Nothing You Say Matters Quotes & Sayings

But, first, remember, remember, remember the signs. Say them to yourself when you wake in the morning and when you lie down at night, and when you wake in the middle of the night. And whatever strange things may happen to you, let nothing turn your mind from following the signs. And secondly, I give you a warning. Here on the mountain I have spoken to you clearly: I will not often do so down in Narnia. Here on the mountain, the air is clear and your mind is clear; as you drop down into Narnia, the air will thicken. Take great care that it does not confuse your mind. And the signs which you have learned here will not look at all as you expect them to look, when you meet them there. That is why it is so important to know them by heart and pay no attention to appearances. Remember the signs and believe the signs. Nothing else matters. — C.S. Lewis

I think, actually, that none of us understands anyone else very well, because we're all too shy to show what matters the most. If you ask me, it's a major design flaw. We ought to be able to say, Here, look what I am. I think it would be quite a relief. — Elizabeth Berg

What you have to say matters! Post anything about why you chose veganism using the hastag #2Bvegan4 (to be vegan for). — Martin Blais

Let us simmer over our incalculable cauldron, our enthralling confusion, our hotchpotch of impulses, our perpetual miracle - for the soul throws up wonders every second. Movement and change are the essence of our being; rigidity is death; conformity is death; let us say what comes into our heads, repeat ourselves, contradict ourselves, fling out the wildest nonsense, and follow the most fantastic fancies without caring what the world does or thinks or says. For nothing matters except life. — Virginia Woolf

The absence of models, in literature as in life, to say nothing of painting, is an occupational hazard for the artist, simply because models in art, in behavior, in growth of spirit and intellect
even if rejected
enrich and enlarge one's view of existence. Deadlier still, to the artist who lacks models, is the curse of ridicule, the bringing to bear on an artist's best work, especially his or her most original, most strikingly deviant, only a fund of ignorance and the presumption that as an artist's critic one's judgement is free of the restrictions imposed by prejudice, and is well informed, indeed, about all the art in the world that really matters. — Alice Walker

It's crazy to say that after three games [without a goal] I was in crisis. I do not care whether I score or not, what matters is that the team win and continue to do so. — Lionel Messi

I don't want to talk about intelligence matters. I will say, however, that intelligence-community estimates should not become public in the way of this city and in the way of Congress. — Warren Christopher

These matters require what I think of as the Shakespearean cast of thought. That is to say, a fine credulity about everything, kept in check by a lively skepticism about everything ... It keeps you constantly alert to every possibility. — Robertson Davies

They say of us that we are an anti-Christian movement. They even say that I am an outspoken paganist ... I solemnly declare here, before the German public, that I stand on the basis of Christianity, but I declare just as solemnly that I will put down every attempt to introduce confessional matters into our Hitler Youth. — Baldur Von Schirach

If you can get by with quotes from The Godfather and nothing you say matters, that's pretty bleak, don't you think? Don't we want what we say to matter? — Joshua Ferris

I like better for one to say some foolish thing upon important matters than to be silent. That becomes the subject of discussion and dispute, and the truth is discovered. — Denis Diderot

And even my sense of identity was wrapped in a namelessness often hard to penetrate, as we have just seen I think ... Yes, even then, when already all was fading, waves and particles, there could be no things but nameless things, no names but thingless names. I say that now, but after all what do I know now about then, now when the icy words hail down upon me, the icy meanings, and the world dies too, foully named. All I know is what the words know, and the dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning, a middle and an end as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead. And truly it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing. Saying is inventing. Wrong, very rightly wrong. You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept. To hell with it anyway. — Samuel Beckett

It took strength to notice things, sometimes, when those things were hidden away in dark places, stuck on the edges of the periphery. Strength to point to them and say that matters enough that I need to do something about it, especially when no one else blinked over them or everyone else forgot they were important. — Therese Walsh

