Only If I Knew You Sooner Quotes & Sayings

The only thing I knew for sure is I hadn't slept in ten years. Not really. I'd been fighting my own monster since nine months after 9/11. I had regrets. I had pain that I still can't find words to describe. But sooner or later you have to make a choice. Maybe fate or luck or God had a plan for me in Jakarta that was greater than an educational leadership conference, a few papers and a book deal. If Vietnam was for Dad, then maybe Jakarta was for me. Indira says I shouldn't discount that it was Allah's plan. The way I see it, Allah's plan is what started my war. — Tucker Elliot

Sophie Betsuie lost her composure and returned to the hogan, crying. She was beating herself up with a club made out of the words if only, and I knew what it felt like. If only I hadn't done this. If only someone else hadn't done that. I hoped she would learn sooner, rather than later, that you can't unchoose anyone's choices, least of all your own. All you can do with your past is try to grow out of it. — Kevin Hearne

The teachers tried everything, even pleading, but Tomas was in the habit of addressing them only in Latin, a language he spoke with papal fluency and in which he did not stammer. Sooner or later they all resigned in despair, fearing he might be possessed: he might be spouting demonic instructions in Aramaic at them, for all they knew. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Jimmy put in a word and told them that if I made it, I wouldn't be able to live with myself without paying them back. That I'd sooner die than owe anyone money for helping me.
Apparently Jimmy knew more about me at that point than I knew about myself. — Craig Ferguson

I've been waiting for you for a very long time." I raised her off my shoulders, lowered her to me, and guided her legs around my waist. "Why did you take so long to come to me?"
"If I knew you were here, I would've come so much sooner. — Kenya Wright

For with my intuition I knew that this man was repeating a pattern over and over again: courting a woman with his intelligence and sympathy, claiming her emotionally; then, when she began to claim in return, running away. And the better a woman was, the sooner he would begin to run. I knew this with my intuition, and yet I sat there in my dark room, looking at the hazed wet brilliance of the purple London night sky, longing with my whole being. — Doris Lessing

I thought that some of the hymns bespoke the true religion of the place. The people didn't really want to be saints of self-deprivation and hatred of the world. They knew that the world would sooner or later deprive them of all it had given them, but still they liked it. What they came together for was to acknowledge, just by coming, their losses and failures and sorrows, their need for comfort, their faith always needing to be greater, their wish (in spite of all words and acts to the contrary) to love one another and to forgive and be forgiven, their need for one another's help and company and divine gifts, their hope (and experience) of love surpassing death, their gratitude. — Wendell Berry

My Queen," he finally speaks, and his usually strong voice holds the slightest tremor.
"My Footman." I don't even blink, playing along with his nonchalance. "You don't seem surprised that I'm here."
"Oh, I knew you would find your way. It was just a matter of when. You actually made it sooner than I expected." He gestures around him. "Thus, the deplorable state of my house."
"Good help is so hard to find," I tease. — A.G. Howard

The people didn't really want to be saints of self-deprivation and hatred of the world. They knew that the world would sooner or later deprive them of all it had given them, but still they liked it. — Wendell Berry

They were untamed, like thunder and lightning in a glass jar. You just knew, sooner or later, the jar would shatter into pieces. — Alyxandra Harvey

Just before he passed behind the hedge at the end of the drive, he turned to look back at Stoke Morrow and caught me spying on him. His shining eyes were so cruel, and before I could close the curtain, I saw the flash of an awful grin on his face. It was a grin that said he knew I'd come around. Sooner or later, I'd fall in line. — Adam McOmber

You swore to stay with me," he said. "When we made our oath, as parabatai. Our souls are knit. We are one person, James."
"We are two people," said Jem.
"Two people with a covenant between us."
Will knew he sounded like a child, but he could not help it.
"A covenant that says you must not go where I cannot come with you."
"Until death," Jem replied gently.
"Those are the words of the oath. 'Until
aught but death part thee and me.' Someday, Will, I will go where none can
follow me, and I think it will be sooner rather than later. — Cassandra Clare

