Quotes About Transformation

Then his face changed to a mask of hate.

Instead, we prepare for the next jump, then the one after, until after a lifetime of motion is past, we are startled, at least a little, by where we are and by what we have become.

A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and complete. A self is always becoming.

You have to let it all hang out, let go of the ideas that were more comfortable and embrace some of the sadness in your life.

What happened if you melted a person down layer by layer? What if there was nothing between the layers, and nothing at the centre, only quiet?

What must it feel like, I wondered, to begin again? Would I still be the same person if I woke up in a different language and another existence?

What mattered was the here and now and not the life before, what mattered were the changeable things of today and tomorrow and not the ever, infinitely, unbearably unchanging yesterday. She

What happens when a hundred thousand people memorize the same poem? Does anything change?

I assumed that when the story finished, life would continue and I would go back to being myself. But it wasn't true. The stories got longer and longer, and I got smaller and smaller. When I told Big Mother this, she laughed her head off. "But that's how the world is, isn't it?

She did not know how or why, but now that she understood, now that she had come to a decision, the old fears had drained away.

You think that the things that matter are more difficult than words - to retreat from a confrontation, for instance, to work at changing something, truly changing something." She lifted her hand toward the bodies and the tanks. "Ai-ming, you're studying history to prepare for the examinations. What if revolution and violence are the only way?

You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.

I had been old and stern for so long, carved with regrets and years like a monolith. But that was only a shape I had been poured into. I did not have to keep it.

But of course I could not die. I would live on, through each scalding moment to the next. This is the grief that makes our kind choose to be stones and trees rather than flesh.

I stepped into those woods and my life began.

When there is rot in the walls, there is only one remedy." The purple bruise at my throat was turning green at its edges. I pressed it, felt the splintered ache. Tear down, I thought. Tear down and build again.

Transformation touched only bodies, not minds.

This is the grief that makes our kind choose to be stones and trees rather than flesh.

That is what exile meant: no one was coming, no one ever would. There was fear in that knowledge, but after my long night of terrors it felt small and inconsequential. The worst of my cowardice had been sweated out. In its place was a giddy spark. I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.

With every step I felt lighter. An emotion was swelling in my throat. It took me a moment to recognize what it was. I had been old and stern for so long, carved with regrets and years like a monolith. But that was only a shape I had been poured into. I did not have to keep it.

I found a new thought in myself. I am embarrassed to tell it, so rudimentary it seems, like an infant's discovery that her hand is her own. But that is what I was then, an infant. The thought was this: that all my life had been murk and depths, but I was not a part of that dark water. I was a creature within it.

I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.

For a hundred generations, I had walked the world drowsy and dull, idle and at my ease. I left no prints, I did no deeds. Even those who had loved me a little did not care to stay. Then I learned that I could bend the world to my will, as a bow is bent for an arrow. I would have done that toil a thousand times to keep such a power in my hands. I thought: this is how Zeus felt when he first lifted the thunderbolt.

I was a golden witch, who had no past at all.