Never Happening Quotes & Sayings

What is actually happening inside readers as they read? Each reader has a unique emotional response to a story. It's unpredictable, but it's real. Readers read under the influence of their own temperaments, histories, biases, morality, likes, dislikes, and peeves. They make judgments that don't agree with yours. So how can a writer predict, never mind control, what readers feel? Psychological — Donald Maass

I have been trying to point out that in our lives chance may have an astonishing influence and, if I may offer advice to the young laboratory worker, it would be this - never to neglect an extraordinary appearance or happening. — Alexander Fleming

Love and respect yourself and never compromise for anything. And then you will be surprised how much growth starts happening of its own accord.. as if rocks have been removed and the river has started flowing. — Osho

I remember being a 12 year old art kid and feeling like there was no exciting art movement happening, especially for somebody like me. I was looking around for artistic inspiration and could find nothing - until my older brother's friend brought a Giger book over to the house. Upon seeing the first image I knew I would never be the same. A whole new world opened up to me and I have been exploring it ever since. It's no doubt that I would not be here today, doing what I do, without his influence. H.R. Giger is the king of the Dark Art movement. — Chet Zar

When a person you love dies, it doesn't feel real. It's like it's happening to someone else. It's someone else's life. I've never been good with the abstract. What does it mean when someone is really truly gone? — Jenny Han

And although we'd sworn we'd never become like them, that was exactly what was happening. We weren't even fifteen yet.
Thirteen, fourteen, adult, dead. — Janne Teller

If only we knew what was happening when we pray, we would never cease to pray. — Louie Giglio

Don't!" cried Jamie. "Don't be bitter, Margaret. We don't know why, we never can know why things happen in this world exactly as they do; but this we know: We know that God is in His Heaven, that He is merciful to the extent of ordaining mercy; we know that if we disobey and take our own way and run contrary to His commandments, we are bitterly punished. And it is the most pitiful of laws that no man or woman can take their punishment alone in this world. It is the law that none of us can suffer without making someone else suffer, but in some way it must be that everything works out for the best, even if we can't possibly see how that could be when things are happening that hurt us so. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Transformation always and necessarily calls for a transformation of oneself and one's environment. But I don't see that happening. People are stuck with their own positions that never change. — Yasuhiko Kimura

I didn't see it happening, but the wheels were falling off of me. I didn't care about responsibilities like paying rent, I was just on a runaway train ride. The horribly ironic cosmic trick of drug addiction is that drugs are a lot of fun when you first start using them, but by the time the consequences manifest themselves, you're no longer in a position to say, 'Whoa, gotta stop that.' You've lost that ability, and you've created this pattern of conditioning and reinforcement. It's never something for nothing when drugs are involved. — Anthony Kiedis

I believed I would never trust another person for as long as I lived. Yet, I couldn't help but trust him; the decision was made before I even realized what was happening. He forced my soul back into innocent belief, not by empty words or false promises but by consistent action that never failed. He was safe. — Rachel Higginson

I had never been so wanted or needed by anyone on earth.
Babies were dangerous ... they made you fall in love before you knew what was happening.
This small, solemn creature couldn't even say my name, and he depended on me for everything.
Everything.
I'd known him for little more than a day. But I would have thrown myself in front of a bus for him. I was shattered by him. This was awful.
"I love you, Luke," I whispered.
He looked completely unsurprised by the revelation.
Of course you love me, his expression seemed to say. I'm a baby. This is what I do. — Lisa Kleypas

Still, I never heard him say that he hated or wanted to hurt or kill someone for all the horrific things that had been happening to him and his family. — Savo Heleta

This life came so close to never happening.. — David Benioff

I've never met all these people you speak of. And neither, I suspect, have you. They only exist in words we hear. It is folly to say you know what is happening to other people. Only they know, if they exist. They have their own Universes of their eyes and ears. — Douglas Adams

I know you want a love match,' he said. 'But, Kate, what do you think the chance is of that happening?' He regretted the words as soon as they were uttered. Too blunt, too cruel.

