T Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with T. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“This was the thing with boys like him. What he was feeling just then, that rage, wasn't the world falling in on him. It was an illusion shattering, the one that told him he deserved everything, and that it was owed to him simply because he existed.”
Source: Lore
“This was the time in her life that she fell upon books as the only door out of her cell. They became half her world.”
“This was the time of the day when i most wished i were able to sleep. High school.
Or was purgatory the right word? If there were any way to atone for my
sins, this ought to count toward the tally in some measure. The tedium was
not something I grew used to; every day seemed more impossibly
monotonous than the last.
Perhaps this could even be considered my form of sleep—if sleep was
defined as the inert state between active periods.”
Source: Midnight Sun
“This was the time when all we could talk about was sentences, sentences—nothing else stirred us. Whatever happened in those days, whatever befell our regard, Clea and I couldn’t rest until it had been converted into what we told ourselves were astonishingly unprecedented and charming sentences:
“Esther’s cleavage is something to be noticed” or “You can’t have a contemporary prison without contemporary furniture” or “I envision an art which will make criticism itself seem like a cognitive symptom, one which its sufferers define to themselves as taste but is in fact nothing of the sort” or “I said I want my eggs scrambled not destroyed.”
At the explosion of such a sequence from our green young lips, we’d rashly scribble it on the wall of our apartment with a filthy wax pencil, or type it twenty-five times on the same sheet of paper and then photocopy the paper twenty-five times and then slice each page into twenty-five slices on the paper cutter in the photocopy shop and then scatter the resultant six hundred and twenty-five slips of paper throughout the streets of our city, fortunes without cookies.”
“This was the time when Mother usually did her knitting. With ten children in the family, she didn't have time to knit more than one pair of mittens a year for each of them, so she gave the mittens to them at Christmas. The children never asked who the mittens were for, even though they watched each one grow. Some had stripes of bright color and some had little patterns, and of course some were big and some were small.”
Source: The Best Christmas
“This was the tree, and it seemed to me standing there to resemble those men, the giants of your childhood, whom you encounter years later and find that they are not merely smaller in relation to your growth, but they are absolutely smaller, shrunken by age. In this double demotion the old giants have become pygmies while you were looking the other way.”
Source: A Separate Peace
“This was the tricky bit. The really tricky bit, trickiness cubed.”
“This was the trouble with emigration - it dismantled the patriarchy. Because really, what did Assunta, or any woman, need a husband for, when she did every goddamn thing herself?”
Source: The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna
“This was the trouble with families. Like invidious doctors, they knew just where it hurt.”
Source: The God of Small Things
“This was the true miracle of life, he thought. Not so much to be born as to bear up under what comes your way. To find a way forward. To embrace what was good.”
Source: Good Dirt
“This was the truth at the core of my existence: this yawning emptiness, scantily clad in rage. It had been there all along.”
“This was the ultimate form of ostentation among technology freaks - to have a system so complete and sophisticated that nothing showed; no machines, no wires, no controls.”
“This was the ultimate leap of faith, in a way: I could hardly trust anyone, so I had to trust everyone.”
Source: Permanent Record
“This was the unexpected ... unforeseeable resolution of the paradox ... her personal goodness was no longer the issue because it had been replaced by the sweetness of relationship.”
Source: The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
“This was the version of her Blake she’d first met. They reconnected with the fire that had drawn them together and kept them together years later. For him, she would always burn.”
“This was the very purpose of creation that each unique, individual being should participate in its own way in the divine Being, should realize its eternal 'idea' in God, should 'become' God by participation, God expressing himself through that unique being.”
“This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.”
Source: The voyage of the Dawn Treader
“This was the void. Not blackness, not nothingness. This was what lay beneath the thinly painted scrim of reality.”
Source: The Ocean at the End of the Lane
“This was the way he had to go; he had no choice. He had never had any choice. He was only a dreamer.”
Source: The Lathe Of Heaven
“This was the way of a small place full of interwoven families. From birth, people developed the necessary social skill of being duplicitous. Be polite and mind yer own business. Never say true things if it didn't help matters; in fact, the truth often made matters worse. The present was complicated enough. And history? Well that had been the tragedy that lay behind it all. The truth was often way too painful; it would end in talk of heinous crime. So no one bothered to speak of it.”
Source: The Mermaid of Black Conch
“This was the way of it with Parker. One kiss, and she was lost.”
Source: Back To You
“This was the way the night had cashed in. Choices had been made and things happened, and here we were. It was sad, and funny. My life was made of this. Stuff like this.”
Source: Palo Alto: Stories
“This was the wedding menu.
