I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“I was regarded as the school freak which further reinforced a lot of inhibitions and doubts I had about myself. I was a shy, frightened teenager for a long time.”
“I was regularly advised not to go into music, that I should give up that foolish dream.”
“I was rejected by casting directors during the day. I attended class in the evening, then rode 90 miles on the train home.”
“I was rejected in school because I didn't look like the big-breasted, beautiful girls. I was awkward and sad. My mother always said, "Be original!" but I didn't understand until I changed to be like everyone else.”
“I was rejected many times. I cried. I was told that female actors are replaceable in films because they just stand behind a guy anyway. I'm still used to being paid - like most actresses around the world - a lot less than the boys. We're told we're too provocative or that being sexy is our strength, which it can be, and it is, but that's not the only thing we have. But women have incredible endurance and incredible strength. Your ability to deal with it is within you.”
“I was rejected, never given any expectations. ... Then at least, I won't be a burden to others. It's alright if the only one who hurts is me...!”
“I was relatively buff (before 'Avatar'), because I was working in a tanktop half the time on stage, anyway, but I just went kind of into hyperdrive after that and really worked to beat that old body into shape, to get that carcass where...I didn't want to be looking at it and see anything hanging where it shouldn't be hanging.”
“I was relatively isolated from people of color. My parents are too old to be Baby Boomers; they had me later in life. So we didn't listen to any black music at all in the house, not even Ben E. King.”
“I was relaxing in my parents' swimming pool with my brother, Peter. I asked him how the engineering business was going, and he reciprocated: 'How's the ministry world going?' 'Okay,' I said, 'except that a couple of weeks ago I realized that I don't know why Jesus had to die.' Then Peter, without skipping a beat, without even a moment's hesitation, said, 'Well, neither did Jesus.'”
“I was relentless, even in the face of total lack of encouragement, because much more often than you'd think, sheer persistence is the difference between success and failure.”
Source: Trump: The Art of the Deal
“I was relieved to find her attitude to myself suggested nothing more hostile than complete indifference.”
Source: A Dance to the Music of Time: 1st Movement
“I was reluctant to talk about my kids on the blog. I kept telling myself, "People aren't coming here for stories about your kids. They want to hear about the upcoming books, writing advice, conventions..."”
“I was relying on a kind of natural transition - the transitions made by someone who is slightly deranged.”
“I was remembering the things we had done together, the times we had had. It would have been pleasant to preserve that comradeship in the days that came after. Pleasant, but alas, impossible. That which had brought us together had gone, and now our paths diverged, according to our natures and needs. We would meet again, from time to time, but always a little more as strangers; until perhaps at last, as old men with only memories left, we could sit together and try to share them.”
Source: The Pool of Fire
“I was reminded as I was reviewing my life, that I have been in too many conflicts, too many wars, political battles, military battles, civil strifes in government. And always one lesson stands out and that is, those whom you fight most passionately often turn out to be your best friends.”
“I was reminded of a painter friend who had started her career by depicting scenes from life, mainly deserted rooms, abandoned houses and discarded photographs of women. Gradually, her work became more abstract, and in her last exhibition, her paintings were splashes of rebellious color, like the two in my living room, dark patches with little droplets of blue. I asked about her progress from modern realism to abstraction. Reality has become so intolerable, she said, so bleak, that all I can paint now are the colors of my dreams.”
Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
“I was reminded of a proverb: 'When a clay Buddha statue sails across the river, it can hardly protect itself.”
Source: Enigma of China
“I was reminded of another very special word when I was driving into Ann Arbor this morning, and that word is homecoming. Our family's had three homecomings to Ann Arbor, Michigan, in my lifetime.”
“I was reminded of the Four Immutable Laws of the Spirit: Whoever is present are the right people. Whenever it begins is the right time. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened. And when it's over, it's over.”
“I was reminded of the old pain, a pain once so intense it was physical.”
Source: Body of Evidence
“I was reminded of the Sydney Harris cartoon that said 'adding two numbers that have not been added before does not constitute a mathematical breakthrough'.”
“I was reminded that it is my obligation not only as an elected official in a pluralistic society, but also as a Christian, to remain open to the possibility that my unwillingness to support gay marriage is misguided.”
Source: The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
“I was reminded that only in unfamiliar bedrooms do we perceive with such clarity the true nature of our existence---true because astray---only away from our own bedroom, from the room that I longed for ever moment of my trip---how I longed to be there, to slip into it---in the persistently unyielding space of a deserted place that just won't be appropriated.”
Source: Suite for Barbara Loden
“I was reminded that when we lose and I strike out, a billion people in China don't care.”
“I was reminding myself of the one basic rule for experts on females: confine yourself absolutely to explaining why she did what she has already done because that will save the trouble of explaining why she didn't do what you said she would.”
Source: GAMBIT
“I was Renee Zellweger's fat doppelganger. If she ever played in a movie where she needed to be fat, apparently I could be her stunt double.”
“I was repeatedly told that there isn't an African American woman who can open a show on Broadway. I said, 'Well, how do we know? How do we know if we don't do it?' I said, 'I think you're wrong.'”
