Top 100 If I Had Quotes
#1. I'm still trying to figure out how to write about cancer and my family's experience with it. If I had been able to write 'The Pura Principle' back in those days, I'm positive it would have had no humor in it. Which means the story would have been false.
Junot Diaz
#2. if I had only picked up a telephone and spoken my heart.
Walter Mosley
#3. Tereza's death hurt me so much, it was as if I had two heads smashing into each other. One was full of mown love, the other of hate. I wanted the love to grow back. It grew like grass and straw, all mixed up together, and turned into an icy affirmation on my brow. That was my damn stupid plant.
Herta Muller
#4. If I had power over the Jews, as our princes and cities have, I would deal severely with their lying mouth
Martin Luther
#5. It wasn't like a Maths test where I have to strain to get it right. I feel very close to Luna so acting her was just natural. And if I had got too nervous I'd have done terribly.
Evanna Lynch
#6. I felt foolish and tired, as if I had been running to escape someone chasing me, only to look behind to discover there was no one there.
Amy Tan
#7. If I had a choice, if I had understood earlier that the reason my days were all the same was because I wanted them like that, perhaps ...
Paulo Coelho
#8. If I had money, I would like to get an old building, have music performances, do lithographs, have shows of paintings, and do those things that I'm interested in doing.
Bill Dixon
#9. If I had to define life in a single phrase, I should clearly express my thought of throwing into relief one characteristic which, in my opinion, sharply differentiates biological science. I should say: life is creation.
Claude Bernard
#10. If I had a baseball bat and bulldozer, maybe I could stop him. But without real weapons, without a pistol, a man-eating lion, and a vial of bubonic plague, I had zero change of competing against him.
Sherman Alexie
#11. I guess if I had to classify myself, I'd say I'm straight.
Brendon Urie
#12. I don't even have a computer in my office. If I had e-mail, I'd never take the time to read research or absorb information. I want to think about what I'm doing, and that takes time.
John W. Rogers Jr.
#13. If I had to say how I felt, I would say like a box that had been turned upside down. And the box was surprised by just how empty it was.
Grace McCleen
#14. If I had the hand strength to sign autographs for everybody in Kansas City, I would ... but its just impossible to get to everyone.
Dante Hall
#15. Kings were wont to honour philosophers, but if I had such I would honour them as angels that should have such piety in them that they would not seek where they are the second to be the first, and where the third to be the second and so forth.
Elizabeth I
#16. Then the other door opened. I wen't rigid. If I had thought Reth's was beautiful, it was nothing to this soul. It filled the night with light, dancing and rippling like the reflection on a pond. I hadn't seen many souls, but I knew this one was special. I wanted it. I needed it.
Kiersten White
#17. Call it vanity, call it arrogant presumption, call it what you wish, but I would grope for the nearest open grave if I had no newspaper to work for, no need to search for and sometimes find the winged word that just fits, no keen wonder over what each unfolding day may bring.
Bob Considine
#18. Even if I had not been waiting but had shut the doors against you, you should have remembered that no one can possibly shut the doors against love forever.
Oscar Wilde
#19. I'd take out an army, burn down an entire city, and throw the world into chaos if I had to in order to keep Kat out of that place.
Jennifer L. Armentrout
#20. In Spain, indeed! He would have got no closer than the Indies if I had not showed him how to do it. Stupid puppy.
Philippa Gregory
#21. Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music as if for the first time, as if I had never heard it before. Being so inescapably a part of it, I'll never know what the listener gets, what the listener feels, and that's too bad.
John Coltrane
#22. If I had a real horse," she said out loud to nobody, "I would not have to convince people that she should have a birthday party.
Day Jamison
#23. If I had to strain my brain with any more of that stuff I would go mad.
Sylvia Plath
#24. I'd have to say that my favorite kind of film is serious comedy. Comedy with serious underpinning. 'Little Miss Sunshine' is like that. That's my fave genre, if I had to pick one.
