Quotes About Experience

By that point, our adventures were long behind us, but for me it was more than enough, for the longest ride continued.

we always bring ourselves with us wherever we go.

Each death is as unique as each life.

The damage that you have inflicted heals over, and the scarred places left behind have unusual surface areas, roughnesses enough to become the nodes around which wisdom weaves its fibrils.

The feeling that you are stupider than you were is what finally interests you in the really complex subjects of life: in change, in experience, in the ways other people have adjusted to disappointment and narrowed ability. You realize that you are no prodigy, your shoulders relax, and you begin to look around you, seeing local color unrivaled by blue glows of algebra and abstraction.

There are no key terms. There are no themes, no thesis sentences. There are no main ideas. Life's curriculum is infinite. Most of the interesting things we know we can't explain. Most of what we need to know we were not taught.

one of the main things that school taught, I realized, was how to lie to get by.

Legendary King Midas never knew the feel of silk or a human hand after everything he touched turned to gold. Humans are stuck in a similar Midas-like predicament: we can't directly experience the true texture of quantum reality because everything we touch turns to matter.

Human beings are stuck in a Midas-like predicament: we can't directly experience the true texture of reality because everything we touch turns to matter.

Legendary King Midas never knew the feel of silk or a human hand after everything he touched turned to gold. Humans are stuck in a similar Midas-like predicament: we can't directly experience the true texture of reality because everything we touch turns to matter.

There had been times when he knew, somewhere in him, that he would get used to it, whatever it was, because he had learnt that some hard things became softer after a very little while.

Human beings are millions of things in one day.

Maybe the best thing to do with favorite books is to leave them be: to achieve such exalted position means that they entered your life at exactly the right time, in precisely the right place, and those conditions can never be recreated.

And what would happen if we never read the classics? There comes a point in life, it seems to me, where you have to decide whether you're a Person of Letters or merely someone who loves books, and I'm beginning to see that the book lovers have more fun.

So please, be tolerant of those who describe a sporting moment as their best ever. We do not lack imagination, nor have we had sad and barren lives; it is just that real life is paler, duller, and contains less potential for unexpected delirium.

A couple of months ago, I became depressed by the realization that I'd forgotten pretty much everything I've ever read. I have, however, bounced back: I am now cheered by the realization that if I've forgotten everything I've ever read then I can read some of my favorite books again as if for the first time .

Life isn't, and has never been, a 2-0 home victory after a fish and chip lunch.

People go on about the first time being important, but it's the second time that really matters. Or the second person, anyway.

No time spent with a book is ever entirely wasted, even if the experience is not a happy one: there's always something to be learned. It's just that, every now and again, you hit a patch of reading that makes you feel as if you're pootling about… But what can you do about it? We don't choose to waste our reading time; it just happens. The books let us down.

It's like everyone's a supporting actor in the film of your life story.

It is important that we are occasionally, perhaps even frequently, depressed by books, challenged by films, shocked by paintings, maybe even disturbed by music. But do they have to do all these things all the time? Can't we let them console, uplift, inspire, move, cheer?

How can that not leave you bruised somewhere? How can that not turn you into the sort of person liable to break into little bits when your first love goes all wrong? What came first, the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person?

Experience, then, was something that enabled you to do nothing with a clear conscience. Experience was an overrated quality.

some things were better, some were worse, and the only way one can ever learn to understand one's own youth is by accepting both halves of the proposition.