Why Bother Quotes

Memorization has gotten a bad rap recently. Lots of students, and even some educators, say that being able to reason is more important than knowing facts; and besides, why bother committing things to memory when you've got Google? My response to this - after I've finished inwardly groaning - is that of course reasoning is important, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't know facts as well. It's not like you have to choose between one or the other. Besides, facts give you a foundation on which to reason about things. ~ Stefanie Weisman

But if you sit around thinking what to do and end up not doing anything, why bother even thinking about it? You're better off going out on the town and having a good time. No, we have to think and act. That's what we're doing here, and that's what you have to do. ~ Elvia Alvarado

In Britain, it's bred into you, the idea that you can't really change anything, so why bother. When I went to school in America, it was the total opposite view - you, as an individual, can change anything and everything. It's how you're raised. ~ Heather Brooke

Once, on ancient Earth, there was a human boy walking along a beach. There had just been a storm, and starfish had been scattered along the sands. The boy knew the fish would die, so he began to fling the fish to the sea. But every time he threw a starfish, another would wash ashore. "An old Earth man happened along and saw what the child was doing. He called out, 'Boy, what are you doing?' " 'Saving the starfish!' replied the boy. " 'But your attempts are useless, child! Every time you save one, another one returns, often the same one! You can't save them all, so why bother trying? Why does it matter, anyway?' called the old man. "The boy thought about this for a while, a starfish in his hand; he answered, "Well, it matters to this one." And then he flung the starfish into the welcoming sea. ~ Loren Eiseley

If you try too much to change the outside, that shows that you are still attached. If a man tries to be detached, it shows attachment. Why bother about detachment if you are not attached? If a man escapes from women, it shows that sex is still the obsession. Otherwise, why escape from women if you are not obsessed? ~ Rajneesh

Why bother to put the boy who broke into a house in jail when the man who stole billions from the health system is named ambassador to the country to which he had been sending the money for years? ~ Donna Leon

We can fight fire with water provided we can get it there soon enough. But often we act when it's too late. The result is splattered in the pages of our history: bloodbaths, uprisings, revolutions, you name. And on it goes. We learn so slowly. After so many centuries, we're still a people who eat fire and drink water.' 'Why bother,then?' 'Because we have to believe that one day we'll learn. ~ Arlene J. Chai

Why bother remembering a past that cannot be made into a present? ~ Soren Kierkegaard

I felt comfortable within mystery's shroud. It was all I knew. Being mysterious meant I had the advantage over others. But I didn't want an advantage over Ashley. I knew her… and I wanted her to know me as well. Mystery was fascinating and all, but why bother looking at a shrouded painting when you could see it all under the full light? A painting is so much more beautiful when you can witness every one of its quirks, kinks, flaws, and accents. That's how I wanted Ashley to see me. I didn't want to be shrouded with only part of me being available for anyone anymore. ~ David R. Torres

Why bother with fictional characters and plots when the world was full of more marvelous stories that were true, with characters so fresh, so powerful, so new, that they stepped from into the narratives under their own power? ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

Q: Why bother doing proofs about programming languages? They are almost always boring if the definitions are right.
A: The definitions are almost always wrong.

- Anonymous ~ Benjamin C. Pierce

I think about the sheer number of people who pulled together just to save my sorry ass, and I can barely comprehend it. My crewmates sacrificed a year of their lives to come back for me. Countless people at NASA worked day and night to invent rover and MAV modifications. All of JPL busted their asses to make a probe that was destroyed on launch. Then, instead of giving up, they made another probe to resupply Hermes. The China National Space Administration abandoned a project they'd worked on for years just to provide a booster.
The cost for my survival must have been hundreds of millions of dollar. All to save one dorky botanist. Why bother?
Well, okay. I know the answer to that. Part of it might be what I represent: progress, science, and the interplanetary future we've dreamed of for centuries. But really, they did it because every human being has a basic instinct to help each other out. It might not seem that way sometimes, but it's true.
If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a search. If a train crashes, people will line up to give blood. If an earthquake levels a city, people all over the world will send emergency supplies. This is so fundamentally human that it's found in every culture without exception. Yes, there are assholes who just don't care, but they're massively outnumbered by the people who do. And because of that, I had billions of people on my side.
Pretty cool, eh? ~ Andy Weir

I don't believe that you can give the same performance every take. It's physically impossible, so why bother? If you don't do what is happening at that moment, then it's not real. Then you're holding something back. ~ Bill Murray

Actually I like working kind of fast, because if you got it, why bother doing it over and over? ~ Alan Cumming

Do not focus your gaze on things that are wrong, for what you see, slowly begins to penetrate you. You are addicted to fixing your eyes on the wrong; you pay attention only to what is wrong inside you. The angry man concentrates on his anger, and how to get rid of it. Though he wants to get rid of the anger, he is actually concentrating on that white line of anger within him; the more he concentrates the more he is hypnotized by it.

