Quotes About Adaptation

I one saw, on a flowerpot in my own living room, the efforts of a field mouse to rebuild a remembered field. I have lived to see this episode repeated in a thousand guises, and since i have spent a large portion of my life in the shade of a non-existent tree, i think i am entitled to speak for the field mouse. (As quoted by Richard Powers in The Echo Maker)

But what is done is done, and you cannot change that. Ma quelche fatto è fatto e non si può cangiar.

interpret a thing in exactly the same way. The world is dynamic in that respect

I've seen country music go uptown, like we say, and I'm proud I was there when it happened.

We tend to think that the future happens later, but we're creating it in our minds every day. When the present falls apart, so does the future we had associated with it. And having the future taken away is the mother of all plot twists.

The nature of life is change and the nature of people is to resist change." It was a paraphrase of something he'd read that had resonated with him both personally and as a therapist, he told me, because it was a theme that informed nearly every person's struggles.

I think of a Flannery O'Connor quote: "The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

When the present falls apart, so does the future we had associated with it. And having the future taken away is the mother of all plot twists.

Our younger selves think in terms of a beginning, middle, and some kind of resolution. But somewhere along the way—perhaps in that middle—we realize that everyone lives with things that may not get worked out. That the middle has to be the resolution, and how we make meaning of it becomes our task.

The nature of life is change, but the nature of people is to resist change.

Whenever one person in a family system starts to make changes, even if the changes are healthy and positive, it's not unusual for other members in this system to do everything they can to maintain the status quo and bring things back to homeostasis.

I think of something else Wendell once said: "The nature of life is change and the nature of people is to resist change." It was a paraphrase of something he'd read that had resonated with him both personally and as a therapist, he told me, because it was a theme that informed nearly every person's struggles.

far better that [a patient make progress but] forget what we talked about than the opposite possibility (a more popular choice for patients)—to remember precisely what was talked about but to remain unchanged.

think of something else Wendell once said: "The nature of life is change and the nature of people is to resist change." It was a paraphrase of something he'd read that had resonated with him both personally and as a therapist, he told me, because it was a theme that informed nearly every person's struggles

As the late psychotherapist Kohn Weakland famously said, "Before successful therapy, it's the same damn thing over and over. After successful therapy, it's one dame thing after another.

The nature of life is change and the nature of people is to resist change.

Why Italian? In order to develop another pair of eyes, in order to experiment with weakness

There are certain things in life for which we can never be prepared.

must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be.

Just because it's normal doesn't make it any easier.

It's me, though. It's my fault for being like this. I'm going to have to get used to it.

But that was then. This was now. She was a different person these days.

Life might not work out as you'd want it to, but you just got on with it anyway.

It made me realize that Beatrice had changed; that she did not pull her wagon so much as she got taken for rides.