Top 100 Quotes About What Could Have Been
#1. I'm not going to hold my breath because life goes on. Life is too short to sit around moaning about what could have been or what was.
Tina Weymouth
#2. For too long nurses have been undervalued, restricted in what they could do, with too few career opportunities in clinical practice. For far too long, nurses have endured a pay system that has held them back - both professionally as well as financially.
John Hutton
#3. Yeah, I know what your English Professor tried to tell you. But if your English Professor could make a living writing fiction, they would have been doing it.
Dean Wesley Smith
#4. You can learn a lot about a person by where they are from and where they have chosen to be."
"You'll never know what could have been if it never was.
Sarah Sloat
#5. My stiffest earthly assignment is ended and my major life's work is done. My country is now free and I have been honoured to be its first indigenous head of state. What more could one desire in life?
Nnamdi Azikiwe
#6. I'm not good, Mac. Never have been.'
What-true confession time? my eyes tease. Don't need it.
'I want what I want and I take it.'
Is he warning me? What could he possibly threaten me with now?
'There's nothing I can't live with. Only things I won't live without.
Karen Marie Moning
#7. About that mystifying enthusiasm a million years ago for turning over as many human activities as possible to machinery: What could that have been but yet another acknowledgment by people that their brains were no damn good?
Kurt Vonnegut
#8. I have been asked what would I ban immediately if I could. Advertising.
Vivienne Westwood
#9. If Jesus simply came to tell us what to do and provide moral instruction so we could try harder to please God, then his life would have been an utter failure.
Matt Perman
#10. The road is a strange place. Shuffling along, I looked up and you were there walking across the grass toward my truck on an August day. In retrospect, it seems inevitable - it could not have been any other way
a case of what I call the high probability of the improbable
Robert James Waller
#11. Are you sorry? Do you wish you could do it all again and go off and write novels instead of being a teacher?
No. You can't trade what is for what might have been.
Lurlene McDaniel
#12. I feel there are so many things in this world that have been and are being created that I could spend the rest of my life thinking about, and I couldn't cover all the things I'm interested in. That to me is what makes life sweet-learning and exploring.
James Franco
#13. You really can't worry about stuff you can't control ... You need to focus on getting where you need to be and not worry about what could have been and what should have been.
Robbie Lawler
#14. The Stones were always exemplary of one of the best of all rock qualities: tightness. They have always been economical, the opposite of ornamental. Having a very clear idea of what they wanted to say they could go into a studio and make it all up on a three minute cut.
Jon Landau
#15. I can't even think about what life "could
have been" like in Boston, without crying. It's like deja-vu, I don't think me
and Boston were ever meant to be.
Cecelia Ahern
#16. Joy was something she willed herself to show us, something she raised from deep inside herself as a promise for what could be. Now her life seemed to have opened up into it as if it had been waiting for her. (215)
Andre Dubus III
#17. It still amazes him how they could have been misled by her personality in Year Eleven. It's what depression does to a person, it changes them completely.
Melina Marchetta
#18. Decades of Saddam's rule made what could have been a fairly rich country, due to its oil reserves, into a very poor one.
Chris Kyle
#19. I have been thinking about what might happen if they installed clappers to turn on and off the lights in a concert hall. Maybe they could spare the cost of hiring some people for the next rock concert.
Linnea Gelland
#20. I'm a little frightened, perhaps. We always are, aren't we? When we have to open a door that's always been there...but we've never opened. [...] I mean frightened by the immensity of what lies beyond the door. A God of Love--infinite and eternal. How could I ever be worthy of that?
Tony Hendra
#21. Postal inspectors have been given advanced warning that Publishers Clearinghouse is sending packets of laundry detergent that could be mistaken for anthrax. Oh, good timing. What genius came up with this promotion? What's next - a ticking alarm clock? Let's put that in a box.
Jay Leno
#22. I didn't have a role model. My role model was Michael Jordan. Bad role model for an Indian dude ... I didn't have anyone who looked like me. And by the time I was old enough to have what could have been a role model, they were my peers. Aziz Ansari is my peer. Kal Penn is my peer.
Utkarsh Ambudkar
#23. Ikenna, I have come to realize, is a man who carries with him the weight of what could have been.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
#24. asked: "And I was very surprised by the ending. Were you?" "Of course not - I'd read it first. I don't think I could have stood the suspense if I hadn't known what was going to happen. I'd have been way too worried.
Will Schwalbe
#25. I've kind of gotten more timid. I used to be fearless - at a certain point I didn't care about what anybody thought. I had all the answers and I could have been as bad as I wanted to be. But nowadays I just want to be good and make people happy.
