AtomicQuote

Wallace Stegner Quote

We have been cut off, the past has been ended and the family has broken up and the present is adrift in its wheelchair. ... That is no gap between the generations, that is a gulf. The elements have changed, there are whole new orders of magnitude and kind. [...]My grandparents had to live their way out of one world and into another, or into several others, making new out of old the way corals live their reef upward. I am on my grandparents' side. I believe in Time, as they did, and in the life chronological rather than in the life existential. We live in time and through it, we build our huts in its ruins, or used to, and we cannot afford all these abandonings.

Wallace Stegner

We have been cut off, the past has been ended and the family has broken up and the present is adrift in its wheelchair. ... That is no gap between the generations, that is a gulf. The elements have changed, there are whole new orders of magnitude and kind. [...]My grandparents had to live their way out of one world and into another, or into several others, making new out of old the way corals live their reef upward. I am on my grandparents' side. I believe in Time, as they did, and in the life chronological rather than in the life existential. We live in time and through it, we build our huts in its ruins, or used to, and we cannot afford all these abandonings.

Tags: build up, chronology, development, existentialism, family, generation gap, history, life, modernity, past

Related Quotes

Recollection builds up our personality. Our individuality is based on all the little pieces we assembled in the past. ("The past was her best friend")

Erik Pevernagie

Recollection builds up our personality. Our individuality is based on all the little pieces we assembled in the past. ("The past was her best friend")

Tags: assemble, base on, best friend, build up, individuality, past, personality, pieces, recollection

Discipline is a bridge built through everyday action.

J.R. Rim

Discipline is a bridge built through everyday action.

Tags: action, bridge, build up, development, disciple, discipline, everyday, improvement, learning, room for improvement

Vulnerability creates unimaginable space to build each other up, as much as it creates ample room to tear each other down.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

Vulnerability creates unimaginable space to build each other up, as much as it creates ample room to tear each other down.

Tags: add, build, build up, family, friends, friendships, growth, marriage, maturation, opportunity

We all need that someone in our life who's going to motivate us and not stress us, and then we need to treat him the same way we want to be treaded, and no lies, we say what we mean and mean what we s...

Marouane LAASSAFAR

We all need that someone in our life who's going to motivate us and not stress us, and then we need to treat him the same way we want to be treaded, and no lies, we say what we mean and mean what we s...

Tags: build up, building people up, building relationship, diamond life, encouragement, faith, forgetting the past, forgiveness, forgiving others, give and take
About Wallace Stegner

Wallace Earle Stegner (February 18, 1909 – April 13, 1993) was an American novelist, writer, environmentalist, and historian. He was often called "The Dean of Western Writers". He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 and the U.S. National Book Award in 1977.