Don't worry! Everybody is! Don't focus your eyes on the anger, but concentrate on compassion. Concentrate on what is right. As the right gets more and more energy, the strength of the wrong gets weaker and weaker. Ultimately it will disappear. This happens because energy is one; you cannot use it in two ways. If you have utilized your energy in becoming peaceful, you would have no energy for restlessness. All your energy has moved towards peace, and if you have had a taste of peace and serenity, why bother to become restless? You can maintain your restlessness only if you have never known the flavour of serenity. You can dive into the pleasures of the world only if you have not tasted the divine. ~ Osho

Everyone's scared. So scared they can't sleep sometimes. Or eat. Or keep their weight on."
"Then why bother playing?" I asked. It was a whisper, this question.
"Because. You love the game. You love the people you play with. You love winning, maybe. You love that one moment when you get it right ... I dunno. Why do you play?"
"Because," I whispered, "it's who I am."
Sounds like a good reason to me. ~ Catherine Gilbert Murdock

It's not perfect, but nothing is perfect except for an idea of something," he goes on, "And if we aren't experiencing the world and all we do is think about our idea of the world, then why bother with any of it? ~ Autumn Doughton

Chess is one thing, but if we get to the point computers can best humans in the arts-those splendid, millennia-old expressions of the heart and soul of human existence-then why bother existing? to produce human art a computer would have to find, feel, absorb reality to the point it is overcome, to the point it sobs for release. A computer perhaps could replicate every possibility but could never transfer the energy art requires to exist in the first place. ~ Jonny Lee Miller

I am fully present wherever I am. Why bother being in a community or neighborhood and not being fully present? I think that's colonization. I'm not interested in that. ~ Mark Bradford

That's the real power of art, I think. Not to chide but to provoke challenge. Otherwise why bother? ~ Gregory Maguire

He muttered to himself. Why bother. Why does this matter so much. What difference does it make to anything if I solve this blue and just start again. I could just sit down and drink wine. I could go and be useful in a cholera-camp in Columbia or Ethiopia. Why bother to render the transparency in solid paint or air on a bit of board? I could just stop. He could not. ~ A.S. Byatt

I know that compared to industries, corporations, and governments, an individual is insignificant. In measureable terms my actions hardly matter. But feeling tiny does not have to end at why bother. ~ Wendy Tremayne

I've been to nudist beaches, like twice. But honestly, I just don't want to see these people naked. Most people look better with their clothes on, and the few that don't, look better than you, so why bother? ~ Peter Buck

Why bother with clubs?

"Because you might get a shag," is the usual response. Really? If that's the only way you can find a partner - preening and jigging about like a desperate animal - you shouldn't be attempting to breed in the first place. What's your next trick? Inventing fire? People like you are going to spin civilisation into reverse. You're a moron, and so is that haircut you're trying to impress. Any offspring you eventually blast out should be drowned in a pan before they can do any harm. Or open any more nightclubs.

Even if you somehow avoid reproducing, isn't it a lot of hard work for very little reward? Seven hours hopping about in a hellish, reverberating bunker in exchange for sharing 64 febrile, panting pelvic thrusts with someone who'll snore and dribble into your pillow till 11 o'clock in the morning, before waking up beside you with their hair in a mess, blinking like a dizzy cat and smelling vaguely like a ham baguette? Really, why bother? Why not just stay at home punching yourself in the face? Invite a few friends round and make a night of it. It'll be more fun than a club. ~ Charlie Brooker

Why bother trying? What was the point? So I could go to some suck-ass college, get a diploma, march out into a job that I hated, marry a pretty girl who would want to divorce me, but then she wouldn't because we'd have kids, so instead she'd be the angry woman at the other end of the kitchen table, and the kids would grow up watching this, until one day I'd look at my son and he'd look just like that face in the bathroom mirror?
If that was life, then it was twisted. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

