B Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with B. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“But when I got to SMU and decided to take a playwriting class, I said this isn't a bad idea. IfI write characters, they could be as dumb as me, and I don't have to be very smart.”
“But when I hear a great song, I can't help but be inspired by it, regardless of whatever genre that song falls under.”
“But when I heard that this old man, who went from accuser to being the accused, had been staked out on his back in a field and the deputies had piled stone upon stone on his chest, it made me wonder about the kind of people who were convicting us. Where was Satan? Wasn’t he hiding in the folds of the judges’ coats? Wasn’t he speaking in the voices of these magistrates and men of religion?”
Source: I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem
“But when I heard that you were feeling the same way, I wanted to do something to help you.”
Source: The Friendly Mouse
“But when I know that the glass is already broken, every minute with it is precious.”
“But when I learned about the dangers of rejection or attack, I thought, it's time to change this. What if we faced any pain we had caused each other and, instead of rejection or attack, could we listen? Could we forgive? Could we merge?”
“But when I look at the fact that today is 1,000 days that we have not had a budget for the United States of America, you know, the House, one of the things we did, we passed a budget last year. But that is still sitting over there at the Senate. And so we have got to get this country back on track.”
“But when I look back at myself at age twenty what I remember most is being alone and lonely. I had no girlfriend to warm my body or my soul, no friends I could open up to. No clue what I should do every day, no vision for the future. For the most part, I remained hidden away, deep within myself. Sometimes I’d go a week without talking to anybody. That kind of life continued for a year. A long, long year. Whether this period was a cold winter that left valuable growth rings inside me, I can’t really say. At the time I felt as if every night I, too, were gazing out a porthole at a moon made of ice. A transparent, eight-inch-thick, frozen moon. But I watched that moon alone, unable to share its cold beauty with anyone.”
“But when I look back I can't call myself unlucky. My 23rd birthday was December 14. In these years I have had more than most people get in a lifetime.”
“But when I look in the basin, among the curdlike blood clots, I see and elfin thorax, attentuated, its pencilline ribs all in parallel rows with tiny knobs of spine rounding upwards. A translucent arm and hand swim beside.”
“But when I looked at a lot of the questions they had on them army tests, I just didn't know the answers. I don't even know how to start after finding the answers. That's all.”
“But when I lose my temper, I find it difficult to forgive myself. I feel I've failed. I can be calm in a crisis, in the face of death or things that hurt badly. I don't get hysterical, which may be masochistic of me.”
“But when I make a good [taxidermy] mount I feel like I beat God in a small way. As though the Almighty said, Let such critter be dead, and I said, 'Fuck You, he can still play the banjo.”
Source: Those Across the River
“But when I play, I still practice hard and focus on my game.”
“But when I played Woodstock, I'll never forget that moment looking out over the hundreds of thousands of people, the sea of humanity, seeing all those people united in such a unique way. It just touched me in a way that I'll never forget.”
“But when I reached Xocolatl, my heart beating ferociously, I found the display window brightly lit, with fairy lights on the window-ledge and along the shelves of chocolates. Cellophane-wrapped and gleaming like a pirate's buried treasure, they seemed to glow with a precious light, those gilded piles of mendiants, and truffles, rose creams and santons de Margot, while above them rose the centerpiece; a statuette of the Bonne Mère, much larger than the ones in the shop, one hand raised in benediction, the other holding the infant Christ, and robed in darkest chocolate. And all around the dishes and jars were origami animals; little angular butterflies and cranes and fish and rabbits in multicolored paper. I detected the hand of Grandmother Li: imagined those clever old hands at work, folding the pretty papers.”
Source: Vianne
“But when I realized it was actually going to be this portrait of the artist, birth to death, I had to then discover who Margaret as a young woman would be. I had to find the different voices for her throughout her life. I had a lot of fun discovering that. I had a lot of fun writing the childhood sections. By imagining her childhood, I was able to come up with this voice that matures as she gets older.”
“But when I really look back on my life, being really honest about it and now that I've got the chance to travel the world, seeing how a lot of little kids grow up - my life wasn't so bad.”
“But when I really think about it, I wonder if maybe it's more than that; maybe it's something that hits close to the deepest core of who I am. I'm not a religious person, but what I have with Harry is the closest thing I have - when I am with him is when the world is at its clearest for me.”
Source: Picture Us in the Light
“But when I record my next studio album, of course I'll do the lead vocals”
“But when I reintroduced the Nation of Islam, and began to host meetings in cities and thousands and thousands of people come out.”
“But when I sat listening with the other Aikido students and teachers on the mat at the Kumano Juku Dojo, all of us dripping with sweat and focused intently on the practice of Aikido in the here and now, the Floating Bridge of Heaven did not feel like an abstract reference to a story of the past. It was a vivid invitation to venture into the world of the spirit, and to integrate that sacred spirit of creativity into all of our actions. It was a compelling reminder that to O-Sensei, and by extension to all sincere students of his art, Aikido was far more than physical technique.”
Source: Journey to the Heart of Aikido: The Teachings of Motomichi Anno Sensei
“But when I saw the cursive grace of Guido Rahr's fly line writing prayers I couldn't read to the river gods of Outer Mongolia, I knew my name was written there too. Fly fishing was going to be my version of my father's sport, my nod to my Scottish ancestors and to my self, and to the fish crazed part of America I had claimed as my own.”
