Quotes About Transition

The thought that he might have to leave did not upset him; he knew that eventually he would have to go but that, as on TV, what would follow next was hidden; he knew the actors on the new program were unknown. He did not have to be afraid, for everything that happened had its sequel, and the best that he could do was to wait patiently for his own forthcoming appearance.

And Pasquale forced himself to look away from her then. It was like prying a magnet off steel, but he did it: he turned forward in the boat, closed his eyes, still seeing her standing there in his memory. He shook with the strain of not looking back until they rounded the breakwater into the open sea and Pasquale exhaled, his head falling to his chest. You are a strange young man, Tomasso the Communist said.

And I wonder if we don't live like water seeking a level a low bed until one day we just go dry. I wonder if a creek ever realizes it has made its own grave.

And when our lives do begin? I mean, the exacting part, the action? It's all so fast.

It's going to hurt until it doesn't anymore.

You can't reach what's in front of you until you let go of what's behind you.

YOU CAN'T REACH WHAT'S IN FRONT OF YOU UNTIL YOU LET GO OF WHAT'S BEHIND YOU.

It's been too many nights of being with to now be suddenly without.

everything is temporary if you give it enough time...

On a sticky August evening two weeks before her due date, Ashima Ganguli stands in the kitchen of a Central Square apartment, combining Rice Krispies and Planters peanuts and chopped red onion in bowl.

The thought of Christmas overwhelms him. He no longer looks forward to the holiday; he wants only to be on the other side of the season. His impatience makes him feel that he is incontrovertibly, finally, an adult.

In those six weeks I regarded her arrival as I would the arrival of a coming month, or season - something inevitable, but meaningless at the same time.

Every time my surroundings change I feel enormous sadness. It's not greater when I leave a place tied to memories, grief, or happiness. It's the change itself that unsettles me, just as liquid in a jar turns cloudy when you shake it. —italo svevo, essays and uncollected writings

When Deepa poured Bela some water from the urn that stood on a little stool, in the corner of the room, her grandmother reproached her. Not that water. Give her the boiled water. She's not made to survive here.

The moments of transition, in which something changes, constitute the backbone of all of us. Whether they are a salvation or a loss, they are moments that we tend to remember.

A transformation, especially one that is deliberately sought, is often perceived as something disloyal, threatening.

He was proud to have come alone to America. To learn it, as he once must have learned to stand and walk and speak. He'd wanted so much to leave Calcutta, not only for the sake of his education but also—he could admit this to himself now—to take a step that Udayan never would.

And so the eight months are put behind them, quickly shed, quickly forgotten, like clothes worn for a special occasion, or for a season that has passed, suddenly cumbersome, irrelevant to their lives.

Es el típico día que parece terminar minutos después de haber comenzando y que echa por tierra los planes que tenía Ashima de hacer muchas cosas, porque la inminencia de la noche la distrae.

Still, for the next three weeks, even though his new driver's license says "Nikhil," even though he's sliced up the old one with his mother's sewing scissors

He remembered himself sitting naked on one side of the mattress, in a room he was suddenly aware he was never again to see. He had not argued; in the wake of his shame, he became strangely efficient and agreeable, with her, with everyone.

Gogol and Sonia] call up their American friends, who are happy enough to see them but ask them nothing about where they've been. And so the eight months are put behind them, quickly shed, quickly forgotten, like clothes worn for a special occasion, or for a season that has passed, suddenly cumbersome, irrelevant to their lives.

But he was no longer in Tollygunge. He had stepped out of it as he had stepped so many mornings out of dreams, its reality and its particular logic rendered meaningless in the light of day.

It's the first apartment he has to himself, after an evolving chain of roommates all through college and graduate school.