So what about that key?" I asked.
"I knew you'd be asking me about it sooner or later." He pulled the cord out from underneath his shirt and dangled the key in front of me.
"What do you want for it?" I sneered. "Five dollars?"
"I don't want money," he said with a wicked grin.
"What does it go to?"
"A kiss will unlock more than this key will," he whispered in my ear. — Ellen Schreiber

Viktor looked at the older man's nightshirt, robe, and nightcap. His lips quirked into a smile. "The hour is late, and the household sleeps. How is it that you are still awake?"
"I knew you would be knocking on the door sooner or later." Pickles looked down his long nose at him. "You have passed the previous six nights with Her Ladyship."
"You are observant, my good man."
"No, Your Highness, I am the one who locks the door at night." Pickles reached into his robe's pocket and produced a key. He passed it to the prince, saying, "After tonight, let yourself into the
house."
Viktor grinned at the majordomo and lifted the key out of his hand. "Your trust honors me."
"You are unlikely to abscond with the silver," Pickles drawled. — Patricia Grasso

Sooner or later we'll be looking back on everything and we'll laugh about it like we knew what all was happening — Michael Tolcher

I knew a wise man that had it for a by-word, when he saw men hasten to a conclusion, "Stay a little, that we may make an end the sooner." — Francis Bacon

I always knew my grip upon the thread of time was tenuous, and the harder I clutched, the sooner it would break. Therefore, do not weep for me, my tender sweet love-- we must all resign ourselves to the final snapping of that bond between soul and death, and though it is a present unworthy of your grace and beauty, you must know that I gift my soul to you. — Lyndsay Faye

The sooner you get another job, babe, the better.'

'It's all of twenty-four hours since I lost the last one. Am I allowed to just be a bit miserable and floppy? You know, just for today?'

'But you've got to look at the positive side. You knew you couldn't stay at that place forever. You want to move upwards, onwards. — Jojo Moyes

As a young man just beginning to publish some short fiction in the t&a magazines, I was fairly optimistic about my chances of getting published; I knew that I had some game, as the basketball players say these days, and I also felt that time was on my side; sooner or later the best-selling writers of the sixties and seventies would either die or go senile, making room for newcomers like me. — Stephen King

As a magistrate his methods were simple. Even for the vastest bribe he would never sell the decision of a case, because he knew that a magistrate who gives wrong judgments is caught sooner or later. His practice, a much safer one, was to take bribes from both sides and then decide the case on strictly legal grounds. This won him a useful reputation for impartiality. — George Orwell

Pg 621 We are all dying. He just knew his death would come sooner than he had planned. But that doesn't mean they weren't happy years, that it wasn't a happy life — Hanya Yanagihara

Dodger made haste towards the house of the Mayhews while in his mind he saw the cheerful face and hooked nose of Mister Punch, beating his wife, beating the policeman and throwing the baby away, which made all the children laugh. Why was that funny, he thought? Was that funny at all? He'd lived for seventeen years on the streets, and so he knew that, funny or not, it was real. Not all the time, of course, but often when people had been brought down so low that they could think of nothing better to do than punch: punch the wife, punch the child and then, sooner or later, endeavour to punch the hangman, although that was the punch that never landed and, oh how the children laughed at Mister Punch! But Simplicity wasn't laughing ... — Terry Pratchett

Sooner or later, we will face a catastrophic threat from space. Of all the possible threats, only a gigantic asteroid hit can destroy the entire planet. If we prepare now, we better our odds of survival. The dinosaurs never knew what hit them. — Michio Kaku

I remember walking across Sixty-second Street one twilight that first spring, or the second spring, they were all alike for a while. I was late to meet someone but I stopped at Lexington Avenue and bought a peach and stood on the corner eating it and knew that I had come out out of the West and reached the mirage. I could taste the peach and feel the soft air blowing from a subway grating on my legs and I could smell lilac and garbage and expensive perfume and I knew that it would cost something sooner or later - because I did not belong there, did not come from there - but when you are twenty-two or twenty-three, you figure that later you will have a high emotional balance, and be able to pay whatever it costs. I still believed in possibilities then, still had the sense, so peculiar to New York, that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month. — Joan Didion

