Misplaced Question Quotes

The biographer is often asked at the conclusion of his project whether he has grown to like or dislike his subject. The answer of course is both. But the question is misplaced. This biographer's greatest fear was not that he might come to admire or disapprove of his subject, but that he might end up enervated by years of research into another man's life and times. That was, fortunately, never the case. The highest praise I can offer Andrew Carnegie is to profess that, after these many years of research and writing, I find him one of the most fascinating men I have encountered, a man who was many things in his long life, but never boring. ~ David Nasaw

I allude to Back to the Future in the 1985 story to let folks know it was an inspiration and because it literally was the most time-travelly bit of pop culture we had in the mid 80's. I can talk about their tools for considering change. First, the book is metafictive in a traditional sense where I'm showing and telling the reader that the act of writing and reading is a reflexive way to push boundaries of real and literal time travel. Writers and readers are time travellers. The question is what we do with that time we traveled when we leave a book, leave a page. ~ Kiese Laymon

I question myself every day. That's what I still find motivating about this. I don't have the answers, I don't pretend that I do just because I won the match. Just keep fighting and maybe something good happens. ~ Andre Agassi

A civilized man is one who will give a serious answer to a serious question. Civilization itself is a certain sane balance of values. ~ Ezra Pound

The most intimate question we can ask, and the one that has the most spiritual power, is this: What or who am I? ~ Adyashanti

I went to Africa to work. Finding myself and falling in love were not items on the agenda. Those were the stuff of daydreams, borne of long, icy Canadian winters. At age 30, I felt I already knew my priorities, talents and limitations. The year in Africa forced me to question all of these assumptions. ~ Jacqueline L. Scott

So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?' Mr. Okamoto: 'That's an interesting question?' Mr. Chiba: 'The story with animals.' Mr. Okamoto: 'Yes. The story with animals is the better story.' Pi Patel: 'Thank you. And so it goes with God. ~ Yann Martel

Giffen's large hand is cupping my chin as he kneels in front of my jump seat. "Kricket," he says while shaking my head to try to get a response from me. Groaning, I mutter, "Are you really shaking my head right now? It already hurts like a spix kicked it, so stop!" "Getting in touch with your spirit animal, were you?" His question is flippant, but there's relief in his tone that he can't hide. "Yeah, it said to give you this." I raise my middle finger at him. He stares at it, because the gesture means nothing to him. "I should take your finger?" he asks. "I hate you,"
Bartol, Amy A. (2015-03-31). Sea of Stars (The Kricket Series Book 2) (p. 285). 47North. Kindle Edition. ~ Amy A. Bartol

So, what's up with the tie?" I asked, and Zayne stared down at it like he'd forgotten he'd been holding it.
"Now that is a question I was dying to ask," Roth commented. "BDSM, Stony? I am shooketh."
…
"Blindfolded training. Not nearly as sexy as I was thinking, but still vastly entertaining" came the comment from the one-man peanut gallery.
"That is a good idea." Anticipation swirled in my chest. "Let's go."
"This should be fun to watch," Roth declared.
"Can you not talk?" Zayne snapped as he walked to where I stood.
"I don't think that is a promise I can make. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

The Jewish question exists wherever the Jews live, however small their number. Where it does not exist it is imported by Jew immigrants. We naturally go where we are not persecuted, and, still persecution is the result of our appearance ... By persecution we cannot be exterminated ... the strong Jews turn proudly to their race when persecution bursts out. Entire branches of Judaism may disappear, break away; the tree lives. ~ Theodor Herzl

There's no happy ending where we prevent climate change any more. Now the question is, is it going to be a miserable century or an impossible one, and what comes after that. ~ Bill McKibben

The only question that got any traction was when he asked Martin what he did. Martin tersely replied that he was a wizard and was met with a blank stare. "You know, a wizard," Martin said. "I do magic." Martin had expected that this would at least impress Ampyx. Martin was wrong. "Why?" Ampyx asked. "Why what? Why do I do magic?" "Yes, why do you do magic?" Ampyx asked, as if it were the most obvious question in the world. Martin looked at Phillip, who shrugged. Finally, Martin answered, "Why wouldn't I do magic? Wouldn't you do magic if you could?" "Never," Ampyx said. "Well, why not?" Ampyx scrunched his face and said, "Magic . . . it is . . . woman's work." Martin ~ Scott Meyer

