If I Mattered Quotes & Sayings

I had less control over my thoughts than I'd have liked. The little ring hung around my neck, under my gown, where nobody could see it. When I was alone, I took it out sometimes, wondering how he had judged the size, with nothing but my swollen, knotted fingers to go by. Wondering if my hands would ever be as they once were, small, white, and fine. By the time that happened, if it ever did, I would be long gone from here. I would have left behind both husband and wedding ring. It mattered little whether the size were right or no. Yet, when I thought this, I found my hand closing around the ring as if I did not want to let it go. It's mine, something inside me would say. — Juliet Marillier

By the day's end I realized that there were a zillion ways to apologize to someone, but none of them mattered if you never opened your mouth. — Jennifer Jabaley

We all looked at Shelton, who rolled his eyes. "Like my vote matters now."
Hi patted his back. "If it makes you feel better, your vote's never mattered."
"Hilarious." Shelton rubbed his face. "I hope my parole officer finds you as funny."
I sprang up and hurried for the exit, stopping Chance with a hand on his shoulder. "Give me a second alone with Ben. He's still worked up, probably needs a few minutes to decompress."
Chance's expression soured, but he held back.
Hi fired a shooter my way. "Good idea. We need him mission focused. Rodger dodger."
Shelton covered his face with his hands. "Enough already. — Kathy Reichs

It's funny. Looking back, none of it seems to matter now, those moments of yearning, craving to belong with people I thought mattered. No more fragments of glass, pieces of a broken mirror you can't put back together and wouldn't want to even if you could. — Rebecca Harris

Actually what we did was save time on the trivial routines so we could spend our work-potential where it mattered. After all, what was gained by a social system that forced me to spend so much of my energy feeding and housing and clothing myself? Weigh the loss against the greater contribution I might have made if I had spent the same time in research. — Various

I wondered why it was that places are so much lovelier when one is alone. How commonplace and stupid it would be if I had a friend now, sitting beside me, someone I had known at school, who would say: "By-the-way, I saw old Hilda the other day. You remember her, the one who was so good at tennis. She's married, with two children." And the bluebells beside us unnoticed, and the pigeons overhead unheard. I did not want anyone with me. Not even Maxim. If Maxim had been there I should not be lying as I was now, chewing a piece of grass, my eyes shut. I should have been watching him, watching his eyes, his expression. Wondering if he liked it, if he was bored. Wondering what he was thinking. Now I could relax, none of these things mattered. Maxim was in London. How lovely it was to be alone again. — Daphne Du Maurier

Seen theologically, then, walking is an act of faith. Walking is, after all, interrupted falling.We see, we listen, we speak, and we trust that each step we take won't be our last, but will lead us into a richer understanding of the self and the world.

In Jamaica, I felt once again as if the only identity that mattered was my own, not the constricted one that others had constructed for me. I strolled into my better self. I said, along with Kierkegaard, "I have walked myself into my best thoughts." (Garnette Cadogan in "Black and Blue") — Jesmyn Ward

But the wind always swept my words away like cloud shadows, as if it mattered more that I said them, than who heard them. — Lauren Wolk

The past doesn't exist. There is nothing to be sorry for. Today is when we start to live. Look ... look at the sea. The sea has no past. It is just there. It will never ask us to explain. The stars, the moon are there to light our way, to shine for us. What do they care what might have happened in the past? They are accompanying us, and are happy with that; can you see them shine? The stars are twinkling in the sky; would they do that if the past mattered? Wouldn't there be a huge storm if God wanted to punish us? We are alone, you and I, with no past, no memories, no guilt, nothing that can stand in the way of ... our love. — Ildefonso Falcones

At this point in my life I'd like to live as if only love mattered. — Tracy Chapman

What mattered to me most when I was batting was feeling comfortable. As long as I felt comfortable, it didn't matter where I was playing or who I was playing against. If you make technical adjustments to cope with different conditions, there's a risk of making yourself feel uncomfortable and of thinking too much about your technique. I've always felt that I've batted best when my mind has been at the bowler's end of pitch, not at my end. There's no time to think about both ends at the same time. So in general it always seemed to me that If I was comfortable with my gear, it would allow my mind to be at the opposite end and I had a better chance of playing well. — Sachin Tendulkar

I wondered if everyone had a secret like this, something slightly wretched, bent and corroded with time, like a lost key that might not even unlock anything anymore. And if, in the end, it might be the only thing that mattered. — Jessica Soffer

Blood mattered. Damon mattered. Even if i wished he didn't. — L.J.Smith

I hate that I let myself be so passive my whole life, and I see now how differently things could've been if I'd had faith in myself when it mattered. I don't want to go back to that. I won't. Not ever. — Tahereh Mafi

Everything in life had its phases, and if you were smart, you learned to appreciate them all.

