“I was a terrible history student. They taught me history as if it were a visit to a wax museum or to the land of the dead. I was over twenty before I discovered that the past was neither quiet nor mute.” IfsPastEducationLandStudentsTaughtTerribleQuietTwentiesMuseumsMute Author:Eduardo Galeano
“I used to be really cute. I could send you earlier photos where I'm stunning. But I've gained about twenty pounds over the past two years, and the more weight I've put on, the more success I've had. If you drew a diagram of weight gain and me getting more work, a mathematician would draw some conclusions from that.” IfsYearsTwoPastUsedDrawsGainsWeightTwentiesConclusionUsed To BeCutePoundsTwo YearsMathematicianOver The PastStunningDiagramsReally Cute Author:Zach Galifianakis
“Most people who have been enlightened in previous incarnations normally begin to regain their past-life enlightenment around the age of twenty-nine, when their astrological Saturn return takes place.” PeopleHas BeensAgePastTeacherReturnEnlightenmentTwentiesNineEnlightenedIncarnationRamaPast LifeSaturn Author:Frederick Lenz
“What I got out of baseball is what I have today, and I've got to look at that. I still see some of my friends that never made it past Triple-A. I made that last big step. I was lucky. I'm in love with my land. I got it all from playing ball. It gives me prestige. Someone says, 'What you got?' I say, 'One hundred and twenty-one acres of nice land.'” GivingLooksMadeStillsBigsTodayLastsPastStepsNiceLandLuckyHundredMy FriendsBaseballBallsGive MeTwentiesMade ItTwenty OnePrestigeAcres Author:Mark Fidrych
“As the United States continues its slow but steady recovery from the depths of the financial crisis, nobody actually wants a massive austerity package to shock the economy back into recession, and so the odds have always been high that the game of budgetary chicken will stop short of disaster. Looming past the cliff, however, is a deep chasm that poses a much greater challenge -- the retooling of the country's economy, society, and government necessary for the United States to perform effectively in the twenty-first century.” WantFirstsCountryStatesGovernmentPastGamesChallengesUnitedUnited StatesEconomyGreaterCenturyTwentiesCrisisDepthFinancialDisasterRecoveryShockMassiveChickensSteadyOddsPackagesCliffsRecessionsFinancial CrisisChasmsAusterityLooming Author:Fareed Zakaria
“As I looked more carefully at the listening matrix I saw that during the past twenty years we had taken a magnifying glass to the first of these four quadrants, the female experience of powerlessness. I saw I was subconsciously making a false assumption: The more deeply I understood women's experience of powerlessness, the more I assumed men had the power women did not have. In fact, what I was understanding was the female experience of male power.” MenYearsFirstsFactsPastUnderstandingTakenSawsFourListeningUnderstoodFemaleTwentiesMalesGlassesAssumptionPowerlessnessMagnifyingMagnifying GlassFalse Assumptions Author:Warren Farrell
“The clock struck half past two. In the little office at the back of Mr. McKechnie's bookshop, Gordon--Gordon Comstock, last member of the Comstock family, aged twenty-nine and rather moth-eaten already--lounged across the table, pushing a fourpenny packet of Player's Weights open and shut with his thumb.” LittlesTwoBookLastsPastHalfPlayerMembersOfficeWeightTwentiesTablesNineClockPushingThumbsMothsBookshops Book:The complete works of George Orwell Source: The complete works of George Orwell
“I'm really glad that I made a lot of mistakes, poorly chose my friends throughout my twenties, and didn't have a rocket trajectory that set me on one path without making any mistakes or having any setbacks. The older I get, the more I realize that it's all of these failed, horrible things from my past, and the stories that they generated, that are the things I will draw on for the rest of my life.” MadeStoriesPastRealizingMistakePathDrawsMy FriendsTwentiesGladHorribleRocketsSetbackMy PastTrajectoryHorrible Things Author:Chuck Palahniuk
“When I learnt, however, that in 1911 there had been twenty-one regular feminist periodicals in Britain, that there was a feminist book shop, a woman's press, and a woman's bank run by and for women, I could no longer accept that the reason I knew almost nothing about women of the past was because there were so few of them, and they had done so little.” LittlesBookReasonDoneRunningPastAcceptingTwentiesPressesFeministBritainShopsSexismTwenty One Author:Dale Spender
“The past is good (as we all know), twenty, thirty years back everything was good, anyone can tell you that.” KnowsYearsPastTwentiesNostalgiaThirtyThirty Years Book:The Tattered Cloak and Other Stories Source: The Tattered Cloak and Other Stories
“If it had taught them nothing else, twenty years of living past high school had taught them self-preservation. ... No one was going to risk putting his ego on the line; they would come prepared with dates, flattering clothes, and a well-rehearsed, carefully edited biography. They would all be kind to each other. High school was enough torture for one lifetime.” IfsYearsWellsKindSelfEnoughSchoolPastLinesRiskTaughtEgoClothesHigh SchoolTwentiesPreparedLifetimeTortureBe KindBiographiesPreservationFlatteringSelf PreservationEdited Author:Sharyn McCrumb
“Sitting for a picture is morbid business. A portrait doesn't begin to mean anything until the subject is dead. This is the whole point. We're doing this to create a kind of sentimental past for people in decades to come. It's their past, their history we're inventing here. And it's not how I look now that matters. It's how I'll look in twenty-five years as clothing and faces change, as photographs change. The deeper I pass into death, the more powerful my picture becomes. Isn't this why picture-taking is so ceremonial? It's like a wake. And I'm the actor made up for the laying-out.” PeopleYearsLooksKindMeanMadeMatterWholePastFacesActorsPowerfulFiveSubjectsSittingTwentiesPhotographDeeperDecadesFive YearsClothingsPortraitsSentimentalInventingTwenty FiveMorbidPicture Taking Book:Mao II Source: Mao II
“Conventional names define a person's past: ancestry, ethnicity, nationality, religion. I am not who I was ten years ago and certainly not who I will be in twenty years” YearsPersonsPastNamesTenYears AgoTwentiesConventionalNationalityAncestryEthnicity Author:FM-2030