Quotes About Change

When I was a junior, my school introduced badminton, which was clearly a P.E. department ploy to get me away from the wrestling room, and it worked, since the first time I played badminton was like the first time I tasted sushi or heard the Beatles or read Wordsworth. This was a sport? This counted for gym requirements?

I felt knots untie themselves, knots I didn't know were there. I could already tell there were things happening deep inside of me that were irreversible. Is there any scarier word than "irreversible"? It's a hiss of a word, full of side effects and mutilations. Severe tire damage - no backing up. Falling in love with Renee felt that way.

I still haven't finished unpacking - by the time I do, it'll be time to move again.

When you want to start living, what do you do? How do you start? Where do you go? Who do you need to blow?

For instance, I hated Pearl Jam at the time. I thought they were pompous blowhards. Now, whenever a Pearl Jam song comes on the car radio, I find myself pounding my fist on the dashboard, screaming, "Pearl JAM! Pearl JAM! Now this is rock and roll! Jeremy's SPO-ken! But he's still al-LIIIIIVE!

And they're right—what could be scarier, stupider, than staying together? How else could you totally guarantee that you would always have reasons to be terrified?

It was a smashing time, and then it ended, because that's what times do.

Everything was changing, that was obvious. The world was so full of music, it seemed we could never run out. 'Twas bliss in that dawn to be alive, but to be young and overworked and underexposed and stuck in a nowhere town was very heaven. It was our time, the first one we had to ourselves. It was a smashing time, and then it ended, because that's what times do.

The things we used to do together were alien now. Lonesome star, shine on.

I've been stuck in my little isolation chamber for so long I'm spinning through the same sounds I've been hearing in my head all my life. If I go on this way, I'll get old too fast, without remembering any more sounds than I already know now.

Sometimes I could feel the glaciers shifting inside me, and I hoped they were melting, but they were just making themselves comfortable.

I would have stayed in 1996 if I could have, but it wasn't my choice, so now I have to move either forward or back—it's up to me. Not changing isn't an option. And even though I've changed in so many ways—I'm a different person with a different life—the past is still me every minute.

We were young and in love and the world was changing

always loved this sentence in Our Bodies, Ourselves, the Eighties edition I had in college: "The previous edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves included a brief section on astrological birth control, which just doesn't work." So much going on in that sentence, dispatched with no drama. Maybe a shade of irony, but no hand-wringing—just a change of mind announced as efficiently and discreetly and decisively as possible.

Rod exemplifies the attitude that Losing It is no big deal. He saw that fate coming, and he was already planning to get over it.

Some couples stop making each other tapes—I have no idea what happens to them.

Love dies in many different ways, and it's natural for the grass to seem greener on the other side. But it's not a competition; there's plenty of pain to go around.

Sometimes great tunes happen to bad times, and when the bad time is over, not all the tunes get to move on with you.

People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

As I took Allison to the airport for her flight into San Francisco and the rest of her life, I thought about how lucky her father and I were to have had her in our lives. My time with her was over, though I was sure we would stay in touch. I kept thinking I should be sad, but I felt content more than anything. Now, I'm not saying I won't want to call her every day, and she'll probably die without me, but why ruin something so perfect trying to stay together?

Snap judgments? I'd gotten over those about the time I was toilet trained. Swore off diapers and faith in the human experience all in one week.

Fall leaves are brilliant with gold and red. You can cup them in your hand and wonder at them, be amazed at their uniqueness and glory. But eventually they are gone, brown, crumbling, scattered on the wind. But the tree remains. The tree is what is important. The tree lives on. That was a difficult knowledge to bear, and an even more difficult life to live. Of course, being the leaf wasn't exactly desirable either.

You can't choose, who you are. No matter how you struggle, some things will never change. And maybe they schouldn't.

Mama said there was always a catastrophe coming. Someone's world was always coming to an end. It wasn't our worry to change every ending, only the endings we could