Quotes & Sayings About Turning Points

You digest and absorb your life by turning it into stories,' he says, 'the same way this theater seems to digest people.' With one hand, he points to a carpet stain, this dark stain sticky and growing mold, branched with arms and legs.
Other events - the ones you can't digest - they poison you. Those worst parts of your life, those moments you can't talk about, they rot you from the inside out. Until you're Cassandra's wet shadow on the ground. Sunk in your own yellow protein mud.
But the stories that you can digest, that you can tell - you can take control of those past moments. You can shape them, craft them. Master them. And use them to your own good. Those are stories as important as food. Those are stories you can use to make people laugh or cry or sick. Or scared. To make people feel the way you felt. To help exhaust that past moment for them and for you. Until that moment is dead.
Consumed. Digested. Absorbed. — Chuck Palahniuk

The cardinal points are a direct reference to the astrological colures. The Cardinals surround the Pope as the cardinal points surround the sun. The sun casts its rays on the Houses as it passes, turning them crimson. The color worn by the physical Cardinals is red, to symbolize that they are illuminated by their proximity to the Pope, the representative of God on earth. The word Pope, may also be a derivative of the word in Egyptian for the evil serpent Apep, Apophis or Apopsa (See Poop Deck and Pupa, and Pepsi, Pepsid, Dr. Pepper, Sgt. Pepper, etc,). — Michael Tsarion

... and pulled out, of all things, a pack of cigarettes ...
... "Are you serious?" I asked. "You think that's cool? Oh, my God, you just ruined the whole thing."
"Which whole thing?" he asked, turning to me ...
... "The whole thing where a boy who is not unattractive or unintelligent or seemingly in any way unacceptable stares at me and points out incorrect uses of literality and compares me to actresses and asks me to watch a movie at his house. But of course there is always a hamartia and yours is that oh, my God, even though you HAD FREAKING CANCER you give money to a company in exchange for the chance to acquire YET MORE CANCER ... — John Green

History is the business of identifying momentous events from the comfort of a high-back chair. With the benefit of time, the historian looks back and points to a date in the manner of a gray-haired field marshal pointing to a bend in a river on a map: There it was, he says. The turning point. The decisive factor. The fateful day that fundamentally altered all that was to follow. There — Amor Towles

We all write our life stories as if we were novelists, McAdams believes, with beginnings, conflicts, turning points, and endings. And the way we characterize our past setbacks profoundly influences how satisfied we are with our current lives. Unhappy people tend to see setbacks as contaminants that ruined an otherwise good thing ("I was never the same again after my wife left me"), while generative adults see them as blessings in disguise ("The divorce was the most painful thing that ever happened to me, but I'm so much happier with my new wife"). — Susan Cain

Turning points are only uncovered later, by historians who seek to bring order to a lifetime of tangled memories. — Kate Morton

Atoms of Element 118 fill an outer shell with electrons, creating a special type of element called a noble gas. Noble gases are natural turning points on the table, ending one row and pointing to the next. — Sam Kean

There was something, which was the turning point: I felt very strongly that women were sexualized, and perceived like they are sexual in every move, and it started off really early. — Deniz Gamze Erguven

Peter Tertzakian's analysis of world oil is a fascinating reminder that history often foretells the major turning points of the future. — Gwyn Morgan

In twelve-step programs there is the idea that peeling the layers of
the onion to free oneself from the "bondage of self " takes an indefinite
amount of time. People sometimes experience a significant difference
between what they think they desire in life and what life actually
unfolds to them. A big chunk of the onion was peeled away during
those key turning points for me in the past three decades. I am now
reminded of the three key things I need in life - peace, love, and purpose -
and how I continually need to bring myself back to those things
and make sure they are in harmony. The twelve steps and the Ignatian
Spiritual Exercises have helped in that regard, and prayer, meditation,
and supportive guidance are what ground me. — Joanna Thyer

At the Foley Center for the Study of Lives at Northwestern University, McAdams studies the stories that people tell about themselves. We all write our life stories as if we were novelists, McAdams believes, with beginnings, conflicts, turning points, and endings. And the way we characterize our past setbacks profoundly influences how satisfied we are with our current lives. Unhappy people tend to see setbacks as contaminants that ruined an otherwise good thing ("I was never the same again after my wife left me"), while generative adults see them as blessings in disguise ("The divorce was the most painful thing that ever happened to me, but I'm so much happier with my new wife"). Those who live the most fully realized lives - giving back to their families, societies, and ultimately themselves - tend to find meaning in their obstacles. In a sense, McAdams has breathed new life into one of the great insights of Western mythology: that where we stumble is where our treasure lies. — Susan Cain

