A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“As I travel around the world, people think the only place where there is potential conflict [over] water is the Middle East, but they are completely wrong. We have the problem all over the world.”
“As I travel through life, I gather experiences that lie imprinted on the deepest strata of memory, and there they ferment, are transformed, and sometimes rise to the surface and sprout like strange plants from other worlds. What is the fertile humus of the subconscious composed of? Why are certain images converted into recurrent themes in nightmares or writing?”
“As I travel through my country, people often ask me how it feels to have been imprisoned in my home -first for six years, then for 19 months. How could I stand the separation from family and friends? It is ironic, I say, that in an authoritarian state it is only the prisoner of conscience who is genuinely free. Yes, we have given up our right to a normal life. But we have stayed true to that most precious part of our humanity-our conscience.”
“As I traveled around the country, I met hundreds if not thousands of people who want to change the country. And you've got, now, 1,900 Bernie delegates who are now going back to their communities in 50 states.”
“As I traveled from one country to another, no one knew anything about me. So I could be anybody, I could speak as I wished, act as I wished, dress as I wished”
“As I traveled the world over, I traveled everywhere, and I learned so much.”
“As I tried to doze, the incident on the piazzetta, lost somewhere amid the Piave war memorial and our ride up the hill with fear and shame and who knows what else pressing on me, seemed to come back to me from summers and ages ago, as though I'd biked up to the piazzetta as a little boy before World War I and had returned a crippled ninety-year-old soldier confined to this bedroom that was not even my own, because mine had been given over to a young man who was the light of my eyes.
The light of my eyes, I said, light of my eyes, light of the world, that's what you are, light of my life. I didn't know what light of my eyes meant, and part of me wondered where on earth had I fished out such claptrap, but it was nonsense like this that brought tears now, tears I wished to drown in his pillow, soak in his bathing suit, tears I wanted him to touch with the tip of his tongue and make sorrow go away.”
Source: Call Me by Your Name
“As I tried various restaurants, certain preconceptions came crashing down. I realized not all Japanese food consisted of carefully carved vegetables, sliced fish, and clear soups served on black lacquerware in a highly restrained manner. Tasting okonomiyaki (literally, "cook what you like"), for example, revealed one way the Japanese let their chopsticks fly.
Often called "Japanese pizza," okonomiyaki more resembles a pancake filled with chopped vegetables and your choice of meat, chicken, or seafood. The dish evolved in Osaka after World War II, as a thrifty way to cobble together a meal from table scraps.
A college classmate living in Kyoto took me to my first okonomiyaki restaurant where, in a casual room swirling with conversation and aromatic smoke, we ordered chicken-shrimp okonomiyaki. A waitress oiled the small griddle in the center of our table, then set down a pitcher filled with a mixture of flour, egg, and grated Japanese mountain yam made all lumpy with chopped cabbage, carrots, scallions, bean sprouts, shrimp, and bits of chicken. When a drip of green tea skated across the surface of the hot meal, we poured out a huge gob of batter. It sputtered and heaved. With a metal spatula and chopsticks, we pushed and nagged the massive pancake until it became firm and golden on both sides. Our Japanese neighbors were doing the same. After cutting the doughy disc into wedges, we buried our portions under a mass of mayonnaise, juicy strands of red pickled ginger, green seaweed powder, smoky fish flakes, and a sweet Worcestershire-flavored sauce. The pancake was crispy on the outside, soft and savory inside- the epitome of Japanese comfort food.
Another day, one of Bob's roommates, Theresa, took me to a donburi restaurant, as ubiquitous in Japan as McDonald's are in America. Named after the bowl in which the dish is served, donburi consists of sticky white rice smothered with your choice of meat, vegetables, and other goodies. Theresa recommended the oyako, or "parent and child," donburi, a medley of soft nuggets of chicken and feathery cooked egg heaped over rice, along with chopped scallions and a rich sweet bouillon. Scrumptious, healthy, and prepared in a flash, it redefined the meaning of fast food.”
