Present Tense Quotes - Page 2

• The nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous. [...] If you see the present tense, boy do you see it! And boy can you celebrate it.

  Dennis Potter

  Boys, Wonderful, Celebrate

  "We tend to forget that life can only be defined in the present tense". Interview with Melvyn Bragg, www.theguardian.com. March 15, 1994.

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• In America we have only the present tense. I am in danger. You are in danger.

  Adrienne Rich

  America, United States, Danger

  Adrienne Rich (2002). “Poemas, 1963-2000”, p.70, Editorial Renacimiento

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• Great acting is all about being in the moment, being in the present tense.

  Tom Hooper

  Acting, Moments, Tense

  "Director Tom Hooper Talks LES MISERABLES, Making the Decision to Have the Actors Sing Live, the Difficulty of Editing the Movie Down, an Extended Cut, and More". Interview with Steve 'Frosty' Weintraub, collider.com. December 29, 2012.

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• Screenplay is the toughest form of writing for me, because you need to be in present tense. You need to be describing things as they occur.

  Guillermo del Toro

  Writing, Needs, Form

  "In our new feature, Guillermo Del Toro takes us through his biggest firsts". Interview with Todd VanDerWerff, www.avclub.com. November 21, 2013.

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• My last defense / Is the present tense.

  Gwendolyn Brooks

  Live In The Moment, Lasts, Defense

  Gwendolyn Brooks (2005). “The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks”, p.81, Library of America

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• It's difficult to get an audience to want to keep up with you, stay present tense. But there's never been a big lag in my career between product. I've constantly tried to pull my audience up into what I'm doing present tense, and they've been usually happy to go there with me.

  Kenny Loggins

  Careers, Lag, Want

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• A lot of modernism does seem to come out of a fear of being thought an ordinary storyteller. So they tell it backwards and they tell it in the present tense and they cut loose the pages and shuffle them around - all that kind of stuff.

  Philip Pullman

  Cutting, Ordinary, Doe

  "His Grimm Materials: A Conversation With Philip Pullman". Interview with Michael Mechanic, www.motherjones.com. November/December 2012.

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• For children, childhood is timeless. It is always the present. Everything is in the present tense. Of course, they have memories. Of course, time shifts a little for them and Christmas comes round in the end. But they don't feel it. Today is what they feel, and when they say 'When I grow up,' there is always an edge of disbelief - how could they ever be other than what they are?

  Ian Mcewan

  Children, Growing Up, Memories

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• Learning to live in the present tense-one that's free from the failures of the past and the anxieties of the future-is a wonderful gift, and one you always should be striving for.

  Rick Pitino

  Motivational, Past, Anxiety

  Rick Pitino (1997). “Success is a Choice: Ten Steps to Overachieving in Business and Life”, Broadway

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• People's - most people's job is talking about the future or like money not even in the present tense. It's not even paper.

  Colin Quinn

  Jobs, Talking, People

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• Ideally, each piece of art's its own unique object, and its evaluation's always present-tense.

  David Foster Wallace

  Art, Unique, Evaluation

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• I think that to believe is to acknowledge that it's a choice in that present tense and that doubt is always an option. You’re not dealing with a fact like one plus one equals two—I’m gonna choose to believe that. It’s kind of one of those things where you are choosing to believe that someone loves you. That is always going to be your choice. So for me, I think that’s what makes the faith that I have volatile and explosive and dangerous and troubling. That’s what most of my songs are about.

  Jon Foreman

  Song, Believe, Love You

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• What do you really want? Sit down and write it out on a piece of paper. Write it in the present tense.

  Bob Proctor

  Writing, Pieces, Paper

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• What do you really want? Sit down and write it out on a piece of paper, write it in the present tense. You might begin by writing, 'I am so happy and grateful now that...' and then explain how you want your life to be in every area.

  Bob Proctor

  Grateful, Writing, Law Of Attraction

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• Rodgers and Hammerstein didn't mean anything to me. I just wanted to have a hit, I just wanted to be like those people on the radio. It was all of a case of the present tense with no projecting into the future, particularly.

  Art Garfunkel

  Mean, People, Radio

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• "Sinner" is a present-tense description of everyone, including those who have put their faith in Christ. Of course, those who have called Jesus "Lord" are justified, meaning that they are no longer guilty. Also, they have been given the Spirit, which makes them slaves to Christ rather than to sin. But we all are sinners. Perfection awaits eternity.

  Edward T Welch

  Jesus, Perfection, Spirit

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• I never think of what it's going to be like later. I only think in the present tense. The only time I think backwards is when I have to reissue something.

  Henry Rollins

  Thinking, Tense, Backwards

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I love you present tense,” I whispered, and then put my hand on the middle of his chest and said, “It’s okay, Gus. It’s okay. It is. It’s okay, you hear me?” I had—and have—absolutely no confidence that he could hear me. I leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “Okay,” I said. “Okay.

  John Green

  Love You, Hands, Gus

  John Green (2012). “The Fault in Our Stars”, p.270, Penguin

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• The bowed head, the buried face. She is silent, she will never speak, never forgive, never reach a hand, never leave this frozen present tense. All waits, suspended. Suspended the autumn trees, the autumn sky, anonymous people. A blackbird, poor fool, sings out of season from the willows by the lake. A flight of pigeons over the houses; fragments of freedom, hazard, an anagram made flesh. And somewhere the stinging smell of burning leaves.

  John Fowles

  Autumn, Smell, Lakes

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• Chronocanine Envy: Sadness experienced when one realized that, unlike one's dog, one cannot live only in the present tense. As Kierkegaard said, "Life must be lived forward.

  Douglas Coupland

  Dog, Sadness, Said Life

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• Walking along past the store windows, into which she peers with her usual eagerness, her usual sense that maybe, today, she will discover behind them something that will truly be worth seeing, she feels as if her feet are not on cement at all but on ice. The blade of the skate floats, she knows, on a thin film of water, which it melts by pressure and which freezes behind it. This is the freedom of the present tense, this sliding edge.

  Margaret Atwood

  Past, Feet, Ice

  Margaret Atwood (2012). “Bluebeard's Egg”, p.257, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Everything is beautiful. We have all this beauty in the world and all we have to do is reach out and touch it, it is all there and all ours for the taking." -- Cecilia to Henry Chinaski, liberty taken changing past tense to present tense (173)

  Charles Bukowski

  Beautiful, Taken, Past

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• I begin with songs. They provide a sort of skeleton grammar for me to flesh out. Songs of longing for future tense, songs of regret for past tense, and songs of love for present tense.

  Mary Doria Russell

  Song, Regret, Past

  "The Sparrow". Book by Mary Doria Russell, 1996.

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• You don’t want a general houseworker, do you? Or a traveling companion, quiet, refined, speaks fluent French entirely in the present tense? Or an assistant billiard-maker? Or a private librarian? Or a lady car-washer? Because if you do, I should appreciate your giving me a trial at the job. Any minute now, I am going to become one of the Great Unemployed. I am about to leave literature flat on its face. I don’t want to review books any more. It cuts in too much on my reading.

  Dorothy Parker

  Jobs, Book, Reading

  Dorothy Parker (1970). “A month of Saturdays: thirty-one famous pieces by "Constant Reader"”

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• A meaningful relationship between two people cannot sustain itself only in the present tense.

  Joshua Foer

  Meaningful, Two, People

  Joshua Foer (2011). “Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything”, p.59, Penguin

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