Quotes & Sayings About Someone Changing

Oh God T.J., I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking Nothing like going on about having kids in front of someone whose fertility had been exchanged for survival. — Tracey Garvis-Graves

My dad picked me up and rocked me in the chair. I felt small and weak and I wanted to hold him back but I couldn't because there wasn't any strength in my arms, and I wanted to ask him if he had held me like this when I was a boy because I didn't remember and why didn't I remember. I started to think that maybe I was still dreaming, but my mother was changing the sheets on my bed so I knew that everything was real. Except me. I think I was mumbling. My father held me tighter and whispered something, but not even his arms or his whispers could keep me from trembling. My mom dried my sweaty body with a towel and she and my dad changed me into a clean T-shirt and clean underwear. And then I said the strangest thing, "Don't throw my T-shirt away. Dad gave it to me." I knew I was crying, but I didn't know why because I wasn't the kind of guy who cried, and I thought that maybe it was someone else who was crying. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

And yet he sometimes wondered if he could ever love anyone as much as he loved Jude. It was the fact of him, of course, but also the utter comfort of life with him, of having someone who had known him for so long and who could be relied upon to always take him as exactly who he was on that particular day. His work, his very life, was one of disguises and charades. Everything about him and his context was constantly changing: his hair, his body, where he would sleep that night. He often felt he was made of something liquid, something that was being continually poured from bright-colored bottle to bright-colored bottle, with a little being lost or left behind with each transfer. But his friendship with Jude made him feel that there was something real and immutable about who he was, that despite his life of guises, there was something elemental about him, something that Jude saw even when he could not, as if Jude's very witness of him made him real. — Hanya Yanagihara

Every man is the architect of his own life. He builds it just the way he wants it. However, after he has built what he wants, he sometimes decides that he doesn't like what he has built and looks for someone or something to blame instead of changing himself. — Sydney Madwed

I was 17 when my body started changing, and I worried about what I did wrong. I went through a period where I didn't eat at all. I also had someone who was encouraging me to take diet pills. I pushed myself to the extreme because I woke up one day and had hips - and a butt - and thought, 'Oh my gosh, I'm getting fat!' — Shantel VanSanten

films like The Never-Ending Story (1984), Stranger than Fiction (2006), and The Adjustment Bureau (2011). Have you seen any of these films? Then you understand hermeneutics. In each case, the story revolves around a protagonist engaging his own life as a fictional story being written either in this world or in another, seemingly by someone else. As he reads and interprets the text of his life, however, he discovers that its story or plot changes. He discovers the circle or loop of hermeneutics. He discovers that as he engages his cultural script as text creatively and critically he is rereading and rewriting himself. He is changing the story. — Whitley Strieber

I am learning to see. I don't know why it is, but everything enters me more deeply and doesn't stop where it once used to. I have an interior that I never knew of ... What's the use of telling someone that I am changing? If I'm changing, I am no longer who I was; and if I am something else, it's obvious that I have no acquaintances. And I can't possibly write to strangers. — Rainer Maria Rilke

The life changing moment for me what the first time I went to a war zone and that was Sierra Leone. I took two weeks, eleven years ago and I went. I wasn't an Ambassador or anything I just asked to go and I was allowed to go. It was like someone smacked me in the face. — Angelina Jolie

During those years the past life recollections began. Psychic powers developed, my meditation increased and I found myself changing, over and over again, becoming someone new almost every day. — Frederick Lenz

ARIADNE: Why are they looking at me?
COBB: Because you're changing things. My subconscious feels that someone else is creating the world. The more you change things, the quicker the projections converge on you.
ARIADNE: Converge?
COBB: They feel the foreign nature of the dreamer, and attack-like white blood cells fighting an infection.
ARIADNE: They're going to attack us?
COBB: Just you, actually. — Christopher J. Nolan

Discipline is not punishment. Discipline is changing someone's behavior. — Nick Saban

Why?" The question left Luce's lips as a growl. "Why is it different now?" "Because of you," Abaddon said. "Losing someone special in your life has a way of changing you. If God's favorite son could fall so far, so hard, then no one was immune. I guess He realized we weren't as infallible as He made us out to be, and if He didn't extend the same courtesy, the same forgiveness, to us, He would lose a lot more than He could bear." The — J.M. Darhower

