Quotes About Change

Darn the wheel of the world! Why must it continually turn over? Where is the reverse gear?

Fear urged him to go back, but growth drove him on.

Nicholson Baker, a man who knows the joys of obsessive research, has already started the division. "Let me tell you," he says, "I remember the old days, the antegoogluvian era. It was O.K.—it wasn't horrible by any means. There were cordless telephones, and people wore comfortable sweaters… . But the haul was haphazard, and it came in slow.

So a story starts with change, which leads to a goal, which raises a story question in the reader's mind. But how do you end the novel? You do so by answering the story question you posed at the outset.

For maximum effectiveness, you should start your story at the time of the change that threatens your major character's self-concept.

You will determine what this change will be in your story by thinking about your main character in considerable depth. Having done so, you will then write down his self-concept in a maximum of ten or fifteen words.

Now consider your reader's psychological reactions when confronted with a concept-threatening change in the opening of your novel. Mr. Reader begins to worry. So far, so good; he may be willing to worry for a long time. But in today's hurried, impatient world, that Reader can't be expected to worry passively about the same vague and unchanging bad situation for several hundred pages. He needs something a bit more concrete to worry about.

He has made enormous progress – backward.

The problem is that too often the only people who can act don't want change. Power doesn't so much corrupt as it breeds conservatism.

Time is like a river. As soon as a thing is seen, it is carried away and another takes its place, and then that other is carried away also. —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS         DAVE

Home. It is the place where once we lived and laughed, where we grew up with the assumption that all would be well, where we met our first love, where life stretched endlessly ahead. This is the place that now becomes a desert of the heart. —Kory Tyler, Musings, 1412           Gabe

You wander around near Independence Park and the Hall of the People, and you get a sense that they will be there forever. But forever is a long time. The people who lived in Washington before the waters came probably thought that about their city. But it's all temporary, baby. Perpetuity is an illusion.

but loss is the one constant we all have to deal with. It's the price of living. We lose parents, friends, relatives. We lose the place we grew up in, and we lose the whole circle of our acquaintances. We spend ungodly amounts of time wondering whatever happened to former teachers and lovers and scoutmasters.

Cape Canaveral. The ultimate historic site. And it's underwater. How could they not have noticed what was going on? They went to the Moon, and they couldn't see that the glaciers were melting?" "I'm sure they did," said Alex. "But you know how people are. They're going to resist changing a lifestyle unless the danger is looking them directly in the eye. The glaciers must have seemed like somebody else's problem.

Only the foolish and the uncaring make guarantees. Circumstances change, the world moves on, While wisdom, and sometimes decency, Require constant adjustments.

Can a literary character be said to live a life from birth to death or otherwise to undergo a development from beginning to end? Or is a literary character-fixed on the pages of a book, trapped forever in the same few words and actions-the very opposite of a living, developing human being?

The Blue Church's stranglehold on truth and reality is breaking, and new ideas are emerging. But when they do, the Blue Church rallies to squash them using their trusted techniques of shame, ridicule, and exile.

All at once, I went from successful social justice activist, to unemployed racist.

I sort of understood that when I first started: that you shouldn't repeat a success. Very often you're going to, and maybe the first time you do, it works. And you love it. But then you're trapped.

There were points in my life where I felt oddly irresistible to women. I'm not in that state now and that makes me sad.

It's been real weird. It wasn't how I expected my life to turn out. Especially, mainly pertaining to the show. It never crossed my mind that one day I'm gonna be big and famous and have my own TV show, you know?

There's a leaf clinging fast to a branch, though withered, it somehow holds on, and a single bird singing its song, though all of its kindred have gone. And as long as that little leaf stays, and as long as that stubborn bird sings, then autumn remains in the world, and winter must wait in the wings.

My dear child, you have no idea what is happening. Your life, the way you know it, is coming to an end. You just wait and see what is going to happen to us!" I thought to myself, what the hell is she talking about? The Russian soldiers seemed so friendly and kind.

If there is one thing you must understand about the future, it is that not only is the world changing; the rate of change is increasing at an exponential pace.