Pivotal Moment Quotes & Sayings

I was trying so hard to find the single pivotal moment that set my life on its path. The moment that answered the question, 'How did I get here?'

But it's never just one moment. It's a series of them. And your life can branch out from each one in a thousand different ways. Maybe there's a version of your life for all the choices you make and all the choices you don't. — Nicola Yoon

Metallica came along for me at a time and had an affect on me that I feel is the most pivotal moment of my life. I don't think there's been anything else that's even come close that's affected me in the way that that band did when I was a child when I was 11 or 12 years old, and where it went from there. — Jeff Kendrick

We are at a pivotal moment in our shared history. The global goals of a healthy planet, social equality, and economic opportunity for all are within reach. But we cannot prevaricate. — Achim Steiner

In many ways marine biology is at a pivotal moment, when we are discovering the richness of the ocean at the very time we are grasping how we've managed to deplete it over the last few centuries. Preserving what's left, as well as rebuilding parts of it to a semblance of what it used to be, requires us to relinquish some of the power we have exercised in the past. It requires living with sharks. — Juliet Eilperin

Now that young girls like my twelve-year-old friend Mai are being exposed to modern Western women like me through crowds of tourists, they're experiencing those first critical moments of cultural hesitation. I call this the "Wait-a-Minute Moment" - that pivotal instant when girls from traditional cultures start pondering what's in it for them, exactly, to be getting married at the age of thirteen and starting to have babies not long after. They start wondering if they might prefer to make different choices for themselves, or any choices, for that matter. Once girls from closed societies start thinking such thoughts, all hell breaks loose. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I just remember that pivotal moment when you're a young adult, and you realize that these authority figures are human beings, too, and they're figuring out their lives just as you are, and they're flawed. — Gia Coppola

You will also allow me to thank the Academy for inviting me to lecture in Stockholm, for its hospitality, and for the opportunity afforded me for admiring the charm of your people and the beauty of your country. — Guglielmo Marconi

Of course it was Hamlet - The uncle kills the father, and the son has to avenge his father's death. So then we decided it was going to be Hamlet with lions." In that pivotal moment, the film got the green light. — Adam M. Grant

I love scoring. Putting music to picture is a rewarding challenge and one that relies on interpretation of emotion - as in, what is the pivotal feeling in a scene and which character's point of view is driving it at any given moment? — Liz Phair

So in the sense that we were all dealing with that freer approach, yes, it was certainly one of the first contacts, perhaps the first contact, when Peter came that summer. So it's a very pivotal moment that is documented there. — Evan Parker

The combination of power, fear, and mania can be deadly. The leader, convinced that he might be betrayed, acts first and betrays others first. Afraid that he's not well liked, he works so hard to get others to like him that it has the opposite effect. Convinced of mismanagement, he micromanages and becomes the source of the mismanagement. And on and on - the things we fear or dread, we blindly inflict on ourselves. — Ryan Holiday

I skipped out of the Fox lot, threw my Keds back on, resisted the temptation to go over to the Simpsons building and take selfies with the Bart Simpson topiary, — Mindy Kaling

I look back, now, and I know that the naming moment, which seemed so insignificant then, which seemed to demand no more than an arbitrary and superstitious yes or no, was in fact a pivotal moment in my life. — Gregory David Roberts

This is such a pivotal moment in my life! I'm transitioning as a woman, and I'm finally able to express myself as I am. — Beyonce Knowles

The present moment is the pivotal point of power. — Debbie Ford

The innovation point is the pivotal moment when talented and motivated people seek the opportunity to act on their ideas and dreams. — W. Arthur Porter

MIDLIFE is that pivotal moment when you can FINALLY say that you basically have all your shit together and then your body starts falling apart! — Tanya Masse

When I think of my three children it is not only their distinctive faces that appear before me, but also the quite distinct feeling they radiate. This feeling, which is constant, is what they "are" for me. And what they "are" has been present in them ever since the first day I saw them. At that time they could barely do anything, and the little bit they could do, like sucking on a breast, raising their arms as reflex actions, looking at their surroundings, imitating, they could all do that, thus what they "are" has nothing to do with qualities, has nothing to do with what they can or can't do, but is more a kind of light that shines within them. Their — Karl Ove Knausgard

