If I Were Quotes

#1. People ask me if my shoes were too small when I was a kid and I say it wouldn't matter how fight my shoes were, I just liked that feeling of them being in there. That's how I started tapping my toes.

Nomar Garciaparra

#2. I would not be standing here today if my skin were white or my religion were Presbyterian. I am here today only because my skin is yellow and my religion is Unification Church. The ugliest things in this beautiful country of America are religious bigotry and racism.

Sun Myung Moon

#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. Resolved, never to do anything which I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life.

Jonathan Edwards

#5. If you were in the film industry at that time, you were always picked up by directors who were much older. You were whisked about and shown things. I did work very hard though.

Diane Cilento

#6. Glorfindel smiled. 'I doubt very much,' he said, 'if your friends would be in danger if you were not with them! The pursuit would follow you and leave us in peace, I think. It is you, Frodo, and that which you bear that brings us all in peril.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#7. I didn't decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms I believed in, or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president.

John McCain

#8. I grabbed her, right there outside the lunch room in the swarming mob. I didn't care if others were watching. In fact, i hoped they were. I grabbed her and squeezed her. I had never been so happy and so proud in my life.

Jerry Spinelli

#9. I should like to know if he has sunk a frigate, alone, with a Fleur-de-Nuit on his back; and as for distinction, my ancestors were scholars in China while his were starving in pits.

Naomi Novik

#10. The first two drinks were always wonderfully liberating. You think better. You're braver, and you'll say anything. If you could just hang in there with two or three, it'd be beautiful. The trouble was I couldn't.

Barry Hannah

#11. All sorts of people told me their stories. Then they left, never to return, as if I were no more than a bridge they were clattering across.

Haruki Murakami

#12. 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

#13. If I were but a man who would be tall, I would be me.

Ryan Stiles

#14. And yet we couldn't leave
it was if the rocks were holding us there. I mean, they were only rocks. But for some reason, those rocks made lonely feel good.

Cynthia Kadohata

#15. He slammed the door shut in Ian's face, the lock clicking into place. Ian hit it again with his fist before roaring, If I were a pervert, I'd be looking for something a damn bit more attractive than you, jackass. And definitely someone that smelled alive.

Rose Wynters

#16. Perfect love casts out fear. Where there is love there are no demands, no expectations, no dependency. I do not demand that you make me happy; my happiness does not lie in you. If you were to leave me, I will not feel sorry for myself; I enjoy your company immensely, but I do not cling.

Anthony De Mello

#17. If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.

Albert Einstein

#18. If you were expecting Prince Charming, I'm sorry. He's with his boyfriend.

Shayla Black

#19. If I were white, I could capture the world.

Dorothy Dandridge

#20. ...In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#21. I'm convinced that if the same opportunities were made available to everybody, people would want to better their lot in life.

Robin Leach

#22. I can't stand these damn shows on museum walls with neat little frames, where you look at the images as if they were pieces of art. I want them to be pieces of life!

W. Eugene Smith

#23. I believe that if Israel were to put an end to the settlements in the West Bank tomorrow, as it did in Gaza, there would still be reluctance on the part of the Palestinian Authority to recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish secular democracy.

Alan Dershowitz

#24. Let anyone laugh and taunt if he so wishes. I am not keeping silent, nor am I hiding the signs and wonders that were shown to me by the Lord many years before they happened, who knew everything, even before the beginning of time.

Saint Patrick

#25. 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

#26. Plus, I wondered if any of these celebrities were alive; or if Brangelina was now a zombified couple.

Shannon Jaeger

#27. 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

#28. If you were to buy a [BMW] 6-series, I recommend you select reverse when leaving friends' houses so they don't see its backside.

Jeremy Clarkson

#29. She sits down at the end of my bed again. "Who were you with? Do you have a boyfriend now or something?"
I can't help but laugh. If I have a boyfriend, his name is Death. And I'm pretty sure Roman is in love with him too. It's a love triangle gone wrong.

Jasmine Warga

#30. The last time I glanced at the library books on the kitchen shelf they were more than five months overdue, and I wondered whether I would have chosen differently if I had known that these were the last books, the ones which would stand forever on our kitchen shelf.

