Bargaining Quotes

“Every broken heart has screamed at one time or another: Why can't you see who I truly am?”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Our standard rate. A doubloon a day."
It was generous. More than generous--some families would put him up for a week for a single coin.
"Half a doubloon a day," she said.
"No, you see, the idea behind bargaining is that you ask for a larger amount.”
― Ilona Andrews, On the Edge

“The truly gifted negotiator, then, is one whose initial position is exaggerated enough to allow for a series of concessions that will yield a desirable final offer from the opponent, yet is not so outlandish as to be seen as illegitimate from the start.”
― Robert Cialdini, Influence

“When we join together, we can increase our bargaining power.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“Another form of bargaining, which many people do, and she did too, is to replay the final painful moments over and over in her head as if by doing so she could eventually create a different outcome.
It is natural to replay in your mind the details. Deep in your heart you know what is true. Your mouth speaks the words, “My cat has died,” but you still don’t really want to believe it. You go over and over and over it in your mind. Your heart replays the scene for you for the express purpose of teaching you to accept what has happened. While your heart tries to “rewire” your mind to accept it, your mind keeps looking for a different answer. It doesn’t like the truth. Like anything else, when you hear it enough, you finally accept that it is true.”
― Kate McGahan, Jack McAfghan: Return from Rainbow Bridge: A Dog's Afterlife Story of Loss, Love and Renewal

“I know the hard ground and the taste of the salt water I’m made of and the way even getting out of bed feels impossible some days. I know how some moments there’s not even enough air.

I know the desperate and the bargains you want to make with the universe and every last prayer you’ve prayed to gods you don’t even believe in.

But stupid? No, love.

Not stupid. Not you. You are infinitely, impossibly, beautifully human.”
― Jeanette LeBlanc

“Knowledge may be power, but cake has great bargaining properties”
― Julia Seitz

“You could hate a sofa, of course—that is, if you could hate a sofa. But it didn't matter. You still had to get together $4.80 a month. If you had to pay $4.80 a month for a sofa that started off split, no good, and humiliating—you couldn't take any joy in owning it. And the joylessness stank, pervading everything. The stink of it kept you from painting the beaverboard walls; from getting a matching piece of material for the chair; even from sewing up the split, which became a gash, which became a gaping chasm that exposed the cheap frame and the cheaper upholstery. It withheld the refreshment in a sleep slept on it. It imposed a furtiveness on the loving done on it. Like a sore tooth that is not content to throb in isolation, but must diffuse its own pain to other parts of the body—making breathing difficult, vision limited, nerves unsettled, so a hated piece of furniture produces a fretful malaise that asserts itself throughout the house and limits the delight of things not related to it.”
― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

“They made a deal and they liked the deal, until they had to pay the price.”
― Brent Weeks, The Black Prism

“A good negotiator flatters the seller not the product.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“Perhaps a necklace of tears to weep so that she won't have to? A pin of teeth to bite annoying husbands? No.' He continues to walk through the small space. He lifts a ring. 'To bring on a child?' And then, seeing my face, lifts a pair of earrings, one in the shape of a crescent moon and the other in the shape of a star. 'Ah, yes. Here. This is what you want.'

'What do they do?' I ask.

He laughs. 'They are beautiful- isn't that enough?'

I give him a skeptical look. 'It would be enough, considering how exquisite they are, but I bet it isn't all.'

He enjoys that. 'Clever girl. They are not only beautiful, but they add to beauty. They make someone more lovely than they were, painfully lovely. Her husband will not leave her side for quite some time.'

The look on his face is a challenge. He believes I am too vain to give such a gift to my sister.

How well he knows the selfish human heart. Taryn will be a beautiful bride. How much more do I, her twin, want to put myself in her shadow? How lovely can I bear her to be?

And yet, what better gift for a human girl wedded to the beauty of the Folk?

'What would you take for them?' I ask.

'Oh, any number of little things. A year of your life. The luster of your hair. The sound of your laugh.'

'My laugh is not such a sweet sound as all that.'

'Not sweet, but I bet it's rare,' he says, and I wonder at his knowing that.

