Quotes about choice
page 5

“Sometimes a man and a woman reach a crossroads and linger there, reluctant to take either way, knowing the wrong choice will mean the end… and knowing there’s so much worth saving.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

Way

“Her body moved with the frankness that comes from solitary habits. But solitude is only a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot; every choice is a world made new for the chosen. All secrets are witnessed.”

Barbara Kingsolver book Prodigal Summer

Source: Prodigal Summer (2000).

Life, Secret, World, Solitude

“Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?”

Anthony Burgess book A Clockwork Orange

Source: A Clockwork Orange

God, Way

“You had a choice: you could either strain and look at things that appeared in front of you in the fog, painful as it might be, or you could relax and lose yourself”

Ken Kesey book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Pain, Appearance

“The basis of shame is not some personal mistake of ours, but the ignominy, the humiliation we feel that we must be what we are without any choice in the matter, and that this humiliation is seen by everyone.”

Milan Kundera book Immortality

Source: Immortality

Feeling, Personality

“Choosing love or war: both are brave choices, in their own ways.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Love, War, Way

“What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It's what you can bear. And there it is… It was death. I chose life.”

Michael Cunningham book The Hours

Source: The Hours

Life, Death

“Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.”

James C. Collins (1958) American business consultant and writer

Source: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

“Don't think too much. That makes you believe you have more choices than you do. Then you mind becomes confused.”

Amy Tan The Hundred Secret Senses

Source: The Hundred Secret Senses

Thinking

“Choices have consequences.”

Scott Sigler book Alive

Alive

“Would you favor me with a dance?" Over all the others I was his choice! I curtsied, and he took my hand. Our hands knew each other. Char looked at me, startled. "Have we met before, Lady?”

Gail Carson Levine Ella Enchanted

Source: Ella Enchanted

Dance

“Sometimes the things presented to us as choices aren't choices at all.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

“It was all a matter of control. And Choice.
Nothing more, nothing less”

Paulo Coelho book The Devil and Miss Prym

Source: The Devil and Miss Prym

“Everybody's got something. In the end, what choice does one really have but to understand that truth, to really take it in, and then shop for groceries, get a haircut, do one's work; get on with the business of one's life.

That's the hope, anyway.”

David Rakoff (1964–2012) writer

Source: Half Empty

Life, Truth, Hope, Understanding

“We don't become geisha because we want our lives to be happy; we become geisha because we have no choice.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Happiness

“… to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery. And one does not get lost but loses oneself, with the implication that it is a conscious choice, a chosen surrender…”

Rebecca Solnit (1961) Author and essayist from United States

Source: A Field Guide to Getting Lost

“But 'Thou mayest!'! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

God, Fight

“Love takes your choices away.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Love

“One's character is set at an early age. The choices you make now will affect you for the rest of your life. I hate to see you swim out so far you can't swim back.”

Wendelin Van Draanen Flipped

Source: Flipped

Life, Hate, Age

“With every experience, you alone are painting your own canvas, thought by thought, choice by choice.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Painting

“And if my choice is to sit graciously in my best robes and accept the inevitable or to bail a sea with a bucket, give me the bucket.”

Robin McKinley Chalice

Source: Chalice

Sea

“There's always a choice,' said Torak, and walked backward off the cliff.”

Michelle Paver (1960) English children's fiction writer

“Choosing to be honest is the first step in the process of love. There is no practitioner of love who deceives. Once the choice has been made to be honest, then the next step on love's path is communication.”

Bell Hooks book All About Love: New Visions

Source: All About Love: New Visions

Love, Communication

“The death of something living is the price of our own survival, and we pay it again and again. We have no choice. It is the one solemn promise every life on earth is born and bound to keep.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Life, Death

“I'm beginning to think the only choice anyone has in life is between either a bad choice or a worse one.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infamous

Life, Thinking

“You fuss too much over making the "right" choice Gaius. All we need do is make a good choice, see it through, and accept the consequences.”

