Quotes & Sayings About The Way Life Turned Out

Oh," said Alex quietly, remembering her manners and falling into a curtsy, "apologies, my lord, your new title slipped my mind." Gavin turned back toward Alex, surprised. "No need to stand on ceremony, Alex. I forget that I'm the earl myself most of the time. I cannot seem to get comfortable with the idea that I carry the title now. Besides, I don't see how it would change much. Nick has been an earl your whole life and that doesn't seem to change the way you treat him." He shot her an odd smile and nodded in the direction of Alex's middle brother. Nick, as always, was quick to chime in. "That's right! You lot have never respected my title," he said, puffing out his chest in a false air of pompousness. He added a thickly arrogant tenor to his blustering. "Why should Blackmoor get any respect? I've been the Earl of Farrow since before you were born and it doesn't earn me an ounce of esteem!" Everyone laughed and, with that, the awkwardness of the situation had disappeared. — Sarah MacLean

The hairs on the back of her neck tingled and she shivered. She turned toward the door and blinked once. Twice.

The sexiest man she'd ever seen in her life stood in the doorway.

No, stood wasn't a good word, not with the way his presence filled the shop. Dear Lord, was she panting? His broad shoulders were encased in a suit that had t cost more than her rent, but she didn't care about that. His thick chest tapered into a trim waist and strong thighs. Just the thought of those thighs made her clench her own. He had his hands fisted at his sides, and oh God, those hands. Large, thick and they looked so out of place compared to his classy suit. It looked as if he actually used his hands rather than merely sitting behind a desk as his attire suggested, — Carrie Ann Ryan

Have you ever had an experience where, had things turned out just a little bit differently, your entire life would have been transformed?

Like a Supreme Court clerkship, a Rhodes Scholarship gets mentioned in your obituary.

The door was open just a crack, in a way that seemed to say "I have an 'open door' policy, but I really don't want to be bothered."

Success didn't take you off the treadmill, but simply put you on a different treadmill, at a higher speed and with a steeper incline.

When we're young, overachieving, and unstoppable, we all think we're special. But as we grow older, we reach a more realistic understanding of our place in the world. It happens at different times for different people, but eventually we all come to terms with our own ordinariness. — David Lat

Nyx had wanted to be the hero of her own life. Things hadn't turned out that way. Sometimes she thought maybe she could just be the hero of someone else's life, but there was no one who cared enough about her to keep her that close. Hell, there was nobody she'd let that close. No one wanted a hero who couldn't even save herself. — Kameron Hurley

But more than that, he admired the way she'd always spoken her mind. He remembered that after they'd gone out a few times, he'd said to her what he said to all women he dated-that he wasn't ready for a steady relationship. Unlike the others, though, Allie had simply nodded and said, "Fine." But on her way out the door, she'd turned and said: "But your problem isn't me, or your job, or your freedom, or whatever else you think it is. Your problem is that you're alone. Your father made the Hammond name famous, and you've probably been compared to him all your life. You've never been your own person. A life like that makes you empty inside, and you're looking for someone who will magically fill that void. But no one can do that but you. — Nicholas Sparks

And I remember when I met him.
It was so clear that he was the only one for me.
We both knew right away.
And as the years went on things got more difficult,
We were faced with more challenges.
I begged him to stay,
Tried to remember what we had in the beginning.
He was charismatic, magnetic, electric, and everybody knew him
When he walked in every woman's head turned.
Everyone stood up to talk to him.
He was like this hybrid, this mix of a man who couldn't contain himself.
I always got the sense that he became torn between being a good person and missing out on all of the opportunities that life could offer a man as magnificent as him.
And in that way, I understood him.
And I loved him, I loved him, I loved him, I loved him.
And I still love him, I love him. — Lana Del Rey

She stampeed. "I am making him run late."
She gave a resolution of exact 60 seconds to herself to see if she can find her diamond necklace or else she would attend the party with out it.

She suddenly turned, as if her memory shouted out loud- Its on the chest right there!
To her bewilderment, he was standing just a few inches away holding a big mirror in hand.

That perplexed her. Not Adam. Not even the fact that her neck was already hosting the necklace.
But seeing herself that way, her very own self. As if, she was unapprehended she existed.

