Top 100 Would Have Quotes
#1. For example, I loved English and history at school. I would have loved to have done a degree in either. But my Mom said I didn't have time for university.
Vanessa Mae
#2. I didn't set out to be famous; if I'd wanted that, I would have gone on 'Big Brother.'
Sam Worthington
#3. I miss you. ... " He stroked the indentation of the gown where her waist would have been - should have been. "I miss you so much.
J.R. Ward
#4. This is technology that will not go away. And to risk it moving into the hands of a terrorist group like al Qaeda or to other focused enemies of the United States, would have tragic consequences.
John Sununu
#5. If time takes orders from man, it would have been reviewed to yesterday to correct the things that are effective.
Aihebholo-oria Okonoboh
#6. It is good to see women doctors and lawyers and executives. I can visualize a woman president. If I were British, I would have supported Margaret Thatcher. But no benefit to anyone can come from women serving in combat.
Jim Webb
#7. There had been occasions when David could have seized position and power by means that would have compromised his commitment to the Lord.
Sinclair B. Ferguson
#8. When I was a teenager, I would have tried anything that an actress I liked was doing to get thin.
Anne Hathaway
#9. Normally I would have been the first to go in search of cannibal monks, particularly as I had heard of a similar tradition at a nunnery in the Philippines. It's the sort of quest I can't resist.
Tahir Shah
#10. I never would have thought of that word, "hospitality." I settle into the rhythm of my steps.
Paul Auster
#11. Nights would have been expressionless
had it not been for the moon.
The moon, I say, is a mood.
Geetika Kohli
#12. We became convinced that, regardless of Stalin's awful brutality and his reign of terror, he was a great war leader. Without Stalin, they never would have held.
W. Averell Harriman
#13. What I mean is that we were ambitious, in a way that would have been unusual a generation before, to serve gentlemen who were, so to speak, furthering the progress of humanity.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#14. Arthur had almost given up. That is to say, he was not going to give up. He was absolutely not going to give up. Not now. Not ever. But if he had been the sort of person who was going to give up, this was probably the time he would have done it.
Douglas Adams
#15. I've always seen My Chemical Romance as the band that would have represented who me and my friends were in high school, and the band that we didn't have to represent us - the kids that wore black - back then.
Gerard Way
#16. I would have appreciated the satisfaction of a carnal paroxysm - in my experience, they bring a sparkle to the eye as well as brightness to the complexion and a spring to the step - but using Stoker to achieve that end was a means I could not begin to contemplate.
Deanna Raybourn
#17. I would have to create a system with common rules that would be acceptable to everyone. That meant as close as possible to no rules at all.
Tim Berners-Lee
#18. To avoid a comparative poverty, which her affection and her society would have deprived of all its horrors, I have, by raising myself to affluence, lost everything that could make it a blessing.
Jane Austen
#19. I would have liked to be a nerd. I didn't even make it to that.
Lloyd Blankfein
#20. Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.
Horace
#21. The truth is - I found myself doing these huge action-adventure movies, and um, and which are cool man. And I really love doing them. And thankfully I haven't had too much dialogue, because if I had I would have really made a mess of it. You know what I mean?
Orlando Bloom
#22. Before this trip and all that she'd learned about the three of them, she would have gotten angry or changed the subject. Anything to obscure the pain she felt. Now she knew better. You carried your pain with you in life. There was no outrunning it.
Kristin Hannah
#23. She was tough in the best sense of the word. She'd taken blows, the disappointments, and had worked her way through them. Some people, he knew, would have buckled under, found a clutch, or given up. But she had carved a place for herself and made it work.
Nora Roberts
#24. People couldn't understand why my mama would have this blind kid out doing things like cutting wood for the fire. But her thing was: He may be blind, but he ain't stupid.
Ray Charles
#25. When I went to law school, which after all was back in the dark ages, we never looked beyond our borders for precedents. As a state court judge, it never would have occurred to me to do so, and when I got to the Supreme Court, it was very much the same. We just didn't do it.
Sandra Day O'Connor
#26. If you had told me at the beginning of the year that I was going to be a shoo-in for the Cy Young, I would have been absolutely ecstatic and amazed.
