Top 100 Once Was Quotes

#1. I once worked at a record label called London Records. The company was owned by Roger Ames, one of the most successful figures in the British music industry. Roger always placed a value on loafing, on holidays, on not being in the office all the time.

John Niven

#2. Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.

Nicole Krauss

#3. Perhaps that same concept applied to people as well. Did we love them more when we knew their full story? How they came to be who and what they were? Or was the mystery what kept us coming back for more, slowly enticing us, knowing that once the truth was out, the appeal would be lost?

Amber Lynn Natusch

#4. So it wasn't actually that bad, it took a couple of weeks to sort of get used to uh, you know, standing around and pretending to have ice shoot out of your hand, but once you got used to that it uh, it was actually not that hard.

Shawn Ashmore

#5. 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

#6. Once there was a tree, and she loved a little boy.

Shel Silverstein

#7. Especially once those poetry events began, because, yeah, the stuff was still on the page, but the page was starting to spill into real space, spill into air, once you could hear it, once there was a typewriter, once there was a body of a typist, it was getting rid of the confines of the page.

Vito Acconci

#8. I was kicked off a record label and didn't get picked up again. It was devastating at first because I thought, 'Oh my God. My career is over. What's gonna happen? What am I going to do?' Once I got that I could have a career, a very good career, without having a hit record, then I changed.

Thelma Houston

#9. That this was once the middle of nowhere and now it's not even that.

Peter Heller

#10. 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

#11. 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

#12. 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

#13. Now I know what it's like to be a rock star. No, I didn't sleep with 5 groupies at once. But I was interviewed about 45 times in 5 days in 3 cities.

Tony Visconti

#14. So we face our final hours ... and all that was once certain has become uncertain. Except for defeat. That, as always, is the end of all our stories.

Tad Williams

#15. Learning that flowered in days of yore In these our times is thought a bore. Once knowledge was a well to drink of; Now having fun is all men think of.

John Guy

#16. Juno MacGuff: Wise move. I know this girl who had a huge crazy freakout because she took too many behavioral meds at once. She took off all her clothes and jumped into the fountain at Ridgedale Mall and she was like, "Blaaaaah! I'm a kraken from the sea!"
Su-Chin: That was you.

Diablo Cody

#17. 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

#18. Or perhaps Zeus was just messing with me again - giving me a taste of my old power before yanking it away once more. Remember this, kid? WELL YOU CAN'T HAVE IT!

Rick Riordan

#19. Age isn't a barrier to playing the bass, and I've definitely improved over the years, although maybe I'm not as flash as I once was. But looking back, I can't imagine a life without a guitar.

Suzi Quatro

#20. Once there was a moose, a very poor, thin, lonely moose who lived on a rocky hill where only bitter leaves grew and bushes with spiky branches. One day a red motor car drove past. In the backseat was
a grey gypsy dog wearing a gold earring.

Annie Proulx

#21. Her daughter had given her a puff of a marijuana cigarette once, but after all the hot pads on the counter started walking toward her, she got scared and never tried it again. So dope was out.

Fannie Flagg

#22. I was once described by one of my critics as an aesthetic fascist.

Alan Parker

#23. In the end, it was the secrets that held me hostage and fuelled my depression, but, once released, emancipation - from fear, shame, guilt and judgement - was finally possible.

B.G. Bowers

#24. As they lay entwined together afterwards, they both were sure their future was blessed, and it would never have occurred to them that Henry and Eleanor had once believed that, too.

Sharon Kay Penman

#25. We think of mortality so little these days ...
I thought of the stern Victorian determination to keep death in mind, the uncompromising tombstones.
Remember, pilgrim, as you pass by,
As you are now so once was I:
As I am so will you be ...

Tana French

#26. There was once a caustic comment from someone suggesting I was breeding a new race. Fans from different countries have married, amazing things like that. I've been to some of the weddings. I went to one here the other day, a pagan ceremony.

Terry Pratchett

#27. Ran "Inchon" - it is a brutal but gripping picture about the Korean War and for once we're the good guys & the Communists are the villains. The producer was Japanese or Korean which probably explains the preceding sentence.

