Quotes about might
page 14

“Women are still in emotional bondage as long as we need to worry that we might have to make a choice between being heard and being loved.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: A Woman's Worth

Love, Women

“I might be half Derek's size, but I was the one who sounded like a two-hundred-pound beast plowing through the woods.”

Kelley Armstrong The Reckoning

Source: The Reckoning

“Distance might not solve anything, no matter how far you run.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

“Imagine being served a plate of sushi. But this plate also holds all of the animals that were killed for your serving of sushi. The plate might have to be five feet across.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Eating Animals

Source: Eating Animals

Imagination, Animals

“I looked into his eyes, and I realized he was the same man I'd seen in my dreams. His face might be totally different, but the same soul was in there, the same intelligence and all the sadness.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

Sadness, Dreams, Soul, Intelligence

“Time is a slippery thing: lose hold of it once, and its string might sail out of your hands forever.”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

Time

“We spend so much time bantering about the words when the real open conversations might very well be our actions. I worry about our rhetoric.”

Anna Deavere Smith (1950) American actress, playwright and professor

Time

“What we [writers] do might be done in solitude and with great desperation, but it tends to produce exactly the opposite. It tends to produce community and in many people hope and joy.”

Junot Díaz (1968) Dominican-American writer

People, Hope, Communication, Solitude

“No one so dislikes being punished unjustly as the person who might have been punished justly on scores of previous occasions, if he had only been found out.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Source: Tales of St. Austin's

Personality

“You can't be so frightened of what might happen that you are unwilling to act.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: Steelheart

“We can't always do what we think we have to do. So when there's nothing else you can do, you wait… No matter what… pressure… you might feel.”

Jeff Lindsay book Dearly Devoted Dexter

Source: Dearly Devoted Dexter

Feeling, Thinking, Waiting

“In everyone there sleeps
A sense of life lived according to love.
To some it means the difference they could make
By loving others, but across most it sweeps,
As all they might have done had they been loved.
That nothing cures.”

Philip Larkin (1922–1985) English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian

Love, Life, Sense, Sleep

“Our own choices might not be as good as those that are made for us.”

Sebastian Faulks book Birdsong

Source: Birdsong

“Has it ever occurred to you that you might be delusional?'

That's what the psychiatrist said, but I think he's wrong. There's an evil flying pizza out there, and it's got Brenda's name on it.”

Janet Evanovich book Fearless Fourteen

Source: Fearless Fourteen

Thinking, Evil, Flying

“Mike nodded. A sombre nod. The nod Napoleon might have given if somebody had met him in 1812 and said, "So, you're back from Moscow, eh?”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Source: Mike and Psmith

“I felt a wish never to leave that room - a wish that dawn might never come, that my present frame of mind might never change.”

Leo Tolstoy book Family Happiness

Source: Family Happiness

Change

“When you stop doing things for fun you might as well be dead.”

Ernest Hemingway book True at First Light

Source: True at First Light (1999), Ch. 12

Dead

“That time we separated was my idea. I thought, well, I'm fifty years old and there might be someone else out there. People waste their happiness - that's what makes me sad. Everyone's so scared to be happy.”

Wally Lamb book She's Come Undone

Source: She's Come Undone

Happiness, People, Sadness, Idea

“Nothing is fair in this world. You might as well get that straight right now”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

World

“The ordinary acts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Home, Soul

“A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

Love, Loyalty

“All right, then, her first rule for the rest of her days: no more looking outside for definitions. She might not have any clue who she was, but better to be lost and searching than shoved into a social box by someone else.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Revealed

Source: Lover Revealed

Search, Box

“Some secrets, she thought, were better told; some were better left the burden of the carrier, that they might not cause pain to others.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Pain, Secret

“Fair isn't fair, Dean. Like I'm supposed to help you because fair is fair? Try I need you to help me so I wont rip out your spine and beat you with it. I might respond to that, maybe.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: School's Out—Forever

Help

“You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the purpose. The meaning is only clear thorough the search.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Art, Search

“A few songs with Him might change the way you sing. Forever.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Source: Next Door Savior

Way, Change, Singing

“You might have to lose control before you could find out what you'd been missing.”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

“You might also see that some of my playlists are simply two songs on repeat fifteen times, like I’m a psycho getting pumped up to murder the president.”

Mindy Kaling book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Source: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Time

“I was looking for the opposite, really -something that might put an end to being in love”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Love

“I love you, Katie. You might not be ready to say those words now, and maybe you'll never be able to say them, but that doesn't change how I feel about you.”

Nicholas Sparks book Safe Haven

Source: Safe Haven

Love, Feeling, Change

“There's always, always a choice. My options might really, truly suck, but that doesn't mean there isn't a choice.”

Jim Butcher book Cold Days

Source: Cold Days

“I decided not to answer on the grounds that I might piss someone off.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book The Laughing Corpse

Source: The Laughing Corpse

“Do I know what people say? Sure. I shrug it off. what else can you do? Stop people from talking? You might as well try to stop the wind from blowing.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

People

“My timing is off. But I had to get it out. Some things you have to tell, no matter how stupid they may sound. Some things you can't save for later. There might not be a later.”

