“We have all experienced the moments that William James calls melting moods, when it suddenly becomes perfectly obvious that life is infinitely fascinating. And the insight seems to apply retrospectively.”
Periods of my life that seemed confusing and dull at the time now seem complex and rather charming. It is almost as if some other person a more powerful and mature individual has taken over my brain. This higher self views my problems and anxieties with kindly detachment, but entirely without pity. Looking at problems through his eyes, I can see I was a fool to worry about them.
Source: Access to Inner Worlds (1990), p. 2-3
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Colin Wilson 192
author 1931–2013Related quotes
“History’s made of surprises that seem obvious in retrospect.”
Source: Nemesis Games (2015), Chapter 28 (p. 296)
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
February 1954 The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 5 as quoted in Woman as Writer (1978) by Jeannette L. Webber and Joan Grumman, p. 38
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)
Context: We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it.
Context: The artist is the only one who knows that the world is a subjective creation, that there is a choice to be made, a selection of elements. It is a materialization, an incarnation of his inner world. Then he hopes to attract others into it. He hopes to impose his particular vision and share it with others. And when the second stage is not reached, the brave artist continues nevertheless. The few moments of communion with the world are worth the pain, for it is a world for others, an inheritance for others, a gift to others, in the end. When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.
We also write to heighten our own awareness of life. We write to lure and enchant and console others. We write to serenade our lovers. We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it. We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth. We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely. We write as the birds sing, as the primitives dance their rituals. If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it. When I don't write, I feel my world shrinking. I feel I am in a prison. I feel I lose my fire and my color. It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing.
“We write to taste life twice," Anais Nin wrote, "in the moment and in retrospection.”
Source: Traveling With Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story
Source: The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders (1988), p. 248
As quoted in "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism: Not Just a Problem with Youth Ministry" https://web.archive.org/web/20180309082359/http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/mtd-not-just-a-problem-with-youth-ministry/ (9 April 2012), by Brian Cosby, The Gospel Coalition
Original: Sono affascinato da tutto ciò che è rischioso, folle e non ordinario. La vita non è infinita, amo vivere ogni opportunità.
Source: prevale.net
Book II, Chapter 2, p. 197
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)