There's No Impossible Quotes & Sayings

I had an interesting day. I was in the studio with a group of musicians, who shall remain nameless, and I said to them "Our exercise today is not to use 'undo' at all. So, there's no second takes. Or, if you do a second take, you have to do the whole take. There's no sort of drop in, change that little bit". The session broke down in, I'd say, 40 minutes. It was impossible for people to work in that restriction any longer. — Brian Eno

Not ever. Not once. You never know. You only guess. This is how it always is. You have to make these huge decisions on behalf of your kid, this tiny human whose fate and future is entirely in your hands, who trusts you to know what's good and right and then to be able to make that happen. You never have enough information. You don't get to see the future. And if you screw up, if with your incomplete, contradictory information you make the wrong call, well, nothing less than your child's entire future and happiness is at stake. It's impossible. It's heartbreaking. It's maddening. But there's no alternative. — Laurie Frankel

There is no better way to fight weakness than with strength. Once the mind and body have been awakened to their true potential, it's impossible to turn back. — Henry Rollins

Greed is a strange, strange sin.
All you want to do is acquire. Acquire money, acquire material, acquire time, acquire energy, acquire attention. The running mantra is "I want, I want, I want" but that quickly turns to "I need, I need, I need."
Suddenly there just isn't enough time for friends, for family, for anyone. Your goal is to acquire and to make sure what you acquire stays acquired. Your life depends on it. You don't see truth because the truth is shadowed by enormous homes, incredibly fast cars, in lavish spending. Your life no longer belongs to you, but you are blind to it all because those around you are seeking the same.
So you shuffle along at an impossible rate, and you pass the real world around you.
But what you'll come to realize, altogether too late, is that it's never enough.
It's simply never enough — Amelie Fisher

Yes, genuine pain and loss coexisted with the deliverance, but it did not have the last word. Its power to hurt him was weakened because he could see the bigger things God was doing in, for, and through him. You can probably find similar events in your life. Hard things persisted, there was no apparent deliverance, but, with closer inspection, you notice a deliverance that went much deeper. And these are eleventh-hour deliverances on this side of death and eternity. Imagine if you gradually developed the spiritual skill to see beyond the immediate moment and catch a glimpse of the glories to come. The basic outline is clear: if you have thrown your lot in with Jesus, everything he has is yours, even the kingdom itself. It would be impossible to ask for more. Those who imitate Abraham's faith are always pushing the last minute farther out until it comes even after physical death. Such a person is fearless. A — Edward T. Welch

When I first started writing, there was no way I'd write a sex scene. That just seemed impossible. That's why in "Fight Club" all the sex happens off-screen. It's all just a noise on the other side of the wall or the ceiling. I just couldn't bring to write in a scene like that. So one of the challenges with "Choke" was I wanted to write sex scenes until I was really comfortable just writing them in a very mechanical way. — Chuck Palahniuk

And I'll tell you something else. I'm not worried that you'll find someone else, because there isn't anyone else on the face of the earth who could ever love you as much as I do. It's impossible because no man has ever loved a woman as much as I love you. And I'm not worried about me finding someone else, because you brought me back from the dead and gave me a second chance at life. — Katy Regnery

The soul is the form of the body, but not as the shape of a statue is formatio et terminatio materiae, for form does not exist apart from material. There is no whiteness without a white object. But the soul is not a form in this simple sense, and in particular, is not the shape of the material it informs. Therefore, the shape of a being does not affect the being's soul, for then something lower would inform something higher, which is impossible. — Michael Flynn

Because of the city's fragmentary, far-flung floor plan, accessible almost exclusively by car, there is no collective sense of community, no overarching sense of "we." ... It's a city of transplants ... Everyone moves to LA with plans not to stay. But then we stay. Because somewhere along the way, this Garden of Forking Freeways burrows itself inside our hardened, from-elsewhere hearts, and slowly, we begin to love the place we claimed to hate. Los Angeles is such a misunderstood city... It's a place that's impossible not to ridicule until you...fully appreciate all its endearing inconsistencies. It is ugly, and it is also beautiful. It is fast; it is slow. It is sexy, and it is also smart. — Lilibet Snellings

It had butterfly wings, like flakes of patterned wax. Under the wings it had a hairy body with tiny horns. Its fur looked very dry in the hot summer rays. It had an ox's head, no bigger than her thumbnail, with a pink muzzle drawn into a grimace. A white splodge between its nostrils. The impossible detail of a scar on its bottom lip. There was warmth and a heartbeat in its body like that of a newborn chick. — Ali Shaw

Cannabis affects the brain because brain cells themselves produce cannabis-like neurotransmitters. The first such compound to be identified was christened anandamide, ananda being Sanskrit for "bliss." The proteins that transmit anandamide's message to the brain, the receptors, are mainly located in the striatum (hence the blissful feeling) and in the cerebellum (hence the unsteady gait after taking marijuana), in the cerebral cortex (hence the problems with association, the fragmented thoughts and confusion), and in the hippocampus (hence the memory impairment). But there are no receptors in the brain stem areas that regulate blood pressure and breathing. That's why it's impossible to take an overdose of cannabis, as opposed to opiates. — D.F. Swaab

I've had two great years, probably five good years. So I had 20 years of just kind of uncertainty and suffering and ego destruction and poverty. All these things. There's no way I'm ever going to catch up to the misery years. It's impossible ... If I don't do anything dumb or I don't get a disease or something, and then I've got to five to eight years I think where it'll really be great and then it will start to degenerate like uranium, you know? — Louis C.K.

