A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“After a moment of composing himself, he raised his head and dejectedly looked at Zane. “Even when I‟m someone else, people try to kill me,” he joked.
Zane sighed and sat down next to him. “Must be your charming personality showing through all the bleach.” He reached out to run his fingers through Ty's abused hair.”
Source: Fish & Chips
“After a moment of shrinking back, we domesticate the grotesque.”
“After a moment or two a man in brown crimplene looked in at us, did not at all like the look of us and asked us if we were transit passengers. We said we were. He shook his head with infinite weariness and told us that if we were transit passengers then we were supposed to be in the other of the two rooms. We were obviously very crazy and stupid not to have realized this. He stayed there slumped against the door jamb, raising his eyebrows pointedly at us until we eventually gathered our gear together and dragged it off down the
corridor to the other room. He watched us go past him shaking his head in wonder and sorrow at the stupid futility of the human condition in general and ours in particular, and then closed the door behind us.
The second room was identical to the first. Identical in all respects other than one, which was that it had a hatchway let into one wall. A large vacant-looking girl was leaning through it with her elbows on the counter and her fists jammed up into her cheekbones. She was watching some flies crawling up the wall, not with any great interest because they were not doing anything unexpected, but at least they were doing something. Behind her was a table stacked with biscuits, chocolate bars, cola, and a pot of coffee, and we headed straight towards this like a pack of stoats.
Just before we reached it, however, we were suddenly headed off by a man in blue crimplene, who asked us what we thought we were doing in there. We explained that we were transit passengers on our way to Zaire, and he looked at us as if we had completely taken leave of our senses.
'Transit passengers? he said. 'It is not allowed for transit passengers to be in here.'
He waved us magnificently away from the snack counter, made us pick up all our gear again, and herded us back through the door and away into the first room where, a minute later, the man in the brown crimplene found us again.
He looked at us. Slow incomprehension engulfed him, followed by sadness, anger, deep frustration and a sense that the world had been created specifically to cause him vexation. He leaned back against the wall, frowned, closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
'You are in the wrong room,' he said simply. `You are transit passengers. Please go to the other room.'
There is a wonderful calm that comes over you in such situations, particularly when there is a refreshment kiosk involved. We nodded, picked up our gear in a Zen-like manner and made our way back down the corridor to the second room. Here the man in blue crimplene accosted us once more but we patiently explained to him that he could fuck off.”
Source: Last Chance To See
“After a moment's debate, Neil shrugged his bag off his shoulder. The thought of leaving it behind made his skin crawl, considering what was hidden inside it, but he didn't trust Andrew's intentions. [...]
"Do you have someplace safe I can hide this?" he asked. [...]
Wymack looked ad Neil again.
"How safe is safe?"
Neil had never been an easy read before, but then, he'd never let the situation get so completely out of hand, either. [...] Neil had fumbled his way through his transition to Millport, but he could have cut and run at any time if he didn't like the way things were going. This, he desperately wanted to make work, for however long he could hold onto it.
"It's all I have," Neil said [...].
Neil looked down at the key in his palm, at the security Wymack so easily and unquestioningly gave him. Maybe Neil wouldn't get any sleep tonight, and maybe he'd spend the next couple weeks waking up every time Wymack snored a little too loud, but maybe Neil really was okay here for now.
"Thank you," he said.
"Move along," Wymack said.”
Source: The Foxhole Court
“After a moment the king said, "So be it." Zsadist cursed. Butch whistled low. Rhage bit into a Tootsie Pop.”
Source: J.R. Ward The Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8
“After a moment, he turned sharply to me. 'Are you quite all right?' 'Yes, perfectly. Why do you ask?' 'Because I have just called you contrary and you did not bother to contradict me. I thought you might be ill.”
