The Undoing Project Quotes

He who sees the past as surprise free is bound to have a future full of surprises. ~ Amos Tversky

No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story. ~ Danny Kahneman

My point being, what if my attacks are enterly unrelated attributable in fact to something entirely else, perhaps for instance just warning shocks brought on by my own crumbling biology, tiny flakes of unknown chemical origin already burning holes through the fabric of my mind, dismantling memories, undoing even the strongest powers of imagination and reason?
how then do you fly from that path? ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

The best apologies are short, and don't go on to include explanations that run the risk of undoing them. An apology isn't the only chance you ever get to address the underlying issue. The apology is the chance you get to establish the ground for future communication. This is an important and often overlooked distinction. ~ Harriet Lerner

Relationships without a Divine Aim always "break up," for they are based on nothing. Divine Purpose could be described as forgiveness -- the undoing and releasing of the ego. Belief in the ego prevents awareness of True Union and Intimacy. The underlying fear of Intimacy and Union is the ego's fear of loss of itself, the 'personal self' and the 'personal world. ~ David Hoffmeister

However life, unlike art, has an irritating way of bumping and limping on, undoing conversions, casting doubt on solutions, and generally illustrating the impossibility of living happily or virtuously ever after. ~ Iris Murdoch

I could not even imagine any place of secondary importance for myself, and for that very reason I quite contentedly occupied the most insignificant one in real life. Either a hero or dirt - there was no middle way. That turned out to be my undoing, for while wallowing in dirt I consoled myself with the thought that at other times I was a hero, and the hero overlaid the dirt: an ordinary mortal, as it were, was ashamed to wallow in dirt, but a hero was too exalted a person to be entirely covered in dirt, and hence I could wallow in dirt with an easy conscience. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

This is the strange undoing of a collection, of a house and of a family. It is the moment of fissure when grand things are taken and when family objects, known and handled and loved, become stuff. ~ Edmund De Waal

If the minority is able to successfully undo the Affordable Care Act by blackmail, it will be the undoing of the democratic nature of our government. ~ Jerrold Nadler

We spend a lifetime undoing the damage caused by cruelty, neglect, and all manner of lovelessness experienced in our families of origin and in relationships where we simply where we simply did not know what to do. ~ Bell Hooks

Laila watches Mariam glue strands of yarn onto her doll's head. In a few years, this little girl will be a woman who will make small demands on life, who will never burden others, who will never let on that she too had sorrows, disappointments, dreams that have been ridiculed. A woman who will be like a rock in a riverbed, enduring without complaint, her grace not sullied but shaped by the turbulence that washes over her. Already Laila sees something behind this young girl's eyes, something deep in her core, that neither Rasheed nor the Taliban will be able to break. something as hard and unyielding as a block of limestone. Something that, in the end, will be her undoing and Laila's salvation.
The little girl looks up. Puts the doll down. Smiles. ~ Khaled Hosseini

According to this, it's not the Twelve that is going to be the undoing of the Daughter of Light, but the Thirteenth Warrior." "Antonio Banderas is going to be my undoing? I'm rife with anticipation. ~ Darynda Jones

Privacy was a luxury slaves didn't deserve, or so most Valorians had thought…to their undoing, since forcing their slaves to sleep and eat together in one collective space had helped them plot against their conquerors. It amazed Kestrel, how people set their own traps.
She remembered that kiss in the carriage on Firstwinter night. How her whole being had begged for it.
She had baited her own trap, too. ~ Marie Rutkoski

As she hung in the seat, Bart stepped back and raked her with a molten gaze. "I imagine you," he said, "with your collar undone. With your habit shirt unbuttoned and your hair unpinned." She swallowed. "That is a lot of undoing. ~ Theresa Romain

Never counted in the "costs" of war are the dead birds, the charred animals the murdered fish, incinerated insects, poisoned water sources, destroyed vegetation. Rarely mentioned is the arrogance of the human race toward other living things with which it shares this planet. All these are forgotten in the fight for markets and ideologies. This arrogance will probably be the ultimate undoing of the human species. ~ Arundhati Roy

Meditation means a state of unconditioned mind. Meditation is the process of undoing the harm that every society goes on doing to every individual - communist or Catholic, Jaina or Jew, it does not matter. I am not talking about any particular conditioning that is wrong; I am saying conditioning AS SUCH is wrong. ~ Rajneesh

When I stand and contemplate my fate and see the path along which you have led me, I reach my end, for artless I surrendered to one who is my undoing and my end. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Work is the undoing of nature. ~ Paul Majkut

And it's not my place to chase around after you, fixing stuff. What I know's what I know, and it don't include putting the world back the way it out to be. It's too late for that. Way too late for heroes, champions, miracles. Don't matter what our heritage was maybe meant for - your side got hold of it first, and you won long ago. No undoing that, Esau, I ain't fool enough to think otherwise. I'm still sorry for you, but I know your side's won, this side of the grave. ~ Peter S. Beagle

