A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Anna loves Ted, but she does not want him in a way that causes her to suffer; she does not want him desperately, despite herself. And it turns out that is how Ted has always wanted to be wanted: the way he has always wanted women. The way Anna wanted Marco, and he wanted Anna, and Rachel (or so it seems, in retrospect) wanted him.
In the absence of this painful wanting, Ted has trouble getting hard.”
Source: You Know You Want This: Cat Person and Other Stories
“Anna Mikhaylovna was already embracing her and weeping. The countess wept too. They wept because they were friends, and because they were kindhearted, and because they - friends from childhood - had to think about such a base thing as money, and because their youth was over.... But those tears were pleasant to them both.”
“Anna needs the power of controlling the vehicle. Difficult emotions are better digested above sixty miles an hour on a curvy country road. Starr needs her darling daughter to slow the eff down so she can die of cancer rather than by putting the truck through a tree.”
Source: Tell Me Something Good
“Anna O. had a third state as well, which today would be called a hidden observer, internal self helper, or center. This was an entity described as follows: "A clear-sighted and calm observer up sat, as she put it, in a corner of her brain and looked on at all the mad business" [p. 101].”
Source: Dissociative Identity Disorder: Diagnosis, Clinical Features, and Treatment of Multiple Personality
“Anna O.'s real name was Bertha Pappenheim. Bertha Pappenheim became one of the first social workers in Europe. Her work was recognized in a commemorative German stamp issued in 1954. She was also an early feminist. Her work involved the establishing of homes for prostitutes and unwed mothers. It is possible that, and psychoanalytic terms, this career was on undoing of her own childhood sexual trauma and of the failure of any person in authority to validate its reality or offer comfort.”
Source: Dissociative Identity Disorder: Diagnosis, Clinical Features, and Treatment of Multiple Personality
“Anna opened the box. Wow. Inside were four beautiful, freshly baked pastries. Anna didn't know what kind they were, but they looked and smelled utterly delicious. Two were in shades of green, the other two in shades of purple, and the warmth of them bled through the box and into her hands and chased some of the cold away.
"They're pan dulce," said the girl. "I knew someone needed them, so I baked them. I knew as soon as I saw you that it was you.”
Source: Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food & Love
“Anna Petrovna (to Shabelsky): You can't make a simple joke without an injection of venom. You are a poisonous man. Joking apart, Count, you're very poisonous. It's hideously boring to live with you. You're always grumpy, complaining, you find everyone bad, good for nothing. Tell me frankly, Count, did you ever speak well of anyone?”
“Anna Petrovna: Do you know what, Kolya? Try and sing, laugh, get angry, as you once did... You stay in, we'll laugh and drink fruit liqueur and we'll drive away your depression in a flash. I'll sing if you like. Or else let's go and sit in the dark in your study as we used to, and you'll tell me about your depression... You have such suffering eyes. I'll look into them and cry, and we'll both feel better.”
Source: Ivanov
“Anna Petrovna: I am beginning to think, doctor, that fate has cheated me. The majority of people, who maybe are no better than I am, are happy and pay nothing for that happiness. I have paid for everything, absolutely everything! And how dearly! Why have I paid such terrible interest?”
Source: Ivanov
“Anna Petrovna: Kolya, my dearest, stay at home.
Ivanov: My love, my unhappy darling, I beg you, don't stop me going out in the evenings. It's cruel and unjust on my part, but let me commit that injustice. It's an agony for me at home. As soon as the sun disappears, my spirit begins to be weighed down by depression. What depression! Don't ask why. I myself don't know. I swear by God's truth I don't know. Here I'm in anguish, I go to the Lebedevs and there it's still worse; I return from there and here it's depression again, and so all night... Simply despair!”
Source: Ivanov
“Anna Petrovna: Never talk to women about your own good qualities. Let them find out for themselves.”
“Anna practically leapt out of bed and skidded across the floor in her bare feet. She didn't bother looking in the mirror. Her long red hair, which she had unbraided the night before, couldn't be that messy, could it? Hmmm... maybe she'd give it a quick glance before she pulled off her nightdress. She looked in the mirror. Not good. Her hair looked like a bird's nest.
