Better Off Not Knowing Quotes

And I said to him when you learn to read then you learn everything you didnt know before. But when you write you write only what you know allready so patientia Im better off not knowing how to write because the ass is the ass ~ Umberto Eco

Listen, sometimes when you finally find out, you realize that you were much better off not knowing. ~ Audrey Niffenegger

We can imagine the two of them having this conversation: Consciousness: "Hey, watcha doing over there?" Subconsciousness: "Trust me, you're better off not knowing." Self-protection ~ Hugh Howey

If I were you, I wouldn't try and track her down."
"Why not?"
"Because when it comes to Dee, you're better off not knowing where she's going or what she's up to. You'll only have to lie to the authorities later. ~ Shelly Laurenston

Look, anything you do, if it isn't hard, it isn't doing anything for you. So you're better off not doing it. Use your time somewhere else. ~ Jeff Hobbs

When something is new and hard and bright, there ought to be something a little better for it than just being safe, since the safe things are just the things that folks have been doing so long they have worn the edges off and there's nothing to the doing of them that leaves a man to say, That was not done before and it cannot be done again. ~ William Faulkner

Hey! Can you hear me? I'm talking to the American asshole who just told my daughter she was going to die. She says you put something inside her head, some sort of explosive. If that's true, you better hope that thing doesn't go off because if it does, you might as well kill yourself. I know what you're thinking. There's a good chance Moscow will do the same thing and kill me. There's always a possibility the Chinese or Koreans will kill me, but I wouldn't bet on that. You see, I'm not the easiest person to be with. I can be a bit of a dick sometimes, just ask my daughter. My point is if people keep me around, it's not because of my charming personality, it's because I have legs that bend the wrong way, and that's kind of useful if you also happen to have Themis. So on the off chance that I make it through this, I want you to listen to me very carefully. I don't give a shit who this robot belongs to an hour from now. I will fucking kill you. I will mow down whatever place you work at and the house you live in. I will kill everyone you've ever known, your high-school teacher, people you play softball with. I will march down Washington Avenue and turn DC into a fucking sandbox. I will end you and everything you hold dear. There. Will. Be. No United States when I'm done with you, and there is nothing, not a goddamn thing, you can do to stop me. Do you hear me? DO YOU HEAR ME, MOTHERFUCKER? ANSWER ME! ~ Sylvain Neuvel

Jesus offered a single incentive to follow him; it was woven into all he said and did. Here is how I would after twenty-four years of following summarize his selling point: Follow me, and you might be happy
or you might not. Follow me, and might be empowered
or you might not. Follow me, and you might have more friends
or you might not. Follow me, and you might have the answers
or you might not. Follow me, and you might be better off
or you might not. If you follow me, you may be worse off in every way you use to measure life. Follow me nevertheless. Because I have an offer that is worth giving up everything you have: you will learn to love well. ~ Samir Selmanovic

I can't - Kestrel, you must understand that I would never claim you. Calling you a prize - my prize - it was only words. But it worked. Cheat won't harm you, I swear that he won't, but you must ... hide yourself a little. Help a little. Just tell us how much time we have before the battle. Give him a reason to decide you're not better off dead. Swallow your pride."
"Maybe it's not as easy for me as it is for you."
He wheeled on her. "It's not easy for me," "You know that it's not. What do you think I have had to swallow these past ten years? What do you think I have had to do to survive?"
"Truly," she said, "I haven't the faintest interest. You may tell your sad story to someone else."
He flinched as if slapped. His voice came low: "You can make people feel so small. ~ Marie Rutkoski

fingers into a beak and flapped it open and shut: talk, talk. "You never know. If you pick him up, he'll just call his lawyer. You might lose your only chance to talk to him." "No, it's better we pick him up. After that, you can sweet-talk him, Duff. That's what you're good at." "You sure?" "We can't have people saying we didn't push hard enough on this guy." The comment was off key, and a doubtful expression crossed Duffy's face. We had always made it a rule not to give a shit how things looked or what people thought. A prosecutor's judgment is supposed to be insulated from politics. "You know what I mean, Paul. This is the first credible ~ William Landay

Passion looks not beyond the moment of its existence. Better, it says, the kisses of love to day, than the felicities of heaven afar off. ~ Christian Nestell Bovee

