Quotes About Experience

everyone who is interesting has a past

Mom always said people worried too much about their children. Suffering when you are young is good for you, she said. It immunized your body and your soul.

People worried too much about their children. Suffering when you're young is good for you. It immunized your body and soul...

Mom also hinted a couple of times that it was good I was going to college, since with one failed marriage behind me, I 'd have trouble landing a good husband and would need something to fall back on. A package that's been opened once doesn't have the same appeal.

Lori wanted Mom to try on the glasses, too. Mom slipped them on and, blinking, looked around the room. She studied one of her own paintings quietly, then handed the glasses back to Lori. "Did you see better?" I asked. "I wouldn't say better," Mom answered. "I'd say different.

spend the afternoon making a meal that will be gone in an hour

Mom said we should all live near the Pacific Ocean at least once in our lives, so we kept going all the way to San Francisco.

Life is a drama full of tragedy and comedy," Mom told me. "You should learn to enjoy the comic episodes a little more.

This is what I thought: for the most banal even to become an adventure, you must (and this is enough) begin to recount it. This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell.

I have crossed the seas, I have left cities behind me, and I have followed the source of rivers towards their source or plunged into forests, always making for other cities. I have had women, I have fought with men ; and I could never turn back any more than a record can spin in reverse. And all that was leading me where ? To this very moment...

You must be like me; you must suffer in rhythm.

To know what life is worth you have to risk it once in a while.

I exist. It is soft, so soft, so slow. And light: it seems as though it suspends in the air. It moves.

But for me there is neither Monday nor Sunday: there are days which pass in disorder, and then, sudden lightning like this one. Nothing has changed and yet everything is different. I can't describe it, it's like the Nausea and yet it's just the opposite: at last an adventure happens to me and when I question myself I see that it happens that I am myself and that I am here; I am the one who splits in the night, I am as happy as the hero of a novel.

We must act out passion before we can feel it.

The Nausea is not inside me: I feel it out there in the wall, in the suspenders, everywhere around me. It makes itself one with the café, I am the one who is within it.

I exist. It's sweet, so sweet, so slow. And light: you'd think it floated all by itself. It stirs. It brushes by me, melts and vanishes. Gently, gently. There is bubbling water in my throat, it caresses me- and now it comes up again into my mouth. For ever I shall have a little pool of whitish water in my mouth - lying low - grazing my tongue. And this pool is still me. And the tongue. And the throat is me.

For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.

I marvel at these young people: drinking their coffee, they tell clear, plausible stories. If they are asked what they did yesterday, they aren't embarrassed: they bring you up to date in a few words. If I were in their place, I'd fall all over myself.

I wanted the moments of my life to follow and order themselves like those of a life remembered. You might as well try and catch time by the tail.

This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his life as if he were recounting it.

With older people, it's quite different. They're reliable, they show you what to do, and there's solidity in their affection.

You talk a lot about this amazing flow of time but you hardly see it. you see a women, you think that one day she'll be old, only you don't see her grow old. But there are moments when you think you see her grow old and feel yourself growing old with her: this is the feeling of adventure.

Voici ce que j'ai pensé : pour que l'événement le plus banal devienne une aventure, il faut et il suffit qu'on se mette à la raconter. C'est ce qui dupe les gens : un homme, c'est toujours un conteur d'histoires, il vit entouré de ses histoires et des histoires d'autrui, il voit tout ce qui lui arrive à travers elles ; et il cherche à vivre sa vie comme s'il la racontait. Mais il faut choisir : vivre ou raconter.