Free men and women... can think across time, viewing their own lives, inclusive of past, present, and future, as architectural wholes, static in mental space. They can therefore see, as others cannot, the cracks and buttresses of repeated action, the points of stress, the established framework. They are not perfect; but they are less imperfect than we by a full dimension of being.
Robert GrudinIndividuals we consider happy commonly seem complete in the present and we see them constantly in their wholeness: attentive, cheerful, open rather than closed to events, integral in the moment rather than distended across time by regret or anxiety.
Robert GrudinAt pains to define liberty, that most resolute of indefinables, our minds fall back on spatial images; on birds, sailboats, and mountains; the untethered balloon, the blue sky, the nude figure.
Robert Grudin