I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“I once said, 'We will bury you,' and I got into trouble with it. Of course we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you.”
“I once sang 'Summer Nights,' from 'Grease,' at a bar in Melbourne with John Travolta, who's a good friend of mine. He looked cool singing the part of Danny - sitting in an armchair, smoking a cigar - while I got stuck playing Sandy.”
“I once sat next to Jim from Wild Kingdom on a flight from Atlanta. I find mentioning that opens a lot of doors.”
“I once sat on the rim of a mesa above the Rio Grande for three days and nights, trying to have a vision. I got hungry and saw God in the form of a beef pie.”
Source: The Serpents of Paradise: A Reader
“I once saw 37,000 kids gathered together, and I said, “Is this a public school math class?” Also, I get the numbers 37,000 and 42 confused.”
Source: A Memoir of Memories and Memes
“I once saw a canyon shaped like a swimming bird. Was it a duck? Well, I quacked and it quacked back.”
Source: Music is fluid, and my saxophone overflows when my ducks slosh in the sounds I make in elevators.
“I once saw a forklift lift a crate of forks. And it was way to literal for me.”
“I once saw a lump of Greenland breaking off into the sea and moving south, which of course will affect the atmosphere and us generally, and it'll happen more and more.”
“I once saw a marble statue in a museum, and it shocked me, because that piece of art had stolen my dance moves. Romance frozen in motion is my contribution to the culture of music, and I hope Harrison hires me to perform at their new concert venue.”
Source: A Memoir of Memories and Memes
“I once saw a moat bicycling around a castle. It was being chased by a soggy giraffe that had a tornado for a neck. I was on the overlooking grassy hill, selling lasagna-free duck soup by the slice to tourists from Nebraska.”
Source: Music is fluid, and my saxophone overflows when my ducks slosh in the sounds I make in elevators.
“I once saw a note on a Stasi file from early 1989 that I would never forget. In it a young lieutenant alerted his superiors to the fact that there were so many informers in church opposition groups at demonstrations that they were making these groups appear stronger than they really were. In one of the most beautiful ironies I have ever seen, he dutifully noted that, by having swelled the ranks of the opposition, the Stasi was giving the people heart to keep demonstrating against them.”
Source: Stasiland: Stories From Behind The Berlin Wall
“I once saw a photograph of a large herd of wild elephants in Central Africa Seeing an airplane for the first time, and all in a state of wild collective terror... As, however, there were no journalists among them, the terror died down when the airplane was out of sight.”
“I once saw a picture in the paper of John Hegley with 'poet' written on his knuckles, and I thought that was pretty cool, so I was quite up front about it.”
“I once saw a small child go to an electric light switch as say, Mamma, can I open the light? She was using the age-old language of exploration, the language of art.”
Source: Ezra Pound and the Visual Arts
“I once saw a waterfall walk up a flight of stairs, when it could have easily taken the escalator. That's what I would have done, if I were composed of 40% more H2O.”
Source: The Lewis and Clark of The Ozarks
“I once saw Arnold Schwarzenegger kill a man in a movie by grabbing his head and twisting it until the neck broke. Was that difficult? Could a man do it without a lot of practice?”
Source: John Dies at the End
“I once saw Dizzy Gillespie at a live show, and it made me want to go home immediately and start writing.”
“I once saw John Updike get in front of a crowd and read a story that he'd written in 1958, and I just thought, I can't even look at stuff I wrote a year ago, I can't believe he's doing this.”
“I once saw my mother playing Mary Magdalene in a parish event. But she had to put the role aside in order to go and front the choir who were singing at the same occasion. She left the stage halfway through the Crucifixion.”
“I once saw two ducks brawling, and I thought, "Hey, it's a pre-pillow fight." It was so violent that it made me want to capture their energy and take a nap.”
Source: BearPaw Duck And Meme Farm presents: Two Ducks Brawling Is A Pre-Pillow Fight
“I once saw two endangered species about to have sex, but I had to put a stop to it because I suspected one of them of being a prostitute. Then I went to the ATM and took out some cash just to be certain.”
Source: I design saxophone music in blocks, like Stonehenge
“I once saw you in a tuxedo and all I wanted to do is eat.”
Source: Just the Way I Feel
“I once saw, on a flower pot in my own living room, the efforts of a field mouse to build a remembered field. I have lived to see this episode repeated in a thousand guises, and since I have spent a large portion of my life in the shade of a nonexistent tree I think I am entitled to speak for the field mouse.”
“I once screamed to the sun and the moon not to stare at you,” I said, “But they said they can’t help it – for they haven’t seen a creature as adorable as you in a billion years.”
Source: A Play of the Cosmos: Script of the Stars
“I once sent a dozen of my friends a telegram saying 'flee at once - all is discovered.' They all left town immediately.”
“I once sent him a song and asked him to mark a cross wherever he thought it was faulty. Brahms returned it untouched, saying 'I don't want to make a cemetery of your compositions.'”
“I once shook hands with Pat Boone, and my whole right side sobered up!”
“I once showed Pat Bradley my swing and said, 'What do I do next?' Pat replied, 'Wait till the pain dies down.'”
“I once smoked on a horse. Why? The opportunity just happen to present itself and I just happen to atop a western saddle and it just seemed right.”
