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 part of the golden age of the record industry, when musicians and producers were making real money. So I have no nostalgia about that time and I enjoy trying to build a new economy, a more humble one. And since I expect to sell only niche music, I feel quite solid, in this little economy. I know we will not become rich with this, but this is not the goal.”
“I was not particularly bright, I wasn't very athletic, I was a little too tall, odd, funny looking, I was just really weird as a kid.”
“I was not pleased that Hamas has refused to announce its desire to destroy Israel.”
“I was not popular enough - or at all - when Vanilla Ice was popular to remember who Vanilla Ice is without my husband reminding me. So I don't have a Vanilla Ice key chain.”
“I was not popular in school, and I was definitely not a ladies' man. And I had a very painful adolescence, because it was all very strange to me. It wasn't like I got beat up, but the humiliation and isolation, and the existential 'God, I exist, and nobody cares' of being a teenager were extremely pronounced for me.”
“I was not popular. I was the kid in school that was bullied.”
“I was not predicting the future, I was trying to prevent it.”
“I was not prepared for the actual process itself; having to go to the shop and having some molds done.”
“I was not prepared: sunset, end of summer. Demonstrations
of time as a continuum, as something coming to an end,
not a suspension: the senses wouldn’t protect me.
I caution you as I was never cautioned:
you will never let go, you will never be satiated.
You will be damaged and scarred, you will continue to hunger.
Your body will age, you will continue to need.
You will want the earth, then more of the earth–
Sublime, indifferent, it is present, it will not respond.
It is encompassing, it will not minister.
Meaning, it will feed you, it will ravish you,
it will not keep you alive.”
Source: The Seven Ages: Bold and Masterful Poems on Death, Metamorphosis, and Embracing the Inevitable
“I was not prepared to live as a single parent.”
“I was not prepared to think of the people I had lost, or to speak of them, although we did, carefully, without letting their names loose in the wind that would reach their ears. We feared that they would hear us and never rest, come back out of pity for the loneliness we felt.”
Source: Tracks
“I was not prey any longer, I decided as I eased up to that door.
And I was not a mouse.
I was a wolf.”
Source: A Court of Mist and Fury
“I was not proud of what I had learned but I never doubted that it was worth knowing.”
“I was not put here to be a background character in someone else's movie!”
“I was not raised a Zionist, but a socialist, as were most Jews before the Holocaust.”
“I was not raised to follow the rules. The only rule I was asked to follow was to not act like a girl. I was not allowed to show emotions. I was taught that showing emotions is a sign of weakness. The only emotions that I was allowed to show was that of anger and aggressiveness.”
Source: Know 'YOUR' Norms
“I was not raised with religion, and I had no faith before my mother died. On the other hand, when she died, I did not immediately feel she was "gone." I don't believe she is in something like heaven, but I also feel that we don't understand much about the nature of the universe. So I hold on to that uncertainty, at times.”
“I was not raised with wealth or resources or any social standing to speak of.”
“I was not ready, but it does not mean I didn't still love you when I was driving back to North Dakota. I was not ready, but it does not mean I didn't feel you, every time I was in the arms of someone else... I was not ready to face the overwhelming doubt telling me I was not ready--to go back to where I came from.”
Source: Harm Unlimited
“I was not ready for abstraction. I clung to earth and her dear shapes, her density, her herbage, her juice. I wanted her volume, and I wanted to hear her throb.”
Source: Growing Pains: The Autobiography of Emily Carr
“I was not really angry: I felt for him all the time, and longed to be reconciled; but I determined he should make the first advances, or at least show some signs of an humble and contrite spirit, first; for, if I began, it would only minister to his self-conceit, increase his arrogance, and quite destroy the lesson I wanted to give him.”
Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
“I was not really as good as I should have been.”
“I was not really sure what my father did in the army. His job seemed mainly to involve two activities: One was rushing to his station to signal an alert drill daily at 9:00 p.m...The other activity was catching runaway soldiers...I could not get the adults to explain why anyone wanted to run away. Where were they going?
There were soldiers everywhere. They were used as a general workforce, sweeping the streets, driving cars, hauling stuff around. Others were always marching somewhere. Often they would waylay schoolkids near a store and ask them to go in to buy something. They were afraid to go in themselves because they might be spotted by a patrol on the lookout for soldiers absent from their unit without leave. The soldiers didn't look particularly happy, but neither did they seem so unhappy they might be thinking of running off into the forest.
As I found out later, they were running away because of dedovshchina ("bullying"). Bullying of raw recruits by older soldiers reached such a level that in 1982 the minister of defense had to issue a secret order, "On Combating Nonregulation Relations," thereby recognizing it as a widespread practice. Hazing became a self-replicating system. You joined the army, got beaten up, your money was taken from you, and you were forced to scrub floors and do the laundry of the "older" soldiers, who joined the army just a year and a half before you. After all these humiliations, you just waited for your turn to beat up the rookies, because that was just the way it was, a necessary part of army life, something that transformed a civilian wimp into a real man. The system was often tacitly endorsed by officers, who saw it as a self-regulating system of training and discipline. For example, some rural idiot joins the army, fails to understand elementary commands, looks scruffy, and is generally hopeless. So then the staff sergeant punches him a couple of times in the middle of the chest ("in the soul"), which really huts (you cannot punch him in the face, because the marks would show), and he immediately comes to his senses and starts behaving like a seasoned soldier.