Ronald Reagan

#28. I'm proud of Lord of the Rings. I think it's a once in a lifetime role, and a once in a lifetime film. It was made with so much care and passion and meticulous detail and everybody was so behind it.

Sean Bean

#29. But somehow or other my intimacy with them was always strained and soon ended of itself. Once, indeed, I did have a friend. But I was

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

Steve Martin

#31. The man he'd once been wasn't a collection of personality traits. He was the things he knew, the desires of his heart, the skills he had.

James S.A. Corey

#32. I assumed it was someone trying to sell me something. They're always calling to sell. Once they said if I sent in a check for $99 I'd be pre-approved for a credit card, and I said, Right, sure, and if I step under a pigeon I'm preapproved for a load of shit

Nicole Krauss

#33. In 1856, shortly before his death, Lord Ellesmere gave the painting to the new National Portrait Gallery in London as its founding work. As the gallery's first acquisition, it has a certain sentimental prestige, but almost at once its authenticity was doubted.

Bill Bryson

#34. Once undressed I felt less exposed. (...) Naked was my uniform. (...) There was no pressure to conform.

Aiden Shaw

#35. Some cleric putting a match to her. /Neither of them looks happy about it. /Once lit, she'll burn like a book, /like a book that was ever finished, /like a locked-up library.

Margaret Atwood

#36. Whatever magnet drew us once was broken now. It had left me simply spinning, a compass without a lodestone.

Alexis Hall

#37. I once made love for an hour and fifteen minutes, but it was the night the clocks are set ahead.

Garry Shandling

#38. I'm in love with you, you stupid arse, and I'm not losing you. Got it?" she whispered against his lips before kissing him again. Her confession had stolen his breath, so all he could do was nod. "Now, once again, how do we fix you?" she asked, when they finally parted. To

Morgan Rhodes

#39. I once thought the three most important words in creation were 'whatever proved necessary,'" he said. "And now?" she gasped against his mouth. "Now I know I was wrong. The three most important words in creation are 'I love you

Gena Showalter

#40. A psychiatrist once told me early in treatment, "Stop trying to make me like you," and what a sobering and welcome smack in the face that statement was. Yet somehow, every day of my life is still a campaign for popularity, or better yet, a crowded funeral.

John Waters

#41. Michelangelo was once asked how he would carve an elephant. He replied, I would take a large piece of stone and take away everything that was not the elephant.

Sharon Salzberg

#42. I was told by a girl once that I should teach a course on how to kiss properly. I thought that was really a nice compliment. I then asked her what she thought about my sexual prowess and she recommended I talk to a guy she used to date. Body blow.

Dane Cook

#43. Once upon a time, there was a generation of parents who were certain that Elvis Presley's unashamed hip-swivellingvwas most certainly the end of society.

Charlie Caruso

#44. It was the lack of a clear reason that got to her most, & it stabbed her that a relationship that had once seemed unbreakable could slip apart so easily due to nothing more than time, family turmoil, & growth spurts.

Dennis Lehane

#45. Once I was beset by anxiety but I pushed the fear away by studying the sky, determining when the moon would come out and where the sun would appear in the morning.

Louise Bourgeois

#46. I think it was Harry Walpole who remarked, In this life one should try everything once except incest and country dancing.

Stephen Fry

#47. 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

#48. Obama sees himself as such a huge change that he can be cautious about other societal changes. But what he doesn't realize is that legalizing gay marriage is like electing a black president. Before you do it, it seems inconceivable. Once it's done, you can't remember what all the fuss was about.

Maureen Dowd

#49. Caroline smiled and waved and blew kisses to both of them as she exited the building. But once outside she felt sad and let down, like the party was over and it was time to go home. And yet she remembered her promise to God. She was going to trust that he knew what was best for her.

Melody Carlson

#50. I didn't show up at the ceremony to collect any of my first three Oscars. Once I went fishing, another time there was a war on, and on another occasion, I remember, I was suddenly taken drunk.

John Ford

#51. They shouldn't call death passing on. They should call it leveling up. Because the game only got harder once I lost. And I was more than a little worried it had only just begun.

