Quotes About Change

She cannot imagine how it might be, to see him again. He would be a child and she is now grown, almost a woman. What would he think? Would he recognise her now, if he were to pass her in the street, this boy who will for ever remain a boy? Several

and she can feel him switch from one character to another; she can sense that other, big-house, self melt off him, like wax sliding from a lit candle, revealing the man within.

Why is it that twenty-four hours in the company of your family is capable of reducing you to a teenager? Is this retrogression cumulative? Will she continue to lose a decade a day?

How is it these children, these young women came from her? What relation do they bear to the small beings she once nursed and dandled and washed?

In their apartment, he lets her take his hand, lets her lead him from the fire to a chair, lets his eyes lose focus, lets her rub her fingers through his hair, and she can feel him switch from one character to another; she can sense that other, big-house, self melt off him, like wax sliding from a lit candle, revealing the man within.

She moves her comb, her shift, her gown next door. She takes up the bed that was once her aunts'. Nothing is said. She leaves her mother and sister to their grief and moves in above the workshop.

What he finds hardest about family life is that, just when you think you have a handle on what's going on, everything changes.

Love is not changed by death and nothing is lost, and all in the end is harvest.

That the things in life which don't go to plan are usually more important, more formative, in the long run, than the things that do. You need to expect the unexpected, to embrace it.

Gardens don't stand still: they are always in flux.

Do you think, Daniel," she said to him, rolling over onto her back so that she was able to look out of the window while she spoke, "that we might have reached the end of our story?

How can they not have invited him to this meeting? He used to have influence – he used to rule over them all. He used to be someone.

THAT THE THINGS IN LIFE WHICH DON'T GO TO PLAN ARE USUALLY MORE IMPORTANT, MORE FORMATIVE, IN THE LONG RUN, THAN THE THINSGS THAT DO

There will be no going back. No undoing of what was laid out for them. The boy has gone and the husband will leave and she will stay and the pigs will need to be fed every day and time runs only one way.

She walks back, more slowly, the way she came. How odd it feels, to move along the same streets, the route in reverse, like inking over words, her feet the quill, going back over work, rewriting, erasing. Partings are strange. It seems so simple: one minute ago, four, five, he was here, at her side; now, he is gone. She feels exposed, chill, peeled like an onion.

Here is a season Hamnet has not known or touched. Here is a world moving on without him.

Later, and for the rest of her life, she will think that if she had left there and then, if she had gathered her bags, her plants, her honey, and taken the path home, if she had heeded her abrupt, nameless unease, she might have changed what happened next. If she had left her swarming bees to their own devices, their own ends, instead of working to coax them back into their hives, she might have headed off what was coming.

There will be no going back. No undoing of what was laid out for them. The boy has gone and the husband will leave and she will stay and the pigs will need to be fed every day and time runs only one way. "Go, then," she says, turning from him, pushing him away, "if you are going. Return when you can.

That the things in life which don't go to plan are usually more important, more formative, in the long run, than the things that do.

My wife who, just a moment ago, was a dark, forbidding figure with a gun, a long gray coat, and a hat like Death's hood, she has shucked off the sou'wester and transmogrified back to her usual incarnation.

Peter had been feeling lately that perhaps he and Jenny had come to the end of their story

I am desperate for change, endlessly seeking novelty, wherever I can find it.

Partings are strange. It seems so simple: one minute ago, four, five, he was here, at her side; now, he is gone. She was with him; she is alone.

That the things in life which don't go to plan are usually more important, more formative, in the long run, than the things that do. You need to expect the unexpected, to embrace it. The best way, I am about to discover, is not always the easy way.