He watched in shame as Kate flushed and her eyes dropped from his. 'I know it's never going to happen,' she said, her voice low and stiff. — Emily May

If you are at all successful in your business, be prepared to never have another good day or bad day at work. There will be so many things - good and bad - happening on any given day that you will be on a roller coaster of highs and lows. If that excites you, then go for it. — Tom Szaky

Jules: Why didn't you tell me any of this?
Emma: Because of what Jem said. That finding out that what we had was forbiddne for good reason would just make it worse. Belive me, knowing what I know hasn't mae me love you any less.
Jules: So you decided to make you hate you.
Emma: I tried. I didn't know what else to do.
Jules: But I could never hat you. Hating you would be like hating the idea of good things ever happening in the world. It would be like death. I thought you didn't love me, Emma. But I never hated you. — Cassandra Clare

It was a look that suggested emotions happening just past your line of sight: a grief so deep you'd never be able to see it, a love so fierce it could swallow itself completely. — Leslie Jamison

They looked for one another when nothing else was happening, the way you pick up a magazine or look in the cupboard for a snack. Not exactly by accident and not exactly on purpose. You could go out in the world and do new things and meet new people, and then you could come home and just sit on the stoop with someone you had never not known, and watch lightning bugs blink on and off. — Lynne Rae Perkins

Eighty percent of what everyone's talking about never happens. I don't mean in terms of product development that's happening right now, I'm talking about the far-flung visions of the future. — Jay Chiat

The writing is never what takes the most time. It's trying to figure what you're going to put down that fills the days. With anger at your own ineptitude, with frustration that nothing is happening inside your head, with panic that maybe nothing will ever happen inside your head, with blessed little moments that somehow knit together so that you can begin to visualize a scene. — William Goldman

I remember the day I saw my hair was thinning. I don't remember caring much. I don't care. It's just hair. It never bothered me much. I was pretty young, too. And it happened and is happening very slowly. I have a feeling dead people get really mad when we complain about losing hair. — Louis C.K.

I never got tied down to any social scene. I was just into creating stuff. And I think, even today, that's how I'm able to work and move between so many different genres - I want to be part of what's happening, I want to make new things. — Diplo

Hear me now, and understand me, we will talk but nothing you can say will change the fact that you and me are happening. I won't let you go, Izzy. Never. You're mine, you got that, Princess? — Harper Sloan

I didn't know why this was happening. The cruel reality of anxiety is that you never quite do. At the moments it should logically strike, I am fit as a fiddle. On a lazy afternoon, I am seized by a cold dread. — Lena Dunham

Go to dinner with me?" His voice whispers against my ear. I start to shake my head when his fingertip lightly traces the birdcage tattoo on my arm. My eyes shut at the sensation. His touch. "I dream about you almost every night." Join the club, buddy, I want to tell him. I dream about me every night, too ... well, until I met him. Now I dream too damn much about him. "Just one date and I will leave you alone if you never want to see me again. Deal?" I open my eyes to gaze into his. There are too many things happening at once. Everything within me says to tell him no. Nothing good can come of this. I know what I have to tell him. "Dinner, not a date," I say, looking him square in the eyes. Holy hell! What did you just do, Keller? Really? Seriously? He grins, not hiding his happiness at my words. I step away, allowing him time to button his shirt up. "Dinner then dessert, and, Keller, it will definitely be a date," he says, — Nicole Reed

You can do anything you want. And you can be anything you want. And you can feel anything you want. But there's only one thing you need to do, and that is: have the slightest vision to see it. Because if you can't see it happening, then it will never happen — Tom DeLonge

I think it's keeping a surprise element, so that the audience never gets ahead of you. I like to pull the rug out from audiences, I don't like for them to think they know what's happening next. — Jason Graae

