Used To Be Quotes - Page 40

• Capitalism will behave antisocially if it is profitable for it to do so, and that can now mean human devastation on an unimaginable scale. What used to be apocalyptic fantasy is today no more than sober realism.

  Terry Eagleton

  Mean, Devastation, Today

  "Why Marx Was Right". Book by Terry Eagleton, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our personal past is only available to us now through black-and-white film, it's a medium for communication with the dead, including our dead selves, the way we used to be, which is why we're drawn to it.

  Frank Lentricchia

  Communication, Black And White, Past

  Frank Lentricchia (2011). “The Sadness of Antonioni”, p.238, SUNY Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I can make some calls. There is a guy. Dagfinn Heyerdahl. He used to be with Norse Heritage Foundation." Norse Heritage Foundation wasn't so much about heritage as it was about viking, in the most cliché sense of the world. They drank huge quantities of beer, they brawled, and they wore horned helmets despite all historical evidence to the contrary. "Used to be?" Curran asked. "They kicked him out for being drunk and violent." Curran blinked. "The Norse Heritage?" "Mhm." "Don't you have to be drunk and violent just to get in?" he asked. "Just how disorderly did he get?

  Ilona Andrews

  Beer, Drunk, Guy

  4 Copy quote

• So are you an inmate or a rubbernecker?" she asks. "Rubbernecker," I answer without hesitation. "You?" "I'm a screw. Or on staff, anyway. Used to be an inmate. Repeat offender. Crimes against my body. Puking sickness followed by heroin, which led to more puking sickness." I'd be surprised at her forthrightness, but that's addicts for you. The twelve steps crack 'em open and then they can't shut up.

  Lauren Beukes

  Twelve, Cracks, Ems

  Lauren Beukes (2010). “Zoo City”, p.149, Jacana Media

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• My life used to be boring. A damnation here, a curse there, with an occasional blight or two to break routine. Now I have Aisling...She's better than reality TV, Internet porn sites, and the trashloids all put together.' - Jim

  Katie MacAlister

  Reality, Two, Together

  7 Copy quote

• They used to be buddies, I thought, they used to be friends, and now they hate each other because one has to work for a living and the other comes from the West Side. They shouldn't hate each other.

  S. E. Hinton

  Hate, West, Sides

  S.E. Hinton (2016). “The Outsiders 50th Anniversary Edition”, p.115, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I take my rucksack and go out the opening where the front door used to be. Manchee gets up from where he's curled and follows me. When I sit down, he recurls by my legs and fall asleep, farting happily and giving a doggy sigh. Simple to be a dog.

  Patrick Ness

  Dog, Fall, Simple

  Patrick Ness (2008). “The Knife of Never Letting Go”, Candlewick Press (MA)

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Tyler's words coming out of my mouth. I used to be such a nice person.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Nice, Mouths, Used

  4 Copy quote

• I wished God were like He used to be, a few notches lower. I wanted Him to be lofty enough to help me but not so uncontrollable. I longed for His warm presence, times when He seemed more… safe.

  Joni Eareckson Tada

  Safe, Helping, Enough

  4 Copy quote

• She'd preferred the uncertainty, if only because it allowed her to remember him the way he used to be. Sometimes, though, she wondered what he felt when he thought of that year they spent together, or if he ever marveled at what they'd shared, or even whether he thought of her at all.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Years, Together, Way

  Nicholas Sparks (2011). “The Best Of Me”, p.26, Hachette UK

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I’m not a romantic, I’m a half-wit. Only stupid people would think I’m smart. I’m not something anyone should know. I’m a lunatic wandering around for scraps, I’m like every single miserable moron I’ve scorned and pretended I didn’t recognize. I’m all of them, every last ugly thing in a bad last-minute costume. I’m not different, not at all, not different from any other speck of a thing. I’m a blemished blemish, a ruined ruin, a stained wreck so failed I can’t see what I used to be.

