But this is how I remember these things, and all we can ever be is faithful to our memories of reality, rather than the reality itself, which is something closely related but never precisely the same thing.—Matt Haig, How to Stop Time. Highlighted
It is a popular modern idea. That the inner us is something different to the outer us. That there is an authentic realer and better and richer version of ourselves which we can only tap into by buying a solution. This idea that we are separate from our nature, as separate as a bottle of Dior perform is from the plants of a forest.—Matt Haig, How to Stop Time. Highlighted
The lesson of history is that ignorance and superstition are things that can rise up, inside almost anyone, at any moment. And what starts as a doubt in a mind can swiftly become an act in the world.—Matt Haig, How to Stop Time. Highlighted
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.—Matt Haig, How to Stop Time. Highlighted
She goes quiet for a little while. Remembers something. ‘“I speak the truth not so much as I would, but as much as I dare, and I dare a little more as I grow older.”’ ‘Is that . . .?’ ‘Montaigne himself.”—Matt Haig, How to Stop Time. Highlighted
Unsatisfied desire allows us to imagine we have found the one who will make us whole, because we haven’t yet tested the fit. The not yet relationship becomes strangely comfortable, at least compared to the risk of finding out your beloved’s half-self won’t conform to your own.—Lisa A. Phillips, Unrequited. Highlighted
Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain You are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today And then one day you find, ten years has got behind you No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun. —David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Roger Waters, and Richard Wright of Pink Floyd, “Time”
I have seen countless twentysomethings spend too many years living without perspective. What is worse are the tears shed by thirtysomethings and fortysomethings because they are now paying a steep price...
...While most therapists would agree with Socrates that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” a lesser-known quote by American psychologist Sheldon Kopp might be more important here: “The unlived life is not worth examining.”
Uncertainty makes people anxious, and distraction is the twenty-first-century opiate of the masses. So twentysomethings like Kate are tempted, and even encouraged, to turn away and be twixters, to close their eyes and hope for the best.
We think that by avoiding decisions now, we keep all of our options open for later—but not making choices is a choice all the same.
I told her I wasn’t so sure, and that an extended period of navel-gazing is usually counterproductive for twentysomethings.
Page 11 of 14