Mary Ellen Mark Quotes

Luck has a lot to do with how your life develops.

So much of life is what you roll and where you land.

My life is a series of things that just happen.

There are good people who are dealt a bad hand by fate, and bad people who live long, comfortable, privileged lives. A small twist of fate can save or end a life; random chance is a permanent, powerful player in each of our lives, and in human history as well.

Can you make a mistake and miss your fate?

There's no adventure in knowing the outcome of who you're supposed to be with.

I was born accidentally. I lived accidentally in London. We nearly migrated to New Zealand. So much of my life has been a product of chance, I can't see a meaning in it at all.

I'd love to claim that what I have done in my life is of my doing, but it's not of my doing at all. I've blown around in the wind like a mad thing, influenced by this and that - like a piece of paper: like the boy in that scene in 'American Beauty' watching a piece of paper blowing hither and thither.

My work is about life as you and I experience it. You're either lucky or you're not lucky; either your relationship works or it doesn't.

So much of life is not about whether you're good or bad, or right or wrong, or can afford or not afford - it's just about timing.

Some days, I'll tell you that everything in life was meant to be and that there is an order to the universe. Other days, I'm convinced it's all a combination of luck and opportunity.

Man has to live with the body and soul which have fallen to him by chance.

Life consists of a long chain of coincidences.

Everything is chance, or nothing is chance. If I believed the first, I would be unable to live on, but I am not yet fully convinced of the second.

Life is mere chance only when one allows it to be.

... we die, just as we were born, at the edge of a road not of our choosing.

Life's a wheel of fortune and y'all can't buy a vowel.

Fortune raises up and fortune brings low both the man who fares well and the one who fares badly; and there is no prophet of the future for mortal men.

I embarked on my life - I didn't do anything. I don't have an explanation.

Don't get me wrong: I think that everyone should put forth an effort to do better, but let's face it, some of us are just plain luckier than others.

My life is a big accident, so where I end up, I think it's all accidents.

I still think that luck is what a lot of the good things come from. It's simply the luck of where you are, when.

Life is full of confusion. Confusion of love, passion, and romance. Confusion of family and friends. Confusion with life itself. What path we take, what turns we make. How we roll our dice.

You're not always able to choose.

As much as we'd like to think life is sacred, there's not a lot of evidence for that. The universe is maddeningly casual, giving and taking it.