William Landay Quotes

• “At some point as adults we cease to be our parents' children and we become our children's parents instead.”

  William Landay

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• “The interior of a teenager’s mind is an endless war between Stupid and Clever.”

  William Landay

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• “An emotion is a thought, yes, an idea, but it is also a sensation, an ache in your body. Desire, love, hate, fear, repulsion - you feel these things in your muscle and bones, not just in your mind.”

  William Landay

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• “Damage hardens us all. It will harden you too, when it finds you—and it will find you”

  William Landay

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• “no one worth knowing can be quite known, no one worth possessing can be quite possessed”

  William Landay

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• “Predisposition is not predestination.”

  William Landay

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• “the act does not create guilt unless the mind is also guilty.”

  William Landay

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• “...don't worry about how things look. People are going to think whatever they think. To hell with 'em. You can't worry about it.”

  William Landay

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• “We are pattern-seeking, storytelling animals, and have been since we began drawing on cave walls.”

  William Landay

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• “But sometimes you can't figure everything out because you can't ever really understand other people. You can't understand why they do what they do. You just have to accept a little mystery, Ben. People are mysterious, the world is mysterious. You can't know everything. You're not supposed to. This isn't a history book. It's just the world. It's a messy place.”

  William Landay

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• “At seventeen, I knew: my entire childhood had been just a prelude to this girl. I had never felt anything like it, and still haven't. I felt changed by her, physically.
  I became a different person, myself, the person I am now. And everything that came after-my family, my home, our entire life together-was a gift she gave me.”

  William Landay

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• “I have an idea that is is what enduring love really means, Your memories of a girl at seventeen become as real and vivid as the middle-aged woman sitting in front of you. It is a happy sort of double vision, this seeing and remembering. To be seen this way is to be known.”

  William Landay

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• “I rather doubt he had the sense to see the truth: that there are wounds worse than fatal, which the law's little binary distinctions-guilty/innocent, criminal/victim-cannot fathom, let alone fix. The law is a hammer, not a scalpel.”

  William Landay

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• “I admit--no one worth knowing can be quite known, no one worth possessing can be quite possessed-”

  William Landay

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• “but good friendships require complementary personalities, not identical ones.”

  William Landay

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• “We move through time like a man in a rowboat, looking back even as we move forward.”

  William Landay

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• “But then, we all tell ourselves stories about ourselves. The money man tells himself that by getting rich he is actually enriching others, the artist tells himself that his creations are things of deathless beauty, the soldier tells himself he is on the side of the angels.”

  William Landay

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• “The leopard in the zoo wanders to the edge of his pen and, through the bars or across an unjumpable moat, he stares at you with contempt for your inferiority, for needing that barrier between you. There is a shared understanding in that moment, nonverbal but no less real: the leopard is predator and you are prey, and it is only the barrier that permits us humans to feel superior and secure. That feeling, standing at the leopard’s cage, is edged with shame, at the animal’s superior strength, at his hauteur, his low estimation of you.”

  William Landay

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• “There is no absolute beginning to any story, after all. There is only the moment you begin watching.”

  William Landay

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• “It was as if there was a place called After, and if I could just push my family across to that shore, then everything would be all right. There would be time for all these "soft" problems in the land of After.”

  William Landay

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• “This is the best thing about men's friendships: most any awkwardness can be ignored by mutual agreement and, true connection being unimaginable, you can get on with the easier business of parallel living.”

  William Landay

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• “The rest-the vast majority, tens of thousands of days-are unremarkable, repetitive, even monotonous. We glide through them then instantly forget them. We tend not to think about this arithmetic when we look back on our lives. We remember the handful of Big Days and throw away the rest.
  We organize our long, shapeless lives into tidy little stories...But our lives are mostly made up of junk, of ordinary, forgettable days, and 'The End' is never the end.”

  William Landay

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• “A good marriage drags a long tail of memory behind it. A single word or gesture, a tone of voice can conjure up so many remembrances.”

  William Landay

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• “Damage hardens us all. It will harden you too, when it finds you—and it will find you.”

  William Landay

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• “A jury verdict is just a guess - a well-intentioned guess, generally, but you simply cannot tell fact from fiction by taking a vote.”

  William Landay

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