Retrospect Quotes - Page 3

• That's why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. You can't control life, at least you can control your version.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Writing, Versions

  Chuck Palahniuk (2004). “Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories”, NY Books

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• Real grief is not healed by time... if time does anything, it deepens our grief. The longer we live, the more fully we become aware of who she was for us, and the more intimately we experience what her love meant for us. Real, deep love is, as you know, very unobtrusive, seemingly easy and obvious, and so present that we take it for granted. Therefore, it is only in retrospect - or better, in memory - that we fully realize its power and depth. Yes, indeed, love often makes itself visible in pain.

  Henri Nouwen

  Pain, Memories, Real

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• I try not to go back in retrospect and say oh, I shouldn't have done this or shouldn't have done that. You make your decisions and you live by them.

  Tim Burton

  Decision, Trying, Done

  Source: www.chud.com

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• And there's always retrospect to light a clearer path.

  Emily Saliers

  Light, Path

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• History is lived forwards but it is written in retrospect. We know the end before we consider the beginning and we can never wholly recapture what it was to know the beginning only.

  C. V. Wedgwood

  Ends, Knows, Written

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• You end up exhausted and spent, but later, in retrospect, you realize what it all was for. The parts fall into place, and you can see the whole picture and finally understand the role each individual part plays. The dawn comes, the sky grows light, and the colors and shapes of the roofs of houses, which you could only glimpse vaguely before, come into focus.

  Haruki Murakami

  Fall, Light, Color

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• Success is terrifying. Like happiness, it is often appreciated in retrospect. It's only later that you place it in perspective. Years from now, I'll look back and say, ‘God, wasn't it wonderful.’

  Julie Andrews

  Years, Perspective, Looks

  This Week, September 18, 1966.

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• It is easy to see things in retrospect. But I was ignorant then of everything but my own happiness, and I don’t know what else to say except that life itself seemed very magical in those days: a web of symbol, coincidence, premonition, omen. Everything, somehow, fit together; some sly and benevolent Providence was revealing itself by degrees and I felt myself trembling on the brink of a fabulous discovery, as though any morning it was all going to come together–my future, my past, the whole of my life–and I was going to sit up in bed like a thunderbolt and say oh! oh! oh!

  Donna Tartt

  Morning, Past, Discovery

  Donna Tartt (2011). “The Secret History”, p.88, Vintage

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• Often continuity is visible only in retrospect.

  Mary Catherine Bateson

  Perspective, Continuity, Visible

  Mary Catherine Bateson (2001). “Composing a Life”, p.223, Grove Press

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• It's always hard for an author to determine his own intentions, especially in retrospect.

  Paul Kingsnorth

  Intention, Determine, Hard

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Again there are so many records which contain fond memories and music and songs of which I have to say I am quite proud. There are a couple of tracks which in retrospect on which I now wish I had pushed the red button, however I'm sure this is true of any artist career that has spanned the number of years that mine has. I do not believe however that I have ever made a bad record and I have certainly never made a record to which I didn't give my complete commitment.

  Greg Lake

  Song, Couple, Memories

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• And then the work bears a strong sense of leave-taking for me personally. It ends the work I began in the 1960s (paintings from black-and-white photographs), with a compressed summation that precludes any possible continuation. And so it is a leave-taking from thoughts and feelings of my own on a very basic level. Not that this is a deliberate act, of course; it is a quasi-automatic sequence of disintegration and reformation which I can perceive, as always, only in retrospect.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Strong, Black And White

  Gerhard Richter, Dietmar Elger, Hans-Ulrich Obrist (2009). “Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007”, Distributed Art Pub Inc

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• In retrospect I can see that my desire to create abstractions has become more and more radical. Art should not be delivering a report on reality, but should be looking at what's behind something.

  Andreas Gursky

  Art, Reality, Desire

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• In retrospect, it seems like everything in my life led to me becoming a writer. I just didn't realise it at the time.

