Were These Quotes

#1. In a broadcast society, there were these gatekeepers, the editors, and they controlled the flows of information. Along came the Internet and it swept them out of the way, and it allowed all of us to connect together, and it was awesome. But that's not actually what's happening right now.

Eli Pariser

#2. I love the stories of changelings and the thought that the Fey were these ancient, capricious creatures who were tricky and dangerous. I've always preferred the Brothers Grimm faery tales to the Disney fairy tales.

Julie Kagawa

#3. Are you available to travel? What kind of questions were these? Was the second one even allowed in a job interview? Still, she'd answered as best she could and finally read a question that made sense:

Melody Anne

#4. And to whom were these bundles of unrecognizably mashed-up mortgages ultimately sold? Quite often, to you and me. Our pension funds, municipalities, and money-market accounts were made up largely of these mortgage-backed securities.

Douglas Rushkoff

#5. In middle school, I started to draw, and my pencil sketches were huge. They were these 4ft by 3ft drawings, and I got a lot of attention for that, so that was very validating. But I didn't start cartooning until I was in college.

Jeff Kinney

#6. Why the rifle? Everybody knows you can't shoot.
Who were these everybodies and would they like to stand in front of me, preferably within ten feet, so I could discuss this issue in greater detail.

Ilona Andrews

#7. Look at Picasso. O'Neill. Tennessee Williams. Capote. Were these shiny happy people spreading sunshine? No. Only the greatest of personal demons can force you to do powerful work.

Marisha Pessl

#8. For many people in the U.N., the 1990s was the worst decade the organization experienced. This was the decade of Somalia, Srebrenica, of Rwanda and so forth, and yet the reality is, during this period, although there were these awful conflicts, the overall number of wars had gone down.

Andrew Mack

#9. When I began writing, the words that inspired me were these: A writer is someone who has written today. If you want to be a writer, whats stopping you?

J. A. Jance

#10. Who were these people, these specially selected tenants? They were mothers and fathers and children. A dressmaker, a secretary, an inventor, a doctor, a judge. And, oh yes, one was a bookie, one was a burglar, one was a bomber, and one was a mistake.

Ellen Raskin

#11. His Holiness [the Dalai Lama] has told me, urgently and repeatedly, that he thinks my photographs are crap. His exact words were, 'These photos are of poor quality. Why is there no sharp focus? There is no clarity!' I said, 'But your Holiness, it's Goyaesque.' And he said, 'No! It's out of focus!'

Richard Gere

#12. Was this for real? Were these two magically oriented, problem-fixing, ass-kicking guys talking about what their kids would look like?

Chloe Neill

#13. Back in Bible days, there were these famous schools of the prophets, but some of the ones Jesus chose didn't come through that route - and not to say that they weren't good, but I'm comfortable.

Joel Osteen

#14. One of the French officers was horrified that at a dinner in Washington's tent, His Excellency served the meal not in a succession of courses like in civilization. Apparently Washington "gave, on the same plate, meat, vegetables, and salad." On the same plate? Were these Americans people or animals?

Sarah Vowell

#15. It seems madness to say, 'We're worried that they're going to become addicted to marijuana'
there's no evidence whatever that it's an addictive drug, but even if it were, these people are dying, what are we saving them from?

Carl Sagan

#16. Rich kids gave us their old clothes. They were the best clothes we ever had. We were these very pure, naive, poor children. The rich kids called us a lot of names but it never bothered us because we didn't know what the words meant.

River Phoenix

#17. In that regard we are different from our ancestors of a few centuries ago, who approved, carried out, and even savored the infliction of unspeakable agony on other living beings. What were these people feeling? And why don't we feel it today?

Steven Pinker

#18. I was 13 when I first saw my mum's films. There were these boys who said to me, 'Your mum makes sexy films,' and I said, 'She doesn't.' Then I watched them and my mum makes sexy films! I'm a huge fan of my mum.