Alan Arkin
#25. If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
E. M. Forster
#26. If I had known that the dress I laboured over would be my only warmth in a room that reeked of sour skin. If I had known that the dress would one day be put on in the night, in a hurry, to be soaked with sweat as I ran through the witching hours to Stapar, screaming fit to raise the dead.
Hannah Kent
#27. It's better to have tried and failed than to live life wondering what would've happened if I had tried
Alfred Lord Tennyson
#28. I was born an original sinner
I was born from original sin
and if I had a dollar bill
for all the things I've done,
there'd be a mountain of money piled up to my ( ... )
Annie Lennox
#29. I was a hundred-percent sick, I felt as if I had no further use for my legs, they just hung over the edge of my bed like unimportant and rather ridiculous objects.
Louis-Ferdinand Celine
#30. You say, 'If I had a little more, I should be very satisfied.' You make a mistake. If you are not content with what you have, you would not be satisfied if it were doubled.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
#31. I don't feel I'm angry. I feel as though I'm describing something true. If I had stabbed my husband, I could understand being called "angry." If I had an affair with my husband's best friend and written about that experience, I could see the anger. But I'm not doing that.
Jamaica Kincaid
#32. If I had to name my greatest value in life, it would be beauty.
Debbie Ford
#33. I had everything I wanted in my hand. If I had to choose my eternity, I'd choose this moment, right now, with him. Because there's no place else I'd rather be.
Katie Kacvinsky
#34. If I had only one more round to play, I would choose to play it at Pebble Beach. I've loved this course from the first time I saw it. It's possibly the best in the world.
Jack Nicklaus
#35. If I had the knack
I'd sing like
Cherry flakes falling
Matsuo Basho
#36. If I had any dignity, that would have been humiliating.
Adam Savage
#37. Maybe that is the best lesson I learned in my first semester at Yale, because if I had gone to a less-demanding school and continued to sail along on the top, I am sure I would never have attained the subsequent achievements in my life.
Ben Carson
#38. Tokyo would probably be the foreign city if I had to eat one city's food for the rest of my life, every day. It would have to be Tokyo, and I think the majority of chefs you ask that question would answer the same way.
Anthony Bourdain
#39. When you're sick on the road, it's the worst. That's when you become the most vulnerable and neurotic. You become scared. If I had a cold or a chest infection, and I had to sing all those high parts, there was stage fright.
Richie Sambora
#40. If I had wings I would fly,
I'd soar on high where only eagles dare
I'd let them rip, I'd let them tear,
until all that remained was me bare.
Michelle Horst
#41. When I was a kid I remember thinking, if I had a girl, I would treat her really well. Little did I know, they don't always like that.
Dov Davidoff
#42. I had no idea that being your authentic self could make me as rich as I've become. If I had, I'd have done it a lot earlier.
Oprah Winfrey
#43. If I had in me something that inspires people towards the good and raises them one step on the ladder of mental and spiritual progress, I want to show it by example, indication, and deduction, not by preaching, threatening, and conspiring.
Ameen Rihani
#44. I know if I had the chance of going aboard the Titanic in those days, I would have gone - I know I would have. I adore going on the Queen Mary - I think it's the only way to travel from New York.
Celia Imrie
#45. If I should die, I have left no immortal work behind me - nothing to make my friends proud of my memory - but I have loved the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remembered.
John Keats
#46. It's a monocle," said the captain. "It helps me see you, for which I am eternally grateful. I always say that if I had two I'd make a spectacle of myself.
Terry Pratchett
#47. I guess I really haven't thought much about winning an Oscar, but if I had the opportunity, I'm sure I would like it.
Ashton Kutcher
#48. I never thought about my image. It interests me that there are people who do, that they seem to be methodical about it. Maybe things would have gone differently for me in some ways if I had.
Alan Alda
#49. Don't, she snapped and I stopped. No fighting back, no response, no arguing. I simply turned my ass right around and sat back on her bed. If I had a tail, it would sure as shit have been tucked between my legs.
J. Sterling
#50. Differences in race, differences in sex, somebody doesn't look at you right, somebody says something. Everybody is sensitive. If I had been as sensitive as that in the 1960s, I'd still be in Savannah.
