Used To Be Quotes

It doesn't matter who you used to be; what matters is who you decide to be today. You are not your mistakes. You are not your mishaps. You are not your past. You are not your wounds. You can decide differently today and at every moment. Remember that. You are offered a new opportunity with each breath to think, decide, choose and act differently – in a way that supports you in being all that you are capable of being. You are not less than. You are enough. ~ Brittany Josephina

Vampires used to be the Dracula types, but in the last ten years most of them have become weak, brooding androgynes that only go after teenagers. A friend of mine took the opportunity to rid his whole city of them after the forth Mormon Vamps book hit and the sparkle meme was at its strongest."

"So does that make Ms. Mormon Sparkle Vamp a hero?"

"Of a sort. Before they started to sparkle, there were a lot of vamps who were tortured antiheroes, thanks to Rice and Whedon."

Ree grimaced. "Do you know if she was clued in?"

Eastwood shrugged. "She's very secretive, no one in the Underground has been able to say for sure. It's all rumor. My guess is she lost someone to a vampire and decided the greatest revenge she could inflict was to turn them into a laughing stock. ~ Michael R. Underwood

Here we are at the bottom, almost empty. It's like confetti, these dried remnants you find in the street for a party no one invited you to. But they used to be, I can admit, part of something beautiful. ~ Daniel Handler

I used to be a free spirit. ~ Soleil Moon Frye

I used to be a bumper sticker kind of writer. Now I'm more developed, and my writing often takes up whole bumpers. ~ Jarod Kintz

There used to be a canny politician in the Hyde Park area in Chicago in which I at one time lived for several years. His slogan was "I am for harmony if I have to use an axe." As "Secretary of Charm," if and when my merits and ambitions are recognized by my appointment to that office, I will take a page out of old "Doc" Jamieson's book. My motto will be "I will have charm, even if I have to use a club. ~ Beatrice Fairfax

I used to be surprised and a little annoyed when characters would reappear in my mind, itching to be in another story. Now I realize it's part of the deal, that you create these people out of thin air but then, if you do it right, they actually live. ~ Peter Orner

In his library he had been always sure of leisure and tranquility; and though prepared, as he told Elizabeth, to meet with folly and conceit in every other room in the house, he was used to be free from them there ~ Jane Austen

Oh I used to be disgusted and now I try to be amused. But since their wings have got rusted, you know, the angels wanna wear my red shoes. ~ Elvis Costello

I'm still embarrassed and mad at myself. But after seventy years, I also feel sorry for the girl I used to be. She was awfully hard on herself. ~ Anita Diamant

I used to be terribly shy, so I was either shy or over the top, and I always had a difficult time. ~ Sigourney Weaver

She wondered if this was true of every parent: if, prior to having children, they all used to be someone else. ~ Jodi Picoult

We live in secret cities
And we travel unmapped roads.

We speak words between us that we recognize
But which cannot be looked up.

They are our words.
They come from very far inside our mouths.

You and I, we are the secret citizens of the city
Inside us, and inside us

There go all the cars we have driven
And seen, there are all the people

We know and have known, there
Are all the places that are

But which used to be as well. This is where
They went. They did not disappear.

We each take a piece
Through the eye and through the ear.

It's loud inside us, in there, and when we speak
In the outside world

We have to hope that some of that sound
Does not come out, that an arm

Not reach out
In place of the tongue. ~ Alberto Alvaro Rios

What sealed the deal for me was that the cloak wouldn't come off without a generous donation of my tears. Those used to be almost impossible for me to summon, I admit, until I watched Field of Dreams. When Kevin Costner asks his dad at the end if he'd like to have a catch, I just completely lose my shit. ~ Kevin Hearne

I work out, and I try to stay active and fit so I can enjoy certain foods that I like to eat. I try to keep everything in moderation. I used to be insane about it. ~ Cameron Mathison

