Act Like Nothing Happened Quotes & Sayings

In '94, I started writing a novel about an enormous terrorist act that destroyed the United States. The novel takes place twenty years after this destruction, with all the stuff that we're dealing with now - a dirty war, the disappeared, the concept of terrorism. Anyway, 9/11 happened some years into the process, and I was like, OK, I don't have a novel. — Junot Diaz

I'll say this much for guys, gay or straight: it's easy to pick up a friendship and act like nothing's happened. I can only imagine how quickly Christianity would have collapsed had Jesus and the Apostles been a bunch of women. Jesus would never have gotten over the fact that they abandoned him during the Crucifixion. 'I can't believe you guys would do that to me. I'm never speaking to you again. Ever!' Then, out of spite, he would have run off and joined up with the Zoroastrians. — Ken Wheaton

What won't work - what can't work - is to act like the last years never happened, and that the survival of the [mass media] industry will be found by hiding content behind walled gardens. Instead of sticking their finger in the dike, trying to hold back the flow of innovation, companies need to ride the rapids of progress and seize the opportunities it provides. — Arianna Huffington

The body of the Word, then, being a real human body, in spite of its having been uniquely formed from a virgin, was of itself mortal and, like other bodies, liable to death. But the indwelling of the Word loosed it from this natural liability, so that corruption could not touch it. Thus is happened that two opposite marvels took place at once: the death of all was consummated in the Lord's body; yet, because the Word was in it, death and corruption were in the same act utterly abolished. — Athanasius Of Alexandria

Thus it is that four strangers sit in the red chairs, strip off their socks, plunge their feet into the ink-baths, and hold hands under an amphibian stare. This is the first act of anyone entering Palimpsest: Orlande will take your coats, sit you down, and make you family. She will fold you four together like Quartos. She will draw you each a card - look, for you it is the Broken Ship reversed, which signifies Perversion, a Long Journey without Enlightenment, Gout - and tie your hands together with red yarn. Wherever you go in Palimpsest, you are bound to these strangers who happened onto Orlande's salon just when you did, and you will go nowhere, eat no capon or dormouse, drink no oversweet port that they do not also taste, and they will visit no whore that you do not also feel beneath you, and until that ink washes from your feet - which, given that Orlande is a creature of the marsh and no stranger to mud, will be some time - you cannot breathe but that they breathe also. — Catherynne M Valente

Sometimes when you go through things, you bottle them up inside and try to act like everything is fine. Because you want to forget they ever happened. But you have to trust me when I say that doesn't work. In order for you to move on, you have to let them out. — Gwen Cole

So just be normal," he says, "at least for today. Let's pretend I'm not a mess, let's pretend you're not angry. Let's act like we're friends and forget what happened." I don't want to pretend. I don't want to be friends. I don't want to forget. I am trying to remember. — E. Lockhart

Stop trying to act like nothing happened. Because something did, and you can't make it go back to being the same — Jodi Picoult

It was as if whatever had happened had reached some kind of limit. It was like finding the gateway to the past unguarded, unforbidden because it didn't have to be. Built into the act of return finally was this glittering mosaic of doubt. Something like what Sauncho's colleagues in marine insurance liked to call inherent vice. — Thomas Pynchon

Did you really ever think of me when you were kidnapped? Because I look at all the things you went through, and my first instinct is to shield you from my problems - but sometimes you act like nothing happened to you at all. — Lia Habel

It occurred to me that the act of writing had led me through a swirl of memories that might otherwise have ended in paralysis or worse. By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, like the night in the shit field, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain. — Tim O'Brien

I used to feel spiritually inferior because I had not experienced the more spectacular manifestations of the Spirit and could not point to any bona fide "miracles" in my life. Increasingly, though, I have come to see that what I value may differ greatly from what God values. Jesus, often reluctant to perform miracles, considered it progress when he departed earth and entrusted the mission to his flawed disciples. Like a proud parent, God seems to take more delight as a spectator of the bumbling achievements of stripling children than in any self-display of omnipotence.
From God's perspective, if I may speculate, the great advance in human history may be what happened at Pentecost, which restored the direct correspondence of spirit to Spirit that had been lost in Eden. I want God to act in direct, impressive, irrefutable ways. God wants to "share power" with the likes of me, accomplishing his work through people, not despite them. — Philip Yancey

Slapping a catchy acronym like the JOBS Act on a piece of legislation makes it more difficult for politicians to oppose it - and indeed that's what happened with the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act. — Steven Rattner

Dreaming is not merely an act of communication (or coded communication, if you like); it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself. Our dreams prove that to imagine
to dream about things that have not happened
is among mankind's deepest needs. Herein lies the danger. If dreams were not beautiful, they would be quickly forgotten. — Milan Kundera