MySpace is a great way to keep in touch with friends who you don't care enough about to actually have a conversation with, why bother calling to say "how are you," when you can just surf their page and post an mpeg of a guy farting on his cat. ~ David Spade

Many of the models in the literature are not general equilibrium models in my sense. Of those that are, most are intermediate in scope: broader than examples, but much narrower than the full general equilibrium model. They are narrower, not for carefully spelled out economic reasons, but for reasons of convenience. I don't know what to do with models like that, especially when the designer says he imposed restrictions to simplify the model or to make it more likely that conventional data will lead us to reject it. The full general equilibrium model is about as simple as a model can be: we need only a few equations to describe it, and each is easy to understand. The restrictions usually strike me as extreme. When we reject a restricted version of the general equilibrium model, we are not rejecting the general equilibrium model itself. So why bother "testing" the restricted version? If we reject it, we will just create another version. ~ Fischer Black

I don't like sequels at all. If the movie's good the first time, why bother? ~ Michael Lehmann

If the achievement of so much in life could not make one happy, then why bother living? ~ Christopher Bram

Someone could be amazing at what they do, but if you don't like them, why bother hiring them? ~ Chip Conley

From within myself I hear it speak,

Why bother when life is so bleak?

Shouldn't you be chasing and drinking and dancing?
Shouldn't you be playing and cursing and running?

I felt this rage burn, grow and churn, 

Scream, Yell and Fight

Burst out of my chest with all its might, 

Cover-up my sweet desire, for today you conspired, 
Against me your former friend, 

On this day you shall meet your end. ~ M.F.C. Assoum

It is, in short, the growing conviction that the Negroes cannot win - a conviction with much grounding in experience - which accounts for the new popularity of black power. So far as the ghetto Negro is concerned, this conviction expresses itself in hostility, first toward the people closest to him who have held out the most promise and failed to deliver (Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins, etc.), then toward those who have proclaimed themselves his friends (the liberals and the labor movement), and finally toward the only oppressors he can see (the local storekeeper and the policeman on the corner). On the leadership level, the conviction that the Negroes cannot win takes other forms, principally the adoption of what I have called a "no-win" policy. Why bother with programs when their enactment results only in sham? Why concern ourselves with the image of the movement when nothing significant has been gained for all the sacrifices made by SNCC and CORE? Why compromise with reluctant white allies when nothing of consequence can be achieved anyway? Why indeed have anything to do with whites at all?

On this last point, it is extremely important for white liberals to understand what, one gathers from their references to "racism in reverse," the President and the Vice-President of the United States do not: that there is all the difference in the world between saying, "If you don't want me, I don't want you" (which is what some proponents of black power have in effect bee ~ Bayard Rustin

Why bother lifting weights if you aren't following a sound nutritional regimen? Sure, it may be fun, but are you really accomplishing anything? ~ Robert Cheeke

The real thing is not the goal, the real thing is the beauty of the movement. The real thing is not reaching, the real thing is the journey. Remember, the real thing is the journey, the very traveling. It is so beautiful, why bother about the goal? And if you are too bothered about the goal, you will miss the journey, and the journey is life - the goal can only be death. ~ Rajneesh

(Please excuse my lack of depth; I'm a generalist, not a specialist. Why bother learning all that biochemistry stuff - or how to design a building, or conn a boat, or balance accounts, or solve equations, or comfort the dying - when you can get other people to do all that for you in exchange for a blow job?) ~ Charles Stross

The mystery lies in the here and now. The mystery is: What is one to do with oneself? As you get older you begin to realize the trick time is playing, and that unless you do something about it, the passage of time is nothing but the encroachment of the horrible banality of the past on the pure future. The past devours the future like a tape recorder, converting pure possibility into banality. The present is the tape head, the mouth of time. Then where is the mystery and why bother kicking through the ashes? Because there is a clue in the past. ~ Walker Percy

But after all
I say this as a kind of afterthought in conclusion
why bother with success at all? I have observed that the successful people get very little real enjoyment out of life. In fact the contrary is true. If I had to choose
with an eye to having a really pleasant life
between success and ruin, I should prefer ruin every time. I have several friends who are completely ruined
some two or three times
in a large way of course; and I find that if I want to get a really good dinner, where the champagne is just as it ought to be, and where hospitality is unhindered by mean thoughts of expense, I can get it best at the house of a ruined man. ~ Stephen Leacock

I ought to be more hardboiled; I'd like to be. I don't think I have it in me. To write in clipped sentences. To employ gritty metaphor in the introduction of sultry blondes ... I can't do it, so why bother trying? ~ Jesse Kellerman

He past is only an unreliable memory held in the present. The future is only a projection of our present conceptions. The present itself vanishes as soon as we try to grasp it. So why bother with attempting to establish an illusion of solid ground?.. ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

I never read the paper myself. Why bother? It's the same old shit day in and day out, dictators beating the ching-chong out of people weaker than they are, men in uniforms beating the ching-chong out of soccer balls or footballs, politicians kissing babies and kissing ass. ~ Stephen King

So why bother investing in one's memory in an age of externalized memories? The best answer I can give is the one I received unwittingly from EP, whose memory had been so completely lost that he could not place himself in time or space, or relative to other people. That is: How we perceive the world and how we act in it are products of how and what we remember. We're all just a bundle of habits shaped by our memories. And to the extent that we control our lives, we do so by gradually altering those habits, which is to say the networks of our memories. No lasting joke, invention, insight, or work of art was ever produced by an external memory. Not yet, at least. Our ability to find humor in the world, to make connections between previously unconnected notions, to create new ideas, to share in a common culture: All these essentially human acts depend on memory. Now more than ever, as the role of memory in our culture erodes at a faster pace than ever before, we need to cultivate our ability to remember. Our memories make us who we are. They are the seat of our values and source of our character. ~ Joshua Foer

But why bother? Why exert all this effort to focus totally on the boring prattlings of a six-year-old?
First, your willingness to do so is the best possible concrete evidence of your esteem you can give your child. If you give your child the same esteem you would give a great lecturer, then the child will know him- or herself to be valued and therefore will feel valuable. There is no better and ultimately no other way to teach your children that they are valuable people than by valuing them.
Second, the more children feel valuable, the more they will begin to say things of value. They will rise to your expectation of them.
Third, the more you listen to your child, the more you will realize that in amongst the pauses, the stutterings, the seemingly innocent chatter, your child does indeed have valuable things to say. The dictum that great wisdom comes from "the mouths of babes" is recognized as an absolute fact by anyone who truly listens to children. Listen to your child enough and you will come to realize that he or she is quite an extraordinary individual. And the more extraordinary you realize your child to be, the more you will be willing to listen. And the more you will learn.
Fourth, the more you know about your child, the more you will be able to teach. Know little about your children, and usually you will be teaching things that either they are not ready to learn or they already know and perhaps understand better than you.
Finally, the more ch ~ M. Scott Peck

If you love something, and are determined, do it.
If it's something you hate, why bother with it in the first place? ~ Marcela Gonzalez

Why bother with a cunning plan when a simple one will do? ~ Terry Pratchett

Do you ever think about it? About nothingness. I do, I think about it all the time. Because of course it's nothingness that awaits us. Of course it is. If it weren't why would our hearts keep pumping any longer than they had to? Why wouldn't we all emerge into the world pure and innocent, and then before we had a chance to get in any trouble, before we had a chance to take our first oily shit, just immediately shut down our systems and head straight to the hereafter? If there were a better life after death, why bother getting fitter for survival's sake? Why would evolution even be a thing? Why fight for something second best? If death was really awesome, in a life or death situation, our bodies wouldn't muscle up with epinephrine and cortisol. Our brains would hit us up instead with sloppy, sleepy happy love. Hannibal Lecter would be our Mickey Mouse. No, there's fuckall to look forward to. Our bodies understand this. The real problem is, it's unbearable to know this. So we cope. ~ Elizabeth Little

My parents and grandparents did not tolerate idle thoughts or behavior. If the action did not have a purpose or lead you in a positive direction, their feeling was "why bother?" This is how I was built. This is why I refuse to fail. ~ Carlos Wallace

Why bother reading something that you won't remember? ~ Jonathan Nolan

And what do I smell like?"
"Like arrogance and self-adoration," she snapped. "I can smell it a mile off.Why bother saying you didn't help me when it could only have been you? ~ Frankie Rose

