And What If Quotes

#1. We are simple-minded enough to think that if we were saying something we would use words. We are rather doing something. The meaning of what we do is determined by each one who sees and hears it.

John Cage

#2. I don't know what kind of life you had, what sorts of joys and sorrows you experienced. But even if there was something that left you unfulfilled, you can't go around seeking it at other people's doors. Even if it is at the place you're most familiar with, and the sort of act that is your forte.

Haruki Murakami

#3. I think the best comedy is tragicomic. Yeah, I suppose if you were to look at everything I've done, there is a bit of a black streak through all of it. It's not deliberate: it's what makes me laugh, and there's a fine tradition of it, especially in Ireland.

Sharon Horgan

#4. P.S. - This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R were eliminated.

Mitch Hedberg

#5. In all honesty, if somebody asked me the secret of auditioning for Americans, I don't know. Often, I do what's called self-taping for America. I go over there quite a lot to sit in a room and do stuff in front of people. You feel like a performing monkey. It's bizarre.

David Wenham

#6. I don't fall in love very easily. It takes a long time, and then, when I have fallen in love, I'm still not sure. I'm suspicious of myself. What if tomorrow I don't feel the same? I have to wait, to be sure. And I wait and wait.

Joey Comeau

#7. Most executives, many scientists, and almost all business school graduates believe that if you analyze data, this will give you new ideas. Unfortunately, this belief is totally wrong. The mind can only see what it is prepared to see.

Edward De Bono

#8. People are hypocrites. If you ask them what they want to see on TV, they'll tell you they want better quality programming. And then what do they watch? 'Gilligan's Island.'

Johnny Carson

#9. Can you see the future, Kerbouchard?"
"Who would wish to? Our lives hold a veil between anticipation and horror. Anticipation is the carrot suspended before the jackass to keep him moving forward. Horror is what he would see if he took his eyes off the carrot.

Louis L'Amour

#10. Maybe I think you're cute and funny. Maybe I wanna do what bunnies do with you, if you know what I mean.

Ingrid Michaelson

#11. If we want to reduce poverty and misery, if we want to give to every deserving individual what is needed for a safe existence of an intelligent being, we want to provide more machinery, more power. Power is our mainstay, the primary source of our many-sided energies.

Nikola Tesla

#12. I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow and I can't relive yesterday but I live in the moment if I can.

Ozzy Osbourne

#13. Fatima's hair, what was left of it, had pulled free of the coil into which she'd put it before striking the match. Her face was now black and shiny, as if an artist commissioned to lacquer the eyes of a statue of

Katherine Boo

#14. You see, nature will do exactly what it must, and if we are a hindrance to its development, to even its destructive powers to reform itself and we are in a way, we will go.

Ralph Steadman

#15. What we need to understand is, one, that there are market failures; and two, that there are things like asset bubbles and irrational exuberance. There are periods of booms, bubbles, and manias. These things, if left to themselves, can lead to crashes, to busts, to panics.

Nouriel Roubini

#16. Science and fiction both begin with similar questions: What if? Why? How does it all work? But they focus on different areas of life on earth.

Margaret Atwood

#17. The most important decisions in organizations are people decisions, and yet only the military, and only recently, has begun to ask, "If we assign this general to lead this base, what do we expect him to accomplish?"

Peter Drucker

#18. If I'm in ya starting five you will never need a sub and I'm never looking down, so I always know what's up.

Drake

#19. It is not enough to celebrate Christmas. We need to be changed and shaped by what we are celebrating. If our spiritual life is no better in spite of all our praying, fasting, and church services, then we have not yet begun to fully respond to the significance of Advent and of the Nativity.

Vassilios Papavassiliou

#20. I don't spend a lot of time thinking of what they'll do musically, I try to imagine being locked into a windowless room with this person for twelve hours at a time. If you can look at that and think it might be fun then maybe you've got the right musician.

Leo Kottke

#21. You need to remember that. If you're to have decent lives, you have to know who you are and what lies ahead of you, every one of you.

Kazuo Ishiguro

#22. I did comics on the Internet because it was free, and if I had made printed copies, I wouldn't have known what to do with them. But I knew how to make a website when most people didn't, and back then, that was enough!

John Allison

#23. If I read something and I love it, I'll do it and I don't even ask what the budget is.

Eric Bana

#24. The paths of Fate are many and varied,and no sane being should ever venture down the deceptively pleasant one of "if only".What happened,happened;

Christie Golden

#25. Nothing could do that to them, that's what they used to whisper as they sat on the back stairs, in the dark and the dust, as if desire were a matter of personal choice.

Alice Hoffman

#26. If time stood still for a moment, what would you be grateful for? And will it be enough to allow time to have meaning when it begins?