Graham McNeill (1971) writer

Source: Fulgrim

“I don't think we get a choice in who we fall for," Ian whispers. "I think we just do.”

Jodi Picoult book Keeping Faith

Source: Keeping Faith

Thinking

“Your destiny is shaped by choice, never by chance. Beware the decisions you make, no matter how small, for they will be your salvation… or your death.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Invincible

Death, Decision, Chance

“It always comes down to just two choices. Get busy living, or get busy dying.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Different Seasons (1982), Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption
Variant: Either get busy living or get busy dying
Source: Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption: A Story from Different Seasons

Business, Motivational

“I think when we make choices—for
each choice is individual of the choices we have made before—we must examine not
only our reasons for making them but what result they will have, and whether good people will be hurt by our decisions.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

People, Thinking, Decision, Hurt

“Everyone has choices to make; no one has the right to take those choices away from us. Not even out of love..”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Love

“We are all what our pasts have made us,” Catarina said. “The accumulation of thousands of daily choices. We can change ourselves, but never erase what we’ve been.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Lost Herondale

Change, Past

“People in general would rather die than forgive. It'shard. If God said in plain language. "I'm giving you a choice, forgive or die," a lot of people would go ahead and order their coffin.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Variant: People, in general, would rather die than forgive. It'shard. If God said in plain language, "I'm giving you a choice, forgive or die," a lot of people would go ahead and order their coffin.
Source: The Secret Life of Bees

God, People, Forgiveness

“Percy grunted. “Believe me, some days I regret the choice. Oh, you want to turn down our offer? Okay, fine! ZAP! Lose your memory! Go to Tartarus!”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Memory

“… it is by our actions that we are destroyed or saved. The choice is ours.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: The Dream Hunter

“Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice - if not whether, then how, they may endure.”

Lois McMaster Bujold The Curse of Chalion

Source: The Curse of Chalion

Men

“When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated. This is why we sometimes attack who they are, which is far more hurtful than addressing a behavior or a choice.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

People, Behavior, Feeling, Hurt

“When you love someone, you don't have a choice. Love takes your choices away.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: City of Ashes; Clary Fray

Love

“The thing about fate, Magnus: even if we can't change the big picture, our choices can alter the details. That's how we rebel against destiny, how we make our mark. What will you choose to do?”

Rick Riordan book The Sword of Summer

Source: The Sword of Summer

Fate, Change

“You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war.' - To Neville Chamberlain”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

War

“The choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Life, Hate, Forgiveness

“An en is a karmic bond lasting a lifetime. Nowadays many people seem to believe their lives are entirely a matter of choice; but in my day we viewed ourselves as pieces of clay that forever show the fingerprints of everyone who has touched them.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

People

“Charity, if you have the means, is a personal choice, but charity which is expected or compelled is simply a polite word for slavery.”

Terry Goodkind book The Pillars of Creation

Source: The Pillars of Creation

Personality

“Forgiving's a choice you make—a gift you give to somebody even if they don't deserve it. It costs nothing, but it makes you feel rich for giving it away.”

Lurlene McDaniel (1944) American writer

Source: When Happily Ever After Ends

Feeling, Forgiveness

“A vocation is not something you slap on, like a coat of paint, and change whenever you want. A vocation is built into you. You have no choice. If you try to do something else, you fail.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Demon King

Change, Painting

“She had made the choice for him - in a moment of flight and panic, but she had made it - not realizing that her Jace would rather die than be like this, and that she'd been not so much saving his life as damning him to an existence he would despise.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Life

“Instead, it just reminded her that sometimes there were no good choices.”

