I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“I had grown up in the 1950s, with radio and television and Reader's Digest, and I had assumed that everyone around us was pretty much alike.”
Source: Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake-Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia
“I had grown up thinking of life as a series of linear decisions that if made properly would land me on some distant safe shore where I would finally enjoy the fruits of my labor. Now that I was getting a glimpse of that shore I was struck by the inanity of such an equation. My mother was never going to get another chance to do anything else. She did not have the capacity for regrets, nor was she even able to enjoy the comfort of nostalgia or fond memories--her mind had leaked away too imperceptibly to allow for the clarity to look back on her life and wish she had done things differently. As I continued to worry over what sort of future I was setting myself up for, she seemed a painful cautionary tale that life was not a savings plan, accrued now for enjoyment later. I was alive now. My responsibility was to live now as fully as possible.”
Source: No One Tells You This
“I had grown up working in a video store, and I'd grown up more with film than I had with theater, so I kind of felt a natural call.”
“I had grown up. I had learned that being a woman was knowing when to stand firm and when to compromise. I had learned to laugh and weep; I had learned that I was weak as well as strong. I had learned to love. I was no longer a rigid, upright tree that would not flex and bow, even though the gale threatened to snap it in two; I was the willow that bends and shivers and sways, and yet remains strong.”
Source: Seer of Sevenwaters: A Sevenwaters Novel 5
“I had grown used to getting a pat on the back and being told after a good result: 'Well done, David - you should be happy, you're the first clean rider.”
Source: Racing Through the Dark: Crash. Burn. Coming Clean. Coming Back.
“I had grown used to the feeling that I was going towards execution. It was something in the distance, an idea with which I had become familiar. Now it suddenly sprang at me, stood close at my elbow, no longer an idea, but a reality, just about to happen. It gave me a shock, a physical sensation in the pit of the stomach. The past had vanished and become nothing; the future was the inconceivable nothingness of annihilation. All that was left was the ceaselessly shrinking fragment of time called 'now'.”
“I had grown used to watching her brain waves. It was a way of hearing her talk.”
Source: The Year of Magical Thinking
“I had had a huge background in the nuance of the accent because I went to drama school in England for four years.”
“I had had a lot of experience in bringing the Internet to Australia, and I saw that knowledge in the hands of people achieves reform.”
“I had had an affair with the moon, in which there was neither sin nor shame.”
“I had had an extroverted personality with a lot of friends, but when I lost the weight and grew so tall, I withdrew within myself.”
“I had had enough and I quit, and there is a distinction…You retire when the game has had enough of you. You quit when you have had enough of the game.”
“I had had no art training.”
“I had had some months of depression. Not serious enough to keep me from work. So, I guess you'd call that a mild depression.”
“I had had the job for three weeks. It was dreary. You couldn't read; they didn't like it. I would feel as if I were drugged, sitting there, watching those damned dolls, thinking what a success they would have made of their lives if they had been women. Satin skin, silk hair, velvet eyes, sawdust heart - all complete.”
Source: Good Morning, Midnight
“I had had to learn the difference between the bearable fatigue and the unbearable, the fatigue of fear. The first can be cured by a night's sleep; the second kills.”
“I had Halloween parties every year, as it was my birthday five days before. My parents would actually put prosthetic noses on, and my dad would wear a top-hat and tails, put on a fake curly moustache, and hold a pipe.”
“I had hardly begun to read I asked how can you ever be sure that what you write is really any good at all and he said you can't you can't you can never be sure you die without knowing whether anything you wrote was any good if you have to be sure don't write”
“I had hardly ever seen Great Granny Webster at that time, and yet her feelings interested me. She was little more to me than the silhouette of a formidable old woman dressed in black who appeared occasionally at family gatherings and made us feel that she was taking a dangerous risk with her upright spine when circumstances forced her to bend over and kiss her great-grandchildren.”
Source: Great Granny Webster
“I had hardly expected so dolichocephalic a skull or such well-marked supra-orbital development. Would you have any objection to my running my finger along your parietal fissure? A cast of your skull, sir, until the original is available, would be an ornament to any anthropological museum. It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull.”
Source: Les Aventures de Sherlock Holmes
“I had hated these ponies for the part they played in my father's death but now I realized the notion was fanciful, that it was wrong to charge blame to these pretty beasts who knew neither good nor evil but only innocence. I say that of these ponies. I have known some horses and a good many more pigs who I believe harbored evil intent in their hearts. I will go further and say all cats are wicked, though often useful. Who has not seen Satan in their sly faces? Some preachers will say, well, that is superstitious "claptrap." My answer is this: Preacher, go to your Bible and read Luke 8: 26-33”
Source: True Grit
“I had headaches for over 30 years until I tried chiropractic. They have completely disappeared.”
“I had heard a man who had AIDS interviewed on TV. He said that on top of dying he constantly had to comfort his well friends, who were terrified that he was dying, and that it was exhausting to have to do that.”
Source: Veronica
“I had heard about Cheers, of course, but I never watched it. So I watched two episodes, and I was like, "Oh my God. This is really good."”
“I had heard about how people struggle and how hard it is to get into acting. But I did not care because it's something I love.”