Steven Cuoco

#27. They just expected it to you know ... Paul, Steve and I could have hired our own publicist, if we wanted to, but I kind of liked the way it was more of a cult thing and those that liked it, liked it, you know what I mean?

Amy Sedaris

#28. Heaven is high and earth wide. If you ride three feet higher above the ground than other men, you will know what that means.

Rudolf G. Binding

#29. I've never met all these people you speak of. And neither, I suspect, have you. They only exist in words we hear. It is folly to say you know what is happening to other people. Only they know, if they exist. They have their own Universes of their eyes and ears.

Douglas Adams

#30. Do not tell me what to do, tell me what you do. Do not tell me what is good for me, tell me what is good for you. If, at the same time, you reveal the you in me, if you become a mirror to my inner self, then you have made a reader and a friend.

George A. Sheehan

#31. If we had pursued what President Nixon declared in 1970 as the war on cancer, we would have cured many strains. I think Jack Kemp would be alive today. And that research has saved or prolonged many lives, including mine.

Arlen Specter

#32. The sign outside the juice store had said CHANGE YOUR FUTURE WITH SUNSHINE IN A GLASS. My future was looking pretty great already, and I couldn't wait to see what would happen if I added orange juice to it.

Maggie Stiefvater

#33. She took a deep breath and forgot to exhale. She wondered what it would be like if she licked him up one side and down the other.
"What are you thinking?"
She suddely felt kind of hot and dizzy and accidetally let Layla out.
"That i want to lick yout tattoo" she whispered.

Rachel Gibson

#34. It's interesting how we often can't see the ways in which we are being strong - like, you can't be aware of what you're doing that's tough and brave at the time that you're doing it because if you knew that it was brave, then you'd be scared.

Lena Dunham

#35. I'm a cartoonist, it's what I am at heart, so cartoons take reality and deform it and make it grotesque, you make it funny, but you alter it. If it works, it's based on reality. That's what I try to do.

Terry Gilliam

#36. If only I were articulate to paint in the frail medium of words what I see and know and possess incorporated in my consciousness of the mighty driftage of the races in the times before our present written history began!

Jack London

#37. What was the use of being grown up if you couldn't take a little risk now and then?

William Bowen

#38. So I'm sorry, I'm going to continue to talk to the people, because I do believe that if they get to know you and what you are as a human being, they can more appreciate what you are as a performer.

Mel Torme

#39. I hear myself saying these words: What this movement is about is options. I say it to friends who are frustrated, or housebound, or guilty, or child-laden, and what I'm really thinking is, If you really got it together, the option you would choose is mine.

Nora Ephron

#40. My first novel, 'The Lions of Lucerne,' just poured out of me. It was an amazing feeling of accomplishment. My biggest fear and therefore my biggest obstacle to becoming an author had been, 'What if I spend all that time and the book is no good?'

Brad Thor

#41. Thinking about the world writ large, I am more optimistic than not that we will tackle our most pressing challenges, whether poverty or equality for women and girls or climate change; but I also know we'll only tackle them if people are really informed about the challenge and what's proven to work.

Chelsea Clinton

#42. The thing I hate most in acting is asking permission to do things. What you really want to do is say, 'This is my need; this is what's going to get me further; this is what's going to be alive. I don't ever say, 'Do you mind if ... ?' I just come in and do it.

Lance Henriksen

#43. And there, in that phrase, the bitterness leaks again out of my pen. What a dull lifeless quality this bitterness is. If I could I would write with love, but if I could write with love I would be another man; I would never have lost love.

Graham Greene

#44. The spirit and tone of your home will have great influence on your children. If it is what it ought to be, it will fasten conviction on their minds, however wicked they may become.

Richard Cecil

#45. And what if there are only spiders there, or something of that sort

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#46. If you walk by something that I've done and you like it then I don't think I did what I was supposed to do. It should hit, it should either make you feel uncomfortable, or it should make you feel great, as long as it makes you feel something.

Jason Shawn Alexander

#47. Teddy Roosevelt supported a progressive income tax. If I am sitting pretty and you've got a waitress who is making minimum wage plus tips, and I can afford it and she can't, what's the big deal for me to say, 'I'm going to pay a little bit more'? That is neighborliness.

Barack Obama

#48. If i am what i have, and i lose what i have, who then am i?

Erich Fromm

#49. Thank you Jonah."
He lowers his head at the break in my voice. I ignore the moisture in his eyes and pretend that mine don't sting.
"For what?" he whispers.
" For showing me that people can change. Even if it is one person out of a million.

Katie McGarry

#50. What is a decision? It's a tool to remove confusion! Are you confused? If so, then make the decision and let's move on!

Brian Valentine

#51. What a happy woman I am, living in a garden, with books, babies, birds and flowers, and plenty of leisure to enjoy them. Sometimes I feel as if I were blest above all my fellows in being able to find happiness so easily.