Ariel Pink
#26. After my parents passed away - in 2000 and 2003 - I felt I could take the time to think about the past and imagine what it would have been like to be my grandmother.
Joyce Carol Oates
#27. My heart is empty.
But my brain -
my brain is full.
It races with thoughts
of what could have been.
Samantha Schutz
#28. If you give your life to a cause in which you believe, and if it is right and just, and if your life comes to an end as a result of this, then your life could not have been spent in a more redemptive way. I think that is what my husband has done.
Coretta Scott King
#29. I have always done the best I could, and yet, somehow, it has never been enough. No one cared what I did. They always turned their backs on me.
Marie Lu
#30. Travis considered the larger one below it. A file drawer. Was it even worth bothering with? What could have been in it but paper? What could be in it now but an inch-deep layer of mold dust?
He opened it.
It contained an inch-deep layer of mold dust.
Patrick Lee
#31. The sun will rise tomorrow. It always does, and all the wishing in the world for the way things were, or for what they could have been, won't change that. It won't change how things are.
Elizabeth Scott
#32. All of the great achievers of the past have been visionary figures; they were men and women who projected into the future. They thought of what could be, rather than what already was, and then they moved themselves into action, to bring these things into fruition.
Bob Proctor
#33. I wish I was what I have been
And what I was could be
As when I roved in shadows green
And loved my willow tree
To gaze upon the starry sky
And higher fancies build
And make in solitary joy
Loves temple in the field
John Clare
#34. What I learned, in the two months that we shot, I don't think I could have learned in two to four years of drama school. It's invaluable to me, and that's been the most fun. It's been nice to let this be a learning experience in everything.
Steven Yeun
#35. What hurts the most
Was being so close
And having so much to say
And watching you walk away
And never knowing
What could have been
And not seeing that loving you
Is what I was tryin' to do
Rascal Flatts
#36. Experience is the only teacher," Hey-Soos says. "Even if I could have told you, it would have been a lecture. Why do you think kids don't listen to their parents, or people don't leave churches and do what the preacher tells them?
Chris Crutcher
#37. If I could have somehow been the kind of artist who could crank out two or three issues a year, that's different. That's sort of what it's all about, to get this thing out so that there's some kind of continuity. But to do a comic book every year or two was just so anti-climactic.
Daniel Clowes
#38. What could have John Edwards' motivations been to have the affair with Rielle Hunter, given his wife is smarter than he is and probably nagging him a lot about doing this, and he found somebody that did something with her mouth other than talk.
Rush Limbaugh
#39. When I first came to work her i spotted a problem that needed to be solved, but I didn't know what to do. So I called the One Minute Manager. When he answered the phone, I said, Sir, I have a problem. Befor I could get another word out, he said, Good! That's what you've been hired to solve.
Kenneth H. Blanchard
#40. How could I have never told anyone what He had done for me? Nothing else had worked. Nothing had been able to break the chains that kept me living on the edge. Nothing ... except the gentleness of His touch.
Nikki Rosen
#41. Maybe if I hadn't been so hell-bent on not becoming my parents, I could have saved Charlie. Maybe I would have been his girlfriend. Maybe we could have gotten married and been happy, regardless of who our parents were and what they did to each other.
A.S. King
#42. Her lack of maidenly scruple would have amused me at another moment, but just now her face was so grimly determined that I could only wonder what she had in mind. Nothing could have been less seductive, anyway, than her expression at that moment.
Elizabeth Kostova
#43. Dez, on the other hand, was pure backcountry Pennsylvania; a blue-eyed blonde who could have been a model for fitness equipment if not for what JT personally viewed as an overactive redneck gene.
Jonathan Maberry
#44. There is no grief more devastating than the grief for what could have been.
Kaya McLaren
#45. When I came into your life your life was over. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is the end. You can say that things could have turned out differently. That they could have been some other way. But what does that mean? They are not some other way. They are this way.
Cormac McCarthy
#46. I made mistakes. I trusted both too little and too much. But, by the gods, I tried so hard. I gave everything I had.
I have always done the best I could, and yet, somehow,it has never been enough. No one cared what I did. They always turned their backs on me. Why can't I be like that?
Marie Lu
#47. Don't think about it. Don't think about what could have been. It's too unbearable.
Sophie Kinsella
#48. Blood has an oder faint but distinct, of conceit and modesty, of courage and cowardice, of charity and greed, of faith and doubt, in short the fragrance of what we might have been and the smell of what we are ...
Dean Koontz
#49. I've been working at performing for five years now. I've been working in Australia and Spain and England. When I was only 15 or 16, 1 was performing in bars; I could have had legal problems, but it's also the only way to get to know what music is all about.
