Jonathan Coe Quotes

You have a choice. Live or die. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. To be or not to be.

I think life's a bit of what you make it and a little smidgen of you being the jellyfish, and the tide's just gently helping you along.

Everybody is dealt a hand of cards. It was my choice to play them the way I played them.

A lot of people go through life thinking that they don't have any control, that life is just happening to them. But that's not true.

The simplest way to say it is that I think we're all dealt these cards in life, but the cards in and of themselves don't read one way or the other. It's up to you to home in and cultivate whatever you've got in your hand.

I believe there's fate, and then you have personal choice. I believe we have the ability to change our fate.

Anyone has outside influences. They are the results of the cosmic roll of the dice: this person is born Aragon the Ranger, this person is born a prisoner in North Korea, this person is born Carlos the Dwarf. Some of these things are out of our control, but that doesn't mean that they can't be changed. A character, just like a person in real life, is a summation of her actions and feelings. Our actions and emotions are not performed against nothing, they do not arise from dust, we are in constant friction, and/or flow with our surroundings.

We live out our lives as we are meant to live them-with some choice, with some chance, but mostly as a result of the persons we are.

It is your decisions, and not your conditions, that determine your destiny.

More than anything else, I believe it's our decisions, not the conditions of our lives that determine our destiny.

Life is mere chance only when one allows it to be.

All men and women are born, live, suffer and die; what distinguishes us one from another is our dreams, whether they be dreams about worldly or unworldly things, and what we do to make them come about... We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time and conditions of our death. But within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live.

Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender.

Power just makes you reject destiny and devour your fate.

You're not always able to choose.

It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.

We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.

I've always been obsessed about how people choose - or are destined - for the paths they take.

I often feel, and ever more deeply I realize, that fate and character are the same conception.

I believe that fate is choices - it's not chance.

It's choice - not chance - that determines your destiny.

It's strange how parts come along, how life lives us, and what we get to do with the abilities that are given us.

I've always felt that life is a novel, and part of it is written for you, and part of it is written by you. It's up to you to write the ending, ultimately.

Nature is at work. Character and destiny are her handiwork. She gives us love and hate, jealousy and reverence. All that is ours is the power to choose which impulse we shall follow.