Shirley Jackson

#31. I mean, you can't have sex until you're married if you're Mormon. The first time I had sex, my parents found out. They were listening in on the phone while I was talking about sex to my girlfriend. They freaked out, man. They both cornered me in my bedroom.

Bert McCracken

#32. I hope that Facebook and other Internet technologies were able to help people, just like we hope that we help them communicate and organize and do whatever they want to every single day, but I don't pretend that if Facebook didn't exist, that this wouldn't even be possible. Of course, it would have.

Mark Zuckerberg

#33. It is so important for me to try, and having tried I look back on failure and success as if it were all the same.

Tom T. Hall

#34. I shot a Metallica video in Hollywood, and there were, like, 100 people on set. There was even a guy there to put antiseptic gel on my hands. Amazing. If I asked for that on a Danish set, they'd probably kick me out of the country.

Thomas Vinterberg

#35. 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

#36. Life is moments going by, but if you don't grab them, they're gone. For a long time, the only moments that were available were bad ones. So now I make sure to grab the good ones.

George Lopez

#37. I wasn't sure if all the bright days I'd had with Dimitri were worth the hurt I felt now.

Richelle Mead

#38. 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

#39. Any man who isn't married by thirty-five is either gay or he's got skeletons in his closet.

Lisa Renee Jones

#40. If you were truly mine, I would never share you."
"Possessive, are you?"
"Extremely.

Evangeline Anderson

#41. Imagine if the headless horseman had a headless horse. That would be chaos. I would think that if you were the headless horseman's horse, you would be very confused. "I don't think this dude can see."

Mitch Hedberg

#42. I am sure that if triangles ever were loved, they were loved for being triangular.

G.K. Chesterton

#43. You're not gay, are you?"
Simon's greenish color deepened. "If I were, I would dress better.

Cassandra Clare

#44. I do not know but thoughts written down thus in a journal might be printed in the same form with greater advantage than if the related ones were brought together into separate essays.

Henry David Thoreau

#45. But you have so much in common. You're both from strange little backwater planets. You both have odd powers. You're male and she's female. What more do you need? Believe me, buddy, if I were you, I'd go right up there and ask her if she wants to ride on my rancor.

Dave Wolverton

#46. I believe that if I should die, and you were to walk near my grave, from the very depths of the earth I would hear your footsteps.

Benito Perez Galdos

#47. It goes against the grain for me to do what so often happens, to speak inhumanly about the great as if a few millennia were an immense distance. I prefer to speak humanly about it, as if it happened yesterday, and let only the greatness itself be the distance.

Soren Kierkegaard

#48. I understand the technique of eccentricity; it would be futile for a man to labor at establishing a reputation for oddity if he were ready at the slightest provocation to revert to normal action.

Rex Stout

#49. She was just kind and genuine. Pure, even. I hated that her good heartedness and naivety were going to cost her so dearly because I was going to bust up her marriage and take her husband if it were the last thing I did.

Rhonda McKnight

#50. She could not leave him hanging like this. "If you were hurt, I need to know." It was a rule somewhere, in the good-guy handbook.

Tara Janzen

#51. Well, I am terribly concerned for your health. One simply should not weigh so much at your age. Lady Maccon poked at a sagging carrot and wondered if anyone would miss her dear sister were she to be oh-so-gently tipped over the rail of the upper deck.

Gail Carriger

#52. Now if the wearing of fine and precious robes were not a fault, word of God would never have so carefully expressed this. For no one seeks costly garments except for vainglory, that he may seem more honorable than others; for no one wishes to be clothed with such, where he cannot be seen by others.

Pope Gregory I

#53. If I were hungry and friendless today, I would rather take my chances with a saloon-keeper than with the average preacher.

Eugene V. Debs

#54. I'm glad I struggled. I think I'd be an asshole if my money were anything other than the "new" kind.

Amy Schumer

#55. If a rhinoceros were to enter this restaurant now, there is no denying he would have great power here. But I should be the first to rise and assure him that he had no authority whatever.

