I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“I've spent much of my life calling my intuition "something wrong with me.”
“I've spent much of my reading life among hedgerows and by-roads. The trouble is I've tended to shy away from certain writers just because their houses of fiction are on the main roads.”
“I’ve spent my entire existence watching over children, trying to keep the evil from tainting them. I look at the kids and see their inherent goodness, their innocence, and their compassion. They’re born that way. They only change, only turn their backs on the world, when the world turns their back on them.”
Source: Extinguish
“I've spent my entire life carefully regulating my environment and everything in it. Temperature. Light. Noise. Food. Textures. Routines. Rules. Emotions. People, especially when they're running in school corridors. I shape the world into one I can fit into more comfortably, and then ensure nobody touches it or messes it up.”
Source: Cassandra in Reverse
“I've spent nearly three years managing a shipping firm," she pointed out. "After all the time I've spent around longshoremen, nothing could shock me now."
"Maybe not," Luke conceded. "But Scotsmen have a special gift for cursing. I had a friend at Cambridge who knew at least a dozen different words for testicles."
Merritt grinned. One of the things she enjoyed most about Luke, the youngest of her three brothers, was that he never shielded her from vulgarity or treated her like a delicate flower. That, among other reasons, was why she'd asked him to take over the management of her late husband's shipping company, once she'd taught him the ropes.”
Source: Devil in Disguise
“I've spent so much time these last years wondering what I'm supposed to be. A wife? A lover? A celibate? An Italian? A glutton? A traveler? An artist? A Yogi? But I'm not any of these things, at least not completely. And I'm not Crazy Aunt Liz, either. I'm just a slippery antevasin - betwixt and between - a student on the ever-shifting border near the wonderful, scary forest of the new.”
Source: Eat, Pray, Love
“I’ve spent the last 11 years meditating, concentrating, contemplating, applicating, educating, investigating, and instigating a higher ideal. I’ve been a born again Christian, a crystal holding new age visualizationist, a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Christian scientist, a universalist, a bullshit artist, a seeker of truth, a charlatan, a holy roller, a shamanistic dancer, a guru, a disciple, and an enigma to my friends.”
“I've spent time with a lot of very busy people - business leaders, prominent journalists, and multiple presidents. Despite the unusually high demands on their schedules, something they all have in common is that they carve out time for reading, and for consuming information that may not seem to have anything to do with their jobs.”
Source: Say More: Lessons from Work, the White House, and the World
“I've spent too much of my life trying to leave the past behind. But the past is a leech. Digs its head into you and sucks your blood until it leaves you dry.”
Source: Blood on the Tracks
“I've spent way too much time looking for the right things in all the wrong places.”
Source: Pieces of a Broken Mind
“I've spent years like a dead fish, now it's time to rule the sea like a shark.”
“I've spent years living safely to secure a longer life, and look where that's gotten me. I'm at the finish line but I never ran the race.”
Source: They Both Die at the End
“I've spoken of the patient Peter who was obsessively forced to make conquests with women, to seduce and then to abandon them, until he was at last able to experience how he himself had repeatedly been abandoned by his mother.”
Source: The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
“I’ve spoken to Sid,” she admits. “He says he’s never seen Charlie so bad. He won’t eat, he’s lost weight and he looks terrible. Sid says it’s the first time he’s ever been so bored by him that he’s considered smothering him.”
Source: Promise Me
“I've squeezed as many bookcases in this tiny space as possible. Being surrounded by books and magazines makes me feel calm. It makes the room seem wrapped in a layer of protection. As if nothing or no one can get to me.”
Source: The Dangerous Art of Blending In
“I've started taking photos of the cats with my phone, which they do not appreciate. When the camera appears they look away, flick their tails, spring up and shoot underneath a house, dive into some brush. Save for this one cat that stared right into the camera, orange and royal as a lion. A few nights later, on an evening walk with my dog, we pass ten cats, all stretched out in the scorched crabgrass behind a neighbor's back door. They watch us as we pass, their furred heads turning slowly at the same time. They look like they are casually dreaming of murder. Like they are guarding a portal to the underworld. Like they have been alive since the dawn of earth.”
Source: State of Paradise
“I've started to feel very odd within my own life. It's most peculiar to feel lonely inside your own life.”
