Happenstance Quotes

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action. (Ian Fleming)

We make choices but are constantly foiled by happenstance.

Penelope Lively

I am placed in situations with opportunities in those situations that others are not. I don't believe that that is happenstance. I believe that there is a God that has a plan for me.

Ronald Perelman

"Events," I say to the Captain, "events control our lives, although we have no understanding of them nor do they have any motivation. Everything is blind chance, happenstance, occurrence; in an infinite universe anything can happen. After the fact we find reasons.

Barry Malzberg

Accidents did not just happen. From time to time they were carefully plotted, calculated, and arranged to one's advantage-all, of course, under the cloak of happenstance.

Jodi Picoult

For as is often the happenstance with that which is precious and lost, when you find him again, he may well not be quite as you left him.

Cassandra Clare

The nag is as fat as a monk-and will stop to eat at every chance, so the resemblance is no happenstance.

Michael Flynn

It's luck that one thing works out and one doesn't, it's sort of happenstance.

Richard Linklater

What kind of God can one infer from the sort of phenomena epitomized by the species on Darwin's Galapagos Islands? The evolutionary process is rife with happenstance, contingency, incredible waste, death, pain and horror.... The God of the Galapagos is careless, wasteful, indifferent, almost diabolical. He is certainly not the sort of God to whom anyone would be inclined to pray.

David Hull

I think of how life takes unexpected twists and turns, sometimes through sheer happenstance, sometimes through calculated decisions. In the end, it can all be called fate, but to me, it is more a matter of faith.

Emily Giffin

The older you get, the more you realise how happenstance... has helped to determine your path through life. (Rowan Atkinson)

My work is on the one hand laboured, and on the other completely happenstance and intuitive.

Ellen Gallagher

There's so much happenstance, so many accidents - stumbling into something and finding it interesting and living with it over time and building on it. It's okay to work from doubt. You need to be willing to not know.

Ellen Gallagher

Serendipity is nice, but hoping for luck and the magic of happenstance shouldn't be an excuse for a lack of proactivity. I had to learn for myself that waiting isn't a life plan.

Karen Finerman

I went to really good New York City public schools that had arts programs. So in junior high, I got into the drama department. From there, I went to a performing arts high school in New York City called Laguardia and I just kind of fell into the professional side by happenstance.

Merritt Wever

The effect hip-hop had on me was enormous. I was exposed to it by happenstance. My father worked at a radio station in New York called WKTU Disco 92. It was the first radio station in New York City to play disco in the late '70s.

Michael Rapaport

Peace is not happenstance. It is a living fire that must be fed constantly. It must be tended with vigilance, else it dies out.

Libba Bray

Sometimes I remind myself that I almost skipped the party, that I almost went to a different college, that the whim of a minute could have changed everything and everyone. Our lives, so settled, so specific, are built on happenstance.

Anna Quindlen

Perhaps I will achieve a small success today. If so, I must not be taken in. I am not on a roll, I am not in the zone. It was an accident, a happenstance. Such things are bound to happen sometimes. The false feeling of confidence will soon pass.

John S. Hall

No event, no matter how preposterous, will fail to find itself indispensable to some future happenstance.

Tony Vigorito

Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action. (Ian Fleming)