If I Knew Then Quotes

#1. You're born thinking you're the centre of things, and they chip away at that until you expire muttering If I knew then, or some nonsense in an empty rooming house.

Mark Anthony Jarman

#2. I thought that the administration needed bipartisan support, and I was for our commander-in-chief. Because I felt at that time it was the right thing do. If I knew then what I know now, I would have never voted for the war.

Ken Lucas

#3. You can't question what has no answer. If I knew then it would not be true love. It would have because attached. I love you because this reason, or that reason. Real love has no because attached.

Eric Jerome Dickey

#4. As with many things in life-what we know at 30we wish we knew at 20-what we know at 40we wish we knew at 25and so on. 'If I knew then, what I know now' is the old adage that has been said for generations.

Kim Mitchell

#5. You can't really make the decision for the coaches. I don't know what's going to happen. If I knew, then I would tell you, but I don't.

Ron Dayne

#6. If I knew then what I know now, I would still be dreaming BIG today.

Tim Storey

#7. 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

#8. Perhaps in body I am not quite as real as you," he said, then looked alive, making him once again seem real, even though she knew that if she tried to touch him, she could not. "But my thoughts and emotions are as real as yours. My soul, Mia Randall, is as real as yours.

Suzannah Daniels

#9. ...A mule kicked him in the head." She paused, and then said, "I always wondered if he provoked it. Deliberately."
Radzin snorted. "Suicide by mule?"
"Everyone knew that animal had a temper."
"There would be a dozen better ways to do it.

Helene Wecker

#10. If you can think outside the box or you can think bigger than that, then that will keep you centered in this earth, in this planet. I think with me I always believed in God but after certain things happened to me that's when I knew without a doubt.

Ryan Montgomery

#11. I just made the decision that I was going to try comedy, and if didn't work, then I knew it didn't work. Then I would go back and do whatever. But at least I wouldn't torture myself the rest of my life, wondering whatever would have happened.

Bob Newhart

#12. Right then I knew we were feeling the same thing. I knew we loved Cassia, if not exactly the same way, then the same amount. And the amount was: completely.

Ally Condie

#13. Even if I knew that Separation would probably win, when they announced the film, I was thinking to myself "Oh! I want this! I want this!" And so, when we didn't win, I got depressed for about 20 minutes, and then I snapped out of it and enjoyed the rest of the evening.

Philippe Falardeau

#14. Honestly?" Logan shrugged. "I didn't know it could kill me. If I'd ever heard that, I forgot it a long time ago. But I knew it was dangerous."
"Then why take the risk?" Stone asked.
Logan turned his head to look at me. "Because she was worth it.

Jeri Smith-Ready

#15. My only real fear was that I would not be able to surf again because I was concerned that I would not physically be able to do it. I knew that if I wasn't able to surf then my life would really change.

Bethany Hamilton

#16. I held her, he wanted to say, and if I knew for certain that all it would take to hold her again would be to die, then I couldn't raise the gun to my head fast enough.

Dennis Lehane

#17. He knew that his wings could ignite at any moment, but the closer he came to touching the fire, the more he sensed that he was fulfilling his destiny. As he put it in his journal that night: If I mean to save my life, then I have to come within an inch of destroying it.

Paul Auster

#18. I should have said the right thing just then, but I did not know what that would be, if such a thing existed, I did not think so, and those who said it did, knew nothing. So I said the first thing that came into my head.
"Are you afraid?". I said.

Per Petterson

#19. To be honest, however, I will have to admit that I wrote this book for the original model - the one who was overkidsed, underpatienced, with four years of college and chapped hands all year around. I knew if I didn't follow Faith's advice and laugh a little at myself, then I would surely cry.

Erma Bombeck

#20. The story of Bennet Omalu is a riveting story; it's just a riveting tale. I knew from the beginning if I stayed close to that kind of storytelling and focussed on the character, then the other stuff comes along with it, and the message becomes baked into the journey.

Peter Landesman

#21. Not for the first time, I found myself wondering if leaving the compound had been the right thing to do. Then, as always, I looked at David and knew. Yes, I was where I was suposed to be
where David was.

Michelle K. Pickett

#22. I knew my motivations for going to each place and what I was looking for. If I don't do that then I generally don't write about my travels.

Jessa Crispin

#23. I never knew any of these people who were using my name, if I had a fiver for every time my name was used for protective purposes by these people to ward off trouble then I'd be a millionaire many times over by now.

Stephen Richards

#24. When I look back at the past and think of all the time I squandered in error and idleness, ... then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift ... every minute could have been an eternity of happiness! If only youth knew! Now my life will change; now I will be reborn.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

#25. If I could go back in time to when I was 18yrs old, I would take better notes this time, because back then I knew everything.

Michael Nuccio

#26. If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman ... because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.