A few minutes after they left, Harold bought the blanket from his bed, surrounded himself with his stuffed-toy animals, and built a fort out of them. Children project souls into their favorite stuffed animals and commune with them in the way adults commune with religious icons. Years later he would remember a happy childhood, but it was interwoven with painful separations, confusions, misapprehensions, traumas, and mysteries. This is why all biographies are inadequate; they can never capture the inner currents. This is why self knowledge is limited. Only a few remarkable people can sense the way early experience has built models in the brain. Later in life we build fictions and theories to paper over the mystery of what is happening deep inside, but in childhood, the inexplicableness of the world is still vivid and fresh, and sometimes hits with terrifying force. — David Brooks

Consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular. Not only has none of us ever experienced more than one consciousness, but there is also no trace of circumstantial evidence of this ever happening anywhere in the world. If I say that there cannot be more than one consciousness in the same mind, this seems a blunt tautology - we are quite unable to imagine the contrary ... — Erwin Schrodinger

Yet they sense that something is wrong. They can't quite put their finger on the problem. As time passes, they grow more and more dependent on each other; they are getting older; any opportunities to make a new life are vanishing fast. They try to keep busy doing reading or embroidery, watching television, seeing friends, but there is always the conversation over supper or after supper. He is easily irritated, she is more silent than usual. They can see that they are growing further and further apart, but cannot understand why. They reach the conclusion that this is what marriage is like, but won't talk to their friends about it; they are the image of the happy couple who support each other and share the same interests. She takes a lover, so does he, but it's never anything serious, of course. What is important, necessary, essential, is to act as if nothing is happening, because it's too late to change. — Paulo Coelho

These things were happening in my life where I was like, 'Man, I wish my pops was here to see this.' I never had those thoughts before fame, when my life was just a regular life. I wasn't saying, 'I wish my dad could be around and see me working at Applebee's.' — Kid Cudi

The problem with being an alpha is that you can never make the first move.
Makes you feel like you're taking advantage of your position. You have to wait until
the other person decides they want in."
Jim set the basket on the coffee table and crouched by me.
"And sometimes it seems like that person likes you, and you try to test the waters,
so you try to tell her how you feel, that she matters and that you want to be with her
and you're concerned about her safety. And every time you do that, she waves her
arms around and accuses you of being a controlling alpha asshole. So you back off
and hope you didn't completely fuck it up."
He was close, too close. I just stared at him. What was happening ... "Why are
you telling me this?"
His voice was low and smooth. "That time when I told you it didn't matter what
your mother thought about your looks ... "
"Aha ... "
"I meant it," he said. "Because I think you're beautiful. — Ilona Andrews

A Blessing of Solitude May you recognize in your life the presence, power, and light of your soul. May you realize that you are never alone, that your soul in its brightness and belonging connects you intimately with the rhythm of the universe. May you have respect for your own individuality and difference. May you realize that the shape of your soul is unique, that you have a special destiny here, that behind the facade of your life there is something beautiful, good, and eternal happening. May you learn to see yourself with the same delight, pride, and expectation with which God sees you in every moment. — John O'Donohue

That's the thing: You can change things. You can repair mistakes. You can restart your whole life if you have to.
But some things you never get back. Certain people. Certain moments in time when you don't know better than to shield your heart.
You don't see those moments coming, you don't know it when they're happening, but later, as the plainness of life begins to show itself, you realize how important they were. You understand who really changed you, who made you what you are. — Blake Nelson

Bullies may be the perpetrators of evil, but it is the evil of passivity of all those who know what is happening and never intervene that perpetuates such abuse. — Philip Zimbardo

I'm very at ease, and I like it. I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy; I didn't think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that's happening to me. I'm rather surprised at who I am, because I'm actually like my dad!
David Bowie — David Bowie

But Jim, now, he knows it happens, he watches for it happening, he sees it start, he sees it finish, he licks the wound he expected, and never asks why: he knows. He always knew. Someone knew before him, a long time ago, someone who had wolves for pets and lions for night conversants. Hell, Jim doesn't know with his mind. But his body knows. And while Will's putting a bandage on his latest scratch, Jim's — Ray Bradbury

Plants are not like us. They are different in critical and fundamental ways. As I catalog the differences between plants and animals, the horizon stretches out before me faster than I can travel and forces me to acknowledge that perhaps I was destined to study plants for decades only in order to more fully appreciate that they are beings we can never truly understand. Only when we begin to grasp this deep otherness can we be sure we are no longer projecting ourselves onto plants. Finally we can begin to recognize what is actually happening.

