If I killed every time I got a bad review, there wouldn't be many women left in America.
"If I responded every time they said, 'Yes, I have these thoughts,' by sending them to the E.R., they would spend their lives there," Dr. Shrier said.
"If I decompensated every time there was stress, how would I do my job?" she asked.
Pleasurable food was generally appreciated as crucial to mental health and balance: "If I say every time, 'This and that you can't eat' some people would develop negative feelings and say, 'There's no meaning to life now.'" Restricting food during illness is counterintuitive for many Chinese Americans (16, 17).
But I would be lying if I said that every time I saw a jeep or a bus picking up passengers, I wasn't tempted to jump on and end what, as we coughed in the dust of motor vehicles, was beginning to feel like a pointless exercise.
"If I were offended every time I was criticized, I wouldn't last three days as chancellor," Ms. Merkel said.
If I got violent every time I got some unwanted attention from men, I explained, I would be in jail.
Former France captain Platini said: "If I got suspended every time I insulted a journalist I wouldn't have many caps.
But if I believed that every time I wrote a Nigerian character that he carried the heavy burden of representing "The Nigerian People" in their entirety, well, I would find it hard to write a word.
I guess I would, too, if every time I sat basking amongst my peers in an audience of academics I had to hear about my own death from a bunch of critics who were theoretically trying to kill me, as they are trying to kill him.
