Quotes About Adaptation

I came to understand that there is no such thing as a perfect life, just a constant shifting, like the wind on the lake. You adjust your sails to catch the wind, not the other way around.

Life as it reveals itself is filled with riches. What will happen, will happen. Worrying will not affect the outcome.

walking again. But being inconspicuous on

the trouble with my life was that it had no strong central storyline—at least, certainly not a conventional one, with love and marriage as its main theme. Just when I thought I'd found something to hold on to, the plot was altered by events I couldn't control.

Well, I suppose one ought not to employ a magician and then complain that he does not behave like other people.

This is the genius of my enemy! Lock a door against him and all that happens is that he learns first how to pick a lock and second how to build a better one against you!

In familiar surroundings our manners are cheerful and easy, but only transport us to places where we know no one and no one knows us, and Lord! how uncomfortable we become!

You will do well to take advantage of Madame's short residence to get up your French a little... You will be glad of this, my dear, when you have reached France, where you will find they speak nothing else.

Girls are caterpillars while they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime there are grubs and larvae, don't you see - each with their peculiar propensities, necessities and structure.

seemed constant, even as to old opinions. Shelly now held a master's degree from Notre

Both the cockroach and the bird could get along very well without us, although the cockroach would miss us most.

Both the cockroach and the bird would get along very well without us, although the cockroach would miss us most.

Well, I mean I have forgotten how to go anywhere alone. There are things you have to do. Like throw money into a toll basket on a highway. I'd pull up to it now and panic. Or what if I had to hail a cab? It's hard to believe, but I used to be able to do things when I was twenty that are impossible now [...] It's more than the physical task. It's ...a vision of yourself. If you don't see yourself as being able to do it, then you can't, no matter how easy it is.

If you think about the unthinkable long enough it becomes quite reasonable.

It's almost like that's the definition of being American: You love becoming Irish for a day, or becoming Italian… Or becoming a Negro for four years.

Put an Englishman into the garden of Eden, and he would find fault with the whole blasted concern; put a Yankee in, and he would see where he could alter it to advantage; put an Irishman in, and he would want to boss the thing; put a Dutchman in, and he would proceed to plant it.

There are two things in life for which we are never truly prepared: twins.

There are two things in this life for which we are never fully prepared: twins.

Don't take the bull by the horns, take him by the tail then you can let go when you want to.

I covered my face because they had taken my wisdom teeth out.

Successfully orchestrating a lot of little changes lays the foundation for big changes when they are needed.

Shelby's mantra, "Their way of doing things is better than your way of not doing things.

Make as many small, positive changes as you can. Build up that change account. Then, if you negotiate a big change and it goes badly, you will have some resources in the change bank to draw from.

I try to act normal. Unfortunately I can do multiple different impressions of normal, and I can't figure out the appropriate one for the moment. I'm dangerously close to simply having to "be myself".