Control Anything Quotes & Sayings

I have never directed anything for the stage. I studied for three years in the theater, and it was a very, very scary experience to direct live, being so vulnerable without the possibility to control things, to be so exposed. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Gender is used as a control mechanism that's just wrong. Gender is never anything to struggle with; gender is something to play with. Once you're free of the rules that all these hierarchical, oppressive systems place on gender, that's the tricky part. — Kate Bornstein

Life is scary, I admit, but we do not have anything to fear. Christ is ultimately in control and will take us on the ultimate adventure if we allow Him to guide our footsteps. — Beau Jason McGlynn

Maitre d's are at the financial spigot of the restaurant, meaning they control who gets in and who doesn't, but aside from that, they don't do anything. And yet they get paid as much as the highest-paid people in the place. — Joe Bastianich

The simple truth? History was never simply history. If it was anything it was another collar - another means to control. — Chris Galford

Emily would have to be eased into sex, and I wasn't quite sure I'd have the self-control necessary to 'ease' her into anything once I was actually inside of her. — Kelley R. Martin

Listen, I'm about to sound like the shallowest person on the face of the earth right now, but you can't control your grandma's disease. You don't make it any better or any worse...One day, your grandma isn't going to remember anything. Hopefully it's still a while away, but it's coming and there's nothing you can do about it. So, there's no use feeling bad about something you can't control. You just have to have to enjoy how things are now. — Christina Daley

The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution. I am an Enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but Coin. If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered. — Thomas Jefferson

English fans love spectacular players like Alan Shearer and that is exactly what United have now signed. He has magic in his boots. The first thing you notice about him is that he is incredibly quick and very, very powerful for such a young man. He has great, close control and his technique is excellent. He believes he can do anything with the ball, and that confidence makes him very special indeed. — Cristiano Ronaldo

[Y]ou can't control everything. Anything, really. Like the food we've been making. We can follow the recipe exactly as your grandmother wrote it, do everything exactly
or almost exactly
as she had, and the dish can come out so-so instead of amazing. Or it can come out amazing when you were expecting very little. — Melissa Senate

Here is a paradox for the creator: if you love your work, let it go.15 Because if you grip it too tightly, you will strangle it. If you hold it in open hands, you may actually find that the work has a life of its own. Creativity is more about listening and following than it is about forcing or manipulating. The truth for the creator is that you have a very limited control over anything in the world, even your own creation. You can work on it. You can help mold and shape its form. But there will come a point in the creative process where your creation is what it is. There comes a point where there is nothing left to do but to rest. To open your hands and let it go. You cannot control how others will receive it. They — Michael Gungor

I think intellectual property is more like land, and copyright violation is more like trespass. Even though you don't take anything away from the landowner when you trespass, most people understand and respect the laws that make it illegal. The real crime in copyright violation is not the making of the copies, it's the expropriation of the creator's right to control the creation. — Brad Templeton

Pain is the feeling. Suffering is the effect the pain inflicts. If one can endure pain, one can live without suffering. If one can withstand pain, one can withstand anything. If one can learn to control pain, one can learn to control oneself. — James Frey

She wanted to sit in the pub with him the way Sam did with Steve, the way Matty and Karen had done last weekend with their boyfriends, to hold his hand as they walked down the street, to be able to smile in public at him, not this controlled, agonisingly formal behaviour.
It struck her, this week in particular, that she was completely isolated. She couldn't talk to him, she couldn't talk to her friends, and she didn't know when that would change. And she couldn't do anything about it; she was weak, because she loved him too much, not that that was weakness, but - she was powerless. — Harriet Evans

Because try as I might, perfect doesn't guarantee me anything. I can't control whether other people will want me or love me or even like me. I can only control how I feel about myself. — Cora Carmack

