“Life is like that. You live it forward but understand it backward.”

—  Abraham Verghese, book Cutting for Stone

Variant: You live it forward, but understand it backward.
Source: Cutting for Stone

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Life is like that. You live it forward but understand it backward." by Abraham Verghese?
Abraham Verghese photo
Abraham Verghese20
Physician, teacher, novelist 1955

Related quotes

Abraham Verghese photo

“Life, too, is like that. You live it forward, but understand it backward. It is only when you stop and look to the rear that you see the corpse caught under your wheel.”

Abraham Verghese book Cutting for Stone

Source: Cutting for Stone

Hanif Kureishi photo

“Our lives can only be lived forward and understood backwards. Living a life and understanding it occupy different dimensions.”

Hanif Kureishi (1954) English playwright, screenwriter, novelist

Source: Collected Stories

Sören Kierkegaard photo

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Variant: Life can only be understood going backward, but must be lived going forward.

“Life can only be understood looking backward. It must be lived forward.”

Eric Roth (1945) American screenwriter

Source: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Screenplay

“Though life has to be lived forward, it can only be understood backwards”

Adeline Yen Mah (1937) Author and physician

Source: Chinese Cinderella: The True Story of an Unwanted Daughter

Zia Haider Rahman photo

“Life can only be understood backward; the trouble is, it has to be lived forward.”

Zia Haider Rahman British novelist

In The Light of what We Know (2014)

Gabrielle Zevin photo

“There is no difference in quality between a life lived forward and a life lived backwards, she thinks. She had come to love this backward life. It was, after all, the only life she had.”

Gabrielle Zevin book Elsewhere

Source: Elsewhere

Andrew Solomon photo

“I started this book to forgive my parents and ended it by becoming a parent. Understanding backward liberated me to live forward.”

Andrew Solomon (1963) American journalist

Source: Far from the Tree, Ch. 12 Father, p. 677.

Sören Kierkegaard photo

“It is perfectly true, as the philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Journals IV A 164 (1843)
See Phenomenology: Critical Concepts in Philosophy, by Dermot Moran (2002)
Variants:
We live forward, but we understand backward.
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
1840s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1840s

Related topics