It's not necessary to tell all you know. It's not ladylike
in the second place, folks don't like to have someone around knowin' more than they do. It aggravates them. Your not gonna change any of them by talkin' right, they've got to want to learn themselves, and when they don't want to learn there's nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language. — Harper Lee

When I was young I believed people should be told everything and that, as a pastor, I had a duty to share all my knowledge. Over the years I came to see that was a mistake. A person may know only what they are capable of assimilating. I have been thinking about this for half my life, and especially since I have been in Israel, but there are few people I can confide in. Really only you. You see, it is a terrible thing to disturb someone's equilibrium. If a person has become accustomed to thinking in a particular way, even a slight digression from that can prove painful. Not everybody is open to new ideas, to making their understanding more precise and supplementing it, to change. I have to admit that I am changing. Today my views on many matters have diverged from those generally accepted in the Catholic world, and I am not the only person in that situation. "You see, the birth of the One whom — Lyudmila Ulitskaya

To control the breathing is to control the mind. With different patterns of breathing, you can fall in love, you can hate someone, you can feel the whole spectrum of feelings by changing your breathing. — Marina Abramovic

Conversion may mean changing one's mind, overcoming prejudices, looking at things differently. Someone has remarked that conversatio means never having to say, 'But we've always done it this way. — Benet Tvedten

Things like taking a few dollars out of a paycheck, putting it into savings, and leaving it there. Or doing a few minutes of exercise every day - and not skipping it. Or reading ten pages of an inspiring, educational, life-changing book every day. Or taking a moment to tell someone how much you appreciate them, and doing that consistently, every day, for months and years. Little things that seem insignificant in the doing, yet when compounded over time yield very big results. You could call these "little virtues" or "success habits." I call them simple daily disciplines. Simple productive actions, repeated consistently over time. That, in a nutshell, is the slight edge. — Jeff Olson

Many marriages end up failing because the people that start into them over time become different people. What love had found as common ground, time separates into distinct territories. It's inevitable. As intelligent beings we grow by changing. No one stays the same. The person you fall in love with will always be someone different ten years down the pike. The same was true for friendships. Even curious friendships like ours. — Dan Skinner

For someone in an alternative job, an alternative lifestyle, it's very hard to explain what I do. So I sometimes try and dumb it down as much as possible, so I'm changing what I do every time! So sometimes I'm in an Uber, and they ask, 'So what do you do?' and I say, 'I'm a comedian,' or, 'I'm a graphic designer.' — Connor Franta

OLD MARX He can't think. London is damp, in every room someone coughs. He never did like winter. He rewrites past manuscripts time and again, without passion. The yellow paper is fragile as consumption. Why does life race stubbornly toward destruction? But spring returns in dreams, with snow that doesn't speak in any known tongue. And where does love fit within his system? Where you find blue flowers. He despises anarchists, idealists bore him. He receives reports from Russia, far too detailed. The French grow rich. Poland is common and quiet. America never stops growing. Blood is everywhere, perhaps the wallpaper needs changing. He begins to suspect that poor humankind will always trudge across the old earth like the local lunatic shaking her fists at an unseen God. — Adam Zagajewski

You two will figure it out. I know you will." Maybe we will, maybe we are, but not if she tells him. "You're very much alike. You both feel things very deeply, too deeply sometimes." What? "Jude and I have quite a bit of armor on us," she continues. "It takes a lot to break through it. Not you and Dad." This is news. I never thought I was anything like Dad. But what she's really saying is that we're both wusses. That's what Brian thinks too. I'm just someone who "draws pictures." And it burns in my chest that she thinks Jude's like her and I'm not. How come everything I think about our family keeps changing? How come the teams keep switching? Is this how all families are? And most importantly, how do I know she's not lying to me about not telling Dad? — Jandy Nelson

Advice may not be good advice 10 or 15 years from now. Someone could tell you something years ago and it might not work now. The world is constantly changing. One word could mean something different today. Today you can't give advice to anyone. — Roy Haynes