  Daniel Handler

  Smart, Stupid, Thinking

  Daniel Handler (2012). “Why We Broke Up”, p.196, Egmont UK

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was in love with the idea of him. An ideal of him. Of who I thought he was. Of who he used to be.

  Alexandra Potter

  Ideas, Used, Ideals

  Alexandra Potter (2011). “You're (Not) the One: A Novel”, p.130, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I used to be a child. It came naturally to me. I was an adult for a time, too. That came less naturally.

  Elliot Perlman

  Children, Adults, Used

  4 Copy quote

• It used to be about trying to do something. Now it's about trying to be someone.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Trying, Used, Iron Lady

  21 Copy quote

• A free thinker used to be a man who had been educated on ideas of religion, law, morality, and had arrived at free thought by virtue of his own struggle and toil; but now a new type of born freethinker has been appearing, who’ve never even heard that there have been laws of morality and religion, and that there are authorities, but who simply grow up with negative ideas about everything, that is savages.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Growing Up, Struggle, Men

  64 Copy quote

• I used to be an angry man myself. I’m a recovering assaholic so I could recognize that in Steve. (quoting Jean-Louis Gassée)

  Walter Isaacson

  Men, Angry Man, Used

  4 Copy quote

• It used to be thought that the events that changed the world were things like big bombs, maniac politicians, huge earthquakes, or vast population movements, but it has now been realized that this is a very old-fashioned view held by people totally out of touch with modern thought. The things that really change the world, according to Chaos theory, are the tiny things. A butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazonian jungle, and subsequently a storm ravages half of Europe.

  Neil Gaiman

  Butterfly, Views, Europe

  "Good Omens". Book by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, 1990.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be.

  Kami Garcia

  Teaching, Heart, Suffering Pain

  6 Copy quote

• Look at those numbers running. Money makes time. It used to be the other way around. Clock time accelerated the rise of capitalism. People stopped thinking about eternity. They began to concentrate on hours, measurable hours,man-hours, using labor more efficiently.

  Don DeLillo

  Running, Men, Thinking

  Don DeLillo (2011). “Cosmopolis”, p.65, Pan Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I find it really offensive when people say that the emotional experiences of teenagers are less real or less important than those of adults. I am an adult, and I used to be a teenager, and so I can tell you with some authority that my feelings then were as real as my feelings are now.

  John Green

  Real, Teenager, Emotional

  7 Copy quote

• I think I'm a bit in love with these girls. They make me feel giddy. Like I haven't a care in the world. Like I'm fearless. Like I used to be.

  Melina Marchetta

  Girl, Thinking, Fearless

  Melina Marchetta (2007). “Saving Francesca”, p.160, Knopf Books for Young Readers

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Something is missing: that's as close as I can come to naming the sensation, an awareness of missed or thwarted connections, or of a great hollowness left where something lovely and solid used to be. ...There is something fundamentally insatiable about being human, as though we come into the world with a kind of built-in tension between the experience of being hungry, which is a condition of striving and yearning, and the experience of being fed, which may offer temporary satisfaction but always gives way to new strivings, new yearnings.

  Caroline Knapp

  Giving, Missing, Lovely

  11 Copy quote

• Is he nuts?" "I think the expression used to be 'touched by God'." "So that would be a yes.

  Jonathan Maberry

  Thinking, Expression, Nuts

  Jonathan Maberry (2011). “Rot and Ruin”, p.63, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I feel the monster of grief again, writhing in the empty space where my heart and stomach used to be. I gasp, pressing both palms to my chest. Now the monstrous thing has its claws around my throat, squeezing my airway. I twist and put my head between my knees, breathing until the strangled feeling leaves me.

  Veronica Roth

  Grief, Heart, Breathing

  Veronica Roth (2013). “Insurgent (Divergent Trilogy, Book 2)”, p.34, HarperCollins UK

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Religion used to be the opium of the people. To those suffering humiliation, pain, illness, and serfdom, religion promised the reward of an after life. But now, we are witnessing a transformation, a true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, we are not going to be judged.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Atheist, Pain, Betrayal

  41 Copy quote