Quotes about fate

Fate doesn't like it when people take up more space than they ought to. Everybody knows that. (p. 178)

Just because fate throws you together doesn't mean fate's got it right. (p. 312)

What a disappointment my brain turned out to be. After everything I had witnessed in my life, I had almost convinced myself that the wheel of personal history spins on thought, and therefore my history was muddy because my thinking had been muddy. I imagined that everything I'd experienced to date was likely to be a materialization of my fears (especially my fear of Dad's fears). In short, I had briefly believed that if man's character is his fate, and if his character is the sum of his actions, and his actions are a result of his thoughts, then man's character, actions, and fate are dependent on what he thinks. Now I wasn't so sure.

You never hear about a sportsman losing his sense of smell in a tragic accident, and for good reason; in order for the universe to teach excruciating lessons that we are unable to apply in later life, the sportsman must lose his legs, the philosopher his mind, the painter his eyes, the musician his ears, the chef his tongue.

Be like the tortoise- grow a hard shell to protect your strong heart. Be like the eagle- soar above your pain and carry the banner and the wonder of our lives to the farthest corners of the world. Build your strength. Destiny is difficult.

"The road will never swallow you. The river of destiny will always overcome evil. May you understand your fate. Suffering will never destroy you, but will make you stronger. Success will never confuse you of scatter your spirit, but will make you fly higher into the good sunlight. Your life will always surprise you."

We cut a pack of cards called historical context—our generation, Sixsmith, cut tens, jacks, and queens. Adrien's cut threes, fours, and fives. That's all.

Patience's design flaw became obvious for the first time in my life: the outcome is decided not during the course of play but when the cards are shuffled, before the game even begins. How pointless is that?

What if trying to avoid the future is what triggers it all?

Irene hated trusting to luck. It was no substitute for good planning and careful preparation.

Sam followed [his father], loved him, listened to him talk. He believed deeply in luck, the old man, though he was careful never to say the word. He called it the shifty shadow of God. All his life he paid close attention to the movements of that shadow. He taught Sam to see it passing, feel it hovering, because he said it was those shifts that governed a man's life and it always paid to be ahead of the play. If the chill of its shade felt good, you went out to meet it like a droughted farmer goes out, arms wide, to greet the raincloud, but if you got that sick, queer feeling in your belly, you had to stay put and do nothing but breathe and there was a good chance it would pass you by. It was as though luck made choices, that it could think. If you greeted it, it came to you; if you shunned it, it backed away.

"I only believe in one thing, Les," Sam solemnly uttered. "Hairy Hand of God, otherwise known as Lady Luck. Our Lady, if she's shinin that lamp on ya, she'll give you what you want."