What really mattered, though, were the people in those moments with you. Memories are what we have and what we keep, and I held mine close. The ones I knew well, like a night on the beach with a boy who would always live in my heart, and the ones yet to come with another. — Sarah Dessen

When the subject of kids first came up years ago, I'd joked that the only thing I could imagine worse than me as a mother was Clay as a father. I couldn't have been more wrong. Clay was an amazing parents. The guy who couldn't spare a few minutes to hear a mutt's side of the story could listen to his kids talk all day. The guy who couldn't sit still through a brief council meeting could spend hours building Lego castles with his kids. The guy who solved problems with his fists never even raised his voice to his children. And if sometimes Clay was a little too indulgent, a little too slow to discipline, preferring to leave that to me, I was okay with it. He supported and enforced my decisions and we presented a unified front to our children, and that was all that mattered. — Kelley Armstrong

Because, though I'd seen and felt just a fraction of all the love in the world, I knew that when people thought of love they thought of moments. Whether or not a marriage worked out, or if they stayed together after graduation, or if they did go to the big dance together, the story's end mattered less, and the highlights in between mattered more. Those are what lingered, and what people can go back to, even when they had nothing left. — Mina V. Esguerra

You've always had me, Ezekiel," I managed, meeting his bright blue stare. "Time never mattered. Vampire or human, if we had forever or just a few years, I'd always choose to spend it with you. — Julie Kagawa

And I don't have to listen to a sermon to know what to think or feel about them. It's almost as if I absorbed completely what mattered most to me, and the rest could go. — Anna Quindlen

Being alone was the best thing I ever did for myself. I've always gone from one relationship to another, hoping the other person would help me figure out who I was or complete me and make me feel whole. But it never worked out that way. When the other person didn't make me feel whole, I was left with an even bigger emptiness inside. It took the pain of the last year to realize that I needed to stop being a half trying to find my other half, but to be a whole on my own. I had to learn how to love myself. I had to learn to value myself. And I had to learn that I mattered. I'm not sure if I'm whole yet, but I'm more complete. And — Neil Strauss

Eyes downcast, she went past me without a glance. Dismissively her gown brushed my knees as if I should have drawn further back, out of her way, as if everyone should always step back to let Anne through. Then she was gone and as I looked up I met the Queen's eye. She looked blankly at me as I might look at a rivalry of birds fluttering in a dovecote. It was not as if it mattered. They would all be eaten in time. — Philippa Gregory

Do not rejoice too early And let some oracle proclaim That wounds do not reopen That evil crowds don't rise again. And that I risk seeming retarded; Let him orate. I firmly know that Stalin is not dead. As if the dead alone had mattered And those who vanished nameless in the North. The evil he implanted in our hearts, Had it not truly done the damage? As long as poverty divides from wealth As long as we don't stop the lies And don't unlearn to fear Stalin is not dead. - Boris Chichibabin, "Stalin Is Not Dead," 1967 — Anne Applebaum

The work saved me. I clung to it like flotsam in a boiling sea. It was the only solitary sport that I ever played, or was any good at. It felt natural to sit at my computer and type and type some more. For entire minutes, while writing, I could forget the godawful thing that had happened. I could forget that nothing really mattered anymore. Perhaps, if I set my sights low, I could care again about some small thing. I would type a word. One word. Then another. I started to care about the words, then entire sentences ... — Rheta Grimsley Johnson

He was mine, and I was his. If I knew anything at all, it was that only those two things mattered. — Jamie McGuire

I have nothing to offer you' said Hactar faintly, 'but tricks of the light. It is possible to be comfortable with tricks of the light, though, if that is all you have.'
His voice evanesced, and in the dark a long, velvet paisley-covered sofa coalesced into hazy shape.
... At least, if it wasn't real, it did support them, and as that is what sofas are supposed to do, this, by any test that mattered, was a real sofa. — Douglas Adams