Anger ... it's a paralyzing emotion ... you can't get anything done. People sort of think it's an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling - I don't think it's any of that - it's helpless ... it's absence of control - and I need all of my skills, all of the control, all of my powers ... and anger doesn't provide any of that - I have no use for it whatsoever.
[Interview with CBS radio host Don Swaim, September 15, 1987.] — Toni Morrison

Science is possible only where situations repeat themselves, or where you have some control over them, and where do you have more repetition and control than in the army? A cube would not be a cube if it were not just as rectangular at nine o'clock as at seven.
The same kind of rules work for keeping the planets in orbit as in ballistics. We'd have no way of understanding or judging anything if things flitted past us only once. Anything that has to be valid and have a name must be repeatable, it must be represented by many specimens, and if you had never seen the moon before, you'd think it was a flashlight.Incidentally, the reason God is such an embarrassment to science is that he was seen only once, at the Creation, before there were any trained observers around. — Robert Musil

Whatever I decide will not work. It's what people want that will work. So no one decided whether you become a vegetarian or anything else. What determines that is the availability of food. If we run out of vegetation due to floods or natural disasters, people will consume meat and if we run out of meat they will consume vegetables. I have no control over that. That would be up to people. — Jacque Fresco

I'm the most experienced cinematographer in this medium, so there's no point in having that extra conversation in the middle of the loop. You're making the film in relation to what's happening now, and you can't really affect what's happening now. It's not like you're in control of anything in front of the camera. If you're calling yourself the director and you're not the cinematographer, I think you're kidding yourself. — David Douglas

When you say or do anything to please, get, keep, influence, or control anyone or anything, fear is the cause and pain is the result. — Byron Katie

Let's not think about anything like that. No point stressing over what hasn't happened. Just work on what you can control now. — Richelle Mead

All the time. A few months ago I came really close to losing it, I was getting really paranoid. And then I started a new job, things fixed themselves. I can't turn my back on the situation and ignore it. If tomorrow I say: "Okay, I've had enough, we're stopping everything" it won't change anything. Might as well try to accept it and stay zen as I have no control over it. — Robert Pattinson

The real damage is done by those millions who want to 'survive.' The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won't take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don't like to make waves - or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It's the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you'll keep it under control. If you don't make any noise, the bogeyman won't find you. But it's all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn. — Sophie Scholl

Humans will believe anything you say provided you do not exhibit the smallest shadow of diffidence; like animals, they can detect the smallest crack in your confidence before you express it. The trick is to be as smooth as possible in personal manners. It is much easier to signal self-confidence if you are exceedingly polite and friendly; you can control people without having to offend their sensitivity. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

If you're poor and ignorant, with a child, you're a slave. Meaning that you're never going to get out of it. These women are in bondage to a kind of slavery that the 13th Amendment just didn't deal with. The old master provided food, clothing and health care to the slaves because he wanted them to get up and go to work in the morning. And so on welfare: you get food, clothing and shelter
you get survival, but you can't really do anything else. You can't control your life. — Joycelyn Elders

What saves me from being a drug addict is sort of the opposite. It's me realizing that I don't really control anything. — Steve Earle

All that you really want in life is to change how you feel. Again, all your emotions are nothing but biochemical storms in your brain, and you are in control of them at any moment in time. You can feel ecstasy right now, or you can feel pain or depression or overwhelmed - it's all up to you. You don't need drugs or anything else to do it. — Tony Robbins

Know that you have complete control over what you put in your mouth. No one ever ate anything by accident. — Charles Poliquin

Assumptions can blind you; hypotheses can guide you. Good negotiators expect surprises; great negotiators reveal the surprises. Negotiation should be seen as a process of discovery. If you think you're too smart to discover anything new, then you will be a terrible negotiator. Until you know who or what you are dealing with, you are actually in the dark and should proceed with caution. Listening well does not come easily to most. By truly listening, you will disarm your opponent, giving them a sense of calm and a feeling of safety. Talking about wants gives us an illusion of control; needs are required to survive and make us feel vulnerable. The biggest mistake a negotiator can make is to rush things. By slowing down the process, you are able to calm down the situation. A soothing but confident voice helps in confrontational situations. Mirroring relies on the fact that we fear what's different and are drawn to what's similar. — Book Summary

