Not What I Meant Quotes

#1. I'm loath to do interviews. What comes out is generally not what I meant or thought I was saying or thought they were asking.

Carmen Dell'Orefice

#2. I had a dream about you. We were married and I walked into the room to see you in my new black dress and high heels and I said "That's not what I meant when I said I bought them for you".

Georgia Saratsioti

#3. You look so good," I say, and s***! Oh god, that's not what I meant. S***! "It looks good. The book.

Deb Caletti

#4. Well, it was kind of an accident, because plastic is not what I meant to invent. I had just sold photograph paper to Eastman Kodak for 1 million dollars.

Leo Baekeland

#5. I want Jesus to come back and say 'THATS NOT WHAT I MEANT' -

Margaret Cho

#6. Robert was good at many things. Communicating with women was not one of them. "That's not what I meant," he muttered.

Courtney Milan

#7. Sometimes I'll be talking to someone, and I'll be like 'Yeah, I've been really lonely lately' and they'll be like 'Well we should hang out!' and I'm like 'No, that's not what I meant. That's not what I meant at all.

John Mulaney

#8. Maybe he wants you to be his queen," Devyn saids. "Continue the line."
"That's crap," Nick says.
"Yeah." I glare at him. "Why would anyone want me to be their queen?"
"That's not what I meant." The front legs of Nick's chair slam back down.

Carrie Jones

#9. Of course I loved him.' I walked toward the window. 'We were best friends.'
'You know that's not what I meant.'
'You don't know what you mean,' I said. 'Because you know nothing about love.

Amber Dermont

#10. That's not what I meant at all ... that's not it at all.

T. S. Eliot

#11. That's not what I meant, pendejo. And you know it.

Julie Ann Walker

#12. You slept with Curran and you didn't tell me? I'm your best friend."
"It didn't come up."
"How disappointing for you."
Ha-ha. "That's not what I meant.

Ilona Andrews

#13. Apollo is hot'
'He's the sun god.'
'That's not what I meant

Rick Riordan

#14. The embattled gates to equal rights indeed opened up for modern women, but I sometimes think to myself; that is not what I meant by freedom, it is only social progress.

Helene Deutsch

#15. I like my money, and if you mess with it, I fuck with you."
I raised my eyebrow. "You want to fuck with Alec?"
"What? No, that's not what I meant."
"But you said you-"
"I know what I said you smartass,

L.A. Casey

#16. Did that work?" I ask into the quiet night. "Um, yeah. Couldn't you tell?"
I shake my head. "That's not what I meant. I meant, did I show you love?"
"Yes. You and me, this is what love is."
We learned it together.

Lauren Blakely

#17. Would it have been worthwhile
If one settling a pillow by her head should say:
That is not what I meant at all
That is not it at all

T. S. Eliot

#18. Anyway, that's not what I meant when I said Marco decides when he wins. You don't understand how slippery he can be. Whatever happens, he'll shift so it was his plan all along. If he were the last person alive, he'd say we needed the apocalypse and declare victory. It's what he is.

James S.A. Corey

#19. He remembered Apollo, smiling and tan and completely cool in his shades. Thalia had said, He's hot. He's the sun god, Percy replied. That's not what I meant.

Rick Riordan

#20. I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant. - Richard M. Nixon

Terry J. Fadem

#21. I know you think you understand what you thought I said but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant

Alan Greenspan

#22. That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all.

T. S. Eliot

#23. You said I told you I was in love with someone else, but I'm not. That's not what I meant. Cassandra was a part of my past, but our time together ended. The only person I want, the only person I love, is you.

Angela Corbett

#24. I brought you here to tell you this: sometimes what we are searching for does not exist. We may sacrifice for it, even bleed for it, but it was never meant to be ours.

Esther Dalseno

#25. Nothing is altered and in spite of God's mercy I am still alone. Though my suffering seems senseless I am still in agony. There is no explanation of my life. Indeed there was not, nor was this what he'd meant to convey.