Eleanore," he whispered again, tilting his head to mine, his lips skimming past my cheek, his breath in my ear. "I'd wait forever for you, you know. If it mattered. If you'd care."
"I do care," I whispered back, miserable.
His fingers tightened, warm and firm. "No, you don't. Not the way I mean. Not yet. — Shana Abe

She looked at me and the expression on her face was an expression of dislike, one I hadn't seen before but knew right away. Later I would see it turned toward other people. But the first time was looking at me and was because she believed she'd done all she could that was correct and the best thing, and it had only gotten her stuck with me. And I couldn't do anything that mattered. Though if I could I would've had my father be there, or Warren Miller, or somebody who had the right words that would take the place of hers, anybody she could speak to without just hearing her own voice in a room and having to go about the trouble of pretending she did not feel absolutely alone. — Richard Ford

You know something?" He lifted his head, and when he turned to me, he had this strange look in his eyes. Almost as if he was really seeing me for the first time. "I don't think I ever really lived until this. I've never done anything that mattered before, but now I'm fighting to save my life, and yours. And I know it sounds really cheesy and lame, but I don't think I ever really felt alive. Not until I met you. — Amanda Hocking

I hesitated for just a moment. Some part of me wanted to see the creature, after having heard it for so many days. Was it the remnants of the scientist in me, trying to regroup, trying to apply logic when all that mattered was survival? If so, it was a very small part. I ran. — Jeff VanderMeer

Maybe I didn't know her as well as I might have wanted. But I can tell you this: love mattered a great deal to Scarlet Montana. I think it must have mattered to Jake too. Because if love hadn't been important to them, they wouldn't have fallen to pieces when it suddenly abandoned them. — Vincent Zandri

The shudder went all through him. Bones pressed me so close that his body ground into mine, jerking my head back with a thick handful of hair until our eyes locked. What had started out as a game was now an open challenge, as well as a direct threat. Any further action would bear results, it was clear from the way his gaze smoldered into mine. All of this should have frightened me, but it was as if my mind were incapable of rational thought. He was a vampire, a hit man, and had almost killed me ... and nothing mattered more than the feel of him. I licked my lips and didn't pull away, and it was all the invitation he needed. — Jeaniene Frost

I put my head against the cold glass of the mirror, fighting the sudden terror that threatened to knock us back to the floor. The trick was to keep breathing, to keep moving. Nothing else mattered. Run long and hard enough, and perhaps while you're running you might actually come up with a plan. But nothing mattered if you were already dead. — Kate Griffin

I never used to write down all the ideas that occur to me while writing. I believed if I forgot them they were not important, and the ones that really mattered were those I remembered. Now I write them all down. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Sometimes I wondered if it even mattered whether our communion cups were filled with consecrated wine or draft beer, as long as we bent over them long enough to recognize each other as kin. — Barbara Brown Taylor

Even if I was pretty, it wasn't going to be enough to bring me the life I wanted: one where I was free to make choices that mattered, one where people listened to what I had to say. Aphrodite had the beauty; Zeus had the thunderbolts. Everyone loved Aphrodite, but everyone listened to Zeus. I'd never get my hands on a thunderbolt, so if I wanted to be free, I'd better find a way to get my hands on the next best thing: a sword. — Esther M. Friesner

If I paid too much attention to naysayers or let encouragers bloat my ego, I'd lose focus on what mattered: the company. — Anonymous

And yet, when we stopped at the last hamlet and I saw him embrace the elders and leave gifts, saw the hope that he left behind, and remembered it was he who had saved Kaden from the savagery of his own kind, I wondered if anything I felt in my gut really mattered. — Mary E. Pearson

I suddenly felt that it was all the same to me whether the world existed or whether there had never been anything at all: I began to feel with all my being that there was nothing existing. At first I fancied that many things had existed in the past, but afterwards I guessed that there never had been anything in the past either, but that it had only seemed so for some reason. Little by little I guessed that there would be nothing in the future either. Then I left off being angry with people and almost ceased to notice them. Indeed this showed itself even in the pettiest trifles: I used, for instance, to knock against people in the street. And not so much from being lost in thought: what had I to think about? I had almost given up thinking by that time; nothing mattered to me. If at least I had solved my problems! Oh, I had not settled one of them, and how many there were! But I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

This girl who was so gorgeous and broken and scared. The woman who'd become my responsibility. My future. Because I'd be damned if I remained a prisoner to my past. One I'd never walk away from again. I loved Shea Bentley and she loved me. It's where it started and where it ended. Nothing before or after or in between mattered. — A.L. Jackson

