Wish I Knew What To Do Quotes & Sayings

What am I going to do?
I wish I knew the answer, Sienna. The man your going to marry is walking this earth. He's alive right now, somewhere. He could be in Australia, backpacking with friends; he could be working in a bar in China; he could be a hotshot American lawyer; he could be a musician; he could be going about his life in London at this very moment ... Any day now, your paths could cross. She smiled when I said this, like it brought her comfort. — Jessica Thompson

You don't need to be seeing someone to be in love with her. You can have lost touch with her, she can have hurt you, even inexplicably. If you ever felt that you really knew her and that it was what you knew that you loved, and if you remember what it was you once knew, why is it so crazy to retain that love still? — Elliot Perlman

You say the gentleman I knew has been replaced. How I wish I could offer better comfort than to say that no matter how you have changed, you wil be welcomed when you return. Do what you must. If it helps you to endure, put the feelings away for now, and lock the door. Perhaps someday we'll air them out together. — Lisa Kleypas

A dancer, more than any other human being, dies two deaths: the first, the physical when the powerfully trained body will no longer respond as you would wish. After all, I choreographed for myself. I never choreographed what I could not do. I changed steps in Medea and other ballets to accommodate the change. But I knew. And it haunted me. I only wanted to dance. — Martha Graham

The damned could be saved ... anytime. But they refused to give up their sins. Though they suffered endlessly, they would not give them up, even for salvation, perfect divine love.
I hadn't understood at the time. If sinners were unhappy, why would they prefer their suffering? But now I knew why. Without my wounds, who was I? My scars were my face, my past was my life. — Janet Fitch

I wait, washed, brushed, fed, like a prize pig. Sometime in the eighties they invented pig balls, for pigs who were being fattened in pens. Pig balls were large colored balls; the pigs rolled them around with their snouts. The pig marketers said this improved their muscle tone; the pigs were curious, they liked having something to think about. I read about that in Introduction to Psychology; that, and the chapter on caged rats who'd give themselves electric shocks for something to do. And the one on the pigeons trained to peck a button that made a grain of corn appear. Three groups of them: the first one got one grain per peck, the second one grain every other peck, the third was random. When the man in charge cut off the grain, the first group gave up quite soon, the second group a little later. The third group never gave up. They'd peck themselves to death, rather than quit. Who knew what worked?
I wish I had a pig ball. — Margaret Atwood

She knew it should bother her more, being evil and all, but after she put on a little mascara and some lipstick and poured herself another cup of blood-laced coffee, she found that she was okay with it. — Christopher Moore

Hatred is always a sin, my mother told me. Remember that. One drop of hatred in your soul will spread and discolor everything like a drop of black ink in white milk. I was struck by that and meant to try it, but knew I shouldn't waste the milk. — Alice Munro

I watched you fall in love with me. I saw the smile cross your lips when it happened. I remember that day. I was the first day I knew I had no heart. — Tara Brown

Then he asked me which one I thought was most likely to happen. I wish I knew. I really do. But I don't. You'd think that after living with these people for fifteen years I'd know a little something about them. But right now I feel like I don't know my parents at all. I guess
when you get down to it, I've never really thought about them as people. They've always been my parents. Now I have to think about them as people with feelings. What a pain.
The funny thing is, I bet they feel the same way. — Michael Thomas Ford

Anyone pretending to be a guide through wild and fabulous territory should know the territory. I wish I knew it better than I do. I am not Jed Smith. But Jed smith is not available these days as a guide, and I am. I accept the duty, at least as much for what I may learn as for what I may be able to tell others. — Wallace Stegner

Subconsciously he knew why it was happening, but a truth suppressed is a reality ignored. — Luke Montgomery

Coyotes move within a landscape of attentiveness. I have seen their eyes in the creosote bushes and among mesquite trees. They have watched me. And all the times that I saw no eyes, that I kept walking and never knew, there were still coyotes. When I have seen them trot away, when I have stepped from the floorboard of my truck, leaned on the door, and watched them as they watched me over their shoulders, I have been aware for that moment of how much more there is. Of how I have only seen only an instant of a broad and rich life. — Craig Childs