Source: Wish I Was Here
“I've started to hate this city, this country, all these STUPID FUCKING PEOPLE.”
“I've stayed here in Oxford as the seasons have changed, watching summer turn to autumn turn to winter turn to spring. And in the coming cycle, I will be here once more. Season after season, year after year, as crocuses make way for summer honeysuckle, as sun-loving lantana ease out for the quieter mums, as pansies blanket the wintry town and as spring beauties burst forth again behind the snow. I'll still be here with Fisher by my side. Because this spring the stars aligned, as Marian promised they would. I picked a mid-March spray of spirea, made myself a bridal bouquet, and gave my whole heart to the man whose heart was given whole to me.”
Source: Perennials
“I've stolen a garden. It isn't mine, it isn't anybody's. Nobody wants it, nobody cares for it, nobody ever goes into it. Perhaps everything is dead in it already, I don't know. I don't care, I don't care. Nobody has any right to take it from me when I care about it and they don't. They're letting it die, all shut in by itsellf!”
Source: The Secret Garden
“I've stopped bothering getting my hopes up and watching them die when all of it's just in my head. I expect nothing from the start, I expect nothing in the middle, and I expect nothing up until the end.”
Source: やはり俺の青春ラブコメはまちがっている 3
“I've stopped.
I've stopped giving
parts of myself
to help heal others,
because in the end
when they start to
feel complete again,
I am the one that
ends up with
all the missing pieces”
Source: Memories Unwound
“I’ve stopped letting somebody else’s mood adjust my day. No matter how much I care for this person, I will create a distance that’s well deserved. My days belong to me.”
“I've stopped preoccupying myself with the idea that my happiness is dependent on whatever might lie ahead in the future (in this case, buying a house). Contentment within my home is something I can find now - but only if I allow myself to actually appreciate the act of real living.
Contentment within your home is something you can find now, not in a far-off home-owning future.”
Source: Home Sweet Rented Home: Transform Your Home Without Losing Your Deposit
“I’ve strived to be a lion
all my life
because they tell me boys
are made of fangs and blood
but maybe there is
more to us and we
are wolves with
greater patience for
long hunts at night.”
Source: Moments at Midnight: A Poetry Collaboration
“I’ve studied and maybe learned how things are, but I’m not even close to why they are. And you must not expect to find that people understand what they do.”
Source: East of Eden
“I’ve studied History all my life, and the one thing I’ve learned for certain I’d that you can’t stand against it. It’s like a river in a flood, and we are just swept along in it. The big people might try to swim against the current for a time, but little people like us, the best we can hope for is to keep our heads above the water for as long as we can.”
Source: A Darkling Plain
“I’ve succumbed to the absolute power of the man that pulls, culls, calls my unwitting submission. And I’ve embraced the power of my submission to draw him in further, to have him kneeling and worshiping what he’s conquered. I’ve known surrender and strength with him. True freedom. And a hell of a lot of orgasms.”
Source: We Were One Once
“I've suffered so much. I raised my five kids with the water of my tears, now they want to trade this key for my oldest son. All my life, I have been faithful to the religion. It it's come to this...
Well, I can't believe in anything anymore.”
Source: Persepolis THE Story of A Childhood
“I’ve supped on potatoes and groats and am waiting to be sick. How about you?
I supped like the Lord in Heaven.’
and what does the Lord in Heaven have for supper?’
Nothing.”
Source: Prague Tales
“I’ve suppressed my aspirations to forget all rationality and let the moment explain everything, for nothing to be said and everything understood. If only I knew how to let these feelings out.”
Source: Here & After
“I've survived revolution, war, and over a decade on this continent," the Burgrave reflected. "But by all the ghosts of the hundred emperors, I think fatherhood will finally do me in.”
Source: The Waking Fire
“I've swallowed fish-eyes whole
like an endoscope.
I once ate a trout cooked inside a dolphin.
Felt like a shark eating another shark,
inside the cold-blooded womb of yet another shark.”
Source: Dawn of the Algorithm
“I've swallowed myself but the fever remains. I'm numb to the pleasure but still feel the pain. If I showed you my soul would you cover your eyes? If I told you the truth would you tell me to lie? I keep it all inside because I know the man is everything but kind.”