If, during any one of a million previous nights, a giant asteroid had smashed the Earth into gravel while we all slept, would it have mattered? With no one left to mourn the wreckage, one could even argue that it wouldn't be a bad way to end things at all: egalitarian if nothing else. I even thought of a scene in Star Wars where Princess Leia receives news that her home world has been destroyed by Darth Vader's Death Star. She throws a hairy fit, but two scenes later, she's back to flirting with Han Solo. — Adrian Barnes

It wouldn't have mattered to my mother if I married a black, was gay, lived in a commune or wore a dress. — George Weinberg

But highly placed sources within the Kennedy Administration disagreed: "[T]he assumption that the strategic nuclear balance mattered in any way was wrong ... As far as I am concerned, it made no difference ... If my memory serves me correctly, we had some five thousand strategic nuclear warheads as against t heir three hundred. Can anyone seriously tell me that their having three hundred and forty would have made any difference? The military balance wasn't changed. I didn't believe it then, and I don't believe it now ... " — Robert McNamara

I'm not sure if it was entirely sadness that caused the tears, but there was so much love. And that's all that mattered. Despite the fear, despite the sadness, despite the pain, there was love. — Esther Earl

When it was just you and your fight to live, the only thing that mattered was time. Time was the only thing reminding you to propel forward and find your next meal, the next roof over your head, or those few hours of crucial sleep, because your days were numbered and they wouldn't stop for anyone, no matter how rich, privileged, or smart you were.
If there was one thing I'd learned in my short span of twenty-three years, it was that time didn't discriminate. — Rachael Wade

His training had a fatal flaw: he cared. He asked me what I wanted to eat for dinner. He knew I liked green, and if he had a choice between a blue sweater and a green one, he'd buy the green one for me even if it cost more. I like swimming, and when we traveled, he made it a point to lay our route so it would go past a lake or a river. He let me speak my mind. My opinion mattered. I was a person to him and I was important. I saw him treat others as if they were important. For all of his supposed indifference, there is a town in Oklahoma that worships him and a little village in Guatemala that put a wooden statue of him at the gates to protect them from evil spirits. He helped people, when he thought it was right. — Ilona Andrews

She was probably male, to judge from the angular mazelike patterns quilting her shirt. I wasn't entirely certain. It wouldn't have mattered, if I had been in Radch space. Radchaai don't care much about gender, and the language they speak - my own first language - doesn't mark gender in any way. — Ann Leckie

If I'd known he was going to die, my last words to him would have meant something. They certainly wouldn't have been my out-of-tune attempt at singing that old Grateful Dead song he loved so much. No, I would have told him how I felt about him, straight out. No more flirting, wild-eyed whispers in the grass outside. I would have looked at him harder to ensure his image was permanently seared in my mind. I'd have asked him a million more things so I could remember what mattered before I got in the car on the way home from Custard's. Because after, nothing mattered. — Sarah Ockler

Once she exclaimed, "But I always thought that sorceresses were evil!"
"What do you mean 'evil'?"
Lynet has never considered the question. "You know," she said, after a moment, "unfriendly to people."
"People!" repeated Morgana derisively. "As if humans were all that mattered. Just once I'd like to see people judged by how friendly they are to sorceresses. — Gerald Morris

I once thought that would be the consummation of all joy - to be united by a bond of love - to be lost in His presence there as if nothing else mattered.
And now - there is much more. Instead of myself and my Christ and my love and my prayer, there is the might of a prayer stronger than thunder and milder than the flight of doves rising up from the Priest who is the Center of every priest, shaking the foundations of the universe and lifting up - me, Host, altar, sanctuary, people, church, abbey, forest, cities, continents, seas and worlds to God and plunging everything into Him. — Thomas Merton

The afterlife mattered to me. Heaven and hell and reincarnation. As much as I wanted to know how Alaska had died, I wanted to know where she was now, if anywhere. — John Green

One of my big goals as a human being is to continue to write what's really happening to me, even if it's a tough pill to swallow for people around me ... I do fear that if I ever were to have someone in my life who mattered, I would second-guess every one of my lyrics. — Taylor Swift

Daddy got mad when people made assumptions about him, but I liked it. It made me feel someone wanted to know me. Even if they were wrong, it didn't matter. It mattered only that they were trying. — Alicia Erian

Maybe. Maybe not. Whether it's filler or not, I'm pretty glad to be here." If there's anything I've learned, it's that you need to make the most of it. "It mattered enough for you not to jump. — Jennifer Niven

