W Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with W. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“When my mother took her turn to sit in a gown at her graduation, she thought she only had two career options: nursing and teaching. She raised me and my sister to believe that we could do anything, and we believed her.”
“When my mother was raising me, she moved us upstate to the Woodstock area. Our closest neighbor was a mile away. She planted all her own vegetables.”
“When my mother was sick, I found myself needing to put down in my journals all sorts of things - to try to understand them, and, I think, to try to remember them.”
“When my mother was trying to teach me how to make friends when I was a kid, she'd bring girls over to the house and I'd give them all my clothes. Nothing changes, I still do it. And then I wonder, "Where is that really nice Isabel Marant dress that I spent a fortune on? Oh my god, I gave it to Liza."”
“When my mother would make me sandwiches for school - zucchini and eggs, pepper and eggs, everything was with eggs - the oil would drip out of the bag. She didn't care if I lost the sandwich - she wanted that brown bag back. She used to give me artichoke sandwiches. You have no idea how embarrassing it is to sit in the schoolyard eating an artichoke with a piece of bread. A lot of kids didn't know what it was, they'd say, Look at that guy eating flowers!”
“When my mother would tell me that she wanted me to have something because she as a child had never had it, I wanted, or I partly wanted, to give it back. All my life I continued to feel that bliss for me would have to imply my mother's deprivation or sacrifice. I don't think it would have occurred to her what a double emotion I felt. I could hardly bear my pleasure for the guilt. There is no wonder that a passion for independence sprang up in me at the earliest age. It took me a long time to manage the independence, (but) I have never managed to handle the guilt. In the act and the course of writing stories, these are the two springs, one bright, one dark, that feed the stream.”
Source: On Writing
“When my mouth shall be filled with dust, and the worm shall feed, and feed sweetly upon me, when the ambitious man shall have no satisfaction if the poorest alive tread upon him, nor the poorest receive any contentment in being made equal to princes, for they shall be equal but in dust.”
Source: Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions and Death's Duel
“When my muffin top makes an appearance after a dedicated weekend of pizza indulging, when I feel too tired to write and all my words sound boring, when my students aren’t laughing at my jokes, I am still enough.”
Source: Don't Pee in the Wetsuit: A Worldwide Romp Through Grief, Laughter and Forgiveness
“When my name started popping up I was quite irritated and a little bit in shock.”
“When my neighbor walks the dogs, he performs a ritual act of sacer simplicitas, to use the church Latin: "sacred simplicity." Walking the dog is in truth a ritual of renewal and revival on an intimate scale - a small rebirth of well-being on a daily basis.”
“When my nephew was 3 and 4, he would say the most genius things. He said, You're hammer macho with FBI dogs. I thought it was just one of those great lines.”
“When my nine goes buck, it will bust your head like a watermelon dropping 12 stories up.”
“when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office; and I hope any conscientious public servant would do the
same.”
“When my old man wanted sex, my mother would show him a picture of me.”
“When my oldest boy was about 14, I started to talk to him about some of the mistakes I made in life, just to put a few dents in that shiny armor.”
“When my oldest brother started acting. From there, I wanted to act myself. That's the long story short.”
“When my opera Plump Jack was performed in 1989, my first piano teacher sent me something that I'd composed when I was four. I remember I played it, and it still sounded like me. I'm the same composer I was then.”
“When my opponent's clock is going I discuss general considerations in an internal dialogue with myself. When my own clock is going I analyse conctrete variations.”
“When my own child was lost, I'd been unable to eat, or even speak, from sheer grief. The fury and sorrow that had consumed me had left nothing for anything else, as though a madness had descended upon me. One that was gradually fading.”
Source: The Fox Wife
“When my own son is going through what he goes through, coming back, I can certainly relate with other families, who kind of fill these ramifications of some PTSD.”
“When my own writing needs a perk, I open Zukofsky and read from "A" - particularly sections "22" and "23." It can be opaque, but I love the intensity.”
“When my pals in high school were starting to drink, it always looked unappealing to me. I would be at a big party and see one of the popular girls or football players completely wasted and puking and acting a fool, and think to myself, There’s nothing cool about that. I never wanted to be that out of control.”
Source: Official Book Club Selection: A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin
“When my pals in high school were starting to drink, it always looked unappealing to me. I would be at a big party and see one of the popular girls or football players completely wasted and puking and acting a fool, and think to myself, there is nothing cool about that. I never wanted to be that out of control.”
“When my parents died they both were 47, and they died of complications of different diseases; one being diabetes.”
“When my parents died, it became clear to me that there was an end in sight. Death was never a real thing to me. And then when that happened I realized I only have so many years left, if I'm lucky.”
“When my parents first arrived there, North Dakota had just been admitted to the Union, and the country was still wild and harsh.”
Source: Wunnerful, Wunnerful: The Autobiography of Lawrence Welk
“When my parents first separated, my father had moved into a dark apartment in a corporate-looking building facing a grove of eucalyptus trees. I remember he got an ice-cream maker so we could make ice cream together. I remember the ice cream tasted like ice crystals. I remember finding a photograph of a beautiful woman with a blurry face on his dresser. I remember thinking the whole place felt incredibly lonely. I remember feeling sorry for him.
Months later, when he told me he was getting married, to a woman I hadn't yet met, I thought of the woman in the photograph and realised that his loneliness had lied to me. It wasn't his but mine, my own loneliness reflected in the cage of his new life, a space in which I felt I had no place.”
