I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“I was not going to surrender to the status quo and corporate insistence that ordinary people have no power and influence.”
“I was not going to use writing for advertising or journalism. I would tend bar, load trucks, chauffeur - do whatever it took. But from the moment I took my first writing workshop, I was a writer.”
“I was not good at team sports, I have to say. I'm quite good at individual sports, but I was not good at team sports, so I wasn't good at baseball and football.”
“I was not good in school. I could never read very fast or very well. I got tested for learning disabilities, for dyslexia. Then I got put on Ritalin and Dexedrine. I took those starting in the eighth grade. As soon as they pumped that drug into me, it would focus me right in.”
“I was not great behind the counter. I had a week off without asking for it. Another time, we had a cart go up in flames, and we went out on another cart, which we wrecked by running it into the cart that was on fire.”
“I was not happy as a child, although from time to time I was content. I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.”
Source: The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel
“I was not happy as a traveller, I did not feel really at home anywhere I went, even in Spain which was the most I felt at home, I still was a foreigner. I missed Australia, and I can't tell why. It's just this is what I grew up with and this is the things I wanted to make meaning of in my life.”
“I was not I, I was nothing - and that seemed to me quite marvelous.”
“I was not impenetrable, merely inexhaustible. Failure became the clarity of water to wash away spent days, and pain the means to move my heart closer to magnificence.”
“I was not in a good space in my life, emotionally particularly, so I needed to do something to recharge my batteries emotionally and musically. I took a break and I learnt software and programming a little bit, and that's how I designed my live machine, which I've been using for years.”
“I was not in agreement with the sharp anti-Semitic tone, but from time to time I read arguments which gave me some food for thought. At all events, these occasions slowly made me acquainted with the man and the movement, which in those days guided Vienna's destinies: Dr. Karl Lueger and the Christian Social Party.”
Source: Mein Kampf
“I was not in favor of U.S. troops in Lebanon. And I voted against it.”
“I was not in touch with reality. Growing up, I was being shielded without my knowing it, because even all the way up to the age of 15, I made these paper basketball men and played with them, like action figures.”
“I was not influenced by composers as much as by natural objects and physical phenomena.”
“I was not influenced by concerts as a child, but I was very strongly influenced by the ballets I saw.”
“I was not influenced by Jack Benny, and people have remarked on my timing and Jack's timing, but I don't think you can teach timing. It's something you hear in your head.”
“I was not innocent, and I had tired of the pretence of being so, though it had amused me for a time.”
Source: The Erotic Notebooks
“I was not interested at all in Formula One when I left; I was very busy with my airline. But slowly I started missing the adrenaline rush and the driving of such fantastic cars at the limit. In reality this urge never disappears when you're a top driver, because I think we're a different breed of people, we need to take chances, we need to push ourselves to the limit all the time, that sort of thing. It stays with you, although you can kill it by losing motivation or other things in your life, but it never leaves you forever.”
“I was not interested in doing the plot of Oedipus in blackface. I did wonder, what would these people have been like if they hadn't been in that situation?... One could look at Oedipus, or at my character Augustus, as a cynical schemer who did everything because he was hungry for power. But that's just too easy. I'm more interested in how humans can embody conflicting goals and emotions.”
“I was not interested in irony; I wanted to emphasize the primacy of the idea in making art”
“I was not interested in what I could bring to myself by being an actress, but in what I could bring out of myself.”
“I was not intrigued with the accouterments of success and fame, the furs, jewels, expensive automobiles and mansions... I can assure you that these things were not on my mind when I sat spellbound in that Pozzuoli movie house. It was what these performers on the screen were doing, not what they received for doing it.”
“I was not just sorrowful that first summer after Rayya died but also, at times, enraged. It was not only anger at Rayya’s absence that I was feeling; it was anger at myself for how much of myself I had given away—and anger at what she had left behind for me to clean up. She had assigned me the task of handling the details of her estate, for instance, which did not turn out to be an easy job. Rayya had been both contradictory and grandiose with her friends and loved ones about what her bank account actually contained and how she wished her money and possessions to be distributed. With a furiously clenched jaw, I did my best to clean up the confusion she had left behind and to manage everyone’s frustration—including my own. The financial gifts that she had promised to her friends I paid from my own account, because her own account was pretty much empty. I paid off her credit card bills, too—although people told me this was a stupid thing to do. (“Why pay the bills of the dead? What are they gonna do? Dock her paycheck?”)
But martyrdom is a central characteristic of codependency, and so of course I paid her bills—not generously, mind you, but angrily. Victimly. “Why am I still down here serving you,” I remember shouting at Rayya in the woods one day, “when you get to float off into heaven and become fucking music?”