I think that everyone should have at least a part of them that's self-invented; in fact, the world would be much more interesting if we all created our own identities afresh whenever we felt like it. Otherwise you're just walking around regurgitating what's expected, which is like, why bother? ~ Jody Gehrman

The last thing she needed was to fall for someone again.
Before the move from Denver, she'd had her first serious
boyfriend. Millicent had gone along on every one of their
dates, suddenly determined to play chaperone. Uncle Pat's
decision to move came just as the relationship was heating
up
Tara sagged. Why bother falling for another guy? It would
hurt too much when Uncle Pat pulled up stakes again.
My life sucks, she thought. ~ Sharon Sala

I didn't win a championship, but I did pop some champagne bottles - and a few locks. Why bother training when you can just steal the trophy? ~ Jarod Kintz

The more you learn, the more you know that you're not so hot. ~ Bernie Glassman

Go huge or why bother? ~ Julie Connor

But why bother trying to turn a monkey into a goat? ~ Lisa See

Why not? Why not anything? If God ain't a God of why nots, than I say 'Why bother,' and I don't think that's takin his name in vain, I think it's tellin the truth about what people need. ~ Todd Johnson

It's just that I think we should be responsible for our friends, is all. If we're not, why bother to have friends? ~ Chet Williamson

People keep asking me whether I'm going to vote for Obama or McCain in the election. But I'm like, why bother? There will never be another leader as good as he was. ~ Zach Braff

The Adams and the Eves used to say, We are what we eat, but I prefer to say, we are what we wish. Because if you can't wish, why bother? ~ Margaret Atwood

So I made an outline. Well, you know, days are going by, and I am not writing anything because this thing is laid out in front of me. It's as if you get every brochure for a trip you are going to go on and you get the minutest details of every step along the way. Well, I really doubt you're going to then get in the car and go. You know, it's like, why bother if it's all laid out in front of you? ~ Steve Tesich

If the book we are reading doesn't shake us awake like a blow to the head, why bother reading it in the first place? ... A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.
Franz Kafka in a letter to Oskar Pollak dated January 27, 1904 ~ Franz Kafka

To change, to convert? Why bother? ~ Lionel Blue

In performance, we have a greater purpose. The greater purpose is that we're communing together, and we want this moment to be really special for all of us. Because otherwise, why bother to have come at all? It's not about proving anything. It's about sharing something. ~ Yo-Yo Ma

She deeply disliked being so fearful, but had actually grown rather comfortable over the years with disappointing herself. She used to try. Just leave the house by the front door once a day. Then, after a while, she'd try for once a week. Then once a month. Then, Why bother? she thought. Let the world come to me, and I'll set out a little lunch. What she hated most was that she'd become one of them. Another Lichporter grown self-indulgent and eccentric, the subject of sidewalk gossip: Oh, her, Mrs. Bowe … yes, yes … so sad. She doesn't leave the house, you know, unless there's a you-know-what, not unless someone D-I-E-S. ~ Ari Berk

Last week convicted Enron crook Ken Lay died of a heart attack. They announced they were going to cremate him. Where he's going, why bother?. ~ Jay Leno

I'm on a man-fast. Why bother with them? the good ones are always taken. Or they're weirdly uminterested in a capricious wild child with continuous legal problems~ Carrow the Incarcerated ~ Kresley Cole

If you're going to do something, strive to do it better than anyone else. Do it all the way. If you're going to half-ass it, why bother? ~ Ashly Lorenzana

The only thing worse than taking things personally is being told you take things personally. And how am I supposed to take things, if you please? Why bother talking to anyone at all if you are not supposed to consider anything that is said to be at all personal? ~ Meg Howrey

If the playwright knew every little thing about his play, why bother? There must be discovery all the time, otherwise why bother to do it? ~ Phylicia Rashad

No wonder the left seeks to avoid political debate at all costs. Why bother? Members of the left are not interested in having a debate about policy. They are not interested in debating what is right or wrong for the country. They are interested in debating you personally. They are interested in castigating you as a nasty human being because you happen to disagree. This is what makes leftists leftists: an unearned sense of moral superiority over you. And if they can instill that sense of moral superiority in others by making you the bad guy, they will. ~ Ben Shapiro

The first thing we need to find,' said Mr Golan, 'is a reason to live'.
...
'Without a reason, why bother? Existence needs purpose: to be able to endure the pain of life with dignity; to give us a reason to continue. The meaning must enter our hearts, not out heads. We must understand the meaning of our suffering. ~ Sarah Winman