Did she have time to fix it?
She had to fix it.
Where was her brush?
It should have been on the desk like it always was, but it wasn't there. Where was it?
Think, Anna. She remembered brushing her hair the morning before at the window seat, because it had the best view of Arendelle. Looking at Arendelle made her start dreaming about Arendelle and what she'd do when she someday moved there. She'd have her own bake shop, of course, and her cookies would be so popular that people would be lined up day and night to purchase them. She'd meet new people and make friends, and it all sounded so glorious she had started singing and spinning around the room with the hairbrush... Oh! Now she remembered where she had flung it.”
Source: Conceal, Don't Feel
“Anna returned her gaze to the bankers' wives, who huddled into the company of one another. The women were young. Their husbands wore the jewellery of their beauty like elegant wristwatches.”
Source: Hausfrau
“Anna rushed onward, past another row of homes, and found her way to the farm where they kept their chicken coop. She opened the netting to collect a fresh batch of eggs. "Morning, Erik, Elin, and Elise," she greeted the hens. "I've got to move quick today. Freya is coming!" She gathered at least a dozen eggs, closed up the coop, and carefully carried the bucket and the tea back to the house.
An older man was pulling a cart with flowers down the street. "Morning, Anna!"
"Morning, Erling!" Anna called. "Gorgeous blooms today. Do you have my favorite?"
Erling produced two stems of golden crocuses. The yellow flowers were as bright as the sun. Anna inhaled their sweet aroma. "Thank you! Come by later for some fresh bread. First batch should be out of the oven midmorning."
"Thank you, Anna! I will!" he said, and Anna hurried along, trying not to crack the eggs or stop again. She had a habit of stopping to talk. A lot.”
Source: Conceal, Don't Feel
“Anna’s attention was focused on a single patient. Ariadne Bridgestock lay quietly against the white pillows. Her eyes were shut, and her rich brown skin was ashen, stretching tightly over the branching black veins beneath her skin.
Anna slipped in between the screens surrounding Ariadne’s cot, and Cordelia followed, feeling slightly awkward. Was she intruding? But Anna looked up, as if to assure herself that Cordelia was there, before she knelt down at the side of Ariadne’s bed, laying her walking stick on the floor.
Anna’s bowed shoulders looked strangely vulnerable. One of her hands dangled at her side: she reached out the other, fingers moving slowly across the white linen sheets, until she was almost touching Ariadne’s hand.
She did not take it. At the last moment, Anna’s fingers curled and dropped to rest, beside Ariadne but not quite touching. In a low and steady voice, Anna said, “Ariadne. When you wake up—and you will wake up—I want you to remember this. It was never a sign of your worth that Charles Fairchild wanted to marry you. It is a measure of his lack of worth that he chose to break it off in such a manner.”
“He broke it off?” Cordelia whispered. She was stunned. The breaking off of a promised engagement was a serious matter, undertaken usually only when one of the parties in question had committed some kind of serious crime or been caught in an affair. For Charles to break his promise to Ariadne while she lay unconscious was appalling. People would assume he had found out something dreadful about Ariadne. When she awoke, she might be ruined.
Anna did not reply to Cordelia. She only raised her head and looked at Ariadne’s face, a long look like a touch.
“Please don’t die,” she said, in a low voice, and rose to her feet. Catching up her walking stick, she strode from the infirmary, leaving Cordelia staring after her in surprise.”
Source: Chain of Gold
“Anna's eyes soften, and the stubborn tears begin to recede. The way she stands, the way she breathes, I know she wants to come closer. New knowledge fills up the air between us and neither of us wants to breathe it in.”
Source: Anna Dressed in Blood
“Anna's voice wasn't a beautiful voice - rough edged and sorrowful, a bit used, somehow male and female at once. Yet it had more vibrancy to it than most Danish voices, which were often thin and white and too pretty to trigger a shiver. Anna's voice had the heat of the south; it warmed Einar, as if her throat were red with coals.”
