Thursday, December 31, 2009

Cecelia Ahern

"To new beginnings. To the pursuit of...somethingness.""

Cecelia Ahern

Vikas Swarup

"Love doesn't happen in an instant. It creeps up on you and then it turns your life upside down. It colors your waking moments, and fills your dreams. You begin to walk on air and see life in brilliant new shades. But it also brings with it a sweet agony, a delicious torture."

Vikas Swarup

Richard Peck

"I read because one life isn't enough, and in the page of a book I can be anybody;
I read because the words that build the story become mine, to build my life;
I read not for happy endings but for new beginnings; I'm just beginning myself, and I wouldn't mind a map;
I read because I have friends who don't, and young though they are, they're beginning to run out of material;
I read because every journey begins at the library, and it's time for me to start packing;
I read because one of these days I'm going to get out of this town, and I'm going to go everywhere and meet everybody, and I want to be ready."

Richard Peck

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Sapardi Djoko Damono

"The day will come
When my body no longer exists
But in the lines of this poem
I will never let you be alone

The day will come
When my voice is no longer heard
But within the words of this poem
I will continue to watch over you

The day will come
When my dreams are no longer known
But in the spaces found in the letters of this poem
I will never tired of looking for you"

Sapardi Djoko Damono

Ray Bradbury

"Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I'm one of them."

Ray Bradbury

Jon Katz

"I think if I've learned anything about friendship, it's to hang in, stay connected, fight for them, and let them fight for you. Don't walk away, don't be distracted, don't be too busy or tired, don't take them for granted. Friends are part of the glue that holds life and faith together. Powerful stuff. "

Jon Katz

Gregory Maguire

"It's the only condition I know. Bitter Love, Loneliness, contempt for corruption, blind hope. It's where I live. A permanent state of bereavement. This is nothing new."

Gregory Maguire

Nicole Krauss

"He was gone, and all that was left was the space you'd grown around him, like a tree that grows around a fence. For a long time, it would remain hollow. Years, maybe. And when at last it was filled again, you knew that the new love you felt for a man would have been impossible without him. If it weren't for him, there would never have been an empty space, or the need to fill it."

Nicole Krauss

Christmas!

There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.

Erma Bombeck

Gifts of time and love are surely the basic ingredients of a truly merry Christmas.

Peg Bracken

Christmas! The very word brings joy to our hearts. No matter how we may dread the rush, the long Christmas lists for gifts and cards to be bought and given--when Christmas Day comes there is still the same warm feeling we had as children, the same warmth that enfolds our hearts and our homes.

Joan Winmill Brown, American author and editor.

This is the message of Christmas: We are never alone."

Taylor Caldwell (1900-1985), English novelist.

Remember, if Christmas isn't found in your heart, you won't find it under a tree."

Charlotte Carpenter.

Christmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind. To cherish peace and good will, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas. If we think on these things, there will be born in us a Savior and over us will shine a star sending its gleam of hope to the world."

Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933), American president.

Christmas, in its final essence, is for grown people who have forgotten what children know. Christmas is for whoever is old enough to have denied the unquenchable spirit of man.

Margaret Cousins (1905- ), senior editor Doubleday Publishing Company.

Unless we make Christmas an occasion to share our blessings, all the snow in Alaska won't make it 'white'.

Bing Crosby (1904-1977), American singer and film actor.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Calvin Coolidge

"Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas." -

Calvin Coolidge

Deb Caletti

"What they say is, life goes on, and that is mostly true. The mail is delivered and the Christmas lights go up and the ladders get put away and you open yet another box of cereal. In time, the volume of my feelings would be turned down in gentle increments to a near quiet, and yet the record would still spin, always spin. There was a place for Rose so deeply within myself that it was another country, another world, with its own light and time and its own language. A lost world. Yet its foundations and edges were permanent-the ruins of Pompeii, the glorious remnants or the Forum. A world that endured, even as it retreated into the past. A world visited, imagined, ever waiting, yet asleep"

Deb Caletti

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Larry Wilde

"Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree. In the eyes of children, they are all thirty feet tall."