I know the girl is right because the snake is in me, knotted around my intestines, hanging off my ribs, snuggled like a lover around my black heart. "I love you," I said, addressing the snake, Madison, Bell, Kevin, Pig, my mother, my past lives and the new lover speeding toward me at this very moment. I wondered if it mattered whether you loved one person or another. Weren't lovers interchangeable when you thought back about them? Maybe that was true in the future too. What I really loved was the note. I always loved odd things: the blue curacao bottle, the wet asphalt, my own insipid fear. — Darcey Steinke

Neither religion nor race mattered to me, but communication did. If you were willing to be my friend and accept my deafness, I didn't care if you were white, black, Catholic, Jewish, Swahili, or whatever. I didn't care if you worked as a CEO or passed your time handing out flowers at the airport. If you can communicate, you're my friend. This is a great example of how I feel that my deafness has helped me grow spiritually - I could appreciate my interaction with anyone, and just be happy we could get along rather than get bogged down on whatever groups or religions they belonged to. Really, human interaction is a blessing; it is such a waste to discriminate. — Mark Drolsbaugh

If patience and gratitude had been she camels, it would have mattered little on which I rode. — Umar

I felt like I had lost something. But not something silly, like my keys or my gum; more like my arm or my foot, something that really mattered. Like something that I could live without, but would make life much harder if it were missing. And life is hard enough. Life is hard enough with everything we're given. — James Frey

I've never been so clear about anything in my life. I turned around, made my way to that room you were in, and there you were. Nothing else mattered. I didn't even know if we would make it out or not, I just wanted to be where you were, whatever that meant. The only thing I'm afraid of is a life without you, Pigeon. — Jamie McGuire

I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something. — Peter Jackson

But then she remembered something else, just a flash: looking up at Damon's face in the woods and feeling such - such excitement, such affinity with him. As if he understood the flame that burned inside her as nobody else ever could. As if together they could do anything they liked, conquer the world or destroy it; as if they were better than anyone else who had ever lived.
I was out of my mind, irrational, she told herself, but that little flash of memory wouldn't go away.
And then she remembered something else: how Damon had acted later that night, how he'd kept her safe, even been gentle with her.
Stefan was looking at her, and his expression had changed from belligerence to bitter anger and fear. Part of her wanted to reassure him completely, to throw her arms around him and tell him that she was his and always would be and that nothing else mattered. Not the town, not Damon, not anything.
But she wasn't doing it. — L.J.Smith

So, if you had died, I wouldn't have cared? Is that what you're saying?"
"I don't know. Would it have mattered?"
Of all the horrible things you've said to me. That is the worst by far."
And he knew it. ...
"I've never wanted you dead not at my lowest point." She softened. "Just a little. — Mary J. Williams

What I was thinking, in that strange way you can think without words while you are dancing, think in glyphs, think in numbers, was how stupid it is that any of us are here, living. What an absurd game we play with ourselves, as if it mattered. We are all mad, all insane, all deluded. It is all for nothing, really, in the end. — Meg Howrey

My mom raised me as if there were no limitations on where I could go or what I could do. When I look back I realize she raised me like a white kid - not white culturally, but in the sense of believing that the world was my oyster, that I should speak up for myself, that my ideas and thoughts and decisions mattered. — Trevor Noah

There was some point as a professor at Stanford and Harvard when I experienced being caught in some kind of a meaningless game in which the students were exquisite at playing the role of students and the faculty were exquisite at playing the role of faculty. I would get up and say what I had read in books and they'd all write it down and give it back as answers on exams but nothing was happening. I felt as if I were in a sound-proof room. Not enough was happening that mattered - that was real. — Ram Dass

Well, the film's not only pricking the pomposity of the Church, it's pricking the pomposity, and sometimes you would think fraudulence, of the insurance companies. I had never read anything like this until I was doing the film, but Mark [Joffe, the director] and people showed me stuff where, like a flood, it mattered where the water came from. If you're flooded from above, you get the money; if you're flooded from below, you don't. What's that about? — Billy Connolly

I now realize what Dorothy means in the final scene from The Wizard of Oz, when she says that if you have to look beyond your front door for your heart's desire, perhapsit was never there to begin with. Maybe, like Dorothy, I should embrace the love right in front of me and not search for some elusive dream that never mattered in the first place. — Jodee Blanco