Source: The Danish Girl
“Anna sat down and studied her brothers. Both were nearly six feet tall. The older, Addison, was muscular with a darker shade of brown hair compared to the younger, blue-eyed Purl, who was leaner and lighter complexioned. Anna noticed that Purl’s wrists showed below his shirt and coat jacket, hand-me-downs from the uncles. All eight children had trouble adjusting after their parents’ death, but Purl’s situation was the most regrettable—three foster homes since he was fifteen. The moves had been hard on him emotionally. Anna suffered too. She’d felt helpless that she was too young to take him
herself, and had watched him slowly lose his youthful vigor.”
Source: Yours in a Hurry: A novel
“Anna Schrader was another of the women who came to Portland during the Girl Rush, arriving in 1910. Census records indicate she was married at the age of eighteen, presumably in Minnesota, where she was born and raised. She became a gadfly for the local Portland police and provided them with a great deal of useful information regarding bootlegging during Prohibition. This was possible because of her affair with police lieutenant William Breuning, who had gotten her the job of "private detective.”
Source: Murder & Scandal in Prohibition Portland: Sex, Vice Misdeeds in Mayor Baker's Reign
“Anna Sergeevna e lui si amavano come due esseri molto vicini, affini, come marito e moglie, come se il destino li avesse destinati l'uno all'altra e non capivano perché li aveva fatti sposare con altri; erano come due uccelli migratori, maschio e femmina, catturati insieme e messi in due gabbie separate.”
Source: The Lady with the Little Dog
“Anna shouted, “Help me! I’m naked and covered in honey!” Wolf slid across the kitchen tile, heading for the basement stairs like Hermes in a footrace. “Hold tight, honeybun! Here I come!” Joe Singer charged behind him with the lantern. Wolf was not going to see Anna in her honey, even if he had to shoot him. This was not police work. This was personal. He hurled himself at Wolf. “She’s my girl!” “Not anymore!”
Source: The Woman in the Camphor Trunk
“Anna smiled,as people smile at the weaknesses of those they love. . .”
Source: Anna Karenina (World Classics, Unabridged)
“Anna spoke not only naturally and intelligently, but intelligently and casually, without attaching any value to her own thoughts, yet giving great value to the thoughts of the one she was talking to.”
“Anna... the night of the summit, when you were saved, it was the only time in my life I've thanked God for anything”
Those words. They would melt me over and over for a long time.”
Source: Sweet Peril
“Anna thought about the men outside on the gallery. She was glad they were there; finding them smoking and talking quietly had been comforting, it was what men did in the evenings when the work was done. Of course, the work was not done, and she doubted that it ever would be. It would go on and on, even after the house was emptied of strangers, long after the wildflowers had blossomed a hundred times on their graves.”
Source: The Black Flower: A Novel of the Civil War
“Anna took his hand to gauge the swelling. 'Let's at least put something cold around it. Frozen peas work pretty well.'
'Do I have to eat them?'
'No, you just have to inject them into a vein,' Anna said.”
Source: The Storyteller
“Anna took love very seriously. She loved love. No, worshipped, that's the word. She worshipped love. That was the only thing which had any place in her life. That and hatred. Do you know what neutron stars are?'
'They're planets with such compactness and high surface gravity that if I dropped this cigarette on one of them it would strike with the same force as an atom bomb. It was the same with Anna. Her gravitation to love-and hatred-was so strong that nothing could exist in the space between them. Every tiny detail caused an atomic explosion. Do you understand? It took me time to understand. She was like Jupiter-hidden behind an eternal cloud of sulphur. And humour. And sexuality.”
“Anna tugged at Heddy's denim shorts, holding a charred-over remnant of a Roman candle firework she found on the ground. "Will you carry me?”
Source: Summer Darlings
“Anna turned the pages slowly for effect, and like some demonic schoolmarm, held the book at an angle to provide maximum exposure to the assembled crowd. Everyone needed to have the opportunity to catch a long, languorous glimpse of my disgrace.
"This looks so much like you," she said to Noah, pressing her body against his.
