What Was Quotes

#1. Calculate what man knows and it cannot compare to what he doesn't know. Calculate the time he is alive and it cannot compare to the time before he was born. Yet man takes something so small and tries to exhaust the dimensions of something so large!

Zhuangzi

#2. What the fuck happened to you? [...] You look like you lost a fight with a lamprey. Hickey, hickey...bruise, bruise, bruise...bite. I thought that thing on your neck the other day was just a fluke. I guess not--looks like you get off on picking up a few souvenirs when you...get off. ~Crash

Jordan Castillo Price

#3. I'm not a freak. That's a horrible thing to say."
"That's where you're going. A special school for freaks. You and that Snape boy ... weirdos, that's what you two are ... "
"You didn't think it was such a freak's school when you wrote the headmaster and begged him to take you.

J.K. Rowling

#4. 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

#5. I don't know what kind of life you had, what sorts of joys and sorrows you experienced. But even if there was something that left you unfulfilled, you can't go around seeking it at other people's doors. Even if it is at the place you're most familiar with, and the sort of act that is your forte.

Haruki Murakami

#6. Funny, there had been a time when building things was what America did. From massive dams to towering skyscrapers, from mechanized factories to moon rockets, the nation had created, had viewed that as part of the national identity.

Marcus Sakey

#7. He had the feeling that he must make a decision, and though he was used to making many decisions every day, this time he was beset with uncertainty; in fact he had no idea what was being asked of him

Amos Oz

#8. I'm not holding Hitler up as a role model, the man was a filthy swine, but as I stood in the suspicious glare of my boss I thought, What would Hitler do?

Anonymous

#9. We became acutely aware of the profound healing that is needed in our species. We knew with conviction that what we were doing, as women and men together, was confronting the cultural dynamics that are killing us all- killing women and men, killing our children, killing the planet.

William Keepin

#10. Everyone on this earth was born for a reason, what's yours?

Frank Sonnenberg

#11. Oh definitely. It'll be in a hot tub, with my entire head squeezed into a jet. The photos are going to be hilarious. Man, I really hope the internet sticks around so people can reference this article in my obituaries and see that what sounds like a joke was actually amazingly prescient.

Jason Sudeikis

#12. Comic book fans have loved Wolverine, and all the 'X-Men' characters, for more than the action. I think that's what set it apart from many of the other comic books. In the case of Wolverine, when he appeared, he was a revolution really. He was the first anti-hero.

Hugh Jackman

#13. What made medicine fool people for so long was that its successes were prominently displayed and its mistakes (literally) buried.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#14. There was a precarious balance during those crucial months between composition and decomposition - what the world gained and what a great city lost. Even then, some part of Detroit was dying, and that is where the story begins.

David Maraniss

#15. Someone was asking me what my favorite outfit is, and 100%, without a doubt in my mind, is my forever lazy.

Eden Sher

#16. What was myth in one world might always be fact in some other.

C.S. Lewis

#17. 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

#18. Oh my God! Why did I leave India? I fell in love with a white man. That's what it was. It was the most boring, predictable reason in the world. I met him in India, we fell in love, and we got married. And then, we got divorced. Sorry about that.

Deepa Mehta

#19. Flora sighed. It was curious that persons who lived what the novelists called a rich emotional life always seemed to be a bit slow on the uptake.

Stella Gibbons

#20. 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

#21. A person's heart should be what she was judged by, rather than whose blood ran in her veins.

Melanie Dickerson

#22. Missus said I was the worst waiting maid in Charleston. She said, "You are abysmal, Hetty, abysmal." I asked Miss Sarah what abysmal means and she said, "Not quite up to standard." Uh huh. I could tell from missus' face, there's bad, there's worse, and after that comes abysmal.

Sue Monk Kidd

#23. I don't know how much longer I can keep going without a friend. I used to be able to do it very easily, but that was before I knew what having a friend was like.

Stephen Chbosky

#24. He had learned long ago that life became much easier if you ignored what was not right before you.

Joe Abercrombie

#25. 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

#26. Our Christian hope is that we are going to live with Christ in a new earth, where there is not only no more death, but where life is what it was always meant to be.

Timothy Keller

#27. For the world was changing, and sweetness was gone, and virtue too. Worry had crept on a corroding world, and what was lost- good manners, ease and beauty? Ladies were not ladies anymore, and you couldn't trust a gentleman's word.

John Steinbeck

#28. Oh, alright. You're no fun," he sighed. "My name is Razor."
"What kind of a name is that?"
"It's a nickname."
"What kind of a nickname is that?"
"Spike, Blade, Fang - all the good, deadly objects were already taken. It was the best I could do.

Ada Adams

#29. Since the outbreak of war, there has been in our country a steady increase in the consumption of spirits, wine and beer. It is estimated that in dollar volume, the annual outlay is now practically double what it was before the war.

William Lyon Mackenzie King

#30. With a face like this, there aren't a lot of lawyers or priest roles coming my way. I've got a face that was meant for a mug shot, and that's what I've been doing for the past thirty years.