Kami Garcia

#52. It's like painting the same blank canvas over and over and over and over and over. Once the concept is known, you don't need to see two. And that was in the back of my head, that I was really done artistically with what I had created or pastiched.

Steve Martin

#53. 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

#54. And if redemption was self-serving, coming as it did ribbon-tied to what he wanted most in life? For once, Akiva's shame wouldn't rise to the bait. He wanted what he'd always wanted, and he'd better just say it, his own worries and fears be damned.

Laini Taylor

#55. In spite of her superficial independence, her fundamental need was to cling.
All her life was an attempt to disprove it; and so proved it. She was like a sea anemone
had only to be touched once to adhere to what touched her.

John Fowles

#56. What I wasn't expecting was the euphoria once my body began releasing endorphins. The mixture of pain and pleasure was ecstasy. Getting my tattoo introduced me to secret, dark pleasures. I would always be a marked prisoner, but I was a liberated soul.

Scarlet Risque

#57. Every one of a hundred thousand cities around the world had its own special sunset and it was worth going there, just once, if only to see the sun go down.

Ryu Murakami

#58. The anxiety was like poison ivy. It took nothing to set off that mental itch-a chance remark, remembering an event from the day before-but once it started I found it impossible to stop the cycle. My thoughts twisted in a circle, my pulse hammered, I couldn't concentrate.

Tracy Thompson

#59. I was once a fairly angry person.

Scott Rudin

#60. I had no idea that, when you audition for television or movies, you go to a big building - like, an office building - and you walk in the room, and everybody, I assumed, was smarter than me and better than me, and there's actors you recognize. I once fainted at an audition.

Kurt Fuller

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

Jennifer Flackett

#62. I've discreetly dated a lot of people - I once dated a billionaire, mostly because it was fun to say, "I'm dating a billionaire," but we did not have the same taste in music, and it was doomed.

Courtney Love

#63. Once I started I couldn't put it down. It was so addictive ... like a train wreck.

Katie Klein

#64. Once labeled schizophrenic the pseudopatient was stuck with that label. - DAVID ROSENHAN,

Jon Ronson

#65. Mom also hinted a couple of times that it was good I was going to college, since with one failed marriage behind me, I 'd have trouble landing a good husband and would need something to fall back on. "A package that's been opened once doesn't have the same appeal".

Jeannette Walls

#66. I yell and scream like they do. I'm the worst of them. Totally. I'm a nightmare. Once they gave me the passport that was it - started throwing my hands in the air, drinking red wine and flying off the handle.

John Kirwan

#67. Glanced back behind me but heard nothing save for a grunt that was repeated from several different sources at once.

Robert J. Crane

#68. It is very difficult for people to believe the simple fact that every persecutor was once a victim. Yet it should be very obvious that someone who was allowed to feel free and strong from childhood does not have the need to humiliate another person.

Alice Miller

#69. Someone once threw me a small, brown, hairy kiwi fruit, and I threw a wastebasket over it until it was dead.

Erma Bombeck

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

Gold Panda

#71. 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

#72. It's lucky I was there. Then again, who am I kidding? I'm in most places at least once, and in 1943, I was just about everywhere.

Markus Zusak

#73. I won't eat offal. Once, I was in London at the Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, which is this really fancy eating establishment and hotel, and I almost got conned into eating testicles. It was one of the most delicious meals I've ever eaten, about twelve courses. That was one of the courses.

Lucy Punch

#74. More than once Jesus deliberately addressed certain issues that quickly diminished the number of onlookers. It was commitment that thinned the ranks.

Charles R. Swindoll

#75. Once social media was introduced, it enabled a new way for people, particularly the younger generation, to connect with one another, based on common interests, goals and even values.

Raymond Arroyo

#76. Loretta didn't have much time left for mothering, and once I was old enough to fry my own eggs, she started leaving me home with the cat. Then the cat ran away; she didn't notice. Poor

Robin Wasserman

#77. See, I saw someone get strangled once when I was 9.

