They're always looking forward to going places they're just coming back from, or regretting doing things they haven't yet done. They say hello when they mean goodbye.
Interpretation
People often romanticize the past or worry about the future, overlooking the present moment.
This quote by Martin Amis highlights the tendency of individuals to long for experiences they've already had or to dwell on actions they have yet to undertake, suggesting a disconnect from the present. It illustrates how people often express themselves in contradictory ways, saying 'hello' as a means of acknowledging new beginnings while actually signifying 'goodbye' to the past, thus revealing the complexities of human emotions and relationships.
In practice
In a motivational speech about mindfulness, one can use this quote to emphasize the importance of living in the moment.
Oh Christ, the exhaustion of not knowing anything. It's so tiring and hard on the nerves. It really takes it out of you, not knowing anything. You're given comedy and miss all the jokes. Every hour you get weaker. Sometimes, as I sit alone in my flat in London and stare at the window, I think how dismal it is, how heavy, to watch the rain and not know why it falls.
Sometimes I feel that life is passing me by, not slowly either, but with ropes of steam and spark - spattered wheels and a hoarse roar of power or terror. It's passing, yet I'm the one who's doing all the moving.
You know how it is when two souls meet in a burst of ecstatic volubility, with hearts tickling to hear and to tell, to know everything, to reveal everything, the shared reverence for the other's otherness, a feeling of solitude radiantly snapped by full *contact* - all that?
All my adult life I have been searching for the right adjective to describe my father's peculiarly aggressive comic style. I recently settled on 'defamatory.'
Love is an abstract noun, something nebulous. And yet love turns out to be the only part of us that is solid, as the world turns upside down and the screen goes black.
Jane was my wicked stepmother: she was generous, affectionate and resourceful; she salvaged my schooling and I owe her an unknowable debt for that. One flaw: sometimes, early on, she would tell me things designed to make me think less of my mother, and I would wave her away, saying, Jane, this just backfires and makes me think less of you.
Life is a promise; fulfill it.
Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope.
My life will be the best illustration of all my work.
The rest of my days I'm going to spend on the sea. And when I die, I'm going to die on the sea. You know what I shall die of? I shall die of eating an unwashed grape. One day out on the ocean I will die β with my hand in the hand of some nice-looking ship's doctor, a very young one with a small blond moustache and a big silver watch.
The inevitable consequence of poverty is dependence.
All of life like a series of tableaux, and in the living we missed so much, hid so much, left so much undone and unsaid.
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