Quotes About Life

We do not, after all, deal in truths, only potentialities. Too much truth can be worse than death, and last longer.

I don't know what makes people do what they do, or call themselves what they call themselves, only that you have to live someone's life to be the expert.

Together—though perhaps only together—they were fully formed. They stayed on the road. Life went on as it had, from the thirties straight into the forties. They owned little—a bit of furniture, their clothes, no car.

Love, Henry remembered thinking then, was a lengthy series of insignificant questions whose answers you couldn't live without.

But if I had to I would say that because I was his son, I can recognize now that life is short and has inadequacies, that once again it requires crucial avoidances as well as fillings-in to be acceptable.

Though when I turn to regard life -- my own or others'-- I now never fail to be struck, amid the onslaught of all that's happened and still is happening, by how much that's gone from me. Absences seem to surround and intrude upon everything. Though in acknowledging this, I cannot let it be a loss or even be a fact I regret, since that is merely how life is--another enduring truth we must notice.

no matter the evidence of your life, or who you believe you are, or what you're willing to take credit for or draw your vital strength and pride from—anything at all can follow anything at all.

Some things can't be explained. They just are. And after a while they disappear, usually forever, or become interesting in another way. Literature's consolations are always temporary, while life is quick to begin again. It is better not even to look so hard, to leave off explaining. Nothing makes me more queasy than to spend time with people who don't know that and who can't forget, and for whom such knowledge isn't a cornerstone of life.

I believe I have done these two things. Faced down regret. Avoided ruin. And I am still here to tell about it.

FIRST, I'LL TELL ABOUT THE ROBBERY OUR PARENTS committed. Then about the murders, which happened later. The robbery is the more important part, since it served to set my and my sister's lives on the courses they eventually followed. Nothing would make complete sense without that being told first.

Things you did,things you never did,things you dreamed. After a long time they run together.

Life's passed along to us empty. We have to make up the happiness part.

Cosas que hiciste. Cosas que nunca hiciste. Cosas que soñaste. Al cabo de un largo tiempo se juntan todas.

mystery about life—the mystery which promises that even with careful notice, much happens that we do not understand.

Though finally the worst thing about regret is that it makes you duck the chance of suffering new regret just as you get a glimmer that nothing's worth doing unless it has the potential to fuck up your whole life.

Les adieux classiques, où tout le monde respecte pieusement les formes, c'est l'exception, dans la vie, pas la règle.

Though finally the worst thing about regret is that it makes you duck the chance of suffering new regret just as you get a glimmer that nothing's worth doing unless it has the potential to fuck up your whole life. A

We drove up onto the interstate and went toward Spokane, where I had lived once and Arlene had, too, though we didn't know each other then the old days, before marriage and children and divorce, before we met the lives we would eventually lead, and that we would be happy with or not.

Our lives were passed on to us empty and our task was to make up being happy.

for your life to be worth anything you must sooner or later face the possibility of terrible, searing regret.

Things happen that seem life-altering, then everything grinds down to being bearable--sometimes slightly better. Which could be a formula for doing anything you fuck-all wanted; or nothing ever meant much--which he did not accept for an instance . . . Still. Who ran their own brain. Your brain ran you.

Though possibly the answer is simple: it is just low-life, some coldness in us all, some helplessness that causes us to misunderstand life when it is pure and plain, makes our existence seem like a border between two nothings, and makes us no more or less than animals who meet on the road watchful, unforgiving, without patience or desire.

Lástima que no estemos expuestos a más momentos inesperados.

We don't know where any of this is going, do we?" she said, and she squeezed my hand tight again. "No," I said. And I knew that was not a bad thing at all, not for anyone, in any life. (Sweethearts, 1986)