Would Be Quotes (page 192)

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• feeling down
• tears
• house

Sometimes one feels that it would be merciful to tear down these houses, for they must often dream. H. P. Lovecraft

• wife
• success
• warning

But while Sasha told us that in America even the most successful men can have but one wife at once--my father had six--and talked about escalators, indoor plumbing, and the various laws of the land, he did not warn us that I would be told by American teenagers that I should go back to Africa. Dave Eggers

• mom
• dad
• actually

I needed to temper (my dad's) enthusiasm a bit (about attending Princeton), and so I announced that I would be majoring in patricide...My mom was actually jealous. David Sedaris

• heart
• lies
• framed

That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity. George Eliot

• people
• caring
• you me

She thought of what it would be like to grow up without the one certainty that every baby deseved - when I'm hurt or cold or scared, someone will come and care for me - and how that absence could warp you so that you'd lash out at the people you loved, driving them away when all you wanted to do was pull them closer. Jennifer Weiner

• love
• learning
• imagination

Imagine how much easier it would be for us to learn how to love if we began with a shared definition. Bell Hooks

• life
• god
• believe

Not to take this web of dualities as a sign we are on the right track would be a bit like believing that God put fossils into the rocks in order to mislead Darwin about the evolution of life. Stephen Hawking

• dance
• no point
• meant

If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it Isadora Duncan

• success
• wishes
• people

Success makes so many people hate you. I wish it wasn't that way. It would be wonderful to enjoy success without seeing envy in the eyes of those around you. Marilyn Monroe

• violin
• aches
• would

if a violin string could ache, i would be that string. Vladimir Nabokov

• ifs
• this guy
• would

If funkytown was a trailerpark, this guy would be a double-wide. Maya Angelou

• kiss
• first kiss
• last

I could not remember my first kiss, but I could have told you Charlotte would be my last. Jodi Picoult

• music
• movie
• empty

The futility of everything that comes to us from the media is the inescapable consequence of the absolute inability of that particular stage to remain silent. Music, commercial breaks, news flashes, adverts, news broadcasts, movies, presenters—there is no alternative but to fill the screen; otherwise there would be an irremediable void.... That’s why the slightest technical hitch, the slightest slip on the part of the presenter becomes so exciting, for it reveals the depth of the emptiness... Jean Baudrillard

• she
• avoiding
• path

There was no reason for Bella Swan to cross paths with me. She would be avoided like the plague she was. Stephenie Meyer

• them
• criticized
• criticizing

Don’t criticize them; they are just what we would be under similar circumstances. Abraham Lincoln