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1 " ...all around George, approaching him, crossing his path from every direction, is the male and female raw material which is fed daily into this factory, along the conveyor-belts of the freeways, to be processed, packaged and placed on the market...What do they think they are up to? Well, there is the official answer; preparing themselves for life which means a job and security in which to raise children to prepare themselves for life which means a job and security in which...Here, in their midst, George feels a sort of vertigo. Oh God, what will become of them all? What chance have they? Ought I yell out to them, right now, here, that it's hopeless?But George knows he can't do that. Because, absurdly, inadequately, in spite of himself almost, he is a representative of hope. And the hope is not false. No. It's just that George is like a man trying to sell a real diamond for a nickel, on the street. The diamond is protected from all but the tiniest few, because the great hurrying majority can never stop to dare to believe that it could conceivably be real. "
― Christopher Isherwood , A Single Man
2 " I blame Mother Nature two-faced bitch and Father Time bloody bastard .Yep those misogynistic killjoys have cut off my pocket money and left me grounded.With those two authoritarian heavyweights ganging up what chance does a woman have I aks you "
― Kathy Lette , Nip 'N' Tuck
3 " The stranger thought it might be God himself had forgotten much from our pasts, events far distant, events of the same day. And if a thing is not in God’s mind, then what chance of it remaining in those of mortal men? "
― Kazuo Ishiguro , The Buried Giant
4 " As a Muslim, I believe in the concept of fate, that there are certain things out of my control. Thus, what chance do I have to stand against kismet? "
― Aishah Madadiy , Bits of Heaven
5 " And he began, " What chance or destinyhas brought you here before your final day?And who is he who leads your pilgrimage?" " Up there in life beneath the quiet starsI lost my way," I answered, " in a valley,before I'd reached the fullness of my age.I turned my shoulders on it yesterday:this soul appeared as I was falling back,and by the road through Hell he leads me home." " Follow your star and you will never fail to find your glorious port," he said to me "
6 " This one had come to me, though, picked me out. I thought she was trouble from the start. I don't read minds and I can't see the future, but call it instinct or experience, something was prickling my spine.You could call it something else, if you wanted: adolescence, hormones, lust. Being seventeen. That doesn't go away, however long you practice." Hullo," I said politely, warily.She was long and slim and very neatly put together, dark hair tumbling over denim, old worn black jacket and jeans that somehow hadn't faded into grey. They probably didn't dare. Right from the start I saw a focus in her, a determination that must go all the way through, like the writing in a stick of Brighton rock. In another world, another lifetime, I thought she'd have raven-feathers in her hair, a bear's tooth on a thong about her. She'd be the village shaman, talking to spirits, and even the headman would be afraid of her, a little...Seventeen, I told you. She was devastating to me, she was sitting at my table, and I couldn't afford her. Not for a minute.If I'd stood up, if I'd left, if I'd run away...Nah. She would just have come after me. Faster, fitter, and on longer legs. What chance did I ever have? "
7 " How is he made? Oftentimes bitter, sometimes sweet, seldom even wide-awake, architectural criticism of " the modern" wholly lacks inspiration or any qualification because it lacks the appreciation that is love: the flame essential to profound understanding. Only as criticism is the fruit of such experience will it ever be able truly to appraise anything. Else the spirit of true criteria is lacking. That spirit is love and love alone can understand. So art criticism is usually sour and superficial today because it would seem to know all about everything but understand nothing. Usually the public prints afford no more than a kind of irresponsible journalese wholly dependent upon some form of comparison, commercialization or pseudo-personal opinion made public. Critics may have minds of their own, but what chance have they to use them when experience in creating the art they write about is rarely theirs? So whatever they may happen to learn, and you learn from them, is very likely to put over on both of you as it was put over on them. Truth is seldom in the critic; and either good or bad, what comes from him is seldom his. Current criticism is something to take always on suspicion, if taken at all. "
8 " Jamie glanced at her notes. " So let's be honest, Jacks, can we? What is the best part of being an Angel? Is it the lifestyle? Is it the parties? The fame? What's your favourite part?" " Just having this chance," he said after considering. " And what chance is that?" Jamie asked. Jacks's blue eyes twinkled. " The chance to be a hero. "
9 " And then, some morning in the second week, the mind wakes, comes to life again. Not in a city sense—no—but beach-wise. It begins to drift, to play, to turn over in gentle careless rolls like those lazy waves on the beach. One never knows what chance treasures these easy unconscious rollers may toss up, on the smooth white sand of the conscious mind; what perfectly rounded stone, what rare shell from the ocean floor. Perhaps a channeled whelk, a moon shell, or even an argonaut. "
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh , Gift from the Sea
10 " If I get to be president, what can I do anyway? With Congress and the press, what chance do I have to make basic changes? "