Mary E. Pearson book The Adoration of Jenna Fox

Source: The Adoration of Jenna Fox

Stupidity, Time

“The only way to not think about money is to have a great deal of it."

You might as well say that the only way not to think about air is to have enough to breathe.”

Edith Wharton book The House of Mirth

Source: The House of Mirth

Money, Way, Thinking

“Maybe instead of stalking her, you should go out with someone else."

He sighed. "You don't think I've tried? How can anyone compare? You might not believe this, but there is no one like Ageline at this school.”

Richelle Mead book The Fiery Heart

Source: The Fiery Heart

School, Thinking

“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

World, Way

“If it weren't for acid, you might not have an IPod, and you definitely would not have some of the best music in your IPod.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

Music

“Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.”

Billy Wilder (1906–2002) American filmmaker

“Resistance to change is proportional to how much the future might be altered by any given act.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

Change, Future

“…still when I lost her, I lost sight of any landmark that might have led me someplace happier, to some more populated or congenial life…”

Donna Tartt book The Goldfinch

Source: The Goldfinch

Life

“Without peanut butter, I might starve.”

Judy Blume (1938) American children's writer

“Uh, the Council," I said. "Big shock, they aren't helping."

Murphy looked like she might be asleep, but she snorted. "So we're on our own."

Yeah."

Good. It's more familiar.”

Jim Butcher book Changes

Source: Changes

Help

“Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes it'll on'y be one.”

John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath

Source: The Grapes of Wrath

“And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Source: Middlemarch

Way

“Rather he consoled himself with the fact that, in the real world, when he looked closely into the darkness he might find the presence of a light, damaged and bruised, but a little light all the same.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

World, Light

“Sometimes, a family is like an ear of summer corn: It might look perfect on the outside, but when you peel the husk away. every kernel is rotten.”

Sara Shepard (1973) Author

Source: Ali's Pretty Little Lies

Family, Summer, Perfection

“I wish I knew. It might make me miss him more clearly. It might have made sad sense.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Sadness, Sense

“A moment might be a thousand different things.”

Kim Edwards book The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Source: The Memory Keeper's Daughter

“You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

Love, Death, Loyalty

“My heart might be bruised, but it will recover and become capable of seeing beauty of life once more. It's happened before, it will happen again, I'm sure. When someone leaves, it's because someone else is about to arrive--I'll find love again.”

Paulo Coelho book The Zahir

Source: The Zahir

Love, Life, Beauty, Heart

“You never know when you might be seeing someone for the last time.”

Marilynne Robinson book Housekeeping

Source: Housekeeping

Time

“One of the most beautiful gifts in the world is the gift of encouragement. When someone encourages you, that person helps you over a threshold you might otherwise never have crossed on your own.”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Source: Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong

World, Beauty, Help, Personality

“Those who love life do not read. Nor do they go to the movies, actually. No matter what might be said, access to the artistic universe is more or less entirely the preserve of those who are a little fed up with the world.”

Michel Houellebecq (1956) writer

Source: H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life

Love, Life, World, Universe

“I wondered if I should start a small fire in Percy Jackson's sink, perhaps burn some bandages in thanks, but I decided that might strain that Jackson's hospitality.”

Rick Riordan book The Hidden Oracle

Source: The Hidden Oracle

“He tried to name which of the deadly seven might apply, and when he failed he decided to append an eighth, regret.”

Charles Frazier book Cold Mountain

Source: Cold Mountain

“what made you happy once might not make you happy now.”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

Happiness

“Horror jolts me when I look at one of you and see a pair of beautiful eyes that make me think your mind might contain a world that could hold me as the bolts shake loose and fly from my frame.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: Solipsist

World, Beauty, Thinking, Flying

“Having an object that symbolizes freedom might make a person happier than actually getting the freedom it represents.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Freedom, Personality

“Everything you own must be able to fit inside one suitcase; then your mind might be free.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook: Uncollected Stories and Essays, 1944-1990

“You and I have never liked each other, Rose. If I’ve got to kill someone, it might as well be you.”

Richelle Mead book Frostbite

Source: Frostbite

“We have in fact only two certainties in this world—that we are not everything and that we will die. To be conscious of not being everything, as one is of being mortal, is nothing. But if we are without a narcotic, an unbreathable void reveals itself. I wanted to be everything, so that falling into this void, I might summon my courage and say to myself: “I am ashamed of having wanted to be everything, for I see now that it was to sleep.” From that moment begins a singular experience. The mind moves in a strange world where anguish and ecstasy coexist.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: L’Expérience Intérieure (1943), p. xxxii

World, Courage, Sleep

“You are nobody, and I might have been somebody, and the road to each of us is love.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Source: Ask the Dust

Love

“So you really cant think of anyone else who might want to kill you?"asked Jace.
"Unlike in your case there arent actually all that many people who dislike me."said Simon.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

People, Thinking

“Be kind to everyone - you don't know what cross they're bearing and how sweet that kind word might ring.”