“I’ve tackled many challenges in my lifetime. The most satisfying ones were food related. Like the 2-pound burger at Fuddruckers that I had to devour in 15 minutes. Shattered it in 5 minutes and 46 seconds! Or
the Blazing Challenge at Buffalo Wild Wings: eat 12 blazing wings in 5 minutes. Killed it in 57 seconds! Quaker Steak and Lube’s all-you-can- eat wings in one sitting? I may still hold the record in Madison, Wisconsin, for scarfing down 78. I’ll never forget when 6 linemen and I went to a sushi restaurant during the time of the 2011 Rose Bowl in Pasadena. We didn’t exactly take on an eating challenge, but we did get kicked out of the place when the owner ordered, “Go home now.
You’ve eaten eight hundred dollars’ worth of sushi.”
Source: First and Goal: What Football Taught Me About Never Giving Up
“I’ve taken from their teachings, but I’ve also taken revenge. I’ve lost my temper, and I’ve resorted to violence. I’ve broken tradition, and I’ve defied the Knighthood. I can only imagine their disappointment in my decisions, but I regret nothing. I did what I had to do.”
Source: The Knighthood
“I've talked a great deal about the importance of failure as a learning tool, but it's really a privilege to expect people to let us fail over and over again. There are too many dudes in my story in general, and you can still sense my bro-ish excitement when I tell old war stories... It's my truth, which is why I'm leaving them in here, but I wish that some of it were different.”
Source: Eat a Peach
“I've talked to Ash and if you take another mortal-”
“Are you threatening me, love?” He grinned at her.
“No. I'm telling you that I don't want you to replace me.”
His smile faded. “Well, then . . . and if I do?”
“Then Ash will work with the other one, the Winter Queen, and they’ll threaten you, hurt our-your-court. But here's the thing they don't get: I don't want you to be hurt. It would hurt me. If you let some other mortal channel that awfulness for you, that would hurt me. What they'll do to you when they find out, that will hurt me.”
“And?”
“And you promised me that you wouldn't let anyone hurt me.”
Source: Ink Exchange
“I've thought about nothing else but you.”
Source: The Black Prince
“I've thought about that often since. I mean, about the word nice. Perhaps I mean good. Of course they mean nothing, when you start to think about them. A good man, one says; a good woman; a nice man, a nice woman. Only in talk of course, these are not words you'd use in a novel. I'd be careful not to use them.
Yet of that group, I will say simply, without further analysis, that George was a good person, and that Willi was not. That Maryrose and Jimmy and Ted and Johnnie the pianist were good people, and that Paul and Stanley Lett were not. And furthermore, I'd bet that ten people picked at random off the street to meet them, or invited to sit in that party under the eucalyptus trees that night, would instantly agree with this classification-would, if I used the word good, simply like that, know what I meant.
And thinking about this, which I have done so much, I discover that I come around, by a back door, to another of the things that obsess me. I mean, of course, this question of 'personality.' Heaven knows we are never allowed to forget that the 'personality' doesn't exist any more. It's the theme of half the novels written, the theme of the sociologists and all the other -ologists. We're told so often that human personality has disintegrated into nothing under pressure of all our knowledge that I've even been believing it. Yet when I look back to that group under the trees, and re-create them in my memory,suddenly I know it's nonsense. Suppose I were to meet Maryrose now, all these years later,she'd make some gesture, or turn her eyes in such a way, and there she'd be, Maryrose, and indestructible. Or suppose she 'broke down,' or became mad. She would break down into her components, and the gesture, the movement of the eyes would remain, even though some connection had gone. And so all this talk, this antihumanist bullying, about the evaporation of the personality becomes meaningless for me at that point when I manufacture enough emotional energy inside myself to create in memory some human being I've known. I sit down, and remember the smell of the dust and the moonlight, and see Ted handing a glass of wine to George, and George's over-grateful response to the gesture. Or I see, as in a slow-motion film, Maryrose turn her head, with her terrifyingly patient smile... I've written the word film. Yes. The moments I remember all have the absolute assurance of a smile, a look, a gesture, in a painting or a film. Am I saying then that the certainty I'm clinging to belongs to the visual arts, and not to the novel, not to the novel at all, which has been claimed by the disintegration and the collapse? What business has a novelist to cling to the memory of a smile or a look, knowing I so well the complexities behind them? Yet if I did not, I'd never be able to set a word down on paper; just as I used to keep myself from going crazy in this cold northern city by deliberately making myself remember the quality of hot sunlight on my skin.
