A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“And I said to myself: That's true, hope needs to be like barbed wire to keep out despair, hope must be a mine field.”
Source: Open Closed Open: Poems
“And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: "Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown." And he replied: "Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light, and safer than a known way."”
“And I said, 'That last thing is what you can't get, Carlo. Nobody can get to that last thing. We keep on living in hopes of catching it once and for all.”
Source: On the Road
“And I sat there at the patio,
while the whole of universe,
was getting engulfed,
in the whitest whiteness of snow.
Down, near my rough paw,
is soft snow,
mannering a fidgeting embryo.
I monitored the snow that plunged,
on the soil of my backyard,
and realized it melting fast.
Was that the temperature or,
my eyes on it overcast?
While I think of this melted exalt,
I am obliged to ask,
What ought happens to the thoughts?
Where do they get tossed?
When they are forgot?
Scorched?
Scoffed?
Deformed?
Unadorned?”
“And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love.”
Source: Sixty stories
“And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love...And you can never touch a girl in the same way more than once, twice, or another number of times however much you may wish to hold, wrap, or otherwise fix her hand, or look, or some other quality, or incident, known to you previously.”
Source: Sixty stories
“And I saw Australia anew through her eyes. And I realised what a tremendously thrilling country it was. And ever since then I have been coming back regularly.”
“And I saw darkness for weeks. It never dawned on me that I could come out of it, but you heal. Nature heals you, and you do come out of it. All of a sudden I saw a crack of light ... then all of a sudden I saw another crack of light. Then I saw forms in the light. And I recognized that there was no darkness, that in darkness there'll always be light.”
“And I saw for the first time how, despite the isolation of our own lives, we are always connected to our ancestors; our bodies hold the memories of those who came before us, whether it is the features we inherit or a disposition that is etched into our soul.”
Source: The Lost Wife
“And I saw her as a sad thirtieth child of Valentine that fell, not as Lucifer rebelling against God, but because she too passionately wanted to be united with him! All things in excess become sin.”
Source: The Alexandria Quartet
“And I saw how I would spend the next few days in solitude, with nothing to do and only my own, horrible thoughts for company. I began speaking before I could reconsider. 'Take me with you.'
Rhys halted as he pushed through two purple gossamer curtains. And slowly, he turned back. 'You should rest.'
'I've rested enough,' I said, setting down the empty mug and standing. My head spun slightly. When had I last eaten? 'Wherever you're going, whatever you're doing- take me along. I'll stay out of trouble. Just... Please.' I hated the last word, choked on it. It had done nothing to sway Tamlin.
For a long moment, Rhys said nothing. Then he prowled toward me, his long stride eating up the distance and his face set like stone. 'If you come with me, there is no going back. You will not be allowed to speak of what you see to anyone outside of my court. Because if you do, people will die- my people will die. So if you come, you will have to lie about it forever; if you return to the Spring Court, you cannot tell anyone there what you see, and who you meet, and what you will witness. If you would rather not have that between you and- your friends, then stay here.'
Stay here, stay locked up in the Spring Court... My chest was a gaping, open wound. I wondered if I'd bleed out from it- if a spirit could bleed out and die. Maybe that had already happened. 'Take me with you,' I breathed. 'I won't tell anyone what I see. Even- them.' I couldn't bear to say his name.
Rhys studied me for a few heartbeats. And finally he gave me a half smile. 'We leave in ten minutes. If you want to freshen up, go ahead.'
An unusually polite reminder that I probably looked like the dead. I felt like it. But I said, 'Where are we going?'
Rhys's smile widened into a grin. 'To Velaris- the City of Starlight.”
Source: A Court of Mist and Fury
“And I saw it didn't matter who had loved me or who I loved. I was alone. The black oily asphalt, the slick beauty of the Iranian attendant, the thickening clouds--nothing was mine. And I understood finally, after a semester of philosophy, a thousand books of poetry, after death and childbirth and the startled cries of men who called out my name as they entered me, I finally believed I was alone, felt it in my actual, visceral heart, heard it echo like a thin bell.”
Source: What we carry: poems
“And I saw myselt just as I was now fifteen years hence, only grown older, is the same room, living the same sort of solitary life, with the same Matryona, who had not grown a bit wiser in all those years.”
Source: White Nights
“And I saw that all my life I had known that this was going to happen, and that I'd been afraid for a long time, I'd been afraid for a long time. There's fear, of course, with everybody. But now it had grown, it had grown gigantic; it filled me and it filled the whole world.”
“And I saw that all the toil and all achievement spring from one person's envy of another.”
Source: Ecclesiastes, or The Preacher
“And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people as one of many hoops that made one circle.”
Source: Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
“And I saw that truly nothing happens by accident or luck, but everything by God's wise providence. If it seems to be accident or luck from our point of view, our blindness and lack of foreknowledge is the cause; for matters that have been in God's foreseeing wisdom since before time began befall us suddenly, all unawares; and so in our blindness and ignorance we say that this is accident or luck, but to our Lord God it is not so.”
“And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.”
“And I saw the roof of the shack in Hanoi where my mother lived. Sheet metal patched together with tar paper. On rainy days, the roof leaked. In the heat of summer, the acrid smell of tar was overpowering, nauseating. All around, the gutters, gurgling under slabs of cement, flowed from one house to the next. Children played in this filthy black water, sailing their little white paper boats. The few mangy patches of grass were at the foot of the wall where men drunk on too much beer came to relieve themselves. The place reeked of urine. This was my street. I had grown up here.”
