Quotes About Reflection

Maybe I'll walk by one of my old apartments, the second one I lived in after I first came to the city from that much duller metropolis, Washington, D.C. That

Smoking helped me think and calmed my nerves, which I had in excess.

I felt sure that I was approaching the brink of my destiny. I wasn't mistaken. How was I to know that I'd never see John—or Big Tom, or Lady Jane, or Miss America, or any of the rest—ever again?

How am I still making stupid mistakes in my eighties? Whenever somebody says to me, "Maybe it'll come with age," I want to say, "I wouldn't count on it.

Like many parents in middle age, he's quick to spot changes in the world, slow to note shifts in his own perspective.

What I wanted was that walk: slate and windy, the sky overcast but not threatening rain. I

Honors ennoble those on whom they're bestowed, but they also ease the guilt of those whose commands made them necessary in the first place. A medal is a mirror, reflecting a glory that we force ourselves to believe in.

No one survives the future, of course. Over the years I have rushed it, run from it, tried to shunt myself from its track. That these efforts did not succeed does not mean that I regret them.

Let no one say and say it to your shame That all was beauty here until you came.

Solvitur Ambulando It is solved by walking

No one survives the future, of course. Over the years I have rushed it, run from it, tried to shunt myself from it's track. That these efforts did not succeed does not mean that I regret them.

Up there in my snug sweet tower, I felt I'd made landfall in the shoals of shifting clouds. Far enough from the crowds to relish the crowds.

Maybe there's a natural order in all this: New things pop up at the edges, but the middle's where the money is. I did that dance myself over the years. I got rich doing it. And now here I am, an old white lady in a fur coat on a Murray Hill sidewalk, eavesdropping on passersby, wondering what I'm missing.

Alone, but not lonely; in the state of being solitary but not the condition of wishing myself otherwise. Solitude enrobed me like a long, warm coat.

I spent my first Christmas in the city alone. Alone, but not lonely; in the state of being solitary but not the condition of wishing myself otherwise. Solitude enrobed me like a long, warm coat.

thought of that image as I was looking across the table at Max, at him looking back at me, old me, much older me: fifty-six. Max was born in 1906 and thus had always been—would always be—younger than I, by six years if I lied about my age, as I always did, or by seven if I was honest, which I was only in the privacy of my mind.

Cher Ami, my savior, I grieve you, I think absurdly, eyes to the sky.

spent my first Christmas in the city alone. Alone, but not lonely; in the state of being solitary but not the condition of wishing myself otherwise. Solitude enrobed me like a long, warm coat.

Solitude enrobed me like a long, warm coat.

I am old and all I have left is time. I don't mean time to live; I mean free time. Time to fill. Time to kill until time kills me. I walk and walk and think and think.

How am I still making stupid mistakes in my eighties? Whenever somebody says to me, Maybe it'll come with age, I want to say, 'I wouldn't count on it.

But the other thing I felt—that no one had ever told me I might—was that as much as I loved him, I could never be totally sure that I wanted him around forever. I did not know if my life was categorically "better" for having him here.

In my youth, before I had made any of my most consequential choices—and isn't that what we always mean by in my youth?

I am old and all I have left is time. I don't mean time to live; I mean free time. Time to fill. Time to kill until time kills me. I walk and walk and think and think.