Top 100 I Had To Quotes
#1. I have known no man of genius who had not to pay, in some affliction or defect either physical or spiritual, for what the gods had given him.
Max Beerbohm
#2. I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded - and how pitiful that was.
Julian Barnes
#3. I was not so sure but too tired and too relieved to go further that night. To reach one another again had been far enough.
Jeanette Winterson
#4. When TJ and I got to the bottom, we found Hope staring terrified at Molly. The dog had something long and horrible and meaty in her jaws. It took me a moment to register that it was a very fresh-looking human spine. Damn, she was hungry.
David Wong
#5. I looked over at Edwart. It occurred to me that I had never seen him in direct sunlight. Interestingly enough, I had also never seen him sparkle. Could the two be related?
The Harvard Lampoon
#6. What I don't like is when I see stuff that I know has had a lot of improv done or is playing around where there's no purpose to the scene other than to just be funny. What you don't want is funny scene, funny scene, funny scene, and now here's the epiphany scene and then the movie's over.
Paul Feig
#7. My life had become a catastrophe. I had no idea how to turn it around. My band had broken up. I had almost lost my family. My whole life had devolved into a disaster. I believe that the police officer who stopped me at three a.m. that morning saved my life.
Trey Anastasio
#8. About six months ago, I listened to Siamese Dream. That was the first time I'd ever really heard my own album, because I had separated from the experience of making the record. And it really moved me. It made me cry, it's so beautiful.
Billy Corgan
#9. When I was younger, I felt very much like, 'Oh, I have to be a certain way, I have to look a certain way.' You really, really don't. That's the way women are treated differently than men. I mean, I've had actors argue with me about this.
Anne Hathaway
#10. That I happened to fall into a career that no other girls wanted isn't surprising to me. I wanted something that didn't exist, so I had to create it.
Ronda Rousey
#11. I had hoped to be a poet, and for a long time I tried to write poetry. My first published pieces were poems.
Norman Lock
#12. I won't say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We used to write essays like What I'm Going to be If I Grow Up
Lenny Bruce
#14. Somebody came up to me after a talk I had given, and say, "You make mathematics seem like fun." I was inspired to reply, "If it isn't fun, why do it?"
Ralph P. Boas Jr.
#15. She was so delicate that, while we sat beneath the linden branches, a leaf would fall and drift down and touch her skin, and it would leave a bruise. So as we sat in the afternoon hour, beneath that fragrant linden bower, I had to chase all of the leafs that fell away.
Roman Payne
#16. If I'd had fame early on, I'd have been able to abuse it in the way that a young man should.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#17. I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote 'Search.' There was no carefully designed work plan. There was no theory that I was out to prove.
Tom Peters
#18. I had wrung impressionism dry and I finally came to the conclusion that I know neither how to paint nor how to draw.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
#19. I went to work in an office and learned, among other lessons, to do things I did not care for, and to do them well. Before I left this office, two of my books had already been published.
Sigrid Undset
#20. I wanted to go home to the safety of my bed and to my stuffed animals and to my people I'd known my whole life. I had nothing to say to anybody, and fervently prayed that no one there would have anything to say to me.
Rachel Cohn
#21. The last time I was this scared, I peed myself."
"The last time I was this scared," Radar says, "I actually had to face a Dark Lord in order to make the world safe for wizards.
John Green
#22. I'm one of those people who had Christmas and my birthday always combined, and generally, my birthday was pretty much ignored. But my parents are always good about making some kind of special effort to make me feel like I also have a birthday that exists.
Noel Wells
#23. I gave a silent prayer of thanks that I didn't seem to be lousy. I had probably been too filthy for any self-respecting louse to take up residence.
Patrick Rothfuss
#24. I do play all the characters, when I write them, one after another. If they actually had to film me, the only one I could play would be Samwell Tarly or Hot Pie.
George R R Martin
#25. Then you go ahead and cry, " Will said.
That ended my weeping. Had he asked me not to cry, I would not have been able to stop, but his permission somehow quit my tears.
Kathleen Grissom
#26. I'm a huge fan of Canadian rock-and-roll. When I was growing up, Rush came out with a record called Hemispheres, and I must have listened to that record for two years straight. Even when I was asleep I had it on. So, yeah, whenever I hear a Rush tune, the first thing I think of is Toronto.
Kiefer Sutherland
#27. I convinced my parents to let me see an agent, but because I had been taught never to speak to strangers, I was so quiet during the interview, they said to bring me back when I was older.