In times like these," he would say, "everyone becomes a sort of intellectual, as matters so dire demand to be thought through. That's the glory of these times. They have woken us up. — Kim Stanley Robinson

It doesn't matter if it could be worse, because even those people living on the street could still say 'it's not as bad as it could be.' You still feel the pain. It still matters. All this means nothing unless you have people around who understand you. People who get that, sometimes, you're just ... really, really fucking sad and it's for no reason at all. Then you get pissed off 'cause you realize you're upset without a good reason, and you feel even worse. — Kelley York

Nothing matters except what you decide to make matter and so I could just say--poof--I don't matter to Andrew and I don't and it's all nothing. And he doesn't matter to me. And all the little awkward clumsy little mechanical machinations? All those things we do in our minds? None of those matter either. Especially those. So it's not a sad thing like, 'Oh boo-hoo, the world has no meaning, what a drag,' but more like, 'Hey! Nothing matters! — Meg Howrey

The case is I talk for a living, so I should be able to say anything I want to say regardless of how you feel. What we're starting to deal with now is your opinion matters, but to be quite honest, your opinion means nothing. — Patrice O'Neal

As the CG in motion capture made it look realistic, it put more of an onus on the game makers to make the dialogue they're saying more realistic. It doesn't matter what they say when they're 8-bits, but if they look almost photo-real, it matters. More and more, the games industry is realising that. — David S.Goyer

You won't lose me. There is nothing in this world that matters more to me than you. Absolutely nothing. You come first. Always. I love you. I don't think you realize how much. Or how much I need you in my life. How whole and totally at peace I feel when you're in my arms and I'm deep inside you. You're the one, princess. The reason I wake up with a smile on my lips. The reason it stays on my face all fucking day. When I hurry home from work, I'm hurrying back to you. To you, Tate. Do you understand what I'm saying? I've made my choice. Don't you ever say I deserve better. — Elle Aycart

She isn't a storm or a leader or a king or a war or anyone whose life and death makes noise. The problem is words. There is skin, yes. And then, inside that, there is your language, the casual, inherited magic spells taht make your skin real. It's too late now
even if we could say "Shut up" or "Where's my dinner?" in the first language, the real language, the words weren't born in us. And unless your skin and your language touch each other without interruption, there is no word strong enough to make you understand that it matters that you live. The things that really "stay" are an Orisha, a kind night, a pretended boy, a garden song that made no sense. Those come closer to being enough. — Helen Oyeyemi

I doubted it. Some people say trying is all that matters, but unfortunately it's only the first step. Sometimes you're got to catch a break and win one, too. You've got to stand up on the bar and do the antler dance. Plus, as I now knew as well as anyone, people really suck at consoling themselves. — James Patterson

I'm very keenly aware that there aren't very many women writing literary fiction in Ireland and so that gives me a sense that what I say matters, in some small way. — Anne Enright

Beauty matters, dare I say, almost as much as spirituality and justice. — N. T. Wright

It's not what you say that matters but the value of what you say". — Abdulazeez Henry Musa

This Moses, I say, this man of old time, whose existence and character you are trying to elucidate, matters to nobody but scholars like you. — Ahad Ha'am

Gansey took a drink of his healing tea. Maura's chin jutted as she observed the lump of it heading down his throat. His face remained precisely the same and he said absolutely nothing, but after a moment, he made a gentle fist of his hand and thumped his breastbone. "What did you say that was good for?" he asked politely. His voice was a little odd until he cleared his throat. "General wellness," Maura said. "Also, it's supposed to manage dreams." "My dreams?" he asked. Maura raised a very knowing eyebrow. "Who else's would you be managing?" "Mm." "Also, it helps with legal matters." Gansey had been swallowing as much of his fancy coffee as he could possibly manage without breathing, but he stopped and put the bottle on the table with a clink. "Do I need help with legal matters?" Maura shrugged. "Ask a psychic. — Maggie Stiefvater