"My girl is talented," Noah said.
My heart stopped beating.
Anna's heart stopped beating.
Everyone's heart stopped beating. The buzzing of a solitary gnat would have sounded obscene in the stillness.
"Bullshit," Anna whispered finally, but it was loud enough for everyone to hear. She hadn't moved an inch.
Noah shrugged. "I'm a vain bastard, and Mara indulges me." After a pause, he added, "I'm just glad you didn't get your greedy little claws on the other sketchbook. That would have been embarrassing." His lips curved into a sly smile as he slid from the picnic table he'd been sitting on. "Now, get the fuck off me," he said calmly to a dumbfounded, speechless Anna as he pushed past her plucking the sketchbook roughly from her hands.
And walked over to me.
"Let's go," Noah ordered gently, once he was at my side. His body brushed the line of my shoulder and arm protectively. And then he held out his hand.
I wanted to take it and I wanted to spit in Anna's face and I wanted to kiss him and I wanted to knee Aiden Davis in the groin. Civilization won out, and I willed each individual nerve to respond to the signal I sent with my brain and placed my fingers in his. A current traveled from my fingertips through to the hollow where my stomach used to be.
And just like that, I was completely, utterly and entirely,
His.”
Source: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer
“Anna war manchmal versucht, den Drink anzunehmen - und sei es nur, um die Reaktionen der beiden zu testen. Ihre Rolle, die so fest etabliert war, dass die Ursprünge längst im Dunkeln lagen, bestand darin, allen Versuchungen ihres Umfelds zu widerstehen - ein braves Mädchen zu sein, und das in jeder Hinsicht. Die Tatsache, dass sie schon seit ihrem vierzehnten Lebensjahr nicht mehr der Ausbund von Tugend war, für den man sie hielt, hätte sie in Anwesenheit von Tante und Mutter leicht vergessen können. Aber sie vergaß es nie ganz.”
Source: Manhattan Beach: Roman
“Anna was, Livia is, Plurabelle's to be. Northmen's thing made southfolk's place but howmulty plurators made eachone in per-son? Latin me that, my trinity scholard, out of eure sanscreed into
oure eryan! Hircus Civis Eblanensis! He had buckgoat paps on him, soft ones for orphans. Ho, Lord! Twins of his bosom. Lord save us! And ho! Hey? What all men. Hot? His tittering daugh-ters of. Whawk?
Can't hear with the waters of. The chittering waters of. Flitter-ing bats, fieldmice bawk talk. Ho! Are you not gone ahome?
What Thom Malone? Can't hear with bawk of bats, all thim liffey-ing waters of. Ho, talk save us! My foos won't moos. I feel as old as yonder elm. A tale told of Shaun or Shem? All Livia's daughter-
sons. Dark hawks hear us. Night! Night! My ho head halls. I feel as heavy as yonder stone. Tell me of John or Shaun? Who wereShem and Shaun the living sons or daughters of? Night now!
Tell me, tell me, tell me, elm! Night night! Telmetale of stem or stone. Beside the rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of. Night!”
Source: Finnegans Wake
“Anna was saying to herself: why do I always have this awful need to make other people see things as I do? It's childish, why should they? What it amounts to is that I'm scared of being alone in what I feel.”
Source: The Golden Notebook
“Anna watched as Abel walked across the empty schoolyard, she wondered whether there was a limit to desolation or whether it grew endlessly, infinitely. Desolation with a hundred faces and more, desolation of a hundred different kinds and more, like the color blue.”
Source: The Storyteller
“Anna Wintour hadn't been to any of McQueen's shows, and McQueen didn't like it. McQueen said American Vogue could borrow the dress only if they flew it to New York and back, in its own seat, with an escort. It was a fuck-you and they took it, and the dress was shot by Richard Avedon. "Fashion people haven't got any brains," McQueen said.”
“Anna Wintour has a reputation - she can be very intimidating - but that day [Valentino show] she was just smiling and laughing. That was my first time meeting her, and she seemed like she was having a great time. Everybody was enjoying themselves.”