Larry Wilde

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Scott Dunlop

"So I feel a bit bi-polar- so fucking what? Everybody has poles, they just aren’t always exaggerated to the point of seeming all-encompassing. The wretched gaiety, the bruised joys of interaction and intervention can flail you and leave you naked, your arteries, veins and nerve-endings exposed to the relentless elements. Imagine a sterile homogeneous world where everything is not just vanilla, it is sugar-flavour-excitement-free, totally devoid of the sinister and blissful vagaries that season the dish. It is fucking hard to deal with raw emotions: Picture the slaughter, the cleaning of the beast, the preparation of the cuts of meat- that’s raw emotion. Nothing like the golden fucking ratio of a medallion fillet served as haute cuisine. So emotions tend to leak and spill, and shriek and cower, and resist taming at all costs. They spew into corners and coat the freshly laundered linen hanging on the washing line with grime and industrial fallout. They come with their corers, gouging and splitting the flesh, dividing the heart from the marrow. Yeah, we reel into the pathways of oncoming trucks knowing that the coup de grace is imminent, yet powerless to resist ..."

Scott Dunlop

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Siddhārtha Gautama

"The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly."

Siddhārtha Gautama

Robert Fulghum

"I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death."

Robert Fulghum

Elie Wiesel

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."

Elie Wiesel

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Stephen King

"I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up DOES rejoice. Still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend."

Stephen King

Stephen King

"Your hair is winter fire
January embers
My heart burns there, too."

Stephen King

Stephen King

"Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule."

Stephen King

Stephen King

"I have the heart of a small boy...and I keep it in a jar on my desk."

Stephen King

Carl Gustav Jung

"What if I should discover that the poorest of the beggars and the most impudent of offenders are all within me; and that I stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I, myself, am the enemy who must be loved -- what then?"

Carl Gustav Jung

P.C. Cast

"I seek strength, not to be greater than other, but to fight my greatest enemy, the doubts within myself"

P.C. Cast

Stephen King

"The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a tellar but for want of an understanding ear."

Stephen King

Scott Dunlop

Its standard police procedure (I’m assuming it is- I’m an expert on it having watched police programs from Kojak to Dexter), to ask the surviving relatives if the stiff, or the vic, had any enemies, so that they can ID the perp.

This is a useful debriefing procedure when you are interrogating yourself in the wee hours. One of you sits hunched in a chair, hollow-eyed and jonesin’ for a coffee or a smoke, while the other circles you. No good cop, bad cop, but rather just a mean lying rat-assed bastard of an inquisitor, second guessing everything you thought was true, but now have lost your bearings with. The lack of sleep and the constant revisiting of scenes of crimes, real and imagined warp the timelines and coordinates of reality. Soon you are adding to your mild wrongdoings a list of heinous activities that is almost genocidal in its documented form. The endless questioning has you longing for the stark comfort of your cell, where the fears and memories are contained and almost disarmed.

So what you need to do is ask what or who your enemies are. For some it maybe the guy at work who shamelessly takes credit for your labours but belittles you in meetings. It could be a family member with whom you refuse to share space at family events. Could be an actual enemy, who has genuinely threatened you. But don’t forget to add yourself to the list of suspects. Yup. Who knows better about how to mess with your head than you? Who can flick your buttons and twist your screws? Who knows that the worst kind of enemy is one from whom you cannot hide?

It’s not a death sentence. You can separate the fictions from the realities, and parse the evil from the good. The best defense against an inner enemy is an inner ally. It helps to surround yourself with people who will tell you the truth, and provide reinforcements of encouragement and love. Thank you for doing that.

Scott Dunlop

Friday, December 11, 2009

Maya Angelou

"I've learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life. I've learned that making a "living" is not the same thing as making a "life." I've learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance. I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back. I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one. I've learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back. I've learned that I still have a lot to learn. I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

Maya Angelou

George Carlin

"The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live. "

George Carlin

Dr. Seuss

"And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more. "

Dr. Seuss

J.K. Rowling

"One can never have enough socks," said Dumbledore. "Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn't get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books."