Malcolm Lowry

#26. My father belongs to the generation that fought the war in the 1940s. When I was a kid my father told me stories - not so many, but it meant a lot to me. I wanted to know what happened then, to my father's generation. It's a kind of inheritance, the memory of it.

Haruki Murakami

#27. I do not put much stock in "believing in God." The grammar of "belief" invites a far too rationalistic account of what it means to be a Christian. "Belief" implies propositions about which you get to make up your mind before you know the work they are meant to do.

Stanley Hauerwas

#28. Good. Because I don't need protecting."
"I knew you'd say that.But the thing is, sometimes you do. And sometimes I do. We're meant to protect each other, but not from everything. Not from the truth. That's what it means to love someone but let them be themselves.

Cassandra Clare

#29. I realized that journalism was not just about regurgitating the facts but about figuring out the point. It wasn't enough to know the who, what, when, and where; you had to understand what it meant. And why it mattered.

Greg McKeown

#30. I head someone say once that passionate people live violent lives. At the time I didn't really get it but if what they meant was the way love waits in ambush traps your well trained sense of control and tortures you into a confession you'd just as soon not make I now understand.

Jay Kopelman

#31. I heard what you told him," he said. "That you thought it would be easy to fall in love with him. You meant it, too." "So?" It was the only thing I could think of to say. "I was jealous - of that. That I'm not ... that sort of person.

Sarah J. Maas

#32. I have to tell him how much i miss him when he's not here. So I snug my face against his pulse in his neck. "I love you" I wait, barely about to breathe. He tightens his arms around me. "I know, and how luck that makes me." I watch him go, wondering just what the fuck that meant to me.

Ellen Hopkins

#33. As I have discovered by examining my past, I started out as a child. Coincidentally, so did my brother. My mother did not put all her eggs in one basket, so to speak: she gave me a younger brother named Russell, who taught me what was meant by 'survival of the fittest.'

Bill Cosby

#34. My sister and I didn't know what that meant either but we were not equal to two questions in a row. And I knew that wasn't what rape meant anyway; it meant something dirty. "Purse. Purse stolen," said my mother in a festive but cautioning tone. Talk in our house was genteel.

Alice Munro

#35. Wilderness is a necessity ... They will see what I meant in time. There must be places for human beings to satisfy their souls. Food and drink is not all. There is the spiritual. In some it is only a germ, of course, but the germ will grow.

John Muir

#36. Let them think what they liked, but I didn't mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank
but that's not the same thing.

Joseph Conrad

#37. I make a film - and once I've made it, everyone comes along and says 'Ah! This is a film that's political, or social', or whatever. But I'm not telling the story that they see. I made a film, told a story, but I wasn't thinking about exactly what it all meant.

Dario Argento

#38. I'll tell you what, I love my daddy. And he's so special. He's meant so much to me, so it's not a thorn in my side to be known as Billy Graham's daughter. It's a privilege.

Anne Graham Lotz

#39. What I got which was unusual, especially as a child actress, was parents who believed that Hollywood was not that important. They told us education, family, health, all come first and they meant it.

Danica McKellar

#40. We didn't exactly believe your story.'
Then
?'
'We believed your two hundred dollars.'
'You mean
' She seemed not to know what he meant.
'I mean that you paid us more than if you'd been telling the truth,' he explained blandly, 'and enough more to make it all right.

Dashiell Hammett

#41. He said, You know what Oscar Wilde said - women are meant to be loved, not understood. Applies to both of them, darling. And I nodded, although it seemed to me that I was going to be a woman too and I would like it if someone thought they should understand me.

Amy Bloom

#42. One should be an enigma not just to others but to oneself too. I study myself. When I'm tired of that I light a cigar to pass the time, and think: God only knows what the good Lord really meant with me, or what He meant to make of me.

Soren Kierkegaard

#43. What are humans meant to do; why are we here? Are we a mutation on the earth destroying its host? Are we a cancer destined to kill what supports us? I think not. So exploring this question is a powerful exercise in meaning; what is the meaning of human existence?