The life I was leading was changing me into someone I didn't even know. — Dennis Rodman

Everyone knows that the Internet is changing our lives, mostly because someone in the media has uttered that exact phrase every single day since 1993. However, it certainly appears that the main thing the Internet has accomplished is the normalization of amateur pornography. There is no justification for the amount of naked people on the World Wide Web, many of whom are clearly (clearly!) doing so for non-monetary reasons. Where were these people fifteen years ago? Were there really millions of women in 1986 turning to their husbands and saying, 'You know, I would love to have total strangers masturbate to images of me deep-throating a titanium dildo, but there's simply no medium for that kind of entertainment. I guess we'll just have to sit here and watch Falcon Crest again. — Chuck Klosterman

I worked with someone who told me they'd never like me. But for some reason, I just felt like I needed her approval. So I started changing myself to please her. It made me stop being social and friendly. I was so unhappy. — Ariana Grande

What would happen if history could be rewritten as casually as erasing a blackboard? Our past would be like the shifting sands at the seashore, constantly blown this way or that by the slightest breeze. History would be constantly changing every time someone spun the dial of a time machine and blundered his or her way into the past. History, as we know it, would be impossible. It would cease to exist. — Michio Kaku

My want can only do so much in terms of changing what's actually occuring with other people, and I'd like to keep it that way. I don't want to feel that if I had wanted something more, or had said one other thing, or had worn a different dress, or had been more mysterious, or more open, then I would get something or someone I wouldn't get otherwise. — Carrie Fisher

Because counseling isn't about changing someone else. It's about trying to change yourself. — Nicholas Sparks

When someone tells you, "You've changed," it might simply be because you've stopped living your life their way. — John Spence

I consider 'Dr. Horrible' a tremendous success. The fact that it won an Emmy I just think lends validity to what we were doing and the point we were trying to make: taking the power into someone else's hands and changing the world. — Nathan Fillion

He had never admitted he had a problem, and maybe if he had she would have stayed longer or tried harder. As it was, she simply felt free now. Being with him had been a long, slow suffocation. Caring for someone who didn't care one bit about changing was like being frayed thin. He hadn't wanted what she had to give. She wasn't really sure what it would be like to — Lauren Blakely

Changing yourself into who you think someone else wants is hurting yourself. It's a rejection of who you are, and that's toxic. You're committing emotional suicide." I — Jennifer Coburn

My life changes dramatically every time I get up out of bed. After my proposal life changed in that I wasn't asked to change. I always thought that marriage meant someone was going to ask you to stop being who you were. And I met someone who not only wants me to be who I am but likes it. So, my life changed in that my views towards marriage stopped being morbid. I found I was ready to be a good partner where I don't think I was a very good partner to people before. I stepped up my game. — Sandra Bullock

The world is changing so quickly, with mobile stuff and different platforms emerging, that I think it's more likely that the biggest competitor for Facebook is someone that we haven't heard of. What that means for us is that we should just really stay focused on what we're doing. — Mark Zuckerberg

I want to make someone's life better because I'm here. If you have that attitude it will change your day and change your life. — Tim Tebow

That was the exact moment my heart threaded with hers. It was as if someone reached down with a sewing needle and stitched my soul to hers. How could one woman be so sharp and so vulnerable at the same time? Whatever would happen to her would happen to me. Whatever pain she would feel, I would feel it too. I wanted it - that was the surprising part. Selfish, self centered Caleb Drake loved a girl so much he could already feel himself changing to accommodate her needs.
I fell.
Hard.
For the rest of this life and probably the next.
I wanted her - every last inch of her stubborn, combative, catty heart. — Tarryn Fisher

You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame, back home to exile, to escape to Europe and some foreign land, back home to lyricism, to singing just for singing's sake, back home to aestheticism, to one's youthful idea of 'the artist' and the all-sufficiency of 'art' and 'beauty' and 'love,' back home to the ivory tower, back home to places in the country, to the cottage in Bermude, away from all the strife and conflict of the world, back home to the father you have lost and have been looking for, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time
back home to the escapes of Time and Memory. — Thomas Wolfe

