A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“And then?" I said.
"Then we shall go through the records and get the names and addresses of all the witches in the whole
wide world!"
"And after that?" I said, quivering with excitement.
"After that, my darling, the greatest task of all will begin for you and me! We shall pack our bags and go
travelling all over the world! In every country we visit, we shall seek out the houses where the witches are
living! We shall find each house, one by one, and having found it, you will creep inside and leave your
little drops of deadly Mouse-Maker in the bread, or the cornflakes, or the rice-pudding or whatever food
you see lying about. It will be a triumph, my darling! A colossal unbeatable triumph. We shall do it
entirely by ourselves, just you and me! That will be our work for the rest of our lives!"
My grandmother picked me up off the table and kissed me on the nose. "Oh, my goodness me, we're
going to be busy these next few weeks and months and years!" she cried.
"I think we are," I said. "But what fun and excitement it's going to be!"
"You can say that again!" my grandmother cried, giving me another kiss. "I can't wait to get started!”
Source: The Witches
“And then I saw him and nothing was ever the same again. The sky was never the same colour, the moon never the same shape: the air never smelt the same, food never tasted the same. Every word I knew changed its meaning, everything that once was stable and firm became as insubstantial as a puff of wind, and every puff of wind became a solid thing I could feel and touch.”
Source: Moab is My Washpot
“And then I saw him.
In the snow.
Behind the trees.
A white wolf. Black on his back and chest.
His eyes burned red.
He said chase me i love you chase me.
I said, “Daddy?” because I was just a little boy again, and my father, my father was there, and he was never going to leave me, he was never going to leave me again.
He ran.
I chased after him.
Tree branches slapped against my face and chest, sharp stings as the blanket flared around me. I almost dropped it. I almost let it go.
PackLoveSon to me to me come to me”
Source: Brothersong
“And then I saw, in my vision, that just as there are two fires, so there are two revolutions. And I saw that the whole mad modern world is a race between them. Which will happen first--the revolution in which bad things shall perish, or that other revolution in which good things shall perish also?”
Source: Selected essays
“And then I saw it. My father's wood: thick by then with twenty years' growth, but still not fully mature. A half-grown wood of oak trees around that little clearing, which, with my new perspective, I could see made the shape of a heart.
I stared down at the clearing. The heart was unmistakable; tapered at the base with the strawberry field in the centre; a stand of trees to form the cleft. How long had it taken my father, I thought, to plan the formation, to plant out the trees? How many calculations had he made to create this God's-eye view? I thought of the years I had been at school; the years I had felt his absence. I remembered the contempt I'd felt at his little hobby. And finally I understood what he'd tried to say to me on the night of my wedding.
'Love is the thing that only God sees.'
I'd wondered at the time what he meant. My father seldom spoke of love; rarely showed affection. Perhaps that was Tante Anna's influence, or maybe the few words he'd had were all spent on Naomi. But here it was at last, I saw: the heart-shaped meadow in the wood, a silent testament to grief; a last, enduring promise.
Love is the thing that only God sees. I suppose you'd say that's because he sees into our hearts. Well, if he ever looks in mine, he'll see no more than I've told you. Confession may be good for the soul. But love is even better. Love redeems us even when we think ourselves irredeemable. I never really loved my wife- not in the way that she deserved. My children and I were never close. Perhaps that was my fault, after all. But Mimi- yes, I loved Mimi. And I loved Rosette Rocher, who was so very like her. One day I hope Rosette will see the heart-shaped meadow in the wood, and know that love surrounds her, whether see can see it or not. And you, Reynaud. I hope one day you can feel what only God sees, but which grows from the hearts of people like us: the flawed; the scarred; the broken. I hope you find it one day, Reynaud. Till then, look after Rosette for me. Make sure she knows my story. Tell her to take care of my wood. And keep picking the strawberries.”
Source: The Strawberry Thief
“And then I saw that the running away was a running towards. An effort to catch up with my fleet-footed self, living another life in a different way.”
“And then I saw the eternal stars twinkling down upon me; I knew their God was mine.”
Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
“And then I saw the menu, stained with tea and beautifully written by a foreign hand, and on top it said..."Chips with everything". Chips with every damn thing. You breed babies and you eat chips with everything.”
“And then I saw the way he looked at her... like he was a blind man, seeing the sun for the very first time.”
“And then I screwed up and the Colonel screwed up and Takumi screwed up and she slipped through our fingers.”
Source: Looking For Alaska Special 10th Anniversary Edition
“And then I search his eyes, search his features for something I can't even name. And I realize I don't want to be his enemy anymore.”
