After So Long Quotes

“Life is flinching in the midst of breathing, gasping at the thought of dying. It's climbing ropeless up sheer rock faces, groping for the next finger-hole of hope. Steady on! Only a thousand feet to go and after that a jungle, a minefield, a rapids. (Can I stop smiling now?)
Once, not long ago, I was flung off the cliff of the moment, thrust into an illicit relationship with destiny, an affair not of my making. Was I making love or being raped? The lines were fuzzy.”

— Chila Woychik

“After all the years, after everything that you'd had to endure, after everything that you'd undertaken, however good or bad, long after you'd given up all hope, the reward.”

— Marlene Van Niekerk

“War unhinges society, disturbs its peaceful and regular industry, and scatters poisonous seeds of disease and immorality, which continue to germinate and diffuse their baneful influence long after it has ceased. Dazzling by its glitter, pomp and pageantry, it begets a spirit of wild adventure and romantic enterprise, and often disqualifies those who embark in it, after their return from the bloody fields of battle, from engaging in the industrious and peaceful vocations of life.”

— Henry Clay

“A friend's loyalty lasts longer than their memory. Over the course of a long friendship, you might fight with your friend, even get angry with them. But a true friend will forget that anger after a while, because their loyalty to their friend outweighs the memory of the disagreement.”

— Matthew Reilly

“Here.
After so long waiting.
Her purple eyes.
Torn cloak.
Skin pale, sheer as ice.
Exhausted.
But unafraid.”

— Edith Pattou

“As long as I can remember I have been carelessly casting myself uninvited into novels where no self-respecting novelist would have me. This literary gate-crashing of mine must be a sign of a wretched thirsting after immortality.”

— Guy Vanderhaeghe

“I didn't know why something that started off feeling so good had to wind up feeling so bad. Love was a big word and it covered a lot of territory. You could spend your whole life chasing after it and wind up with nothing, be an old bitter guy with long nose hair and ear hair and no teeth, hanging out in bars, looking for somebody your age, but the chances of success went down then. After a while you got too many strikes against you.”

— Larry Brown

“He inched in, slid out. Pumped deeper, pulled away. Just as her frustration swelled to a f#ckingly epic level, he hauled her hips up, dragging her higher before he sank all the way in, filling her so completely she gasped.
Her flesh stretched, unaccustomed to a man after so long. Each thrust stirred her unspeakably. More than just her p#ssy linked with him when he slid into her. A little part of her heart did as well.”

— Cari Quinn

“Kidnappings, magic, long-lost love of my life. Nothing to rock the boat. All in a day's work."
"Of course," he said dryly. "Which is why you're calling me in the middle of the night while I'm on my
honeymoon."
"Man, you've been married three months. The honeymoon is over. "
"Not until we leave Russia," Artur said. "And never even after that."
Which was like hearing the Incredible Hulk start talking like Gandhi.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

“Meaningful work, creative work, thoughtful work, important work-this type of effort takes stretches of uninterrupted time to get into the zone. But in the modern office such long stretches just can't be found. Instead, it's just one interruption after another.”

— Jason Fried

“Seeing him again after so long awakened something inside me. I was surprised to find myself feeling sad rather than joyful, as I would have imagined.”

— Arthur Golden

“Back at home, after some prodding from Tereza, he admitted that he had been jealous watching her dance with a colleague of his. "You mean you were really jealous?" she asked him ten times or more, incredulously, as though someone had just informed her she had been awarded a Nobel Peace prize. Then she put her arm around his waist and began dancing across the room. The step she used was not the one she had shown off in the bar. It was more like a village polka, a wild romp that sent her legs flying in the air and her torso bounding all over the room, with Tomas in tow. Before long, unfortunately, she bagan to be jealous herself, and Tomas saw her jealously not as a Nobel Prize, but as a burden, a burden he would be saddled with until not long before his death.”

— Milan Kundera

“You have no idea ... I ran out of words at that point. Her being this close after so long was the sweetest kind of torture. Each breath she took, I felt in every part of my body, in some areas more than others. Really inappropriate, but she always had a powerful hold over me. Common sense jumped out the window.”

— Jennifer L. Armentrout

“My wife and kids are the constituents I will be serving long after my days in Springfield are a distant memory.”