As a single parent, I had become tyrannical in order to survive, and anything I couldn't control caused me enormous anxiety. As a naturally untidy, disorganised man who never made lists or kept receipts, morphing into someone who could take care of a toddler on his own may have caused me to overcompensate a little. — Simon Van Booy

Can anything be more idiotic than certain people who boast of their foresight? They keep themselves officiously preoccupied in order to improve their lives; they spend their lives in organizing their lives. They direct their purposes with an eye to a distant future. But putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune's control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? — Seneca.

Secrecy is the keystone to all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy and censorship. When any government or church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man who has been hoodwinked in this fashion; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, whose mind is free. No, not the rack nor the atomic bomb, not anything. You can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him. — Robert A. Heinlein

With anything in life, I think that's when you start stressing yourself out - when you start worrying about the things that are out of your control. What I can control is being at my best every day and having no regrets at the end of each day. That's what I plan on doing. — Scott Tolzien

God, Abby, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, he said as he stared out the bay window onto the lake. The serene morning calm of the water was laughing at his riptide of emotions. In all his life, he'd never been as tortured as he was now. Rip his limbs apart, whip his back raw, waterboard him, anything but this. Because this ... this was far worse. It was her pain. Her torture that was destroying his sanity. He had no control over it. He couldn't stop it.
He hated that he wasn't strong enough to withstand this. Most of all, he hated that he cared so much about her.
Cause he knew.
He knew one certainty in all this.
She had managed to touch a piece of his ice-cold heart. And it wasn't letting him go. — Cindy Paterson

I think I'm good with actors. I like directing actors. I also like to show up and just do an acting gig. Where I'm just a hired gun, I don't have to have an opinion on anything.I never got involved in all this stuff because I wanted to control stuff; I got involved in writing and producing because I wasn't getting interesting acting gigs. In a way I'm grateful that I didn't get interesting roles, because it made me pull my finger out and do some work. — Steve Coogan

He who has learnt to control his tongue has attained self-control in a great measure. When such a person speaks he will be heard with respect and attention. His words will be remembered, for they will be good and true. When one who is established in truth prays with a pure heart, then things he really needs come to him when they are really needed: he does not have to run after them. The man firmly established in truth gets the fruit of his actions without apparently doing anything. God, the source of all truth, supplies his needs and looks after his welfare. — B.K.S. Iyengar

You know what? I never really factor Hollywood into anything. I'm a black actor, so I can't really control what Hollywood thinks. I gotta go do my thing, and my jokes have got to be funny. Whatever I do has got to be great. — Jamie Foxx

Using MRI scans, scientists can now read thoughts circulating in our brains. Scientists can also insert a chip into the brain of a patient who is totally paralyzed and connect it to a computer, so that through thought alone that patient can surf the web, read and write e-mails, play video games, control their wheelchair, operate household appliances, and manipulate mechanical arms. In fact, such patients can do anything a normal person can do via a computer. — Michio Kaku

Don't let them see how fast you really are; don't let them see the control you have, the ability you have to read them and the situation. Let them think you're out of control. Let them think you are going to be easy. Because they will be anything but, and you need to be ready for the fight of your life. — Shannon Mayer

For twenty-one years, I have been paralyzed by the fear of what this society will do with me if they ever were to know of the thoughts that I continually push away. For more than two decades, I have made a choice to be straight. After all, it's as easy as making a choice, isn't it? This culture has made sure that I know that. Anyone who is anything other than straight was just someone deceived by the devil. He is unnatural. He is confused. He is mistaken. He is weak. He can control it if he desires to control it. Such a compelling and ongoing argument has been made that I have always trusted it.
I believed that if I hid it long enough, and ran from it long enough, and refused to acknowledge it for long enough, I could indeed succeed at living up to their decrees. I believed that I could force myself to never be anything else. — Dan Pearce