Source: Unravel Me
“And then I see what she means. Because I did have to tell her, just like she had to tell me all of this. I had to trust her. Sometimes you have to tell someone else what it's like. Because if you don't, you'll go nuts.”
Source: Things Not Seen
“And then I settled into the most natural thing for a man with no real talents.
Journalism.”
Source: Detroit: An American Autopsy
“And then I sez—‘How is anybody a-goin’ to live pattern lives, when they are a-starvin' to death? And how is anybody a-goin’ to enjoy religion when they are a-chokin’?”
Source: Samantha at the World's Fair
“And then I snapped. I'd been an overachiever all my life, so it made sense that I'd excel in all things. Including emotional breakdowns.”
Source: Mother Hater
“And then, I swear to God, it waves at me! One of its little arms waves at me!
I wave back.
It waves again.
Okay, this could go on all day. I head back toward the airlock.
Your move, guys.
...
Their move is taking a long time and I'm getting bored.
Wow, I'm sitting here in a spaceship in the Tau Ceti system waiting for the intelligent aliens I just met to continue our conversation... and I'm bored. Humans being have a remarkable ability to accept the abnormal and make it normal.”
Source: Project Hail Mary
“And then I think, maybe that’s what we are. An accidental spectacle.”
“And then I think we realized, like any young guys, that blues are not learned in a monastery. You've got to go out there and get your heart broke and then come back and then you can sing the blues.”
Source: Life
“And then I thought of my loneliness, my approaching death, how nobody knew me, how nobody cared. I thought of my parents, long dead, and how little love they'd given me. I thought of Walter, of his nauseatingly gentle caresses. Even when he meant to be tender, he was condescending and controlling. I'd never been loved properly. Nobody had ever said, "You are wonderful, even your bitterness and neurotic energy are wonderful. Even your suspiciousness, your rigidity, your graying, thinning, hair, your wrinkled thighs?" I'd been young and beautiful once, and even then nobody had kissed me and said, "How young and beautiful you are”, not unless they wanted something from me. And that was Walter. Always wanting something, some permission to be boastful, some permission to have power. I cried and cried, thinking of the love I could have had, had I never met that awful, deleterious, pompous man. I let tears drip from my eyes, my head bent toward the gravel, and as they splatted they made a little trail behind me. Maybe Charlie would pass by later and follow the trail. Poor Charlie. He was the only one on Earth who loved me, and even he had left. My head began to throb. I got dizzy again.”
Source: Death in Her Hands
“And then I thought that I had to be like Sherlock Holmes and I had to detach my mind at will to a remarkable degree so that I did not notice how much it was hurting inside my head.”
“And then I told them what always comes so easy when it is too late. "I love you, darling. I will see you later.”
Source: The Life Impossible
“And then I understand that I have not been alone. I am reveling in this time because I am with Tony. In this solitude, finally, I can think about him undistracted. I can read his journals and commune with his thoughts. I can even do what I believed his death had denied me: learn new things about him.”
Source: Memorial Days
“And then I understood that she had no idea what she'd done to my family. She thought love and hatred were equal.”
Source: Incantation
“And then I understood
that the demons
I tried to outrun
have a heartbeat
and carry my name.”
Source: Tales of Lacrimosa
“And then I understood: this was the real god of Benaras—this black mud of the Ganga into which everything died, and decomposed, and was reborn from, and died into again. The same would happen to me when I died and they brought me here. Nothing would get liberated here.”
Source: The White Tiger
“And then I walked out, straight through the twilight, treading the beaten earth. There were no dust clouds, no signs of anyone, but I paid no mind. I was my own lucky hand of solitaire. The desert landscape unchanging: a long, unwinding scroll that I would one day amuse myself by filling. I'm going to remember everything and then I'm going to write it all down. An aria to a coat. A requiem for a café. That's what I was thinking, in my dream, looking down at my hands.”
Source: M Train
“And then I was alone, and glad that he was gone. I'd never been glad at Peter's absence before, and something inside me seemed to shift. My legs hurt like fire for a minute, and then it was over, and I distinctly felt that I was taller than I've been a moment before.”
Source: Lost Boy: The True Story of Captain Hook
“And then I was asleep. That deep, can-still-taste-her-in-my-mouth sleep, that sleep that is not particularly restful but difficult to wake up from all the same.”
Source: Looking for Alaska: A Novel
“And then I went back into my room, locked into a sequence as perfect as a pattern, and I sat down on my great rock throne, invisible to the outside world but palpable beneath me, and from how my face felt I thought maybe I was crying, either because I didn’t want to do this or because I did, it was hard to tell and anyway I never would, who would believe me in either case and who would be there to believe me in all cases, it was a puzzle, I had yet to learn the way of the jigsaw, and so I positioned the rifle beneath my chin, it feels cold, like an actual thing in the actual present physical world, OK, there it is, I am here now, and then I lay down on my belly and listened to the rising squall beyond the door.”