David W. Earle

#44. The darkest day of my life was the day I heard of Lincoln's assassination. I did not know what it meant. Here was the rebellion put down in the field, and starting up in the gutters...

Ulysses S. Grant

#45. Wait a minute, I'm thinking, was this another one of those conversations where what is meant and what is being said are not the same thing?

Peter Hedges

#46. I believe fear of what we do not know may be the devil's best tool, meant to keep us back from those we long to approach.

Vicki Grove

#47. I have a lot of scars, man. My mother said that a man is not a man unless he has a scar on his face. And what she meant by a scar was some kind of battle that you had to go through, whether it was psychological or physical. To her, a scar was actually beautiful and not something that marred you.

Nick Nolte

#48. I thought being an adult meant knowing what you believe, but that has not been my experience.

John Green

#49. That's my girl, he whispered into her mind. I meant what I said about taking your body into my keeping. You'll always be safe with me. Just let yourself feel, not think. You're with me, and I'll cherish and protect you for all time.

Christine Feehan

#50. What silence? I hear every word you write, every word you speak with your incredible face as if you'd spoken the words out a loud. You were meant to be with me, Scotlyn. Not him.

Tess Oliver

#51. Some secrets are meant to be taken to the grave, and that's what I plan on doing with all mine. They're not necessarily my secrets to tell. I'm the gatekeeper of other people's secrets.

Drew Lachey

#52. More of that hair-raising energy rolled out of Vlad, until I was rubbing my arms to chase the tingling sensations away. Was this what Marty meant when he told me vampires could measure each others' strength by feeling their auras? If so, then Vlad's had Badass: Do Not Engage written all over it.

Jeaniene Frost

#53. While I still did not know what self- actualization that sat on the top level of the pyramid meant, I could believe
that if I knew I would be able to say something positive about it as well in
my life.

Vann Chow

#54. I hear the cock woke you up."
Eve choked on her coffee. "What?"
"Not that kind of cock." Sinead sent a sparkling look over her shoulder. "Though if that's true as well, good for you. I meant the rooster.

J.D. Robb

#55. What is it with me and guys? Do I come on too strong? Why do none of them want to stick around? I'm gonna be forty years old and out on a date with some man, and we'll make out, then he'll tell me we're not meant to be, and I'll go home to my fourteen cats.

Miranda Kenneally

#56. In 2002, a Scottish journalist, during a dinner meant to be private, absolutely wanted me to react to Stephen Hawking's comments. I said one shouldn't pay too much attention to what Hawking was saying because he was a celebrity but not a specialist of elementary particle theory.

Peter Higgs

#57. My life is exactly what it's meant to be, and I'm okay. I'm. Okay. Those two words, yeah, they mean a lot to me. I'm not perfect, I'm not completely healed, but I'm okay. I'll take it.

Ashley Beale

#58. I felt like the Empress Theodora. Can I get more orifices? I thought. Is that what she meant in the Historia Arcana - not that three isn't enough, but that the three on offer aren't enough to sustain a marriage?

Nell Zink

#59. I did get in a few fights in school. Kids threw around anti-Semitic slurs, not knowing necessarily what they meant. It was probably just something they picked up somewhere, as kids do.

Jami Attenberg

#60. -I didn't mean to hurt you.
-You shouldnae have been able to.
She blinked at that, but knew what he meant.
-I suppose not, no. we're still strangers. More or less.
-Only in the measure of time could we consider ourselved that.

(Graham & Katie)
Some Like It Scot

Donna Kauffman

#61. When I got to the end of this play, I realized I was trying to make Angel do something that had not been justified by the characters and by their story ... I kept trying to force it, but that doesn't work. So I had to come to terms with what it meant for me to create a character who doesn't triumph.

Pearl Cleage

#62. I worked in a grocery store my whole life, Honey-girl. I know what lonely housewives think of this."
"I meant the baby, Jerk."
"Attached to me."
"You think you're cute, don't you?"
"Are you honestly asking me this? I know you're not debating it.

