Quotes About Experience

But the memory stayed, clinging to the walls of her mind like a slimy black leech.

It wasn't just that her memories of the last ten years were back. It was that her true self, as formed by those ten years, was back. As seductive as it might have been to erase the grief and pain of the last ten years, it was also a lie. Young Alice was a fool. A sweet, innocent fool. Young Alice hadn't experienced ten years of living.

had to run out of a cinema because the smell of the woman's perfume sitting next to me (Opium) combined with her popcorn made me retch.

For her, the smell of cigarettes smelled like love. She dated far too many smokers for this reason.

Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going' Tennessee Williams

Amy, who was handling lockdown far better than her friends, because they had never experienced the permanent low-level sense of existential dread that Amy had been experiencing since she was eight years old.

As soon as she left the attic, she was picked up and swept along by the fast-running current of her life.

Early love is exciting and exhilarating. It's light and bubbly. Anyone can love like that. But love after three children, after a separation and a near-divorce, after you've hurt each other and forgiven each other, bored each other and surprised each other, after you've seen the worst and the best—well, that sort of a love is ineffable. It

forty being the "precise age where you're old enough and young enough to handle a revelation".

She couldn't shake the feeling that if she didn't record this moment on her phone then it wasn't really happening, it didn't count

Me entran ganas de gritar a la mujer que era yo hace unos años: «¡Quedarte embarazada no significa que vayas a tener un hijo, idiota!».

Erika, because she had no experience of it, and because part of her would always believe that visitors were to be feared and despised.

Real people don't have the answers. They make mistakes. They say things with great authority and they're wrong.

They would think she was savoring the taste (blueberries, cinnamon, cream—excellent), but she was actually savoring the whole morning, trying to catch it, pin it down, keep it safe before all those precious moments became yet another memory.

Now it was hard to remember ever feeling innocent and audacious enough to dream of a certain type of life, as if you got to choose how things turned out.

I wish my memories would blur a bit,' Savannah had said, looking into her glass. 'I remember everything. The details never fade.

Now it seemed like she could twist the lens on her life and see it from two entirely different perspectives. The perspective of her younger self. Her younger, sillier, innocent self. And her older, wiser, more cynical and sensible self. And

He'd be fine. Every child went to school. They survived. They learned the rules of life.

dissatisfied feeling she often experienced when

It was similar to that intense way you felt when you were newly in love, or newly pregnant, or driving a car on your own for the very first time. Everything felt significant.

It's called guided psychedelic therapy," said Masha. "As your ego dissolves you will access a higher level of consciousness. A curtain will be drawn back and you will see the world in a way you've never seen it before.

after a fancy-dress fortieth, and a very weird sober kiss with a fat man in the

No surprise you're in pain, no surprise you're dead. You're old. That's what is meant to happen. We don't care that you forget you're old. We know you're old.

was funny how she'd always thought she had ample supplies of empathy; it turned out that to be truly empathetic she had to experience it.