Source: Untangling My Chopsticks: A Culinary Sojourn in Kyoto
“As I trotted down the hall, Fritz was holding the street door open and three people were entering in the shape of a sandwich – a dick, Zorka, and another dick.”
Source: Over My Dead Body
“As I try to get around with a guitar, a banjo and a suitcase of high heels and dresses, I treasure that little ukulele.”
“As I turn 91... I have to admit my hours at the easel have diminished.”
“As I turned around to head back to the outdoor patio, my elbow poked the guy next to me. Unlike Daniel, this guy had a higher squish-to-muscle ratio.
"I'm sorry," I squeaked as I maneuvered around him.
"Watch where you're going," he grumbled while looking me up and down. As I walked away, he muttered, "Stuck-up bitch."
My mouth fell open, searching for words. The alcohol clouded my brain, making it hard to know how to respond.
"The only stuck-up bitch here is you," Daniel said and walked closer to the aggressor. "She said she was sorry. I believe you owe her an apology."
"I don't owe her shit. You and your girlfriend can get the fuck outta my face." He turned to his entourage and made a face that made them laugh.
Why that seemed like the best time to jump into the conversation, I don't know, but it did. "Look, you walking Dockers pants model, I said I was sorry. And you're a fucking asshole to talk to someone that way----ANY human that way---in the holiest, Dolly-est place on earth, well, second to Dollywood." I wagged my index finger in his face. "I have another apology for you. I'm sorry you took an innocent bump of an elbow into your beer pooch and tried to turn it into a personal attack. And I'm sorry to your friends for having a loser who drags down their social circle.”
Source: So We Meet Again
“As I turned around to receive my injection,
I said, 'Next time I'll use some protection.'
If I see another girl and I get an erection...
I'm walking in the other direction!”
“As I turned away, I saw Holmes, with his back against a rock and his arms folded, gazing down at the rush of the waters. It was the last that I was ever destined to see of him in this world. - Watson.”
Source: Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Stories
“As I turned my head and looked out the window, I saw that everything around me was glowing from within. The sunlight on the trees, the swaying of the leaves in the wind, the slight rattle of the panes of glass in the old window frame, were too beautiful for words. I was enthralled at how miraculous everything was. Absolutely everything was beautiful. . . .
I saw clearly that everyone is made of light—that we are like forms of light—but that a crust has formed over it. The crust is black and rubbery like tar and has obscured the inner light that is everyone’s real, inner self. Some blotches of tar are very thick; other areas are thinner and more transparent. Those who have worked on themselves for longer have less tar and they radiate more of their inner light. Because of their personal history, others are covered with more tar and need a great deal of work to get free of it. . .
If we observe ourselves truthfully and non-judgmentally, seeing the mechanisms of our personality in action, we can wake up, and our lives can be a miraculous unfolding of beauty and joy.”
Source: The Wisdom of the Enneagram: The Complete Guide to Psychological and Spiritual Growth for the Nine Personality Types
“As I turned over the last page, a wave of sorrow enveloped me. Where had they all gone, these people who had seemed so real? To distract myself, I walked out into the night; instinctively, I lit a cigarette. In the dark, the cigarette glowed, like a fire lit by a survivor. But who would see this light, this small dot among infinite stars? I stood awhile in the dark, the cigarette glowing and growing small, each breath patiently destroying me. How small it was, how brief. Brief, brief, but inside me now, which the stars could never be.”
Source: Faithful and Virtuous Night
“As I turned to leave, I looked down. Beside my foot, a sprout of greenery was clawing its way through the pristine nothingness to begin anew. It was later that I realized my haven had sent me a message, and it had shown me that nothing is ever completely lost, unless you cease searching.”
Source: Epiphany
“As I twisted the steering wheel and forced the accelerator to the floor I was controlling Mexico, and might and aloneness and inexperienced youth and Bailey Johnson, Sr., and death and insecurity, and even gravity.”
Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
“As I unclutter my life, I free myself to answer the callings of my soul.”
Source: Excuses Begone!: How to Change Lifelong, Self-Defeating Thinking Habits
“As I understand it, a born executive is a guy who, when anything difficult or unexpected happens, yells for somebody to come and help him.”
