Quotes About Choice

In this world, you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant. Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. ~Elwood P. Dowd

In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant. ' Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.

We are none of us born into Eden, Doc said reasonably. world's plenty evil when we get here. Question is, what's the best way to play a bad hand?...

The sign of a good decision is the multiplicity of reasons for it.

To leave the apple unpicked—that was sin.

How long ago did she die, Wyatt? Morgan pressed. Is it nine years now? Eight, Wyatt said, halfway between stubborn and sad. I promised to love her all my life, Morg. I meant to keep my word. That shut Morgan up, but Doc's eyes opened and he gazed at Wyatt for a long time. What? Wyatt asked. That is your ghost life, Wyatt, Doc told him, and closed his eyes again. That is the life you might have had. This is the life you've got.

No children? Emilio asked them one evening, to his own surprise. Nope. Turned out, we don't breed well in captivity, George said, unembarrassed.

And Johannes Voelker is the last man on Earth I'd choose as a spiritual director for Sandoz, he thought. Shit or get off the pot, my son.

We are none of us born into Eden, Doc said reasonably. World's plenty evil when we get here. Question is, what's the best way to play a bad hand?

I never would have shot him

Regret because you really can't control your life. Most of the time you don't act; you react.

it was dawning on me how uphill a poet's path was, and I confessed to her that if I had to be the choice between being happy or being a poet, I'd choose to be happy.

Most morally ominous: from the second you choose one event over another, you're shaping the past's meaning.

You can be a slave to current magazines or a slave to history

If you have a difficult decision to make, never force it, Rob had told his boys. Weigh each alternative singly, without prejudice. If they seem to balance evenly, no advantage one way or the other, do not be deceived. There is an advantage one way or the other. If you wait long enough, it will become apparent to you and suddenly the decision will be made without difficulty, and it will be right.

And that I did not give to anyone the responsibility for my life. It is mine. I made it. And can do what I want to with it. Give it back, someday, without bitterness, to the wild and weedy dunes.

What will you do with your one precious, wild life?

Not anyone who says I'm going to be careful and smart in the matters of love, who says, I'm going to choose slowly, but only those lovers who didn't choose at all but were, as it were, chosen by something invisible and powerful and uncontrollable and beautiful and possibly even unsuitable-- only those know what I'm talking about in this talking about love.

Let the path become where I choose to walk, and not otherwise established.

that is to say, having chosen to claim my life, I have made for myself, out of work and love, a handsome life.

What I want to say is that the past is the past, and the present is what your life is, and you are capable of choosing what that will be, darling citizen. So come to the pond, or the river of your imagination, or the harbor of your longing, and put your lips to the world. And live your life.

else the responsibility for your life.

The television has two instruments that control it. I get confused. The washer asks me, do you want regular or delicate? Honestly, I just want clean. Everything is like that. I won't even mention cell phones. I can turn on the light of the lamp beside my chair Where a book is waiting, but that's about it. Oh yes, and I can strike a match and make fire.

And that I did not give to anyone the responsibility for my life. It is mine. I made it. And can do what I want to with it. Live it. Give it back, someday, without bitterness, to the wild and weedy dunes.