Happened Quotes - Page 33

• Call listened with amusement--not that the incident hadn't been terrible. Being decapitated was a grisly fate, whether you were a Yankee or not. But then, amusing things happened in battle, as they did in the rest of life. Some of the funniest things he had ever witnessed had occurred during battles. He had always found it more satisfying to laugh on a battlefield than anywhere else, for if you lived to laugh on a battlefield, you could feel you had earned the laugh. But if you just laughed in a saloon, or at a social, the laugh didn't reach deep.

  Larry McMurtry

  Fate, Yankees, Rest Of Life

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• So you want another story?" Uhh... no. We would like to know what really happened." Doesn't the telling of something always become a story?" Uhh... perhaps in English. In Japanese a story would have an element of invention in it. We don't want any invention. We want the 'straight facts,' as you say in English." Isn't telling about something--using words, English or Japanese--already something of an invention? Isn't just looking upon this world already something of an invention?

  Yann Martel

  Stories, Elements, World

  Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.335, Vintage Canada

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• I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I'm gone which would not have happened if I had not come.

  Salman Rushdie

  Life, Destiny, Gone

  Salman Rushdie (2010). “Midnight's Children”, p.535, Random House

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• It was a joy! Words weren't dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you.

  Charles Bukowski

  Pain, Book, Reading

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• Well, what I don't get is why do we exist? I don't mean how, but why.' I watched the fireflies of his thoughts orbit his head. He said, 'we exist because we exist. . .we could imagine all sorts of universes like this one, but this is the one that happened.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Mean, Firefly, Orbit

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• ...what happened in New York and Washington is the same thing that England and America did to Berlin every day for three years during World War II -- and Germany did the same thing to England.

  Lemmy Kilmister

  New York, War, England And America

  Lemmy Kilmister (2012). “White Line Fever: Lemmy: The Autobiography”, p.166, Simon and Schuster

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• I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office.

  George W. Bush

  Leadership, Smart, Long

  George W. Bush's remarks in Washington, D.C., May 12, 2008.

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• That he'll never let you down. That boy's got a heart the size of Kentucky, and he loves you. That's important. Take it from someone who knows. My mom used to tell me that whatever you do, marry someone who loves you more than you love him. And I listened to her. Why do you think Henry and I get along so well? I'm not saying that I don't love him, because I do. But if I ever left Henry or something, God forbid, ever happened to me, I don't think he'll be able to go on. And that guy would risk his life for mine in a heartbeat.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Mom, Love You, Heart

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• Amy adored both the new look and the new person it allowed her to be. Following the photo shoot, she wore her bruises to the dry cleaner and the grocery store. Most people nervously looked away, but on the rare occasions someone would ask what happened, my sister would smile as brightly as possible, saying, 'I'm in love. Can you believe it? I'm finally, totally in love, and I feel great.

  David Sedaris

  Believe, People, Looks

  David Sedaris (2009). “Me Talk Pretty One Day”, p.91, Hachette UK

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• In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way. The angles of vision are skewed. When a booby trap explodes, you close your eyes and duck and float outside yourself. .. The pictures get jumbled, you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed.

  Tim O'Brien

  War, Eye, Ducks

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• Whenever you look back and say "if" you know you're in trouble. There is no such thing as "if". The only thing that matters is what really happened.

  D. J. MacHale

  Looks, Matter, Trouble

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• It was like something you have dreaded and feared and dodged for years until it seemed like all your life, then despite everything it happened to you and all it was was just pain, all it did was hurt and so it was all over, all finished, all right.

  William Faulkner

  Hurt, Pain, Years

  William Faulkner (1956). “Intruder in the Dust”

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• History was like some vast thing that was always over the tight horizon, invisible except in its effects. It was what happened when you weren't looking -- an unknowable infinity of events, which although out of control, controlled everything.

  Kim Stanley Robinson

  Events, Horizon, Infinity

  Kim Stanley Robinson (2003). “Red Mars”, p.348, Spectra

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• I was young and not gloomy and there were always strange and comic things that happened in the worst time.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Worst Times, Strange, Comic

  Ernest Hemingway (2014). “The Hemingway Collection”, p.457, Simon and Schuster

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• Nothing happened, and nothing kept happening.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Happenings

  Chuck Palahniuk (2011). “Haunted”, p.59, Random House

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• ...the air so still it aches like the place where the tooth was on the morning after you’ve been to the dentist or aches like your heart in the bosom when you stand on the street corner waiting for the light to change and happen to recollect how things once were and how they might have been yet if what happened had not happened.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Morning, Heart, Light

  Robert Penn Warren (2006). “All the King's Men”, p.50, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I’ve gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each "I", every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you’ll have to swallow the world.

  Salman Rushdie

  Gone, Answers, World

  "Midnight's Children". Book by Salman Rushdie, 1981.

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• My favorite six letter word is always because it promises so much. My favorite five letter word is never because it insists on contradicting the promise. My favorite four letter word is once because it says it happened then. My favorite three letter word is yes because I’m just now learning to say it to my heart. My favorite two letter word is if because it makes all things possible like this: If not always If not never Then once. Yes.

  Kate DiCamillo

  Heart, Two, Promise

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• One day, quite some time ago, I happened on a photograph of Napoleon’s youngest brother, Jerome, taken in 1852. And I realized then, with an amazement I have not been able to lessen since: ‘I am looking at eyes that looked at the Emperor.’ Sometimes I would mention this amazement, but since no one seemed to share it, nor even to understand it (life consists of these little touches of solitude), I forgot about it.

  Roland Barthes

  Brother, Taken, Eye

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• When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud And goes down burning into the gulf below, No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud At what has happened. Birds, at least must know It is the change to darkness in the sky. Murmuring something quiet in her breast, One bird begins to close a faded eye; Or overtaken too far from his nest, Hurrying low above the grove, some waif Swoops just in time to his remembered tree. At most he thinks or twitters softly, 'Safe! Now let the night be dark for all of me. Let the night be too dark for me to see Into the future. Let what will be, be.

  Robert Frost

  Eye, Dark, Night

  Robert Frost (1949). “Complete Poems of Robert Frost: 1949”, New York : H. Holt

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• My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die. I counted. It happened on the Jellicoe Road. The prettiest road I’d ever seen, where trees made breezy canopies like a tunnel to Shangri-La. We were going to the ocean, hundreds of miles away, because I wanted to see the ocean and my father said that it was about time the four of us made that journey. I remember asking, 'What’s the difference between a trip and a journey?' and my father said, 'Narnie, my love, when we get there, you’ll understand,' and that was the last thing he ever said.

  Melina Marchetta

  Father, Ocean, Journey

  Melina Marchetta (2010). “Jellicoe Road”, p.1, Harper Collins

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• I knew what was like to finally be seduced by the thing you hunted. Mine just happened to be a more traditional seduction. Okay, at least I was still among the living.

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  Seduction, Okay, Stills

  Laurell K. Hamilton (2011). “Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15”, p.1215, Penguin

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• I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes. After that I liked jazz music. Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way. I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened.

  Donald Miller

  Eye, Night, Men

  Donald Miller (2012). “Blue Like Jazz: Movie Edition: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality”, p.7, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• Oh, Eeyore, you are wet!” said Piglet, feeling him. Eeyore shook himself, and asked somebody to explain to Piglet what happened when you had been inside a river for quite a long time.

  A. A. Milne

  Rivers, Long, Feelings

  A. A. Milne (2011). “The House at Pooh Corner”, p.81, Egmont UK

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• Nothing comes ahead of its time, and nothing ever happened that didn't need to happen.

  Byron Katie

  Needs, Katie, Happens

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