I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“It was a compromise. There was a sense that I could write my own memoirs, and Larry [Grobel] would help me down the line, or maybe not, maybe he was too close to me.”
“It was a confirmation of a connection that already existed. And it was a bond that extended far beyond the borders of a shared living space. We would have stayed together even without a marriage certificate . . . but I believed in the permanence it represented. It was a piece of paper you could build a life on.”
Source: Smooth Talking Stranger: A Novel
“It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A. B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn't.”
“It was a constant source of amazement to Alexia that the only thing she had ever done in her entire life that pleased her mama was marry a werewolf.”
“It was a conversation that I didn't want to have with my parents to say mom and dad I missed my flight.”
“It was a cookie, not a crack pipe.”
“It was a cool day and very clear. You could see a long way-but not as far as Velma had gone.”
Source: Stories and Early Novels
“It was a cooler morning than usual, but it was a welcomed difference. The many childhood summers she had spent on the French Riviera were now a simple memory, her younger adult years in the Caribbean now packed away into the past. The cooler New England temperatures helped to mitigate the heat of her present concerns.”
Source: Until Morning Comes
“It was a costly triumph. But God’s values are not so easily reckoned. If God had simply terminated Satan, then it would not have been so clear that God is both stronger and infinitely more to be desired than Satan. God wills for his glory to shine forth not only through acts of physical power, but also through acts of moral and spiritual power that display the beauty of his grace with lavish colors. To take sinners out of Satan’s hands by virtue of Christ’s sin-bearing sacrifice and his law-fulfilling obedience to the Father was a more glorious victory than mere annihilation of the enemy.”
Source: Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ
“It was a counter-attack and I had to take him down. I don't regret it and I would do it again if I had to.”
“It was a country . . . that he and his people had known how to use and abuse, but not how to preserve.”
Source: Remembering
“It was a crap shoot, adopting a baby made from someone else's genes, and it worried her sick. "It's a crap shoot giving birth to a baby made from your own genes," Marshall reminded her. She fretted and paced and dreamed and hoped.”
Source: China Run
“It was a crazy game. We could have scored five...oh right, we did score five, but we could have scored six, seven or eight.”
“It was a crazy idea. But, as usual, that’s all Percy had.”
“It was a crazy write, a crazy thought, I loved it, and hated it" and it's still alive!”
“It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation. Yes we can. It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail towards freedom through the darkest of nights. Yes we can. It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness. Yes we can.”
Source: Change We Can Believe In
“It was a cruel city, but it was a lovely one; a savage city, yet it had such tenderness; a bitter, harsh, and violent catacomb of stone an steel and tunneled rock, slashed savagely with light, and roaring, fighting a constant ceaseless warfare of men and of machinery; and yet it was so sweetly and so delicately pulsed, as full of warmth, of passion, and of love, as it was full of hate.”
Source: The Web and the Rock
“It was a cruel fate, Yet not so cruel as Mago's will be. I promise you that, by the old gods and the new, by the lamb god and the horse god and every god that lives. I swear by the Mother of Mountains and the Womb of the World. Before I am done with them, Mago and Ko Jhaqo will plead for the mercy they showed Eroeh.”
Source: George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones 5-Book Boxed Set (Song of Ice and Fire Series): A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and and A Dance with Dragons
“It was a cruel world though. More than half of all children died before they could reach maturity, thanks to chronic epidemics and malnutrition. People dropped like flies from polio and tuberculosis and smallpox and measles. There probably weren't many people who lived past forty. Women bore so many children, they became toothless old hags by the time they were in their thirties. People often had to resort to violence to survive. Tiny children were forced to do such heavy labor that their bones became deformed, and little girls were forced to become prostitutes on a daily basis. Little boys too, I suspect. Most people led minimal lives in worlds that had nothing to do with richness of perception or spirit. City streets were full of cripples and beggars and criminals. Only a small fraction of the population could gaze at the moon with deep feeling or enjoy a Shakespeare play or listen to the beautiful music of Dowland.”
Source: 1Q84
“It was a crushing defeat, but it put iron in my backbone and sulphur in my blood. I knew at least what it was to fail. I knew what it was to attempt something big.”
Source: Tropic of Capricorn
“It was a cry of real love. A woman's outburst of despair melts a lover's heart, and the forgiveness that he is secretly eager to give her is easily yielded, especially when the woman is young, beautiful, and wearing a dress so low cut that she could rise from the top of it in the costume of Eve.”
Source: Cousin Bette
“It was a cultural revolution, and was not directed at instituting economic changes. He could thus appeal to old prejudices without threatening the existing economic system. This appealed, above all, to white-collar workers and the small entrepreneurs, as some of the statistics presented in this book will demonstrate. It was their kind of revolution: the ideology would give them a new status, free them from isolation in the industrial society, and give them a purpose in life. But it would not threaten any of their vested interests; indeed it would reinforce their bourgeois predilections toward family...and restore the 'good old values' which had been so sadly dismantled by modernity.”
Source: Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural and Social Life in the Third Reich
“It was a culture that business is something bad - it was a leftist-oriented psychology. We have to break this. We are pro-business.”
“It was a curious fact that no matter how many lives she had experienced, and no matter how different those lives were, she almost always had her phone by the bed. And in this life, it was no different, so she grabbed it and sneaked out of the room quietly. Whoever the man was, he was a deep sleeper and didn't stir.”
Source: The Midnight Library
“It was a curious feeling, that something could be so close and so distant at the same time.”
“It was a dagger in the haughty father's heart, an arrow in his brain, to see how the flesh and blood he could not disown clung to this obscure stranger, and he sitting by. Not that he cared to whom his daughter turned, or from whom turned away. The swift sharp agony struck through him, as he thought of what his son might do.”
Source: Dombey and Son ... With frontispiece by H. K. Browne
“It was a damned good thing men couldn’t have children. Gregory took no shame in admitting that the human race would have died out generations earlier.”
Source: On the way to the wedding
“It was a damned near-run thing, I must admit,' said Jack, modestly; then after a pause he laughed and said, 'I remember your using those very words in the old Bellerophon, before we had our battle.'
'So I did,' cried Dundas. 'So I did. Lord, that was a great while ago.'
'I still bear the scar,' said Jack. He pushed up his sleeve, and there on his brown forearm was a long white line.
'How it comes back,' said Dundas; and between them, drinking port, they retold the tale, with minute details coming fresh to their minds. As youngsters, under the charge of the gunner of the Bellerophon, 74, in the West Indies, they had played the same game. Jack, with his infernal luck, had won on that occasion too: Dundas claimed his revenge, and lost again, again on a throw of double six. Harsh words, such as cheat, liar, sodomite, booby and God-damned lubber flew about; and since fighting over a chest, the usual way of settling such disagreements in many ships, was strictly forbidden in the Bellemphon, it was agreed that as gentlemen could not possibly tolerate such language they should fight a duel. During the afternoon watch the first lieutenant, who dearly loved a white-scoured deck, found that the ship was almost out of the best kind of sand, and he sent Mr Aubrey away in the blue cutter to fetch some from an island at the convergence of two currents where the finest and most even grain was found. Mr Dundas accompanied him, carrying two newly sharpened cutlasses in a sailcloth parcel, and when the hands had been set to work with shovels the two little boys retired behind a dune, unwrapped the parcel, saluted gravely, and set about each other. Half a dozen passes, the blades clashing, and when Jack cried out 'Oh Hen, what have you done?' Dundas gazed for a moment at the spurting blood, burst into tears, whipped off his shirt and bound up the wound as best he could. When they crept aboard a most unfortunately idle, becalmed and staring Bellerophon, their explanations, widely different and in both cases so weak that they could not be attempted to be believed, were brushed aside, and their captain flogged them severely on the bare breech. 'How we howled,' said Dundas. 'You were shriller than I was,' said Jack. 'Very like a hyena.”
Source: The Commodore
“It was a dance of masks and every mask was perfect because every mask was a real face and every face was a real mask so there was no mask and there was no face for there was but one dance in which there was but one mask but one true face which was the same and which was a thing without a name which changed and changed into itself over and over.”
