Stephen Malkmus Quotes

It's hard to watch something you've done many years ago.

Thinking of someone else is what got me damned. It’s a mistake I don’t want to repeat. (Xypher) You know sometimes it’s by repeating our mistakes that we realize what went wrong the first time. Knowing that, we’re able to fix the mistake and move past it. (Acheron)

There are a few things that I regret, but nothing that I need to forget.

It carried quite a wallop. I have all the classic symptoms. Reflection. Where am I now? Where have I come from? What's important? Dealing with the moment of a different kind of feeling for mortality. Shifting of the body. Contextualizing or reevaluating behaviors and values. All those kinds of things.

As I review my life, I feel I must have missed the point, either then or now.

I'm a grown man. You know, I've been in a lot of scrapes, but I never felt like I got so - there are probably a lot of things I should have done that I didn't do.

In looking back, I see nothing to regret and little to correct.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

It brings me no joy and not enough comfort to dwell too much on things I've said or written or made or worn in the past.

The last thing I want to do is to make the mistakes of the past.

I'm not big on regret; I don't spend a lot of time on it.

I thought if I looked back and evaluated my life, it would help me in the future.

I can't dwell on past mistakes.

In bed at night, I could be reading some book, and I'll come across a sentence that's totally unrelated to some scene I did years ago. But I'll play the scene back in my mind and think, I did that wrong - I should've opened the door more slowly.

It's not always enjoyable to go back and look at things in your life. Things that you're not proud of, you definitely don't want to confront; dark times that you've already gotten over.

I make mistakes, and sometimes in split seconds. Then seconds later I know how wrong I was.

I try not to look back on my life and be regretful.

There's no doubt that probably at least once a week, maybe once a day, I said, "Ah, I should have done that better."

I thought of the things that had happened to me over the years, and of how little I had made happen.

I go back to December, turn around and make it alright I go back to December, turn around and change my own mind I go back to December all the time

There’s a period of time in your life when I kind of look back, and I’m like, was I happy, or was I just not aware?

As I look back over my life, I've been an active person - obviously I was self-absorbed for a period of time.

Regretting the past does not prevent me from repeating it.

Every night before I turn out the lights to sleep, I ask myself this question: Have I done everything that I can.... Have I done enough?

Sometimes he thinks that if he could only trace the path of his life carefully enough, everything would become clear. The ways that he screwed up would make sense. He closes his eyes tightly. His life wasn't always a mistake, he thinks, and he breathes uncertainly for awhile, trying to find a pathway into unconsciousness, into sleep.