M. C. Gainey

#31. The food was what you might expect to find on Air Uganda tourist class:

Anthony Bourdain

#32. Fatima's hair, what was left of it, had pulled free of the coil into which she'd put it before striking the match. Her face was now black and shiny, as if an artist commissioned to lacquer the eyes of a statue of

Katherine Boo

#33. I stood Sentinel of Cadogan House, by God. He was mine, and he knew it, and I would claim what was mine.

Chloe Neill

#34. Again, I must stress that this is my reading now of what happened then. Or rather, my memory now of my reading then of what was happening at the time.

Julian Barnes

#35. Of course it would be hard. But I remembered what my nurseryman grandfather used to say when I didn't want to go to school: half the work in the world was done by people who didn't feel so good today.

Rollo Romig

#36. I understood what he was doing, that he had spent four years fulfilling the absurd and tedious duty of graduating from college and now he was emancipated from that world of abstraction, false security, parents, and material excess.

Jon Krakauer

#37. 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

#38. I've always known from the time I was eight years old what I wanted to do. I would have been fairly content to be someone's lead guitar player.

Brad Paisley

#39. Had she been in town, the two of them would have spent most of the day together, and she didn't want that. Then again, deep down, it was exactly what she wanted, leaving her more confused that she'd been in years.

Nicholas Sparks

#40. 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

#41. Curran looked at me. What the hell was I supposed to do, catch the werebison as he was falling?

Ilona Andrews

#42. I thought, possibly, that what I really needed was to go where nobody knew me and start over again, with none of my previous decisions, conversations, or expectations coming with me.

Maggie Stiefvater

#43. 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

#44. They just expected it to you know ... Paul, Steve and I could have hired our own publicist, if we wanted to, but I kind of liked the way it was more of a cult thing and those that liked it, liked it, you know what I mean?

Amy Sedaris

#45. I'm not going to hold my breath because life goes on. Life is too short to sit around moaning about what could have been or what was.

Tina Weymouth

#46. The apothecary's name was Owlglass. He hummed to himself as he worked in his back room. He'd found a new type of blue fluff, which he was grinding down. It was probably good for curing something. He'd have to try it out on people until he found out what.

Terry Pratchett

#47. 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

#48. 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

#49. Mrs. Gruber said that happiness was not something she aspired to, that when we had seen as much of the world as she had, we would know that what lies right behind the horseshit is not a prize pony, my dears, it's more horseshit.

Amy Bloom

#50. Maybe I don't really want to know what's going on. Maybe I'd rather not know. Maybe I couldn't bear to know. The Fall was a fall from innocence to knowledge.

Margaret Atwood

#51. 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

#52. It took me until I was almost forty before I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up.

Anita Diamant

#53. Things were a little untidy, but what did that matter? It was possible to become the slave of things; possible to miss life in preparation for living.

Elizabeth Von Arnim

#54. 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

#55. I love you," he said against her lips. "I love you, too," she said but the words that always seemed so big felt small now. What was love when put up against war?

Kristin Hannah

#56. History was what had happened; class was something you read about in a book.

Amit Chaudhuri

#57. I brought you here to tell you this: sometimes what we are searching for does not exist. We may sacrifice for it, even bleed for it, but it was never meant to be ours.

Esther Dalseno

#58. There was no one to comfort the children, no one to embrace them, no one to love them. Care and control were what the dormitories were all about, not love and affection.

Ruth Hegarty

#59. It's interesting how we often can't see the ways in which we are being strong - like, you can't be aware of what you're doing that's tough and brave at the time that you're doing it because if you knew that it was brave, then you'd be scared.

Lena Dunham

#60. In every single culture I encountered, there were always women who defied cultural norms to do what they believed was right for them. This phenomenon has never been related to how rich, poor, successful or not successful the woman may be.

Zainab Salbi

#61. I didn't have that intense ambition to be a musician or an actress. I just enjoyed it. And by enjoying it, because I loved it, it enabled me to get better at what I was doing, because there was a love behind it.

Lauryn Hill

#62. I passed what I thought was a Halloween parade, which was disorienting since I was fairly sure this was May. When I stopped on the corner of Sixteenth Street and made a closer inspection it turned out to be something called a "Gay Pride Parade," which made my stomach turn.

Bret Easton Ellis

#63. 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

#64. What was the use of being grown up if you couldn't take a little risk now and then?

William Bowen

#65. 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

#66. Let the psychotics take over. They alone understood what was happening.

J.G. Ballard

#67. What was wonderful was that even within the drunkenness of two a.m., each of you somehow recognized the more permanent worth and pleasure of the other. You may have arrived with others, will perhaps cohabit this night with others, but both of you have found your fates.

Michael Ondaatje

#68. It felt wrong for me to stay totally connected to that very strict way of approaching the heritage - what it can be, what it cannot be. That was also the period where I really thought, "No, let's open it up."

Raf Simons

#69. What she liked the most about drinking was not being present, that feeling of self-evasion, of disconnection, of liberation, of escape. Alcohol offered her an excellent alternative to being herself without actually dying.

Laura Esquivel

#70. What was it about Halloween that gave every girl license to dress as slutty as possible?

