I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“it was Tark's experience that TV addicts were usually addicted to something else as well. Food, booze, drugs, sex, money, take your pick.”
Source: Storm Surge
“It was taunted as reality. It was dangled as a carrot. In terms of people's hopes and dreams, to say that that is less of a reality than the daily grind they find themselves in is maybe not correct.”
“It was teeth and talons and fire and mustard gas, it was ghosts scorched into Hiroshima streets, showerheads pouring poison into tiled rooms, and a grasp that twined itself around his own bones, a tongue that licked for marrow in his own spine, and a hunger he could feel in his own stomach.”
Source: The War Beneath
“It was telling that he had taken responsibility for the thing that he did...but he did not mention the things done in his name. This was always the way of these strongmen. They would craft the fear so carefully and then toss it into the world for everyone to use. And when someone took that fear and destroyed with it, they were just "unstable" or "mentally ill".”
Source: A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor
“It was ten against ten. So, as Svengal later recounted, it was no contest. He had the enemy outnumbered three to one.”
Source: The Invaders
“It was terrible to watch one of those things die. Eighteen tons, a hundred feet from wingtip to wingtip, ten men aboard, all fighting to get out. If she spun, the centrifugal force would pin them to the walls... You're trapped inside a metal box. You've got five miles to fall. You know it. [...] Sometimes you could hear them all the way.”
Source: Dreaming Eagles
“It was terrible when a single conversation with someone determined your whole future relationship.”
“It was terrible. All of the things we couldn't share. The room was filled with conversations we weren't having.”
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel
“It was terribly beautiful to Tess today, for since her eyes last fell upon it she had learnt that the serpent hisses where the sweet birds sing.”
Source: Tess of the d'Urbervilles: Works of Hardy
“It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself-anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face ... was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime.”
Source: Animal Farm and 1984
“It was terribly embarrassing, but for the first time in my life, I didn’t really care what the cute girls thought of me or what my friends thought of me, for that matter. God kept winking at me this whole trip, so I figured that even in my sullied state, He must still find me pretty desirable.”
Source: Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose
“It was terrifying," he says, "watching you fall. I mean, you're generally terrifying, but I am not used to fearing for you. And then I was furious. I am not sure I have ever been that angry before." ~Cardan”
Source: The Queen of Nothing
“It was terrifying- that feeling- like there was something tying me to him. Because if one of us fell into the darkness, the other would too.”
Source: Sky in the Deep
“It was terrifying, the idea that we could fall asleep girls, minty breathed and nightgowned, and wake up to find ourselves wolves.”
Source: We Are Okay
“It was terrifying to realize life goes on without you.”
“It was terrifying when Aaron Sorkin announced that he was leaving West Wing, he and Tommy Schlamme. We felt like our parents were abandoning us. It was a tremendously sad day and I'm sure I will never understand exactly all the reasons why that happened.”
“IT WAS TESS who told me about the crowd going to the all-night dance. We'd been school friends. We'd picked mushrooms and pretended to have seen a big ship. She had got married since I went away; it was a made match, a man from the midlands, a Donal, who had worked in a garage but took to farming, out all day, draining fields and callows so that he could till them and sow corn.”
Source: The Light of Evening
“It was testimony to the romantic speculation he inspired that there were whispers about him from those who had found little that it was necessary to whisper about in this world.”
Source: The Great Gatsby
“It was thanks to Alfred Hitchcock that I understood that murder scenes should be shot like love scenes and love scenes like murder scenes.”
“It was that culture of denial that allowed my abuse to take place to start with. Did you know that it wasn't until 1984 that the Department of Health added the category of "sexual abuse" to its list of harms that can befall children? When I was being raped and made pregnant at the age of 11, it wasn't just my own dissociative process that told me that it wasn't happening; it was society too. "We don't have a category for that. Computer says no."͏”
Source: Living with the Reality of Dissociative Identity Disorder: Campaigning Voices
“It was that depressing time in the early morning where the only people about were milkmen, police officers- and time travellers.”
“It was that difficult moment when we usually part ways. Outside on the doorsteps in the light of the night as we embraced each other. She rested her lips against mine and I couldn’t help but think of the first time we kissed.
Spontaneous and unsure if we were riding the same wave, I reached for her lips only to end with our laughter at the awkwardness. But despite the error of the first time, this time felt like new.Sighing in awe of the soft and gentle embrace of our lips, it turned into a tug of war.
Like a battle because we didn’t want to let go of that smooth and passionate feeling. That was the final shake as the bottle was about to burst from the pressure, then it came: “I Love You”, I said softly but firmly.
The words seemed to echo for an eternity back and forth between our chests.She stopped and stared at me. Just like my Drill Sergeant badge, I wore my heart on my sleeve. There was so much that she said without words.
