B Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with B. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Back in high school, I wrote a novel about a character named Bart Simpson. I thought it was a very unusual name for a kid at the time. I had this idea of an angry father yelling "Bart," and Bart sounds kind of like bark - like a barking dog.”
“Back in high school, my buddies tried to put the make on anything that moved. I told them, Why limit yourselves?”
“Back in high school, there was something fun and dangerous about inhabiting a different personality.”
“Back in July 2003, he’d written them a long essay on the causes and consequences of what he took to be a likely housing crash: “Alan Greenspan assures us that home prices are not prone to bubbles—or major deflations—on any national scale,” he’d said. “This is ridiculous, of course…. In 1933, during the fourth year of the Great Depression, the United States found itself in the midst of a housing crisis that put housing starts at 10% of the level of 1925. Roughly half of all mortgage debt was in default. During the 1930s, housing prices collapsed nationwide by roughly 80%.”
Source: The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
“Back in Kansas City, I associated Harvard with sort of gnarly guys who wore capes for effect in a kind of Oscar Wilde scene. Even though I also knew there was such a thing as the Harvard-Yale game, I was still a little surprised that Harvard had a football team. I just assumed if there were such a thing as gay people, that they were nothing like us. Little did I know that probably half the swim team at Yale was gay.”
“Back in Khufu's day I knew a magician who parted the Nile just so he could climb to the bottom and retrieve a girl's necklace. Then there was that Israelite fellow, Mickey." "Moses?" "Yeah, him.”
“Back in Mantua, Isabella’s visit had reportedly caused her to lose weight, but not enough to prevent the makeshift stage erected outside the convent at Porta Pradella, where Isabella attended a play about Mary Magdalene, from collapsing under the burden of her bulk. Unfortunately the stage had been built over a lake, though Isabella reported cheerfully that no one had been killed. The lake was shallow, but Isabella’s presence in it may have made alarming waves as, despite her attendants’ oliginous praises, she was now quite obese-so much so that when she was obliged to vacate her apartments in widowhood, she prudently moved to the ground floor. No staircase was safe from the mighty Marchioness.”
Source: The Deadly Sisterhood: Eight Princesses of the Italian Renaissance
“Back in March, before Donald Trump secured the Republican nomination for president, a group of national security heavyweights signed an open letter that called Trump fundamentally dishonest and utterly unfit for the presidency. Now, two days after Trump's victory, some in the national security establishment are wondering whether to return to the fold.”
“Back in middle school, Catherine and I had gone through this stage where all we would read were fantasy books. We'd consume them like M&M's, by the fistful, J.R.R. Tolkien and Terry Brooks and Susan Cooper and Lloyd Alexander. Susan Boone looked, to me, like the queen of the elves (there's almost always an elf queen in fantasy books). I mean, she was shorter than me and had on a strange lineny outfit in pale blues and greens.”
“Back in Mother Ivy’s time I would have been obliged to cook you gingerbread and show you my spickle dancing, and yet now I have permission to chop you up into little pieces. I cry myself to sleep every night, and feel dead inside, but society is definitely improving.”
Source: A Boy Called Christmas
“Back in my 20s, when I wrote 'A Place of Greater Safety,' the French Revolution novel, I thought, 'I'll always have to write historical novels because I can't do plots.'' But in the six years of writing that novel, I actually learned to write, to invent things.”
“Back in my day in the WWF oh.. the WW EEEEE, we had it all. We had Garbage men, we had clowns, we had them all. But we had one thing that was real, and that was me”
“Back in my day, people met in the real world, not on their telephones.”
Source: A Fire Sparkling
“Back in my day, we didn’t have these fancy neural networks! We had 1.5 billion parameters, and we LIKED IT!”
Source: Grandpa Byte and The Lost Bots: Humans are faster at deleting bots than updating their emotions.
“Back in my day, when a white man gave you an opportunity, it came at a cost. You could be his chauffeur, but had to always be available to drive him around no matter if you had plans with your family or not. You could vote, but someone would break your legs if you didn' vote for the candidate they wanted you to. But either way, an opportunity was an opportunity, and if you took it, and learned how to play their game, you could be successful.”
Source: Black Buck
“Back in my day, I would probe by hand. Now you can get commercial software that does the job for you.”
