Quotes About Before Christmas

“The thing to do,' I said as we gained the lane that leads to Beech Green and Fairacre, 'is to get absolutely everything in the summer and lock it in a cupboard. Then order every scrap of food from a shop the week before Christmas and sit back and enjoy watching everyone else go mad. I've been meaning to do it for years.”

— Miss Read

“And there it is! Bravo! I knew it was only a matter of time before Byron realized he had an audience. That man is simply incapable of keeping his shirt on when there are spectators. One Christmas Eve, he stripped his shirt off right in the middle of the choir's rendition of Oh Child of Bethlehem. Coincidentally, the next song was Come Let Us Adore Him and the imbecile actually launched into some interpretive dance.”

— Kirt J. Boyd

“The ribbon on my wrist says: Do not open before Christmas.”

— Fall Out Boy

“To make his point, Ivan staged a sensational demonstration. Some time before Christmas he had arrested two Lithuanians employed in the Moscow Kremlin. He charged them with plotting to poison him. The accusations against Jan Lukhomski and Maciej the Pole did not sound very credible; but their guilt or innocence was hardly relevant. They were held in an open cage on the frozen Moskva River for all the world to see; and on the eve of the departure of Ivan's envoy to Lithuania, they were burned alive in their cage.50 As the ice melted under the fierce heat of the fire and the heavy iron cage sank beneath the water, taking its carbonized occupants down in a great hiss of steam, one could have well imagined that something was being said about Lithuania's political future.”

— Norman Davies

“My favorite random email I got was from some guy who wrote: Mr. Max, with the hope of a six year old on the night before Christmas asking about Santa, I ask the same question: Do you really exist?”

— Tucker Max

“She stared at the castle. She had actually been summoned to a castle. A week before Christmas.”

— Fern Michaels

“Twas the night before Christmas-well, the late afternoon, in fact, but who could tell at the North Pole in the middle of winter-and Matthias the werewolf was knee-deep in reindeer guts. Really, it was the deer's own fault for having that glowing red nose that had made it ever so easy to pick him out in the gloom. There it had been, like a neon sign saying FAST FOOD and Matt being like Yellow Dog Dingo-always hungry-had taken the opportunity for a quick snack.”

— Kat Richardson

“At Christmas
A man is at his finest towards the finish of the year;
He is almost what he should be when the Christmas season's here;
Then he's thinking more of others than he's thought the months before,
And the laughter of his children is a joy worth toiling for.
He is less a selfish creature than at any other time;
When the Christmas spirit rules him he comes close to the sublime.”

— Edgar A. Guest

“I've always thought about the theatre like a Christmas tree, all shining and bright with beautiful ornaments. But now it seems like a Christmas tree with the tinsel all tarnished and the colored balls all fallen off and broken ... '
Sure, I know what you mean ... And it's both ways ... Some of the ornaments fall and break and some stay clear and bright. Some of the tinsel gets tarnished and some stays shining and beautiful like the night before Christmas. Nothing's ever all one way. You know that. It's all mixed up and you've just got to find the part that's right for you.'
-Elizabeth and Ben”

— Madeleine L'Engle

“Professor Snape was forcing them to research antidotes. They took this one seriously, as he had hinted that he might be poisoning one of them before Christmas to see if their antidote worked.”

— J.K. Rowling

“Because, George thought as she sat there with her eyes closed back before Christmas in Mrs Rock's self-consciously comfortable chair in the counselling office, how can it be that there's an advert on TV with dancing bananas unpeeling themselves in it and teabags doing a dance, and her mother will never see that advert?
How can that advert exist and her mother not exist in the world?
She didn't say it out loud, though, because there wasn't a point.
It isn't about saying.
It is about the hole which will form in the roof through which the cold will intensify and after which the structure of the house will begin to shift, like it ought, and through which George will be able to lie every night in bed watching the black sky.”

— Ali Smith

“Christmas and Easter are attitudinal bookends for an enlightened world view. With an enlightened view of Christmas, we understand that it is within our power through God to give birth to a divine self. With an enlightened view of Easter, we understand that this self is the power of the universe before which death itself has no real power. Resurrection is the symbol of joy, it is the great 'ah-ha!' The acceptance of the resurrection is the realization of the fact that we need wait no longer to see ourselves as healed and whole.”

— Marianne Williamson

“I'm sure most of us remember being a kid and you have all of this endless time where two weeks before Christmas feels like ten years. I used to go to bed to try and go to sleep to try and make it go faster.”

— Andrea Arnold

“It's just past eight and I'm feeling young and reckless. The ribbon on my wrist says "Do not open before Christmas." Only liars, but we're the best. Only good for the latest trends. Only good cuz you can have almost famous friends, besides we've got such good fashion sense.”