And so I'll write again that George was a good man.”
Source: The Golden Notebook
“I've thought at length about stocks and leftovers. How much should I buy? What should I cook? How long should I keep it? I've thought about it and found an answer: do what you would for a large family. With fish: raw on the first day, cooked the next if it hasn't been eaten, made into terrine on the third and soup on the fourth. That's what my grandmother does. That's what most women do and no one's ever died from it. How do I know? It would have been in the paper. With meat it's the same, except I think tartar is a bit vulgar, so I cook my meat the day I buy it, then it becomes meatballs, soft little meatballs with coriander and cumin, celery tops, fronds of chervil, cream, lemon and tomatoes, roasted in garlic. There's no third chance for meat. Well there is and there isn't. I'm not allowed to write about it. With vegetables it's even more straightforward: raw, cooked, puréed, in soup, as stock. It's the same for fruits. Dairy products are such a help: they hold up well. I have a particular weakness for them. I trust them completely. Juices, of every sort, are kept separately in glass jugs. Very important, glass jugs. That's something else I got from my grandmother.”
Source: Chez Moi: A Novel
“I've thought of a wonderful way to start a forest fire,' Tom said musingly as they were having coffee.”
Source: Ripley's Game
“I've thought of you perpetually, ever since I last saw you. I'm exactly the same. I love you just as much, and everything I said to you then is just as true.”
Source: The Portrait of a Lady
“I’ve told a journal how I feel about you,
Out of fear of how you’d react
In the event of telling you.
Through past experiences, the happiest
Times I’ve had occurred when I kept them
To myself.
I’ve told this journal everything about you &
We’ve traveled page after page
In endless vacation.
How we’ve experienced things we both thought
We’d never experience.
How the food you normally scrunch your nose up at
Turned out to be some of the best things
you ever tasted & how badly I wanted
to be laid out on that plate.
To be the reason you sit back and undo the top
Button on your jeans.
The reason you tell your friends to come visit,
Your return trip back.
I’ve told a journal how I feel about you,
Out of fear of how you’d react.
Once I tell you, the you that I’ve come
To know and love will no longer be existent
& all I’ll have is another journal entry”
Source: Late Nights On Venus
“I've told you before, Egyptians are not found in Cairo or in Alexandria' she said. 'You've never really known Egyptians. I hate Egyptians of your class as much as I do my parents.'
' What am I, then, if I am not Egyptian?'
'You are what you are; and that is a human being born in Egypt, who went to an English public school, who has read a lot of books, and who has an imagination. But to say that you are this or that or Egyptian, is nonsense.'
'What are you, Edna?'
'I can't be generalized about either, except that I was born Jewish. But the difference between you and me is that I know Egyptians and love them.”
Source: Beer in the Snooker Club
“I’ve told you before not to call me prickly. That’s a word that men use about women who don’t cave to them, who don’t swoon before their manliness.”
“Damn it, Melissa. I don’t expect you to cave or swoon. I’d just like to occasionally be able to have a conversation without you acting like I’m attacking you.”
Source: Part-Time Husband
“I've told you, I don't know!' bellowed the Doctor, angrily. 'I can't have an answer for everything.'
Oh, that's a good one, thought Ace.”
Source: Doctor Who: Nightshade
“I've touched some sentences and have kissed some words.”
“I’ve traveled into the human world a few times. Didn’t like it much. The air is awfully thick there, and I can almost *feel* Time crawling all over me, aging me with each passing second. Not a pleasant sensation!”
Source: Entranced
“I’ve travelled miles to be here; to come and reach out to you. But right now, I’ll put my back towards this place which hems your shame. And I’ll send my feet towards the place where I think of you day in and day out. Where my thoughts dwell in sorrow, like a turnip growing within thorns. And I'll continue to do so until you find a word to say to me.”
Source: STELLA