Holly Black book The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Source: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

“even if we can’t change the big picture, our choices can alter the details. That’s how we rebel against destiny”

Rick Riordan book The Sword of Summer

Source: The Sword of Summer

Change

“At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), p. 212. ISBN 978-0-375-50789-2

Life

“Heaven on Earth is a choice you
must make, not a place you must find.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

Faith

“I believe the choice to be excellent begins with aligning your thoughts and words with the intention to require more from yourself.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

“That's the most stupid expression in the world. 'I fell in love'—as if you had no choice. There's a moment, there's always a moment; I can do this, I can give in to this or I can resist it. I don't know when your moment was but I bet there was one.”

Patrick Marber Closer

Source: Closer

Love, Stupidity, World

“There's always a third choice in life. Even if you think you're stuck between two impossible choices, there's always a third way. You just have to look for it.”

Marcus Sedgwick (1968) British writer and illustrator

Source: Revolver

Life, Way, Thinking

“The one man you most want to sleep with may be the worst choice of all.”

Tess Gerritsen book Body Double

Source: Body Double

Sleep

“We could've done this anywhere, but I wanted you to see me, to see this," he said, gesturing at the room. "I wanted you to know where I come from, what I am under the choices I make.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Ever After

“I have a choice.”

Margaret Peterson Haddix Among the Free

Source: Among the Free

“If loneliness was a choice, what was the other option? To settle for second-best and try to be happy with that? And was that fair to the person you settled for?”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Sugar Daddy

Happiness, Personality, Loneliness

“Happiness is the best revenge, you know? Just be happy. It's a choice.”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

Source: Heart of the Matter

Happiness, Revenge

“We all have choices. (Astrid)
No we don’t, princess. Only people with money and influence have choices. For the rest of us, basic necessity dictates what we have to do to survive. (Zarek)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Dance with the Devil

Source: Dance with the Devil

Money, People, Princess

“To make a true choice, we must have true knowledge.”

Cassandra Clare book Lord of Shadows

Source: Lord of Shadows

Knowledge

“It isn’t about being at the same school or the same town or even the same room. It’s about being together. Love is a choice you make.”

Kristin Hannah (1960) American writer

Source: Night Road

Love, School

“When you abandon making choices, you enter the vast world of excuses.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

World

“As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise human science is at a loss.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Question, Decision, Science, Loss

“The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice.”

John Stuart Mill book On Liberty

Source: On Liberty

Feeling, Exercises

“Sometimes, fewer choices can be a good thing.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Source: Saint Anything

“You seem to think you have a choice," Cam said. "But you have it backwards. Love chooses you. The shadow moves as the sun commands.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Married By Morning

Love, Thinking, Sun

“The choices we make within the boundaries of the twists of fate determines who we are”

John Perkins book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Source: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Fate

“You can't blame anyone else,…, no one but yourself. You have to make your own choices and live every agonizing day with the consequences of those choices.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“Peace is a conscious choice.”

John Denver (1943–1997) American singer, songwriter, activist, and humanitarian

Peace

“It only takes one mistake and nothing else you ever do will matter. No matter how hard you work or how smart you become, you'll always be known for that one poor choice.”

Chuck Palahniuk Snuff

Source: Snuff

“Just because you refuse to acknowledge something, refuse to look at it or think about it, doesn’t mean it’s not there, that it doesn’t affect you and the choices you make in your life.”

Rachel Gibson (1961) American writer

Source: Tangled Up In You

Life, Thinking

“The time will come when you will be forced to make a choice,” Hanalea said. “When that time comes, choose love.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Gray Wolf Throne

Love, Time

“We must set aside our wishes and give heed to reality. Nobody can accept the truth while hiding from it. When a decision matters, we have to stare at the truth unflinchingly. Only then can we find peace in our choices.”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Source: Chasing the Prophecy

Truth, Peace, Reality, Decision

“You may believe that you are responsible for what you do, but not for what you think. The truth is that you are responsible for what you think, because it is only at this level that you can exercise choice. What you do comes from what you think.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"

Truth, Exercises, Thinking

“… Next time you're faced with a choice, do the right thing. It hurts everyone less in the long run.”

