What If Quotes

He slid his hand onto Riley's bare abdomen. "I got to thinkin' that a few years down the line, when yer older, what if that was our baby and I could feel it right here under my hand. Feel the life we'd created."
Riley's eyes moistened. "Girl or boy?"
"Doesn't matter. If it's a girl, we can name her after my gran. Her name was Emily Rose."
"Hmm ... I like that. Maybe the boy could be Paul Arthur, like my dad."
"Yeah, that works. But that's all the way down the line, isn't it?" It might never come to pass. ~ Jana Oliver

When I'm triggered, I think, "This will last forever" or "What if this lasts forever?" I get thoughts about how I should give up, run away, hide, protect myself. These thoughts, I cannot change. What I can change is how I respond to them. Will I unconditionally believe these ideas, or will I accept them as side effects of the temporary experience of pain? Will I act on each thought that arises in the burning fire, or will I hold myself gently and say, "It'll be okay. I know it hurts. I love you"? My power lies in these choices. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

Ellen Louise, you've done the sensible thing all your life. Now's the time to follow your heart."
"What if I do that and he still turns me down?"
"What if you don't and you never know? ~ Jenna Kernan

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

My books are based on the "what if" principle. "What if you became invisible?" or "What if you did change into your mother for one day?" I then take it from there. Each book takes several months in the long process of writing, rewriting, writing, rewriting, and each has its own set of problems. The one thing I dislike about the writing process is the sometimes-loneliness of it all. Readers only get to see the glamour part of a bound book, not some of the agonizing moments one has while constructing it. ~ Mary Rodgers

Because what if instead of a story told in consecutive order, life is a cacophony of moments we never leave? What if the most traumatic or the most beautiful experiences we have trap us in a kind of feedback loop, where at least some part of our minds remains obsessed, even as our bodies move on? ~ Noah Hawley

Asking someone out on a date is a simple task that frequently becomes a terrifying conundrum of fear, self-doubt, and anxiety. It's full of tough decisions: How do I ask? In person? Phone call? Text? What do I say? Could this person be the person I end up spending the rest of my life with? What if this is the only person for me? What if I fuck it all up with the wrong message? Though technology has added a few new, modern quirks to this dilemma, asking a new person to go on a romantic outing has never been easy. It means declaring your attraction to someone and putting yourself out there in a huge way, while risking the brutal possibility of rejection - or, ~ Aziz Ansari

What if I can't find it? What if I can't find that particular pumping-station? The breath tore in and out of his lungs, hot and bloody-tasting in the back of his throat. A stitch was sinking into his side. His buttocks sang where the rock had hit him. Beverly had said Henry and his friends meant to kill them, and Ben believed it now, yes he did. He came to ~ Stephen King

He described the securities - called Abacus - to a girlfriend: I had some input into the creation of this product (which by the way is a product of pure intellectual masturbation, the type of thing which you invent telling yourself 'Well, what if we created a "thing," which has no purpose, which is absolutely conceptual and highly theoretical and which nobody knows how to price?').15 ~ John Kay

What if I cease to exist altogether? ~ Dani Harper

You know why I think we still execute people? Because, even if we don't want to say it out loud-for the really heinous crimes, we want to know that there's a really heinous punishment. Simple as that. We want to bring society closer together-huddle and circle our wagons-and that means getting rid of people we think are incapable of learning a moral lesson. I guess the question is: Who gets to identify those people? And what if, God forbid, they got it wrong? ~ Jodi Picoult

It had become a habit with him lately to listen to his heart's pulsation while lying in bed. As usual, the palpitation was calm and steady. With his hand still on his chest, he tried to imagine the warm, crimson blood flowing leisurely to this beat. This was life, he thought. Now, at this very moment, he held in his grasp the current of life as it flowed by. To his palm it felt like the ticking of a clock. But it was more, it was a kind of alarm that summoned him to death. If it were possible to live without hearing this bell--if only his heart did not measure out time as well as blood--then how carefree he would be! How thoroughly he would savor life! But--and here Daisuke shuddered involuntarily. He was a man so attached to life that he could scarcely bear to picture his heart calmly beating to the coursing of his blood. There were times when, lying in bed, he would place his hand just below his left breast and wonder, what if someone gave me one good blow with a hammer here. Although he lived in sound health, there were instances when his consciousness awakened to the indisputable fact of his being alive as a near-miracle of good fortune. ~ Natsume Sōseki