Montesquieu

#27. To forgive and be forgiven, if it's the last thing I do, then in death's release I may find the peace that in life I never knew.

Elton John

#28. I try to gauge whether a girl likes me before I make a move. I would write a page-long note to a girl. If she wrote a whole page back, I knew she liked me, too. If she wrote back like two words, then I figured I'd move on.

Devon Werkheiser

#29. God, I knew I was in trouble even then. I was running for my life, bleeding on your floor, and all I could think about was kissing you and damn if we got caught.

Alwyn Hamilton

#30. They asked if I knew what 'conscientious objector' meant. I told them that when the white man asked me to go off somewhere and fight and maybe die to preserve the way the white man treated the black man in America, then my conscience made me object.

Malcolm X

#31. Tell them dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for being:
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never sought to ask, I never knew:
But, in my simple ignorance suppose
The selfsame power that brought me there brought you.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#32. As kids we used to laugh/Who knew that life would move this fast?
Who knew I'd have to look at you through a glass?
And look, tell me you ain't did it, you ain't did it
And if you did, then that's family business.

Kanye West

#33. That was the impetus for me to do music or art, because I knew if I didn't try when I was young, then I would get to be in my 40's and I'd be really unhappy that I hadn't.

Debbie Harry

#34. But 40 told me to do me and don't listen to anybody that knew me. Cause to have known me would mean that there's a new me and if you think I've changed, then the slightest could have fooled me.

Drake

#35. I knew right then and there nothing was ever going to change. It wouldn't matter if I was tall or short or fat or thin or absent every day. I was a loser from birth.

Julie Anne Peters

#36. Would I like kids? If I knew I could be - and how could I put this delicately - faithful, then yes. I do like kids.

Simon Cowell

#37. I had learned very early that not getting caught was just about the solution to every problem. If you were caught then those who hadn't yet been caught had to make an example of you, unless of course you knew the right people.

Christopher S. Hyatt

#38. The wavelets flung themselves up as if trying to pat my feet and I darted back, laughing, and picked up my skirts to chase them back as they receded, in a game of tag more ancient than I then knew.

Amanda DeWees

#39. I came to California in 1970 and so many people were asking if I was a Buddhist or knew Zen theory, asking if I was enlightened already or not. So I said, "Yes, I am enlightened," and then I studied quickly to catch up.

Hiroshi Sugimoto

#40. When I was a young actor in Vienna, already my hair was falling out at a rapid rate. I went to a doctor, who said hair was like grass: if you mow it, then it grows back stronger. So I went to Brittany, where nobody knew me, and I shaved my head. When it grew back - only the fringes!

Otto Preminger

#41. One time I was standing on a corner in Chicago & a man stopped his car & asked for directions to a place I knew & I said that's too easy, ask me something harder & he yelled & said he wasn't playing games kid & then he drove off & I think about him sometimes & wonder if he ever got there.

Brian Andreas

#42. My mentality has always been, If I'm not the best at something, then I might as well be the best at something else. I realized that I wasn't going to be an Olympic volleyball player, but I knew I could model at that level.

Gigi Hadid

#43. He was slumped over, blood trickling from the side of his mouth. I shook his furry hip, thinking, No! Even if you are half barnyard animal, you're my best friend and I don't want you to die!
Then he groaned "Food," and I knew there was hope.

Rick Riordan

#44. If everyone knew exactly what I was going to say, then there would be no point in my saying it, would there?

Douglas Adams

#45. By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better.

Ernest Hemingway,

#46. I think I always knew that I wanted to adopt. It never meant that I didn't want to have my own children - I always felt that if I were in the right circumstances then I would totally have my own children.

Kristen Stewart

#47. I knew how to draw all of the different smokestacks on the old trains and all that stuff, and then I realized that if I can draw trains, which is the thing I was probably the least interested in in the world at the time, I can do anything and find a way into it that will be interesting.

Daniel Clowes

#48. If you experience this feeling once, you will want to go back and do it again. This was the first time it happened to me, and like the first kiss, it was very special. I knew then that I could call myself mathematician.

Edward Frenkel

#49. - it was only then that I understood how longing for a place can take you over so that you can do nothing except return, as I did, return and pick at the city, scraping together bits of the place you once knew. But what do you do if you can never return?

Ahdaf Soueif

#50. And if he knew, then what would I see if I did look in his eyes? Blame? Indignation? Or, God forbid, what I feared most: guileless devotion? That, most of all, I couldn't bear to see.

Khaled Hosseini

#51. I knew it was going to be important that if I had an audience understand who she was, then all those things had to come from a place that was grounded, as opposed to being tics and manners and twitches. I didn't think it was going to be as rich, perhaps, as if I was going to make it more emotional.

Kate Winslet

#52. But I also knew if I could somehow replace my doubt with hope, my fear with courage, and my self-pity with a sense of pride, then I just might be able to do this.

Bear Grylls

#53. I guess, then, that is what I find troublesome about this plan. It is too logical, too clever, too carefully thought out, and, most important of all, it has to be carried out in secret, which means that if the American public knew about it, they would be appalled and would not be supportive of it.

J.W. Amran

#54. I took delight in hurling books across the room if I knew I would not be reading the second chapter. Then I'd go and pick them up again, because they are books, after all, and we are not savages.

Neil Gaiman

#55. When I was 12 years old, someone took me to see Martha Graham. It was nothing like what I thought of as serious dancing and even then I knew I was having a great experience. It was as if somebody was moving through space like no one ever did before.

Leslie Fiedler

#56. Choice
I needed it like I needed air.
Bit no one could hear me.
No one could listen.
No words. No sound.
No voice.
I couldn't even dream myself away.
Choices were made.
None of them mine.
At first I wondered if it was hell.
And then I knew it was.

Mary E. Pearson

#57. If I knew what makes a movie catch on then I'd make hit after hit.

Jerry Bruckheimer

#58. I wondered, as I wondered so often when I was that age, who I was, and what exactly was looking at the face in the mirror. If the face I was looking at wasn't me, and I knew it wasn't, because I would still be me whatever happened to my face, then what was me? And what was watching?

Neil Gaiman

#59. Butch clapped V on the thigh, then stood up, as if he knew exactly what V was thinking. "Listen, I don't want you to feel bad. It's my animal magnetism. I'm irresistible."
"Smart-ass.

J.R. Ward

#60. I hated feeling like I was using him for my own pleasure, but I knew he wouldn't let me return the favour ... if this was the only way I could provide comfort to him and chase away his nightmares, then so be it. Selfless, I know. Mother-friggin-Teresa, right here.

Kendall Ryan

#61. So many times have I heard the common lament, "If only I could go back to that age, knowing what I now know!" Those words amuse me profoundly, for in truth, the lament should be, "If only I could reclaim the lust and the joy I knew then!

R.A. Salvatore

#62. Who is the love of my life? Maybe I don't have one. Maybe it's not love at all. But if it's not love, then what is it? I wish I knew.

Laurell K. Hamilton

#63. Haven't you always had me? I want to say that to him. But then again, I'm not sure if I always knew that myself.

Karina Halle

#64. I never would have seen Chelsea reach up, take Logan's face in her hands, and kiss him. So the off again was definitely on again. And I knew then that Patrick was very wrong about my heart, because if it had actually been an encyclopedia I could have watched it all with perfect composure.

Marni Bates

#65. If I knew birthday presents made her this excited, I would have bought her one the day I met her. And every day since then.

Colleen Hoover

#66. I knew I was in the vicinity of a serious lesson, if not about how to live life, then at least how to put some poetry into your craven retreat from it.

Sam Lipsyte

#67. I knew then, that I would stay with you ... even if it killed me.

S.C. Stephens

#68. Every bird at the marsh filled us with a little light. I wondered if I was just so simple that this was all it took. But then I thought, I'm lucky that this is all it takes, and knew that I was especially lucky that this was all it took for my teenaged son, too.

Lynn Thomson

#69. In fashion design, you can divide people into two groups. You have people who come with an aesthetic that is there forever, even if it evolves. Then you have people I call 'jumpers.' One season it can be this; the next season it's completely something else. I always knew I am more of a jumper.

Raf Simons

#70. If people knew what I was up to, they'd probably try to stop me. The idiots would take Casper's side, and then I'd have to kill Casper and them after Casper bit their throats out. I'm no superhero.

Kendare Blake

#71. I was a new person then, I knew things I had not known before, I knew things that you can know only if you have been through what I had just been through.

Jamaica Kincaid

#72. Isaiah pauses. "It's Beth. If she knew what her mom is mixed up in, she'd try to fix it, and then she'd end up in trouble that I couldn't fix."
This is the kind of guy Isaiah is: loyal to the end and a fixer. Even if the person he loves doesn't want to be helped.

Katie McGarry

#73. Did you know me then?" she asked sleepily.
"No." I held her closer, as if I could somehow pull her inside me and keep her safe. "But I knew, in that moment, you were amazing.

Jennifer L. Armentrout

#74. You see, Doctor, God didn't kill that little girl. Fate didn't butcher her and destiny didn't feed her to those dogs. If God saw what any of us did that night he didn't seem to mind. From then on I knew ... God doesn't make the world this way. We do.

Alan Moore

#75. Then before I knew it, his considerable girth was inside me, stretching my virgin passage almost to the point of tearing, and he was thrusting into me as if he were trying to drive me completely through the mattress to the floor beneath.