Source: Make It Scream, Make It Burn
“When my parents fought, I'd run up to my room, put on The Sound of Music, open the window and sing out. My voice was my escape. I saw it as a way out.”
“When my parents got divorced, there was a custody fight over me. ... and no one showed up.”
Source: It's Not Easy Bein' Me: A Lifetime of No Respect but Plenty of Sex and Drugs
“When my parents passed on, and we read their wills, we discovered something we didn’t at all expect, especially from our devoutly Catholic mother: they had both left instructions that their bodies be donated to science. We were bewildered and we were pissed. They wanted their cadavers to be used by medical students, they wanted their flesh to be cut into and their cancerous organs examined. We were breathless. They wanted no elaborate funerals, no expense incurred for such stuff – they hated wasting money or time on ceremony, on appearances. When they died there was little left – the house, the cars. And their bodies, and they gave those away. To offer them to strangers was disgusting, wrong, embarrassing. And selfish to us, their children, who would have to live with the thought of their cold weight sinking on silver tables, surrounded by students chewing gum and making jokes about the location of freckles. But then again: Nothing can be preserved. It’s all on the way out, from the second it appears, and whatever you have always has one eye on the exit, and so screw it. As hideous and uncouth as it is, we have to give it all away, our bodies, our secrets, our money, everything we know: All must be given away, given away every day, because to be human means:
1. To be good
2. To save nothing”
Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
“When my parents realized that what I liked was fashion, they gave me good advice. I remember my father telling me that I should try to do an internship. They never said, "This is a world we don't know; it might be something strange," or "That is not serious," or things like that. They always said, "Try. We'll help you. We'll send drawings to people if you want. We'll write letters for you." What I'm very thankful for is they never made me think that something was impossible. They were really, really supportive. They are still.”
“When my parents send me emails the first 3 are blank.”
“When my parents separated, I was very grateful.”
“When my parents went off to Knoxville to work, I lived with my father's mother. She was strict - the kind who starched and ironed dresses. I had to sit more than I played. Oh, I was miserable. I liked being out with the animals. I'd come in the house with my hair pulled out, sash off the dress, dirty as heck. I was always getting spanked.”
“When my parents were getting divorced, I just said to myself, 'Go to sleep, and tomorrow you can go skiing.' I cried myself to sleep, and in the morning I was up on the mountain, and I was good.”
“When my parents were growing up the world's population was under three billion. During my children's lifetime, it is likely to exceed nine billion. You don't need to be an expert to realise that sustainable development is going to become the greatest challenge we face this century”
“When my parents were liberated, four years before I was born, they found that the ordinary world outside the camp had been eradicated. There was no more simple meal, no thing was less than extraordinary: a fork, a mattress, a clean shirt, a book. Not to mention such things that can make one weep: an orange, meat and vegetables, hot water. There was no ordinariness to return to, no refuge from the blinding potency of things, an apple screaming its sweet juice.”
“When my passions flare, diplomacy is not my métier”
Source: Origin
“When my phone chimes with a text message on Monday morning, I'm still in that dreamy state between sleep and awake where you can pretty much convince yourself of anything. Like that a teen Mick Jagger is waiting in your driveway to take you to school. Or that your favorite book series ended with an actual satisfying conclusion, instead of what the author tried to pass off as a satisfying conclusion.”
Source: A Week of Mondays
“When my physicality is involved, it's kind of my comfort zone, so I find it much easier to access emotions.”
“When my pillow would no longer be wet,
when I won’t curl up, cursing my fate,
maybe then I’ll fly, feel alive again
then somehow maybe I’ll get rid of this pain.”
Source: Stolen Reflections
“When my pop career was over, I was scratching my head, thinking, "God, how am I going to do something after I'm forty?" I was in my mid-thirties, thinking I was on the scrap heap.”
“When my prayers to God were met with indifference, I picked up a pen, I wrote my own deliverance”
“When my problems seem overwhelming and impossible to solve, I hold fast to these facts: God is real, He is right, and He cares.”
“When my reason is afloat, my faith cannot long remain in suspense, and I believe in God as firmly as in any other truth whatever; in short, a thousand motives draw me to the consolatory side, and add the weight of hope to the equilibrium of reason.”
“When my relations with the Communist Party gave me the necessary perspective I decided to write my autobiography. I wanted to show how a man can pass from literature held sacred to action which nevertheless remains that of an intellectual.”
“When my relationship ended with Gabriel all those years ago, I was devastated for a while, and then I did what every self-respecting woman would do: I shut the door on it, on him. I taught myself to think of Gabriel as someone who belonged to my teenage years, a first crush, little more to me than my brief fixation with the singer Johnnie Ray. Seeing Gabriel again, like this, in the place where we once meant so much to each other, could she,e me to my core if I let it.”
Source: Broken Country
“When my relationship failed due to her secret affairs, I struggled with how my abandonment of the child would affect their future childhood development with me living thousands of miles away.”
“When my Republican colleagues talk about family values, they mean that a woman should not be able to have the right to control her own body; that women should not be able to purchase the contraceptives that they want. Those are their family values, not our family values.”
“When my reputation was at its height, classmates insulted me right to my face as I walked down the hall. When a teacher called on me, boys snickered and girls rolled their eyes. My body and face burned. I felt mortified. I contemplated suicide.”