The answers would come to her. No need to rush them. Ten years ago, but so well remember it was as if it had happened yesterday, she had suffered the repercussions brought on by thoughtless rushing. This time, she would wait. Not wait for him to act, like she had been doing these past months. She would wait to see how she would act. — Anne Cherian

He looked down at her and rolled his eyes then looked over and saw me approaching with the chain. "What happened to her?" I asked peeking around him. "I knocked her out. I got tired of listening to her whimpering. I mean if you're a cold blooded killer, act like it." He — Yolanda Olson

Out of your awareness you cannot become soldiers in a war because you will be able to see, with clear eyes, that you are going to kill people - people who have done no harm to you personally, people just like you. They have their children, their wives, their mothers, their old fathers to take care of - and you are killing the person just to get a gold medal. Your gun will slip out of your hand, and that will be an act of awareness. And you will feel tremendously blissful that it happened; even if you are being shot your death will be a glory, a peace, an adventure, a journey into a new world. — Rajneesh

The greatest tragedy in your life will not be the death of a loved one or a natural disaster; those things hurt like hell and devastate to the core. But loss like that is part of life. What's not necessary and is therefore most tragic is the demise of your truest identity, your dying before you're dead, the moments when you let the words and judgments of others define who you are instead of rising above that pain to be the person you were meant to be. No matter what has happened in your past, you are still capable of becoming a better version of who you are at this moment. Think right. Believe the voice inside of you that speaks the truth. You are a divine marvel. Act like it. Live like it. — Toni Sorenson

Don't act like you haven't been thinking about that kiss every single day since it happened. Don't pretend you haven't thought once about what it would be like to do it again. To do more. — Karina Halle

Superior, do you understand me? These are white people. They are not like you, or me or us. They have the power to hurt you ... and sometimes it's fun to them when they do. Their power is not because they are smart ... it's because ... something happened sometime ... started somewhere and they got on top of the world. They got the power. The only power you got is to learn to live with them, learn to read their minds ... til you can do better. They don't treat each other right ... so don't you look to be treated right. You hear me? Sometimes there's good white people ... but don't you act like that til you know that. — J. California Cooper

I like him a lot.... I think I might love him. And it obviously isn't everything, but being the way I am has been a huge part of my life. It's easy to act like my past never happened, but it feels like I've put up this wall around my heart. — Meredith Russo

Blue was in a terrible mood. Something had clearly happened while she was on shift, but Gansey's attempts to prise it from her had established only that it was neither about the toga party nor him. Now, she was the one driving the Pig, which had a threefold benefit. For starters, Gansey couldn't imagine anyone whose mood wouldn't be marginally lifted by driving a Camaro. Second, Blue said she never got a chance to practise driving in Fox Way's communal vehicle. And third, most importantly, Gansey was outrageously and eternally driven to distraction by the image of her behind the wheel of his car. Ronan and Adam weren't with them, so there was no one to catch them in what felt like an incredibly indecent act. — Maggie Stiefvater

I know what a human brain preserved in formaldehyde looks like," I said, "We've got to get out of here. Go to the party, act as though nothing's happened. He can't suspect that we know."

"How can I act like papa doesn't have a brain in a hatbox? — Megan Shepherd

And sometimes when I tilt my head,
in that deep sleep, I realize I forgot to tell you
what happened at work, in the thick of,
all other rubbish daily stuff.
And then I hate to believe, it's more than
5 hours to hit the snooze, and now suddenly
the night seems longer- than any lazy afternoon.
I want to talk to you now, before I forget
How I have imagined you will react, word by word,
And act by act.
But I kind of manage dozing off in a few minutes,
And I clearly forget it morning,
This entire instance.

But tonight- when you are asleep, and I am
Wide awake like a snake, I don't say I forgot any
Buzz to discuss, but I have this insane gush
Of words of tell you I how much I have loved you through.
Precisely none of this should be forgotten,
So I decide to write this poem and tell you,
I am so much in my moment of truth. — Jasleen Kaur Gumber

When Sarsine saw Kestrel, her eyes narrowed to mere cracks and Kestrel became very conscious that Sarsine was a tall woman. "For someone with a reputation for being so smart," Sarsine said, "you act like you haven't a thought in your head. Did it never occur to you that I'd worry when you disappeared from the city with no word?"
"I didn't exactly mean to leave."
"Oh, so it just happened."
"Yes."
"The gods made you do it."
Kestrel laughed. "Maybe they did." Then, earnestly, she said, "I'm sorry, Sarsine."
Sarsine folded her arms. "Then make it up to me."
"How?"
Sarsine's expression softened. Now there was an inquisitive gleam in her eye. "Start with the night you left. End with this very moment. And tell me everything."
So Kestrel did. — Marie Rutkoski