You think you know someone, but that person always changes, and you keep changing, too. I understood it suddenly, how that's what being alive means. Our own invisible plates shifting inside of our bodies, beginning to align into the people we are going to become. — Ava Dellaira

We don't have the flexibility of changing the bid amount. We can go through the whole process and someone else could beat us by giving more. — Thomas Raymond Kelly

I wish someone would give my heart a polygraph; it keeps lying and flipping and changing its mind. — Jasmine Warga

The sensation wasn't repellent, though she had believed somewhere it would be. Someone had left her with that impression, but, whoever they were, they were wrong. It was ... mesmerizing. She could sense the length of him against her buttocks as well as a kind of heaviness, a substantive presence. He was changing right there under her, growing longer and thicker, information she acquired through the unlikely source of her bum, while he kissed her mouth. — Judith Ivory

Indeed, this is what modern and postmodern masculinity has been all about-men behaving like little boys forever, serving themselves in the name of self-discovery. (Can we imagine someone like Ronald Reagan or Winston Churchill talking about going on a quest to find his masculine self? They were too busy changing the world.) — Richard D. Phillips

People tell me an Olympic medal is a life-changing event. Except I don't even think about the medal unless someone asks about it. — Mikaela Shiffrin

People need to learn the art of making an argument. Often there is no right or wrong. It's just your opinion vs someone else's opinion. How you deliver that opinion could make the difference between opening a mind, changing an opinion or shutting the door. Sometimes folk just don't know when they've "argued" enough. Learn when to shut up. — J'son M. Lee

Whose truth do you want to know, Dr. Amin Jaafari? The truth of a Bedouin who thinks he's free and clear because he's got an Israeli passport? The truth of a serviceable Arab per excellence who's honored wherever he goes, who gets invited to fancy parties by people who want to show how tolerant and considerate they are? The truth of someone who thinks he can change sides like changing a shirt, with no trace left behind? Is that the truth you're looking for, or is it the one you're running away from? What planet do you live on, sir? ... Our cities are being buried by machines on caterpillar tracks, our patron saints don't know which way to turn, and you, simply because you're nice and warm in your golden cage, refuse to see the inferno consuming us. — Yasmina Khadra

I guess when someone's gone from your life for a while, all you think about are the big things. The big regrets, the could-have, should-haves. Or the big moments, the memories that are going to be with you forever, those life-changing moments, like first kisses and first confessions and first trusts. And you think about the lasts too: the last kiss, the last words, the last moments. — Beth Revis

Social media is an ever-changing world. You want to be ready if a certain platform becomes red-hot, and you don't want someone else taking your company name as his or her handle. That does happen! — Michelle Phan

You want someone in the ballpark and then you grow together. Thats what a relashionship's about: changing each other. — Grayson Perry

The job is what you do when you are told what to do. The job is showing up at the factory, following instructions, meeting spec, and being managed.
Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can.
The job might be difficult, it might require skill, but it's a job.
Your art is what you do when no one can tell you exactly how to do it. Your art is the act of taking personal responsibility, challenging the status quo, and changing people.
I call the process of doing your art 'the work.' It's possible to have a job and do the work, too. In fact, that's how you become a linchpin.
The job is not the work. — Seth Godin

A kaleidoscope consists of a tube (or container), mirrors, pieces of glass (or beads or precious stones), sunlight, and someone to turn it and observe and enjoy the forms. Metaphorically, perhaps the sun represents the divine light, or spark of life, within all of us. The mirrors represent our ability to serve as mirrors for one another and each other's alignment, reflecting sides of ourselves that we may not have been aware of. The tube (or container) is the practice of community yoga. We, as human beings, are the glass, the beads, the precious stones. The facilitator is the person turning the Kaleidoscope, initiating the changing patterns. And the resulting beauty of the shapes? Well, that's for everyone to enjoy... — Lo Nathamundi

A deep analysis judges technology morally - from its conception and intention to the totality of its consequences, knowing that all "raw materials" once were someone's home or sustenance, that extraction and manufacture at industrial scale reduce landscapes and their human beings, that distribution, employment, and disposal of technologies change lives in unpredictable ways. — Stephanie Mills

