“Something, like nothing, happens anywhere.”
Philip Larkin (1922–1985) English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian
Quotes about happening page 14
Liz Kessler (1966) British children's writer
Source: Read Me Like a Book
“The best luck always happens to people who don't need it.”
Robert Penn Warren book All the King's Men
Source: All the King's Men
“That's what happens when you love someone… you notice and notice and notice.”
Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist
Source: The Crimson Crown
Sarah Dessen book Just Listen
Variant: If someone is really close with you, your getting upset or them getting upset is okay, and they don't change because of it. It's just part of the relationship. It happens. You deal with it.
Source: Just Listen
Judith McNaught (1944) American writer
Source: Something Wonderful
Jerry Spinelli (1941) American children's writer
Source: Today I Will: A Year of Quotes, Notes, and Promises to Myself
Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter
Other Lyrics
Source: "The Favorite Game"
Context: Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.
It is easy to display a wound, the proud scars of combat. It is hard to show a pimple.
Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer
Source: Running from Safety: An Adventure of the Spirit
“I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.”
Kazuo Ishiguro (1954) Japanese-born British author
Dunn, Adam. " In the land of memory: Kazuo Ishiguro remembers when http://web.archive.org/web/20010625162920/http://www.cnn.com/2000/books/news/10/27/kazuo.ishiguro/" cnn.com Book News. 27 Oct. 2000 (archived from the original http://www.cnn.com/2000/books/news/10/27/kazuo.ishiguro/ on 2001-06-25). <br class="br">Interviews <br class="br">Context: More fundamentally, I'm interested in memory because it's a filter through which we see our lives, and because it's foggy and obscure, the opportunities for self-deception are there. In the end, as a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.
“A Love like this happens but once in a lifetime”
Clint Eastwood (1930) actor and director from the United States
“A lot of life is just surviving what happens.”
Deb Caletti (1963) American writer
Source: The Six Rules of Maybe
“Every time my dreams threaten to become reality, something always happens and I end up alone.”
Jane Green (1968) British writer
Source: Swapping Lives
“It's a curse to see all that might happen but never know what will.”
Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist
Source: Challenger Deep
Rabih Alameddine (1959) Lebanese-American painter and writer.
Source: I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters
“Art makes nothing happen in a way that makes something happen.”
Ali Smith book How to Be Both
Source: How to Be Both
Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist
Statement before his fight with George Foreman (31 March 1973)
“Is it sad that my first thought happened to be: Thank God I'm off the treadmill.”
Gena Showalter (1975) American writer
Source: Alice in Zombieland
Nicholas Sparks book The Lucky One
Variant: He was a wonderful man. And when a man is that special, you know it sooner than you think possible. You recognize it instinctively, and you're certain that no matter what happens, there will never be another one like him.
Source: The Lucky One
Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist
A Letter from Cuba (1934)
Context: All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.
Context: All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.
“So many miracles have not yet happened.”
Kate DiCamillo (1964) American children's writer
Source: Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures
“Don't let the old story repeat itself now. Arm yourself with all that's happened.”
Anne Rice (1941) American writer
Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo
Source: Magic Rises
“What's the worst that can happen? A tidal wave? Glaciers with guns?”
Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter
Source: The Ice Palace and Other Stories
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
1960s, I've Been to the Mountaintop (1968)
Context: I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road, I said to my wife, "I can see why Jesus used this as a setting for his parable." It's a winding, meandering road. It's really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is about 1200 miles, or rather 1200 feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho, fifteen or twenty minutes later, you're about 2200 feet below sea level. That's a dangerous road. In the day of Jesus it came to be known as the "Bloody Pass." And you know, it's possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?".
Nicholas Sparks book True Believer
Doris McClellan, Chapter 3, p. 54
Source: 2000s, True Believer (2005)
“Dying in a a war never stopped wars from happening.”
Charles Bukowski book Ham on Rye
Source: Ham on Rye
“… if you're alone nothing bad can happen to you.”
Bret Easton Ellis book Imperial Bedrooms
Source: Imperial Bedrooms
Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist
Variant: You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should've behaved better.
Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
“They ask, how could this happen here? Well. How could it not happen here?”
Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes
Source: Nineteen Minutes
“She wasn't a person to whom things happen. She did all the happenings.”
Muriel Spark book Aiding and Abetting
Source: Aiding and Abetting
Cheryl Strayed book Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Source: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter
Source: Apocalypse
“And your own life while it's happening to you never has any atmosphere until it's a memory.”
Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist
“Pain nourishes courage. You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you.”
Mary Tyler Moore (1936–2017) American actress, television producer
As quoted in The Reader's Digest, Vol. 128 (1986), p. 137; later in Quotable Quotes (1997) by Editors of Reader's Digest
“All that happens means something; nothing you do is ever insignificant.”
Aldous Huxley book Crome Yellow
Source: Crome Yellow