Geoff Ryman Quotes

God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice.

It's no fun getting older. I might be wearing beautiful diamond earrings, but they can't take away the pain of losing my hearing.

Laughter and grief join hands. Always the heart Clumps in the breast with heavy stride; The face grows lined and wrinkled like a chart, The eyes bloodshot with tears and tide. Let the wind blow, for many a man shall die.

Life is really pretty tricky, and there's a lot of loss, and the longer you stay alive, the more people you lose whom you actually couldn't live without.

Even if you live to be a ripe old age, you live long enough to see the people you love pass away.

The game of life is good, though all of life may be hurt, and though all lives lose the game in the end.

Death is natural, and it happens early for some people. I acknowledge that, and in the next sentence, reject it, because it just sucks. It hurts. I can at the same time acknowledge it as true, and then have my protest against it.

It is the common calamity of old age to lose whatever might have rendered it desirable.

Life is hard, but death is even harder.

Life is short, but its ills make it seem long.

As human beings, nobody gets out of this world free. We all have to do some suffering before we leave.

Nothing begins, and nothing ends, That is not paid with moan; For we are born in others pain And perish in our own.

For every mother who ever cursed God for her child dead in the road, for every father who ever cursed the man who sent him away from the factory with no job, for every child who was ever born to pain and asked why, this is the answer. Our lives are like these things I build. Sometimes they fall down for a reason, sometimes they fall down for no reason at all.

When a man stands on the verge of seventy-two you know perfectly well that he never reached that place without knowing what this life is - heartbreaking bereavement.

We stand there, quiet. My questions all seem wrong: How did you get so old? Was it all at once, in a day, or did you peter out bit by bit? When did you stop having parties? Did everyone else get old too, or was it just you? Are other people still here, hiding in the palm trees or holding their breath underwater? When did you last swim your laps? Do your bones hurt? Did you know this was coming and hide that you knew, or did it ambush you from behind?

Let's die of it before we're too old.

We tried not to age, but time had its rage.

The ordinariness of living to be old is too novel a thing to appreciate.

Pain is something that's common to human life. When we ignore it, we aren't engaging in the whole reality, and the pain begins to fester.

Every life has a measure of sorrow, and sometimes this is what awakens us.

At a certain age, death becomes familiar to you-or a loss becomes familiar-the tragedies that are more commonplace in life.

There should be weeping at a man's birth, not at his death.

I've been through cancer, divorce, loss and bereavement, but they are things most humans go through.

Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre.