Quotes about first
page 17

“I didn't know what to think about first: me seeing Claude naked, Claude seeing me naked, or the whole fact that we were related and naked in the same room.
(Sookie Stackhouse, Dead in the Family)”

Charlaine Harris Dead in the Family

Source: Dead in the Family

Family, Thinking, Dead

“This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Source: Selected Poems

Personality

“Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness: the truth more first than sun, more last than star…”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

"being to timelessness as it's to time" (1958)

Love, Truth, Fear, Hope

“You cannot be really first-rate at your work if your work is all you are.”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

Source: A Short Guide to a Happy Life

Success

“The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book.”

Mickey Spillane (1918–2006) American writer

Books

“Why wouldn't I dance?' Uh, maybe because at first glance he looked like he ate puppies for breakfast and kittens for lunch?”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Alice in Zombieland

Dance

“I'm writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.”

Shannon Hale (1974) American fantasy novelist

Variant: Writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.

Box

“The solution of the problem of life is life itself. Life is not attained by reason and analysis but first of all by living.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Life, Problem

“It was the first time I had ever made love. I wondered if he knew that. It felt like crying. I wondered, Why does anyone ever make love?”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Love, Making love, Time, Cry

“Feel free to call me by my first name: Master.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind

Feeling

“A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself. He makes his failures certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.”

Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) French writer and dramatist, father of the homonym writer and dramatist

Failure, Personality

“I hope some historian will confirm that I was the first cartoonist to use the word 'booger' in a newspaper comic strip.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Source: The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book

Hope

“At first, she could not talk. Perhaps it was the sudden bumpiness of love she felt for him. Or had she always loved him?”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Love

“I dont care who kissed you first as long as I kiss you last.”

Rachel Vail (1966) American writer

Source: I didn't care who kissed you first as long as I kissed you last."
-George from If We Kiss

Kiss

“Sadie, I can't intervene." He turned up his palms in frustration. "I told you when we first met, this isn't an actual physical body."
"Shame," I mumbled.
"What?"
"Nothing. Go on.”

Rick Riordan book The Throne of Fire

Source: The Throne of Fire

“you're my first born child, and the person who first showed me the miracle of this love a mother has for her child.”

Elizabeth Noble (1968) British novelist

Source: Things I Want My Daughters to Know

Love, Personality

“If I didn't know the ending of a story, I wouldn't begin. I always write my last lines, my last paragraph first, and then I go back and work towards it. I know where I'm going. I know what my goal is. And how I get there is God's grace.”

Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist

God

“Are you an idiot, or an idiot?' Gargarin hissed.

'The first one. I really resent being called the second.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Froi of the Exiles

“Death is the number two fear that people have and public speaking is the first!”

Sidney Sheldon (1917–2007) American writer

Death, People, Fear

“In her first passion, a woman loves her lover, in all the others all she loves is love.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Love, Lovers, Passion

“Life is short… eat desert first!”

Wendy Mass Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life

Variant: Life is short, have dessert first.
Source: Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life

Life

“We can begin the restructuring of thought by declaring legitimate what we have denied for so long. Lets us declare Nature to be legitimate. The notion of illegal plants is obnoxious and ridiculous in the first place.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Source: Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge

Nature

“All right. First, find me a cliff"

"That, will it give you a vantage to see the area?"

"No," said Kaladin. "It will give me something to throw you off of”

Brandon Sanderson book The Way of Kings

Source: The Way of Kings

“Whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first call promising.”

Cyril Connolly book Enemies of Promise

Source: Enemies of Promise (1938), Part 2: The Charlock’s Shade, Ch. 13: The Poppies (p. 109-110)
Context: Whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first call promising.
Young writers if they are to mature require a period of between three and seven years in which to live down their promise. Promise is like the mediaeval hangman who after settling the noose, pushed his victim off the platform and jumped on his back, his weight acting a drop while his jockeying arms prevented the unfortunate from loosening the rope. When he judged him dead he dropped to the ground.