Adam was expecting a smile on her face, and that she would touch the necklace and say- "Oh my foolish self" but she touched her face and said- "Oh my self..."

That was foolish! — Jasleen Kaur Gumber

And America has done much good. And there's no shortage of nations far exceeding any of its faults or sins. But no nation in the modern world has ever been given so much. None has been so blessed. To whom much is given, much is required. If a nation so blessed by God should turn away from Him, what then? It's blessing will be replaced with curses? Yes. And has America turned away from God? I asked. It has turned and is turning. How? In the same way Israel turned. It started with a spiritual complacency, then spiritual confusion, then the merging of God with idols and then, ultimately, the rejection of his ways. Just as with ancient Israel, America began ruling God out of its life, turning, step by step, against His ways, at first subtly and then more and more brazenly. — Jonathan Cahn

That's the thing about human life
there is no control group, no way to ever know how any of us would have turned out if any variables had been changed. — Daniel Keyes

I remember the day I turned thirty. I was getting out of the shower and I stood in front of the mirror and stared at myself for a long time. I examined every inch of my body and appreciated the fact that I finally looked like a grown woman. I also assumed that this was how I was going to look for the rest of my life. The way I saw it, I was never going to age; I'd just look up one day and be old. — Terry McMillan

But he would have to say that it had been years since he had felt the way he had these past few days - so alive and energized. Anna was his first thought every morning and his last thought every night. Even in his sleep she seemed to drift across the dark background of his mind, radiating a soft, warm glow and a sense of quiet contentment. In fact, had he ever felt this way? Even in his youth? Maybe he had forgotten, but it seemed to him that all of this was new. His life was just beginning, and the heavy summer air felt rich with promise.
If it turned out she didn't love him back, he would still treasure the knowledge that he was capable of such feelings. — Anne Tyler

They were still out on the sidewalk of West Eighty-sixth Street, the taxi pulling way, when Louise put down her travel bag, raised both arms and declared herself in love with New York City. 'It's exactly as I imagined it!' She let her arms fall and looked out at the street, at the honking, halting parade of cars, headlights bright in the dusking air. She turned to Cora with glistening eyes. 'I've always known it, my whole life. This is where I'm meant to be. — Laura Moriarty

A full moon, although less splendid than that earlier on,lit everything around. Before I reached the point where I would have to leave the road and set off across country, the narrow path I was following seemed suddenly to end and disappear behind a large hedge, and there before me, as if blocking my way, stood a single, tall tree, very dark at first against the transparently clear night sky. Out of nowhere, a breeze got up. It set the tender stems of the grasses shivering, made the green blades of the reeds shudder and sent a ripple across the brown waters of a puddle. Like a wave, it lifted up the spreading branches of the tree and, murmuring, climbed the trunk, and then, suddenly, the leaves turned their undersides to the moon and the whole beech tree (because it was a beech) was covered in white as far as the topmost branch.It was only a moment, no more than that, but the memory of it will last as long as my life lasts. — Jose Saramago

Come, my child," I said, trying to lead her away. "Wish good-bye to the poor hare, and come and look for blackberries."
"Good-bye, poor hare!" Sylvie obediently repeated, looking over her shoulder at it as we turned away. And then, all in a moment, her self-command gave way. Pulling her hand out of mine, she ran back to where the dead hare was lying, and flung herself down at its side in such an agony of grief as I could hardly have believed possible in so young a child.
"Oh, my darling, my darling!" she moaned, over and over again. "And God meant your life to be so beautiful! — Lewis Carroll

The rules of the track work well for life. Roller derby is life in a tiny circle. You can only go forward, even if you find yourself turned around, facing the wrong way. There's speed, unpredictability, and danger. You can't be sure what's going to happen, you don't always know when you'll stop, and it appears most people are out to get you. You will fall. You will get hurt. But you will get up again. — Pamela Ribon

He's MINE", I howled. "Mine! And I'm his! You knew this when you slunk into our bed. I told you at the beginning, and I thought you understood, well, you understand now, don't you?"
He had the nerve to extend a placating hand to me, and I wished so violently for a weapon, I were not surprised to hear the clatter of a knife falling out of the cupboard.
I turned my head to the side and spat instead. "I told you 'no', dammit. I told you I'd follow him to the ends of the fucking earth, and I will, and you thought that if you took him, you'd take the way I felt. Well, you can't! Hammer and me - we're twined together, like rose bushes or wrought iron, and you can't untangle us, and if you did, you'd have to break us! Don't you see what you've done? You tried to break Hammer! He's mine! My whole life, the only thing I ever wanted were him, and you tried to break him! And why? So you could have me? You don't care for me! — Amy Lane

Oh, well, I know that Libby." He rolls his eyes. "I've never met anyone more committed to, well, life that you are."
"Really?" I swallow rather hard. "Even though I keep on screwing my life up?"
"Sweetheart, precisely because you keep screwing your life up! I mean look at you. You had the crappiest career eve in the world before you turned everything around and became this shit-hot jewellery designer. You set your head on fire with a cigarette and ended up being utterly adored by the guy who had to put you out... And I do adore you, by the way," he adds, in a nonchalant sort of way, "in case you ever had wondered. Oh, and then there's your love of life. Loads of girls would have just sunk... — Lucy Holliday

There are some liberals eager to embrace a culture void of morals, but the majority of America is made up of honest, hard-working families who turned out in droves to protect the traditional way of life. — John Doolittle

Eldric turned away from the mirror, holding out his hand. In the cup of his hand lay his fidget of paper clips. But the fidget had blossomed into a crown. An allover-filigree crown, with a twisty spire marking the front.
I stared at it for some moments. "It's for you," said Eldric. "If you want it."
"I'm seventeen," I said. "I haven't played at princess for years."
"Does that matter ?" Eldric set it on my head. It was almost weightless, a true crown for the steam age.
In a proper story, antagonistic sparks would fly between Eldric and me, sparks that would sweeten the inevitable kiss on page 324. But life doesn't work that way. I didn't hate Eldric, which, for me, is about as good as things get. — Franny Billingsley

I am gradually learning that the call to gratitude asks us to say, "Everything is grace." As long as we remain resentful about things we wish had not happened, about relationships that we wish had turned out differently, mistakes we wish we had not made, part of our heart remains isolated, unable to bear fruit in the new life ahead of us. It is a way we hold part of ourselves apart from God. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

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

What troubled people especially was not just the tragedy--or even the needlessness--but the element of fate in it all. If the Titanic had heeded any of the six ice messages on Sunday . . . if ice conditions had been normal . . . if the night had been rough or moonlit . . . if she had seen the berg 15 second sooner--or 15 seconds later . . . if she had hit the ice any other way . . . if her watertight bulkheads had been one deck higher . . . if she had carried enough boats . . . if the Californian had only come. Had any one of these "ifs" turned out right, every life might have been save. But they all went against her--a classic Greek tragedy. — Walter Lord

Do you think love just goes away? Pops out of existence when it becomes too painful or inconvenient, as if you never felt it?"
I looked at him. What did Jericho Barrons know of love?
"If only it did. If only it could be turned off. It's not a faucet. Love's a bloody river with level-five rapids. Only a catastrophic act of nature or a dam has any chance of stopping it - and then usually only succeeds in diverting it. Both measures are extreme and change the terrain so much you end up wondering why you bothered. No landmarks to gauge your position when it's done. Only way to survive is to devise new ways to map out life. You loved her yesterday, you love her today. And she did something that devastates you. You'll love her tomorrow. — Karen Marie Moning

I handed them a script and they turned it down. It was too controversial. It talked about concepts like, 'Who is God?' The Enterprise meets God in space; God is a life form, and I wanted to suggest that there may have been, at one time in the human beginning, an alien entity that early man believed was God, and kept those legends. But I also wanted to suggest that it might have been as much the Devil as it was God. After all, what kind of god would throw humans out of Paradise for eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. One of the Vulcans on board, in a very logical way, says, 'If this is your God, he's not very impressive. He's got so many psychological problems; he's so insecure. He demands worship every seven days. He goes out and creates faulty humans and then blames them for his own mistakes. He's a pretty poor excuse for a supreme being. — Gene Roddenberry

