Once I Was Quotes

#1. Once upon a time, when I was young, his forgetting might have rendered my memory meaningless. I no longer require so much from life.

Abigail Thomas

#2. I once listed all the good things I did over the past year, and then turned them into resolution form and backdated them. That was a good feeling

Robert Fulghum

#3. Once I had feared that telling the truth would be like falling, that love would be like hitting the ground, but here I was, my feet firmly planted, standing on my own.

Rachel Hartman

#4. I believe that Ronald Reagan will someday make this country what it once was ... an arctic wilderness.

Steve Martin

#5. It took a while to find a passion for another career that was as strong as the passion that I had for football. Once I found it in acting, it was simple. Use the tools you were given from playing football and apply it to your new passion. I have done that through acting, producing and writing.

Maurice Hall

#6. Would I be as strong as that once I did that thing Christophe was talking about? Blooming? Would I smell like a bakery item? Or was that just him? Did he use pie filling for cologne?

Lilith Saintcrow

#7. Somewhere a million miles away, the girl I once loved was going down her road, and I was stuck back on mine.

Jennifer Flackett

#8. I got fired once for putting like a packet of biscuits through a fan - I was really bored.

Gold Panda

#9. Always the rationalization is the same-"Once this situation is remedied, then I will be happy." But it never works that way in reality: The goal is achieved, but the person who reaches it is not the same person who dreamed it. The goal was static, but the person's identity was dynamic.

Phillip Moffitt

#10. Once when I was 16 I had my car taken away from me for being past curfew. Oh, and I said a bad word once, and I actually did get my mouth washed out with soap.

Ashlee Simpson

#11. Once I read a story about a butterfly in the subway, and today, I saw one. It got on at 42nd, and off at 59th, where, I assume it was going to Bloomingdales to buy a hat that will turn out to be a mistake - as almost all hats are.

Miklos Laszlo

#12. One of my favorites of all time was with Jim Jarmusch, called 'Dead Man.' I was in that with Johnny Depp. I ride really well, and I shoot a gun really well. I love the genre. Once I did Westerns, I was hooked.

Lance Henriksen

#13. I once listened to an Indian on television say that God was in the wind and the water, and I wondered at how beautiful that was because it meant you could swim in Him or have Him brush your face in a breeze.

Donald Miller

#14. There is no more pressure on my rudder, he once remarked. Plain sailing, no drag on other people either. A bit of dancing now and then, that's fine. I still see those girls, but I pretend they're paintings. Or advertisements. But that was only later.

Cees Nooteboom

#15. But Hood was not yet done with her. He swung her up again, spun and once more hammered her onto the stone. 'I have had,' the Jaghut roared, and into the air she went again, and down once more, 'enough' - with a sob the crushed, broken body was yanked from the ground again - 'of- 'your- justice!

Steven Erikson

#16. My father once asked me if I knew where yonder was. I said I thought yonder was another word for there. He smiled and said, No, yonder is between here and there.

Siri Hustvedt

#17. So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.

Robert Frost

#18. Frank Sobotka in 'The Wire' on HBO was one of the greatest characters I've ever played. They cut his throat at the end of that season. There's something about creative coupling that seems to go with great characters, and the fact that you can never play them again once you're done.

Chris Bauer

#19. Once, when our paths crossed, he told me that the kindest thing I'd ever done was to not marry him. Perhaps because he was passionately in love with a woman who possessed the wisdom to adore him as he deserved.

Lorraine Heath

#20. Months ago, I'd painted him as the dragon. Never once did I imagine he was the shining knight the entire time.

Rachel Van Dyken

#21. But what do you think, my lady?'
'I think that she must be cruel if she wants to be loved,' Gertrude explained. ' For once a lady succumbs to the man's desire, he rejects her as unworthy of it.'...Was love like a hunger, easily satisfied by feeding? Or did it grow by what it fed on?

Lisa Klein

#22. Now I knew why I had been hollowed out, why my insides were chipped away with a chisel and mallet. It was to make room for this new feeling, this love that was so vast, so expansive it could not have fit into the vessel I once was.

Lang Leav

#23. For once, I wished I wasn't so broken, so Rhian had a best friend who was strong and not afraid to love, to hold up as an example of what was possible. Instead, I was her excuse that she wasn't being irrational. I was her enabler.

Samantha Young

#24. Once, if I remember well, my life was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed.

Arthur Rimbaud

#25. Before I was known, I would go on stage and pretend I was other people. Once I pretended I was mentally handicapped. It was really wrong. One time I was a bad magician. And one time I pretended I was a Christian comic.