“I had heard all sorts of stories about Woody Allen's directing - directorial approach. And some of them turned out to be myth. But, one of them was that he doesn't rehearse and another was that he doesn't really direct, if he doesn't like it...he cuts it out of the movie, or even replaces you.”
“I had heard before that there were rumors I was gay. It's funny. My cousin gets his hair cut at this place, and one of the guys there told him that Scott Wolf was gay. He didn't realize that he was my cousin.”
“I had heard blues and jazz all my life but I was never aware that it was associated with nightclubs and drinking.”
“I had heard everything, Larry gonna knock me out, he gonna beat me, this and that. I got so sick of that. I had a little talk with myself in my bedroom and I said, Don't think about getting in the ring with Larry Holmes, I mean, Don't forget Larry Holmes is getting in the ring with you. You're champ for so many years. And just do what you're best at. What I am best at was not letting anybody have their way with me in the ring.”
“I had heard my brothers and sisters use curse words but had never dared use one myself in front of anyone. But I had practiced alone in my room lots of times, trying out different cadences and into nations: 'Fuck, fuck, fuck you, fucknut. Shit, shitstain, fucker! Go fuck a duck, you asswipe!' My favorite was, 'What a fucking cocksucker.' The plan was to say this casually to one of my new friends while one of our teachers walked by. No one in kindergarten ever really got my sense of humor, so I was hell-bent on making my mark in the first grade.”
Source: My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands
“I had heard my father say that he never knew a piece of land run away or break.”
Source: Diary and Autobiography: Diary, 1782-1804. Autobiography to October 1776
“I had heard so much negative talk about our generation, that we're slackers and young fogies, that I knew wasn't true of the people I know.”
“I had heard some women make comments about my chest, so why not show it off? Nobody wants to see a fat guy in tights. That wouldn't be fair to the fans.”
“I had heard that the local pirozhki are sometimes filled with herbaceous horsetail, which apparently tastes like celery and has long been revered for keeping remote villagers going during times of famine. In the summertime, bakers fill their cakes with northern berries--- cranberry, cloudberry and serviceberry.”
Source: Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels
“I had heard that Tom [Cruise] was the same way, that he is incredibly dedicated. I was very excited to meet him and I was, honest to God, weirdly surprised that the guy makes me look lazy. I think he does think I'm a hard worker, but he makes me look like I'm doing nothing. The guy is at the gym before anybody in the morning.”
“I had heard that when people lost people, there was anger. But I definitely experienced it a lot more than I was prepared for it. Anger was not something I'd ever really felt in my life and I was not prepared for it.”
“I had heard the nails being driven into the nails of her coffin, but I couldn't adjust to the fact that she had returned to nothingness.”
“I had heard the old Indian legend about the red fern. How a little Indian boy and girl were lost in a blizzard and had frozen to death. In the spring, when they were found, a beautiful red fern had grown up between their two bodies. The story went on to say that only an angel could plant the seeds of a red fern, and that they never died; where one grew, that spot was sacred.”
“I had heard the wind from the mountains calling me last night, telling me it was my time to go, and I woke up, knowing what to do.”
Source: Seeds of yesterday
“I had held a notion that I could make a pretty fair appraisal of the worth of an opponent simply by speaking to him on the first tee and taking a good measuring look into his eyes.”
“I had higher math SATs than in English - yet I became an English major in college.”
“I had highfalutin ideas about being a serious actress when I was 16, 17, and first signed at Universal. I was so flattered to be asked to be in the movies - the idea of being paid to act was heady stuff.”
“I had hit a critical period in my life, where I changed very much as a person. I consider the person I used to be, dead, and I'm glad that he is. Insecure, frightened, confused, much like a lot of people I know today.”
“I had hit a personal low. I was out of work for the first time since I was seventeen. I had no job, a blank date book, and so much time on my hands I could lunch with the girls. Sure, I had money. But I was also a bit lost. The kids were grown and living their own lives. Without work, which had been central to my identity and my self-esteem for so many years, I was no longer sure who I was. I had been retired for two months, and already I was panicked.”
Source: Rubies in the Orchard: How to Uncover the Hidden Gems in Your Business
“I had hit on the most positive solution to the world’s most negative problems. What we needed were a bunch of little, hairy Hobbits! Not large armies of Gondoreans and Rohirrim, just beer drinking, song-singing, riddle-solving, barrel-riding, pipe-weed-smokin’, second-breakfast-eatin’, long-walkin’ Hobbits!”
Source: Be a Hobbit, Save the Earth: the Guide to Sustainable Shire Living
“I had hit upon a truth of womanhood: however blameless a life we led, the passions and greed of men could bring us to ruin, and there was nothing we could do.”
“I had holes in my jeans well before it was fashionable.”
“I had hope,
When violence was ceased, and war on earth,
All would have then gone well; peace would have crowned
With length of happy days the race of Man;
But I was far deceived; for now I see
Peace to corrupt no less than war to waste.”
“I had hoped God would be neutral.”
“I had hoped I would have some definitive news to give you by now, but I've heard (unofficially) that they need/will take another 2 week extension to make their decision. I've also heard that the police are flooding the Gov's office with last minute calls/letters requesting that I be denied.”