One of the turning points of my life was when I got my first bait-casting outfit. — Jimmy Carter

When your self and your life belong to your being, your self opens, your life opens, your being comes in, and it will have everything. It is the single greatest turning point in your life. — John De Ruiter

There is a purpose to our lives, even if it is sometimes hidden from us, and even if the biggest turning points and heartbreaks only make sense as we look back, rather than as we are experiencing them. So we might as well live life as if - as the poet Rumi put it - everything is rigged in our favor. — Arianna Huffington

Life doesn't change when you meet a guy and life doesn't fall apart when you break up with one. We are teaching young female readers the wrong things through books not only expressing this point, but also using these two concepts as turning plot points of novels. — Meghan Blistinsky

Turning points in human consciousness occur when new energy regimes converge with new communications revolutions, creating new economic eras. — Jeremy Rifkin

The encounter with death is the great turning-point in the lives of those who live on. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Transition is the natural process of disorientation and reorientation that marks the turning points in the path of growth ... transitions are key times in the natural process of self-renewal — William Bridges

Turning points in my life ... the bush, the trails, lakes, waterfalls ... moving camp from one wonderful lake to another ... the companionship of a great individual, a wonder with canoe, axe and fish line. — Arthur Lismer

A lot of the turning points happen in high school and in college, and it defines a lot of how you see the world and how you decide to defend yourself from the world. Some people - their defense mechanism is, I'm really smart or I'm sexy or I'm the leader. And other people - they hide or they make jokes. — Judd Apatow

Sometimes the course of our lives depends on what we do or don't do in a few seconds, a heartbeat, when we either seize the opportunity, or just miss it. Miss the moment and you never get a chance again. — Aidan Chambers

Naturally - and why should I not admit this - I have occasionally wondered to myself how things might have turned out in the long run ... I only speculate this now because in the light of subsequent events, it could well be argued that in making my decision ... I was perhaps not entirely aware of the full implications of what I was doing. Indeed, it might even be said that this small decision of mine constituted something of a key turning point; that that decision set things on an inevitable course towards what eventually happened.
But then, I suppose, when with the benefit of hindsight one begins to search one's past for such 'turning points', one is apt to start seeing them everywhere ... What would have transpired, one may ask, had one responded slightly differently ... ? And perhaps - occurring as it did around the same time as these events? — Kazuo Ishiguro

I kept seeing turning points. First the uprising. Then the creation of the Free Syrian Army, the FSA. Now a big assassination bombing in the heart of Assad's government. But the turn never came. It just got worse and worse. — Richard Engel

There are turning points in everyone's life when we have to fight, even if we have to do it by ourselves and in public. — Junius Williams

Repentance means turning from as much as you know of your sin to give as much as you know of yourself to as much as you know of your God, and as our knowledge grows at these three points so our practice of repentance has to be enlarged. — J.I. Packer

But what is the sense in forever speculating what might have happened had such and such a moment turned out differently? One could presumably drive oneself to distraction in this way. In any case, while it is all very well to talk of 'turning points', one can surely only recognize such moments in retrospect. Naturally, when one looks back to such instances today, they may indeed take the appearance of being crucial, precious moments in one's life; but of course, at the time, this was not the impression one had. Rather, it was as though one had available a never-ending number of days, months, years in which to sort out the vagaries of one's relationship with Miss Kenton; an infinite number of further opportunities in which to remedy the effect of this or that misunderstanding. There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Wars make history seem deceptively simple. They provide clear turning points, easy distinctions.: before and after, winner and loser, right and wrong. True history, the past, is not like that. It isn't flat or linear. It has no outline. It is slippery, like liquid; infinite and unknowable, like space. And it is changeable: just when you think you see a pattern, perspective shifts, an alternate version is proffered, a long-forgotten memory resurfaces. — Kate Morton

It is strange, but true, that the most important turning-points of life often come at the most unexpected times and in the most unexpected ways. — Napoleon Hill

