Figuring It Quotes

He could cheat on me and he would never tell me, and he would think less and less of me for not figuring it out. He would see me across the breakfast table, innocently slurping cereal, and know that I am a fool, and how can anyone respect a fool? ~ Gillian Flynn

There. You see? You're just figuring it out now, but I discovered a long time ago that the smarter you are, the more tempting it is to just let people imagine you. We move through each other's lives like ghosts, leaving behind haunting memories of people who never existed. The popular jock. The mysterious new girl. But we're the ones who choose, in the end, how people see us. And I'd rather be misremembered. Please, Ezra, misremember me. ~ Robyn Schneider

A lot of the appeal of internal medicine is Sherlockian - solving the case from the clues. We are detectives; we revel in the process of figuring it all out. It's what doctors most love to do. ~ Lisa Sanders

Domestic pain can be searing, and it is usually what does us in. It's almost indigestible: death, divorce, old age, drugs; brain-damaged children, violence, senility, unfaithfulness. Good luck with figuring it out. It unfolds, and you experience it, and it is so horrible and endless that you could almost give up a dozen times. But grace can be the experience of a second wind, when even though what you want is clarity and resolution, what you get is stamina and poignancy and the strength to hang on. Through the most ordinary things, books, for instance, or a postcard, or eyes or hands, life is transformed. Hands that for decades reached out to hurt us, to drag us down, to control us, or to wave us away in dismissal now reach for us differently. They become instruments of tenderness, buoyancy, exploration, hope. ~ Anne Lamott

Great marriages have an ease about them, a back-and-forth nonreactive, nondefensive, open, and ongoing flow in which you never stop talking and figuring it out together. ~ Rob Bell

Costume design is so important and really helpful, and I really love that aspect of character development, just figuring it out. ~ Katherine Waterston

Your life AFTER Christ is not static or an end result. You are not suspended in grace above the fray of life. You are looking at God through a kaleidoscope. Your life moves, and the beads shift, and something new emerges. You are defining. Redefining. Figuring it out all over again. You are in motion, in transit, in flux. You will be sad. You will be happy. You will love and doubt and cry and rage, and all of it matters. You are human, and you are beloved, and this is what it is to be Alive. ~ Addie Zierman

It's strange to play outdoors, especially in the daytime. But we're figuring it out. The rules are different for festival shows - how you talk to the crowd, how you can try to get them involved. Things are just a little different, and I think we've learned to adapt our show. ~ Andrew Dost

We spend our whole lives worrying about the future, planning for the future, trying to predict the future, as if figuring it out will cushion the blow. But the future is always changing. The future is the home of our deepest fears and wildest hopes. But one thing is certain when it finally reveals itself. The future is never the way we imagined it ~ Shonda Rhimes

You see? You're just figuring it out now, but I discovered a long time ago that the smarter you are, the more tempting it is to just let people imagine you. We move through each other's lives like ghosts, leaving behind haunting memories of people who never existed. ~ Robyn Schneider

A feral smile, and he grabbed her by the chin
not hard enough to hurt, but to get her to look at him. "First thing," he breathed, "we're not friends. I'm still training you, and that means you're still under my command." the flicker of hurt must have shown, because he leaned closer, his grip tightening on her jaw. "Second
whatever we are, whatever this is? I'm still figuring it out, too. So if I'm going to give you the space you deserve to sort yourself out, then you can damn well give it to me. ~ Sarah J. Maas

I think the beauty of growing up is not really knowing and figuring it out for yourself. ~ Khloe Kardashian

A conundrum of music is that music brings people together, yet to become a skilled musician involves a certain amount of lonely time in which you're just figuring it out, practicing. ~ Michael Tilson Thomas

Much of life, fatherhood included, is the story of knowledge acquired too late: if only I'd known then what I know now, how much smarter, abler, stronger, I would have been. But nothing really prepares you for kids, for the swells of emotion that roll through your chest like the rumble of boulders tumbling downhill, nor for the all-enveloping labor of it, the sheer mulish endurance you need for the six or seven hundred discrete tasks that have to be done each and every day. Such a small person! Not much bigger than a loaf of bread at first, yet it takes so much to keep the whole enterprise going. Logistics, skills, materiel; the only way we really learn is by figuring it out as we go along, and even then it changes on us every day, so we're always improvising, which is a fancy way of saying that we're doing things we technically don't know how to do. ~ Ben Fountain

Eleanor had known that for so long, she couldn't even remember figuring it out. ~ Rainbow Rowell

