Things Could Have Been Different Quotes & Sayings

It was like they waited to tell each other things that had never been told before. What she had to say was terrible and afraid. But what he would tell her was so true that it would make everything all right. Maybe it was a thing that could not be spoken with words or writing. Maybe he would have to let her understand this in a different way. That was the feeling she had with him. — Carson McCullers

The great events of an age appear, to those living through them, as backdrops only to the vastly more compelling dramas of their own lives, and how could it be otherwise?
In this same way, many of the men and women there in the Hippodrome (and some who were not, but later claimed to have been) would cling to one private image or another of what transpired. They might be entirely different things, varying moments, for each of us has strings within the soul, and we are played upon in different ways, like instruments, and how could it be otherwise? — Guy Gavriel Kay

Things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained. — Baruch Spinoza

There is a moment that comes into every life when the right word, the right look even, could change the shape of the world forever. The wrong one could as well, though the resulting shape would be different. No word at all, however, and the moment slips by, and things remain unsaid that perhaps should have been said, perhaps shouldn't, and no one can ever know for sure. — Anne Elisabeth Stengl

The way I figure it, everyone gets a miracle. Like, I will probably never be struck by lightening, or win a Nobel Prize, or become the dictator of a small nation in the Pacific Islands, or contract terminal ear cancer, or spontaneously combust. But if you consider all the unlikely things together, at least one of them will probably happen to each of us. I could have seen it rain frogs. I could have stepped foot on Mars. I could have been eaten by a whale. I could have married the Queen of England or survived months at sea. But my miracle was different. My miracle was this: out of all the houses in all the subdivisions in all of Florida, I ended up living next door to Margo Roth Spiegelman. — John Green

I really do think how we frame things determines so much of our experience, and I've been talking to a lot of oncologists, like, why don't we call them transformation suites and give people transformation juice and have guides that support people when they're going through chemo so you could actually burn away what needs to be burned away, as opposed to this dread, terror, horror, which is a very different experience. — Eve Ensler

I could have been on a path that led to different, more traditional teen romance, and 'Nip/Tuck' shook me loose from any generalization I might have been forced into. It helped me understand I wanted to take on things that were edgier, more challenging and riskier. — Seth Gabel

Sometimes my mother did practice but one thing led to another and sometimes she did not. The advice of the homely man was something of a curse. She would not practice at all if she could not practice right so that gradually she played less and less and sometimes not at all.
I used to think that things might have been different. Gieseking never played a scale and Glenn Gould hardly practiced at all, they would just look at the score and think and think and think. If the homely man had said to go away and think this would have been every bit as revolutionary a concept for a Konigsberg. Perhaps he even thought that you had to think. But you can't show someone how to think in an hour; you can give someone an exercise to take away. — Helen DeWitt

Now I have very little respect for the electoral system in the United States. I could have respected it in the early days, when the country was small and we had small population. The system that we have in the United States was set up at a time when the total population was the population of Tennessee. We've stretched it to try to make it work for different kind of problems and in stretching and adapting it, we've lost its meaning. We still have the form but not the meaning. There's a lot of things that we have to look at critically that might have been useful at one time that are no longer useful I think there's some good in everything. There's some bad in everything. But there's so little good in some things that you know for practical purposes they're useless. They're beyond salvation. There's so much good in some things, even though there's bad, that we build on that. — Myles Horton

It's like we learn to think something's ugly. Maybe if we're could all stop being taught that only certain things are right or pretty, or that only certain things are the way that everything else should be, you know, I mean physically, then we could start looking at things through fresh eyes. And then we're wouldn't look at things or people in a way that would make them sad or that would exclude them. It might even stop us from constantly trying to change our own body image, and maybe we'd just learn to enjoy what we have, enjoy what great gifts we've been given and revel in them instead of wishing they'd be different. — John C. Horst

You are learning that what you require and what your frame may endure can be two very different things. If only I could have a solon for every patient who came to me speaking as you do! 'Ibelius, I have smoked Jeremite powders for twenty years and now my throat bleeds, make me well!' 'Ibelius, I have been drunk and brawling all night, and now my eye has been cut out! Restore my vision, damn you.' Why, let us not speak of solons, let us instead say a copper baron per such outburst...I could still retire to Lashain a gentleman! — Scott Lynch

Things might have been different, but they could not have been better. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I would wish this book could take the form of a plea for everlasting peace, a plea from one who knows ... Or it would be fine to confirm the odd beliefs about war: it's horrible, but it's a crucible of men and events and, in the end, it makes more of a man out of you.
But, still, none of these notions seems right. Men are killed, dead human beings are heavy and awkward to carry, things smell different in Vietnam, soldiers are afraid and often brave, drill sergeants are boors, some men think the war is proper and just and others don't and most don't care. Is that the stuff for a morality lesson, even for a theme?
Do dreams offer lessons? Do nightmares have themes, do we awaken and analyze them and live our lives and advise others as a result? Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories. — Tim O'Brien

You care about me. We're in a room together, with a hundred other people, and you know ehre I am, who I'm talking to. We enjoy each other. We're a bit alike, but different enough. You see things in me that you don't see in your wife and you know, deep down, that if we had met in another time, when it wasn't impossible for anything to happen between us, that we could have had something. And you think it might have been spetacular. And you know you might be a different person if you were with me, and that scares the hell out of you. And when youve had a few drinks, you fancy the arse off me." (...)
He gave her a little sideways smile. "Nearly right."
She raised an eyebrow. God, this felt good. (...)
"Just to be sure we're both clear on this, I'm about to kiss you, Lucy. — Elizabeth Noble

Life is full of what-ifs, many of which could easily have been realities, had just a few things been different. — Julian Baggini

I really love being a weirdo who writes a lot of different things for a lot of different ages. I have been considering doing a guide on my website so that a reader who liked one of my books could find the other books that he or she might like, because I know some of the books are really different from the rest. — Holly Black

For so many years," he said, "for so long, I have been so many things, so many different men." ... "But here," he said so softly I could barely hear him, "here in the dark, with you ... I have no name."
I lifted my face toward his, and took the warm breath of him between my own lips.
"I love you," I said, and did not need to tell him how I meant it. — Diana Gabaldon

For so many years, for so long, I have been so many things, so many different men. But here," he said, so softly I could barely hear him, "here in the dark, with you ... I have no name. — Diana Gabaldon

I never took you for a coward, Stevie,' he said quietly and her gaze swung back, angrily. 'Did
I make you mad? Good. I'm glad. Because you make me mad. If today didn't change anything
for you, then you're either a liar or a fool. And I never took you for either of those, either.' He
leaned closer, until he could see every dark eyelash. 'I'm not a coward or liar, but I might be a
fool because I'm not giving up on you. Nor am I giving you up. So consider yourself on notice,
Detective Mazzetti. Things will be different when you get out of here. I'm not going to wait
forever, because we don't have forever. If things had been any different this morning, we might
not even have this moment. So if you're not "ready", then you'd best spend your time in here
figuring out how to get "ready — Karen Rose

I have thought that the word America must mean different things to the people who live under its aegis. I would that for each of them it might be symbolized by one -- at least one -- memory of some aspect of unspoiled nature. America -- wide, far-reaching, insouciant -- has been the amphitheater for our civilization. I wish each of us could appreciate its vast beauty, and could see how far the elements of our civilization fall short of the sheer majesty of our America. — Harvey Broome

Clarence Hervey might have been more than a pleasant young man, if he had not been smitten with the desire of being thought superior in every thing, and of being the most admired person in all companies. He had been early flattered with the idea that he was a man of genius; and he imagined that, as such, he was entitled to be imprudent, wild, and eccentric. He affected singularity, in order to establish his claims to genius. He had considerable literary talents, by which he was distinguished at Oxford; but he was so dreadfully afraid of passing for a pedant, that when he came into the company of the idle and the ignorant, he pretended to disdain every species of knowledge. His chameleon character seemed to vary in different lights, and according to the different situations in which he happened to be placed. He could be all things to all men - and to all women. — Maria Edgeworth

I think she did really try her hardest to get over him. You would, wouldn't you, if someone had hurt you like that? You'd make all kinds of promises to yourself not to let them do something like that again. But wouldn't a small part of you always be wondering "what if" Wouldn't some part of you - a part that you might not want to exist - still be holding out for that happy ending? It's how we're built isn't it? No matter how many times you get slapped in the face you have to believe that the next time would be different. And then in comes the guy who hurt you all those years ago, and he wants to make things better and to prove he's not all talk- this time it will be different. How could she not fall for that? How could she not think that if she chose him it would finally lift the shadow that he'd cast over her life? All that hurt, all that suffering wouldn't have been for nothing then, would it? If he'd come back to you like that, would you have taken him back? — Mike Gayle

The first step to get people interested in history is to wonder how things could have been different. — Gavriel David Rosenfeld

Originally the premise of killing Hitler was fueled by deep traumatic feelings of wishing and fantasizing that if only things had been different, we could have spared ourselves all kinds of suffering. More recently it's been turned into a comedic trope. As we go forward, tragedy plus time equals comedy. — Gavriel David Rosenfeld

Stacey muttered, "But I hate this school, and this city, and the sooner I leave, the better. I want to start over in a new place. I haven't ... " her voice trailed off and she looked away from Jason, hoping instead to find her words among the falling raindrops. "Do you ever feel like you aren't the person you're supposed to be? That you could be a different person - and have a better life - if things had been just a little different? — J.M. Reep

You'll do," Hemarchidas thought. "Isn't this what we always end up with? What we truly want is unreachable, so we'll make do with what is at hand. I know for you it's different. I know for you it's really me you want. You won't regret it. I'll love you for that, and for who you are. There is still a little part of me that wishes things could have been different. I'll never let you know, feel, or even suspect that, though. I'll make sure at least one of us gets what he truly wants." He noticed Arranulf was studying his face. He gave him a reassuring smile and a light peck on the lips. "It'll be all right, and I too will be all right. — Andrew Ashling

I know vaudeville isn't supposed to be art. It's supposed to be entertainment, which is different. But I think art ... I think it's making something from nothing, basically. It's taking something as simple as movement, or a few notes, or steps, or words, and putting them all together so that they're bigger than what they ever could have been separate. They're transformed. And just witnessing that transformation changes you. It reaches into your insides and moves things around. It's magic, of a sort.
I never really knew that until I saw your act. But when you walked out on that stage, I knew I was seeing something ... different. Something maybe more amazing than what the professor and Silenus had done. You were making something up there, out of just the simplest elements possible, and seeing it changed something in me. I'd never encountered anything like that. — Robert Jackson Bennett

You know, maybe if we'd met as ordinary people, one day, maybe ... maybe things might have been different. Maybe I could have loved you. — Lucy Christopher

Critical analysis tells us not just that injustice exists, but how and why power plays take place historically and specifically, not simply as the general order of things: how injustice exists changeably rather than inevitably, politically rather than metaphysically - how our lives could have been different. Critical analysis tells us, colloquially speaking, not just what's wrong but also what we can do practically to respond. Complaint, in contrast, tells us what's wrong - unjust, racist, manipulated, sexist, and so on - but tells us nothing new about how the world can be otherwise, how we can change the world, resist injustice, do justice. — John Forester

I wanted so much to keep you safe. I did my best. I'm sorry things didn't come out different for the two of us. I wish I could have been good enough for you. — Juliet Marillier

Afterwards
Mostly you look back and say, "Well, OK. Things might have been different, sure, and it's not too bad, but look - things happen like that, and you did what you could."
You go back and pick up the pieces. There's tomorrow. There's that long bend in the river on the way home. Fluffy bursts of milkweed are floating through shafts of sunlight or disappearing where trees reach out from their deep dark roots.
Maybe people have to go in and out of shadows till they learn that floating, that immensity waiting to receive whatever arrives with trust. Maybe somebody has to explore what happens when one of us wanders over near the edge and falls for awhile. Maybe it was your turn. — William Stafford

Catherine," said the Marquess, placing one hand on Cath's shoulder and one on his wife's. "We know you've been through some . . . difficult things recently."

Anger, hot and throbbing, blurred in her vision.

"But we want you to be sure . . . absolutely sure this is what you want." His eyes turned wary beneath his bushy eyebrows. "We want you to be happy. That's all we've ever wanted. Is this what's going to make you happy?"

Cath held his gaze, feeling the puncture of Raven's talons on her shoulder, the weight of the rubies around her throat, the itch of her petticoat on her thighs.

"How different everything could have been," she said, "if you had thought to ask me that before."

She shrugged his arm away and pushed between them. She didn't look back. — Marissa Meyer

My experience is that people who call themselves "The Intellectuals" understand theories, but they do not understand things. I have long been convinced that, if these men could have gone into the South and taken up and become interested in some practical work which would have brought them in touch with people and things, the whole world would have looked very different to them. Bad as conditions might have seemed at first, when they saw that actual progress was being made, they would have taken a more hopeful view of the situation. — Booker T. Washington