John Darnielle Quotes

I think people feel like there are all these things in our lives that we don't really have control over.

Risk is trying to control something you are powerless over.

I am attracted to characters who think they are in control, but their situation is uncontrollable.

We can't control it, and we've basically quit trying. People are going to talk, and people are going to lie.

Under the big political umbrella, a man is just like a leaf in the ocean, with no control of his destiny and does not have any choice.

At first I was a bit indignant about it, and then I realised, 'No, that's what people want, so that's what is given.' But it's not in your control. It's just what happens to you, and that's what's frightening.

In my life, things have happened to me. I've never felt I was controlling anything.

To try to fix the future is a manifest absurdity.

I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.

With situations that you have no power over, there is no point in worrying about one thing or another. Why think about things that you can't control?

There are so many things that could happen and will happen that are out of my control.

She knows herself to be at the mercy of events, and she knows by now that events have no mercy.

I am the very slave of circumstance And impulse -- borne away with every breath!

We remain unnecessarily worried. All worries are futile because that which is going to happen is going to happen.

Fate rules. You follow the steps and you plan and you work. Then fate slips in laughing and makes fools of us. Sometimes we can trick it or out guess it but most often its already written. For some its written in blood. That doesn't mean we stop, but it does mean we can't comfort ourselves with blame. It's easier to take the blame than to admit there was nothing you could do to stop whatever happened.

What fates impose, that men must needs abide; it boots not to resist both wind and tide.

It wasn't his, it wasn't my fault, we both had nothing except patience, but Death has none. I saw him come (how meanly!) and I watched him as he took and took: none of it I could claim as mine.

What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.

Man is better without knowledge of things to come, for what is to be will be, and man can neither avert nor hasten. It is better to go in the dark when the road must pass a lion and there is no other road.

...the plan will happen in spite of us, not because of us.

I am tired of trying to hold things together that cannot be held. Trying to control what cannot be controlled. I am tired of denying myself what I want for fear of breaking things I cannot fix. They will break no matter what we do.

The world is a sea in which we all must surely drown.

Alas! we are the sport of destiny.

We are in the grip of some big machine grinding us along. The force of it simplifies everything. A weird calm settled over me from inside out. What is about to happen has stood in line to happen. All the roads out of that instant have been closed, one by one.

Often the prudent, far from making their destinies, succumb to them. -Francois