Well, did he do it?"
She always asked the irrelevant question. It didn't matter in terms of the strategy of the case whether the defendant "did it" or not. What mattered was the evidence against him
the proof
and if and how it could be neutralized. My job was to bury the proof, to color the proof a shade of gray. Gray was the color of reasonable doubt. ~ Michael Connelly

Monkeys"
"You can buy cooler, more humdrum pets
a monkey deprived of his mother in the cradle
feels the want of her affection so keenly
he either pines away or masters you
by literally hanging on your neck
no ounce of your patience or courage is misplaced;
the worst is his air of boredom and neglect,
manifested in tail-chewing and fur plucking.
The whole species is vulnerable to killing colds,
likes straw, hay or bits of a torn blanket,
a floortray thinly covered with sawdust,
they need trapezes, shelves, old rubber tires
any string or beam will do to set them swinging
these charming youngsters tend to sour with age ~ Robert Lowell

If AIBO is in some sense a toy, it is a toy that changes minds. It does this in several ways. It heightens our sense of being close to developing a postbiological life and not just in theory or in the laboratory. And it suggests how this passage will take place. It will begin with our seeing the new life as "as if " life and then deciding that "as if " may be life enough. Even now, as we contemplate "creatures" with artificial feelings and intelligence, we come to reflect differently on our own. The question here is not whether machines can be made to think like people but whether people have always thought like machines. ~ Sherry Turkle

The simple question 'What color do you want to paint that upstairs room?' might, if we follow things to their logical conclusions, be stated: 'How do I live, knowing that I will one day die and leave you? ~ Donald Antrim

Every time you do something, make something, it's final in a way, but it's not. It immediately raises a great set of questions. And if you become a question addict, which I am, you immediately have something you need to pursue. ~ Robert Irwin

The question why did you retire is a much nicer one than why don't you retire ~ Mike Hawthorn

We can't own each other's past. The question is whether we have a future together. ~ Jostein Gaarder

Question for your life: If you could change War's name, do you think you'd change its nature? ~ Jarod Kintz

People have enough ideas. The real question is "Which ideas are you going to use?". ~ Michael Ray

Matthew turned as he became aware of someone approaching from behind. It was the pair of constables, looking disgruntled. "It's procedure for lawbreakers to wear 'and cuffs while they're being transported to Bow Street," one of them said. He gave Daisy an accusing glance. "Pardon, miss, but what did you do with the cuffs that was removed from Mr. Phelan?"
Daisy looked back at him innocently. "I gave them to a maidservant. I'm afraid she's very forgetful. She probably misplaced them."
"Where should we start looking?" the officer asked with a puff of impatience.
Her expression did not change as she replied, "I would suggest a thorough search of all the chamberpots. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Why do you assume I forced him to do anything, darlin'?"
"Don't," I gritted out, "call me that."
Cole's light brows rose. "I guess that answers my question about why you lied to Alban. Care to
explain how you even know my brother? ~ Alexandra Bracken

Without ending sorrow there is no love. Sorrow is part of your self-interest, part of your egotistic, self-centred activity. You cry for another, for your son, for your brother, for your mother. Why? Because you have lost something that you are attached to, something which gave you companionship, comfort, and all the rest of it. With the ending of that person, you realize how utterly empty, how lonely your life is. Then you cry. And there are many, many people ready to comfort you, and you slip very easily into that network, that trap, of comfort.

There is the comfort in God, which is an image put together by thought, or comfort in some illusory concept or idea. And that's all you want. But you never question the very urge, the desire for comfort, never ask whether there is any comfort at all. One needs to have a comfortable bed or chair - that's all right. But you never ask whether there is any comfort at all psychologically, inwardly. Is it an illusion which has become your truth? You understand? An illusion can become your truth - the illusion that you are God, that there is God. That God has been created by thought, by fear. If you had no fear, there would be no God.