Alice Englert

#19. Who were these people, all of them young couples, a few fabulous ones, tall thin-haired blondes with toned men in perfectly pressed jeans
neither fearing the loss of the other.

Dave Eggers

#20. I think that people have short memories, and I think that they believe that our forbearers in the past were these Founding Fathers who were ideal and who were - would never have stooped to dirty tricks.

Joseph Cummins

#21. I had a book that was given to me as a kid that was called 'Faeries.' It was this dark, sinister book with pictures that used to scare me because they were these creepy little creatures. But, I was always really drawn to that fantasy world, more than a sci-fi world, in terms of outer space stuff.

Anna Silk

#22. We were these arty punks from Hollywood. I considered myself an intellectual.

Flea

#23. There was our house in New Orleans. Two blocks in front of us were these beautiful mansions and two blocks behind us were the ghetto, projects, and that's where I had to go to school, but I would always pattern my life looking forward. It was almost literal.

Tyler Perry

#24. Always have there been great numbers of individuals who were very much eager to fight for good causes. Always there were these, but then there were even greater numbers of trendies who would then become wholly and completely misguided in the efforts.

Criss Jami

#25. I remember as a young man seeing these bigger-than-life, strong images of black manhood in the form of Jim Brown and Fred Williamson, Jim Kelly, Billy Dee Williams. All these guys were these alpha males who were smart, attractive. I said, 'Wow, I want to be like that.'

Michael Jai White

#26. What were these animals then?"
"They didn't have names, but I knew what they were.

Margaret Atwood

#27. When I was young, my parents were these titanic, infallible figures. But Mum's illness and Dad's battles with diabetes and heart attacks had a ripple effect on me - reminding me of my own mortality and that these illnesses are genetic.

Sam Worthington

#28. Yes. No. Hang on. So what were these people? And pterodactyls have been extinct for fifty million years."

"If you say so, dear. Your father never really talked about it.

Neil Gaiman

#29. Nothing ... They're from nothing,' he said. 'They came in the book ... I found the book and inside were these flowers ... They were in the book when I bought it ... I bought it used ... Because they meant something.
'To someone else.'
'To someone.

Aimee Bender

#30. I used to look out the window of my bedroom as a kid, and there were these stars that, in my mind, made a big "A" in the sky. I thought my destiny was to go there.

Helen Mirren

#31. I could truly have gone through life thinking that women were these venomous creatures. Turns out, they're not.

Claire Danes

#32. In the '90s there were these great end of the world movies like 'Armageddon' and 'Deep Impact' ... I always liked the idea of what people on the ground are doing, not so much the people who are trying to stop the world from ending.

Lorene Scafaria

#33. It was not easy for my mother, being a struggling actress and raising a child. We were these two sort of vagabonds, never knowing where the money was going to come from. She always says she couldn't afford a babysitter, which is why she put me on the stage.

Christina Applegate

#34. Anna's conclusions were these: That fire is beautifully cruel. That fusion occurs only at a specific heat. That blood, in fact, can boil. That the dissolution of an affair is an entropic reaction, and the disorder it tends toward is flammable. That a heart will burn. And burn and burn and burn.

Jill Alexander Essbaum

#35. As Estha stirred the thick jam he thought Two Thoughts and the Two Thoughts he thought were these:
a) Anything can happen to anyone.
and
b) It is best to be prepared.

Arundhati Roy

#36. What I loved about 'Summer' was that they were these four bright kids with a wonderful future. In a way, she was the one with the brains, and then you have the beauty queen and the jock and the introvert.

Kevin Williamson

#37. Would Terrible actually have killed me if I hadn't agreed to come up?" "It's entirely possible, yeah." She said it like it was no big deal. Like it was normal or something, rather than psychotic. Who the hell were these people?

Stacia Kane

#38. One morning I remember pulling out a small card and threading it through my typewriter. Among the words that I typed [ ... ] were these: The simple secret is this: put your trust in the Lord, do your best, then leave the rest to Him.

Joseph B. Wirthlin

#39. I Came away from the U.S. Memory Championship eager to find out how Ed and Lukas did it. Were these just extraordinary individuals, pridigies from the long tail of humanity's bell curve, or was there something we could all learn from their talents?

Joshua Foer

#40. The archaeologists of the future will find themselves excavating heaps of our discarded junk, picking through mountains of DVDs and yoghurt pots and wondering: "who the fuck were these idiots?

Chris Thomas

#41. Growing up in Fife, you were aware that there were these creatures called lesbians, but it was in the realms of complete freakishness. And I didn't feel like a freak.

Val McDermid

#42. When I was in high school, there were these British blues-rock-type bands with really good guitar players that would jam on one song for half an hour. And as much as I was amazed by some of those guitar players, seeing them prompted me to make a note that that's not something I could do.

David Byrne

#43. It was just the two of us, inside there with just mirrors, all the way around us. Everywhere we looked, there were these two freaks, sitting at a table, eyeballing each other

Christian Bale

#44. It was strange, I reflected.. that even in the weirdest circumstances, the most troubling episodes of one's life, the greatest divides from home and familiarity, there were these moments of undeniable joy.

Elizabeth Kostova

#45. I remember hanging out at Starbucks. There were these older guys who would sit around and play Crosby, Stills & Nash songs. I was just so in love with music. I would just go hang out with them, and I would try to sing and harmonize with them. I didn't even know the songs.

Leon Bridges

#46. Back in the days of the Smiths, when we first started touring England - this is, like, 1984 - there were these two girls. They were literally vicar's daughters, and they used to follow us to every gig, no matter where we went.

Andy Rourke

#47. I love 'Breathless,' and 'Paris, Texas,' and 'Badlands.' I was obsessed with those films in my teens. I remember watching 'Badlands' and being amazed that there were these scenes in which nobody said anything and the silence told the whole story.

Agyness Deyn

#48. I met an angel in Morocco and all I got were these lousy scars.

Laini Taylor

#49. The way I wanted to write it, is with a hero, or sort of a pure character who was the protagonist. And the antagonists were these demonic evil children, cause when you're a kid, seven or eight years old, and you're looking at the world around you - everything seems black or white, good or bad.

John Wozniak

#50. Well, you see, there were these ninjas...

S.A. Hunter

#51. I really wanted to believe that there were these magic celestial bodies that would direct my life, tell me what to do, and it turns out it's not stars, it's some bits of screwy DNA. I'm just meat with faulty programming.

Lauren Beukes

#52. I'm not explaining this right. What happened was this. There were these beautiful feelings and loose little pleasures inside me. And this woman was something like an assembly line for my soul. I run these little pieces of myself through her and I come out complete. Now do you follow me?

Carson McCullers

#53. I found that there were these incredibly great people at doing certain things, and you couldn't replace one of these people with fifty average people.

Steve Jobs

#54. I wanted to be a nun. I saw nuns as superstars. When I was growing up I went to a Catholic school, and the nuns, to me, were these superhuman, beautiful, fantastic people.

Madonna Ciccone

#55. Plutarch's peers were writing "rhetorics," which were these dry philosophical treatises that made really broad gestures about life and death and fate. Plutarch stepped out of the stream to create an essayistic form that relied on a digressive structure and down to earth anecdotes.

John D'Agata

#56. The one thing I witnessed over and over were these pretty young people who would throw themselves into a cause larger than themselves and believe they could change the world.

Kristin Gore

#57. In my mind at that time, at 14, the men who were successful were Stallone and Schwarzenegger and guys like that - Harrison Ford - who were these men of action. I was like, "Okay, they're successful, they're not getting evicted, they built their bodies - I'm gonna go build my body." It was like that.

Dwayne Johnson

#58. When we came to America, the movies here needed a "new wave." European films looked totally different than American movies, which were these lush, glossy pictures with this elaborate production design.