It was always easy, in open and lonely places, to be visited by Panic wilderness fear, but these are the urban fantods here, that come to get you when you are lost or isolate inside the way time is passing, when there is no more History, no time-travelling capsule to find your way back to, only the lateness and the absence that fill a great railway shed after the capital has been evacuated, and the goat-god's city cousins wait for you at the edges of the light, playing the tunes they've always played, but more audible now, because everything else has gone away or fallen silent. . . barn-swallow souls, fasioned of brown twilight, rise toward the white ceilings. . . the are unique to the Zone, they answer to the new Uncertainty. Ghosts used to be either the likeness of the dead or wraiths of the living. But here in the Zone categories have been blurred badly. The status of the name you miss, love, and search for now has grown ambiguous and remote, but this is even more than the bureaucracy of mass absence- some still live, some have died, but many, many have forgotten which they are. Their likenesses will not serve. Down here are only wrappings left in the light, in the dark: images of the Uncertainty. . ." 3:2 ~ Thomas Pynchon

My heroes used to be cowboys. ~ David Foreman

The Republican name used to be synonymous with limiting the size and scope of government, and we need to re-establish that reputation. We must work to eliminate government waste, make certain taxpayer dollars go to meaningful programs, and leave resources directly with the people. ~ Tim Walberg

I used to be ashamed
And now I am proud.
The world once was black
And now it is bright.
I used to walk head bent
And now I stand up tall.
I used to have dreams
But now I have hope. ~ Judith McNaught

We shed the skins of who we used to be! ~ Eric Jerome Dickey

You know, back in the 1950s and '60s, when J. Edgar Hoover was making the FBI the respected organization it used to be, oftentimes they would find a fugitive and basically have his house surrounded, and then put out a press release saying he was on the top 10 most wanted list. And 10 minutes later, he'd be arrested. ~ Howie Carr

Well, Chinese used to be seen as low, right? Working on the railroad, in laundries, and stuff like that. Now they're seen as smart and wealthy. I mean, isn't there the stereotype of the model minority? I read an article for school that said people like us - not you, Dr. Rosen - are now labeled as inquisitive, persistent, and ambitious. With ingenuity, fortitude, and cleverness. ~ Lisa See

We used to be "shiftless and lazy," now we're "fearsome and awesome." I think the black man should take pride in that. ~ James Earl Jones

What. The. Fuck. Did. I. Do?" I ask Apate. There's a horrible, cold, sinking feeling where my stomach used to be. We look at each other for a few moments, both with the blank expressions of those who just plain old don't know. Finally, we look at Hunter, who just smiles, points at himself, and says, "That would be me. You did me last night." "Doubtful. ~ Victoria C. Johnson

Everyone I know who used to be in the intelligence community is moving into the corporate world. ~ Tony Gilroy

Common sense used to be a great trait for one to have, and hence the name, common it was plentiful. Today's it's as rare as the Dodo bird. ~ M.A. Bookout

McDonalds used to be my favorite place to eat, until my metabolism changed in my late 30s. Before that, I would have no hesitation about walking into McDonalds and getting two cheeseburgers and fries and enjoying every last bite. ~ Andy Cohen

I think in some way it's like that for all of us, living with the ghosts of things that used to be, or never were. We're all of us haunted by yesterday, and we got no choice but to keep marching into our tomorrows. ~ Rodman Philbrick

Sometimes we fall in love and end up losing ourselves. We allow ourselves to become different people. But we have choices, Lily. We can choose to find the person we used to be, the person we really are. Or we can continue on as this new being."

-Conall. ~ Chani Lynn Feener

On every door the management had placed a photograph of the person so they could find their room. As he went by he saw face after face of someone who used to be young. ~ Fannie Flagg

Channel Firing
BY THOMAS HARDY
That night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the Judgment-day

And sat upright. While drearisome
Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
The worms drew back into the mounds,

The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, "No;
It's gunnery practice out at sea
Just as before you went below;
The world is as it used to be:

"All nations striving strong to make
Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters
They do no more for Christés sake
Than you who are helpless in such matters.

