“One day I'll be old, dead, forgotten. And at this very moment, while I'm sitting here thinking these things, a man in a dingy hotel room is thinking, "I will always be here."”
Melancholic feeling
Melancholic Quotes — page 204 of 412
“I've always been keenly aware of the passing of time. I've always thought that I was old. Even when I was twelve, I thought it was awful to be thirty. I felt that something was lost. At the same time, I was aware of what I could gain, and certain periods of my life have taught me a great deal. But, in spite of everything, I've always been haunted by the passing of time and by the fact that death keeps closing in on us.”
“Time does us violence; it is the only violence.”
“Thus Carol hit upon the tragedy of old age, which is not that it is less vigorous than youth, but that it is not needed by youth.”
“I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be what they had promised me it was going to be - instead of the tawdry, lousy fouled-up mess it is.”
“What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all; Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold.”
“It was far too cold. The second I got out I had this incredible headache, I'm just not used to it. The last time I saw snow was years and years ago.”
“I didn't have an identity. It was manufactured. My identity now? It was written on the wall by ancient forces.”
“My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree Toward heaven still, And there's a barrel that I didn't fill Beside it, and there may be two or three Apples I didn't pick upon some bough. But I am done with apple-picking now. Essence of winter sleep is on the night, The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.”
“Well, the first days are the hardest days, don't you worry anymore. When life looks like Easy Street there is danger at your door.”
“Men," Thom murmured. "Men who shook the pillars of heaven and rocked the world on its foundations." He shook his head. "It doesn't matter. Forget about them. They are dust now.”
“When I was young, people lived paycheck to paycheck. Today, it seems like they live from credit card payment to credit card payment.”
“Age may have one side, but assuredly Youth has the other. There is nothing more certain than that both are right, except perhaps that both are wrong.”
“All sorts of allowances are made for the illusions of youth, and none, or almost none for the disenchantment of age.”
“We advance in years somewhat in the manner of an invading army in a barren land; the age that we have reached, as the saying goes, we but hold with an outpost, and still keep open communications with the extreme rear and first beginnings of the march.”
“And so the greatest of American triumphs... became a peculiarly joyless victory. We had won the Cold War, but there would be no parades.”
“I don't think American poetry has gotten any better in the past 35 years. Oddly enough, creative writing programs seem to have been good for fiction, and I would not have predicted that.”
“It is one thing to make a mistake, and quite another thing not to admit it.”
“thus, in a sense, we are all doomed. even if we stay away from black holes”
“It's strange how pain marks our faces, and makes us look like family.”