Vilmos Zsigmond

#59. I had a dream that there were these huge indoor swimming pools called 'lobbies' that poor people used to do mass amounts of laundry

Megan Boyle

#60. I was worried for a while that it was some sort of reflection of me that all I seemed to be getting were these characters that were a tad bit loony. But I love it. Those are the most fun characters to play!

Torrey DeVitto

#61. The Hewitt sisters were these amazing - both sort of philanthropists and dilettantes who went out and single-handedly collected all of these of-the-moment designs in wallpaper and textiles and in graphic design in order to teach people about design.

Jake Barton

#62. To hold the reader's attention, you have to bring the person who's reading the book inside the experience of the time: What was it like to have been alive then? What were these people like as human beings?

David McCullough

#63. Synthesizers were looked at as stealing the soul of music, but then there were these new bands who used it to contradict that idea.

Brendon Urie

#64. What were these strange feelings that made him want to protect her, live for her, and die for her?

Paula Quinn

#65. As a small kid, I came across things like these early Edward Gorey books in department-store bookstores. These were these really unusual objects to me. I didn't know how they fit into the comic world or into newspaper comics.

Ben Katchor

#66. My eyes went blank, and I stared off, and the music started. It was raining, and the sun was shining at the same time, and there were these big bay windows, and there was the blue in the sky, and the sun on the trees, and it was drizzling.

Al Jarreau

#67. There were these things and the flames ate these things, and since fire doesn't distinguish between the word of God and the word of the Soviet Communications Registry Bureau, both Qur'an and telephone directory returned to His mouth in the same inhalation of smoke.

Anthony Marra

#68. And where was that day? Past and dead. Whose humiliating memories were these? His and not his father's. What had he to think back on that he could call good? Very, very little. You had to forgive. First, to forgive yourself, and then, general forgiveness.

Saul Bellow

#69. I thought of women in other places, streets and boulevards in major cities, wind blowing, a woman's skirt lifting in the breeze, the way the wind tenses the skirt, giving shape to the legs, making the skirt dip between the legs, revealing knees and thighs. Were these my father's thoughts or mine?

Don DeLillo

#70. When I was a kid, there were these great comic books called 'Tales From The Crypt' and 'The Vault of Horror.' They were gruesome. I discovered them in the barbershop and thought they were fabulous.

R.L. Stine

#71. There were these things to do.

Gary Paulsen

#72. Here were these college kids beating the Soviets and going on to the Olympic Gold Medal. To me, that's the greatest upset of all time in any sport that I can think of.

Jim McKay

#73. In the '20s and '30s, there were these musicals either set on college campuses or based on classical stories, so any of the Rodgers and Hart musicals certainly influenced me. I was definitely influenced by any of the 'Porgy' songs; I was influenced by 'American Pie.'

Douglas Carter Beane

#74. It was strange how most of the time we got along so well, but then there were these periods when it was a good things the knives were in the drawer and not out on display.

Tama Janowitz

#75. There were these great women in Montgomery, [Rosa Louise] Parks was among them. Jo Ann Robinson [who organized the bus boycott] was among them. It's always these ordinary women and men of grace who have been waiting and seething and planning to change things that are unjust that bring movement.

Marian Wright Edelman

#76. As I grew older, I understood that instructions came with this voice. What were these instructions? The instructions were never to lament casually. And if one is to express the great inevitable defeat that awaits us all, it must be done within the strict confines of dignity and beauty.

Leonard Cohen

#77. the strongest predictor of who got the money was not the person's credentials or the content of the pitch. The strongest predictors of who got the money were these traits: confidence, comfort level, and passionate enthusiasm.

Amy Cuddy

#78. I performed after 9/11 for relief workers down by Ground Zero. There were these men just coming back, and they were voraciously hungry. They were heroes, pulling rubble, and I was a new comic trying to go blue just so I could get some laughs.

Chelsea Peretti

#79. You'll see, you'll come to understand. These big things, these terrible things, are not the important ones. If they were, how could one go on living? No, it is the small, little things that make up a day, that bring fullness and happiness to a life.