It was the program from her ceremony, and on the side was a love note that I could not recognize as such. It was written in that vague, noncommittal way of a girl who wants you to know what she feels but wants to protect herself all the same. I did not know what I was holding, and was caught on the price in self-esteem for figuring it out. I talked to her that night and thanked her, but I did not push like I was supposed to. I could not see that beneath the shield, beneath the smiles and laughter that were her armor, behind the glowing ax, all of us are waiting to be swept away. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Of course, the opposite of white privilege is not blackness, as many of us seemed to think then; the opposite of white privilege is working to dismantle that privilege. But my particular hip-hop generation proved to be very serious about figuring it all out and staying engaged. ~ Adam Mansbach

Holy shit, are you guys some kind of radical feminist cult?"
Diana frowned. "Not exactly?"
"Are you all lesbians?"
"Of course not."
"It's cool if you are. Nim's gay. Maybe bi. She's figuring it out."
"Who's Nim?"
"My best friend." My only friend, Alia did not add.
"Some like men, some like women, some like both, some like nothing at all."
"But why no guys, then?"
"It's a long story. ~ Leigh Bardugo

The conventional wisdom is - people say this all the time - you should only write something when you're far enough away from it that you can have a perspective. But that's not true. That's a story that you're telling. The truth of it is here, right now. It's the only truth that we ever know. And I'm interested in that truth and the confusion being part of the experience and sorting it your way through and figuring it out. ~ Charlie Kaufman

I sat in a world of sorrow trying to figure things out. I couldn't because the world isn't supposed to be figured out. You're not supposed to get it. You're supposed to flow with it and things come or don't. It's that simple, but we think everything's complex when it's just sitting right in front of us. ~ Dominic Riccitello

This page is related to that page.

You're reading something constructed using a rhetorical practice, something informed both directly and indirectly by the entire history of composition up until this point, from the Sophists to Derrida. But you're navigating it using pure logical statements, using spans of text or images that, when clicked or selected, get other files and display them on your screen. The text is based in the rhetorical tradition; the links are based in the logical tradition; and somewhere in there is something worth figuring out.

...the entire history of Western pedagogy [is] an oscillation between these two traditions, between the tradition of rhetoric as a means for obtaining power - language as just a collection of interconnected signifiers co-relating, without a grounding in "truth," and the tradition of seeking truth, of searching for a fundamental, logical underpinning for the universe, using ideas like the platonic solids or Boolean logic, or tools like expert systems and particle accelerators ... what is the relationship between narratives and logic? What is sprezzatura for the web? Hell if I know. My way of figuring it all out is to build the system and write inside it, because I'm too dense to work out theories. ~ Paul Ford

This is a competitive business - there are a lot of women who want these jobs, but experience, education, and smarts go a long way. I'm still figuring it out - I learn new things every day. Once you stop learning, you should get out of the business. It's just really about being hungry for more. ~ Nicole Lapin

I'm figuring it out as I go, I'm good at that. ~ Esther Hicks

The wife's gotta know. You can't hook up like that for what looks like about six or seven years without the wife figuring it out. Unless she's another idiot.
"I'm not an idiot."

Smiling, Roarke continued to stroke. "I'll keep that in mind when I decide to have a long-term affair."
"Yeah, you do that. They'll never find your body," she murmured, then dropped into sleep.

His smiled warmed, and feeling well loved, he dropped off with her. ~ J.D. Robb

All I'm asking for is for us to spend the next few weeks figuring it out. If you fall in love with me, that's on you. The possibility is real." He grins. "My money says you'll want to keep me. ~ Corinne Michaels

People are going through tough times. I want to say to them, "Live your joy." I know I can tell them that because I went through a lot of hard times. I had a choice of either succumbing to the hard times or figuring it out. ~ Bonnie St. John

Earlier in the summer, I'd found the syllabi to a couple of the courses I was taking at Defriese in the fall, and I'd hunted down a few of the texts at the U bookstore, figuring it couldn't hurt to acquaint myself with the material. ~ Sarah Dessen

I tend to not speak up as much, so saying no is rather difficult for me. The biggest step of being an adult is saying, "This is what I do like. This is what I don't like." Being yourself means certain people aren't going to like that. I'm still figuring it out and taking things day by day. ~ Selena Gomez

There are many, many things that are difficult in this life, but one thing that isn't difficult at all is figuring out whether someone is excited or not when they open a present. ~ Lemony Snicket

No one likes doing chores. In happiness surveys, housework is ranked down there with commuting as activities that people enjoy the least. Maybe that's why figuring out who does which chores usually prompts, at best, tense discussion in a household and, at worst, outright fighting. ~ Emily Oster

I think much of a #writerslife is figuring out how much coffee is needed to fuel madness & creativity while avoiding having to pee. ~ Jennifer Worrell

You come to love not by discovering the ideal individual, yet by figuring out how to see a blemished individual flawlessly. ~ Sam Keen