God

“It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Beauty

“Or you might shout at the top of your lungs or whisper into your sleeve, "I hate you, God." That is a prayer too, because it is real, it is truth, and maybe it is the first sincere thought you've had in months.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers

God, Hate, Truth, Sincerity

“Oh, can I really believe the poet's tales, that when one first sees the object of one's love, one imagines one has seen her long ago, that all love like all knowledge is remembrance, that love too has its prophecies in the individual.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

On Regine Olsen (2 February 1839)
1830s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1830s
Context: Oh, can I really believe the poet's tales, that when one first sees the object of one's love, one imagines one has seen her long ago, that all love like all knowledge is remembrance, that love too has its prophecies in the individual. … it seems to me that I should have to possess the beauty of all girls in order to draw out a beauty equal to yours; that I should have to circumnavigate the world in order to find the place I lack and which the deepest mystery of my whole being points towards, and at the next moment you are so near to me, filling my spirit so powerfully that I am transfigured for myself, and feel that it's good to be here.

Love, Imagination, Knowledge

“What one generation finds ridiculous, the next accepts; and the third shudders when it looks back on what the first did.”

Peter Singer (1946) Australian philosopher

“Takes a lot of tries before you hit perfection." He paused to reconsider that. "Well, except for my parents. They got it on the first try." (Adrian)”

Richelle Mead Bloodlines

Source: Bloodlines

Parent, Perfection

“He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands.”

Susanna Clarke book Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Source: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

World, Understanding, Time, Waiting

“All cat stories start with this statement: "My mother, who was the first cat, told me this…”

Shirley Jackson book We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Source: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Cats

“First ambitions are best. We are less brave later.”

Andrew Miller

Pure

“To live and let live, without clamor for distinction or recognition; to wait on divine love; to write truth first on the tablet of one's own heart - this is the sanity and perfection of living, and my human ideal.”

Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910) religious leader

Love, Truth, Waiting, Heart

“As if I could stop loving you. As if I would want to give up the thing that makes me stronger than anything else ever has. Since the first time I saw you, I have belonged to you completely.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Variant: And now I'm looking at you, he said, and you're asking me if I still want you, as if I could stop loving you. As if I would want to give up the thing that makes me stronger than anything ever has.
Source: City of Glass

Love, Time

“Oh lovers! be careful in those dangerous first days! once you've brought breakfast in bed you'll have to bring it forever, unless you want to be accused of lovelessness and betrayal.”

Milan Kundera book The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Source: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Lovers, Betrayal

“Now, for the first time, he's seeing that there really is a way out of this, and it's all so simple. You don't have to run away. You just meet somebody special and step sideways into a parallel universe.”

Irvine Welsh book Skagboys

Source: Skagboys

Way, Universe, Time

“First you find out what you have, Dad would say. Then you figure out how to make it work for what you need, 'cause you don't get what you want. You get just what you have and no more.”

Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer

Source: Betrayals

“The first bowl of chocolate pudding was too hot, but Goldilocks ate it all anyway because, hey, it's chocolate pudding, right?”

Mo Willems (1968) American children's illustrator and writer

Source: Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs

“Life always kills you in the end, but first it prevents you from getting what you want.”

Douglas Coupland The Gum Thief

Source: The Gum Thief

Life

“There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.”

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) British American-born writer

Life and Human Nature.
Afterthoughts (1931)

Life, Happy

“Maybe she'd always been there. Maybe strangers enter your heart first and then you spent the rest of your life searching for them.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: The Piper's Son

Life, Search, Heart

“Well there you go. Even a psychopath recognized your worth enough to want to kill someone else first."
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.”

Richelle Mead Bloodlines

Source: Bloodlines

Cry

“Don't wait for it," I said. "Create a world, your world. Alone. Stand alone. Create. And then the love will come to you, then it comes to you. It was only when I wrote my first book that the world I wanted to live in opened to me.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: The Diary of Anais Nin Volume 1 1931-1934: Vol. 1

Love, Books, World, Waiting

“I want to say yes, but I don't want to be with a boy whose heart belongs to somebody else. Just once, I want to be somebody else's first choice”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Boy, Heart

“Admitting that you do not know something is the first step to learning.”