G.K. Chesterton

#56. In the new quiet I heard the sea as if my ears were laid against the ocean floor. I could hear everything. The rumbling earthquake of a ship and spider crabs moving between weeds.

Deborah Levy

#57. Different types of sex work are differently supportive. If I were working in a strip club, I would be competing with my colleagues, and while there would be support, there would be financial motivation not to offer too much support.

Molly Crabapple

#58. It's not unusual for writers to look backward. Because that's your pool of resources. If you were to write something now, I bet there's a pretty good chance you'd call on your teenage years, your experiences then, stuff you learned then.

Paul McCartney

#59. It looks as if I were meant to be alone, and that any hope of happiness is not meant. Am I too old to acquire the knack for happiness?

May Sarton

#60. If I were 21 years old, I would go into biotechnology or genetic engineering.

Larry Ellison

#61. If I were God, I certainly wouldn't want people to love me sentimentally. It's too unreliable.

J.D. Salinger

#62. He's like a sunflower, Grace. He leans into me as if I were the source of all light.

Benjamin Alire Saenz

#63. I had gone far in search of the sun, and the sun, found at last, was hostile to me. And if I were to fling myself off a cliff? While I was making such rather grim speculations, considering these pines, these rocks, these waves, I suddenly felt how bound I was to this lovely, accursed universe.

Emil M. Cioran

#64. He took a moment, as if he were deciding which tack to go with. I think he chose honesty, but it's so hard to tell. And if you chose honesty as a strategy, is it still honesty?

Kate Morgenroth

#65. Did you refuse to be tested to see if you and he were Soul Complements because you were afraid you might want sex with him?
Yes, I am tactful that way.

Devon Monk

#66. I don't like when I watch a fight in a movie that's perfectly worded and very articulate. If you were able to be that composed, you wouldn't be fighting! Fighting in real life is sloppy.

Jason Segel

#67. We all have a different image of what old is, and if you were exposed to senior citizens at a young age, as I was, it can color your soul with terror.

Billy Crystal

#68. God, if only I were smart enough to know I'm worth more than being kept secret

Anthony Paull

#69. In the comic-book world, there tends to be an overblown sense of tradition. Bad habits die hard. There are ways I think the form could work more effectively if we lost the bad habits that were created before we were born.

Frank Miller

#70. If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,And speed glum heroes up the line of death.

Siegfried Sassoon

#71. A barracks is meant to be a place where real soldiers were to be fed and equipped for war, not a place to settle down in or as a comfortable snuggery in which to enjoy ourselves. I hope that if ever they, our soldiers, do settle down God will burn their barracks over their heads!

Catherine Booth

#72. Well, Henry, if I were you I wouldn't worry", said the lawyer. "My belief is that your boy's born lucky, and in the long run that's better than to be born clever or rich.

W. Somerset Maugham

#73. Responsible Development is the style of development I aspire to now. It can be summarized by answering the question, How would I develop if it were my money? I'm amazed how many theoretical arguments evaporate when faced with this question.

Kent Beck

#74. I think secrets often come out. I spoke to a friend who is a therapist and I asked her if there were people who came to her and admitted to doing horrible things and she said, 'More than you know.'

Alice Hoffman

#75. I would court you with passion, if things were different. you'd never get me off your porch swing.

Laura Whitcomb

#76. When I am telling it, it doesn't seem as if it was only made up. It seems more real than you are
more real than the schoolroom. I feel as if I were all the people in the story
one after the other. It is queer.

Frances Hodgson Burnett

#77. Were we, also, hiking along some cosmic journal page? Were the events about us all part of a message we could understand, if only we found the right perspective from which to read them? Somehow, with our long series of miracles, I thought so.

Richard Bach

#78. I make soul music for hip-hop heads. It's music I'd want to sample if I were a rapper.

Mayer Hawthorne

#79. The ice cold fear I'd felt, not knowing if Wyatt was alive, pressed into the wall with other girls and surrounded by guys who were unspeakably brave, hit my body again in a wave. This was trauma - the gift that keeps on giving.

