Quotes about happening
page 15

“Everyone suffers at least one bad betrayal in their lifetime. It’s what unites us. The trick is not to let it destroy your trust in others when that happens. Don’t let them take that from you.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Invincible

Suffering, Betrayal

“Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist (1988), p. 184; this also has been quoted as "What happens once will never happen again. But what happens twice will surely happen a third time."

Time

“She wanted something to happen - something, anything: she did not know what.”

Kate Chopin (1850–1904) American author

“He was making a brave attempt, but Jason could see the sadness lingering in his eyes. Something had happened to him… something to do with Calypso.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Sadness

“You'll see some bad things, but if you didn't see them, they'd still be happening.”

Paula Fox The Slave Dancer

Source: The Slave Dancer

“There. She had thanked Sebastian. She waited for a bolt of lightning to shoot out of the clouds and striker her dead. But nothing happened.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Waiting, Dead

“Hold thy peace, dear little Pearl!" whispered her mother. "We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Scarlet Letter

Source: The Scarlet Letter

Peace

“What are you? (Nick)
Completely perplexed. You remember everything that happened. (Acheron)
Yeah. Duh. Not like you’re going to forget the killer zombie stalkers and psyched-out kitchen staff. What kind of freak show is this? (Nick)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

Forgetting

“I'm just saying -- you can't prevent other people from disappointing you. It's bound to happen at some point. We're all only human. What you can do is decide how you're going to deal with it.”

Sara Shepard (1973) Author

People, Disappointment

“Miracles don't happen. You make them happen. They're not wishes or dreams or candles on a cake. They're not impossible. Reality is real. It's totally and completely under my control.”

Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer

Source: Far from Xanadu

Dreams, Reality

“Death has this much to be said for it:
You don't have to get out of bed for it.
Wherever you happen to be
They bring it to you—free.”

Kingsley Amis (1922–1995) English novelist, poet, critic, teacher

Death

“Life's not linear at all. It happens in lighting flashes. So fast you don't see those lay-you-out cold moments coming at you until you're Wile E. Coyote, steamrolled flat as a pancake by the Road Runner, victim of your own elaborate schemes.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Dreamfever

Life, Light

“I'm numb and I'm tired. Too much has happened today. I feel as if I'd been out in a pounding rain for forty-eight hours without an umbrella or a coat. I'm soaked to the skin with emotion.”

Ray Bradbury book The Martian Chronicles

Source: The Martian Chronicles

Feeling

“You like him because he's a lost boy. Believe me, I've seen it happen before. But do you know what happens to girls who love lost boys? They become lost themselves. Without fail.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Love, Girl, Boy

“It was like wondering how evil had come into the world or what happens to a person after he dies: an interesting philosophical exercise, but also curiously pointless, since evil and death happened, regardless of the why and the how and what-it-meant.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Source: Horns

Death, World, Exercises, Evil

“With everything that has happened to you, you can either feel sorry for yourself or treat what has happened as a gift. Everything is either an opportunity to grow or an obstacle to keep you from growing. You get to choose.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

Feeling

“I will love you for ever, whatever happens. Till I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead I’ll drift about forever, all my atoms, till I find you again…”

Philip Pullman book The Amber Spyglass

Source: The Amber Spyglass

Love, Way, Dead

“Growing up happens when you start having things you look back on and wish you could change -Clary Fray”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Change

“Here is one of the worst things about having someone you love die: It happens again every single morning.”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

Source: Every Last One

Love

“What will happen to us?" I asked. "There will always be us," he answered.”

Patti Smith Just Kids

Source: Just Kids

“Sometimes, unexpected things can happen.”

Alex Flinn book Beastly

Source: Beastly

“There was pain, but there was also joy. It was in the tension between the two that life happened. Imperfect as it was, this world was real. Illusion was no substitute. I'd rather live a hard life of fact than a sweet life of lies.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

Life, Pain, World, Joy

“I am afraid of falling into hopeless despair, over my wasted life, and I am still not sure how it happened.”

Margaret Atwood book Alias Grace

Source: Alias Grace

Life, Despair

“Did you ever dream you had a friend, Alec? Someone to last your whole life and you his. I suppose such a thing can’t really happen outside sleep.”

