Quotes About Experience

It is strange that the tactile sense, which is so infinitely less precious to men than sight, becomes at critical moments our main, if not only, handle to reality.

The days of my youth, as I look back on them; seem to fly away from me in a flurry of pale repetitive scraps like those morning snow storms of used tissue paper that a train passenger sees whirling in the wake of the observation can.

Both were diverted by life's young fumblings, both saddened by the wisdom of time

When, on a Sunday evening in May 1876, Anna throws herself under the freight train, she has existed more than four years since the beginning of the novel, but in the case of the Lyovins, during the same period, 1872 to 1876, hardly three years have elapsed. It is the best example of relativity in literature that is known to me.

The kind of poem I produced in those days was hardly anything more than a sign I made of being alive, of passing or having passed, or hoping to pass, through certain intense human emotions. It was a phenomenon of orientation rather than of art, thus comparable to stripes of paint on a roadside rock or to a pillared heap of stones marking a mountain trail.

Then, after all the excitement, I shall experience a certain satiation of suffering--perhaps on the mountain pass to a kind of happiness which it is too early for me to know (I know only that when I reach it, it will be with pen in hand).

It is childish to study a work of fiction in order to gain information about a country or about a social class or about the author.

But after all we are not children, not illiterate juvenile delinquents, not English public school boys who after a night of homosexual romps have to endure the paradox of reading the Ancients in expurgated versions.

From early childhood his mother had taught him that to discuss in public a profound emotional experience-which, in the open air, immediately evanesces and fades, and, oddly, becomes similar to an analogous experience of one's interlocutor-was not only vulgar, but also a sin against sentiment.

Actually she was at least in her late twenties (I never established her exact age for even her passport lied) and had mislaid her virginity under circumstances that changed with her reminiscent moods.

Elmenni annyi, mint kicsit meghalni, és meghalni annyi, mint kicsit túl messze menni.

An author's fondest dream is to turn the reader into a spectator; is this ever attained?

Dimly, I recall running up to his chair to show him a pretty pebble, which he slowly examined and then slowly put into his mouth.

The more you love a memory; the stronger and stranger it becomes

The more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.

If only it were possible to juicily belch up the life one's lived, chew it anew and gulp it down, and then once more to roll it with a fat, ox-like tongue, to squeeze from its eternal dregs the former sweetness of crisp grass, drunk with the morning dew and the bitterness of lilac leaves!

As Ganin looked up at the skeletal roof in the ethereal sky he realized with merciless clarity that his affair with Mary was ended forever. It had lasted no more than four days—four days which were perhaps the happiest days of his life. But now he had exhausted his memories, was sated by them, and the image of Mary, together with that of the old dying poet, now remained in the house of ghosts, which itself was already a memory

Nemcsak a gondolatok, hanem egyszersmint a dolgok világában is élünk. A szavak tapasztalat nélkül értelmetlenek.

Kilencvennégy évesen is szerette újra átélni azt az elsÅ' szerelmes nyarat, s nem úgy, mint egy épp az imént látott álmot, hanem mint a múltbéli tudat felidézését, amelynek révén leküzdötte a szürke hajnali órákat a felületes alvás és az aznapi elsÅ' tabletta között.

It is fun to be present at the coming true of a dream, even if it is not one's own.

The more you love a memory, the stronger and the stranger it becomes.

I notice I may have somehow mixed up two events, my visit with Rita to Briceland on our way to Cantrip, and our passing through Briceland again on our way back to New York, but such suffusions of swimming colors are not to be disdained by the artist in recollection.

Oh, said Haze, poor me should know, I went through that when I was a kid: boys twisting one's hair, hurting one's breasts, flipping one's skirt.

Egy elegáns elsÅ' osztályú fülkében, egyik keszty?s kezünket bedugva a bársony ajtóhurokba, könny? nagyon világlátott embernek érezni magunkat, miközben nézzük a szorgosan elsuhanó tájat.