Quotes & Sayings About Time Changing Things

The world is changing, but I am not changing with it. There is no e-reader or Kindle in my future. My philosophy is simple: Certain things are perfect the way they are. The sky, the Pacific Ocean, procreation and the Goldberg Variations all fit this bill, and so do books. Books are sublimely visceral, emotionally evocative objects that constitute a perfect delivery systemBooks that we can touch; books that we can smell; books that we can depend on. Books that make us believe, for however short a time, that we shall all live happily ever after. — Joe Queenan

So I had made a decision which carried with it things that I could not articulate at the time. I had made the choice instinctively, and only later had given it meaning. The trip had never been billed in my mind as an adventure in the sense of something to be proved. And it struck me then that the most difficult things has been the decision to act, the rest had been merely tenacity
and the fears were paper tigers. One really could do anything one had decided to do whether it were changing a job, moving to a new place, divorcing a husband or whatever,m one really cold act to change and control one's life;and the procedure, the process, was its own reward. — Robyn Davidson

I'm in love with that girl," she said out loud in amazement, because she knew that this was a life-changing thing and life-changing things should be said aloud, should have a moment in time, and a place in the air, some molecular structure to make them real. I'm in love with that girl, she heard as it reverberated inside her head. And it was truth, she realised, as things are which you don't think, but discover have always existed. — Paula Boock

Changing the big picture takes time.. and the best things to do is focus on the things that we can make in our lives if we're doing all that. That becomes the collage of real change — Michelle Obama

One of the cardinal features of the Buddha's teaching is that all life, however solid it may seem to be, and all things, however separate they may seem to be, are in a state of flux. That is to say that the world we live in doesn't consist so much of things or entities as it consists of process. Everything is in a constant state of flowing pattern. By way of illustration you might say that it's something like the flowing pattern you see when you look at smoke: a dancing, constantly changing arabesque of pattern; flowing, flowing, all the time. Or that the substance of life is something like water, which I can hold in my hand so long as I cup it gently, but if I clutch at the water, I immediately lose it. — Alan W. Watts

The defenders of feeling-based marriage venerate emotions for their authenticity only because they avoid looking closely at what actually floats through most people's emotional kaleidoscopes, all the contradictory, sentimental, and hormonal forces that pull us in a hundred often crazed and inconclusive directions.
We could not be fulfilled if we weren't inauthentic some of the time - inauthentic, that is, in relation to such things as our passing desires to throttle our children, poison our spouse, or end our marriage over a dispute about changing a lightbulb. A degree of repression is necessary for both the mental health of our species and the adequate functioning of a decently ordered society. We are chaotic chemical propositions. We should feel grateful for, and protected by, the knowledge that our external circumstances are often out of line with what we feel; it is a sign that we are probably on the right course. — Alain De Botton

Transformations are a part of life. We are constantly being changed by things changing around us. — Suzy Kassem

I'm always changing things around. I have to change it all the time. I'm rearranging furniture and taking down paintings and putting up new ones, and buying new pieces of art. — Evangeline Lilly

The arc of history is longer than human vision. It bends. We abolished slavery, we granted universal suffrage. We have done hard things before. And every time it took a terrible fight between people who could not imagine changing the rules, and those who said, 'We already did. We have made the world new.' The hardest part will be to convince yourself of the possibilities, and hang on. — Barbara Kingsolver

But O, sick children of the world,
Of all the many changing things
In dreary dancing past us whirled,
To the cracked tune that Chronos sings,
Words alone are certain good. — William Butler Yeats

Directors are always changing things at the last minute. Actors will do a scene, and the director will say, 'Okay, that was perfect, but this time, Bob, instead of saying "What's for dinner?" you say, "Wait a minute! Benzene is actually a hydrocarbon!" And say it with a Norwegian accent. Also, we think maybe your character should have no arms. — Dave Barry

The present: It is interesting that the "NOW" is called "the present." The present is the ultimate gift; it is the gift of truth and life. You are given the present every second, and you will receive it forever. The present is the only thing that exists, the only thing you are ever conscious of. Your life is a series of presents moving through time. The future does not exist until it becomes the present.

Life is one perpetual present.

Creation is happening now: Your body, mind, and the world around it are being created from microsecond to microsecond. Things may look the same, but they are not; everything is constantly changing and being recreated. Our life and our world is being created from moment to moment.