L.T. Vargus

#78. Once we played for the Princess of Monaco in Paris. We were the biggest ducks ever, wearing rented tuxedos. We trashed the party, took a bunch of girls and champagne in limos underneath the Eiffel Tower, and set up an acoustic show. It was like a Hilary Duff movie.

Conrad Sewell

#79. 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

#80. She looked over my shoulder once while I was texting, which was already annoying, and when I wrote lol she made a very clear point to me about how I was silent and not laughing out loud, not at all. I said it was just an expression, and that I was laughing out loud inside my own mind.

Aimee Bender

#81. I was a very religious child - I went to synagogue at least once, sometimes twice, a day. And I remember my religiousness as good - I think religion is good for children, especially educated children, because it allows for imagination, a whole imaginative world apart from the practical world.

Yehuda Amichai

#82. Once upon a time, there lived a boy, and he had to risk everything to keep what he loved. But really the story was: Once upon a time, there lived a boy, and his fear ate him alive.

Maggie Stiefvater

#83. It would absolutely suck if you paid a few bucks for a book only to find that on the first page it said, 'Once upon a time they all lived happily ever after' and the rest of the book was blank.

Simon Travaglia

#84. Mamie told me living rooms were once known as death rooms, back when funerals were a home matter. After mortuaries came into fashion, there was no need for keeping bodies on ice at home, and the death room was rechristened the living room.

Sarah Jude

#85. Once upon a long ago time I was a girl with hopeful halos in my eyes - not unlike you - not a typical beauty but beautiful nonetheless, as all young girls tend to be in their prime, even if they don't tend to know it.

Shannon Celebi

#86. I once stayed in a roach-infested hotel in Istanbul for a work trip. I had to share my room with a male model, and pointedly all we talked about was our other halves.

Jasmine Guinness

#87. 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

#88. It was at that moment he realized that his spirit was truly human once more. For he no longer remembered how to be alone without being lonely.

Neal Shusterman

#89. Before we got married, I had tremendous ambition. Once we got married and I started having children, then I just thought that that was my real life. Steve was definitely more ambitious than I.

Eydie Gorme

#90. he grinned a grin that began in his eyes and went everywhere at once. It was devastating.

Paula McLain

#91. Perhaps he finds beauty saddening
I do myself sometimes. Once when I was quite little I asked father why this was and he explained that it was due to our knowledge of beauty's evanescence, which reminds us that we ourselves shall die.

Dodie Smith I Capture The Castle

#92. A bartender named Murphy once told me to be careful when I hit the road because sometimes the road hits back. He was right.

Patrick Thomas

#93. So that was the way. No fair play. Once down, that was the end of you.

Jack London

#94. Simply having the courage to say senseless things made me euphoric. I was free, with no need to seek or to give explanations for what I was doing. This freedom lifted me to the heavens - where greater love, one that forgives everything and never allows you to feel abandoned, once again enveloped me.

Paulo Coelho

#95. Then I went to the windows and pulled them open. The rain had stopped and the night was very still, black except for the glow behind the western hills that marked the Burning Lands. A dog barked far off, once and no more.

John Christopher

#96. It seems impossible that you could get something from nothing, but the fact that once there was nothing and now there is a universe is evident proof that you can.

Bill Bryson

#97. When I was younger, I listened to the greats: Winters, Mel and Carl, Nichols and May, Pryor, Carlin, Klein, Berman and lots of Lenny Bruce albums. But once I started doing fairly well, I didn't want to hear anybody's jokes or premises.

Richard Lewis

#98. Once upon a time, there lived a troll that was so naughty and so evil that he decided to make a mirror that would twist the image of anything and anyone reflected in it.

Ken T Seth

#99. Science, which is not so attached to 'truth' as it once was, ut more to immediate 'effectiveness', is now drifting towards a decline, it's civic fall from grace.

Paul Virilio

#100. In Europe it was once commonly believed that beasts could be possessed by demons and controlled by the evil of Satan. So animals, even birds and insects, were tried by ecclesiastical courts, just like witches and heretics. They were excommunicated, tortured and condemned to death.

Chet Williamson

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