But what is the sense in forever speculating what might have happened had such and such a moment turned out differently? One could presumably drive oneself to distraction in this way. In any case, while it is all very well to talk of 'turning points', one can surely only recognize such moments in retrospect. Naturally, when one looks back to such instances today, they may indeed take the appearance of being crucial, precious moments in one's life; but of course, at the time, this was not the impression one had. Rather, it was as though one had available a never-ending number of days, months, years in which to sort out the vagaries of one's relationship with Miss Kenton; an infinite number of further opportunities in which to remedy the effect of this or that misunderstanding. There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable. — Kazuo Ishiguro

If only [love] could be turned off. It's not a faucet. Love's a bloody river with level-five rapids. Only a catastrophic act of nature or a dam has any chance of stopping it- and then only succeeds in diverting it. Both measures are extreme and change the terrain so much you end up wondering why you bothered. No landmarks to gauge your position when it's done. Only way to survive is to devise new ways to map out life. — Karen Marie Moning

Situations will always turn out the best
for all those who do their best
with the way things have already turned out. Everything in your life can be used for your benefit! — Timothy Pina

When I came into your life your life was over. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is the end. You can say that things could have turned out differently. That they could have been some other way. But what does that mean? They are not some other way. They are this way. — Cormac McCarthy

It is impossible to conceive how different things would have turned out if that birth had not happened whenever, wherever, however it did for millions of people who have lived since, the birth of Jesus made possible not just a new way of understanding life but a new way of living it. It is a truth that, for twenty centuries, there have been untold numbers of men and women who, in untold numbers of ways, have been so grasped by the child who was born, so caught up in the message he taught and the life he lived, that they have found themselves profoundly changed by their relationship with him. — Frederick Buechner

I was interested in [Hunter S. Thompson novels]. The rebel in me fell in love with it, and the artist in me was confused by it, and interested and turned on. Ever since, his work has meant different things to me, at different times, and I still get new meaning out of it and appreciate it, in a different way. His work is very visceral, and you can take from it what you want, in various moments of your life. — Amber Heard

Unconscious bias influences our lives in exactly the same manner as that undercurrent that took me out so far that day. When undercurrents aid us ... we are invariably unconscious of them. We never credit the undercurrent for carrying us so swiftly; we credit ourselves, our talents, our skills. I was completely sure that it was my swimming ability that was carrying me out so swiftly that day. It did not matter that I knew in my heart that I was a very average swimmer, it did not matter that I knew that I should have worn a life jacket and flippers. On the way out, the idea of humility never occurred to me. It was only at the moment I turned back, when I had to go against the current, that I even realized the current existed. — Shankar Vedantam

I invited Intuition to stay in my house when my roommates went North. I warned her that I am territorial and I keep the herb jars in alphabetical order. Intuition confessed that she has a 'spotty employment record.' She was fired from her last job for daydreaming.

When Intuition moved in, she washed all the windows, cleaned out the fireplace, planted fruit trees, and lit purple candles. She doesn't cook much. She eats beautiful foods, artichokes, avocadoes, persimmons and pomegranates, wild rice with wild mushrooms, chrysanthemum tea. She doesn't have many possessions. Each thing is special. I wish you could see the way she arranged her treasures on the fireplace mantle. She has a splendid collection of cups, bowls, and baskets.
Well, the herbs are still in alphabetical order, and I can't complain about how the house looks. Since Intuition moved in, my life has been turned inside out. — J. Ruth Gendler

Your nightmare, mama, was my dream." My heart clenched. He kept going. "Never had a home until you gave me one." My breath started sticking. "Never had anyone give to me the way you gave to me." My breath stopped sticking and clogged. "Never thought of findin' a woman who I wanted to have my baby." Oh God. "Never had light in my life, never, not once. I lived wild but I didn't burn bright until you shined your light on me." Oh God. "Whacked, fuckin' insane, but, at night, you curled in front of me, didn't mind I did that time that wasn't mine 'cause it meant I walked out to you." He had to stop. He had to. He didn't. "Your nightmare," he whispered, turned his head and against my neck he finished, "my dream. — Kristen Ashley

To deny that there was this dark side of life would be like pretending that the cold of winter was somehow only a temporary illusion, a way station on the way to the higher "reality" of long, warm, pleasant summers. But summer, it turned out, was no more real than the snow that melted in wintertime. — David Guterson

