Life & Wisdom Quote by Martin Goldsmith

Goldsmith’s line lands like a shrug that’s secretly a clenched fist. “That’s life” is the classic dismissal, the phrase people use to seal up disappointment and move on. Then he immediately violates that calm, letting “fate” become physical, petty, and intentional: it doesn’t merely frustrate you, it “sticks out a foot.” The comedy is dark because it’s mundane. This isn’t Greek-tragedy destiny with thunderbolts; it’s the cheap shot in a hallway, the kind of bad luck that feels personal precisely because it’s small.

The intent is to capture that paranoid-but-relatable sensation that every choice carries its own trapdoor. “Whichever way you turn” kills the fantasy of the right path. Goldsmith isn’t arguing that effort is useless; he’s describing the emotional texture of effort under uncertainty, when every decision is made in partial darkness and judged in harsh daylight. The subtext is about agency under siege: you keep moving, but you’re moving through an environment that seems rigged to humble you.

As a writer, Goldsmith is also tipping his hand about narrative itself. Stories need friction. A protagonist who isn’t tripped doesn’t change; a life without abrupt missteps doesn’t read as life, it reads as propaganda. By giving fate a literal foot, he makes misfortune feel both absurd and intimate - and that’s why the line sticks. It licenses disappointment without romanticizing it, and it turns resignation into a wry, survivable joke.