Source: Paradise of the Blind
“And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I'm going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I'm going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire purchase plan.”
“And I saw then again, and for good, what I had always been afraid to see, and had pretended not to see in him: that he was a woman as well as a man. Any need to explain the sources of that fear vanished with the fear; what I was left with was, at last, acceptance of him as he was. Until then I had rejected him, refused him his own reality. He had been quite right to say that he, the only person on Gethen who trusted me, was the own Gethenian I distrusted. For he was the only one who had entirely accepted me as a human being: who had liked me personally and given me entire personal loyalty, and who therefore had demanded of me an equal degree of recognition, of acceptance. I had not been willing to give it. I had been afraid to give it. I had not wanted to give my trust, my friendship to a man who was a woman, a woman who was a man.”
Source: The Left Hand of Darkness
“And I saw then and there you take a man half-bad and a women half-bad and put their two good halves together and you got one human all good to share between.”
Source: Something Wicked This Way Comes
“And I say also this. I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, nor love so sweet, if there were no danger in the lakes.”
Source: Out of the Silent Planet
“and I say give me ginger, cinnamon, myrrh,
make it burn
and let me bleed until
I’m clean and
maybe
one day I’ll have earned redemption.”
Source: BlazeVox 23: An Online Journal of Voice
“And I say let a man be of good cheer about his soul. When the soul has been arrayed in her own proper jewels - temperance and justice, and courage, and nobility and truth - she is ready to go on her journey when the hour comes.”
“And I say north is where I want it to be!”
“And I say that Your Highnesses ought not to consent that any foreigner does business or sets foot here, except Christian Catholics, since this was the end and the beginning of the enterprise, that it should be for the enhancement and glory of the Christian religion, nor should anyone who is not a good Christian come to these parts.”
“And I say the sacred hoop of my people was one of the many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father.”
Source: Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
“And I say to my heart: rave on.”
Source: Thirst: Poems
“And I say to you that if you bring curiosity to your work it will cease to be merely a job and become a door through which you enter the best that life has to give you.”
“And I say to you, I have decided to stick with love, for I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go. For I have seen too
much hate... every time I see it, I know that it does something to their faces and their personalities, and I say to myself that hate is too great a burden to bear. I have decided to love.”
“And I say to you, you are Kepha, and on this kepha I will build my church.”
“And I say, 'Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know.' And he says, 'Oh, uh, there won't be any money. But when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness.' So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.”
“And I say, the meaning of life is what you make it. There will be as many different meaningful lives as there are people to live them.”
“And I see. I hear. But not with eyes and ears. I'm not outside my world anymore, and I'm not really inside it either. The thing is, there's no difference anymore between me and the universe. The boundary is gone. I am it and it is me. I am a stone, a cactus thorn. I am rain.”
Source: Stargirl
“And I see my father once again, eternally once again. And as the moment fades, I realize I have recreated this scene countless times. And each time I forget that I had created it not long ago. “Longing is powerful,” I say out loud to no one but myself.”
Source: Moose
“And I see that not touching for so long was a drive to the beach with the windows rolled up so the waves feel that much colder.”
Source: The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel
“And I see the - you know, when I go to the juvenile detention centers and prisons, I see people who can't read now. And I know that when they leave those prisons and those detention centers, they're not going to be able to make it in our society.”
“And I seek people who break rules with happiness — and not bringing pain to themselves.”
“And I shall always hold myself more obliged to those by whose favour I enjoy uninterrupted leisure than to any who might offer me the most honourable positions in the world.”
“And I shall find some girl perhaps, and a better one than you, With eyes as wise, but kindlier, and lips as soft, but true, and I dare say she will do.”
Source: Collected Poems
“And I shall see it again... in dreams, when I sleep by the Ganges; and again, in a more remote hour—when another slumber overcomes me, on the shore of a darker stream!”
Source: Jane Eyre
“And I shall seek you endlessly, for
I am a moth, and you’re my flame
Knowing that I’ll burn at your touch
I return, for you’re a fire; untamed”
“And I shall watch the ferry boats, and they'll get high, on a bluer ocean against tomorrow's sky. and i will never grow so old again, and i will walk and talk, in gardens all wet with rain.”
“And I should get back and... I don't know, walk around the beach talking to myself and Jona or something. Maybe sing. Keep up the whole Mad Prince thing a bit longer."
"Oh, I hope you don't ever give it up entirely! I rather like it."
"For you, it will come out of the closet occasionally." He leaned over into the water. Ariel kicked her tail and rose up just long enough for a quick kiss- cold, wet, salty, and slapped by the sea at just the wrong moment.
Heaven.”
Source: Part of Your World
“And I should like to assure you, my Islamic friends, that under the American Constitution, under American tradition, and in American hearts, this Center, this place of worship, is just as welcome as could be a similar edifice of any other religion. Indeed, America would fight with her whole strength for your right to have here your own church and worship according to your own conscience. This concept is indeed a part of America, and without that concept we would be something else than what we are.”
“And I should mention the light which falls through the big windows this time of day italicizing everything it touches.”
Source: Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems
“and I shudder sometimes to think of all that stellar mystery of how she IS going to get me in a future lifetime, wow - And I seriously do believe that will be my salvation, too. A long way to go.”
Source: Big Sur (Annotated)
“And I silently simmered in the chaos of my mind and heart.”
Source: Time
“And I simply decided to be happy again.”