Serendipitous Encounters Quotes

Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity.

There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken.

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.

Maybe when you meet the people you are supposed to meet you know it, without knowing it.

There are millions of people in the world, and the spirits will see that most of them you never have to meet. But there are one or two you are tied to, and the spirits will cross you back and forth, threading so many knots until they catch and you finally get it right.

How else do you think life happens? A series of coincidences and occurrences have to happen somehow. Our lives all crash and collide and you think there's no reason or rhyme to it? If there wasn't any reason for it all, what would be the point? Why do you think anything happens at all? There is an outcome, repercussions and occurrences to everybody you meet and everything you say.

You never know where your next job is going to lead you, down the road. One single episode that might seem so far removed from what you might end up doing in the future might spark somebody's memory bank. Just one little line you said or a look you gave might be what they want to pursue with a character.

You never know / What opportunity / Is going to travel to you, / Or through you.

You don’t choose a story, it chooses you.

I don't think people are born artists; I think it comes from a mixture of your surroundings, the people you meet, and luck.

[My work] just develops and develops, and I'm very nicely served by the universe: just as I'm ready to take the conversation further with myself, some other individual pops up, like David McKenzie did, with this idea of making this film [Teknolust], and provides exactly the leap to the next adventure.

Journeys end in lovers meeting.

Maybe all wondrous books appear in our lives the way Milo’s tollbooth appears, an inexplicable gift, cast up by some curious chance that comes to feel, after we have finished and fallen in love with the book, like the workings of a secret purpose. Of all the enchantments of beloved books the most mysterious-the most phantasmal-is the way they always seem to come our way precisely when we need them.

It amazes me how easy it is for things to change, how easy it is to start off down the same road you always take and wind up somewhere new. Just one false step, one pause, one detour, and you end up with new friends or a bad reputation or a boyfriend or a breakup. It's never occurred to me before; I've never been able to see it. And it makes me feel, weirdly, like maybe all of these different possibilities exist at the same time, like each moment we live has a thousand other moments layered underneath it that look different.

Letters crossing in the post, unfamiliar tunes heard three times in one day, the way that blows of fate descend upon the same bowed shoulders, and the beams of good fortune glow perpetually upon the blessed. Fairy tales, as I said, are lived out daily. There is far more going on in the world than we ever imagine.

Adventure is allowing the unexpected to happen to you. Exploration is experiencing what you have not experienced before. How can there be any adventure, any exploration, if you let somebody else - above all, a travel bureau - arrange everything before-hand?

Tricky the paths a long love might follow, like the spiral down twists of a raindrop on a windowpane.

I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together.

I like chance meetings--life is full of them. Everyday, without realizing it, I pass people whom I should know. At this moment, in this cafe, we're sitting next to strangers. Everyone will get up, leave, and go on their own way. And they'll never meet again. And if they do, they won't realize that it's not for the first time.

There's no adventure in knowing the outcome of who you're supposed to be with. If everybody did follow this device, and it was supposed to work, then I guess there would be no divorce, no children coming from broken homes and a lot fewer people in therapy. So ultimately society would be functioning at a much higher level. There would be advances.

Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions.

The world needs more love at first sight.

I have an antique console stand-up radio that I bought in a yard sale, that I've always half-believed has magical properties. It's in my office, and it has watched over each of the fifteen books I've written. It also helped me find my wife.

It was like their lives were overlapping lines, like they had their own gravity. Usually, that serendipity thing felt like the nicest thing the universe had ever done for her.

Chance acquaintances are sometimes the most memorable, for brief friendships have such definite starting and stopping points that they take on a quality of art, of a whole thing, which cannot be broken or spoiled.