Life is a train that stops at no stations; you either jump abroad or stand on the platform and watch as it passes.
Interpretation
Life requires active participation and decision-making; you can either take action or miss out on opportunities.
This quote by Yasmina Khadra emphasizes the relentless pace of life and the necessity to engage with it actively. It suggests that life is constantly moving forward, much like a train that does not halt for anyone, and encourages individuals to seize opportunities rather than passively observing from the sidelines.
In practice
During a motivational speech emphasizing the importance of taking risks.
If you want your life to be a small part of eternity, to be lucid even in the heart of madness, love... Love with all your strength, love as though it is all you know how to do, love enough to make the gods themselves jealous... for it is in love that all ugliness reveals its beauty.
It seems that the whole world is beginning to decay, and that its putrefaction has chosen to spread outward from here, from the land of the Pashtuns, where desertification proceeds at a steady, implacable crawl even in the consciences and intellects of men.
You can know all there is to know about life and mankind, but what do you really know about yourself?
He got right down in the dark between heartbeats, and rested there. And then he saw that another one wasn't going to come. That's it. That's the last. He looked at the dark. I would like to take this opportunity, he said, to pray for another human being.
Everything that goes into my mouth seems to make me fat, everything that comes out of my mouth embarrasses me.
Time ... brings us everything we have and are, then comes with a back-loader and starts taking it all away.
That's the thing about running: your greatest runs are rarely measured by racing success. They are moments in time when running allows you to see how wonderful your life it.
People ask me: "Why do you write about food, and eating, and drinking? Why don't you write about the struggle for power and security, and about love, the way the others do?" . . . The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry.
But I smiled, and smiling was easy, no matter how strange and disorienting the street seemed to be. I was a fugitive. I was a wanted man, a hunted man, with a price on my head. And I was still one step ahead of them. I was free. Every day, when you're on the run, is the whole of your life. Every free minute is a short story with a happy ending.
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