Quotes About Change

You like Nick a lot, don't you, Nora? Dorothy asked. He's an old Greek fool, but I'm used to him. Charles isn't a Greek name. It's Charalambides, I explained. When the old man came over, the mugg that put him through Ellis Island said Charalambides was too long...too much trouble to write... and whittled it down to Charles. It was all right with the old man; they could have called him X so they let him in.

But that's the part of it I always liked. He adjusted himself to beams falling, and then no more of them fell, and he adjusted himself to them not falling.

The man whose name I had not caught was saying: "Comes the revolution and we'll all be lined up against the wall—first thing." He seemed to think it was a good idea.

I don't think he even knew he had settled back naturally into the same groove he had jumped out of in Tacoma. But that's the part of it I always liked. He adjusted himself to beams falling, and then no more of them fell, and he adjusted himself to them not falling.

Today, the latitude and longitude lines govern with more authority than I could have imagined forty-odd years ago, for they stay fixed as the world changes it's configuration underneath them—with continents adrift across a widening sea, the national boundaries repeatedly redrawn by war or peace.

What we are doing to develop leaders is not working! We are treating the symptoms and ignoring the disease.

Becoming a Leader of Character changes lives—our lives and the lives of the people we touch.

Directors are always changing things at the last minute. Actors will do a scene, and the director will say, 'Okay, that was perfect, but this time, Bob, instead of saying "What's for dinner?" you say, "Wait a minute! Benzene is actually a hydrocarbon!" And say it with a Norwegian accent. Also, we think maybe your character should have no arms.

New houses, which are crap, because they don't build them the way they used to anymore. Old houses, which used to be good, because they were built back when they built them the way they used to, but which today, as a result of being old, are crap. So whichever kind of house you own, it's going to be some variety of crap, which means sooner or later everything in it will break. Dealing with broken things is the essence of home ownership, and it's exhausting.

and he held her, then, and she held him, just for a moment, the last moment they would ever have when they were both the same age.

Why did we do that to Pluto? We had it good with Pluto.

And there is a chance that everything we did was incorrect, but stasis is itself criminal for those with the means to move, and the means to weave communion between people.

It all meant something. Until it didn't.

my problem with paper is that all communication dies with it. It holds no possibility of continuity.

My head was a condemned church with a ceiling of bats, but I swung from this dark mood to euphoria when I thought about leaving.

Stasis is itself criminal for those with the means to move.

It only takes one person, one small act of stepping from the dark to the light.

If you think I'm annoying and preachy now, you should have known me in grade school.

The Earth is an animal that shakes off its fleas when they dig too deep, bite too hard. It shifts and our cities fall; it sighs and the coasts are overtaken.

It was as if, for a moment, she thought Mae was one kind of person, but now, knowing she was another, she could part with her, she could give her back to the world.

Our town was rigid in many ways, in terms of the uniformity of things, the colors of skin, the makes of cars, the lushness of the lawns, but on top of that it was sort of a blank canvas, so -- and again, I guess this is true of any child -- I was ready to quickly accept the sudden and total substitutions of all I knew to be true.

Kit, you say your mother hasn't changed, but she has. A hundred times she's changed. It's important to know with adults, thought there is continual development, there is not always improvement. There is change, but not necessarily growth.

Wars] can come in different shapes and guises, but always wars come in increments. I am convinced there are steps, and that once these events are set in motion, they are virtually impossible to reverse. There were other steps in the country's stumble toward war, and I remember these days clearly now. But again, at the time I did not recognize these days as such, not as steps but as days like any others.

If you don't have something grand for men like us to be part of, we will take apart all the little things. Neighbourhood by neighbourhood. Building by building. Family by family.