What a genuine expression of agreement that reflected from her beautiful brown eyes, beyond the ability of any woman to fake or hide. Then she kissed me even more passionately than ever before. In my heart, I believe that it could be more, if it wasn’t for….THE TABLE BETWEEN US”
Source: The Table Between Us
“It was that evening, when my mother abdicated her authority, that marked the beginning, along with the slow death of my grandmother, of the decline of my will and of my health. Everything had been decided at the moment when, unable to bear the idea of waiting until the next day to set my lips on my mother's face, I had made my resolution, jumped out of bed, and gone, in my nightshirt, to stay by the window through which the moonlight came, until I heard M. Swann go. My parents having gone with him, I heard the garden gate open, the bell ring, the gate close again...”
Source: Time regained
“It was that fatal and perfidious bark, Built in th' eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark.”
Source: Poems Upon Several Occasions: English, Italian, and Latin
“It was that impossible thing: happiness that does not wilt to reveal the thin shoots of some new desire rising from within it.”
Source: Tenth of December: Stories
“It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road.”
Source: THE CATCHER IN THE RYE
“It was that kind of kiss. But as with all kisses, it was not without a certain element of danger”
Source: Norwegian Wood
“It was that love was all we had. And we needed so much more. All couples do. We needed common passions and interests and goals.”
Source: The Prisoner's Wife: A Memoir
“It was that once upon a time the world had been full of possibility and excitement and wonder, and now it held difficulty and years of toil to come, and defeat after inevitable defeat. And yet here they were, Vikram and Gil, once again making themselves a space in which they could, perhaps, be happy.”
“It was that period in the vernal quarter when we may suppose the Dryads to be waking for the season. The vegetable world begins to move and swell and the saps to rise, till in the completest silence of lone gardens and trackless plantations, where everything seems helpless and still after the bond and slavery of frost, there are bustlings, strainings, united thrusts, and pulls-all-together, in comparison with which the powerful tugs of cranes and pulleys in a noisy city are but pigmy efforts.”
Source: FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD (British Classics Series): Historical Romance Novel
“It was that quality that led me into aviation in the first place — it was a love of the air and sky and flying, the lure of adventure, the appreciation of beauty. It lay beyond the descriptive words of man — where immortality is touched through danger, where life meets death on equal plane; where man is more than man, and existence both supreme and valueless at the same instant.”
Source: The Spirit of St. Louis
“It was that reader that she'd found in Mama's trunk. At the schoolhouse they had McGuffey, good lessons about good boys and girls. But Meggie had found the worn, faded book of fairy tales. They had been much more interesting than the stern admonitions of McGuffey. And her imagination had taken flight. Fanciful, that's what her father had called it. And when she'd read about Rapunzel, she'd decided that none of the local boys would ever do. A real prince was coming up the mountain for Meggie Best someday. She was sure of it. Unfortunately, this morning she'd thought that he'd arrived.”
Source: Marrying Stone
“It was that sort of sleep in which you wake every hour and think to yourself that you have not been sleeping at all; you can remember dreams that are like reflections, daytime thinking slightly warped.”
“It was that summer, too, that I began the cutting, and was almost as devoted to it as to my newfound loveliness. I adored tending to myself, wiping a shallow red pool of my blood away with a damp washcloth to magically reveal, just above my naval: queasy. Applying alcohol with dabs of a cotton ball, wispy shreds sticking to the bloody lines of: perky. I had a dirty streak my senior year, which I later rectified. A few quick cuts and cunt becomes can't, cock turns into back, clit transforms to a very unlikely cat, the l and i turned into a teetering capital A.
The last words I ever carved into myself, sixteen years after I started: vanish.
Sometimes I can hear the words squabbling at each other across my body. Up on my shoulder, panty calling down to cherry on the inside of my right ankle. On the underside of a big toe, sew uttering muffled threats to baby, just under my left breast. I can quiet them down by thinking of vanish, always hushed and regal, lording over the other words from the safety of the nape of my neck.
Also: At the center of my back, which was too difficult to reach, is a circle of perfect skin the size of a fist.
Over the years I've made my own private jokes. You can really read me. Do you want me to spell it out for you? I've certainly given myself a life sentence. Funny, right? I can't stand to look myself without being completely covered. Someday I may visit a surgeon, see what can be done to smooth me, but now I couldn't bear the reaction. Instead I drink so I don't think too much about what I've done to my body and so I don't do any more. Yet most of the time that I'm awake, I want to cut. Not small words either. Equivocate. Inarticulate. Duplicitous. At my hospital back in Illinois they would not approve of this craving.
