What If Quotations

My husband was just OK looking. I was in labor and I said to him, 'What if she's ugly? You're ugly.

You know it's very difficult to be an actor, and to have people depending on you to say the right line, at the right time, and to not be able to hear your cues! I can't tell you how many times I would've had to have said What? if I didn't have my hearing aids. So my hearing aids are a life saver, and they allow me to practice my craft.

In society, we have these unspoken rules of conduct, these 'shoulds.' Even though we pride ourselves on being a democracy, there are all these ways we say you 'should' behave. But what if you're living your life by the 'shoulds' and you're not really living your life?

If you're going to figure something out, study ethics. You can ask What's the answer? What's Right and Wrong? What I learned is that nobody knows the answer and there is no Right and Wrong. So I'm incapable of becoming a fundamentalist because there are no absolutes, there's always a what if.

Women are always complaining about men's fascination with breasts. But what if men were absolutely indifferent to breasts? What would women do then with these things that serve one function once or twice in a lifetime, and the rest of the time are just in the way?

What if capitalism is unsustainable, and socialism is impossible?

The counter-argument would be, so what if my sexual relationships are superficial, one can still have satisfying and rewarding relationships with friends, or parents, or siblings, or whatever.

What if we all suddenly get carried away thinking - who will be left to act?

Some authors, when starting a novel, imagine a place first. Others, a character starts taking shape in their head. I start with a hook, a situation, a 'what if.

I'm not coming from film school. I learned cinema in the cinema watching films, so you always have a curiosity. I say, 'Well, what if I make a film in this genre? What if I make this film like this'

I used to wake up and look at our analytics and think, 'What if yesterday was the last day anyone used Pinterest?' Like, everyone collectively decided, 'We're done!' Over time I got more confidence.

I choose parts because I don't want to be embarrassed when the movie comes out. What if my friends were to see the movie? What if my niece or nephew wandered into the theater and saw the movie? I don't want to be too ashamed of it.

My father wasn't perfect. He had a temper. I took some of that. He would snap, but the older he got, he started calming down. He learned about life, but the thing that he taught my whole family was that family was the most important thing and, no matter what, if a family member needs you, you go and help them out; you get there.

Alternate history fascinates me, as it fascinates all novelists, because 'What if?' is the big thing.

It's easy to dislike the few senior women out there. What if women were half the positions in power? It would be harder to dislike all of them.

A lot of amateurs are terrified of going up against a player who is clearly better than they are. They never play their best, because they aren't comfortable. There's one surefire way to get over that, and it's to ask yourself, 'What if I beat him?' Imagine the possibility.

You know, parenting is so personal. And we're all afraid that we didn't quite get it right. And it feels like the stakes are so high. By we - what if we made a mistake?

Do any of us actually want to live in a world where your boss can decide that he or she is morally opposed to mental health care? What if your employer was morally opposed to getting x-rays or antibiotics? How about just being forced to disclose your private medical information to your employer?

What if Shakespeare had had a test audience for Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet?

In my life, I was always floating around the edge of the dark side and saying what if take it a little bit too far, and who says you have to stop there, and whats behind the next door. Maybe you gain a wisdom from examining those things. But after a while, you get too far down in the quicksand.

Picasso said, 'Art is a lie that tells the truth.' What if you just want to tell the truth and not lie about it?

What if Woody Allen called me and said, I'm working on this movie and there's a really divine role for you. We want exactly you! It would be such a fantasy. Forget it! My idol, Woody Allen!

I'd say any good set or any comedy that I've worked on, that's worked, has been comedians pitching ideas back and forth to each other. A lot of like, 'What if you say this? What about this?'

It's no accident many accuse me of conducting public affairs with my heart instead of my head. Well, what if I do? Those who don't know how to weep with their whole heart don't know how to laugh either.

If Joy Behar or Sherri Shepherd was a dude, they'd be off TV. They're not funny enough for dudes. What if Roseanne Barr was a dude? Think we'd know who she was?

What if it's boring - or if it's not boring, it might be too revealing, or worse, it might be too revealing and still be boring.

My tendency as an actor was to correct people, was to say, 'What if we tried it this way, what about if we tried that way?' That's terrible habit for an actor, but that's a good habit for director. So I became a director.