Justin Verlander
#27. If Sir John A. MacDonald or any other leader of that day were here now, he would have a different program from that of sixty years ago. He sought to give his people policies suited to the time in which he lived.
John Bracken
#28. But Jeanie had just gone through the motions. No one would have realized, except perhaps her too-perceptive son-in-law, but that was one of the few perks of maturity: you knew how to dissemble.
Hilary Boyd
#29. If you take guns away from legal gun owners, then the only people who would have guns would be the bad guys. Even a pacifist would get violent if someone were trying to kill him or her. You would fight for your life, whatever your beliefs.
Bruce Willis
#30. The notion that I might have been able to court friends, win attention, conjure it, would have spoiled it for me. Unbidden love was what I wanted.
Edmund White
#31. Things could change Gabe. Things could be different. I don't know how, but there must be some way for things to be different. There could be colors. And grandparents. And everybody would have memories. You know about memories ... Gabe, there could be love.
Lois Lowry
#32. Middle class people, I think they realize that Romney is not for them because of his narrowness, but they want to make sure that Barack Obama is focused on them with things that will make a difference. They know he tried, but they also know that it didn't do as well as they would have liked.
Chuck Schumer
#33. The few questions I had asked had been futile and I was suddenly dispirited, for it had occurred to me that had Holmes been present, he would have probably have solved the entire mystery by now.
Anthony Horowitz
#34. I wish somebody would have told me, 'Don't try too hard,' because when I was younger I wanted to try really hard. I wanted to please everybody and be this perfect, polite little girl.
Taylor Spreitler
#35. I should like to think that had I been around at the time I would have been a convinced anti-Nazi engaged in the underground resistance fight. However, I know really that I would have been as confused and felt as helpless as most of the people I am writing about
Ian Kershaw
#36. It might not have been the destiny you would have asked for, Fennrys," she said quietly. "But I'm starting to think that the only destiny there is ... is the one we make for ourselves.
Lesley Livingston
#37. If I could, I would have my son on tour the whole time. But he has school, summer camp, and he has to see his mother.
Nate Mendel
#38. I talk to my kids about my mother's energy and how she would have loved them. I talk about how kind and polite my father was. So that they have some kind of remembrance that even though my parents died from their addictions and so that they know they were genuine in how they were.
Lemon Andersen
#39. If Finn had brought me something with bubbles, I probably would have performed explicit favors for him involving feathers and chocolate pudding.
Molly Harper
#40. I just had this feeling that, if I were to get into a fight, somehow I would have the ability to fight back, just based on playing 'Street Fighter' for so many years of my life. It's almost like I actually learned martial arts.
Bryan Lee O'Malley
#41. If I'd stayed on in London and carried on going to literary parties, it would have wrecked me as a writer.
Colin Wilson
#42. I'd be satisfied just coaching in high school. I turned down a number of colleges when I was teaching in South Bend, Indiana, before I went into the service. I honestly believe that if I hadn't enlisted in the service, I would never have left high school teaching. I'm sure I would have never left.
John Wooden
#43. Now you see, Dr. Stadler, you're speaking as if this book were addressing to a thinking audience. If it were, one would have to be concerned with such matters as accuracy, validity, logic and the prestige of science. But it isn't. It's addressed to the public.
Ayn Rand
#44. After 'Bhaji On The Beach', I didn't make a movie for six years. I couldn't get a movie off the ground for love nor money. It was a very tough time and I almost gave up. If I had been an Oxbridge bloke after 'Bhaji', my career would have been very different
Gurinder Chadha
#45. I never met Colleen McCullough; if I had, I probably would have cried and made a fool of myself.
Sarah MacLean
#46. For this world, which lives only through belief, being forgotten is our ultimate death curse. Had you not come, we would have slowly faded until nothing remained. Do not blame yourself for the machinations of fate.
Kathryn Tanquary
#47. Clearly he needed a father, but some other father, any other father, would have been preferable.
Ann Patchett
#48. I wasn't born an early bird.
It took three different alarms clocks blasting in my ear every morning to wake me up. And on special occasions when I'd sleep through the bird caws, beeping, and extreme drum solos, Stella would have the privilege of yanking me from my bed.
