Quotes About Experience

You didn't have to enjoy every aspect of each life to keep having the option of experiencing them. You just had to never give up on the idea that there would be a life somewhere that could be enjoyed.

Things I should do less of on the internet Post about a meaningful experience, when I could be having an actual meaningful experience.

But the truth is, it only half-works, you know? Places are places and memories are memories and life is fucking life.

Sad things happen in life. They just do. But so do happy things.

You arrived, with baby feet and hands and infinite happiness, and then the happiness slowly evaporated as your feet and hands grew bigger.

After all, we aren't just who we are born. We are who we become. We are what life does to us. And she, born four hundred years ago, has had a lot of it, has done a lot of living.

I mean, it would have made things a lot easier if we understood there was no way of living that can immunize you against sadness. And that sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness. You can't have one without the other. Of course, they come in different degrees and quantities. But there is no life where you can be in a state of sheer happiness forever. And imagining there is just breeds more unhappiness in the life you're in.

I traveled with my work. I went to Paris, Boston, Rome, São Paolo, Berlin, Madrid, Tokyo. I wanted to fill my mind with human faces, in order to forget Isobel's. But I achieved the opposite effect. By studying the entire human species, I felt more toward her specifically. By thinking of the cloud, I thirsted for the raindrop.

It is a wistful smile. The kind of smile no one is capable of before the age of forty. The kind that contains sadness and defiance and amusement all at once.

I click through her photos.

They live in your mind, the way they always lived inside

People didn't feel the enormity of the world or their own smallness within it. When I first travelled around the globe, it took over a year, on a boat full of men, who were lucky if they made it. Now, the world is just there. All of it. In an hour I will be on a flight to Sydney, and by lunchtime I will have arrived. It makes me feel claustrophobic, as if the world is literally shrinking, like a balloon losing air.

A sore throat doesn't become less sore simply because you've felt it before.

You don't need the world to understand you. It's fine. Some people will never really understand things they haven't experienced. Some will. Be grateful.

Depression for me was total exposure. A red-raw, naked mind. A skinned personality. A brain in a jar full of the acid that is experience. I'm not talking about all that What doesn't kill you makes you stronger stuff. No. That's simply not true. What doesn't kill you very often makes you weaker. What doesn't kill you can leave you limping for the rest of your life.

it would have made things a lot easier if we understood there was no way of living that can immunise you against sadness.

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.

I regret not having a gap year after university.

Sometimes regrets aren't based on fact at all. Sometimes regrets are just . . .' She searched for the appropriate term

And besides, she knew her regrets. Regrets don't leave. They weren't mosquito bites. They itch for ever.

A veces la única manera de aprender es vivir.

Je hoeft het leven niet te begrijpen. Je hoeft het alleen maar te léven.

Entre a vida e a morte, há uma biblioteca — disse ela. — E, dentro dessa biblioteca, as prateleiras não têm fim. Cada livro oferece uma oportunidade de experimentar outra vida que você poderia ter vivido. De ver como as coisas seriam se tivesse feito outras escolhas... Você teria feito algo diferente, se houvesse a chance de desfazer tudo de que se arrepende?

I now realise it is perfectly possible for anyone to feel old. All they need to do is become a teacher.