Quotes About Adaptation

The easiest way to get old is to be technologically behind, A.J.

the things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life. —

What is so great about the times?" A.J. has often reflected that, bit by bit, all the best things in the world are being carved away like fat from meat. First, it had been the record stores, and then the video stores, and then newspapers and magazines, and now even the big chain bookstores were disappearing everywhere you looked. From his point of view, the only thing worse than a world with big chain bookstores was a world with NO big chain bookstores.

When you think about it, isn't a person just a structure built in reaction to the landscape and the weather?

me-also-thinks my latter-day reaction speaks to the necessity of encountering stories at precisely the right time in our lives. Remember, Maya: the things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life. —

In this world, to be overly literal is a profound weakness.

If you are a person who has always been liked, it is hard to understand why you have, without changing a thing about yourself, suddenly become unlikable. It is equally difficult to turn the tide in your favor when those around you find you to be deficient.

Remember, Maya: the things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life. —A.J.F.

It was strange, really. A couple months ago, I had thought I couldn't live without him. Apparently I could.

Remember, Maya: the things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life.

It's difficult to ever go back to the same places or people. You turn away, even for a moment, and when you turn back around, everything's changed.

Frankie had always played the same songs, but they had nonetheless always been different, changing in a thousand different ways that Kevin could scarcely name.

Like a starfish, the heart endures its amputation.

We lived here for each other, and for everyone else we loved within twenty miles, and for all the good reasons people live where they live. They need the view of a wheat field or an ocean; they need the smell of a thunderstorm or the sound of a city. Or they need to leave, so they can invent what they need someplace else.

Things change, people change, but that doesn't mean you should forget the past.

Nobody gets to grow old in the America they grew up in.

I can't forget. I can't really forgive. But I can live. Live with it.

You turn often enough, you end up straight ahead again.

There are two kinds of people. One kind, you can just tell by looking at them at what point they congealed into their final selves. It might be a very nice self, but you know you can expect no more suprises from it. Whereas, the other kind keep moving, changing... They are fluid. They keep moving forward and making new trysts with life, and the motion of it keeps them young. In my opinion, they are the only people who are still alive. You must be constantly on your guard against congealing.

As long as you can go on creating new roles for yourself, you are not vanquished.

Growth demands a temporary surrender of security.

If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living.

Changes are not only possible and predictable, but to deny them is to be an accomplice to one's own unnecessary vegetation.

Here was a dyed-in-the-brine Cape Cod, Massachusetts, man who dropped into New York State on a carpetbag and used his slain brother's gilded connections to help win a Senate seat.