Quotes About Progress

You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, is what he says. We thought we could do better. Better? I say, in a small voice. How can he think this is better? Better never means better for everyone, he says. It always mean worse, for some.

she doesn't want to begin, she wants to continue. No: she wants to go back.

There are days when I can hardly make it out of bed. I find it an effort to speak. I measure progress in steps, the next one and the next one, as far as the bathroom. These steps are major accomplishments. I focus on taking the cap off the toothpaste, getting the brush up to my mouth. I have difficulty lifting my arm to do even that. I feel I am without worth, that nothing I can do is of any value, least of all to myself.

Change, we were sure, was for the better always. We were revisionists; what we revised was ourselves.

We thought we could do better. Better? I say, in a small voice. How can he think this is better? Better never means better for everyone, he says. It always means worse, for some.

The corrupt and blood-smeared fingerprints of the past must be wiped away to create a clean space for the morally pure generation that is surely about to arrive. Such is the theory.

All writers must go from now to once upon a time; all must take care not to be captured and held immobile by the past.

am a great proponent of better. In the absence of best. Which is how we live now.

So much for endings. Beginnings are always more fun. True connoisseurs, however, are known to favor the stretch in between, since it's the hardest to do anything with.

I don't think they'll ever replace the living and breathing," says Gary. "They said that about e-books," says Kevin. "You can't stop progress.

Human society, they claimed, was a sort of monster, its main by-products being corpses and rubble. It never learned, it made the same cretinous mistakes over and over, trading short-term gain for long-term pain. It was like a giant slug eating its way relentlessly through all the other bioforms on the planet, grinding up life on earth and shitting it out the backside in the form of pieces of manufactured and soon-to-be-obsolete plastic junk.

Better? I say, in a small voice. How can he think this is better? Better never means better for everyone, he says. It always means worse, for some.

We must continue to remind ourselves of the wrong turnings taken in the past so we do not repeat them.

It's good to have small goals that can be easily attained.

This bug is something new though. We've got the bioprint.

If you don't like it, change it, we said, to each other and to ourselves. And so we would change the man, for another one. Change, we were sure, was for the better always. We were revisionists; what we revised was ourselves.

Don't cry any more, she tells herself. Just do one thing at a time. Get from hour to hour and day to day like a frog jumping lily pads.

Backward glances are not encouraged.

it is better to journey than to arrive, as long as we journey in firm faith and for selfless ends. Let

But perhaps it is too late for that. You take the first step, and to save yourself from the consequences, you take the next one. In times like ours, there are only two directions: up or plummet.

Everything is post these days, as if we're all just a footnote to something earlier that was real enough to have a name of its own.

How did she end up in this madhouse? By putting one foot in front of the other and never taking her eyes off her feet. You could end up anywhere that way.

But once you've climbed a ladder, what use is it? You kick it away, if you don't intend to go down it again.

I would have to go into the tunnel whether I wanted to or not - the tunnel was the road of going on, and there was more of the road on the other side of it - but the entrance was where [my teacher] had to stop. Inside the tunnel was what I was meant to learn