Ann B. Ross American writer

Source: Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind

“The truth is, all might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they ought.”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

Essay, written under the pseudonym "Candidus," in The Boston Gazette (14 October 1771) http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2092, later published in The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams (1865) by William Vincent Wells, p. 425

Truth, Freedom

“Love is fragile -- she was thinking -- but perhaps the pieces are saved, the things that hovered on lips, that might have been said. The new love-words, the tenderness learned, and treasured up for the next lover.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book May Day

Source: May Day

Love, Lovers, Thinking, Learning

“This is a story about a man named Eddie and it begins at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun. It might seem strange to start a story with an ending. But all endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time.”

Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003)

Time, Sun

“Are you sure you want me to go after Christina? Lately I've kind of thought I might just give up on that. Plus, didn't you and I need to gaze into each other's eyes first? How will I know how to gaze at Christina? And my pebble kicking? Disaster.”

Jaclyn Moriarty (1968) Australian writer

Source: The Year of Secret Assignments

“I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

“But after a moment a sense of waste and ruin overcame him. There they were, close together and safe and shut in; yet so chained to their separate destinies that they might as well been half the world apart.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

World, Sense

“All natural disasters are comforting because they reaffirm our impotence, in which, otherwise, we might stop believing. At times it is strangely sedative to know the extent of your own powerlessness.”

Erica Jong book Fear of Flying

Source: Fear of Flying

Nature, Time

“I don't know if there is a one for me. I think I might like variety.”

E. Lockhart (1967) American writer of novels as E. Lockhart (mainly for teenage girls) and of picture books under real name Emily J…

Source: The Boyfriend List: 15 Guys, 11 Shrink Appointments, 4 Ceramic Frogs and Me, Ruby Oliver

Thinking

“He looked different in sleep, beautiful but cold as moonlight. I found myself wishing he would wake so that I might watch the life return.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

Life, Beauty, Sleep

“After a traumatic experience, the human system of self-preservation seems to go onto permanent alert, as if the danger might return at any moment.”

Judith Lewis Herman (1942) American psychiatrist

Source: Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

“I'm a man of few words."
"If you read more, you might have a larger vocabulary.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Reading

“This might hurt a little is universal code for this will definitely hurt a lot”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Last Guardian

Universe, Hurt

“With luck, it might even snow for us.”

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

Source: After Dark

“The only thing more dangerous than an idea is a belief. And by dangerous I don't mean thought-provoking. I mean: might get people killed.”

Sarah Vowell The Wordy Shipmates

Source: The Wordy Shipmates

People, Idea

“The world news might not be therapeutic.”

Ken Kesey book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

World

“Lunatics have no age. If we were crazy, you and I, we might be a great deal younger.”

Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner

Age

“Now you know I’m a reporter, so you might as well answer my question truthfully, or I’ll just keep asking it until you lose your mind. (Susan)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dark Side of the Moon

Question

“Just let them sit in the goddam sun. But the world won't let them because there's nothing more dangerous than letting old farts sit in the sun. They might be thinking. Same thing with kids. Keep 'em busy or they might start thinking.”

Frank McCourt book Teacher Man

Source: Teacher Man

World, Business, Thinking, Sun

“If you keep wiggling, things might get uncomfortable,” he said into my ear, his voice like a caress. “I’m doing my best, but thinking about baseball only takes you so far.” I froze.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Burn for Me

Thinking

“Did you think I was sitting on my hands?” “I thought you might be injured.” He looked at me. “We’ve met, you and I?” I deliberately took a big step back. “What?” he growled. “I’m making room for your ego.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Shifts

Thinking

“What's that?" he asked, when I stood beside him again.

"Halos," I said with a grin. "For heavenly creatures like us."

"That might be a stretch.”

Richelle Mead Blood Promise

Source: Blood Promise

“Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them was surely damnation.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Barrayar (1991)

Children

“You might have mentioned this to me Molly,” said Leonard. “The fact that there are hostile natives on the island.”
“I forgot,” said Molly.
“You forgot?” said Leonard.
“There’s been a lot happening,” said Molly.”

Dave Barry book Peter and the Starcatchers

Source: Peter and the Starcatchers

Hostility

“A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war: wide-awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance. Going to knowledge or going to war in any other manner is a mistake, and whoever makes it might never live to regret it”

Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998) Peruvian-American author

Source: The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe, (1998), Quotations from The Teachings of Don Juan (Chapter 4)

War, Fear, Knowledge

“He might as well plant an oak in a flower-pot, and expect it to thrive, as imagine he can restore her to vigour in the soil of his shallow cares!”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Heathcliff (Ch. XIV).
Source: Wuthering Heights (1847)
Context: You talk of her mind being unsettled - how the devil could it be otherwise, in her frightful isolation? And that insipid, paltry creature attending her from duty and humanity! From pity and charity. He might as well plant an oak in a flower-pot, and expect it to thrive, as imagine he can restore her to vigour in the soil of his shallow cares!

Imagination, Flowers

“When life gives you lemons… You might as well shove 'em where the sun don't shine, because you sure as hell aren't ever going to see any lemonade.”

Rob Thurman (1950) American writer

Source: Nightlife

Life, Hell, Sun