Source: The Red Box
“As I understand it, a universe is a ... well, a totality. A universe is everything that is, as far as the inside of the thing.”
Source: Mr g: A Novel About the Creation
“As I understand it, I am being paid only for my work in arranging the words; my property is that arrangement. The thoughts in this book, on the contrary, are not mine. They came freely to me, and I give them freely away. I have no "intellectual property," and I think that all claimants to such property are theives.”
Source: Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays
“As I understand it, Kantian constructivism is partly a position in normative ethics and partly a position in metaethics. In metaethics, it is the position that ethical claims have truth values, but their truth conditions consist not in a set of objective facts to which they correspond, but instead in the outcome of some procedure of deliberation resulting in decisions about what to do.”
“As I understand it, laws, commands, rules and edicts are for those who have not the light which makes plain the pathway.”
“As I understand it, sport is hard work for which you do not get paid.”
“As I understand it, triangulation is the idea that you demonstrate to some set of swing voters that you are politically palatable by poking the extremes of both parties in they eyes.”
“As I understand life at different levels, I can use music to express what these levels feel like to me. Hopefully the listener can be transported to this understanding by listening to the music.”
“As I understand, you need to marry and sire a child rather soon. If Cat doesn't succeed in bearing a son, the Hathaways will lose Ramsay House."
"We've survived many things far worse than losing a bloody house. I'll marry Marks and take the risk."
"Perhaps you're testing the waters," Harry said, his face expressionless. "Trying to determine if she's fertile before you marry her.”
Source: Married by Morning
“As I usually say, sensuality has its own plan of fulfillment. It has its own plan of making a relationship work. You don’t have to force it to work.”
“As I’ve aged, I’ve come to prefer the idea to the reality of human company.”
Source: Musings from a Small Island: Everything under the Sun
“As I've always said to Talyn, tough times never last. But tough Andarions. I learned that from watching you as a boy. Your parents, grandparents, and Keris treated you like shit and yet you never once spoke against them. You'd just lift your chin and carry on. 'Barking dogs don't bother me,' you used to say. 'Sooner or later, they reach the end of their yard and hit a fence. I'll keep going past it, and won't hear them anymore.”
Source: Born of Betrayal
“As I’ve been telling your, son, you get nowhere looking at clothes and the color of the skin to judge a man. It won’t tell you nothing about what’s inside. That’s where a fellow’s mettle is, and that’s what counts.”
Source: The Carolinian
“As I've gotten older and realised that society's expectations are only as firm as we allow them to be, I've discovered that allowing myself to unmask and be my authentic autistic self--stims and all--has unleashed more ability than I ever had when I was locking myself away.”
Source: Different, Not Less: A Neurodivergent's Guide to Embracing Your True Self and Finding Your Happily Ever After
“As I've gotten older, I have taught myself to act "normal." I can do it well enough to fool the average person for a whole evening, maybe longer. But it all falls apart if I hear something that elicits a strong emotional reaction from me that is different from what people expect. In an instant, in their eyes, I turn into the sociopathic killer I was believed to be forty years ago.”
Source: Look Me in the Eye
“As I've gotten older, I realize I'm certain of only two things. Days that begin with rowing on a lake are better than days that do not. Second, a man's character is his fate. And as a student of history, I find this hard to refute. For most of us our stories can be written long before we die. There are exceptions among the great men of history, but they are rare..”
“As I’ve learned from life, happiness sometimes only greets us in fits and starts. For tragedy often follows merriment. Without strife, we would not know the true meaning of gaiety. That’s what I like to tell myself to ease the pain.”
Source: The Ancestor
“As I’ve mentioned too often before, we are governed, and specifically our physicality is governed, by fairly strict rules, which are easily observable in nature. We have some freedom to manipulate some of these, but really not by very much. Everyone knows, or at least has the information, about the horrors of ignoring health issues and expecting your body to do what you want it to do with the least investment in it. Another “authority” telling you what you should do is not the answer.”
Source: Re:
“As I've said before," she scoffed, "you're different."