Our world is falling apart quietly. Human civilization has reduced the plant, a four-million-year-old life form, into three things: food, medicine, and wood... — Hope Jahren

She had never in her life met such an innocent. In nearly everyone who had ever lived there was at least one small splinter of evil. There was none in him: she knew it when she saw him up on that windowsill the night before, the lightning shocking the world behind him. His eagerness, his deep kindness, these were the benefits of his privilege. This peaceful sleep of being born male and rich and white and American and at this prosperous time, when the wars that were happening were far from home. This boy, told from the first moment he was born that he could do what he wanted. All he needed was to try. Mess up over and over, and everyone would wait until he got it right. She — Lauren Groff

The worst part about pregnancy would definitely have to be my nausea. I don't know why it's just called morning sickness because morning sickness never just happened in the morning for me and it's not happening just in the morning for my sister. — Tia Mowry

Number one, I'd just seen my first zombies. Number two, there was no way to stop what was happening. Number three, the odds were I'd never live to see my nineteenth birthday. Life was over before I'd ever even got the chance to live it. — Rose Wynters

You can win tournaments when you're mechanical, but golf is a game of emotion and adjustment. If you're not aware of what's happening to your mind and your body when you're playing, you'll never be able to be the very best you can be. — Jack Nicklaus

Women should set themselves forth attractively but innocently, like a cat. A cat is never a presentation, but an innocent happening. — Alwin Nikolais

It's funny how you can't ask difficult questions in a familiar place, how you have to stand back a few feet and see things in a new way before you realize nothing that is happening to you is normal. The trouble with you and me is we are used to what is happening to us. We grew into our lives like a kernel beneath the earth, never able to process the enigma of our composition ... Nothing is normal. It is all rather odd, isn't it, our eyes in our heads, our hands with five fingers, the capacity to understand beauty, to feel love, to feel pain. — Donald Miller

We have been told we cannot do this by a coarse of sentence: it will only grow louder and more dissident. we have been asked to pause for a reality check, we have been warned about offering this nation false hope, but in the unlikely story that is america there has never been anything false about hope.
nothing can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change
the hopes of little girl who goes to a public school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of a little boy who learns on the streets of L.A. We will remember that there is something happening in America, that we are not as devided as our politics suggest, that we are one people, we are one nation and together we will begin the next great chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea: YES WE CAN!
yes we can to justice and equality
yes we can to oppurtunity and prosperity — Barack Obama

When we narrow in on one moment on this long never-ending journey, we mistakenly conclude that something did or didn't work out for us. We become too specific and rigid in the outcome we desire and don't realize that it's an ongoing process that never ends. One outcome is the opening of the path to another. If we can become more flexible in how we get there and what "there" looks like, if we can pull back our perspective a bit and realize it's always in the process of happening, then we might find that everything has been working out for us all along. — Emily Maroutian

Unfortunately, what is happening now in our central regions is evidence of this global climate change, because we have never in our history faced such weather conditions in the past. — Dmitry Medvedev

I guess I've always been really strong minded about what I wear; I've never followed what other people consider fashionable or what styles are happening at the time. — Bonnie Wright

Some people believe that if they keep their heads down and stick to their safe routine and trust that nothing bad will befall them, then it won't. They see things happening to others, but they think they're different; they're special; it could never happen to them. They believe that nothing can get better, but also that nothing can get worse. They're cowards, in one way, because they won't fight, but they're also brave, because they're willing to accept their lot in life. Glupava smelost, we called it. Foolish courage. — Samantha Shannon

Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace Worse Things kept happening — Arundhati Roy

Watch a good movie sometime without reference to what's happening but only with attention to how it was photographed; you'll see the change of focus - zoom in, pan out, close-up on face, fade to black, open from above - easily. You want to do that in what you write; it's one of the things that keep people's eyes on the page, though they're almost never conscious of it. — Diana Gabaldon

