Example sentences of "i could [verb] [be] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | All I could manage was to haunt Rocamar like a beast with no heart . ’ |
| 2 | ‘ You had them all the time — you trailed me round — you bloody filthy lying bastard — you poked my head into every shit-bin in Bristol — you led me up hill and down dale till my feet were dropping off — you made me steal some people 's boat — I could 've been got by the police — I might be festering in jail now — handcuffed — criminal — you do n't care , you 're criminal anyway — I would n't be surprised if you 'd murdered half a dozen innocent people and cut them up and kept their pieces stashed away in the hole where you 've been hiding my bag and my things and my money and my dreams … ’ |
| 3 | I suppose I could 've been too cool ! ’ |
| 4 | The thing that I 'd like to do and that I really wish I could do is give you a job here but Personnel have said I 'm already fully staffed . ’ |
| 5 | Right , well what I could do is I could give you another prescription now , that you can go and get if you feel you are going to need something . |
| 6 | And then I could add them together , or if that 's a bit awkward , what I could do is I could think of the hundred and one as a hundred add one , I can think of the seventeen as ten add seven , and then I multiply them this way and I multiply all the bits and then add all the bits up at the end . |
| 7 | What I could do is play a record but er I ca n't remember so bear with me for a moment . |
| 8 | ‘ I was so tired by that time that all I could do was sit in a deck-chair on the sea-front and sleep all day , but it was enough . ’ |
| 9 | The only thing I could do was sit outside his house on the doorstep . |
| 10 | He was a tall , heavy-built almost surly type who spoke no English ; all I could do was listen patiently , smile , and offer a small but polite salute on departure . |
| 11 | The idea of God pursuing a whole family like a demented genealogist seemed grossly unfair , but as it was a commandment all I could do was hope that neither my father nor any of my immediate ancestors had done anything really sinful , and that if they had , God did n't know of my relationship . |
| 12 | There were no books in the room so all I could do was look out of the window and wait for the quarterly chimes from the Cathedral Clock . |
| 13 | If I was to spend race day reporting as a spectator , then the least I could do was arrive early and attempt the course myself . |
| 14 | By next morning some stray cat had eaten much of his back , so all I could do was measure him . |
| 15 | So all I could do was to prance about waving flashcards and realia like a second-rate conjuror at a children 's party , and try not to glance at my watch more than once a minute . |
| 16 | ‘ I realised he was n't going to be able to stop and all I could do was watch him come closer and closer to me . |
| 17 | ‘ All I could do was scream down the phone — God knows what the listeners made of it . ’ |
| 18 | All I could do was dig it out . |
| 19 | I wanted to run out and scream , but Mum had the key and all I could do was stand stock still , listening to the thumping of my heart . |
| 20 | All I could do was pile up small bits of information hoping it would make an understandable structure one day . |
| 21 | All I could do was to mumble that I regretted not taking my degree , and , though I could see it was irritating of me to whine , to feel stale and bored was not such a trivial thing ; that though we might have the vote now , meals still had to be prepared and children looked after and since this kind of drudgery was despised by society as not being ‘ real work ’ , we were in the hideous position of being both exhausted and imprisoned by it and also looked down on for doing it ; that I had honestly tried to be the sort of wife Richard wanted — and the sort of wife I felt I ought to be — but it was like being in a kind of airless cell and I could only see Richard as a jailer ; that I saw myself becoming progressively more and more incapable of doing anything , not just mentally , but from some kind of paralysis of will . |
| 22 | Is that what she was like ? ’ and all I could do was say well , no , not at all … but that was the licence you got at the NME , because the most important word in the paper is I . ’ |
| 23 | Tonight all I could do was make sure of Crispin . |
| 24 | There was an immediate loss of power and all I could do was to crash-land the aircraft . |
| 25 | So the least I could do was to get out and around looking for the guy . |
| 26 | All I could do was write a letter , and by the time I 'd written a letter and it got where it was going and a reply got back , a week or two weeks could have gone by . |
| 27 | But all I could do was remind people of John 's situation . |
| 28 | The only thing I could do was discuss with her yet again the best way to express our case . |
| 29 | If I did n't want it he would say that he was keeping me and the least I could do was give him sex . |
| 30 | ‘ All I could do was lie on the bed ’ , she says , ‘ it made me feel very ill and because of that I felt slightly depressed . |