Andy Dick

#26. When I first got into technology I didn't really understand what open source was. Once I started writing software, I realized how important this would be.

Matt Mullenweg

#27. Fear and guilt are the dark angels that haunt rich men, Khader said to me once. I wasn't sure if that was true, or if he simply wanted it to be true, but I did know from experience that despair and humiliation haunt the poor.

Gregory David Roberts

#28. Reality the iconoclast once more. Heaven will solve our problems, but not, I think, by showing us subtle reconciliations between all our apparently contradictory notions. The notions will all be knocked from under our feet. We shall see that there never was any problem.

C.S. Lewis

#29. I did some acting in college. But then everything stopped when I was a junior, in the fall of 2001, when I started becoming religious. Once I became a full-on Hasidic, I stopped everything. I stopped music. I stopped acting.

Matisyahu

#30. I considered; my life was so wretched it must be changed, or I must die. After a season of darkness and struggling, light broke and relief fell. My cramped existence all at once spread out to a plain without bounds ...

Charlotte Bronte

#31. When I told my sister, who was a fashion designer in college, what I wanted to do, she said I was crazy. But once I got started, I couldn't turn back. Kimberly Goodwin, Snapping Turtle Kids

Holly Hurd

#32. In America everyone plays bang ball, eight ball, nine ball, that kind of stupid crap, but in Canada and Europe they play snooker which is a much more skillful game and I enjoy that. I play pool now with friends, if we go to a bar we will play, but I am nowhere near as good as I once was.

Daniel Negreanu

#33. I remember once asking Grandma about a book she was reading, a biography of Abraham Lincoln, and how she answered me: this was the first conversation of my life that concerned a book, and 'the life of the mind' - and now, such subjects have become my life.

Joyce Carol Oates

#34. I think Donald Trump's history has shown that this was a very problematic thing. There were so many ways Iraq could have gone awry once we started, and I don't think most of us spend enough time considering the dangers.

Jeff Sessions

#35. All at once I saw that the sun was round! Since then I have been the happiest man on Earth!

Frederick Franck

#36. I was once a student in a punk T-Shirt hooked on screwed-up scenarios. That's how I became the esteemed cultural figure that I am today.

Bruce Sterling

#37. I told you once that [our marriage] was like an adolescent's dream of what marriage should be like. That hasn't changed.

Ronald Reagan

#38. You told me once that freedom was my right." I held his gaze. "Maybe you should do something with it.

Samantha Shannon

#39. I replaced someone on 'Days of our Lives' once, and the fans hated me. She was a redhead, I was a brunette: they went nuts. Even at fan events, they were rude to me.

Shelley Hennig

#40. More likely thoughts... and events than something else... after all yesterday it was a dream... already happen... tomorrow is the fucking dream as for "Now"... it is always now... If I am doing something else and I can control the direction... once finished as action... it cannot be changed.

Deyth Banger

#41. I started to play the guitar for a couple of years, which was fun. I still bring it out once in a while, could bust out a couple of songs, but I'm not very good at it.

Dirk Nowitzki

#42. So I pulled back from everything and everyone I'd known ... I realized I'd been changing even before we started moving,that my reinvention began when I was still in the most familiar of places. Once the setting was totally new,though, I finally could be,as well.

Sarah Dessen

#43. This state lasted for six months, for six months I was truly happy, truly at home in this world and in myself before slowly it began to lose its luster, and once more the world moved out of my reach.

Karl Ove Knausgard

#44. I do not comment on my client's personal lives in the media. As for Luke, he did so once, a long time ago when he was an inexperienced, young actor and now with maturity and hindsight, he has learned not to engage the press in his personal life again.

Luke Evans

#45. We do things in life to make others happy. We make sacrifices because that feeling - the one I once thought was altruism, but have since learned is just love - it makes us feel good. We give, but it's never selfless.

Ginger Scott

#46. Once I could persuade these guys that all I wanted to hear from them was what they did - Tell me what you do - once you can persuade someone that this is all you're after, you can't shut them up because we're all fascinated by what we do.

Roger Angell

#47. I once knew a chap who had a system of just hanging the baby on the clothes line to dry and he was greatly admired by his fellow citizens for having discovered a wonderful innovation on changing a diaper.

Damon Runyon

#48. Instead, I rejoice that she is once again whole. She's no longer confined to the broken body she was sentenced with.

Samantha Christy

#49. I once believed in causes, too. Had my pointless point of view. Life went on no matter who was wrong or right.

Billy Joel

#50. I once stole a book. It was really just the once, and at the time I called it borrowing. It was 1970, and the book, I could see by its lack of date stamps, had been lying unappreciated on the shelves of my convent school library since its publication in 1945.

Hilary Mantel

#51. I knew Chloe LOVED to read, but I was in the middle of a MAJOR life crisis! For once, couldn't she just try focusing on ME instead of her stupid book characters?! Then

Rachel Renee Russell

#52. Never be daunted in public' was an early Hemingway phrase that had more than once bolstered me in my timid twenties. I changed it resolutely to 'Never be daunted in private'.
- M.F.K. Fisher A Is for Dining Alone

Jenni Ferrari-Adler

#53. I have never been lost but I was bewildered once for three days.

Daniel Boone

#54. I was just sitting on my bed in a dormitory room, and I started writing. The thing that was magic about it was that once you put down one word, you could cross it out. I figured that out right away. I put down 'mountain,' and then I'd go, 'No - 'valley.' That's better.'

James Tate

#55. I had once read, in one of those pre-plague books in the library, that love was bearing witness. That it was the act of watching someone's life, of simply being there to say: you're life is worth seeing.

Anna Carey

#56. I once wondered if two broken souls could heal one another, I hoped the answer was yes.

T.M. Frazier

#57. I don't like being retired. It's like announcing an end to your worth, whatever that worth was, and the longer you go on, the more you realize that that worth wasn't worth anything like you once thought it was, and that just makes it worse.

Steven Erikson

#58. Because I sensed in him the magic of a poet, a storyteller who can bind you with tales of things that had never been and could never be. And I felt myself so bound. Pulled under. At a loss for breath in his presence, just as I once was in a river, clinging to life.

Stephanie Dray

#59. It's 'cause I hated the place so much. I wasn't going to let it beat me. I figured, let it get me once and I'd be finished. I was scared I'd just keep slipping down and down.

Haruki Murakami

#60. For me retiring wasn't hard once I knew that that was the decision I was going to make.

Gabriela Sabatini

#61. I've been performing my whole life. My mom signed me up for a theater program when I was five - I was the evil queen in 'Once Upon a Mattress.'

Lilla Crawford

#62. He held me against him gently, as if I was glass - as if I could shatter and fall away from him at any moment and leave him breathless and alone once more.

Alexandra Bracken

#63. Once I got away from him, I was smart enough to stay away from him. To hunt that one is as wise as to go hunting a porcupine.

I cannot leave this alone, Nighteyes.

I understand. I am the same about porcupines.

Robin Hobb

#64. I did a modeling gig for Burberry once, and it was a great experience, but no I am not a model. I want to be a model because it's a lot easier than acting.

Alex Pettyfer

#65. I once saw a small child go to an electric light switch as say, "Mamma, can I open the light?" She was using the age-old language of exploration, the language of art. It was a sort of metaphor, but she was not using it as ornamentation.

Ezra Pound

#66. I was quite depressed two weeks ago when I spent an afternoon at Brentano's Bookshop in New York and was looking at the kind of books most people read. Once you see that you lose all hope.

Friedrich Hayek

#67. If you're committed enough, you can make any story work. I once told a woman I was Kevin Costner, and it worked because I believed it.

Bob Odenkirk

#68. I've always viewed myself as a brand. When I started 10 years ago, that was very controversial. 'Marketing' and 'PR' were dirty words for the literary world, but that has changed. Once the book is finished, I want as many people as possible to read it.

Camilla Lackberg

#69. Do you know that books smell like nutmeg or some spice from a foreign land? I loved to smell them when I was a boy. Lord, there were a lot of lovely books once, before we let them go.

Ray Bradbury

#70. Hello my Country I once came to tell everyone your story Your passion was my poetry And your past my most potent glory Your promise was my prayer Your hypocrisy my nightmare And your problems fill my present Are we both going somewhere?

Harry Chapin

#71. I know a song about him. But I thought he lived a hundred years ago.
We all did. Once I was as young as you.

George R R Martin

#72. A famously wise old man in a village was once asked how he came by his wisdom. "I got it from my good judgment," he answered. And where did his good judgment come from? "I got it from my bad judgment."

Sydney J. Harris

#73. Lord, you're Irish," said Will. "Can you make things that don't have potatoes in them? We had an Irish cook once when I was a boy. Potato pie, potato custard, potatoes with potato sauce ...

Cassandra Clare

#74. They wrote that I'd gained 30 pounds over the summer and lost it in a week because I was dating three guys at once!

Yasmine Bleeth

#75. Once she got a grip on it, it was a death grip, and I would sooner go into her purse looking for Tic Tacs than try to get it away from her.

Shay Savage

#76. Somebody once asked me what my theory of life was, and I said, 'Don't try.' That fits the writing, too. I don't try; I just type.

Charles Bukowski

#77. I realized that there was something internal that I could gain from pursuing this career as an actor. However, once I got into the business I just really abhorred what this career can drum up inside of a person.

Sonja Sohn

#78. I had a lot of successes, but what really made me fearless was my complete failure at Zidd-Davis. Once you've lived through that, you know you can survive, and you're not as scared ... There's nothing to build confidence like real achievement, but also like real failure.

Esther Dyson

#79. My dad was a longshoreman in the Port of Miami. Tough job. I worked down there in the summer once. One day. Never again. My dad was a no-nonsense guy. As a kid, I hated his rules, but as a man, I understand what he was teaching. He taught me you have to work hard for everything you get.

Nick Ferguson

#80. All my life I've been terrible at remembering people's names. I once introduced a friend of mine as Martini. Her name was actually Olive.

Tallulah Bankhead

#81. This is embarrassing and personal, but once a month, since I was twelve years old, I go to my favorite jewelry store and try on my dream ring.

Jennifer Love Hewitt

#82. IN April 1882 my father died; and I was at once whirled out of my land of dreams into a very different sphere.

Edward Carpenter

#83. Woody Allen, who has made a fabulous career out of the fear of death, was once asked if he hoped to live on for ever through the silver screen. Allen answered that 'I'd rather live on in my apartment.

Yuval Noah Harari

#84. There is nothing better than this, he said, and I worried he was right. I worried that once something had entered you, it would never leave - he would plant himself inside me and grow and grow until I was nothing but him.

Alison Espach

#85. After much soul searching I was able to renounce my past Islamist ideology, challenging everything I was once prepared to die for.

Maajid Nawaz

#86. I am not, however, militant in my atheism. The great English theoretical physicist Paul Dirac is a militant atheist. I suppose he is interested in arguing about the existence of God. I am not. It was once quipped that there is no God and Dirac is his prophet.

Linus Pauling

#87. I said once that lies have no rights against truth. I was wrong. In daily life, it's the truth that's disenfranchised. What fits the popular narrative, what makes an observer happy with the consistency of events, is what is believed.

Adrian Lamo

#88. Once I was a stupid girl; now I am an angry woman.

Emma Donoghue

#89. What, indeed, had I done in all my thirty years of conscious life? Not only had I failed to live my life for the sake of all, but I had not even lived it for myself. I had lived as a parasite, and once I asked myself why I had lived, the answer I received was: for nothing.

Leo Tolstoy

#90. I had an inspiration once. I woke up one morning and I knew that it was my task to swallow fifty asprin.It was my task:my job for the day.-17 Girl Interrupted

Susanna Kaysen

#91. I synonymously felt my heart beat rapaciously, the heart which was once void of anything alive and well. Now the heart was rasping and knocking on my ribcage as if it was demanding to come out, take its root and grow.

Diyar Harraz

#92. A lecturer once told me I could never be a director. I was 16. I believed him.

Paddy Considine

#93. I was once walking in an airport and a woman came up to me and said, 'Be zany!'. That'd be like walking up to Baryshikov and going, 'Plie! Just do a plie! Do it! Do a releve right now! Lift my wife!'

Robin Williams

#94. Leaf once told me that there was absolutely no difference between the Orphans' fairy tales and the nose on my face, because both were only as real as I thought they were.

April Genevieve Tucholke

#95. I do miss the social aspect of sitting in a pub with a pint but you know what when I get down to it I never went for a pint. I went to a pub to get f**ked up. If it was just going for a pint that would be ok but once I start I just can't stop.

Ozzy Osbourne

#96. It may sound funny, but I got a thrill when I was pulled into a crowd once. It was like 'How am I going to get out of this?!

Nick Carter

#97. I remembered Father remarking once that if rudeness was not attributable to ignorance it could be taken as a sure sign that one was speaking to a member of the aristocracy.

Alan Bradley

#98. I noticed my mother's face assume an expression she reserved for unspeakable horror. I had seen this look only twice before: once when she was caught in the path of a charging, rabid pig and then again when I told her I wanted a peach-colored velveteen blazer with matching slacks.

David Sedaris

#99. In all likelihood, I was going to be in charge of his entire business empire soon. I would hold the purse strings, and Jo was worried that my main vice - vindictiveness - would mean she was going to lose her cushy lifestyle. For once in her miserable life, she was right.

L.J. Shen

#100. Once upon a time, they thought I was a sweet, wide-eyed boy that was just trying to figure out how to kiss the girl. Lots of comic relief and adolescent yearnings.

Ben Mendelsohn