There are things we can fix and things we can't. I guess life is about figuring out which is which, and dealing with both the best you can. ~ Ruth Cardello

Design is about creating spaces for people to enjoy and of course, creating moments where you elevate the spirit, but 'design for good' is figuring out a program that not only creates better spaces, but creates jobs, creates new industry and really kind of raises the conversation about how we rebuild. ~ Cameron Sinclair

I'd rather be more of the hippie country chick - as in, instead of pointing a finger, just maybe saying, 'We're all screw-ups. We're all in this kind of together. We're all just figuring this out.' ~ Kacey Musgraves

Often, my central challenge is figuring out how do I build trust, how do I acquaint people who've just endured some terrible event - losing their child to murder, say, or being sexually assaulted - with the bizarre and sometimes invasive nature of in-depth interviews that aren't just a quick list of ten questions? ~ Sarah Stillman

People think of teachers who are born to teach, and you think of all these charismatic folks. Some of the most successful teachers are some of the least charismatic, interestingly. But they have a gift of figuring out what motivates people. ~ Wendy Kopp

The trick, when you're flirting, is figuring how to keep a balance between being engaging enough to retain someone's attention and not seeming overly available. So you tease a person a little. ~ Neil Strauss

The music comes first, like, 99 percent of the time. I come up with the basic chord structure and the melody first and then I get really obsessed with arranging, adding, and subtracting parts. The last step of the process, for me, is finding words that fit into that structure and figuring out exactly what I want to talk about. ~ Mikal Cronin

I never look at the internet because then you just have nothing else to do but just look. Most generally, and even myself as a consumer, you think you know what you want. But what's more interesting is figuring out what you don't want. I think the only way that I can do that is just to do what I think is right. That is the only real gesture of respect. Then people can react to the movie how they want to react. ~ Nicolas Winding Refn

Okay, listen up, dudes. We have to book. Yesterday, when I find you guys are, like, AWOL? I, like, freak. Yelling at everybody–where are they, why did you let them leave–the hotel people are, like, whaaaa? Anyway, I pack up all your stuff, figuring I may never see the place again, and down in the lobby I find my man Arif. I'm, like, help me, and he takes all of our stuff to this launch–and then we're halfway across the sea when Arif gets this radio message, and he's all excited, but I don't know what he's saying until he's, like, 'POLICE!' in English. And we see these cop cars and somebody's getting a big old boat, so we're, like, sayonara, only in Indonesian, and we tool out into this boat-traffic jam to try to loose them, and I'm hearing these radio reports that are half English–there's been a fire and somebody's dead, yada yada, and I'm totally wigging out–Why did you do that? Why did you and your sister leave me in a hotel without even a note? ~ Peter Lerangis

A lot of me figuring out how to love myself more involves finding the things that I'm ashamed of and looking them right in the eye. ~ Arca

Just trying to live our lives and figuring out how to turn that into art. It's tough to say that the art was premeditated. Instead you just focused on living. 'How do I want to live? What do I want to do?' Then you figured out how to make that into art. ~ Casey Neistat

A central notion in the Affordable Care Act was we had an inefficient system with a lot of waste that didn't also deliver the kind of quality that was needed that often put health care providers in a box where they wanted to do better for their patients, but financial incentives were skewed the other way, we don't need to reinvent the wheel
you're already figuring out what works to reduce infections in hospitals or help patients with complicated needs. ~ Barack Obama

Movements have narratives. They tell stories, because they are not just about rearranging economics and politics. They also rearrange meaning. And they're not just about redistributing the goods. They're about figuring out what is good. ~ Marshall Ganz

Academics were not a challenge when I was fifteen in college. The challenge was figuring out how to fit in socially. ~ Ian Bremmer

Narrators are often unreliable, and part of the reader's pleasure is figuring out what's really true. The ~ Lisa Cron

Discovering passion and purpose requires figuring out what works and what doesn't. Mature, successful people establish their on rules. These rules are measured by only one standard: do they work? ~ Robert A. Glover

When you have the enthusiasm and the passion, you end up figuring how to excel. ~ Deena Kastor

As a result, we've built a culture in which most technological "innovation" is merely figuring out how to scale diversions in new, more efficient (and more intrusive) ways. As the venture capitalist Peter Thiel once said, "We wanted flying cars, instead we got Twitter. ~ Mark Manson

Some people might get obsessed with figuring out how they wound up on the F train in drag, with no bag and only one shoe, but that's simply not my style. What's done is done. I'm sure I had my reasons. ~ Josh Kilmer-Purcell

The only thing we need to sustain is the freedom to act on our judgment-which includes the freedom to use our property as we see fit. As long as we are free, we can keep the lights on and continue figuring out how to make them cheaper and brighter. ~ Craig Biddle

