Siri Hustvedt Quotes

Coincidences, in general, are great stumbling-blocks in the way of that class of thinkers who have been educated to know nothing of the theory of probabilities.

People are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence. They are far too ready to dismiss it and to build arcane structures of extremely rickety substance in order to avoid it. I, on the other hand, see coincidence everywhere as an inevitable consequence of the laws of probability, according to which having no unusual coincidence is far more unusual than any coincidence could possibly be.

But, in the name of the experimental method and out of our poor knowledge, are we really entitled to claim that everything happens by chance, to the exclusion of all other possibilities?

Statisticians tell us that people underestimate the sheer number of coincidences that are bound to happen in a world governed by chance.

I'm very familiar with how people can confuse correlation with causation.

If something happens for one season, for me, it is a coincidence. Twice, we can start talking about it.

Chance is the fool's name for Fate

That's too coincidental to be a coincidence.

It might have been that notion, or just chance, or its more flamboyant relative, destiny.

I don't believe in providence and fate, as a technologist I am used to reckoning with the formulae of probability.

A very small cause which escapes our notice determines a considerable effect that we cannot fail to see, and then we say that the effect is due to chance.

There is no more dangerous error than that of mistaking the effect for the cause.

Given the infinite number of coincidences that could happen, very few ever actually do. The universe exists in a coincidence-hating state of anti-fluke.

It's just a coincidence that I've scored two headers. I'm not a specialist scoring headed goals.

You can't really explain why things happen.

I don't really believe in coincidence.

Of course it's all luck.

Accident is simply unforeseen order.

So even the most unlikely events have to take place somewhere.

There is no such thing as chance or accident; the words merely signify our ignorance of some real and immediate cause.

You may say that things happen just by chance, but I don't feel that way.

What were the odds that she'd turn away at the same instant the ball came flying her way? And that she'd be holding a soda in a crowd at a volleyball game she didn't even want to watch, in a place she didn't want to be? In a million years, the same thing should probably never happen again. With odds like that, she should have bought a lottery ticket.

The million, million, million ... to one chance happens once in a million, million, million ... times no matter how surprised we may be that it results in us.

If two baseball players from the same hometown, on different teams, receive the same uniform number, it is not ironic. It is a coincidence. If Barry Bonds attains lifetime statistics identical to his father's, it will not be ironic. It will be a coincidence.

Probability fractions arise from our knowledge and from our ignorance.