The look he gave me ... My stomach quivered in that exact same way when I watched Before Sunset, yearning for a guy to know me so deeply and truly, we were only really complete when we were together. That I could talk, go on wild tangents, make obtuse references, and he would divine my meaning before I knew what I was trying to say myself. Erik had fallen asleep next to me on the couch, complaining later that the movie was "just people talking." He had no idea that this movie could have been a love letter written for me. — Justina Chen

Did they know why they knew? Not at all. But the Knew! — Malcolm Gladwell

What is it about business that makes us laugh - when things go wrong, which they do all the time (why, I still wish I knew) then we need to laugh. — Ronnie Apteker

They wouldn't be politicians if they knew what they were doing. — Jim Rogers

Gogol remembers having to do the same thing when he was younger, when his grandparents died ... He remembers, back then, being bored by it, annoyed at having to observe a ritual no one else he knew followed, in honor of people he had seen only a few times in his life ... Now, sitting together at the kitchen table at six-thirty every evening, his father's chair empty, this meatless meal is the only thing that seems to make sense. — Jhumpa Lahiri

I thought every other kid was like me. I'd watch films and act them out on my own and wish I could be one of the actresses. When I saw 'Pride And Prejudice,' the one with Colin Firth, I just absolutely knew that was what I wanted to do, and for 'Cranford' to be my first job was poetic, really. — Kimberley Nixon

She knew her duty inside and out. The prosperity of the cash drawer brought happiness to husband and wife. Not that Madame Puta was bad looking, not at all, she could even, like so many others, have been rather pretty, but she was so careful, so distrustful that she stopped short of beauty just as she stopped short of life - her hair was a little too well dressed, her smile a little too facile and sudden, and her gestures a bit too abrupt or too furtive. You racked your brains trying to figure out what was too calculated about her and why you always felt uneasy when she came near you. This instinctive revulsion that shopkeepers inspire in anyone who goes near them who knows what's what, is one of the few consolations for being as down at heel as people who don't sell anything to anybody tend to be. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

The police, he knew, had already copied the — David Baldacci

If only those who dream about Hollywood knew how difficult it all is. — Greta Garbo

For what is known of God is evident among them: for God revealed Himself to them. 20. For the unseen things, both His eternal power and divine authority, from His creation of the world, are seen clearly, being understood by His works. so they are without excuse. 21. Because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or give thanks, but their thoughts became directed to worthless things and their foolish hearts and minds became covered in darkness. 22. Although they claim to be wise they were made foolish — Anonymous

Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back — Blaise Pascal

It didn't work. It didn't work because I knew not to give the best of myself to the worst of people. — A.S. King

Somewhere out there is a true and living prophet of destruction and I dont want to confront him. I know he's real. I have seen his work. I walked in front of those eyes once. I wont do it again. I wont push my chips forward and stand up and go out to meet him. It aint just bein older. I wish that it was. I cant say that it's even what you are willin to do. Because I always knew that you had to be willin to die to even do this job. That was always true. Not to sound glorious about it or nothin but you do. If you aint they'll know it. They'll see it in a heartbeat. I think it is more like what you are willin to become. And I think a man would have to put his soul at hazard. And I wont do that. — Cormac McCarthy

She knew neither that she was living in the first century BC nor in the Hellenistic Age, both of them later constructs. (The Hellenistic Age begins with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and ends in 30 BC, with the death of Cleopatra. — Stacy Schiff

What are you doing here?! (Aimee)
Come to inadvertently insult you some more apparently. Who knew? (Fang) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

When I talk to the National Alliance on
Mental Illness (NAMI) and other patient
support groups, I take questions at the
end. At one talk I was asked, "What's
the difference between yourself and
someone without mental illness?"
At another talk I was asked, "How do
you make the voices be not so mean?"
I wish I knew. — Mark Vonnegut

