But Where Were You Quotes

#1. I don't need my head examined, but where were you when I married my second husband. Sheesh.

Lisa Scottoline

#2. You may not be able to change the course of government, but you can achieve some peace. And books were the path to that. I grew up in a house where books were everywhere.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

#3. The library was quiet. It was busy but it was quiet and I thought it must be like this in a monastery where you had company and sympathy but your thoughts were your own.

Jeanette Winterson

#4. The wizards were good at wind, weather being a matter not of force but of lepidoptery. As Archchancellor Ridcully said, you just had to know where the damn butterflies were.

Terry Pratchett

#5. I like video games, but they're really violent. I'd like to play a video game where you help the people who were shot in all the other games. It'd be called 'Really Busy Hospital.

Demetri Martin

#6. Mrs. Bright cut another slice of the rich, dark cake. It was Mindy's fourth, counting dessert at home. But Mrs. Bright's layer cakes were, Mindy felt sure, the best in the world. Where else did you find the layers of icing almost as thick as the layers of cake?

Jane Louise Curry

#7. Well, you know how a river moves a mountain." The words surprised me at first, but I knew where they were coming from. "Stone by stone," she finished.

Lisa Wingate

#8. I've always been an ajumma, but when you get older, the culture we were brought up in works in our favor where aging is good, combatting the Hollywood idea that aging is bad. I'm very grateful for that.

Margaret Cho

#9. If I were there, Carrie, I would need to feel how soft the skin on the inside of your thighs is, first, how hot it is at that place where your thigh curves into your pussy. I love that place. I would kiss it first, but then lick it, inhale you.

Mary Ann Rivers

#10. The best meeting I ever went to was a meeting in France where the talk slots were 60 minutes long, but you were told to prepare a five-minute talk. It was absolutely great because the entire talk was a conversation between the speaker and the audience.

Tim Hunt

#11. Where the veil broke, you could see silvery clouds on which tall angels might stand. Not cute little Christmas angels, but high, stern angels in white robes, whose faces were sad and serious from being near God all day and hearing His decisions about the world.

Cynthia Voigt

#12. Things happened when you were little. Things you don't remember now, and don't want to. But they need to escape, need to worm their way out of that dark place in your brain where you keep them stashed.

Ellen Hopkins

#13. There was one moment where they were riding their little ponies in Scotland, and Stella said to me: 'Dad! You're Paul McCartney, aren't you?' 'Yes darling, but I'm Daddy really'.

Paul McCartney

#14. The lines on the page were pulled tight, like a man screaming, but not "Joe, where are you?" More like Joe, where is anything?

Charles Bukowski

#15. You always thought you knew where you were headed. But now your life's been interrupted, and these personal goals, hopes, and trajectories are being asked to take a backseat to what God uniquely has in mind for you.

Priscilla Shirer

#16. When I stepped back from the gallery I was in a phase where I thought I wasn't going to be making work for a gallery context for a while. People were like, "You should never leave a gallery if you didn't have somewhere else to go," but I wasn't trying to disrespect the gallerists in that way.

Kalup Linzy

#17. I remember in 'Law of Desire,' where I played a homosexual, that people were more upset that I kissed a man on the mouth than I killed a man. It's interesting to see how people can pardon you for murdering a man, but they can't pardon you for kissing one.

Antonio Banderas

#18. Animals come from nature. They were not designed. All my inspiration comes from nature, whether it's an animal or the layout of bark or of a leaf. Sometimes my patterns are very bold, and you can barely see where they come from, but all the textures and all the prints come out of nature.

Diane Von Furstenberg

#19. So many times, people want you to stay the way you were, be as you were before because they want to encapsulate you in a time so they can remember their youth. But you're here to continually push forward and move forward. That's where I'm at - I just want to always surprise people.

Maxwell

#20. Words were useless. At times, they might sound wonderful, but they let you down the moment you really needed them. You could never find the right words, never, and where would you look for them? The heart is as silent as a fish, however much the tongue tries to give it a voice.

Cornelia Funke

#21. I don't know where Hank Aaron will break Ruth's record but I can tell you one thing - ten years from the day he hits it three million people will say they were there.

