T Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with T. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“They had an opening. You know, it was one of those deals. I auditioned and got it in '93.”
“They had an ordinary life, full of ordinary things—if love can ever be called that.”
Source: Ruin and Rising
“They had applied their doubts to the very head that had introduced doubt as a tool for advancing knowledge. And in the end they gave the head a nod.”
Source: Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict between Faith and Reason
“They had argued a lot, but then suddenly they stopped fighting and began speaking calmly to each other, like they were strangers. That’s when I knew something was really wrong.
Mo eventually explained that she and my father were simply different peas meant to live in separate pods. You would think two adults could figure that out before they got married and had kids.”
“They had battled and bloodied one another, they had kept secrets, broken hearts, lied, betrayed, exiled, they had walked away, said goodbye and sworn it was forever, and somehow, every time, they had mended, they had forgiven, they had survived. Some mistakes could never be fixed - some, but not all. Some people can't be driven away, no matter how hard you try. Some friendships won't break.”
“They had become a fixed star in the shifting firmament of the high school's relationships, the acknowledged Romeo and Juliet. And she knew with sudden hatefulness that there was one couple like them in every white suburban high school in America.”
Source: Carrie
“They had become a nation of traders.”
Source: An Elegy for Easterly: Stories
“They had become an occasional mutter, like the interior sounds a woman makes when she believes she is alone and unobserved at her work: a sth when she misses the needle's eye; a soft moan when she sees another chip in her one good platter; the low friendly argument with which she greets the hens.”
Source: Beloved
“They had become distanced from the object of their journey, caught up in the grinding cruelty of the red world, where nations were oppressed and irreplaceable ancient sites violated and destroyed.”
Source: Stealing Sacred Fire
“They had become muffled and distant then anyway. This happened in those first days after the wave. I couldn't find their faces, they quivered as in a heat haze. Even in my stupor I knew that details of them were dropping away from me crumbs. Still, whenever they emerged, I panicked.”
Source: Wave
“They had become too conceited to be capable of normal human feelings.”
Source: Doctor Zhivago
“They had become, year by year, month by month, mysterious to her, her love for them an extended pain, a web or field of force, of which she felt at times the almost breaking tension.”
Source: The Green Knight
“They had been born immortal only to die in war.”
Source: Horus Rising
“They had been brought up in a tradition that told them in one way or another that the life of the mind and the life of the senses were separate and, indeed, inimical; they had believed, without ever having really thought about it, that one had to be chosen at some expense of the other. That the one could intensify the other had never occurred to them.”
Source: Stoner
“They had been corrupted by money, and he had been corrupted by sentiment. Sentiment was the more dangerous, because you couldn’t name its price. A man open to bribes was to be relied upon below a certain figure, but sentiment might uncoil in the heart at a name, a photograph, even a smell remembered.”
“They had been dreams borrowed from stories, dreams she had clung to because she had yet to imagine her own dreams.”
Source: A Curse for True Love
“They . . . had been slugging it out like Rihanna and Chris Brown on repeat . . .”
Source: One Night
“They had been talking about astrology, a forbidden science that was not pursued in the cloister. Narcissus had said that astrology was an attempt to arrange and order the many different types of human beings according to their natures and destinies. At this point Goldmund had objected: "You're forever talking of differences - I've finally recognised a pet theory of yours. When you speak of the great difference that is supposed to exist between you and me, for instance, it seems to me that this difference is nothing but your strange determination to establish differences."
Narcissus: "Yes. You've hit the nail on the head. That's it: to you, differences are quite unimportant; to me, they are what matters most. I am a scholar by nature; science is my vocation. And science is, to quote your words, nothing but the 'determination to establish differences.' Its essence couldn't be defined more accurately. For us, the men of science, nothing is as important as the establishment of differences; science is the art of differentiation. Discovering in every man that which distinguishes him from others is to know him.”
Source: Narcissus and Goldmund
“They had been talking about his friend Z. when she announced, "If I hadn't met you, I'd certainly have fallen in love with him."
Even then, her words had left Tomas in a strange state of melancholy, and now he realized it was only a matter of chance that Tereza loved him and not his friend Z. Apart from her consummated love for Tomas, there were, in the realm of possibility, an infinite number of unconsummated loves for other men.
We all reject out of hand the idea that the love of our life may be something light or weightless; we presume our love is what must be, that without it our life would no longer be the same; we feel that Beethoven himself, gloomy and awe-inspiring, is playing the "Es muss sein!" to our own great love.
Tomas often thought of Tereza's remark about his friend Z. and came to the conclusion that the love story of his life exemplified not "Es muss sein!" (It must be so), but rather "Es konnte auch anders sein" (It could just as well be otherwise).”
Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“They had been the reason for the receding love between her and her husband. She claimed a substitution for her sacrifices, an amendment of her situation.”
