Missing Your Old Self Quotes & Sayings

Nobody worked harder than Mozart. By the time he was twenty-eight years old, his hands were deformed because of all the hours he had spent practicing, performing, and gripping a quill pen to compose. That's the missing element in the popular portrait of Mozart. — Twyla Tharp

I was so full of missing her that I felt my heart would splinter into a thousand tiny pieces, but I found comfort in the thought of them together up there in the shade of those old trees, overlooking the bay. It tempered my grief ever so slightly, like a feather come to lodge in a dark place. — Ute Carbone

It was an excellent coat. It was long, grey, suspiciously blotched, smelt faintly of dust and old curries, went all the way down to my knees and overhung my wrists even when I stretched out my arms. It had big, smelly pockets, crunchy with crumbs, it boasted the remnants of a waterproof sheen, was missing a few buttons, and had once been beige. It was the coat that detectives down the ages had worn while trailing a beautiful, dangerous, presumably blond suspect in the rain, the coat that no one noticed, shapeless, bland and grey - it suited my purpose perfectly. — Kate Griffin

I moved to San Francisco when I was 20 years old. I couldn't even drink yet. My friends in college thought I was so stupid for missing out on the four best years of my life. But I was so ready to start living my own life and absorb Silicon Valley culture. — Brit Morin

I miss my old life — Richard C. Morais

Every nation on Earth was attacked. Earth's casualties were 461 killed, 223 wounded, none captured, and 216 missing. Mars' casualties were 149,315 killed, 446 wounded, 11 captured, and 46,634 missing. At the end of the war, every Martian had been killed, wounded, captured, or been found missing. Not a soul was left on Mars. Not a building was left standing on Mars. The last waves of Martians to attack Earth were,-to the horror of the Earthlings who pot-shotted them, old men, women, and a few little children. The — Kurt Vonnegut

I kind of miss the old sleazy Times Square, in a way. And yet I don't mind not being accosted by all sorts of strange people. — Malachy McCourt

And when whatever happened in that barn happened, it was a moment I'll never forget. Like a missing key slid into a dusty old lock. Click. My world opened. — Jennifer Walkup

You don't know what you're missing."
I was thirty-four years old. I had a pretty good idea what I was missing. — Marshall Thornton

I be yellin out money over everything, money on my mind then she wanna ask when it got so empty. Tell her I apologize, happened over time. They say they miss the old Drake, girl don't tempt me — Drake

Kaushik, what about a picture?" my father suggested. I shook my head. I had left my camera, my father's old Yashica, at school. "But you always have it with you." That look of irritated disappointment, the one that had appeared the day my mother died and was missing now that he'd married Chitra, passed briefly across my father's face. "I forgot it," I said. It was true, I did always have the camera with me. Even on quiet weekends when I came home and my father and I saw no one I would bring it, taking it with me on walks. This time I had left it behind, knowing that I would not want to document anything. "I don't understand," my father said. "Neither do I," I replied. "You haven't wanted a picture of anything in years." "That's not true." "It is." We were stating facts and at the same time arguing, an argument whose depths only he and I could fully comprehend. — Jhumpa Lahiri

There's no winning or losing in this game, only playing, endless playing, you want your adversary to be strong not weak, smart not dumb, you're delighted to trick him and delighted to be tricked by him, boy learns from girl, white learns from black, old learns from young, the teaching is the doing is the beauty is the grace is the humor, endlessly you go on learning, smiling, moving, feinting, never missing a beat. Gingare, the dance of life: the controlled, prolonged, sustained, ineffable excitement of capoeira is like an endless climax. — Nancy Huston

Her eyes popped open in time to see flames shoot up behind the first-floor windows of Angie's Books. Angie! Where was Angie? Where were her children? The bookstore owner lived in the apartment above her shop with sixteen-year-old Beth and twelve-year-old Bradley.
The Moosetookalook Fire Department was located right next door, housed in part of the town's redbrick municipal building. The overhead door had already been raised. As Liss watched, unable to move, unable to look away, the truck pulled out, maneuvering so that it could get closer to the burning building. — Kaitlyn Dunnett

Whoever is missing in action turns
Into a flower, after he reappears
In stories, such as the old people were
Telling... — Simeon Dumdum Jr.

Time moves on for us, for you it stands still. You will be forever ageless as we grow old, your smile will never wrinkle, nor will that shine in your eyes fade.. — Kendal Rob

President Obama , I guess, is starting to confess to some of his anxieties. In a recent interview, President Obama said, 'I miss being anonymous.' He said, 'In the old days, I could blend in with all the other Hawaiian Barack Hussein Obamas.' — Conan O'Brien

An old homeless man confronts me quietly with his beard, his missing teeth, and his poverty. — Markus Zusak

The little babies are missing their families from their past lives. The babies have old souls and the old souls have to shrink to become little babies. The tears loosen their memories so they can slide away. They cry at the life they have lost, and then they cry at everything they'll forget. — Akhil Sharma

Henri said our names were fitting because we were destined to be together in our old age, like our great-great-aunts. Two gray old ladies in the bodies of teenage girls. Someday we'd live in a big house with faded curtains, a dozen or so cats, and a handful of our marbles long ago lost. On all accounts - our destiny, her clairvoyance, and our soon-to-be missing marbles - I believed her. — Jessica Taylor

What's missing is leadership in the White House. And the story that Barack Obama does tell, forever shifting blame to the last administration, is getting old. The man assumed office almost four years ago - isn't it about time he assumed responsibility? — Paul Ryan

