I tell you this because books for young readers are so often written about that very moment: the moment of the fork. The moment the old man cannot return to.

Amory thought how it was only the past that seemed strange and unbelievable.

The act of vividly recalling a patch of the past is something that I seem to have been performing with the utmost zest all my life, and I have reason to believe that this almost...

Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.

But it doesn’t matter because, look, here come the waiters. They are scraping away the debris with their little horn and steel blades, pulled with studied grace from the hidden pockets of their white aprons....

…the passage of time, which transformed the volatile present into that finished, unalterable painting called the past, a canvas man always executed blindly, with erratic brushstrokes that only made sense when one stepped far enough...

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...

It’s sometimes easier to help others rather than helping yourself. The trick is to listen to your “self” as a friend. This may be the simplest change you ever make in life, with the biggest...

In retrospect, I enjoyed the time planning the program before I start. Like I say, there is more fun in the program preparation than in the program itself.

The Naga laughed softly, ‘There’s a thin line that separates courage from stupidity.”And that line is only visible in retrospect, my friend. If I’m successful, people will call me brave. If I fail, I will...

We pass through the present with our eyes blindfolded. We are permitted merely to sense and guess at what we are actually experiencing. Only later when the cloth is untied can we glance at the...

I feel like I am either on the cusp of something great, or standing on the edge of my abyss, discovering something brand new, or uncovering somebody elses lost imagination.

In retrospect, I am very nearly as sharp as I pretend to be.

The power of hope! Even a lack of ambition can, for a time, pay off as a necessary facet, as long as hope outweighs it.

There are so many things I wish I had learned when I was 16 or 17 years old. They would have been game changers in my life.

There’s a difference between thinking you can’t be wrong and having no regrets. Wrongness is what occurs prior to empiricism, in hindsight a counterpart of revelation, and revelation is nothing to regret.