First Time Quotes - Page 16

• at the press conference for the film he impressed everyone with his complete sincerity and innocence. he said he had come to see the sea for the first time and marveled at how clean it was. someone told him that, in fact, it wasn't. 'when the world is emptied of human beings' he said, 'it will become so again

  Werner Herzog

  Sea, World, Firsts

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• It was the first time I was ever in love, and I learned a lot. Before that I'd never even thought about killing myself.

  Steven Wright

  Firsts, Killing, Killing Myself

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• I’m going to break one of the rules of the trade here. I’m going to tell you some of the secrets of improvisation. Just remember—it’s always a good idea to follow the directions exactly the first time you try a recipe. But from then on, you’re on your own.

  James Beard

  Ideas, Secret, Trying

  James Beard (1974). “The best of Beard: great recipes from a great cook”

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• The first time you see something that you have never seen before, you almost always know right away if you should eat it or run away from it.

  Scott Adams

  Running, Food, Firsts

  Scott Adams (2007). “Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!: Cartoonist Explains Cloning, Blouse Monsters, Voting Machines, Romance, Monkey G ods, How to Avoid Being Mistaken for a Rodent, and More”, p.448, Penguin

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• The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  New York, Bridges, Cities

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “The Echoes of the Jazz Age Collection: The Beautiful and Damned, Winter Dreams, The Great Gatsby, Babylon Revisited, The Diamond as Big as the Ritz and many more”, p.517, e-artnow

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• When a new baby laughs for the first time a new fairy is born, and as there are always new babies there are always new fairies.

  James M. Barrie

  Baby, Laughing, Nests

  James M. Barrie (2015). “Peter Pan: Top 100 Classic Novels”, p.128, 谷月社

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• My first time I jacked off, I thought I'd invented it. I looked down at my sloppy handful of junk and thought, This is going to make me rich.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Sex, Teenager, Funny Relationship

  Chuck Palahniuk (2001). “Choke: A Novel”, Anchor Books

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• I felt a strange tightness coming over me, and I reacted instinctively – for the first time in a long, long while – by slipping my notebook into my belt and reaching down to take off my watch. The first thing to go in a street fight is your watch, and once you’ve lost a few, you develop a certain instinct that lets you know when it’s time to get the thing off your wrist and into a safe pocket.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Notebook, Fighting, Long

  Hunter S. Thompson (2012). “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72”, p.364, Simon and Schuster

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• …there is no nakedness that compares to being naked in front of someone for the first time.

  John Irving

  Naked, Firsts, Compare

  John Irving (2012). “A Widow For One Year”, p.43, Random House

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• All my life one of my greatest desires has been to travel-to see and touch unknown countries, to swim in unknown seas, to circle the globe, observing new lands, seas, people, and ideas with insatiable appetite, to see everything for the first time and for the last time, casting a slow, prolonged glance, then to close my eyes and feel the riches deposit themselves inside me calmly or stormily according to their pleasure, until time passes them at last through its fine sieve, straining the quintessence out of all the joys and sorrows.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Country, Eye, Sea

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• It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance.

  Annie Dillard

  Powerful, Firsts, Glances

  Annie Dillard (2016). “The Abundance”, p.122, Canongate Books

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• If he failed the first time he took his driver's licence test, it was mainly because he started an argument with the examiner in an ill-timed effort to prove that nothing could be more humiliating to a rational creature than being required to encourage the development of a base conditional reflex by stopping at a red light when there was not an earthly soul around, heeled or wheeled. He was more circumspect the next time, and passed.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Light, Effort, Soul

  Vladimir Nabokov (2012). “Pnin”, p.85, Penguin UK

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• It was the first time I'd ever said the words to another person, and the sound of them broke open my heart.

  Sue Monk Kidd

  Heart, Sound, Firsts

  Sue Monk Kidd (2003). “The Secret Life of Bees”, p.242, Penguin

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• I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Father, Book, Firsts

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon (2005). “The Shadow of the Wind”, p.14, Penguin

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• You were in my arms for the first time, and you said my name, 'Tristan.' I answered you: 'Isolde.' Isolde. The world became a word.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Names, World, Arms

  Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Lighthousekeeping”, p.189, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The radio was on and that was the first time I heard that song, the one I hate. Whenever I hear it all I can think of is that very day riding in the front seat with Lucy leaning against me and the smell of Juicy Fruit making me want to throw up. How can a song do that? Be like a net that catches a whole entire day, even a day whose guts you hate? You hear it and all of a sudden everything comes hanging back in front of you, all tangled up in that music.

  Lynda Barry

  Song, Hate, Thinking

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• In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life.

  Haruki Murakami

  Spring, Years, Twenties

  Haruki Murakami (2011). “Sputnik Sweetheart”, p.3, Random House

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• It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I'd been happy, and that I was happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.

  Albert Camus

  Lonely, Stars, Philosophy

  L'Etranger (The Stranger) pt. 2, ch. 5 (1942)

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• I don't mean to say that I'm about to state my credo here on this page, but merely to affirm, sincerely for the first time in my life, my belief in man as an individual and independent entity. Certainly not independence in the everyday sense of the word, but pertaining to a freedom and mobility of thought that few people are able - or even have the courage - to achieve.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Mean, Independent, Men

  Hunter S. Thompson (2012). “Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967”, p.70, Ballantine Books

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• Don’t ever leave me again,” I said in a tiny voice. I won’t,” he promised into my hair, sounding most un-Fang-like. “I won’t. Not ever.” And just like that, a cold shard of ice that had been inside my chest ever since we’d split up-well, it just disappeared. I felt myself relax for the first time in I don’t known how long. The wind was chilly, but the sun was bright, and my whole flock was together. Fang and I were together. Excuse me? I’m alive too.” Iggy’s plaintive voice made me pull back.

  James Patterson

  Hair, Ice, Wind

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• I'll never forget the first time Davram took me by the scruff of my neck and showed me he was the stronger of us. It was magnificent! If a woman is stronger than her husband, she comes to despise him. She has the choice of either tyrannizing him or else making herself less in order not to make him less. If the husband is strong enough, though, she can be as strong as she is, as strong as she can grow to be.

  Robert Jordan

  Strong, Husband, Order

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• It was then that Hook bit him. Not the pain of this but its unfairness was what dazed Peter. It made him quite helpless. He could only stare, horrified. Every child is affected thus the first time he is treated unfairly. All he thinks he has a right to when he comes to you to be yours is fairness. After you have been unfair to him he will love you again, but he will never afterwards be quite the same boy. No one ever gets over the first unfairness; no one except Peter.

  James M. Barrie

  Children, Pain, Love You

  Peter and Wendy ch. 8 (1911)

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• The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread. When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out "stop!" When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.

  Bertolt Brecht

  Summer, Rain, Fall

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• This was the first time that he has ever looked into the labyrinth of the human soul. He was very far from understanding what he saw. But what was of more value, he felt and suffered with her. In years that were yet to come, he relived this memory in song, in the most beautiful song this world has known. For the understanding of the soul's defencelessness, of the conflict between the two poles, is not the source of the greatest song. The source of the greatest song is sympathy.

  Halldór Laxness

  Beautiful, Song, Memories

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• To travel a circle is to journey over the same ground time and time again. To travel a circle wisely is to journey over the same ground for the first time. In this way, the ordinary becomes extraordinary, and the circle, a path to where you wish to be. And when you notice at last that the path has circled back into itself, you realize that where you wish to be is where you have already been ... and always were.

  Neale Donald Walsch

  Inspirational, Wise, Time

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