Needless to say, such an idiotic practice did nothing to improve discipline, and fundamentally undermined respect for the army. Soldiers returning home after two years of national service luridly described the bullying to those yet to be conscripted. It closely resembled the revelations of people returning from prison. Mothers listened in horror and then had no wish to send their sons off to the army. Periodically, after yet another unfortunate young man, unable any longer to bear the hazing, committed suicide or shot his abusers, the army would launch another anti-bullying campaign, which never did any good. The practice is institutionalized and can only be combated by changing the institution, primarily by creating an army in which professional servicemen and servicewomen are paid a salary to defend the county. What is not needed is an army that depends on hapless youths taken from their families (for two years in the U.S.S.R., and nowadays for one) who are forced to spend their time in an institution that is a bizarre form of survival school.
Curiously, the army takes a certain pride in this constant imbecility, as I began to notice as I grew older. It was regularly remarked that our soldiers and officers were so inured to carrying out ridiculous orders-for example, with my own eyes I saw soldiers painting grass green before inspection-that, under fire, they would perform miracles of discipline. Because they lived in such poverty and were so used to hardship, there could be no doubt that in the event of war the pampered Americans, with their luxurious barracks and individual apartments for officers, would be defeated.”
Source: Patriot: A Memoir
“I was not religious, but I liked rituals. I liked the idea of connecting an action with remembering.”
Source: Looking For Alaska Special 10th Anniversary Edition
“I was not reluctant to become a singer. Singing has been an activity I've done my whole life, without thought.”
“I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator of my own rescue.”
Source: Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything
“I was not right to want to die. I didn't want to leave my family. I liked my mind and its potential. I knew the type of burden I was. I was like my mother.”
Source: Heart Berries
“I was not scared of anything, when I read my book.”
Source: The Ocean at the End of the Lane
“I was not scared of Edwina Currie - a bully who shagged the prime minister. It was music to my ears when she finally got kicked out. The silly cow.”
Source: Humble Pie
“I was not seduced by the celebrity side of acting. However, as a British girl watching a lot of American TV, I saw that there was a whole world of opportunity in the States that I wanted to discover.”
“I was not self-destructive, though I almost destroyed myself. In the end, I turned away from stand-up with a tired swivel of my head...”
“I was not so comfortable with my new authority that I could say 'We eat the chicken now!' but the magus had seen that I was considering it.”
“I was not so comfortable with my new authority that I could say 'We eat the chicken now!' but the magus had seen that I was considering it...
"My purse is full enough," said the magus, "to keep you supplied with roast chickens."
"So, so, so," I said. "We know who the power behind the throne is," and the magus laughed.
"You eat more than Gen did after prison," he said.
"I have more sympathy with him all the time. Are you going to finish that drumstick?" I asked.
"I am. Stop staring at it.”
Source: A Conspiracy of Kings
“I was not so old that I would deny my own senses.”
“I was not so sure, but Jem told me I was being a girl, that girls always imagined things, that’s why other people hated them so, and if I started behaving like one I could just go off and find some to play with.”
Source: To Kill a Mockingbird
“I was not someone who participated in other people's castles.”
“I was not sorrowful, but only tired
Of everything that ever I desired.”
Source: The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson
“I was not sorry for loving Charleston or for leaving it. Geography had made me who I was.”
Source: The Invention of Wings
“I was not sorry when my brother died.”
“I was not stressing about what other people wanted. I put myself first.”
“I was not successful as a ball player, as it was a game of skill.”
“I was not such a great student, .. So, when I graduated high school, I went to work cooking. I cooked a little at home, but back then, cooking wasn't really a profession that you aspired to, unless your family was in the business. I looked at it as a job. My first job was at Joe Allen's, and I remember there was a photo over the bar of the Triple Dead Heat from the 1944 Carter Handicap.”
“I was not supposed to be in any way a liberated person. I was a female born in the '40s in a patriarchal family; I was supposed to marry and make everyone around me happy.”
“I was not sure I wanted to issue orders to life; I rather liked the Greek notion of allowing Chance to take a formative hand in my affairs.”
Source: Fifth business
“I was not sure where I was going, and I could not see what I would do when I got [there]. But you saw further and clearer than I, and you opened the seas before my ship, whose track led me across the waters to a place I had never dreamed of, and which you were even then preparing to be my rescue and my shelter and my home.”
Source: A Thomas Merton Reader
“I was not surprised that a high altitude researcher would be harassed by high altitude police officers!”
“I was not surprised that researching my disabling sickness uncovered a wide range of frauds.”
“I was not surprised that the USA with its WiFi, cell phones, computers and indoor society had one of the worst outbreaks of COVID-19 in the world.”
“I was not surprised to learn that Nikola Tesla went crazy!”
Source: Magee’s Disease
“I was not surprised when the Golden State Killer turned out to be a police officer.”