Wendelin Van Draanen Flipped

Source: Flipped

Time, Hurt

“What makes a man a man? A friend of mine once wondered. Is it his origins? The way he comes to life? I don't think so. It's the choices he makes. Not how he starts things, but how he decides to end them.”

Guillermo del Toro (1964) Mexican film director

Source: Hellboy: The Art of the Movie

Life, Way, Thinking

“Clarissa," he said, "here with the vampire, I see. When things have settled a bit, we really must discuss you choice in pets..”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

“If people can't stand being alone, they have no choice but to die”

Natsuo Kirino book Grotesque

Source: Grotesque

People

“Religious freedom should work two ways: we should be free to practice the religion of our choice, but we must also be free from having someone else's religion practiced on us.”

John Irving (1942) American novelist and screenwriter

Source: My Movie Business: A Memoir

Religion, Way, Freedom

“But you'll be killed!"
"I'll be fine. Besides, we've got no choice."
Annabeth glared at me like she was going to punch me. And then she did something that surprised me even more. She kissed me.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

Kiss

“All power is the same. Magic. Physical strength. Economic strength. Political strength. It all serves a single purpose-it gives its possessor a broader spectrum of choices. It creates alternative courses of action.”

Jim Butcher Proven Guilty

Source: Proven Guilty

“Happiness is not a feeling, it is a choice. To be happy, one must choose to be happy, not respond to a circumstance that now controls your happiness.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Happiness, Feeling

“Falling in love was not really a choice; it just struck me.”

Helen Fisher (1947) Canadian anthropologist

Source: Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love

Love

“It could be worse," he said finally. "Efrenia married an arsonist. Jake's wife is a kleptomaniac. I suppose, a psychopathic spree killer isn't that odd of a choice, considering.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Bayou Moon

“We are not our parents, Gabriel. We do not have to carry the burden of their choices or their sins.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Parent

“Choices are easy when you have nothing to lose.”

Barbara Delinsky (1945) American writer

Source: While My Sister Sleeps

“That’s what you taught me - we don’t have to accept destiny or Des Tiny. We can create our own future, all of us. We have the power to rule our lives - we just have to make the choice to use it.”

Darren Shan book Sons of Destiny

Source: Sons of Destiny

Future

“It's Thursday afternoon, and we have sports. These are the choices for the girls: watching an invitational cricket game; studying in one of the classrooms; or watching the senior rugby league. As you can imagine, I'm torn.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Saving Francesca

Imagination, Girl, Game, Sport

“He understood well enough how a man with a choice between pride and responsibility will almost always choose pride--if responsibility robs him of his manhood.”

Stephen King The Running Man

Source: The Running Man

For Men

“One should make the best choice possible given the circumstances, and then avoid second-guessing for the sake of one's own sanity.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Again the Magic

“The right choice is hardly ever the easy choice.”

Rick Riordan book The Throne of Fire

Source: The Throne of Fire

“Funny how we think of romance as always involving two, when the romance of solitude can be ever so much more delicious and intense. Alone, the world offers itself freely to us. To be unmasked, it has no choice.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Source: Still Life with Woodpecker

World, Thinking, Solitude

“As I've said, freedom is really an illusion. Anytime we think we have a real choice, it just means we haven't seen the shotgun aimed at our navel.”

Jeff Lindsay book Dexter Is Delicious

Source: Dexter Is Delicious

Thinking, Freedom

“You bit de Quincey," he said. "You fool. He's a vampire. You know what it means to bite a vampire."
"I had no choice," said Will. "He was choking me."
"I know," Jem said. "But really, Will. Again?”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Variant: Jem shook his head. "You bit de Quincey" he said. "You fool. He's a VAMPIRE"

"I had no choice" said Will " He was choking me"

"I know" Jem said. " But really Will, AGAIN?
Source: Clockwork Angel

Fools