'What about my tears?' I ask. 'You could make another necklace.'

He looks at me, as though evaluating how often I weep. 'I will take a single tear,' he says finally. 'And you will take an offer to the High King for me.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“The last week hadn’t been any better, come to think of it. On Monday they arrived at Gorda, just to find that the cargo of electronics he was to ship to Beowulf had been taken by another freighter for a lower fee. It took him until Wednesday before he found another cargo – which had to reach Earth by Saturday. The last straw was when his crew mutinied a day out of the Hermes system and demanded a pay increase. The union tended to call that sort of thing “collective bargaining”, not actually mutiny, but hey – the results are the same. He tended to favor the term “piracy”, but this wasn’t the high seas and out here, there were real pirates to worry about. His former crew had also wanted more time off and a better cook – at least one who knew how which end of a frying pan to hold. He was unable to comply, and so was forced to stop at Beowulf anyway. That was the last time he saw them. Fortunately for him, Weaver, Fuller and Jang opted to stay with him. Whether it was out of loyalty, or perhaps just convenience, he never knew.”
― Christina Engela, Blachart

“Every bargain we made was chewed over carefully before it was swallowed. Each one seemed like the best choice at the time, and yet it seemed that we swallowed enough unwholesome things to bring us down to the very edge of death.”
― Alter S. Reiss, Sunset Mantle

“Don't just bargain for success. Pay the price!”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Become a Better You

“The fever in my blood is not malaria but commerce.
So! Shall we dicker?”
― Stephen King, Needful Things

“A good negotiator sometimes win more out of a deal than he expected.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“Negotiation means willfully entering into a professional conflict.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“During the negotiation information is more valuable than eloquence.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“In each case, the relative cost of postponing the purchase for buyer and seller determines the intensity of competition between the [past and future] selves of the seller. If the buyer has a lower cost of postponing the purchase (delay, making do with an interior model) than the seller (inventory, staff salaries) the buyer has the bargaining power.”
― Rakesh V. Vohra, Principles of Pricing: An Analytical Approach

“Employment bargains your life and time for a piece of currency”
― Sunday Adelaja

“In Rome, Matt had told her, ‘I knew that if I kept up my playing, we would have a baby.’ That was what music represented to him now: a bargain he had sought with fate. In a less anaemic age, he would have sacrificed virgins or immaculate lambs.”
― Michelle de Kretser, The Life to Come

“Obviously he stood ready to speak for all.
He was of course Karuso, and he began to bargain for the assembly with eloquence and great pertinacity. It was an affair that could not be hurried. The wage itself was a pretext, but the bargaining was important. Had I agreed immediately to the little money he demanded, all would have felt cheated and the poorer for it. The whole process was essentially a provision of wisdom and an affair of primitive honour that should not be minimized. It was a drama designed also to bring out the human factors to which Karuso was committing them all. I knew they would stop bargaining, not only when the wage seemed fair, but also when they felt they knew what kind of people we were.”
― Laurens van der Post, The Lost World of the Kalahari

“If you sell your soul to get ahead it will cost more than you bargained for. When you earn your success and never take something for nothing, no one can lay claim to what’s rightfully yours. My biggest investors (parents & grandparents), now deceased, ask nothing of me. They are the only ones I owe for a debt I can never repay; but its the only kind that will ever be worth carrying.”
― Carlos Wallace, Life Is Not Complicated-You Are: Turning Your Biggest Disappointments into Your Greatest Blessings

“Bargaining is the third stage of the grief process. So am I bargaining? Am I telling myself that it’s okay for Bao to be dead so long as it’s only temporary? I think about this, walking across the hospital parking lot to my car. But it doesn’t feel right. I’m not bargaining. Besides, knowing that Bao is coming back does not mitigate the unbearable pain of having lost him.”
― Gail Graham, Will YOUR Dog Reincarnate?