Let us consider Elfland as a great national park, a vast and beautiful place where a person goes by himself, on foot, to get in touch with reality in a special, private, profound fashion. But what happens when it is considered merely as a place to "get away to"?
Well, you know what has happened to Yosemite. Everybody comes, not with an ax and a box of matches, but in a trailer with a motorbike on the back and a motorboat on top and a butane stove, five aluminum folding chairs, and a transistor radio on the inside. They arrive totally encapsulated in a secondhand reality. And then they move on to Yellowstone, and it's just the same there, all trailers and transistors. They go from park to park, but they never really go anywhere; except when one of them who thinks that even the wildlife isn't real gets chewed up by a genuine, firsthand bear.
The same sort of thing seems to be happening to Elfland, lately. — Ursula K. Le Guin

The sergeants are shunted forward and they blink and stare up at Gonzo as he leans on the edge of his giant mixing bowl. MacArthur never addressed his troops from a mixing bowl
not even one made from a spare geodesic radio emplacement shell
and certainly de Gaulle never did. But Gonzo Lubitsch does, and he does it as if a whole long line of commanders were standing at his shoulder, urging him on.
"Gentlemen," says Gonzo softly, "holidays are over. I need an oven, and I need one in about twenty minutes, or these fine flapjacks will go to waste, and that is not happening."
And something about this statement and the voice in which he says it makes it clear that this is simply true. One way or another, this thing will get done. Under a layer of grime and horror, these two are soldiers, and more, they are productive, can-do sorts of people. Rustily but with a gratitude which is not so far short of worship, they say "Yes, sir" and are about their business. — Nick Harkaway

New York will always seem more real than anything Britain has to offer. It is strange that, although the majority of British people have never seen a skate-boarding body-popper, an exploding fire-hydrant, or anybody dunk a doughnut, these things seem infinitely more immediate and happening images than that jar of Horlicks which has stood in the cupboard for 40 years — Ben Elton

Let's go downtown," Dad said. "By the public library. You never know what wild and crazy things might be happening at the library. — Marion Jensen

I like to apply storytelling methods and techniques to try to frame the story in an interesting way, but you can never control what's happening. — Jorgen Leth

Back then, living hadn't had any meaning. Every so often, without any warning or any real reason, he'd even caught himself thinking, 'Maybe I'll try dying.' He'd had one foot in the world of the dead, and yet the other foot had been chained to the world of the living, and he couldn't pull it out; he'd just looed on disinterestedly, sort of like it was all happening on the other side of some window, as the dull, vague world passed him by. Never making any more to walk out into it himself. Somewhere along the way, though, he'd stopped thinking about trying to die. He wondered when that had happened. — Yukako Kabei

Within minutes, the entire village was in the water, splashing about, falling over, getting up, moving steadily forwards towards the horizon; never looking back to shore ... "come back," he beseeched his wife: "nothing is happening. come back! — Salman Rushdie

The Duchess of Omnium did indeed remark to Lady Chiltern that she remembered something of the same kind happening to the same girl soon after her own marriage. As the duchess had now been married a great many years this was unkind; - but it was known that when the Duchess of Omnium did dislike any one, she never scrupled to show it. 'Lord Rufford is about the silliest man of his day,' she said afterwards to the same lady; 'but there is one thing which I do not think even he is silly enough to do. — Anthony Trollope

A myth is something that never was but that is always happening. — Jean Houston

Now there's some night terrors that happen in adults. And if it starts as an adult and you've never had them before, then there might be other things that are happening; it might be anxiety, depression, stress. And that's when you might have more of a thorough psychological evaluation. — Shelby Harris

But eavesdropping acquired a new, and more intense, life after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. "Never again" was an impossible mandate, of course, but the only way to have any hope of preventing something from happening is to know everything that is happening. That led the NSA to put the entire planet under surveillance. — Bruce Schneier