E.M. Forster book Maurice

Source: Maurice

Life, Dreams, Sleep

“Books: a beautifully browsable invention that needs no electricity and exists in a readable form no matter what happens.”

Nicholson Baker (1957) Novelist, essayist, non-fiction writer

Books

“As Estha stirred the thick jam he thought Two Thoughts and the Two Thoughts he thought were these:
a) Anything can happen to anyone.
and
b) It is best to be prepared.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“A good book is an education of the heart. It enlarges your sense of human possibility what human nature is of what happens in the world. It's a creator of inwardness.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Books, World, Education, Nature

“So little of what could happen does happen.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

“I don't know. But Iknow that I'm at the stage of my life where I want, not.

I know that the first person I kissed won't be nearly as important as the last person I kiss.

And I also know better than to dream about things that can't happen.”

Jodi Picoult book Sing You Home

Source: Sing You Home

Life, Dreams, Kiss, Personality

“Busy your mind with the concepts of harmony, health, peace, and good will, and wonders will happen in your life.”

Joseph Murphy (1898–1981) American writer

Source: The Power of Your Subconscious Mind -

Life, Health, Peace, Business

“Remembering is just an invention of the mind… It means that if you want to, you can remember anything, whether it happened or not… You don't need a time machine if you can remember.”

Rodman Philbrick book Freak the Mighty

Source: Freak the Mighty

Time

“She was sad about what happened to Kostos. And someplace under that, she was sad that people like Bee and Kostos, who had lost everything, were still open to love, and she, who'd lost nothing, was not.”

Ann Brashares The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Source: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Love, People, Sadness, Bee

“… It's just one hour. Just one little hour. What could happen in one hour?”

Jim Butcher book Ghost Story

Source: Ghost Story

“She didn't want to know how a thing was done, but why…. Luckily, queer ones like her don't happen often.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

“Her father sagged as relief spread through him. “I thought
something awful was happening.”
She frowned. “Something awful was happening. It could have
got stuck in my hair.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Dark Days

“News travels fast in places where nothing much ever happens.”

Charles Bukowski book Ham on Rye

Source: Ham on Rye

Travel

“It's the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.”

John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach

For Parents

“Choose a love and work to make it true, and somehow, something will happen, something you couldn’t plan, will come along to move like to like, to set you loose, to set you on the way to your next brick wall.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: Running from Safety: An Adventure of the Spirit

Love, Way

“When the girl sitting at the next table looked away from a moment, Dirk leaned over and took her coffee. He knew that he was perfectly safe doing this because she would simply not be able to believe that this had happened.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Girl, Coffee

“Men are like that sometimes - if they meet someone and fall in love, it's real, no matter how fast it happened. But if someone falls for a woman they happen to care about, all they do is question the man's intentions.”

Nicholas Sparks book Nights in Rodanthe

Source: Nights in Rodanthe

Love, Men, Question

“That's the thing about being a victim; you start to think it'll happen to you on a regular basis. It's living with the reality of your own vulnerability, and it sucks.”

Dennis Lehane book A Drink Before the War

Source: A Drink Before the War

Thinking, Reality

“You don't read it in the sense of reading a message; it doesn't work like that. What's happening is that the Shadows are responding to the attention you pay them.”

Philip Pullman book Northern Lights

Source: The Golden Compass

Sense, Reading

“What I feel is that if one has got to have a murder actually happening in one's house, one might as well enjoy it, if you know what I mean.”

Agatha Christie book The Body in the Library

Source: The Body in the Library

Feeling, Housing

“I'm trying to make some sense out of the phrase "Everything happens for a reason," and I think I've figured out what the reason is - to pissed me off.”

Cecelia Ahern book Love, Rosie

Variant: I’m trying to make some sense out of the phrase “Everything happens for a reason,” and I think I’ve ﬁgured out what the reason is—to piss me off.
Source: Love, Rosie

Thinking, Sense

“Mistakes are something that happen by accident. You didn't walk out the door one morning and fall into some guy's bed. You thought about it, for a while. You made that choice.”

Jodi Picoult book The Tenth Circle

Source: The Tenth Circle

Guy

“You are a fever I am learning to live with, and everything is happening
at the wrong end of a very long tunnel.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Learning

“What happens to the rest of something when you smash its heart?”