— Fall Out Boy

“I think we need one recognized, respected public figure to make a tough, blunt statement on just what Reagan's record is and what he might do to the country, let alone the Republican Party before Christmas.”

— Robert Teeter

“So many people release albums before Christmas and they get lost in the Christmas rush.”

— Bonnie Tyler

“My mother accidentally gave me food poisoning. She fed me baby carrots for a snack before Christmas dinner - but they had expired in June! I threw up for the next 24 hours.”

— Busy Philipps

“He wrote and kept reading aloud what was written, while Vasilisa considered what she ought to write: how great had been their want the year before, how their corn had not lasted even till Christmas, how they had to sell their cow. She ought to ask for money, ought to write that the old father was often ailing and would soon no doubt give up his soul to God ... but how to express this in words? What must be said first and what afterwards?”

— Anton Chekhov

“On Christmas morning, we always make breakfast, and everyone eats before we open any presents. I make muffins and homemade applesauce, which I don't think anyone likes as much as I do ... I just love the way it makes the house smell!”

— Laura Leighton

“I make personal appearances around the country. I'm starting a book tour now, and I may be coming to Toronto with the Learning Annex, which I'm doing all through the United States, so that may come up just before Christmas.”

— Burt Ward

“Christmas was always a big holiday in our family. Every Christmas Eve before we'd go to bed, my mom and dad would read to us two or three stories and they would always be 'The Happy Prince,' 'The Gift of the Magi' and 'Twas the Night Before Christmas,' and I would like to keep that alive.”

— Cameron Mathison

“Mandy was thinking back to when she was five years old, when she, her parents and Jud went outside before Christmas and had a snowball fight with the gray snow of Sydney Mines. "This is a wicked blast," Jud would say, and Mandy would snap photos with a 35mm disposable film camera, photos she wished very much she could step into sometimes.”

— Rebecca McNutt

“I'm not a fan of musicals at all, but I do think 'The Nightmare Before Christmas' is a very good. I always thought 'Walk the Line' was very good, too. I was in 'Nowhere Boy.' I played Paul McCartney. That was kind of musical - we did songs in that.”

— Thomas Sangster

“I quickly discovered that trying to go play golf while living in Manhattan was about as easy as trying to grab a taxi while standing out in front of Saks Fifth Avenue in the freezing rain on the last shopping day before Christmas.”

— Dan Jenkins

“A department store two days before Christmas Eve is like a city in a state of siege ...”

— Rachel Cohn

“'The Nightmare Before Christmas' is my number one biggest influence artistically in every way.”

— Amy Lee

“Before Christmas, I host a party for our kids and all their friends. We love to make a mess while decorating gingerbread houses.”

— Kourtney Kardashian

“Just before you went into the ICU, I started to feel this ache in my hip." "No," I said. Panic rolled in, pulled me under. He nodded. "So I went in for a PET scan." He stopped. He yanked the cigarette out of his mouth and clenched his teeth. Much of my life had been devoted to trying not to cry in front of people who loved me, so I knew what Augustus was doing. You clench your teeth. You look up. You tell yourself that if they see you cry, it will hurt them, and you will be nothing but A Sadness in their lives, and you must not become a mere sadness, so you will not cry, and you say all of this to yourself while looking up at the ceiling, and then you swallow even though your throat does not want to close and you look at the person who loves you and smile. He flashed his crooked smile, then said, "I lit up like a Christmas tree, Hazel Grace. The lining of my chest, my left hip, my liver, everywhere.”

— John Green

“It was the night before Christmas.”

— John Green

“I used to think in my Russian-novel days, that I would cherish a lover who managed through thick and thin, snow and sleet, to have a bunch of Parma violets on my breakfast tray each morning
also rain or shine, Christmas or August, and onward into complete Neverland. Later, I shifted my dream plan
a split of cold champagne one half hour before the tray! Violets, sparkling wine, and trays themselves were as nonexistent as the lover(s), of course, but once again, Why not?”

— Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

“Twas the night before Christmas, the office was closed, The transom was shut, the staff home in repose; The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, But St. Nicholas won't be coming because this is a Designated National Security Site within the meaning of Para 4.12 of Section 3 of the Official Secrets Act (Amended) and unauthorised intrusion on such a site is an arrestable offense ...”