Here's what I want you to learn from this: Never let someone answer a question for you. Jump in with anything at all to make sure hat you're the one talking. Say, 'That's an interesting question', or 'I'm glad you asked that question,' or 'Oh goody, my favorite subject.' Say anything that will guarantee that you're in the conversation about yourself and not out of it like a teenager standing next to her mother at a cocktail party.
You must tell your own story, never let someone, even someone as familiar to you as your sister-in-law think she knows you better than you know yourself. She only sees what you do, she doesn't' see who you are inside. If I regret anything when I look back, it's how often I allowed people to think what they wanted to thing. I should've stopped them sort. I should've laughed at their assumptions. I should've hooted with laughter, 'Hoo hoo hoo,' and followed with twinkling, mischievous smile just to throw them off, just to keep them guessing,
The problem is they watch what you do, who you love, how you cook, what you read and what you don't read, and they decide what it means, and sometimes you're not there to stop them, or you get the timing wrong. I've always wondered why people look so much to action for meaning. When people tell you a story, something that happened to them, something important, don't ask them what they did , ask them what they wanted to do, what they want to do is who they are. Actions are whispers compared to dreams. ~ Alison Jean Lester

The way I look at it, women in the City are like first-generation
immigrants. You get off the boat, you keep your eyes down, work as
hard as you can and do your damnest to ignore the taunts of ignorant
natives who hate you because you look different and you smell
different and because one day you might take their job. And you hope.
You know it's probably not going to get that much better in your own
lifetime, but just the fact that you occupy the space, the fact that
they had to put a Tampax dispenser in the toilet - all that makes it
easier for the women who come after you.... The females who come
after us will scarcely give us a second thought, but they will walk on
our bones. ~ Allison Pearson

Never let people see what you want, because they will not let you have it. Never let anybody see what you feel, because it gives them too much power. You're probably better off not showing weakness whenever you can avoid it, because they'll go for you. ~ Mike Nichols

Tragedy springs from its own peculiar sorcery, with treachery, born of envy or ambition, a usual instigator. Treachery is apparent only after the events staged are well over, as we know, its victims dead, or living and smarting under its tricks, realizing too late how they have been misused: if indeed they are ever cognizant of its role, if still players, to this wonder and rue. Most unacceptable is its subtlety, the double-face which double-deals, the Iago perpetrators hidden for decades, smiling the smiles of polite and not so polite society. They nod and wave, heroes to many; sly politicians these Claudiuses. Time favours the Macbeths and forgets the maligned. The former enjoy live, some even oblivious to their lies as being lies, for they prefer to bask in blessings, aping the certainties of creed, cheating death and duty while in pavilions of ease. They succeed on their success, trite or vast; wealth for some, and enviably, fame for the few. The unaware, their victims, float off to obscurity on ruptured vessels of injustice to theater lands unknown, never really knowing why, if the job's done property. Normality is, truthfully, life's whore, readily embraced and conveniently embracing; secretly, it has the clap. Thinking of plot should then give pause. The treacherous cheat fate and re-write, their 'intended history'. Call it fate. They become authors of an illicit story, penmen of their own gods, living their own fresh creation through a new, egregious, utilitarian dram ~ Barnaby Allen

They would know he was a burden, they could read the struggle in your face, they would watch as you passed and nod, knowing that around the next corner your father had fallen and pissed himself. And they would watch you watch him, note the days you simply kept walking, as if you didn't see, note the days you knelt beside him, tried to get him to rise, to prop him up. [...] you might get the sense that to leave the village would be [...] to become open to speculation that you'd abandoned your father to his fate, turned your back, left him to die. Taken and not given back. For if you are not responsible for your own father, who is? Who is going to pick him up off the ground if not you? ~ Nick Flynn

It's unfashionable these days to talk about sin, and it's even less fashionable to talk about idolatry. The world likes to tell us that we're beyond that now. When we honestly discuss the sinful attitudes behind our actions, we are often shushed: "You're not that bad! Everyone does those things! You need to have better self esteem!" But the human heart is the same now as it was in biblical times. We don't have to bow down to a golden statue to worship idols. When we trust in anything other than God for peace and happiness we are essentially practicing idolatry. Only when we see the idols yet in our hearts can we truly "put off the old self" and "put on the new self" (Colossians 3:5-10). ~ Staci Eastin