Joddie Zeng
#49. The world would have peace if only men of politics would follow the Gospels.
Bridget Of Sweden
#50. Instead of making myself write the book I ought to write, the novel that was expected of me, I conjured up the book I myself would have liked to read, the sort by an unknown writer, from another age and another country, discovered in an attic. ITALO CALVINO
Salman Rushdie
#51. - had a million things to do today; death would have to wait, -
(The Tin Star)
J.L. Langley
#52. I wanted to ask him if that was part of the plan, but I knew he would have said yes. The plan was to make war; anything that followed was part of it.
Dinaw Mengestu
#53. If I had been born ugly, you would have never heard of Pele
George Best
#54. Go and see what others have produced, but never copy anything except nature. You would be trying to enter into a temperament that is not yours and nothing that you would do would have any character.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
#56. it made me wonder whether the brothers karamazov would have ever come down to us as a classic if its title had been the karamzov brothers.
William Peter Blatty
#57. Any one observing him would have seen a change in his complexion, in the adjustment of his facial muscles, in the vividness of his glance, which might have made them imagine that every molecule in his body had passed the message of a magic touch. And so it had.
George Eliot
#58. Victor Hugo: If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away.
Ayn Rand
#59. I had crashes when I was small and Gumby-like that would have killed me now. I would just fly off jumps and go 40 or 50 meters when I was 6 years old - break skis, smash my goggles and get a bloody nose and go crawl inside for a little while and then come back out and ski more in the afternoon.
Bode Miller
#60. I'm a practised writer now. But when I began, I had no idea what this was going to be. I just knew that there was something inside me that wanted me to tell who I was, and that would have come out even if I didn't want it.
Chinua Achebe
#61. Jack had met me half-way that would have been better for him. An' for me, because I get good out of helpin' any one." His
Zane Grey
#62. I would have had a clause in my contract; I would've definitely put some fine print in my contract that said, "If the president leaves, I'm leaving." That'd be the bottom line.
Joe Budden
#63. Drugs. If they did not exist our governors would have invented them in order to prohibit them and so make much of the population vulnerable to arrest, imprisonment, seizure of property, and so on.
Gore Vidal
#64. In yesterday's post, I asked how many of you guys would have sex with a robot if it was indistinguishable from a hot human woman. About 95% of the hetero guys said they would. The other 5% expressed a strong preference for lying.
Scott Adams
#65. He hadn't treated me with the love and compassion I wanted, but I was worthy of that love, and someday some boy would have it for me. I hadn't found it yet, but I would find it soon.
Aspen Matis
#66. This is the great secret. This is the sacred wisdom. Do unto others as you would have it done unto you.
Neale Donald Walsch
#67. Every weekend the drama department would have parties. The 20 hot girls on campus? All of them were in the drama dept. So we'd have somebody standing guard at the door to keep all the computer science guys out. We had to guard our women at all times.
Joe Manganiello
#68. If I had known how much I hate auditioning, I doubt I would have become an actress.
Jaime Murray
#69. pleasant-enough place, as cemeteries went, and if somebody had told him that he'd be buried there, after a life of, say, a hundred forty years and much more sex and barbecue, he would have been content with the prospect.
John Sandford
#70. Now, I'm not going to be misquoted on this like I have numerous times before, so I'll be quite clear. I've never said hitler was my hero, just that if he had focused on more than one race he would have had the right idea. Try to turn that one against me.
Zach Braff
#71. A leveller has long ago been set down as a ridiculous and chimerical being, who, if he could finish his work to-day, would have to begin it again tomorrow.
Charles Caleb Colton
#72. How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience would have achieved success?
Elbert Hubbard
#73. My eyes were stinging, my body shaking, and my heart seemed to be just aching deep in my chest. ( ... )
I should have let myself smash down the rocks. It would have hurt a whole lot less
Keri Arthur
#74. There's always been a lot of pressure and tension on the line. If 'Pi' didn't work out, I have no idea what my career would be. I don't think I would have gotten another shot at it. If 'Requiem for a Dream' didn't work out, they would have called me a 'one-hit wonder with a sophomore slump'.
