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I Quotes

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All I Quotes

“I was supremely happy, for I had seen. Nothing could ever be the same. I have drunk at the clear and pure waters and my thirst was appeased. ...I have seen the Light. I have touched compassion which heals all sorrow and suffering; it is not for myself, but for the world. ...Love in all its glory has intoxicated my heart; my heart can never be closed. I have drunk at the fountain of Joy and eternal Beauty. I am God-intoxicated.”

“I was sure of myself, of everything, surer than he could ever be, sure of my life and sure of the death that was waiting for me. Yes, that was all I had. But at least I had as much of a hold on it as it had on me. I had been right, I was still right, I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I hadn’t done that. I hadn’t done this thing but I had done another. So what? It was as if I had waited all this time for this moment and for the first light of this dawn to vindicate me. Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he. Throughout this whole absurd life I’d lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from the depths of my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed it leveled all that had been possible in the equally unreal years that I was living. What did the death of other people or a mother’s love matter to me; what did his God or the lives people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we’re all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people like him who also called themselves my brothers? Couldn’t he see, couldn’t he see that? Everybody was privileged. There were only privileged people. The others would all be condemned one day. And he would be condemned, too.”

“I was sure that I was going to write stories myself when I grew up. It’s important to put it like that - not "I am a writer," but rather "I write stories." If you put the emphasis on yourself rather than your work, you’re in danger of thinking that you’re the most important thing. But you’re not. The story is what matters, and you’re only the servant, and your job is to get it out on time and in good order.”

“I was sure the old man knew nothing about the beatitudes, ecstasies, dazzling reverberations of sexual encounters. Cut out the poetry was his message. Clinical sex, deprived of all the warmth of love—the orchestration of all the senses, touch, hearing, sight, palate; all the euphoric accompaniments, back-ground music, moods, atmosphere, variations—forced him to resort to literary aphrodisiacs.”

“I was surprised at how much general fear and anxiety lurked inside me these days. I'd never been a fearful person, never even understood phobias like fear of heights of water or snakes or any of those things. And while I knew that my coming out as a transgender person was going to throw certain people for a loop, I somehow hadn't realized how much it would throw me.”

“I was surprised at the silence and the absence of movement which our departure caused among the spectators, and believed them to be astonished and perhaps awed at the strange spectacle; they might well have reassured themselves. I was still gazing when M. Rozier cried to me - "You are doing nothing, and the balloon is scarcely rising a fathom."”

“I was surprised by the level of sophistication of the Special Operation forces. Among them were anthropologists and PhD candidates. I felt because I understand the patterns of nineteenth-century jihad in West Africa that I was definitely going to be more advanced than they were in comprehending what the militant rallying cry was.”