You will never change, unless you are honest with yourself or you are forced to be authentic by someone that was honest with him or herself. — Shannon L. Alder

When I say something that contradicts the predictions of someone else in the past, people discredit me, not realizing that they are contradicting themselves, for the purpose in knowing the future is the potential in changing it. And so, when I detect changes, it means that the once predicted future is not the same anymore. If the future could not be changed, fortunetelling would be like telling you that you'll burn yourself at cooking dinner, and then wait for you to do it, instead of inviting you out to a restaurant. — Robin Sacredfire

Trying to change someone, and their views, is like throwing paper into a fire. — Anthony Liccione

That is the saddest part when you lose someone you love - that person keeps changing. And later you wonder, Is this the same person I lost? Maybe you lost more maybe less, then thousand different things that come from your memory or imagination - and you do not know which is which, which was true, which is false. — Amy Tan

It's definitely a thing to be sitting there, getting a pedicure, and you look over and someone is reading an article about an aspect of your life that you know is not true. It's weird, it's uncomfortable, but I don't see it changing anytime soon, so I should figure a way to laugh through it. — Anne Hathaway

You may change cause people wanna see you like you are ordinary , But you fight so hard for changing cause someone saw you extraordinary — Walaa WalkademAgmal

But where do we go?"(Elinor)
"I used to think there was a plan, a rough plan, but a plan all the same," the doctor admitted. "Now, I believe there are a thousand plans. Every breath, every decision, influences the plan, expands it, shortens it, twists it all around. It's always changing. Those of us lucky enough to make it through the multitude of possible diseases and accidents get old. We get tired. We close our eyes."
"And then? Where are we then?"
Silly to ask him as though he knew, but in fact the doctor didn't hesitate. He took Elinor's hand and placed it on his chest, in the place where he knew his heart to be.
"There."
Elinor smiled and thought at last. At last someone had told her the truth. — Alice Hoffman

The moment it was over I knew I shouldn't have done it. It was fucked up on so many levels that it didn't even feel right to hold Dan close to me in what had been our bed less than a month earlier. Dan loved me, I knew he did. It wasn't fair of me to lead him on, even if I had broken up with him just before fucking him. But it wasn't just that, the rest of it wasn't right either. The knowledge of what I no longer was in my family's view but forever, for whoever looked upon me, marked on my body, a lack so fundamental and obvious that some would refuse to call me a man. And what would happen to me because of that, the way my body was even in that moment changing to accommodate someone else's desires, the way I was becoming what Brennan had decided I needed to be. For the first time, it wasn't a mere omission but an outright lie. To be in that bed next to Dan was taking up the space that belonged to someone else, someone we had both loved and who was now gone. That life was over, done. — N.J. Lysk

Keep in mind too, our failures serve to teach us, and usually teach us more than our successes do. What we may perceive as a failure is also an opportunity for someone else to rise to the occasion and perform a mitzvah, or mitzvot. Do not begrudge someone their joyous performance of mitzvot. Sometimes, perhaps even more often then you may think, what we consider our failures were blessings in disguise for ourselves, or others, or everyone. Abraham did not change the world just because he himself changed, and followed his own destiny. He changed the world through his giving others opportunities to rise to their own greatness. — Laura Weakley

If people envisage me in the Senate they might think of me as someone who would emulate Paul Wellstone, fighting for the issues he fought for. He was a good friend of mine.We'll be trying to do a couple of things. One is fighting for national health care. Another is fighting to raise the minimum wage to a living wage, and changing our trade policies. — Bernie Sanders

Because I trust in the ever-changing climate of the heart. (At least, today I feel that way.) I think it is necessary to have many experiences for the sake of feeling something; for the sake of being challenged, and for the sake of being expressive, to offer something to someone else, to learn what we are capable of. — Jason Mraz

You never think it will happen to you. You think about what it would be like. You go through it over and over in your mind, changing the scenario slightly each time, but deep down, you don't really believe it would ever happen, because it's something that happens to someone else, not to you. — Tonya Hurley

Suppose the god, the goal of progress, is changing. Then progress becomes impossible. How could we progress toward a goal that keeps receding? How could a runner make progress toward a finish line if someone kept moving it as he ran? — Peter Kreeft

