Quotes About Change

I like every part of growing older except what happens to your feet. Written by Avis DeVoto to Julia Child in As Always, Julia

His best moment was when he walked up the majestic stairway to the second floor of the Met; he loved the glorious spaces of old exhibition halls. Not that they knew about old here, with buildings always being blasted and rebuilt higher. How did people in this city keep track of themselves, with so much coming at them at once?

It was one of the mysteries of modern life, what happened to old love.

The clear-cuts soured all of us

We're relieved—and that's what makes us both feel so terrible. Can you imagine? To me, that would be the ultimate disgrace, to leave behind people who felt relief rather than sorrow at my passing. It would mean that I hadn't added value to this world. That I hadn't earned my keep as one of God's creatures. Isn't that the least we owe our Creator for all this splendor? To make a mark, to effect a change, to lighten a load, to do something to repay Him for this gift of life?

Long before I became a feminist in any explicit way, I had turned from writing love stories about women in which women were losers, and adventure stories about men in which the men were winners, to writing adventure stories about a woman in which the woman won. It was one of the hardest things I ever did in my life.

I feel at the moment I can't complete, that I've become smug and pissy and I Haven't a sense of Humor.

She was striving to change, she was, but it was hard, all the same, to let go of the glory of her past certainties, of her belief in passion, and surrender, and the seductive power of giving in to inclination.

This is awful," Sally said. "Why should it be so painful?" "Because you don't realize how important your human landscape is until bits drop away." He gripped her hand. "It's worse when you get older. In your twenties, you never think—

I've never been very good at leaving things behind. I tried, but I have always left fragments of myself there too, like seeds awaiting their chance to grow.

Places do not lose their identity, however far one travels. It is the heart that begins to erode over time. The face in the hotel mirror seems blurred some mornings, as if by too many casual looks. By ten the sheets will be laundered, the carpet swept. The names on the hotel registers change as we pass. We leave no trace as we pass on. Ghostlike, we cast no shadow.

We came in the wind of the carnival. A wind of change, or promises. The merry wind, the magical wind, making March hares of everyone, tumbling blossoms and coat-tails and hats; rushing towards summer in a frenzy of exuberance.

For a time, then, we stay. For a time. Till the changes.

Like a flower she grows towards the light, without thinking or examining the process which moves her to do so. I wish I could do the same.

Old habits never die. And when you've once been in the business of granting wishes, the impulse never quite leaves you

But if you could travel back through Time, and find yourself as you used to be, wouldn't you try, just once at least, to give her some kind of warning? Wouldn't you want to make things right?

There's no such thing as a trivial thing. Everything costs; it all adds up until finally the balance shifts and we're gone again, back on the road, telling ourselves - well maybe next time

Il vento di marzo è un vento malato, diceva sempre mia madre. Eppure è piacevole, odora di linfa e ozono e del sale di mari lontani. Un buon mese, marzo, con febbraio che vola via dalla porta sul retro e la primavera che aspetta a quella principale. Un buon mese per un cambiamento.

The serpent eating itself, tail-first. We live to repeat the same mistakes, to push away the ones we love, to move on when we want to stay, to wait in silence when we should speak. In the life we have chosen to lead, loss is the only constant. Loss, that eats up everything – like the snake, even itself.

Sometimes walking away is best. I should know. It's my specialty.

We have travelled into the past and returned to find that our present is not quite the same as we left it. Atticus Finch will never again be the white knight we once thought him. And yet the mockingbird still sings — no longer a song of innocence, but maybe one of experience; a song that combines sorrow, forgiveness — and, ultimately, a kind of hope.

No point carrying useless ballast. It won't change a thing.

At17, balanced on that precarious walkway between adolescence and adulthood, the world is a crazy obstacle course paved one day with broken glass, the next with apple blossom.

Pensate all'immagine che da una lastra fotografica si trasferisce sulla carta, diventando sempre più scura, da bianca all'oro più pallido, da ambra a seppia. Immaginate la luna mentre gira lentamente il profilo sottile fino a diventare piena, trascinando con sè le maree. Immaginate la crisalide quando schiude la bara dura della larva e mostra le ali al sole. L'insetto perfetto piange il bruco che un tempo è stato? E se ne ricorda?