Rosamunde Pilcher

#52. The cap-and-trade plan is more market driven than anything else. If you want to discourage carbon use, you have to make it more expensive, but what is crucial is that this be a worldwide program that includes China and India.

Phil Gramm

#53. What good's a black face if it means I'm just someone else's property? Why give me these arms and legs just to carry someone else's load, not my own?

Stacey Lee

#54. I mean, if no one knows for sure what God's like, then why don't you just believe the people who think he's all rainbows and sunshine and loves you no matter what?

J.C. Lillis

#55. I'm into hip-hop, rap, country, blues, gospel, old school, new school ... whatever ... pop. If it's really good, I like it. I don't have to be told what to listen to. If I like it and it's good, I'll listen to it.

Toby Keith

#56. The human being is like a light bulb. If a human being is super stressed, depressed and filled with negativity, this is what that human being radiates out into the world.

David Lynch

#57. There's not a lot of room anymore for what I call 'made-up' drama. The drama comes from real places now - marriage takes work and focus, the kid stuff takes patience and commitment. And if you don't grow as people and as a couple, within all of that, then you've got some real drama.

Jeremy Sisto

#58. I'll tell you what 20 years teaches you - is that if one thing doesn't last something else will come down the pipe and to go from that and to do these films now.

Blair Underwood

#59. With you, I want it all. If I get a taste of what it could be, I won't ever want to let it go. I fell in love with you when I was sixteen, and that's never changed. But trusting you with my heart again is different. With you, I need to know it's forever.

Abbi Glines

#60. I wondered if all creatures were drawn to what was dangerous or if we merely wanted light at any cost and were willing to burn for our desires.

Alice Hoffman

#61. Why should we remain innocent of what lurks in the shadows? How can we live in the world if we don't understand how dark and brutal it can be?

Penny Matthews

#62. What I look for in a voice is for it to be unique. I don't really care if a singer sings well. Really, it's about emotion, or being able to sing the lyrics and actually mean it. A lot of singers sing good notes but forget about what words they use.

Zedd

#63. Another coupon tacked onto the pile I'll redeem when I get some power in my fucken life. Look around this life and all you see is folks' coupons tacked everywhere, what they'll do if, what they'll do when. Warm anticipation for shit that ain't even going to happen.

D.B.C. Pierre

#64. Every white person in this country-and I do not care what he or she says-knows one thing. They may not know, as they put, "what I want",but they know they would not like to be black here.
If they know that, then they know everything they need to know, and whatever else they say is a lie.

James Baldwin

#65. If you chase the market, it's not going to come to you. You have to have faith in yourself. I think one of the differences in what I call 'civilians' and 'authors' is that we have an antenna hat buzzing all the time.

David Morrell

#66. Do not trust anybody but yourself. If people want to help you, fine. Put it on paper and understand exactly what every word says.

Art Alexakis

#67. What was striking about Ms. Wilson, and was also true of the other outsiders who volunteered their time that day, was that she spoke to us prisoners with great respect, as if our lives ahead had hope and meaning and possibility. After all these months at Danbury, this was a shocking novelty.

Piper Kerman

#68. They are so very cultivated, so very rich and so utterly charming. At the end of each day, they all ask themselves: 'Is it time I stopped?' And they all reply: 'If I did, there would be no meaning to my life.'
As if they actually knew what the meaning of life was.

Paulo Coelho

#69. If people didn't know me and only knew my public persona, what I'd want them to know is everything that I do, I do for the Glory of Lord. Because of my Christian faith, that's who I am. I wasn't always that way, but I'm very proud that I am.

Tony Dungy

#70. Frustration is the first step towards improvement. I have no incentive to improve if I'm content with what I can do and if I'm completely satisfied with my pace, distance and form as a runner. It's only when I face frustration and use it to fuel my dedication that I feel myself moving forwards.

John Bingham

#71. I have always felt that the truth is prophetic, and that if you describe precisely what you see and give it life with your imagination, then what you write ought to have lasting value, no matter what the mood of your prose.

Paul Theroux

#72. I'm not sure what kind of love you mean, baby, but if you mean do I want you to be with me forever, that I can't bear the thought of being without you as my lover, my best friend, my whole world....one day my wife, and my baby mama, then yes, I Love you, Love you!

S.E. Hall

#73. There is a law in psychology that if you form a picture in your mind of what you would like to be, and you keep and hold that picture there long enough, you will soon become exactly as you have been thinking.

William James

#74. What was Christmas for, if not joy?
And they had the most special gift of all to celebrate.

Roxanne Snopek

#75. I spent my childhood in New York, riding on subways and buses. And you know what you learn if you're a New Yorker? The world doesn't owe you a damn thing.

