Saying No Quotes

If the world ends tomorrow, understand that I regret saying no.
- Alex Adams

It was his subconscious which told him this---that infuriating part of a person's brain which never responds to interrogation, merely gives little meaningful nudges and then sits humming quietly to itself, saying nothing.
- Douglas Adams

I said nothing. I'm good at saying nothing. I don't like talking. I could go the rest of my life without saying another word, if I had to.
- Lee Child

We must at all costs avoid saying no because people prefer those who say yes, and this allows us to survive in hostile territory.
- Paulo Coelho

Elli couldn't help it, she had to. She smiled before saying, "Nothing much, but Shea?"
"Yeah?" he asked wearily as she smirked up at him.
"I'll never break your heart. I'll never make you cry," she continued to sing the chorus of the well known Backstreet Boys song as Shea turned beet red with embarrassment.
"Grace, I swear I'm going to kill you!" Shea yelled.
- Toni Aleo

It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists.
- John Ruskin

Beckett, you're doing this for people who don't even know you're protecting them. We're in the shade here. I can do this. Let me do this. I can't stand by and watch.
Beckett thought for a moment, saying nothing. Blake had taken the beating like a pro. Too good to be his first time.
- Debra Anastasia

I think 2012 is the year when consumers all around the world start saying no to feature phones and start saying yes to smartphones.
- Marc Andreessen

To say yes, you have to sweat and roll up your sleeves and plunge both hands into life up to the elbows. It is easy to say no, even if saying no means death.
- Jean Anouilh

I have been accused of never saying no.
- William Shatner

After saying yes to Turkey, the EU is having difficulty finding clear and consistent grounds for saying no to other, still more remote candidates - but being in the general vicinity of Europe does seem to be a continuing requirement.
- Timothy Garton Ash

After saying all that, what have we said, my God, my life, my holy sweetness? What does anyone who speaks of you really say? Yet woe betide those who fail to speak, while the chatterboxes go on saying nothing.
- Saint Augustine Of Hippo

Yet we must say something when those who say the most are saying nothing.
- Saint Augustine Of Hippo

Nevertheless, this is where it begins. The first word appears only at a moment when nothing can be explained anymore, at some instant of experience that defies all sense. To be reduced to saying nothing. Or else, to say himself: this is what haunts me. And then to realize, almost in the same breath, that this is what he haunts.
- Paul Auster

The finest command of language is often shown by saying nothing.
- Roger Babson

Oh, see then, the Simi is not in trouble. I just kill the Greek god and all's fine. (Simi)
You can't kill a Greek god, Simi. It's not allowed. (Acheron)
There you go again, akri, saying no to the Simi. Don't eat that, Simi. Don't kill that, Simi. Stay here, Simi. Go to Katoteros, Simi, and wait for me to call you. I don't like being told no, akri. (Simi)
- Sherrilyn Kenyon

But how could he admire Joyce's lengthy, libidinal 'yes' so fervently and end up saying 'no' to his own life? I suppose that a lifetime spent hiding one's erotic truth could have a cumulative renunciatory effect.
Sexual shame is in itself a kind of death.
- Alison Bechdel

What is a rebel? Someone who says no. But saying no does not mean giving up: it also means saying yes, with every gesture.
- Albert Camus

When we were trying to get the money for Driving Miss Daisy, everyone kept saying no one could direct it well enough to entertain an audience for 100 minutes essentially watching three people chatting in the kitchen.
- Bruce Beresford

Then they started pulling me in and I was very resistant. All the other actors would be saying write more, more dialogue for me, and I'd always be saying 'No, less, less'.
- Peter Berg

Do you think that people ever really do believe they will die, that the world will just go along as always without them? I wonder if we aren't all a little surprised at the moment of crossover, if we don't look back over our shoulders saying, Now hold on.
- Elizabeth Berg

As soon as I sat down across from her, she ordered me to put the entire contents of my pants pockets on the table. I did as I was told, saying nothing. My reality seemed to have left me and was now wandering around nearby. I hope it can find me, I thought.
- Haruki Murakami

Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough.
- Josh Billings

The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.
- Tony Blair

He raged for hours. And the skeleton, ever the frail and solelmn philosopher, hung quietly inside, saying not a word, suspended like a delicate insect within a chrysalis, waiting and waiting.
- Ray Bradbury

It is a great, a pleasant thing to have a friend with whom to walk, untroubled, through the woods, by the stream, saying nothing, at peace--the heart all clean and quiet and empty, ready for the spirit that may choose to be its guest.
- Catherine Drinker Bowen

I do say no to lots of things, actually! I know it doesn't look like it. But I have a tendency to a) be rubbish at saying no, and b) be pushed by some kind of Protestant work ethic.
- Jo Brand

