A Quote by Paul Theroux
When I left Africa in 1966 it seemed to me to be a place that was developing, going in a particular direction, and I don't think that is the case now. And it's a place where people still kid themselves - you know, in a few years this will happen or that will happen. Well, it's not going to happen. It's never going to happen.
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One of the things that really impressed me about Anna Karenina when I first read it was how Tolstoy sets you up to expect certain things to happen - and they don't. Everything is set up for you to think Anna is going to die in childbirth. She dreams it's going to happen, the doctor, Vronsky and Karenin think it's going to happen, and it's what should happen to an adulteress by the rules of a nineteenth-century novel. But then it doesn't happen. It's so fascinating to be left in that space, in a kind of free fall, where you have no idea what's going to happen.
There are people who haven't faced the reality of what has gone on in Iraq. They still think that the old central state is going to be put back together again. It's not going to happen in Kurdistan. It's not going to happen in the south. It's not going to happen in Baghdad.
If you are waiting for this thing that might happen tomorrow, it probably will never happen. You need to activate it now! No one else is going to do it for you, and ten years are going to go by before you even know it.
I know a dramatic role is going to happen, but you just got to be patient, you know? It's going to happen when it's supposed to happen. I'm not rushing it. I'm not trying to make it happen tomorrow.
You think it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person in the world to whom none of these things will ever happen, and then, one by one, they all begin to happen to you, in the same way they happen to everyone else.
So when people say how horrible it is that Donald Trump is president, well, yeah, but we've faced a lot worse than this and our country went on to go from the world of 'Mad Men' to the world it is today, and that's what's going to happen now. That's what's going to happen in the next 50 years. We're going to be fine.
If something is going to happen, whether you want it to happen or not, it is going to happen. And you are much better off cannibalizing yourself, or being ahead of whatever direction the world is headed than you are howling at the wind or wishing it away or trying to put up blockers.
Nothing is going to happen to me, or you, for that matter. Anything can happen, though. Anything can happen. But most always, just normal things happen, and people have happy lives.
When I see an image in my head that compels me, where there's this mystery about what's going to happen next or could happen next, I'll be intrigued. There are so many scripts that you read, and you know exactly what's going to happen, and there aren't too many where you can't tell within the first 20 pages where it's going.
My grandma and my mom are not happy about the fact that I am still a bachelor. It's not on my mind that I have to find the person I'm going to spend the rest of my life with. It will happen the way it's going to happen.
In my experience, writing a novel tends to create its own structure, its own demands, its own language, its own ending. So for much of the period in which I'm writing, I'm waiting to understand what's going to happen next, and how and where it's going to happen. In some cases, fairly early in the process, I do know how a book will end. But most of the time, not at all, and in this particular case, many questions are still unanswered, even though I've been working for months.
It's one of those scenarios you feel will never happen to you. Nobody thinks they're going to be the one, whatever, to get in a car wreck to have their, you know, their kids killed in a plane crash, whatever, you don't think those things are going to happen to you. And I didn't think that I'd be traded. So.
You never know what's going to happen sometimes, or what you think's going to happen never happens, or when you least expect it, the Santana record comes along and just blows up.
That is what we have been feinting towards for a year of our lives: pretending like it was going to happen, acting like it was going to happen, and making you think it was going to happen. I like to work from the back forward.
We are not going to let it happen where [foreign corporations and their CEO's ] decide the outcome of our elections. They can't do it and we're not going to let it happen. This is our last chance to save our country and reclaim it for we the people, and it's going to happen.
Here was a place where real things were going on. Here was a scene of vital action. Here was a place where anything might happen. Here was a place where something would certainly happen. Here I might leave my bones.
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