Source: Deanna Raybourn Lady Julia Grey Volume 1: Silent in the Grave\Silent in the Sanctuary\Silent on the Moor
“After a moment, Wrath turned to John. "This is Lassiter, the fallen angel. One of the last times he was here on earth, there was a plague in central Europe-" "Okay, that was so not my fault-" "-which wiped out two-thirds of the human population." "I'd like to remind you that you don't like humans." "They smell bad when they're dead." "All you mortal types do.”
“After a nasty flu-like sickness went through my family in 2015, I developed chronic daily headaches. I had them for years until my brain was scanned with a CT X-Ray scanner. A few weeks later they disappeared and I have never seen them since!”
“After a near-death experience, life is never, life will never ever be the same. There was a reason, I was given this special experience; yes, there really really was.”
“After a night of drinking, she would be a pale, starling-sized creature, but now, in this place, she is moonlight in heels.”
Source: The Sudden Appearance of Hope
“After a night so restless that Aimee was certain she hadn't slept at all, her body surrendered at dawn; she found a dreamless peace from the tormenting thoughts of St. Briac and his outrageous behavior. During hours spent alone in the darkness she had rehearsed dozens of speeches that she intended to deliver as soon as they were face to face again and out of earshot of others. For now, however, Aimee lay sprawled on her back in the middle of the big bed, oblivious to the morning sunshine.”
Source: You And No Other
“After a noticeable silence, he'd recently published a book of technically baffling poems, with line breaks so arbitrary and frequent as to be useless, arrhythmic. On the page they look like some of Charles Bukowski's skinny, chatty, muttering-stuttering antiverses. Impossibly, Mark's words make music, the faraway strains of an irresistible jazz. It's plain to any reader, within a few lines—well, go read the poems and see, Marcus Ahearn traffics with the ineffable. He makes the mind of the speaker present, in that here-and-now where the reader actually reads—that place. Such a rare thing. Samuel Beckett. Jean Follain, Ionesco—the composer Billy Strayhorn. Mark calls his process "psychic improvisation" and referred me to the painter Paul Klee; the term was Klee's. "You just get out a pen and a notebook and let your mind go long," he told me.”
Source: The Largesse of the Sea Maiden
“After a number of years dating, we decided we were good partners.”
“After a patient of his with pneumonia coughed in his face, Vink’s energy and endurance quickly tanked. He estimated that from one day to the next he lost 70-80% of the power in his legs. Very quickly this former marathoner was unable to walk 30 yards without having to rest for 15 minutes. He also experienced severe dizziness, headaches (for the first time in his life) and problems sleeping. Graded exercise therapy (GET) caused him to relapse further and he ended up bedridden.”
“After a pause she said, "I see your magic is not good only for large things."
"Hospitality," he said, "kindness to a stranger, that's a very large thing.”
Source: The Tombs of Atuan
“After a pause, he asked, 'What do you think of Nasuada's plans?' 'Mmm...she's doomed! You're doomed! They're all doomed!'She cackled, doubling over, then straightened abruptly. 'notice I didn't specify what kind of doom, so no matter what happens, I predicted it. How very wise of me.' She lifted the basket again, setting it on one hip. 'I supposed I won't see you for a while, so farewell, best of luck, avoid roasted cabbage, don't eat earwax, and look on the bright side of life!' And with a cheery wink, she strolled off, leaving Eragon blinking and nonplussed.”
Source: The Inheritance Cycle Complete Collection: Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr, Inheritance
“After A Perfect Storm came out, I heard from a young reader, who had suffered a similar background as Arizona, that I had helped her to find peace. That was the most amazing thing in the world to me.”
“After a period in which technocrats attempted to become stars and stars to become politicians, the political void has been occupied by the force of mediocrity, which can easily master enough of the star techniques to produce inoffensive personalities and enough of the rational vocabulary to create the sounds of competence.”
Source: Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West
“After a person dies, his biographers feel free to give him a glittering list of intimate friends. Anecdotes are so much tastier spiced with expensive names.”