We are each other's reference point at our turning points. — Elizabeth Fishel

The turning points of lives are not the great moments. The real crises are often concealed in occurrences so trivial in appearance that they pass unobserved. — George Washington

It's no accident, I think, that tennis uses the language of life. Advantage, service, fault, break, love, the basic elements of tennis are those of everyday existence, because every match is a life in miniature. Even the structure of tennis, the way the pieces fit inside one another like Russian nesting dolls, mimics the structure of our days. Points become games become sets become tournaments, and it's all so tightly connected that any point can become the turning point. It reminds me of the way seconds become minutes become hours, and any hour can be our finest. Or darkest. It's our choice. — Andre Agassi

Any historian of warfare knows that it is in good part a comedy of errors and a museum of incompetence; but if for every error and every act of incompetence one can substitute an act of treason, we can see how many points of fascinating interpretation are open to the paranoid imagination: treason in high places can be found at almost every turning
and in the end the real mystery, for one who reads the primary works of paranoid scholarship, is not how the United States has been brought to its present dangerous position, but how it has managed to survive at all. — Richard Hofstadter

The indictment, in a lot of ways, that was the turning point. — Jeffrey Skilling

Education is at a turning point — Howard Gardner

Winning the Revolutionary War, or the Civil War, or World War II were the turning points in our history, the sine qua non of our forward progress. — Stephen Ambrose

I like writing about big turning points, where professional and personal lives coalesce, where the boundaries are coming down, and you're faced with a set of choices which will change life forever. — Tana French

One of the stall doors swings open and a fortyish-year-old woman walks out tucking her shirt into her jeans. Her heavy lined eyes land on Seth. "This is the women's restroom." She points a finger to the door. "Can't you read?"
"Can't you see that everyone in this club is about twenty years younger than you?" Seth retorts, turning to the mirror. With his pinkie, he messes with bangs. "Now if you'll excuse us, we're going to have some fun. — Jessica Sorensen

Generational bonds are easily formed and rarely broken. — David Jeremiah

In real life turning points are sneaky. They pass by unlabeled and unheeded. Opportunities are missed, catastrophes unwittingly celebrated. Turning points are only uncovered later, by historians who seek to bring order to a lifetime of tangled moments. — Kate Morton

Indeed, four men like them, four men devoted to each other from their money to their lives, four men always supporting each other, never retreating, performing singly or together the resolutions they had made in common; four arms threatening the four points of the compass or all turning to a single point, must inevitably, be it surreptitiously, be it openly, be it by mines, by entrenchments, by guile, or by force, open a way to the end they wanted to reach, however well defended or far off it might be. — Alexandre Dumas

Being poised to shatter the adaptive illusion of God is arguably one of the most significant turning points our species has ever faced in its relatively brief 150,000-year history. The belief instinct may never be completely deprogrammed in our animal brains, but by understanding it for what it is rather than subscribing uncritically to the intuitions it generates, we can distance ourselves from an adaptive system that was designed, ultimately, to keep us hobbled in fear. — Jesse Bering

The two great turning-points of my life were when my father sent to Oxford, and when society sent me to prison. — Oscar Wilde

Suppose we are all children in the eyes of the Lord. But when God points us in the direction of his plan and we accept it, we morph and transform like the caterpillar emerging after living so long in its cocoon. No matter what that butterfly does, it cannot return to the cocoon nor can it go back to being a caterpillar." She felt Alejandro squeeze her hand under the table. "I believe that when we follow God's will without question, that is the day when we truly become an adult in his eyes and, at that point, there is no turning back. — Sarah Price

Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories - first carefully turning them inside out. — G.K. Chesterton

Harper Collins gave me a letter of intent saying that they want me to pen down my autobiography. When I was recollecting the incidents of my life for that, I selected only those incidents which were turning points in my life. I staged it instead of writing it. — Anupam Kher

One of the turning points in the look of the Guardian is when we decided Logan Thackeray would be a Guardian as opposed to a Warrior. Logan's own protective nature and the fact that the humans have been knocked back into defensive positions informed a lot of what the Guardian became. — Jeff Grubb

