Quotes About Experience

It was one of those moments when we suddenly recall a dream that we've unaccountably forgotten, and back in a flood comes all the emotion we felt in our sleep

And we have the right to refuse to guide them if they lie, or if they hold anything back, or if they have nothing to tell us. If they live in the world, they should see and touch and hear and love and learn things. We shall make an exception for infants who have not had time to learn anything, but otherwise, if they come down here bringing nothing, we shall not guide them out.

I heard a baby cry. And this blood-splattered thing was put in my arms. My child. And, at that moment, it was like a gigantic plug appeared and - POW! - I was plugged into humanity in a way I'd never been before. Never could be. I was part of all mothers and all births from the beginning of time. I was a woman in a mud hut in Africa, in an igloo in the Arctic, a wigwam in America, a cave, a skyscraper, a spaceship. I was part of a flow and that flow was blood -

Nothing bad can happen to a writer. Everything is material.

In my childhood I led the life of a sage, when I grew up I started climbing trees

Dreams? If only they had been! But I don't need dreams, Doctor, that's why I hardly have them—because I have this life instead. With me it all happens in broad daylight!

I was a biography in constant motion, memory to the marrow of my bones.

Like all enjoyable things, you see, it has unenjoyable parts to it.

The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget about being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that—well, lucky you.

You had to be there to see what it looked like. They live in a dream, and we live in a nightmare.

Rimane il fatto che, in ogni modo, capire bene la gente non è vivere. Vivere è capirla male, capirla male e male e poi male e, dopo un attento riesame, ancora male. Ecco come sappiamo di essere vivi: sbagliando. Forse la cosa migliore sarebbe dimenticare di aver ragione o torto sulla gente e godersi semplicemente la gita. Ma se ci riuscite... Beh, siete fortunati.

To those not yet old, being old means you've been. But being old also means that despite, in addition to, and in excess of your beenness, you still are. Your beenness is very much alive. You still are, and one is as haunted by the still-being and its fullness as by the having-already-been, by the pastness. Think of old age this way: it's just an everyday fact that one's life is at stake.

Noi siamo, dopotutto, la somma delle nostre esperienze, e l'esperienza comprende non soltanto ciò che facciamo concretamente, ma anche ciò che privatamente immaginiamo.

Am I mistaken to think that even back then, in the vivid present, the fullness of life stirred our emotions to an extraordinary extent? Has anywhere since so engrossed you in its ocean of details? The detail, the immensity of the detail, the force of the detail, the weight of the detailthe rich endlessness of detail surrounding you in your young life like the six feet of dirt that'll be packed on your grave when you're dead

You get them wrong before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you're with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them wrong all again...That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that- well, lucky you.

To be alive, to him, is to be made of memory—to him if a man's not made of memory, he's made of nothing.

One's story isn't a skin to be shed— it's inescapable, one's body and blood. You go on pumping it out till you die, the story veined with the themes of your life, the ever-recurring story that's at once your invention and the invention of you.

Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre.

Life is just a short period of time in which we are alive.

Madeline displayed the bright sadder-but-wiser outlook of an alert first grader who'd discovered the alphabet in a school where Ecclesiastes is the primer—life is futility, a deeply terrible experience, but the really serious thing is reading.

The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong.

The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that--well, lucky you.

I left the front stoop on Leslie Street, ate of the fruit of the tree of fiction, and nothing, neither reality nor myself, has been the same since.

Das Alter ist kein Kampf; es ist ein Massaker.