Quotes About Adaptation

Indeed, from my earliest years the idea of transformation has been central to my life. Naturally so, I suppose, being the child of diplomats. I changed schools, languages, countries and continents a number of times during my childhood. At each change I had the opportunity to re-create myself, to present a new façade, to bury past errors and misrepresentations.

English's drive to exploit the new and the alien, its zeal in robbing words from other languages, its incapacity to feel qualms over the matter, its museum-size overabundance of vocabulary, its shoulder-shrug approach to spelling, its don't-worry-be-happy concern for grammar—the result was a language whose colour and wealth Henry loved.

The first time I went to an Indian restaurant in Canada, I used my fingers. The waiter looked at me critically and said, Fresh off the boat are you? I blanched. My fingers which had seconds before had been taste buds savoring the food a little ahead of my mouth, became dirty under his gaze. They froze like criminals caught in the act. I didn't dare lick them. I wiped them guiltily on my napkin. He had no idea how deeply those words wounded me. They were like nails being driven into my flesh.

Change becomes a habit and habits are hard to change. I

Der erste Schritt zum Überleben ist ein offenes Auge dafür, was zur Hand ist und was als Nächstes getan werden muss. Wer in müßiger Hoffnung auf Hilfe wartet, der vertut sein Leben mit Träumerei.

Those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly we are not the same afterwards.

Es sollte anders kommen als wir dachten, aber was kann man da schon machen? Man muss das Leben nehmen, wie es kommt, und sehen, dass man das Beste daraus macht.

A child born with a weak eye can put a patch over the strong eye and train the weak eye to do what the strong eye already can.

I have sired a well-adapted man (read: adapted to everyone except his father).

Día tras día el mundo me ha empequeñecido y hoy es el mundo el que se empequeñece en mí. Así es. La muerte triunfa poco a poco. Nos vamos acostumbrando. Nos vamos acostumbrando a la muerte.

Les vieux, des gens d'une autre époque mis dans le futur.

If I weren't in a constant state of metamorphosis, I'd have to battle the gloom that comes with endings because I refuse to wind down in some female fit of the vapors.

It's not right to live so long in this world only moving backward. -from Diary of My Sixteenth Year

The future ain't what it used to be.

I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.

Art is a way of survival.

It was also clear that in order to survive at this game, we had to get serious.

The competition always stayed close on our heels, but we managed to keep innovating and improving our products.

For a dark stream bottom, use a dark fly; for a light stream bottom, use a light fly.

When there is no crisis, the wise leader or CEO will invent one. Not by crying wolf but by challenging the employees with change.

These days, it feels to me like you make a devil's pact when you walk into this country. You hand over your passport at the check-in, you get stamped, you want to make a little money, get yourself started... but you mean to go back! Who would want to stay? Cold, wet, miserable; terrible food, dreadful newspapers - who would want to stay? In a place where you are never welcomed, only tolerated. Just tolerated. Like you are an animal finally house-trained.

Because immigrants have always been particularly prone to repetition - it's something to do with that experience of moving from West to East or East to West or from island to island. Even when you arrive, you're still going back and forth; your children are going round and round. There's no proper term for it - original sin seems too harsh; maybe original trauma would be better.

Other people's words are so important. And then without warning they stop being important, along with all those words of yours that their words prompted you to write. Much of the excitement of a new novel lies in the repudiation of the one written before. Other people's words are the bridge you use to cross from where you were to wherever you're going.

progress is never permanent, will always be threatened, must be redoubled, restated and reimagined if it is to survive.