Alva Noto Quotes

I believe that life is chaotic, a jumble of accidents, ambitions, misconceptions, bold intentions, lazy happenstances, and unintended consequences, yet I also believe that there are connections that illuminate our world, revealing its endless mystery and wonder.

We are continually shaped by the forces of coincidence.

It seems to me that everything that happens to us is a disconcerting mix of choice and contingency.

So much of life, it seems to me, is determined by pure randomness.

My life is a series of things that just happen.

A consistent soul believes in destiny, a capricious one in chance.

Every single moment is a coincidence.

I say the one thing about luck is you can't really count on it.

We make choices but are constantly foiled by happenstance.

I was born accidentally. I lived accidentally in London. We nearly migrated to New Zealand. So much of my life has been a product of chance, I can't see a meaning in it at all.

There's a lot of things in life that we don't know why they're coming exactly at this moment.

He [the historian] should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.

A man may plan as much as he wants to, but nothing of consequence is likely to come of it until the magician circumstance steps in and takes the matter off his hands.

I think things just happen to people. That's healthier, I feel, than believing there's some grand scheme where your story is already inscribed in the Book of Life. Books get rewritten.

It is really strange how life works, isn't it?

But something, somehow, had made all these paths converge. You couldn't find it on a checklist, or work it into the equation. It just happened.

I was not sure I wanted to issue orders to life; I rather liked the Greek notion of allowing Chance to take a formative hand in my affairs.

The threads of circumstance that lead to tomorrow are so tenuous that all the fussing and worrying about decisions is futile compared to the pure randomness of existence.

Is there a design in the events of our lives? Or do things just happen, much like a junk yard falling down a staircase? If it's the latter, how do you deal with it?

It's hard to believe in coincidence, but it's even harder to believe in anything else.

Luck has a lot to do with how your life develops.

The world is so unpredictable. Things happen suddenly, unexpectedly. We want to feel we are in control of our own existence. In some ways we are, in some ways we're not. We are ruled by the forces of chance and coincidence.

Chance is a name for our ignorance.

My life is a big accident, so where I end up, I think it's all accidents.

Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.