When I was small and easily wounded books were my carapace. If I were recalled to my hurts in the middle of a book they somehow mattered less. My corporeal life was slight the dazzling one in my head was what really mattered. Returning to books was coming home. — Lauren Groff

I wish I knew why she never told me any of this. Maybe she thought I wouldn't be able to handle it, that I was too sheltered or too innocent or something. If she had told me why she cut herself all the time, or that it was the pills that made her act so spaced out, or that she was even on pills, or even saw doctors, or any of it, I would have done my best to help her. I'm not saying I'm a superhero. I'm not saying I would have just swooped down and saved her. I'm just saying the only reason everything was a waste was that she made it a waste. That whole time, back when I was just a normal kid in high school, living out my normal life, I really thought everything mattered. — Nina LaCour

Beneath me, the bed tipped as Cole edged closer. I felt him lean over me. His breath, warm and measured, hit my cheek. Two breaths. Three. Four. I didn't know what I wanted. Then I heard him stop breathing, and a second later, I felt his lips on my mouth.
It wasn't the sort of kiss I'd had with anyone before. This kiss was so soft it was like a memory of a kiss, so careful on my lips that it was like someone running his fingers along them. My mouth parted and stilled; it was so quiet, a whisper, not a shout. Cole's hand touched my neck, thumb pressed into the skin next to my jaw. It wasn't a touch that said I need more. It was a touch that said I want this.
It was all completely soundless. I didn't think either of us was breathing.
Cole sat back up, slowly, and I opened my eyes. His expression, as ever, was blank, the face he wore when something mattered.
He said, That's how I would kiss you, if I loved you. — Maggie Stiefvater

The Luidaeg.
Something woke in me that remembered how to hope, because I recognized her as soon as I knew her name
the sea witch, Blind Michael's sister, who sent me to him in the first place. There were figures in the darkness behind her, but none of them mattered; the Luidaeg would save me if anyone could. I owed her, after all. She needed me alive to pay my debts. — Seanan McGuire

Why do people let me speak to them so rudely? If they'd let me get away with less, I might think what I said mattered more. — Leah Stewart

And if it all falls apart, I will know deep in my heart, the only dream that mattered had come true. In this life, I was loved by you. — Collin Raye

The others set up all this because they want me to know that what I did was important - important enough to burn coal.

But it doesn't feel important. Not like it should.

I'm reminded now, watching the coals burn, of why I never feel like I truly belong to Winter. I want to understand all this as deeply as Sir and Alysson and everyone else, a reminder of a time when everything was how it should be, but all this is wasted on me, someone whose only connection to Winter lies in stories told by others. I thought that if I had a hand in saving Winter, I'd feel like I deserve it, the kingdom everyone else remembers. I thought I could fill the void left by my lack of memories with purpose. That's what I've always told myself: if I matter to Winter, Winter will matter to me. And today I mattered to my kingdom.

Then why don't I feel anything more for the fire pit than the slight burn on my finger? — Sara Raasch

I've been thinking." She pretended to mull the question over. "What if I decided to go flying around the galaxy with some scoundrel?" Han raised his eyebrows and pointed toward his own chest. Leia laughed. "Unless you had another scoundrel in mind." "Hey, hey. I'm the only scoundrel up for the job." He shook his head in - surprise? Disbelief? Leia wasn't sure. What mattered most was the warmth in his smile. Even if Han wasn't convinced she intended to do this, he liked the idea. Down — Claudia Gray

The truth, as I see it, is that if black men and women, black boys and girls, mattered, if we were seen as living, we would not be dying simply because whites don't like us. Our deaths inside a system of racism existed before we were born. The legacy of black bodies as property and subsequently three-fifths human continues to pollute the white imagination. To inhabit our citizenry fully, we have to not only understand this, but also grasp it. — Jesmyn Ward

I knew that even if I were second or third rate, it was astronomy that mattered. — Edwin Powell Hubble

Q looked at me as if I was his perfection.
His queen.
He wanted me.
That was all that mattered. — Pepper Winters

I did not matter what distant iron city had raised him. He had been made by Sorry-in-the-Vale, his bones as much a part of it as the valley and the woods. It was as if she had the whole town spread underneath her. Or the whole world, since right then he was the only part of it that mattered. — Sarah Rees Brennan

We were leaving a pleasant region, an Oriental farmer's paradise, that was more prosperous and secure under communist control than the area around Bong Son was under ARVN control. I wondered if the form of government really mattered to those peasant farmers. — Matthew Brennan

So for me the creative world isn't what you do after your day job, though many professional musicians do this to make ends meet, but it's something that IS a job. Perhaps that's why I'm not as disheartened by the more cold blooded aspects of the industry. Over the course of watching my mother navigate the creative world I've seen just about every trick pulled that could have been and I've seen her deposit the checks received for a job well done. When I recently asked her why she chose the creative world she said: "Early on I decided that if I had to work I was going to work at something that I loved."

