When I was young, I wanted to be a dramatic writer, a writer of tragedy. Nothing would've pleased me more than if I could have written like Eugene O'Neil or Tennessee Williams.
If I could have enough money that I know I could buy a house someday, and if I want to have kids, I could raise them - I don't need the money grab. I don't need to have a mansion. I just need to be creative and happy.
I have my own way to walk and for some reason or other Zen is right in the middle of it wherever I go. So there it is, with all its beautiful purposelessness, and it has become very familiar to me though I do not know "what it is." Or even if it is an "it." Not to be foolish and multiply words, I'll say simply that it seems to me that Zen is the very atmosphere of the Gospels, and the Gospels are bursting with it. It is the proper climate for any monk, no matter what kind of monk he may be. If I could not breathe Zen I would probably die of spiritual asphyxiation.
Ah, if I could realize, if I could forget myself and devote my meditations to the freeing, the awakening and the blessedness of all living creatures everywhere I'd realize what there is, is ecstasy.
I was self-conscious of being so lanky, of being me. I'd keep my head down, make excuses not to go out. I'd look in the mirror and hate myself. I thought I was disgusting. I cried constantly from 11 to 16. If I could tell my younger self anything, it would be to learn to love your flaws. It's OK to look in the mirror and feel really confident about yourself.
We dont have a good legal justification for breaking up the banking system. But if I could wave a magic wand, Id break up the banking system.
If I could have any job in the world, I'd start out by writing a blog on Wired.com.
As an architect it is very important that you distinguish between different realities. There's the reality of the drawing and the reality of the building. So one could say, or at least it is the common belief that architecture has to be built; I always denied that, because ultimately it is based on an idea. I don't ever need a building to verify my idea. Of course, what with a building is more its vanity and actual physical experience. But I anticipate; I wouldn't even build it if I could not anticipate how it would be.
Im obsessed with the moon and space travel, so if I could incorporate that, Id love to go to space.
I was extraordinarily lucky. I wrote a book because I wanted to see if I could write a mystery. Someone nagged me into sending it to a contest, which it won, after which I was offered a two-book contract, thus requiring the writing of a second book.
If I could change one thing about myself... I would try to control my generosity.
It would be wonderful if I could see the end of civilization during my lifetime.
Advertising is a conscienceless industry, populated by cowards and idiots, that warps and drains everyone. It eggs on the worst in all of us. If I could eliminate either advertising or nuclear weapons, I would choose advertising.
When I wrote 'Kidulthood,' I didn't even know there was going to be a 'Kidulthood.' I just wanted to test myself to see if I could write a script.
"Mine ain't a selfish affection, you know," said Mr. Toots, in the confidence engendered by his having been a witness of the Captain's tenderness. "It's the sort of thing with me, Captain Gills, that if I could be run over - or - or trampled upon - or - or thrown off a very high place -or anything of that sort - for Miss Dombey's sake, it would be the most delightful thing that could happen to me."
If I could do it over, I'd do better.
If I could have somehow been the kind of artist who could crank out two or three issues a year, that's different. That's sort of what it's all about, to get this thing out so that there's some kind of continuity. But to do a comic book every year or two was just so anti-climactic.
If I could never put out an album in my life, I could just put out mixtapes. The music got to be out there somehow.
Let no one think that I do not love the old ministers. They were, probably, the best men in their generation, and they deserve that their biographies should fill the pages of the town histories. If I could but hear the "glad tidings" of which they tell, and which, perchance, they heard, I might write in a worthier strain than this.
I certainly know that if the war fails, the administration fails, and that I will be blamed for it, whether I deserve it or not. And I ought to be blamed, if I could do better. You think I could do better; therefore you blame me already. I think I could not do better; therefore I blame you for blaming me.
I don't suppose there's a man going, as possesses the fondness for youth that I do. There's youth to the amount of eight hundredpound a-year, at Dotheboys Hall at this present time. I'd take sixteen hundred pound worth, if I could get 'em, and be as fond of every individual twenty pound among 'em as nothing should equal it!
I started swimming when I was four because my brother wanted to join a swim team, and I wanted to do what he did. They said I had to be six, but if I could swim a lap, then I could participate. So I swam a lap, and the rest is history.
Would I if I could by pushing a button would I kill five thousand Chinamen if I could save my brother from anything. Well I was very fond of my brother and I could completely imagine his suffering and I replied that five thousand Chinamen was something I could not imagine and so it was not interesting. One has to remember that about imagination, that is when the world gets dull when everybody does not know what they can or what they cannot really imagine.
The loss of my sight was a great fillip. If I could go deaf and dumb I think I might pant on to be a hundred.
I've tried not to exaggerate the glory of athletes. I'd rather, if I could, preserve a sense of proportion, to write about them asexcellent ballplayers, first-rate players. But I'm sure I have contributed to false values--as Stanley Woodward said, "Godding up those ballplayers." The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.
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