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W Quotes

Browse famous quotes beginning with W. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.

All W Quotes

“What always attracted me to [Bob] Dylan, and what has sustained me as a Dylan listener, or has always continued to surprise me, is his voice, the way he sings, the way he wraps his voice around certain words, the way he backs off from melodic moments, the way he moves forward to grab something in a song that, were anybody else performing it, they would have no idea it was even there.”

“What am I? Average. A middleweight. Not the brightest bloke in the world, but certainly not the dimmest. I have read books like The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Love in the Time of Cholera, and understood them, I think (they were about girls, right?), but I don't like them very much; my all-time top five favourite books are The Big Sleep my Raymond Chandler, Red Dragon by Thomas Harris, Sweet Soul Music by Peter Guralnick, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams and, I don't know, something by William Gibson, or Kurt Vonnegut. I read the Guardian and the Observer as well as the NME and music glossies; I am not averse to going down to Camden to watch subtitled films (top five subtitled films: Betty Blue, Subway, Tie Me Down!, The Vanishing, Diva), although on the whole I prefer American films, and therefore the best films ever made: The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Taxi Driver, Goodfellas and Reservoir Dogs.) I'm ok looking... a girlfriend once told me I looked a bit like Peter Gabriel, and he's not too bad, is he? I'm average height, not slim, not fat, no unsightly facial hair, I keep myself clean, wear jeans and T-shirts and a leather jacket more or less all the time apart from in the summer when I leave the leather jacket at home. I vote Labour. I have a pile of classic comedy videos... I can see what feminists are on about, most of the time, but not the radical ones. My genius, if I can call it that, is to combine a whole load of averageness into one company frame. I'd say that there were millions like me, but there aren't, really: lots of blokes have impeccable music taste but don't read, lots of blokes read but are really fat, lots of blokes are sympathetic to feminism but have stupid beards, lots of blokes have a Woody Allen sense of humour but look like Woody Allen. Lots of blokes drink too much, lots of blokes behave stupidly when they drive cars, lots of blokes get into fights, or show off about money, or take drugs. I don't do any of these things, really; if I do OK with women it's not because of the virtues I have, but because of the shadows I don't have.”

“What am I doing here?” she demanded, bewildered. “You’re having dinner,” her little brother said. “Stop it! I’m not hungry. Stop it!” John held the spoon in front of her. His cherubic face was dark with anger. “You said you wouldn’t leave me.” “What are you talking about?” Mary demanded. “You said you wouldn’t do it. You wouldn’t leave me alone,” John said. “But you tried, didn’t you?” “I don’t know what you’re babbling about.” She noticed Astrid then, leaning against a filing cabinet. Astrid looked like she’d been dragged through the middle of a dog fight. Little Pete was sitting cross-legged, rocking back and forth. He was chanting, “Good-bye, Nestor. Good-bye, Nestor.” “Mary, you have an eating disorder,” Astrid said. “The secret is out. So cut the crap.” “Eat,” John ordered, and shoved a spoonful of food in her mouth. None too gently. “Swallow,” John ordered. “Let me—” “Shut up, Mary.”

“What am I doing? Perhaps the evil witch had a point. No, I refuse to believe that. She's so cold and cruel. I shake my head. She's wrong. I am right for Christian. I am what he needs. And. In that moment of stunning clarity, I don't question how he's lived his life until recently—but why. His reasons for doing what he's done to countless girls—I don't even want to know how many. The how isn't wrong. They were all adults. They were all—How did Flynn put it?—in safe, sane, consensual relationships. It's the why. The why was wrong. The why was from his place of darkness. I close my eyes and drape my arm over them. But now he's move on, left it all behind, and we are both in the light.”

“What am I doing with my life am I living it or am I just going to some hum drum job that I don't really wanna be at doing some miniscule task being paid to be a mindless drone or am I living my life on my terms - the way I want to live doing thing that I want to do - make no mistake as hard as this is- this is what I want to do! Some people can make fun of it, they can crack jokes they can analyze and criticize and make all the fun they want but I'm living my life. I'm doing it! What are you?”

“What am I doing with my life? In the American sense, the bootstrapping capitalist one, her life as-is seemed a good answer. She was a relatively successful business owner, she employed young people, she brought good, wholesome food to the hood. During the pandemic, she had managed to keep her entire full-time staff on payroll, even through the early months when the restaurant was closed and only she and a skeleton crew fulfilled delivery orders. Sure. And yet. So many, too many people had nothing. What was the point of working hard, having something, when one had to live with the knowledge of so much want?”

“What am I eliminating? The bourgeois infatuation with peaceful conservation of the past. This is a binding force, a thing which holds humankind into one vulnerable unit in spite of illusionary separations across parsecs of space. If I can find the scattered bits, others can find them. When you are together, you can share a common catastrophe. You can be exterminated together. Thus, I demonstrate the terrible danger of a gliding, passionless mediocrity, a movement without ambitions or aims. I show you that entire civilizations can do this thing. I give you eons of life which slips gently toward death without fuss or stirring, without even asking 'Why?' I show you the false happiness and the shadow-catastrophe called Leto, the God Emperor. Now, will you learn the real happiness?”

“What am I going to do without you, Oscar?’ ‘You’ll be fine’, I answered. ‘You could probably do some time away from me. I’m a pain in the neck. You’re always saying so.’ ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘It’ll be great to have you out of my hair for a few months.’ ‘Oscar, seriously though.’ ‘What?’ ‘Stay in touch, will you? Please?’ ‘Of course I will.’ ‘Promise?’ ‘Yes, I promise.’ ‘Good, because I’m really going to miss you.”

“What am I in the eyes of most people - a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person - somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then - even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart.”