What if a girl grew up like a boy, with marriage an abstract, someday thought, a thing to think about when she became an adult, a thing she could do, or not do, depending? What would that look and feel like? ~ Anonymous

What if the places you went and the things you encountered in your work were more interesting than what was available in the physical world around you? ~ Neal Stephenson

What if the healing of the world utterly depends on the ten-thousand invisible kindnesses we offer simply and quietly throughout the pilgrimage of each human life? ~ Wayne Muller

What if there were no longer only two sides? Not just capital versus labor, but a third team, one that straddled elements of both? I think there's a huge opportunity for a third kind of participant, a linchpin, and now there is an opportunity to change all the rules that we've lived with all our lives. There is a shortage of this third kind of worker, and that shortage means that the market needs you desperately. The con game is ending, at least for people passionate enough to do something about it. ~ Seth Godin

Never give up. The same manuscript may appeal to one agent and not to another. It's a matter of taste, and it's all about the writing.

What if I had give up at 15? Or 40? Or even 60?

The point is, I can't tell you how to succeed. But I can tell you how not to: Give in to the shame of being rejected and put your manuscript - or painting, song, voice, dance moves - in the coffin that is your bedside drawer and close it for good. I guarantee you that it won't take you anywhere. ~ Kathryn Stockett

What if every seemingly isolated object was actually just where the continuous wave of that object poked through into our world? ~ Reuben Heyday Margolin

I'm sick of remaining in people's what-if lists, thinking I become stronger anyway every time I'm abandoned. ~ Roch Lazarte

For what it's worth, I know how you feel," Conner told him. "I used to doubt myself a lot. When people told me I wasn't good enough, I believed them. It's hard not to when you're young."
"Tell me about it," Bold said. "Does it get better when you're older?"
"It did for me," Conner said.
"How?" Bolt asked.
"Someone else believed in me," Conner said. "All it took was one person's approval and suddenly I believed myself, too. It gave me a shield to block out all the doubt and negativity. It made me realize I was just as capable and deserving as the people I compared myself to. But you know what? I was wrong."
"You were?" Bolt asked.
"Totally," Conner said. "I didn't need someone else. I had confidence in myself, deep down inside, the whole time. Approval is just a shortcut to self-worth, but sometimes we have to find things out on your own. Sometimes if we want something bad enough, we have to inspire ourselves to get it. Sometimes we have to be our own superhero."
Out of everything Conner said, he could tell this resonated with the boy the most. If he wanted to help people, maybe he had to start with himself.
"But what if I fail?" Bolt asked. "What if the Snake Lord wins and I don't save anyone? Then I'll never be a superhero."
"A very wise man once told me that 'courage is what makes a superhero super,'" Conner said. "He never sad anything about succeeding. ~ Chris Colfer

What if you wake up one fine morning only to realize that the life you have been living since the last few days was nothing but a dream of yours?

Would you go back to sleep then?

I wake up each morning only to realize you're not by my side. And if this emptiness is nothing but a nightmare, let me wake up and go back to the time we were together... ~ Sanhita Baruah

What if time's not linear, the way people think it is? What if the past, present and future are all going on at the same time, only they're separated by- oh, I don't know- a kind of gauze or something. And maybe there are people that can see through that gauze. ~ Charles De Lint

The driver believed that he would pay for his sin for a little while in hell, but then he would surely go to heaven after that. After all, he hadn't done too many bad things. So Azeem said to him, "If I slapped you in the face, what would you do to me?" The driver replied, "I would throw you out of my taxi." "If I went up to a random guy on the street and slapped him in the face, what would he do to me?" "He would probably call his friends and beat you up." "What if I went up to a policeman and slapped him in the face? What would he do to me?" "You would be beat up for sure, and then thrown into jail." "And what if I went to the king of this country and slapped him in the face? What would happen to me then?" The driver looked at Azeem and awkwardly ~ David Platt

After gathering myself, I finally stated bluntly, "Sara, I want to have sex."
"Well, of course you do," she responded like I'd said the most obvious thing in the world.
"But what if I'm terrible at it?"
Sara started laughing hysterically. I hung up the phone. She called back ten seconds later.
"Sorry," she offered calmly. "You're serious. ~ Rebecca Donovan

Aimee, what if, she asked, you decided to let go? And I wondered if she'd been listening to me at all. Because all I do is let go. ~ Autumn Doughton

She'd never broken a bone, had surgery. But the worst damage didn't leave a mark. When Hellie died, it was as if someone had cut into Alex's chest, cracked her open like balsa wood. What if it really had been like that and she'd had to walk down the street bleeding, trying to hold her ribs together, her heart and her lungs and every part of her open to the world? Instead, the thing that had broken her had left no mark, no scar for her to point to and say, This is where I ended. ~ Leigh Bardugo

I'm against redefining marriage historically 5,000 years ... because then it'll be re-defined. What if it's between a brother and a sister? ~ Rick Warren

And what if Britain lost? There would be a financial crisis, unemployment, and destitution. Working-class men would take up Ethel's father's cry and say that they had never been allowed to vote for the war. The people's rage against their rulers would be boundless. ~ Ken Follett

Why must I cling to the customs and practices of a particular country forever, just because I happened to be born there? What does it matter if its distinctiveness is lost? Need we be so attached to it? What's the harm if everyone on earth shares the same thoughts and feelings, if they stand under a single banner of laws and regulations? What if we can't be recognized as Indians any more? Where's the harm in that? No one can object if we declare ourselves to be citizens of the world. Is that any less glorious? ~ Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay

You get that one chance; and damn it, you've got to take it! If there's one lesson I know I will take with me for eternity, its that there are those things that might happen only once, those chances that come walking down the street, strolling out of a café; if you don't let go and take them, they really could get away! We can get so washed out with a mindset of entitlement– the universe will do everything for us to ensure our happiness– that we forget why we came here! We came here to grab, to take, to give, to have! Not to wait! Nobody came here to wait! So, what makes anyone think that destiny will keep on knocking over and over again? It could, but what if it doesn't? You go and you take the chance that you get; even if it makes you look stupid, insane, or whorish! Because it just might not come back again. You could wait a lifetime to see if it will...but I don't think you should. ~ C. JoyBell C.

[O]ne may properly look closely at any proposed new "freedom" from restraint or convention in order to learn what if any personal interest the advocate of the proposal has therein. Personal observation supports the statement that he who speaks for the tearing down of convention and the doing away with restraint may be one who wishes to escape the odium of some defect of his own habit or character, by having everyone else either become as he is or take his point of view. ~ J. Reuben Clark Jr.

You care too much about what other people think. I mean, so what if you fail? So what if it takes a few tries? You're following your dreams. It shouldn't matter to anyone else how long it takes you or what your journey is like–it should just matter to you. ~ Akemi Dawn Bowman

Perhaps I've grown less likable over the years, or maybe I've just forgotten how to meet people. The initial introduction - the shaking-hands part - I can still manage. It's the follow-up that throws me. Who calls whom, and how often? What if you decide after the second or third meeting that you don't really like this person? Up to what point are you allowed to back out? I used to know these things, but now they're a mystery. ~ David Sedaris

They go to work, attend a meeting
Write an equation, have a beer,
Hail colleagues with a cheerful greeting,
Are conscientious, sane and sincere,
Rational, able and fastidious.
Through hardened casing no invidious
Tapeworm of doubt, no guilt, no qualm,
Pierces to Sabotage their claim.
When something's technically attractive,
You follow the conception through,
That's all. What if you leave a slew
Of living dead, of radioactive
"Collateral damage" in its wake?
It's just a job, for heaven's sake. ~ Vikram Seth

A WISE PHYSICIAN SAID:
"THE BEST MEDECINE FOR HUMAN IS LOVE"
someone asked:
What if it doesn't work?
He Smiled and Answered..
"INCREASE THE DOSE"
(c) ~ Anonymous

I have to admit that I'm feeling a little anxious these days. We've all been lied to so much. There's just all this uncertainty we're facing ...
I mean, what if the hokey-pokey ISN'T what it's all about? ~ Vernon Crumrine

What are we going to do, Dogger?'
It seemed a reasonable question. After all he had been through, surely Dogger knew something of hopeless situations.
'We shall wait upon tomorrow,' he said.
'But
what if tomorrow is worse than today?'
'Then we shall wait upon the day after tomorrow.'
'And so forth?' I asked.
'And so forth,' Dogger said. ~ Alan Bradley

So what if the air
in Paris smells of romance?
My shirt smells of you. ~ Pooja Nansi

What if deep down inside you...you knew you were more amazing and magnificent than you thought you were? ~ Roger James McDonald

Liam's lips tightened. "She's only a little girl. She doesn't know anything about swords. What if she cuts herself? It's sharp, right?"
"Of course it is sharp, Liam. What would be the point ot having a sword that wasn't? ~ Deborah Blake

What if love is this fun game that started from heaven with you and I, perfectly together.

And then, at some point, we agreed to play a game, to be tossed into a world in which we would spend the rest of our lives trying to find each other.

Wouldn't it be fun to know that no matter what, no matter when, no matter how, and no matter where, at some point I'd find you, and say ... "Hello. ~ Israel S. Dudley

What if the reason I've never let myself fall in love with a woman is because I didn't have anything to give? Because I'd already given my heart to her when we were seventeen years old? And all these years ... I've just been waiting for her to come back to me with it. ~ Emma Chase

You cannot come to Christ unless the Spirit of God brings you. But what if you ignore His warnings? Then you are in the gravest danger, for some day God will no longer be speaking to you. Then it will be too late. Come to Christ while there is still time. Christ, God's greater Ark, stands ready to welcome you to safety today. ~ Billy Graham

Sometimes I look out the window out into the big, bright world and stare at people. Passers-by who live their ordinary lives and experience a full range of extraoridnary emotions. I stare at them for minutes, sometimes hours and then it makes me think, it makes me wonder. Are there people who are born healthy, who are born perfectly normal yet there is something wrong with them? Something nobody feels, nobody understands or questions, something that no one has ever even heard of? What if there are people among us who are capable of truly falling for someone, who are - in all biological, emotional, hormonal, chemical, philosophical senses - capable of loving someone with romantic love but no one in this wide world is capable of requiting that? Is it possible? Is it the fault of that person? Is it perhaps in the genes, the very DNA of someone? Is it perhaps destiny? And those passers-by go along happily without knowing anyone has ever asked something like this and they will probably never think about anything such because there might be only one person in this world who has to experience the feeling, the feeling that is so deeply rooted in a life alone. ~ Daniel Gyorki

What if everyone in this car had said, together: no you can't take them. Could we have stopped it?
The answer might have been yes, for a few minutes. But they'd have reinforcements at the next station; we'd all have been arrested and taken away. We'd face the same fate she will. Is that a good enough reason to say nothing? ~ Teri Terry

Falling in love with Renée was not the kind of thing you walk away from in one piece. I had no chance. She put a hitch in my git-along. She would
wake up in the middle of the night and say things like "What if Bad Bad Leroy Brown was a girl?" or "Why don't they have commercials for salt like
they do for milk?" Then she would fall back to sleep, while I would lie awake and give thanks for this alien creature beside whom I rested. ~ Rob Sheffield

The basic idea of a portfolio life is that instead of thinking of your work as a monolithic activity, what if you chose to see it as the complex group of interests, passions, and activities it is? ~ Jeff Goins

