Source: The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896), Ch. 12
“I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.”
Source: Education of a Wandering Man (1989), Ch. 1
Context: A great book begins with an idea; a great life, with a determination.
My life may not be great to others, but to me it has been one of steady progression, never dull, often exciting, often hungry, tired, and lonely, but always learning. Somewhere back down the years I decided, or my nature decided for me, that I would be a teller of stories.
Decisions had to be made and there was nobody but me to make them. My course altered a number of times but never deviated from the destination I had decided upon. Whether this was altogether a matter of choice I do not know. Perhaps my early reading and the storytelling at home had preconditioned me for the role I adopted.
Somewhere along the line I had fallen in love with learning, and it became a lifelong romance. Early on I discovered it was fun to follow along the byways of history to find those treasures that await any searcher. It may be that all later decisions followed naturally from that first one.
One thing has always been true: That book or that person who can give me an idea or a new slant on an old idea is my friend.
“It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.”
Source: Emerson in His Journals
Conversation with Thomas Jones (27 February 1932), quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 29.
1932
The Unbearable Lightness of Scones, chapter 8.
The 44 Scotland Street series
“The old customs are dead, and we keep trying on new ones, like badly fitting clothes.”
Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 3 (p. 50)
2005-09, Address at Stanford University (2005)
Context: No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
As quoted in "Tibet's Living Buddha" by Pico Iyer, p. 32.
The Dalai Lama: A Policy of Kindness (1990)
“A new wound makes all the old ones ache again.”
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified
