Quotes About Routine

She and I would trade books, talk endlessly, drink cheap whiskey, engage in unremarkable sex. You know, the stuff of everyday.

Each day the sun would rise and set, the flag would be raised and lowered. Each Sunday I would have a date with my dead friend's girl. I had no idea what I was doing or what I was going to do.

It wasn't like there was some obvious change. Actually, the problem was more a lack of change. Nothing about her had changed - the way she spoke, her clothes, the topics she chose to talk about, her opinions - they were all the same as before. Their relationship was like a pendulum gradually grinding to a halt, and he felt out of synch.

He followed his daily routine, and she followed hers. But without her there, Tengo noticed a human-shaped void she had left behind.

Somerset Maugham once wrote that in each shave lies a philosophy. I couldn't agree more. No matter how mundane some action might appear, keep at it long enough and it becomes contemplative, even meditative act.

The library was like a second home. Or maybe more like a real home, more than the place I lived in. By going every day I got to know all the lady librarians who worked there. They knew my name and always said hi. I was painfully shy, though, and could barely reply.

but I was not, in the true sense of the word, alive. I simply performed the mundane tasks that were handed to me, one after another

A regular wind-up toy world this is, I think. Once a day the wind-up bird has to come and wind the springs of this world. Alone in this fun house, only I grow old, a pale softball of death swelling inside me. Yet even as I sleep somewhere between Saturn and Uranus, wind-up birds everywhere are busy at work fulfilling their appointed rounds.

Le travail ne représentait qu'ennui pour moi, je détestais aller au bureau. Je me sentais vraiment oppressé. J'avais l'impression que mon moi véritable se rétrécissait de plus en plus, et que j'allais finir par disparaître.

Just as you take care of the birds and the fields every morning, every morning I wind my own spring. I give it some thirty-six good twists by the time I've gotten up, brushed my teeth, shaved, eaten breakfast, changed my clothes, left the dorm, and arrived at the university. I tell myself, Ok, let's make this day another good one.

Beside the road cows are lazily chewing grass. They show zero interest in the runners. They're too busy eating grass to care about all these whimsical people and their nonsensical activities. And for their part the runners don't have the leisure to pay attention to what the cows are up to, either.

Like a person in a storm desperately grasping at a lamppost, he clung to his daily routine.

Then I got undressed and, crawling under the covers, sat up in bed and sipped my drink. I felt like I was going to fade out any second, but I had to allow myself this luxury. A ritual interlude I like so much between the time I get into bed and the time I fall asleep. Having a drink in bed while listening to music and reading a book. As precious to me as a beautiful sunset or good clean air.

I could drink my coffee, read my book, pass the time of day without any special thought, all because I was part of the regular scenery. Here I had no ties to anyone. Fact is, I'd come to reclaim myself.

The minute you leave your house, all phones sound alike.

People need routines. It's like a theme in music. But it also restricts your thoughts and actions and limits your freedom. It structures your priorities and some cases distorts your logic.

I stepped out of the shower and dried my hair, rubbed on body lotion, cleaned my ears. Then to the kitchen to heat up the last of the coffee. Only to discover: no one sitting at the opposite side of the table. Staring at that chair where no one sat, I felt like a tiny child in a De Chirico painting, left behind all alone in a foreign country.

The longer you stay in here , the more you get to thinking that things are normal.

no meter la pata debido a las prisas, no seguir siempre las mismas rutinas y, cuando hubiera que mentir, contar mentiras lo más sencillas que se pudiera

Day after day I took part in producing nothingness. Perhaps I was quite used to facing nothingness day after day - though I wouldn't go so far as to say we were intimate.

There is good evidence that when people are put under pressure, they regress to their most habituated ways of responding

We humans are no more mysterious to surgeons than toilets are to plumbers. The cardiologist that the valve replacement was routine and I believed him. He gave me a choice between pig, cow, and manufactured. How serious could this be if it involved shopping?

Good habits are as addictive as bad habits, and a lot more rewarding.

My dad still sat in his chair and smoked, watching Westerns and drinking whiskey, and my mom still read and talked on the phone and would scratch my back if I asked her. But there was a strange resistance in her, some stubbornness that made her unreachable, and the way Dad kept his jaw set was a fence around him.