There are times in our lives when the Lord calls us to seize the opportunities presented us. When we must, no matter how hard or fearful, summon the courage to step out into the unknown, brave the darkness, and embrace the dawn. With the Lord's help, though, such seemingly impossible feats become not only attainable, but essential. — Kathleen Morgan

Anguish. German soldiers--with their steel helmets and their death's-head emblem. Still, our first impression of the Germans were rather reassuring. The officers were billeted in private homes, even in Jewish homes. Their attitude toward their hosts was distant but polite. They never demanded the impossible, made no offensive remarks, and sometimes even smiled at the lady of the house. A German officer lodged in the Kahns' house across the street from us. We were told he was a charming man, calm, likable, and polite. Three days after he moved in, he brought Mrs. Kahn a box of chocolates. The optimists were jubilant: "Well? What did we tell you? You wouldn't believe us. There they are, your Germans. What do you say now? Where is their famous cruelty?

The Germans were already in our town, the Fascists were already in power, the verdict was already out--and the Jews of Sighet were still smiling. — Eli Wiesel

To me [Edgar Allen Poe's] prose is unreadable - like Jane Austin's [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death. — Mark Twain

He seemed to be lying on the bed. He could not see very well. Her youthful, rapacious face, with blackened eyebrows, leaned over him as he sprawled there.

"'How about my present?' she demanded, half wheedling, half menacing.

"Never mind that now. To work! Come here. Not a bad mouth. Come here. Come closer. Ah!

"No. No use. Impossible. The will but not the way. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Try again. No. The booze, it must be. See Macbeth. One last try. No, no use. Not this evening, I'm afraid.

"All right, Dora, don't you worry. You'll get your two quid all right. We aren't paying by results.

"He made a clumsy gesture. 'Here, give us that bottle. That bottle off the dressing-table.'

"Dora brought it. Ah, that's better. That at least doesn't fail. — George Orwell

No one ever sounded like The Slits or looked like them, no matter how many people tried it, or were influenced by it. It's impossible. You can't recreate that. There will never be another Sex Pistols. There will never be another Clash. — Ari Up

Pick any time of the day or night and somewhere, everywhere, stories are being told. They overlap and flow across one another, the pull away again just as waves do upon a shore. It is this knack that stories have of rubbing up against one another that makes the world an interesting place, a place of greater possibility than it would be if we told our tales alone.
This is impossible, of course. Make no mistake, everyone's stories touches someone else's. And every brush of one life tale upon another, be it ever so gentle, creates something new: a pathway that wasn't there before. The possibility to create a new tale. — Cameron Dokey

There seldom is a single wave. Another way to look at it is, 'when it rains, it pours.' Good luck or bad luck often followed by more of the same. Whatever path you begin, it's almost impossible to change your direction. You're sent hurtling through space, crashing through experiences decided by the first few decisions you ever made. Binary choices set against something as simple as a yes or no in your earliest stages of development. As a Future Child, that would be your primitive choices in Genus. Actions, friendships, whether to smile in one moment or frown in the next. Those are all paths that, once set upon, are entirely unchangeable. At least, that's what I was designed to think. — Brandon R. Chinn

There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome's allies; and if Rome had no allies, then allies would be invented. When it was utterly impossible to contrive such an interest - why, then it was the national honor that had been insulted. The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbors, always fighting for a breathing space. The whole world was pervaded by a host of enemies, and it was manifestly Rome's duty to guard against their indubitably aggressive designs. They were enemies who only waited to fall on the Roman people. — Joseph Alois Schumpeter

The diversity of networks in business and the economy is mindboggling. There are policy networks, ownership networks, collaboration networks, organizational networks, network marketing-you name it. It would be impossible to integrate these diverse interactions into a single all-encompassing web. Yet no matter what organizational level we look at, the same robust and universal laws that govern nature's webs seem to greet us. The challenge is for economic and network research alike to put these laws into practice. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

Try as some of us may, we cannot escape the influence our lives have upon the lives of others. Ours is the opportunity to build, to lift, to inspire, and indeed to lead. The New Testament teaches that it is impossible to take a right attitude toward Christ without taking an unselfish attitude toward men: 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me' (Matthew 25:40). We may think as we please, but there is no question about what the Bible teaches. — Thomas S. Monson

There's a pizza place I want you to try, Ciccio's. You heard of it?"

"We can get good pizza on Fifth."

"No, you have to try this place, Matt. It's phenomenal."

"What's phenomenal, the pizza or the staff?" Since my divorce a few years ago, Scott - boss, friend, and eternal bachelor - had high hopes that I'd become his permanent wingman. It was impossible to talk him out of anything, especially when it involved women and food.

"You got me. You have to see this girl. We'll call it a work meeting. I'll put it on the company card." Scott was the type who talked about women a lot and about porn even more. He was severely out of touch with reality.