“Anna Wintour is the most powerful woman in the global fashion industry, the first lady of fashion. She's a politician; I'm a stylist. They are two very different jobs.”
“Anna woke with the wonderful feeling bad sleepers have when they know they have slept well. As if they have stolen something and got away with it. At these times the memories of what led up to such deep sleep keep their distance for a few seconds and those few seconds are perhaps the only time the world can ever be said to show mercy.”
Source: The People's Act of Love
“Anna wondered what it was that was so alienating about cars. Somehow, more than any othter machine, they seemed to create a world of their own, a mobile pack-rat midden full of personal artifacts that utterly separated man from the natural environment he hurtled through.”
Source: Ill Wind
“Anna, you do have decent fashion sense. But I’ve seen your outfits, and you don’t have anything to wear on a date. Jeans, capris, geeky tee shirts, and more jeans.”
Source: Tall, Dark Streak of Lightning
“Anna, falling in love with you was like coming home to a place I didn't realize I'd been missing all my life. You're the only person I've ever known who accepts me for who I am, right in this moment, faults and all, and isn't waiting for me to become someone else.”
Source: The Wedding Quilt: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel
“Anna, there's something very arrogant about insisting on the right to be right.”
Source: The Golden Notebook
“Annabel looked down. Her hands were shaking. She couldn't do this. Not yet. She couldn't face the man she'd kissed who happened to be the heir to the man she didn't want to kiss but whos she probably was going to marry. Oh yes, and she could not forget that if she did marry the man she didn't want to kiss, she was likely to provide him with a new heir, thus cutting off the man she did want to kiss.”
“Annabella thought about Maria and Roberto and how happy they were living in the middle of nowhere and yet, Annabella in her modelling days, lived in a Château similar in size and amenities, with a pool, a sauna, etc. and yet she was not happy”
Source: Emotional Rhapsody
“Annabella was intrigued by Santiago’s amazing mind, he was also very charming, funny, philosophical, empathic and understanding. He had a gentle soul and was incredibly romantic! Annabella fell madly in love with him. Santiago was not like the other men in her life, he was not rich, but he was self-educated, happy, confident and content just the way he was”
Source: Emotional Rhapsody
“Annabella was like a light, a beam of pure joy. She radiated kindness and creativity. She helped him sort through his struggles, and she ignited something inside him no one else had.”
Source: A Pocket of Stars
“Annabelle and I ate mussels on the back deck and drank beers until we were toasted. Laughed our asses off remembering these people in our classes and those stupid parties where literary people try so hard to be literary people. Cool superiority as a mask for overflowing insecurity. 'Every time I see people in social circumstances like that, I can't help but imagine them in junior high, worrying about who they're going to eat lunch with,' Annabelle had said, and I always thought about that later. You see a person's inner thirteen-year-old and you won't look at them the same way again.”
Source: Stay
“Annabelle gave him a chiding smile. “If you’re implying that I’m spoiled, I assure you that I am not.” “You should be.” His warm gaze slid over her pink-tinted face and slender upper body, then sought hers again. There was a note in his voice that gently robbed her of breath. “You could do with a bit of spoiling.”
“Annabelle ne renonçait pas; pour elle, le visage de Michel ressemblait au commentaire d'un autre monde. Vers la même époque elle lut la Sonate à Kreutzer, crut un instant le comprendre au travers de ce livre.”
Source: The Elementary Particles
“Annabelle stared straight ahead at the canvas, neither seeing nor caring about the fluctuations of light and color that conveyed impressions of approaching nightfall…the dusk of the Roman Empire. Hunt seemed similarly indifferent to the show, his head inclined toward hers, his gaze locked on her face. Though his breathing remained soft and disciplined, it seemed to her that its rhythm had changed ever so slightly.
Annabelle moistened her dry lips. “You…you mustn’t stare at me like that.”
Soft as the murmur was, he caught it. “With you here, nothing else is worth looking at.”
Source: Secrets of a Summer Night
“Annabelle was practically standing on my back. It was like wearing an Annabelle backpack.”
Source: Forever Charmed