Benedict Freedman

#80. ... unpacked her books, her sweet delight in happier days, and her soothing resource in the hours of moderate sorrow: but there were hours when even these failed of their effect; when the genius, the taste, the enthusiasm of the sublimest writers were felt no longer.

Ann Radcliffe

#81. It was cold out there, bitter, biting, cutting, piercing, hyperborean, marmoreal cold, and there were all these Minnesotans running around outdoors, happy as lambs in the spring.

Charles Kuralt

#82. But what's regret anyway? Regret, I am learning these days, is a lot of things. But mostly, it's a slippery seed of longing, of looking back and asking yourself why you didn't know better when the answers were so obvious all along.

Allison Winn Scotch

#83. To give you an idea what it feels like to be going in with some of the best baseball players of all-time, I mean it is fantastic. I have to say this about them, there are so many of these guys up here that were my role models, people I looked up to, people I wanted to be like.

Dave Winfield

#84. I can't stand these damn shows on museum walls with neat little frames, where you look at the images as if they were pieces of art. I want them to be pieces of life!

W. Eugene Smith

#85. Happiness and depression cannot blossom on the same vine. Some people affirm their woes and beg for sympathy. Others, unfortunately, cast gloom wherever they go. These poor souls were born sick and tired.

Louis Sullivan

#86. I grew up in the '50s, in New York City, where television was born. There were 90 live shows every week, and they used a lot of kids. There were schools just for these kids. There was a whole world that doesn't exist anymore.

Christopher Walken

#87. Plus, I wondered if any of these celebrities were alive; or if Brangelina was now a zombified couple.

Shannon Jaeger

#88. Sigh. These were my people now that I was a writer, people who didn't understand anything. I mean, they understood perfectly the thing I cared most about - books - but basically were moron-level elsewhere.

Claire Dederer

#89. Whoever these "John," "Matthew," and "Judas" people were, they were NOT HAVING A GOOD TIME.

Felicia Day

#90. The last time I glanced at the library books on the kitchen shelf they were more than five months overdue, and I wondered whether I would have chosen differently if I had known that these were the last books, the ones which would stand forever on our kitchen shelf.

Shirley Jackson

#91. The British invasion was the most important event of my life. I was in New Jersey and the night I saw the Beatles changed everything. I had seen Elvis before and he had done nothing for me, but these guys were in a band.

Steven Van Zandt

#92. The Sixties, of course, was the worst time in the world to try and bring up a child. They were exposed to all these crazy things going on.

Nancy Reagan

#93. All these subprime companies were calling and hollering at him: You're wrong. Your data's wrong. And he just hollered back at them, 'It's YOUR fucking data!

Michael Lewis

#94. There were so many of these moments that could never be captured accurately, even in the camcorder, only in the heart.

Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

#95. Disney features, especially the early ones, were horror movies with cute critters: Greek tragedies with a hummable chorus. Forcing children to confront the loss of home, parent, friends and fondest pets, these films imposed shock therapy on four-year-olds.

Richard Corliss

#96. These were good, hardworking, simple people. He

Mike Shelton

#97. Do you see these hands?" Jo said, holding them up. "These were made for caressing handsome men and meant to be adorned with pretty nails and diamond rings. They're not made for paint rollers and paint splatter and that kind of manual labor.

Nicholas Sparks

#98. I can tell you that I never aspired to be president. I always honour something that Commander Chavez told us: that while we were in these posts, we must be clothed in humility and understand that we are here to protect the man and woman of the streets.

Nicolas Maduro

#99. These memories, which are my life
for we possess nothing certainly except the past
were always with me.

Evelyn Waugh

#100. I do think that people who are now in their sixties and their seventies are living a different kind of life than their grandparents led, even in these tough times. A lot of them are more active, a lot of them are still working, which was not the case when our grandparents were in their sixties.

Anna Quindlen