One thing I have never understood is how to work it so that when you're married, things keep happening to you. Things happen to you when you're single. You meet new men, you travel alone, you learn new tricks, you read Trollope, you try sushi, you buy nightgowns, you shave your legs. Then you get married, and the hair grows in. I love the everydayness of marriage, I love figuring out what's for dinner and where to hang the pictures and do we owe the Richardsons, but life does tend to slow to a crawl. — Nora Ephron

I echoed his groan as I pushing into him, fast and hard, knowing now that we were both burning, burning, my nipples and his ass, and Jesus, wasn't that a metaphor for whatever was happening between us? I was just on fire for him, in a way I'd never been before, for his pale skin and dark hair and red lips, for both the fucking incendiary raunch and the heartbreaking sensitivity that came in turns from his brilliant artist's mind. — Amelia C. Gormley

I don't like talking about my work at all. I find it very difficult. I never know what to say. It's too close to me, and there's so many things happening unconsciously while I'm working that I'm not aware of, and people will point these things out to me, and I'll say, "That's interesting." But I don't know what to make of it. — Paul Auster

Scotty, what's wrong?" For a moment, Scott ignored the sleepy, querulous voice of the man occupying the other half of his bed. Then he turned back from the window to look at the guy whose name he couldn't remember for the life of him and said, "Nothing, just a nightmare. Sorry. Go back to sleep." "Maybe I don't want to sleep now," the man pouted. Scott shrugged. "Then get dressed and go home. Makes me no nevermind." "Well, I never," the man huffed. "I guess I might as well. Looks like nothing more's going to be happening here." With a shrug, Scott grabbed his robe then put it on as he strode out of the bedroom. When he was downstairs in the kitchen, he started a pot of coffee, sighing — Edward Kendrick

Agatha Christie never wrote books that just started with a dead body, and a 'Let's find out who the murderer is', which is kind of mysterious but not that mysterious. She always started with, 'How can this thing be happening; isn't it strange?' — Sophie Hannah

You can't put your whole life on hold for someone who may never come to his senses. I hate to tell you this but life is happening with or without you.
-- Jordan to Mac — S.E. Harmon

Solitary like a pool at evening, far distant, seen from a train window, vanishing so quickly that the pool, pale in the evening, is scarcely robbed of its solitude, though once seen.
***
Here sitting on the world, she thought, for she could not shake herself free from the sense that everything this morning was happening for the first time, perhaps for the last time, as a traveller, even though he is half asleep, knows, looking out of the train window, that he must look now, for he will never see that town, or that mule-cart, or that woman at work in the fields, again. — Virginia Woolf

Sometimes we fall into the negative so deeply that we do not realize our first instinctive reaction to everything is to think negatively or to "look" for the bad in every situation. The phrase "too good to be true" directly comes from this aspect of ourselves. To be cautious can be good in certain situations, but to dismiss every interaction or idea to the possibility of "bad things happening" puts us in a place where the beautiful or the divine never gets a chance to fully blossom. Mind your thoughts carefully, as you are the only one who can allow happiness to thrive in your life — Gary Hopkins

Isabelle had been trained to wake up early every morning, rain or shine, and a slight hangover did nothing to prevent it from happening again. She sat up slowly and blinked down at Simon. She'd never spent and entire night in a bed with anyone else, unless you counted crawling into her parents bed when she was four and afraid of thunderstorms. She couldn't help staring at Simon as if he were some exotic species of animal. He lay on his back, his mouth slightly open, his hair in his eyes. Ordinary brown hair, ordinary brown eyes. His t-shirt was pulled up slightly. He wasn't muscular like a shadowhunter. He had a smooth flat stomach but no six-pack, and there was still a hint of softness to his face. What was it about him that fascinated her? He was plenty cute, but she had dated gorgeous faerie knights, sexy shadowhunters ...
"Isabelle," Simon said without opening his eyes. "Quit staring at me. — Cassandra Clare

Everything was happening all the time. You never needed television. — Barbet Schroeder

In the Middle East, we have people chopping the heads off Christians, we have people chopping the heads off many other people. We have things that we have never seen before - as a group, we have never seen before, what's happening right now.The medieval times - I mean, we studied medieval times - not since medieval times have people seen what's going on. I would bring back waterboarding and I'd bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding. — Donald Trump

