B Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with B. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“But then, such is an ocean. Seemingly serene and soothing, even while powerful currents tear through its depths. And likewise, such are people, I remember as I look at him. You never really know what’s underneath the face they show you. Usually not until it’s too late.”
Source: Vegas Baby
“But then that evening on the couch Malcolm
said something he didn’t catch. Oliver had leaned
forward and asked what he’d said, and Malcolm had
kissed him. A speculative kiss; nothing more, nothing less. Oliver could smell that dizzying aftershave of Malcolm’s mixed with the musk of a day in a hot office and a night at a party in Kensington. Sweat and tobacco and alcohol.
“I don’t know how to do any of this,” Oliver
whispered. He pressed his forehead to Malcolm’s and closed his eyes. All he could see was Jenny, there in the house with Imogen at her side. Manic, when he’d left her this morning. Baking pies and organising their receipts and bills into boxes so they could find everything when they needed them. She wouldn’t meet his eyes, wouldn’t acknowledge his readiness to leave. Imogen hadn’t kissed him goodbye. His daughter, once so full of life, with so many questions and an endless thirst for adventure, had grown quiet and deeply suspicious of his absences too; she simply avoided interaction with him as much as she could now, which upset him more than anything else. He could accept Jenny’s coldness, he had earned that, but Imogen? He couldn’t abide the thought of alienating his only child. He wanted to sit her down and explain what was going on in his life, in her life. But how could she begin to understand what was happening
when he barely grasped it himself? That closeness
they’d had on their little tour of the children’s homes
seemed so very long ago now.
“Just let yourself go, Oliver,” Malcolm said. “Abandon yourself. Forget about everything else. Just for tonight.”
Oliver kissed him back finally and raised a hand to
Malcolm’s face. After a moment’s hesitation, he ran
his fingers through Malcolm’s fine blond hair. He’d
wanted to do that for weeks. To touch him. One touch led to another until their hands were entwined and they were kissing in the darkness with the sound of London traffic drifting into the apartment. One door being opened that led to another door, and another, deeper into a house he didn’t know the dimensions of. But Malcolm coaxed him through with gentle encouragement. It felt like a controlled explosion in his life. Over the next few days and weeks, he came to realise that there were shards of that explosion in everything. Some of them shone like diamonds, some of them were sharp to the touch. He tried to conceal them as well as he could.”
Source: PoppyHarp
“But then, that’s the beauty of writing stories—each one is an exploratory journey in search of a reason and a shape. And when you find that reason and that shape, there’s no feeling like it."
[Peter Wild Interviews TC Boyle, 3:AM Magazine, June 2003]”
“But then that's the crux of love, isn't it? It is very much a high, a high people thrive on. One that can rip your soul apart once you have lost it.”
“But then, that was what was expected of a princess. To wait, to trust, to allow others to fight for her. Except, in this case, Leisa wasn’t sure whether anyone else in this entire palace actually cared enough to do so.”
Source: The Faceless Mage
“But then the fate of shy people is that all of their fears usually come true.”
Source: The Illicit Happiness Of Other People
“But then the girl moved, and smiled, and pulled her hand from the grate- a gorgeous green stone clutched tightly in her grasp. It was covered with dust and cobwebs, but it was uncracked and unharmed. And, of course, completely fake.”
Source: Uncommon Criminals
“But then the golden stars began to fall. The effect was incredible. Golden streaks against a dark sky. It was mesmerising. They floated down to about a metre above the ground and then winked out. I was transfixed by the beauty of it.”
Source: As Stars Fall
“But then the light hit the back of Iris’s hair, a golden-blue halo circling her features. The single braid she wore twisted around the side of her neck, dipping down to her waist, the small curls that framed her face an ethereal gold. She turned to face him fully, then, meeting his too-long stare. And the halo was gone.”
Source: The Music of Monsters
“But then the pastors and men of God can only be human,--cannot altogether be men of God; and so they have oppressed us, and burned us, and tortured us, and hence come to love palaces, and fine linen, and purple, and, alas, sometimes, mere luxury and idleness.”