Woman must not depend on the protection of man, but must learn to protect herself ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

Why bother choosing a certain chair? Because that chair says something about you. ~ David Bowie

I wanted to paint pictures of people. I thought, "Why bother doing anything else. Everything else is a waste of time. I want to tell stories about people and their feelings and emotions." ~ Lisa Yuskavage

Well, sir, I think it's just as well that they are being phased out of the war effort, and that we are now going to detonate the supernova bomb. In the very short time since we were released from the time envelope-'

'Get to the point'

'The robots aren't enjoying it, sir.'

'what'

'The war sir, it seems to be getting them down there's a certain world-weariness.'

'Well, that's all right, they're meant to be helping to destroy it.'

'yes, well they're finding it difficult, sir. They are afflicted with a certain lassitude. They're just finding it hard to get behind the job. They lack oomph.'

'What are you trying to say?'

'Well, I think they're very depressed about something, sir.'

'What on Krikkit are you talking about?'

'Well, in a few skirmishes they've recently, it seems that they go into battle, raise their weapons to fire and suddenly think, why bother? What, cosmically speaking, is it all about? And they just seem to get a little tired and a little grim.'

'And then what do they do?'

'Er, quadratic equations mostly, sir. Fiendishly difficult ones by all accounts. And then they sulk.'

'Sulk?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Whoever heard of a robot sulking?'

'I don't know, sir. ~ Douglas Adams

At the end of almost every AA meeting, someone read the Promises. One of these was 'We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it'. Dan thought he would always regret the past, but he had quit trying to shut the door. Why bother, when it would just come open again? The fucking had no latch, let alone a lock. ~ Stephen King

As I look around on Sunday morning at the people populating the pews, I see the risk that God has assumed. For whatever reason, God now reveals himself in the world not through a pillar of smoke and fire, not even through the physical body of his Son in Galilee, but through the mongrel collection that comprises my local church and every other such gathering in God's name. (p. 68, Church: Why Bother?) ~ Philip Yancey

I've thought a lot about suicide and near death experiences. I'm not saying I'm going to kill myself or anything. However, I've had a lot of passive thoughts about "what's the point?". I see life for what it is. We live, we procreate, we die. So the next gen can do it again. What's my purpose or point? Why bother? What do I have to live for? The near death experiences come in with me being curious about after life. If I knew I'd be okay would I just go there, would that change my mind about my purpose? ~ Ben Caesar

I utterly reject the view that the Third World is doomed to poverty and starvation. Not only is this wrong, I think this attitude verges on the immoral, like thinking that slavery is an unalterable facet of the human condition so why bother doing anything about it? ~ Alex Tabarrok

3 is a prime, 5 is a prime, and 7 is a prime. Why bother with non-prime numbers when the primes can do everything? ~ William Of Ockham

Why bother inflicting enormous pain on yourself when sooner or later Life would certainly get around to doing it for you? ~ Jeff Lindsay

And I would not blame you if you still asked, Why bother to make contact with kindred spirits you never see and may never hear from, who perhaps do not even exist except in your hopes? Why spend ten years in an apprenticeship to fiction only to discover that this society so little values what you do that it won't pay you a living wage for it? ~ Wallace Stegner

When something's painful, you just avoid it. Why bother dredging up the past if it's nothing but bad stuff? ~ Shane Koyczan

It was all a big joke. I could see that now. There was no rhyme or reason to whether we lived or died. One day it might be the man next to you at roll call who is torn apart by dogs. The next day it might be you who is shot through the head. You could play the game perfectly and still lose, so why bother playing at all? ~ Alan Gratz

My philosophy is, unless you're sick and need help, why bother? ~ Jackie Collins

My personal life is invented for me, so why bother? ~ Rhys Ifans

You don't do characters that are the same as you, otherwise why bother to act? ~ Tom Selleck

If it wasn't possible to reinvent the past in such a way as to make it conform to the present's cheerful view of the way things ought to have been, why bother living? ~ Kathryn Davis

By the twentieth century, only a few self-isolated sects practiced the collaborative tradition. Blame it on wars that killed millions, the atomic bomb, Freud, or any combination of factors you choose - there's no shortage of reasons. The result is that most of us grew up in a culture that applauded only individual achievement. We are, each of us, generals in an ego-driven "army of one," each the center of an absurd cosmos, taking such happiness as we can find. Collaboration? Why bother? You only live once; grab whatever you can. But ~ Twyla Tharp

Life is not fair. And if life's not fair, then what's the point? Why bother with the rules? Why bother with life at all? Maybe that's the conclusion that Jessie came to. Maybe he woke up one morning and decided he simply didn't want to play a game against people who refused to obey the rules. ~ Shaun David Hutchinson

More raiders came down the stairs prodding the Reverend Dr. Lionel J. D. Jones, the Black Fuehrer, and Father Keeley before them.
Dr. Jones stopped halfway down the stairs, confronted his tormentors. 'All I've done, 'he said majestically, 'is do what you people should be doing.'
'What should we be doing?' said a G-man. He was obviously in command of the raid.
'Protecting the Republic,' said Jones. 'Why bother us? Everything we do is to make the country stronger! Join with us, and let's go after the people who are trying to make it weaker!'
'Who's that?' said the G-man.
'I have to tell you?' said Jones. 'Haven't you even found that in the course of your work? The Jews! The Catholics! The Negroes! The Orientals! The Unitarians! The foreign-born, who don't have any understanding of democracy, who play right into the hands of the socialists, the communists, the anarchists, the anti-Christs and the Jews!'
'For your information,' said the G-man in cool triumph, 'I am a Jew.'
'That proves what I've just been saying!' said Jones.
'How's that?', said the G-man.
'The Jews have infiltrated everything!' said Jones, smiling the smile of a logician who could never be topped.
'You talk about the Catholics and the Negroes-' said the G-man, 'and yet your two best friends are a Catholic and a Negro.'
'What's so mysterious about that?' said Jones.
'Don't you hate them?', said the G-man.
'Certainly not,' said Jones. 'We all believe ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Good begets good; evil begets evil; and even if the good you give is met by evil, you have no choice but to go on giving better than you get. Otherwise-and these were Willy's exact words-why bother to go on living? ~ Paul Auster

Seemed like no matter how much money people had, they were desperate to have more, desperate to look good compared to everyone else. Why bother to impress when all anyone else cared about was how impressive THEY were? ~ Stephanie Lehmann

feel like if I can't have a "good" quiet time - one with prayer, meditation, Bible reading, and a devotional reading - then why bother? So I let my overwhelming need for perfection keep me from having a meaningful relationship with God. If I can't take the time to do it right, then I guess I won't do it at all. ~ Kathi Lipp

Silence hung between them, and Maddy's heartbeat picked up. She probably should have played it cool, but why bother? She wanted him. ~ Sara Humphreys

That's why I love improvisational theater so much - you do it [scene] once and then it's done. You don't get bogged down with a lot of preplanning and repetition. If I do something and it gets a laugh, I don't want to do it again. Why bother? I'm just repeating myself. It's boring. ~ Amy Sedaris

Why bother to learn to read when you can smell meat a mile away? Chapter 2 ~ Mikhail Bulgakov

Charley: If you're not going to tell
me where you are, if you're not going to trust me to help you, then why are you here? Why bother?
Reyes: Because you're the reason I breathe. ~ Darynda Jones

Tom smiled and surrendered to the inevitable. Because you couldn't escape your fucking past, so why bother trying? ~ S.E. Jakes

That's the Staatsoper," says Neumann Two one night. The facade of a grand building rises gracefully, pilastered and crenelated. Stately wings soar on either side, somehow both heavy and light. It strikes Werner just then as wondrously futile to build splendid buildings, to make music, to sing songs, to print huge books full of colorful birds in the face of the seismic, engulfing indifference of the world - what pretensions humans have! Why bother to make music when the silence and wind are so much larger? Why light lamps when the darkness will inevitably snuff them? When Russian prisoners are chained by threes and fours to fences while German privates tuck live grenades in their pockets and run? Opera ~ Anthony Doerr

It reminds me of a friend of mine who was very interested in a French philosophy called deconstruction. He advertised to me as one of deconstruction's selling points that deconstruction deconstructs itself. I couldn't help responding, if deconstruction deconstructs itself, why bother reading its long, boring books? Why not go for a jog instead, or reread one of Patrick O'Brian's tremendous tales of the sea? ~ Eric Kaplan