Pella Grace

#63. You've got me, anyhow. I'm not good for much, I know, but I'll stand by you, Jo, all the days of my life. Upon my word I will! and Laurie meant what he said.

Louisa May Alcott

#64. What's dangerous in the hands of the multitudes, he said, with what may or may not have been irony, is safe enough for those whose motives are ...
Beyond reproach, I said.
He nodded gravely. Impossible to tell whether or not he meant it.

Margaret Atwood

#65. The people I see from my window. In the huts, in the distance. They're all dressed the same.' 'Ah, those people,' said Father, nodding his head and smiling slightly. 'Those people ... well, they're not people at all, Bruno.' Bruno frowned. 'They're not?' he asked, unsure what Father meant by that.

John Boyne

#66. I mean, of course "King Kong" is a metaphor for the slave trade. I'm not saying the makers of "King Kong" meant it to be that way, but that's what, that's the movie that they made whether they meant to make it or not.

Quentin Tarantino

#67. I use to think being a warning was not meant to be apart of anyone's life purpose. However, how could you teach anything in life, without the deepest understanding of what not to do? Personally, I don't want someone offering advice, unless they have been to hell and back with a map and a compass.

Shannon L. Alder

#68. All in all, I'd heard people do a lot of things with words. I'd heard them not say what they meant and I'd seen them not do what they said, but I'd never met a person who could speak so simply and still convey so much.

Rachel Joyce

#69. Ha!" he thought. "That will teach me to meddle with magic meant for kings! Norrell is right. Some magic is not meant for ordinary magicians. Presumably John Uskglass knew what to do with this horrible knowledge. I do not. Should I tell someone? The Duke? He will not thank me for it.

Susanna Clarke

#70. I admitted that I did not understand life. What I meant was that I am bewildered by human hearts and motivations, including my own.

Norman Lock

#71. I understood how strangers met and fell into bed, not how they met and fell in love. I wasn't sure what falling in love meant. The very notion seemed so corny, so arbitrary, so fragile.

Chloe Thurlow

#72. My dick didn't seem to be aware that she was there. She kept asking me what was wrong, and I was so out of it that I thought she meant what was wrong with the world, so I started talking about global poverty and shit. I'm not surprised she left. I suspect she won't be coming back.

Nikki Sixx

#73. I will create what I am meant
to create.
But I will not destroy what I am meant
to destroy.
Nay, I will stare destruction in the eye
and say,
"I will create you again.

Beata N. Imre

#74. Not proud you have, but thankful that you have. Proud can I never be of what I hate, but thankful even for hate that is meant love.

William Shakespeare

#75. For me, awards are not what I really care about - the work is what I really care about. And, I am especially proud that I was acknowledged for doing work that I was so proud of and that meant a lot to me.

Michael Cerveris

#76. Did you really mean what you said?" she asked softly. "If God Himself were waiting at Gloucester, you would not relinquish me?" He did not meet her gaze, but the muscles in his arms bunched beneath her hands as he pulled her close again. "I meant it, he whispered, burying his lips in her hair.

Marsha Canham

#77. I know I said that I always choose the anticlimactic over the irrevocable, and yes of course what I meant was that I have always been a coward, but I lied: not always, there was that night, there was that one time.

Tana French

#78. seen this look on his face before, and I knew exactly what "some time" meant: hours and hours. "Then I'll go find the house by myself," I said. "Not alone, you aren't. You promised." "Then I'll find a person who

Ransom Riggs

#79. I believe you're speaking English, Turner, but I'm not sure you're doing a good job of it. It makes a girl wonder what you meant by, 'Here, let me take you to gaol.'" "I always mean precisely what I say, even if I don't say precisely what I

Courtney Milan

#80. I am not without fear, but courage is taking action despite the fear. Knowing what you want, what you are meant to do, and proceeding despite any knots in your stomach or rocks stuck in your throat. It is walking boldly into the unknown with your chin held high ... even if it quivers.

Rachel Harris

#81. This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.