He was wondering if there was some cryptic, cultish mark on his door that told all the crazy people he'd have trouble saying no.
- Anne Tyler

It only takes one mistake,' the Dan Banyan guy says, 'and nothing else you ever do will matter.' With his empty hand, he takes one of my hands. His fingers feel hot, fever-hot, and pounding with his heartbeats. He turns my hand palm-up saying, 'No matter how hard you work or how smart you become, you'll always be known for that one poor choice.' He sets the blue pill on my palm, saying, 'Do that one wrong thing- and you'll be dead for the rest of your life.
- Chuck Palahniuk

People have nothing to say, but they are afraid of saying nothing, so what they do say comes out flat and vapid and meaningless. The shadow of death is on every face.
- William S Burroughs

The film industry is about saying 'no' to people, and inherently you cannot take 'no' for an answer.
- James Cameron

A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over... is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.
- Gilbert K Chesterton

Some of the analysts were saying, Now you're a cash cow, there's no growth at all, pay it all out in dividends, give me it all, you can't invest wisely.
- Jim Cantalupo

Everybody, even me, sometimes had to compromise on something, doing things we know to be wrong, and this happens doing whatever job in the world. But a singer must have the courage of saying no.
- Jose Carreras

I've learned, I think, to be able to distinguish between the necessary and the unnecessary as far as my limited outside time is concerned. Saying "no" politely is a necessity if one wants to lead any kind of stable life.
- Richard Chamberlain

I don't just want to ban The Bomb. I want to ban all bombs, whatever, and all bombers, whoever, and all bombings, whyever. There have to be better ways of saying no and making changes.
- Aidan Chambers

Those things which I am saying now may be obscure, yet they will be made clearer in their proper place.
- Nicolaus Copernicus

Learn to say no in situations where saying no can be difficult, where it could mean getting fired. Say no anyway, because it could lead you to greater opportunities.
- Sam Dash

but you could also look at it the other way. Like you're saying no matter how bad things are for you, I can still relate.
- Sarah Dessen

Now on a personal level with things like the California Tax Commission... I really think if people started banding together and saying no to this it could snowball and that could really help.
- Joe Eszterhas

And the inner dynamics of Hollywood are like politics. Say you give a script to a group of executives - they all sit around, afraid to voice an opinion, saying nothing, waiting to know what the consensus is. Just like focus groups, opinion polls or a cabinet.
- Joe Eszterhas

Saying nothing... sometimes says the most.
- Emily Dickinson

Kind of like saying 'no offense' when you've just said something offensive?
- Jennifer Egan

I spend 90 percent of my time saying no, and my accountant yells at me for it, but when I started in this business, I wanted my career to have legs.
- Omar Epps

I could hear my watch whenever the car stopped, but not often they were already eating Who would play a Eating the business of eating inside of you space too space and time confused Stomach saying noon brain saying eat o clock All right I wonder what time it is what of it.
- William Faulkner

In saying no to progress, it is not the future which they condemn, but themselves. They give themselves a melancholy disease; they inoculate themselves with the past. There is but one way of refusing tomorrow, that is to die.
- Victor Hugo

...only someone who'd never been an animal would put up a sign saying not to feed them...
- Jonathan Safran Foer

You have terminated me," one of them said in a strange, flat voice. "But I
am one of many."
"Robots!" Iggy breathed, taking Total from Angel.
"One of many, one of many, one of many," the robot Eraser was saying. Now
Nudge saw the red light in its eyes, saw how they were fading and winking out.
"Good!" spat the Gasman, kicking it hard. "Because we like to blow stuff up,
blow stuff up, blow stuff up!
- James Patterson

Kyoko sniffs, unable to speak. Sometimes saying nothing means most of all.
- Sandy Fussell

How big are souls anyway? asked Coraline.
The other mother sat down at the kitchen table and leaned against the back wall, saying nothing. She picked at her teeth with a long crimson-varnished fingernail, then she tapped the finger, gently, tap-tap-tap against the polished black surface of her black button eyes.
- Neil Gaiman

I would start seeing, in just the sense I was saying now, the kind of record it was going to be and what the arrangement demands, and what my vocal part should be in the record. This was all emerging as the song was emerging.
- Art Garfunkel

Kaeleigh, queen of passive, all the time saying no, but not strong enough to mean it.
- Ellen Hopkins

If we say that anyone who "moralizes" must be perfect morally then we are in effect saying no one can moralize.
- Jonah Goldberg

It was only when the giant got halfway down the incline that he suddenly, happily, burst into flame and continued his trip saying, "NO SURVIVORS, NO SURVIVORS!" in a manner that could only indicate deadly sincerity.
It was seeing him happily burning and advancing that startled the Brute Squad to screaming. And once that happened, why, everybody panicked and ran..
- William Goldman

We stood there, looking at each other, saying nothing. But it was the kind of nothing that meant everything.
- Jenny Han

Stop saying no offense," I said, "when you say offensive things. It's not a free pass.
- Daniel Handler

There's this wonderful first assistant and he'll be saying, 'Now Harry goes down among the dragons.' You have to hold yourself together. Because if you lose it for a second then you're sunk.
- Maggie Smith

Sometimes being a good friend means saying nothing.
- Kristin Hannah

Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife - chopping off what's incomplete and saying: 'Now, it's complete because it's ended here.'
- from Collected Sayings of Maud'Dib'' by the Princess Irulan
- Frank Herbert

I thought that by saying no and explaining my reasons my employer would abandon his social suggestions. However, to my regret, in the following few weeks, he continued to ask me out on several occasions.
- Anita Hill

I can remember feeling very angry, and saying no! I can do it myself! From that point of view it was very emotional for me to get myself to the point to sit in the chair and be "up".
- Gregory Hines

There is an ancient saying,' noted Ironflanks, 'originating, I believe, from you fastbloods. The truth will set you free.'
'No, old steamer,' said the commodore. 'In my experience, the truth will get you sent to the bottom of the ocean with an anchor chain wrapped around your legs to buy your silence. But it's the truth I need, all the same.
- Stephen Hunt

I enjoy feeling fastidious and aloof. I enjoy saying no, always no, and I should be afraid of any attempt to construct a finally habitable world, because I should merely have to say - Yes; and act like other people.
- Jean Paul Sartre

Sir Richard Glendale lifted the fatal paper, read it, and saying, 'Now all is indeed over,' handed it to Maxwell, who said aloud, 'Black Colin Campbell..
- Walter Scott

...There are also those who inadvertently grant power to another man's words by continuously trying to spite him. If a man gets to the point where he can simply say, 'The sky is blue,' and people indignantly rush up trying to refute him saying, 'No, the sky is light blue,' then, whether they realize it or not, he has become an authority figure even to such adversaries.
- Criss Jami

And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We're always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it's only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.
- Steve Jobs

Why is discipline important? Discipline teaches us to operate by principle rather than desire. Saying no to our impulses (even the ones that are not inherently sinful) puts us in control of our appetites rather than vice versa. It deposes our lust and permits truth, virtue, and integrity to rule our minds instead.
- John F Macarthur Jr

Some people talk nonstop and manage to say nothing at all. Other people are more efficient and manage to say nothing at all simply by saying nothing.
- Jarod Kintz

What we're saying now is you have a choice: You can stay, or you can go away.
- Paul Kantner

All my integrity seemed to lie in saying No.
- Susanna Kaysen

This is the beginning and the end of the world right here. Look at those patient Buddhas lookin at us saying nothing.
- Jack Kerouac

Can't you just see all those enlightened monkey men sitting around a roaring woodfire around their Buddha saying nothing and knowing everything?
- Jack Kerouac

I like to interpret 'Call me a River', as if I'm saying, 'Now you're telling me you love me after all that, and I'm telling you to shove off.' That's my interpretation. But I would never 'say' that because somebody else might interpret the song in another way.
- Diana Krall

I'm not used to saying no to this man on any level.
- Andrea Mackris

We had an eyeball-to-eyeball agreement at a restaurant before I came back that, if I came back, he would never talk to me that way again or I was simply saying no.
- Andrea Mackris

My fear is that I go up to the girl of my dreams and say 'I'm sorry, but I've got to say hello to you,' and she slides the stool back and gets up and walks away, saying, 'Not for me, Bub. I don't want anything to do with you.'
- John Mayer

In a language as idiomatically stressed as English, opportunities for misreadings are bound to arise. By a mere backward movement of stress, a verb can become a noun, an act a thing. To refuse, to insist on saying no to what you believe is wrong, becomes at a stroke refuse, an insurmountable pile of garbage.
- Ian Mcewan

Americans are gathering the courage to just say no. We are saying no to addictive consumer lifestyles. We are saying no to wars and corporate takeover and the IMF loans that gobble up people and their resources.
- Cynthia Mckinney

The moment my doctor told me, I went silent. My mum and dad were with me, then we all went to pieces. I was saying, No, I've got my flight to Sydney in two hours. I'm getting on a plane.
- Kylie Minogue

To say a poem is absolute is saying nothing, because an ink blot can be absolute. Yet you put into it what you like. So it becomes totally relative.
- Nicholas Mosley

I try to combine my work with my family, that's what I aspire to. I don't say that's the only thing. It's not all work and family, because otherwise you would be saying no to the many other things in life and there are many other things.
- Connie Nielsen

No!' I say. (I thought about saying 'NO!', but then I thought, no.)
- John Niven

To this day, I've found that it doesn't matter what a guy looks like if he's really funny. His sense of humor makes him attractive. On the other hand, you don't hear men saying, 'No she's not pretty, but is she ever funny!'
- Catherine Ohara

Sometimes, it's just easier to say yes to that extra snack or dessert, because frankly, it is exhausting to keep saying no. It's exhausting to plead with our kids to eat just one more bite of vegetables.
- Michelle Obama

A lot of things that I can't get into the room for, even just to be seen, is because they're just saying 'No. they're not casting non-white.' You're lumped into a category with people who are just not white.
- Sandra Oh

Fat is a way of saying no to powerlessness and self-denial.
- Susie Orbach

And so whether it's failing to move forward on the Dream Act, failing to move forward on putting teachers back to work, failing to do all the things we could do right now to help the economy and middle class, this Congress is just saying no.
- David Plouffe

As it did go. They never talked about the sex, let it happen, at first only in the tent at night, then in the full daylight with the hot sun striking down, and at evening in the fire glow, quick, rough, laughing and snorting, no lack of noises, but saying not a goddamn word except once Ennis said, "I'm not no queer," and Jack jumped in with "Me neither. A one-shot thing. Nobody's business but ours.
- Annie Proulx

...saying not a goddamn word except once Ennis said, "I'm not no queer," and Jack jumped in with "Me neither. A one-shot thing. Nobody's business but ours.
- Annie Proulx

Saying No Is Actually Saying Yes To Other Things
- Patrick Rhone

I thought you were saying no, no discussion at all
- James E Rogers

We conservatives don't have a corner on saying 'no'. We're just the ones who say it when it's the right thing to say.
- Mitt Romney

The trouble is that once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you've seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There's no innocence. Either way, you're accountable.
- Arundhati Roy

We're saying no changes for Medicare for people above the age of 55. And in order to keep the promise to current seniors who've already retired and organized their lives around this program, you have to reform it for the next generation.
- Paul Ryan

I don't know what to say to her. All I know is, I ain't saying it. And I know she ain't saying what she want a say either and it's a strange thing happening here cause nobody saying nothing and we still managing to have us a converstaion.
- Kathryn Stockett

My face goes hot, my tongue twitchy. I don't know what to say to her. All I know is, I ain't saying it. And I know she ain't saying what she want a say either and it's a strange thing happening here cause nobody saying nothing and we still managing to have us a conversation. -The Help pg. 29
- Kathryn Stockett

And I knew she ain't saying what she want a say either and it's a strange thing happening here cause nobody saying nothing and we still managing to have us a conversation.
- Kathryn Stockett

...and it's a strange thing happening here cause nobody saying nothing and we still managing to have us a conversation.
- Kathryn Stockett

He: What's the matter with you?
Me: Nothing.
Nothing was slowly clotting my arteries. Nothing slowly numbing my soul. Caught by nothing, saying nothing, nothingness becomes me. When I am nothing they will say surprised in the way that they are forever surprised, but there was nothing the matter with her.
- Jeanette Winterson

Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying No to any authority - literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social and even political.
- Ignazio Silone

I have had to learn about saying no.
- Jaclyn Smith

They caught up with each other's news casually, leaving long, cosy gaps of silence in which to go to work on their muffins and coffees. Jerome - after two months of having to be witty and brilliant in a strange town among strangers - appreciated the gift of it. People talk about the happy quiet that can exist between two lovers, but this too was great; sitting between his sister and his brother, saying nothing, eating.
- Zadie Smith

When I have sat at home with this God-given talent for music for a long time, somebody approaches me out of the blue and asks me to play for them. It's almost as though there's a force somewhere which is saying 'no sittin' around, out you go!
- Jeremy Spencer

During the time I was on The Hardy Boys, I was also watching other people's careers. I thought the next step was to be a movie star. I kept saying no to projects, and offers stopped coming in. I was no longer hot.
- Parker Stevenson

Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.
- Denis Waitley

A lot of guys spend their lives saying no because it's an easier way to keep your job.
- Cynthia Weil

Cullen?"
"Hey, Mom."
"Can you do me a favor?" she asked in that way that implied that saying no would cause someone to die.
- John Corey Whaley

Gossip is the art of saying nothing in a way that leaves practically nothing unsaid.
- Walter Winchell

Oh, Jeeves,' I said; 'about that check suit.'
Yes, sir?'
Is it really a frost?'
A trifle too bizarre, sir, in my opinion.'
But lots of fellows have asked me who my tailor is.'
Doubtless in order to avoid him, sir.'
He's supposed to be one of the best men in London.'
I am saying nothing against his moral character, sir.
- P G Wodehouse

Like a lot of freelance cartoonists, when any opportunity like that comes along, I have a hard time saying no, whether it makes sense or not.
- Jim Woodring

A true Zen saying: Nothing is what I want.
- Frank Zappa