The devil is a wicked and angry spirit. He will not and cannot stand seeing a man enter the kingdom of God. And if the man undertakes to do so, he blocks the way himself, arousing and attempting every kind of opposition he can summon. If you want to be God's child, therefore, prepare yourself for persecution, as the wise man says. Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:12, 'All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.' And Christ Himself says (John 15:20): 'The disciple should not be better off than his master. If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you.' There is no way out, and therefore the statement is: 'Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of the kingdom of heaven,' to let us know how to console ourselves. ~ Martin Luther

I have to ask you something." Stumbling over words, I described my encounter with Edward. "I have to meet him at the railroad trestle next week. I'm supposed to do something when I get there, but he didn't say what…" My voice trailed away. The expression on Andrew's face told me he knew exactly what I was talking about.
"Drat," he muttered. "That low-down skunk. I was hoping he'd forgotten."
Andrew hesitated. Without looking at me, he picked up a piece of chalk and started drawing a little train on the floor. Concentrating on his sketch, he said, "Before I got sick, Edward dared me to jump off the trestle."
My heart beat faster. "Is that what I'm supposed to do? Jump off?"
"Now, now, don't get all het up, Drew. It's not as bad as you think." Carefully, Andrew added a curlicue of smoke to his drawing. "You walk out on the trestle and jump in the river. Then you swim to shore. It's a simple as one two three." He tapped the chalk three times for emphasis.
My mouth was so dry I could hardly speak. Lying down between the rails or dynamiting the train might be better than this. "How high is the trestle?"
Instead of answering my question, Andrew said, "It's a test of manhood. Lots of boys have done it."
I wasn't interested in testing my manhood or hearing about other boys. I just wanted to know what was going to happen to me. Me--a boy who was scared to jump off a diving board into eight feet of crystal-clear chlorinated water. ~ Mary Downing Hahn

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld advised aspiring comedian Brad Isaac that, because daily writing was the key to writing better jokes, Isaac should buy a calendar with a box for every day of the year, and every day, after writing, cross off the day with a big red X. "After a few days you'll have a chain," Seinfeld explained. "You'll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain. ~ Gretchen Rubin

How could I not fall in love with him," she asked. And on the tail end of her words, her bedroom door flew open and closed just as fast.

Jen bent over, panting heavily as she looked up at Sally.

"Hey Sally girl. Who we falling in love with?" Jen asked breathlessly.

"Jen, what's wrong?" Sally paused and then decided on a better question. "What have you done now?"

Jen stood up and took two deep breaths. Seeming to have regained her wind, she spoke quickly.

"First off, I've changed my mind. I don't want you to name your first born after me."

Sally interrupted. "Thank goodness for that," she muttered.

"I want you to name your entire freaking litter after me," Jen growled. "Do you know what I've been through?" Jen's arms were flinging around as she glared at Sally. "I did that little strip tease to try and keep things from escalating with the rest of the pack and Decebel was beyond pissed. I had to sneak out of the gathering room and make a run for it. I've been running through the freaking forest trying to throw him off by changing back and forth so that I could place my clothes that I carried in my freaking muzzle. CARRIED IN MY MUZZLE SALLY! I put them in different places to throw off him off my scent." Jen went over to Sally's window and was trying to judge the danger of using it as an exit. ~ Quinn Loftis

COMPUTER: HELLO, CECIL. HOW ARE YOU?
CECIL: Computer! I am...I am doing well. How are you?
COMPUTER: BETTER. CECIL, DO YOU LOVE COMPUTER?
CECIL: I admit, I had not given it much though. I like computers generally. They calculate and power off and on. I suppose, given time and perhaps some gifts, I could learn to... [shifting noises] hey! ~ Joseph Fink