"That this is not the judgment-hour
For some of them's a blessed thing,
For if it were they'd have to scour
Hell's floor for so much threatening....

"Ha, ha. It will be warmer when
I blow the trumpet (if indeed
I ever do; for you are men,
And rest eternal sorely need)."

So down we lay again. "I wonder,
Will the world ever saner be,"
Said one, "than when He sent us under
In our indifferent century!"

And many a skeleton shook his head.
"Instead of preaching forty year,"
My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,
"I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer."

Again the guns disturbed the hour,
Roaring their readiness to avenge,
As far inland as Stourton Tower,
And Camelot, ~ Thomas Hardy

Years ago - I used to be an actor - I was in a production of Vaclav Havel's 'Temptation,' and when we started rehearsals, he was in prison. When we closed the show, he was running for president. And it felt incredibly timely and important and also this lucky thing. ~ Kelly Sue DeConnick

British actors used to be scared of the multi-year options that U.S. TV shows demand. That has changed, because the same is now happening in the U.K. ~ Jamie Bamber

We have some goats, some chickens, and we used to have pigs. There used to be two ostriches as well, but they were a little bit violent, so we had to give them away. When we were little, we used to play with the goats all the time. We each had our own little goat, and we'd go and run around with them. ~ Jessica Springsteen

I used to be into 'forbidden fruit', but I've moved on to'verboten vegetables ~ Josh Stern

We will remember the way things used to be, and teach our children to be better than us. The generations that follow will remember with us. In that day, we will all be free ~ Rachel Higginson

I used to be a huge collector, and my big thing was stickers. ~ Jenny Lewis

It used to be that the longest unprotected border in the world was that between the United States and Canada. Today it's the one between fact and fiction. If the two cozy up any closer together The National Enquirer will be out of business. ~ Stacy Schiff

I used to be obsessed with game shows. When the Game Show Network became popular in the late '90s, I was all about reruns of 'The Price Is Right.' I knew all the prices from the '70s. ~ Kate Micucci

Only recently, the word scientist had been coined, by the polymath William Whewell. Many scholars had objected to this blunt new term, as it sounded so sinisterly similar to that awful word atheist; why not simply continue to call themselves natural philosophers? Was that designation not more godly, more pure? But divisions were being drawn now between the realm of nature and the realm of philosophy. Ministers who doubled as botanists or geologists were becoming increasingly rare, as far too many challenges to biblical truths were stirred up through investigation of the natural world. It used to be that God was revealed in the wonders of nature; now God was being challenged by those same wonders. Scholars were now required to choose one side or the other. As ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I think I used to be lower maintenance. I think I'm slowly becoming higher maintenance. ~ Alison Brie

I did a Clean & Clear commercial. I did a series of them. I used to be the Clean & Clear girl! ~ Shantel VanSanten

It's lovely that the Hollywood stars are crossing over to Broadway ... There used to be such a dividing line in the country between Hollywood and the theatre and that's just melting away. It's just wonderful right now! ~ Julie Andrews

You're real, Evie. It doesn't matter who you used to be or who you thought you were. You are real, and I see you. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

Motherhood has helped me to stop overanalyzing things. It's been liberating because I used to be somewhat neurotic. I attribute that to having something bigger than myself. ~ Idina Menzel

One possible way of couching it is to choose to say that we will take apart your skull very gently and reconstruct a skull for you that will have a highly developed bump of clarity and a slight concave dent where the fear-instinct used to be. ~ David Foster Wallace

When Dawn looked at Vic, she saw Vic exactly as he wanted to be seen. Whereas Vic's parents couldn't help seeing who he used to be, and so many friends and strangers couldn't help seeing who he didn't want to be anymore, Dawn only saw him. Call it a blur if you want, but Dawn didn't see a blur. She saw a very distinct, very clear person. ~ David Levithan

Each year before the first rain after the harvest in Spring, I would look at the dry peach tree that I know so well at our backyard and anticipating that in summer it will be covered in an overgrown hedge unless my father who was a committed gardner of note take a weekend off from Jo'burg during the pruning season to prune it. Even now, I still remember with crystal clarity my childhood mood - warm days in Schoonoord with rich nostalgia of green scenery and flowers flowering everywhere.