We need to reject evil and embrace our faith-whatever it may be. We need to remind ourselves about how things used to be-how it should be. Only by informing others, can we defeat this corrupt system of organized chaos. Remember, everything that is happening now was planned long ago, and it is all happening for a specific purpose. The insane policies that are being made have never been about keeping us safe from terrorists; nor have they been about preserving freedom of speech, or just plain freedom. One thing is for certain: it is not about God, nor is it about Grandma or "apple pie". It is all about money and power and control-plain and simple. — Cass Swenson

People never know what's going on while it's happening. You think, during the Renaissance, people called it 'The Renaissance'? — Anne Meara

He'd tried to explain it to her, how accidents happen but we really are safe. But there was, already, the sense that nothing he said touched what was really bothering her, which was the realization that you can't stop bad things from happening to other people, other things. And that would be hard forever. He'd never quite gotten used to it himself. — Megan Abbott

Because life is very small, you can never see it happening. Have you ever seen a tree actually grow? Can you see a child grow? Growth is too gentle, too tender. Life is basically hidden. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

He realized how easy it was to present an appearance of orthodoxy while having no grasp whatever of what orthodoxy meant. In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding, they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm because it left no residue behind. — George Orwell

When you write a show, you just never know if it will have a future or if the show will end up ever having a production, but, that doesn't mean that the songs - the best of the best songs - can't be pulled out and put on a CD. And, if the shows that they come from end up happening, then people will regard this as like a quirky little concept recording. And, if the shows don't end up happening, at least the songs will live on in some capacity. — Michael Patrick Walker

It never ceases to amaze me the precious time we spend chasing the squirrels around our brains, playing out our dramas, worrying about unwanted facial hair, seeking adoration, justifying our actions, complaining about slow Internet connections, dissecting the lives of idiots, when we are sitting in the middle of a full-blown miracle that is happening right here, right now. — Jen Sincero

Even though I didn't notice it while it was happening, I got reminded in ninth grade of a few things I guess I should have known all along.
1. A first kiss after five months means more than a first kiss after five minutes.
2. Always remember what it was like to be six.
3. Never, ever stop believing in magic, no matter how old you get. Because if you keep looking long enough and don't give up, sooner or later you're going to find Mary Poppins. And if you're reall lucky, maybe even a purple balloon. — Steve Kluger

My inspiration is my life, what I see happening around me. It can be history and, quite often, plain traditional fairy tales. But I never adapt; I nourish myself with old stories, and then create my own tales. — Michel Ocelot

The most interesting thing about writing is the way that it obliterates time. Three hours seem like three minutes. Then there is the business of surprise. I never know what is coming next. The phrase that sounds in the head changes when it appears on the page. Then I start probing it with a pen, finding new meanings. Sometimes I burst out laughing at what is happening as I twist and turn sentences. Strange business, all in all. One never gets to the end of it. That's why I go on, I suppose. To see what the next sentences I write will be. — Gore Vidal

We cannot know what time will do to us with its fine, indistinguishable layers upon layers, we cannot know what it might make of us. It advances stealthily, day by day and hour by hour and step by poisoned step, never drawing attention to its surreptitious labours, so respectful and considerate that it never once gives us a sudden prod or a nasty fright. Every morning, it turns up with its soothing, invariable face and tells us exactly the opposite of what is actually happening: that everything is fine and nothing has changed, that everything is just as it was yesterday
the balance of power
that nothing has been gained and nothing lost, that our face is the same, as is our hair and our shape, that the person who hated us continues to hate us and the person who loved us continues to love us. — Javier Marias

If we do not like what is happening to us, it is a sure sign that we are in need of a change of mental diet. For man, we are told, lives not by bread alone but by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And having discovered the mouth of God to be the mind of man, a mind which lives on Words or inner talking, we should feed into our minds only loving, noble thoughts. For with Words or inner talking we build our world. Let love's lordly hand raise your hunger and thirst to all that is noble and of good report, and let your mind starve e'er you raise your hand to a cup love did not fill or a bowl love did not bless. That you may never again have to say, What have I said? What have I done, O All Powerful Human Word? — Neville Goddard