Termite, you're young, and I'm not sure if you're going to understand what I'm about to say, but here's the nugget: Without the heart, nothing else matters. She could be the Goddess of Love, you could have all the mind-blowing sex you could physically handle, but when the shooting is over, and you're starting to think about getting a bite to eat, smoking a cigarette, or what you do with her now, you're just lying in bed with a woman who means little more to you than the remote control for your TV. Love is not tool; neither is a woman's heart. What I'm talking about, you won't find in that magazine."
"How would you know? You just said you've only loved one woman. I think you need to test-drive a few cars before you buy one."
"You can buy that lie if you want, but if you're working for a bank, you don't study the counterfeit to know the real thing. You study the real thing to know the counterfeit."
Reese talking to Termite, pg. 109-110 — Charles Martin

Conservatives and those on the right are usually willing to settle for thinking themselves correct on political issues; those on the left have always needed to feel not so much that they are correct but that they are also good. Disagree with someone on the right and he is likely to think you obtuse, wrong, sentimental, foolish, a dope; disagree with someone one the left and he is more likely to think you selfish, cold-hearted, a sellout, evil-in league with the devil, he might say, if he didn't think religious terminology too coarse for our secular age. To this day one will hear of people who fell for Communism in a big way let off the hook because they were sincere; if one's heart is in the right place, nothing else matters, even if one's naive opinions made it easier for tyrants to murder millions. — Joseph Epstein

Take note, theologians, that in your desire to make matters of faith out of propositions relating to the fixity of sun and earth you run the risk of eventually having to condemn as heretics those who would declare the earth to stand still and the sun to change position-eventually, I say, at such a time as it might be physically or logically proved that the earth moves and the sun stands still. — Galileo Galilei

What they say doesn't matter because it can be lies, but it's what they do that matters because it always speaks truth. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

I can tell you, Jay, nothing that happens in this life is worth killing yourself over. Time passes, and you can decide to change your future. You don't let what some assholes say or do, direct you. In this life, it only matters what you do with it. — Nicole Reed

It's not what you do that matters. It's not what you say. There's nothing that is not holy or spiritual. Be beyond definition, beyond categorization, be absorbed. — Frederick Lenz

I thought that love was a river, endless and deep. I thought it merely happened, washing over you like water. It was nothing to search for, nothing to force. I didn't understand that even when we can't control our fate, we alone have the last say in matters of the heart. We can give it freely, even in the worst of times, even when it isn't returned. — Alice Hoffman

I can't say what made me fall in love with Vietnam - that a woman's voice can drug you; that everything is so intense. The colors, the taste, even the rain. Nothing like the filthy rain in London. They say whatever you're looking for, you will find here. They say you come to Vietnam and you understand a lot in a few minutes, but the rest has got to be lived. The smell: that's the first thing that hits you, promising everything in exchange for your soul. And the heat. Your shirt is straightaway a rag. You can hardly remember your name, or what you came to escape from. But at night, there's a breeze. The river is beautiful. You could be forgiven for thinking there was no war; that the gunshots were fireworks; that only pleasure matters. A pipe of opium, or the touch of a girl who might tell you she loves you. And then, something happens, as you knew it would. And nothing can ever be the same again. — Graham Greene

The Resistance needs you. I need you. What do you say?" Jacob suddenly stood. He did not answer but rather cleared their dishes and washed them in the sink. "Your father doesn't see what we see," Avi said after a long silence, as if he knew exactly what Jacob was thinking. "You know that. You've heard us arguing. You've heard what he's said. He doesn't see it. That breaks my heart. But there's nothing more I can do about it. If he won't save himself, we're going to have to take matters into our own hands." "But if I join you, what will happen to them?" "I can't give you answers, Jacob," Avi replied. "I can't promise you they'll be safe. I hope they will be. But I don't really know. All I can do is tell you the truth, which is this: the moment of reckoning is at hand. I've made my choice. Now you must make yours. — Joel C. Rosenberg

People always say that, when you love someone, nothing in the world matters. But that's not true, is it? You know, and I know, that when you love someone, everything in the world matters a little bit more. — Jodi Picoult

They say, he's mine, and you say, all right, all right, he's yours, of course, take him. Nothing matters to me at all. Not me, not my food, not my bread, not my life, and not him either, nothing matters to me." "I ,Tatiana, fight for nothing — Paullina Simons

It must make you feel nice and young to say that being a man means nothing and being a woman means nothing and what matters is being a ... person. How about being a spider, Gwyn. Let's imagine you're a spider. You're a spider, and you've just had your first serious date. You're limping away from that now, and you're looking over your shoulder, and there's your girlfriend, eating one of your legs like a chicken drumstick. What would you say? I know. You'd say: I find I never think in terms of male spiders or in terms of female spiders. I find I always think in terms of ... spiders — Martin Amis

What can you say about pain?
Words can trace only the shadow of the thing itself. The reality of hard, sharp physical pain is like nothing else, and it is beyond language. The world is too much with us, day and night, but when we hurt, when we really hurt, the world melts and fades and becomes a ghost, a dim memory, a silly unimportant thing. Whatever ideals, dreams, loves, fears, and thoughts we might have had become ultimately unimportant. We are alone with our pain, it is the only force in the cosmos, the only thing of substance, the only thing that matters, and if the pain is bad enough and lasts long enough, if it is the sort of agony that goes on and on, then all the things that are our humanity melt before it and the proud sophisticated computer that is the human brain becomes capable of but a single thought:
Make it stop, make it STOP! (from The Glass Flower) — George R R Martin

No, I do not believe in fate, that some spirits of the heavens weave the laws of the world to make it so. That is dogma for the foolish, for the universe is quite able to deal with such matters herself, to use her natural laws to guide matter and the spirits. Even so, souls within the world can act to naturally shift the cause of events. Magister Brennark did say that 'Nothing happens unless we make it so.' I believe you have made it so, Wolfdon, and how foolish it would be for us to ignore an opportunity that you yourself established, whether you knew you were doing so or not. — Mary-Jean Harris

Speak up and speak clearly. I want to hear what you have to say because it matters. Let's listen to each other and respect one another's opinions. Although, they may be different, wisdom allows us to be responsible for our own feelings and actions. — Felicia Johnson

For the first time driving that day I could feel the motion of the Earth. The Earth rushing through the emptiness of space. Spinning on its axis but they say you don't feel it, you can't experience it. But to feel it is to be scared and happy at once and to know that nothing matters but that you do what you want to do and what you do you are. And I knew I was moving into the future. There is not PAST anybody can get to, to alter things or ever to know what those things were but there is definitely a future, we are already in it. — Joyce Carol Oates

And truly it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing. Saying is inventing. Wrong, very rightly wrong. You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept. — Samuel Beckett

What makes me say these things is that I see how much you care about the way people look at you. It matters too much to you. And there are people who take advantage of that. They haven't got anything of their own and they'll leave you nothing for yourself. They want to put themselves in your thoughts and in your mind, and that you should care for them. It's a sickness. But they don't want you to care for them as they really are. No, that's the whole stunt. You have to be conscious of them, but not as they are, only as they love to be seen. They live through observation by the ones around them, and they want you to live like that too. Augie darling, don't do it. They will make you suffer from what they are. And you don't really matter to them. — Saul Bellow

What matters that I was born a woman, if I can cure your misfortunes? I pay my share of tolls and taxes, by giving men to the State. But you, you miserable greybeards, you contribute nothing to the public charges; on the contrary, you have wasted the treasure of our forefathers, as it was called, the treasure amassed in the days of the Persian Wars. You pay nothing at all in return; and into the bargain you endanger our lives and liberties by your mistakes. Have you one word to say for yourselves? ... Ah! don't irritate me, you there, or I'll lay my slipper across your jaws; and it's pretty heavy. — Aristophanes