Life and everything in it is always new. — Michael Smith

I'd make oatmeal cookies."
"Cookies?"
"I would. That's just what I would do."
"Why?"
He lifts one hand from the steering wheel and pinches his chin. "Because the world is changing so fast all the time. There's nothing you can do but just say, 'cool,' and roll with it. But some things can stay the same. Flour is still flour. Vanilla still smells like vanilla. Say a giant fireball is motoring toward us right now from Alha Centauri. Okay, universe. You expect us to run and scream and kill one another? Sorry, we're making oatmeal freaking cookies. — R.A. Nelson

Why didn't you tell me?" he asked her after a small eternity.
"I didn't
I didn't feel that way
until
so many things have happened ... " Kaitlyn faltered. Of all things, she wanted to make Rob all right. Although now she saw that her love for him must have been changing for a long time, gradually, she didn't know how to explain that. "It's probaly just
I'll get over it. In a little while ... "
"Not that, you won't," Rob said. "Neither of you. I mean, I sure hope you don't." He sounded as incoherent as Kaitlyn felt, and he kept swallowing. But he went on doggedly, "Kait, I love you. You know I do. But this isn't something I can compete with." He stepped back. "I'm not blind. You two belong together. — L.J.Smith

Most of the time, the things that really change the world exist for something fundamentally selfish and then the world-changing ends up being a side-effect of that. — Andrew Mason

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

Even nature has hidden lessons for mankind underneath its silent saga. The trees teach us to give without discrimination, the seasons proclaim that time keeps changing for the better and the vastness of the sky bears the amount of love we should hold in our hearts for everyone we come across throughout the day. — Sanchita Pandey

I sat out a few years because I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do next. So many things were changing in music and in culture, so it seemed like a good time to step back. — Beck

Even thought you can't see it, my son, things are changing. Things ALWAYS change, given enough time and pressure. The very thought of that is scary to some, but change is absolutely nothing to be afraid of. It is a simple fact of life. — EXO Books

Life is a series of moments and moments are always changing, just like thoughts, negative and positive. And though it may be human nature to dwell, like many natural things it's senseless, senseless to allow a single thought to inhabit a mind because thoughts are like guests or fair-weather friends. As soon as they arrive, they can leave, and even the ones that take a long time to emerge fully can disappear in an instant. Moments are precious; sometimes they linger and other times they're fleeting, and yet so much could be done in them; you could change a mind, you could save a life and you could even fall in love. — Cecelia Ahern

In the '70s, if anything, it was a more interesting time in fashion. It was a time when things were changing, especially in London. — Rei Kawakubo

Peter - do please be happy. I mean, you've always been the comfortable sort of person that nothing could touch. Don't alter, will you?" That was the second time Wimsey had been asked not to alter himself; the first time, the request had exalted him; this time, it terrified him. As the taxi lurched along the rainy Embankment, he felt for the first time the dull and angry helplessness which is the first warning stroke of the triumph of mutability. Like the poisoned Athulf in the Fool's Tragedy, he could have cried, "Oh, I am changing, changing, fearfully changing." Whether his present enterprise failed or succeeded, things would never be the same again. — Dorothy L. Sayers

And then, 'Why is a raven like a writing desk?' Those things just became so important to the character. You realize that the more you read it, if I read the book again today, I'd find 100 other things that I missed last time. It's a constantly changing book. — Johnny Depp

The question for each man to settle is not what he would do if he had means, time, influence and educational advantages; the question is what he will do with the things he has. The moment a young man ceases to dream or to bemoan his lack of opportunities and resolutely looks his conditions in the face, and resolves to change them, he lays the corner-stone of a solid and honorable success. — Hamilton Wright Mabie

Forever is a long long time and time has a way of changing things — Walt Disney Company

Despite her apparent freedom, her life consisted of endless hours spent waiting for a miracle, for true love, for an adventure with the same romantic ending she had seen in films and read about in books. A writer once said that it is not time that changes man, nor knowledge; the only thing that can change someone's mind is love. What nonsense!
The person who wrote that clearly knew only one side of the coin.
Love was undoubtedly one of the things capable of changing a person's whole life, from one moment to the next. But there was the other side of the coin, the second thing that could make a human being take a totally different course from the one he or she had planned; and that was called despair. Yes, perhaps love really could transform someone, but despair did the job more quickly. — Paulo Coelho