When something or someone moves you, truly moves you, a part of you wakes affected and afflicted by senses you had never previously experiences. A part of you that you never understood, or perhaps never even knew, suddenly sparks into existence. — K.L. Hughes

People like Mike McConnell don't really move from public office to the private sector and back again; that implies more separation than actually exists. Rather, the U.S. government and industry interests essentially form one gigantic, amalgamated, inseparable entity - with a public division and a private one. When someone like McConnell goes from a top private sector position to a top government post in the same field, it's more like an intracorporate reassignment than it is like changing employers. When McConnell serves as DNI he's simply in one division of this entity, and when he's at Booz Allen he is in another. It's precisely the same way that Goldman Sachs officials endlessly move in and out of the Treasury Department and other government positions with financial authority, or the way that health care and oil executives move in and out of government agencies charged with regulating those fields. In — Glenn Greenwald

It's crap when people say you shouldn't try to change someone. The whole nature of a relationship is compromise, and compromise is change. It can be scary as hell changing what you know to fit with someone else, so I think you're entitled to drag your feet a bit. — L.A. Fiore

Well, while you were in the bathroom, I sat down at this picnic table here in Bumblefug, Kentucky, and noticed that someone had carved that GOD HATES FAG, which, aside from being a grammatical nightmare, is absolutely ridiculous. So I'm changing it to 'God Hates Baguettes.' It's tough to disagree with that. Everybody hates baguettes. — John Green

When you squeeze an orange, you'll always get orange juice to come out. What comes out is what's inside. The same logic applies to you: when someone squeezes you, puts pressure on you, or says something unflattering or critical, and out of you comes anger, hatred, bitterness, tension, depression, or anxiety, that is what's inside. If love and joy are what you want to give and receive, change your life by changing what's inside — Wayne Dyer

Best of all, she waits outside the dressing room while I'm changing. Girlfriends don't do this but wives do, and if there is any better reason to get married than to have someone to hold your hand in a clothing store, I don't know what it is. — Charlie Close

When it seems impossible that a deep connection with another person could just go away instead of changing form. It seems impossible that you will one day look up and say the words "I used to date someone who lived in that building," referring to a three-year relationship. As simple as if it was a pizza place that is now a dry cleaner's. It happens. Keep walking. — Sloane Crosley

When you choose to be a loving person, it's magical how love comes back to you and brightens someone's day, changing your mood and that of the world. — Jason Mraz

Our lives are often a continuous betrayal and denial of what came before, we twist and distort everything as time passes, and yet we are still aware, however much we deceive ourselves, that we are the keepers of secrets and mysteries, however trivial. How tiring having always to move in the shadows or, even more difficult, in the half-light, which is never the same, always changing, every person has his light areas and his dark areas, they change according to what he knows and to what day it is and who he's talk to and what he wants ... Sometimes it is only the weariness brought on by the shadow that impels one to tell all the facts, the way someone hiding will suddenly reveal himself, either the pursuer or the pursued, simply in order to bring the game to an end and to step free from what has become a kind of enchantment. — Javier Marias

Each of us is different and has different needs. In addition, our needs change over the course of our relationship. When you are committed to an enduring relationship with someone, you aren't simply concerned about having your needs met. You also go out of your way to care for your loved one, being aware of and adaptable to their changing needs. — Chris Prentiss

Grief is like a moving river, so that's what I mean by it's always changing. It's a strange thing to say because I'm at heart an optimistic person, but I would say in some ways it just gets worse. It's just that the more time that passes, the more you miss someone. — Michelle Williams

Being meek does not make you weak. You're not someone who sways with changing circumstances. You don't allow yourself to be used. You're not passive or spineless. Your faith is in the Almighty, so you know that you are mighty. — Toni Sorenson

I'd spent so long trying to fit in,trying to be someone i wasn't,that i had no idea who i was any more. — Dorothy Koomson

When I talk to my neighbor, or to someone at church who doesn't accept that the planet is changing, I know that they don't know any better. They've been told this information by somebody they trust and it's not their fault. They've just never heard otherwise. — Katharine Hayhoe

