Home > Topic > a very long time
1 " It takes a very long time to become young. "
― Pablo Picasso
2 " Once in a very long time you come across a book that is far, far more than the ink, the glue and the paper, a book that seeps into your blood. With such a book the impact isn't necessarily obvious at first...but the more you read it and re-read it, and live with it, and travel with it, the more it speaks to you, and the more you realize that you cannot live without that book. It's then that the wisdom hidden inside, the seed, is passed on. "
― Tahir Shah , Travels With Myself
3 " Look," Grace said. " How strange! In spite of the rain, you can still see the stars. How bright they are tonight." She pointed, but Lorcan didn't look. His eyes remained fixed intently on her." I can't think of a finer sight in the whole world than the one I'm looking at right now," he said.In spite of being drenched, Grace flushed at his words.Lorcan's eyes sparkled at her, brighter than ever before. It was as if the rare blue gems of his iriseshad been washed by the rain amd buffed by the moonlight to a new intensity. " Grace, there's been something I've wanted to do for a very long time now, but things have kept getting in the way." He reached forward, bringing a hand to the side of her face. Then he gently but firmly drew her wet face toward his. He gazed at her, as if seeing her for the first time. Then he brought his soft lips down to hers and kissed her. "
4 " Once in a very long time you come across a book that is far, far more than the ink, the glue and the paper, a book that seeps into your blood. "
5 " It is not enough to say the crow flies purposefully, or heavily, or rowingly, or whatever. There are no words to capture the infinite depth of crowiness in the crow's flight. All we can do is use a word as an indicator, or a whole bunch of words as a general directive. But the ominous thing in the crow's flight, the bare-faced, bandit thing, the tattered beggarly gipsy thing, the caressing and shaping yet slightly clumsy gesture of the down-stroke, as if the wings were both too heavy and too powerful, and the headlong sort of merriment, the macabre pantomime ghoulishness and the undertaker sleekness - you could go on for a very long time with phrases of that sort and still have completely missed your instant, glimpse knowledge of the world of the crow's wingbeat. And a bookload of such descriptions is immediately rubbish when you look up and see the crow flying. "
― Ted Hughes , Poetry in the Making: An Anthology
6 " It takes a very long time to sever a marriage in which children are involved. There is a table, two chairs, and a small pile of bargaining chips. This is how it begins, but it ends with one chair in an empty room. The days darken. The children are slices open and split down the middle. Someone takes an arm; someone takes a foot. The car pulling into the driveway on a Friday afternoon becomes a hearse, and everything is couched in lies. The house of old assumes a silence. "
― Kate Mulgrew
7 " The world existed for a very long time before this particular set of seven billion billion atoms came along and it will go right on after they're scattered up, down and sideways. "
― Rick Yancey , The Last Star (The 5th Wave, #3)
8 " Alex here. (...) Ron, I really enjoy all the help you have given me and the times we spent together. I hope that you will not be too depressed by our parting. It may be a very long time before we see each other again. But providing that I get through the Alaskan Deal in one piece you will be hearing form me again in the future. I’d like to repeat the advice I gave you before, in that I think you really should make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing or been to hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one piece of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. (...) Once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty. (...) Don’t settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon. (...) You are wrong if you think joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living.Ron, I really hope that as soon as you can you will get out of Salton City, put a little camper on the back of your pickup, and start seeing some of the great work that God has done here in the American West. you will see things and meet people and there is much to learn from them. And you must do it economy style, no motels, do your own cooking, as a general rule spend as little as possible and you will enjoy it much more immensely. I hope that the next time I see you, you will be a new man with a vast array of new adventures and experiences behind you. Don’t hesitate or allow yourself to make excuses. Just get out and do it. Just get out and do it. You will be very, very glad that you did.Take care Ron,Alex "
― Jon Krakauer
9 " It will be a very long time before I trust you ever, ever - OK, I trust you again. "
― Daniel Handler , Why We Broke Up