You won't be the reason our family falls apart because I wouldn't allow a woman who loves my son as much as you do to walk out of his life." Stepping closer, Lillian placed a tentative hand on Emily's shoulder, her eyes spilling over with tears. "I wouldn't allow you to walk out of our lives. What you were about to give up, though it would've hurt my son, was selfless. I once knew a girl who loved a man so much it scared her, too." Lillian paused, her gaze falling on Chad. The corner of her mouth turned up in a small, sad smile as he made his way toward her. Bringing her eyes back to Emily's, Lillian shook her head. "It would've killed me if I had to give up those stolen breaths before he kissed me. Whether or not the baby you're carrying is my grandchild, I'd be honored to call you my daughter. — Gail McHugh

In The Bloudy Tenent, Williams points out that Constantine "did more to hurt Christ Jesus than the raging fury of the most bloody Neroes." at least under the Christian persecutor Nero, who was rumored to have had the Apostle Paul beheaded and Saint Peter crucified upside down, Christianity was a pure (if hazardous) way of life. But when Constantine himself converted to Christianity, that's when the Church was corrupted and perverted by the state. Williams explains that under Constantine, "the gardens of Christ's churches turned into the wildernesss of national religion, and the world (under Constantine's dominion) to the most unchristian Christendom." Legalizing, legitimizing the Church turned Christianity into just another branch of government enforced by "the sword of civil power," i.e., through state-sponsored violence. — Sarah Vowell

I could not even imagine any place of secondary importance for myself, and for that very reason I quite contentedly occupied the most insignificant one in real life. Either a hero or dirt - there was no middle way. That turned out to be my undoing, for while wallowing in dirt I consoled myself with the thought that at other times I was a hero, and the hero overlaid the dirt: an ordinary mortal, as it were, was ashamed to wallow in dirt, but a hero was too exalted a person to be entirely covered in dirt, and hence I could wallow in dirt with an easy conscience. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

My little donkey, if I hadn't shown up, your fate would have been sealed. Love has saved you. Is there anything else that could erase the innate fears of a donkey and send him to rescue you from certain death? No. That is the only one. With a call to arms, I, Ximen Donkey, charged down the ridge and headed straight for the wolf that was tailing my beloved. My hooves kicked up sand and dust as I raced down from my commanding position; no wolf, not even a tiger, could have avoided the spearhead aimed at it. It saw me too late to move out of the way, and I thudded into it, sending it head over heels. Then I turned around and said to my donkey, Do not fear my dear, I am here! — Mo Yan

And there in the darkness of the hotel room, scarcely more than twenty-four hours before the maybe end of the world, the three of them managed to laugh together. It turned out that no amount of terror could stop the great human need to connect. Or maybe, Anita thought, terror was actually at the heart of that need. After all, every life ended in an apocalypse, in one way or another. — Tommy Wallach

You know I feel very fortunate that my life has turned out the way that it has - whatever that means - I mean ... you know, to say that I would be glad would mean that I planned it. — Oliver Platt

The saddest thing of all was that their party represented a deviation from the conditions of the time. It was impossible to imagine that in the houses across the lane people were eating and drinking in the same way at such an hour. Beyond the window lay mute, dark, hungry Moscow. Her food stores were empty, and people had even forgotten to think of such things as game and vodka.
And thus it turned out that the only true life is one that resembles the life around us and drowns in it without leaving a trace, that isolated happiness is not happiness, so that duck and alcohol, when they seem to be the only ones in town, are not alcohol and a duck at all. — Boris Pasternak

Turned and ran down another. They remembered the corridors that held no cheese and quickly went into new areas. Sniff would smell out the general direction of the cheese, using his great nose, and Scurry would race ahead. They got lost, as you might expect, went off in the wrong direction and often bumped into walls. But after a while, they found their way. Like the mice, the two Littlepeople, Hem and Haw, also used their ability to think and learn from their past experiences. However, they relied on their complex brains to develop more sophisticated methods of finding Cheese. Sometimes they did well, but at other times their powerful human beliefs and emotions took over and clouded the way they looked at things. It made life in the Maze more complicated and challenging. Nonetheless, Sniff, Scurry, Hem and Haw all discovered, in their own way, what they were looking for. They each found their own kind of cheese one day at the end of one of the corridors in Cheese Station — Spencer Johnson

