{"quotes":[{"text":"In retrospect, I am very nearly as sharp as I pretend to be.","author":"Lyndsay Faye","tags":["humor","retrospect","wit"],"id":40842,"author_id":"Lyndsay+Faye"},{"text":"Retrospect: the sweetener of life.","author":"Kamand Kojouri","tags":["afterthought","hindsight","kamand","kamand-kojouri","kojouri","life","quote","recollection","remember","reminisce","retrospect","retrospection","sweetener"],"id":46316,"author_id":"Kamand+Kojouri"},{"text":"Too often we only identify the crucial points in our lives in retrospect. At the time we are too absorbed in the fetid detail of the moment to spot where it is leading us. But not this time. I was experiencing one of my dad’s deafening moments. If my life could be understood as a meal of many courses (and let’s be honest, much of it actually was), then I had finished the starters and I was limbering up for the main event. So far, of course, I had made a stinking mess of it. I had spilled the wine. I had dropped my cutlery on the floor and sprayed the fine white linen with sauce. I had even spat out some of my food because I didn’t like the taste of it.“But it doesn’t matter because, look, here come the waiters. They are scraping away the debris with their little horn and steel blades, pulled with studied grace from the hidden pockets of their white aprons. They are laying new tablecloths, arranging new cutlery, placing before me great domed wine glasses, newly polished to a sparkle. There are more dishes to come, more flavors to try, and this time I will not spill or spit or drop or splash. I will not push the plate away from me, the food only half eaten. I am ready for everything they are preparing to serve me. Be in no doubt; it will all be fine.” (pp.115-6).","author":"Jay Rayner","tags":["absorbed","apron","courses","crucial-points","cutlery","deafening-moments","debris","floor","food","grace","identify","linen","lives","main-event","meal","mess","moment","plate","pockets","retrospect","sauce","splash","starters","tablecloth","taste","time","waiters","wine","wine-glass"],"id":46714,"author_id":"Jay+Rayner"},{"text":"One must judiciously retrospect not just his actions but also reactions of the other in order to arrive at a sensible conclusion. The primary fallacy is that you're assuming that the other is functioning out of awareness - which is falsity and this further aggrevates the mental agony, driving you farther from reality. Watch on!","author":"Ramana Pemmaraju","tags":["awareness","brood-over","introspecting","life-lessons","life-philosophy","past","retrospect","sensible-conclusion"],"id":98405,"author_id":"Ramana+Pemmaraju"},{"text":"Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer's own life. This has been the case with me. Connections slowly emerge. Like distant landmarks you are approaching, cause and effect begin to align themselves, draw closer together. Experiences too indefinite of outline in themselves to be recognized for themselves connect and are identified as a larger shape. And suddenly a light is thrown back, as when your train makes a curve, showing that there has been a mountain of meaning rising behind you on the way you've come, is rising there still, proven now through retrospect. Writing fiction has developed in me an abiding respect for the unknown in a human lifetime and a sense of where to look for the threads, how to follow, how to connect, find in the thick of the tangle what clear line persists. The strands are all there: to the memory nothing is ever lost.","author":"Eudora Welty","tags":["cause-and-effect","connect","connection","experience","fiction","identified","lost","memory","mountain","nothing","respect","retrospect","sequence","train","writing"],"id":131718,"author_id":"Eudora+Welty"},{"text":"...The passage of time, which transformed the volatile present into that finished, unalterable painting called the past, a canvas man always executed blindly, with erratic brushstrokes that only made sense when one stepped far enough away from it to be able to admire it as a whole. -pg. 19.","author":"Félix J. Palma","tags":["past","retrospect","time"],"id":153222,"author_id":"F%C3%A9lix+J.+Palma"},{"text":"A kind of joy came upon him, as if borne in on a summer breeze. He dimly recalled that he had been thinking of failure-as if it mattered. It seemed to him now that such thoughts were mean, unworthy of what his life had been.","author":"John Williams","tags":["existentialism","retrospect"],"id":169968,"author_id":"John+Williams"},{"text":"The power of hope! Even a lack of ambition can, for a time, pay off as a necessary facet, as long as hope outweighs it.","author":"Criss Jami","tags":["ambition","despair","despair-hope","encouraging","facet","hope","inspiration","inspirational","motivational","outweigh","phases","power","purpose","recovery","retrospect","time"],"id":179326,"author_id":"Criss+Jami"},{"text":"It's sometimes easier to help others rather than helping yourself. The trick is to listen to your 'self' as a friend. This may be the simplest change you ever make in life, with the biggest impact.","author":"Lorii Myers","tags":["friendship","life-lessons","retrospect"],"id":189415,"author_id":"Lorii+Myers"},{"text":"Strange that, the way happiness only works in retrospect.","author":"Peter Akinti","tags":["forest-gate","happiness","happy","retrospect"],"id":198450,"author_id":"Peter+Akinti"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":19,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}