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

I have shown you this evening autographic records of the history of stress and strain in the living and non-living. How similar are the writings! So similar in fact that you cannot tell one apart from the other. Among such phenomena, how can we draw a line of demarcation and say, here the physical ends and there the physiological begins? Such absolute barriers do not exist.
It was when I came upon the mute witness of these self made records, and perceived in them one phase of a pervading unity that bears within it all things - the mote that quivers in ripples of light, the teeming life upon our earth, and the radiant suns that shine above us - it was then that I understood for the first time a little of that message proclaimed by my ancestors on the banks of the Ganges thirty centuries ago: "They who see but one, in all the changing manifoldness of this universe, unto them belongs Eternal Truth - unto none else, unto none else! — Jagadis Chandra Bose

Despite the experiences that put me in the spotlight as the co-creator of my wisdom, the human part of me keeps burning, like an alchemical process that I both accept and want to refuse. You see, it's hard when I notice women falling in love with me, and then destroying everything at the same time. And so, I'm changing the world as much as this world is changing me. The two things are inseparable. — Robin Sacredfire

Yes I have done it all. Tested the shallow waters, swam through the dangerous tides, met strangers, seen friends turn strangers, taken risks to achieve my goals, persevered to out do myself each time, rose high, fell hard, learned to climb, learned to dream and in dreaming learned to relate to reality.
I have earned respect, achieved things very young, believed in my potential, questioned it too but through it all I have never stopped to aspire. I am a human and I must adapt to the changing seasons, learn new skills and master them all.
Now as I stand and look up, I see a heap of laurels yet to achieve and chest of mysteries yet to resolve. I am not one in the crowd. I'll forever be the one whom they could never be — Adhish Mazumder

There are times in life when the imagined worst-case scenario proves better than reality. When the images cultivated in your mind are not nearly as horrifying as the truth. When the desire to turn back time and do things differently burns through your body so fiercely that it singes the very fiber of your being, forever changing you. — Amber Lynn Natusch

No ... it never takes your breath away, telling you things you already know, laying everything out flat, as though the terms and the time, and the nature and the movement of everything were secrets of the same magnitude. They write for people who read with the surface of their minds, people with reading habits that make the smallest demands of them, people brought up reading for facts, who know what's going to come next and want to know what's coming next, and get angry at surprises. Clarity's essential, and detail, no fake mysticism, the facts are bad enough. But we're embarrassed for people who tell too much, and tell it without surprise. How does he know what happened, unless it's one unshaven man alone in a boat, changing I to he, and how often do you get a man alone in a boat, in all this ... all this ... — William Gaddis

We could not be fulfilled if we weren't inauthentic some of the time - inauthentic, that is, in relation to such things as our passing desires to throttle our children, poison our spouse, or end our marriage over a dispute about changing a lightbulb. — Alain De Botton

Almost every scene, I re-think as I'm about to start drawing it, and at least half of the time I'm changing dialogue or whatever, or adding scenes or different things. — Chester Brown

Nights without beginning that had no end. Talking about a past as if it'd really happened. Telling themselves that this time next year, this time next year, things were going to be different. — Raymond Carver

My granda always told me that fall's the time to root up something you don't want coming back to trouble you.' Kote mimicked the quaver of an old man's voice. 'Things are too full of life in the spring months. In the summer, they're too strong and won't let go. Autumn ... ' He looked around at the changing leaves on the trees. 'Autumn's the time. In autumn everything is tired and ready to die. — Patrick Rothfuss

I pick at what's left of the popcorn and think about the summer, the summer that was both awful and wonderful. I thank Adam, as I have thanked him almost every night since August, for showing me that it's possible to lift the corners of our universe. Adam told me about lifting the corners the second time I met him, but I had no idea what he meant. Now I think I do. It's all about changing what's handed to you, about poking around a little, lifting the corners, seeing what's underneath, poking that. Somethings things work out, sometimes they don't, but at least you're exploring. And life is always more interesting that way. — Ann M. Martin

Empowered Women 101: Forgive yourself for having chosen to expose yourself to people who don't care about your feelings and help others to do the same. Enjoy life! It is as simple as changing your focus or perspective when you start thinking about people from the past who hurt your feelings. Eventually, you will forget about those types of people because your time and attention will be taken up by more positive things/people/events/activities etc. When you understand how much time is wasted trying to make people see you, understand you, respect you, value you, like you or agree with you ... life becomes a pointless negative fight for validation that will drain your happiness. You are worth more than the indifference, inattention or crumbs people throw you. You are a queen that demands respect and God will bring the right person into your life to make you forget why you ever wasted your time on nothing important. — Shannon L. Alder

We start with our consumers and spend an exorbitant amount of time talking with them, trying to figure out what's driving them, finding out where they are and how they're changing things. — Cathy O'Brien