Lauren Bacall

#76. And with returning awareness, he saw as if for the first time the bodies of the men that he had killed to get to the Regent's decoy, and beyond that, the evidence of what he had done. The

C.S. Pacat

#77. What's it mean; are you determined
To make modern all mankind?
If so, you should be be-sermoned
And brought back to healthy mind.

Charles C. Abbott

#78. I got the idea [for Anthem's theme] in my school days, in Soviet Russia, when I heard all the vicious attacks on individualism, and asked myself what the world would be like if men lost the word 'I.'

Ayn Rand

#79. And yet what manner of man would I be, who has so much to say in the contest of words, if now I shirked this contest of blood?

Geraldine Brooks

#80. What they don't tell you when you get sober is that if you manage to stay that way, you will bury your friends. Not everyone gets to have a whole new shiny-but-messy life like I have, and I've never come up with a satisfying explanation for why that is.

Nadia Bolz-Weber

#81. But for the love of piss, make some sort of decision. If you don't want to eat babies and nail bloodbags to walls, that's your choice. What Sarren did or made you do in the past has nothing to do with it now. You're a vampire. Do whatever the hell you want.

Julie Kagawa

#82. Even the richest personality is nothing before he has chosen himself, and on the other hand even what one might call the poorest personality is everything when he has chosen himself; for the great thing is not to be this or that but to be oneself, and this everyone can be if he wills it.

Soren Kierkegaard

#83. I think it would be best if you came down from there before I explained that."
"I think I'll stay right where I am, thank you," I said. "And you, you stay where you are, or I'll ... I don't know what I'll do, but it will really hurt. You, I mean.

Molly Harper

#84. I'm quite contrary. If people agree on something, I tend to gravitate the other way by my nature. I don't like to be told what to do. I think it goes back to school. I like to do things I want to do and I really don't like doing what I don't want to do.

Andy Serkis

#85. The problem with looking in the mirror is that you never know how you will feel about what you see. Sometimes, when my hormones are out of sync, I have no interest in the mirror, and if I do look I think everything is all wrong. Other times, I am quite pleased with what I see.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#86. Why, if one were Queen, would one ever want to marry? If one is ruler, is it not better to both King and Queen? That is exactly what a woman can do if she remains without a mate.

Kathryn Lasky

#87. And if ten percent of men are gay and twenty percent of men are Chinese, what are the odds that a men chosen at random spends his free time and mealtime while on his knees.

Bo Burnham

#88. Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness. Thus religion is solitariness; and if you are never solitary, you are never religious.

Alfred North Whitehead

#89. I learnt that no matter what names they give you, nothing applies until you wish it to. No insult, no barb yours to bear unless you want it to. Use it, if you want. Make it into a weapon and let it boomerang back to those who uttered it. Just don't let it overpower your life.

Sweety Shinde

#90. Love, always love. Perhaps that's what we're all looking for. And if we don't get it early enough we panic in case we never shall.

P.D. James

#91. If my life can inspire people, then a television show where guests talk about their challenges and what makes them unique would work.

Anupam Kher

#92. Or if I have my head in the results, I can't work with what I have, because I'm trying to force something to happen. And with singing, any time you force it, you tighten up. If you tighten up, you're screwed, nothing will work.

Kathy Mattea

#93. If I waited long enough and said, "Okay, so what you're saying is you liked your life a lot better when you were 30?" everybody would get real quiet and then admit that that wasn't the case, that they really felt like they were sort of growing into themselves in a way.

Anna Quindlen

#94. Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world.

Erich Fromm

#95. The artist should fear to become the slave of detail. He should strive to express his thought and not the surface of it. What avails a storm cloud accurate in form and color if the storm is not therein?

Albert Pinkham Ryder

#96. There are black men who are madly in love with white women. God bless them, if that's what works for them. I just hope that we can strike a balance that portrays black folks and the black family in a light that's not extreme. Those are the types of characters that I find myself attracted to.

Nia Long

#97. My energy level rises but I get calmer, if that's possible. What a lot of people tend to do is get real tight and get all psyched up and take themselves out of their game.

Joey Harrington

#98. Ultimately, if you want to make movies, you've got to want to make movies every day, when people are paying you to make movies and when they're not, because you're going to get a lot more no's on this business, no matter what it is, than you are going to get yeses.

Morgan Spurlock

#99. Tell me what you wish for, and if it's any part of my body, your wish will come true at the Regency Hotel in forty minutes." She'd giggled and turned her face to the sunlight. "Free, Jonathan. I wish to be free.

C.D. Reiss

#100. And, anyway, friendship is different in another language; a foreign friend doesn't have to understand what you feel, and I don't expect it. It's enough if he understands what you just said.

Michael Chabon