Clarence Thomas
#51. If I had my life to live over again, I'd run barefoot, relax a bit more, I'd talk more to children, and I'd learn how they laugh.
Amy Grant
#52. I'm gonna be making records anyway, even if I had to sell 'em out of the trunk of my car. I'm that kind of musician and singer.
Dolly Parton
#53. Now there's a girl I don't want to mess with' - or at least, that's what I would think if I had a chronic fear of freakishly nice people.
Nenia Campbell
#54. I wasn't sure how I would kiss her without lifting her up to my lips. She laughed as if I had said this out loud.
Lily King
#55. For the first time, vague doubts assaulted me, the shattering suspicion that for all pleasure and joy in life we had to pay ... I repel fear. If I had to pay I would pay, after all, the memory of ecstasy while pungisse its pain could never be erased.
Frank Harris
#56. If I were rich, I would buy him a new black suit ... If I had next week's allowance and had not spent this week's on three Cherry Flips ...
Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher
#57. Oh, I am all for singing. If I had had children I should have hounded them into choirs & choral societies, and if they weren't good enough for that, I would have sent them out, to sing in the streets.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
#58. Russell answered, Well, no - well, it certainly has permitted me to have more hours to work ... but I would not recommend it to anyone. If I had my life to do over again, I would certainly get married.
Robert A. Caro
#59. I don't know what he meant by 'they're after me.' And then I said, 'You know, Bobby, I'm here for you. If you need any help, give me a call.' And then he did call me about a week later, and wanted to know if I had a good attorney.
Tommy Bond
#60. Where would I go, if I could go, who would I be, if I could be, what would I say, if I had a voice, who says this, saying it's me?
Samuel Beckett
#61. I would not be well-known if I had just used my gift to make money for me. The moment I started to teach others - you teach people to fish - I think that's why my book Rich Dad, Poor Dad became an international bestseller, and things like this.
Robert Kiyosaki
#62. Why not go down the pub? A guy once came up to me at a gig and asked me if I had MySpace. I said, 'This is my space, and you're invading it.'
Paul Weller
#63. If I had a nervous breakdown every time something awful happened in the world, I'd be crazier than a shithouse rat.
John Green
#64. I'd waited an eternity for this. I'd have waited all over again if I had to. I was meant to kiss this boy, designed to be held by him.
Kiera Cass
#65. Everything I ever learnt as a small boy came from my father, and I never found anything he ever told me to be wrong or worthless. The simple lessons he taught me are as sharp and clear in my mind as if I had heard them only yesterday.
Irving Pichel
#66. I don't think I would be a writer if I had stayed in Chile. I would be trapped in the chores, in the family, in the person that people expected me to be.
Isabel Allende
#68. If I had wanted to be a pawn in a game, I would have taken up chess...
Virginia Alison
#69. If I had 20 days to solve a problem, I would take 19 days to define it
Albert Einstein
#70. If I had learned anything in my life about love, it was that they were tenous things that could end at any moment. Caution was essential-but not at the cost of risking your life
Richelle Mead
#71. If I had my will I would live in a ship on the sea, and never come nearer to humanity than that!
Eleonora Duse
#72. I wanted to tell you that wherever I am, whatever happens, I'll always think of you, and the time we spent together, as my happiest time. I'd do it all over again, if I had the choice. No regrets.
Cynthia Hand
#73. If I had the strength, I'd find myself otherwise occupied, but my legs refuse to move. My mouth seems to be working just fine though. If I had gills, I could go down on you.
Olivia Cunning
#74. I would write ads for deodorants or labels for catsup bottles, if I had to. The miracle of turning inklings into thoughts and thoughts into words and words into metal and print and ink never palls for me.
John Updike
#75. I still like to keep tapes of the few minutes before the final take, things that happen before the session. Maybe it's superstitious, but I believe if I had done things differently - if I had walked around the studio or gone out - it wouldn't have turned out that way.
Ray Davies
#76. Morelli beeped his truck unlocked. "If you're looking for your rent-a-cop, I told Ranger you'd be with me this morning."
"Did he make you take a blood oath that you'd protect me?"
"He asked me if I had adequate health insurance.
Janet Evanovich
#77. If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal giver of life would be my god.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#78. I have been forgetting things for years - at least since I was in my 30s. I know this because I wrote something about it at the time; I have proof. Of course I can't remember exactly where I wrote about it or when, but I could probably hunt it up if I had to.
Nora Ephron
#79. I would give worlds, if I had them, if The Age of Reason had never been published. O Lord, help! Stay with me! It is hell to be left alone.
Thomas Paine
#80. Romans park their cars the way I would park if I had just spilled a beaker of hydrochloric acid on my lap.
Bill Bryson
#81. If I had the wings of a swan, over these stony hills I would fly. I would fly to the arms of my true love, and there I'd be happy to die.
Susan Price
#82. I am sincerely grateful to everyone who did not let me pass my auditions. If I had gotten in too easily, I wouldn't have worked as hard. Thanks to them, I've gained more strength and I've learned what it means to never give up.
IU
#83. If I had listened to the critics I'd have died drunk in the gutter
Anton Chekhov
#84. If I had to come up with a single metaphorical device to express what is missing in childhood now it would be something on the order of string: the tie that binds, the thread of connection, the weave of narrative, the web of life." NOAH'S CHILDREN
Sara Stein
#85. I've always wanted to have the ability to do what I want to do. And there are so many things that I want to do because I love acting, I love directing, I love producing, I love being a mother, I love being a wife. If I had to choose one, just would put me in the crazy house.
Jada Pinkett Smith
#86. I can make just such ones if I had tools, and I could make tools if I had tools to make them with.
Eli Whitney
#87. There are some of us who think to ourselves, 'If I had only been there! How quick I would have been to help the Baby. I would have washed His linen. How happy I would have been to go with the shepherds to see the Lord lying in the manger!' Why don't we do it now? We have Christ in our neighbor.
Martin Luther
#88. We're going to protect and honor the Constitution, and I don't have the authority to set it aside ... If I had the authority to set it aside, this would be a dangerous government, and I wouldn't respect it.
John Ashcroft
#89. I have often photographed when I am not in tune with nature but the photographs look as if I had been. So I conclude that something in nature says, 'Come and take my photograph.' So I do, regardless of how I feel.
Minor White
#91. But if I had committed a breach of privilege, it was the privilege of the Senate, and not of this House, which was violated. I was answerable there and not here.
Preston Brooks
#92. She was held in the tension just before movement, about to walk back toward the house. Later she would think, If I had turned away, I'd have missed the moment he fell in love.
He would not remember it that way. What he experienced was not so much the beginning of love as a cessation of pain.
Mary Doria Russell
#93. If I had to define 'sexy' now, as Disney as it sounds, I would have to say it's about complete and utter confidence.
Solange Knowles
#94. If I had an office job, I'd probably be doing the exact same thing I'm doing on television: hanging out by the water cooler and talking to co-workers about their relationships.
Tracy McMillan
#95. If I had to pick one song for me that sort of quintessentially summed me up, it would be 'Angel.' Without fail, I absolutely love singing it.
Sarah McLachlan
#96. I don't work hard enough. If I had worked harder I might have been prime minister.
Ken Livingstone
#97. Of course I knew The Band's Canadian keyboard player, the late Richard Manuel, but I didn't play that night because I was there as a guest with my record executives. People ask, "why didn't you play?" If I had known I was going to be playing then I would have been prepared for it.
Gordon Lightfoot
#98. On the way to the delivery room, I almost changed my mind about having a baby. I wouldn't have found it so hard to go ahead with it if I had realized that having a baby was the only way I could ever become a grandmother.
Phyllis Diller
#99. The press keep asking me, 'What was your biggest mistake?' But if I had made a big mistake, they'd all be writing about it, wouldn't they?
Ken Livingstone
#100. If I had to describe my work in one word, that word would be time.
Andy Goldsworthy