Andy Gibb
#50. Could I - could I say good-bye to him, sir? asked Hagrid. He bent his great, shaggy head over Harry and gave him what must have been a very scratchy, whiskery kiss. Then, suddenly, Hagrid let out a howl like a wounded dog.
J.K. Rowling
#51. My father was always suppressing the softer side of my nature; it seemed to have disappeared in the course of those boxing lessons, that's what boxing did to me. My father took away the real me and replaced all what I could have been by imposing his brutal regime of terror upon me.
Stephen Richards
#52. The warmth of the bourbon still glowed deep within her, helping her find her center. How could something so simple have brought her so much relief? But Safia sensed it wasn't truly the alcohol so much as the kindness. She had forgotten what that was like. It had been too long. Not since ... not
James Rollins
#53. I like things to be what they're going to be. Not what they were. Or could have been.
Angie Smibert
#54. Gazzy, man, jeezum!" Fang exclaimed. "What the heck have you been eating for God's sake?"
That was a smoke bomb!" Gazzy defended himself. "Not even i could fill this whole flippin' house!
James Patterson
#55. Is this what's going to make you happy?'
'How different everything could have been, if you had thought to ask me that before.
Marissa Meyer
#56. First of all, God inspires me, where he's brought me, it blows my mind. To know that He brought me this far, it could not have been an accident, to go forward, I'm excited to leap into the void, I'm excited about tomorrow, the unknown, excited to see what else He has for me.
Columbus Short
#57. You know what the true definition of hell is? It's when you die, you get to meet the person you could have been.
Frank Mir
#58. Tragedy is the difference between what is and what could have been.
Abba Eban
#59. I would not, if I could, give up the memory of the joy I have had in books for any advantage that could be offered in other pursuits or occupations. Books have been to me what gold is to the miser, what new fields are to the explorer.
Margaret Elizabeth Sangster
#60. A big ethical question is what happens after people stop using the device. Does it degrade the environment? Could it have been designed so it would actually be good for the environment?
Donald Norman
#61. Can't get myself down by thinking about what could have been, right?
S.A. Tawks
#62. Oh could I feel as I have felt,-or be what I have been,
Or weep as I could once have wept, o'er many a vanish'd scene;
As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish though they be,
So midst the wither'd waste of life, those tears would flow to me.
George Gordon Byron
#63. I guess if I'd had any sense, I'd have been a little scared [to register to vote] - but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they could do was kill me, and it kinda seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I could remember.
Fannie Lou Hamer
#64. Jo claimed that the reason people survived breakups was that within days of the amputation, Mother Nature started reminding you of what you had been doing without, what could have been better, all the samll discontents you had been filing away.
Emma Donoghue
#65. Ever since I could first write I have been doing so. When I was taught how to write and read at school, I made up my mind that this was what I love to do best and this was the world I was going to occupy.
Anita Desai
#66. The religion of the God who became man has met the religion (for such it is) of man who makes himself God. And what happened? Was there a clash, a battle, a condemnation? There could have been, but there was none
Pope Paul VI
#67. He bent down so I could hear him over the music. "What are you doing here?" he asked with a hard tone.
Okay. Not the best first line. Something like, you look beautiful, have my babies would have been a little bit better.
R.S. Grey
#68. In the Damascus airport she had been humiliated by what she was assumed to be, and when she returned home, she felt angry because of what she could have been.
Azar Nafisi
#69. 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
#70. The music for 'The Departed' could have been played by an orchestra, but you make a decision about orchestration based on the context of the film. You want the music to broaden the scope of a film, not just repeat what you're seeing.
Howard Shore
#71. If I'd ever seen what love really could do, or was, maybe I'd have believed in it from the start. But too much of my life had been spent watching marriages come together and then fall apart. So I understood, yes. But sometimes, like lately, I wished that I didn't, not at all.
Sarah Dessen
#72. She could not tell him that she protested because she did not believe he loved her enough to become his wife. It was no ordinary man but the Prince of Light who was asking her to be his bride. And, she thought gloomily, what sacrifice might she have disregarded had his gaze been only for her?
Noriko Ogiwara
#73. It's been constant grinding and trying to secure work that I care about, tireless auditions and meetings. I've been fortunate that a lot of cool doors have opened to me, chiefly meeting great people who were inspired by what I've done and what they feel I could bring to their projects.
Keith Stanfield
#74. I think I need to face
what I could have been in order to understand and accept what I am.
Cecelia Ahern
#75. It was no good to look back, to apologize for what had happened, or to wonder what could have been different.
