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I Quotes

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All I Quotes

“I wanted to tell her that she was the first beautiful thing I had seen in three years. That the sight of her yawning to the back of her hand was enough to drive the breath from me. How I sometimes lost the sense of her words in the sweet fluting of her voice. I wanted to say that if she were with me then somehow nothing could ever be wrong for me again.”

“I wanted to tell him I hadn’t been with anyone else either. That I had waited. And waited. And waited for him until I thought my skin would break apart and my bones would turn to so much dust. That I did what I had to do to keep us alive, that even though we had become something more than what the pieces of us should have made, there was an ache in my head and a hole in my heart and it was because of him.”

“I wanted to tell him that the pool, the garden, the house, the tennis court, the orle of paradise, the whole place, would always be his ghost spot. Instead, I pointed upstairs to the French windows of his room. Your eyes are forever there, I wanted to say, trapped in the sheer curtains, staring out from my bedroom upstairs where no one sleeps these days. When there’s a breeze and they swell and I look up from down here or stand outside on the balcony, I’ll catch myself thinking that you’re in there, staring out from your world to my world, saying, as you did on that one night when I found you on the rock, I’ve been happy here. You’re thousands of miles away but no sooner do I look at this window than I’ll think of a bathing suit, a shirt thrown on on the fly, arms resting on the banister, and you’re suddenly there, lighting up your first cigarette of the day—twenty years ago today. For as long as the house stands, this will be your ghost spot—and mine too, I wanted to say.”

“I wanted to tell him then how loneliness can become a tangible thing, after a while. It’s something that you carry with you on your shoulder, hold up like a friend with a twisted ankle. It sits with you and walks the streets with you. It’s a selfish thing and it refuses to let go or even split its attention. Of course, like a particularly annoying itch, you can convince yourself for a while that it’s not there. You can go to libraries and sit with friends and drink more coffee than your body can handle and you can feel surrounded and happy. But eventually you have to scratch it. Loneliness steals you away from the world, as if you’ve been cut loose and you’re lost, untethered, somewhere far above everyone else. Just you and this feeling that you just need someone to put a hand on your shoulder and turn you around, to look at you and tell you the three words that matter most: You’re not alone. Don’t be scared. I am here. It’s not about love or lust or any other inadequate word; it’s about being touched and realising that you are no longer by yourself.”

“I wanted to tell him what had just happened. I wanted to say it was the first time I had been able to decide how to react to something bad, even such a small thing, instead of coming to consciousness in the middle of already reacting. I said I hadn't known you could choose how to feel instead of being overpowered by an emotion from outside yourself. I said I couldn't explain it properly. I didn't feel like a different person, I felt like myself. As though I had been found.”

“I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant.”

“I wanted to tell the story of these women and the war in the Congo and I couldn't find anything about them in the newspapers or in the library, so I felt I had to get on a plane and go to Africa and find the story myself. I felt there was a complete absence in the media of their narrative. It's very different now, but when I went in 2004 that was definitely the case.”

“I wanted to tell them that, in Kabul, we snapped a tree branch and used it as a credit card. Hassan and I would take the wooden stick to the bread maker. He'd carve notches on our stick with his knife, one notch for each loaf of naan he'd pull for us from the tandoor's roaring flames. At the end of the month, my father paid him for the number of notches on the stick. That was it. No questions. No ID.”

“I wanted to tell you that life is a lot shorter than you could ever have imagined. And those people that love you that you think will be there forever, won’t be. I wanted to tell you not to waste your time pretending to live without really living. Take your shoes off when everyone has theirs on. Wear what you want. Say how you feel. And say it often. Say it when you’re most afraid to. Love so hard that it hurts. Don’t pretend to be someone to make other people comfortable, and don’t let others steal your confidence because they are struggling with their own. I want to hear that you lived your life free of the restrictions that others wanted to choke you with. I want to hear that you had the courage to risk it all, once. That you soaked every last tear out of that heartbreak and are stronger for it. I want to hear that you feel the wind and the rain and the sun. I want to hear you scream so loud that the clouds shake. Because this is all you have. All we have. Right now. I don’t want you to wake up one day and realize that you spent so much time worrying about life that you forgot to live it.”

“I wanted to thank you for saving my life. I am still puzzled about your motives
though. Was it revenge against Zedan for rejecting you?”
“You insult me. It seems that you think of everybody in the same lowly terms you
think of yourself. If there is anybody I should hate for Zedan rejecting me, it should be
you. He was only doing what is expected of him in our society.”
“You mean you don't hate me?” This was a new revelation to Brown. It worried him.
He was used to hate, he could deal with it, but this he could not understand, he had used
the girl ruthlessly and yet she did not hate him.”

“I wanted to touch on how we look on each other. Good hair, light skin, you must be smart; if you're black, you're dark-skinned, you're ugly. That really happens. This is something that started with slavery, when they divided the house, and it's still a part of today's society and things that we battle with.”

“I wanted to transfer to an art school, and ended up going to the University of Southern California. They had a cinematography school, and I said "Well, that's sort of like photography, maybe that will be interesting." And once I started in that department, I found what it was that I loved and was good at.”