I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a Gentle-man and is nothing else.
‐‐ Oliver Cromwell
I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.
‐‐ Samuel Johnson
I had reached a point in my career in which I was ready to try something new in my writing, and the idea of a novel has always been in the back of my mind.
‐‐ E. O. Wilson
I had reached the point when I could not see anything clearly ahead, I needed help, and I got it.
‐‐ Ross MacDonald
I had read the novel and I had heard David Lean was going to direct it - and it came as a surprise to me because American actors, if given the chance, can do style as well as anybody and speak as well as anybody.
‐‐ Rod Steiger
I had read tons of science fiction. I was fascinated by other worlds, other environments. For me, it was fantasy, but it was not fantasy in the sense of pure escapism.
‐‐ James Cameron
I had read too many memoirs that were written after the writer or the director was past his or her prime.
‐‐ Joe Eszterhas
I had real plans for my next decade and felt I'd worked hard enough to earn it. Will I really not live to see my children married? To watch the World Trade Center rise again? To read - if not indeed write - the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger?
‐‐ Christopher Hitchens
I had really bad obsessive-compulsive disorder. At its worst, I was compelled to leave my house at three o'clock in the morning and go out in the alley because I just knew that the paper-towel roll I threw in the recycling bin was uncomfortable, like it was lying the wrong way, and I would be down in the garbage.
‐‐ Fiona Apple
I had really good English teachers in elementary through high school. Not only were we required to read a lot - which is the best training for writing - we were drilled on grammar every day, every night. I hated the drill part, but I don't dangle my participles too often.
‐‐ Carol Berg
I had really great parents who always gave me lots of opportunity for choice, but I didn't always realize how rare that was for a girl for them to say, 'You can be a mom or have a career or do both or do something we haven't thought of yet.'
‐‐ Ally Condie
I had really no sense of style. Everyone around me in my family had the sense of style - I learned as much as I possibly could.
‐‐ Caitlyn Jenner
I had really wanted adventure. At the time that I ran away, lots of kids ran away from home. It was something of a social phenomenon.
‐‐ Mary Gaitskill
I had reasoned this out in my mind, there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other.
‐‐ Harriet Tubman
I had reconciled myself to being happily out to pasture, a bit.
‐‐ Elizabeth McGovern
I had redesigned my entire amplifier system for this tour because airlines are very strict now.
‐‐ Lee Ritenour
I had relationships with men as well as women. I wasn't choosing; I didn't think I had to.
‐‐ Jeanette Winterson
I had relatives who would go to Japan and bring back random stuff they bought at the airport or whatever - 'Ultraman' and 'Speed Racer,' stuff like that.
‐‐ Adrian Tomine
I had repeatedly made written requests to the Fuehrer that I might be allowed to join the Wehrmacht as an ordinary soldier. He refused to give me this permission.
‐‐ Fritz Sauckel
I had ridiculous amounts of energy. Mom's like, you're driving me crazy - do you want to try gymnastics? From the moment I started it, I loved it and it kind of was like storybook from there.
‐‐ Alicia Sacramone
I had rock-star dreams from 8 or 9 almost nonstop. I thought it was going to be like being a god on earth: having as many women as you want whenever you want them, having super powers, being incredibly wealthy, never doing laundry.
‐‐ Rivers Cuomo
I had role models in my community, guys that were older than me and played at university or on the national team. Eli Pasquale was always around UVic when I was a young player, and the national team was around Victoria a little bit, so I got to watch those guys and learn from them.
‐‐ Steve Nash
I had sacrificed my entire life to play football.
‐‐ Brian Bosworth
I had sadness for breakfast.
‐‐ Andy Milonakis
I had said before that I'd never write an autobiography because I've been around, and there's a lot that I've seen and heard that stays with me. That's just mine. I didn't want to do a kiss-and-tell, as some of my peers have.
‐‐ Dionne Warwick
I had said no to him and no to him and no to him and no to him and no to him and no to him about his saucy language. It had never gotten to this level until I came back.
‐‐ Andrea Mackris
I had said to some pastor that I was having thoughts, and the church turned on me. They went to my mom and said, So sorry about your son.
‐‐ Jai Rodriguez
I had sat in one day in Central Park with Bonnie and Delaney, and Duane was playing with them, so I asked if he wanted to work on an album. You never had to say to him how to play the guitar.
‐‐ Herbie Mann
I had saved a few hundred photos of dodo skeletons into my 'Creative Projects' folder - it's a repository for my brain, everything that I could possibly be interested in. Any time I have an Internet connection, there's a sluice of stuff moving into there, everything from beautiful rings to cockpit photos.
‐‐ Adam Savage
I had saved a lot of money working at Mrs. Fields' Chocolate Chip Cookies, ushering at the Golden Gate Theatre, and doing odd jobs so I could live in New York for a few months. If it ran out, I would have to give up and go home. It turned out OK. I got my Equity card and started working.
‐‐ B. D. Wong
I had seen a lot of music movies that celebrated music or that showed the kind of joys from playing music, which is a big part of it of course, and not something that I would want to deny.
‐‐ Damien Chazelle
I had seen a Pfizer's pilot plant in 1965 and decided that, 'I'll build a Pfizer.' If not Pfizer, I have built Dr Reddy's, which is no less respectable.
‐‐ Kallam Anji Reddy
I had seen Adelaide the dearest and the cheapest place to live in.
‐‐ Catherine Helen Spence
I had seen AIDS patients in India and Africa, and knowing that people were dying even though drugs existed that could help them was shattering for me.
‐‐ Yusuf Hamied
I had seen 'Avenue Q' off-Broadway back in 2003 and fell in love with it. I just thought it was the smartest, funniest thing I'd seen in a long time.
‐‐ Rob McClure
I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different.
‐‐ T. S. Eliot
I had seen cancer at a more cellular level as a researcher. The first time I entered the cancer ward, my first instinct was to withdraw from what was going on - the complexity, the death. It was a very bleak time.
‐‐ Siddhartha Mukherjee
I had seen 'Do the Right Thing' when I was at college, and it was incredibly inspiring as a piece of cinema. Just brilliant, I thought. But saw 'Malcolm X' with a crowded audience. It was my first time in an American cinema, hearing an audience respond. You know, in England, everyone is so restrained.
‐‐ Justin Chadwick
I had seen movies before that that had made me laugh, but I had never seen anything even remotely close to as funny as Richard Pryor was, just standing there talking.
‐‐ Joe Rogan
I had seen other comic friends of mine go to indie labels. Like David Cross and Pat Oswald went to Subpop, and Subpop didn't make total sense for me, but the metal version of that did. So I made a small list with Metal Blade, Prosthetic and couple of other labels, and Relapse was one of them.
‐‐ Brian Posehn
I had seen people who had lost everything and everyone they loved to war, famine, and natural disasters.
‐‐ Chelsea Clinton
I had seen 'Pillowman' in London and loved it. Being part of something that I, as an audience member, would like to be part of was one of the greatest experiences I've ever had.
‐‐ Zeljko Ivanek
I had seen so many injustices done in the court by well-meaning people. I had lost fourteen clients to gang violence in only seven years. I was angry at a system I thought had failed my clients, and I was part of it.
‐‐ Richard Helms
I had seen some films made about the underground music world in Tehran, and most of them were short documentaries about 30 or 40 minutes long. And I always wondered why they weren't publicized more. Really, their only flaw was they were short documentaries.
‐‐ Bahman Ghobadi
I had seen the films out of World War II, the great 82nd Airborne, the 101st, and all of those of you in the greatest generation and the service that you had provided.
‐‐ Hugh Shelton
I had seen the photographs of Harlem in its glory days, stylish men in bespoke suits, women so well dressed that they'd put the models in 'Vogue' to shame. I knew that Harlemites loved to dance, to pray, and to eat.
‐‐ Marcus Samuelsson
I had self-esteem issues into my early 20s.
‐‐ Adam Lambert
I had sent out 100 audition tapes within 365 days, and then I got the 'Dope' audition. When I sent that out, two days later my manager called me and said they wanted to fly me out to L.A. to audition.
‐‐ Shameik Moore
I had serious psoriasis as a child - it's strange that I make my living off my looks after years of looking like a monster.
‐‐ Alek Wek