I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“I was once asked to pick a couple of records for an interview I was doing on Radio 2. I picked one by Will Oldham and one by Joanna Newsom. Someone on the production phoned me to say that I couldn't have either record because they were 'too alternative' and I could just pick two from their playlist. Now, personally, I think that Radio 2's listeners would dig both Joanna Newsom and Will Oldham if they heard their records, and that the fact they don't get to hear them contributes to the cultural wasteland we live in. I told them that I'd been to see Joanna Newsom in the Albert Hall a couple of weeks before and it had been sold out. How could she be 'too alternative'?
'Alternative' and 'mainstream' aren't strictly to do with whether things are popular or minority interest. They are ideological labels. Someone like Joe Pasquale would be called 'mainstream' and regularly pops up on TV, but would play the smaller end of the touring-theatre circuit. If Joanna Newsom can sell out Albert Hall, why can't she get played on Radio 2? I would agree that it's because her work is too layered, challenging and interesting. Think about that. What you get to hear about is filtered, and not filtered to get rid of useless cunts like Joe Pasquale, but of things that might enrich your life.”
Source: Work! Consume! Die!
“I was once asked what I thought was the most disquieting thing you could see on the screen and I said, "An open door".”
“I was once asked what it takes to be a great manager...my response? Great players.”
“I was once asked why I don't participate in anti-war demonstrations. I said that I will never do that, but as soon as you have a pro-peace rally, I'll be there.”
“I was once being interviewed by Barbara Walters. In between two of the segments she asked me: "But what would you do if the doctor gave you only six months to live?" I said, "Type faster." This was widely quoted, but the "six months" was changed to "six minutes," which bothered me. It's "six months."”
“I was once chillin in my room, watching TV, just in a regular place.. And now I'm in this big world, living my dream and, you know, doing what I love. It's just crazy how it all came around.”
“I was once dancing with a woman who told me she had a yeast infection so I told her to bake me some bread.”
“I was once described by one of my critics as an aesthetic fascist.”
“I was once doing a book signing and a man came up to me and said that he gave classes to people who'd been convicted of drunken driving twice. He said he felt that nearly all of those people were what I was describing as sociopathic. Which makes a great deal of sense to me. We always talk about how could you possibly, knowing that you're drunk, get behind the wheel of a car again and do that? Well, you could if you didn't give a half a damn what happened.”
“I was once doing a question and answer period with the novelist Jane Smiley in a bookstore and someone asked us what our processes were and Jane said hers and then I said mine and Jane said, "Well, if I had a student like that I'd force him never to write like that again because you could never write a novel in the way that you write poetry."”
“I was once driven north along Central Park, all the way from Chinatown. We hailed the cab in front of a building where Orthodox Jews still lived, so they shut down an elevator on Saturdays. In the taxi, I was with my mother. We were visiting her aunt, my great aunt, who was 93. She had no memory of the old country, Lithuania, but she'd been born there. Her parents escaped the pogroms so she could survived a century here. Her American prosperity was half a century of subsistence wages and thirty years of Medicare in an elevator building.
The old country for the cab driver was Bangladesh, and he was a talker. He'd just graduated from college, and his prospects were good. He'd majored in a practical field, network engineering or something like that. Young and optimistic, he spoke fluent English. His big idea was to keep his countrymen out of the United States. America was great, but if he got overrun with foreigners, his kind in particular, it would be ruined. "Bangladesh is hot and crowded. Why would want to make America like that." He said this in all sincerity.”
Source: Frade Killed Ellen
“I was once fond of saying, "sleep is the third pillar of good health, alongside diet and exercise." I have changed my tune. Sleep is more than a pillar; it is the foundation on which the other two health bastions sit. Take away the bedrock of sleep, or weaken it just a little, and careful eating or physical exercise become less than effective, as we shall see.”
Source: Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams
“I was once held hostage by a patient in the hospital. I was fortunate I knew the department layout and I was able to free myself by darting out of a door while my terrorist was distracted.”
“I was once hired by an organization to deliver a workshop on networking. The goal was to provide their engineers with tools and strategies for expanding their circles of influence—to foster innovation, collaboration, and teambuilding. One of the engineers raised her hand in the middle of the program and bluntly said, “I’m happy with the people in my life and don’t care to add any more.” I respect and appreciate her position and have sometimes felt the same way.
But, as long as we are alive, we will meet, greet, and interact with new people. Even if we are not inviting them into our personal lives, being socially brave will open new doors which may have remained closed otherwise.”
Source: The Art of Action: 8 Ways to Initiate & Activate Forward Momentum for Positive Impact
“I was once hired to write a column for 'The Guardian' and then got fired before I'd submitted my first one. That was unusual. Most newspapers wait until I've written at least one piece for them before firing me.”
“I was once in a bar with a friend of mine, we were having a drink and a bunch of people walked in and they were talking about how, "It's official, there's going to be a 'Friends' reunion," and I'm sitting there with my friend going, "No, no, there's not."”
“I was once in a long relationship with a man who ran a vintage clothes store but had been a chef, so I'd come home each night to a different three-course meal. I was quite fat, but so happy.”
“I was once in captivity but now I am saved by grace.”
Source: Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind
“I was once in darkness, but now, I see a bright light on my path.”
Source: Think Great: Be Great!
“I was once in darkness, but now, the light of God has shone upon me.”
Source: Think Great: Be Great!
“I was once in love with books. Now they go their way and I go mine.”
“I was once invited to take part in a heroic, possibly fatal enterprise, but I declined, mainly on account of sloth.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“I was once involved in a same-sex marriage. There was the same sex over and over and over.”
“I was once kissed on the lips by a giraffe, and I don't think I've ever got over it.”
“I was once knocked out by a Mexican bantamweight - six of my pals were swinging him around by his heels at the time.”
“I was once like you, enlightened and "rational",
I too scoffed at lovers,
Now I am drunk, crazed, thin with misery.
No one is safe! Watch out.”
“I was once making a burger for myself at my boyfriend's house and a lyric started pouring out and I had to catch it, so I ran to another room to write it down, but then the kitchen caught fire. His cabinets were charred, and he was furious. But it was worth it for a song.”
“I was once married and part of their universe, although in the end I didn't succeed in having children. But I was quite focused on it. I wanted children with all my heart and did everything I could , even IVF. I looked at the babies around me, read and thought about them. I saw myself in that maternal role.
The entire meaning of my life at the time was linked to having children. I felt somehow that I had to have a baby, that everything would be ruined if I didn't, and nothing else was anywhere near as important. That phase of my life lasted a long time. Almost an entire decade.”
Source: Letters to an Embryo
“I was once married to a woman who could eat anything and tell you what was in it: the most complicated recipes. Her memory of taste - now that's what I call memory!”
Source: Morton Feldman Says: Selected Interviews and Lectures 1964-1987
“I was once more in a time which the things around me were changing and that is how I wanted it to be for the rest of my days.”
“I was once naïve enough to ask the late Duke of Devonshire why he liked the town of Eastbourne. He replied with a self-deprecating shrug that one of the things he liked was that he owned it.”
“I was once on a German talk show, and this woman said to me, 'Mr. Williams, why do you think there is not so much comedy in Germany?' And I said, 'Did you ever think you killed all the funny people?'”
“I was once on a mission, on a cruise I was wishin, that my mom was in the kitchen, eatin chicken, finger lickin.”
“I was once on a panel where we concluded that the only things you couldn't have in YA were boring and beastiality. Now with the introduction of shapeshifters, I'd say just boring.”
“I was once pro-choice and the thing that changed my mind was, I read my husband's biology books, medical books, and what I learned ... At the moment of conception, a life starts. And this life has its own unique set of DNA, which contains a blueprint for the whole genetic makeup. The sex is determined. We know there's a life because it's growing and changing.”