Dawn Of The Dead is about how we're just a country cannibalizing itself, turning into one shopping mall, and everyone at the mall is just brain-dead, wandering around. Capitalism gone awry, and the worst parts of human nature coming out. All these different things that people read into the films that are all there, very strong anti-Bush sentiments that went into making those films. It's great. I like it when people get it the second or third time, when someone else points it out to them. They don't realize it's been there all along. Those are my favorite movies. — Eli Roth

I hate outlines. I have a broad sense of where the story is going; I know the end, I know the end of the principal characters, and I know the major turning points and events from the books, the climaxes for each book, but I don't necessarily know each twist and turn along the way. That's something I discover in the course of writing and that's what makes writing enjoyable. I think if I outlined comprehensively and stuck to the outline the actual writing would be boring. — George R R Martin

I have had a few turning points, the first day I entered a gymnastics school at age 6. — Nadia Comaneci

Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means. — Arthur Koestler

It happened in pieces, tiny little turning points. I'll never figure out when it all turned, because it wasn't a single moments. It doesn't matter how many times I look back, how many times I try to figure it out. There is no before and after. Just a year of choices. — Amanda Grace

Except in the rare cases of great dynamic thinkers whose thoughts are as turning-points in the history of our race, it is by Style that writers gain distinction, by Style they secure their immortality. — George Henry Lewes

People are aware that they cannot continue in the same old way but are immobilized because they cannot imagine an alternative. We need a vision that recognizes that we are at one of the great turning points in human history when the survival of our planet and the restoration of our humanity require a great sea change in our ecological, economic, political, and spiritual values. — Grace Lee Boggs

Nuclear episodes stand out in bold print in life story as narrative high points, low points and turning points, explaining how the person has remained the same and how he or she has changed over time. — Dan P. McAdams

I don't believe in right-angled turning points. — Timothy West

Make your breaking point your turning point. — Dennis Kimbro

I see a wiser person than when I was younger: having babies, and passing 30, were the turning points. What women in their 40s - I am 39 - lack in gorgeousness, they make up for in wisdom. I love ageing, despite the drawbacks - thinner, drier skin. — Thandie Newton

There are moments that define our existence, moments that, if we recognize them, become pivotal turning points in our life. — C.W. Gortner

This, then, is the legacy of January 1973. The "me generation" found its voice, religion became a political force, poverty and civil rights became someone else's problem, and the national will for concerted action for the common good of all its citizens was scattered into "a thousand points of light."

At some point, perhaps those scattered lights will re-form and reunite to give birth to a rededicated nation, one that includes a place for everyone, opportunity for all, and help for those who need it. After all, it only takes a moment in time and some simultaneity. As Lyndon Johnson so aptly observed in his greatest speech - the "We Shall Overcome" speech - there are times in America when "history and fate meet at a single time in a single space to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom."

Let us hop such a time is nearing. — James Robenalt

Every war has turning points and every person too. — Meg Rosoff

But then, I suppose, when with the benefit of hindsight one begins to search one's past for such 'turning points', one is apt to start seeing them everywhere. — Kazuo Ishiguro

I think one of the turning points for me was when my brother recorded the Neil Young MTV "Unplugged" performance from the TV. My brother is eight years older than me and he was starting to get into things like that. — James Walsh

When others witness or comment on abusive behaviors, the little voice that the upscale abused wife once heard inside her and ignored or muffled becomes amplified. Slowly she starts to recognize that she must stop enduring the abuse. . . . each woman comes to grips with her situation at her own pace. However, talking to others is key to her growing capacity to recognize and label her experiences, reclaim herself, target important turning points, and ultimately leave her tormentor. — Susan Weitzman

They're at the gates now, and there's no lock on them that Parks can see, but they don't open. Used to be electric, obviously, but bygones are bygones and in the brave new post-mortem world that just means they don't bloody work. "Over!" he yells. "Up and over!" Which is easily said. A head-high rampart of ornamental ironwork with functional spear points on top says different. They try, all the same. Parks leaves them to it, turns his back to them and goes on firing. The up side is that now he can be indiscriminate. Set to full auto and aim low. Cut the hungries' legs out from under them, turning the front-runners into trip hazards to slow the ones behind. The down side is that more and more of them keep coming. The noise is like a dinner bell. Hungries are crowding into the green space from the streets on every side, at what you'd have to call a dead run. There's no limit to their numbers, and there is a limit to his ammo. Which — M.R. Carey