— Charles Stross

“Well ... yes, and here we go again. But before we get to The Work, as it were, I want to make sure I know how to cope with this elegant typewriter-(and, yes, it appears that I do) -so why not make this quick list of my life's work and then get the hell out of town on the 11:05 to Denver? Indeed. Why not? But for just a moment I'd like to say, for the permanent record, that it is a very strange feeling to be a 40-year-old American writer in this century and sitting alone in this huge building on Fifth Avenue in New York at one o'clock in the morning on the night before Christmas Eve, 2000 miles from home, and compiling a table of contents for a book of my own Collected Works in an office with a tall glass door that leads out to a big terrace looking down on The Plaza Fountain. Very strange.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

“My dad got me my first bow for Christmas, when I was ten. But he took it away before New Year's." "Did you shoot someone?" "He caught me soaking arrows in lighter fluid. I just really, really wanted to shoot a flaming arrow at something. It didn't matter what. Still do. I feel like that would complete me: to see a burning arrow go thwock into something and set it afire. I suppose it's how men feel when they imagine sinking balls-deep into the perfect piece of ass. I just want one sexy little thwock." John”

— Joe Hill

“You are riding for a fall, Your Grace,"
"I'll be riding you before Christmas.”

— Stephanie Laurens

“The idea of performing some of Jack Skellington's songs from The Nightmare Before Christmas live for the very first time is immensely exciting.”

— Danny Elfman

“Will you call me before Christmas?' she asks.
Maybe.' I pull on my vest, wondering why I even came here in the first place.
You've still got my number, don't you?' She reaches for a pad and begins to write it down.
Yeah, Blair. I've got your number. I'll get in touch.'
I button up my jeans and turn to leave.
Clay?'
Yeah, Blair.'
If I don't see you before Christmas,' she stops. 'Have a good one.'
I look at her a moment. 'Hey, you too.'
She picks up the stuffed black cat and strokes its head.
I step out the door and start to close it.
Clay?' she whispers loudly.
I stop but don't turn around.'Yeah?'
Nothing.”

— Bret Easton Ellis

“She blew out of the Terrace sometime before Christmas to points unknown. The Gujarati guy told me when I ran into him at the Pathmark. He was still pissed because Pura had stiffed him almost two months' rent.
Last time I ever rent to one of you people.
Amen, I said.”

— Junot Díaz

“One of the joys our technological civilization has lost is the excitement with which seasonal flowers and fruits were welcomed; the first daffodil, strawberry or cherry are now things of the past, along with their precious moment of arrival. Even the tangerine
now a satsuma or clementine
appears de-pipped months before Christmas.”

— Derek Jarman

“One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.”

— Dylan Thomas

“Like God, Christmas is timeless and eternal, from everlasting to everlasting. It is something even more than what happened that night in starlit little Bethlehem; it has been behind the stars forever. There was Christmas in the heart of God before the world was formed.”

— Roy Rogers

“If one isn't parsimonious before Christmas one can't be munificent when it arrives.”

— Grace S. Richmond

“It is surprising that people are snapping photos and stuff and then putting them on the internet. For me, it is like, "Why would you want to do that?" It would be like knowing what your Christmas presents were before Christmas morning.”

— Michael Shannon

“I'll be in #- Jharkhand along with Kaustav Narayan Niyogi, who is directing the film and my director of photography for location hunting. I want to lock the locations before Christmas as everyone goes into vacation mode after that,”

— Pooja Bhatt

“I've said before: If Osama bin Laden was a Christian, Iraq was the Christmas present he always wanted but never expected his parents to give. It validated for the Muslim world virtually all of bin Laden's rhetoric. He had always said the Americans will destroy any strong Muslim regime, and we did.”

— Michael Scheuer

“We need a Savior. Christmas is an indictment before it becomes a delight.”

— John Piper

“Advent allows us to recover during this four-week journey. It begins four Sundays before Christmas all the way up to Christmas. It lets us breath in those moments of faithfulness and helps us recognize that God is working.”

— Louie Giglio

“Postal officials say that before Christmas they receive tons of letters written to Santa Claus, but after Christmas how few letters of thanks are sent to him! From childhood onward, human beings seem to be characterized by thanklessness.”

— Robert E.Lee

“I was on the tube just before Christmas. and this girl turned round to me and said, 'Are you Kate Winslet?'. And I said, 'Well, yes. I am actually'. And she said, 'And you're getting the tube?' And I said, 'Yes'. And she said, 'Don't you have a big car that drives you around?' And I said, 'No'. And she was absolutely stunned that I wasn't being driven round in some flash car all the time. It was ludicrous.”

— Kate Winslet

“It was two weeks before Christmas. A slow time of year for raising the dead.”

— Laurell K. Hamilton

“Two days later, two days before Christmas, I am judged fat and sane enough to be kicked out of the hospital. The plan to send me straight back to New Seasons won't work. There is no room at the inn for a leather Lia-skin plumped full of messy things. Not yet. The director promises Dr. Marrigan he'll have a bed for me next week. I'm stable enough to go home until then. They all say I'm stable.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson