#rowing

At one point I learned transcendental meditation. This was 30-something years ago. It took me back to the way that I naturally was as a child growing up way in the country, rarely seeing people. I was in that state of oneness with creation and it was as if I didn't exist except as a part of everything. ↗

— Alice Walker

#back #child #country #creation #everything

My views on everything from welfare to a balanced budget to affirmative action can be traced to what Buddy and Helen Watts taught me as a young boy growing up poor but proud in Eufaula. ↗

— J. C. Watts

#affirmative #affirmative action #balanced #balanced budget #boy

To pitch a perfect game wearing pinstripes at Yankee Stadium, it's unbelievable. Growing up a Yankee fan, to come out here and make history, it really is a dream come true. ↗

— David Wells

#dream #fan #game #growing #growing up

I never had any hang-ups about sex. As for being sexually repressed, nothing could be further from the truth. There are more hang-ups now than ever there were when I was growing up. ↗

— Mary Whitehouse

#any #being #could #ever #further

You can make great money in a utility type of business by borrowing cheaply and lending sensibly but that's not what's being done. ↗

— Meredith Whitney

#being done #borrowing #business #cheaply #done

Chick Corea was a great influence on me, musically, as I was growing up. ↗

— Debra Wilson

#corea #great #growing #growing up #i

Irish poets, learn your trade, sing whatever is well made, scorn the sort now growing up all out of shape from toe to top. ↗

— William Butler Yeats

#growing up #irish #learn #made #now

I don’t ever remember being afraid of “oldness”. There are things I miss about being younger - chiefly the ability to pull all-nighters and keep working and working well; and being smiled at by girls I didn’t know who thought I was cute; and I wish I had the eyesight I had even five years ago… but that stuff feels pretty trivial. I’m happier than I’ve been at any time in my life these days. I have a wonderful wife whom I adore, watched three amazing kids grow into two delightful adults and my favourite teenager, an astonishing number of grand life experiences, I’ve made art I’m proud of, I have real, true, glorious friends, and I’ve been able to do real good for things I care about, like freedom of speech, like libraries. Sometimes I’ll do something like An Evening With Neil and Amanda, or the 8 in 8 project, and completely surprise myself. I miss friends who have died, but then, I’m glad that time gave them to me, to befriend, even for a while, and that I was alive to know them. I knew Douglas Adams, and I knew Roger Zelazny, and I knew John M Ford, and I knew Diana Wynne Jones… do you know how lucky that makes me? Ah, I’m rabbiting on, and I sound a bit more Pollyannaish than I’m intending to sound: I know the downside of age and the downside of time, and I am sure that the view from age 51 is not the view from age 71. I wish the time hadn’t gone so fast, though. And sometimes I wish I’d enjoyed it more on the way, and worried about it less. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#growing-older #inspirational #age

I just wish moments weren’t so fleeting!' Isaac called to the man on the roof, 'They pass so quickly!' 'Fleeting?!' responded the tilling man, 'Moments? They pass quickly?! . . . Why, once a man is finished growing, he still has twenty years of youth. After that, he has twenty years of middle age. Then, unless misfortune strikes, nature gives him twenty thoughtful years of old age. Why do you call that quickly?' And with that, the tilling man wiped his sweaty brow and continued tilling; and the dejected Isaac continued wandering. 'Stupid fool!' Isaac muttered quietly to himself as soon as he was far enough away not to be heard. ↗

— Roman Payne

#fable #growing-old #hope-and-despair #middle-age #old-age

Life has a funny way of turning you into the one thing you don't want to be. ↗

— Jonathan Levine

#life #you #funny