Laura Anderson Kurk

#80. I have always kept a stack of library books next to my bed as a lifeline. If I ever woke in the middle of the night too scared to move or too sad to roll over, the books were my saviors.

Julie Halpern

#81. I always wanted to be somebody. If I made it, it's half because I was game enough to take a lot of punishment along the way and half because there were a lot of people who cared enough to help me.

Althea Gibson

#82. If I were a doctor, I would diagnose his condition thus: "The patient is suffering from nostalgic insufficiency.

Milan Kundera

#83. I have dreamed of our bed as if it were a shore where we would be washed up, not this striped mattress we must cover with sheets. [from "After an Absence"]

Linda Pastan

#84. Angie Dickinson in 'Hollywood Wives' took me under her wing. If you look at that cast, I was definitely an 'outcast' ... so to speak. Most of them were of the same era, or just so much more experienced that I was.

Catherine Mary Stewart

#85. I don't know what has happened to movies, but lately every movie is at least 20 minutes too long. It used to be that if you were three hours long it was because it was epic - a movie about Gandhi; something with very important subject matters.

Ethan Hawke

#86. I don't believe in God, but I have this idea that if there were a God, or destiny of some kind looking down on us, that if he saw you taking anything for granted he'd take it away.

Hugh Laurie

#87. But the Count! Never did I imagine such wrath and fury, even to the demons of the pit. His eyes were positively blazing. The red light in them was lurid, as if the flames of hell fire blazed behind them. His face was deathly pale, and the lines of it were hard like drawn wires.

Bram Stoker

#88. Oh, if there were only a true religion. Fool that I am, I see a Gothic cathedral and venerable stained-glass windows, and my weak heart conjures up the priest to fit the scene. My soul would understand him, my soul has need of him. I only find a nincompoop with dirty hair.

Stendhal

#89. One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important, and that to take a holiday would bring all kinds of disaster. If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his or her work important.

Bertrand Russell

#90. I am the least intimidating person. I think I would have done better in my career if I were a little more intimidating. Even the maid who comes to work for me once a week has found out that she can just trample over me ... I'm a Cancer! We are not ferocious people.

Karen Black

#91. But I realized the place didn't matter. The person did. With someone you loved, you could be anywhere, and it would be incredible. Being in the most luxurious bed in the world wouldn't matter if you were with someone you didn't love. - Rose Hathaway

Richelle Mead

#92. It made me start to wonder if there were other people so lonely so close. I thought about "Eleanor Rigby." It's true, where do they all come from? And where do they all belong?

Jonathan Safran Foer

#93. If there was one thing I knew, it was that our demons were what shaped who we were. The things we do, the way we act, are all driven by the things we want locked away forever.

Barbara C. Doyle

#94. The Afghans I met were some of the nicest and most honorable people I've ever encountered. There is a code called 'Pashtunwali,' so if someone invites you into their village, every last man will fight to protect your life. I was impressed by that.

Brad Thor

#95. I smiled into the air the way I smiled when customers unbuckled their belts, and I made my eyes laugh as if everything were some version of a good time.

Miranda July

#96. I don't know you very well, and i'm almost afraid to know you better. Maybe i love you because i don't know you. Maybe if i knew what you were really like and what you wanted out of life and what you think is important, I wouldn't care for you at all and that would be the end of this.

Elliot Mabeuse

#97. Thrilled that Reyes and I were outside, and taking that as her cue to get her freak on, Artemis ran around like a gerbil on meth, turning occasionally to make sure we were still watching. And God help us if we weren't.

Darynda Jones

#98. I always felt if you were going to be successful, make sure you get good people. You win with great players. Coaches don't win games. Players win games.

Hank Stram

#99. Wish my life were inside a book
So I could turn to the ending,
See if it is a love story
Or a gothic disaster.

Stasia Ward Kehoe

#100. A man can't pass on, like a mother could, an awareness of your body, or sensuality, or what it means to be a woman. I was never taught what femininity was. I learnt it - or rather I invented it - on my own. I tended not to talk at all, if people were staring at me.

Carole Bouquet