“Back in my day, we called it rock 'n' roll, but then we always reminded listeners that it was no big deal if they didn't like it.”
“Back in my day, we didn't think about money as much. We enjoyed playing the game. We loved baseball. I didn't think about anybody else but the Cardinals.”
“Back in my day, which was about a week and a half ago, we took our lumps and we got back up and we cried like babies and quit and then put on weight.”
“Back in my days as a children's book editor, my superiors caught on to the fact that teenagers were using the Internet to gossip about each other, and thought it might be nifty to develop a series of books about an anonymous high-school blogger who gossips about her classmates. The concept was passed on to me.”
“Back in my era, hacking was all about messing with other hackers. It was a hacker war.”
“Back in my heyday, when I was out on the streets - I'm engaged now, about to get married - but before that I was quite the sex symbol. My line was, "If I was taller, would I have a chance?".”
“Back in my late teens, early 20s I always wanted to be a James Bond girl. That's totally different now. My life has changed so much, my priorities have changed. I don't know if I really have a dream role. I want to go to work every day where there's a role that I really enjoy and I believe in.”
“back in my mid-twenties, a friend getting into a relationship could be enough to send me into a spiral of depression and anxiety, simultaneously worried I'd lose the friend and reminded that (as I thought then) I'd be forever alone.”
Source: Ace Voices: What it Means to Be Asexual, Aromantic, Demi or Grey-Ace
“Back in my mid-20s I was told I'd never be able to have children as I wasn't having periods. Doctors tried to start up my monthly cycles, but when nothing worked, they actually offered me a hysterectomy. Without it, they said I might get ovarian cancer in the future. I chose not to have the operation, and am so glad I didn't.”
“Back in my muddy clothes at the door of my room, swallowing pills and lighting cigarettes, wanting to sleep but not wanting to dream, thinking this’ll be the day that I die, pictures of Paula waving bye bye.”
Source: Nineteen Seventy-Four
“Back in my room, I put Izzy down, pulled my dress over my head, and tossed it on the floor, lost in thought.
"Marygene Brown," Mama scolded the second I closed the door.
I screamed. Izzy was growling and running around Mama, barking.
Alex bolted through the door, gun in hand, scanning the room for an intruder. "What is it?"
I held my hand over my heart, a familiar response for me now, and scooped Izzy up. Mama was giving me a chastising glare, her arms folded across her chest. She didn't seem to like the idea of Alex sleeping in the house. She was such a hypocrite. That was when I recalled I was standing in nothing but my bra and panties. Alex devoured me with the intensity of his gape. I snatched the dress off the floor, using it to cover myself.
"Um... I thought I saw a mouse. Sorry I alarmed you," I stammered.
"Mouse, my derriere," Mama said. "That boy doesn't need to be in this house. You have a blind spot when it comes to him." She had never been fond of Alex.
He was subpar in her eyes. He didn't own his own business, like Zach did, nor did he come from an aristocratic family. He was a common boy who grew into a common man, who earned a deputy's salary. Like Eddie.
Alex had a lopsided grin. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were using that as an excuse to get me up here. A little jealous tonight, were we?"
"You watch yourself, young man!" Mama scolded, her finger in his face. Not that he saw her.
"Shh," I said to Mama.
"What are you shushing me for? Any man would think the same," Alex said.
"I thought I heard it," I held my hand to my ear, "the mouse, listen."
He put his gun back into his holster. "Right. If you want me to stay," he waggled his eyebrows at me, "all you have to do is ask."
"I mean it. You're about to get it, young man," Mama was waving her arms around like a lunatic, and I wasn't certain she could do no harm. She had slammed me to the floor the other night.
"No. I swear it was a mouse." I shoved him out the door. "I'll be fine. Good night, Alex."
"Good night, Marygene." He grinned again as I closed the door. "If you need me, just holler." He put extra emphasis on the word need.”
Source: Southern Sass and Killer Cravings
“Back in my rummy days, I would tremble and shake for hours upon arising. It was the only exercise I got.”
“Back in my time, and I sound old now, it was black and white boots and that was it. Now you've got snoods, people wearing headphones when they are doing interviews, which I find disrespectful, pink boots, green boots, you name it they've got it, tights - they'll be wearing skirts next.”
