Quotes About Experience

In keeping with my family's affection for doomed product lines and hexed formats, we purchased a Betamax. The year before, we'd bought a TRS-80 instead of an Apple II, and in due course we'd unbox Mattel's Intellivision, instead of Atari's legendary gizmo. This was good training for a writer, for the sooner you accept the fact that you are a deluded idiot who is always out of step with reality the better off you will be.

The Declaration [of Independence] is like a map. You trust that it's right but you only know by going out and testing it yourself.

It was the softest bed she had ever lain in. But then, it was the only bed she had ever lain in.

Sometimes such an experience bound one person to another; just as often the shame of one's powerlessness made all witnesses into enemies.

in the slow motion that is the speed of humiliation.

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, because in the end, whatever goes down, whatever you get up to, your triumphs and transgressions, nobody actually understands what it means except for you.

But now that I been out and I been brought back, I nkow there's nothing in here that changes people. In here and out there are the same, but in here no one has to act fake anymore.

Elwood never ceased to marvel how you could walk around and get used to seeing only a fraction of the world. Not knowing you only saw a sliver of the real thing.

If you want to see what this nation is all about, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you'll find the true face of America.

She was sure he had claimed a hundred and one years at his last party. He was only half that, which meant he was the oldest slave anyone on the two Randall plantations had ever met. Once you got that old, you might as well be ninety-eight or a hundred and eight. Nothing left for the world to show you but the latest incarnations of cruelty.

What's wrong with Disneyland? It brings joy to millions and tutors children about the corporate, overbranded world they've been born into.

life is an argument with the world over time.

Once you got that old, you might as well be ninety-eight or a hundred and eight. Nothing left for the world to show you but the latest incarnations of cruelty.

The iron horse still rumbled through the tunnel when she woke. Lumbly's words returned to her: If you want to see what this nation is all about, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you'll find the true face of America. It was a joke, then, from the start. There was only darkness outside the windows on her journeys, and only ever would be darkness.

It was in the realm of his humor, and Carney had doubtless laughed. You get older and the old jokes grow less funny.

Lumbly'nin sözleri yeniden akl?na geldi: 'Bu ülkenin nas?l bir yer olduÄŸunu öÄŸrenmek istiyorsan?z demiryolunu kullan?n derim ben hep. H?zla giderken d??ar? bakarsan?z, Amerika'n?n gerçek yüzünü görürsünüz.' Åžaka yapm??t? adam, demek ki. Yolculuklar? s?ras?nda pencereden bak?nca yaln?zca karanl??? görmüÅŸtü Cora, hep de öyle olacakt?.

Maynard Spencer was a white man in his late fifties, bits of silver in his cropped black hair. A real "crack of dawner," as Harriet used to say, who moved with a deliberate air, as if he rehearsed everything in front of a mirror.

If you want to see what this nation is all about, I always say, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you'll find the true face of America.

When you talk about this trip, and you will, because it was quite a journey and you witnessed many things, there were ups and downs, sudden reversals of fortune and last-minute escapes, it was really something, you will see your friends nod in recognition.

I wrote two five-page short stories, two five-page epics, to audition for my college's creative writing workshops, and was turned down both times. I was crushed, but in retrospect it was perfect training for being a writer. You can keep 'write what you know'—for a true apprenticeship, internalize the world's indifference and accept rejection and failure into your very soul.

She has one pair of worn sneakers, left over from when she first moved to the city and spent long hours on trudging marches between the buildings. Each time she came to the city's edges and saw the churning brown rivers beyond, Lila Mae would hit a right angle and turn back into the buildings, deeper in. She'd never experienced anonymity like that: it's as if the place stimulates enzymes that form a carapace.

The french-fry smell was almost another person in our room, stumbling around in the dark

Step back and the world is a classroom if need be.

Twenty years is a while. They were both older, fatter, and sadder--which is the general trajectory--and that was a nice couple of days.