Science and fiction both begin with similar questions: What if? Why? How does it all work? But they focus on different areas of life on earth.

Do we really need these big, gigantic, heavy rockets? What if we launch a rocket that's empty, and its sole purpose is to act as a source of fuel on the Moon? Who should build that? Well, I think the U.S. should build that.

I'm convinced that sending people to Mars is so expensive that if you go once and bring the people back and then go again and bring the people back, we're eventually going to run out of money. But what if we send people the first time and they don't come back? What if they stay there?

An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument. Isaac Stern takes good care of his violin. What if everybody jumped on his violin?

It is too easy to say 'what if' and paint a picture of a perfect world.

There are days when I think: what if I just checked out? What if I grew a beard and went off to live somewhere remote? I have often wondered about the freedom that would bring.

" ... What if?" Through the alchemy of those two words, something new comes into the world.

Spreadsheet: a kind of program that lets you sit at your desk and ask all kinds of neat "what if?" questions and generate thousands of numbers instead of actually working.

What if the only resolution you made was to love yourself more?

You have to keep walking, no matter what. If you don't, it's a living death. You're just standing in one place dying.

What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?

But if I could go back in time, I wouldn't do a single thing differently. What if all those things I did were the things that got me here?

What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn't have done was what also had got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?

What if I forgave myself? I thought. What if I forgave myself even though I'd done something I shouldn't have? What if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I'd done other than because it was what I wanted and needed to do?What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?

Life has but one true charm: the charm of the game. But what if we’re indifferent to whether we win or lose?

What if loving something means you should mostly feel frustrated and thwarted? And then a little ruined, too, by the pursuit? But you keep coming back for more?

What if everyone in the whole world suddenly decided to run away from his problems?" "Well, at least we'd all be running in the same direction!

They say, Keep your enemies closer. But what if you live with them?

The Eleventh Commandment: don't speak ill of a fellow Republican. What if the fellow Republican is doing something that hurts America? Isn't it the patriot who sides with America before he sides with the Republicans?

What if all tomorrow brings is ashes and glass, and I can't tell you child, 'this too shall pass.' If all the world were windswept, cold and gray. And in the end there's nothing left to say.

I never want to look in the mirror and say, 'What if? What if I had run harder? What if I had dived for that groundball?'

Life is too short to be wondering, 'What if?'

What if she figures out you're not very smart?

As they used to say 'What if they gave a war and nobody came?' How worthwhile if they declared a day of peace and everybody came.

What you create doesn’t have to be perfect. So what if the eggs are greasy or the toast is burned? Don’t let fear of failure discourage you.

Alright, all right," I said. "What if I tell you a story, instead?" Highlanders loved stories, and Jamie was no exception. "Oh, aye, " he said, sounding much happier. "What sort of story is it?

Hey, what if those crop circles are just ads for Target?

Grapes are juicy. Strawberries. Oranges. Good pork chops are succulent," said Dusty. "But the word isn't accurately descriptive of a person." Smiling with delight, Ahriman said, "Oh, really, not accurately descriptive? Be careful housepainter. Your genes are showing. What if I were a cannibal?

And what if---what are you if the people who are supposed to love you can leave you like you're nothing?

What if Jesus was the only normal person who ever lived?

What if what you do to survive kills the things you love?

It may be a brief interruption - just a few seconds - but what if someone sitting near you is trying to make a decent bootleg? Did you ever think of that? Now all those street-corner copies are permanently defiled by your so-called 'emergency.' Don't be so damn selfish.

If you see cattle as a source of organic manure, animal energy, as well as milk products, then Indian cattle are not inferior. It is only when you measure them as milk machines that they become inferior. What if we measured the dairy cows of America or Jersey or the Swiss Alps in terms of their work functions? They would be terribly inferior.

But what if music is what escapes when a heart breaks?

I always imagined music trapped inside my clarinet, not trapped inside of me. But what if music is what escapes when a heart breaks?

What if, every time I started to invent something, I asked, 'How would nature solve this?'

when I first began this diary I said I would give a record of my inner life. I begin to wonder if I have said anything about my inner life. What if I have no inner life?

My liveliest interest is not so much in things, as in relations of things. I have spent much time thinking about the alleged pseudo-relations that are called coincidences. What if some of them should not be coincidences?