“I was repelled by the sleazy reality of the totalitarian countries: politicians were shameless. There were corruption, pollution, shoddy goods, long lines, and suicide everywhere, but the leaders kept boasting about their great achievements and bright tomorrows. I saw all this and tried to show it in my pictures as simply and straightforwardly as I could. All I wanted to do was record how all these poor people adapted to lies and suffering, how they got used to it, how, in fact they were bound to miss it when it was over.”
“I was required by Capital to release one every six months and the fastest I could do with all my touring was every nine months, and it would spook me every time because I never had what I needed and I really didn't want to do covers.”
“I was required by law and the wooden spoon my mom liked to whoop my ass with to show up [at school ]every day, so I did.”
Source: A Very Large Expanse of Sea
“I was rescued by librarians. It was librarians who said 'maybe you would like to read The Hardy Boys as well as Nancy Drew.' It is true for me, as for so many countless others, that librarians saved my life, my internal life.”
“I was rescued from being a greaser by music.”
“I was researching a different World War II story when I came across an article in the 'Chicago Tribune' from June 1945 that knocked me for a loop. The article explained that a military plane had crashed in an impossibly remote valley of New Guinea that had been nicknamed Shangri-La.”
“I was researching altitude sickness and became aware that creatine was a known treatment for the “Hypoxia Blues” that people experience when living in high altitude cities.”
Source: Magee’s Disease
“I was researching light deficiency for the book Toxic Light. I closed all my window blinds and kept the home interior relatively dark for several months. It made me super sick, then I started to feel better than before I started and then I became sensitive to sunlight. After my gradual return to sunlight I felt better than before I started.”
Source: Toxic Light
“I was researching some of the modern-day figures that The Sopranos were moulded on. So many iconic Sopranos moments. James Gandolfini and Edie Falco had an incredible scene together in the kitchen of that house that looked like it was about to explode. That was an iconic series that changed the way we did television. It is also an extremely realistic portrayal of the mafia. Much more so than The Godfather. The Godfather, one of the greatest films ever, but let's face it, a romanticized version of the mob.”
“I was resolved to sustain and preserve in my college the bite of the mind, the chance to stand face to face with truth, the good life lived in a small, various, highly articulate and democratic society.”
“I was responding to one thing for the woman I knew, and there's another thing for what did she give, right. She [Nina Simone] was a great teacher.”
“I was rich, for there was nothing else that I needed or wanted.”
Source: Two Winters in a Tipi
“I was riddled with memory issues that became so severe at the age of 45 that I had to apply for disability benefits. At the age of 50, my mental functioning was in decline with severe short term memory issues, concentration problems and chronic fatigue. My kidneys were testing bad on blood tests. The USA has refused all applications for occupational disease and disability benefits.”
“I was riding my bicycle and I was hit by a Jeep. And the damage that was done to my body was gradually diagnosed, instead of immediately, so the recovery process for me was probably unnecessarily long: It took nearly two years for me to say that I could successfully walk. It was scary. And in a way, when you're faced with something like that, it forces you to change, and very quickly. I think that unconsciously, I felt called to a challenge-a challenge to regain something.”
“I was right - Barack Obama's primary objective is to return the nation's wealth to it's rightful owners. This guy comes, if you look at some of his czars, for example, this Mark Lloyd guy.”
“I was right about one of the most significant issues in modern American history. I was the only one who was right about one of the most significant issues in modern American history.”
“I was right at the edge of their circle, like the tail of a Q...”
Source: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
“I was right not to be afraid of any thief but myself, who will end by leaving me nothing.”
Source: Flowering Judas and Other Stories: A Library of America eBook Classic
“I was right, our lovemaking is more than sex, more than love, it is pure, unadulterated nostalgia and there is nothing more intoxicating than that. I wonder if it is always like this when you sleep with someone you once loved long ago. The knowledge of that first time is hardwired into your physiology. It feels raw and right and so real, everything else fades, just the two of us in high relief.”
Source: Broken Country
“I was right outside the NSA [on 9/11], so I remember the tension on that day. I remember hearing on the radio, 'the plane's hitting,' and I remember thinking my grandfather, who worked for the FBI at the time, was in the Pentagon when the plane hit it...I take the threat of terrorism seriously, and I think we all do. And I think it's really disingenuous for the government to invoke and sort-of scandalize our memories to sort-of exploit the national trauma that we all suffered together and worked so hard to come through -- and to justify programs that have never been shown to keep us safe, but cost us liberties and freedoms that we don't need to give up, and that our Constitution says we should not give up.”
“I was right then, I'm right now. I think time has proven me right.”
“I was right there in the middle of all of this action. I didn’t have to think up gags…The cartoons drew themselves…I was more surprised than anyone when Brother Bootsie became a Harlem household celebrity, not only among the colored proletariat be among the literati as well.”
Source: Why I Left America and Other Essays
“I was right to back Muhammad Ali, but it caused me major enmity in many areas of this nation.”