Virginia Woolf

#82. I always thought 'chick lit' meant third-person contemporary funny novels, dealing with issues of the day. I mean, it's not the ideal term; when I'm asked to describe what I do, I say I write romantic comedies, cause that's what I feel they are. But I'm quite pragmatic.

Sophie Kinsella

#83. I just ... ," Cath started again: "I realized that I'm not cut out for fiction-writing."
Professor Piper blinked and pulled her head back. "What are you talking about? You're exactly cut out for it. You're a Butterick pattern, Cath
this is what you were meant to do.

Rainbow Rowell

#84. I wasn't really testing it on myself as much as I was learning from other people about what it meant to live and love with your whole heart, and then thinking, oh my god, I'm not doing that.

Brene Brown

#85. I realize now that what I was trying to do with the Armaghast data was offer the Church not a rebirth but only a transition to a false life such as these poor walking corpses inhabit. If the Church is meant to die, it must do so - but do so gloriously, in the full knowledge of its rebirth in Christ.

Dan Simmons

#86. I loved the sound of words, even if I was not entirely certain what all of them meant

Neil Gaiman

#87. I will advise you to wait until you are at least in the university, wait until you own yourself a little more. Do you understand?"
"Yes," Ifemelu said. She did not know what "own yourself a little more" meant.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#88. What am I meant for then?" "How wonderful that question is, Beru." He smiled mysteriously. "And as you did not die on this day, you have more time in which to answer it.

Paula McLain

#89. Ah, you're an Irish lass." "As are you." His smile tipped and laughter twinkled in his eyes. "Not a lass, exactly, but Irish-born, for sure." Wasn't that just like a man. Knew exactly what she meant and yet turned her words about. "You know full well I didn't mean you were a lass." "Didn't you now?

Sarah M. Eden

#90. But what I found out that summer ... was that I could swallow whatever hit me and let it sink as if nothing had happened. So I mimicked a game that meant nothing to me now, I was going through the motions, and then it looked as if what I was doing had a purpose, but it did not.

Per Petterson

#91. And I don't just mean that they change you. A lot of people can change you - the first kid who called you a name, the first teacher who said you were smart, the first person who crowned you best friend. It's the change you remember, the firsts and what they meant, not really the people.

Sara Zarr

#92. Peter.' It was the first time I had used his name. 'You heard me sing tonight, did you not?'
'Yes, love.'
The endearment took my breath away - made me forget what I meant to say. I stood there with but one thought: He must care about me.

Jennifer Paynter

#93. I believe in fate and what's meant to be mine will be mine, and if it's not in my lap, then it's not mine.

Cameron Diaz

#94. I find my thoughts, increasingly, not on the supernatural or spiritual but on what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life - achieving a sense of peace within oneself.

Oliver Sacks

#95. I would have to go into the tunnel whether I wanted to or not - the tunnel was the road of going on, and there was more of the road on the other side of it - but the entrance was where [my teacher] had to stop. Inside the tunnel was what I was meant to learn

Margaret Atwood

#96. 'In the Cut' was not what readers expected of me. Before it was published, I was seen as a women's writer, which meant that I wrote movingly about flowers and children.

Susanna Moore

#97. Like Naokuo, I'm not really sure what it means to love another person. Though she meant it a little differently. I do want to try my best though. I have to, or else I won't know where to go. Like you said before, Naoko and I have to save each other. It's the only was for us to be saved!

Haruki Murakami

#98. She said, 'Believe it or not, I used to be idealistic.' I asked her what 'idealistic' meant. 'It means you live by what you think is right.' 'You don't do that anymore?' 'There are questions I don't ask anymore.

Jonathan Safran Foer

#99. I want people to understand, gambling is not a bad thing if you do it within the framework of what it's meant to be, which is fun and entertaining.

Michael Jordan

#100. The one thing that shaped my life was when I was 15 or 16: I knew I wanted to be a journalist. And not just a journalist, but a journalist in the Middle East, and to go back to the Arab world and try to understand what it meant to be Lebanese.

Anthony Shadid