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I can't change the past, and I don't think I would. I don't expect to be understood. I like what I've written, the stories and two novels. If I had to give up what I've written in order to be clear of this disease, I wouldn't do it.

Harold Brodkey
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Being ill like this combines shock - this time I will die - with a pain and agony that are unfamiliar, that wrench me out of myself.
Harold Brodkey
I am sensible of the velocity of the moments, and entering that part of my head alert to the motion of the world I am aware that life was never perfect, never absolute. This bestows contentment, even a fearlessness.
Harold Brodkey
Memory, so complete and clear or so evasive, has to be ended, has to be put aside, as if one were leaving a chapel and bringing the prayer to an end in one's head.
Harold Brodkey
But death's acquisitive instincts will win.
Harold Brodkey
This identity, this mind, this particular cast of speech, is nearly over.
Harold Brodkey
So an autobiography about death should include, in my case, an account of European Jewry and of Russian and Jewish events - pogroms and flights and murders and the revolution that drove my mother to come here.
Harold Brodkey
True stories, autobiographical stories, like some novels, begin long ago, before the acts in the account, before the birth of some of the people in the tale.
Harold Brodkey
In New York one lives in the moment rather more than Socrates advised, so that at a party or alone in your room it will always be difficult to guess at the long term worth of anything.
Harold Brodkey
It is like visiting one's funeral, like visiting loss in its purest and most monumental form, this wild darkness, which is not only unknown but which one cannot enter as oneself.
Harold Brodkey
I can't change the past, and I don't think I would. I don't expect to be understood. I like what I've written, the stories and two novels. If I had to give up what I've written in order to be clear of this disease, I wouldn't do it.
Harold Brodkey
Me, my literary reputation is mostly abroad, but I am anchored here in New York. I can't think of any other place I'd rather die than here.
Harold Brodkey
I was always crazy about New York, dependent on it, scared of it - well, it is dangerous - but beyond that there was the pressure of being young and of not yet having done work you really liked, trademark work, breakthrough work.
Harold Brodkey
I feel sorry for the man who marries you... because everyone thinks you're sweet and you're not.
Harold Brodkey
I look upon another's insistence on the merits of his or her life - duties, intellect, accomplishment - and see that most of it is nonsense.
Harold Brodkey
Death and I are head to head in a total collision, pure and mutual distaste.
Harold Brodkey
I have thousands of opinions still - but that is down from millions - and, as always, I know nothing.
Harold Brodkey
If you like to read, sometimes it's interesting just to go and see what the reality is, of the word, of the seedy or not so seedy fiction writer, the drunk or sober poet... Sometimes you can go looking for illumination.
Harold Brodkey
Almost the first thing I did when I became ill was to buy a truly good television set.
Harold Brodkey
I am in an adolescence in reverse, as mysterious as the first, except that this time I feel it as a decay of the odds that I might live for a while, that I can sleep it off.
Harold Brodkey
Public radio is alive and kicking, it always has been.
Harold Brodkey
It is death that goes down to the center of the earth, the great burial church the earth is, and then to the curved ends of the universe, as light is said to do.
Harold Brodkey
God is an immensity, while this disease, this death, which is in me, this small, tightly defined pedestrian event, is merely and perfectly real, without miracle - or instruction.
Harold Brodkey
I awake with a not entirely sickened knowledge that I am merely young again and in a funny way at peace, an observer who is aware of time's chariot, aware that some metamorphosis has occurred.
Harold Brodkey
It bothers me that I won't live to see the end of the century, because, when I was young, in St. Louis, I remember saying to Marilyn, my sister by adoption, that that was how long I wanted to live: seventy years.
Harold Brodkey
We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.
Eric Hoffer
I must stress here the point that I appreciate clarity, order, meaning, structure, rationality: they are necessary to whatever provisional stability we have, and they can be the agents of gradual and successful change.
A. R. Ammons
Excuses change nothing, but make everyone feel better.
Mason Cooley
So, first you have to be able to play with a metronome. Then you take your freedom. If you play in an orchestra, you got to watch the conductor, he is like a metronome, but it is more difficult because he can change rhythms.
Ruggiero Ricci
I wouldn't change Buffy for anything and I wouldn't change the course in which she has evolved but it is nice to be able to do something that is a little different.
Sarah Michelle Gellar
For example, UNICEF works with governments to change legislation such as in India where a law was passed raising the age of compulsory school completion to keep children in school and away from the workplace for longer.
Carol Bellamy
Great joy, especially after a sudden change of circumstances, is apt to be silent, and dwells rather in the heart than on the tongue.
Henry Fielding
I still feel that a movie has to attempt to say something - even if it fails miserably. But I've sort of given up on believing that I'm going to change the world with every film I choose to act in.
Sarah Polley
Don't knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation if it didn't change once in a while.
Kin Hubbard
You don't have to be the Dalai Lama to tell people that life's about change.
John Cleese
I knew that my staying up would not change the election result if I were defeated, while if elected I had a hard day ahead of me. So I thought a night's rest was best in any event.
Benjamin Harrison
It will always be a battle a day between those who want maximum change and those who want to maintain the status quo.
Gerry Adams
Being a father, well, I don't know if this is a change, but it makes me want to get out of here faster. Get off the clock. Just 'cause the baby is my reason for living, my reason for coming to work.
Richard Dean Anderson
A liberal knows that the only certainty in this life is change but believes that the change can be directed toward a constructive end.
Henry A. Wallace
I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there.
Richard P. Feynman
In their search for quality, people seem to be looking for permanency in a time of change.
John Naisbitt
The game has kept faith with the public, maintaining its old admission price for nearly thirty years while other forms of entertainment have doubled and tripled in price. And it will probably never change.
Connie Mack
One day I actually took the list into the bathroom and I put it up against my face and looked in the mirror and I realized I had one of two choices, change the list or change myself.
Star Jones
But the real focus should be on people who are buying today because the base is so big it will take a long time for any change materialize on an overall basis.
Sanjay Kumar
Markets change, tastes change, so the companies and the individuals who choose to compete in those markets must change.
An Wang
The psychological basis of the metropolitan type of individuality consists in the intensification of nervous stimulation which results from the swift and uninterrupted change of outer and inner stimuli.
Georg Simmel
Headteachers and governing bodies run schools and that won't change.
Estelle Morris
Using the power of decision gives you the capacity to get past any excuse to change any and every part of your life in an instant.
Tony Robbins
They said just keep doing my thing, don't try to change anything, which I won't.
Paul McDonald