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I Quotes

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All I Quotes

“I told myself that if I hoped to write a book that helped people to take a good look at some of the names that have been written on their nametags, I would need to do the same. I had to write Hello, My Name Is from a place of authenticity, even vulnerability, being willing to let God show me areas of my life that have been incorrectly shaped by false identities I've allowed to hang around for too long. I truly felt like, 'if this book is helping me, then it's going to help someone else.'”

“I told myself to look up; the moonlight was filling the room. The moon must have looked beautiful. But I couldn’t look at it. I felt the guilt of Collin’s words crush me, Eldridge’s words confuse me, and my own thoughts criticize me. I didn’t want to give myself the pleasure in seeing even the simplest beauty. The weight of my shame pulled my head down. I lost track of time for minutes, maybe an hour, feeling as cold as the stone I stood on. I thought for a moment I might never move or see beauty again. And I fell asleep, with the moon left unseen; possibly as lonely as me.”

“I told myself, "Lincoln, you can never make a lawyer if you do not understand what demonstrate means." So I left my situation in Springfield, went home to my father's house, and stayed there till I could give any proposition in the six books of Euclid at sight. I then found out what "demonstrate" means, and went back to my law studies.”

“I told myself, 'All I want is a normal life'. But was that true? I wasn't so sure. Because there was a part of me that enjoyed hating school, and the drama of not going, the potential consequences whatever they were. I was intrigued by the unknown. I was even slightly thrilled that my mother was such a mess. Had I become addicted to crisis? I traced my finger along the windowsill. 'Want something normal, want something normal, want something normal', I told myself.”

“I told myself: 'I am surrounded by unknown things.' I imagined man without ears, suspecting the existence of sound as we suspect so many hidden mysteries, man noting acoustic phenomena whose nature and provenance he cannot determine. And I grew afraid of everything around me – afraid of the air, afraid of the night. From the moment we can know almost nothing, and from the moment that everything is limitless, what remains? Does emptiness actually not exist? What does exist in this apparent emptiness?”

“I told one of the writers that our fields were so nearly vertical that we planted our corn with a shotgun and had to breed a race of mules with legs shorter on one side than the other for plowing. And when he asked how we transported the corn down off the mountain, I said, in a jug. He appeared to believe me, so I was encouraged to go on and tell him that every church in that corner of the state, except our Indian congregation, either conducted services speaking entirely in tongues or else took up serpents as recommended by Jesus. Both the writer and I had taken a few rounds of Scotch at the time. The story appeared as fact in a well-known national periodical, along with the obligatory descriptions of the beauty and ruggedness and unmatched remoteness and mystery of our mountains.”

“I told Seven the Bartender that true love is felonious. "Not if they're over eighteen," he said, shutting the till of the cash register. By then the bar itself had become an appendage, a second torso holding up my first. "You take someone's breath away," I stressed. "You rob them of the ability to utter a single word." I tipped the neck of the empty liquor bottle toward him. "You steal a heart." He wiped up in front of me with a dishrag. "Any judge would toss that case out on its ass." "You'd be surprised." Seven spread the rag out on the brass bar to dry. "Sounds like a misdemeanor, if you ask me." I rested my cheek on the cool, damp wood. "No way," I said. "Once you're in, it's for life.”

“I told that girl, in the kindest, gentlest way, that I could not consent to deliver judgment upon any one's manuscript, because an individual's verdict was worthless. It might underrate a work of high merit and lose it to the world, or it might overrate a trashy production and so open the way for its infliction upon the world. I said that the great public was the only tribunal competent to sit in judgment upon a literary effort, and therefore it must be best to lay it before that tribunal in the outset, since in the end it must stand or fall by that mighty court's decision any way.”