No, Sully'd decided long ago to abstain from all but the most general forms of regret. He allowed himself the vague wish that things had turned out differently, without blaming himself that they hadn't, any more than he'd blamed himself when his 1-2-3 triple never ran like it should at least once. It didn't pay to second-guess every one of life's decisions, to pretend to wisdom about the past from the safety of the present, the way so many people did when they got older. — Richard Russo

She had turned thought and feeling into life, into reality, into creation. They speak of the _creations_ of the human intellect, of the human imagination! there is nothing man can do comes half so near the making of the Maker as the ordering of his way--except one thing: the highest creation of which man is capable, is to will the will of the Father. That _has_ in it an element of the purely creative, and then is man likest God. But simply to do what we ought, is an altogether higher, diviner, more potent, more creative thing, than to write the grandest poem, paint the most beautiful picture, carve the mightiest statue, build the most worshiping temple, dream out the most enchanting commotion of melody and harmony. — George MacDonald

He shook his head. You're asking that I make myself vulnerable and that I can never do. I have only one way to live. It doesn't allow for special cases. A coin toss perhaps. In this case to small purpose. Most people don't believe that there can be such a person. You see what a problem that must be for them. How to prevail over that which you refuse to acknowledge the existence of. Do you understand? When I came into your life your life was over. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is the end. You can say that things could have turned out differently. That there could have been some other way. But what does that mean? They are not some other way. They are this way. You're asking that I second say the world. Do you see?
Yes, she said sobbing. I do. I truly do.
Good, he said. That's good. Then he shot her. — Cormac McCarthy

I kept thinking about the uneven quality of time--the way it was almost always so empty, and then with no warning came a few days that felt so dense and alive and real that it seemed indisputable that that was what life was, that its real nature had finally been revealed. But then time passed and unthinkably grew dead again, and it turned out that that fullness had been an aberration and might never come back. — Elif Batuman

We have a tremendous personal responsibility for the way our life has turned out, and an equally important role of steering it into the future. Although we constantly make decisions, we're not always mindful of their far-reaching consequences. — Timber Hawkeye

Before I met Maria, I was your basic craven hermit. I spent most of my time in my room, in love with my walls, hiding out from the world with my
fanzines and my records. I thought I was happier that way. I had developed these monastic habits to protect myself from something, probably, but
whatever it was, the monastic habits had turned into the bigger problem. In my headphones, I led a life of romance and incident and intrigue, none
of which had anything to do with the world outside my Walkman. I was an English major, obsessed with Oscar Wilde and Walter Pater and Algernon
Swinburne, thrilling to the exploits of my decadent aesthete poet idols, even though my only experience with decadence was reading about it. — Rob Sheffield

Now put down only what you actually had to do in the event." "What I had to do?" "Right. Because there are no such things as shoulds and woulds in the universe." "There aren't?" I'm starting to suspect Keith a bit. For someone in Anxiety Management, he's giving me an exercise that is fairly confusing and anxiety-provoking. "No," he says. "There are only things that could have turned out differently. You don't have any shoulds or woulds in your life, see? You only have things that could have gone a different way." "Ah." "You never know what truly would have happened if you had done your shoulds and woulds. Your life might have turned out worse, isn't that possible?" "I don't see how it's really possible, seeing as I'm on the phone with you. — Ned Vizzini

A responsible person accepts the results of his choices, attributing blame or praise to himself; that is what makes you happy with the way you turned out. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

It struck me that we-that moth and I-were two opposite extremes. My existence was as unstable as a stream, changing in every
way; but the moth was like a piece of stone, changing not at all. While thinking this thought, I reached out a finger to feel the moth's velvety surface; but when I brushed it with my fingertip, it turned all at once into a pile of ash without even a sound, without even a moment in which I could see it crumbling. I was so astonished I let out a cry. The swirling in my mind stopped; I felt as if I had stepped into the eye of a storm. I let the tiny shroud and its pile of ashes flutter to the ground; and now I understood the thing that had puzzled me all morning. The stale air had washed away. The past was gone. — Arthur Golden