Eddie Mathews

#22. Home was not the place where you were born but the place you created yourself, where you did not need to explain, where you finally became what you were.

Dermot Bolger

#23. If you were to sit me down in a classroom, with fluorescent lights humming and some woman trying to teach me Italian, there's no way. But scream goes to Italy, we stay in a squat, and the only way you can ask someone where to take a piss is to do it in Italian. So I learned Italian.

Dave Grohl

#24. But I'm sorry, where did you think you were, motherfucker? Connecticut? You're in a magic safe house in Bed-Stuy, borough of Brooklyn. There was a considerable Venn diagram overlap between people who lived in Bed-Stuy and people who had motherfucking guns. Fool.

Lev Grossman

#25. I knew at an early age I wanted to act. Acting was always easy for me. I don't believe in predestination, but I do believe that once you get where ever it is you are going, that is where you were going to be.

Morgan Freeman

#26. The point came when people were doing things I didn't feel competent to do myself. I'm not being modest; I honestly get lost. I was lucky in spotting what I did when I did, but there comes a point where you realise what you're doing is not going to be much good.

Peter Higgs

#27. Coraline? Oh, there you are. Where on earth were you?' 'I was kidnapped by aliens,' said Coraline. 'They came down from outer space with ray guns, but I fooled them by wearing a wig and laughing in a foreign accent, and I escaped.' 'Yes,

Neil Gaiman

#28. Moist had seen the Falls before and that's just what they were ... falls. Pretty good falls by the standard of falls, but once you'd looked at them for a few minutes undoubtedly someone would say; 'Where can we get a coffee around here?

Terry Pratchett

#29. I'll tell you what: If I could do it all over again, I'd spend more time helping others. All I've ever done is dig tunnels. Some of them were real beauties too, but they're all hidden underground, where they're no good to anyone but me.

Peter Brown

#30. There were no route maps posted on the walls, but a Wonderland-style sign commanding, 'If you know where you are, then please tell others.

Elizabeth Wein

#31. When they ask you where you're from, tell them your name was fleshed from the toothless mouth of a war-woman. That you were not born but crawled, headfirst - into the hunger of dogs. My son, tell them the body is a blade that sharpens by cutting.

Ocean Vuong

#32. Invisible Boy was fun. Everybody else's character, they knew where they were at already as a superhero. But invisible boy's character, you kind of grow up with him within the movie.

Kel Mitchell

#33. From the earliest days, videogame players were less interested in winning than in going to a new psychic place where things were always a bit different, but always the same. The gambler and the videogame player share a life of contradiction; you are overwhelmed, and so you disappear into the game.

Sherry Turkle

#34. Always look up to the better. They tell you where to go but never look down upon inferior because you know, you were once there.

Prashant Balan

#35. I spent a long time playing that game," she said. "Pretending there were other versions of this world, where other versions of me got to live, and be happy, even if I didn't, and you know what? It's lonely as hell. Maybe there are other versions, other lives, but this one's ours. It's all we've got.

Victoria Schwab

#36. You know, I went to Oberlin. At that time, grades were - you elected to have them or not. It was all of that era where grades were out the window. But I did very well in school. I didn't really study the arts; I practiced the arts.

Julie Taymor

#37. You may not always end up where you thought you were going, But you will always end up where you were meant to be.

Jessica Taylor

#38. None of us ask for some things. We don't ask to be born where we were. We don't ask for those things which limit us. We have to do the best we can with what we have where we are. And we can try to change things, but you can't do any of that if you refuse to accept where you are.

L.E. Modesitt Jr.

#39. But compared to writing a novel, where you can be God, I did the Bay of Pigs invasion in six pages once, and there were 50,000 guys with boots that I didn't have to pay, and all those extras; we didn't have to pay them.

John Sayles

#40. Just be careful," a Seattle homicide detective warned. "Maybe we'd better know where to find your dental records in case we need to identify you."
I laughed, but the words were jarring; the black humor that would surround Ted Bundy evermore begun.

Ann Rule

#41. We had had several mine disasters where workers, some of the workers were rescued. It was, you know, who was lucky and who weren't. Some would find the air pockets But, in this one, bam, it was just, everybody was gone and it greatly depressed the state.

Richard Grimes

#42. They think the only road is where they're heading, but you and I were meant to sail upon the sea.

Heather Dale

#43. Those few seconds when you're awake but empty. You forget where you are. What you are now, what you were before. It's all breath and heartbeat and blood moving. Like being in your mother's womb again. The peace of the void.

Rick Yancey

#44. If the day gets really bad, I can always pull out fan mail. Who else gets mail where kids write to you and say, 'Dear Mr. Scieszka, we were supposed to write to our favorite author, but Roald Dahl is dead. So I'm writing to you.'

Jon Scieszka

#45. Footsteps in the snow suggest where you have been, point to where you were going: but when they suddenly vanish, never dismiss the possibility of flight ...

Diane Duane

#46. Were a man to spend only one day in Sicily and ask, "What must one see?" I would answer him without hesitation, "Taormina." It is only a landscape, but a landscape where you find everything on earth that seems made to seduce the eyes, the mind and the imagination.

Guy De Maupassant

#47. My partner, Jeff Ullrich, and I always thought Earwolf was going to be big. There were a couple of studies before we launched saying podcasts were going to really grow. But I remember so many conversations at the beginning where people would say, 'How are you going to make money with this?'

Scott Aukerman

#48. She took my hands in her, then, and squeezed them. 'But you stayed where you were meant to be, and you didn't listen to them. Well done. That's quality, that is,' and she sounded proud. In that moment I forgot my hunger and I forgot my fear.

Neil Gaiman

#49. She joked about her fears, but it was the kind of joke where you knew people thought it was ridiculous, and you pretended you thought so too, but underneath you were completely serious.

Janet Fitch

#50. That morning we thanked the men who had helped bury Saidu. "You will always know where he is laid," one of the men said. I nodded in agreement, but I know that the chances of coming back to the village were slim, as we had no control over our future. We know only how to survive.

Ishmael Beah

#51. It's kind of weird. You can have hits, but it's hard to sustain a career. I went through that period where I didn't have a lot of hits, although people were still buying the records.

Gary Wright

#52. The accidents are things that audiences always remember most, I've found on my own movies. The things that they like the most are the things that were just by accident. So you have to create a situation where nothing but accidents can happen the entire time.

Robert Rodriguez

#53. Success and suffering will either darken your heart or make you wise, but they won't leave you where you were.

Timothy Keller

#54. I always wrote the music first, and the music gave me the mood and the lyrics were pretty much put in to give you a map, where that mood came from and where it's going. But my first love was really the music itself, and I guess I've gone back to that.

Billy Joel

#55. What people don't realize is that fame, whatever your worst experience in high school, when you were being bullied by those ten kids in high school, fame is that, but on a global scale, where you're being bullied by millions of people constantly.

Megan Fox

#56. You can do everything right, strictly according to procedure, on the ocean, and it'll still kill you, but if you're a good navigator, at least you'll know where you were when you died.
(In "The Nautical Chart" by Arturo Perez-Reverte)

Justin Scott

#57. When I got to filmmaking, the most democratic of environments where anybody could say anything, those were the best environments, but what you don't want to assume is that you know what the audience is thinking.

Rick Moranis

#58. You look back and see pictures of yourself, or hear an old song, and you know where that came from or why you were working on that - but you don't want to do that again. You don't necessarily hate it, but you're a very different person now, so, in that way you do.

Hamilton Leithauser

#59. No matter where you once were, no matter how dark your storm, God doesn't want you to remain there. Overcoming may not be easy, but it's possible when you ask your Father to battle for you.

Dana Arcuri

#60. You always were a strange child, Alexander," he said, "but vampires? I can't believe it."
I shrugged.
"Well, now you know where I get my biting sense of humor," I said weakly.

Isabelle Glass

#61. They might play Extinctathon, or one of the others. Three-Dimensional Waco, Barbarian Stomp, Kwiktime Osama. They all used parallel strategies: you had to see where you were headed before you got there, but

Margaret Atwood

#62. Were you ever at the cathedral in Chartres? You walk the labyrinth," he says, "set into the pavement, and it seems there is no sense in it. But if you follow it faithfully it leads you straight to the center. Straight to where you should be.

Hilary Mantel

#63. You expected too much of me' I told him, and he bowed his head. 'I don't know where you brought your grand ideas of men and women from. I don't want to know' I added hastily. But I must have been a prettier word that this' I said: 'are you quite sure that you were wise in leaving it?

J.M. Barrie

#64. A DRUNKEN brawl in Kuwait, since there really aren't any bars where you can drink alcohol. But it just so happened that there was a restaurant where we liked to eat, and where, not so coincidentally, it was easy to sneak in alcohol. We were there one night and started to get a

Chris Kyle

#65. We're no longer in the days where everything is super well crafted. But at the heart of the programs that make it to the top, you'll find that the key internal code was done by a few people who really know what they were doing.

Bill Gates

#66. Though this situation is extreme, have you ever found yourself in an unexpected place but where, deep down, you knew you were supposed to be?

C.S. Lewis

#67. never seen real darkness, not in the city, but how, if you stood peeing off the cabin porch on a moonless night, or took a walk through the woods where the treetops stitched out the stars, you could almost forget you were there, you felt invisible. Country dark, his mother called it.

Tom Franklin

#68. I had a scene where the chair was meant to slide off the table, but do you think it would slide off? No. We were running out of time and we had to get these scenes done urgently.

Dannii Minogue

#69. I think part of running for president, people want to know who you are, what influenced you, what motivates you, not just where you stand on issues but what is in your heart and what were things in your life that led you to believe the things you believe in, and fight for.

Karen Finney

#70. You never choose the way that you're raised, it's just the way that you were raised, but you do get to a certain age where you're in a position to question the expectations of you and the way that you've been formed by your surroundings.

Mia Wasikowska

#71. Stop smiling," I grumbled. "Can't.""Were you this irritating when we met?""I was charming. Very charming.""Where did Mr. Charming go?""That guy didn't have staying power.""But Mr. Irritating? He'll stick around?""Unfortunately.

C.D. Reiss

#72. He took her hand. If it were in my power, I would take you to that place from your movie, over the rainbow where dreams come true. But all I can offer is myself, and I'm not going anywhere.

Lisa Kessler

#73. You could name the great stars of the silent screen who were finished; the great directors gone; the great title writers who were washed up. But remember this, as long as you live: the producers didn't lose a man. They all made the switch. That's where the great talent is.

Ernst Lubitsch

#74. You are concerned citizens." He knew about concerned citizens. Wherever they were, they all spoke the same private language, where "traditional values" meant "hang someone." He did not have a problem with this, broadly speaking, but it never hurt to understand your employer.

Terry Pratchett

#75. He could hear his granny speaking. "No one's too poor to buy soap." Of course, many people were. But in Cockbill Street they bought soap just the same. The table might not have any food on it but, by gods, it was well scrubbed. That was Cockbill Street, where what you mainly ate was your pride.

Terry Pratchett

#76. Perfect love casts out fear. Where there is love there are no demands, no expectations, no dependency. I do not demand that you make me happy; my happiness does not lie in you. If you were to leave me, I will not feel sorry for myself; I enjoy your company immensely, but I do not cling.

Anthony De Mello

#77. Jimmy Boggs was born in a little town called Marion Junction, Alabama, where there were as many pigs, or more pigs, than even the people. But you know what? People in the South had an understanding that you could make a way out of no way, and that's how they survived.

Grace Lee Boggs

#78. My father said, You are a spirit. Where did you die?
and we were equally alive. I thought to correct him
but he was not in his perfect mind.

Katharine Whitcomb

#79. But a book that did what books always promised to do and never actually quite did: get you out, really out, of where you were and into somewhere better.

Lev Grossman

#80. Know what you desire, but, more importantly, why you desire it. That why was where the trick lay, I realized. Why was a land of trapdoors and hidden places, trees and rocks that looked like one thing, but were actually another.

