Stakes Are High Quotes

#1. Some reviewers call my stories dark - and yes, there is violence and angst, and the stakes are high - but I like to think that the endings are satisfying and hopeful.

Carol Berg

#2. There is always a countermove, always an escape or way through. No one said it would be easy and of course the stakes are high, but the path is there for those ready to take it.

Ryan Holiday

#3. My history is long, and not much of it is good. I can't erase it, but I'm determined not to make another mistake. Not when the stakes are high, not when it comes to you.

Becca Fitzpatrick

#4. For me, a great story is one in which the protagonist faces unimaginable odds; where the stakes are high that failure constitutes a disaster.

Michael Boatman

#5. I honestly think vulnerability is a beautiful thing: it's tenderness, authenticity, and risk-taking. It means you're living a life where the stakes are high and you are continuing to push your own boundaries and learn new things. It keeps you flexible and young.

Jaime Murray

#6. Write every day. Don't ever stop. If you are unpublished, enjoy the act of writing - and if you are published, keep enjoying the act of writing. Don't become self-satisfied, don't stop moving ahead, growing, making it new. The stakes are high. Why else would we write?

Rick Bass

#7. I always prefer the character moments. For me, personally, whether I'm shooting the gun or not shooting the gun, I really don't care. I'm the guy who's like, "Whatever you want me to do." But, I really get excited about the character moments that are steeped in emotion when the stakes are high.

Brandon Jay McLaren

#8. There's a game out there, and the stakes are high. And the guy who runs it figures the averages all day long and all night long. Once in a while he lets you steal a pot. But if you stay in the game long enough, you've got to lose. And once you've lost there's no way back, no way at all.

Dalton Trumbo

#9. Jamie, when the stakes are high, I never cheat. I consider myself too important to do that.

E.L. Konigsburg

#10. When a sports movie really works, it gets you on all levels, because the stakes are high. It's black and white. It's win or lose.

Carla Gugino

#11. Most of us are going through life without interrogating whether our decision-making processes are fit for purpose. And that's something we need to change - especially when the stakes are high and the decisions are of real import.

Noreena Hertz

#12. Jumping to conclusions is efficient if the conclusions are likely to be correct and the costs of an occasional mistake acceptable. Jumping to conclusions is risky when the situation is unfamiliar, the stakes are high and there is no time to collect more information.

Daniel Kahneman

#13. When the stakes are high, bow down low.

Beth Moore

#14. But I have learned that you make your own happiness, that part of going for what you want means losing something else. And when the stakes are high, the losses can be that much greater.

Emily Giffin

#15. When characters have different goals and are intent on achieving them, conflict results. If the stakes are high and both sides are unyielding, you have the makings of high drama.

James N. Frey

#16. You are a powerhouse of creativity; you were born magnificently expressive, available and aware. Before you had the words for it, you had an intrinsic sense of urgency because you knew down in your bones that the stakes are high.

Larry Silverberg

#17. The best we can do is a compromise: learn to recognize situations in which mistakes are likely and try harder to avoid significant mistakes when the stakes are high.

Daniel Kahneman

#18. The stakes are high on every film now because there's the opening weekend. The first week is extremely crucial; increasingly, films are being judged in terms of opening day, opening weekend, then first week. People are going berserk promoting their films.

Vidya Balan

#19. The acceleration of the marketing process, the concentrating of manufacturing, greater diversification, increased international competition, have in turn speeded up product improvements, product innovations and new product introductions. The stakes are high, the failures costly.

Tom Sutton

#20. The more comfortable you get, the more money you earn, the more successful you are, the harder it is to create situations where you have to prove yourself and make yourself not just want it, but need it. The stakes should always feel high. Stephen

Carrie Brownstein

#21. In New York the stakes are so high. In urban centers the stakes are so high. You marry the wrong person, you go to the wrong college, you take the wrong job. Any of these things could really get you in trouble down the road. Or in your mind anyway. You're afraid to make any move, it's paralyzing.

Meghan Daum

#22. I think the American people expect more from us than cries of indignation and attack. The times are too grave, the challenge too urgent, and the stakes too high
to permit the customary passions of political debate.

John F. Kennedy

#23. The real stakes in the theater are high - they are life stakes. That's what I love about it. You gamble with your life, and that's a gamble worth taking.

Lauren Bacall

#24. The stakes are too high for us to die with a small vision.

Louie Giglio

#25. When the stakes are this high- when calling God by the right name can make the difference between eternal happiness and eternal suffering, it is impossible to respect the beliefs of others who don't believe as you do.

Sam Harris

#26. The reason why I hate working in theatre is the tedium of memorisation. But once that is done, then you feast on this never-ending meal. If you play it correctly, every night is fraught with very high stakes that are very difficult to find in everyday life.

Christopher Meloni

#27. The stakes are so high because auditions are make or break. You get the job or you don't. The stakes are about as high as they get, for yourself and your own self-esteem.

Madeline Zima

#28. I think all villains have something in common: they have something that they need or want very, very badly. The stakes are very high and they are not bound by moral codes or being ethical, so they can do anything and will do anything to get what they want.

Donna Murphy

#29. The times call for courage. The times call for hard work. But if the demands are high, it is because the stakes are even higher. They are nothing less than the future of human liberty, which means the future of civilization.