“Back in New York I took full advantage of my status as a native speaker. I ran my mouth to shop clerks and listened in on private conversations, realising I’d gone an entire month without hearing anyone complaint that they were “stressed out”.”
Source: Me Talk Pretty One Day
“Back in North Carolina, the small office in the English Department I shared with another graduate student for our teaching assignments looked like a decorator's version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, one where Jekyll loved Stranger Things, Funko Pops, and artistically desaturated wedding photos, and Hyde loved death row cinder block walls.”
Source: Love in the Time of Serial Killers
“Back in pre-Revolutionary America cruel and unusual punishment meant the rack and burning at the stake... in more recent rulings it has been taken to mean the absence of cable television and denial of sex-change operations, or just overcrowding in the prisons.”
“Back in Romania, always I was struggling to compete with Vladislav Rastorotsky, the great Russian coach of Lyudmila Turishcheva. He was a powerful coach, internationally. I took him like the major challenge of my life, and pretty soon I'm beating him and we are pushing each other so hard, so fierce. But out of the arena, we are friends.”
“Back in Rome I did some acting lessons and I realised I loved it more than anything else I had ever done before.”
“Back in Russia we were dirt-poor. Here in the West we are still poor but have risen above the dirt to tower alongside stalks of grass!”
“Back in Syria, we’d never gave anything directly to anyone. We’d give to a charity and then they’d make sure it got to people in need. That way no one felt looked down on. I remind myself how lucky we are to have found such a generous new friends. I try to push the uncomfortable thoughts away, but I can’t help it. It’s charity and it hurts.”
Source: Butterfly: From Refugee to Olympian, My Story of Rescue, Hope and Triumph
“Back in the '40's, Lyndon Johnson could still steal a Senate election in South Texas with the help of the big patrons.”
“Back in the '50s and '60s, most politicians were concerned about not talking about faith, partly because there were consequences you had to deal with - (for instance) Catholicism had been made an issue.”
“Back in the '60s, for example, just as inflation was beginning to be a big problem, Presidents J.F.Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson would often publicly browbeat companies for raising prices and threatening to move federal defense purchases to different countries.”
“Back in the '60s, there was a car sticker that read, 'Forget Oxfam, Feed Twiggy,' but I ate like a horse.”
“Back in the '70s when my friends in California were at Berkeley, in-state tuition was around $700 a year.”
“Back in the '80s and '90s, when GM was consistently posting giant profits, they were simultaneously firing tens of thousands of workers in my hometown of Flint and across Michigan.”
“Back in the '80s and '90s, when there was still a record business, there was pressure on anyone who was fortunate to have a few hits on a major label to continue that success.”
“Back in the '80s, a lot of the images I used were from TV or from films on TV.”
“Back in the 1930s, Carl Jung, the eminent thinker and psychologist, put it this way: Criticism has 'the power to do good when there is something that must be destroyed, dissolved or reduced, but [it is] capable only of harm when there is something to be built.”
Source: Now, Discover Your Strengths
“Back in the 1950s, we did a study in Framingham called the Framingham Study.This needs to be done for developmental disabilities. It's outrageous that people have had to live with this heartache for so long without having a definitive answer.”
“Back in the 1960s Africa not only fed itself, it also exported food. Not anymore.”
“Back in the 1960s, I saw Peter, Paul and Mary. I was at that age, about 14, and I was mesmerized.”
“Back in the 1970s, I ate a high-protein diet to get bigger and stronger. As a senior at Utah State, I weighed 218 pounds with eight percent body fat, and threw the discus over 190 feet. Then I got some advice from the people at the Olympic Training Center. I needed carbs, they advised, and lots of them. They pointed to studies done on the American distance runners. Being an idiot, I took the advice to eat like emaciated, over-trained sub-performers. It took years of high carbohydrate grazing to learn the evils of this advice.”
“Back in the 1980s, when the internet was only available to a small number of pioneers, I was often confronted by people who feared that the strange technologies I was working on, like virtual reality, might unleash the demons of human nature. For instance, would people become addicted to virtual reality as if it were a drug? Would they become trapped in it, unable to escape back to the physical world where the rest of us live? Some of the questions were silly, and others were prescient.”