For those who need a name, there's a gift basket of medical terms. All I know is that the cutting made me feel safe. It was proof. Thoughts and words, captured where I could see them and track them. The truth, stinging, on my skin, in a freakish shorthand. Tell me you're going to the doctor, and I'll want to cut worrisome on my arm. Say you've fallen in love and I buzz the outlines of tragic over my breast. I hadn't necessarily wanted to be cured. But I was out of places to write, slicing myself between my toes - bad, cry - like a junkie looking for one last vein. Vanish did it for me. I'd saved the neck, such a nice prime spot, for one final good cutting. Then I turned myself in.”
Source: Sharp Objects
“It was that summer, too, that I began the cutting, and was almost as devoted to it as my newfound loveliness. I adored tending to myself, wiping a shallow red pool of my blood away with a damp washcloth to magically reveal, just above my naval: queasy. Applying alcohol with dabs of a cottonball, wispy shreds sticking to the bloody lines of: perky. I had a dirty streak my senior year, which I later rectified.”
Source: Sharp Objects: A Novel
“It was that surrender he needed. That complete feminine submission to every stroke, every caress, ever naughty act. Only in that submission would the subconscious trust, the bond he needed between them, come. He wanted her to trust, to know, to instinctively understand that he was more than just her lover; he was her other half. The one she told her secrets to. The one, she made secrets with.”
“It was that time when I am finally able to sleep the sweetest, the deepest.”
Source: In the Cut
“It was that white cloak that soiled me, not the other way around.”
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 that word “hate” that killed him. And that word is going to kill us all if we don’t learn how to fight it.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World
“It was the 1950s, you know, and they had a ray gun, which was basically a flashlight with a sort of trigger on it. And it buzzed and a red light, you know, came on. But anyway we all had one - Davy Crockett hat.”
“It was the 60th anniversary of 'Face the Nation.' During his interview, President Obama said, 'Our country doesn't fear the future. We grab it.' Nothing says you grab the future like going on a 60-year-old show hosted by a 77-year-old-man to speak to a 90-year-old audience.”
“It was the academic community who wired up their universities so it was put together by smart, well-meaning people who thought it was a good idea.”
“It was the act of a gentleman, and Damian was as gentle as a cactus.”
Source: Converting The Bad Boy
“It was the Age of Anything-Can-Happen, he reminded himself. He had heard many people say that on TV and on the outré video clips floating in cyberspace, which added a further, new-technology depth to his addiction. There were no rules any more. And in the Age of Anything-Can-Happen, well, anything could happen. Old friends could become new enemies and traditional enemies could be your new besties or even lovers. It was no longer possible to predict the weather, or the likelihood of war, or the outcome of elections. A woman might fall in love with a piglet, or a man start living with an owl. A beauty might fall asleep and, when kissed, wake up speaking a different language and in that new language reveal a completely altered character. A flood might drown your city. A tornado might carry your house to a faraway land where, upon landing, it would squash a witch. Criminals could become kings and kings be unmasked as criminals. A man might discover that the woman he lived with was his father’s illegitimate child. A whole nation might jump off a cliff like swarming lemmings. Men who played presidents on TV could become presidents. The water might run out. A woman might bear a baby who was found to be a revenant god. Words could lose their meanings and acquire new ones. The world might end, as at least one prominent scientist- entrepreneur had begun repeatedly to predict. An evil scent would hang over the ending. And a TV star might miraculously return the love of a foolish old coot, giving him an unlikely romantic triumph which would redeem a long, small life, bestowing upon it, at the last, the radiance of majesty.”
Source: Quichotte
“It was the age of confidence. Arrogance was epidemic.”
Source: The Children's Blizzard
“It was the Almighty who decreed that men and women must cover their nakedness by wearing proper and modest clothing. No amount of rationalizing can change God's laws. No amount of fashion designing can turn immodesty into virtue, and no amount of popularity can change sin into righteousness.”
“It was the American Dream to strive for a future that might not exist.”
Source: Father in My Name
“It was the American middle class. No one's house cost more than two or three year's salary, and I doubt the spread in annual wages (except for the osteopath) exceeded more than five thousand dollars. And other than the doctor (who made house calls), the store managers, the minister, the salesman, and the banker, everyone belonged to a union. That meant they worked a forty-hour week, had the entire weekend off (plus two to four weeks' paid vacation in the summer), comprehensive medical benefits, and job security. In return for all that, the country became the most productive in the world and in our little neighborhood it meant your furnace was always working, your kids could be dropped off at the neighbors without notice, you could run next door anytime to borrow a half-dozen eggs, and the doors to all the homes were never locked -- because who would need to steal anything if they already had all that they needed?”
Source: Here Comes Trouble
“It was the anonymity. He wanted to be unknown, unpossessed by others' knowledge of him. That was freedom.”
Source: Severance
“It was the awakening summer of 1960 and the entire country was in labor. Something wonderful was about to be born, and we were all going to be good parents to the welcome child. Its name was Freedom.”
Source: The Heart of a Woman