Darren Aronofsky
#75. When I started I would have called myself an artist but the discipline I chose in art was music and text.
Blixa Bargeld
#76. But she wasn't in love with him - Otho hadn't said that. He had seen no attachment on her part. And Celaena would never be that stupid. It was Dorian who was the fool - Dorian who would have his heart broken, if he did actually love her.
Sarah J. Maas
#77. If our adoption were not permanent, we would have great reason to fear. Our sin might yet condemn us.
John F. MacArthur Jr.
#78. The studio rented a house for my wife in Los Angeles under a phony name to keep reporters away. Whenever I wanted to visit her and my children, I would have to sneak in the back door after dark.
Max Von Sydow
#79. So you would have me throw Shazi to the wolves?"
"Shazi?" Jalal's grin widened. "Honestly, I pity the wolves.
Renee Ahdieh
#80. I think the last one would have to be The Godfather because it was such a powerful story. There was lots of violence in it but I could take it because I thought there was a reality to it. It wasn't gratuitous, it was just these guys' story.
Bobby Farrelly
#81. Of course, they haven't seen your reports yet. (Joe)
'They would have if Carlos could have held a gun on the computer to make that piece of shit send an e-mail.' (Carlos)
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#82. It would have been very easy to drift into writing a non-fiction book so by taking it away from Nottingham I forced myself to imagine much more of it.
Jon McGregor
#83. Religion would have us believe that immortality is reserved for the gods. We remain skeptical.
Fiona Paul
#84. If he weren't so damn cute, none of this would have happened.
Nicholas Sparks
#85. Additional twenty feet. Not much if the ladder was at an angle - but because it would have to be positioned nearly horizontally out over the river, it would test the limits of what was safe. Had
Nicholas Sparks
#86. In another life I would have liked to be a poet, I just can't stop the lines in time, so I'm a novelist.
Colum McCann
#87. Because Tom Doherty and people like that are not stupid. If they could have streamlined their operation more to get more money out of it, they would have done it. It's not like they're a bunch of idiots.
Jerry Pournelle
#88. If I could dance like the ladies can, it would have been my arse on your screens
Lily Allen
#89. As governor of New Mexico, I would have - I signed a bill banning late term abortion. I've always favored parental notification. I've always favored counseling. I've always favored the notion of no public funds used for abortion.
Gary Johnson
#90. So swift, silent and furtive were his movements like those of a trained bloodhound picking out a scent, that I could not but think what a terrible criminal he would have made had he turned his energy and sagacity against the law instead of exerting them in its defense.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#91. A dry stretch of commentary in the middle of an 'Anchorman' movie would have been a terrible thing.
Adam McKay
#92. If everybody spent enough time worrying about their own goddamn selves, no one would have to worry about anyone else.
Don De Grazia
#93. It does so happen to be the case that if the freedom of the people of this country-and especially the rights of trade unionists-if those precious things in the past had been left to the good sense and fairmindedness of judges, we would have precious few freedoms in this country.
Michael Foot
#94. Frank [Zappa] said he probably would have been a major criminal, given his brain power and his attention to detail, had he not been a composer. But being a composer is not something you can't help.
Gail Zappa
#95. Because you're not what I would have you be, I blind myself to who, in truth, you are.
Madeleine L'Engle
#96. As one of four daughters, I grew up with an imaginary brother - wondering what it would have been like if one of us had been a boy. There's no question that there was a phantom boy child in my imagination when I was young.
Siri Hustvedt
#97. There was a big possibility that I would have had to leave Newcastle had Ruud Gullit stayed as manager.
Alan Shearer
#98. Not one man in a million would have allowed me the time without speaking. I opened my mind, let my gaurd down completely, relaxed. His silence washed over me. I stood, closed my eyes, breathed out the relief that was too profound for words.
Charlaine Harris
#99. He laced his hands behind his neck and propped his boots on the opposite arm of the sofa. If an artist were to capture this image, it would have been labeled,Smugness: A Portrait. She wanted to shake him.
Tessa Dare
#100. If you continue to use monetary policy to attempt to promote full employment the result would be that you would have higher inflation, and that you would not have lower unemployment.
Milton Friedman
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