There are not many secure hospitals that can boast someone who thought he was Napoleon, but St. Cerebellum's could field three - not to mention a handful of serial killers whose names inexplicably yet conveniently rhymed with their crimes. Notorious cannibal "Peter the Eater" was incarcerated here, as were "Sasha the Slasher" and "Mr. Browner the Serial Drowner." But the undisputed king of rhyme-inspired serial murder was Isle of Man resident Maximilian Marx, who went under the uniquely tongue-twisting epithet "Mad Max Marx, the Masked Manxman Axman." Deirdre Blott tried to top Max's clear superiority by changing her name so as to become "Nutty Nora Newsome, the Knife-Wielding Weird Widow from Waddersdon," but no one was impressed, and she was ostracized by the other patients for being such a terrible show-off. — Jasper Fforde

If you don't think it's nearly impossible to change someone who is not willing to change, just think how hard it is to change yourself, and you are willing. — Charles F. Glassman

MOST PEOPLE think acting is make-believe. Like it's a big game where people put on costumes and feign kisses or stab wounds and then pretend to gasp and die. They think it's a show. They don't understand that acting is becoming someone else, changing your thoughts and needs until you don't remember your own anymore. You let the other person invade everything you are and then you turn yourself inside out, spilling their identity onto the stage like a kind of bloodletting. — Mindy Mejia

Dear God,
Reveal to me through stories something of what it is like to walk around in someone else's shoes.
Show me something about myself in the stories I read, something that needs changing, a thought, a feeling or attitude.
Deliver me from myself, O God, and from the parachial and sometimes prejudiced views I have of other people, other nations, other races, other religions.
Enlarge by heart with a story, and change me by the characters I meet there.
May some of the light from their lives spill over into mine, giving me illumination where there was once ignorance, compassion where there was once contempt. — Ken Gire

Life is a game in which the rules are constantly changing; nothing spoils a game more than those who take it seriously. Adultery? Phooey! You should never subjugate yourself to another nor seek the subjugation of someone else to yourself. If you follow that Crispian principle you will be able to say Phooey, too, instead of reaching for your gun when you fancy yourself betrayed. — Quentin Crisp

Listening to learn isn't about giving advice
at least not until asked
but about trying to understand exactly what someone means,how it is that someone looks at and feels about her particular situation ... Listening to learn from a daughter in adolescence, conspiring with her thoughts and feelings, keeps a mother in touch with a daughter's growing and changing self. — Elizabeth Debold

I don't believe it can be taught as if it were a recipe. There aren't ingredients and techniques that will guarantee success. Parameters exist that, if followed, will ensure a business can continue, but you cannot clearly define our business success and then bottle it as you would a perfume. It's not that simple: to be successful, you have to be out there, you have to hit the ground running; and, if you have a good team round you and more than your fair share of luck, you might make something happen. But you certainly can't guarantee it just by following someone else's formula. Business is a fluid, changing substance. — Richard Branson

Beauty shouldn't be about changing yourself to achieve an ideal or be more socially acceptable. Real beauty, the interesting, truly pleasing kind, is about honoring the beauty within you and without you. It's about knowing that someone else's definition of pretty has no hold over you. — Golda Poretsky

A moment later the race began - poof - without any fanfare. There was no horn or gun or even a megaphone. But someone at the starting line must have yelled, "Go!" for everyone began running. Some things, even some of the most life-changing experiences, start that way. No one says, "This (fill in the blank) is going to be one of the most radical rites of passage you will ever travel through, so pay attention." Someone just says, "Okay, go ahead now," and you find yourself in the middle of an unexpected lightning storm with your life flashing before you. — Cami Ostman

Jennifer to Beth I don't know. Writing headlines, I guess. Reading the same stories over and over to make sure some idiot reporter didn't use "they're" when he should have used "their." Changing "which"es to "that"s. Arguing with someone about sequence of tenses. What on earth is sequence of tenses? It's top-secret copy editor stuff. — Rainbow Rowell