What was so much better than stability and the love of a good person who rooted for you? We fall in love and we decide to marry in this one incredible moment, and what if everything that happens after that is trying to remember that moment? We watch ourselves and our spouses change, and the work is to constantly recall the reasons you did this in the first place. ~ Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Isn't friendship amazing? At one time, our friends were just strangers to us. However, there was something special about these strangers; you felt a connection, something in common, a special bond, and your friendship began. What if, as we pass all of the 'strangers' in our lives, if we looked at these strangers as if they could be a friend? What a different world it would be…. ~ James A. Murphy

We've heard them all talk about Dust, and they're so afraid of it, and you know what? We believed them, even though we could see that what they were doing was wicked and evil and wrong ... We thought Dust must be bad too, because they were grown up and they said so. But what if it isn't? What if it's - '
She said breathlessly, 'Yeah! What if it's really good ... ~ Philip Pullman

What if at the core, if you dug deep enough, uncovered every truth ... what if at the heart of it all.. there was a lie, like a worm at the centre of the apple, coiled like Oroborus, just as the secret of men hides coiled at the centre of each piece of you, no matter how fine you slice? Wouldn't that be a fine joke now? ~ Mark Lawrence

~My father says there are more than twenty thousand turned out for the king. It seems that most men think that we will win, that York will be captured and killed, though the king in his tender heart has said he will forgive them all if they will surrender.
~Will there be another battle?
~Unless York decides he cannot face the king in person. It is one sort of sin to kill your friends and cousins, quite another to order your bowmen to fire at the king's banner and him beneath it. What if the king is killed in battle? What if York brings his broadsword down on the king's sanctified head? ~ Philippa Gregory

I mean, my age is just a number. So what if you were born in the era when they still used rotary phones and cassette tapes? I think it's cute. ~ T.S. Krupa

I've had to learn through experiences not to be afraid to fail. You don't know what the future holds for you. You can hope your dreams come true, but you have to be fearless. I don't want to look back and think, What if? ~ Nastia Liukin

What if you gave someone a gift, and they neglected to thank you for it - would you be likely to give them another? Life is the same way. In order to attract more of the blessings that life has to offer, you must truly appreciate what you already have. ~ Ralph Marston

Nothing matters... and what if it did? ~ Liana Key

For [Stephen] Harper, a national daycare plan bordered on being a socialist scheme, a phrase he had once used to describe the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. For [Paul] Martin, whose plan would have transferred to the provinces $5 billion over five years, the national program was what Canadianism was all about. "Think about it this way," [Martin] said. "What if, decades ago, Tommy Douglas and my father and Lester Pearson had considered the idea of medicare and then said, 'Forget it! Let's just give people twenty-five dollars a week.' You want a fundamental difference between Mr. Harper and myself? Well, this is it. ~ Lawrence Martin

I remember Secretary of State [George] Shultz one day saying that America is an economic model for the world. I replied to him that America represents 5 percent of the world's population and consumes 30 percent of the world's energy. What if everyone in the world lives like Americans? Where do we get the energy for this standard of living? ~ Mikhail Gorbachev

There's a voice that says: "So what?"
It's not my voice, it's probably not yours, but it makes itself heard in the arenas of public opinion, querulous and smug and fortified by just a little knowledge, which as always is a dangerous thing. "So what if a bunch of species go extinct?" It says. "Extinction is a natural process. Darwin himself said so, didn't he? Extinction is the complement of evolution, making room for new species to evolve. There have always been extinctions. So why worry about these extinctions currently being caused by humanity?" And there has always been a pilot light burning in your furnace. So why worry when your house is on fire? ~ David Quammen

But Marge, what if we chose the wrong religion? Each week we just make God madder and madder. ~ Matt Groening

Scary thought - what if I get to know myself and I'm someone I don't want to be? ~ Susan Wiggs

What if we go on, to only more pain and despair?" "Then it is not the end. ~ Sarah J. Maas

We flew out of the city and we landed on the page where Moses split the sea and the Jews marched between those suspended mountains of water, hovering, humming on both sides, and the poor expelled merchants wondered if Moses knew what the fuck he was doing. What if his hand got tired and he accidentally dropped his magic cane, or got distracted by a wet desert ass, or lost his sandals, or what if that lush single malt of a God changed his mind again and the fucking Red Sea closed in on them with its menstrual red liquid? ~ Rawi Hage

