You Make Things So Complicated Quotes

“Life's not fair. Life's often complicated, leaving us to deal with things that we shouldn't have to. Life can make you smile one day, only to leave you broken into tiny little pieces the next.”

— Lisa De Jong

“In science there is a dictum: don't add an experiment to an experiment. Don't make things unnecessarily complicated. In writing fiction, the more fantastic the tale, the plainer the prose should be. Don't ask your readers to admire your words when you want them to believe your story.”

— Ben Bova

“I mean, I don't know how the world broke. And I don't know if there's a God who can help us fix it. But the fact that the world is broken - I absolutely believe that. Just look around us. Every minute - every single second - there are a million things you could be thinking about. A million things you could be worrying about. Our world - don't you just feel we're becoming more fragmented? I used to think that when I got older, the world would make so much more sense. But you know what? The older I get, the more confusing it is to me. The more complicated it is. Harder. You'd think we'd be getting better at it. But there's just more and more chaos. The pieces - they're everywhere. And nobody knows what to do about it. I find myself grasping, Nick. You know that feeling? That feeling when you just want the right thing to fall into the right place, not only because it's right, but because it would mean that such a thing is still possible? I want to believe that.”

— Rachel Cohn

“You humans always try to make things too simple, except when you're trying to make things too complicated. You can never just be with what is.”

— Angelo Dirks

“So as a seventh grader, no, you weren't friends with people you didn't like. But sometimes you also weren't friends with people you did like, which was complicated, and which didn't make any sense if you tried to explain it. Sometimes things just changed. That's where the sadness came in.”

— Lauren Myracle

“But for some reason, those rocks made lonely feel good. Those clouds made you dream big. Not big like you could make a lot of money or like you could have a good job. Bigger than those things. It was complicated. I mean, big like you were part of the sky, which also made you feel small.”

— Cynthia Kadohata

“People always think that happiness is a faraway thing," thought Francie, "something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains - a cup of strong hot coffee when you're blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book to read when you're alone - just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness.”

— Betty Smith

“About life:
It is not complicated unless I make it so. It is not difficult unless I allow it to be. A second is no more than a second, a minute no more than a minute, a day no more than a day. They pass. All things and all time will pass. Don't force or fear, don't control or lose control. Don't fight and don't stop fighting. Embrace and endure. If you embrace, you will endure.”

— James Frey

“Hoddan began suddenly to see real possibilities. This was not a direct move toward the realization of his personal ambitions. But on the other hand, it wasn't a movement away from them. Hoddan suddenly remembered an oration he'd heard his grandfather give many, many times in the past.
"Straight thinkin'," the old man had said obstinately, "is a delusion. You think things out clear and simple, and you can see yourself ruined and your family starving any day! But real things ain't simple! They ain't clear! Any time you try to figure things out so they're simple and straightforward, you're goin' against nature and you're going to get 'em mixed up! So when something happens and you're in a straightforward, hopeless fix-why, you go along with nature! Make it as complicated as you can, and the people who want you in trouble will get hopeless confused and you can get out!”

— Murray Leinster

“You know," she says softly, "what I've learned is that everything's more complicated than it seems. I'm so glad I came here, got to know my family, learn about where I come from. India is an incredible country. There are parts of it that I love, that really feel like home. But at the same time, there are things here that just make me want to turn away, you know?"
She looks to Somer.
"Does that sound awful?"
"No, honey." She touches Asha's cheek with the back of her hand. "I think I understand," Somer says, and she means it.
This country has given her Krishnan and Asha, the most important people in her life. But when she has fought against the power of its influence, it has also been the root of her greatest turmoil.”

— Shilpi Somaya Gowda

“Life is painful and messed up. It gets complicated at the worst of times, and sometimes you have no idea where to go or what to do. Lots of times people just let themselves get lost, dropping into a wide open, huge abyss. But that's why we have to keep trying. We have to push through all that hurts us, work past all our memories that are haunting us. Sometimes the things that hurt us are the things that make us strongest. A life without experience, in my opinion, is no life at all. And that's why I tell everyone that, even when it hurts, never stop yourself from living.”

— Alysha Speer

“Sometimes it's moments like that, real complicated moments, absorbing moments, that make you realize that even hard times have things in them that make you feel alive. And then there's music, and girls, and drugs, and homeless people who've read Pauline Kael, and wah-wah pedals, and English potato chip flavors, and I haven't even read Martin Chuzzlewit yet ... There's plenty out there.”

— Nick Hornby

“And we'd had this stupid scene on the street, and even that was kind of cool, because sometimes it's moments like that, real complicated moments, absorbing moments, that make you realize that even hard times have things in them that make you feel alive.”

— Nick Hornby

“Fact is, knowing what you want and knowing who you are ... those are two separate things. One is complicated. The other isn't. You're trying to take something simple and make it hard, and there's enough hard things in life without you adding more for yourself.”

— Cora Carmack

“There had been a quarrel, she had been hurt, had wept. Now it was over; now she sat still and waited. Life would go on. As with children. As with animals. If only you did not talk, did not make simple things complicated, did not turn your soul inside out.”

— Hermann Hesse

“I love the way in which I make up dances. It's a complicated way and the product is usually clear. Clear and simple. I don't need everybody to know that there are all of these fabulous things going on. If you CAN see it, that's wonderful.”

— Mark Morris

“Good. I wouldn't want you to fall madly in love with me. That would make things very complicated when it comes to your beloved Shadow, wouldn't it? Who'd win the battle for your heart then? The servant or the king?”

— Michelle Rowen

“Things don't always tie up in a nice bow. Even when you make strides with people and relationships, it's complicated.”

— Aaron Tveit

“The only complicated things worth fighting for will change the world in some way and/or make you lots of money, and a complicated relationship will only keep you from doing either.”

— Ingrid Weir

“The narratives we create in order to justify our actions and choices become in so many ways who we are. They are the things we say back to ourselves to explain our complicated lives. Perhaps the reason you've not yet been able to forgive yourself is that you're still invested in your self-loathing. Perhaps not forgiving yourself is the flip side of your stealing-this-now cycle. Would you be a better or worse person if you forgave yourself for the bad things you did? If you perpetually condemn yourself for being a liar and a thief, does that make you good?”

— Cheryl Strayed

“There is no plan ... You need to make smart choices, But you can make career decisions for two different types of reasons.
You can do something for instrumental reasons
because you think it's going to lead to something else, regardless of whether you enjoy it or it's worthwhile ... or you can do something for fundamental reasons
because you think it's inherently valuable, regardless of what it may or may not lead to.
The dirty little secret is that insturmental reasons usually don't work. Things are too complicated, too unpredictable. You never know what' going to happen. So you end up stuck. The most successful people
not all of the time, but most of the time
make decisions for fundamental reasons.
They take a job or join a company because it will let them do interesting work in a cool place
even if they don't know exactly where it will lead. They're not fools. They're enlightened pragmatists.”

— Daniel H. Pink

“Successful people understand that you don't need to make things complicated.”

— Anne McKevitt

“In good novelistic fashion, the discovery I've made is that it's complicated. I think that's one of good things about exploring these questions in a non-polemic, fictional way: you get to feel out territory rather than take positions. Through writing this, I can understand the impulse to faith, how people make meaning, how people make community, without having to say, do this, don't do that, or I believe, I don't believe.”

— Hari Kunzru

“I learned to stop being English about things like love. If you make a film in England about love, it's hugely complicated. It's all about saying what the weather is like, and you're secretly telling someone you love them. You know what the English are like; they're very repressed people. You don't get that in India. India is incredibly un-cynical about love. It's a not a complicated thing. It's me, you, love. Let's go.”

— Simon Beaufoy

“It's easy to make a pirate copy when you have digital tapes of things. And it was so complicated and complex to go through all the post-production of a movie without ever going digital.”

— Jose Padilha

“Movies serve many purposes, and I've visited many of those genres, from the most light, frivolous comedy that is just trying to make you laugh, to movies that explore the most complicated side of the human soul. As an actor, I play all of those things, and I still like it.”

— Antonio Banderas

“Why do you have to go and make Things so complicated ...”

— Avril Lavigne

“I'm not beating people over the head, and I'm saying that there are good things in store - you can make it in life. Most of the stuff that I minister [is] not real complicated deep things.”

— Joel Osteen

“I always say that, like a scientist or anyone, you always want to be the problem-solver. You feel like, if you solve the greatest mystery or the greatest problem, then that makes you brilliant. It's the same thing with an actress. You want to be able to really tackle a character and make it a fully-dimensional human being who is complicated, funny and all the things that a person could be.”

— Viola Davis