Source: All the Way to the River
“I was not ladylike, nor was I manly. I was something else altogether. There were so many different ways to be beautiful.”
Source: A Home at the End of the World: A Novel
“I was not leaving the south to forget the south, but so that some day I might understand it”
Source: Black Boy
“I was not like them. Are you not? The voice was my uncle's, resonant and deep. Then you must think, Circe. What would they not do?”
Source: Circe
“I was not long since in a company where I was not who of my fraternity brought news of a kind of pills, by true account, composed of a hundred and odd several ingredients; whereat we laughed very heartily, and made ourselves good sport; for what rock so hard were able to resist the shock or withstand the force of so thick and numerous a battery?”
“I was not looking for a sitcom, because the philosophy at that point was that you had to make a choice: Were you going to do movies or TV? You couldn't cross over.”
“I was not looking for my dreams to interpret my life, but rather for my life to interpret my dreams.”
Source: The benefactor: a novel
“I was not looking for you when you met me, but now with you, it feels like a part of me always wanted to have you.
-my heart stopped searching for anything else the moment it found you.”
Source: All Is Not Lost: Journey To Yourself
“I was not looking now at an unusual flower arrangement. I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation - the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence.”
“I was not lying. I said things that later on seemed to be untrue.”
“I was not making enough time to take care of me.”
“I was not meant to have to do this part alone. The teenage part. I was changing her nappies yesterday, and today I am grappling with the reflection of my failures in her too-wise eyes. I am trying to allow her to grow while simultaneously keeping her from drifting away. I want her to know life, its beauties and its complexities, I want her to take risks and make mistakes and know love as we all should, and yet those things feel too big, they are dwarfing us, she is just a baby and I really need my wife.”
Source: Wild Dark Shore
“I was not merely cleaning an oven; I was improving the world.”
“I was not much afraid of punishment, I was only afraid of disgrace.But that I feared more than death, more than crime, more than anything in the world. I should have rejoiced if the earth had swallowed me up and stifled me in the abyss. But my invincible sense of shame prevailed over everything . It was my shame that made me impudent, and the more wickedly I behaved the bolder my fear of confession made me. I saw nothing but the horror of being found out, of being publicly proclaimed, to my face, as a thief, as a liar, and slanderer.”
Source: The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“I was not much used to women except for mothers. Everything I did, they did different.”
Source: Ride with the Devil
“I was not naturally intellectual, but somebody whose interest had to be whetted, still the case sadly.”
“I was not naturally meant to be on stage.”
“I was not naturally talented. I didn't sing, dance or act, though working around that minor detail made me inventive.”
Source: Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
“I was not obedient, and rules made a rebel of me.”
Source: Screaming into Pillows
“I was not offended, my love. An insult is like a drink; it affects one only if accepted. And pride is too heavy baggage for my journey.”
Source: Glory Road
“I was not one for telling the truth back then. Truth telling was not my first instinct in any situation - especially in stressful situations. It took my many years to become an honest person, and I know why: because the truth is often terrifying. Once you introduce truth into a room, the room may never be the same again.”
Source: City of Girls
“I was not one man only but the steady advance hour after hour of an army in close formation, in which there appeared, according to the moment, impassioned men, indifferent men, jealous men.”
Source: La fugitiva
“I was not one of the popular kids, I was not great at sports, girls didn't pay attention to me.I was just pretty much an average kid, no stand-out abilities, nothing note-worthy.”
“I was not one of those people who wanted to be a comedian when I was growing up. I liked comedy, but didn't know it was something you could do for a living. I actually wanted to be an attorney. I did do things on the side like improv and sketch comedy, but law was my focus. I was a very bookish, academic kid. When I got out of college, I was really unhappy. I had a great job that I should have loved, yet I was miserable. I slowly realized that was because I wasn't performing. So I just tried stand-up and fell in love with it after one performance.”
“I was not only hunting for my liberty, but also hunting for my name.”
Source: The Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave
“I was not only invited to read: I was expected to read. Reading was my responsibility, in English and Spanish. Like many poor kids before me, I was given the best gift anyone could hope for--a library card.
On Saturdays, my mother and I would take the #11 bus downtown. I'd haul my stack of the week's books inside and come back out with a new armload. I was a millionaire.”
Source: Six Kinds of Sky: A Collection of Short Fiction
“I was not only the first woman to become secretary of state, I was the first [U.S.] secretary of state of the 21st century. I was the first secretary of state to own a Web site, to visit Internet cafes, and to make Internet access a part of policy.”
“I was not only typecast as a Russian, but I was typecast as Yakov Smirnoff. This is understandable, and I was very happy to get the roles, but it would be nice to be in a movie where I could be someone else.”