Deb Caletti

#81. But it would be wrong to say you were unhappy there, for you had no trouble adjusting to your reduced circumstances, you found it invigorating to learn that you could get by on almost nothing, and as long as you were able to write, it made no difference where or how you lived.

Paul Auster

#82. A friend told me about a Nike competition, where they give you one minute to do tricks with a basketball. I wasn't going to go, but they were giving away free sneakers. I ended up coming in second place.

Ramon Rodriguez

#83. I have no doubt that they'll tell you a lot of kind things about me when my back is turned. They may not have been behind the door when God passed out the pretty faces, but Heaven only knows where they were when He divided up the gratitude.

Kurt Vonnegut

#84. But you stayed where you were meant to be, and you didn't listen to them. Well done. That's quality, that is.

Neil Gaiman

#85. But in the garden of simple, where all of us are nameless, you were never anything but beautiful to me.

Ani DiFranco

#86. There is a world beyond this black world. There is a world of the possible. A world where Anne can be queen is a world where Cromwell can be Cromwell. He sees it; then he doesn't. The moment is fleeting. But insight cannot be taken back. You cannot return to the moment you were in before.

Hilary Mantel

#87. My mother was amazing. I guess, in our community, if you wanted to get by you had to work hard. So she cleaned offices. She did everything that you could imagine. We were really poor. But she would say, 'Where you are is not who you are.'

Ursula Burns

#88. I was at that level of inebriation - that hinge, that crux, that ridge - where you can decide to proceed or step back. Red warning lights were flashing on the control panel but the aeroplane was not yet in a screaming death-dive.

William Boyd

#89. Growing up as an Asian American in this society, there were a lot of times where you feel isolated or out of place as an Asian. And growing up in White America, that's absolutely my experience. And I think that's why I got into acting because I wanted to be anybody else but Asian.

Ming-Na Wen

#90. I loved your world, Noah. It was a magical place, where there were stars and love, and there was hope. Hope. I don't think you know how it is not to have that. I stole some of yours. It was beautiful, but there were too many secrets between us, and I always knew I'd have to give it back.

Debbie Howells

#91. I remember living in a pretty small neighborhood where you could play in the streets and run around like crazy. My friends and I would ride our bikes around, but instead of just riding our bikes, we were solving crimes and going out in the woods to see what lay out there.

Maulik Pancholy

#92. Me being an actor was an accident, and not something I wanted to do, because I knew what happened eventually. Yeah, maybe you'd get famous, but then you wouldn't be famous anymore. Then you'd have to scramble to get back to where you were, and chances are, you wouldn't.

Carrie Fisher

#93. My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. Everything else was secondary. Sure, it was great to make a profit, because that was what allowed you to make great products. But the products, not the profits were the motivation.

Steve Jobs

#94. You never know where you're going to find the same thoughts in another brain, but when it happens you know it right off, just like you were connected by a small electrical wire that suddenly glows red hot and sparks.

Louise Erdrich

#95. People will tell you were they have gone, they'll tell you where to go, but until you get there for yourself you never really know.

Joni Mitchell

#96. If you were black, you experienced prejudice. It wasn't a real horrible thing for us; we went through it. We noticed it mostly in the South and in Las Vegas, where we couldn't stay in the hotels where we entertained. But that began to change.

Harold Nicholas

#97. My parents were very volatile but very loving. My father would get jealous if my mother looked at somebody. I used to be insanely jealous. It comes out of insecurity. It can come and go, but you get to the point in life where you don't have this raging jealousy and protectiveness about your world.

Felicity Kendal

#98. If you were designing an organism to look after life in our lonely cosmos, to monitor where it is going and keep a record of where it has been, you wouldn't choose human beings for the job. But

Bill Bryson

#99. Because you were raised by ignorant people. They taught you to use things before you understood them. To kill things before you recognized them. To hate things before you knew them. But you'll appreciate a thing better when you know where it comes from, when your hands know the shape of it.

Lila Bowen

#100. It wasn't so much that I thought there was nowhere to go, in this huge city; but with so many places to go, where were you supposed to begin?

Kelly Braffet