Quotes About Change

I was also gone in a sense that I was transformed, made over. You know that story of the man who wakes up and finds he's turned into a beetle? I was the beetle who woke up and saw the possibility of being a man.

No sooner do we come into this world,' said Flaubert, 'than bits of us start to fall off.

What you fail to do is look ahead, and then imagine yourself looking back from that future point. Learning the new emotions that time brings. Discovering, for example, that as the witnesses to your life diminish, there is less corroboration, and therefore less certainty, as to what you are or have been. Even if you have assiduously kept records -- in words, sound, pictures -- you may find that you have attended to the wrong kind of record-keeping.

Dingen die eenmaal weg zijn, kunnen niet teruggehaald worden, dat wist hij nu wel. Een klap, eenmaal uitgedeeld, kan niet worden ingetrokken. Woorden, eenmaal uitgesproken, kunnen niet onuitgesproken worden gemaakt. We mogen verdergaan alsof er niets verloren, niets gedaan, niets gezegd is, we mogen beweren het allemaal te vergeten, maar ons diepste wezen vergeet niet, omdat we voor altijd veranderd zijn.

cambio, es como un loro que salta de rama en rama y parlotea a la vista de todos.» Gustave se imaginaba que era una fiera salvaje: le encantaba pensar que era un oso polar, remoto, silvestre y solitario. Yo acepté esta idea suya, y hasta le dije que era un búfalo salvaje de las praderas americanas; pero es posible que no fuera más que un loro.

On the other hand, the emotional record was not like a history book; its truths were constantly changing, and true even when incompatible.

Quando si è giovani-parlo per me almeno-si vogliono provare sentimenti simili a quelli di cui leggiamo nei libri. Passioni che ti sconvolgono la vita, che creano e definiscono una realtà nuova. Più tardi, mi pare, vogliamo dai sentimenti qualcosa di più pratico e modesto: che siano di sostegno alla nostra vita per come è diventata e si manifesta. Vogliamo che ci garantiscano che va tutto bene. E che c'è di male in questo? da Il senso di una fine

Tai, kÄ… galiausiai prisimeni, ne visada yra tas pats, kÄ… patyrei

time's many paradoxes. For instance: that when we are young and sensitive, we are also at our most hurtful; whereas when the blood begins to slow, when we feel less sharply, when we are more armoured and have learnt how to bear hurt, we tread more carefully. Nowadays

Alice was surprised. In her worldview, everything was hopeless, but you just had to get on with it. And there wasn't much point changing what you believed at this late stage of the game.

I replayed the words that would forever haunt me. As would Adrian's unfinished sentence: 'So, for instance, if Tony . . .' I knew I couldn't change, or mend, anything now.

One had turned gay, after all these years, having suddenly started noticing the napes of young men's necks.

But then we learn something else: that the brain doesm't like to be typecast. Just when you think everything is a matter of decrease, of subtraction and division, your brain, your memory, may surprise you. As it it's saying: Don't imagine you can rely on some comforting process of gradual decline--life's much more complicated than that. And so the brain will throw you scraps from time to time, even disengage those familiar memory loops.

Back in 'my day'—though I didn't claim ownership of it at the time, still less do I now . . .

Why go through that stuff all over again? Don't you know the rule: once bitten, twice bitten? But now, I found myself in revolt against my own … what? Conventionality, lack of imagination

I hate the stuff. Just a glass of sweet sherry at Christmas, so as not to be accused of being a spoilsport. But it changes people. And not for the better." I agree. I have no interest in alcohol, or in people getting "merry," or "whistled," or "half seas over" and all the other words and phrases which make them feel better about themselves.

But I was wrong about most things, then as now.

Love, he had ventured, was like the vast and sudden uncreasing of a lifelong frown.

finding another woman can bring an exceptional clarity of mind to a man all of a sudden.

Chi poteva sapere come l'avrebbe pensata, il futuro? Ci aspettiamo troppo dal domani, sperando che sappia contrastare l'oggi.

Professional critics] act as if Flaubert, or Milton, or Wordsworth were some tedious old aunt in a rocking chair, who smelt of stale powder, was only interested in the past, and hadn't said anything new for years. Of course, it's her house, and everybody is living in it rent free, but even so, surely it is, well, you know… time?

His life had not been wrecked. His heart, yes, his heart had been cauterised. But he had found a way to live, and continued with that life, which had brought him to here. And from here, he had a duty to see himself as he had once been. Strange how, when you are young, you owe no duty to the future; but when you are old, you owe a duty to the past. To the one thing you can't change.

They grow up so quickly, don't they?" when all you really mean is: time goes faster for me nowadays. Margaret's

Does character develop over time? In novels, of course it does: otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story. But in life? I sometimes wonder. Our attitudes and opinions change, we develop new habits and eccentricities; but that's something different, more like decoration. Perhaps character resembles intelligence, except that character peaks a little later: between twenty and thirty, say. And after that, we're just stuck with what we've got.