice reached him. "It makes no sense, but I'm glad my date never showed. I think I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be tonight. ~ Jennifer Kacey

I guess being a writer is a little like being a singer, when they're forced to sing that same boring song a million times over to their fans, even though that song was in the charts something like twenty years ago. We must read our book a million times before releasing it, they must sing the same song a million times after release, right? WRONG! It's nothing like that at all, because a song only takes three minutes to sing, whereas the reading of a book takes a fucking lifetime if you hate it already! ~ Jimmy Tudeski

Listen," he said one afternoon in the library. "You have to read a book three times before you know it. The first time you read it for the story. The plot. The movement from scene to scene that gives the book its momentum, its rhythm. It's like riding a raft down a river. You're just paying attention to the currents. Do you understand that?"
"Not at all," I said.
"Yes, you do," he said.
"Okay, I do," I said. I really didn't, but Gordy believed in me. He wouldn't let me give up.
The second time you read a book, you read it for its history, its knowledge of history. ~ Sherman Alexie

Book buying studies have proven a reader has to hear about your book multiple times before they reach into their wallet and purchase a book. The number of exposures to your book is somewhere between six and twelve times before you collect a sale. A key part of your platform building process as an author is to give readers multiple exposures to your book and the availability. ~ W. Terry Whalin

A young person, or someone who's writing in a different way - in some ways you could say, eventually someone will find them. Eventually someone will hear them. But it's good a lot of young people persevere. Because sometimes you have to send something out a thousand times before anyone recognizes your value. ~ Junot Diaz

I believe life is an education meant to teach us the need to be better people. And I believe this learning often takes place through trial and error which may mean being an awful person at times before clearly seeing and grasping the necessity to improve. If you don't agree with me, just ask Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge. I think Charles Dickens got it quite right. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich