Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss.

The line is widely attributed to screenwriter Eric Roth as dialogue from the film *The Curious Case of Benjamin Button* (2008). In the movie’s reflective, voiceover-driven narration, characters look back on how chance encounters and small decisions ripple outward, shaping lives in ways no one can fully foresee. The sentiment fits the film’s broader preoccupation with time, contingency, and the poignancy of paths taken versus paths not taken—especially as the protagonist’s unusual life course makes the role of timing and missed connections feel unusually stark.

The quote frames a life story as the sum of openings that appear—some seized, some ignored, some lost to circumstance. Its key twist is that missed opportunities still “define” us: regret, unrealized potential, and the counterfactual lives we imagine become part of our identity and memory. The line also suggests a moral humility about agency. We like to narrate our lives as products of intention, but the quote insists that contingency and absence matter too—what didn’t happen can shape character as powerfully as what did. In that sense, it invites both acceptance (you are not fully in control) and attentiveness (opportunities are consequential).