Reading is rapture (or if it isn't, I put the book down meaning to go on with it later, and escape out the side door).
William MaxwellRead
I had inadvertently walked through a door that I shouldn’t have gone through and couldn’t get back to the place I hadn’t meant to leave.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on unintended consequences and irreversible choices.
William Maxwell's quote highlights the concept of making choices that can lead us to unexpected paths, emphasizing the difficulty of returning to our previous state once we've ventured into new territories. It speaks to the human experience of navigating life, where certain decisions can alter our journey in profound ways, often leaving us longing for what we consciously or unconsciously left behind.
Themes
ChoicesConsequencesJourneyRegretLife
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about regret during a book club meeting.
More from William Maxwell
All quotes →Sometimes she goes out to work as a practical nurse, and comes home and sits by the kitchen table soaking her feet in a pan of hot water and Epsom salts. When she gets into bed and the springs creak under her weight, she groans with the pleasure of lying stretched out on an object that understands her so well.
William MaxwellRead
The view after seventy is breathtaking. What is lacking is someone, anyone, of the older generation to whom you can turn when you want to satisfy your curiosity about some detail of the landscape of the past. There is no longer any older generation. You have become it, while your mind was mostly on other matters
William MaxwellRead
If you turn the imagination loose like a hunting dog, it will often return with the bird in its mouth.
William MaxwellRead
A writer is a reader who is moved to emulation.
William MaxwellRead
Similar quotes
There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.
Howard ZinnRead
Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding.
Mahatma GandhiRead
Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.
Terence MckennaRead
All essential knowledge relates to existence, or only such knowledge as has an essential relationship to existence is essential knowledge.
Soren KierkegaardRead
We build buildings based on the false assumption that women go to mosques half as much as they actually do. In fact, the US is the only country in the world where women and men report that they attend the mosque in equal numbers, but our institutions aren't representing this reality.
Dalia MogahedRead
He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable.
George OrwellRead