Fear is the greatest obstacle to learning. But fear is your best friend. Fear is like fire. If you learn to control it, you let it work for you. If you don't learn to control it, it'll destroy you and everything around you. Like a snowball on a hill, you can pick it up and throw it or do anything you want with it before it starts rolling down, but once it rolls down and gets so big, it'll crush you to death. So one must never allow fear to develop and build up without having control over it, because if you don't you won't be able to achieve your objective or save your life. — Mike Tyson

If an emotion can't change the condition or the situation you're dealing with, it is likely an unhelpful emotion. Or, quite possibly, a destructive one. But it's what I feel. Right, no one said anything about not feeling it. No one said you can't ever cry. Forget "manliness." If you need to take a moment, by all means, go ahead. Real strength lies in the control or, as Nassim Taleb put it, the domestication of one's emotions, not in pretending they don't exist. — Ryan Holiday

We have the ability to choose, we are God's higher form of creation, we surpass all other forms of life and we don't use the mental faculties we've been given. We don't even understand what we are capable of doing. School doesn't teach us anything about ourselves. So the more we learn about ourselves, the more we take control over our life. — Bob Proctor

Time management requires self-discipline, self-mastery and self-control more than anything else. — Brian Tracy

I love money because money is power, the power to invite my friends for lunch and pay the bill without expecting anything in return, the power to give twenty dollars to beggar just because I can, the power to offer an expensive remote control helicopter to children and create a huge smile in them, the power to wait for the ones you love to love you back just because you don't need to waste your time like they do. — Robin Sacredfire

You asked if I thought my fiction had changed anything in the culture and the answer is no. Sure, there's been some scandal, but people are scandalized all the time; it's a way of life for them. It doesn't mean a thing. If you ask if I want my fiction to change anything in the culture, the answer is still no. What I want is to possess my readers while they are reading my book
if I can, to possess them in ways that other writers don't. Then let them return, just as they were, to a world where everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt, and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise, to have set loose in them the consciousness that's otherwise conditioned and hemmed in by all that isn't fiction. This is something that every child, smitten by books, understands immediately, though it's not at all a childish idea about the importance of reading. — Philip Roth

YOUR lack of control is not due to the big burdens, but to your permitting the little frets and cares and burdens to accumulate. If anything vex you, deal with that and get that righted with Me before you allow yourself to speak to, or meet anybody, or to undertake any new duty. Look upon yourself more as performing My errands, and coming back quickly to Me to tell Me that message is delivered, that task done. Then, with no feeling of responsibility as to result (your only responsibility was to see the duty done), go out again, rejoicing at still more to do for My Sake. — A.J. Russell

If you're willing to do it as good as you're willing to think up to do it, that's what your mind is there for, and you deliver excellence right now, now being the only moment you can control or do anything with or be creative with. — Robert Forster

Though the evidence suggests that most people are caught up on this frustrating treadmill of rising expectations, many individuals have found ways to escape it. These are people who, regardless of their material conditions, have been able to improve the quality of their lives, who are satisfied, and who have a way of making those around them also a bit more happy. Such individuals lead vigorous lives, are open to a variety of experiences, keep on learning until the day they die, and have strong ties and commitments to other people and to the environment in which they live. They enjoy whatever they do, even if tedious or difficult; they are hardly ever bored, and they can take in stride anything that comes their way. Perhaps their greatest strength is that they are in control of their lives. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

If she'd learned anything from her father, it was that composure was control. Even if it was just an illusion. — Victoria Schwab

