Quotes about start
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“And besides, I like to cry. After I cry hard it's like it's morning again and I'm starting the day over.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Cry

“So are there any asshole guys here I can start dating?' she says. 'That's, like, my pattern.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

Guy

“But Neve, you can’t start a book and leave it halfway through,’ he’d said implacably. ‘It’s almost as bad as turning down the corner of the page, instead of using a bookmark.”

Sarra Manning (1950) British writer

Source: You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

Books

“I start to get the feeling that something is really wrong.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

Feeling

“I can't tell them what to do!"
"Why not?" the other girl demanded. "Honestly, Clary, if you don't start utilizing a bit of your natural feminine superiority, I just don't know what I'll do with you.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Girl, Nature

“The world keeps ending but new people too dumb to know it keep showing up as if the fun's just started.”

John Updike book Rabbit Is Rich

Source: Rabbit Is Rich

People, World

“it is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Thinking

“If everyone started off the day singing, just think how happy they'd be.”

Lauren Myracle book Shine

Source: Shine

Happiness, Thinking, Singing

“Okay, Shane," Agnes said as Brenda's clock gonged midnight. "I got Joey in the kitchen, a cop in the front hall, a dead body in the basement, and you in my bedroom. Where do you want to start?”

Jennifer Crusie (1949) American writer

Source: Agnes and the Hitman

Dead

“When you started thinking it was easy, you were forgetting what it cost.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Thinking, Forgetting

“Just start the sentence… and see what happens. This is how we write.”

Jincy Willett American writer

Source: The Writing Class

“I always finish what i start”

Ally Carter Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy

Source: Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy

“When God ignores you, the devil starts looking good.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Flirt

Source: Flirt

God

“Patrick started running after the sunset. And Sam immediately followed him. And I saw them in silhouette. Running after the sun.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Sun

“Oh, I'm starting to cry again. That's what happens when you think about life being fair. And I can't explain why it isn't… I don't think it's something anybody knows.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Life, Thinking, Cry

“I know what it's like to start something and have it suddenly grow out of control. And you want to get rid of it, because it's hurting you and everyone else around you, but every time you try to do that, it consumes you again.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Time, Hurt

“The key is this: Meet today's problems with today's strength. Don't start tackling tomorrow's problems until tomorrow. You do not have tomorrow's strength yet. You simply have enough for today.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Source: Traveling Light: Releasing the Burdens You Were Never Intended to Bear

Problem

“So I started out for God knows where.
I guess I'll know when I get there.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

God

“We know how it ends practically before it starts. That's why stories appeal to us. They give us the clarity and simplicity our real lives lack.”

Anne Bishop (1955) American fiction writer

Source: Daughter of the Blood

“If we have to be cat burglars, I'm going to see what' to steal in the fridge."
We're trying to find evidence she's the poisoner. Just a thought before you start putting random things in your mouth." Ruth shrugged and walked past Val.”

Holly Black (1971) American children's fiction writer

Source: Valiant

Cats, Past

“Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

“Ka was like a wheel, its one purpose to turn, and in the end it always came back to the place where it had started.”

Stephen King book The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands

Source: The Waste Lands

“A library card is the start of a lifelong adventure.”

Lilian Jackson Braun (1913–2011) author

“I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumours to my dogs.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Disease, Dogs, Home, Night

“But who are you?"

Percy—" I started to say. Then the skeletons turned around. "Gotta go!"

What kind of name is Percy Gotta-go?”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

“The worse I am, the more I need God. I can't shut myself out from His mercy. That is what it would mean; starting a life with you, without Him.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Source: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

Life, God

“Kids can handle a lot more than you think they can. It's when they get to be grown up that you have to start worrying.”

Anne Ursu (1900) American writer

Source: Breadcrumbs

Thinking

“If you want to be loved, be a lovable. It's a good place to start.”

David Levithan Boy Meets Boy

Source: Boy Meets Boy

Love

“I go wherever you go,' he says, launching us into the water.
This is our start. This is the moment it becomes real. We are married. We are infinite. Me and Conrad. The first boy I ever slow danced with, ever cried over. Ever loved.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: We'll Always Have Summer

Love, Boy, Water, Dance

“Until you actually start making something, your brilliant idea is just that, an idea.”

Jason Fried software entrepreneur

Source: Rework

Idea

“The tricky thing about mazes is that you don't know if you've chosen the right path until the very end. If it turns out you were wrong, it's usually too late to go back and start again. That's the problem with mazes.”

Haruki Murakami book The Strange Library

Source: The Strange Library

Problem

“But when you started dating someone, you could never be sure what you were getting into. You had to give someone a chance to show you who he really was… and believe him when he did.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Blue-Eyed Devil

Chance

“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head.”

