First Time Quotes - Page 17

• I’m ALIVE. Thinking about it, noticing it, is new. You do things and don’t watch. Then all of a sudden you look and see what you’re doing and it’s the first time, really.

  Ray Bradbury

  Thinking, Watches, Looks

  5 Copy quote

• From the first time he'd met her, he'd sensed an air of contradiction about her. She was very much a woman, but still retained a waiflike quality. She could be brash, and at times deliberately suggestive, yet she was painfully shy. She was incredibly easy to get along with, yet she had few friends. She was a talented artist in her own right, but so self-conscious about her work that she rarely completed a piece and preferred to work with other people's art and ideas.

  Charles de Lint

  Art, Ideas, Air

  5 Copy quote

• The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I read a book over I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Friendship, Book, Reading

  Oliver Goldsmith, Sir James Prior (1837). “The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith, M.B.: Letters from a citizen of the world, to his friend in the East. A familiar introduction to the study of natural history”, p.335

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• Maybe I'd never see him again... maybe he'd gone for good... swallowed up, body and soul, in the kind of stories you hear about... Ah, it's an awful thing... and being young doesn't help any... when you notice for the first time... the way you lose people as you go along ... the buddies you'll never see again... never again... when you notice that they've disappeared like dreams... that it's all over... finished... that you too will get lost someday... a long way off but inevitably... in the awful torrent of things and people... of the days and shapes... that pass... that never stop.

  Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  Dream, Long, People

  23 Copy quote

• The gate is perfectly simple," Temeraire said. "There is only a bar across the fence, which one can lift very easily, and then it swings open; Nitidus could do it best, for his forehands are the smallest. Though it is difficult to keep the animals inside the pen, and the first time I learned how to open it, they all ran away," he added. "Maximus and I had to chase after them for hours and hours--it was not funny at all," he said, ruffled, sitting back on his haunches and contemplating Laurence with great indignation.

  Naomi Novik

  Animal, Simple, Swings

  Naomi Novik (2009). “In His Majesty's Service: Three Novels of Temeraire (His Majesty's Service, Throne of Jade, and Black Powder War)”, p.390, Del Rey

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I shall no longer be instructed by the Yoga Veda or the Aharva Veda, or the ascetics, or any other doctrine whatsoever. I shall learn from myself, be a pupil of myself; I shall get to know myself, the mystery of Siddhartha." He looked around as if he were seeing the world for the first time.

  Hermann Hesse

  Wisdom, Yoga, Siddhartha

  Hermann Hesse, Stanley Appelbaum (1998). “Siddhartha”, p.47, Courier Corporation

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Suicide is a form of murder - premeditated murder. It isn't something you do the first time you think of doing it. It takes getting used to. And you need the means, the opportunity, the motive. A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.

  Susanna Kaysen

  Suicide, Suicidal, Mean

  FaceBook post by Susanna Kaysen from Mar 22, 2014

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide.

  Terry Pratchett

  Intelligent, People, Three

  "Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (Friday)". Book by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, May 1, 1990.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• I felt, that night, on that stage, under that skull, incredibly close to everything in the universe, but also extremely alone. I wondered, for the first time in my life, if life was worth all the work it took to live. What exactly made it worth it? What's so horrible about being dead forever, and not feeling anything, and not even dreaming? What's so great about feeling and dreaming?

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Dream, Night, Skulls

  Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.145, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• It thought about the magic that happens when you tell a story right, and everybody who hears it not only loves the story, but they love you a little bit, too, for telling it so well. Like I love Ms. Washington, in spite of myself, the first time I heard her. When you hear somebody read a story well, you can't help but think there's some good inside them, even if you don't know them.

  Katherine Hannigan

  Love You, Thinking, Magic

  4 Copy quote

• Bolivia is a striking example. The mostly white, Europeanized elite, which is a minority, happens to be sitting on most of the hydrocarbon reserves. For the first time Bolivia is becoming democratic. So it's therefore bitterly hated by the West, which despises democracy, because it's much too dangerous.

  Noam Chomsky

  White, Democracy, Example

  6 Copy quote

• Whenever I meet people for the first time, I get them to talk for ten minutes. Then I size them up from the exact opposite perspective of all they’ve told me. Do you think that’s crazy? “No,” I said, shaking my head, “I’d guess your method works quite well.