We'll have a sauna first."
"Oh,will we?"
"Yeah." He hooked a hand in the waistband of her trousers and drew her closer. "Open the pores a bit." In a quick move, he unhooked them, then drew them over her hips.
"Since you insist." Shelby began undoing his tie. "Have you noticed, Senator, that most of the time you wear a great many more clothes than I?"
"As a matter of fact ... " He slipped his hands under her blouse and found her. "I have. ~ Nora Roberts

who did I think we were.
who did I think
I could make you.

this is the oldest mistake,
to confuse wanting
with magic. silence is the undoing
of every spell, and we are experts
in the unsaid. even now, I forget
to put us in past tense. as if
the air in this city were the same.
as if love is anything like its speaking. ~ Marty McConnell Emily Kagan Trenchard

Yes, we call it recursive, the act of reading, of looping the loop, of continually returning to an earlier group of words, behaving like Penelope by moving our mind back and forth, forth and back, reweaving what's unwoven, undoing what's been done; and language, which regularly returns us to its origin, which starts us off again on the same journey, older, altered, Columbus one more time, but better prepared each later voyage, knowing a bit more, ready for more, equal to a greater range of tasks, calmer, confident - after all, we've come this way before, have habits that help, and a favoring wind - language like that is the language which takes us inside, inside the sentence - inside - inside the mind - inside - inside, where meanings meet and are modified, reviewed and revised, where no perception, no need, no feeling or thought need be scanted or shunted aside. ~ William H Gass

Through the radical undoing and debilitation of repeated pain we are reacquainted with the essentialities of place and time and existence itself; in deep pain we have energy only for what we can do wholeheartedly and then, only within a narrow range of motion, metaphorically or physically, from tying our shoelace to holding the essential core conversations that are reciprocal and reinforcing within the close-in circle of those we love. Pain teaches us a fine economy, in movement, in the heart's affections, in what we ask of ourselves and eventually in what we ask in others. ~ David Whyte

My death granted immortality.
With one look, I knew he'd be my undoing ... Forgotten, book #1 of the Fate Trilogy ~ Sarah J. Pepper

Do not choose for your friends and familiar acquaintance those that are of an estate or quality too much above yours ... You will hereby accustom yourselves to live after their rate in clothes, in habit, and in expenses, whereby you will learn a fashion and rank of life above your degree and estate, which will in the end be your undoing. ~ Matthew Hale

Your body's ability to function as a clean and efficient channel is limited by stiffness, lack of strength, and lack of endurance. Your mind's ability is limited by the way it thinks about itself, by the way you think about you. The process of yoga is one of undoing the obstructions and limitations in your body and mind that inhibit the free flow of creative life force. ~ Erich Schiffmann

The sound of her voice was stinging, like a moon-dragged starvation surging into every hopeless raw vacant pore, undoing, exquisite undoing. ~ Max Porter

Miss Dearly: I'll be outside, if you don't want to open the door. But when you're ready, I'd like to play a game with you. Ask me any question you like, and I'll answer truthfully. If the answer makes you feel a little safer, reward me by undoing one of the locks. I play to get my room back, you play for the confidence to be able to leave it.
Oh, by the way: Could you wind my alarm clock?
-Captain Abraham Griswold ~ Lia Habel

For conservatives, the issue is that for generations now, they have failed to make the case for their values. They haven't even conveyed conservative values to many of their children. And when they have, the university has often succeeded in undoing them. ~ Dennis Prager

She's wearing her hair in a bun, like a ballerina's. Buns are so sexy. They used to be a treat to take apart: it was like opening a gift. Heads with the hair pulled back into buns are so elegant and confined, so maidenish; then the undoing, the dishevelment, the wildness of the freed hair, spilling down the shoulders, over the breasts, over the pillow. He enumerates in his head: Buns I have known. ~ Margaret Atwood

Pastor Smith did not have the religious constitution needed to provide salvation for any of us who'd had a hand in this tragic event. We had put on the armour of God, and there was no undoing what we had done. My faith, my belief in myself as a good citizen, everything I had thought was truth was scattered to the wind, and no one on this earth could put that to rights. Things weren't as simple as living and dying. I understood that now. ~ Cheryl R Cowtan

Laila sees something behind this young girl's eyes, something deep in her core, that neither Rasheed nor the Taliban will be able to break. something as hard and unyielding as a block of limestone. Something that, in the end, will be her undoing and Laila's salvation. ~ Khaled Hosseini

[Fire] is lightfooted and shamanic, dancing between the visible and invisible, undoing matter one collapsed molecule at a time, wreaking utter destruction with a touch softer than breath. Its poor cousins, wind and water, are one-dimensional rubes by comparison. Wind is all push, push, push. Water is suffocating, but passively so. And even when water gets it together to be a torrent or a tsunami, it is but wet wind. Fire is at once elemental and otherworldly. Fire dances on the grave of all it destroys. Fire is serious voodoo. ~ Michael Perry

Surely the weakness of our monarchy in Saudi Arabia is bound up in our addiction to extravagance. I fear it will be our undoing. ~ Jean Sasson

The undoing is almost always more difficult than the doing. ~ Kate DiCamillo

Julia had removed his shirt and was not working at undoing the belt that secured his pants around his waist. When the buckle proved difficult, she growled and doubled her efforts to remove it. ~ Leslie North