Quotes About Adaptation

perhaps because much further back I had had to face certain difficulties until I decided to accept the fact that a man must be what he is, life must be lived as it is… and you cannot live at all if you do not learn to adapt yourself to your life as it happens to be."128

It makes far better sense to reshape ourselves to fit a finite planet than to attempt to reshape the planet to fit our infinite wants

If you can't regulate your own emotional temperature, you'll regulate everyone around you to keep yourself comfortable.

The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.

I just looked at the pattern of my life, decided I didn't like it, and changed.

Given enough time, I guess anything can look good. All it has to do is survive.

I gave my mother a matching set [of mugs] for Christmas, and she accepted them as graciously as possible, announcing that they would make the perfect pet bowls. The mugs were set on the kitchen floor and remained there until the cat chipped a tooth and went on a hunger strike.

Living in a foreign country is one of those things that everyone should try at least once. My understanding was that it completed a person, sanding down the rough provincial edges and transforming you into a citizen of the world. What I find appealing in life abroad was the inevitable sense of helplessness it would inspire. Equally exciting would be the work involved in overcoming that helplessness. There would be a goal involved, and I like having goals.

Opinions constantly shifted and evolved, were fluid the same way thoughts were. Ten minutes into The Exorcist you might say, "This is boring." An hour later you could decide that it was the best thing you'd ever seen, and it was no different with people. The villain at three in the afternoon might be the hero by sunset. It was all just storytelling.

Rather than admit defeat, I decided to change goals.

Comfort has its place, but it seems rude to visit another country dressed as if you've come to mow its lawns.

I explained that he was Chinese, and she asked if the movie would be in Chinese. No, I said, he lives in America. In California. He's been there since he was a baby. Then what does it matter if he's Chinese? Well, I said, he's got... you know, a sensibility.

It is what it is," which is ubiquitous now and means absolutely nothing, as far as we can see. "Isn't that the state motto of South Dakota?" I said the second or third time I heard it.

Fly enough, and you learn to go brain-dead when you have to. It's sort of like time travel. One minute you're bending to unlace your shoes,and the next thing you know you're paying fourteen dollars for a fruit cup, wondering, How did I get here?

Though harsh in other respects, prison would be an excellent place to learn a foreign language - total immersion, and you'd have the new slang before it even hit the streets.

Shit is the tofu of cursing and can be molded to whichever condition the speaker desires.

In binghamton, new york, winter meant snow, and though I was young when we left, I was able to recall great heaps of it, and use that memory as evidence that North Carolina was, at best, a third-rate institution. What little snow there was would usually melt an hour or two after hitting the ground, and there you'd be in your windbreaker and unconvincing mittens, forming a lumpy figure made mostly of mud. Snow Negroes, we called them. The

My understanding was that it completed a person, sanding down the rough provincial edges and transforming you into a citizen of the world.

living in a foreign country is one of those things that everyone should try at least once. My understanding was that it completed a person, sanding down the rough provincial edges and transforming you into a citizen of the world.

weeks passed, my suitcase grew more and more conventional. "I've got something for you," I'd say to a teenager. "It's nothing huge

I had that in my mouth ten minutes ago and now it's a private part?

It doesn't mean that you've fallen out with the person you used to be closest to but that you've merged into someone else's lane, or had him or her merge into yours.

But he didn't used to be this nice and agreeable, I complained to Hugh. Well, he is now, he said. Why can't you let people change?

I read yesterday that when starved for food, the humpback cricket will chew off its own legs. If they regenerated this might be a half-decent idea, but they don't. So it eats its legs, and, unable to escape danger, it promptly gets eaten itself. That so seems like something I would do.