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

Effort, Learning

“This is the world as it is. This is where you start.”

Saul D. Alinsky (1909–1972) American community organizer and writer

World, Wise, Deep, Inspirational

“Over and over, we start our own tales, compose our own stories, whether our lives are short or long. Until at last all our beginnings come down to just one end, and the tale of who we are is done.”

Cameron Dokey (1956) American writer

Source: Before Midnight: A Retelling of Cinderella

“Quite possibly there's nothing as fine as a big freight train starting across country in early summer, Hardesty thought. That's when you learn that the tragedy of plants is that they have roots.”

Mark Helprin book Winter's Tale

Source: Winter's Tale

Learning, Summer, Training, Country

“It never seemed fair that just when you're old enough to do anything you want, you can't. You have to start working, so there's no time. And if there is time, you're not working, so there's no money.”

Terri Farley (1950) American writer

Source: Seven Tears Into the Sea

Money, Time

“You are freakishly tall, aren’t you? (Tory)
For a woman wanting my help you are ever determined to insult me. Should I make this as painless as possible and leave now before the die-painfully-you-asshole-prick stuff starts again? (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

Help

“Start walking. When you hit a spot where you’re gasping for breath, that should tell us our limitations. (Xypher)
Oh, joy. I can’t wait to be the guppy. (Simone)
Glub, glub, little fishy. Start walking. (Xypher)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dream Chaser

Waiting, Joy

“Since I had started to break down all my writing and get rid of all facility and try to make instead of describe, writing had been wonderful to do.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast

“I always hated when my scars started to fade, because as long as I could still see them, I knew why I was hurting.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Hate, Hurt

“We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

We Didn't Start the Fire.
Song lyrics, Storm Front (1989)

World, Light, Fight

“Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity, you will become a statistic.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Fight

“I start to crack at four hundred to one.”

Suzanne Collins Gregor and the Marks of Secret

Source: Gregor and the Marks of Secret

“Can you imagine, finally showing your true self to your spouse, your soul mate, and having him not like you? So that's how the hating first began. I've thought about this a lot, and that's where it started, I think.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

Hate, Soul, Imagination, Thinking

“In this desperate way, I started many a comedy.”

Charlie Chaplin book My Autobiography

Source: My Autobiography

Way

“He started to look at me in a manner I recognized: it was the way I looked at a new book, one I had never read before, one that surprised me with all it had to say.”

Alice Hoffman book Blackbird House

Source: Blackbird House

Books, Way, Reading

“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Life, Beauty

“Just start off with the same goals in mind. If you have the same values, same goals then you'll be on track for the same future.”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

Future

“The storm starts, when the drops start dropping
When the drops stop dropping then the storm starts stopping.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

“There are so many beautiful girls around that after a while you start looking for someone who can make you laugh”

Candace Bushnell book Sex and the City

Source: Sex and the City

Beauty, Girl

“When in doubt, start from the top.
-Jason Grace”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

“I wondered if I should start a small fire in Percy Jackson's sink, perhaps burn some bandages in thanks, but I decided that might strain that Jackson's hospitality.”

Rick Riordan book The Hidden Oracle

Source: The Hidden Oracle

“If you insist on the chase," I say, my voice much surer than I feel."Then you better start training. 'Cause, dude you're in for a marathon.”

Alyson Nöel book Blue Moon

Source: Blue Moon

Feeling, Training

“I worry that when you start quoting Machiavelli to justify your actions, you have ceased to be one of the good guys.

No, quoting Nietzsche does that. Machiavelli is just cool.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Bullet

Source: Bullet

Guy, Quotes

“And when things start to go wrong, a good boss doesn't just fire everybody and start over.”

Lisi Harrison (1970) Canadian writer

Source: Boys "R" Us

“That's funny because if anyone actually did prove the existence of God we'd just tell him 'nice proof, Fraa Bly' and start believing in God.”

Neal Stephenson book Anathem

Source: Anathem

God

“She had given birth to me and nursed me and brought me up. She had known me before I knew myself and now she had no say in the matter. Life started out one thing and then suddenly turned a corner and became something else.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

Source: Middlesex

Life, Birth

“Power doesn't have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it.”

Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man

Source: Invisible Man (1952), Chapter 6.

Confidence

“When you truly start to care about someone you become vulnerable to all sorts of things.”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Source: Bruiser

“If you never tell anyone the truth about yourself, eventually you start to forget.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Truth, Forgetting

“My head was throbbing, and my hands were shaking, but I went down the ladder to my workroom - and started figuring out how to rip someone's heart out of his chest from fifty miles away.
Who says I never do anything fun on a Friday night?”