Feeling threatened can easily lead to feelings of anger and hostility and from there to outright aggressive behavior, driven by deep instincts to protect your position and maintain your sense of things being under control. When things do feel "under control," we might feel content for a moment. But when they go out of control again, or even seem to be getting out of control, our deepest insecurities can erupt. At such times we might even act in ways that are self-destructive and hurtful to others. And we will feel anything but content and at peace within ourselves. — Jon Kabat-Zinn

I nod and I promise I will report any hallucinations to my mother, but I do not really believe I will hallucinate no matter what type of drugs he gives me, especially since I know he will not be giving me LSD or anything like that. I figure weaker people probably complain about their drugs, but I am not weak and I can control my mind pretty well. — Matthew Quick

Kit raised his eyebrows. 'You mean we should tell [Carmela] that being hot on Ronan is actually being hot on both a cranky Celto-Goth hottie and a senior Power-That-Is who spent most of the last ten years on earth wearing a macaw costume?'
Nita looked at him.
'Nah,' Kit said at last. 'Let's not say anything. Let's just let it play out.' And then Kit broke up laughing.
Nita's look grew annoyed. 'You're enjoying the idea,' she said.
'Oh yeah!' Kit managed to say. It took a while to get control of his laughter. — Diane Duane

Are you saying you don't want anything from me?"
"I want this. I want our arrangement. I want you ... " I sucked in a breath, feeling my control slip. " ... to fuck it out of me."
"Fuck what out, Jocelyn?"
Couldn't he see it? Was my mask really that good? I shrugged. "All the nothing — Samantha Young

You mean machines are like humans?"
I shook my head. "No, not like humans. With machines the feeling is, well, more finite. It doesn't go any further.
With humans it's different. The feeling is always changing. Like if you love somebody, the love is always shifting or wavering. It's always questioning or inflating or disappearing or denying or hurting. And the thing is, you can't do anything about it, you can't control it. With my Subaru, it's not so complicated. — Haruki Murakami

I try to remind myself that we are never promised anything, and that what control we can exert is not over the events that befall us but how we address ourselves to them. — Jeanne DuPrau

Marlowe's the name. The guy you've been trying to follow around for a couple of days."
"I ain't following anybody, doc."
"This jalopy is. Maybe you can't control it. Have it your own way. I'm now going to eat breakfast in the coffee shop across the street: orange juice, bacon and eggs, toast, honey, three or four cups of coffee, and a toothpick. I am then going up to my office, which is on the seventh floor of the building right opposite you. If you have anything that's worrying you beyond endurance, drop up and chew it over. I'll only be oiling my machine gun. — Raymond Chandler

Year by year, his life wasn't amounting to anything at all...And yet, another part of him had expanded: his self-consciousness, his self-pity -- oh, the tediousness of it...Shouldn't he return to a life where he might slice his own importance, to where he might relinquish this overrated control over his own destiny and perhaps be subtracted from its determination altogether? He might even experience that greatest luxury of not noticing himself at all. — Kiran Desai

His mouth started to speak, but his brain decided it hadn't got anything to say yet and shut it again. His brain then started to contend with the problem of what his eyes told it they were looking at, but in doing so relinquished control of the mouth which promptly fell open again. Once more gathering up the jaw, his brain lost control of his left hand which then wandered around in an aimless fashion. For a second or so the brain tried to catch the left hand without letting go of the mouth and simultaneously tried to think about what was buried in the ice, which is probably why the legs went and Arthur dropped restfully to the ground. — Douglas Adams

Sex Ed - when I finally got to take it - was all about biology and birth control and nothing about anything that actually goes on between people. — E. Lockhart

What I can control is how I react. I can't control anything else. — Kelsey Grammer

My will can control anything that's empty. — Michael Ende

No one can stop or control your thought process or your thinking. You can think anything you want. But that doesn't seem to be the point. The thinking process has to be directed into a certain approach ... not in accord with certain dogma, philosophy, or concepts. Instead, one has to know the thinker itself. — Chogyam Trungpa

Anything under God's control is never out of control. — Charles R. Swindoll

None of it lay fallow and neglected, none of it under another's control; for being an extremely thrifty guardian of his time he never found anything for which it was worth exchanging. So he had enough time; but those into whose lives the public have made great inroads inevitably have too little. — Seneca.

