Quotes About Change

In binghamton, new york, winter meant snow, and though I was young when we left, I was able to recall great heaps of it, and use that memory as evidence that North Carolina was, at best, a third-rate institution. What little snow there was would usually melt an hour or two after hitting the ground, and there you'd be in your windbreaker and unconvincing mittens, forming a lumpy figure made mostly of mud. Snow Negroes, we called them. The

If you were to throw a lipoma to a dog, he'd swallow it in a single bite, then get that very particular look on his face that translates to Fuck. Was that a tumor? There'd be something to see. Turtles, on the other hand, never change expression and live with fewer regrets

weeks passed, my suitcase grew more and more conventional. "I've got something for you," I'd say to a teenager. "It's nothing huge

When apple-picking season ended, I got a job in a packing plant and gravitated toward short stories, which I could read during my break and reflect upon for the remainder of my shift. A good one would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.

When young, the animals were sweet. Then one day they became moody and violent, like human teenagers

Time is cruel to everything but seems to have singled out eyeglasses for special punishment. What looks good now is guaranteed to embarrass you twenty years down the line, which is, of course, the whole problem with fashion.

You're the man now," she said to me after my father died, "you're the man." Then she turned to Popeye, our calico tom, and said, "You're the cat now, Popeye, you're the cat

but things change once you've been together for 10 years. They rarely make movies about long-term couples and for good reason. Our lives are boring.

I had that in my mouth ten minutes ago and now it's a private part?

I haven't got the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.

Without much accuracy, with strangely little love at all, your family will decide for you exactly who you are, and they'll keep nudging, coaxing, poking you until you've changed into that very simple shape.

It doesn't mean that you've fallen out with the person you used to be closest to but that you've merged into someone else's lane, or had him or her merge into yours.

You'd think my mother could have seen the difference between the sunny, likable her and the dark one who'd call late at night. I could hear the ice cubes in her glass rushing forth whenever she took a sip. In my youth, when she'd join my father for a drink after work—"Just one, I have to get dinner on the table"—that was a happy sound. Now it was like a trigger being cocked.

But he didn't used to be this nice and agreeable, I complained to Hugh. Well, he is now, he said. Why can't you let people change?

A place always looks different—worse, most often—after you've made the commitment to buy it

Though there's an industry built on telling you otherwise, there are few real joys to middle age. The only perk I can see is that, with luck, you'll acquire a guest room. Some people get one by default when their kids leave home, and others, like me, eventually trade up and land a bigger house.

It had nothing to do with changing people—forget that, on a good day you're lucky if you can talk someone into changing their socks.

As kids, we spent our beach time swimming. Then we became teenagers and devoted ourselves to tanning.

Pretty much everything that isn't terrible is awesome in America now.

There's an Allan Gurganus quote I think of quite often: "Without much accuracy, with strangely little love at all, your family will decide for you exactly who you are, and they'll keep nudging, coaxing, poking you until you've changed into that very simple shape." Is there a richer or more complex story than that?

It's so hard to predict which friends will last and which will fade away. Quite often I'd move and lose half the contacts in my address book, people I thought would be with me forever. It's not that we outgrew one another. They just couldn't be bothered to put a stamp on a letter. Or I couldn't. Of course it's easier now with email.

I told myself that if I looked at my brother differently, it was because of the suit, nto the weight. He was a grown man now. He was going to get married, and therefore, he was a changed person. He took a sip of my father's weak coffee and spit it back into the mug. This shit's like making love in a canoe. Excuse me? It's fucking near water. Then again, I thought, maybe it is just the weight.

I told myself that if I looked at my brother differently, it was because of the suit, not the weight. He was a grown man now. He was going to get married, and therefore, he was a changed person. He took a sip of my father's weak coffee and spit it back into the mug. This shit's like making love in a canoe. Excuse me? It's fucking near water. Then again, I thought, maybe it is just the weight.

waiting on the other side of sixteen.