Jason Fuchs
#28. If I had to sit in Heaven forever, knowing that there are these people, millions and millions- probably billions of people, suffering these eternal horrible torments and there was nothing I could ever do for them, that, to me, would be Hell.
Richard Carrier
#29. Someday I hope Americans will not believe that anyone had to spend his or her days fighting for limited government because everyone they know wants maximum freedom and minimum statism.
Grover Norquist
#30. A feeling erupted in my stomach, like nothing would ever be the same again. Like good karma was catching up with me. Like someone had opened up the lid to my lobster tank and I was finally breathing in the shockingly fresh air.
Francesca Zappia
#31. Now for the hitch in Jane's character,' he said at last, speaking more calmly than from his look I had expected him to speak. 'The reel of silk has run smoothly enough so far; but I always knew there would come a knot and a puzzle: here it is. Now for vexation, and exasperation, and endless trouble!
Charlotte Bronte
#32. I wanted to keep the music very electronic, very filmic, and give it an almost sci-fi like quality. Music is a necessity for me. I go into the studio at least five days a week, every week, so once I had the idea and the template, the process was quick and fun.
Martin Gore
#33. The other girls in the village never felt restless. Nhamo was like a pot of boiling water. 'I want ... I want ... ,' she whispered to herself, but she didn't know what she wanted and she had no idea how to find it.
Nancy Farmer
#34. I didn't decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms I believed in, or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president.
John McCain
#35. I did comics on the Internet because it was free, and if I had made printed copies, I wouldn't have known what to do with them. But I knew how to make a website when most people didn't, and back then, that was enough!
John Allison
#36. I've had offers to sign a record deal, but the people I've talked to have wanted to package me and have me meet with songwriters who've written stuff for Whitney Houston, that sort of thing. That's not at all my style.
Lukas Haas
#37. I think what my father appreciated was the science experiment of life. He had these kids, and they had their own experiences. He wanted us to discover the world for ourselves.
Ahmet Zappa
#38. I had to do a lot of dancing in 'Queens of Country.'
Lizzy Caplan
#39. When I started Biocon in 1978, the obstacles I needed to navigate were manifold - ranging from infrastructural hurdles to issues related to my credibility as a business woman. With no access to venture capital, money was scarce and high-cost, debt-based capital was all I had.
Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw
#40. Big deal, so he scored. The last time I saw someone dance like that I had to pay her $20 and have my pants dry cleaned the next day.
Dennis Miller
#41. I was able to shoot a movie like 'Tree of Life' because I had done 'Y Tu Mama Tambien.' The camera needed to capture that sense of freedom and joy and life you have when you're young.
Emmanuel Lubezki
#42. At this stage of my life, I had reached the conclusion that I would never be the protagonist of any story. The only thing I could hope for was to make an appearance in somebody else's.
Cesar Aira
#43. I've had my own personal stalker. I would get nude drawings of my body with a knife and a message saying 'I'm watching you' and 'I'm going to get you.'
Erin Gray
#44. I didn't care that we'd caught a few stares from students passing by. I didn't care that the bell to begin class rang. I didn't care that everything between us had changed. All I cared about was the fact that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get any closer to Jack.
Brodi Ashton
#45. When I first read 'The River,' I had theories on what it was about, but once we got into rehearsal, I realized it's much simpler: It's about how human beings try to connect. The play holds a mirror up to the audience, and they take from it what's relevant to their lives.
Laura Donnelly
#46. And suddenly I felt completely strange, like the distance between us was much much greater than what I could see from where I was standing. Like that line, always so clear to me, had somehow shifted, or never even been where I'd thought it was at all.
Sarah Dessen
#47. Uncertainty to me was like Aardvaark to other people. A curious thing I had no notion of, but recongnised through secondhand illustrations.
Jeanette Winterson
#48. I just close my eyes and act like I'm a 3-year-old. I try to get as close to a childlike level as possible because we were all artists back then. So you just close your eyes and think back to when you were as young as you can remember and had the least barriers to your creativity.
Kanye West
#49. And with that, the future I had imagined, the one just about to be realized, the culmination of decades of striving, evaporated.
Paul Kalanithi
#50. I had hoped that the board would accept Johnny Hon's offer of a loan to buy the stadium back for the club, as I think this would be best way of continuing the long tradition of Cambridge United in Cambridge - and it was a generous offer.
Anne Campbell
#51. I began to write in the first place because I expected everything to change, and I wanted to have things in writing the way they had been. Just a little things, of course. A little of my little.
William, Saroyan
#52. It used to be that phrases and lines would come into my head, often many of them in a period of five days or a week, and maybe I didn't know what I was talking about, but the words had a kind of heaviness or deliciousness to them.
Donald Hall
#53. If you look at the history of technology over a couple hundred years, it's all about time compression and making the globe smaller. It's had positive effects, all the ones that we know. So we're much less likely to have the kind of terrible misunderstandings that led to World War I, for example.
Eric Schmidt
#54. I did a lot of thinking, and used mental activity to relieve whatever feelings I had. I became very left-brained, and I was good in school. That is, I was a smart kid.
George Carlin
#55. I used to build my own PCs ... and actually had one of the first water-cooled, overclocked PCs around. I ran it at over 4Ghz, and this was back in 2001 ... but alas, I do not have the time for that fun anymore.
Brian Krzanich
#56. Truth was like an exploding star: violent, glitteringly beautiful. Now that I had seen it, felt it, it was impossible to settle for anything less.
Marie Rutkoski
#57. The sign outside the juice store had said CHANGE YOUR FUTURE WITH SUNSHINE IN A GLASS. My future was looking pretty great already, and I couldn't wait to see what would happen if I added orange juice to it.
Maggie Stiefvater
#58. I have never had a problem with people not being able to understand the words and the meanings in Titus.
Julie Taymor
#59. I had panic attacks during rehearsal. There were times when I really thought I wasn't going to be able to do it.
William Petersen
#60. It's amazing - and poignant - to think that Leonardo (da Vinci)did consider himself as something of a failure. He didn't believe that he had achieved everything he might have done. His notebooks have a repeated refrain: 'Tell me if I ever did a thing.
Ross King
#61. I made up my mind that I was going to be just like Elvis. It never occurred to me that Elvis was a man. I just wanted to be him. He had a huge impact on me, right down to that black leather jumpsuit he wore on the '68 Comeback Special.
Suzi Quatro
#62. I kind of grew up my whole life as an underdog. I had two older brothers who would beat on me and then let me know I wasn't much compared to them. And it's still like that. Guys like that keep you humble, being around them every day and realizing I'm still the little brother to them.
A. J. Hawk
#63. If I had to pick another career, I'd be an optometrist for potatoes. That's where the money is.
Peter Wisan
#64. I grew up in the church and had religion in my life for a long time. I'm not really a church goer, but I definitely have a hunger for a spiritual connection to the world and for my soul to be healed.
Wes Bentley
#65. I tried to show him that he was the answer to a question I hadn't even known I had been asking.
Jojo Moyes
#66. I could be making a lot more money now if I had chosen a different kind of movie, but none of that matters to me ... I've done the parts I wanted to do.
Jessica Lange
#67. The Lord help us!' he soliloquised in an undertone of peevish displeasure, while relieving me of my horse: looking, meantime, in my face so sourly that I charitably conjectured he must have need of divine aid to digest his dinner, and his pious ejaculation had no reference to my unexpected advent.
Emily Bronte
#68. I ain't no saint, but I've tried never to do anything that would hurt my family or offend God ... I figure all any kid needs is hope and the feeling he or she belongs. If I could do or say anything that would give some kid that feeling, I would believe I had contributed something to the world.
Elvis Presley
#69. The bungalow was a hideous red-brick structure built, if I had to guess, in the early 1980s by some hack architect who'd been aiming at art deco and hit Tracy Emin instead.
Ben Aaronovitch
#70. I was creating commitment devices of my own long before I knew what they were. So when I was a starving post-doc at Columbia University, I was deep in a publish-or-perish phase of my career. I had to write five pages a day towards papers, or I would have to give up five dollars.
Daniel Goldstein
#71. I'm proud to be Japanese and I wanted my country to succeed. I believed my system was a way that could help us become a modern industrial nation. That is why I had no problem with sharing it with other Japanese companies, even my biggest competitors.
Taiichi Ohno
#72. We know everyone we love is going to die, but we don't know it, can't possibly believe it, she thought, or long ago I would have gone and started digging until I had a hole big enough to lie down in.
Rae Meadows
#73. I had a dream that I could please everyone. Well that will always be a dream, because I find that near to impossible to do.
Starley Ard
#74. Object-oriented programming had boldly promised "to model the world." Well, the world is a scary place where bad things happen for no apparent reason, and in this narrow sense I concede that OO does model the world.
Dave Fancher
#75. The purpose of my life had always been to free people from concern. I dubbed it, 'The church of freedom from concern,' or 'FFC.
Jim Carrey
#76. When you've had a near-death experience, your life is never the same. A divine fire is supernaturally transferred into your soul, to tell everyone about your encounter. This in itself, is a miracle. As such, I am on a mission to rid hell of its future recruits.
Josephine Akhagbeme
#77. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and today -- all without seeing him. It is a long time to be alone; still, it is better to be alone that unwelcome. I had to have company -- I was made for it, I think -- so I made friends with the animals.
Mark Twain
#78. My main goal, starting out as a young actor, was to carry the reins that Pac left off and to reach the depths as an actor that I know he would have reached had he still been here with us.
Michael K. Williams
#79. I'm one of those people who really wants to do everything. And if I had enough time, I really would.
Anna Popplewell
#80. The house had been torn down. Nothing is left but the old white fence. There used to be privet bushes everywhere. "The smell of privet is the smell of summer for me," I say to Catherine.
"Yes, Mom." she says, "I know, Your memories are my memories now.
Abigail Thomas
#81. When I was very young in London, I had a bank account, which didn't have a great deal in it. I should think at least every three months the bank manager would call me up and threaten to strangle me because I had no money, and I was writing checks.
Peter Mayle
#82. I had admired Richard Burton for years and years before I had ever worked with him. He was a great, great actor. It was a joy to get to know him as a person.
Gale Gordon
#83. Jessie Wallace was the first time I erupted. She was late, she was young. She's not like that any more. I lost my temper. It was silly and I burst into tears and ran up to the producer. I said I had been terrible and amateur.
Barbara Windsor
#84. Growing up training, I use to get up so early I would wave to the garbage men going by. So, I had this relationship with Blue Collar America and I really liked it. I felt that lots of those people looked forward to me winning.
Gerry Cooney
#85. Of course, even though Peter and I have had our disagreements, we share a bond I'd defend to the death if needs be. If all goes according to the natural order of things, siblings will know us longer than our parents, longer than our spouses and friends. Lord Westdale to Duncan
Kieran Kramer
#86. All of my conjuring had led only to ruin and death. Now I was a wounded witch, waiting in the forest, undone.
Ariel Levy
#87. My first novel, 'The Lions of Lucerne,' just poured out of me. It was an amazing feeling of accomplishment. My biggest fear and therefore my biggest obstacle to becoming an author had been, 'What if I spend all that time and the book is no good?'
Brad Thor
#88. I guess that's the thing about a hero's journey. You might not start out a hero, and you might not even come back that way. But you change, which is the same as everything changing. The journey changes you, whether or not you know it, and whether or not you want it to. I had changed.
Kami Garcia
#89. I was so thin, I had to run around in the shower to get wet. That kind of thin.
Kurt Fuller
#90. Time is relative, Einstein tells us. It's an artificial construct that we have created to remind us that we are finite, mortal. The universe doesn't wear a wristwatch. And thankfully, I decided to stop wearing one the day I found out I had terminal cancer." --My Own Personal Singularity
Glen Robinson
#91. When I think back, I get mad at what they did to those poor men. Ernie must have had PTSD - they called it shell shock - and the doctors told him to keep it all bottled up inside. They didn't know any better, but it was like treating syphilis with candy bars.
Anita Diamant
#92. I did play Ramses II once, who lived to be 91 and had 120 children, but he died 4,000 years ago.
Christopher Lee
#93. Hardly had I left when we ran into the Korean war, doubled what I had asked for and doubled it again. I had told him I would stay in Government, be honored to, but not with the Air Force.
Stuart Symington
#94. She left me alone in the riddle. I needed her because I loved her - or I loved her because I needed her. Why had the feelings turned to a maze? Now I was lost in the dark.
M. Pierce
#95. Suddenly a mist fell from my eyes and I knew the way I had to take.
Edvard Grieg
#96. I had a huge advantage with Edward Norton because he's directed a movie before, so one thing he appreciates is how hard my job is, he's very sensitive to that. We actually ended up finishing "Leaves of Grass" a day early.
Edward Norton
#97. I had been an activist on the issue of HIV, primarily in the African American and Latino communities here in the U.S. for many years. It was horrifying to me how the pandemic was raging right here in this country but no one was talking about it.
Gloria Reuben
#98. In effect, I was asking that if Russia mobilized against Austria, the German Government, who had been supporting the Austrian demand on Serbia, should ask Austria to consider some modification of her demands, under the threat of Russian mobilization.
Edward Grey
#99. My mother would cry about my blindness and the hopelessness of my ever seeing, but I told her I wasn't sad. I believed God had something for me to do.
Stevie Wonder
#100. Shoulders slumped in defeat, I turned to walk away. The drugstore had caved under the force of my criminal will, but the Coke machine was virtuous. Inviolate.
Laura Bickle
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