Quotes About Perspective

Life isn't, and has never been, a 2-0 home victory after a fish and chip lunch.

I can see that now. I can see everything once it's already happened — I'm very good at the past. It's the present I can't understand.

People go on about the first time being important, but it's the second time that really matters. Or the second person, anyway.

It's like everyone's a supporting actor in the film of your life story.

The point is not that my life is one long golden summer which I am simply too self-absorbed to appreciate (although it might be, of course, and I am simply too self-absorbed to appreciate it), but that happy moments are possible, and while happy moments are possible I have no right to demand anything more for myself, given the havoc that would be wrought.

I'd never really had arguments like this before, arguments I couldn't understand properly, arguments where both sides were right and wrong all at the same time.

It's not a case of the glass being half full or half empty; more that we tipped a whole half-pint into an empty pint pot. I had to see how much was there, though, and now I know.

Ken didn't die for your benefit, you know. It's like everyone's a supporting actor in the flm of your life story. Of course. Isn't that how it works for everybody?

The trouble with influential books is that if you have absorbed the influence without ever reading the original, then it can sometimes be hard to appreciate the magnitude of its achievement.

some things were better, some were worse, and the only way one can ever learn to understand one's own youth is by accepting both halves of the proposition.

I see now that dismissing YA books because you're not a young adult is a little bit like refusing to watch thrillers on the ground that you're not a policeman or a dangerous criminal...The world suddenly seems a larger place.

And if I went back to sleep and slept for forty years and woke up without any teeth to the sound of Melody Radio in an old people's home, I wouldn't worry that much, because the worst of life, i.e., the rest of it, would be over. And I wouldn't even have had to kill myself.

But Tony was a storyteller, and he knew that if you looked at any narrative closely enough you could trace the unraveling back and back and back—right to the very beginning, if the story was good enough.

For us it is not comparable, the FA Cup and Champions League,' Arsène Wenger said before Arsenal played Leeds in the FA Cup. 'The Champions League is compulsory. The FA Cup is something that is for enjoyment … The basis of our life at the top level is dictated by the championship. If we can add on top of that the FA Cup it is fantastic.

don't think people with talent necessarily value it, because it all comes so easy to them, and we never value things that come easy to us.

You may think that you don't want to read about the problems of being brought up Mennonite, but the great thing about books is that you'll read anything a good writer wants you to read.

In a few short weeks, mock-marital status had ceased to be something to aspire to, and had become a cause for scorn. At seventeen, we were becoming as embittered and as unromantic as our parents.

Sitting at the table with the kids, and being told off like a kid, has liberated me; my disenfranchisement has empowered me.

What came first _ the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music?

How had I managed to edit all this out in the intervening years? How had I managed to turn her into the answer to all the world's problems?

Well. I don't see passion as . . . as petrol. Something that runs out. I see it as more like, I don't know, something you lose. Like keys." He picks up the pen he's using to do the crossword and waves it around. "Or this biro." "Keys get found. Biros don't. So it's important for me to know which it is." Tom doesn't say anything. "Keys? Or a biro?" Tom doesn't say anything. Louise is getting angry.

So, yes, of course I feel nostalgic, even if I am longing for a time which never really belonged to us: like I said, some things were better, some were worse, and the only way one can ever learn to understand one's own youth is by accepting both halves of the proposition.

But I want to see Clara, Charlie's friend, who's right up my street. I want to see her because I don't know where my street is; I don't even know which part of town it's in, which city, which country, so maybe she'll enable me to get my bearings.

When they – I cannot bring myself to use the first-person plural in this instance.