For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth. — W. H. Auden

We never really set out to talk about California on the album ['California'], it was something that we noticed that was happening about three-quarters of the way through the recording process. We were looking at which songs we thought would make the record and we realised that there was this theme coming through. I think it's just a product of being in California for as long as I have. — Mark Hoppus

One day Nola came into school wearing a set of incredibly thick glasses, and though they did no favors to her appearance, Nola was ecstatic: she could see all kinds of things now, things she'd never known were even there. She'd had no idea trees were so pretty, she said. She could see every single leaf waving in the wind now. For some reason, this terrified young Mona. It wasn't that Nola's vision had changed: it was that her vision had changed without her even knowing it. There were all kinds of things happening around her that she'd never known about, that she was blind to. Though her experience of the world had seemed whole and certain to her, in truth it had been marred, filled with blind spots, and she'd had no idea. — Robert Jackson Bennett

We were approaching the Louvre, but he paused to lean on the parapet, and we both stood there contemplating the passing boats, which dazzled us with their spotlights. 'Look at them,' I said, because I needed to talk about something, afraid that he might get bored and go home. 'They only see what the spotlights show them. When they go home home, they'll say they know Paris. Tomorrow they'll go and see the Mona Lisa and claim they've visited the Louvre. But they don't know Paris and have never really been to the Louvre. All they did was go on a boat and look at a painting, one painting, instead of looking at a whole city and trying to find out what's happening in it, visiting the bars, going down the streets that don't appear in any of the tourist guides, and getting lost in order to find themselves again. It's the difference between watching a porn movie and making love. — Paulo Coelho

All this has been happening around them all the days of their lives though they couldn't see it, then one day, Prayer removes the veil and everything changes. Think of it this way: Picture a man whistling a tune, when out of nowhere, first a harmony joins, then another, and then suddenly he is taken up into a whirlwind of music, countless instruments playing soaring complexities that the man's whistling is, indeed, a part of, but now he begins to see how small a part; the longer he listens, he realizes that his is not the melody and where he had thought he was whistling alone, the truth had always been the music playing, though never before that moment heard, and now what had been noise becomes symphony. — Geoffrey Wood

If it's achievement that you place your value in, you're never going to achieve enough. If it's power, you always need to wield power over others. If it's money, you'll never be rich enough. But if you do something and are a part of what is happening, then you're always in it and it's always enough. — Jason Segel

These things are happening in large measure because of us. We in this country burn 25 percent of the world's fossil fuel, create 25 percent of the world's carbon dioxide. It is us - it is the affluent lifestyles that we lead that overwhelmingly contribute to this problem. And to call it a problem is to understate what it really is. Which is a crime. Crime against the poorest and most marginalized people on this planet. We've never figured out, though God knows we've tried, a more effective way to destroy their lives. — Bill McKibben

A sudden thought struck me. Wouldn't it be odd if my mother got old! ... It is only natural that when your children are big you must be older but somehow I had never thought of its happening to my mother... What a peculiar thing to think of in the bright sunshine of the afternoon! — Maureen Daly

One is never sufficiently grateful for ordinary life; there's no time to notice it when it's happening. — Eve Tushnet

It's a great idea to analyze how screen time has changed your life and how it alters your behavior. If you don't like what you see, implement changes. Get comfortable again with real human connection and don't give so much power to the screen and what is behind it. Real life is in the present moment, happening right now. We never know how many days we have in front of us. Let's live them fully, not virtually. — Jennifer L. Scott

The interesting part about the writing process is that you can never see all the way to the end, not if something is happening over the course of a year and a half, or two years. — Tom Perrotta

Now, I've never flown in space; but the folks who have say that on landing day, you know, you've just spent maybe a week and a half, sometimes two weeks in orbit and you're used to the things happening slowly in space. — Duane G. Carey

If you didn't remember something happening, was it because it never had happened? Or because you wished it hadn't? — Jodi Picoult