That's why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. You can't control life, at least you can control your version.

It's no fun to be miscast. The times I've done parts that I don't feel, in retrospect, I was great for - it's a very bad feeling.

In retrospect, everything is finite, but prospectively, there are infinite possibilities. I guess that's what makes life hopeful.

Everything, in retrospect, is obvious. But if everything were obvious, authors of histories of financial folly would be rich . . .

'Pasadena' erred on the side being too dark. That was probably the one thing about it, in retrospect, why it didn't get picked up.

In retrospect, the most unnerving aspect of being openly gay was that it turned out to be as disappointingly normal as being straight.

In retrospect, I had a lot of shortcomings and didn't take care of the things that needed to be taken care of, and that's all my fault.

There is always a reason. When I look back on things that really upset me at the moment, I can always see why it happened in retrospect.

Honestly, in retrospect, it probably was a little easier being an adolescent and not having people immediately know that Hef was my dad.

The current financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged in retrospect as the most wrenching since the end of the Second World War.

My dad is and was very funny and had a really dry sense of humor, which, as a kid, seemed un-fun. But in retrospect, it's kind of hilarious.

I knew I was going to be composing. It all makes sense in retrospect. But you don't know while you're in the process of improvising your life.

Sometimes when people are attached to a project, they need persuading to stay attached, and then, in retrospect, they're not the right person.

In retrospect, I think it's a plus, because now we've been able to go back and spend extra time on each of those episodes and make them better.

How ungenerously in later life we disclaim the virtuous moods of our youth, living in retrospect long, summer days of unreflecting dissipation.

The Clinton administration cared a lot about the middle class and the poor. But it also cared a lot - too much, in retrospect - about the rich.

The best early-stage venture capital investments appear obvious in retrospect; however, very few of them are actually obvious when you make them.

When I first heard about Y Combinator, it was one of those ideas that just seemed forehead-slappingly obvious. Good ideas often do, in retrospect.

This black hole that people talk about in my career in the '70s, when I didn't make any films - in retrospect, what I was doing was learning my job.

I think, a lot of times in Hollywood, the right idea comes along at the right time, and it becomes in retrospect, 'Wow, why didn't I think of that?'

Are there really good wars and bad wars? We thought so during World War II, and in retrospect, we were right. But in Vietnam, and Iraq we were wrong.

It is obvious, in retrospect, to lean on those who love us most. With depression, in part because of the shame attached to it, it's harder to be honest.

Vietnam was a palpable failure. And of course, in retrospect, it was even more clearly a disaster and a failure than maybe people understood at the time.

Basketball is my first love. If my health had permitted me, I would still be playing, but I am glad in retrospect that everything happened the way it did.

To be candid, I think, in retrospect, it was a mistake to work at AOL when I did. I think I had rose-colored glasses about the opportunity to reinvent AOL.

Each person’s life is dominated by a central event, which shapes and distorts everything that comes after it and, in retrospect, everything that came before.

When we recall the past, we usually find that it is the simplest things - not the great occasions - that in retrospect give off the greatest glow of happiness.

I've had a number of near misses during my travels that in retrospect seem of greater concern than they did at the time. I guess that is what happens with age.

There will always be women who say, 'She doesn't represent me.' In retrospect, these things are gifts, because it forces me to step up and defend what I'm doing.

In retrospect, I'm really shocked at how far I put my heart out there on the line with 'Prima Donna'. I seem to have this knack for being able to accomplish that.

In retrospect, we could see that the 1950s had been a reactionary period in America of Eisenhower blandness, of virulent anticommunism, of the 'Feminine Mystique.'

Generational change within a genre is hard to parse while it's happening. Only in retrospect can the passing of the baton from ancestors to progeny be clearly discerned.

In retrospect, I think I had some kind of learning disorder. I could kind of charm my way through grade school, but in high school... I could never seem to grasp things.

In retrospect, 'Pulp Fiction' isn't just the template for everything Tarantino has done but the yardstick by which everything else he does is measured one way or another.

When I was in my early twenties, I used to grow all sorts of very weird beards. All of them awful in retrospect. I had Civil War beards for a while, then Mennonite beards.

In retrospect, I can see I couldn't talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching about. Ha! Like, that sure made sense!

I reflected a lot, I thought a lot on my 50th birthday. It has been one of the most important birthdays in my life, not in terms of celebration but in terms of retrospect.

Maybe a deal was possible earlier. And maybe, in retrospect, looking back, you could say this was a moment you could have jumped on. If so, shame on us. I tend to think not.

The clothes chosen for me as a child had a strong element of the Pre-Raphaelite, muted greens and ivories, dusty rose, what seems in retrospect an eccentric amount of black.

In retrospect, I do think it's fair to say that we were overly idealistic and focused on more of the good parts of what connecting people and giving people a voice can bring.

It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment.

I wrote 'The Match,' my cricket novel, between 2002 and 2005. In retrospect, almost an age of innocence in cricket and a time when it was rare to find the game deep in fiction.

In retrospect, the populist panic may have been overblown. Regarding Brexit, for example, the shock exaggerated its meaning. Because it was so unexpected, it became a sensation.

In our business, it's hard to look at anything in retrospect and look at your accomplishments because you're so busy thinking about the next week. What we do is 52 weeks a year.

In my early twenties, I got the basics covered. In retrospect, one of the great things about success is that I never really had to work in a factory full-time. So that's a blessing.

I felt that, in retrospect, there was a time in the late Seventies, after I had a string of hits and successes, as a performer and a recording artist, that I wasn't saying anything.

My father said I should become a doctor and do science in my spare time, which in retrospect might not have been a bad idea, but I wasn't interested in taking care of people's ills.

History is lived forwards but it is written in retrospect. We know the end before we consider the beginning and we can never wholly recapture what it was to know the beginning only.

Well, she managed to - Barbara was capable of doing practically anything if she set her mind to it. In retrospect, I'm not surprised that Barbara managed to get collect calls through.

When you talk to people in retrospect, they always say the casting was a no-brainer, but nothing really is. You have to have so many things line up. I'm very grateful that it worked out.

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