One evening I was sitting at the veranda of our firehut looking at the orange tree between the plat (flat - roofed) house and the big L - shaped house - the tree served as a shelter from the sun for the drinking water pot next to the plat house - suddenly the weather changed, the wind howled, the tree swayed, the loose corrugated iron sheets on roof of he house clattered and clanged, the open windows shuts with a bang and the sky made night a day, and I was overwhelmed with that feeling of childhood joy at the approaching rain. All of a sudden, the deafening of steady pouring rain. The raging storm beat the orange tree leaves while I sat there remembering that where the orange tree stood used to be our first house, a small triangular shaped mokhukhu ((tin house) made of red painted corrugated iron sheets salvaged from demolishing site in Witbank, also remembering that my aunt's mokhukhu was also made of the same type and colour of corrugated iron sheets. The ashen ground drunk m ~ Pekwa Nicholas Mohlala

Today most habeas involves the federal courts overriding state convictionswhere it used to be mostly the reverse. ~ Anthony Gregory

Altruism, a jargon word for what used to be called love, is worse than weakness, it is sin, a violation of nature. Be seperate. Do not be a social animal. ~ Lewis Thomas

It used to be that people went to their doctor to find out what was wrong. That was the expectation when someone made an appointment with their local family doctor: they wanted to know what they had and how they could feel better. Ear infection: what should I take? Pulled muscle: what should I do? Broken ankle: how can you fix it? Over the years, something happened to this common sense approach. "Algorithms" and "pathways" have proliferated in ways that have reduced each person's unique story to simplistic recipes. More often than not, this cookbook approach ends up telling patients what they don't have - which, while potentially reassuring, does not result in a real diagnosis.1 ~ Leana Wen

It used to be said that you had to know what was happening in America because it gave us a glimpse of our future. Today, the rest of America, and after that Europe, had better heed what happens in California, for it already reveals the type of civilisation that is in store for all of us. ~ Alistair Cooke

There are many more women who identify as unique people as well as mothers, or instead of as mothers, than there used to be and, hopefully, there are more men who identify as fathers. ~ Gloria Steinem

You're wrong, you know. I'm not with you because of who you became. I fell in love with you when I was bleeding under a counter at the dead end of the desert and you saved my life. Back when we were both who we used to be. ~ Alwyn Hamilton

The way music reflects real life, the way that painstakingly, over the years, what I have said is really a metaphor for what's happening to America. It used to be about, or tried to be at the very beginning, about what was right. It has stopped being what was right for America; it started being about what was right for companies that are in control. ~ Immortal Technique

Check it out."
Jonah removed the bubble wrap and held up the picture for his three cousins.
Dan took a step backward. The shock was almost as powerful as it had been the day before at the Uffizi. "It's perfect! It's every bit as disgusting as the real one!"
Amy nodded. "And so fast. We only called you yesterday."
Jonah shrugged. "Even the Janus take a short cut every now and then. You can do a lot with digitization these days. You break the picture down to squares and reproduce them one at a time. The other two are just as fly."
"You mean, hog ugly," Hamilton amended.
"The serpents don't help," Dan put in critically. "Live fat spaghetti. Lady, if you're thinking of a modeling career, forget it!"
The rapper clucked sympathetically. "You guys just don't appreciate the power of the visual image. The Wiz used to be like that–until Gangsta Kronikles. When you're in film industry, you understand the whole picture's-worth-a-thousand-words deal."
Hamilton rolled his eyes. "Here we go again. ~ Gordon Korman

I used to be really insecure about my self-education. I'm definitely always learning. But there's many ways to learn. There are many, many ways to always be a learner. ~ Maggie Grace

It's not just in my industry ... everything is so sensationalized that there's not a lot of heart and soul in a lot of things there used to be heart and soul in. ~ Kenny Chesney

