Once Upon A Time Quotes - Page 3

• Once upon a time . . . What time are we upon and where do I belong?

  Francesca Lia Block

  Francesca Lia Block (2009). “Witch Baby”, p.5, Harper Collins

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• Once upon a time people talked about the infallibility of the pope; today it is that of the merchant which they wish to establish.

  Charles Fourier

  People, Wish, Today

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• Children understand that 'once upon a time' refers not only--not even primarily--to the past, but to the impalpable regions of the present, the deeper places inside us where princes and dragons, wizards and talking birds, impassable roads, impossible tasks, and happy endings have always existed, alive and bursting with psychic power.

  Stephen Mitchell

  Children, Past, Dragons

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• Once upon a time you were a fish. How do you know? Because I was also a fish. You, too? Sure. A long time ago. Anyway, being a fish, you knew how to swim. You were a great swimmer. A champion swimmer, you were. You loved the water. Why? What do you mean, why? Why did I love the water? Because it was your life! And as we talked, I would have let him go one finger at a time, until, without his realizing, he'd be floating without me. Perhaps that is what it means to be a father-to teach your child to live without you.

  Nicole Krauss

  Children, Father, Mean

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• Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.

  Juvenal

  Military, Men, Long Ago

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• Once upon a time, began the story of you.Many perilous, wonderful, harrowing, brilliant, delightful, profound things happened.And yet—the most exciting twists and best turns are yet to come. And it absolutely does not matter how old or young you are.Like a bright carpet of wonders, enjoy the unrolling of your story.

  Vera Nazarian

  Profound, Stories, Matter

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• Once upon a time, I thought denial was a river in Egypt. It's actually the attitude of the Abbott government.

  Bill Shorten

  Attitude, Government, Egypt

  "Abbott Government still behaving like an opposition: Shorten". Interview with Louise Yaxley, www.abc.net.au. December 1, 2014.

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• We are creatures of story, and the process of changing one mind or the whole world must begin with 'Once upon a time.'

  Jonathan Gottschall

  Mind, Stories, World

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• Our story is a 'once upon a time', but it's not a 'happy ever after'.

  Rupert Sanders

  Stories, Ever After, Happy Ever After

  "Snow White & The Huntsman director Rupert Sanders is living the fairy tale". Interview with Francesca Babb, www.theguardian.com. June 01, 2012.

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• Once upon a time, the Reindeer took a running leap and jumped over the Northern Lights. But he jumped too low, and the long fur of his beautiful flowing tail got singed by the rainbow fires of the aurora. To this day the reindeer has no tail to speak of. But he is too busy pulling the Important Sleigh to notice what is lost. And he certainly doesn’t complain. What's your excuse?

  Vera Nazarian

  Beautiful, Christmas, Running

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• I had more trouble than I had a sense of utility or satisfaction. But it served to occupy me and to keep me occupied in a field that I love - which was cinema - while I was waiting to realize the film that I wanted to do, which was Once Upon a Time in America, which took ten years of thinking and working to realize.

  Sergio Leone

  Thinking, Years, America

  Interview with Marlaine Glicksman, www.americansuburbx.com. December 28, 2012.

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• An important Italian critic once gave Fistful of Dollars a very bad review when it came out. Then he went to the university here [Rome] with Once Upon a Time in America. We showed it to 10,000 students. And while the man was speaking that day to the students, with me present, he said, "I have to state one thing. When I gave that review about Sergio's films, I should have taken into account that on Sergio Leone's passport, there should not be written whether the nationality is Italian or anything else. What should be written is: 'Nationality: Cinema.' "

  Sergio Leone

  Taken, Italian, Men

  Interview with Marlaine Glicksman, www.americansuburbx.com. September 1987.

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• India does not need to become anything else. India must become only India. This is a country that once upon a time was called 'the golden bird'. We have fallen from where we were before. But now we have the chance to rise again. If you see the details of the last five or ten centuries, you will see that India and China have grown at similar paces. Their contributions to global GDP have risen in parallel, and fallen in parallel. Today's era once again belongs to Asia. India and China are both growing rapidly, together. That is why India needs to remain India.

