Andre Dubus III Quotes

We all spend so much time worrying about the future that the present moment slips right out of our hands. And so all we have left is retrospection and anticipation, retrospection and anticipation. In which case what's left to recall but past anticipation? What's left to anticipate but future retrospection?

Quit worrying about how everything is going to turn out. Live one day at a time; better yet, make the most of this moment.

Just handle what is in front of you now and the future will take care of itself. Otherwise, you'll spend most of your life wondering which foot you'll use to step off the curb when you're still only halfway to the corner.

It isn't the great big pleasures that count the most; it's making a great deal out of the little ones--I've discovered the true secret of happiness, Daddy, and that is to live in the now. Not to be for ever regretting the past, or anticipating the future; but to get the most that you can out of this very instant.

Don't worry about the past and don't try to solve the future.

If I fret over tomorrow, I'll have little joy today.

But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment.

I don't think about the miles that are coming down the road, I don't think about the mile I'm on right now, I don't think about the miles I've already covered. I think about what I'm doing right now, just being lost in the moment.

I don’t live in either my past or my future. I’m interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we’re living now.

We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive.

Enjoy the present day, as distrusting that which is to follow.

He dares not concern himself with the future for fear of disturbing the present.

There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hand. I love a broad margin to my life.

Instead of thinking about work the next day or thinking about what you have to do, if you live in the moment you'll have some of the best times of your life.

The future is only a thought form. Work with the present moment. Be with what is.

Everyone rushes his life on, and suffers from a yearning for the future and a boredom with the present. But that man who devotes every hour to his own needs, who plans every day as if it were his last, neither longs for nor fears tomorrow.

Forget the future. I'd worship someone who could do that.

What will happen from now on? It doesn't matter. I can only focus on what's happening to me in this moment.

In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.

Don't worry about what might be...Worry about what is.

How often are you worrying about the present moment? The present moment is usually all right. If you're worrying, you're either agonizing over the past which you should have forgotten long ago, or else you're apprehensive over the future which hasn't even come yet. We tend to skip over the present moment which is the only moment God gives any of us to live.

If we spend our time with regrets over yesterday, and worries over what might happen tomorrow, we have no today in which to live.

We can no more enjoy life by hoping for a future result than we can enjoy music by waiting for the final note.

But I don't think of the future, or the past, I feast on the moment. This is the secret of happiness, but only reached now in middle age.