Quotes About Experience

My guess is that you can only be so happy. While there seems to be no floor to sorrow.

The man looked up wearily. You aint callin me a liar are ye son? I aint ye son. How old are you? That's some more of your business. How old are you? He's fifteen. You hush your damn mouth. He turned to the man. He dont speak for me, he said. He's done spoke. I was fifteen year old when I was first shot. I aint never been shot. You aint sixteen yet neither.

Die Geschichte ist eine Sammlung von Papier. Ein paar verblassende Erinnerungen. Nach einer Weile ist das, was nicht geschrieben steht, nie geschehen.

The straight and the winding way are one and now that you are here what do the years count since last we two met together? Men's memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not.

My daddy used to tell me not to chew on somethin that was eatin you. Yessir.

Most people don't ever see anyone die. It used to be if you grew up in a family you saw everybody die. They died in their bed at home with everyone gathered around. Death is the major issue in the world. For you, for me, for all of us. It just is. To not be able to talk about it is very odd.

One could even say that what endows any thing with significance is solely the history in which it has participated. Yet wherein does that history lie?

We're all of us pretty much an assemblage of memories.

it was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all.

I've studied much and learned little.

a fast car and an open road can give you a sensation that's hard to duplicate elsewhere or otherwise.

Did I kill a lot of people? I been asked that question a few times. But never before by a man. I told this one girl I was seeing that yes I had killed a bunch of gooks but that I hadnt eaten any of them.

Ci sono un sacco di cose che sembrano più belle, viste da lontano. Si? Almeno così la penso io. E hai ragione. La vita passata, per esempio. Già. E magari anche la vita non ancora vissuta.

They listened with great attention as John Grady answered their questions and they nodded solemnly and they were careful of their demeanor that they not be thought to have opinions on what they heard for like most men skilled at their work they were scornful of any least suggestion of knowing anything not learned at first hand.

Solo hay una verdad, dijo John Grady. La verdad es lo que ocurrió. No es lo que sale de la boca de alguien.

There is no such joy in the tavern as upon the road thereto

Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real. The events that cause them can never be forgotten (135)

it was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all.

a book always keeps something of its owner between its pages.

Blue as the evening sky, blue as cranesbill flowers, blue as the lips of drowned men and the heart of a blaze burning with too hot a flame. Yes, sometimes it was hot in this world, too. Hot and cold, light and dark, terrible and beautiful, it was everything all at once. It wasn't true that you felt nothing in the land of Death. You felt and heard and smelled and saw, but your heart remained strangely calm, as if it were resting before the dance began again. Peace. Was that the word?

Children are caterpillars and adults are butterflies. No butterfly ever remembers what it felt like being a caterpillar.

What are stories for if we don't learn from them?

Ist es nicht seltsam, wie viel dicker ein Buch wird, wenn man es mehrmals liest? [...] Als würde jedes Mal etwas zwischen den Seiten kleben bleiben. Gefühle, Gedanken, Geräusche, Gerüche ... Und wenn du dann nach vielen Jahren wieder in dem Buch blätterst, entdeckst du dich selbst darin, etwas jünger, etwas anders, als hätte das Buch dich aufbewahrt, wie eine gepresste Blüte, fremd und vertraut zugleich.

We all know what fun it can be to get right into a book and live there for a while, but falling out of a story and suddenly finding yourself in this world doesn't seem to be much fun at all.