Source: Within Paravent Walls
“They had been there. I had seen my mother’s anxious face, desperate to catch my eye and give me a warm smile. I had tried to smile back, but I had not known how. That old curse again. How to smile. If I smiled too broadly it might look like triumphalism; if I smiled too weakly it might look like a feeble bid for sympathy. If I smiled somewhere in between it would, I knew, look, as always, like plain smugness. Somehow I managed to bare my teeth in a manner that expressed, I hope, sorrow, gratitude, determination, shame, remorse and resolve.”
Source: Moab is My Washpot
“They had been Vince's brothers in a way, and Race was his son, and you couldn't drive a man's family to the earth and expect to live.”
Source: THROTTLE
“They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in nightmares.”
Source: Heart of Darkness
“They had bombed and burned,killed and maimed,plundered and looted.Now they had come to claim the land.”
Source: Mornings in Jenin
“They had bombed London, whether on purpose or not, and the British people and London especially should know that we could hit back. It would be good for the morale of us all.”
“They had borrowed a hat from Mathilde’s costume stash, a fleece beret in pale lilac that looked uber-stylish on their chic head, though it would have looked like a literal macaron on mine.”
Source: The Quicksand Theatre Company
“They had both noticed that a life of dissipation sometimes gave to a face the look of gaunt suffering spirituality that a life of asceticism was supposed to give and quite often did not.”
Source: Ship of Fools: A Novel
“They had both wanted it to happen and they both wished it had not; what mattered now was that nobody else should ever know.”
Source: Half of a Yellow Sun
“They had chains which they fastened about the leg of the nearest hog, and the other end of the chain they hooked into one of the rings upon the wheel. So, as the wheel turned, a hog was suddenly jerked off his feet and borne aloft. At the same instant the ear was assailed by a most terrifying shriek; the visitors started in alarm, the women turned pale and shrank back. The shriek was followed by another, louder and yet more agonizing--for once started upon that journey, the hog never came back; at the top of the wheel he was shunted off upon a trolley and went sailing down the room. And meantime another was swung up, and then another, and another, until there was a double line of them, each dangling by a foot and kicking in frenzy--and squealing. The uproar was appalling, perilous to the ear-drums; one feared there was too much sound for the room to hold--that the walls must give way or the ceiling crack. There were high squeals and low squeals, grunts, and wails of agony; there would come a momentary lull, and then a fresh outburst, louder than ever, surging up to a deafening climax. It was too much for some of the visitors--the men would look at each other, laughing nervously, and the women would stand with hands clenched, and the blood rushing to their faces, and the tears starting in their eyes. Meantime, heedless of all these things, the men upon the floor were going about their work. Neither squeals of hogs nor tears of visitors made any difference to them; one by one they hooked up the hogs, and one by one with a swift stroke they slit their throats. There was a long line of hogs, with squeals and life-blood ebbing away together; until at last each started again, and vanished with a splash into a huge vat of boiling water. It was all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated. It was pork-making by machinery, pork-making by applied mathematics. And yet somehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the hogs; they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly; and they were so very human in their protests--and so perfectly within their rights! They had done nothing to deserve it; and it was adding insult to injury, as the thing was done here, swinging them up in this cold-blooded, impersonal way, without a pretence at apology, without the homage of a tear. Now and then a visitor wept, to be sure; but this slaughtering-machine ran on, visitors or no visitors. It was like some horrible crime committed in a dungeon, all unseen and unheeded, buried out of sight and of memory.”
Source: The Jungle
“They had chopped wood here too; then they were gone. Gone to the fields, the small towns, the cities – where they died. There was always news coming back to the quarter about someone who had been killed or who had been sent to prison for killing someone else: Snowball, stabbed to death in a nightclub in Port Allen; Claudee, killed by a woman in New Orleans; Smitty, sent to the state penitentiary for manslaughter. And there were others who did not go anywhere but simply died slower”
Source: A Lesson Before Dying
“they had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes.”
Source: Animal Farm and 1984
“They had come to praise him.
"It was so beautiful, so comical, so true to life!" the doctor said.
The little girl gave him the flowers and the Mayor embraced him lightly. "Oh, we thought, signore," he said, "that you were merely a poet.”
Source: The Stories of John Cheever (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
“They had created themselves together, and they always saw themselves, their youth, their love, their lost youth and lost love, their failures and memories, as a sort of living fiction.”
Source: Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature
“They had discovered one could grow as hungry for light as for food.”
Source: The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger
“They had dreams but they called them dreams because they were unrelated to reality, they were a distant unknown, an impossibility, they would never come true.”
Source: Bright Shiny Morning
“They had each other. An unusually happy marriage, its selflessness strengthened by shared tragedy, had grown into something more, an identification so close that each could be said to have passed beyond the barriers of self and to live in the other with an immediacy that very largely shut out thought of the future. Largely, not entirely. The thought of death did come at times and they would smile at each other and say, 'We'll go together.' But in each was the fear, never expressed to the other, that it might not be so. They hardly realized the uniqueness of their love, and their good fortune in its possession, though they did know they were happy.”
Source: The Scent of Water
“They had each other and there was a love between them that would withstand anything. Alina and I had always intuited, with no small wry pique, that, although our parents adored us and would do anything for us, they loved each other more. As far as I was concerned, that was the way it should be. Kids grow up, move on and find a love of their own. The empty nest shouldn't leave parents grieving. It should leave them ready and excited to get on with living their own adventure, which would, of course, include many visits to children and grandchildren.”
Source: Dreamfever: Fever Series
“They had engaged in what could not be called treatment or even discussion, but open combat, the two of them a microcosm of the great war raging in the far distance: one side that desired autonomy, and the other that took independence as a sign of madness.”
Source: Blue Asylum
“They had entered the thorny wilderness, and the golden gates of their childhood had for ever closed behind them.”
Source: The Mill on the Floss
“They had exchanged vows and tokens, sealed their rich compact, solemnized, so far as breathed words and murmured sounds and lighted eyes and clasped hands could do it, their agreement to belong only, and to belong tremendously, to each other.”
Source: The Wings of the Dove
“They had exhorted her to work hard, it need only be for a short time after all, at 'dull school subjects', such as English, French, History and Maths. Moy, who hated these with the possible exception of English, had decided some time ago that she would not work at these horrid subjects, would not take any of the beastly exams, and would leave school as soon as possible. She occasionally tried to communicate this decision to her family, but they simply refused to listen.”
Source: The Green Knight
“They had expected to see the grey, heathery slope of the moor going up and up to join the dull autumn sky. Instead, a blaze of sunshine met them. It poured through the doorway as the light of a June day pours into a garage when you open the door. It made the drops of water on the grass glitter like beads and showed up the dirtiness of Jill's tear-stained face. And the sunlight was coming from what certainly did look like a different world- what they could see it. They saw smooth turf, smoother and brighter than Jill had ever seen before, and blue sky and, darting to and fro, things so bright that they might have been jewels or huge butterflies.”
Source: The Silver Chair
“They had f@@@ed the night before, and then again this morning, but that had been hard lust. Now Hunter wanted passion and slow, smooth rhythm. He wanted to feel the security of Dillon's embrace, the solid unfettered motion of their lovemaking, and he wanted to make Dillon understand that he no longer had to prove anything. He moved away and set his head on his own pillow, waiting for Dillon to find the rain's pulse.”
Source: Afflicted II
“They had felt hungry before, but when they actually saw at last the supper that was spread for them, really it seemed only a question of what they should attack first where all was so attractive, and whether the other things would obligingly wait for them till they had time to give them attention. Conversation was impossible for a long time; and when it was slowly resumed, it was that regrettable sort of conversation that results from talking with your mouth full. The Badger did not mind that sort of thing at all, nor did he take any notice of elbows on the table, or everybody speaking at once. As he did not go into Society himself, he had got an idea that these things belonged to the things that didn't really matter (We know of course that he was wrong, and took too narrow a view; because they do matter very much, though it would take too long to explain why.)”
Source: The wind in the willows
“They had found honey in the pyramids, buried among the dead—in case they’d gotten hungry on their journey. He wondered what the dead did now, without any more paths to guide them to the stars.”
Source: The Shivering Ground & Other Stories
“They had freedom as before, but without their vast riches. These previously privileged had what everyone else did, and were not given compensation, like some had predicted. In an instant, they had been turned into regular human beings. In one loud terrifying moment, people became equal within the law and as recipient of benefits. Before then, the entire revolution had seemed impossible. Although it was amazingly bloodless, these changes were welcomed by most and only resisted by a minute number who still could not see the benefit.”
Source: Zin
“They had gathered at Eastcheap to wait. At this time of day, the marketplace ought to have been thronged with people looking for bargains, moving from stall to stall, examining the fresh fish, choosing the plumpest hens, buying candles and pepper and needles. The stalls were open, but the fishmongers and cordwainers and butchers were doing no business, despite the growing crowd. The sun was hot, flies were thick, and the odors pungent; no one complained, though. They talked and gossiped among themselves, strangers soon becoming friends, for the normally fractious and outspoken Londoners had forgotten their differences, at least for a day, united in a common purpose and determined to revel in their triumph, for they were pragmatic enough to understand this might be their only one. Now they joked and swapped rumors and waited with uncommon patience, and at last they heard a cry, swiftly picked up and echoed across the marketplace: “She is coming!”
Source: When Christ and His Saints Slept
“They had gone through so much as children. It had been them against the world. Their bonds forged in the fires of hardship. Bonds that never frayed. Never weakened. They were more than friends; they were chosen family.”
Source: The Doomsday Butcher
“They had grown to loathe the man in his short time in their community but they pitied him in death. No one would ever know what had driven him or what had brought him to their town. Now they felt only relief that he would be gone...”
Source: Moon of the Crusted Snow
“They had grown up the best of friends, and seeing
him cut down at such a young age, never to recover fully and with many of his life's dreams impossible…it had destroyed a small part of her heart.”
Source: Once I Knew