"I'm sure this qualifies as sexual harassment somewhere. — Renee Carlino

I am such a romantic at heart. I don't think I will ever write a book that doesn't have at lease an underlying love story. There's just something about it that makes me feel alive when I write it. Romance is beautiful. It's sacred. It's messy. It's what keeps the world functioning (and falling apart). But no matter what, it's impossible for me not to write it. — Allison J. Kennedy

She was almost in love with him. No, that's impossible, she thought: either you are or you aren't. Love's the only thing in this world that is unequivocal. There are different kinds of love, certainly, but it's a you-do or you-don't proposition with them all. — Harper Lee

It's impossible to conquer all fear and loss by preparation. There are always sources of desolation that aren't taken into account because no one knows what they will be. — Nadine Gordimer

There's the fact of her being a hundred and four years old. I keep saying that's her age, but actually I'm just guessing. We don't really know for sure how old she is, and she claims she doesn't remember, either. When you ask her, she says,
"Zuibun nagaku ikasarete itadaite orimasu ne."
... (footnote) Zuibun nagaku ikasarete itadaite orimasu ne
"I have been alive for a very long time, haven't I?" Totally impossible to translate, but the nuance is something like: "I have been caused to live by the deep conditions of the universe to which I am humbly and deeply grateful. P. Arai calls it the "gratitude tense," and says the beauty of this grammatical construction is that "there is no finger pointed to a source." She also says, "It is impossible to feel angry when using this tense. — Ruth Ozeki

My father revisited Moby a lot. Maybe it's because there's no other novel in the whole world that better captures the Impossible Standard. — Niall Williams

Art has no immediate future because all art is collective and there is no more collective life(there are only dead collections of people), and also because of this breaking of the true pact between the body and the soul. Greek art coincided with the beginning of geometry and with athleticism, the art of the Middle Ages with the craftsmen's guilds, the art of the Renaissance with the beginning of mechanics, etc ... Since 1914 there has been a complete cut. Even comedy is almost impossible. There is only room for satire (when was it easier to understand Juvenal?). Art will never be reborn except from amidst a general anarchy - it will be epic no doubt, because affliction will have simplified a great many things ... It is therefore quite useless for you to envy Leonardo or Bach. Greatness in our times must take a different course. Moreover it can only be solitary, obscure and without an echo ... (but without an echo, no art). — Simone Weil

I am finding myself: it's deadly because only death concludes me. But I bear it until the end. I'll tell you a secret: life is deadly. I'll have to interrupt everything to tell you this: death is the impossible and intangible. Death is just future to such an extent that there are those who cannot bear it and commit suicide. It's as life said the following: and there simply was no following. — Clarice Lispector

Freedom isn't an illusion; it's perfectly real in the context of sequential consciousness. Within the context of simultaneous consciousness, freedom is not meaningful, but neither is coercion; it's simply a different context, no more or less valid than the other. It's like that famous optical illusion, the drawing of either an elegant young woman, face turned away from the viewer, or a wart-nosed crone, chin tucked down on her chest. There's no "correct" interpretation; both are equally valid. But you can't see both at the same time.
"Similarly, knowledge of the future was incompatible with free will. What made it possible for me to exercise freedom of choice also made it impossible for me to know the future. Conversely, now that I know the future, I would never act contrary to that future, including telling others what I know: those who know the future don't talk about it. Those who've read the Book of Ages never admit to it. — Ted Chiang

But he also knew that there is an inflationary aspect to love, and that should his mother, or Rose, or any of those who loved him find out about each other, they would not be able to help but feel of lesser value. He knew that I love you also means, I love you more than anyone loves you, or has loved you, or will live you, and also, I love you in a way that no one loves you, or has loved you, or will love you,and also, I love you in a way that I love no one else, and never have loved anyone else, and never will love anyone else. He knew that it is, by love's definition, impossible to love two people. — Jonathan Safran Foer

There is a moment, if you trip or slip, before your hand shoots out to break your fall, when you feel the earth rushing up at you and you cannot help yourself, a passing, fraction-of-a-second terror. I felt that way hour after hour after hour. Being anxious at this extreme level is bizarre. You feel all the time that you want to do something, that there is some affect that is unavailable to you, that there's a physical need of impossible urgency and discomfort for which there is no relief, as though you were constantly vomiting from your stomach but had no mouth. — Andrew Solomon

I don't even know that I understand what just happened between us.
It seems impossible that Adam and I could fissure and break apart so abruptly. I care so deeply for him. He was there for me when no one else was; he gave me hope when I needed it most; he loved me when no one else would. He's not anyone I want to erase from my life.
I want him around. I want my friend back. — Tahereh Mafi

There is no way to live up to your full potential in life without losing lots of things. Yet there are people who believe you can go through a lifetime without losing anything, if you would just be more careful and more thoughtful. They actually believe that a child can get through elementary school without losing a jacket, but that's impossible unless the child is very repressed. — Jennifer James