  Haruki Murakami

  Crazy, Thinking, Opposites

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Jun 25, 2014

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Now they are empty, Ramon replied with a shrug of broad, muscled shoulders on his six-foot-three-inch frame....For the first time, a glint of humor touched Ramon Galverra's finely sculpted mouth and arrogant dark eyes.

  Judith McNaught

  Eye, Dark, Feet

  Judith McNaught (2016). “Tender Triumph”, p.6, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Love, they say, enslaves and passion is a demon and many have been lost for love. I know this is true, but I know too that without love we grope the tunnels of our lives and never see the sun. When I fell in love it was as though I looked into a mirror for the first time and saw myself. I lifted my hand in bewilderment and felt my cheeks, my neck. This was me. And when I had looked at myself and grown accustomed to who I was, I was not afraid to hate parts of me because I wanted to be worthy of the mirror bearer.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Life, Hate, Passion

  6 Copy quote

• For the first time since her return, she felt pain, a violent pain, but it made her feel alive, because it was worth feeling.

  Ayn Rand

  Pain, Feelings, Alive

  4 Copy quote

• There's a moment when love makes you believe in death for the first time. You recognize the one whose loss, even contemplated, you'll carry forever, like a sleeping child. All grief, anyone's grief...is the weight of a sleeping child.

  Anne Michaels

  Children, Grief, Believe

  6 Copy quote

• Dustfinger still clearly remembered the feeling of being in love for the first time. How vulnerable his heart had suddenly been! Such a trembling, quivering thing, happy and miserably unhappy at once.

  Cornelia Funke

  Happiness, Heart, Being In Love

  58 Copy quote

• I offer Emily half of my hit of acid- Love Saves the Day. It's my second or third time tripping, Emily's first, and she's understandably trepid. Awake all night, at one point I find her touching her reflection in a cruelly lit dorm bathroom, asking if she'll ever be the same. I kiss her then for the first time and whisper, No.

  Nick Flynn

  Kissing, Reflection, Night

  Nick Flynn (2016). “Another Bullshit Night in Suck City”, p.96, Faber & Faber

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Chris Nielsen: Thank you for every kindness. Thank you for our children. For the first time I saw them. Thank you for being someone I was always proud to be with. For your guts, for your sweetness. For how you always looked, for how I always wanted to touch you. God, you were my life. I apologize for everytime I ever failed you. Especially this one.

  Richard Matheson

  Children, Kindness, Proud

  "Fictional character: Chris Nielsen". "What Dreams May Come", www.imdb.com. 1998.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• A rare objectivity and insight can be imparted regarding this world's struggle for spiritual integrity. In the land of Faerie, the reader may see his small battles writ large in the wars of titans or elves and understand for the first time, his own worth.

  Michael O'Brien

  Spiritual, Integrity, War

  Michael David O'Brien, Michael O'Brien (1998). “A Landscape with Dragons: The Battle for Your Child's Mind”, p.18, Ignatius Press

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Life, Change, Song

  Viktor E. Frankl (2015). “Man's Search For Meaning, Gift Edition”, p.35, Beacon Press

  239 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is By my leaning over the precipice Of your presence and your absence in hopeless fusion My finding the secret Of loving you Always for the first time

  Andre Breton

  Loving You, Secret, Fusion

  9 Copy quote

• Six hundred and forty fish later, the only thing I know is everything you love will die. The first time you meet someone special, you can count on them one day being dead and in the ground.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Relationship, Death, Special You

  "Survivor". Book by Chuck Palahniuk, February 17, 1999.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The unicorn halted in her slow, desperate round of the cage, realizing for the first time that the magician understood her speech. He smiled, and she saw that his face was frighteningly young for a grown man-untraveled by time, unvisited by grief or wisdom. "I know you," he said.

  Peter S. Beagle

  Grief, Men, Speech

  Peter S. Beagle (2003). “A fine and private place: The last unicorn”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Fathers are always so proud the first time they see their sons in uniform," she said. "I know Big John Karpinski was," I said. He is my neighbor to the north, of course. Big John's son Little John did badly in high school, and the police caught him selling dope. So he joined the Army while the Vietnam War was going on. And the first time he came home in uniform, I never saw Big John so happy, because it looked to him as though Little John was all straightened out and would amount to something. But then Little John came home in a body bag.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Father, War, Home

  Kurt Vonnegut (1998). “Bluebeard”, Dial Press

  5 Copy quote

  Show source