  Kate Morton

  Becoming, Realising, Seems

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• In retrospect, I'm really shocked at how far I put my heart out there on the line with 'Prima Donna'. I seem to have this knack for being able to accomplish that.

  Rufus Wainwright

  Heart, Knack, Lines

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• Those of us who have come to years of discretion and more, must often take to retrospect, and seek to appraise the outcome of our lives.

  Learned Hand

  Maturity, Years, Outcomes

  Learned Hand (1959). “The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses”

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• Doubt is my boon companion, the faithful St. Bernard ever at my side. Whether writing essays or just going about daily life, I am constantly second-guessing myself. My mind is filled with 'yes, buts,' 'so whats?' and other skeptical rejoinders. I am forever monitoring myself for traces of folly, insensitivity, arrogance, false humility, cruelty, stupidity, immaturity and, guess what, I keep finding examples. Age has not made me wiser, except maybe in retrospect.

  Phillip Lopate

  Humility, Writing, Forever

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• My ability to notice that kind of thing, the sanctity of the bubble that you create, has not been so good in a way, in that I notice it concurrently with actually doing the thing. I always notice it in retrospect.

  Andy Richter

  Way, Kind, Sanctity

  Interview with Jonathan R. de la Manzana, Jr., believermag.com. September 1, 2003.

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• It was too difficult. People weren't prepared to put in the hours on the donkey work - you know, dates and facts and so on. I think in retrospect my generation will be seen as a turning point. From now on there'll be a net loss of knowledge in Europe. The difference between a peasant community in fourteenth-century Iran and modern London, though, is that if with their meager resources the villagers occasionally slipped backward, it was not for lack of trying. But with us, here in England, it was a positive choice. We chose to know less.

  Sebastian Faulks

  Loss, Thinking, Iran

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• It was not until some weeks later that I realized there is no need to restrict oneself to 2 by 2 matrices. One could go on to 4 by 4 matrices, and the problem is then easily soluable. In retrospect, it seems strange that one can be so much held up over such an elementary point. The resulting wave equation for the electron turned out to be very successful. It led to correct values for the spin and the magnetic moment. This was quite unexpected. The work all followed from a study of pretty mathematics, without any thought being given to these physical properties of the electron.

  Paul Dirac

  Successful, Discovery, Goes On

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• I'm not saying that McDonald's gift certificates caused the obesity epidemic, but in retrospect, the timing is kind of suspicious.

  Jim Gaffigan

  Epidemics, Mcdonalds, Obesity Epidemic

  Jim Gaffigan (2014). “Food: A Love Story”, p.213, Crown Archetype

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• I used to work at NASA in Virginia. It was nothing glamorous; I was just tasked with making code compile for obscure projects, and I wasn't very good at it. Now I spend most of my time drawing pictures and looking at funny things on the Internet, which in retrospect is largely what I did at my old job, too.

  Randall Munroe

  Jobs, Old Job, Virginia

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• You know, 'Peepshow,' in retrospect that seems like a good fit for me, but in the beginning, I'm sure you remember, nobody was sure if the show was going to last. Everybody was like, 'What are you doing? You can't sing, and you can't dance. What are you doing in this show?

  Holly Madison

  Doing You, Lasts, Remember

  "Holly Madison talks family, career and casting decisions as she ends ‘Peepshow’ run". Interview with John Katsilometes, lasvegassun.com. October 23, 2012.

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• I was stuck in the feeling that one did not--was not justified in being alive unless one was fulfilling other people's dreams, whether they were contractual dreams or the public's dreams, or fulfilling my own dreams and illusions about what I thought I was supposed to be, which, in retrospect, turned out to not be what I am.

  John Lennon

  Dream, People, Feelings

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• When I first heard about Y Combinator, it was one of those ideas that just seemed forehead-slappingly obvious. Good ideas often do, in retrospect.

  Mark Fletcher

  Ideas, Firsts, Obvious

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