Source: Wolf in White Van
“And then I went into television; and then television moved from the East Coast to Hollywood.”
“And then I went round the corner and there's a Van Gogh portrait, and you just think, well, this is another level. A higher level, actually. I love the Sargent, but it's not the level of Van Gogh.”
“And then I went to 'Dawson's Creek,' which is a show that was, for better or for worse, all about the language. It was a word-perfect show, which I'd never had any experience with. And it was really shocking for me. I felt really hemmed in. At the time, it wasn't my favorite working experience.”
“And then I went to college, and I met people who, for whatever reason, decided to be my friends, and they taught me - everything, really. They made me, and make me, into someone better than I really am.
"You won't understand what I mean now, but someday you will: the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are - not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving - and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad - or good - it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all. But the best, as well.”
Source: A Little Life
“And then I went to visit my sister in the states and all of a sudden it was just like, it's like... it's like the movie Wizard of Oz when all of a sudden it changes from Black and White to glorious Technicolor.”
“And then I wonder, does my brother think of me this way? We entered this world together, one after the other, beats in a pulse. But I will be first to leave it. That's what I've been promised. When we were children, did he dare to imagine an empty space beside him where I then stood giggling, blowing soap bubbles through my fingers? When I die, will he be sorry that he loved me? Sorry that we were twins? Maybe he already is.”
Source: Fever
“And then I would go home to Velaris, where I would finally walk through the artists' quarter, and enter those shops and galleries and learn what they knew, and maybe - maybe one day - I would open my own shop. Not to sell my work, but to teach others.
Maybe teach the others who were like me: broken in places and trying to fight it - trying to learn who they were around the dark and the pain. And I would go home at the end of every day exhausted but content - fulfilled.
Happy.”
Source: A Court of Mist and Fury
“And then I wrote my first autobiography when I - well, it was 23 years ago. And since then I've written about one book every two years.”
“And then I yet again find myself standing before the very thing that has relentlessly pummeled me, staring through a bloodied brow realizing that my most heroic efforts have utterly failed to bring this thing to an ‘end.’ And at those most hopeless of moments where I stand before a monster I cannot slay, it would behoove me to finally accept the reality that the ‘beginning of the end’ is only possible when I ‘begin’ to surrender that thing to God and ‘end’ my feeble attempts to slay it on my own.”
“And then in 1956 or 1957 my family went over to Europe and I moved over with them, and immediately people in Europe thought my perspective on that issue was 100% correct.”
“And then, in a skittering, chittering rush, it came. The hand, running high on its fingertips, scrabbled through the tall grass and up onto a tree stump. It stood there for a moment, like crab tasting the air, and then it made one triumphant, nail-clacking leap onto the center of the tablecloth.
Time slowed for Coraline. The white fingers closed around the black key....”
Source: Coraline
“And then in life, you always have to try, and today, I may not have succeeded, but I am happy to have tried to beat my record.”
“And then in the FBI report it says that Hillary Clinton can't remember her exit interview from the FBI because of her concussion because she didn't have a memory. But she was acting as secretary of state at the time which means we had a secretary of state who was acting who doesn't have a memory of what she was doing.”
“And then it all came rushing back; that's when I realized I'll never stop having a thing for you.”
“And then it changed. I wasn't letting him anymore. He was taking, pawing, grabbing. I pushed, I cried out, I squirmed, but like I said it's a shitty game and he didn't feel like playing by the rules anymore.”
Source: Sixteenth Notes: the breaking of the rose-colored glasses
“And then it explodes in bright plumes of orange and red, a sun to split the silver darkness.”
Source: Red Queen
“And then it gets so hot that they keep the supermarkets too cold. Hot, cold. Hot, cold. It gives me the runs." Mr. Landowsky”
“And then it got even worse, I mean, a few people fell by the wayside within hours. Nick Lowe was in it for about 5 hours I think, he was expelled for going to bed.”
“And then it happens. He smiles. And his whole face unfastens like a window blowing open into the breeze, letting in the fresh air and sunshine.”
Source: The Harper Effect
“And then it happens, the most dreaded response in the world, more terse than any word, more withholding than a "no," and strictly verboten for someone as in love with language and me as you claim to be.
You: "K”
Source: You
“And then it happens. The panic. It's slow at first, creeping through the cracks in my thoughts until everything starts to feel heavy. It builds; it becomes something physical that clutches at my insides and squeezes out the air and the blood.”
Source: A Quiet Kind of Thunder