Yes, but look what a mess you have made of things prior to my arrival." Lady Maccon was not to be dissuaded from her chosen course of action. "Someone has to tell Conall that Kingair is to blame." "If none of them are changing, he'll find out as soon as he arrives. His lordship would not like you following him." "His lordship can eat my fat - " Lady Maccon paused, thought the better of her crass words, and said, " - does not have to like it. Nor do you. The fact remains that this morning Floote will secure for me passage on the afternoon's dirigible to Glasgow. His lordship can take it up with me when I arrive. — Gail Carriger

There is no gainsaying the fact that this suggested program will strike most people as impossibly "radical" and "unrealistic"; any suggestion for changing the status quo, no matter how slight, can always be considered by someone as too radical, so that the only thoroughgoing escape from the charge of impracticality is never to advocate any change whatever in existing conditions. But to take this approach is to abandon human reason, and to drift in animal- or plant-like manner with the tide of events. — Murray N. Rothbard

Is it a crime when you love someone so much that you can't stand the thought of them changing? Is it a crime when you love someone so much that you can't see clearly? — Jodi Picoult

Maybe part of the reason that love becomes such a volatile force in our lives when it's supposed to be so still and beautiful is that we keep reaching for that forever love. We can't just let it be what it is. We try to make feelings and interest sustain themselves for years and years when they just don't have that kind of staying power. But how much of it is a result of our own changing and how much is the fact that forever love comes with so many expectations and too much pressure? What if it's really that nobody is to blame, other than whoever instilled in us the idea that "forever" was the ultimate kind of love? Because what if we stopped expecting and started just being. I think that's what scares people. I think they choose to not love someone because of what it means for the long-term instead of having any interspersed bits of love. But those bits might be all we ever have. It's out of them that the rest grows. — Brianna Wiest

When our responses turn into reactions and we set out to teach people a lesson, we lose. We lose because the act of teaching someone a lesson rarely succeeds at changing them, and always fails at making our day better, or our work more useful. — Seth Godin

Why does anyone fall in love with anyone? I don't believe we each have some single special person waiting for us out there, if that's what you're getting at. I've been in love too many times over the years to buy into that old canard. It's more a question of timing you know? As if we all have these elaborate locks inside our hearts that are constantly changing shape, and every once in a while, someone happens along with the perfect key. Love is nothing more than a fortuitous collision of circumstances. And then you discover you've ended up spending fifty years with someone. — Tommy Wallach

The thing about being catapulted into a whole new life
or at least, shoved up so hard against someone else's life that you might as well have your face pressed against their window
is that it forces you to rethink your idea of who you are. Or how you might seem to other people. — Jojo Moyes

In stories, when someone behaves uncharacteristically, we take it as a meaningful, even pivotal moment. If we are surprised again and again, we have to keep changing our minds, or give up and disbelieve the writer. In real life, if people think they know you well enough not only to say, 'It's Tuesday, Amy must be helping out at the library today,' but well enough to say to the librarian, after you've left the building, 'You know, Amy just loves reading to the four-year-olds, I think it's been such a comfort for her since her little boy died' - if they know you like that, you can do almost anything where they can't see you, and when they hear about it, they will, as we do, simply disbelieve the narrator. — Amy Bloom

Remember, changing someone's hang-ups is an easier task if stays in the realm of sex because the carrot at the end of this trip is - SEX! It's not so easy to change other aspects of a man's personality because the rewards aren't as apparent and you can't exactly screw the stupid out of someone. — Roberto Hogue

Vivienne Westwood, The Sex Pistols, Seven Stars, coffee with milk and strawberry cake. And Ren flowers.
Nana's favorite things never change.
It was so cool for someone like me who keeps on changing their mind. — Ai Yazawa

Do you know anyone who hasn't changed his mind? This door was a tree, then it will be firewood for someone, then it will return to air and earth. We're all like that, constantly changing. It's simply honest to report that you've changed your mind when you have. When you're afraid of what people will think if you speak honestly, that's where you become confused. — Byron Katie

I work with a lot of young people who have poems that are changing their lives, that they're eager to talk about, but every now and then when I meet someone, maybe someone of my parents' generation, and I tell them that I write poetry, they'll begin to recite something that they memorized when they were in school that has never left them. — Tracy K. Smith