Hate. Huh. He'd never hated himself. If anything, he'd always liked himself a little too much. Once, a human female had even accused him of picturing his own face while he climaxed. He hadn't denied it, either, and next time he'd slept with her, he'd made sure to scream, "Strider" at the pivotal moment."
Strider, keeper of the demon of Defeat
— Gena Showalter

In stories, when someone behaves uncharacteristically, we take it as a meaningful, even pivotal moment. If we are surprised again and again, we have to keep changing our minds, or give up and disbelieve the writer. In real life, if people think they know you well enough not only to say, 'It's Tuesday, Amy must be helping out at the library today,' but well enough to say to the librarian, after you've left the building, 'You know, Amy just loves reading to the four-year-olds, I think it's been such a comfort for her since her little boy died' - if they know you like that, you can do almost anything where they can't see you, and when they hear about it, they will, as we do, simply disbelieve the narrator. — Amy Bloom

More than four decades after Nixon met Mao, the relationship between the U.S. and China has reached a pivotal moment. To date, even as China has become more powerful and present in our lives, Americans have generally found it to be an unsatisfying 'enemy.' — Evan Osnos

If I have one special memory, it was when we recreated the trial of the Chicago Seven - and I'd known about it before - but this was a pivotal moment in my life. If my father had been found guilty of conspiracy, I wouldn't be here. — Troy Garity

... Or he could choose life. At that pivotal moment, it occurred to him that with all his
schooling in theology he had, perhaps, missed the entire point of his studies, the very
crux of the gospel he had professed to believe. That the measure of a person's heart, the
barometer of good or evil, was nothing more than the extent of their willingness to
choose life over death. That the path of God was, simply, the path of life, abundant and
eternal. And this is where he failed, for to choose life is to choose sorrow as well as joy,
pain as well as pleasure. When Hunter had buried Rachel, he buried along with her his
heart, lest it might heal and feel and grow again. And in so doing he had chosen more
than death, he had chosen damnation itself, for damnation is nothing more than to stop
a thing in its eternal progression. In that first flight from West Chester he had run not
only from the horror and pain of death but from life itself.
— Richard Paul Evans

War is a great destroyer. And human history has arrived at a pivotal moment. We can choose a path built on cooperation, where our caring and sharing side uplifts us, or we can continue to embrace a worldview where domination using violence imprisons us in cycles of killing and destruction. I'm a biologist, and war is not genetically fixed. War is a cultural invention. It's time to end this abomination, and this World Beyond War movement is uniquely focused on unifying the human community to create one of the biggest revolutions in history. I'm in. Join us! — Judith Hand

Ask any successful person to look back over the events of his or her life, and chances are there'll be a turning point of one kind or another. It doesn't matter if that success has come on a ball field or in a boardroom, in a research laboratory or on a campaign trail - it can usually be traced to some pivotal moment. — Bill Rancic

You live and die two or three times making a movie. First, you write it, and the first pivotal moment comes when you can get it made. The second is in the process of making it, when the movie reveals itself to you, its flaws and its virtues. Then the most unnerving moment is when that movie is then launched into the world. It's like bringing your kid to the first day at school and somebody points out that it has bowlegs, it is cross-eyed, or it's gorgeous. You feel very exposed. — Guillermo Del Toro

What about free will? . . . There's that too. I never understood why people think they're mutually exclusive. Ask me, our entire lives aren't planned out for us- just some things. Specific events along the way, crossroads we're meant to come to. Tests, maybe, to measure our progress. But we always have choices, and those choices can send us along an unplanned path . . . there are some things that are meant to happen at a certain moment and in a certain way. No matter which path you choose, which decisions you make along your own particular journey, those pivotal moments appear to be set in stone. Maybe they represent the specific lessons we're meant to learn . . . Things we have to face. Things we have to learn. Responsibilities we have to fulfill. And mistakes we have to correct. — Kay Hooper

But once that string gets cut, kid, you can't uncut it. Do you get what I'm saying? — John Green

Take just one well-known event: The Beatles' 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. This has been depicted with astonishing regularity as a pivotal cultural moment; in fact an entire movie -- I Wanna Hold Your Hand -- was built around it. And that Sullivan episode was indeed a major event in popular culture. But did you know that in 1961, 26 million people watched a CBS live broadcast of the first performance of a new symphony by classical composer Aaron Copland? Moreover, with all the attention that sixties rock groups receive, it may come as a surprise to learn that My Fair Lady was Columbia Records' biggest-selling album before the 1970s, beating out those of sixties icons Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and The Byrds. — Jonathan Leaf