Forget about showering with my fellow students in Tribeca Alternative's prison-style showers - one nozzle for four to six girls at a time - in the locker room.
It was impossible to work up a sweat during what passed for physical education class at TAHS, so there was no need to shower, anyway.
Well, impossible for me, considering that, in the past, whenever a volleyball or whatever came near me,
I'd always make sure to step calmly away to avoid it.
See? No sweat. No need for a shower. Problem solved. — Meg Cabot

What we usually consider as impossible are simply engineering problems ... there's no law of physics preventing them. — Michio Kaku

The notorious tendency of conservative apologists and New Age paperback writers alike is to leap from mere possibility to the right to believe. "If there might be space aliens, we can assume there are." "If the idea of Atlantis is not impossible, we can take it for granted." "If the traditional view of gospel authorship cannot be definitievely debunked, we can go right on assuming it's truth." No, you can't. — Robert M. Price

Well, I mean I have forgotten how to go anywhere alone. There are things you have to do. Like throw money into a toll basket on a highway. I'd pull up to it now and panic. Or what if I had to hail a cab? It's hard to believe, but I used to be able to do things when I was twenty that are impossible now [ ... ] It's more than the physical task. It's ... a vision of yourself. If you don't see yourself as being able to do it, then you can't, no matter how easy it is. — Josephine Humphreys

No religion I ever encountered made any sense. None are consistent. Most gods are megalomaniacs and paranoid psychotics by their worshippers' description. I don't see how they could survive their own insanity. But it's not impossible that human beings are incapable of interpreting a power so much greater than themselves. Maybe religions are twisted and perverted shadows of truth. Maybe there are forces which shape the world. I myself have never understood why, in a universe so vast, a god would care about something so trivial as worship or human destiny. — Glen Cook

For all this talk about us being a nation at war with child abuse, and for all the media hype about witch-hunts and false allegations - and don't ever let anyone use the word witch-hunts about this; there were no witches - the fact remains that in 1994, it is extremely difficult to come forward with allegations of sexual abuse. And the external forces of denial are almost overwhelming. If a case as verified as mine meets with denial, I dread to think about the experience of people who don't have the kind of corroboration that I do. And I really worry that we're getting close to a point where it's going to be impossible to prosecute child molesters, because we don't believe children, and now we don't believe adults. (Cheit "Paper presented at the Mississippi Statewide Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect" Jackson, April 29 1994.) — Ross Cheit

It's done. We did our best. The Kindertransports from Germany are shut down. Yours was the last train across the border." "What about the children still left there?" Marla asked. Sebastian shook his head. "We did what we set out to do. We saved as many children as we could, almost ten thousand." "But what about Jules?" Marla asked. "I'm sorry. There is nothing we can do for him. It's impossible. We don't even know where he is. No one will be allowed in or out of Germany. Perhaps we can still get a few more Kindertransports out of the Netherlands, but the rail lines into Germany are shut down. — Jana Zinser

the change I want to define and trace is one which takes us from a society in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is one human possibility among others. I may find it inconceivable that I would abandon my faith, but there are others, including possibly some very close to me, whose way of living I cannot in all honesty just dismiss as depraved, or blind, or unworthy, who have no faith (at least not in God, or the transcendent). Belief in God is no longer axiomatic. There are alternatives. And this will also likely mean that at least in certain milieux, it may be hard to sustain one's faith. — Charles Taylor

There is a further trouble; no matter how meticulous the scientist, he or she cannot be separated from the experiment itself. Impossible to detach the observer from the observed. A great deal of scientific truth has later turned out to be its observer's fiction. It is irrational to assume that this is no longer the case. — Jeanette Winterson

Olivia was her only beautiful child. Julia, with her dark curls and snub nose, was pretty but her character wasn't, Sylvia
poor Sylvia, what could you say? And Amelia was somehow ... bland, but Olivia, Olivia was spun from light. It seemed impossible that she was Victor's child, although, unfortunately, there was no doubting the fact. Olivia was the only one she loved, although God knows she tried her best with the others. Everything was from duty, nothing from love. Duty killed you in the end. — Kate Atkinson

Before I met No I thought that violence meant shouting and hitting and war and blood. Now I know that there can also be violence in silence and that it's sometimes invisible to the naked eye. There's violence in the time that conceals wounds, the relentless succession of days, the impossibility of turning back the clock. Violence is what escapes us. It's silent and hidden. Violence is what remains inexplicable, what stays forever opaque ...
My mother stands there at the living room door with her arms by her sides. And I think that there's violence in that too - in her inability to reach out to me, to make the gesture which is impossible and so forever suspended. — Delphine De Vigan

You remember what you told me, Mom? That there are no medals for the completion of a good life? I've been thinking about that. About how no one wins. Like you said, it's impossible to win, because the finish line is death. — J.A. Konrath

It is philosophically impossible to be an atheist, since to be an atheist you must have infinite knowledge in order to know absolutely that there is no God. But to have infinite knowledge, you would have to be God yourself. It's hard to be God yourself and an atheist at the same time! — Ron Carlson

lightning Collecting all the world's lightning into one place is obviously impossible. What about gathering all the lightning from just one area? No place on Earth has constant lightning, but there's an area in Venezuela that comes close. Near the southwestern edge of Lake Maracaibo, there's a strange phenomenon: perpetual nighttime thunderstorms. There — Randall Munroe