Matter does not control us; we control matter through our thinking and choosing. We cannot control the events and circumstances of life but we can control our reactions. In fact, we can control our reactions to anything, and in doing so, we change our brains. It's not easy; it is hard work, but it can be done through our thoughts and choices. — Caroline Leaf

Whether I will be remembered at all, I really don't get to choose, unless I shoot someone famous. It's not really anything I have much control over. — Henry Rollins

You're too good for me."
He laughed. "Are we talking about the same person? The selfish fucker who curses and yells, blows up cars and beats up people, because he has a temper he can't control? You know, the one who drinks like a fish and fries his brain with drugs? That person is too good for you?"
She shook her head. "I'm talking about the boy who shared his chocolate bar with me when he probably never shared anything before, who gave me his mama's favourite book, because he thought I deserved to read. The one who seems to be constantly fixing me up when I get hurt. I'm talking about the boy who treats me like I'm a regular girl, the one who desperately needs his bedroom cleaned and laundry washed but chooses to live in a mess and wear dirty clothes, because he's too polite to ask the girl he kisses for help."
"Wow," Carmine said. "I'd like to meet that motherfucker. — J.M. Darhower

What if you let go of every bit of control and every urge that you have, right down to the most infinitesimal urge to control anything, anywhere, including anything that may be happening with you at this moment? If you were able to give up control absolutely, totally, and completely, then you would be a spiritually free being. — Adyashanti

When I was teaching basketball, I urged my players to try their hardest to improve on that very day, to make that practice a masterpiece.
Too often we get distracted by what is outside our control. You can't do anything about yesterday. The door to the past has been shut and the key thrown away. You can do nothing about tomorrow. It is yet to come. However, tomorrow is in large part determined by what you do today. So make today a masterpiece. You have control over that.
This rule is even more important in life than basketball. You have to apply yourself each day to become a little better. By applying yourself to the task of becoming a little better each and every day over a period of time, you will become a lot better. Only then will you will be able to approach being the best you can be. It begins by trying to make each day count and knowing you can never make up for a lost day. — John Wooden

Most libertarians agree that all rights are, in effect, property rights, beginning with this fundamental right to self-ownership and control of one's own life. As owners of their own lives, individuals are completely free to do absolutely anything they wish with them provided, of course, that it doesn't violate the identical right of others whether the people around them approve of what they do or not. — L. Neil Smith

The universe, she sees, exists as it does to not simply humble, but abuse, denigrate, and humiliate the minds it was so expertly commissioned to birth. This is malevolence on an unfathomable scale, expressed through immeasurable waste stretched out between distances and times that cannot be understood. It is cruel, but not hateful, depraved, but not vengeful. This is considered pain, carefully presented in careless proportions to blister and disgrace anyone - or anything - that might momentarily dare to ever privately contemplate it is in control. — John Zande

I exercise strong self control. I never drink anything stronger than gin before breakfast. — W.C. Fields

You cannot control anything yet you can affect on everything. — Maliheh Sadat Razavi

A pin lies in wait for every bubble. And when the two eventually meet, a new wave of investors learns some very old lessons: First, many in Wall Street (a community in which quality control is not prized) will sell investors anything they will buy. Second, speculation is most dangerous when it looks easiest — Warren Buffett

Tate did anything he wanted to and expected me to put up with it or give into it. This was annoying. I was all for Tate being a macho man, badass, bounty-hunting biker because all that was immensely attractive but I'd spent more than ten years being in the control of a man. I wasn't looking for that kind of thing again no matter what form it came in. That said, as Caroline noted, Brad thought he was all that and wasn't but Tate was. No man liked a bitchy, nagging, argumentative shrew and, I would guess, definitely not a man like Tate. If I didn't cool that too maybe I'd turn him off and lose him. — Kristen Ashley