“But when I say it isn't meant for anyone's eyes, I don't mean it in the sense of one of those novel manuscripts people keep in a drawer, insisting they don't care if anyone else ever reads it or not.The people I have known who do that, I am convinced, have no faith in themselves as writers and know, deep down, that the novel is flawed, that they don't know how to tell the story, or they don't understand what the story is, or they haven't really got a story to tell. The manuscript in the drawer is the story.”
Source: The Music Lesson: A Novel
“But when I see a story on welfare on television, they only show black people.”
“But when I sit back to look up at him, his brows are furrowed.
"I loved you," he whispers.
"I know," I say.
Hurt eyes move across my face. "You broke my heart."
"I know that, too.”
Source: Every Summer After
“But when I slept I was always in the truck, huddling together with the others, all of us stinking, shivering, naked, squeezed together for warmth, all but one. One lay by himself against the barred door, the cold one, with a mouth full of clotted blood. He was the traitor. He had gone on by himself, deserting us, deserting me. I would wake up full of rage, a feeble shaky rage that turned into feeble tears.”
Source: The Left Hand of Darkness
“But when I start to kiss someone - lust is the easiest emotion to generate.”
“But when I started writing songs, I stopped painting completely, and the only art things I do are connected to the career, like album sleeves and, to some extent, posters and things like that.”
“But when I stopped facing Sandy, I had to face Don Drysdale. No one on my team wanted to face him.”
“But when I talk to people who are Darwinists or evolutionists and say, 'Well, how did life begin' - they're... they don't have an answer. I mean, they have an answer, but it's a BS answer. It's an answer that wouldn't make sense to a small child.”
“But when I think about ponds infested with gallon-big goldfish, I feel a kind of triumph. I see something that no one expected to live not just alive but impossibly flourishing, and no longer alone. I see a creature whose present existence must have come as a surprise even to itself. Imagine having the power to become resilient to all that is hostile to us. Confinement, solitude, our own toxic waste... Imagine the freedom of encountering space for the first time and taking it up... A dumped goldfish has no model for what a different and better life might look like, but it finds it anyway. I want to know what it feels like to be unthinkable too, to invent a future that no one expected of you.”
Source: How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures
“But when I think of superchicks, I think of the roles, not the variety.”
“But when I think of the night he was shot at, the night he did coin tricks, I cant help recalling him gazing up from my bed, intoxicated and disturbingly intoxicating.
Page 157”
Source: The Wicked King
“But when I think of you, I want to be alone together. I want to strive against and for. I want to live in contact. I want to be a context for you, and you for me.
I love you, and I love you, and I want to find out what that means together.”
Source: This Is How You Lose the Time War
“But when I thought I hit bottom, it started hitting back.”
“But when I thought I hit bottom, it started hitting back. There is no bruise like the bruise loneliness kicks into your spine.”
“But when I took up my pen, my hand made big, jerky letters like those of a child, and the lines sloped down the page from left to right horizontally, as if they were loops of string lying on the paper, and someone had come along and blown them askew.”
“But when I touch you, your aura … it smolders. The colors deepen, it burns more intensely, the purple increases. Why? Why, Sydney?” He used that hand to pull me closer. “Why do you react that way if I don’t mean anything to you?” There was a desperation in his voice, and it was legitimate.”
Source: The Indigo Spell
“But when I was a kid, I would look at the paper next to the phone and I would think to myself, "I want to do that." So I started doing that. [doodling]”
“But when I was a little kid, I was always writing stories and illustrating little books that I would create.”
“But when I was a prostitute I protected myself, fought back at every moment, was never off guard. To protect my deeper, inner self from men, I offered them only an outer shell. I kept my heart and soul, and let my body plat its role, its passive, inert, unfeeling role. I learnt to resist by being passive, to keep myself whole by offering nothing, to live by withdrawing to a world of my own. In other words, I was telling the man he could have my body, he could have a dead body, but he would never be able to make me react, or tremble, or feel either pleasure or pain. I made no effort, expended no energy, gave no affection, provided no thought. I was therefore never tired or exhausted.”
Source: Woman at Point Zero
“But when I was selected, after my very first tour of squadron duty, to become one of the youngest candidates for the test pilot school, I began to realize, maybe you are a little bit better.”
“But when I was seven or eight, I did my first little piece of acting.”
“But when I was twelve years old I caught my first strong glimpse of one of the fundamental forces of existence, whose votary I was destined to be for life - namely, Beauty.”
“But when I wasn't working, I was usually at a window looking down at Earth.”
“But when I went on the stage to do a show, I would put on makeup because I felt that it enhanced my act; it drew attention to what I was doing.”
“But when I went to Harvard, it kind of got washed out of me, partly because people made fun of you in college. If you said you believed in God, they would look at you clinically, you know, suggest that you needed a referral.”
“But when I went to Hiroshima and began to study or just listen to people's descriptions of their work, it was quite clear they were talking about death all the time, about people dying all around them, about their own fear of death.”
“But when I worked on a painting I would do it from a drawing but I would put certain things I was fairly sure I wanted in the painting, and then collage on the painting with printed dots or painted paper or something before I really committed it.”
Source: Roy Lichtenstein: new paintings