Francesca Lia Block Missing Angel Juan

Source: Missing Angel Juan

Heart

“the past only had whatever power you gave it; life was what you made it and if you wanted something different from what you had, it was up to you to make it happen.”

Sara Zarr (1970) American children's writer

Source: Sweethearts

Life, Past

“Boredom is what happens to people who have no control over their minds.”

Rebecca Stead book Liar & Spy

Source: Liar & Spy

People

“What’s the world’s greatest lie?” the boy asked. “It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Fate, Lie, World, Boy

“Of all the things trauma takes away from us, the worst is our willingness, or even our ability, to be vulnerable. There's a reclaiming that has to happen.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: Rising Strong

“Pirates could happen to anyone.”

Tom Stoppard (1937) British playwright

Source: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

“I felt the kind of loneliness that can happen in a roomful of people when everyone but you seems to be in on the good time.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Blue-Eyed Devil

People, Time, Loneliness

“When something horrible happens, it's human nature to want to blame it on someone. We want someone to be held accountable, even though sometimes things just happen.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Abandon

Nature

“I'm sitting at the dinner table, wearing my future mother-in-law's underwear. It's like some twisted dream that you wake up and thinkL Crikey Moses! Thank God that didn't really happen!”

Sophie Kinsella book I've Got Your Number

Source: I've Got Your Number

God, Law, Dreams, Future

“That prison," I said with heartfelt sincerity, "Was absolutely the most awful thing that has happened to me in my entire life." I could tell by the way he looked at me that he thought my life had been filled with one awful thing after another.”

Megan Whalen Turner The Thief

Source: The Thief

Life, Way, Sincerity

“Everything is happening too fast for me to process it.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

“This is what we call love. When you are loved, you can do anything in creation. When you are loved, there's no need at all to understand what's happening, because everything happens within you.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Wedding, Love, Understanding

“Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave.”

Quentin Crisp book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 18

Funny, Life, Way

“It seemed to happen in springs, the revealing of things.”

Aimee Bender (1969) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Spring

“To be oneself, simply oneself, is so amazing and utterly unique an experience that it's hard to convince oneself so singular a thing happens to everybody.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

Source: Prime of Life

“Nothing happened today. And if anything did, I’d rather not talk about it, because I didn’t understand it.”

Roberto Bolaño book The Savage Detectives

Source: The Savage Detectives

Understanding

“Bad magic happens"
Ash Redfern”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Secret Vampire

“Being with you is the best thing that's ever happened to me, the one perfect decision I've made in a lifetime of fumbling and poor judgment. I'd go through it all again to be by your side. Never doubt that. Never doubt how I feel about you.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: The Ruby Circle

Feeling, Decision, Perfection

“There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened.”

Harold Pinter Old Times

Source: Old Times

“In order for this to happen, your entire frame of reference will have to change, and you will be forced to surrender many things that you now scarcely know you have.”

James Baldwin book The Fire Next Time

Source: The Fire Next Time

Change

“If I write something, I fear it will happen, and if I love too much, I fear I will lose that person; nevertheless, I cannot stop writing or loving…”

Isabel Allende book Paula

Source: Paula

Love, Fear, Personality

“I'm not afraid to die; I just don't want to be there when it happens”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

“Rose: "Wow. You beat up your dad. I mean, that's really horrible… what happened. But, wow. You really are a god."…
Dimitri: "What?"
Rose: "Uh, nothing.”

Richelle Mead Vampire Academy

Variant: Wow." I hadn't thought Dimitri could be any cooler, but I was wrong. "You beat up your dad. I mean, that's really horrible... what happened. But, wow. You really are a god."
He blinked. "What?"
"Uh, nothing.
Source: Vampire Academy

God

“Out there things can happen, and frequently do,
To people as brainy and footsy as you.
And when things start to happen, don't worry, don't stew.
Just go right along, you'll start happening too!”

Dr. Seuss Oh, the Places You'll Go!

Oh, the Places You'll Go! (1990)
Source: Oh, The Places You'll Go!

People

“Sometimes two people will regard each other over a gulf too wide to ever be bridged, and know immediately what could have happened, and that it never will.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

People

“That was what happened to laughter when you caged it. It became unbearably sad. It was worse than crying.”