Cristina Rayne

#76. We love you, too, Jake, and if it's drugs or whatever it is, we don't care. We'll get you right again. Like I said your confused."
"No, dad. I'm peculiar." Then I hung up the phone, using a language I didn't know I knew, I ordered the hollow to stand.
Obedient as a shadow, it did.

Ransom Riggs

#77. Forgive me if I stare, I knew you were young, but even then I was expecting someone a little more, well, more.

Christopher Paolini

#78. But when I felt like I had something to prove? Then I got up early every morning and worked all day long. I didn't know if I had any more talent than anyone else directing, but I knew I could work hard at it, and so I did.

Ben Affleck

#79. I was pursuing my acting career, but I was silent on the LGBT issue, the issue that was closest to me. I knew if I came out then, I'd have had to change careers.

George Takei

#80. I stepped back and looked at all the people as they continued to weave in and out, around and around, faster and faster until they were one blur, until they were One. And then I knew what Bubbe meant. Here, was God.

Han Nolan

#81. If you'd asked me then if I saw how big 'The Steve Harvey Morning Show' was going to be, I couldn't tell you. But I knew I could reach people not as a character but as Steve Harvey, because although I tell jokes for a living, I've also lived, and I think I can relate to you more than you know.

Steve Harvey

#82. In many ways, I think I've always overcompensated. I was always almost too careful, because I knew if anybody ever found any way to doubt my work, then they'd start picking my life apart, too.

Jose Antonio Vargas

#83. To answer the question, though: I didn't always want to direct. I just liked the idea of it. If a friend was making a short and needed someone who knew screen direction, I would jump in. It would be horrible, but it led to a short, then another, and another. It was like student films.

Ben Affleck

#84. I had come to believe that I was not as clever as some other kids who were my friends. And yet I knew even then that I wanted to do something of an intellectual nature, and excel at it. I also realized that if I was going to succeed at all, it would be through hard work.

Irving Sandler

#85. When I started acting, my parents gave me three rules: I had to stay good in school, stay the kid they always knew I was, and I had to have fun. If I wasn't doing those three things, then I couldn't do acting anymore.

Shailene Woodley

#86. Air punched out of my lungs. I held her tight, and I knew right then I would burn down the whole universe for her if I had to. I would do anything to keep her safe. Kill. Heal. Die. Anything. Because she was my everything.

Jennifer L. Armentrout

#87. So, I stood alone by the wall and watched the dance for a while. I would describe it to you, but I think it's the kind of thing where you have to be there or at least know the people. But then again, maybe you knew the same people when you went to high school dances, if you know what I mean.

Stephen Chbosky

#88. If you have no idea what I'm about to do, just watch and wait..then you'll see time spin to a stop right before your eyes..and you'll forget that world you once knew

Lenise Lee

#89. He said it like he assumed I knew what the grandfather paradox was, because, if I didn't know, then I was a moron. I hate when people do that.

Rick Yancey

#90. You could do so much for me if you just would. If you just knew. I am I and you are you and I know it and you don't know it and you could do so much for me if you just would and if you just would then I could tell you and then nobody would have to know it except you and me.

William Faulkner

#91. I knew I couldn't let her go, not again, especially then that I knew she would not ever come back if she did.

Emiliano Campuzano

#92. You have to come to your closed doors before you get to your open doors ... What if you knew you had to go through 32 closed doors before you got to your open door? Well, then you'd come to closed door number eight and you'd think, 'Great, I got another one out of the way' ... Keep moving forward.

Joel Osteen

#93. I knew then and there only that pretty young little things are like monsoon lilies; transient trams. Catch them if you can, but if you miss them, do not wail, a next one would be whistling round the corner, about to enter the La Gurre of your heart

Aporva Kala

#94. Something bloomed right then and there in the small dark space between us. I didn't know what it was, but I knew enough to know it was rare and delicate. And it felt so real I might have been able to reach out and touch it if I tried.

Alyxandra Harvey

#95. I knew none of it then - if indeed I know any of it now and am not just making patterns in the air.

Bernhard Schlink

#96. You dress to please yourself. If she doesn't like you for you, then you don't need her.' All of this would be fine if I knew exactly who me for me was.

Jennifer Niven

#97. I knew I was being an idiot. But I figured if I kept being an idiot, if I didn't actually accept the truth, then the truth would become false.

Sherman Alexie

#98. If I had taken a proprietary control of the Web, then it would never have taken off. People only committed their time to it because they knew it was open, shared: that they could help decide what would happen to it next.. and I wouldn't be raking off 10%!

Tim Berners-Lee

#99. Peeta would lose it if he knew I was thinking any of this, so I only say, "So what should we do with our last few days?"
"I just want to spend every possible minute of the rest of my life with you," Peeta replies.
"Come on, then," I say, pulling him into my room.

Suzanne Collins

#100. 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