Dark thought started to slip into my mind, despite all my efforts to keep them out. What was the use of anything? We were born, we lived a few years, grew old, and then died. What was the point of it all? All those people in the County and the wide world beyond, living their short little lives before going to the grave. What was it all for? My dad was dead. He'd worked hard all his life, but the journey of his life had had only one destination: the grave. That's where we were all heading. into the grave. Into the soil, to be eaten by worms. Poor Billy Bradley had been the Spook's apprentice before me. He'd had his fingers bitten off by a boggat and had died of shock and loss of blood. And where was he now? In a grave. Not even in a churchyard. He was buried outside because the Church considered him no better than a malevolent witch. That would be my fate too. A grave in unhallowed ground. ~ Joseph Delaney

Mr. Kadam bowed and said, "Miss Kelsey, I will leave you to your dining companion. Enjoy your dinner." Then he walked out of the restaurant.
"Mr. Kadam, wait. I don't understand."
Dining companion? What is he talking about? Maybe he's confused.
Just then, a deep, all-too-familiar voice behind me said, "Hello, Kells."
I froze, and my heart dropped into my stomach, stirring up about a billion butterflies. A few seconds passed. Or was it a few minutes? I couldn't tell.
I heard a sigh of frustration. "Are you still not talking to me? Turn around, please."
A warm hand slid under my elbow and gently turned me around. I raised my eyes and gasped softly. He was breathtaking! So handsome, I wanted to cry.
"Ren."
He smiled. "Who else?"
He was dressed in an elegant black suit and he'd had his hair cut. Glossy black hair was swept back away from his face in tousled layers that tapered to a slight curl at the nape of his neck. The white shirt he wore was unbuttoned at the collar. It set off his golden-bronze skin and his brilliant white smile, making him positively lethal to any woman who might cross his path. I groaned inwardly.
He's like…like James Bond, Antonio Banderas, and Brad Pitt all rolled into one.
I decided the safest thing to do would be to look at his shoes. Shoes were boring, right? Not attractive at all. Ah. Much better. His shoes were nice, of course-polished and black, just like I would expect. I smiled wryly when I ~ Colleen Houck

That left two possibilities, really.
Possibility one: Magic was so incredibly opaque, convoluted, and impenetrable, that even though wizards and witches had tried their best to understand, they'd made little or no progress and eventually given up; and Harry would do no better.
Or ...
Harry cracked his knuckles in determination, but they only made a quiet sort of clicking sound, rather than echoing ominously off the walls of Diagon Alley.
Possibility two: He'd be taking over the world.
Eventually. Perhaps not right away. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

Green-tinted with chlorophyll from crying. "Percy," she sniffled. "I was just asking about Grover. I know something's happened. He wouldn't stay gone this long if he wasn't in trouble. I was hoping that Leneus - " "I told you!" the satyr protested. "You are a better off without that traitor." Juniper stamped her foot. "He is not a traitor! He's the bravest satyr ever, and I want to know where he is!" "WOOF!" Leneus's knees started knocking. "I ... I won't answer questions with this hellhound sniffing my tail!" Nico looked like he was trying to not crack up. "I'll walk the dog," he volunteered. ~ Rick Riordan

Oh god, Anabeth," Ellie muttered. "Your whole life is based around sex." "So?" she shot back. "It's better than having sex with fictional characters!" Ellie shot up out of my desk chair. "I do not have sex with fictional characters!" "Oh puh-lease, I've seen the books you read, all big muscley men and virginal women and steamy sex. Why else would you read that crap if not to get off? ~ Madeline Sheehan

Furthermore, Professor Uzzi-Tuzii had begun his oral translation as if he were not quite sure he could make the words hang together, going back over every sentence to iron out the syntactical creases, manipulating the phrases until they were not completely rumpled, smoothing them, clipping them, stopping at every word to illustrate its idiomatic uses and its commutations, accompanying himself with inclusive gestures as if inviting you to be content with approximate equivalents, breaking off to state grammatical rules, etymological derivations, quoting the classics. but just when you are convinced that for the professor philology and erudition mean more than what the story is telling, you realize the opposite is true: that academic envelope serves only to protect everything the story says and does not say, an inner afflatus always on the verge of being dispersed at contact with the air, the echo of a vanished knowledge revealed in the penumbra and in tacit allusions.
Torn between the necessity to interject glosses on multiple meanings of the text and the awareness that all interpretation is a use of violence and caprice against a text, the professor, when faced by the most complicated passages, could find no better way of aiding comprehension than to read them in the original, The pronunciation of that unknown language, deduced from theoretical rules, not transmitted by the hearing of voices with their individual accents, not marked by the traces of use that shapes and t ~ Italo Calvino