Source: Phineas Redux: Trollope's Works
“But then the person Nora was sitting next to — a smartly dressed business woman in her fifties, and the source of the musky perfume smell — leaned in and whispered. 'I'm so sorry about what happened to you. You know, the stuff in Portugal...”
Source: The Midnight Library
“But then the wine came, one glass and then a second glass. And somewhere during that second drink, the switch was flipped. The wine gave me a melting feeling, a warm light sensation in my head, and I felt like safety itself had arrived in that glass, poured out from the bottle and allowed to spill out between us.”
Source: Drinking: A Love Story
“But then there are magical, beautiful things in the world, and there's incredible acts of kindness and bravery and in the most unlikely places, and it gives you hope.”
“But then there are the van Goghs and Hemingways and Mozarts, those who feel a hunger so deep, so far down, that greatness lies there too, nestled somewhere within it. Those who get their inner voice and direction from the cool mysterious insides of the moon, and not from the earth like the rest of us.”
Source: Wild Roses
“But then there is the one who seems to have a hard time separating the actor's work from reality.”
“But then there was Hendrix, man. Jimi was really the last cat to freak me. Jimi was playing all the stuff I had in my head. I couldn't believe it, when I first heard him. Man, no one can ever do what he did with a guitar. No one can ever take his place.”
“But then there was The Bite of '87. Yeah. I-It's amazing that the human body can live without the frontal lobe, you know?”
“But then, this treachery is at the heart of love. That two people’s needs are never the same. That while it involves fulfillment through another, you understand more about sovereignty. That your desire and the other’s independence of will would always be in an elusive chase. That some might be transiting through love because they are conditioned to do things at appropriate stages, like other life activities, others might be totally transformed by it. That two in love might be looking in one direction but never at the same thing. This struggle to get the lover to see what you see is futile and yet a deep desire. Much later she was to grow up and she learn more. And even though Nanaki felt bereft of love and heart broken and utterly abandoned, even some seemingly seeped in love could be having a heart break. The desire to be understood is primeval too. It might be forgotten for a while in the euphoria of new love. But it resurfaces like a lost child come home. You can’t shut the door. You got to take it in. The tussle then begins.”
Source: In The Land of The Lovers
“But then to part! to part when Time Has wreathed his tireless wing with flowers, And spread the richness of a clime Of fairy o'er this land of ours; When glistening leaves and shaded streams In the soft light of Autumn lay, And, like the music of our dreams, The viewless breezes seemed to stray 'T was bitter then to rend the heart With the sad thought that we must part; And, like some low and mournful spell, To whisper but one word farewell!”
“But then, war is about taking the future away from people.”
Source: Ninefox Gambit
“But then we are most passionate when we worship the things that don't exist, like race, or money, or God, or, quite simply, our fathers.”
Source: The Appointment
“But then we have to leave, have to. It's always been that way, and it will always be that way, Jane. That's just.. how it works”
Source: Sundays at Tiffany's
“But then we so rarely understand the value of what we possess until it's gone.”
Source: Bloodfever: Fever Series
“But then what does it matter whence comes the gentle nudge that jars the soul into motion and sets it rolling, doomed never again to stop?”
Source: Glory
“But, then, what is philosophy today—philosophical activity, I mean—if it is not the critical work that thought brings to bear on itself? In what does it consist, if not in the endeavor to know how and to what extent it might be possible to think differently, instead of legitimating what is already known? There is always something ludicrous in philosophical discourse when it tries, from the outside, to dictate to others, to tell them where their truth is and how to find it, or when it works up a case against them in the language of naive positivity.”
Source: The History of Sexuality, Volume 2: The Use of Pleasure
“But then when am I not a fool?"
- as her heart took a leap, her perpetual over sensitivity shrieked out loud with a twinkle in her eye, the spark of naive honesty.
"But then again I would rather be a fool than befooled with the illusionary intelligence of them around."
- a smile caressed her as the voice of her soul clutched her with a thousand memories of days gone by, the leaf of fooled wisdom.”
Source: A Whispering Leaf. . .
“But then when I'm in a halfway successful movie, it irritates the hell out of the critics in New York, because they'd like to kill my pictures if they could. So maybe I'm pretty good in the movie. Then they use all these words like I'm 'surprisingly' good, or 'shockingly enough,' I'm good. It's like I crawled out from under a magazine and they're surprised I can act.”
