Quotes About Choice

Writing a dissertation is very much like being in a long-term relationship: there are likely to be some very good times and some perfectly dreadful ones, and it's a big help if you like what you've chosen.

We were not having any fun, he had recently begun pointing out. I would take exception (didn't we do this, didn't we do that) but I had also known what he meant. He meant doing things not because we were expected to do them or had always done them or should do them but because we wanted to do them. He meant wanting. He meant living.

I could tell you that I came back because I had promises to keep, but maybe it was because nobody asked me to stay.

There's a point when you go with what you've got. Or you don't go.

if someone "chose" you, what does that tell you? Doesn't it tell you that you were available to be "chosen"? Doesn't it tell you, in the end, that there are only two people in the world? The one who "chose" you? And the other who didn't?

He meant doing things not because we were expected to do them or had always done them or should do them but because we wanted to do them

We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely . . . by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the "ideas" with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience. –Joan Didion

Was there time to go back? Could we have a different ending on Pacific time?

A story is entirely determined by what portion of time it chooses to narrate.

There was more to be said for the power of regret than was often said.

We all overlay our feelings with too much thinking. We are afraid of our feelings because they are arbitrary and volatile, and we often need literature to make our feelings intelligible to us, to make us see that our reaction to what we can't choose and what we can is what shapes our lives.

To her amazement, the baby, even at this stage, was a fact, and not a choice of any kind. She

She marched to the door and said, if I ever marry, Patrick O'Sullivan, I shall make sure that my mate for life is a decent woman, or even, maybe, a book.

Putting our earthly nature to death isn't something we can do apart from God. It isn't meant to be a renovation we attempt on our own or a charade we play at until it becomes reality. Believe me, I've tried it that way, and it just doesn't work. And yet, while the Holy Spirit wants to help us, we must initiate the act. For in a very real sense, only we can choose to die.

Better a king in the gutter,' he said, 'than a slave in an emperor's place

Our lives are like these things I make. Turn 'em, build 'em, bake 'em in fire. That's what you've been, son. Baked and fired. But a pot don't have the right to choose whether he be for water, wine, or just left empty. You have, son. You have.

I don't think we get a choice in who we fall for, Ian whispers. I think we just do.

You know how every now and then, you have a moment where your whole life stretches out ahead of you like a forked road, and even as you choose one gritty path you've got your eyes on the other the whole time, certain that you're making a mistake.

Whether or not you believe in Fate comes down to one thing: who do you blame when something goes wrong.

Is Fate getting what you deserve, or deserving what you get?

Happiness is what you choose to remember.

The only way someone can leave you is if you let them.

It's choice that makes us human.

Power isn't about doing something terrible to someone who's weaker than you, Reiner. It's having the strength to do something terrible, and choosing not to.