I want to know what your five-dollar wish was for."
"Is that all?" He smiled beneath her exploring fingertips. "I wished you would find someone who wanted you as much as I did. But I knew it wouldn't come true."
The candlelight slid over Daisy's delicate features as she raised her head to look at him. "Why not?"
"Because I knew no one could ever want you as much as I do."
Daisy levered herself farther over him until her hair tumbled in a dark curtain around them both.
"What was your wish?" Matthew asked, combing his fingers through the fall of shimmering hair.
"That I could find the right man to marry." Her tender smile stopped his heart. "And then you appeared. — Lisa Kleypas

He gave me heaven and earth, and assumed I'd be satisfied; Actually I was too embarrassed to argue. The spiritual seekers are tired, two or three at each stage of the path. The rest who have given up never knew your address at all. There are so many in this gathering who wish the candle well. But if the being of the candle is melting, what can the sorrow-sharers do? — Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib

He was a romantic, he knew it, and he guarded the knowledge jealously. — Stephen King

I miss the girl I was, and I wish I could tell her that. But she got hurt really bad and I've been waiting such a long time for her to be okay again. I bet she never dreamed she would live so long, or do the things she can do now. I wish I could tell her what she'd grow up to be, how strange and beautiful and unexpected she'd be. She'd probably feel a lot better if she knew. The sky and the stars are brilliant, and I think of how much she would have loved this. — Austin Grossman

Right now I feel guilty to be alive. Why? Because I'm wasting it. I've been given this life and all I do is mope it away.
What's worse is, I am totally aware of how ridiculous I am. It would be a lot easier if I believed I was the center of the universe, because then I wouldn't know any better NOT to make a big deal out of everything. I know how small my problems are, yet that doesn't stop me from obsessing about them.
I have to stop doing this.
How do other people get happy? I look at people laughing and smiling and enjoying themselves and try to get inside their heads. How do Bridget, Manda, and Sara do it? Or Pepe? Or EVERYONE but me?
Why does everything I see bother me? Why can't I just get over these daily wrongdoings? Why can't I just move on and make the best of what I've got?
I wish I knew. — Megan McCafferty

I wish I knew what to do with my life, what to do with my heart ... I do nothing all day, boredom settles in, I look at the sky so I get to feel even smaller than I already feel and my mind keeps poisoning itself uselessly. — Sylvia Plath

I wish I knew at 14 not to put much thought into what other people my age said to me, cause we were all looking for the answers. So I wish I knew that other people really don't know any more than you do! — Will Estes

I believe you owe me a token, my lady. Or do you wish me to extend credit?"
"What, and have you claim I owe you some further recompense?" she declined with a scornful laugh as she flipped him a wooden chip.
"Definitely not!"
Christopher sighed in exaggerated disappointment. "Too bad. I was looking forward to collecting."
"You always are," she murmured as he leaned forward to pick up the chip.
"You can hardly fault me there." His tone was equally soft as his eyes caressed her warmly. "You sorely test my restraints, my lady."
"Restraints?" She raised a delicate brow in disbelief. "I have seen no evidence of such."
"Madam, if you really knew, you'd think me a scoundrel."
"I already do."

-Christopher & Erienne — Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

There was an inscription at the end in Latin. It's translated in one of the guidebooks: What you are, we used to be. What we are, you will be. What do you think they meant?" Janey looked confused, torn, Ilana was sure, between her wish to have her mother explain and not wanting to admit her incomprehension to her sister. "It's obvious," Sarah said. "The bones were once people. Someday we'll be just bones." "I knew that." "Liar, — Lisa Gornick

I only wish I could have played in the big leagues when I was young enough to show what I could do. When an offer was given to me to join up, I was too old, and I knew it. — Buck Leonard