So this is a very complex problem of our life - why we are so shallow, empty, filled with other people's knowledge and with books; why we are not independent, free human beings to find out; why we are slaves. This is not a rhetorical question; it is a question each one of us must as ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

...They came to see me too,Varya said.It was a joke.They asked if I believed in God...Yes Mikhail Yırevich repeated,that question shouldn't be in there.The first census after the revolution was in 1920 and when Lenin saw the question on faith,he had them take it out.He understood the inequity of the question. ~ Anatoli Rybakov

She wanted to read things -- could not resist wanting to read things -- and reading was easily done, and relatively inexpensive. On the other hand, that she should receive any praise for such reflexive habits baffled the girl, for she knew herself to be fantastically stupid about many things. Wasn't it possible that what others mistook as intelligence might in fact be only a sort of mutation of the will? She could sit in one place longer than other children be bored for hours without complaint, and was completely devoted to filling in every last corner of the coloring books Augustus Blake sometimes brought home. She could not help her mutated will -- no more than she could help the shape of her feet or the street on which she was born. She was unable to glean real satisfaction from accidents. In the child's mind a breach now appeared: between what she believed she knew of herself, essentially, and her essence as others seemed to understand it. She began to exist for other people, and if ever asked a question to which she did not know the answer she was wont to fold her arms across her body and look upward. As if the question itself were to obvious to truly concern her. ~ Zadie Smith

Nothingness is everything to philosophers. If you wonder what everything is, then you also wonder what nothing is. The question is whether you can talk about it and still make sense. Heidegger thought that although being and nothing are not something, we nevertheless have a sense of them in moods like anxiety, joy and boredom. I'm writing a book about Heidegger, which means I'm writing about nothing. The good thing about nothing is that there's so much of it. Pretty much everywhere you go, there it is. ~ Taylor Carman

He took two quick steps forward, wrapped a hand around the back of my neck, and held me for his kiss. I hadn't expected it - not while he was still so close to changing. I'm sure that's why I didn't pull out of his hold.
The first touch of his lips was soft, tentative, asking where his hands had demanded. The man was diabolical. I could have resisted force, but the question of his kiss was an entirely different matter.
I leaned into him because he asked with the light touch and the gentle withdrawal of his lips that begged me to follow where he led. The heat of his body, welcome in the over-cooled house, rewarded me as I leaned closer to him, as did the hard planes of his body, so I was drawn to press even tighter against him.
He danced like that, too. Leading instead of pulling. It had to have been deliberate, something he worked at, because he was as dominant as they came - Alphas are. But Adam was more than just dominant: he was smart, too. And he didn't play fair.
Which is how he ended up against the wall with me plastered all over him when someone . . . Darryl, quietly cleared his throat.
I jerked free and hopped back to the middle of the hallway. "I'll just get Jesse's clothes now," I told the carpet on the floor and then took my red face into Jesse's room and shut the door. I didn't mind getting caught kissing, but that had been a lot more carnal than a kiss.
Sometimes good hearing isn't a blessing.
"Sorry," Daryl said, though his voi ~ Patricia Briggs

You know," said Jack, "I was a King for a while in Hindoostan, and my subjects would get worked up into a lather about a potato, which to them was worth as much as a treasure-chest. At first I'd want to know everything about the potato in question, and I would take a large stake in the matter, but towards the end of my reign - "
Here Jack rolled his eyes, as Frenchmen frequently did during encounters with Englishmen. Leroy seemed to take his meaning very clearly. "It is the same with every King. ~ Neal Stephenson

When you make a film it is like asking yourself a question. When it is finished, you know the answer. Ultimately with all of cinema, we are just trying to learn about ourselves. I have always used the opportunity to make a film to learn more about myself, which I am still doing. ~ Francis Ford Coppola

Marlboro Man and Tim were standing in the hall, not seven steps from the bathroom door. "There she is," Tim remarked as I walked up to them and stood. I smiled nervously.
Marlboro Man put his hand on my lower back, caressing it gently with his thumb. "You all right?" he asked. A valid question, considering I'd been in the bathroom for over twenty minutes.
"Oh yeah…I'm fine," I answered, looking away. I wanted Tim to disappear.
Instead, the three of us made small talk before Marlboro Man asked, "Do you want something to drink?" He started toward the stairs.
Gatorade. I wanted Gatorade. Ice-cold, electrolyte-replacing Gatorade. That, and vodka. "I'll go with you," I said.
Marlboro Man and I grabbed ourselves a drink and wound up in the backyard, sitting on an ornate concrete bench by ourselves. Miraculously, my nervous system had suddenly grown tired of sending signals to my sweat glands, and the dreadful perspiration spell seemed to have reached its end. And the sun had set outside, which helped my appearance a little. I felt like a circus act.
I finished my screwdriver in four seconds, and both the vitamin C and the vodka went to work almost instantly. Normally, I'd know better than to replace bodily fluids with alcohol, but this was a special case. At that point, I needed nothing more than to self-medicate.
"So, did you get sick or something?" Marlboro Man asked. "You okay?" He touched his hand to my knee.
"No," I answered. "I got…I go ~ Ree Drummond

Made to observe the vastness of our world, the greater breadth and depth of stars unfurled, the mind can grasp an order and a plan and ponder the deep question, "Who is man? ~ Mary Angeline Bell

We come now to the question: what is a priori certain or necessary, respectively in geometry (doctrine of space) or its foundations? Formerly we thought everything; nowadays we think nothing. Already the distance-concept is logically arbitrary; there need be no things that correspond to it, even approximately. ~ Albert Einstein

After the turbulence of death, moral principles and even religious proofs are called into question. ~ Salvatore Quasimodo

One can't live without fear, it's a question of what is your attitude towards fear? I'm afraid of a sordid death. I'm afraid that I will die in an ugly or squalid way, and cancer can be very vigorous in that respect. ~ Christopher Hitchens

I don't want to ruin your life," Leonard said in a gentler tone.
"You're not ruining it."
"The drugs just slow the process down. But the end's inevitable. The question is, how to turn this thing off?" He jabbed at his head with his index finger. "It's cutting me up, and I can't turn it off. Madeleine, listen to me. Listen. I'm not going to get better. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

The question for immigration reform is not if we'll get it done, it's when we'll get it done. It's going to get done. ~ Xavier Becerra

Nobody disputes that cheap natural gas would be a good thing for the economy. The question is, is this a sustainable new development that can be counted on for decades to come, or simply a 'bubble' brought on by a land grab and drilling frenzy? ~ Jeff Goodell

We are none of us born into Eden," Doc said reasonably. "world's plenty evil when we get here. Question is, what's the best way to play a bad hand?" ... ~ Mary Doria Russell

Our love for God is tested by the question of whether we seek Him or His gifts. ~ Ralph Washington Sockman

As he spoke, it occurred to her that maybe he, too, felt like two people, that maybe everybody does, and that it's not a question of whether one's damaged, but of how easily or not that damage is seen. ~ Marie Rutkoski

Niten drew in a deep shuddering breath and the air was suffused with the delicate odor of green tea.
"And Tsagaglalal ... "
"Yes, Father?"
Prometheus closed his eyes. "Tell Niten to find Aoife and ask her the question. Tell him ... tell him she will say yes. ~ Michael Scott

My tried-and-true philosophy of keeping people at a distance was taking a beating lately. It wasn't working so well with Mircea, and Pritkin had somehow bulldozed past every defense I had before I'd even noticed. I still wasn't sure how he'd done it.
He wasn't that good-looking, he had the social skills of a wet cat and the patience of a caffeinated hummingbird. In between crazy stunts and, okay, saving my life, he was just really annoying. When we'd started working together, I'd assumed it would be a question of putting up with Pritkin; then suddenly the stupid hair was making me smile, and the sporadic heroics were making my heart jump and the constant bitching had me wanting to kiss him quiet. And now I cared more than was good for me. ~ Karen Chance

For every mountain there is another one. The big question is if you reach the top of the mountain, what then? What do you do then? I suppose you die. ~ Frank Lowy

To espresso or to latte, that is the question ... whether 'tis tastier on the palate to choose white mocha over plain ... or to take a cup to go. Or a mug to stay, or extra cream, or have nothing, and by opposing the endless choice, end one's heartache ... ~ Jasper Fforde

The fact that police are legally allowed to engage in a wholesale roundup of nonviolent drug offenders does not answer the question why they would choose to do so, particularly when most police departments have far more serious crimes to prevent and solve. Why would police prioritize drug-law enforcement? ~ Michelle Alexander

Would he find her?
Without question.
Would he save her?
Always. ~ Lauren Kate

I never wanted to be feared. If I regret one thing, it is the fear I have caused. Fear is the tool of tyrants. Unfortunately, when the fate of the world is in question, you use whatever tools are available. ~ Brandon Sanderson

My grandmother had a picture of herself as a close-lipped, silent, reserved individual without curiosity, who never asked personal questions. Actually, of course, she was a talkative, jolly, interminably curious woman, who loved people, and who enjoyed the personal details of their lives almost as much as they did themselves. ~ Molly Picon