Mustapha Mond paused, put down the first book and, picking up the other, turned over the pages. "Take this, for example," he said, and in his deep voice once more began to read: "'A man grows old; he feels in himself that radical sense of weakness, of listlessness, of discomfort, which accompanies the advance of age; and, feeling thus, imagines himself merely sick, lulling his fears with the notion that this distressing condition is due to some particular cause, from which, as from an illness, he hopes to recover. Vain imaginings! That sickness is old age; and a horrible disease it is.
They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light; turns naturally and inevitably; for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its life and charms has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need ~ Aldous Huxley

Jared told her he used to be an exotic dancer in San Francisco.'
'My body is a gift from God,' Jared said gravely. 'Except for my hips, which are clearly a gift from the devil. ~ Sarah Rees Brennan

People recognize me wherever I go, where it used to be just New York. I guess people who aren't even baseball fans watch the World Series. I was driving down the freeway in Los Angeles over the winter and a guy pulled up next to me and gave me the finger. ~ Graig Nettles

When I was in elementary school, I was a big fan of the zip-off pants that could be turned into shorts. The Delia's catalog used to be my bible. ~ Hayley Williams

As Ephram waited for the pain, he saw Ruby as she used to be, the first time he'd seen her. The sweet little girl with long braids. The kind of pretty it hurt to look at, like candy on a sore tooth. ~ Cynthia Bond

The stands are packed every weekend, year after year, even though the team's achievements have collapsed in line with the town's economy. And perhaps that's why - because everyone hopes than when the team's fortunes improve again, the rest of the town will get pulled up with it. Which is why places like this always have to pin their hopes for the future on young people. They're the only ones who don't remember that things actually used to be better. ~ Fredrik Backman

It was hard to get guys to notice me, period, because I was so skinny and all my friends were curvy. Plus, I used to be very nervous in front of guys. ~ Tyra Banks

America used to be a uniquely productive, low-cost place to do business. We had efficient infrastructure. We had limited regulation. We believed in the market. ~ Michael Porter

Life is wonderful and strange...and it's also absolutely mundane and tiresome. It's hilarious and it's deadening. It's a big, screwed-up morass of beauty and change and fear and all our lives we oscillate between awe and tedium. I think stories are the place to explore that inherent weirdness; that movement from the fantastic to the prosaic that is life....

What interests me - and interests me totally - is how we as living human beings can balance the brief, warm, intensely complicated fingersnap of our lives against the colossal, indifferent, and desolate scales of the universe. Earth is four-and-a-half billion years old. Rocks in your backyard are moving if you could only stand still enough to watch. You get hernias because, eons ago, you used to be a fish. So how in the world are we supposed to measure our lives - which involve things like opening birthday cards, stepping on our kids' LEGOs, and buying toilet paper at Safeway - against the absolutely incomprehensible vastness of the universe?

How? We stare into the fire. We turn to friends, bartenders, lovers, priests, drug-dealers, painters, writers. Isn't that why we seek each other out, why people go to churches and temples, why we read books? So that we can find out if life occasionally sets other people trembling, too? ~ Anthony Doerr

Human beings used to be molecules which could do many, many different sorts of dances, or decline to dance at all
as they pleased. My mother could do the waltz, the tango, the rumba ... ~ Kurt Vonnegut

I used to be able to slim down just by exercising more, but that's changed. ~ Mariah Carey

Pretty soon we'll have robots in our society, you're going to have a lot of automated processes that used to be done by people - this is happening. Society and technology is changing so fast, and the impact of the change on society and technology is global, not local. ~ Jose Padilha

I used to be indecisive but now I am not quite sure. ~ Tommy Cooper

It was possible to grow up in an instant, that you could look down and see the line in the sand dividing your life now from what it used to be. ~ Jodi Picoult

The Senate used to be a place of great debate and accomplishment. Now it is run like a dictatorship shutting out the voices of millions of Americans. ~ John Cornyn

