Quotes About Transition

Sometimes your life changes so slowly and imperceptibly that you don't notice it at all until one day you wake up and think, 'How did I get here?' But other times, life changes in an instant with a lightning stroke of good or bad luck with glorious or tragic consequences.

There is no special protection when you cross that invisible line from your ordinary life to that parallel world where tragedies happen. It happens just like this. You don't become someone else. You're still exactly the same. Everything around you still smells and looks and feels exactly the same.

We'd traveled, we'd been to lots of parties, lots of movies and concerts, we'd slept in. We'd done all those things that people with children seem to miss so passionately. We didn't want those things anymore. We wanted a baby.

Relationships don't stay the same. There isn't time.

Baths, she thought, were just like her relationships, all "ooh, ah" in the beginning and then suddenly, without warning, she had to get out, out, out!

He hadn't left her for something better, but for something new.

about six months ago, after my fortieth, I started to feel so...the only word I can think of is 'bland.' Or 'flat' might be a better word.

She said that sometimes you had to be brave enough to "point your life in a new direction.

There was something pathetic about the rejected wife bravely pulling herself together, joining a tennis club, doing a photography course, cutting her hair, venturing timidly back out onto the single scene.

Miss Barnes clearly didn't know what in the world to do. She was twenty-four years old, for heaven's sake.

Back in 1998, the days were so much more spacious. When she woke up in the morning, the day rolled out in front of her like a long hallway for her to meander down, free to linger over the best parts. Days were so stingy now. Mean slivers of time. They flew by like speeding cars. Whoosh! When she was pulling back the blankets to hop into bed each night, it felt as if only seconds ago she'd been throwing them off to get up.

She remembered that raw sensation she'd felt after previous relationships had ended. For months afterward, it had felt like she'd lost a layer of skin. If she'd felt like that after those meaningless boys, what would she feel like after breaking with Nick? She'd been so cozy in the cocoon of their relationship. She assumed she got to stay there forever.

Once, she'd loved to receive flowers. Now it was like being handed a series of tasks: Find the vase. Cut the stems. Arrange them like so.

It's amazing how friends can slip through your fingers, how your social network can vanish like it never existed.

But things change. People change. It just happens. It's just life. The fact that you're getting a divorce doesn't change the fact that you had all those wonderful times. And I swear

Sometimes your life changes so slowly and imperceptibly that you don't notice it at all until one day you wake up and think: How did I get here?

There were moments when she thought she might survive. And there were other moments when she would catch herself thinking about her life as if it was a party she couldn't wait to leave.

As soon as she left the attic, she was picked up and swept along by the fast-running current of her life.

forty being the "precise age where you're old enough and young enough to handle a revelation".

One minute they were driving her home from the hospital, a tiny, wrinkled, squalling baby. The next she was all legs and cheekbones and opinions. Whoosh. It made Alice's head spin.

sometimes you had to be brave enough to "point your life in a new direction.

Nothing is rigid. Things change. You can change your mind. You can change your thinking.

She'd been so cozy in the cocoon of their relationship. She assumed she got to stay there forever.

I'm only temporarily tragic, she told herself