But I don't think it's as dangerous, scary, or terrifying as getting to the end of our lives and wondering, what if I would have shown up?

What if?' history is a tricky game, but there is no doubt that the senior planners of D-Day - including Eisenhower and the British general Bernard Montgomery - believed that the Double Cross operation had played a pivotal role in the victory.

It terrified me to consider: What if, as a grown-up, I craved another body beside me as still as this one? What then?

What if I couldn't read? I wouldn't be able to text my friends movie times or even order cheese biscuits from Red Lobster!

No matter what, if you're a parent, you have to make sacrifices.

What if I couldn't handle people's opinions of me? I know that shouldn't dictate a person's degree of peace or happiness in life, but the problem is, I chose a business saturated in judgment.

Sometimes you regret the things you do, but they're over and done. Regretting the things you didn't do is tougher because they're still out there, haunting you with the what ifs.

What if we knew what tomorrow would bring? Would we fix it? Could we?

What worries me is, what if this guy is really the one for me and I just haven't had enough therapy yet for me to be comfortable with having found him.

What if when they called a war, no one went?

What if God's a woman? Not only am I going to hell, I'll never know why!

What if someone gave a war and Nobody came?

What if people knew they were recycled? Would that change anything?

I wasn't going to be one of those people who died wondering what if? I would keep putting my dreams to the test - even though it meant living with uncertainty and fear of failure. This is the shadowland of hope, and anyone with a dream must learn to live there.

I'll defend child pornography, how about that? What's wrong with seeing some child pornography? What if you watch child pornography because you find it hilarious? Then should it not a protected freedom of speech?

What if I don't want a leader? Where does that vote go? I do good on my own. I don't want to be led.

What if I got hit by lightning while walking with an umbrella? Ban umbrellas! Fight the menace of lightning!

What if God exists except it turns out he doesn't really like people very much?

I'm not a "what if." I want to just do it, try it, give it my all, and if it's not meant to be, I can accept that. But I had to do it.

What if we could make energy do our work without working our undoing?

Things that don't have a big impact seem to be crucial. Always when you go out to make a movie you have questions, "What if this doesn't work? What if that doesn't work?" you want to cover yourself, you want to bring back enough [footage] so you can do something.

What if reality is nothing but some disease?

I am always nervous about doing voice-over work. I'm always clammy and I worry, "What if my voice squeaks? What if I don't deliver it right?" Until you start saying the lines, it's always nerve-wracking, for some reason, and I've never gotten over that.

... but to remain historically accurate, I would have had to leave out an important question that I felt needed to be addressed, which is, 'What if Jesus had known kung fu?

I'm into lately being a little less precious about writing and being like, "Okay, what if I just locked myself in my room, pretend that there's someone outside with a gun that's saying, 'Don't come out until you write something.'"

And what if I never go of my own free will? Will you pitch me from some window so that I must fly or fall? Will you bolt all shutters after me? You had better, because I'll knock and knock and knock until I fall down dead. I'll have no wings that take me away from you.

What if you wake up some day, and you're 65... and you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life?

What if we gave fifty percent of our discretionary budget to the world’s poor and then counted on the moral power of that action to protect us?

What if I gave thanks in the trouble, for the trouble, because the trouble is a gift that causes me to turn? What if I loved God not for His goods but for His love itself that is goodness enough?

I think people have been obsessed with the wrong question, which is, ‘How do we make people pay for music?’ What if we started asking, ‘How do we LET people pay for music?’

What if sometimes there is no choice about what to love? What if the temple comes to Mohammed? What if you just love? without deciding? You just do: you see her and in that instant are lost to sober account-keeping and cannot choose but to love?

Never drink alone, that's what they say. But you know what? If you drink you will never be alone, alright?

What if the very reason we have breath is because we have been saved for a global mission? And what if anything less than passionate involvement in global mission is actually selling God short by frustrating the very purpose for which he created us?

What if all it took to bring us to our knees and to ignite our affections was the Word opened and the presence of God? What if that was enough for us? What if it didn't take a great band to evoke that kind of response from us in worship? What if His presence - His Word opened - what if it was enough?

What if the word of God was enough to inspire passionate worship among his people?