“But if I refused to engage anyone who I found the least bit detestable, corrupt, or stupid, I'd never work with anyone. Nothing would get done. The inability to compromise isn't a sign of moral rectitude"-- she spoke the phrase with haughty emphasis--"it's a sign of immaturity. You know who can't be bargained with? Little children and madmen."
(Edith)”
― Josiah Bancroft, The Hod King

“I'll give you the knife, and we'll look for your name together."
"We're still enemies," he said.
"Of course we are. And I'll keep trying to defeat you, and you'll keep trying to stop me. But in the meantime, we'll look for your name."
I waited. I knew what he would say next: Let me do something about those virgin hands, and we'll have a deal. It was only logical, for obviously I could get the knife whenever I liked, and as long as I remained a virgin, I could still use it to fulfill the Rhyme.
No matter how much I desired his kisses, the thought of letting him possess me entirely was still terrifying. But I'd come here prepared to offer up that much. I couldn't back out now.
"Deal," he said.
I blinked. He reached up and tapped my wrist.
"All right!" I jerked thee knife away. He caught my wrist, took the knife, and threw it across the room.
"You're worried about the knife but not my hands?" I demanded.
"Well, I'm the mighty demon lord and I have your knife. It seems only fair to leave you some advantages."
"But--" I realized with a wave of embarrassment that despite my relief, I was also disappointed. My face heated.
He grinned as if he knew and kissed my palm.”
― Rosamund Hodge, Cruel Beauty

“When you experience loss, people say you'll move through the 5 stages of grief. Denial,
Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. What they don't tell you is that you'll cycle through them all every day.”
― Atul Purohit

“Rhysand's moon-white skin began to darken into nothing but shadow.

'Wait.'

The darkness consuming him paused. For Tamlin... for Tamlin I would sell my soul; I would give up everything I had for him to be free.

'Wait,' I repeated.

The darkness vanished, leaving Rhysand in his solid form as he grinned. 'Yes?'

I raised my chin as high as I could manage. 'Just two weeks?'

'Just two weeks,' he purred, and knelt before me. 'Two teensy, tiny weeks with me every month is all I ask.'

'Why? And what are to... to be the terms?' I said, fighting past the dizziness.

'Ah,' he said, adjusting the lapel of his obsidian tunic. 'If I told you those things, there'd be no fun in it, would there?'
...
I couldn't think entirely of the enormity of what I was about to give- or else I might refuse again. I met Rhysand's gaze. 'Five days.'

'You're going to bargain?' Rhysand laughed under his breath. 'Ten days.'

I held his stare with all my strength. 'A week.'

Rhysand was silent for a long moment, his eyes travelling across my body and my face before he murmured. 'A week it is.'

'Then it's a deal,' I said. A metallic taste filled my mouth as magic stirred between us.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses

“I'll make a bargain with you.'
...
Cassian maintained a casual stance. 'If you do an hour of exercises right now, I'll owe you a favour.'

'I don't need any favours from you.'

'Then name your price.' He struggled to calm his racing heart. 'An hour of training for whatever you want.'

'That's a fool's bargain for you.' Her eyes narrowed. 'I thought you were a general. Aren't you supposed to be good at negotiating?'

His mouth quirked upward. She wasn't fighting him. 'For you, I have no strategies.'

She studied him with unflinching focus. 'Anything I want?'

'Anything.' He added wryly, 'Anything short of you ordering me to fall out of the sky and smash my head on the earth.'

She didn't smile the way he'd hoped. Her eyes turned to chips of ice. 'You truly believe me capable of such a thing?'

No,' he said without hesitation.

Her mouth tightened. Like she didn't believe him.
...
She surveyed him again, and Cassian willed himself to stand still, to appear open and nonthreatening and not like his very heart was in his bloody, outstretched hands.

She said at last, 'Fine. Let's just say it will be a favour. Of whatever size I wish.'

It was dangerous to allow this. Deadly. Stupid. But he said. 'Yes.'

He extended his hand. One last time.

Keep reaching out your hand.

'A bargain.' He met her steely expression with his own. 'You train with me for an hour, and I'll owe you one favour of whatever size you wish.'

'Agreed.' She slid her hand into his and shook firmly.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A ​Court of Silver Flames

“I’m not going to say yes to Trey,” I said. “If he asks, it’s a no from me. You’ll never get the grandchildren you want.”
― Jenn McKinlay, It Happened One Christmas Eve