Terry Goodkind (1948) American novelist

Learning

“it taught me, that when a woman lets herself love, she loses. it taught me that to survive, you rely on yourself first and last." -adrianne

"It should have also taught you that sometimes love has no threshold." -philip”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Sweet Revenge

Love

“You can't love anyone or anything until you love your own existence first. Love can only grow out of a respect for your own life.”

Terry Goodkind book The Pillars of Creation

Source: The Pillars of Creation

Love, Life

“If I ever reach heaven I expect to find three wonders there: first, to meet some I had not thought to see there; second, to miss some I had expected to see there; and third, the greatest wonder of all, to find myself there.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

“The fair breeze blew,
The white foam flew,
And the forrow followed free.
We were the first to ever burst into the silent sea.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge book The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Source: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Sea

“Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities, because, as has been said, 'it is the quality which guarantees all others.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

In Great Contemporaries, "Alfonso XIII" (1937).
The 1930s

Courage

“somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence.
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you always open petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously)her first rose or if it be your wish to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly
as the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries
rendering death and forever with each breathing”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

W [ViVa] (1931) LVII

Life, Death, World, Travel

“When I first met him, he did not care if a friend did not fit into his world, because at that time his world had not been born yet.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

World, Time

“There is no stillness like the quiet of the first cold nights in the fall.”

Carson McCullers (1917–1967) American writer

Source: The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories

Night

“He realized that he had thought only about the first step, never imagined the last.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Imagination

“For there to be betrayal, there would have to have been trust first.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Betrayal

“First impressions are always unreliable.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

“The cucumber and the tomato are both fruit; the avocado is a nut. To assist with the dietary requirements of vegetarians, on the first Tuesday of the month a chicken is officially a vegetable.”

Jasper Fforde (1961) British novelist

Source: Shades of Grey

“Our first computers were born not out of greed or ego, but in the revolutionary spirit of helping common people rise above the most powerful institutions.”

Steve Wozniak (1950) American inventor, computer engineer and programmer

People, Help

“So if the world hates us, we take courage that it hated Jesus first. If you're wondering whether you'll be safe, just look at what they did to Jesus and those who followed him. There are safer ways to live than by being a Christian.”

Shane Claiborne The Irresistible Revolution

Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical

Hate, World, Way, Courage

“I sat up, sliding them off, and the quiet around me did not, for once, seem empty and vast. Instead, for the first time in a while, it felt like it already was full.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

Time

“Whenever she turned her steep focus to me, I felt the warmth that flowers must feel when they bloom through the snow, under the first concentrated rays of the sun.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Feeling, Flowers, Sun

“Admit nothing - that was his first rule. Appeal to logic - second rule. Delay the inevitable - third rule.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Wizard Heir

“People who want to make a million borrow a million first”

Sophie Kinsella book Shopaholic Abroad

Source: Shopaholic Takes Manhattan

People

“His crush went from exciting to depressing, as if he'd gone from the first blush of infatuation to the terminal nostalgia of a former lover without even the temporary relief of an actual relationship in between.”

Lev Grossman The Magicians

Source: The Magicians

Lovers, Nostalgia

“Run first,' Shane said. 'Mourn later.'
It was the perfect motto for Morganville.”

Rachel Caine book Glass Houses

Chapter 13
Variant: Run first,"" Shane said. ""Mourn later.""
It was the perfect motto for Morganville.""
Source: Glass Houses

Perfection

“And if you dont come back from the dorm, I'm the one who has to explain to Micheal how I let you go off and get yourself killed like a Dumbass. First rule in horror movies, Clair-Never split up!”

