Quotes About Experience

How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.

We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.

The key to finding a terrific mentor is not to pursue someone who is at the very top of the profession, but to find someone who two years ago was where you are now. He or she will be most familiar with your current situation, and have relevant, timely experiences and perspective to share.

The menu is not the meal.

What's that line from TS Eliot? To arrive at the place where you started, but to know it for the first time. I'm able to write about a breakup from a different place. Same brokenness. Same rock-bottom. But a little more informed, now I'm older. Thank God for growing up.

If I could sell 500 million records every time, it would be great. But I've also had the luxury experience of having it when I was a teenager, in a very kind of model version of it.

You live, you learn You love, you learn You cry, you learn You lose, you learn You bleed, you learn You scream, you learn

Swallow it down (what a jagged little pill)

If there was a lesson to be taken from history, it was that men lived but never learned from

Yes, I was actually an acting teacher for a while.

Readers develop unique histories with the books they read. It may not be immediately apparent at the time of reading, but the person you were when you read the book, the place you were where you read the book, your state of mind while you read it, your personal situation (happy, frustrated, depressed, bored) and so on – all these factors, and others, make the simple experience of reading a book a far more complex and multi-layered affair than might be thought.

Man is ... essentially a story-telling animal. That means I can only answer the question 'what am I to do?' if I can answer the prior question of 'what story or stories do I find myself a part of?

Friends have suggested that I am the least qualified person to talk about happiness, because I am often down, and sometimes profoundly depressed. But I think that's where my qualification comes from. Because to know happiness, it helps to know unhappiness.

But that was good enough for me, because adventure doesn't always have to be about climbing K2. Just getting out there and doing something is sometimes good enough. In fact, you shouldn't even compare your trip with climbing K2. You should compare it with the realistic alternative that faces most people with busy lives and tight diaries, which is doing no adventure at all.

I am far more interested in being a beginner than in trying to become an expert. Life is difficult and complicated for everyone - but it's very, very short.

It is always worth making a little effort to find a special spot to sleep because the memories and the smug Instagram photo last long after you've got your breath back. Bivvying

I have discovered that coming up with an interesting plan (and committing to making it happen) is virtually all you need to do to guarantee an interesting, challenging and rewarding experience.

When you travel, the world comes real and three-dimensional, impossibly vivid

It is easy to begin but hard to stick at, which is why I respect anyone who has completed a long hike. You learn a lot, someone, by hiking in the hills

I now believe there is something even more important than striving for the remarkable. And that is to stop dreaming about an adventure of a lifetime, and instead pursue a lifetime of living adventure through a daily pledge to push myself a little, scare myself now and then and remain curious

Only the curious have, if they live, a tale worth telling at all.

I wish to have both things in my life: adventure and comfort.

It's not how far you've come that matters. It's where you've come from.

You don't usually think of boredom as something similar to pain. That's because you've only been exposed to it in relatively small doses. You don't know its true colour. The difference between the boredom you know and the boredom I know is like the difference between touching snow and putting your hand in a vat of liquid nitrogen.