I used to be a good party boy. I'm old. I'm an old man. You pay the consequences. I'm just fine with a couple of drinks, no more than that. ~ Javier Bardem

I'm just a different machine than I used to be, where now I've taken my diet more serious than I ever have in my life, and I've gotten way small. My physique is just completely different to the way it used to be. ~ Jon Jones

Women used to be elected only when their husbands died and they became widows. The men found this was too hard on them. That's why they've become feminists. ~ Gloria Steinem

I used to be scared of loosing you and it happened just as I had thought. I wonder if you ever feel hurt about having lost the love we had. Do you feel the pain that I feel? ~ Ron Miles

It used to be controversial whether smoking caused lung cancer, it used to be controversial whether HIV caused AIDS. Now, there are a few mavericks who deny those things. In the case of climate change, I think the debate is going the same way in that there is a strong consensus that it is a serious matter. ~ Martin Rees

DJs used to be American heroes. No more. Today, being a disk jockey is generally regarded as being slightly more respectable than snatching purses for a living, or robbing graves. ~ Larry Lujack

I don't think she let herself go Charlie, I think she just let's herself be. I can't expect Frances to do all that she's done in the last twenty years including simply gaining twenty years and not look different from the twenty-five year old I feel in love with.
If she's comfortable carrying extra weight, fair enough, if it bothers her enough she'll change it.
I don't get it when guys are like 'oh my wife isn't like she used to be'. Why would she be? Don't you expect to change as you get older? I mean I'll look at the twenty-three year old as happily as the next guy. They're pretty and their bodies are gorgeous, but what the f*** would we talk about, juice cleanses and youtube? ~ Abbi Waxman

Nothing can alter the character of God. In the course of a human life, tastes and outlook and temper may change radically: a kind, equable man may turn bitter and crotchety: a man of good-will may grow cynical and callous. But nothing of this sort happens to the Creator. He never becomes less truthful, or merciful, or just, or good, than He used to be. ~ J.I. Packer

The worst thing you can do is make a cult movie. That means you got three great reviews and nobody went. An art film means it got a lot of good reviews and nobody went. There is no such thing as a counter culture now. What used to be considered that is commercial now. ~ John Waters

I shut my eyes and she was again the same as she used to be: she was the hiss of steam, the clink of a cup, she was a certain hour of the night and the promise of rest. ~ Graham Greene

I think a huge amount of it is because of the Internet. Every single thing in the world is accessible with a few clicks. Almost every child, by the age of 13, has seen pornography. That's clearly different. It used to be really hard or really humiliating, as a 13-year-old, to access pornography. If you wanted to take a look at a Playboy, it was really challenging. Today, it's a joke. ~ David Schwimmer

When you give something up, you need to fill the space where it used to be, and you understand the landscape in yourself a bit more. ~ Simon Van Booy

In whichever way my music can get out there, I'm just like, 'Sure.' It's also through the TV synch licenses that I've been surviving. I don't really make money through record sales. I used to be really picky: 'No, I don't want it to be the song of a commercial,' but nowadays it's what you need to do to get the song out as much as you can. ~ Priscilla Ahn

So now, when I look back, all I see is who we used to be and who we are now. And I wonder how anybody can recognize anyone at all. ~ Susan Pogorzelski

I'm no longer a shoeaholic, but I used to be. I used to spend all my time on tour either buying records or shoes. ~ Jamie Cullum

Flying used to be so great but now it's more of a trial. ~ Michelle Stuart

My wife told me I'm not as disgusting to her as I used to be. ~ John Kruk

I used to be a blanket -
without seams -
a silk cocoon of happy dreams.
Now I'm a quilt,
no square the same
a patchwork of pleasure and pain ~ Susan Polis Schutz

Let me tell you about this leg, Miss Oldridge," he said. "This used to be a modest, well-behaved leg, quietly going about its business, troubling nobody. But ever since it was hurt, it has become tyrannical."

Her expression eased another degree, and amusement glinted in her eyes, like faint, distant stars in a midsummer night's sky.

