Excuses Are Like Quotes

“We need to stop giving people excuses not to believe in God. You've probably heard the expression 'I believe in God, just not organized religion'. I don't think people would say that if the church truly lived like we are called to live.”

— Francis Chan

“I didn't do anything wrong. I swear.'
He grunted. 'Like I've never heard that before. Funny, but I expected a little more originality from Moira's daughter.'
'Yeah, well, the dog ate my notebook with all my good excuses.”

— Mindee Arnett

“The sleepy like to make excuses.”

— Benedict Of Nursia

“That's why she felt entitled to be filthy rich. It explains and excuses a lot. She didn't want money because money was power; she wanted it because she'd been poor, and money cures poverty. [ ... ] But beauty is like money from God. And Mom has always been beautiful.”

— Sean Wilsey

“I have been thinking about the idea of excuses for some time now. They are like menacing demons that creep into our lives without us knowing. They are roadblocks, white lies to ourselves, a reason to set the bar lower, and self-justification for achieving less than our full potential.”

— Lorii Myers

“After a few months, I decided to do one more leg of the Le Noise tour and film the last show with Jonathan Demme in Toronto's Massey Hall/ It turned out to be a great night. Everyone was very happy because we had captured it. During a review of the digital files, we realized that the resolution was not full, it was a stepped down quality, not the best it could be. My own team's excuses were not adequate, because I was not informed of the decision to go to a lesser quality. Lesser quality is so accepted as normal now that even I had used it unknowingly. I went back to Massey Hall and set up a PA system like the one I used at the show, played back the mixes through the PA, and rerecorded the house sound at the highest resolution. I did the best I could with a bad situation. It does sound great now. Thankfully, the PA mix was only one step down from the highest resolution, so when it resonated in the hall and was rerecorded at the highest level, a high resolution hall sound was captured.”

— Neil Young

“Dieting was cruel; it was an abuse of human rights. Yes, that's what it was, and she should not allow herself to be manipulated in this way. She stopped herself. Thinking like that was nothing more than coming up with excuses for breaking the diet. Mma Ramotswe was made of sterner stuff than that, and so she persisted.”

— Alexander McCall Smith

“Excuses will become self-refuting. No man who does not believe that Jesus is the perfect, sinless Son of God can, in his desperation and love for sin, reasonably use and misconstrue Jesus' words that unless a Christian is perfect, then that Christian cannot judge sin. Otherwise this non-believer is unconsciously entertaining a belief that Jesus, unlike any other man to ever live, was indeed perfect and sinless in His judgments and therefore that Christian is supposed to be like Him.”

— Criss Jami

“Hope and reality lie in inverse proportions, inside the walls of a hospital ... Doubt is like dye. Once is spreads into the fabric of excuses you've woven, you'll never get rid of the stain.”

— Jodi Picoult

“I am not in the business of pointing fingers or making excuses. However, recent history has shown that I, like thousands of others in Ireland, incorrectly relied upon the persons who guided Anglo and who wrongfully sought to portray a 'blue chip' Irish banking sector.”

— Sean Quinn

“I used to play works in progress to people, but now I wait 'til it's finished, because you make excuses all the time: 'Well, there's gonna be an orchestra on it.' Rather than make excuses, wait 'til it's finished, and then they can say they don't like it.”

— Chris Lowe

“I come up with the silliest excuses when it's time to work out. I'll be like, 'Oh no! Now I have to go and find some socks.'”

— Christina Hendricks

“Family. It was just a word ... Could see its letters all strung together. But it was a symbol, too. And people thought they knew what it meant ... It was a thing everyone had an opinion about-that it was all you had when you didn't have anything else, that family was there, that blood was thicker than water, whatever. But when Nailer thought about it, most of these words and ideas just seemed like good excuses for people to behave badly and get away with it. Family wasn't more reliable than marriages or friendships ... maybe less ... The blood bond was nothing. It was the people that mattered. If they covered your back, and you covered theirs, then maybe that was worth calling family.”

— Paolo Bacigalupi

“No matter how much long-distance running might suit me, of course there are days when I feel kind of lethargic and don't want to run. Actually, it happens a lot. On days like that, I try to think of all kinds of plausible excuses to slough it off. Once, I interviewed the Olympic running Toshihiko Seko, just after he retired from running and became manager of the S&B company team. I asked him, "Does a runner at your level ever feel like you'd rather not run today, like you don't want to run and would rather just sleep in?" He stared at me and then, in a voice that made it abundantly clear how stupid he thought the question was, replied, "Of course. All the time!”