Starters
Rounds of Grana Padano
Breads
Seafood platters
Prosciutto with melon
Prawn cocktails
(The prawn cocktails were at Mrs. Gardner's insistence. She said she'd never heard of prosciutto and was dubious about meat served with fruit.)
Entrées
Chicken with white sauce and vegetables, or
Beefsteak with mushrooms and béarnaise sauce
(Alex's requests. We copied them from the menu of his favorite restaurant.)
Dessert
Platters of cannoli, cassata, biancumanciari, setteveli, and almond cookies
The desserts were my wish list. Traditional and Sicilian, just the way I wanted them. Mrs. Gardner said she wasn't "a sweet tooth" (in a way that made it sound like a kind of tribe), and Alex couldn't care less about dessert. I thought of these desserts when I went to aerobics classes, trying to lose weight before the wedding- imagined the smooth filling of the cannoli, the cool velvet of the cassata, and the toothy crunch of the almond cookies.”
Source: Season of Salt and Honey
“This was the woman Narasimhan had married, as opposed to whatever girl from Madras his family wanted for him. Subhash wondered how his family reacted to her. He wondered if she'd ever been to India. If she had, he wondered whether she'd liked it or hated it. He could not guess from looking at her”
Source: The Lowland
“this was the wonderful thing about strangers. they were big blank pieces of paper, you could draw watever you like on their impresionable surfaces”
“This was the worst story yet. The phantom life that might have been.”
Source: A Great Reckoning
“this was the worst thing that Professor Grimes had ever done to her - made her doubt she was a good scholar. He's destroyed her faith in her own ability to think, and to judge the results of her own thought, instead of turning to him at every step for confirmation. And it was just so unfortunate that it took his death for her to conceive, research and carry out an entire project on her own.”
Source: Katabasis
“This was their first encounter with the fact that a full stomach meant good spirits; an empty one, bickering and gloom.”
“This was their way of honoring the dead. The story over, the demands of their own hard, rough lives began to re-assert themselves in their hearts, in their nerves, their blood and appetites. Would that the dead were not dead! But there is grass that must be eaten, pellets that must be chewed, hraka that must be passed, holes that must be dug, sleep that must be slept. Odysseus brings not one man to shore with him. Yet he sleeps sound beside Calypso and when he wakes thinks only of Penelope.”
Source: Watership Down
“This was to be man sex.”
Source: Afflicted
“This was to say, however, that she did not long, at times, for some even greater variation, that she did not pass through those abnormal hours in which one thirsts for something different from what one has, when those people who, through lack of energy or imagination, are unable to generate any motive power in themselves, cry out, as the clock strikes or the postman knocks, in their eagerness for news (even if it be bad news), for some emotion (even that of grief); when the heartstrings, which prosperity has silenced, like a harp laid by, yearn to be plucked and sounded again by some hand, even a brutal hand, even if it shall break them; when the will, which has with such difficulty brought itself to subdue to its impulse, to renounce its right to abandon itself to its own uncontrolled desires, and consequent sufferings, would fain cast its guiding reins into the hands of circumstances, coercive and, it may be, cruel.”
“This was too much for him to handle. It was like watching memories of his life play out from a different camera angle, sometimes with new scenes added. He was living DVD extras.”
Source: Destroyer of Worlds
“This was too much. Too much of what I wanted, too much of what I knew I couldn’t have.”
Source: Misinformation
“This was too much. "I refuse. I absolutely REFUSE to be an onion.”
Source: Harriet the Spy
“This was totally influenced by me and the direction that I am writing about and the stuff that I am writing about. There is just no way that you can be as intense as what I have been through in my life over a drum beat machine, sample, or loop; it's just not going to happen.”
“This was triumph, but I sensed that the smoke of battle hid vile carnage, and when it cleared the victory might not be as sweet.”
Source: Mythangelus
“This was true: and while he spoke my very conscience and reason turned traitors against me, and charged me with crime in resisting him. They spoke almost as loud as Feeling: and that clamoured wildly. "Oh, comply!" it said. "Think of his misery; think of his danger–look at his state when left alone; remember his headlong nature; consider the recklessness following on despair–soothe him; save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for 'you'? or who will be injured by what you do?"
Still indomitable was the reply–"'I' care for myself.”
“This was true enough, though it did not throw any light upon my perplexity. If we had heard of it to start with, it is possible that all the family would have considered the possession of a ghost a distinct advantage. It is the fashion of the times. We never think what a risk it is to play with young imaginations, but cry out, in the fashionable jargon, 'A ghost! - nothing else was wanted to make it perfect.' I should not have been above this myself. I should have smiled, of course, at the idea of the ghost at all, but then to feel that it was mine would have pleased my vanity. Oh, yes, I claim no exemption. The girls would have been delighted. I could fancy their eagerness, their interest, and excitement. No; if we had been told, it would have done no good - we should have made the bargain all the more eagerly, the fools that we are. ("The Open Door")”
Source: The Gentlewomen of Evil: An Anthology of Rare Supernatural Stories from the Pens of Victorian Ladies
“This was true mountain country, now, and true wilderness. Valley meadows, leafy trees halfway up the slopes, then evergreens gradually taking over at the higher altitudes... their road wound its way up and down through tree-tunnels that only intermittently allowed them to see the sky.
