Imagine That Quotes - Page 11

• People said things they didn't mean all the time. Everybody else in the world seemed able to factor it in. But not Lena. Why did she believe the things people said? Why did she cling to them so literally? Why did she think she knew people when she clearly didn't? Why did she imagine that the world didn't change, when it did? Maybe she didn't change. She believed what people said and she stayed the same." (Lena, 211)

  Ann Brashares

  Believe, Mean, Thinking

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• As a child, I remember asking my parents when I was five years old, "How come if you are not Zionists, you came to the country?" I was surprised at myself that I asked this question. It means that it was always in the air. Then years later I understood it was because of the Holocaust, because they were refugees. They did not come as immigrants and, because of the illusions of the '50s and the late '40s, my mother said, "The world must be better." She could not imagine that it wouldn't be different.

  Amira Hass

  Country, Mother, Children

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• A social order bent on producing wealth as an end in itself cannot avoid the creation of a people whose souls are superficial and whose daily life is captured by sentimentalities. They will ask questions like “why does a good God let bad things happen to good people ” such people cannot imagine that a people once existed who produced and sang the psalms. If we learn to say “God ” we will do so with the prayer “My God my God why have you forsaken me?

  Stanley Hauerwas

  Prayer, Order, People

  Stanley Hauerwas (2012). “Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir”, p.141, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• She liked to imagine that when she passed, the world looked after her, but she also knew how anonymous she was. Except when she was at work, no one knew where she was at any time of day and no one waited for her. It was immaculate anonymity.

  Alice Sebold

  World, Imagine, Time Of Day

  Alice Sebold (2014). “The Lovely Bones: Picador Classic”, p.177, Pan Macmillan

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• The darkest secret of this country, I am afraid, is that too many of its citizens imagine that they belong to a much higher civilization somewhere else. That higher civilization doesn’t have to be another country. It can be the past instead—the United States as it was before it was spoiled by immigrants and the enfranchisement of the blacks. This state of mind allows too many of us to lie and cheat and steal from the rest of us, to sell us junk and addictive poisons and corrupting entertainments. What are the rest of us, after all, but sub-human aborigines?

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Country, Lying, Past

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• It was a stretch to imagine that Barbara Walters might want to give it all up for Ed Couch, but Evelyn tried her hardest. Of course, even though she was not religious, it was a comfort to know that the Bible backed her up in being a doormat.

  Fannie Flagg

  Religious, Giving, Comfort

  Fannie Flagg (2013). “Fried Green Tomatoes, Can't Wait to Get to Heaven, and I Still Dream About You: Three Bestselling Novels”, p.60, Random House

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• They say: sufferings are misfortunes," said Pierre. 'But if at once this minute, I was asked, would I remain what I was before I was taken prisoner, or go through it all again, I should say, for God's sake let me rather be a prisoner and erat horseflesh again. We imagine that as soon as we are torn out of our habitual path all is over, but it is only the beginning of something new and good. As long as there is life, there is happiness. There is a great deal, a great deal before us.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Taken, Long, Suffering

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• None of us, irrespective of our sexual preference and/or practice, imagine that we can have an intimate relationship with a partner and always have seamless harmony. Indeed, most of us assume that once the “honeymoon” period is over differences will emerge and conflicts will happen. Positively, we also assume that we will be “safe“ in those moments; that even if voices are raised and emotions expressed are intense, there will not be and should not be any abuse or any reason to be unsafe, and that the will to connect and communicate will prevail.

  Bell Hooks

  Voice, Differences, Intimate Relationships

  bell hooks (2013). “Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom”, p.75, Routledge

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• Oh, she doesn't belong to anybody now,' he said, and suddenly I saw her for what she was - a piece of refuse waiting to be cleared away: if you needed a bit of hair you could take it, or trim her nails if nail trimmings had value to you. Like a saint's her bones could be divided up - if anybody required them. She was going to be burnt soon, so why shouldn't everybody have what he wanted first? What a fool I had been during three years to imagine that in any way I had possessed her. We are all possessed by nobody, not even by ourselves.

  Graham Greene

  Hair, Years, Waiting

  Graham Greene (1974). “The end of the affair”, Vintage

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• It's a mistake to expect the laws of the country to reflect the imperatives of the New Testament and the Sermon on the Mount. I applaud the efforts of the Church to provide for people in need, regardless of where they're from or how they got here. But I think it's a mistake to turn around and expect a nation to act that way. Americans are uniquely tempted to imagine that we are a church, and that we are a universal nation. This is one of the reasons why we're such a dangerous country.

