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?
I learned about life from life itself, love I learned in a single kiss and could teach no one anything except that I have lived with something in common among men.
The end is simply the beginning of an even longer story.
Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
Yes, you live with your feet in the mud and there's no time to be thinking about how you got in or how you're going to get out.
Everything was usual. That was depression: being stuck, clinging to an out-of-date version of oneself.
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