Henry Hazlitt

#30. As far as I'm concerned, the stakes are always very high. Whether it's playing at the White House or playing for a group in my own house - you know, one of those soirees I play in. Once I start playing, the stakes are somehow higher, in a way, than any of the context.

Joshua Bell

#31. The challenge is high. The stakes are important. I think it's manageable.

William Hedgcock Webster

#32. I can't let that happen again. The stakes are way too high. I know that, now more than ever. If there's anything good that came from my failure on First Earth, it's that I have now totally given myself over to being a Traveler.

D.J. MacHale

#33. We heads of state really prefer to have some sort of an agenda before we sit down at the high-stakes table, you know. All bad novelists notwithstanding, surprise and improvisation are not the best basis for successful diplomacy!

David Weber

#34. I've pretty much given up on the orange. I really have. I just don't even bother. It's just either sour, or woody, or the skin's too thick. It's very nice when you come across the perfect orange, because it's really a beautiful experience. But the stakes are too high.

Scott Thompson

#35. When you are 15, everything is such high stakes, even tiny things. I think because of that, it is funny but sad at the same time.

Sophie Wu

#36. Cancer is such a wake-up call to remind us how high the cosmic stakes really are and how short and brief and frail life really is.

Joni Eareckson Tada

#37. You know, parenting is so personal. And we're all afraid that we didn't quite get it right. And it feels like the stakes are so high. By we - what if we made a mistake?

Amy Chua

#38. The stakes are very high for us in Haiti. We have many important interests there. Perhaps the most important to me is our interest in the promotion of democracy in this hemisphere.

Warren Christopher

#39. To the truly driven (which one has to be to survive in the high stakes, competitive world of show business), lack of opportunity means nothing. The TDs always think numbers are for everyone else and don't involve them.

K Callan

#40. Good stories are driven by conflict, tension, and high stakes.

William Landay

#41. Any time you get into a presidential campaign and the stakes are so high, all candidates - they want to be in complete control whenever they can. And you can't blame them for that.

Bob Schieffer

#42. Sometimes a King has to do terrible things in order to protect those he has sworn to look after. When the stakes are so high, dreadful decisions have to be taken. It is the responsibility of a King to take on that burden, that guilt.

Cressida Cowell

#43. Baseball is a little bigger gamble than most, and the stakes are pretty high.

Jacob Ruppert

#44. With the parties at virtual parity and the ideological gulf between them never greater, the stakes of majority control of Congress are extremely high.

Thomas E. Mann

#45. Hence [through No Child Left Behind] the state has been given power...to fire all teachers and principles. So here we have an unusual case in which the students are engaged in the performances, but the high stakes have been displaced onto the teachers who are preparing their charges for the exams.

James M. Lang

#46. Like it or not, Google and the Chinese government are stuck in a tense, long-term relationship, and can look forward to more high-stakes shadow-boxing in the netherworld of the world's most elaborate system of censorship.

Rebecca MacKinnon

#47. Over time, you realize that even the things that are most high stakes kind of resolve themselves.

Natasha Lyonne

#48. Life is too short, time is too precious, and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been. We have to work together for what still can be.

Hillary Clinton

#49. The most volatile current debate among American school administrators, teachers, parents, and students concerns "high-stakes" testing. The stakes are considered high because instead of simply testing students to measure their progress, schools are increasingly held accountable for the results.

Anonymous

#50. To regret fully is to appreciate how high the stakes are in even the average human life; fully experienced, it turns our eyes, attentive and alert, to a future possibly lived better than our past.

David Whyte

#51. Precious souls are at high stakes when this world turns over with feet that quake. The timeless hearts of souls that make, beautiful music at no mistake. Peace love and light too all who demand, and together forever in on this earth we we will stand.

Peace Gypsy

#52. Sometimes, proceeding in the dark and aiming an arrow at the elusive, mythical dragon trumps all the rational arguments for not proceeding. Sometimes, the stakes are so high and the status quo is so unacceptable that taking aim in any direction is better than not shooting at all.

Rebecca J. Anderson

#53. But I am, personally, not a gambler. I wouldn't spend £1 on the lottery, let alone take a punt on a pregnancy. The stakes are far, far too high. I can't agree with a society that would force me to bet on how much I could love under duress.

Caitlin Moran

#54. It was my proudest moment as a manager when England drew 0-0 with Italy in Rome to qualify for the World Cup finals. Fifteen years later, the stakes are equally high for both countries as they go head-to-head for a semi-final place at the European Championship.

Glenn Hoddle

#55. The less people present in an urgent situation that a moderately high stakes recording session can create - the less people there are in the room - the more openness there can be. These songs share that as well, in addition to just the obvious, basic starkness.

Will Oldham

#56. The reality is the stakes are very high. If your industry is targeted or your company is sued in a class action, your legal costs will soar.

Jonathan Friedman

#57. Bon Iver: Way too emotionally high stakes for casual listening in the sense that it makes every single part of your life feel like the part of a TV show where you are in a hospital saying goodbye for the very last time

Jesse Andrews

#58. The last element in drama is high stakes. War, of course, is life and death - survival, not only for the story's characters, but often for the society itself. That's why I'm drawn to stories that are built around wars, even if they're not technically "war stories."

Steven Pressfield

#59. The stakes ... are too high for government to be a spectator sport.

Barbara Jordan