Do we emphasize behavior over character? Because good behavior won't guarantee anything. If they don't love Jesus and people, it matters zero if they remain virgins and don't say the F-word. We must shepherd their hearts, not just their hemlines. Jesus operates beyond the tidy boundaries of good behavior. — Jen Hatmaker

I say this because as an older man I am prone to ponder matters in the light of death in a way that you are not. I am like a traveler from Mars who looks down in astonishment at what passes here. And what I see is the same human frailty passed from generation to generation. What I see is again and again the same sad human frailty. We hate one another; we are the victims of irrational fears. And there is nothing in the stream of human history to suggest we are going to change this. But
I digress, confess that. I merely wish to point out that in the face of such a world you have only yourselves to rely on. You have only the decision you must make, each of you, alone. And will you contribute to the indifferent forces that ceaselessly conspire toward injustice? Or will you stand up against this endless tide and in the face of it be truly human? — David Guterson

Be a lawyer, a doctor or a teacher", they say. But there's one thing they can't hear: the silent beat of creativity within you - that calling beckoning you to trust your gut, follow your heart, and do what your soul demands. You can never articulate to others what you feel in your bones because you rarely understand it yourself. Do you know how many times I get a bomb-ass idea but can't explain it to anyone? All. The. Time. They can't see it, but I can - and that's all that matters. They will see it when I bring my idea to life. — Connor Franta

Maybe superficial is exactly what I want right now. If you don't talk about anything that matters, no one can say anything that'll hurt you
and you don't have to talk about the things that are eating away at you from the inside. — Liz Kessler

I cannot begin to say where this belief in Prophecy comes from. The future surely holds the same for us all and that is to return to the Goddess in death. What matters most is what we do while we are here! May the Goddess grant the Gryffin wisdom as they pursue their Destiny. By bringing them to contemplate their actions, she might teach them that happiness and fulfillment are concerns of the present as well as the future. — S.J. Faerlind

The advice that I have valued in my own life has never turned on fixed maxims or canned metaphors. More crucially, lists of precepts don't work like targeted advice because lists contain inherently constraining messages. They seem to say that complex matters are knowable, that a given process leads to foreseeable results. It implies a thin and predictable world, whereas the sort of advice that has mattered to me bespeaks a quite tentative optimism, the optimism of the quest whose outcome is finally unknowable. — Peter D. Kramer

We could say politically correct that look doesn't matter, but the look obviously matters. — Donald Trump

Open, honest communication is the best foundation for any relationship, but remember that at the end of the day it's not what you say or what you do, but how you make people feel that matters the most. — Tony Hsieh

Place pain in a steel box and let it float away," Benny would say. "Pain will always be there - it's how you deal with it that matters. — Duff McKagan

Let no one charge me with ever having abused or encouraged weakness or surrendered on matters of principle. But I have said, as I say again, that every trifle must not be dignified into a principle. — Mahatma Gandhi

I had a goal, I had a dream ... and at the end of the day no matter what people say to you as long as YOU know who you are as a person NOTHING else in the world
matters. — Andy Biersack

There was all this talk when Obama got elected about how we were living in a postracial world. But we're not. Until we get to the point where James Earl Jones can play, say, George Washington, race matters. You wouldn't put a white actor in blackface to play Othello. You shouldn't have a white actor in what amounts to yellowface to play Asian. — David Henry Hwang

My rugrats give me gifts that say "#1 Mom" on them and I'm like, bwhahahahaha, joke's on you, I'm more like the #1,297,279 Mom. But they truly think I'm the best mom on earth. And that's all that matters. — Karen Alpert

At last I went to the artisans, for I was conscious that I knew nothing at all, as I may say, and I was sure that they knew many fine things; and in this I was not mistaken, for they did know many things of which I was ignorant, and in this they certainly were wiser than I was. But I observed that even the good artisans fell into the same error as the poets; because they were good workmen they thought that they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom — Plato