When you run up against someone else's shamelessness, ask yourself this: Is a world without shamelessness possible?
No. Then don't ask the impossible. There have to be shameless people in the world. This is one of them. The same for someone vicious or untrustworthy, or with any other defect. Remembering that the whole world class has to exist will make you more tolerant of its members. — Marcus Aurelius

But being a monk is just one more impossible thing, like traveling to the past or having Finn here forever, because to be a monk you'd have to be a man and you'd also have to believe in God, neither of which was ever going to happen. I don't think God would create a disease just to kill people like Finn, and if he did, then there's no way I'd ever even consider worshipping him. — Carol Rifka Brunt

That's what I want, a mental evidence I can feel. I don't want physical evidence, proof you have to go out and drag in. I want evidence that you can carry in your mind and always touch and smell and feel. But there's no way to do that. In order to believe in a thing you've got to carry it with you. You can't carry the Earth, or a man, in your pocket. I want a way to do that, carry things with me always, so I can believe in them. How clumsy to have to go to all the trouble of going out and bringing in something terribly physical to prove something. I hate physical things because they can be left behind and become impossible to believe in them. — Ray Bradbury

Negativity is simply the devil's language spoken by those who have his perspective." God's language is faith. Nothing is impossible with God (see Matt. 19:26). God never speaks negatively. He speaks truth. Even when He speaks truth, He speaks it by faith, because He sees what can happen.
Faith doesn't mean that you don't see the problem. Faith means you can see past the problem to the answer. You're not saying, "There is no problem." You're saying, "There is an answer!"
By — Robert Morris

Not only is there no way to make everyone happy, it's nearly impossible to make anyone happy. And anyway, most people only think they want to be happy. Including me. There's something wildly freeing about knowing that. — Caroline Burau

I always speak the truth. Not the whole truth, because there's no way, to say it all. Saying it all is literally impossible: words fail. Yet it's through this very impossibility that the truth holds onto the real. — Jacques Lacan

Daisy pulled away from Swift's grasp. "You've changed," she said, trying to collect herself.
"You haven't," he replied.
It was impossible to tell whether the remark was intended as compliment or criticism.
"What were you doing at the well?"
"I was ... I thought ... " Daisy searched in vain for a sensible explanation, but could think of nothing. "It's a wishing well."
His expression was solemn, but there was a suspicious flicker in his vivid blue eyes as if he were secretly amused. "You have this on good authority, I take it?"
"Everyone in the local village visits it," Daisy replied testily. "It's a legendary wishing well."
He was staring at her the way she had always hated, absorbing everything, no detail escaping his notice. Daisy felt her cheeks turn blood-hot beneath his scrutiny.
"What did you wish for?" he asked.
"That's private."
"Knowing you," he said, "it could be anything. — Lisa Kleypas

I felt compassion for the poor people who were taken in by [supernatural] follies. And now I think that I was at least as much to be pitied myself. Not that experience has since shown me anything surpassing my first beliefs, and that through no fault of my curiosity; but reason has taught me to condemn a thing thus, dogmatically, as false and impossible, is to assume the distinction of knowing the bounds and limits of God's will and of the power of our mother Nature; and that there is no more notable folly in the world than to measure these things by our capacity and competence. If we call prodigies or miracles whatever our reason cannot reach, how many of these appear continually before our eyes! Let us consider through what clouds and how gropingly we are led to the knowledge of most of the things that are right in our hands; assuredly we shall find that it is rather familiarity than knowledge that takes away their strangeness. — Michel De Montaigne

There are a lot of things a person with two hands couldn't steal," Eddis said.
"So?"
"If it's impossible to steal them with two hands, it's no more impossible to steal them with one. Steal peace, Eugenides. Steal me some time. — Megan Whalen Turner

Paradoxically, the fear of breaking your neck (translation in corporate terms: losing your job) does not make change impossible. It's a much more insidious kind of fear that interferes with change: the fear of mockery. If you want to make change in your organization utterly impossible, try mocking people as they struggle with the new, unfamiliar ways you have just urged upon them. There is no surer way to stop essential change dead. The safety that is required for essential change is a sure sense that no one will be mocked, demeaned, or belittled while struggling to achieve renewed mastery. — Tom DeMarco

Patrul Rinpoche tells the story of an old frog who had lived all his life in a dank well. One day a frog from the sea paid him a visit. "Where do you come from?" asked the frog in the well. "From the great ocean," he replied. "How big is your ocean?" "It's gigantic." "You mean about a quarter of the size of my well here?" "Bigger." "Bigger? You mean half as big?" "No, even bigger." "Is it ... as big as this well?" "There's no comparison." "That's impossible! I've got to see this for myself." They set off together. When the frog from the well saw the ocean, it was such a shock that his head just exploded into pieces. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Werewolves are not the subject of academe," she said, "but you know what the professors would be saying if they were. 'Monsters die out when the collective imagination no longer needs them. Species death like this is nothing more than a shift in the aggregate psychic agenda. In ages past the beast in man was hidden in the dark, disavowed. The transparency of modern history makes that impossible: We've seen ourselves in concentration camps, the gulags, the jungles, the killing fields, we've read ourselves in the annals of True Crime. Technology turned up the lights and now there's no getting away from the fact: The beast is redundant. It's been us all along. — Glen Duncan