That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner. — Samuel Johnson

But I was wrong. I should have known it wasn't owver, couldn't be over quite easily. No sooner was Xavier out of sight than a little cylinder of paper fell from the top of my locker. As I unrolled it, I knew I'd see black calligraphy crawling across it like a spider. Dread settled around me like a fog as the words burned into my brain:
The Lake of Fire awaits my lady — Alexandra Adornetto

Would you guys choose to walk away from possibly the most incredible encounter of your lifetime just because you had to let it go sooner then you wanted? Just because you knew that it would never be? — Holly Hood

And she learned to do that, be very nice to people she knew quite well were the Enemy, and even like them sometimes: it didn't mean you weren't going to Get them, because they were bound to do something that would remind you what they were sooner or later. — C.J. Cherryh

Yarvi soon learned only to sip the results, since unwrapping to piss in that cold was an act of heroism that earned grunted congratulations from the others, all the more heartfelt since everyone knew sooner or later they would have to present their own nethers to the searing wind. — Joe Abercrombie

I gave myself to you sooner than I ever did to any man, I swear to you; and do you know why? Because when you saw me spitting blood you took my hand; because you wept; because you are the only human being who has ever pitied me. I am going to say a mad thing to you: I once had a little dog who looked at me with a sad look when I coughed; that is the only creature I ever loved. When he died I cried more than when my mother died. It is true that for twelve years of her life she used to beat me. Well, I loved you all at once, as much as my dog. If men knew what they can have for a tear, they would be better loved and we should be less ruinous to them. — Alexandre Dumas-fils

I had been stalking the bluebottle fly for five minutes, waiting for him to sit down. He didn't want to sit down. He just wanted to do wing-overs and sing the prologue to Pagliacci. I had the fly swatter poised in midair and I was all set. There was a patch of bright sunlight on the corner of the desk and I knew that sooner or later that was where he was going to light. But when he did, I didn't even see him at first. The buzzing stopped and there he was. And then the phone rang. — Raymond Chandler

I knew - perhaps I hoped - that no form could ever contain Lila, and that sooner or later she would break everything again. — Elena Ferrante

Oh, my love," Erienne breathed as he pressed his lips to her brow, "I was afraid you would come, and yet I hoped you would."
Light kisses rained upon her cheek and brow as he held her close, savoring the nearness of her while he could. "I would have come sooner had I known where they had taken you. I had not expected this of your father, but he will answer. I promise you that."
Erienne shook her head and replied in the same muted tone. "He is not my real father."
Christopher held her away, looking down at her wonderingly. "What is this?"
"My mother married an Irish rebel and got with child before he was hanged. Avery married her, knowing the facts, but he never told her that it was he who had given the final orders to hang my father."
Christopher gently brushed a tumbled curl from off her cheek. "I knew you were too beautiful to be kin to him."

-Erienne & Christopher — Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

If I knew how much you loved me, I would've shot you sooner. — William S. Burroughs

If your coping mechanism to date has been to ignore your weight, don't feel badly. You're in good company. I've done my share of standing on the doctor's scale backwards, cringing as the nurse scribbled on the clipboard, anxious when the doctor came in glancing over my record. I scrutinized his face for any semblance of judgment. Whether or not I faced the scale or the doctor skipped a pep talk, it didn't change the truth and it still pervaded every hour of my waking thoughts. I knew what I needed to do and just agonizingly prolonged it. What about you?

We want our lies to be true--desperately. We think it means less work, less pain. But aren't we experiencing work and pain every day when we are obese? We don't escape it, we just reallocate it, attach it to different problems.

The sooner we face the numbers and start to deal with them, the sooner we can resolve them. — Shannon Sorrels

Soon he was picturing little girls with mischievous green eyes and pigtails asking him to play tea. Of course he'd bring real food to the tea party. None of that pretend food bullshit for his little girls.
By the time Haley had stopped for breakfast he'd been calmer about everything. He'd already decided to ignore that breakup nonsense. It was just ridiculous and he knew sooner or later Haley would realize that so they could get started on making their all girl baseball team. — R.L. Mathewson