Christopher Morley Quotes

Five years from now I'm probably going to look back on the things I'm doing and cringe.

I've had quite a life, when you stop and think about it.

It could be seen as narcissistic to have your own museum, but for me, it's such a long time ago - I have perspective. That young man in the funny clothes - he's almost a stranger, so I can tell his story.

You usually can't tell what's inspiring until you look back on it.

It's only in hindsight that you realize what indeed your childhood was really like.

It is always nice to reflect on how one started.

I think sometimes you need distance to reflect.

When I look back at my life now, I'm not amazed by what I did at 16 to 21.

There's something to be said about being able to be retrospective about a certain age as opposed to just in it.

As a kid, you don't know what's going on at the time. But once you get older, you start to realize it.

It is relatively impossible for people to have clear perspectives on themselves when they're in the midst of them, and often harder to recollect after the times, eras, and situations themselves have passed.

Life can only be understood backwards.

We write to taste life twice," Anais Nin wrote, "in the moment and in retrospection.

Coming back is the thing that enables you to see how all the dots in your life are connected.

That's why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. You can't control life, at least you can control your version.

Looking back we see with great clarity, and what once appeared as difficulties now reveal themselves as blessings.

My diary entries allow me to keep track of all the things I would like to change about my life.

when I first began this diary I said I would give a record of my inner life. I begin to wonder if I have said anything about my inner life. What if I have no inner life?

We go through the present blindfolded... Only later, when the blindfold is removed and we examine the past, do we realize what we've been through and understand what it means.

You live it forward, but understand it backward.

You do learn from what you've done in the past.

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

A man's diary is a record in youth of his sentiments, in middle age of his actions, in old age of his reflections.

I was in my early thirties writing about my early twenties, so there was this way of seeing my younger self from enough of a distance to have perspective but also not to feel that I had to protect myself. My dreams for myself then would have undersold myself in a way.

I began to understand with a terrible sureness that we teach what we need to learn and write what we need to know.