“I was once really close to sitting down and having a conversation with a shadowy young woman who is reputed have become a millionaire by investing in Beanie Babies. She was someone that a couple people claimed to know, she seemed to exist, but she remained shadowy.”
“I was once referred to in a Kirkus review as a "northern Michigan version of Andre Dubus." My editor called me after the review came out and asked if I was okay with that. What part? I wondered. Finding myself in the same sentence with Andre Dubus? What could be better than that? Or perhaps - and more likely, my editor meant being pigeonholed as a writer of this remote region "mostly ignored by the rest of the world," as Jim Harrison says.”
“I was once reproved by a minister who was driving a poor beast to some meeting-house horse-sheds among the hills of New Hampshire, because I was bending my steps to a mountain-top on the Sabbath, instead of a church, when I would have gone farther than he to hear a true word spoken on that or any day. He declared that I was 'breaking the Lord's fourth commandment,' and proceeded to enumerate, in a sepulchral tone, the disasters which had befallen him whenever he had done any ordinary work on the Sabbath. He really thought that a god was on the watch to trip up those men who followed any secular work on this day, and did not see that it was the evil conscience of the workers that did it. The country is full of this superstition, so that when one enters a village, the church, not only really but from association, is the ugliest looking building in it, because it is the one in which human nature stoops the lowest and is most disgraced. Certainly, such temples as these shall erelong cease to deform the landscape. There are few things more disheartening and disgusting than when you are walking the streets of a strange village on the Sabbath, to hear a preacher shouting like a boatswain in a gale of wind, and thus harshly profaning the quiet atmosphere of the day.”
Source: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
“I was once that little boy
Terrified of the world, now I'm on a world tour”
“I was once that which you are, and what I am you will also be.”
“I was once thought that we could all be saved, that maybe we could escape or be liberated.
But I was wrong.”
“I was once thrown out of a mental hospital for depressing the other patients.”
“I was once told by a traditional publisher I write and publish more books than they can handle so I became a publisher. - Kailin Gow on being prolific”
“I was once told by a very well-respected editor, "Category horror is about good vs. evil, that's all it is." And I thought, "That's why it's no good. That's why I find that stuff unreadable." One is looking for something that's a little more emotionally complex and nuanced.”
“I was once told by someone wise that writing is perilous as you cannot always guarantee your words will be read in the spirit in which they were written.”
“I was once told I am being Arrogant as an Author just because I legally protect my books with copyrighting them and trademarking my titles and names. That's not being Arrogant. It's about being Smart. I went to law school And I'm married to a lawyer. It's ingrained in me to fight the sh*t out of protecting what is mine even if it is perceived as "arrogant". I'd rather be arrogant than stupid. - Strong by Kailin Gow”
“I was once told in Sunday school that a church tower reaches up skywards because it is a promise of Heaven. Church towers are different in France. It was the first thing I noticed when I came here, when I changed my world of home for my world of war. In comparison the church towers at home seem almost squat, hiding themselves away in the folds of the fields. Here there are no folds in the fields, only wide open plains, scarcely a hill in sight. And instead of church towers they have spires that thrust themselves skywards like a child putting his hand up in class, longing to be noticed. But God, if there is one, notices nothing here. He has long since abandoned this place and all of us who live in it.”
Source: Private Peaceful
“I was once walking in an airport and a woman came up to me and said, 'Be zany!'. That'd be like walking up to Baryshikov and going, 'Plie! Just do a plie! Do it! Do a releve right now! Lift my wife!'”
“I was once walking through the forest alone. A tree fell right in front of me - and I didn't hear it.”
“I was once weak, I was always afraid, I hidden my tears, but I kept on going, I kept on believing, I followed my heart, I found my courage, and I realised if I hadn't believed in myself, then I wouldn't have become the person I am today”