If she had been a normal female, she would have swooned. But she was not normal, never had been.
"Good grief, you are impossibly handsome," she said breathlessly. "I vow, I have never experienced the like. For an instant, my brain stopped altogether. I must say, my lord, you do clean up well. But next time, I wish you would call out a warning before you come into view, and give me a chance to brace myself for the onslaught."
Something dark flickered in his eyes. Then a corner of his hard mouth quirked up. "Miss Adams, you have an interesting - a unique - way with a compliment."
The trace of a smile disoriented her further. "It is a unique experience," she said. "I never knew my brain to shut off before, not while I was full awake. I wonder if the phenomenon has been scientifically documented and what physiological explanation has been proposed. — Loretta Chase

Allie would love what you've done," he remarked. "She was always a softie when it came to things like this."
I folded my hands in my lap. "I wish she could be there this weekend."
Noah glanced at the stack of letters. I knew he was imagining Allie, and for a brief moment, he looked strangely younger.
"So do I," he said. — Nicholas Sparks

Anne, I don't want to live ... Now listen, life is lovely, but I Can't Live It. I can't even explain. I know how silly it sounds ... but if you knew how it Felt. To be alive, yes, alive, but not be able to live it. Ay that's the rub. I am like a stone that lives ... locked outside of all that's real ... Anne, do you know of such things, can you hear???? I wish, or think I wish, that I were dying of something for then I could be brave, but to be not dying, and yet ... and yet to [be] behind a wall, watching everyone fit in where I can't, to talk behind a gray foggy wall, to live but to not reach or to reach wrong ... to do it all wrong ... believe me, (can you?) ... what's wrong. I want to belong. I'm like a jew who ends up in the wrong country. I'm not a part. I'm not a member. I'm frozen. — Anne Sexton

I was breaking down, wanting to fade away and cry, yet I feared ever being invisible again. My head lowered to conceal my humiliation behind a curtain of hair where I trembled as if sobbing.
"Hey, Gwen, it's okay. It's okay. Calm down."
I yearned to feel Daniel's soft touch meet my temple and then trace along my ear, brushing back the hairs from my face. What I wanted was the comfort his caress always afforded me. He moved as if he would grant my wish, realizing at the last moment that neither of us possessed the power to touch the other.
"Your hair, Gwen."
I refused to do what he wanted. I didn't care for him to see the shame plainly visible in my features. But the next thing I knew, his blue eyes were staring up at me from the ground, a glare reflecting off his glasses. The guy had dropped his books to fall over for a clear view of my face. His desperation made me laugh.
"It's going to be okay, Gwen, I promise."
- from "Phantom's Veil — Richelle E. Goodrich

I wanted love and goodness in this which is living death,' I said. 'It was impossible from the beginning, because you cannot have love and goodness when you do what you know to be evil, what you know to be wrong. You can only have the desperate confusion and longing and the chasing of phantom goodness in its human form. I knew the real answer to my quest before I ever reached Paris. I knew it when I first took a human life to feed my craving. It was my death. And yet I would not accept it, could not accept it, because like all creatures I don't wish to die! And so I sought for other vampires, for God, for the devil, for a hundred things under a hundred names. And it was all the same, all evil. And all wrong. Because no one could in any guise convince me of what I myself knew to be ture, that I was damned in my own mind and soul. — Anne Rice

Sometimes, what people choose to write down on paper is more important than what they say.
Caleb didn't know what Sarah meant. But I knew. I wrote in my journal every night. And when I read what I had written, I could see myself there, clearer than when I looked in the mirror. I could see all of us: Papa, who couldn't always say the things he felt; Caleb, who said everything; and Sarah, who didn't know that she had changed us all. — Patricia MacLachlan

I'd never really believed in terrorists before
I mean, I knew that in the abstract there were terrorists somewhere in the world, but they didn't really represent any risk to me. There were millions of ways that the world could kill me
starting with getting run down by a drunk burning his way down Valencia
that were infinitely more likely and immediate than terrorists. Terrorists kill a lot fewer people than bathroom falls and accidental electrocutions. Worrying about them always struck me as about as useful as worrying about getting hit by lightning. — Cory Doctorow