That and when you're doing live action you don't normally get to see the thing before it's in production. In this case we'd go in every couple weeks and look at animatic and sketches. The way they do it - is they'll put it up on a screen and the storyboard artist who worked on that sequence will talk you through it. Kind of like a pitch session. Then they would leave and we would sit there with the directors and say 'Alright - what if we change that? What if we do that?' It's very different from live action. ~ Jonathan M. Goldstein

Person of Interest is an example of series which have a lot of reverses... what if somebody knows a lot of about you?? And you don't him??
You are not famous and he doesn't exist as a person?? WOW, isn't it awesome?? ~ Deyth Banger

Advantage! What is advantage? And will you take it upon yourself to define with perfect accuracy in what the advantage of man consists? And what if it so happens that a man's advantage, SOMETIMES, not only may, but even must, consist in his desiring in certain cases what is harmful to himself and not advantageous. And if so, if there can be such a case, the whole principle falls into dust. What do you think
are there such cases? ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

What if the constellations no longer held?
[...] Would it not cause one to scrutinize the totality of one's surroundings carefully? Would it not terrify? ~ J.J. Abrams

So I could touch some stranger and my wolf would decide he's 'the one'?" I shuddered at the thought. "What if I hate him?"

Luke laughed. Deep and warm.

He looked my way. "You won't hate him. I've seen enough of my packmates find the other half of their soul. It's not always a smooth process, but fate hasn't messed up even once." He sobered, his eyes searching mine. "Whoever he is, he's lucky, and he doesn't even know it yet. ~ Lisa Kessler

Apple's approach to career development is yet another way it runs contrary to the norms at other companies. The prevalent attitude for workers in the corporate world is to consider their growth trajectory. What's my path up? How do I get to the next level? Companies, in turn, spend an inordinate amount of time and money grooming their people for new responsibilities. They labor to find just the right place for people. But what if it turns out all that thinking is wrong? What if companies encouraged employees to be satisfied where they are because they're good at what they do, not to mention because that might be what's best for shareholders?

Instead of employees fretting that they were stuck in terminal jobs, what if they exalted in having found their perfect jobs? A certain amount of office politics might evaporate in a corporate culture where career growth is not considered tantamount to professional fulfilment. Shareholders, after all, don't care about fiefdoms and egos. There are many professionals who would find it liberating to work at what they are good at, receive competitive killer compensation, and not have to worry about supervising others or jockeying for higher rungs on an org chart. ~ Adam Lashinsky

I hate it when you 'deal' with me." "OK, what if I 'handle' you instead? ~ Orson Scott Card

Question: What if a negative feeling toward someone or a situation persists, despite my intention and effort to let it go? Answer: Sometimes one is more or less forced to surrender to a situation and presume that it's karmic. With spiritual research, one finds out that it is indeed karmic. Let's say you are paying off the karma of being mean to a lot of people! Now you get a chance to see what it's like to have people be mean to you. Sometimes the only reasonable thing left to do is to surrender to karmic patterns. You don't have to believe in karma as a religious doctrine in order to make this step. It's simply accepting the basic law of human interactions that "what goes around comes around," and most of us have not always been saints! ~ David R. Hawkins

A sensation, hidden in the depths of my emotional memory, was suddenly revived: what if ... What if for me The Variation is not dead? If The Variation is alive?! ~ Lev Polugaevsky

If it will be an intolerable thing to suffer the heat of fire for a year or a day, or an hour, what will it be to suffer ten thousand times more for ever? What if thou wert to suffer Lawrence 's death, to be roasted upon a gridiron; or to be scraped or pricked to death as other martyrs were; or if thou wert to feed upon toads for a year together? If thou couldst not endure such things as these, how wilt thou endure the eternal flames ? ~ Richard Baxter

What if experience is disappointment, and a human's old age has no sense, and all what we acquire in our lifetime is a habit for disappointment? ~ Lara Biyuts

So what if she had to wear another woman's underpants. She'd live and the sun wouldn't stop coming up in the morning. ~ Carolyn Brown

What if she told him how she felt, and he didn't feel the same? She could lose him forever. ~ Michelle Madow

I look at the books on my library shelves. They certainly seem dormant. But what if the characters are quietly rearranging themselves? What if Emma Woodhouse doesn't learn from her mistakes? What if Tom Jones descends into a sodden life of poaching and outlawry? What if Eve resists Satan, remembering God's injunction and Adam's loving advice? I imagine all the characters bustling to get back into their places as they feel me taking the book down from the shelf. "Hurry," they say, "he'll expect to find us exactly where he left us, never mind how much his life has changed in the meantime. ~ Verlyn Klinkenborg

When I stand on the edge of a tall place I feel like I'm on the edge of time, peering into forever. The question 'What if ... ?' rises up in my mind, and it's exciting because I know that in the next instant, in less time than it takes to snap my fingers, I could fly into eternity. ~ Ruth Ozeki

He knew he had been unfair, but they had asked a question he wasn't ready to answer, a question so frightening that he couldn't begin to think what it might mean. What if Bluestar never recovered? ~ Erin Hunter

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. ~ Wallace Shawn

I'm picking you up for lunch because I want to go over with you what will happen on the tour."

Do I get a choice?

"Shouldn't that be your assistant's job to talk to me about that stuff?" I question.

"Well if I wanted my assistant to have lunch with you then yeah it would be, but I don't, so you're getting me – okay?"

"What if I already have plans?"

"Do you?"

"Yes?"

Silence.

"With?"

Do I detect a hint of jealously there, Jake?

"Starbucks. I meet him every day at one for a coffee and blueberry muffin."

I hear him exhale down the line.

"Would you consider ditching him for me?" His voice has gone all seductive and flirty again.

"I don't know … it's a pretty serious thing me and Starbucks have going on."

"I'll make it worth your while."

"Go on?"

"I'm talking cake, Tru, lots and lots of cake…"

"Starbucks who?" I giggle ~ Samantha Towle

What if I were to have you hanged?" In a clever retort, alluding to both his considerable girth and to his network of influential friends abroad, the agronomist replied, "Your Excellency, the weight of my body would break the gallows with a noise loud enough to be heard in America." Djemal apparently liked that answer. Before the ending of their meeting, he had appointed Aaronsohn inspector in chief of a new locust eradication program, ~ Scott Anderson

What if you had never seen the sea before? What if the only thing you'd ever seen was a child's picture - blue crayon, choppy waves? Would you know the real sea if you only knew the picture? Would you be able to recognize the real thing even if you saw it? You don't know what Dionysus looks like. We're talking about God here. God is serious business. ~ Donna Tartt

What if she's dead?" Winkler was close to howling out his misery.

"Winkler, she most likely is. You have to deal with this. You have to. You've seen wolves go down before. This is no different. A member of your Pack is dead. You must move on. ~ Connie Suttle

And what if, besides love, there can be no respect either, if on the contrary there is already loathing, contempt, revulsion - what then? ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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? ~ Bill Maher

what if the whole world was an ocean, do you need a horse to transport you above the water? or you have find a tree grown onto water to stand onto it! no, you have to get all you weapons, learn to swim and become a shark under water! thats when storms of the ocean will never bother you. ~ Anath Lee Wales

Sounds like that happens to you a lot. Bet your girlfriend wasn't thrilled, though." She wasn't sure why she said it, but it came out before she could think. "Who said I have a girlfriend?" He said, raising his scarred eyebrow. His dark eyes crinkled. "No one," she said. " Well, I don't anymore, if anyone's interested."
"Who's interested?"
"Are you?" He looked her straight in the eye.
"I could ask the same of you," she scoffed.
"So what if I was? Interested, I mean." He shrugged.
"It wouldn't be a surprise," she said. "I'm sure half the crew has a crush on me. ~ Melissa De La Cruz

The fantasy that appeals most to people is the kind that's rooted thoroughly in somebody looking around a corner and thinking, 'What if I wandered into this writer's people here?' If you've done your job and made your people and your settings well enough, that adds an extra dimension that you can't buy. ~ Tamora Pierce

As soon as we arrived home, I told Bliss I was going to take a shower. Sundays were a two-show day, so I certainly needed it. I let her go in first to brush her teeth. I waited for the water to turn on, then leapt into action. I found Hamlet's feathered cat toy (the only reason she would ever willingly get close to Bliss), and hid it underneath the bed. Then I went to the closet and found the suit coat pocket where I'd hidden the ring. I popped open the box to look at it one more time.

It wasn't much. I was only an actor, after all. But Bliss wasn't one to wear much jewelry any way. It was simple and sparkling, and I hoped she would love it as much as I loved her. A popping sensation filled my gut like those silly candy rocks that Bliss loved.

What if I was pushing her too fast?

No. No, I'd thought this out. It was the best way. I opened the top drawer of the nightstand, and slid the ring box toward the back. The water in the bathroom shut off, and I went back to the closet, shucking my shirt. I tossed it in the hamper at the same time Bliss walked in the room.

She came up behind me and placed a hand on my bare back. She pressed a small kiss on my shoulder and asked, "Get Hamlet for me before you shower?"

I smiled, and nodded.

Bliss was so determined to make Hamlet like her that she played with the cat for at least half an hour before bed every night. Hamlet would stick around for as long as Bliss waved t ~ Cora Carmack

Also, what if Adam and Ever were merely symbols of companionship? And Eve, different from him, woman instead of man, was simply a tool by which God noted that companionship was something you got from a person outside yourself? What if that's all it was? And why not? ~ Chinelo Okparanta

What if I'm not the superhero? What if I'm the bad guy? ~ Edward Cullen (Stephenie Meyer)

What if some games, and the more general concept of 'play,' not only provide outlets for entertainment but also function as means for creative expression, as instruments for conceptual thinking, or as tools to help examine or work through social issues. ~ Mary Flanagan

What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears? ~ Soren Kierkegaard

What if...the doctors couldn't find anything wrong? What if I was over-exaggerating the pain, weakness, and weird sensations? ~ Jennifer Starzec

Strange, the impact of History, the grip it had on us, yet it was nothing but words. Accidental accretions for the most part, leaving most of the story out. We have not yet begun to explore the true power of the Word, I thought. What if we broke all the rules, played games with the evidence, manipulated language itself, made History a partisan ally? Of course, the Phantom was already onto this, wasn't he? Ahead of us again. What were his dialectical machinations if not the dissolution of the natural limits of language, the conscious invention of a space, a spooky artificial no-man's land, between logical alternatives. I loved to debate both sides of any issue, but thinking about that strange space in between made me sweat. Paradox was one thing I hated more than psychiatrists and lady journalists. ~ Robert Coover

I've seen marvelous things, Sunday. I've looked back from the edge of the system and seen this planet, this Earth, reduced to a tiny dot of pale blue. I know what that feels like. To think that dot is where we came from, where we evolved out of the chaos and the dirt. And I know what it feels like to imagine going further. To hold that incredible, dangerous thought in my mind, if only for an instant. To think: what if I don't go home? What if I just keep traveling? Watching that pale-blue dot fall ever further away, until the darkness swallowed it and there was no turning back. Until Earth was just a blue memory. ~ Alastair Reynolds

En inglés, Borogove'" I said. "But what if I don't finish this painting in
time?"
"Teresa, I insist, you must call me Mimsy. If you weren't going to finish it, they would have arranged a later pickup date, since they already know what will happen. For god's sake, girl, quit worrying. Go home and get to work! You have
until tomorrow night."
"But I don't even know where to start!"
"Don't you artists have any imagination? Make something up! ~ Terry Bisson

So what if you believe it can't be done. Stop trying to prevent those who do believe from reaching for the stars. ~ Teyla Branton

I have said it before. You are too cautious, Fitz. What if this, what if that? You hide from trouble that may never knock at our door. ~ Robin Hobb