  Narendra Modi

  Country, Together, Chance

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• Once upon a time there was a girl who wanted to put her fist through a mirror. She would tell everyone it was so that she could see what was on the other side, but really, it was so that she wouldn't have to look at herself. That, and because she thought she might be able to steal a piece of glass when no one was looking, and use it to carve her heart out of her chest.

  Jodi Picoult

  Girl, Heart, Glasses

  Jodi Picoult (2009). “Handle with Care: A Novel”, p.318, Simon and Schuster

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• You see in Once Upon a Time in the West the whole film moves around her [Claudia Cardinale]. If you take her out, there's no more film. She's the central motor of the entire happening.

  Sergio Leone

  Moving, West, Film

  Interview with Marlaine Glicksman, www.americansuburbx.com. December 28, 2012.

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• When you take a child who's hollering like hell, sit him on your knee, and say "once upon a time", you stop him hollering. As long as you go on telling him a story, he will listen. Novelists who neglect this fundamental effect do so at their peril. They become what is known as the experimental novelist, and an experimental novel is not really a novel at all.

  William Golding

  Children, Long, Goes On

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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• Money has lost its narrative quality the way painting did once upon a time. Money is talking to itself.

  Don DeLillo

  Talking, Quality, Narrative

  Don DeLillo (2011). “Cosmopolis”, p.64, Pan Macmillan

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• Basically, when I hear it now, I don't recognize myself directly in a lot of cases. I was expecting more menace. And the fact that it didn't seem menacing at first troubled me. Then I thought, What the hey, you know? I'm 66 years old, and I could just crack open a beer and listen to it, and it doesn't trouble me that it doesn't kill. Once upon a time, it probably would have.

  Richard Meltzer

  Beer, Years, Cracks

  Source: therumpus.net

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• That was the only decision there was once upon a time: what to do with the night.

  Harry Crews

  Night, Decision

  Harry Crews (1998). “A Feast of Snakes: A Novel”, p.27, Simon and Schuster

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• Once upon a time there were mass media, and they were wicked, of course, and there was a guilty party. Then there were the virtuous voices that accused the criminals. And Art (ah, what luck!) offered alternatives, for those who were not prisoners to the mass media.

  Umberto Eco

  Art, Media, Voice

  Umberto Eco (2014). “Travels in Hyperreality”, p.161, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Once upon a time, there was a little creature that was rather small and rather wicked and it lived all alone in the woods. The little creature lived in a little den, at the bottom of a little ravine, filled with not-at-all little brambles and on the edge of a forest that could only be described as really freakin' huge.

  Ursula Vernon

  Wicked, Littles, Woods

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• We've strayed into a zone with a high magical index,' he said. 'Don't ask me how. Once upon a time a really powerful magic field must have been generated here, and we're feeling the after-effects.' Precisely,' said a passing bush.

  Terry Pratchett

  Powerful, Feelings, Magic

  Terry Pratchett (2012). “The Wit and Wisdom of Discworld”, p.5, Harper Collins

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• Man walks the moon but his soul remains riveted to earth. Once upon a time it was the opposite.

  Elie Wiesel

  Dream, Moon, Men

  Elie Wiesel (2013). “Souls on Fire”, p.256, Simon and Schuster

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• Once upon a time there was an island named Blogosphere, and at the very center of that island stood a great castle built of stone, and spreading out from that castle for miles in every direction was a vast settlement of peasants who lived in shacks fashioned of tin and cardboard and straw.

  Nicholas G. Carr

  Islands, Castles, Tin

  "The Great Unread" by Nicholas G. Carr, www.roughtype.com.

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• Never, in all my early childhood, did anyone address to me the affecting preamble: 'Once upon a time!' ... I can but think that my parents were in error thus to exclude the imaginary from my outlook upon facts. They desired to make me truthful; the tendency was to make me positive and sceptical. Had they wrapped me in the soft folds of supernatural fancy, my mind might have been longer content to follow their traditions in an unquestioning spirit.

  Edmund Gosse

  Thinking, Errors, Parent

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