Source: Beautiful Losers
“It was a dangerous profession I had chosen ... because no one likes a funny kid. In fact, adults are scared silly of them and tend to warn children who act out that they are going to wind up in prison or worse. It is only when you grow up that they pay you vast sums of money to make them laugh.”
Source: Leaving home: a memoir
“It was a dangerous thing for me to know what I wanted.”
Source: Love and Other Sins
“It was a dark and painful time. I knew better, but still allowed it. It led to a special kind of heartbreak… a devastating realization that the only thing we had in common was that we both didn’t love me.”
“It was a dark and stormy night.”
Source: A Circle of Quiet
“It was a dark and stormy night. - Snoopy”
Source: Peanuts Movie Novelization
“It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly a scream pierced the air'. . . . Good writing takes enormous concentration.”
“It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out! A door slammed. The maid screamed. Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon! While millions of people were starving, the king lived in luxury. Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas, a boy was growing up.”
Source: Snoopy and
“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents - except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”
“It was a dark story.”
Source: Lord Jim
“It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.”
Source: Predator Cities x 4 and The Traction Codex
“It was a darkness without time. It was an impenetrable darkness. To the right and left of me rose those terrible formless things of my imagination, which I could not see because there was no light. I could not see, but I dared not close my eyes lest the darkness crawl beneath my eyelids and suffocate me. I could only hear. My ears became my being and I could hear the specks of life that crawled beneath my clothing, the rotting of the great tree which rose from its three-cornered trunk above me. I could hear the darkness gathering against me and the silences that lay between the moving things.”
Source: Helmet for My Pillow
“It was a day and age that saw no reason why one could not learn whatever was required - learn vitally anything - by the close study of books.”
“It was a day as different from other days as dogs are from cats and both of them from chrysanthemums or tidal waves or scarlet fever.”
Source: The Winter of our Discontent
“It was a day filled with relief and grief in equal measure. I mourned for the fact that we would not create memories together. I mourned for the fact that we would not create memories together. I rejoiced for the fact that we would not create more memories together. I cried because both of those opposing states were true.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“It was a day in early spring; and as that sweet, genial time of year and atmosphere calls out tender greenness from the ground,--beautiful flowers, or leaves that look beautiful because so long unseen under the snow and decay,--so the pleasant air and warmth had called out three young people, who sat on a sunny hill-side enjoying the warm day and one another.”
Source: The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Essays, Letters and Memoirs (Illustrated): The Scarlet Letter with its Adaptation, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, Tanglewood Tales, Birthmark, Ghost of Doctor Harris… (Including Biographies and Literary Criticism)
“It was a day when I was preparing a speech to be delivered in praise of the Emporor; there would be a lot of lies in the speech and they would be applauded by those who knew that they were lies."
The Confessions of St. Augustine”
Source: The Confessions of Saint Augustine
“It was a day when, if a man travels, he cannot go slowly enough. At anything faster than a foot pace a man seems to lose life as he goes, on a day like this. So quick and prodigal is nature now. It would make of man a pilgrim. Not only daffodils and the wild arums sought notice, but the blue bird's eye tiny in the grass, the pink and intricate ground-ivy flower. In a cleared coppice perfect bright ovals of severance shone on the hazel butts, and told of expert work with a sharp tool.”
Source: A Countryman's Spring Notebook
“It was a deal I’d made with myself months before and the only thing that allowed me to hike alone. I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. And I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me. Insisting on this story was a form of mind control, but for the most part, it worked. Every time I heard a sound of unknown origin or felt something horrible cohering in my imagination I pushed it away. I simply did not let myself become afraid. Fear begets fear. Power begets power. I willed myself to beget power. And it wasn’t long before I actually wasn’t afraid.”
Source: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
“It was a death struggle every day being a Yankee you either won or you lost. There was no second place. Half of us were nuts by the end of a season.”
“It was a debacle which swept the Columbia Plateau.”
“It was a December night so cold and clear that the air felt like the air of the Moon - lung-burning; mentholated and pure”