He looks up and the loss in his Noise is so great it feels like I'm standing on the edge of an abyss, that I'm about to fall down into him, into blackness so empty and lonely there'd never be a way out.
"Todd," I say again, a catch in my voice. "On the ledge, under the waterfall, do you remember what you said to me? Do you remember what you said to save me?"
He's shaking his head slowly. "I've done terrible things, Viola. Terrible things-"
"We all fall, you said." I'm gripping his hand now. "We all fall but that's not what matters. What matters is picking yourself up again. — Patrick Ness

In education, we need to begin paying attention to matters routinely ignored. We spend long hours trying to teach a variety of courses on, say, the structure of government or the structure of the amoeba. But how much effort goes into studying the structure of everyday life - the way time is allocated, the personal uses of money, the places to go for help in a society exploding with complexity? We take for granted that young people already know their way around our social structure. In fact, most have only the dimmest image of the way the world of work or business is organized. Most students have no conception of the architecture of their own city's economy, or the way the local bureaucracy operates, or the place to go to lodge a complaint against a merchant. Most do not even understand how their own schools - even universities - are structured, let alone how much structures are changing under the impact of the Third Wave. — Alvin Toffler

Never say no. It always depends on what's possible. I don't care so much where it is; it's what I want to do that matters. — Michael Haneke

I'm in a business where the only thing that matters is weight and appearance. That is so messed up. They might as well say 'Get younger,' because that's how easy it is. — Carrie Fisher

The only thing that matters to me about my stories is that they're entertaining and they're funny. And I tend to get bored easily, so I generally throw something supernatural in. I would say they're humorous novels that have a supernatural bent, but that's as close as you're going to get to fitting them all in the same basket. — Christopher Moore

All too often we say of a man doing a good job that he is indispensable. A flattering canard, as so many disillusioned and retired and fired have discovered when the world seems to keep on turning without them. In business, a man can come nearest to indispensability by being dispensable in his current job. How can a man move up to new responsibilities if he is the only one able to handle his present tasks? It matters not how small or large the job you now have, if you have trained no one to do it as well, you're not available; you've made your promotion difficult if not impossible. — Malcolm Forbes

What matters most with any regimen, whether it's to lose weight or stop drinking or smoking, is your willingness to seek help and your desire to say 'no more. — Ewan McGregor

Mark Waugh, the most fluent and aesthetically pleasing batsman of his generation but also one of the most frustrating to watch. Often, when he appeared to be a class above the rest and to have the bowling at his mercy, he would play a lazy shot to what appeared, more often than not, an innocuous delivery. And just like that his innings would be over. To make matters worse, he didn't seem to care; he would nonchalantly wander off the field. No shaking of the head or staring back at the pitch to apportion blame. His fans had to learn to accept 30s and 40s instead of centuries and 150s. His concentration, some would say his interest, never seemed to be there in the Test arena. Despite playing some match-winning Test innings, Waugh was never quite able to shake the 'lackadaisical' tag. — Sean Ehlers

The clear and perfect truth no man has seen, nor will there be anyone who knows about the gods and what I say about all things ... ; for, however perfect what he says may be, yet he does not know it; all things are matters of opinion. — Xenophanes

Diamonds are held under tons and tons of pressure, extremely high temperatures of fire and shuffled under shifting of tectonic plates, for a long, long time! Yet when they come out from there and are put on display for their beauty; does anybody stop to evaluate the diamond based upon all the shit it's been through and say "Remember that disgusting hole it used to be in? I bet it was hell in there!" No, people don't remember where a diamond has come from; they just see the beauty of it now. But it wouldn't have become so beautiful, you know, if not for all of that! So why should we look at other people, or at ourselves and evaluate them/ourselves based upon their/our pasts? Shouldn't we forget that? And only see the beauty that is in front of our eyes? Whatever it was, it made you beautiful! And that is what matters! — C. JoyBell C.