The year was 1996, and the date was July 5. It was a Friday night and I had just turned 21 two days prior, which, by the way, was a miracle unto itself. Due to the violent life I was living, this was a milestone and something worth celebrating. But on this beautiful summer evening, I was not in a celebratory mood. Rather, I was in a predatory mood and that was what I was doing: lying and waiting for my prey to arrive. — Drexel Deal

If everything turned out just the way everybody expected, life would be exceedingly dull, and learning in any useful sense simply would not occur. — Harrison Owen

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

THINGS WOULD HAVE TURNED out better if she had lived. As it was, she died when I was a kid; and though everything that's happened to me since then is thoroughly my own fault, still when I lost her I lost sight of any landmark that might have led me someplace happier, to some more populated or congenial life. Her death the dividing mark: Before and After. And though it's a bleak thing to admit all these years later, still I've never met anyone who made me feel loved the way she did. Everything came alive in her company; she cast a charmed theatrical light about her so that to see anything through her eyes was to see it in brighter colors than ordinary — Donna Tartt

Up until then I'd thought that white people and colored people getting along was the big aim, but after that I decided everybody being colorless together was a better plan. I thought of that policeman, Eddie Hazelwurst, saying I'd lowered myself to be in this house of colored women, and for the very life of me I couldn't understand how it had turned out this way, how colored women had become the lowest ones on the totem pole. You only had to look at them to see how special they were, like hidden royalty among us. Eddie Hazelwurst. What a shitbucket. — Sue Monk Kidd

For a moment, I wondered how different my life would have been had they been my parents, but I shook the thought away. I knew my father had done the best he could, and I had no regrets about the way I'd turned out. Regrets about the journey, maybe, but not the destination. Because however it had happened, I'd somehow ended up eating shrimp in a dingy downtown shack with a girl that I already knew I'd never forget. — Nicholas Sparks

My primary pastoral work had to do with Scripture and prayer. I was neither capable nor competent to form Christ in another person, to shape a life of discipleship in man, woman or child. That is supernatural work, and I am not supernatural. Mine was the more modest work of Scripture and prayer- helping people listen to God speak to them from the Scriptures and then joining them in answering God as personally and honestly as we could in lives of prayer. This turned out to be slow work. From time to time, impatient with the slowness, I would try out ways of going about my work that promised quicker results. But after a while it always seemed to be more like meddling in these people's lives than helping them attend to God. More often than not I found myself getting in the way of what the Holy Spirit had been doing long before I arrived on the scene, so I would go back, feeling a bit chastised, to my proper work: Scripture and prayer; prayer and Scripture. — Eugene H. Peterson

Your life has turned out the way it has for a reason. And now, you need to unearth that purpose and use it for your own good and the greater good. — Joanne Guidoccio

I am thinking about the way that life can be so slippery; the way that a twelve-year-old girl looking into the mirror to count freckles reaches out toward herself and that reflection has turned into that of a woman on her wedding day, righting her veil. And how, when that bride blinks, she reopens her eyes to see a frazzled young mother trying to get lipstick on straight for the parent/teacher conference that starts in three minutes. And how after that young woman bends down to retrieve the wild-haired doll her daughter has left on the bathroom floor, she rises up to a forty-seven-year-old, looking into the mirror to count age spots. — Elizabeth Berg

So life hasn't turned out right for either of us, not the way we expected,' he said.
'Except it feels good now, at this moment. — Kent Haruf

I got bigger problems than that life hasn't turned out the way you hoped. You can harp on the past all you please, Dow, like some old woman upset cause her tits used to stay up by themselves, or you can shut your fucking hole and help me get on with things. — Joe Abercrombie

Jude says it's because that's the way I look at life_ it's so much more exciting when you don't know what's on the other side of the day you're in. you just expect the best, deal with the bumps, and pray that your boat doesn't fall apart under the big waves ...
(re driftwood) It will remind me of him and life in general. Because if you think about it, every day is full of wrong turns and roads that take us nowhere. But when you stand back and look at it, you can see how beautiful it all turned out and that you're standing where you're supposed to be. — Karen White