Isobelle Carmody book Greylands

Source: Greylands

Sadness, Laughter, Cry

“I cover my face with my arms because this isn't happening. It isn't possible. For someone to make Peeta forget he loves me… no one can do that.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Love, Forgetting

“I have a dream of what would have happened if what happened instead hadn't.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Source: Adverbs

Dreams

“In terms of doing things I take a fairly scientific approach to why things happen and how they happen. I don't know if there's a god or not, but I think religious principles are quite valid.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

PBS interview with David Frost (November 1995)
1990s

God, Thinking

“Even so you have managed to live that love in the only way possible for you. Losing it before it happened.”

Marguerite Duras book The Malady of Death

Source: The Malady of Death

Love, Way

“If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

History, Learning

“I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

Success

“Everybody dies. What matters is what you do between now and when it happens to you.”

Orson Scott Card Treasure Box

Source: Treasure Box

“Things happen to you they happen. They dont ask first. They dont require your permission.”

Cormac McCarthy book No Country for Old Men

Source: No Country for Old Men

“How had it happened, Simon thought, that he was bound to these people—to people who thought of him as nothing more than a Downworlder, half human at best?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

People

“The only thing you have for measuring what's real is your mind… so what happens when your mind becomes a pathological liar?”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Source: Challenger Deep

“Did something happen to the sanctity of your church again?"

My eye twitched. "Newt broke it so she could look in my closet." Again.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Ever After

“So that plan worked out well.'

Skulduggery, your entire plan consisted of, and I quote, "Let's get up close and then see what happens."'

All the same,' he said, 'I think the whole thing worked out rather beautifully.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Playing with Fire

Quotes, Thinking

“Sometimes great tunes happen to bad times, and when the bad time is over, not all the tunes get to move on with you.”

Rob Sheffield (1966) American music journalist

Source: Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time

Time

“A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself - and especially to feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

Feeling, Freedom

“Experience is not worth the getting. It's not a thing that happens pleasantly to a passive you--it's a wall that an active you runs up against.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

“Billions of things are going on in this world. You can think about it all you want, but life is still going to keep on happening.”

Michael Singer (1945) American landscape architect

Source: The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

Life, World, Thinking

“That is the freakiest thing that ever happened to me.” I nodded toward the mess. “And if you knew my life, you’d realize just how freaky that is.”

Patricia Briggs book Frost Burned

Source: Frost Burned

Life

“I thought of the things that had happened to me over the years, and of how little I had made happen.”

Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending

Source: The Sense of an Ending

“I would like to fall in love again but my only hope is that love doesn't happen to me so often after this. I don't want to get so used to falling in love that i get curious to experience something more extreme - whatever that may be.”

Douglas Coupland book Life After God

Source: Life After God

Love, Hope

“Steampunk is nothing more than what happens when Goths discover brown.”

Charles Stross (1964) British science fiction writer and blogger

“Today will never happen again. Don't waste it with a false start or no start at all.”

Og Mandino (1923–1996) American author

Falseness

“I remember you saying that growing up happens when you start having things you look back on and wish you could change. I guess that means I've grown up now…”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Variant: I've screwed everything up royally. I remember you saying that growing up happens when you start having things you look back on and wish you could change.
Source: City of Ashes

Change

“I think housework is far more tiring and frightening than hunting is, no comparison, and yet after hunting we had eggs for tea and were made to rest for hours, but after housework people expect one to go on just as if nothing special had happened.”

Nancy Mitford (1904–1973) British writer

People, Thinking, Tea

“It is man's intelligence that makes him so often behave more stupidly than the beasts. … Man is impelled to invent theories to account for what happens in the world. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Texts and Pretexts (1932), p. 270
Context: It is man's intelligence that makes him so often behave more stupidly than the beasts. … Man is impelled to invent theories to account for what happens in the world. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations. So that when he acts on his theories, he behaves very often like a lunatic. Thus, no animal is clever enough, when there is a drought, to imagine that the rain is being withheld by evil spirits, or as punishment for its transgressions. Therefore you never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. No horse, for example would kill one of its foals to make the wind change direction. Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, intelligent enough.

World, Intelligence