“But then when you go through the process of making the film and you sit in the cinema two years later and your jaw hits the floor, it's quite sad in a way because you're looking at yourself - facially anyway - and see the way you looked when you were 20.”
“But then why do we write if not to tackle the fears that others look to us to conquer?”
Source: Author 2.0 Blueprint
“But then why is it so terrible for me to be with the girl I love? Everyone one is permitted to have what they want, express their love as they please, without fear of harassment, ostracism, persecution, or even the law. Even emotionally abusive, adulterous relationships are often tolerated, despite the harm they cause others. In our progressive, permissive society, all these harmful, unhealthy types of "love" are allowed--but not ours.”
Source: Forbidden
“But then why, when talking on the phone, did they quarrel, on average at least once every four sentences? Maybe, though the inspector, it was an effect of the distance between them becoming less and less tolerable with each passing day, since as we grow old - for every now and then one must, yes, look reality in the eye and call things by their proper names - we feel more keenly the need to have the person we love beside us.”
“But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”
Source: Autobiography and Selected Letters
“But then you become closed. Then you start dying as far as your intelligence is concerned because intelligence needs the open sky, the wind, the air, the sun in order to grow, to expand, to flow. To remain alive it needs a constant flow; if it becomes stagnant it becomes slowly slowly a dead phenomenon.”
“But then you begin to understand that the reward of merit is not life’s business.”
“But then you hear that he can't hear you, you see that he can't see you. You are not here--and you haven't even died yet. You see yourself through his eyes, as The Generic Woman, the skirted symbol on the ladies' room door.”
Source: The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing
“But then you make eye contact with someone across the room and it clicks and you’re right there in love again.”
“but then you realize that this ‘whole package’ everyone’s looking for is unattainable. No one can be everything you want them to be.”
Source: Waiting For You
“But then you say, Well, who makes the decision? Does the government make the decision? The reason this is such a national dispute and moral issue for people is because it occurs inside the body of a woman. That makes it really complicated. What are you going to do? Put women in prison? How much do we want the government to intrude on this?”
“But then you slammed a door handle into my gut. And when a girl does that to a guy; it means she likes him.”
“But then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk! He TURNED; we had to throw him out. There's no fun now, you're Just a sour-dumpling. What's wrong? What's changed?”
“But then, after all, we are all alike, for we are all derived from the monkey.”
Source: Einstein and the Poet: In Search of the Cosmic Man
“But then, as far as I know, as far as I've studied or heard or picked up, it seems that this type of thing is a curse against mankind.”
“But then, Cap'n Crunch in a flake form would be suicidal madness; it would last about as long, when immersed in milk, as snowflakes sifting down into a deep fryer. No, the cereal engineers at General Mills had to find a shape that would minimize surface area, and, as some sort of compromise between the sphere that is dictated by Euclidean geometry and whatever sunken treasure related shapes that the cereal aestheticians were probably clamoring for, they came up with this hard-to-pin-down striated pillow formation.”
“But then, even with sex, I'm more in the school of less is more in movies.”
“But then, gifts are like beauty, are they not. It is in the eye of the recipient that they find their seat, not in the hand of the giver.”
Source: J.R. Ward The Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8
“But then, he thought, most politicians are small and shabby, the sort of people who have been bullied at school. That's why they become politicians.”
Source: Skeleton Key
“But then, his revenge had been more direct. He’d hunted down the ones who’d killed his sister and nephew – those who’d survived his mother’s attack – and he’d made them wish they’d never been born with nerve endings.' (Acheron)”
Source: Acheron: A Dark-Hunter Novel
“But then, how could you have any self-respect knowing that you didn't believe in anything exactly? How did you embrace what was yours if you didn't leave something for it? How did you create a life of meaning and pride?”
Source: The Inheritance of Loss
“But then, I am always being overwhelmed. I require it to sustain life.”
Source: Everett Ruess, a vagabond for beauty
“But then, I suppose, when with the benefit of hindsight one begins to search one's past for such 'turning points', one is apt to start seeing them everywhere.”