“That was the stuff of other lives, he was waiting for his to begin. He got in the habit of walking around the trailer and asking aloud, "Who knows?" He said, "Who knows?" For no one knew. He meant, anything could happen. A spinning coin, still balanced on its rim, may fall in either direction.”

Source: The Shipping News (1993), P. 11

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "That was the stuff of other lives, he was waiting for his to begin. He got in the habit of walking around the trailer a…" by Annie Proulx?

Annie Proulx29

American novelist, short story and non-fiction author 1935

Related quotes

“He spent the whole time sitting on a log in the woodshed, sometimes starting straight ahead with the fixity of a blind man who knows that even if he turns his head in the other direction he will still not see anything”

José Saramago book The Cave

Source: The Cave (2000), p. 30 (Vintage 2003)

“He was confused. He was in love with a woman he did not know, except he knew her loyalty was to the enemy. Yet Denmark did not feel like an enemy, though it was. And he was a Soldier still, and Soldiers, he reckoned, fought for those who could not fight for themselves, and that meant he should be fighting for Astrid's folk and not his own. But that was too great a wrench to contemplate.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Lieutenant Richard Sharpe, p. 136
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Prey (2001)

“He, like all people who live with nature and know want, was patient and could wait calmly for hours, even days, without feeling either alarm or vexation”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

“Apollonius then asked him [Iarchas] whether they knew themselves also, thinking that he, like the Greeks, would regard self-knowledge as a difficult matter. But the other, contrary to Apollonius' expectations, corrected him and said: "We know everything, just because we begin by knowing ourselves; for no one of us would be admitted to this philosophy unless he first knew himself." And Apollonius remembered what he had heard Phraotes say, and how he who would become a philosopher must examine himself before he undertakes the task; and he therefore acquiesced in this answer, for he was convinced of its truth in his own case also.”

Philostratus book Life of Apollonius of Tyana

Book 3, § 18.
Life of Apollonius of Tyana

“Ask a great money-maker what he wants to do with his money, — he never knows. He doesn't make it to do anything with it. He gets it only that he may get it. "What will you make of what you have got?"”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

you ask. "Well, I'll get more," he says. Just as at cricket, you get more runs. There's no use in the runs, but to get more of them than other people is the game. So all that great foul city of London there, — rattling, growling, smoking, stinking, — a ghastly heap of fermenting brickwork, pouring out poison at every pore, — you fancy it is a city of work? Not a street of it! It is a great city of play; very nasty play and very hard play, but still play.

The Crown of Wild Olive, lecture I: Work, sections 23-24 (1866)