I'm glad she did. As difficult, chaotic, dysfunctional and crazy as the world in music and the arts can be I always knew that they mattered deeply to her, as they do to me. — Jamie Freveletti

I was looking at my past self through the one-way interrogation window of my current self, and it caused me to experience the strange sadness that accompanies helplessness. If only I could have told teenage Elizabeth that none of it actually mattered. It all seemed to matter so much at the time. — Penny Reid

I loved that these two guys argued with each other as if movies actually mattered. Nobody I knew talked about movies that way, but Siskel and Ebert took each movie as it came and talked about whether it was a success on its own terms. — Sarah Vowell

Brent put his arm around me whispering, "I know." I wasn't sure if he was agreeing with the fact that we had conquered Thomas, if he knew the
real reason I had risked so much to save him, or if he understood why I was crying. I decided it didn't matter. All that mattered was that he was
holding me. — Lani Woodland

I felt in that moment as if it were all a dream - the training, my former life, the world I had left behind. None of that mattered anymore. Only this place mattered, only this moment, and not because the psychologist had hypnotized me. In the grip of that powerful emotion, I stared out toward the coast, through the jagged narrow spaces between the trees. There, a greater darkness gathered, the confluence of the night, the clouds, and the sea. Somewhere beyond, another border. — Jeff VanderMeer

I know conventional wisdom has always been to go to Europe, and I did that early on, and I tried it, but I realised pretty quickly if I wasn't playing, nothing else mattered - I wasn't going to be happy. — Landon Donovan

You knocked the door down." Disbelief rang in his matter-of-fact tone.
"I know," she answered,unable to say anything else. Unable to look away from his body.
"But it's solid oak."
"I know." She felt the solid oak beneath her and a little shocked that she'd done it, too. If it mattered at all, her shoulder felt a little bruised. And it was the slight pain that brought some reality back into the moment.
"You don't have any clothes on." Oh, God, did she really say that? — C.C. Hunter

I knelt and prayed, and the strongest truth came over me. Didn't matter if God in his heaven was a Catholic or a Protestant God, or the God of the Hindus. What mattered was something deeper and older and more powerful than any such image - it was a concept of goodness based upon the affirmation of life, the turning away from destruction, from the perverse, from man using and abusing man. It was the affirmation of the human and the natural. — Anne Rice

He, too, was in the grip of rage and rhetoric. I saw that, attractive though his side of the political spectrum was. A cancerous violence had eaten into every political idea, had taken over the ideas themselves, and for so many, all that mattered was the willingness to do something. Action led to action, free of any moorings, and the way to be someone, the way to catch the attention of the young and recruit them to one's cause, was to be enraged. It seemed as if the only way this lure of violence could be avoided was by having no causes, by being magnificiently isolated from loyalties. But was that not an ethical lapse graver than rage itself? — Teju Cole

It was a recession when I graduated, but I was so unequipped to have a job anyway, I don't think it would have mattered if the economy was booming. I think I was expecting bad jobs. But as it went on through my 20s, I began to wonder how things were going to turn out. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Strong emotional feelings don't just go away overnight. In fact, they may never go away. The fears of feeling disliked, or that I wasn't going to fit in, all quickly bubbled up to the surface. but it was the choices I made when I was faced with challenges that really mattered. I had to continually tell myself that I was always in control. If someone was pressuring me to do something that I knew was not good for me, I had the power to simply say no. No one can ever take that power away from me. If someone was upset or didn't like me for saying no, that was someone that I really didn't need in my life. — Stephen Cremen

That moment when this heart.. stops.. almost as if it never existed.
When every.. breathe.. slows down.. almost as if you never ... needed as single breathe of air
When time stops.. almost as if every second never mattered.
In that moment ... I'm infinite.
In that moment ... I am immortal.
In that moment ... I am Finally alive. — Hafsa Shah