— Peter Roskam

“Mama grizzlies mate later than other bears. They have two cubs instead of four. They wait four years - about twice as long as other bears - between having cubs. And after they're pregnant, if winter is hard or their health is not good or the food supply is uncertain, they re-absorb the embryo into their body.”

— Gloria Steinem

“It's really touching that we can come back after so long and care about making an album that says as much as this one does. And after all this time, we really do care about each other.”

— Lindsey Buckingham

“How long do you think it's going to take Decebel to deal with the wayward wolf who touched Sally? Jen asked Jacque casually as they sat in the now, nearly empty, gathering room. After Sally and Costin had left, Vasile and Decebel had agreed that it was time to call it a night. Jen and Jacque had been helping clean up, but just as Jen was carrying empty cups towards the trash, she had heard Decebel tell her to park her cute butt and not move. So she had parked it, dragging Jacque along with her to an empty table.”

— Quinn Loftis

“What therefore is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms: in short a sum of human relations which became poetically and rhetorically intensified, metamorphosed, adorned, and after long usage seem to a notion fixed, canonic, and binding; truths are illusions of which one has forgotten that they are illusions; worn-out metaphors which have become powerless to affect the senses; coins which have their obverse effaced and now are no longer of account as coins but merely as metal.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

“I was born in Queens and spent many years there. After I got married, I moved to Kew Gardens, then moved to Baldwin, Long Island, where I still reside.”

— Bob Sheppard

“A decade is a long time to be doing anything, much less to be with the same guys, chasing after the same goals.”

— Mike Shinoda

“Relief, fear, and humiliation. Her parents paid for a pricey prep school education in D.C. She graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown with a degree in political science. She breezed through law school and finished with honors. A dozen megafirms offered her jobs after a federal court clerkship. The first twenty-nine years of her life had seen overwhelming success and little failure. To be discharged in such a manner was crushing. To be escorted out of the building was degrading. This was not just a minor bump in a long, rewarding career.”

— John Grisham

“The great fact emerges that after that historic date all holographs so far exhumed initialled by Haromphrey bear the sigla H.C.E. and while he was only and long and always good Dook Umphrey for the hungerlean splapeens of Lucalizod and Chimbers to his cronies it was equally certainly a pleasant turn of the populace which gave him as sense of those normative letters the nickname Here Comes Everybody”

— James Joyce

“After so long keeping to herself and tending her secret quietly, all these words just bubbled up out of her her like cool golden champagne.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

“Some of these guys will go on walking long after the laws of biochemistry and handicapping have gone by the boards. There was a guy last year that crawled for two miles at four miles an hour after both of his feet cramped up at the same time, you remember reading about that? Look at Olson, he's worn out but he keeps going. That goddam Barkovitch is running on high-octane hate and he just keeps going and he's as fresh as a daisy. I don't think I can do that. I'm not tired -not really tired- yet. But I will be." The scar stood out on the side of his haggard face as he looked ahead into the darkness "And I think ... when I get tired enough ... I think I'll just sit down”

— Stephen King

“After so long being thin, it was terrifying being heavier. But I am a naturally curvy Hispanic girl. I don't deprive myself.”

— Demi Lovato

“Isolated and unincorporated, North Gulfport lacked a basic infrastructure: flooding and contaminated drinking water were frequent problems. Although finally incorporated in 1994 - not long after the arrival of the first casino - many of North Gulfport's streets still lack curbs, sidewalks, and gutters.”

— Natasha Trethewey

“One of the greatest glories of growing older is the willingness to ask why and, getting no good answer, deciding to follow my own inclinations and desires. Asking why is the way to wisdom. Why are we supposed to want possessions we don't need and work that seems beside the point and tight shoes and a fake tan? Why are we supposed to think new is better than old, youth and vigor better than long life and experience? Why are we supposed to turn our backs on those who have preceded us and to snipe at those who come after? When we were small children we asked 'Why?' constantly. Asking the question now is more a matter of testing the limits of what sometimes seems a narrow world. One of the useful things about age is realizing conventional wisdom is often simply inertia with a candy coating conformity.”

— Anna Quindlen

“Often, investors will discover a manager after he's had a terrific run, usually when he lands on a magazine cover somewhere. Invariably, funds swell up with new investor money just before they revert to their long-term averages.”

