Quotes About Change

There is a classic moment in 'The Sun Also Rises' when someone asks Mike Campbell how he went bankrupt, and all he can say in response is, "Gradually and then suddenly." When someone asks how I lost my mind, that's all I can say too.

How can you hide from what never goes away? --Heraclitus

Time passes slowly, or too fast, or it makes no difference.

At first, I was shocked that Diane could even suggest this family reunion [on television], and then I realized this is just the way of the world, or at least the way of fin de siecle America. Not only would the next revolution be televised, but so would every other little stupid thing. It was already happening: Television reunions between adopted children and their birth parents...

that I don't want to feel better in the morning, how that way of life is wearing me out, that what I really want is to not feel this way in the first place.

At long last, I had found myself vulnerable to the worst of New York City, because at 44 my life was not so different from the way it was at 24.

Negaliu pak?sti minties, kad asmenyb?s raid? ir vis? individuali? savybi? rinkin? galima paaiškinti paprastai tokie buvo laikai.

It is hard to get back what is lost. It is more difficult still to begin anew.

life was one long distraction from the inevitable.

As you heal, you see yourself more realistically. You accept that you are a person with strengths and weaknesses. You make the changes you can in your life and let go of the things that aren't in your power to change. You learn that every part of you is valuable. And you realize that all of your thoughts and feelings are important, even when they're painful or difficult.

This choreography of ruin, the world breaking like glass under a microscope, the way it doesn't crack all at once, but spreads out from the damaged cavities. Still for a moment it all recedes. The backyard potatoes swell quietly buried beneath their canopy of leaves. The wind rubs its hands through the trees.

On Christmas morning, Rebecca lost her moral virginity, her sense of humor - and her two best friends. But, other than that, it was a hell of a holiday.

It has come quickly, this crushing, industrial love of paradise. The pervert-free, less-trammeled, hundred-mile-view days were little more than two decades past, not so very long ago. Yet already my own history sounds like another country.

Death is senseless yet makes way for the living.

We build our computers the way we build our cities—over time, without a plan, on top of ruins.

The corollary of constant change is ignorance. This is not often talked about: we computer experts barely know what we're doing. We're good at fussing and figuring out. We function well in a sea of unknowns. Our experience has only prepared us to deal with confusion. A programmer who denies this is probably lying, or else is densely unaware of himself.

But now what? Is this a ticket to a new understanding of my life, or a bomb that's going to blow up everything? Consider one more possibility: that you remain essentially the same person you were, neither new nor destroyed.

It's a kind of arrogance to be so certain you're past redemption.

But there comes a time when the old grow very tired, and the load of leadership unjustly heavy to bear. And perhaps—perhaps!—Heribert would not be quite so sad as even he now supposed, if the load should be lifted from him.

What matters is to leave what has always been, and look for what has never been yet. I had had riches and marriage and a child, and I had nothing. Nothing is not enough for any man. The only answer is to abandon that nothing, and go in search of something. A different kind of treasure, perhaps. A different kind of salvation. Perhaps not salvation at all, only the loss of oneself.

Discipline says, "You need to change this behavior, and this will help you do so." It's all about intent and the result. "All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness" (Heb. 12:11).

Fear isn't so difficult to understand. After all, weren't we all frightened as children? Nothing has changed since Little Red Riding Hood faced the big bad wolf. What frightens us today is exactly the same sort of thing that frightened us yesterday. It's just a different wolf. This fright complex is rooted in every individual.

Fear isn't so difficult to understand. After all, weren't we all frightened as children? Nothing has changed since Little Red Riding Hood faced the big bad wolf. What frightens us today is exactly the same sort of thing that frightened us yesterday. It's just a different wolf. This fright complex is rooted in every individual.

When things reach the extreme, they alternate to the opposite.