The Time of Our Lives Quotes

“Is happy the same as contented do you think?... as I see it, happiness is something that comes in bursts from outside – love at first sight, winning at chess, getting good news. Happiness is something that seizes you. ...I think of contentment as an everyday thing. It’s what you feel when you don’t want anything more – until you do. It’s nice, but it needs a shot of happiness now and again.”
― Robert Dessaix, The Time of Our Lives: Growing Older Well

“Best not to say what you think in order to give offence, obviously, not if you’re nice, as we are. Whatever you say, though, someone will feel offended. On that question, I rather side with the Stoics, The Stoics held that offence has to be taken, it can’t just be given, so we should try not to take it in the first place.”
― Robert Dessaix, The Time of Our Lives: Growing Older Well

“I am in no position to judge, but I think he hit some nail or other right on the head. Towards the end of your run, if you’ve got your wits about you, you may well become impatient with the conventions you grew up with – or quite a few of them at least – and start shucking them off. You’ll know a freedom, if you’re growing old well, of a kind you’ve never enjoyed before in your life. At a certain point towards the end, if you have all your faculties intact, you’re unlikely to give a rat’s arse about anything very much at all (except, just possibly, global warming).”
― Robert Dessaix, The Time of Our Lives: Growing Older Well

“I hardly have the words to analyse why I like or love a piece of music – I have words, of course, but a layman’s words, I don’t really know what a cadence is, let alone a Phrygian cadence or an augmented sixth.”
― Robert Dessaix, The Time of Our Lives: Growing Older Well

“She loves throwing things out. At home alone during the week before she fell over all she did was throw things out – blouses, old dinner-sets, shoes, vases, mugs, sheets and rugs. It excited her to empty cupboards, to wipe down the empty shelves, to take the things we were throwing out to the tip, she loved our trips to the tip, her mind quickened at the prospect of the tip.”
― Robert Dessaix, The Time of Our Lives: Growing Older Well

“But life isn’t about finding yourself or finding anything, Dylan said, it’s about creating yourself.”
― Robert Dessaix, The Time of Our Lives: Growing Older Well

“John Cleese, in a clever, funny talk he gave on creativity years ago, said you also need a sense of humour if you want to be creative. You can’t manufacture a sense of humour, but if you don’t have one, then you might indeed be better off reporting facts. Art is not about reporting.”
― Robert Dessaix, The Time of Our Lives: Growing Older Well