When we are fully mindful of the transience of things - an impending return home from an overseas adventure, a graduation, our child boarding the school bus for the first day of kindergarten, a close colleague changing jobs, a move to a new city - we are more likely to appreciate [be grateful for] and savor the remaining time that we do have. Although bittersweet experiences also make us sad, it is this sadness that prompts us, instead of taking it for granted, to come to appreciate the positive aspects of our vacation, colleague, or hometown; it's 'now or never.' — Sonja Lyubomirsky

While writing 'Half of a Yellow Sun,' I enjoyed playing with minor things: inventing a train station in a town that has none, placing towns closer to each other than they are, changing the chronology of conquered cities. Yet I did not play with the central events of that time. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

If you know you have to wait anyway, why not make a decision to enjoy your life while you're waiting? Why not be happy while God is in the process of changing things? After all, there's nothing we can really do to make it happen any faster. We might as well relax and enjoy our lives, knowing that at the appointed time God is going to bring his plan to pass. — Joel Osteen

Perhaps, with enough time in these walls, one could become resigned to things never getting better, or even changing all that much. Or maybe a person eventually lost hope that there was anything worth preserving at all. — Hugh Howey

A majority of the successful women on the pop scene conform to what a woman is supposed to be. Some have tried to get things moving. They have tried to modify the image. But sometimes the image has a hard time changing the eye - to change the relationship between the image and the eye takes longer. — Orlan

Innovating Women is more important today than ever. Things are changing for the better. The recent announcements by Google, LinkedIn, Yahoo, and Facebook of their diversity numbers - and a pledge to improve these - are the most recent victories. The Boys Club is under fire and is trying to reform itself. Women are achieving success and helping each other. Advancing technologies are leveling the playing field. Women are in the catbird seat for the new era of exponential innovation. This is the time to inspire and motivate - and that is what Innovating Women will surely do. — Vivek Wadhwa

When I talk to people who have teenagers now, their rooms are filled with screens. There are their phones and their DVD players and TVs and all these things to produce distractions for them, and I think it would be hard to find the time to create something. I think that's really changing something about adolescence. — Adrian Tomine

I know there are fewer women comics, and I think there'll continue to be an inherent sexism in many industries, comedy being one, just because things do take a while to evolve. Things are changing, but it's going to take time. I accept this rather than getting angry about it. — Miranda Hart

It seems like it's all just remembering and forgetting. Things happen so fast, and then they're gone before you notice them. Events ambush you from out of nowhere, blindside you, and then you have to spend the time afterward trying to remember or forget what the hell it all was to begin with. The more you think about it, the more the events crumble, crack, breakdown, or refuse to change at all. They're either pieces of ice in your hand, changing shape and melting away until they're nothing like what they were to begin with, or pieces of glass. Sharp and irritating, unchanging reminders of pain and unpleasantness - or happiness. — Gregory Galloway

There you are. The sight of the changing world is miraculous and heartbreaking, both at the same time.
But so it is for me too. The heartbreaking side of growing old is not in the things around one but in oneself. — Simone De Beauvoir

Autumn was his favourite time of year, not simply for its changing colours but for the crispness in the air and the sharpness of the light. As the leaves fell the landscape revealed itself, like a painting being cleaned or a building being renewed. He could see the underlying shape of things. This was what he wanted, he decided: moments of clarity and silence. — James Runcie

You could always go on changing things but there comes a time when you have to decide to stop. — Peter Wright

In books there are chapters to separate out the moments, to show that time is going by and things are changing, and sometimes the parts even have titles that are full of promise - 'The Meeting', 'Hope', 'Downfall' - like paintings do. But in life there's nothing like that, no titles or signs or warnings, nothing to say 'Beware, danger!' or 'Frequent landslides' or 'Disillusion ahead'. In life you stand all alone in your costume, and too bad if it's in tatters. — Delphine De Vigan

I feel all things as dynamic events, being, changing, and interacting with each other in space and time even as I photograph them. — Wynn Bullock

I think that anything is a form of folk music. That's just me being glib, but the thing I like the best about humans, and there are not many other things besides this, is that humans make culture. If you're an artist, a big part of folk is noticing what other people are doing and incorporating it and changing it - the way that songs warp and change over time. — Will Sheff

But I don't like it, okay? I don't like how everything is changing. It's like when you're a kid, you think that things like the holidays are meant to show you how things always stay the same, how you have the same celebration year after year, and that's why it's so special. But the older you get, the more you realize that, yes, there are all these things that link you to the past, and you're using the same words and singing the same songs that have always been there for you, but each time, things have shifted, and you have to deal with that shift. Because maybe you don't notice it every single day. Maybe it's only on days like today that you notice it a lot. And I know I'm supposed to be able to deal with that, but I'm not sure I can deal with that.--David Levithan (p. 201 in galley) — David Levithan

