Evangeline Lilly Quotes

By far the hardest decision I've had to manage [was about my health]. Because I had 51 years of doing it wrong.

The height of mediocrity is still low.

I might not be able to use the word "hope," but I could certainly use the word "optimism." I'm very optimistic. I don't feel that it helps to be pessimistic. At some point in my life I made a conscious decision that I would try to be optimistic - not blind to anything at all - but to always hear the way that had the best chance for happiness.

To me, however, the question of the times resolved itself into a practical question of the conduct of life. How shall I live? We are incompetent to solve the times. Our geometry cannot span the huge orbits of the prevailing ideas, behold their return, and reconcile their opposition. We can only obey our own polarity.

I'm not a what-if and could-have person. I'm happy with my decisions.

It's a good idea always to do something relaxing prior to making an important decision in your life.

For what level of mediocrity will you settle?

If you were to rush into this room right now and announce that you had struck a deal - with God, Allah, Buddha, Christ, Krishna, Bill Gates, whomever - in which the ten years since my diagnosis could be magically taken away, traded in for ten more years as the person I was before - I would, without a moment's hesitation, tell you to take a hike.

Everyone chooses one of two roads in life - the old and the young, the rich and the poor, men and women alike. One is the broad, well-traveled road to mediocrity, the other road to greatness and meaning.

I often wonder what would have happened to me if I hadn't made that decision. I suppose I would have sunk. I suppose I would have found some kind of hole and tried to hide or pass. After all, we make ourselves according to the ideas we have of our possibilities. I would have hidden in my hole and been crippled by my sentimentality, doing what I was doing, and doing it well, but always looking for the wailing wall. And I would never have seen the world as the rich place that it is. You wouldn't have seen me here in Africa, doing what I do.

Now that I'm almost forty, I look back at some of the decisions I made when I was younger - decisions that I thought of as courageous, or generous, or otherwise befitting a writer; befitting someone who had taken it as their life's goal to understand the human condition - and I wish I could go back in time and be like, "Hey, you don't actually have to do that - you're allowed to look out for yourself a little bit."

When I was a kid, the world was such a big place, and I had no idea that I would be afforded these great moments in between doing what I love to do. I'm able to actually choose places to go which have intrigued me for the last god knows how many years, and Tasmania's always been one of those places. I see it all and yet I see so little because it's so fast.

I made up my mind when I was 15 years old that I would never smoke or drink. I have kept that pledge to myself, and it was one of the smartest decisions I ever made.

A tiny change today brings us to a dramatically different tomorrow. There are grand rewards for those who pick the high hard roads, but those rewards are hidden by years. Every choice is made in the uncaring blind, no guarantees from the world around us.

I have noticed that doing the sensible thing is only a good idea when the decision is quite small. For the life-changing things, you must risk it.

I think there is a great deal to the idea of not doing a thing, but that when you do a thing, you don't do it in five minutes or in five hours, but in five years.

I think all of the decisions I make about my life and writing are the preparation - what I choose to write about and the immersive nature of the lifestyle I choose for playwriting.

The thing I have learned through the years is that one idea 'doth' not a novel make. A novel must be several seemingly unrelated ideas that somehow magically come together to create the fabric of the story.

I never felt good enough about myself. I could be better at this, I could be better at that. I could look better. My work could be better. That whole idea that you're going to get caught, you're going to be found out as a fraud. That's one of those reasons I got up at 2:30 in the morning.

Everybody makes bad decisions. I am sure I have made my share of them over 40 years of service. Or I have made good decisions and have been overruled. The real challenge, when you are overruled, is to remember who the boss is and don't take it personally.

I never wanted to get to a point in my life where I knew what was going to happen next. I felt like most people just couldn't wait until they found themselves settled down into a routine and they didn't have to think about the next day, or the next year, or the next decade because it was all planned out for them. I can't understand how people can settle for having just one life.

Suze, your whole life," my dad went on, not without sympathy, "you've always made the right decisions. Not necessarily the easiest ones. The right ones. Don't mess that up now, when you're facing what's probably the most important decision you'll ever have to make.

Sometimes I do wonder what college would have been like. But I made my decision.

The NFL is in premium interest time, in the fourth quarter [of the business year] when you have Thanksgiving, Christmas, and that's when we try to get the most decision-makers in front of the television, in the fourth quarter.

My mother has made choices in her life, as we all must, and she is at peace with them. I can see her peace. She did not cop out on herself. The benefits of her choices are massive-a long, stable marriage to a man she still calls her best friend; a family that has extended now into grandchildren who adore her; a certainty in her own strength. Maybe some things were sacrificed, and my dad made his sacrifices, too-but who amongst us lives without sacrifice?