Quotes About Experience

Now looking across my latte at this confident smiling Starbucks employee I felt sorry for myself. She seemed carefree to me so young so full of options. Later I would learn that she had seen more hardship in her life than I could conceive of having seen in three lifetimes.

Only after a person has their heart broken does the world appear as it truly is.

One thing that is clear is that we do not always want to relive the experience of the Romans; although sometimes what they did is entirely to be admired and envied, in other respects they were detestable. Most of what they achieved was based upon the use of force. The culture that has given us their unequaled masterpieces was created and maintained, in the last resort, by violent means that modern societies could not, or should not, tolerate today…

Not that i wrote it on the wall, but i was here... i lived and that's all that matters.

Films that are entertainments give simple answers but I think that's ultimately more cynical, as it denies the viewer room to think. If there are more answers at the end, then surely it is a richer experience.

All movies assault the viewer in one way or another.

Knowledge is the wisdom of one passing on the accumulation of their experience to others.

People don't hire resumes. People hire people.

I'd never seen a guy get the shit kicked out of him without a punch being landed, but there's a first time for everything, and my father had shown how to do it. Principle Spence offered nothing in return.

Keep in mind that no matter how successful you were in dancing your animal, that in itself is not proof that you still have its power. You may only be dancing a memory. A successful experience does suggest, however, that you may have at least had such a guardian spirit in the past, if not now. The dancing itself, however, is no proof in itself, one way or another.

I grew up reading Holocaust literature at the beach, Gulag literature on winter holidays, Vietnam memoirs on spring break.

For most of my life, I've always been the youngest one at the table, and it's something I've come to expect, maybe take for granted.

you could also hear the other, some young soldier speaking in all bloody innocence, saying, 'All that's just a load, man. We're here to kill gooks. Period.' Which wasn't at all true of me. I was there to watch.

Page took the record that was playing on the turntable off without asking anybody and put on Jimi Hendrix: long tense organic guitar line that made him shiver like frantic electric ecstasy was shooting up from the carpet through his spine straight to the old pleasure center in his cream-cheese brain, shaking his head so that his hair waved all around him, Have You Ever Been Experienced?

Sometimes you go so far in your life, you can't get back though you know it's not really your life.

20. Everybody's got to learn sometimes (The Korgis) 19. Annie's song (John Denver) 18. Eleanor Rigby (The Beatles) 17. Leaving on a jet plane (Peter, Paul and Mary)

I don't want you seeing so many R-rated movies!" she said, trying to be a mother. "Mom, life is an R-rated subject.

I'm a dad, I'm a husband, I'm an activist, I'm a writer and I'm just a student of the world.

I always felt that I came up short in the education department, but I've come to the conclusion that we all get an education.

Going public was a difficult decision, and I had misgivings. My subjective experience was now an objective fact in the wider world. It didn't belong to just me anymore - though I quickly learned that it hadn't belonged to just me in the first place. More than a million Americans and their families were going through the same thing; some openly, some in secret due to concerns of being misunderstood and marginalized.

I might have skipped class, but I didn't miss any lessons.

Personally, I didn't take a single photograph while I was there, but that's not all that unusual for me. I suppose my aversion to snapping pictures may have something to do with shaky hands and blurry results, but there's another reason: The act of lifting up the camera and positioning it between me and the object of my interest separates me from the experience.

It seems to me that the quality of a moment in time is not always a reflection of the moment in and of itself—what happens before and what happens after are often what give it its savor.

When I visit the past now, it is for wisdom and experience, not for regret or shame.