Encouraged, he went on, "This limb is selfish, surly, and ungrateful. When English medical expertise declared the case hopeless, we took the leg to a Turkish healer. He plied it with exotic unguents and cleaned and dressed it several times a day. By this means he staved off the fatal and malodorous infection it should have suffered otherwise. Was the leg grateful? Did it go back to work like a proper leg? No, it did not."

Lips twitching, she made a sympathetic murmur.

"This limb, madam," he said, "demanded months of boring exercises before it would condescend to perform the simplest movements. Even now, after nearly three years of devoted care and maintenance, it will fly into a fit over damp weather. And this, may I remind you, is an English leg, not one of your delicate foreign varieties. ~ Loretta Chase

We've been here three days already, and I've yet to cook a single meal. The night we arrived, my dad ordered Chinese takeout from the old Cantonese restaurant around the corner, where they still serve the best egg foo yung, light and fluffy and swimming in rich, brown gravy. Then there had been Mineo's pizza and corned beef sandwiches from the kosher deli on Murray, all my childhood favorites. But last night I'd fallen asleep reading Arthur Schwartz's Naples at Table and had dreamed of pizza rustica, so when I awoke early on Saturday morning with a powerful craving for Italian peasant food, I decided to go shopping. Besides, I don't ever really feel at home anywhere until I've cooked a meal.
The Strip is down by the Allegheny River, a five- or six-block stretch filled with produce markets, old-fashioned butcher shops, fishmongers, cheese shops, flower stalls, and a shop that sells coffee that's been roasted on the premises. It used to be, and perhaps still is, where chefs pick up their produce and order cheeses, meats, and fish. The side streets and alleys are littered with moldering vegetables, fruits, and discarded lettuce leaves, and the smell in places is vaguely unpleasant. There are lots of beautiful, old warehouse buildings, brick with lovely arched windows, some of which are now, to my surprise, being converted into trendy loft apartments.
If you're a restaurateur you get here early, four or five in the morning. Around seven or eight o'clock, home cooks, to ~ Meredith Mileti

My ace in the hole as a human being used to be my capacity for remembering birthdays. I worked at it. Whenever I made a new friend, I made a point of finding out his or her birthday early on, and I would record it in my Filofax calendar. ~ Susan Orlean

Political identities aren't about tax cuts. They are about tribes... This is the result of the incredible rise in political polarization in recent decades. It used to be that both the Republican and Democratic parties included both liberals and conservatives. Since parties contained ideological multitudes, it was hard for them to be the basis of strong, personal identities. A liberal Democrat in New Jersey didn't have a lot in common with a conservative Democrat in Alabama. But now that's changed. The parties are sharply sorted by ideology. What were once fractious coalitions have become unified tribes. ~ Ezra Klein

I used to be the youngest person on the set [of Bored To Death]. Now I'm very often the oldest person on the set. I feel lucky about that, to be honest. Lena [Dunham], by the way is a doll to me. So much fun to work with and really open. ~ Richard Masur

I think I'm a bit in love with these girls. They make me feel giddy. Like I haven't a care in the world. Like I'm fearless.
Like I used to be. ~ Melina Marchetta

There was a jolly miller once, Lived on the River Dee; He worked and sang, from morn to night; No lark so blithe as he. And this the burden of his song, Forever used to be, I care for nobody, not I, If no one cares for me. ~ Isaac Bickerstaffe

College professors used to be badly paid and worth it. Colleges used to be modest institutions; they should go back to being modest institutions. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

Every day she would spread her wings and tell herself today was the day she would fly - but every day a quiet, hateful old witch told her if she tried even once, she would fall. Told her little girls weren't meant to fly. Little girls were meant to stay at home and be pretty, and as long as she did that all the good things in the world would come to her." The words tasted foul. "And the little girl, who used to be fearless, learned fear. Just a little more each day, until her wings grew too heavy to lift her and her fear weighed her down to earth. ~ Cole McCade