— Haruki Murakami

“Like David we have a number of self-destructive options we use to avoid repenting and admitting sin. I'll list them and let you come up with personal examples for each: deny, avoid, blame shift, rationalize, and give excuses. If you can't think of how you've used these, you may be stuck in denial!”

— James MacDonald

“There are only two kinds of employees that I've run across in 30 years. There are ones that get results, and ones that make excuses. If you're in that second camp, you're not going to like Dish.”

— Charlie Ergen

“What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it-like a secret vice!”

— Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“You're afraid of the audience, aren't you?"
"Yes, but it's not stagefright. It's that I'm there as the geek. They like to watch me eat my shit. But it pays the light bill and takes me to the racetrack. I don't have any excuses about why I do it.”

— Charles Bukowski

“People always talked about the good clean smell of fresh sweat. They had to make excuses for it. They never talked about the good clean smell of fresh shit. There was nothing really as glorious as a good beer shit - I mean after drinking twenty or twenty-five beers the night before. The odor of a beer shit like that spread all around and stayed for a good hour-and-a-half. It made you realize that you were really alive.”

— Charles Bukowski

“It sounds to me like you're making excuses," Jeb said quietly. "You're trying to convince yourself, and you're using me to listen to yourself talk.”

— Nicholas. Sparks

“I know how you guys feel about us. I'm not stupid, and believe me, I've tried to get you out of my head. But there isn't enough liquor or art or any other distraction in the world to do it. I had to stop going to Wolfe's because it was too hard being that close to you, even if it was all just pretend fighting. I couldn't stand the touching. It was agonizing because it meant something to me－and I knew it meant nothing to you. I kept telling myself to stay away altogether, and then I'd find excuses ... like the car ... anything to be around you again.”

— Richelle Mead

“You'll see that excuses like "That's not easy" are of no value and that it pays to "push through it" at a pace you can handle. Like getting physically fit, the most important thing is that you keep moving forward at whatever pace you choose, recognizing the consequences of your actions.”

— Ray Dalio

“You Kowalskis have always gotten a little carried away."
This wasn't Mitch's first traffic stop. He knew it was best to be polite to the cop, who was just doing his job, and neither offer lame excuses nor get belligerent. But Durgin was too much. "We got carried away sometimes when we were young and stupid. Most kids do. But I'll be damned if I'm going to sit here and take shit from you because you lost control of the new cruiser and rolled it into a ball. I'm not a kid anymore and I'm not going to be spoken to like one. Write me the damn ticket and get on with your life.”

— Shannon Stacey

“I would like to take revenge but I'm not looking for excuses for having lost to her”

— Elena Dementieva

“I would also hope that readers receive a larger understanding, or a different understanding, of what it means to be human, than they might have had before. We suffer from being quick to judge, quick to make excuses for ourselves and others, and I would like the reader to feel that we are all, more or less, in a similar state as we love and disappoint one another, and that we try, most of us, as best we can, and that to fail and succeed is what we do.”

— Elizabeth Strout

“I try to serve the character all the time; this one took a lot of work and was consuming. It's like climbing up a ladder and sometimes you're afraid to face yourself so you make excuses; you avoid going to the top of the ladder and look in the mirror.”

— Forest Whitaker

“Tim Thomas is about excuses. It's always somebody else's fault. He said I was jealous? He should thank me for helping him get that contract. He said I didn't show? They traded me, they traded Ray, they traded Big Dog [Robinson] and Tim Thomas still wasn't the man on that team. Michael Redd became the man there. I think I'm doing quite well for myself here. Right now, he needs to focus on his game. Right now, he's not a good basketball player. And I like Tim Thomas. He just has too many damn excuses.”

— Sam Cassell

“Excuses are like rear ends. Everybody has one and they stink.”

— Tom Curle

“Excuses are for losers, and winning is for winners, like you!”

— RuPaul

“Failure is not an option, and I always felt like I'm a man who doesn't have regrets, and I don't live with excuses. I can't take excuses.”

— Nas

“If you don't like to make excuses or apologies, stop making promises.”

— Evan Esar