As if I feared that the scope of what I could feel and imagine was being quietly limited by the world within a world, the internet. The things outside of the web were becoming further from me, and everything inside it seemed piercingly relevant. The blogs of strangers had to be read daily, and people nearby who had no web presence were becoming almost cartoonlike, as if they were missing a dimension.
It was just happening, like time, like geography. The web seemed so inherently endless that it didn't occur to me what wasn't there. My appetite for pictures and videos and news and music was so gigantic now that if something was shrinking, something immesurable, how would I notice?
... Most of life is offline, and I think it always will be; eating and aching and sleeping and loving happen in the body. But it's not impossible to imagine loosing my appetite for those things; they aren't always easy, and they take so much time. — Miranda July

Her keyboard. "There," she said eventually. "Bringing up real-time scan." The display changed to a zoomed-in view of the Animus penetration around the object, as several of the tendrils of the black fluid crept toward it. Creed's eyes widened as just a moment later he saw the Animus shrink away from the object. It was impossible to say whether it had been driven back or had recoiled voluntarily, but the reason was at least clear why this tiny part of Malpense's brain had remained free of Animus. Unfortunately, it left them no closer to understanding what the object was. That would require an invasive, — Mark Walden

Environmental scientists in Canada said it was impossible for me to get to the Pole in 2004 ... I said 'no,' it's still OK, and I can still get there, and I did. — Ben Saunders

I don't think that. I believe we're going to win.' - Hime
'On what grounds do you think that?' - Mitchi
'There are no grounds, but ... it's because I won't let anyone tell me that it's impossible. If I myself think that it's impossible, then I can't win. That's why I only believe myself and say ... I can do it.' - Hime — Maki Minami

If you make a film and then two and a half, three years later, suddenly the country's changed and you look like you just happened to hit it. I actually like being contrarian. I would have preferred to come out three years ago when everyone was disagreeing with me. But hopefully it asks a lot of questions about our responsibility in sending young men and women to war, especially a war that's so complex, where there's no right answer, where they're forced with impossible decisions every day. — Paul Haggis

On bad days I talk to Death constantly, not about suicide because honestly that's not dramatic enough. Most of us love the stage and suicide is definitely your last performance and being addicted to the stage, suicide was never an option - plus people get to look you over and stare at your fatty bits and you can't cross your legs to give that flattering thigh angle and that's depressing. So we talk. She says things no one else seems to come up with, like let's have a hotdog and then it's like nothing's impossible.
She told me once there is a part of her in everyone, though Neil believes I'm more Delirium than Tori, and Death taught me to accept that, you know, wear your butterflies with pride. And when I do accept that, I know Death is somewhere inside of me. She was the kind of girl all the girls wanted to be, I believe, because of her acceptance of "what is." She keeps reminding me there is change in the "what is" but change cannot be made till you accept the "what is. — Tori Amos

The term - 'Fairy-Tales' is so ironical in itself, when I sometimes sit to write love stories with a happy ending, it usually drags me into a dilemma whether, I should even begin with a love story at first place or not? Because honestly, I haven't seen many of them reaching climax, most of them just die out in the mid. Then comes the concept of fairy tales or what we say 'fiction', where nothing is impossible!
But over time, if I've realized something, it is that there's no such term called fiction when it comes to reality! Its harsh, in-your-face-sarcastic, ironical and highly irrational. You can't expect what's coming up next, and how it's going to blow you. In the real life, the entire meaning of fiction ceases to exist. Conclusively, we writers, deal with harsh reality and write lively fictions, this job in itself is so ironical but, that's life ... — Mehek Bassi

I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless sins onto a scapegoat and expect them to pass from me; we rightly sneer at the barbaric societies that practice this unpleasantness in its literal form. There's no moral value in the vicarious gesture anyway. As Thomas Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on a another man's debt, or even to take his place in prison. That would be self-sacrificing. But you may not assume his actual crimes as if they were your own; for one thing you did not commit them and might have died rather than do so; for another this impossible action would rob him of individual responsibility. So the whole apparatus of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral, while the concept of revealed truth degrades the concept of free intelligence by purportedly relieving us of the hard task of working out the ethical principles for ourselves. — Christopher Hitchens

I stare at her. I've always known that it's impossible to argue with Belinda, not because she's particularly good at it, but because she's so bad at it- that there is no common ground to work from. She simply sees the world she wants to see it and no amount of logic can change her mind. — Rick Yancey

Let's say there was no terrorism whatsoever and we were all very nice to one another and we were all kind, we still would be faced with an extremely cruel and hostile universe and existence and so I'm a great pessimist and I feel that it's impossible really to be happy, and that the best you can hope for is to be distracted. — Woody Allen

It seems to me that no autobiography can claim to document every detail of the author's life. That's impossible. There are — Sachin Tendulkar

Masses of warring men animated the horizon, crashing into stubborn ranks, churning in melee. The air didn't so much thunder as hiss with the sound of distant battle, like a sea heard through a conch shell, Martemus thought - an angry sea. Winded, he watched the first of Conphas's assassins stride up behind Prince Kellhus, raise his short-sword ...
There was an impossible moment - a sharp intake of breath.
The Prophet simply turned and caught the descending blade between his thumb and forefinger. "No," he said, then swept around, knocking the man to the turf with an unbelievable kick. Somehow the assassin's sword found its way into his left hand. Still crouched, the Prophet drove it down through the assassin's throat, nailing him to the turf.
A mere heartbeat had passed. — R. Scott Bakker

I'm not interested in absolute moral judgments. Just think of what it means to be a good man or a bad one. What, after all, is the measure of difference? The good guy may be 65 per cent good and 35 per cent bad - that's a very good guy. The average decent fellow might be 54 per cent good, 46 per cent bad - and the average mean spirit is the reverse. So say I'm 60 per cent bad and 40 per cent good - for that, must I suffer eternal punishment?
Heaven and Hell make no sense if the majority of humans are a complex mixture of good and evil. There's no reason to receive a reward if you're 57/43 - why sit around forever in an elevated version of Club Med? That's almost impossible to contemplate. — Norman Mailer

It's impossible to be involved in all situations, but there's no excuse not to be involved in something, somewhere, somehow, with someone. Make an ounce of difference. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Some might question whether it makes sense to talk about setting up the experiment and running it again with exactly the same conditions--that it is, in fact, impossible. Locally, you might get the conditions exactly the same, but you have to embed the experiment in the universe, and that has moved on. You can't rewind the wave function of the universe and rerun it. The universe is a one-time-only experiment that includes us as part of its wave function, and there's no going back. — Marcus Du Sautoy

I fell in love with you, Liv." "That's impossible." "It isn't. It happened. And you - " "It's impossible because there is no me to fall in love with. I don't exist." That made him stop moving. She continued speaking. "I breathe. I'm here. I take up space. I eat. I drive. But I have no brain. No will. No strength. No opinions. I do not matter to the point I do not exist." "You exist for me." "I — Kristen Ashley

Modern humanism is the faith that through science humankind can know the truth- and to be free. But if Darwin's theory of natural selection is true this is impossible. The human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth. To think otherwise is to resurrect the pre-Darwinian error that humans are different from all other animals. (...) There is no mechanism of selection in the history of ideas akin to that of the natural selection of genetic mutations in evolution.(...) Among humans, the best deceivers are those who deceive themselves: 'we deceive ourselves in order to deceive others better'. A lover who promises eternal fidelity s more likely to be believed if he believes his promise himself; he is no more likely to keep his promise.(...) In a competition for mates, a well-developed capacity for self-deception is an advantage. — John Gray

Since everyone can't be happy anyway, whoever can be happy right now, should. You have to be happy today, right now, no matter what. Someone said there can't be a heaven if there's a hell. Supposedly it's impossible to be in heaven if you know suffering exists somewhere. Nonsense. True enjoyment of life can only be felt if you've known suffering. — Mikhail Shishkin

There's no happy ending where we prevent climate change any more. Now the question is, is it going to be a miserable century or an impossible one, and what comes after that. — Bill McKibben

Is there such a thing?' Birle asked.
He looked thoughtfully at her, but not as if he saw her. 'Men have dreamed of it, although none has ever held it in his hand, not to my knowledge. I cannot say that there is such a thing, no. But equally I cannot say there is not. Why should a man be able to dream of it if it cannot be? If it is so impossible, then what put's it into a man's mind? Greed puts many things into men's mind, and fear does too. But men dream of other things, as well
of justice, of the lost golden age, of an order to their world ... of medicine to cure all sickness ... — Cynthia Voigt

This isn't a spotless life. There is much ahead, my immaculate little peach. And there is no way to say it other than to say it: marriage is indeed this horribly complex thing for which you appear to be ill prepared and about which you seem to be utterly naive. That's okay. A lot of people are. You can learn along the way. A good way to start would be to let fall your notions about "perfect couples." It's really such an impossible thing to either perceive honestly in others or live up to when others believe it about us. It does nothing but box some people in and shut other people out, and it ultimately makes just about everyone feel like shit. A perfect couple is a wholly private thing. No one but the two people in the perfect relationship know for certain whether they're in one. Its only defining quality is that it's composed of two people who feel perfectly right about sharing their lives with each other, even during the hard times. — Cheryl Strayed

As for myself, I look upon all women as my Mother. This is a very pure attitude of mind. There is no risk or danger in it. To look upon a woman as one's sister is also not bad. But the other attitudes are very difficult and dangerous. It is almost impossible to keep to the purity of the ideal. — Ramakrishna

With the exception of weapons of mass destruction, there is no other type of attack that is more effective than suicide terrorism. The perception is that it's impossible to guard against. — Bruce Hoffman

The slow zone, based on the sensor data we're able to get, is approximately one million kilometers across." Holden pointed at the 3D representation on the screen behind him. "There are no visible stars, so the location of the zone is impossible to determine. The boundary is made up of one thousand three hundred and seventy-three individual rings evenly spaced into a sphere. So far, the only one we've been able to find that's 'open' is the one we came through. The fleets we traveled out with are still visible on the other side, though the Ring seems to distort visual and sensor data, making readings through it unreliable. — James S.A. Corey