I'm not a big believer in doing things unilaterally. I'm a big believer in opening up a dialogue and figuring out how we can make something work for all people. ~ Bill Richardson

I very much want to be in the business of creating content, of doing stories all over the world rather than figuring out what the business model is for 'Newsweek' on the iPad, although that's very important work as well. ~ Fareed Zakaria

You find out who you are by figuring out who and what you're not ~ Kelly Cutrone

Humans want to conquer everyone they can, and buy everything they see. I think this is because humans have forgotten how to be happy. It's not their fault - it's not easy figuring out how to be happy in these days of anything-but-moderation. ~ A.S. King

Perhaps forgiveness wasn't a singular event, but a progression, or better, a dance that took some figuring before you could perform the steps. ~ Bonnie Grove

This is what men must do. Their true job."
"What's that?"
"Take responsibility for what's theirs and let go the rest."
"Seems the trick, then, is figuring out what you can safely let go. ~ Lance Weller

In college - while figuring the things out that most people do in college - I had no game. No confidence. I had Birkenstocks. And overalls. A budding romance novel addiction. But no cool. No poise. I was trying on a thousand different personalities, but a lot of them were formed by the perceptions of others. ~ Molly O'Keefe

So much of making movies is about discovery on the day, what you're figuring out. If you know everything going in, then it's not worth doing - it's already done. ~ Brad Pitt

It's not enough to raise awareness. You have to give people solutions, and you have to invite them to get involved in whatever way they can, whether that's doing volunteer work or taking a portion of their salary and figuring out where they want that money to go. You have to find ways to inspire people to get involved. ~ Madonna Ciccone

Here I was, Brett Ashley Baker, A.K.A., dead girl, A.K.A., untrained guardian angel, stuck figuring out all of this angel stuff in addition to being dead on my own. ~ Karri Thompson

I think you can go from being not very funny to working really hard for 10 years and figuring out how to make a living on the road, but I don't think you can rise much above that. ~ Amy Schumer

A slick way to outfigure a person is to get him figuring you figure he's figuring you're figuring he'll figure you aren't really figuring what you want him to figure you figure. ~ Whitey Herzog

The first sort of big present I remember getting from Santa Claus was quite a small telescope that I remember going into our backyard with my parents and figuring out how to assemble, and staring at the night sky, just for hours, with both of my parents. ~ Chelsea Clinton

I'm not sure she's going to honor that agreement, especially if you bring up the former king," Snow said thoughtfully. "But perhaps you could offer her something more in return. Something that lets her know that trading with your kingdom is something she couldn't possibly refuse. Is there another export you have that would be worthy to her?"
Henri paused for a moment. "We have a lot of cattle. We'd certainly be willing to trade some of our stock." He looked at her. "You're very wise, Snow White."
She looked down at her clogs. "I like figuring out things and keeping my mind busy. ~ Jen Calonita

Sometimes figuring out who you are means understanding that we are a mosaic of experiences. I'm Dumplin'. And Will and Willowdean. I'm fat. I'm happy. I'm insecure. I'm bold. ~ Julie Murphy

The right thing isn't always real obvious. Sometimes the right thing for one person is the wrong thing for someone else. So ... good luck figuring that out. ~ Stephenie Meyer

I've just grown up a lot and started to encounter some of the big decisions of life in terms of what career I wanted to do and figuring out personal relationships and things. ~ Lee Norris

In the lifetime of one person, we went from figuring out where we came from to figuring out how to get rid of ourselves. ~ Jack Horner

The key to skeleton is to find the line, and I think I spend most of training figuring out where that sweet spot is ... ~ Katie Uhlaender

What were we trying to do, kill ourselves and everyone around us? But we were children then, and we were just figuring out how to live. The car finished its U-Turn and headed back for the road. I laughed. I believed in writing down my future, but I didn't know to keep an eye on hers. ~ Nova Ren Suma

The task of worrying is to come up with positive solutions for life's perils by anticipating dangers before they arise. If we are preoccupied by worries, we have that must less attention to expend on figuring out the answers. Our worries become self-fulfilling prophecies, propelling us toward the very disaster they predict. ~ Daniel Goleman

In a 22-page comic, figuring an average of four to five panels a page and a couple of full-page shots, a writer has maybe a hundred panels at most to tell a story, so every panel he wastes conveying a.) something I already know, b.) something that's a cute gag but does nothing to reveal plot or character, or c.) something I don't need to know is a demonstration of lousy craft. ~ Mark Waid

When I was 13, I was just figuring out how to play 'Eruption,' poorly, by Eddie Van Halen. ~ Dierks Bentley