This woman did not know me, but she knew this stretch of trail. She didn't know if I was kind or mean, gentle or abrasive, honest or a liar. She didn't need to know what I had accomplished in life or what I had wasted. She just knew that if I was there in her hospital on my birthday, I was probably feeling a little lost. On that basis alone, i mattered to her. — Russ Ramsey

Well, if you sat eating as though nothing mattered save your dinner I'm not surprised," said Juliana
viciously. "If I were not so angry with her, the deceitful, sly wretch, I could pity her for all she must
have undergone at your hands."
"Seeing me eat was the least of her sufferings," answered the Marquis. "She underwent much, but it
may interest you to know, Juliana, that she never treated me to the vapours, as you seem like to do."
"Then I can only say, Vidal, that either she had no notion what a horrid brutal man you are, or that she
is just a dull creature with no nerves at all."
For a moment Vidal did not answer. Then he said in a level voice: "She knew." His lip curled. He
glanced scornfully at his cousin. "Had I carried you off as I carried her you would have died of fright
or hysterics, Juliana. Make no mistake, my dear; Mary was so desperately afraid she tried to put a
bullet through me. — Georgette Heyer

I didn't write my speech until the night before, and even then I refused to write it out like I would say it, preferring to keep cribbed notes I could come back to if necessary. I wanted this to feel like a conversation because it was what I wanted to say that mattered, not how it looked on paper. — Corey Taylor

I only let myself think about this moment one time on the way here. I told
myself if you gave me another chance, I would take this slow and somehow prove to you that you're the only one that ever mattered to me. I'm willing to spend the rest of my life showing you how much you mean to me. I'll work every single day to be the man you deserve, but let me make love to you tonight. Let me know what it's like to feel you again. Please. — Kindle Alexander

I once held a belief that life made sense, that working toward a dream would birth substance. Nothing else mattered. I soon discovered that success is as long-lasting as any of life's novelties.
We've all been happy with new things, only to be disappointed later. Dolls and soldiers our parents toiled to give us found their way to pedestals, then to the back of closets.
I'd always dreamed of marrying a woman I loved and watching my children grow. I wonder if our lives should be filled with the pursuit of such dreams, those magical hopes interwoven into our story. Our stories are decorative shells for the crabs we really are, both protecting and exposing us to the manic outside. — Christopher Hawke

I don't get scared very often," he said finally. "I was scared the first morning I woke up and you weren't here. I was scared when you left me after Vegas. I was scared when I thought I was going to have to tell my dad that Trent had died in that building. But when I saw you across the flames in the basement ... I was terrified. I made it to the door, was a few feet from the exit, and I couldn't leave.
"What do you mean? Are you crazy?" I said, my head jerking up to look into his eyes.
"I've never been so clear about anything in my life. I turned around, made my way to that room you were in, and there you were. Nothing else mattered. I didn't even know if we would make it out or not, I just wanted to be where you were, whatever that meant. The only thing I'm afraid of is a life without you, Pigeon."
I leaned up, kissing his lips tenderly. When our mouths parted, I smiled. "Then you have nothing to be afraid of. We're forever. — Jamie McGuire

Inside, I gagged. The floor was awash with excrement. Blocked toilet bowls brimmed with sewage. The place looked as if it hadn't been cleaned in weeks. Nobody had noticed, because nobody who mattered ever went in there. — Geraldine Brooks

If this were some kind of entertainment, this would be roughly the point where Rupert said, "We don't have any more time, Professor, you must complete your research as soon as possible," but there was no great sense of urgency, no sense that it even mattered. It was just something that Rudi was interested in, for his own reasons. They could be working on this for years and still not understand it, and it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference.
He said, "Look, Professor, a lot of effort went into getting you that information. We'd be grateful if you could make some kind of sense of it reasonably soon.
"There is one thing I can tell you right now," Lev said..."Whoever is running this thing, they're really interested in railways. — Dave Hutchinson

I just want, she said when he'd finally broken down her defenses. And so had he. He'd wanted her to desire him, but truthfully, whether she knew it or not, any man's tender arms would do. The woman was wounded and aching for love, and it didn't matter who Adrian was, or that he was the one who held her.
But it had mattered to him. His eyelids slid closed as he envisioned all the pleasure he could have shown her, if she hadn't had the decency to decline. No toys or tricks needed for this one; just deep, primal fucking. Stripping away her inhibitions alone would have been erotic enough to test his endurance. — Shelby Reed