10 " Once Ed said to me, " For a very long time I didn't like myself." It was not said in self-pity but simply as an unfortunate fact. " It was a very difficult time," he said, " and very painful. I did not like myself for a number of reasons, some of them valid and some of them pure fancy. I would hate to have to go back to that. Then gradually," he said, " I discovered with surprise and pleasure that a number of people did like me. And I thought, if they can like me, why cannot I like myself? Just thinking it did not do it, but slowly I learned to like myself and then it was all right." This was not said in self-love in its bad connotation but in self-knowledge. He meant literally that he had learned to accept and like the person " Ed" as he liked other people. It gave him a great advantage. Most people do not like themselves at all. They distrust themselves, put on masks and pomposities. They quarrel and boast and pretend and are jealous because they do not like themselves. But mostly they do not even know themselves well enough to form a true liking. They cannot see themselves well enough to form a true liking, and since we automatically fear and dislike strangers, we fear and dislike our stranger-selves. "
11 " My name is growing all the time, and I’ve lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story. Real names tell you the story of the things they belong to in my language, in the Old Entish as you might say. It is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time to say anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to. "
― J.R.R. Tolkien , The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, #2)
12 " It needs a very long time to earn a great respect but it just needs a few second to spoil all respect... "
― Shehryar
13 " Darwin struggled for a very long time with the problem of evolution being wrong but finally came up with the answer: it's all the fault of the females. . . The females aren't crazy at all. If a female sees a magnificent work of art, she knows she's dealing with an experienced male - a male who's good at surviving and who has enough time to spare to create a beautiful work of art. He's got to be a strong and healthy male, the kind of male you'd want to father your children. "
14 " Now she and I sit together in her room and eat chocolate, and I tell her that in a very long time when we both to go heaven, we should try to get chairs next to each other, close to the dessert table. "
― Anne Lamott , Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
15 " For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. "
― Gertrude Stein
16 " It would be a very long time before we saw any of our original pursuers again. At least, it seemed kinda long. But nothing warps time quite like childhood. I remember visits to faraway worlds that lasted only a few days but felt like entire lifetimes. And then there were the endless journeys between destinations that somehow went by in the blink of an eye. You know how it goes. "
― Brian K. Vaughan , Saga, Volume 3
17 " She had short curls and her face had so many wrinkles it looked as if someone had been trying to draw her for a very long time and every line put in had made the face more like her. "
― Lucy M. Boston , The Children of Green Knowe (Green Knowe, #1)
18 " What actually happens when you die is that your brain stops working and your body rots, like Rabbit did when he died and we buried him in the earth at the bottom of the garden. And all his molecules were broken down into other molecules and they went into the earth and were eaten by worms and went into the plants and if we go dig in the same place in 10 years there will be nothing except his skeleton left. And in 1,000 years even his skeleton will be gone. But that is all right because he is part of the flowers and the apple tree and the hawthorn bush now.When people die they are sometimes put into coffins which means that they don't mix with the earth for a very long time until the wood of the coffin rots.But Mother was cremated. This means that she was put into a coffin and burnt and ground up and turned into ash and smoke. I do not know what happens to the ash and I couldn't ask at the crematorium because I didn't go to the funeral. But the smoke goes out of the chimney and into the air and sometimes I look up into the sky and I think that there are molecules of Mother up there, or in clouds over Africa or the Antartic, or coming down as rain in rainforests in Brazil, or in snow somewhere. "
― Mark Haddon , The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
19 " I’ve watched you for a very long time now. And in this time, I’ve come to discover just as I first suspected. We are perfect for one another. "
― Paloma Beck , Hold My Hand (Heart & Soul, #1)
20 " Serpentfire can burn for a very long time if the bagic is strong," said Aldric. " It's hard to handle, that kind of fire, it seems to have a mind of its own, but it can be a good tool if you have nothing else. You never, ever want to use it unless you need it. I keep it around in case of dire circumstances. I hate to admit that anything Serpentine can be useful." Absentmindedly he picked up a Dragon's claw from a pile of them on the tabe, and used it to stratch his neck. "