I started to see it Eunice's way. We now had obligations to each other. Our families had failed us, and now we had to form an equally strong and enduring connection to each other. Any gap between us was a failure. Success would come when neither of us knew where one ended and the other began. — Gary Shteyngart

I never knew anything other than wanting to be an entrepreneur. I tried my first business when I was 6 years old, and I started another business when I was 8. I don't think I knew anything besides that. — Daymond John

I had always thought one could not be truly lost if one knew one's own heart. — Cassandra Clare

I was supposed to stay for 3 months. But I think I always knew I would stay a little longer, despite the crazy Frenchies. Or maybe because of them. — Vicki Lesage

All of us who grew up before World War II are immigrants in time, immigrants from an earlier world, living in an age essentially different from anything we knew before. — Margaret Mead

I have discovered nothing. I have only found out what I knew. I understand the force that in the past gave me life, and now too gives me life. I have been set free from falsity, I have found the Master. — Leo Tolstoy

I had a library of maybe 1,000 books in my room in Buenos Aires. I did have the sense that everything there was organised in the right way. You'll probably think I needed serious psychiatric treatment, but there were times when I would not buy a book because I knew it wouldn't fit one of the categories into which I had divided the library. — Alberto Manguel

He didn't operate on the same frequency as everyone else. On one hand, he was more dangerous than anyone I'd ever met.
He could slip into a room, kill you with a spatula, and be out of town before anyone knew about it. On the other, he was the most pure, untarnished soul I'd ever come across. It was an odd mix so uniquely Kale, and I wouldn't change it for anything in the world. — Jus Accardo

He had been the recipient, he now gratefully acknowledged, of a rare and precious gift. In demanding the hand of a woman he neither understood nor was capable of knowing, he had instead received from her the chance to see himself and the opportunity to become a better man. And he had changed. He knew he had. He knew that he was not that man stalking angrily back to his chambers in Rosings Hall. What had happened to him in those intervening months? He was not sure; he could offer no complete explanation, but the man who had opened Rosings's doors, already prepared to write an angry letter, was a stranger, a man who had been walking through his entire life asleep. But now, he had awoken. — Pamela Aidan

Such disappointments, betrayals and reconciliations were the stuff of married life, but she and Jack had gone through them before the wedding. Now, at least, she felt confident that she knew him. Nothing was likely to surprise her. It was a funny way to do things, but it might be better than making your vows first and getting to know your spouse afterward. — Ken Follett

Books never cease to astonish me. When I was a child, I knew
in the incontestable way that children know things
that God was an author who'd imagined me, which is why I (and everyone else) existed: to populate His narrative. My task was to imagine God in return: this was all He and I owed each other. — Martha Cooley

Other clubs never came into my thoughts once I knew Arsenal wanted to sign me. — Dennis Bergkamp

[T]he more we do this, the more I learn about what I think Chains was really training us for. And this is it. He wasn't training us for a calm and orderly world where we could pick and choose when we need to be clever. He was training us for a situation that was fucked up on all sides. Well, we're in it, and I say we're equal to it. I don't need to be reminded that we're up to our heads in dark water. I just want you boys to remember that we're the gods-damned sharks."
"Right on," cried Bug. "I knew there was a reason I let you lead this gang! — Scott Lynch

With a dreamy sigh, I prop my chin on my fists. "Who knew that one day I'd be on a date with the lead singer from a famous boy band?"
He scowls. "Infinite Gray was not a boy band."
"Were there any girls in the band?"
"No."
"That makes you a boy band."
"It made us an all-male rock group."
I bite back my smile. He's so cute when he's irritated. "Right, like 'N Sync."
He winces. "Not like 'N Sync. Jesus, watch where you hurl those things. Words hurt, Maggie. — Lexi Ryan

The trouble was, Elizabeth thought, they did not tell the children of colonial families not to love these foreign lands, not to fall in love with their birthplaces. While parents dreamt of retiring in peace to another place called 'home', their children soaked up knowledge of the only world they knew: its different peoples, its spicy food, its birdsong, the way warm rain fell like a curtain through the palm trees. Their souls would be forever torn. — Anne M. Chappel

