Never Quite Quotes

#1. Russia can be quite a dangerous place sometimes, but I never think about it.

Marc Almond

#2. Riding is a complicated joy. You learn something each time. It is never quite the same, and you never know it all.

Monica Dickens

#3. As far as I was concerned men were something you had around the place, not particularly interesting, but quite harmless. I had never shown the slightest feeling for them, and apart from my never wearing a skirt, saw nothing else in common between us.

Jeanette Winterson

#4. The problem with looking in the mirror is that you never know how you will feel about what you see. Sometimes, when my hormones are out of sync, I have no interest in the mirror, and if I do look I think everything is all wrong. Other times, I am quite pleased with what I see.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#5. I was never ambitious to be a good actor. I just love doing it and I seem to be quite suited for it.

Katherine Helmond

#6. Weddings are quite similar to funerals in that, apart from the main players, when it's all over, people are never quite sure what they should be doing next, which is why they see if there is any wine left.

Terry Pratchett

#7. It is good to have a failure while you're young because it teaches you so much. For one thing it makes you aware that such a thing can happen to anybody, and once you've lived through the worst, you're never quite as vulnerable afterward.

Walt Disney

#8. It was that kind of story. The kind that's like a sneeze which threatens but never quite arrives.

Stephen King

#9. Never mind failures; they are quite natural,
they are the beauty of life, these failures.
What would be LIFE without them

Swami Vivekananda

#10. Obviously, I'm still building a name and reputation for myself. The stigmas that come with my past will remain there for quite some time, but I'm not afraid to challenge those things, and I never have been.

Sasha Grey

#11. Being a pastor, of course, obviously people would say it (shouldn't) have done much but, boy, it sure gave me a peace I never had before. I think we struggle in life. Even people of faith struggle when things don't work out quite the way we think they should.

Todd Burpo

#12. A mistake which is commonly made about neurotics is to suppose that they are interesting. It is not interesting to be always unhappy, engrossed with oneself, malignant and ungrateful, and never quite in touch with reality.

Cyril Connolly

#13. That was the trouble with moving houses; no matter how carefully you packed the books, they never ended up on the new shelves in quite the right place.

Val McDermid

#14. I'm really quite exhausted at the moment, but you never know, you are always surprised at what you can find sometimes, and maybe I will find something deep within to find the desire to swim fast

Leisel Jones

#15. I never felt I was quite the ticket academically. I always felt I had to put in an enormous amount of effort not to be disappointing. So I worked really hard, but at the time it suited me, because I didn't do very much else.

Emily Mortimer

#16. Motherhood to me is something that I always wanted, but never quite knew how it was going to happen.

Catherine Zeta-Jones

#17. I can't be you. You can't be me. You can imagine another well - but never quite perfectly, you know?

John Green

#18. I never saw myself as Mr. Ugly, but I'm not that handsome. I can sort of be made to look quite a lot better or quite a lot worse.

Colin Firth

#19. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is.

Douglas Adams

#20. People who have never done theatre before, and have only worked in front of a camera, would find it very difficult, I think, to know how to command a stage and work with the logistics of being on stage. They're very different. The theatre is quite tricky, actually.

David Wenham

#21. When you've got good actors, they're going to come up with good stuff, but you're never quite sure how the dynamics are going to work between them.

Martin McDonagh

#22. I love 'Saturday Night Live,' and I really feel like people who have left before me have always stayed with the show. They never really quite left, which is nice. Everyone kind of stays close.

Fred Armisen

#23. The docks were said to be quite tough, but there were pubs you didn't go into if you were a respectable ... but um, I never felt a sense of danger in Liverpool.

Derek Taylor

#24. I've realized now that hope almost never goes together with reason. It's something quite irrational and instinctive.

Vasily Grossman

#25. I sit there in my bed staring at the wall, feeling happy, enjoying the way the wall looks, how pink and how white it is. Pink and white, as far as I'm concerned, have never looked quite so pink and white before.

Elizabeth Wurtzel

#26. I have never watched property programmes. I watch Property Ladder, because I feel it's very rude for a director to work very hard on a programme and you can't be bothered to even watch it. So I do watch it, but I have to turn away when I'm on screen. It's quite unpleasant seeing myself up there.

Sarah Beeny

#27. I wandered through various public rooms, glory below, gloom above: for the look of lust always is gloomy; lust is never quite sure
even when the velvety victim is locked up in one's dungeon
that some rival devil or influential god may still not abolish one's prepared triumph.

Vladimir Nabokov

#28. I never did quite fit the glamour mode. It is life with my husband and family that is my high now.

Patty Duke

#29. The Holocaust never quite leaves Israeli Jews alone. Arabs use it against them and they use it against Arabs. Jews use it against other Jews. Even the president of the United States, it seems, can use it against the prime minister of Israel.

David K. Shipler

#30. Never doubt how beautiful you are, Callie. For your beauty has quite ruined me for all others. And, frankly, I rather wish I'd found you years ago.

Sarah MacLean

#31. The thing about Stephen Schwartz is that, while it may be difficult to learn - it's a little bit like[Stephen] Sondheim; Sondheim is quite difficult to learn - but, once you have it in you: it never leaves you. It becomes some of your favorite music; it really does.

Kerry Ellis

#32. You're one of those people who fall off a tree and never quite reach the ground.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#33. This is worth an eternity of torture," he whispered. "I'm quite certain I love you more than anyone I've ever loved, in any life. I may have lost my soul when I was turned, but it's been replaced by you, Cassandra. I'll never let you go.

L.J. Kentowski

#34. I don't seem to have ever had a plan, but I have always been quite good at walking through doors when they are opened. I am never any good at anticipating what will happen next, but I always go for it when it does.

Julian Fellowes

#35. Because of the accumulation of objects, things are never quite the way I want them to be. There has always been a lack of, well, clarity.

B. D. Wong

#36. He wanted to explain how people were never quite what you thought they were.

William Golding

#37. I quite often don't have breakfast, and I never have lunch. I find it helps not to wake my stomach up because if I had a good big breakfast, I would be ready for a snack at 11 and then a three-course lunch, then I'd be ready for tea, then a cocktail and then an enormous dinner.

Joanna Lumley

#38. You're never quite sure how you feel about a neighbor until a 'For Sale' sign suddenly appears in front of his house.

Orlando Aloysius Battista

#39. I guess the magic of being someone else is lost when you can never quite shed your own skin.

Julie Murphy

#40. The future ... seems to me no unified dream but a mince pie, long in the baking, never quite done.

Zomick's Bakery

#41. Give my love to the kids, I shout as the door closes, and I've never seen that shade of red on a face. It's quite lovely, actually, I should aim for it more often.

Kiersten White

#42. I just never, ever want to give up. Most battles are won in the 11th hour, and most people give up. If you give up once, it's quite hard. If you give up a second time, it's a little bit easier. Give up a third time, it's starting to become a habit.

Lewis Gordon Pugh

#43. You need not fear it, but you must always bear in mind that the past is never quite as finished with you as you think you are with it.

Kathryn Kennish

#44. I never was interested in politics. I'm quite unable to work up any kind of belligerent feeling. Just as I'm about to feel belligerent about some country I meet a decent sort of chap. We go out together and lose any fighting thoughts or feelings.

P.G. Wodehouse

#45. I grew up in a culture of motorbikes. So I like racing just fine. Quite a lot, actually. That was when I was a boy in Australia. And I never really made the jump to cars after that.

Chris Hemsworth

#46. Heartache, Daphne eventually learned, never really went away; it just dulled. The sharp, stabbing pain that one felt with each breath eventually gave way to a blunter, lower ache - the kind that one could almost - but never quite - ignore.

Julia Quinn

#47. Let me soap you," he murmured.
"Thank you for your good intentions," she said, "but my two hands are quite enough."
"Even if it's just your back," the foreigner begged.
"That would be silly," she said. "People never soap their backs.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

#48. I have never said that the terrorists' interpretation of Islam is the accurate or correct one. But I have pointed out that the terrorists portray themselves quite successfully among Muslims as the exponents of true and pure Islam, and moderates have mounted no successful response as yet.

Robert Spencer

#49. Clover was a stout motherly mare approaching middle life, who had never quite got her figure back after her fourth foal.

George Orwell

#50. Until late in life, I was never quite good enough for my father, and I suppose that is part of what drives me even now, well after his death in 1992.

Richard Smalley

#51. My entire life, I've never been able to understand the concept of not being happy or excited when others were successful or had something good happen to them. It quite honestly is a concept that I cannot grasp.

Dan Pearce

#52. Estrella," he said has he pulled his mouth away and began kissing along my jawbone to my neck. "I have never wanted anyone, anything, quite like I want you."
... "I promise you, you can have me. I am yours," I said.

Karina Halle

#53. Concerning the factors of silence, solitude and darkness, we can only say that they are actually elements in the production of the infantile anxiety from which the majority of human beings have never become quite free.

Sigmund Freud

#54. Everybody's a bird, locked up in a pretty cage. Sometimes you fly to a slightly bigger one, but you never quite have the courage to abandon captivity completely.

Dave McKean

#55. I've never been the sort of firebrand that I've been made out to be. I'm actually quite a mild person.

Richard Dawkins

#56. I quite enjoy cooking but I'm not consistent. I can't follow the recipe book. If something goes well, I'll never make it again, which is completely stupid. It's a one-shot kind of deal.

Rebecca Hall

#57. As Rachel walked along the beach she realised that, because of the dogs, two strangers had chatted, found out quite a lot about each other, but never exchanged names, and may well never see each other again.

Mary Grand

#58. Haunted since the day its discovery was projected all over the world in 1994, I, like many others, have always wanted to see inside the Chauvet cave, site of the world's earliest known cave art. Quite rightly, we will never go. It is closed to the public.

Simon McBurney

#59. The bawling of babies, always in a way
Inappropriate - why should the love and innocent
Greet existence with wails? - is proof that not all
Is well. Dreams and deliveries never quite mesh.

Eugene H. Peterson

#60. Your plan isn't going to work."
He was all innocence. "I have a plan?"
"Oh, please," she scoffed. "You're going to try to wear me down in hopes that eventually I'll give in."
"I would never dream of it."
"I'm sure you dream of quite a bit more," she muttered.
-Sophie & Benedict

Julia Quinn

#61. The whole house smells of Granny. There's something quite special about a granny's house. Even if ten or twenty or thirty years go by, you never forget how it smells.

Fredrik Backman

#62. To be a child means to owe one's existence to another, and even in our adult life we never quite reach the point where we no longer have to give thanks for being the person we are.

Hans Urs Von Balthasar

#63. Acting is a child's prerogative. Children are born to act. Usually, people grow up and out of it. Actors always seem to me to be people who never quite did grow out of it.

Joanne Woodward

#64. If you have ever clothed another with woe, as with a garment of pain, you will never be quite as happy as though you had not done that thing.

Robert Green Ingersoll

#65. But her mother was one of those weakest of women who can never forget the beauty they once possessed, or quite believe they have lost it, remaining, even after the very traces of it have vanished, as greedy as ever of admiration.

George MacDonald

#66. I never quite toed the line. I was a bit disruptive. All my early school reports from the age of 5 were 'Daniel must learn not to distract others.' And now, that's what I do for a living.

Dan Stevens

#67. I'm not a bad driver. And I never will be because I took lessons when I was quite a boy. I never had to pass a test because there wasn't such a thing when I first started driving a motor car. So I didn't have to pass one.

Richard Murdoch

#68. I think because of my background - I went through university and did an academic career and fell into acting - I've never had a game plan for my career because I got into it quite ad hoc.

Rob James-Collier

#69. Packing the basket was not quite such pleasant work as unpacking the basket. It never is.

Kenneth Grahame

#70. If you have been sick for a long, long time, Prozac may make you high. It probably won't make you, never quite managed to be a part of, but a world, nevertheless, that you at first fit into with the precision of a key to a lock or a neurotransmitter to its receptor.

Lauren Slater

#71. Words could never quite express what it means to us. Respectfully,

Katy Regnery

#72. Yes, Nicky, but you think I know everything because I never tell you anything I am not quite certain of

Georgette Heyer

#73. I'm never quite sure if I'm me when I'm dressed up.

Neil Gaiman

#74. Things got said, the kinds of embarrassing things that don't go away. Tempers ran high. My paternal grandfather's teak desk required a new panel, which never quite matched the others. Intellectual debate can be very hard on furniture.

Nancy Kress

#75. When I was quite a boy I had a spasm of religion which lasted six weeks ... But I never since have swallowed the Christian fable.

George Meredith

#76. Writing a novel in general is like trying to reach a mountain top you'll never quite reach - so you try again and maybe get a little closer.

Harlan Coben

#77. Are all our dates going to be like that?" said Perkins.
"I hope not", I replied with a smile, "but it was quite fun, wasn't it? I mean, it's not like we were killed or eaten or anything, right?"
"If your idea of a good date is not being killed and eaten, you'll never be disappointed.

Jasper Fforde

#78. I've never really felt like I was a child actor. Just an actor who happened to be quite young.

Saoirse Ronan

#79. I remember when I used to sit on hospital beds and hold people s hands, people used to be shocked because they d never seen this before. To me it was quite normal.

Princess Diana

#80. If you don't act now while it's fresh in your mind, it will probably join the list of things you were always going to do but never quite got around to. Chances are you'll also miss some opportunities.

Paul Clitheroe

#81. The border means more than a customs house, a passport officer, a man with a gun. Over there everything is going to be different; life is never going to be quite the same again after your passport has been stamped.

Graham Greene

#82. Children," Lady Bridgerton said with a sigh as she retook her seat. "I am never quite certain if I'm glad I had them.

Julia Quinn

#83. I think that when we talk about education I was also blessed to talk with my dear brother Arne Duncan. I had never met him, the secretary of Education. We had a wonderful talk. And I had told him quite explicitly education is a right, it's not a race to the top.

Cornel West

#84. There is no reason for believing that any sort of gods exist, and quite good reasons for believing that they do not exist and never have. It has all been a gigantic waste of time and a waste of life. It would be a joke of cosmic proportions if it weren't so tragic.

Richard Dawkins

#85. [H]e could feel his unshakable enemy, depression, blooming in him like a pernicious flower that could never quite be ripped out.

Andrea Speed

#86. I never quite envisioned myself a proper doctor under that white coat, but I was interested in the idea of healing and in the psychological dimension rather early on.

Robert Jay Lifton

#87. The dishes that were meant to be hot were never quite as warm as those that were meant to be chilled.

Renata Adler

#88. He looked the boy up and down as if he had never seen a child before and wasn't quite sure what he was supposed to do with one: eat it, ignore it or kick it down the stairs.

John Boyne

#89. Cleverness never seems quite so impressive when regarded outside the moment,

Brandon Sanderson

#90. I am not quite sure of being a man: I never found it very difficult. It seemed to me that you had only to let yourself alone.

Jean-Paul Sartre

#91. I am quite wiling to confide entirely in human being, except that at some moment or another human beings get preoccupied, moody, busy, inattentive, and there come an end to the interest, and this never happens in a journal!

Anais Nin

#92. I've never had anything cold and wet touching my butthole before. That was quite the experience!

Ronda Rousey

#93. What did he say about me?" Tom demanded.
"You don't want to know."
"You're right."
"Told you," Prophet said, looking quite pleased with himself. "Don't say I never tell you anything.

S.E. Jakes

#94. It's a very strange and quite terrifying experience to watch yourself on TV. I never like to do it with other people.

Simon Bird

#95. I've never really had any barrier to break I guess. I don't really have anything to rebel against. I'm quite lucky.

Emma Watson

#96. Interestingly, I never thought I'd do an adaptation. I've also been quite against them. I think trying to translate one medium to another is wrong. I never really felt that books fitted into film. Generally people are disappointed, aren't they?

Andrea Arnold

#97. I transcend earthly bounds. I never cease to amaze myself because I haven't yet found my limits. I am quite ready to accept the limits of what I can do, but every time I feel that way - boom! - God touches me and I do something that's even more stupendous than whatever I've done up to then.

Don King

#98. I grew up in East Germany, so we had to learn Russian in school ... everybody hated it. I never thought it would come in handy ... And being an actor, I've been able to use it quite a bit.

Tom Wlaschiha

#99. I never had any idea that I would have a career quite honestly. You never really have any idea what is going to happen. You have an idea of what you would like to happen.

Colin Hanks

#100. I never played the 'decoration,' I always played the one who suffered. And then I got very lucky in my middle career, when I started playing the hero, which at that point was quite rare for women.

Tyne Daly