Quotes About Choice

If you make a mistake, you got to make it right. I realized I had a choice. I could sit in my misery or I could do something about it.

You have a choice. Mindsets are just beliefs. They're powerful beliefs, but they're just something in your mind, and you can change your mind. As you read, think about where you'd like to go and which mindset will take you there.

You can look back and say, "I could have been…," polishing your unused endowments like trophies. Or you can look back and say, "I gave my all for the things I valued." Think about what you want to look back and say. Then choose your mindset.

Por cierto, la mentalidad de crecimiento no te fuerza a dedicarte a nada; simplemente te dice que puedes desarrollar tus habilidades. De nuevo eres tú quien tiene que decidir si quieres hacerlo o no.

In one day I had altered my life; my life, therefore, was alterable. This simple axiom did not call out for exegesis; no, it entered my bloodstream directly, as powerful as heroin. I could feel it pump and surge, the way it brightened my veins to a kind of glass. I had wakened that morning to narrowness and predestination and now I was falling asleep in the storm of my own free will.

How does a poet know when a poem is ended? Because it lies flat, taut; nothing can be added or subtracted. How does a woman know when a marriage is over? Because of the way her life suddenly shears off in just two directions: past and future.

But we must also be careful which memories we select to justify our lives, because we will have to live by them.

Nick's need to reduce dissonance was increased by the irrevocability of his decision; he could not unmake that decision without losing a lot of money.

The investigators asked them how certain they were that their horses would win. The bettors who had placed their bets were far more certain about their choice than the folks waiting in line.19 Yet nothing had changed except the finality of placing the bet. People become more certain they are right about something they just did if they can't undo it.

The more costly a decision in terms of time, money, effort, or inconvenience and the more irrevocable its consequences, the greater the dissonance and the greater the need to reduce it by overemphasizing the good things about the choice made.

Self-justification is complicated enough when it follows our conscious choices and we know we can expect it. But it also occurs in the aftermath of things we do for unconscious reasons, when we haven't a clue about why we hold some belief or cling to some custom but are too proud to admit it.

What is it then? Life? When it is only agony, why not take it? Is that not the kinder thing?

A book lets you choose how much of the blood you want to see. A book gives you the permission to see the story as you want, as your mind directs.

It wasn't my fault that Candace followed me down to the water's edge and it wasn't my fault that I picked her up and held her down in the water and watched her pass on to the great beyond. She wanted to be there, or she wouldn't have gone down there with me. She knew she was killing me and she knew that I was not the type to go down without a fight.

Thank you so much." "Every time." "I like that. Every time. Instead of 'anytime.' It's pointed.

I gave her as much as I had, but it's like the difference between a movie and a book: A book lets you choose how much blood you want to see. A book gives you permission to see the story as you want, as your mind directs. You interpret.

It was my decision to spare you the pain of life.

You don't get to be anything slash anything.

this shower curtain is something you are going to look at Every. Fucking. Day. So I started going through hundreds of options online. Most of the designs are bullshit you could never stomach every day (a map of the world, go fuck yourself, fish, a map of Brooklyn, really go fuck yourself, snowmen, the Eiffel Tower, nautical signs—I mean, I'm not some fucker who buys scarves at Urban Outfitters and rates movies on IMDB). I just wanted something funny and classic.

But the most important thing I know is that I want the possibility of you more than the reality of Karen Minty.

You will always choose the Peaches and Benjis of the world over me because you're loyal to the gentry.

The freedom to choose, in other words, means the freedom to make mistakes, to falter and fail, to come face-to-face with your own flaws and limitations and fears and secrets, to live with the terrible uncertainty that necessarily attends the construction of a self.

I don't think you can get really out of anorexia (or any addiction, for that matter) until you simply have no other choice, until the sense that your back's against the wall grows too strong and too irrefutable, until you are simply in too much pain - too desperate and deeply bored and unhappy - to go on.

The freedom to choose...means the freedom to make mistakes, to falter and fail, to come face-to-face with your own flaws and limitations and fears and secrets, to live with the terrible uncertainty that necessarily attends the construction of a self.