Kim Askew

#71. I didn't know what Facebook was, and now that I do know what it is, I have to say, it sounds like a huge waste of time.

Betty White

#72. Finally they reached the Colosseum, where a dozen guys in cheap gladiator costumes were scuffling with the police - plastic swords versus batons. Percy wasn't sure what that was about, but he and Annabeth decided to keep walking. Sometimes mortals were even stranger than monsters.

Rick Riordan

#73. I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don't know what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose.

P.G. Wodehouse

#74. Well, it's a little odd, the path I took, because when I was young, I wanted to be a cattle rancher. That was what I knew and that was what I liked.

Sandra Day O'Connor

#75. Love was not in it for me at first. I dated guys because of the way they looked. And then I began to learn that it's what's inside that counts. Love to me now is understanding. It's giving.

Crystal Waters

#76. You have just got to face the facts, don't you? I face it head-on. I knew what I was coming in to. I didn't make the impact I hoped for and I believed in.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer

#77. 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

#78. But I did what I thought was right in the moment. In the end, that's all a man has to measure his life, and it's plenty.

Justin Cronin

#79. 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

#80. My first fight. I fought a girl that was a little bit heavier, a little bit more experienced and I was petrified because I didn't know what I was getting myself into. And I did really well against her and nobody believed it was my first fight.

Gina Carano

#81. What I told [my teammates] after the game was I'm just fortunate [for] my 16 years because, this [injury] can happen every single night you go out and play ... It can be over in one instant, so you should appreciate everyday.

Charles Barkley

#82. I was kind of an outcast in school 'cause I always kept to myself and was writing poetry and then going on tour with my brother band all the time, so kids didn't know what to make of me.

Christina Perri

#83. Be a life long or short, its completeness depends on what it was lived for.

David Starr Jordan

#84. It had been too long since she'd had some hot sex. She wasn't looking for a relationship. No, a one night stand was what she wanted. Anonymous sex with a handsome cowboy that she would never have to see again.

Tamara Hoffa

#85. It's more like I was daydreaming when the Supreme Being told me what I should do with my life, and it's too late to ask what it was.

Tim Tharp

#86. I remember what it was ... to be young, very young. When everything, touching and tasting-everything- was so new, and even suffering was wonderful because it was so complete.

James Baldwin

#87. God, it's like reality's completely shifted on me. I used to think I was standing on such solid ground. If I wanted something badly enough, I just worked like hell for it. Now I can't decide what to do, which move to make. All the things I counted on aren't there for me anymore.

Tess Gerritsen

#88. In the half-reclined bed, Yaz slept, mouth open, snoring - probably doped. Mike turned on the TV. For twenty minutes, he watched retired generals on CNN discussing Afghanistan and troop surges as though they knew what the hell war was all about.

Pete Barber

#89. I didn't know then what a sperm was, and so wouldn't understand his answer for several years. "My boy," he said, "you are descended from a long line of determined, resourceful, microscopic tadpoles
champions every one.

Kurt Vonnegut

#90. Thierry Henry, he was definitely the best. He was just too quick. Oh God, what a player he was. I was so relieved when he went to Barcelona. He used to have everything. You couldn't even kick him, he was big and strong, oh, Jesus, he was a nightmare

Jamie Carragher

#91. At night the Garden was a place of shadows and moonlight, where you could more clearly hear all the illusions that went into making it what it was.

Dot Hutchison

#92. If you walk by something that I've done and you like it then I don't think I did what I was supposed to do. It should hit, it should either make you feel uncomfortable, or it should make you feel great, as long as it makes you feel something.

Jason Shawn Alexander

#93. Guilt kept me going. It was impossible not to blame myself for what had happened, but even guilt was a comfort. It was a human feeling, a sign that I was still attached to the same world that other men lived in.

Paul Auster

#94. The next day Mrs Honeyfoot told her husband that John Segundus was exactly what a gentleman should be, but she feared he would never profit by it for it was not the fashion to be modest and quiet and kind-hearted.

Susanna Clarke

#95. Let us inquire what glory there was in an omnipotent being torturing forever a puny little creature who could in no way defend himself? Would it be to the glory of a man to fry ants?

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

#96. A scientist said, "The very best way to send an idea is to wrap it up in a person." That was what happened at Christmas. The idea of divine love was wrapped up in a Person.

Halford Luccock

#97. It was important for a person not to let their body or mind become slow and dull. Oba believed it was important to learn new things. He believed it was important to grow. He thought it was important for a person to use what they had learned. That was how people grew.

Terry Goodkind

#98. I had Micah Richards as a player at 16 and he was a man then. What is he now? A bigger man, probably

Kevin Keegan

#99. I used to think romantic love was a neurosis shared by two, a supreme foolishness. I no longer think that. There's nothing foolish in loving anyone. Thinking you'll be loved in return is what's foolish.

Rita Mae Brown

#100. I've attended many concerts where I felt let down and I was wishing it would be something else. Not that it's their duty to please me, but at the same time, I think a lot about what it's like through the eyes of the consumer, the fan. I want not to pander to the audience, but to be aware of them.

Trent Reznor