Everybody who works in the computer industry is in an industry that didn't exist twenty-five years ago. We are talking on cell phones, and there were no such things. All the people who work for Nextel and so on, those are lost jobs that became found jobs. We are in a constant state of changing, and there are numerous opportunities in a time like this, but people are still going back to the fear. — Wayne Dyer

As the author Tim Ferriss once wrote: "Develop the habit of letting small bad things happen. If you don't, you'll never find time for the life-changing big things. — Cal Newport

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to a ceremony celebrating Blake Hartt and Livia McHugh. Today is not the start of their lives together. It will mark the day we all stood, clapped, and gave good wishes. But their fates were destined for each other long before they even met. True love, the kind that lasts forever, is very rare indeed. It takes compromise, continued growth, and trust."
Cole paused to look from Blake to Livia and back again. "Livia and Blake have a head start on all those things," he continued. "Time has tested them already, asking a fresh love to face terrifying and life-changing tasks. These two had to find and hold onto their love, even when it felt like all was lost. — Debra Anastasia

Everything keeps changing. People want to label things all the time and once you label it, it changes again. — Dylan McDermott

As Nancy Frey writes of the long-distance pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, 'When pilgrims begin to walk several things usually begin to happen to their perceptions of the world which continue over the course of the journey: they develop a changing sense of time, a heightening of the senses, and a new awareness of their bodies and the landscape ... A young German man expressed it this way: 'In the experience of walking, each step is a thought. You can't escape yourself. — Rebecca Solnit

Change You can draw a path for your life and have all of your goals set. You can change yourself as much as possible and change things around you just to reach those goals. Here's the catch. Never underestimate the power of fate. It can knock down the highest of goals that seem guaranteed in your life. Plan, yes, and decide, yes, but be prepared for plans not to work. If they don't work despite your hardest efforts, there must be a reason. You may not be able to see the reason at the time, but you will one day, maybe even years later. Did your efforts go to waste? If you don't learn from them, then yes, they did go to waste. Even after changing yourself and your surroundings for the sake of reaching that one goal, you may realize that it was waiting for you at the place where you started, when you were the true you who did not need to change or be changed. Change for yourself, not just for a goal. — Najwa Zebian

Sometimes I think of all the people who have travelled on their own across the world, people who have gone far from home, from villages to sprawling cities where nothing and no one is familiar. My mother has also travelled - across time for more than nine decades, from one era to the next, from a world she knew to another where much she was taught does not apply. Things are changing so fast; there is no period of adjustment now for anyone. My mother tries to keep up, but it is such a complicated trip. The faces that time taught her to trust are all missing. She lives in a foreign land where it is up to me to try to make her feel at home. She has walked so far, through time. — George Hodgman

Now, ideals, conventions, even truth itself, are continually changing things so that the milk of one generation may be the poison of the next. The young Americans of my time have seen one of these transformations with their own eyes, and for this reason they will not make the initial mistake of trying to teach their children too much. Before a man is thirty he has already accumulated, along with a little wisdom, a great quantity of dust and rubbish in his mind, and the difficulty is to let the children profit by what is wise without unloading the dust and rubbish on them too. We can only try to do better at it than the last generation did - when a generation succeeds in doing it completely, in handing down all its discoveries and none of its delusions, its children shall inherit the earth. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Things are changing, but this tiime I'm not afraid. This time I know who I am. This time I've made the right choice and I'm fighting for the right team. I feel safe. Confident. Excited, even. — Tahereh Mafi

The ocean was one of the greatest things he had ever seen in his life - bigger and deeper than anything he had imagined. It changed its color and shape and expression according to time and place and weather. It aroused a deep sadness in his heart, and at the same time it brought his heart peace and comfort. — Haruki Murakami

You know, how there are some people who have no time for small things? Pettiness, I mean. In the way they let things go - because whatever huge, life-changing thing happened to them gave them a perspective most of us can't ever have. — Debbie Howells

Relaxing with the present moment, relaxing with hopelessness, relaxing with death, not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance, that everything is changing all the time - that is the basic message. — Pema Chodron

The elder who is eliminating what time has done to the face, what life has done to the face, is making a statement for others to see: This is the way to be a good old person - it is to defeat this body that is doing things to you. Because you haven't changed. Your body's changing. — James Hillman