Jim Butcher book Storm Front

Source: Storm Front

Heart, Night

“When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.”

John Wyndham book The Day of the Triffids

Source: Book opening line. (Ch.1, p.7) [Page numbers per the Penguin Books paperback, 1954 reprint.]

“If you allow your rhythm to be interrupted, you'll create a void. Then to replace what you give up, you'll start to expect and need more from your partner.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl—A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship

“if it's true your life flashes past your eyes before you die, then it is also the truth that your life rushes forth when you are ready to start to truly be alive.”

Amy Hempel (1951) Short story writer

Source: The Collected Stories

Life, Truth, Past

“… maybe it's only fitting that relationship that started with a lie would end with one.”

Ally Carter I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Source: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Lie

“The supposedly immaterial soul, we now know, can be bisected with a knife, altered by chemicals, started or stopped by electricity, and extinguished by a sharp blow or by insufficient oxygen.”

Steven Pinker book How the Mind Works

Source: How the Mind Works

Soul

“You know you're in trouble when your own imagination starts punishing you.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Imagination

“Guys can smell desperation. It triggers an instinct in them to run far and fast so they aren't around when a woman starts peeling apart her heart.”

Janette Rallison (1966) American writer

Source: My Fair Godmother

Guy, Heart

“Everything was too sharp and clear, so that I could never tell where to start- the way a map that shows too much can sometimes be useless.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Way

“So once you're dead there's just nothing?
Mari: Basically…
Korogi: I get so scared when I start thinking about this stuff. I can hardly breathe, and my whole body wants to shrink into a corner. It's so much easier to just believe in reincarnation.”

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

Source: After Dark

Thinking, Dead

“This is a story about a man named Eddie and it begins at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun. It might seem strange to start a story with an ending. But all endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time.”

Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003)

Time, Sun

“Arm there," she said. "Other arm, idiot. Now hand there… okay, ready? We're going to start with your left foot. On three. One. Two… What the devil is he doing here?”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: Erak's Ransom

“Helplessness is such a rotten feeling. There's nothing you can do about it. Being helpless is like being paralyzed. It's sickness. The cure calls for a monumental effort to stand up and start walking somewhere, anywhere. But that takes some doing.”

Chuck Barris (1929–2017) American game show creator, producer, and host

Source: You and Me, Babe

Feeling, Effort

“I guess it started in London, the night our dad blew up the British museum.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Night

“Sex is like a drink, it's bad to start brooding about it too early in the day.”

Margaret Atwood book Oryx and Crake

Source: Oryx and Crake

Sex, Drink

“The ocean makes its music; the wind does its dance. We hold on. At first we hold on to one another, but then it starts to feel like we are holding on to something even bigger than that. Greater.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Music, Feeling, Dance

“Come on, it’s an American tradition. Apple soup? Mom’s homemade chicken pie?'
She chuckled in spite of herself, then winced. 'It’s apple pie and Mom’s homemade chicken soup. But you didn’t do badly, for a start.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Nightfall

Moms

“No one ever asks a kid for her opinion, but it seems to me that growing up means you stop hoping for the best, and start expecting the worst.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Between the Lines

Hope

“Garion started shaving. "Try to keep away from your nose," said Hettar wryly. "A man looks quite strange without a nose.”

David Eddings book Castle of Wizardry

Source: Castle of Wizardry

“All of us started normal. All of us started out as functioning human beings with the potential to do almost anything we wanted, but somewhere along the paths of our lives, we got lost.”

James Frey book A Million Little Pieces

page 332
Source: A Million Little Pieces (2003)
Context: All of us started out normal. All of us started out as functioning human beings with the potential to do almost anything we wanted, but somewhere along the paths of our lives we got lost. Though we are here at this Clinic trying to find our way back, we all know that most of us will never get there. Things like the fight allow us to dream, and take us away from here, and allow us to imagine what the normal World must be like and how normal people must live in it.

“When she started to play, Steinway came down personally and rubbed his name off the piano.”

Bob Hope (1903–2003) American comedian, actor, singer and dancer

Personality

“I am starting to get tired of relying on words.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

“This is where it all begins. Everything starts here, today.”

David Nicholls book One Day

Source: One Day

Hope

“Next morning I went over to Paul’s for coffee and told him I had finished. “Good for you,” he said without looking up. “Start the next one today.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

Coffee

“You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it.
That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.”

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

Thinking

“(On being in a position of leadership) Even if it's your dog, you've got authority over somebody. Start treating him better.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Dogs

“All things truly wicked start from an innocence.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Ch 17; Variant: All things truly wicked start from innocence.
As quoted by R Z Sheppard in review of The Garden of Eden (1986) TIME (26 May 1986)
A Moveable Feast (1964)