  Kelefa Sanneh

  Country, Mistake, Thinking

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

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• I remembered her once saying that life was like your shoes. You couldn't simply expect or imagine that your shoes would fit perfectly. Shoes that pinched your feet were a fact of life.

  Henning Mankell

  Shoes, Feet, Facts

  FaceBook post by Henning Mankell from Nov 28, 2012

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• He's one of those smart, drifty young people who, after certain deliberations, decides he wants to do Something in the Arts but won't, possibly can't, think in terms of an actual job; who seems to imagine that youth and brains and willingness will simply summon an occupation, the precise and perfect nature of which will reveal itself in its own time.

  Michael Cunningham

  Art, Jobs, Thinking

  Michael Cunningham (2010). “By Nightfall: A Novel”, p.12, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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• There's no need to imagine that you're a wondrous beauty, because that's what you are.

  Tove Jansson

  Needs, Imagine, Wondrous

  Tove Jansson (2014). “Moominsummer Madness”, p.13, Macmillan

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• In the abstract, it might be tempting to imagine that irreducible complexity simply requires multiple simultaneous mutations - that evolution might be far chancier than we thought, but still possible. Such an appeal to brute luck can never be refuted... Luck is metaphysical speculation; scientific explanations invoke causes.

  Michael Behe

  Serendipity, Luck, Mutation

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• If you imagine that everything is an exchange, then we're supposed to just transact and walk away. If we haven't walked away and we still have a relationship, it's because there's a debt.

  David Graeber

  Debt, Imagine, Walks

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Do not imagine that art or anything else is other than high magic! - is a system of holy hieroglyph. The artist, the initiate, thus frames his mysteries. The rest of the world scoff, or seek to understand, or pretend to understand; some few obtain the truth.

  Aleister Crowley

  Art, Magic, World

  Aleister Crowley “The Equinox Vol. 1. No. 6.”, Lulu.com

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• I can imagine that Rod Stewart likes giving autographs because he's pure showbusiness.

  Ritchie Blackmore

  Giving, Likes, Imagine

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• The first play I did was 'Philadelphia Here I Come.' Can you imagine that? I am 37 years old I am doing my second professional play and I am on stage with John Malkovich. Joan Allen, Laurie Metcalf and Gary Sinise. One huge name after another. I was terrified and petrified, could hardly get a word out of my mouth.

  John Mahoney

  Philadelphia, Years, Play

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• Do not imagine that what we have said of the insufficiency of our understanding and of its limited extent is an assertion founded only on the Bible: for philosophers likewise assert the same, and perfectly understand it,- without having regard to any religion or opinion.

  Maimonides

  Understanding, Opinion, Philosopher

  Moses Maimonides (2016). “Guide for the perplexed”, p.283, Moses Maimonides

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• I'm one of the most adaptable guys I know in as much as travelling is my favourite thing to do in life. With every place I go, I try to stay there long enough to do it justice, long enough so that I can at least imagine what it would be like to live there. Once I imagine that, then it's OK for me to return home.

  Matthew McConaughey

  Home, Long, Justice

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• When I was younger I didn't have much financially, like we couldn't afford a lot of stuff and I remember seeing little girls' rooms on TV and they'd all be pink. I didn't have my own room, I shared with my brother, so I would have this daydream and imagine that one day I could have my own room and it would all be pink, like Cinderella's.

  Nicki Minaj

  Girl, Brother, One Day

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• People like to imagine that because all our mechanical equipment moves so much faster, that we are thinking faster, too.

  Christopher Morley

  Moving, Thinking, People

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• In the same way that I had to follow an Italian manager here, I can imagine that it was not easy for an Italian manager to follow me at Porto.

  Jose Mourinho

  Italian, Way, Imagine

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• I can't imagine that anybody is as screwed up as I am.

  Rick Springfield

  Imagine, Screwed Up, I Can

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• I can well imagine that certain writers, even writers that we'd consider today very great writers, may not necessarily have tested highly on IQ just because of their numerical skills, or maybe they may not be very good at memory, and are not particularly good at these kinds of tests.

  Daniel Tammet

  Memories, Skills, May

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