A leader did not slump. A leader was in control. Even when he least felt like he controlled anything. Especially then. — Brandon Sanderson

I think the issue of women's choice is essential for a woman being able to have their lives - if they cannot control their own bodies by choosing if or when to have a child, then they cannot control their working life or anything around them. — Tavis Smiley

If I had it my way, Harper and I wouldn't be standing in this room right now, we wouldn't be pressed against each other. I would just be her roommate's brother who pisses her off. But when it came to this girl, I was no longer in control of anything. She consumed me in every way possible. My brain was telling me to run from her, to keep her safe, to keep her from someone like me, but she had my heart completely, and that was winning out. I wanted her, I wanted her to want me and only me. Not Brandon even though I knew he was the better choice for her. But that just didn't matter to me at the moment; all I cared about was the fact that one of my best friends was winning over the only girl that would ever mean anything to me. - Chase Grayson. — Molly McAdams

You are out of control, Rand al'Thor,' she declared.
I do what must be done,' he said, speaking now from the shadows. He sounded exhausted ...
I hate what you just did, Rand,' Nynaeve snarled. 'No, "Hate" isn't strong enough. I loathe what you've done. What has happened to you?'
Test him!' Rand whispered, voice dangerous. 'Before condemning me, let us first determine if my sins have achieved anything beyond my own damnation. — Brandon Sanderson

You reach a certain age when reality grabs you by the scruff of the neck and shouts in your face:"Hey, look, this is what life is." And you have to open your eyes and look at it, listen to it, smell it: people who don't like you, things you don't want to do, things that hurt, things that scare you, questions without answers, feelings you don't understand, feelings you don't want but have no control over.
Reality.
When you gradually come to realise that all that stuff in books, films, television, magazines, newspapers, comics - it's all rubbish. It's got nothing to do with anything. It's all made up. It doesn't happen like that. It's not real. It means nothing. Reality is what you see when you look out of the window of a bus: dour faces, sad and temporary lives, millions of cars, metal, bricks, glass, rain, cruel laughter, ugliness, dirt, bad teeth, crippled pigeons, little kids in pushchairs who've already forgotten how to smile ... — Kevin Brooks

Technically, web browsers can control what users see, and sites using Javascript can overwrite anything coming from the original authors. Browsers heavily utilize Javascript to create an interactive Internet; sites like YouTube, Facebook, and Gmail could be crippled without it. — Ben Shapiro

If you have to dwell on anything, think of noble pure thoughts. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Our time has been distinguished, more than by anything else, by a mastery, a control, of the external world, and by an almost total forgetfulness of the internal world. If one estimates human evolution from the point of view of knowledge of the external world, then we are in many respects progressing. If our estimate is from the point of view of the internal world, and of oneness of internal and external, then the judgment must be very different. — R.D. Laing

We all have stories we tell ourselves. We tell ourselves we are too fat, too ugly, or too old, or too foolish. We tell ourselves these stories because they allow us to excuse our actions, and they allow us to pass off the responsibility for things we have done-maybe to something within our control, but anything other than the decisions we have made. — Eleanor Brown

I may not be in control of anything else, but I am in control of my body. — Karen Carpenter

We often think that the ideal stance is to give up one's life for a dream: nothing could be further from the truth. In order to achieve our dream, we need to preserve our life and we must, therefore, know how to avoid those things that threaten us. The more we plan our steps, the more chance there is that we will go wrong, because we are failing to take into consideration four things: other people, life's teachings, passion and calm. The more we feel we are in control of things, the farther off we are from controlling anything. — Paulo Coelho

If your situtation is the fault of anything or anyone else ... there is very little hope and absolutely zero power over your own life.
Responsibility is about hope and control. And ... who doesn't want hope for a greater future that their choices control? ... Most folks look for their car keys with more energy than they search for the wisdom that can change their lives. — Andy Andrews

