Quotes About Transformation

As we run, we become.

We're plotting reformation of life as we know it," I replied, somewhat flippantly. "Oh, is that all?" she teased. "Why not start with breakfast?

How a mother comes to love her child, her caring at all for this thing that's made her heavy, lopsided and slow, this thing that made her wish she were dead ... that's the miracle.

I'd always kept an eye on the house. I don't mean doing repairs, for as the house didn't belong to me that was not my place, but rather I'd keep watch over its decline. The changes come slowly, like watching a woman age: another line, the spread of crow's feet, age spots rising slowly to the surface. One day the face you know is ravaged.

in her inward reality she was a vehicle of transformation, travelling through the mists of illusion towards the elusive, ever-receding landfall that was Truth.

But here, in the tide country, transformation is the rule of life: rivers stray from week to week, and islands are made and unmade in days. In other places forests take centuries, even millennia, to regenerate; but mangroves can recolonize a denuded island in ten to fifteen years. Could it be the very rhythms of the earth were quickened here so that they unfolded at an accelerated pace?

When was it exactly that I became... this? By small degrees, I suppose. One act presses hard upon another, on a path we have no choice but to follow, and each time there are reasons. We do what we must, we do what we are told, we do what is easiest. What else can we do but solve one sordid problem at a time? Then one day we look up and fine we are... this.

This was a place of learning, and wonder, and great beauty.' 'Time has not been kind to the place.' 'Time is never kind.

Courage can come fro many places, and be made of many things, and yesterday's coward can become tomorrow's hero in an instant if the time is right.

Strange, how quickly a king could become an animal. Or half a king half an animal. Perhaps even those we raise highest never get that far above the mud.

People liked to think of beauty as some natural gift, but Savine firmly believed that just about anyone could be beautiful, if they worked hard at it and spent enough money. It was merely a question of emphasising the good, disguising the bad and painfully squeezing the average into the most impressive configuration. Very much like business, really.

When was it exactly that I became… this? By small degrees, I suppose. One act presses hard upon another, on a path we have no choice but to follow, and each time there are reasons. We do what we must, we do what we are told, we do what is easiest. What else can we do but solve one sordid problem at a time? Then one day we look up and find we are… this.

You stick a bunch of drunken murderers together, ain't long before some turn to thieving, then to lying, then to bad language, and pretty soon to sobriety, raising families and making an honest living.

All too often when we topple something hateful, rather than breaking it and starting afresh, we raise ourselves up in its place.

When was it exactly that I became... this? By small degrees, I suppose. Once act presses hard upon another, on a path we have no choice but to follow, and each time there are reasons. We do what we must, we do what we are told, we do what is easiest. What else can we do but solve one sordid problem at a time? Then one day we look up and fine we are... this.

If you want to be a new man you have to stay in new places, and do new things, with people who never knew you before. If you go back to the same old ways, what else can you be but

we must sometimes have a little chaos if a better order is to emerge. There can be no progress without pain, no creation without destruction.

If you want to be a fine new person with a fine new life you've got to put the person you were behind you, like a snake sheds its skin. You've got to stop picking through your hoard of hurts and grievances like a miser with his coins, set 'em down and allow yourself to go free. You've got to forgive and you've got to trust, not because anyone else deserves it, but because you do.

He always told me that to change the world you must first burn it down.

It is hard to lose something." Skara turned back toward the towering truss. "But it gives you the chance to make something better.

If men can change like that.' And Monza snapped her fingers in his face. 'That's the only way they do change, ain't it?' His one eye stayed on her. 'If things change enough around 'em? Men are brittle, I reckon. They don't bend into new shapes. They get broken into them. Crushed into them.

If you want to be a fine new person with a fine new life you've got to put the person you were behind you, like a snake sheds its skin. You've got to stop picking through your hoard of hurts and grievances like a miser through his coins, set 'em down and allow yourself to go free. You've got to forgive and you've got to trust, not because anyone else deserves it, but because you do.

Strange, isn't it? You keep having to check how disgusting it is. Then, one day, you check and you find you actually like it. Soon after, no other drink will quite scratch that itch. I've often felt that people are the same.

Only the direction of the treason had changed.