Erin McKean Quotes

Serendipity. Look for something, find something else, and realize that what you've found is more suited to your needs than what you thought you were looking for.

One aspect of serendipity to bear in mind is that you have to be looking for something in order to find something else.

How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for somewhere else.

The concept of serendipity often crops up in research. Serendipity is the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things that were not being sought. I believe that all researchers can be serendipitous.

'Glee' found me. I didn't really go looking for it.

I thought I would reflect here on a theme most scientists enjoy recalling: the part luck played in their accomplishments.

I can't say that I wanted to be an actress, it just happened along the way. I did not even know that I would be doing modelling but that also just happened.

Truth is something you stumble into when you think you're going someplace else.

I had so many professions before. I didn't want to do this particularly. It just happened.

It always happened like this: he would look and look for the keys to Satan’s Hearse and then finally he’d just give up and say, “Fine. I’ll take the fugging bus,” and on his way out the door, he’d see the keys. Keys show up when you reconcile yourself to the bus; Katherines appear when you start to disbelieve the world contains another Katherine; and, sure enough, the Eureka moment arrived just as he began to accept it would never come.

If an essay has a 'motive,' it is linked more to happenstance and opportunity than to the driven will. A genuine essay is not a doctrinaire tract or a propaganda effort or a broadside.

Most discoveries even today are a combination of serendipity and of searching.

Coincidence is a recognized element in 'real life.' All of us have anecdotes about those times when, by the merest coincidence, we avoided some disaster or stumbled onto some wonderful experience.

For me, everything has always been an accident.

I didn't decide to be a photographer; I just happened to fall into it.

Actually, the books were never a planned career path.

In real life, coincidences happen all the time. In novels, they are leapt upon with fury.

You can find inspiration when you're not even looking for it.

Certain things you have to stumble on to. They can't be preprogrammed.

Things happen in weird, serendipitous ways.

What's so great about inspiration is sometimes it finds you when you're not looking.

I kind of drifted into acting through a series of coincidences.

The thing that I like about magazines, paper magazines, and papers in any kind of tangible format is the surprise factor of turning the page and not necessarily knowing what you're going to see. You're not looking for something. You're just experiencing something.

I tend to view my life as an accident, almost as a dream.

I never try to look for love but sometimes it finds me.