Quotes About Adaptation

My point is you're different here. Hollis I've only been here for a month. A lot can happen in a month he replied. Shoot in two weeks I met my future wife changed my entire life's trajectory and bought my first tie. You bought a tie I asked. Because honestly this was the most shocking part.

Watching him, I thought, not for the first time that night, that maybe it should have felt strange to be with him, here, now. And yet it didn't, at all. That was one of the things about the night. Stuff that would be weird in the bright light of day just wasn't so much once you passed a certain hour. It was like the dark just evened it all out somehow.

How weird that must be, to stay the same as everyone else changes.

Life isn't fair, Owen told her. Get used to it.

Maybe it was just part of growing up with someone. Once you have a rhythm and stay with it long enough, it's not hard to find again.

Change is inevitable, though, he replied. As is disappointment. Best to get used to it now.

Her life was perfect. But as was often the case, the rest of us were still adjusting.

I'm starting to think, though, that some things never get that. The replay, and all. So at some point you have to make peace with it as it is, not keep waiting for a chance to change it

When someone starts to change, and it's obvious, it's sort of natural to wonder why. Right?

The thing about Wes, Delia said to me, unwrapping another package of turkey, is that he thinks he can fix anything. And if he can't fix it, he can at least do something with the pieces of what's broken.

I'd chosen instead to just change my route, go miles out of the way, as if avoiding it would make it go away once and for all.

Well, here we are, Ethan said. The end of the world. I smiled, turning slightly to take in the full view. It's different to what I expected. The big stuff always is, he said.

So I just decided to relax into it, bumpy and crazy as it might be, and try for once to just go along for the ride.

She took the sun when it came and the rain the same way.

Because' I repeated, as a breeze blew over us, sometimes things just happen. That aren't expected. Or on the list. Such as? he asked I don't know, I said, frustrated. That's the point. It would be out of the blue, taking us by surprise. Something we might not be prepared for. But we will be prepared, he said, confused. We'll have the list.

I don't want everything to change.

The lizard stared up at us, and we stared back, taking each other in. He was little and defenseless, I felt sorry for him already. This was a screwed-up place he'd just come into. But he didn't have to know that. Not yet, anyway. There in that room, where it was hot and cramped, the world probably still seemed small enough to manage.

We would probably never be the way we had been again, but at least we were all together.

Was I sad about the way things stood, and did I wish, still, the spring and even this summer had gone differently? Yes. But the anger, somehow had been lifted, leaving behind a sense that I could deal with whatever came next for us, even if it was nothing at all. Which sounds bad, I knew. Having no expectations for some people in your life can be depressing, if not devastating. But with others, it's what is necessary. The hard part is not figuring out which one applies, but accepting it.

It doesn't matter whether you're the one having to douse a flame or helplessly watching it sputter. Either way, it goes out eventually.

So I pulled back from everything and everyone I'd known....I realized I'd been changing even before we started moving,that my reinvention began when I was still in the most familiar of places. Once the setting was totally new,though, I finally could be,as well.

But you take what you get in this world. What else can you do?

Something I had seen as slid–not perfect, but solid–was suddenly crumbling. I felt like I was falling to pieces right along with it.

My father's new life was progressing as planned, one neat step at a time. And I felt it, again, that same feeling I got whenever another change or shift in my life was announced to me – selling the house, Ashley's tantrums, now the baby – that need to dig in my heels and prepare myself for the next shock and its aftermath. I was tired of hanging on, taking the torn pieces to make something whole with them.