Top 100 Been What Quotes
#1. I am who I choose to be. I have always been what I chose, though not always what I pleased.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#2. 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
#3. If it hadn't been what it was, it would've been beautiful.
Megan Abbott
#4. When nothing was, then God was there,
Had nothing been God would have been;
My being has defeated me,
Had I not been, what would have been.
Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib
#5. Sometimes it is more comfortable to live in the past. It is where you have already been, what you already know. It is because the future is unknown that it scares us. But the future is here, and you cannot stop it. Embrace it because one day this future will be the past you may want to revisit.
Matthew A. DeBettencourt
#6. To get someone to follow them, a Siren would most likely appear as that person's deepest desire. The thing they wanted most. Cole's had become me, only it wasn't me as the queen, which I assumed would've been what Cole wanted most. It wasn't even me as an Everliving.
It was me, simply as me.
Brodi Ashton
#7. I'm no actor and I never have been. What people see on the screen is me.
Clark Gable
#8. I wouldn't have been what you'd call a champion if I had accepted failure when it first came, if I had looked at it and said, 'Well, that's it.'
Shirley Strickland
#9. The problem with music was always that the sound system often obliterated the words, and words, not music, have always been what I was about.
Lydia Lunch
#10. I didn't grow up with my dad, so it was always very funny to me, and always has been, what an important part DNA plays in one's life.
Kiefer Sutherland
#11. Life is simple, it has always been. What is complex is our brain, and that's the main reason why we perceive life as being complicated. Embrace life for what you have and embrace life for who you are, as what you have others might envy and who you are might be secretly being admired by millions.
Jeekeshen Chinnappen
#12. The Scandinavians are dear people but they've never been what you might call bywords for wit and sparkle, have they?
Kingsley Amis
#13. I say it must have been great to grow up when men were men. He says men have always been what the are now, namely incapable of coping with life without the intervention of God the Almighty. Then in the oven behind him my pizza starts smoking and he says case in point.
George Saunders
#14. While still a student, Napoleon had written on the last page of his geography book: "St. Helena. Small island." This may have been what we call a coincidence, but the thought must certainly have aroused terror in him in his last days.
Ryunosuke Akutagawa
#15. I am surprised by how not-adopted the video reply has been. What keeps other people from doing it, I think, is that they think a video comes across as 'I'm cool, look at how many e-mails I get.' That perception doesn't scare me, because I know who I am.
Gary Vaynerchuk
#16. To be perfectly frank, his ding-dong wouldn't have been what you might call the subject of an exhaustive search. Albert
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
#17. If I thought being kissed by Tyr had been what kissing was all about, I had been wrong. This kiss trampled Tyr's kiss, threw it to the ground, and danced on its grave.
Eilis O'Neal
#18. It is not in the outward and visible world of material life that the Celtic genius of Wales or Ireland can at this day hope to count for much; it is in the inward world of thought and science.What it has been, what is has done, what it will be or will do, as a matter of modern politics.
Matthew Arnold
#19. I just want to make my last demand in reverence to the work of what has been done by architects of the past. what was, has always been. what is, has always been. and what will be, has always been. such is the nature of beginning.
Louis Kahn
#20. You ask me why I'm nice to you," he said. "Why, why, why. But you don't ask me stuff that matters. Who I am or where I been. What I see when I look at you. What I want.
Sarah Ockler
#21. He's got to have the ability, and it seems to be fairly rare, to see things as they are and at the same time as they might have been. What we mean is the eye of an artist.
Jack Finney
#22. I've never been one for religion, but yet I've never been what ye could call an unbeliever. What I say is, nothin' don't seem impossible once you've clapped eyes on a whale.
Elizabeth Goudge
#23. Nothing was what she was; nothing was what she gave to those foolish enough to care for her. Nothing was what she deserved, and so nothing had been what she got. It didn't matter how hard she tried or what she did.