The God of Imagination lived in fairytales. And the best fairytales made you fall in love. It was while flicking through "Sleeping Beauty" that I met my first love, Ivar. He was a six-year-old bello ragazzo with blond hair and eyebrows. He had bomb-blue eyes and his two front teeth were missing.
The road to Happily Ever After, however, was paved with political barbed wire. Three things stood in my way.
1. The object of my affection didn't know he was the object of my affection.
2. The object of my affection preferred Action Man to Princess Aurora.
3. The object of my affection was a boy and I wasn't allowed to love a boy. — Diriye Osman

We're so distracted, we're missing out own lives. The parent who records his kid's dance recital or first steps or graduation is so busy trying to capture the moment--to create a thing that proves that they were there--they miss out on actually living and enjoying the moment.
I've done this before with my camera. I have jockeyed for position, bumping elbows with other parents so I could get into the best spot to look through the viewfinder of my SLR to capture the moment of my daughter's dance recital. Five-year-old Phoebe was so cute in her little sailor outfit, tapping away. And I got some great pictures. It's just that while I remember getting the pictures, I do not recall the moment. So much of the time we don't trust ourselves to experience our world without stuff. Things so often don't enhance our lives, but are barriers to fully living our lives. — Dave Bruno

When I was ten years old, my dad and brother did judo, so I went along because I felt like I was missing out. They eventually gave up, and I continued, then moved into Tae Kwon Do, kickboxing and various other martial arts. I did lots of different things, but mostly things like Wushu, Jeet Kune Do, Krav Maga and stuff like that. — Scott Adkins

Anyone could buy a green Jaguar, find beauty in a Japanese screen two thousand years old. I would rather be a connoisseur of neglected rivers and flowering mustard and the flush of iridescent pink on an intersection pigeon's charcoal neck. I thought of the vet, warming dinner over a can, and the old woman feeding her pigeons in the intersection behind the Kentucky Fried Chicken. And what about the ladybug man, the blue of his eyes over gray threaded black? There were me and Yvonne, Niki and Paul Trout, maybe even Sergei or Susan D. Valeris, why not? What were any of us but a handful of weeds. Who was to say what our value was? What was the value of four Vietnam vets playing poker every afternoon in front of the Spanish market on Glendale Boulevard, making their moves with a greasy deck missing a queen and a five? Maybe the world depended on them, maybe they were the Fates, or the Graces. Cezanne would have drawn them in charcoal. Van Gogh would have painted himself among them. — Janet Fitch

Technically my boss, Laynie's most notable trait was her ability to focus intently on a project until it was completed. In other words, she was a little obsessive. It was actually a great characteristic when it came to work. She always thought of everything, never missing a detail. Her brain worked on overdrive, and while she liked to talk incessantly about business, her passion and creative ideas made sure the subject never grew old. — Laurelin Paige

The prostitute journalist is a familiar and well-understood figure in the Middle East, and Saddam Hussein's regime made lavish use of the buyability of the regional press. Now we, too, have hired that clapped-out old floozy, Miss Rosie Scenario, and sent her whoring through the streets. — Christopher Hitchens

I lit a candle in a Catholic church for the first time that afternoon. Me, a Presbyterian. I lit a candle in the warm, dark, waxy-smelling air of Saint Adelbert's. I put it beside the one that Mrs. Baker lit. I don't know what she prayed for, but I prayed that no atomic bomb would ever drop on Camillo Junior High or the Quaker meetinghouse or the old jail or Temple Emmanuel or Hicks Park or Saint Paul's Episcopal School or Saint Adelbert's. I prayed for Lieutenant Baker, missing in action somewhere in the jungles of Vietnam near Khesanh. I prayed for Danny Hupfer, sweating it out in Hebrew school right then. I prayed for my sister, driving in a yellow bug toward California - or maybe she was there already, trying to find herself. And I hoped that it was okay to pray for a bunch of things with one candle. — Gary D. Schmidt

A lover of comfort might shrug after looking at the whole apparent jumble of furniture, old paintings, statues with missing arms and legs, engravings that were sometimes bad but precious in memory, and bric-a-brac. Only the eye of a connoisseur would have blazed with eagerness at the sight of this painting or that, some book yellowed with age, a piece of old porcelain, or stones and coins.
But the furniture and paintings of different ages, the bric-a-brac that meant nothing to anyone but had been marked for them both by a happy hour or memorable moment, and the ocean of books and sheet music breathed a warm life that oddly stimulated the mind and aesthetic sense. Present everywhere was vigilant thought. The beauty of human effort shone here, just as the eternal beauty of nature shone all around.
pp. 492-493 — Ivan Goncharov

I'm seven hundred years old, Alexander. I know when something isn't going to work. You won't even admit I exist to your parents."
Alec stared at him. "I thought you were three hundred! You're seven huundred years old?"
"Well," Magnus amended, "eight hundred. But I dont look it. Anyway, you're missing the point. The point is-"
But Alec never found out what the point was because at that moment a dozen more Iblis demons flooded into the square. He felt his jaw drop. "Damn it."
Magnus followed his gaze. the demons were already fanning out into a half circle around them, their yellow eyes glowing. "Way to change the subject, Lightwood. — Cassandra Clare

Dad used to tell me about the guys at the VFW who could feel their amputated limbs. I feel like one of those guys-wiggling my weak tortured, pathetic self from only a month ago even though I've amputated him.
It's a little like being two people at once. One minute I feel like the old Lucky who had nothing, and the next minute I realize I have everything I could possibly need.
While I'm in the driveway, I hear the neighborhood kids playing. Normal kids doing normal things. They probably don't know that as of today more than 1,700 servicemen have still not been accounted for. They probably don't know that about 8,000 are still missing from Korea, or that approximately 74,000 never surfaced after World War II. They don't know that amputees sometimes try to wiggle limbs they lost.
I don't envy them. They have a lot to learn. — A.S. King