Quotes About Experience

First novels were always at least somewhat autobiographical,

sometimes a mindfuck was a satisfying and productive fuck after all.

But maybe in life, she thought later, there are not only moments of strangeness but moments of knowledge, which don't appear at the time as knowledge at all

So many people don't even know what hits them when they grow up. They feel clobbered over the head the minute the first thing goes wrong, and they spend the rest of their lives trying to avoid pain at all costs. But you all know that avoiding pain is impossible. And I think having that knowledge, plus the experiences you've lived through, make you definitely not fragile. They make you brave.

Yeah, you were lucky you got to come here when you did. But what was most exciting about it when you were here was the fact that you were young. That was the best part.

certain concrete signs of optimism were no longer as central a part of the school experience: the smell of pencils, for instance, with their suggestion of woodshop and campgrounds and the promise of some precocious kid's standout in-class essay.

Siempre he tenido la sensación de que uno se pasa la vida como… preparándose para los grandes momentos, ¿sabes? Pero cuando llegan, a veces no te sientes nada preparado, o incluso resulta que no son como habías pensado. Y eso es lo que los hace extraños. La realidad es realmente distinta de la fantasía.

The food was bad but the conversation was vigorous as they sat and talked about many of the campers

Walking into someone's house was like entering their body. You saw what they were made of, and what they had been stewing in all this time.

Those moments of strangeness. Life is full of them.

It's weird," she said, "the way sometimes you're in your life, but other times you're looking back at it like a spectator. It kind of goes back and forth, back and forth." "And then you die." She laughed a little. "Yes. And then you die.

He was a little young to go crazy, but it happened to people.

Now, deep into the Reagan years, you should still feel the sad spillover from that quaintly vanished era, and you could go with your best friend to this friendly sex toy store located in an anonymous office building, and stand together, silently shaking with laughter, both teenaged and fully grown all at once, knowing that you would never have to choose between those different states of maturity, because you contained them both inside yourselves.

You're all equipped for the world, for adulthood, in a way that most people aren't," she continues. "So many people don't even know what hits them when they grow up. They feel clobbered over the head the minute the first thing goes wrong, and they spend the rest of their lives trying to avoid pain at all costs. But you all know that avoiding pain is impossible. And I think having that knowledge, plus the experiences you've lived through, make you definitely not fragile. They make you brave.

the Olympian vantage point that time provides:

Ce se întâmpl? în Belzhar, orice ar fi, nu las? nicio urm? în lumea real?. Nicio umbr?, niciun fel de reziduu.

Throw yourself into new experiences... Why not try to use your 'outside voice'? You know, I sometimes think that the most effective people in the world are introverts who taught themselves how to be extroverts.

Greer, Zee, and Chloe were an unlikely trio, but she had heard this was typical of social life in the first weeks of college. People who had nothing in common were briefly and emotionally joined, like the members of a jury or the supervisors of a plane crash. Chloe took them across West Quad, and then they looped around behind the fortress of the Metzger Library, which was all lit up and poignantly empty, like a 24-hour supermarket in the middle of the night.

Everybody's grown-up, everybody's old, and the normal rules do apply.

What you knew, felt and wanted now, and the way you could love now, had a long valley of seriousness running through it that had always perhaps been there, though to a lesser extent.

Both beds had extra-long sheets, a weird detail of college life. After college, sheets would immediately shorten to their normal length.

It was the best night ever. And they hadn't talked about any of it since.

So many things you never think you'll do until you do them.

The world is blood-hot and personal. —Sylvia Plath