The truth," Mrs. Hodgkins says, standing back up and turning to her cold marble pupils, "is imagination without boundaries is like a gun, it can be dangerous and kill." She turns slightly and points to the back of her head to demonstrate. Her brains spill over the left crevice of her skull, clinging like hardened jelly. "Or imagination can save lives. — Mav Skye

I am beginning to understand that the stream the scientists are studying is not just a little creek. It's a river of energy that moves across regions in great geographic cycles. Here, life and death are only different points on a continuum. The stream flows in a circle through time and space, turning death into life across coastal ecosystems, as it has for more than a million years. But such streams no longer flow in the places where most of us live. — Kathleen Moore

My life is one long curve, full of turning points. — Pierre Trudeau

As I thought of these things, I drew aside the curtains and looked out into the darkness, and it seemed to my troubled fancy that all those little points of light filling the sky were the furnaces of innumerable divine alchemists, who labour continually, turning lead into gold, weariness into ecstasy, bodies into souls, the darkness into God; and at their perfect labour my mortality grew heavy, and I cried out, as so many dreamers and men of letters in our age have cried, for the birth of that elaborate spiritual beauty which could alone uplift souls weighted with so many dreams. — W.B.Yeats

The 1860s ushered in a number of changes that profoundly transformed the nation. While the emancipation of enslaved people and the increased resettlement of Native Americans represent critical turning points in the political, legal, social, and economic history of the United States, these transformations produced devastating and unanticipated consequences. When soldiers in the North reached for the rifles that hung above the mantles of their front doors and marched off to war, they did so in the name of ending slavery. But in the effort to dismantle the institution of slavery, very few considered how ex-slaves would survive the war and emancipation. An abstract idea about freedom became a flesh-and-blood reality in which epidemic outbreaks, poverty, and suffering threatened former bondspeople as they abandoned slavery and made their way toward freedom. The — Jim Downs

What fascinates me are the turning points where history could have been different. — Hilary Mantel

Satan will tempt you with many things in life, but the most powerful is the temptation to be grateful for what you have, when it is not the best life God had to offer you. — Shannon L. Alder

We didn't talk about problems, or parents, or automobiles, or ambitions. We talked about life ... And the sea was there, forty feet away and getting closer, and the sky over the sea, and the sun going down the sky. And it was cold, and it was the high point of my life.
I'd had high points before.
Once at night walking in the park in the rain in autumn.
Once out in the desert, under the stars, when I turned into the earth turning on its axis. Sometimes thinking, just thinking things through.
But always alone. By myself.
This time I was not alone.
I was on the high mountain with a friend. There is nothing, there is nothing that beats that. If it never happens again in my life, still I can say I was there once. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I start with the history, and I ask myself, 'What are the great turning points? What are the big dramatic scenes that are essential to telling the story?' — Ken Follett

Short term volatility is greatest at turning points and diminishes as a trend becomes established — George Soros

One of our jobs is to keep women working, which we do by keeping women coming to the movies. And doing that means making good, smart, often funny movies that women can identify with-with terrific dialogue we all remember and cherish, and stories that illuminate our lives and decisions and turning points. — Lynda Obst

1. Institutions shape politics. The rules and standard operating procedures that make up institutions leave their imprint on political outcomes by structuring political behavior. Outcomes are not simply reducible to the billiard-ball interaction of individuals nor to the intersection of broad social forces. Institutions influence outcomes because they shape actors' identities, power, and strategies. 2. Institutions are shaped by history. Whatever other factors may affect their form, institutions have inertia and "robustness." They therefore embody historical trajectories and turning points. History matters because it is "path dependent": what comes first (even if it was in some sense "accidental") conditions what comes later. Individuals may "choose" their institutions, but they do not choose them under circumstances of their own making, and their choices in turn influence the rules within which their successors choose. — Robert D. Putnam

What had transpired that day in 1903, in the stiff winds and cold of the Outer Banks in less than two hours time, was one of the turning points in history, the beginning of change for the world far greater than any of those present could possibly have imagined. With their homemade machine, Wilbur and Orville Wright had shown without a doubt that man could fly and if the world did not yet know it, they did. Their flights that morning were the first ever in which a piloted machine took off under its own power into the air in full flight, sailed forward with no loss of speed, and landed at a point as high as that from which it started. — David McCullough