O Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with O. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Once, I compared poetry to mothers in my book called To Write as a Woman, because my mother is someone who captures me in her body and gave birth to me out of her desire but washed her hands of me after giving birth to me as a poet.”
“Once, I cut off a man's head, but he did not know it until he tried to brush his hair. Then it fell off.”
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
“Once, I discovered the skulls of two impala rams, their horns locked into an irreversible figure-of-eight; the two animals had been trapped in combat, latched to each other during the battle of the rut. The harder they had pulled to escape from each other, the more intractably stuck they were, until they had fallen exhausted, to their knees, in an embrace of hatred that had killed them both.”
Source: Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood
“Once, I had a dream of fame. Generally, even then, I was lonely.”
Source: Wittgenstein's mistress
“Once, I had so many scripts coming to me that I could hardly read them all.”
“Once, I had to clip a jacket back to take a picture, and after they were done I forgot to remove the clip until someone noticed.”
“Once, I had to drive Oliver to soccer, was ten minutes late, and learned that there had apparently been a misprint in the Bible on the Ten Commandments thing: Thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not be late to soccer. My father was so pissed, I practically had to get the lightning bolt surgically removed from my back.”
“Once, I optioned a novel and tried to do a screenplay on it, which was great fun, but I was too respectful. I was only 100 pages into the novel and I had about 90 pages of movie script going. I realized I had a lot to learn.”
“Once, I ordered two thousand lady bugs from the local garden center and set them loose in the atrium. I sprinkled marigold seeds in the ficus planters and put gold fish in the lobby fountain. These are things I did with no consequences, no repercussions. My nineteen detentions were for smart answers and missed homework. There is no equivalent punishment for making the world a stranger place.”
“Once, I took a taxi. I hate those limousines. They stink and their drivers have been driving dead people to the cemeteries.”
“Once, I was a master at recycling leftovers. Now I cultivate the art of simmering memories.”
Source: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
“Once, I was a poet, and, like all poets, I spent too long in the Kingdom of Dreams.”
“Once, I was at a party...This was at a time when it seemed like I had everything. I was young. I was undefeated. I had money. I`d just moved into my own home. People at the party were laughing and having fun. And I missed my mother. I felt so lonely. I remember asking myself, `Why isn`t my mother here? Why are all these people around me? I don`t want these people around me.' I looked out the window and started crying.”
“Once, I was easy. Now, I was choosy. See? Big difference.”
Source: This Lullaby
“Once, I was my mother's daughter. Now I am my daughter's mother.”
Source: The Neighbor: A Detective D. D. Warren Novel
“Once, I'd written a Western story, and one of the panels was just a hand holding a six-shooter, and there was a puff of smoke coming out of the barrel, and a straight horizontal line, indicating the trajectory of the bullet. So that page was sent back to me from the Code office, saying that the particular panel was too violent. I asked them what they meant, and they told me--I swear--"The puff of smoke is too big." Well, of course. So I had the artist make the smoke a little smaller, and the youth of America was saved.”
“Once, if I remember well, my life was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed.”
Source: Une Saison en Enfer & Le Bateau Ivre
“Once, in a dry season, I wrote in large letters across two pages of a notebook that innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself. Although now, some years later, I marvel that a mind on the outs with itself should have nonetheless made painstaking record of its every tremor, I recall with embarrassing clarity the flavor of those particular ashes. It was a matter of misplaced self-respect.”
Source: We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction
“Once, in a spasm of sappiness, you asked Q-Jo if she thought your dreams would ever come true. 'You aren't talking about dreams,' she corrected you, 'you're referring to your pathetic bourgeoisie ambitions. Dreams don't come true. Dreams are true.”
“Once, in a three-day taping that included several sadists, the material was so overwhelming that both the film crew and I got sick - I with a sinus infection, and the entire film crew with a flu so severe they had to delay their departure from the motel. Our immune systems had weakened, I believe, from the beating out souls had taken.”
Source: Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders : who They Are, how They Operate, and how We Can Protect Ourselves and Our Children
“Once, in Australia, I ate 33 pancakes in 20 minutes, and I only did it because they said a girl could never enter the competition.”
“Once, in Lisbon, I tried my best to work the phone book in a way that would assuage a longing [Alice and I] had for certain Chinese dishes . . . .”
“Once, in London, the BBC asked me what was my favorite English book. I said Alice in Wonderland”
“Once, in my father's bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later—no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget—we will return.”
“Once, long ago in her world, a sunny day in spring was her favorite, but now a sunny day in winter delights her more. It is the perfect metaphor for their love. Sunshine on ice. She warms his frost. He cools her fever.”
Source: The Fever Series 7-Book Bundle: Darkfever, Bloodfever, Faefever, Dreamfever, Shadowfever, Iced, Burned
“Once, long ago, Parminder had told Barry the story of Bhai Kanhaiya, the Sikh hero who had administered to the needs of those wounded in combat, whether friend or fo. When asked why he gave aid indiscriminately, Bahai Kanhaiya had replied that the light of God shone from every soul, and that he had been unable to distinguish between them.”
“Once, lovers on faraway shores sat by candlelight and dipped ink to parchment, writing words that could not be erased. They took an evening to compose their thoughts, maybe the next evening as well.”
“Once, my little sister was walking down the street in her thick black glasses, and a homeless man muttered, Talk nerdy to me.”
Source: Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's
“Once, my mother told a whole host of angels that she’d rather die than go back to a man she didn’t love.”
Source: Smoulder
“Once, once for all, if you would save your heart from breaking, learn this lesson once for all you must cease, in this world, to believe in the eternity of any creed or form at all. Whatever grows in time is a child of time, and is born and lives, and dies at its appointed day like ourselves.”
Source: The Nemesis of Faith
“Once, Picasso was asked what his paintings meant. He said, “Do you ever know what the birds are singing? You don’t. But you listen to them anyway.” So, sometimes with art, it is important just to look.”
“Once, poets were magicians. Poets were strong, stronger than warriors or kings — stronger than old hapless gods. And they will be strong once again.”
Source: The Serpent Mage
“Once, she made a boy come out of his house and kiss her under the streetlight. It was her first kiss. She thinks it was probably his, too. She never told him and she never, ever will.”
“Once, she'd been a pro at decompressing, loved to sit on the back deck of the beach house in one of our splintery Adirondack chairs for hours at a time, staring at the ocean. She never had a book or the paper or anything else to distract her. Just the horizon, but it kept her attention, her gaze unwavering. Maybe it was the absence of thought that she loved about being out there, the world narrowing to just the pounding of the waves as the water moved in and out.”
Source: The Truth About Forever
“Once, somebody asked Robert Schumann to explain the meaning of a certain piece of music he had just played on the piano.
What Robert Schumann did was sit back down at the piano and play the piece of music again.”
Source: Wittgenstein's mistress
“Once, the parental bed collapsed because all the children sat on it at once.”
“Once, there was a girl who vowed she would save everyone in the world, but forgot herself.”
“Once, this had been the life I’d wanted. Even chosen. Now, though, I couldn’t believe that there had been a time when this kind of monotony and silence, this most narrow of existences, had been preferable. Then again, once, I’d never known anything else.”
Source: The Truth About Forever
“Once, this whole world had been hidden beneath a shallow sea.”
Source: The Memory Keeper's Daughter: A Novel
“Once, Turner had himself lashed to the mast of a ship for several hours, during a furious storm, so that he could later paint the storm. Obviously, it was not the storm itself that Turner intended to paint. What he intended to paint was a representation of the storm. One's language is frequently imprecise in that manner, I have discovered.”
Source: Wittgenstein's mistress
“Once, when a British Prime Minister sneezed, men half a world away would blow their noses. Now when a British Prime Minister sneezes nobody else will even say 'Bless You'.”
“Once, when a religionist denounced me in unmeasured terms, I sent him a card saying, "I am sure you believe that I will go to hell when I die, and that once there I will suffer all the pains and tortures the sadistic ingenuity of your deity can devise and that this torture will continue forever. Isn't that enough for you? Do you have to call me bad names in addition?"”
Source: I, Asimov: A Memoir
“once, when I was a young lady and on a night express ... I was awakened by a man coming in from the corridor and taking hold of my leg ... Quite as much to my own astonishment as his, I uttered the most appalling growl that ever came out of a tigress. He fled, poor man, without a word: and I lay there, trembling slightly, not at my escape but at my potentialities.”
“Once, when I was young and true. Someone left me sad - Broke my brittle heart in two; And that is very bad. Love is for unlucky folk, Love is but a curse. Once there was a heart I broke; And that, I think, is worse.”
Source: Not So Deep as a Well
“Once, when I'd needed to meet Daniel to deliver a warning from Jeremy, I'd worn two-inch heels and had quite enjoyed the sensation of talking down to Daniel, until he told me how sexy I looked. Since then he'd never seen me in anything but my oldest, grubbiest sneakers.”
Source: Werewolves: Book One: Bitten, Stolen and Beginnings
“Once, when she was six years old, she had fallen from a tree, flat on her stomach. She could still recall that sickening interval before breath came back into her body. Now, as she looked at him, she felt the same way she had felt then, breathless, stunned, nauseated.”
“Once, when the days were ages, And the old Earth was young, The high gods and the sages From Nature's golden pages Her open secrets wrung.”
“Once, when Tom was over here, to tease Rose, I asked him, "Before she was born, can you remember? Were things just the same as they are these days? Did it still rain and get dark and all the stuff it does now? Did the sun go up and down in exactly the same way?" Yes," Tom said, and then he smiled at Rose and said, "No. Not really. Not exactly the same way.”
Source: Caddy Ever After
“Once, when we were discussing a world peace project with my teacher, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, somebody asked him, Where is all the money going to come from? And he replied without hesitation, From wherever it is at the moment.”
“Once, when we were playing at the Apollo Theater, Holiday was working a block away at the Harlem Opera House. Some of us went over between shows to catch her, and afterwards we went backstage. I did something then, and I still don't know if it was the right thing to do—I asked her for her autograph.”