Rachel Caine book Glass Houses

Source: Glass Houses

“To pay compliments to the one we love is the first method of caressing, a demi-audacity venturing. A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Love, Kiss

“Georgie, stop trying to resurrect the shoes. They were never alive in the first place.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: On the Edge

Shoe

“Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Variant: Faithfulness and sincerity are the highest things.
Source: The Analects

Faith, Sincerity

“When I was alive, I mean the first time, Mussolini was in charge. We were at war.”
“Mussolini?” Leo frowned. “Wasn’t he like BFFs with Hitler?”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

War, Time

“First you must have the images, then come the words.”

Robert James Waller The Bridges of Madison County

Source: The Bridges of Madison County

“I don't know the first thing about holding together a family, especially one that resembles an heirloom vase, shattered but glued back together for its beauty, and no one mentions that you can see the cracks as plain as day.”

Jodi Picoult book Songs of the Humpback Whale

Source: Songs of the Humpback Whale

Family, Beauty

“I'm a Christian first, and a mean-spirited, bigoted conservative second, and don't you ever forget it.”

Ann Coulter book If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans

2007
Source: If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans (2007), p. 77 ISBN 0307408957

Forgetting

“She answered by standing and kissing him first and held his cheeks and closed her eyes and felt sure as bones and deep as blood that she had found her place.”

Shannon Hale The Goose Girl

Source: The Goose Girl

Kiss

“Be you wise and never sad,
You will get your lovely lad.
Never serious be, nor true,
And your wish will come to you--
And if that makes you happy, kid,
You'll be the first it ever did.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Love, Happiness, Sadness

““I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend ... if you have one."
— George Bernard Shaw, playwright (to Winston Churchill)
"Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one."
— Churchill's response”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Night

“Much as I have no wish to hurt anyone's feelings, my first obligation has not been to be nice but to be true to my perhaps peculiar memories, experiences and feelings.”

Edward Said (1935–2003) Professor of English and literature

Source: Out of Place

Feeling, Memory, Hurt

“Fantasy is totally wide open; all you really have to do is follow the rules you've set. But if you're writing about science, you have to first learn what you're writing about.”

Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006) American science fiction writer

Learning, Science

“What else should you be? Human beings didn't evolve brains in order to lie around on lakes. Killing's the first thing we learned. And a good thing we did, or we'd be dead, and the tigers would own the earth.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

Lie, Learning, Dead

“You asked me who I belong to," he whispered. "I belong to. Your blood is my blood, your bones my bones. The first time you saw me, I looked familiar, didn't I? Just like you looked familiar to me.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Time

“Between the time the last train leaves and the first train arrives, the place changes: it's not the same as in daytime.”

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

Source: After Dark

Change, Time, Training

“To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

World, Understanding

“The first rule of truly living - do the thing you are most afraid of.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

“I’ve named everything that I’ve ever owned. Real or inanimate, I have to give it a first and last name. Everything in my apartment comes alive at night.”

Amy Sedaris (1961) American comedian

Night

“You fainted and I caught you. It was the first time I'd supported a human. You had such heavy bones. I put myself between you and gravity. Impossible.”

Elizabeth Knox (1959) New Zealand writer

Source: The Vintner's Luck

Support, Time

“Jessica swallowed. "I think you had better stick to English."

"But Italian is so moving," Dain said.

"To ho voluto dal primo che ti vedi." I've wanted you from the first moment I saw you.

"Mi tormenti ancora." You've tormented me ever since.”

Loretta Chase book Lord of Scoundrels

Source: Lord of Scoundrels

Thinking

“I buy wine according to the bottle design. After I get down the first glass it all tastes okay to me so I figure you go for something classy to look at on the table”

Janet Evanovich (1943) Novelist

Source: Smokin' Seventeen

Wine

“Fanfiction isn't copying - it's a. One long party, from the first capital letter to the last full stop!”

Jasper Fforde book One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

Source: One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

“Looks are deceiving," Risa says. "After all, when I first saw you I thought you looked reasonably intelligent.”

Neal Shusterman book Unwind

Variant: Do I look feeble to you"
"Actually, yes."
"Well, looks can be deceiving. For instance, when I met you, I thought you look reasonably intelligent.
Source: Unwind

Intelligence