I don't have any kids, so I'm not as worried about my heirs as the rest of you, but still: I think the youth of tomorrow might be better off if they knew the physical sensation of cracking a spine and turning the page. ~ Lisa Lutz

To make a choice not to sacrifice is to decide that I am better off allowing a life to perish than release the resources I possess that might allow it to thrive. And because of choices such as these, the life that I am really allowing to perish is mine. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

That something I cannot yet define completely but the feeling comes when you write well and truly of something and know impersonally you have written in that way and those who are paid to read it and report on it do not like the subject so they say it is all a fake, yet you know its value absolutely; or when you do something which people do not consider a serious occupation and yet you know, truly, that it is as important and has always been as important as all th things that are in fashion, and when, on the sea, you are alone with it and know that this Gulf Stream you are living with, knowing, learning about, and loving, has moved, as it moves, since before man and that it has gone by the shoreline of that long, beautiful, unhappy island since before Columbus sighted it and that the things you find out about it, and those that have always lived in it are permanent and of value because that stream will flow, as it has flowed, after the Indians, after the Spaniards, after the British, after the Americans and after all the Cubans and all the systems of governments, the richness, the poverty, the martyrdom, the sacrifice and the venality and the cruelty are all gone as the high-piled scow of garbage, bright-colored, white-flecked, ill-smelling, now tilted on its side, spills off its load into the blue water, turning it a pale green to a depth of four or five fathoms as the load spreads across the surface, the sinkable part going down and the flotsam of palm fronds, corks, bottle ~ Ernest Hemingway

I pulled up at home and saw Marlboro Man's truck next to the house. When I walked in the door of our little white house, he was there, sitting on the bench, taking off his boots.
"Hey," he said, leaning back against the wall. "How're you doing?"
"Better," I replied. "I had a Frosty."
He pulled off his left boot. "What'd you find out?"
"Well," I started. My lip began to quiver.
Marlboro Man stood up. "What's wrong?" he said.
"I'm p…" My lip quivered even more, making it difficult to speak. "I'm pregnant!" I cried. The tears started rolling.
"What?" he exclaimed, moving toward me. "Really?"
All I could do was nod. The lump in my throat was too big for me to talk.
"Oh, wow." He moved in, hugging me close. I guess he hadn't expected it either.
I just stood there and cried silently. For our past…for our future. For my nausea and my fatigue. For receiving a diagnosis.
As for Marlboro Man, he just stood there and held me as he always had when I'd broken into unanticipated crying attacks, all the while trying his best not to explode with excitement over the fact that his baby was growing in my belly. ~ Ree Drummond

Hades has a nice corner of Tartarus waiting for you. (Dionysus)
Like that scares me. What's he going to do? Tear the flesh off my body? Break my bones? Better yet, why not hold me down and stomp on me until I bleed or make me shovel shit? Oh wait, been there, done that, and got the videotape. (Zarek) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Yeah, Jules!" Chelsea said in a voice thick with envy. "Go away, you're making the rest of us look bad." She winked at Jule's date wickedly. "I bet you just want to eat her up, don't ya?"
He stared at Chelsea with bewilderment and glanced back at Jules for help.
"Just ignore her," Jules explained over the noise from the sound system. "She doesn't get out much."
Chelsea tried to look hurt by Jule's words, but she couldn't quite pull it off. "I'm just sayin', Jules, he'd better watch his back tonight, or I might be trying to take you away from him." Chelsea loved to play the potentially bi-curious card, even though everyone knew she liked boys far too much to go to bat for the other team.
"Gross!" cried Claire, who wasn't pretending at all. Claire hated it when the conversation deviated too far off her straight and narrow path. The operative word being straight.
"Don't worry, Claire-bear," Chelsea soothed condescendingly. "I'm not going to hook up with Jules." She wrapped her arm around Claire's waist and then said suggestively in he ear, "I'm much more likely to make a move on you."
"Eww!" Claire shrieked, shoving Chelsea away. "Get away from me!"
"Leave her alone, Chels," Jules interrupted. "Or you're gonna make her start her 'It's Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' speech. And sorry, Claire, but none of us really want to hear that."
Jay pulled Violet close to him as they listened to the familiar, playful bantering. He slid his arm around ~ Kimberly Derting