I was once more in a time which the things around me were changing and that is how I wanted it to be for the rest of my days. — Paulo Coelho

She looked up. "What I can't figure out is why the good things always end." "Everything ends." "Not some things. Not the bad things. They never go away." "Yes, they do. If you let them, they go away. Not as fast as we'd like sometimes, but they end too. What doesn't end is the way we feel about each other. Even when you're all grown up and somewhere else, you can remember what a good time we had together. Even when you're in the middle of bad things and they never seem to be changing, you can remember me. And I'll remember you. — Torey L. Hayden

The Gospel is not merely a communication of things that can be known - it is one that makes things happen and is life-changing. The dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life. — Pope Benedict XVI

Things are changing, but this time I'm not afraid. This time I know who I am. This time I've made the right choice and fighting for the right team. I feel safe. Confident — Tahereh Mafi

I was receiving at least ninety-nine incredible, positive, and life-changing responses for every negative or abusive one, yet I couldn't stop looking at the one percent. I couldn't get them out of my mind. I let them kill my excitement. I let them destroy my love for what I was doing. I let them shut me down. I let them bully me into changing the way I did things around here.
I almost stopped. I almost gave up. I almost quit writing.
But every time, I remembered my dad.
He taught me better than that.
And I forced myself to be excited again. I forced myself to see the goal and vision of why I was excited in the first place. I forced myself to start skipping over the negative replies and start diving into the loving ones. — Dan Pearce

I'm sorry, it's true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We're born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It's been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much - if at all. — Steve Jobs

We are all here on this planet, as it were, as tourists. None of us can live here forever. The longest we might live is a hundred years. So while we are here we should try to have a good heart and to make something positive and useful of our lives. Whether we live just a few years or a whole century, it would be truly regrettable and sad if we were to spend that time aggravating the problems that afflict other people, animals, and the environment. The most important things is to be a good human being. — Dalai Lama

Everything,' his father said, 'comes down to time in the end
to the passing of time, to changing. Ever thought of that? Anything that makes you happy or sad, isn't it all based on minutes going by? Isn't sadness wishing time back again? Even big things
even mourning a death: aren't you really just wishing to have the time back when that person was alive? Or photos
ever notice old photographs? How wistful they make you feel? ... Isn't it just that time for once is stopped that makes you wistful? If only you could turn it back again, you think. If only you could change this or that, undo what you have done, if only you could roll the minutes the other way, for once. — Anne Tyler

I couldn't do the same job for 30 years. That would make me want to kill myself. Other people do it and they're very happy doing it, but for me, that's not what I want. I like changing things, all the time. — James Purefoy

Time is only the relationship between the different things changing — Mark Haddon

But most of us, for most of our lives, do not try to determine the causes of things. Rather, most of the time we try to get by; to eat, sleep, and of course, to reproduce. In other words, we are mainly concerned with surviving, getting along in a complex and changing world, in short, with adapting rather than with interference. — Robert Evan Ornstein

Only bad things happen quickly, ... Virtually all the happiness-producing processes in our lives take time, usually a long time: learning new things, changing old behaviors, building satisfying relationships, raising children. This is why patience and determination are among life's primary virtues. — Gordon Livingston

In many countries in the Middle East - and this is changing in the wake of the Arab Spring - but for a long time, censorship of books and film was a very big deal. There were books you couldn't buy; things with political content would be censored, but there were some genres of books and film that the censors just didn't understand. — G. Willow Wilson

You see, should I stand in front of a landscape and paint it, I'm completely ignoring the factor of time. While I am painting it, it's changing, clouds are changing, all sorts of things. So there's the myth there of someone creating in a timeless vacuum. — William S. Burroughs

The way Smith sees it, this kind of approach denotes a certain category of writer: the Micro Manager. Authors fall into one of two primary camps, she explained in her 2009 book of essays, Changing My Mind.691 Macro Planners work out the structure of their novels and then write within that structure. Micro Managers, on the other hand, don't rely on an overarching configuration (don't even conceive of one), but rather home in on each sentence, one by one, and each sentence, as they come to it, becomes the only thing that exists. If there is a spectrum starting with Macro Planners on one end and Micro Managers on the other, Smith would be somewhere to the right of the page. Smith's writing is entirely incremental and cumulative. The grand plan is that there is no grand plan; working things out ahead of time ruins everything, "feels disastrous."She prefers the writing of a novel as a process of discovery. "The thinking goes on on the page," not beforehand. — Sarah Stodola