Quotes About Adaptation

You can learn much about life from a checker game: surrender one to take two; don't make two moves at one time; move up, not down; and when you reach the top, you may move as you like.

There are no conditions to which a man cannot get accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.

You express different energies at different times in your life.

It's good to have a short memory because it keeps life fresh.

It's a skill that I worked all my life, and it's been taken away. That's kind of tough to take.

There had been times when he knew, somewhere in him, that he would get used to it, whatever it was, because he had learnt that some hard things became softer after a very little while.

Strange how, after deciding to take life as one finds it, life comes fawning to one's hand.

I'm as strong as I'll ever be without change of interests and surroundings.

Straight? So is spaghetti until you heat it up

What bends does not break.

The successful parents I saw were able to redefine who they were and renegotiate their needs and roles as humans, parents, and partners.

Parenting is constant readjustment.

School doesn't help with real life.

A repeating refrain I wrote for Bones & Ash, the theatrical adaptation of this novel, is the spine upon which the story rests: "We take blood, not life, and leave something in exchange." In order to answer any of the questions the book raises we must take blood—metaphorically speaking. That is, we must learn how to break through the surface, find the deep dangerous place where blood flows without hurting one other, and share all that we know and love in order to survive.

I was willing to take on the struggle to establish myself in a new country because I knew that was the price I would have to pay for the freedom to think, speak, and write whatever I pleased.

The poor teachers! Trained in the traditional sciences, they were totally lost when trying to teach us about pigs or paddy fields.

Learning to read again was by far the hardest thing I had to do. I don't know if those cells in my brain had died or what, but I had no recollection that reading was something I had ever done before, and I thought the concept was ridiculous.

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

Become an expert on your biggest competitor—the status quo.

Here's what it all boils down to: To become the differentiator, you need to always be learning.

Transport a German to Kiev, and he remains a perfect German," Hitler said. "But transport him to Miami, and you make a degenerate out of him."9 Late

As the years passed, and Madison grew old, he observed how many other nations had followed the United States' lead and written their own constitutions: France, Haiti, Poland, the Netherlands, Switzerland. By 1820, at least sixty constitutions had been written in Europe alone; eighty more would be written by 1850. Very few of those constitutions lasted.18

To treat the founding documents as Scripture would be to become a slave to the past. "Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched," Jefferson conceded. But when they do, "They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human.

Get comfortable with being uncomfortable!