Source: Weird Girl Adventures from A to Z
“I once sold shoes. They were Buy One, Get One FREE. Then I met a customer with only one foot, and now I have an extra shoe. So, I filled it with duck eggs, because I ran out of room in the six pockets of my pool table.”
Source: Music is fluid, and my saxophone overflows when my ducks slosh in the sounds I make in elevators.
“I once spent a weekend on Earth,
With two men (of science; and god)
One man convinced me I did not exist,
And the other that I was a fraud.
In both men I saw the same reason,
In bothmen i saw the same light,
So I left for another dimension,
Assuming that both men were right."
- The Alien
From the novel 'Ineffable”
Source: Ineffable
“I once spent a year in Philadelphia, I think it was on a Sunday.”
“I once spoke to a human geneticist who declared that the notion of intelligence was quite meaningless, so I tried calling him unintelligent. He was annoyed, and it did not appease him when I went on to ask how he came to attach such a clear meaning to the notion of lack of intelligence. We never spoke again.”
“I once spoke to someone who had survived the genocide in Rwanda, and she said to me that there was now nobody left on the face of the earth, either friend or relative, who knew who she was. No one who remembered her girlhood and her early mischief and family lore; no sibling or boon companion who could tease her about that first romance; no lover or pal with whom to reminisce. All her birthdays, exam results, illnesses, friendships, kinships—gone. She went on living, but with a tabula rasa as her diary and calendar and notebook. I think of this every time I hear of the callow ambition to 'make a new start' or to be 'born again': Do those who talk this way truly wish for the slate to be wiped? Genocide means not just mass killing, to the level of extermination, but mass obliteration to the verge of extinction. You wish to have one more reflection on what it is to have been made the object of a 'clean' sweep? Try Vladimir Nabokov's microcosmic miniature story 'Signs and Symbols,' which is about angst and misery in general but also succeeds in placing it in what might be termed a starkly individual perspective. The album of the distraught family contains a faded study of Aunt Rosa, a fussy, angular, wild-eyed old lady, who had lived in a tremulous world of bad news, bankruptcies, train accidents, cancerous growths—until the Germans put her to death, together with all the people she had worried about.”
Source: Hitch 22: A Memoir
“I once started a detective story to make moneybut I couldn't get the murder to take place! At the end of three chapters I was still describing the characters and the milieu, so I thought, this is not going to work. No corpse!”
“I once started out to walk around the world but ended up in Brooklyn, that Bridge was too much for me.”
Source: These are My Rivers: New & Selected Poems, 1955-1993
“I once stayed in a roach-infested hotel in Istanbul for a work trip. I had to share my room with a male model, and pointedly all we talked about was our other halves.”
“I once stole a book. It was really just the once, and at the time I called it borrowing. It was 1970, and the book, I could see by its lack of date stamps, had been lying unappreciated on the shelves of my convent school library since its publication in 1945.”
“I once stole a pornographic book that was printed in braille. I used to rub the dirty parts.”
“I once stood in the middle of New York city watching my name go round the electronic zipper sign in Times Square and I felt pretty thrilled, but not quite as thrilled as I felt when I saw my name in the Examiner for the first time.”
“I once stood on a road and found I had no friends. And I was glad. Better to have no friends than to have people claim they were your friends when they were not. It is a source of strength to come to terms with your right to be alone.”
“I once stopped to pick up a girl, and then there was this creepy-looking guy standing behind the bushes waiting to jump out and get in, too. So I just quickly drove away.”
“I once struggled in Hell, and was then admitted into Heaven. It all happened in one moment while not moving from my chair. In that moment I simply changed my heart, deciding that I had a Perfect and Loving Creator who was giving and taking as needed to help me, his child, grow and mature. At that moment ALL that had ever occurred in my life (Joyous or difficult) was transformed into Heavenly Blessings and I ceased being a tortured victim in Hell.”
“I once succumbed to the fad of fasting and went for six days and nights without eating. It wasn't difficult. I was less hungry at the end of the sixth day than I was at the end of the second. Yet I know, as you know, people who would think they had committed a crime if they let their families or employees go for six days without food; but they will let them go for six days, and six weeks, and sometimes sixty years without giving them the hearty appreciation that they crave almost as much as they crave food.”
Source: How to win friends & influence people
“I once suggested to one of my patients that she should have a small funeral ceremony to bury the idea she had of a certain person, because she kept chasing that image even in the face of substantial evidence of its actual nonexistence.
Then I asked her to prepare a small headstone to honor, in private.
Not all the dead are really dead or were really alive, but that does not make parting with them a lesser loss.”
“I once talked about wanting to kill myself, but I don't think I was ever really planning on doing it. It was just comforting to know that I could.”
“I once taught a duck how to swim. I'm such a good coach that in no time at all it learned how to fly.”
Source: Eggs, they’re not just for breakfast
“I once taught art to adults in a night course. I had a woman who painted her back yard, and she said it was the first time she had ever really looked at it. I think everyone sees beauty. Art is a way to respond”
“I once terminated a partnership with a chap who proved--unreliable. As a matter of fact, I terminated him.”
“I once thought I had mono for an entire year. It turned out I was just really bored.”