My dear, religion is a null area in the law. A church can do anything any organization can do - and has no restrictions. It pays no taxes, need not publish records, is effectively immune to search, inspection, or control - and a church is anything that calls itself a church. Attempts have been made to distinguish between 'real' religions entitled to immunities, and 'cults.' It can't be done, short of establishing a state religion . . . a cure worse than the disease. — Robert A. Heinlein

I was one hundred percent not in control of this situation. This girl fucking owned me right now. I sat on that bed waiting for her to give me the time of day. I didn't necessarily like this feeling, but I suffered through it ... for her. I convinced myself that I'd probably suffer through pretty much anything for this girl. — J. Sterling

We are the girls with anxiety disorders, filled appointment books, five-year plans. We take ourselves very, very seriously. We are the peacemakers, the do-gooders, the givers, the savers. We are on time, overly prepared, well read, and witty, intellectually curious, always moving ... We pride ourselves on getting as little sleep as possible and thrive on self-deprivation. We drink coffee, a lot of it. We are on birth control, Prozac, and multivitamins ... We are relentless, judgmental with ourselves, and forgiving to others. We never want to be as passive-aggressive as our mothers, never want to marry men as uninspired as our fathers ... We are the daughters of the feminists who said, "You can be anything," and we heard, "You have to be everything. — Courtney Martin

You can't control what the other athlete is going to do; you can't control anything except for your competition and how you execute the race or how you execute the task. — Michael Johnson

According to the virginity movement, men have no self-control when it comes to anything sexual. — Jessica Valenti

We create our own future by our own beliefs, which control our actions. A
strong enough belief system, a sufficiently powerful conviction, can make
anything happen. This is how we create our consensus reality, including our
gods. — Brian Herbert

You can't control what others think. The only thing you can control is yourself. Some people will look down on you for your choices in life, no matter what they are. You can't do anything about that. The only thing you can do is decide how to live your own life. And to hell with everybody else — Marie Sexton

Real meditation is not about mastering a technique; it's about letting go of control. This is meditation. Anything else is actually a form of concentration. Meditation and concentration are two different things. Concentration is a discipline; concentration is a way in which we are actually directing or guiding or controlling our experience. Meditation is letting go of control, letting go of guiding our experience in any way whatsoever. The foundation of True Meditation is that we are letting go of control. — Adyashanti

The gun-control crusade today is like the Prohibition crusade 100 years ago. It is a shared zealotry that binds the self-righteous know-it-alls in a warm fellowship of those who see themselves as fighting on the side of the angels against the forces of evil. It is a lofty role that they are not about to give up for anything so mundane as facts - or even the lives of other people. — Thomas Sowell

Good powerlessness (because there is also a bad powerlessness) allows you to "fall into the hands of the living God" (Hebrews 10:31). You stop holding yourself up, so you can be held. There, wonderfully, you are not in control and only God needs to be right. That is always the very special space of any positive powerlessness and vulnerability, but it is admittedly rare.
Faith can only happen in this very special threshold space. You don't really do faith, it happens to you when you give up control and all the steering of your ship. Frankly, we often do it when we have no other choice. Faith hardly ever happens when we rush to judgment or seek too-quick resolution of anything. Thus you see why faith will invariably be a minority and suspect position. And you also see why the saints always said that faith is a gift. You fall into it more than ever fully choosing it, and only then do you know how grace, love, and God can sustain you and strengthen you at very deep levels. — Richard Rohr

Bride had become the centre of his world. He was nothing without her. If he had to obey her every word for the rest of his life, he would. If he had to let her control his body, he would do that too.
Anything was better than being without her. That, he'd learned inside his underground cell. He could endure anything as long as she was with him. — Gena Showalter

My dad has no control over who works with me. Me, me and me alone has to take responsibility for anything. — Shane MacGowan