“After a person dies, there is always something like a feeling of stupefaction, so difficult is it to comprehend this unexpected advent of nothingness and to resign oneself to believing it.”
“After a play in the field Casey would turn (to the players on the bench) and say 'What did he do wrong?' or 'You're better than that guy.' Either way, he'd keep them from getting stale.”
“After a point, all marriages become boring, some are peacefully boring and some are annoyingly boring.”
“After a point of time, when you get success and fame, money and everything, the purpose of life has to be redefined. For me, I think that purpose is to build bridges. Artists can do that very easily, more than politicians.”
“After a point you have to lose your ideas about gods to meet real gods, you have to lose spiritual knowledge to find the soul, you have to lose everything that can be lost to find that which can't be lost.”
“After a prosperous, but to me very wearisome, voyage, we came at last into port. Immediately on landing I got together my few effects; and, squeezing myself through the crowd, went into the nearest and humblest inn which first met my gaze.”
Source: Famous German Novellas of the 19th Century
“After a quarter of a century of personal experience and professional observation, I have come to understand that peace of mind is the true goal of the considered life. I know now that the sum of all other possessions does not necessarily add up to peace of mind; on the other hand, I have seen this inner tranquility flourish without the material supports of property or even the buttress of physical health. Peace of mind can transform a cottage into a spacious manor hall; the want of it can make a regal residence an imprisoning shell.”
“After a quick breakfast I headed off for school. I don't know what it was... maybe just something in the air... but I had an incredible sense of well-being that morning. Like I was ready to take on the world. Ready, in fact... for absolutely anything.”
Source: Miki Falls, Volume 1: Spring
“After a regime is removed, however, it is dangerous to leave a security vacuum.”
“After a rest in Edinburgh, where, passing a music-shop, I heard some blind man playing a mazurka of mine.”
Source: Chopin's Letters
“After a run of several night events, you begin to appreciate the solitude and the quiet backstage.”
“After a scary movie about the world almost ending, we can walk into the sunlight and say, "Wow, everything's still here. I'm OK!" We like to tease ourselves. Human beings have a need to get close to the edge, and when filmmakers or writers can take them to the edge, it feels like a dream where you're falling, but you wake up just before you hit the ground.”
“After a semester or so, my infatuation with computers burnt out as quickly as it had begun.”
“After a session of yoga, the mind becomes tranquil and passive.”
“After a sharp inward struggle, he concluded to stay and see it out. He should despise himself, more than he cared to face, if he gave in now.”
Source: Tom Brown at Oxford
“After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it.”
“After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.”
“After a short period of time in Pakistan, it's clear that drones are not a security solution. If you believe in drones, the original idea was to go after so-called high-value targets, which according to the NYU-Stanford study 2% of the people killed by drones are high-value targets - now, who are all the rest of the people? Well, it's a secret program, so therefore the CIA doesn't have to tell us anything, yet they claim that with each attack they're getting militants. Now we have people coming forward, saying, actually, no we're not terrorists.”
“After a short period spent in Brussels as a guest of a neurological institute, I returned to Turin on the verge of the invasion of Belgium by the German army, Spring 1940, to join my family. The two alternatives left then to us were either to emigrate to the United States, or to pursue some activity that needed neither support nor connection with the outside Aryan world where we lived. My family chose this second alternative. I then decided to build a small research unit at home and installed it in my bedroom.”
“After a short silence the doctor raised himself a little in his chair and asked if Tarrou had an idea of the path to follow for attaining peace. "Yes, he replied. "The path of sympathy.”
Source: Nobel Prize Library
“After a significant loss, it's tempting to live life in the past - wishing it had been different, screaming that it was unfair; deconstructing every decision to figure out where things went wrong or what you could have done differently, imagining what life would be like now had the past turned out the way you wish it had. But as the existential psychologist Irving Yalom said, sooner or later we all have to 'give up the hope for a better past.'