For women who have children, the economic difficulty of sustaining a life as an artist maybe makes it impossible. There's no maternity leave, there's no pension. — Elizabeth Price

So my antagonist said, "Is it impossible that there are flying saucers? Can you prove that it's impossible?" "No", I said, "I can't prove it's impossible. It's just very unlikely". At that he said, "You are very unscientific. If you can't prove it impossible then how can you say that it's unlikely?" But that is the way that is scientific. It is scientific only to say what is more likely and what less likely, and not to be proving all the time the possible and impossible. — Richard Feynman

This is how it always is. You have to make these huge decision on behalf of your kid, this tiny human whose fate and future is entirely in your hands. Who trusts you to know what's good and right and then to be able to make that happen. You never have enough information. You don't get to see the future. And if you screw up - if with your incomplete contradictory information you make the wrong call - nothing less than your child's entire future and happiness is at stake. It's impossible. It's heartbreaking. It's maddening. But there's no alternative."

"Sure there is," she said.

"What?"

"Birth control. — Laurie Frankel

That's what happens in our hearts. The holes do not disappear, but scar tissue grows and becomes part of who we are. The same takes place in nature. As the famous Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi observed, 'There are no straight lines or sharp corners in nature.' The most stable structures in nature - like trees or spiderwebs - have angular and curved lines. As our hearts grow larger, and we learn that scar tissue is not so ugly after all, we accommodate what we had thought would be unendurable. And we realize that the wisdom we have gained would not have been possible without the losses we have known, even those that seemed impossible to bear. — Daniel Gottlieb

Life sucks, there's no way around that. But you never know when the good might come. Maybe it won't, but you shouldn't count it out. And besides, that's what makes us human, right? Even if it seems impossible, even when there is no point, we fight to the death with smiles on our faces. — Kyle West

Give us all a chance to prove we're on your side." Emotions locked Keeley's throat tight. She wanted to believe him with all her heart, but he failed to see how impossible that was. She fucked up everyone and everything she came in contact with. She was a pestilence. Sooner he realized there was no light getting through all her darkness, the better off he would be. — Lora Ann

Maybe there's nothing impossible tonight. We're down the hole to Wonderland, and no White Rabbit to guide us.
If I remember correctly, the White Rabbit was an unreliable guide, anyway. — Dean Koontz

Reality is painful
it's so much easier to keep doing stuff you know you're good at or else to pick something so hard there's no point at which it's obvious you're failing
but it's impossible to get better without confronting it. — Aaron Swartz

And then there are the Germans. Do you know, they form words by just sticking them together, so that their word for 'Gatling gun' literally translates into 'mechanicaldeviceshootingwithoutcockingrifle?' The words get longer still. No word is too long for a German because it's quite impossible to bore a German. You cannot entertain a Norwegian, you cannot bore a German, and you cannot educate an American or a chimpanzee. — Stephen Hunter

The future will erase everything
there's no level of fame or genius that allows you to transcend oblivion. The infinite future makes that kind of mattering impossible. — John Green

Our lives are like a complex musical score. Filled with all sorts of cryptic writing, sixteenth and thirty-second notes and other strange signs. It's next to impossible to correctly interpret these, and even if you could, and could then transpose them into the correct sounds, there's no guarantee that people would correctly understand, or appreciate, the meaning therein. No guarantee it would make people happy. Why must the workings of people's lives be so convoluted? — Haruki Murakami

There is no always," I say. "Nothing persists forever."
"Nothingness persists," she says. She is testing me.
"No. So long as anything exists, nothingness is impossible. In fact, it's nothingness that cannot persist. Nothingness gives way to somethingness. The nothingness that preceded the Big Bang was obliterated. Nothing became something. — Michael Grant

I tried to find a way to go on. I could see familiar traces of the path that was my life, but there was always the wall behind me. Do you know what I mean? First you try and climb, pretending it never happened, but it's too tall. Then you try to go around, thinking you can fix it, but it is too far. Then, in frustration, you beat on it with your hands, but it does nothing, so you tire and sit down and just stare at it. You stare because you can't bring yourself to walk away. Walking away means that you're giving up, abandoning them.
"There is no way back. There is only forward. It's impossible to imagine there's any reason to move ahead, but that isn't the real reason you give up. The real fear
the terror that keeps you rooted
is that you might be wrong."
Myron, Monk of Maribor — Michael J. Sullivan

I haven't read much, but it still seems impossible to me that anyone, no matter how much he read, could've read every book in the world. There must be so many of them, and I don't mean every single book, good and bad, just the good ones. There must be stacks of them! Enough that you could spend twenty-four hours a day reading! And that's not to mention the bad ones, since there must be more bad ones than good ones, and at least a few of those, like anything, must be good and worth reading. — Roberto Bolano

His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. There is no limit to His power.
If you choose to say, 'God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,' you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prifex to them the two other words, 'God can.'
It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God. — C.S. Lewis