— Barry Ritholtz

“Being with him after so long, after everything we'd endured ... it was like coming home.”

— Richelle Mead

“For a long time," he said at last, "when I was small, I pretended to myself that I was the bastard of some great man. All orphans do this, I think," he added dispassionately."It makes life easier to bear, to pretend that it will not always be as it is, that someone will come and restore you to your rightful place in the world."
He shrugged.
"Then I grew older, and knew that this was not true. No one would come to rescue me. But then-" he turned his head and gave Jamie a smile of surpassing sweetness.
"Then I grew older still, and discovered that after all, it was true. I am the son of a great man."
The hook touched Jamie's hand, hard and capable.
"I wish for nothing more.”

— Diana Gabaldon

“All things come to an end, but when you open your eyes after a long sleep a new journey begins.”

— Shannon L. Alder

“After a long time with someone, you realise you've been thinking for two.”

— Kristin Scott Thomas

“In light this bright, after so long in the dark, everything we can see is only black and white. Only glaring
shape-outlines we have to blink against.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“We have a long and proud tradition as a nation of investing in our human capital so that we can build a thriving middle class. You look at the G.I. Bill after the war - it was an investment in our service members who had served this nation with distinction.”

— Thomas Perez

“It's a massive consumer frustration around the world about how long they have to wait after the U.S. to see television shows and movies. In the U.S., there's the frustration of having to wait a year to watch a movie in the format that you choose.”

— Ted Sarandos

“To be together again, after so long, who love the sunny wind, the windy sun, in the sun, in the wind, that is perhaps something, perhaps something.”

— Samuel Beckett

“I feel that my relationship with Kasparov now is much the same as it had been before the match - good. As for his reaction, well it can't be nice to lose your title after so long, but he was very generous.”

— Vladimir Kramnik

“I'm still a member of the Empire! Although I sometimes feel like an American with a British accent - you get contaminated after so long.”

— Gary Oldman

“Steve Jobs was never going to let Flash on any Apple product again like that after in 1997 - he's got a long memory - they said no and Bill Gates said yes.”

— Walter Isaacson

“But why tell me?" Fireheart repeated. "Perhaps after so long I want a cat to know the truth," meowed Bluestar with a slight frown. "I think you of all cats might understand, Fireheart. Sometimes there are no right choices.”

— Erin Hunter

“It was only long after the ceremony that we learned why we got married in the first place.”

— Lois Wyse

“I'm 68 years old, and somebody asked if I'm retired. I told him, No, I'll still be writing long after I'm dead.”

— Ron Brackin

“I remember having a friend overnight, and lots of giggling after the lights were out. And seemingly long silences followed by "Are you asleep yet?" and, sometimes, some pretty serious discussions about God and Life.”

— Joe Brainard

“I guess it was this over-riding feeling I wanted people to get from the album - a kind of positivity. On the one hand it's quite a sad record, but I wanted the songs in essence to be about pulling yourself out of a difficult time. So I thought that the idea of day after a really long, difficult night, would be pretty appropriate ... I think the album's about contrasts too - contrasts of emotion - so I thought the comparison was appropriate.”

— Sarah Blasko

“There are good and bad movies, and long ones, and pretentious ones, and fun ones, and it's kind of healthy not just being able to switch off after ten minutes, but have patience.”

— Susanne Bier

“I believe that we don't need to worry about what happens after this life, as long as we do our duty here-to love and to serve.”

— Albert Einstein

“How the holy and the profane mix in the light of day and at the end of life is sometimes the most beautiful thing in this world and a compassionate entry into the next. After failure and defeat, a concentration upon certain beauties, though forever lost and unretrievable, can lift the wounded past roundedness and the dying past dying, protecting them with an image, still and bright, that will ride with them on their long ride, never to fade and never to retreat.”

— Mark Helprin

“After a long, hopeless war, people will settle for peace, at almost any price.”

— Salman Rushdie

“To preach long, loud, and Damnation, is the way to be cried up. We love a man that damns us, and we run after him again to save us.”

— John Selden

“Of the women in my childhood, I retain above all the memory of their perfumes, perfumes that lingered - filling the lift with fragrance long after they had gone.”

— Christian Dior