You cannot change the facts of your history; you cannot change your loss. But you can integrate that loss into who you are now and decide what that will mean for you as you move forward. It is easy to conceptualize life as a series of events that happen to you, and your story as a reporting of those events. But it is not that simple. It is not just what has happened to you that shapes you. The way that you make sense of what happened to you also shapes you.
There is the story you have lived up until this moment and then there is the story you are still living, telling, and creating. You are not just the storyteller; you are the story writer. How you understand the story of your past and your present is shaping a future that is still unfolding.”
Source: What's Your Grief?: Lists to Help You Through Any Loss
“After a six-year battle, the Senate will vote next week to begin construction on the Keystone XL pipeline, which is an oil pipeline that runs from Canada to the Gulf Coast. They're hoping the pipeline will provide enough oil to cover Kim Kardashian's next photo shoot.”
“After a sleepless night the body gets weaker, It becomes dear and not yours - and nobody's. Just like a seraph you smile to people And arrows moan in the slow arteries. After a sleepless night the arms get weaker And deeply equal to you are the friend and foe. Smells like Florence in the frost, and in each Sudden sound is the whole rainbow. Tenderly light the lips, and the shadow's golden Near the sunken eyes. Here the night has sparked This brilliant likeness - and from the dark night Only just one thing - the eyes - are growing dark.”
“After a slight diversion around Milan Centrale, I found my way to Como and got my bike down the street to my apartment. I quickly assembled the bike, rolled it down the stairs, and cruised down the street for a leisurely ride to the lake, managing to forget that I’d consumed thirteen glasses of wine and hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours. Welcome to Italy, I thought to myself. Let’s go!”
Source: The Lost Art of Searching: Embracing Uncertainty, Discovering Intrinsic Value, and Charging Through Life One Ride at a Time
“After a snowstorm is the best time to be in the woods, because all the empty beer and soda cans and candy wrappers disappear, and you don't have to try as hard to be in another time. Plus there's just something beautiful about walking on snow that nobody else has walked on.”
Source: Tell the Wolves I'm Home: A Novel
“After a spent day, I
walked back in a fever.
The whole way home
the sun touched my cheeks.
The blissful evening glow
spread across the meadows
and I called this light
the blood I shed.
My hot burning blood lay
consoling the entire world.
So I walked with pride--
Now that all was tilled.
I didn't know what was happening,
I leaned against a fence post,
in my blood that covered
the meadows near and far.”
“After a steadying breath, Aislinn turned to Keenan. "I'm sure you can figure out lunch without help. So, umm, go make friends or whatever."
And she walked away.
He sped up to stay beside her as they entered the cafeteria. "May I join you?"
"No."
He stepped in front of her. "Please?"
"No." She dropped her bag into a chair next to Rianne's things. Ignoring him-and the stares they were attracting-she opened her bag.
He hadn't moved.
With a shaky gesture, she pointed. "The line's over there."
He looked at the throng slowly progressing to the vats of food. "Can I get you something?"
"A little space?"
A flare of anger flashed over his too-beatiful face, but he said nothing. He just walked away.”
Source: Wicked Lovely
“After a storm comes a calm.”
Source: The NIV Matthew Henry Commentary in One Volume: Based on the Broad Oak Edition
“After a storm comes fair weather, after sorrow comes joy.”
“After a stranger asked where I'm from, I told him I'm from Florida, and he said he has been there once and he'd stayed a week. I replied, "Yes, I remember. We all waited for you to come back, and we wondered where you had gone. We cried out for you, but you never answered." Then I offered him a swig of duck soup, because I had a thermos full and we were now practically brothers.”
Source: Music is fluid, and my saxophone overflows when my ducks slosh in the sounds I make in elevators.
“After a stressful event, we often crave comfort food. Our body is calling for more glucose and simple carbohydrates and fat... And in modern life, people tend to have fewer friends and less support, because there's no tribe. Being alone is not good for the brain.”
Source: Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain