Accident Quotes

“He dreamed of ambassadorial limousines crashing into jack-knifing butane tankers, of taxis filled with celebrating children colliding head-on below the bright display windows of deserted supermarkets. He dreamed of alienated brothers and sisters, by chance meeting each other on collision courses on the access roads of petrochemical plants, their unconscious incest made explicit in this colliding metal, in the heamorrhages of their brain tissue flowering beneath the aluminized compression chambers and reactions vessels.”
― J.G. Ballard, Crash

“Some of us would take our time, if we knew that we are rushing to our deaths.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“An accident is often caused by an attempt to prevent one.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The steering wheel is turned by the driver, not the indicator, or the road sign.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Most things are never meant.

- Going, Going”
― Philip Larkin, High Windows

“We are naturally grieved over the fact that a just God and a kindly providence do not guard us better against such influences in our most defenseless age. We thereby gladly forget that as a matter of fact everything in our life is accident from our very origin through the meeting of spermatozoa and ovum, accident, which nevertheless participates in the lawfulness and fatalities of nature, and lacks only the connection to our wishes and illusions.”
― Sigmund Freud, Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood

“Some lives were saved by accident; some, by an accident.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Speed does not always kill. And not only that, sometimes speed saves a life.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“I have sometimes looked at old photographs of the smiling faces of victims, and searched them desperately for some sign that they knew. Surely they must have known that within hours or days their life was to end in that car crash, in that aeroplane disaster, or in domestic tragedy. But I can find no sign whatever. Nothing. They look out serenely, a terrible warning to us all. 'No I didn't know. Just like you ... there were no signs.' 'I who died at thirty... I too had planned my forties.' 'I who died at twenty had dreamed, as you do, of the roses round the cottage someday. It could happen to you. Why not? Why me? Why you? Why not?”
― Josephine Hart, Damage

“Some car accidents are caused by the ignorance or disbelief of the fact that a driver’s eyes and mind can be thousands of kilometres apart.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Being younger than someone has the tendency to leave you with the belief that you will outlive them.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Impatience often makes us patients.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“When I threw the stick at Jamie, I hadn't intended to hit him with it. But the moment it left my hand, I knew that's what was going to happen. I didn't yet know any calculus or geometry, but I was able to plot, with some degree of certainty, the trajectory of that stick. The initial velocity, the acceleration, the impact. The mathematical likelihood of Jamie's bloody cheek.

It had good weight and heft, that stick. It felt nice to throw. And it looked damn fine in the overcast sky, too, flying end over end, spinning like a heavy, two-pronged pinwheel and (finally, indifferently, like math) connecting with Jamie's face.

Jamie's older sister took me by the arm and she shook me. Why did you do that? What were you thinking? The anger I saw in her eyes. Heard in her voice. The kid I became to her then, who was not the kid I thought I was. The burdensome regret. I knew the word "accident" was wrong, but I used it anyway. If you throw a baseball at a wall and it goes through a window, that is an accident. If you throw a stick directly at your friend and it hits your friend in the face, that is something else.

My throw had been something of a lob and there had been a good distance between us. There had been ample time for Jamie to move, but he hadn't moved. There had been time for him to lift a hand and protect his face from the stick, but he hadn't done that either. He just stood impotent and watched it hit him. And it made me angry: That he hadn't tried harder at a defense. That he hadn't made any effort to protect himself from me.

What was I thinking? What was he thinking?

I am not a kid who throws sticks at his friends. But sometimes, that's who I've been. And when I've been that kid, it's like I'm watching myself act in a movie, reciting somebody else's damaging lines.

Like this morning, over breakfast. Your eyes asking mine to forget last night's exchange. You were holding your favorite tea mug. I don't remember what we were fighting about. It doesn't seem to matter any more. The words that came out of my mouth then, deliberate and measured, temporarily satisfying to throw at the bored space between us. The slow, beautiful arc. The spin and the calculated impact.

The downward turn of your face.

The heavy drop in my chest.

The word "accident" was wrong. I used it anyway.”
― David Olimpio, This Is Not a Confession

“Art turned out to be an extremely happy accident.”
― Efrat Cybulkiewicz

“I have made myself my own first-responder. And if I’m really all that good, why am I still laying at the scene of the accident?”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“In all innocence I plead guilty for loving you by accident.”
― Giovannie de Sadeleer

“Some people were killed by their celebration of the fact that they were still alive.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“After the Accident

-

The body has healed,
memory has not.

Let it be, don’t mend it.

The cracked colossus
in the desert
once sang
with wind through its crevices.

Then stone was affixed to stone—
it fell silent.”
― Krystyna Dąbrowska

“Drive carefully, 90% of people are accidents.”
― Nitya Prakash

“Attraction is an accident but a relationship requires efforts and purpose.”
― Nitya Prakash

“You didn’t get here by accident. The condition of your life, for better or for worse is here because of a very reason. Learning this lesson was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done.”
― Josh Hatcher

“It is not surprising that the biologically toxic field of high altitude astronomy has an established history of killing workers through occupational disease and workplace accidents.”
― Steven Magee

“How did I get home without killing myself in a car accident was a question that I asked myself many times during working extreme night shifts.”
― Steven Magee

“It was a mistake, that’s all. A stupid, stupid mistake. We all make them–it doesn’t matter if it’s a calculated risk or a split-second decision, but sometimes we’re only one step away from disaster.”
― Sibel hodge, Into the Darkness

“Mindlessness often leads to headlessness.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“He wasn’t just bleeding without. He was bleeding within, too.”
― Willowy Whisper, Angel Gate

“Everyone get trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them. When faced with such a sudden tragedy, with fervent prayer, call on the divine Being to deliver you.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“Your slippery tongue is more dangerous than your loaded gun. Always tame it to get rid of accident.”
― Lord Robin

“The masks will drop down automatically in the event of the cabin being depressurized. If this occurs, put out your cigarettes.' Must we really prepare to die in a mask, remaining unrecognizable to ourselves even into the next world? I think there are thousands of dead people still hanging around on flights because they haven't been accepted on the other side on account of their masks. They go on travelling around in the most awful conditions and we brush up against them without knowing it.

I could never travel in an aeroplane with God, nor with anyone who thought he was God (Verdiglione). It is too dangerous. It's not so much that you might crash as that you might never come down again.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories

“I am not a vulture. If I did not withdraw the case, that poor girl would be in jail for months. I am buying her freedom from prison and her family, a better future from your million dollar settlement. Sorry. Go and talk to your bloody lawyer. Marry somebody else, cause an accident and file a lawsuit. Get the hell out of here.”
― Ravindra Shukla, A Maverick Heart: Between Love and Life