Quotes About Transition

As to the presidency, the two happiest days of my life were those of my entrance upon the office and my surrender of it.

I'll never get used to living without Mo, but the painful things that surround what happened to him aren't so painful any more-not so raw or so new.

And the terrible thing, the terrible thing is, but the good thing too, the saving grace, is that if something happened to one of us--excuse me for saying this--but if something happened to one of us tomorrow, I think the other one, the other person, would grieve for a while, you know, but then the surviving party would go out and love again, have someone else soon enough. All this, all of this love we're talking about, it would just be a memory. Maybe not even a memory.

It is August. My life is going to change. I feel it.

The light was draining out of the room, going back through the window where it had come from.

We opened our eyes and turned in bed to take a good look at each other. We both knew it then. We'd reached the end of something, and the thing was to find out where new to start.

I'm moving to Nevada. Either there or kill myself.

We knew our days were numbered. We had fouled up our lives and we were getting ready for a shake-up.

That was in Crescent City, California, up near the Oregon border. I left soon after. But today I was thinking of that place, of Crescent City, and of how I was trying out a new life there with my wife, and how, in the barber's chair that morning, I had made up my mind to go. I was thinking today about the calm I felt when I closed my eyes and let the barber's fingers move through my hair, the sweetness of those fingers, the hair already starting to grow.

Things change, he says. I don't know how they do. But they do without your realizing it or wanting them to.

But he understood it was over, and he felt able to let her go. He was sure their life together had happened in the way he said it had. But it was something that had passed. And that passing--though it seemed impossible and he'd fought against it--would become part of him now, too, as surely as anything else he'd left behind.

It's funny how we can be in love with someone one day, and the next we can easily fall in love with someone else.

I don't want to talk to anybody. Actually, I'd talk to Molly, if I could, but I can't any longer — she's somebody else now. She isn't Molly any more. But — what can I say? — I'm somebody else, too.

What's there to tell? The people over there embrace for a minute, and then they go inside the house together. They leave the light burning. Then they remember, and it goes out.

Things change. I don't know how they do. But they do without your realizing it or wanting them to.

I'm saying that at the end of the summer she let the blind man run his hands over her face, said good-bye to him, married her childhood etc., who was now a commissioned officer, and she moved away from Seattle.

The nights are very unclear here. But if the moon is full, we know it. We feel one thing one minute, something else the next.

Teníamos esa extraña sensación de que, ahora que nos dábamos cuenta de que ya había sucedido todo, podía suceder cualquier cosa.

All I know about this fine, sweaty life, my own or anyone else's, is that in a little while I'll rise up and leave this astonishing place that gives shelter to dead people. This graveyard. And go. Walking first on one rail and then the other.

Things change, he says. I don't know how they do. But they do without your realizing it or wanting them to.

Maybe I can quit drinking one of these days. They all say that, don't they? It takes about three years. Three years? He looked shocked. Usually it does. It's a different world. You have to get used to a paler set of colors, a quieter lot of sounds. You have to allow for relapses. All the people you used to know well will get to be just a little strange. You won't even like most of them, and they won't like you too well.

Call me Sunset. I'm always moving west.

This was the time to leave, to go far away. So I pushed the door open and stepped quietly in.

To say good-bye is to die a little.