"How am I different?" his exasperation was clear.
"Well, it seems you are my partner in crime." She smiled then, a beaming grin not unlike the one he'd seen her give Oxford earlier.
He lost his bluster at the words, feeling the full force of her pleasure like a blow, and a nonsensical wave of pride coursed through him... pride at being the one he would turn to with such excitement, pride at being the one she would ask to escort her on such an adventure. And, in that sun-filled moment, with all of London mere inches away from their hiding place, he was struck by her beauty- her bright brown eyes and her hair, gleaming auburn in the light and her mouth, wide and welcoming and enough to bring a man to his knees.
She was really quite extraordinary.”
Source: Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake
“As I've said before," she scoffed, "you're different."
"How am I different?" his exasperation was clear.
"Well, it seems you are my partner in crime." She smiled then, a beaming grin not unlike the one he'd seen her give Oxford earlier.
He lost his bluster at the words, feeling the full force of her pleasure like a blow, and a nonsensical wave of pride coursed through him... pride at being the one he would turn to with such excitement, pride at being the one she would turn to with such excitement, pride at being the one she would ask to escort her on such an adventure. And, in that sun-filled moment, with all of London mere inches away from their hiding place, he was struck by her beauty- her bright brown eyes and her hair, gleaming auburn in the light and her mouth, wide and welcoming and enough to bring a man to his knees.
She was really quite extraordinary.”
Source: Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake
“As I’ve said before, “the Mod generation”, contrary to popular belief, was not born in even 1958, but in the 1920s after a steady gestation from about 1917 or so. Now, Mod certainly came of age, fully sure of itself by 1958, completely misunderstood by 1963, and in a perpetual cycle of reinvention and rediscovery of itself by 1967 and 1975, respectively, but it was born in the 1920s, and I will maintain this. I don’t care who disagrees with me, and there are dozens of reasons that I do so —from the Art Deco aesthetic, to flapper fashions (complete with bobbed hair), to androgyny and subtle effeminacy, to jazz.”
“As I’ve said, encountering death has a way of jerking your priorities into line.”
Source: Life on the Edge: The Next Generation's Guide to a Meaningful Future
“As I’ve said, it wasn’t until a long time afterwards—long after I’d left the Cottages—that I realized just how significant out little encounter in the churchyard had been. I was upset at the time, yes. But I didn’t believe it to be anything so different from other tiffs we’d had. It never occurred to me that our lives, until then so closely interwoven could unravel and separate over a thing like that.
But the fact was, I suppose, there were powerful tides tugging us apart by then, and it only needed something like that to finish the task. If we’d understood that back then—who knows?—maybe we’d have kept a tighter hold of one another.”
Source: Never Let Me Go
“As I very much liked to draw and paint as a child, I entered a special art program in high school, which was very much like being in an art school imbedded in a regular high school curriculum.”
“As I view it, in every family a record should be kept...that record should be the first stone, if you choose, in the family altar. It should be a book known and used in the family circle; and when the child reaches maturity and goes out to make another household, one of the first things that the young couple should take along should be the records of their families, to be extended by them as life goes on...each one of us carries, individually, the responsibility of record keeping, and we should assume it.”
“As I view it, spending over two years in a cage is far worse than having your face pounded and dealing with a black eye for a week or two.”
“As I visited the various neighborhoods in the campaign, I learned fast that it's a mistake to think that all of the wisdom and possible solutions to our problems are available only in this building.”
“As I visualize it, the business of the future will be a scientific, social and economic unit. It will be vigorously creative in pure science where its contributions will compare with those of the universities...”
“As I visualize the new, I become dissatisfied with the old.”
“As I wait for the crowd to disperse, I take stock of the room. Levi’s team appears to be WurstFest™ material. The well-known Meatwave. A Dicksplosion in the Testosteroven. The good old Brodeo.”
Source: Love on the Brain
“As I waited, I flicked through a magazine in a futile bid to look occupied. It had the next month's date on the cover and I remembered you laughing at time-traveling fashion mags, saying the date on the cover should alert people to their absurdity inside.”