Courtney Milan
#24. yes, he had been preoccupied, but hadn't that been what I was looking for--someone who wouldn't pay too much attention, someone who wouldn't look at me to closely?
Carol Goodman
#25. Could that have been what happened to the human race - a willing perversity that set at naught all human values which had been so hardly won and structured in the light of reason for a span of more than a million years?
Clifford D. Simak
#26. One builds one's life in consistency; one invests it with the belief, however unsupported by reality, that one has always been what one is now, that even in one's distant past one could recognize the seed from which this doomed flower has bloomed.
Aleksandar Hemon
#27. Guns have metamorphosed into cameras in this earnest comedy, the ecology safari, because nature has ceased to be what it always had been - what people needed protection from. Now nature tamed, endangered, mortal - needs to be protected from people.
Susan Sontag
#28. If we had never met Picasso, would Cubism have been what it is? I think not. The meeting with Picasso was a circumstance in our lives.
Georges Braque
#29. Some of the worst things that have happened in my career, like things getting leaked, have actually been what's best for me, because people knew when I was on that show that I was really growing up.
Miley Cyrus
#30. I've always been a rocker. Like ever since I was really young. I had a crush on the Green Day guys. That's always been what I was like and been my interest.
Ashlee Simpson
#31. Tasting what could have been - what should have been - didn't make it easier.
Kele Moon
#32. I opened up a bit and explained that I have a type I'm drawn to naturally, but that I've found that the women I've ended up loving the most have never been what I've thought of as my type, maybe because part of love is being helpless, being out of control of your own emotions.
B.J. Novak
#33. Too often, I have not been what I wanted to be; I've succumbed to pressures. Yes, I have. The things I've done that I liked, I've always done against advice.
Kirk Douglas
#34. What you are is what you have been. What you'll be is what you do now.
Gautama Buddha
#35. We are what we are because we have been what we have been, and what is needed for solving the problems of human life and motives is not moral estimates but more knowledge.
Sigmund Freud
#36. My persona has always been what a man was never supposed to be. Outrageous, gregarious, crazy, silly, funny.
Richard Simmons
#37. Alas, criticism has always been what human beings, especially leaders, most hate to hear.
David Brin
#38. You have always been what I want. I just made mistakes along the way. I told you that I would make it up to you, that I would show you what I could be for you, if you would only let me.
K.A. Linde
#39. The songs that I sing and the songs that I write have always just been what I feel my voice does well, and what my inspirations have been and a kind of culmination of everything.
Josh Groban
#40. You know, I once read a short story about how much you could tell about people from their shoes. You could tell where they had been, what they did, whether they were real walkers.
Elizabeth Edwards
#41. You're like a brother to me. I would never do anything to hurt you. And I know I haven't been what a brother would consider good material for his wee sister, but I love Ellie, Braden. I have for a long time now, and I can't not be with her. I've wasted too much time as it is.
Samantha Young
#42. How do we deal with all the people we've been? What happens when we have to confront them?
Rachel Kapelke-Dale
#43. It would be a great boon to know where we stand in this world, what is, what has been, what will be. And to know it absolutely.
Stephen R. Lawhead
#44. We've been proud of the fact that we were known for our music first and it has been what makes us work harder
G-Dragon
#45. You have always been what you are. That's not new. What you'll get use to, is knowing it.
Cassandra Clare
#46. My influences have been what I call my four Bs - the primary one being the blues, then Borges, Baraka, and Bearden.
August Wilson
#47. If you had to pack your whole life into a suitcase-not just the practical things, like clothing, but the memories of the people you had lost and the girl you had once been-what would you take?
Jodi Picoult
#48. I have never been what you'd call a crying man.
Stephen King
#50. He had lived and acted on the assumption that he was alone, and now he saw that he had not been. What he had done made others suffer. No matter how much he would long for them to forget him, they would not be able to. His family was a part of him, not only in blood, but in spirit.
Richard Wright
#51. What an idiot I'd been. What a spoilt brat. What a bloody fool.
David Millar
#52. My writing has always been what you call 'narrative fiction' in the sense that it's got very strong plots and twists at the end.
Anthony Horowitz
#53. Crime fiction has always been what I wanted to read, so when I sat down to write my first book, it was naturally the way that I was going to go.
Mark Billingham
#54. Up until now, the biggest question in society about video games has been what to do about violent games. But it's almost like society in general considers video games to be something of a nuisance, that they want to toss into the garbage can.
Shigeru Miyamoto
#55. Orgasms, for her, had been what she faked with a man and provided herself when she was alone,
Linda Howard
#56. One of my interests in music has always been what it means, why it affects us the way it does.
Tod Machover
#57. Real art has been ... what's the word? Kidnapped? No, that's not it. But, OK, kidnapped by business.
Vivienne Westwood
#58. Mrs. Hilbery would have been perfectly well able to sustain herself if the world had been what the world is not. She was beautifully adapted for life in another planet.
Virginia Woolf
#59. Be what you are becoming without clinging to what you might have been; what you might yet be.
Luce Irigaray
#60. You've always been what you are. That's not new. What you'll get used to is knowing it.
Cassandra Clare
#61. It doesn't matter how bitter or better the past has been, what we can do with the bitter or better past today is what matters.
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
#62. I've done very well in the film business. Whenever I have wanted something, the film business has given it to me. I'm very fortunate. My big problem in life has always been, 'What do I want?'
John Patrick Shanley
#63. The first priority of the family should be to establish a quality of relationship with each other that is a reflection of an authentic relationship with God. That may have been what Paul was aiming at when he wrote to the church in Ephesians 5 and 6 about the family.
Reggie Joiner
#64. It was too late to think about what could have been or what should have been. What's done is done. The past was in the past and there was no changing it.
Jason Medina
#65. He still was not happy, she never had been. What caused this inadequacy in her life? Why did everything she leaned on instantaneously decay?..
Gustave Flaubert
#66. We treat what's lost, what could have never been, what we could have never dreamed of, again. We treat it like heirlooms for it is so precious. For we know it can be lost, again.
Kevin Focke
#67. Let go of resentment, for it will hold you back. Do not worry about what could've been, what is to come is what matters.
Leon Brown
#68. Writing, overall, has never been what I'd call fun. It's fulfilling. It doesn't come real easy for me.
Iris Dement
#69. I have never been what you would call just an integrationist. I know I've been called that ... Integrating that bus wouldn't mean more equality. Even when there was segregation, there was plenty of integration in the South, but it was for the benefit and convenience of the white person, not us.
Rosa Parks
#70. For me, my family and my faith have been what's really been my anchor, and grounding me, and helping me navigate through a lot of the things that really destroy marriages in Hollywood, and in your own personal integrity.
Kirk Cameron
#71. The only really safe thing to do is to write a diary of where you've been, what time you went to bed, what you ate. If I wrote honestly about everything I think it'd be a disaster. It would cause a lot of trouble.
Ellie Goulding
#72. If it had been what was supposed to happen, it would have happened.
Allan Houston
#73. To me, being brave is an element that is so important with stand-up comedy. It's not essential. There are many comics who were just funny, and that's fine, too. But that's never been what I was trying to do in comedy. I was always trying to do something that involved not pandering to the audience.
Bill Maher
#74. Whether tales are told by the light of a campfire or by the glow of a screen, the prime decision for the teller has always been what to reveal and what to withhold. Whether in alone or with images, the narrator should be clear about what is to be shown and what is to be hidden.
Dave Gibbons
#75. Also, as an author, character has always been what I'm most interested in - much more so than plot or setting, although those are good things too.
Lauren Myracle
#76. I've done other things, but it always seems like my sci-fi projects have been what people respond to the most, because those fans are extraordinary, so passionate.
Summer Glau
#77. ...Be what you like'
'Some people, sir,' remarked Lamps, 'are sometimes what they don't like.'
'Nobody knows that better than I do,' sighed the other. 'I have been what I don't like, all my life.
Charles Dickens
#78. I never really chose to be a writer. It's just always been what I do. Writing chose me...
Te Russ
#79. And it is only after seeing man as his unconscious, revealed by his dreams, presents him to us that we shall understand him fully. For as Freud said to Putnam: We are what we are because we have been what we have been.
Sigmund Freud
#80. Finally, when happiness came knocking on my door, I'd be waiting. I'd open the door and say: "Where have you been? What took you so long? And if you just give me a moment I'll pack and go with you."
Constance Briscoe
#81. I know my body. What happened is that I got so caught up in the applause I forgot how I should dance. All my life I've been what others wanted - in dancing and in life. Now I'm doing it my way.
Gelsey Kirkland
#82. The universal motivator," she says. "That has always been what makes a squad function under fire. Not honor or medals or promotions. As long as they make us pick up rifles and go to war together, it'll always be about the grunt next to you." I
Marko Kloos
#83. You feel very much like a puppet, but it had been what I was accustomed to - so you just get on with it and try to find something that rings true.
Emily Blunt
#84. I don't think anything might have been. What is, is.
Edward Gorey
#85. Look closer and you'll see something extraordinary, mystifying, something real and true. We have never been what we seemed.
Zelda Fitzgerald
#86. But in every century, and ever since England has been what it is, an Englishman has always felt somewhat ashamed of his own emotion and of his own sympathy.
Emmuska Orczy
#87. What is has been. What will be is no more than a forgotten year striking backward.
Rudyard Kipling
#88. My main disappointment was always that a book had to end. And then what? But I don't think I was ever disappointed by the books. I must have been what any author would consider an ideal reader. I felt every pain and pleasure suffered or enjoyed by all the characters. Oh, but I identified!
Eudora Welty
#89. People don't understand that when I grew up, I was never the most talented. I was never the biggest. I was never the fastest. I certainly was never the strongest. The only thing I had was my work ethic, and that's been what has gotten me this far.
Tiger Woods
#90. In the past stories have been what tethers us to the world and they've made us who we are.
Mat McNerney
#91. He just wanted to see it. From afar. To see what might have been, what he was glad hadn't been. But maybe should have been.
Julia Quinn
#92. My adult mind says that the really interesting bit of LOTR must have been what happened afterwards - the troubles of a war-ravaged continent, the Marshall Aid scheme for Mordor, the shift in political power, the democratization of Minas
Anonymous
#93. I'm so glad to be back in New York. Los Angeles can be so cold, so cruel after you've been-what's the word?-oh yes: 'fired.'
Bette Midler
#94. I am forever grateful for not knowing - What would have been. WHAT WILL BE holds none of those bittersweet pangs and it is lit w joy.
Erica Goros
#95. All I know is that there is comfort in knowing one's place in the universe, even if that means our light is less beautiful than it otherwise would have been. What say you, then, of the night sky?
David Adams
#96. When what's around you - such as scripts, or like me being on the show and playing 18, now me doing this film playing 18 - it's kind of been what's been there for me.
Shane West
#97. Our problem isn't that we're individualists. It's that our individualism is static rather than dynamic. We value what we think rather than what we do. We forget that we haven't done, or been, what we thought; that the first function of life is action, just as the first property of things is motion.
Fernando Pessoa
#98. As medical progress has extended our lives, the result has been what's called the "rectangularization" of survival.
Atul Gawande
#99. For how many thousands of years now have we humans been what we insist on calling "civilized?" And yet, in total contradiction, we also persist in the savage belief that we must occasionally, at least, settle our arguments by killing one another.
Walter Cronkite
#100. I scarcely know a professional man I can like, and certainly not one who has been what the world calls successful, that I should the least wish to resemble.
James Anthony Froude