It would have been a lovely journey under other circumstances. The weather remained fair, and remarkably pleasant, even if the night was going to be cold. She had only read about the wilderness, never experienced it for herself, and she found herself liking it a lot. Or- parts of it, anyway. The way it was never entirely silent, but simply 'quiet'- birdsong and insect noises, the rustle of leaves, the distant sound of water. She had never before realized how noisy people were. And the forest was so beautiful. She wasn't at all used to deep forest; it was like being inside a living cathedral, with beams of light penetrating the tree-canopy and illuminating unexpected treasures, a moss-covered rock, a small cluster of flowers, a spray of ferns. These woods were 'old', too, the trees had trunks so big it would take three people to put their arms around them, and there was a scent to the place that somehow conveyed that centuries of leaves had fallen here and become earth.”
Source: One Good Knight
“This was true, she knew. Being involved with him gave her the privileged position of knowing him intimately. There were nights when he would wake up sweating, the nightmares returning out of the blue after a peaceful period sometimes weeks long. Growing up in the middle of a fierce civil war could indelibly mark a child. To Mykl, birthdays were always just another year under the belt, where the only reason to celebrate was that you weren’t dead yet. She took his hand, squeezed it tight and led him inside.”
Source: Dead Beckoning
“This was truly advanced WASP: how to comfort a wronged wife and mother without acknowledging any misdeeds done or embarrassment caused by loved ones.”
Source: Seating Arrangements
“This was truly guerilla filmmaking. We shot out in the middle of nowhere in a place called Delta Flats, where basically every day was some new minor catastrophe.”
“This was very exciting. I'd never had two boys get into a fight over me before. The fact that one of the boys was my stepbrother, however, and held about as much romantic appeal for me as Max, the family dog, somewhat dampened my enthusiasm. And Michael wasn't much of a catch, either, when you actually thought about it, being a potential murderer and all. Oh, why did I have to have such a couple of losers fighting over me? Why couldn't Matt Damon and Ben Affleck fight over me? Now that would be truly excellent.”
Source: Mean Spirits
“This was weird. The thing that could have driven two friends instantly apart was actually drawing them closer together.”
Source: The Fallen Series: 4-Book Collection
“This was what being cured was like: like being in a fishbowl, circling always inside the same glass.”
Source: Delirium Stories: Hana, Annabel, Raven and Alex
“This was what Dennis had been doing lately: granting everyone permission to feel the way they were going to feel regardless. It was the books. Dennis’s relationship to his own feelings had become tender, curatorial. Dismantling. Entomological. Mave couldn’t be like that. She treated her emotional life the way she treated her car: She let it go, let it tough it out. To friends she said things like “I know you’re thinking this looks like a ’79, but it’s really an ’87.” She finally didn’t care to understand all that much about her emotional life; she just went ahead and did it. The point, she thought, was to attend the meager theater of it, quietly, and not stand up in the middle and shout, “Oh, my God, you can see the crew backstage!” There was a point at which the study of something became a frightening and naive thing.”
“This was what happened after you'd been together with someone a long time. You loved that it was old and worn and comfy, but sometimes it was old and worn and comfy.”
Source: The Story of Us
“This was what happened to girls who played dark games; they lost to the men who played them better.”
Source: Little Deaths
“This was what happiness felt like - this wondrous, miraculous alternative to dread.”
Source: There Is No Dog
“This was what he stood for: a world where there would be room enough even for such a mass of clumsy and cumbersome freedom. A margin of humanity, of tolerance, where some of life’s beauty could take refuge. His eyes narrowed a little, and an ironic, bitter smile came to his lips. I know you all, he thought. Today you say that elephants are archaic and cumbersome, that they interfere with roads and
telegraph poles, and tomorrow you’ll begin to say that human rights too are obsolete and cumbersome, that they interfere with progress, and the temptation will be so great to let them fall by the road and not to burden ourselves with that
extra load. And in the end man himself will become in your eyes a clumsy luxury, an archaic survival from the past, and you’ll dispense with him too, and the only thing left will be total efficiency and universal slavery and man himself will disappear under the weight of his material achievement. He had learned that much behind the barbed wire of the forced labor camp: it was our education, a lesson be was not prepared to forget.”
Source: The Roots of Heaven