Lily Blake
#76. As if they were supposed to have made a direct hit, to have a long, full, crazy, wild, passion-filled, child-strewn life together, but somehow they'd come at each other from the wrong angle, and missed what could have/would have/should have been.
Karen Marie Moning
#77. Our lives are entwined and we're bound together by everything that we've been through, what we feel and the love I have for you. I know you love me too Layla and I wish I could make it all right again but I can't.
Marie Coulson
#78. What the mud had been doing with itself, or where it came from, who could say? But it seemed to collect in a moment, as a crowd will, and in five minutes to have splashed all the sons and daughters of Adam.
Charles Dickens
#79. Myself," said the drone sniffily, "I have never been able to see what virtue there could be in something that was eighty percent water.
Iain M. Banks
#80. George McGovern, for all his mistakes ... understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon,
Hunter S. Thompson
#81. But, Jesus, Tommy, what do you expect me to say? I grew up with you. When we were kids your fly was open more often than the twenty-four-hour laundromat. If your dick had been a gun you could have outdrawn Doc Holliday.
Bart Yates
#82. Everything's explained by the constant intervention of Allah. And whatever happens had to happen, and was decreed at the beginning of time, and there's no way of even imagining how anything could have been different from what it is.
Paul Bowles
#83. There have been times when I reread - or at least leafed through - something because I'd sent a copy to a friend, and what usually happened was that I noticed dozens and dozens of clumsy phrases I wished I could rewrite.
Peter Straub
#84. We have a chance to wind down and expedite the removal of 96 percent of the world's nuclear weapons. What an achievement it would be, if at the end of the next administration, we could say that the nuclear arsenals of both Russia and the United States had been reduced to the barest minimums.
Dianne Feinstein
#85. What the hell did magic wands have to do with helping girls learn math and science? He'd been good at both. He could have helped them with math and science. Weren't these girls supposed to be building skills? Screw magic wands. He'd have handed out some fucking calculators.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips
#86. Whether it goes to series or stands by itself, I'm proud of what we did with it, not only from the standpoint of what it could have been, but for itself.
Yancy Butler
#87. Sneak out. He shrugged, as if that should have been a no-brainer. But that was easy for him to say. He was dead. What else could they do to him, take away his birthday?
Rachel Vincent
#88. Alice must already have known, even back then, when she first saw Fortune, when she was, what, nine or ten, that she would try and hitch a lift on the wheel, too, as soon as she possibly could. She must already have been thinking out how. But she couldn't have guessed how soon her chance would come.
Vanora Bennett
#89. The young Steve Jobs had a hard time articulating something that didn't exist. He could see it, taste it, knew what it felt like, but he didn't have all the language because it hadn't been invented yet. People didn't fathom the personal computer on a mass produced level.
Joshua Michael Stern
#90. I could tell that Mom was dreaming, but I didn't want to know what she was dreaming about, because I had enough of my own nightmares, and if she had been dreaming something happy, I would have been angry at her for dreaming something happy.
Jonathan Safran Foer
#91. I am never happy with what I do, so I try not to watch stuff that is filmed with me in it because I am always like, 'Oh, I could have done that a little bit better,' or, 'I could have done that differently - that riff could have been a little better.'
Josh Young
#92. The trenches are all filled in, but the boys are still dying.'
Then I could read her thoughts and I knew what this day meant. Mrs. Abernathy's son could have been my dad.
Richard Peck
#93. This could be a college guest room, for the less distinguished visitors; or a room in a rooming house, of former times, for ladies in reduced circumstances. That is what we are now. The circumstances have been reduced; for those of us who still have circumstances.
Margaret Atwood
#94. To be quite honest, I've been very blessed when I've worked with Hollywood. The studios that have purchased my work to be adapted to film have really liked the work and wanted to stay as close as they could to what the book was.
Nicholas Sparks
#95. I had to know if I could make it somewhere else. I did not want to go through the rest of my life wondering what might have been without putting myself to the test.
Kenny Dalglish
#96. Camille leaned forward. When she did, the neckline of her black silk blouse gaped open. If Simon had still been human, he would have blushed. "Will you let me see it?"
Simon could actually feel his eyes pop out. "See what?
Cassandra Clare
#97. One of my heroes, almost necessarily from what I'm saying, of course, is Borges, who is a supreme master of doing thing
being a data bank
and the beauty of this economy is that he could have written War and Peace in three or four pages; who knows, it might have been a better book.
Peter Greenaway
#98. I supposed, perhaps, you miss the promise of what could have been, while at the same time you are grateful that what it was instead is over.
Sylvia Day
#99. Tasting what could have been - what should have been - didn't make it easier.
Kele Moon
#100. We could have been the greatest love story ever told.
If only you'd stayed in character.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