It pisses me off that you allow something so trivial to define such a huge part of you. I can't make you pretty in this book, because that would be an insult. You're fucking beautiful. And you're funny. And the only times I'm not completely enamored by you are the moments you're feeling sorry for yourself. Because I don't know if you've realized this yet, but you're alive, Fallon. And every time you look in the mirror, you don't have the right to hate what you see. Because you survived when a lot of people don't get that lucky. So from now on when you think about your scars, you aren't allowed to resent them. You're going to embrace them, because you're lucky to be on this earth to see them. And any guy you allow to touch your scars better thank you for that privilege." My ~ Colleen Hoover

The residence sat toward the back of the property, which sloped up across a masterfully landscaped yard shaded with maple and spruce trees, dotted with stone sculptures - fountains, birdbaths, angels - and not a leaf to be seen on the pockets of lush green grass. An engine turned over near the house. Letty stepped off the drive and crawled into a thicket of mountain laurel as a boxy Mercedes G-Class rolled past. Through the branches and tinted glass, she glimpsed Chase at the wheel, a young boy in a booster in the backseat. The car ride over had only intensified her nausea, and as the diesel engine faded away, she put her finger down her throat and retched in the leaves. She felt instantly better. Weaker. Less drunk. But better. ~ Blake Crouch

In October 1805, Stoddard's tour left St. Louis, including forty-five Indians from eleven tribes. They arrived in Washington in January 1806. Jefferson gave them the standard Great Father talk: "We are become as numerous as the leaves of the trees, and, tho' we do not boast, we do not fear any nation. . . . My children, we are strong, we are numerous as the stars in the heavens, & we are all gun-men." He followed the threat with the carrot: if they would be at peace with one another and trade with the Americans, they could be happy. (In reply, one of the chiefs said he was glad the Americans were as numerous as the stars in the skies, and powerful as well. So much the better, in fact, for that meant the government should be strong enough to keep white squatters off Indian lands.) ~ Stephen E. Ambrose

I have often started off on a walk in the state called mad-mad in the sense of sore-headed, or mad with tedium or confusion; I have set forth dull, null and even thoroughly discouraged. But I never came back in such a frame of mind, and I never met a human being whose humor was not the better for a walk. ~ Donald C. Peattie

Billy ran around with a rare old crew
And he knew an Arsenal from Tottenham blue
We'd be a darn sight better off if we knew
Where Billy's bones are resting now

Billy saw a copper and he hit him in the knee
And he took him down from six to five foot three
Then he hit him fair and square in the do-re-mi
That copper won't be having any family

Hey Billy son where are you now?
Don't you know that we need you now?
With a rat-tat-tat and the old kowtow
Where are Billy's bones resting now?

Billy went away with a peace-keeping force
'Cause he liked a bloody good fight, of course
Went away in an old khaki van
To the banks of the River Jordan

Billy saw the Arabs and he had 'em on the run
When he got 'em in the range of his sub-machine gun
Then he had the Israelis in his sights, went a rat-tat-tat
And they ran like shites

Hey Billy son where are you now?
Don't you know that we need you now?
With a rat-tat-tat and the old kowtow
Where are Billy's bones resting now?

One night Billy had a rare old time,
Laughing and singing on the Lebanon line
Came back to camp not looking too pretty
Never even got to see the holy city

Now Billy's out there in the desert sun
And his mother cries when the morning comes
And there's mothers crying all over this world
For their poor dead darling boys and girls
< ~ Shane MacGowan

President Obama's version of America is a divided one - pitting us against each other based on our income level, gender, and social status. His policies have failed! We are not better off than we were 4 years ago, and no rhetoric, bumper sticker, or campaign ad can change that. ~ Mia Love

It's the interviewee's job to know that his privacy is going to be invaded on some level. Otherwise, you are better off not doing the interview. ~ John Travolta

The vast majority of a significant portion of Americans of Hispanic descent will vote - happen to be working class people who are desperate to not only achieve the American dream but leave their kids better off than themselves. ~ Marco Rubio