When we sit down to write, we psychically enter a sanctuary. This safe haven is our own personal space where we can say whatever is on our mind, where we can talk about what matters most to us, where we can imagine the kind of world that we would like to live. — Rob Bignell, Editor

You may not understand this, but I don't think it matters killing people so long as you don't hate them. I also think that there are times when you can only show your feeling of brotherhood for someone else by killing him, or trying to. I believe most ordinary people feel this and would make a peace in that sense if they had any say in the matter. There has been very little popular resistance to this war, and also very little hatred. It is a job that has to be done. — George Orwell

Stop looking at me like that," I say, frowning and rubbing at my chest. He has this habit of making my heart sore, making my lungs feel like there's not enough air.
He tilts his head attractively, which only makes matters worse. "Like what?"
"Like you're molesting me with your eyes," I blurt out.
His answering laugh is long and deep. I can barely handle the affection in his gaze. "Okay, I'll try to stop. But if it all gets to be too much for you, this apartment happens to have a very nice bathroom. You can go rub one out again to take the edge off. I'll come listen, too, if that will help."
There he goes again, pushing me.
I do a slow blink at him before coming out with a rather masterful comeback. And when I say "masterful," I mean shit. "Why don't you go and rub one out?"
He cocks an eyebrow. "I don't rub out, darlin'. I jack off. — L. H. Cosway

It matters, because everything we say
Of the past is description without place, a cast
Of the imagination, made in sound;
And because what we say of the future must portend,
Be alive with its own seemings, seeming to be
Like rubies reddened by rubies reddening. — Wallace Stevens

President [Ronald] Reagan never has tried to become an expert on military matters. He never has endeavored to learn the most important details in that field, which lead to a situation in which his aides played a much greater roles than aides would have played under President Ford or let us say in the whole Nixon-Ford-Kissinger era. — Helmut Schmidt

However, please allow me to say that the fundamental style of my writing has been to start from my personal matters and then to link it up with society, the state and the world. — Kenzaburo Oe

It's all you can say, when the end comes: 'I did not waste my time.' I think that matters. I think it may be all that matters. — Conn Iggulden

To be read. To be heard. To be seen. I want to be read, I want to be heard. I don't need to be seen. To write requires an ego, a belief that what you say matters. Writing also requires an aching curiosity leading you to discover, uncover, what is gnawing at your bones. Words have a weight to them. How you choose to present them and to whom is a matter of style and choice. — Terry Tempest Williams

In theory, say you did have thousands of people - no, thousands of systems - enraged at a hypothetical Galactic Empire in a faraway galaxy. But they're all upset over local matters, over particular grievances, and they never get together on anything. So they get no strength in numbers, no strategic advantages from cooperation. They're easy to divide and conquer. And worst of all, no common spirit ever develops. — John Jackson Miller

DANTE: And what if you found out you were right? What if it meant that I could hurt you?
RENEE: I would not say that I'm not scared. Everyone has the ability to hurt. It's the choice that matters. — Yvonne Wood

Even though people are shallow and lots of people prefer scripted fictional heroes to real human beings, they can still be shaken out of it in the presence of someone who is REAL. Your problem is not that you haven't mastered the conversational skills necessary to maintain someone's interest. Your problem is that you've never forced yourself to define exactly who you are and what you love and how you want to live. You've never had to talk about these things passionately. You've never dared to lay yourself bare, without apology. Once you can look someone in the eyes and say, "Here's what really matters to me"? That's what people find attractive, trust me. They want to be with someone who knows himself and gives a shit. That's what's alluring and attractive and irreplaceable, even in this age of smooth make-believe. — Heather Havrilesky

If you keep focusing on what people have to say or will say about you, you will lose focus of what God has called you to do. Never let distractions bother you...if you do, you will only be giving your energy to an unworthy cause. — Kemi Sogunle

Many people spend their lives trying to create a lasting legacy on earth. They want to be remembered when they're gone. Yet, what ultimately matters most will not be what others say about your life but what God says. — Rick Warren