When they were introduced, he made a witticism, hoping to be liked. She laughed extremely hard, hoping to be liked. Then each drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their faces.
The man who'd introduced them didn't much like either of them, though he acted as if he did, anxious as he was to preserve good relations at all times. One never knew, after all, now did one now did one now did one. — David Foster Wallace

The people of Lancre wouldn't dream of living in anything other than a monarchy. They'd done so for thousands of years and knew that it worked. But they'd also found that it didn't do to pay too much attention to what the King wanted, because there was bound to be another king along in forty years or so and he'd be certain to want something different and so they'd have gone to all that trouble for nothing. In the meantime, his job as they saw it was to mostly stay in the palace, practise the waving, have enough sense to face the right way on coins and let them get on with the ploughing, sowing, growing and harvesting. It was, as they saw it, a social contract. They did what they always did, and he let them. — Terry Pratchett

My first collection was made from sheets that my grandmother, who lived in Normandy, had been collecting for a long time. There are a lot of flea markets in that part of France, and she knew what I liked. — Olivier Theyskens

I knew that I could be more creative onstage, to state my own case and deliver my own interpretation of the role much more aggressively than in the recording studio. — Kiri Te Kanawa

I looked at the book lying on a table. Though not a great reader myself, I knew that those who were - even Nora - could grow testy when one came between them and their books. — Susan Higginbotham

I knew a book of mine was finished when I was in intensive care. — Kate Braverman

It was not that low-income renters didn't know their rights. They just knew those rights would cost them. — Matthew Desmond

He had spoken with such absolute confidence that I knew he had to be blowing this out of his rectal orifice. — Neal Stephenson

As an exercise, can you recall the last time you saw someone whose gender was ambiguous? Was this person attractive to you? And if you knew they called themselves neither a man nor a woman, what would it make you if you're attracted to that person? And if you were to kiss? Make love? What would you be? — Kate Bornstein

I was pursuing my acting career, but I was silent on the LGBT issue, the issue that was closest to me. I knew if I came out then, I'd have had to change careers. — George Takei

I knew that I wanted to be an illustrator since I was in kindergarten. I can remember the exact day. The art teacher usually came to our classroom once a week, but she was absent that day. Instead, our regular teacher gave us each a huge piece of paper and crayons, and we could do whatever we wanted. — Jan Brett

It is often said that Leonardo drew so well because he knew about things; it is truer to say that he knew about things because he drew so well. — Kenneth Clark

I knew that Clara kept Carax's book in a glass cabinet by the arch of the balcony. I crept up to it. My plan, or my lack of it, was to lay my hands on the book, take it out of there, give it to that lunatic, and lose sight of him forever after. Nobody would notice the book's absence, except me. Carax's book was waiting for me, as it always did, its spine just visible at the end of a shelf. I took it in my hands and pressed it against my chest, as if embracing an old friend whom I was about to betray. Judas, I thought. I decided to leave the place without making Clara aware of my presence. I would take the book and disappear from Clara's life forever. Quietly, I stepped out of the library. The door of her bedroom was just visible at the end of the corridor ... I walked slowly up to the door. I put my fingers on the doorknob. My fingers trembled. I had arrived too late. I swallowed hard and opened the door. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

And I just remember, you know, breaking into tears and feeling so empty because, as long as Elvis was in the world, you always knew something was going and he always had something that kept everybody mesmerized. — Jackie DeShannon

She smiled the most extraordinary smile and Egg knew his life would never be the same again. — Jamie Scallion

I knew a lot of my musicians used to take coke. I never saw them. They would hide it from me, so I wasn't really aware of it. Creatively, I don't think it was that great. — Giorgio Moroder

I was still young when I missed Beijing. I was favourite to win a medal but I knew I had time. My coach advised me to stay at school and finish my exams. Even if I had gone and won the Olympics, I might not have handled the pressure. So I moved on. — David Rudisha