J.K. Rowling

Cassandra Clare

"That does it," said Jace.
"I'm going to get you a dictionary for Christmas this year."
"Why?" Isabelle said.
"So you can look up 'fun.' I'm not sure you know what it means.""

Cassandra Clare (City of Ashes)

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Peter Cameron

"What if she was meant to be, or could have been, someone important in my life? I think that's what scares me: the randomness of everything. That the people who could be important to you might just pass you by. Or you pass them by. How do you know...I felt that by walking away I was abandoning [them], that I spent my entire life, day after day, abandoning people."

Peter Cameron

Mitch Albom

"There are no random acts...We are all connected...You can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind..."

Mitch Albom

Elizabeth Berg

"There are random moments - tossing a salad, coming up the driveway to the house, ironing the seams flat on a quilt square, standing at the kitchen window and looking out at the delphiniums, hearing a burst of laughter from a child - when I feel a wavelike rush of joy. This is my true religion: arbitrary moments of of nearly painful happiness for a life I feel privileged to lead."

Elizabeth Berg

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Carlos Gebler

"You can't change the past but, with understanding, you can sometimes draw the poison out of it."

Carlos Gebler

Colette

"There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall."

Colette

Mitch Albom

"Holding anger is a poison...It eats you from inside...We think that by hating someone we hurt them...But hatred is a curved blade...and the harm we do to others...we also do to ourselves."

Mitch Albom

Siddhārtha Gautama

"There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt. Doubt separates people. It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations. It is a thorn that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills."

Siddhārtha Gautama

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Caroll Hermann

Spieel

Wanneer jou drome, soos
n spieel stukkend
val
En fragmente van jou
lewe
soos skerwe voor jou voete
lê.
En Hoop,
Geloof,
(en liefde)
bloed belope terug weerkaats -
stuk vir stuk
n legkaart maak.
Kort n n stuk.
En ek soek,
ek soek.

Caroll Hermann

Monday, November 30, 2009

A.S. Byatt

"Things are not what they seem."

A.S. Byatt

A.S. Byatt

"This is where I have always been coming to. Since my time began. And when I go away from here, this will be the mid-point, to which everything ran, before, and from which everything will run ..."

A.S. Byatt

Jodi Picoult

"Take it from me: love has all the lasting permanence of a rainbow- beautiful while it's there, and just as likely to have disappeared by the time you blink."

Jodi Picoult

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Stephen Chbosky

"So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be."

Stephen Chbosky

Michael Buble

"Life can show no mercy
It can tear your soul apart
It can make you feel like you've gone crazy
But you're not
Things have seem to changed
There's one thing that's still the same
In my heart you have remained
And we can fly fly fly away"

Michael Buble

Thursday, November 26, 2009

George Eliot

"A friend is one to whom one may pour out all the contents of their heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that the gentlest of hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away".

Nickle Creek

"I'll be the harmony to every lonely song you learn to play".

Nickle Creek

Walt Whitman

"I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre for your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you".

Walt Whitman

TS Eliot - The Hollow Men

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us - if at all - not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer -

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Ambrose Bierce

"Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret."

Ambrose Bierce

Aristotle

"Anyone can become angry. That is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose and in the right way - that is not easy."

Aristotle

Gloria Steinem

"The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off."

Gloria Steinem

Haruki Murakami

"But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drink, the very air I breathe, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at four o'clock in the morning."

Haruki Murakami

Edgar Allan Poe

"I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom."

Edgar Allan Poe

Elizabeth Gilbert

"When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings."

Elizabeth Gilbert

Anaïs Nin

"I am lonely, yet not everybody will do. I don't know why, some people fill the gaps and others emphasize my loneliness. In reality those who satisfy me are those who simply allow me to live with my 'idea of them."

Anaïs Nin

Janet Fitch

'Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. And intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you'll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way.'

Janet Fitch

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Terry Pratchett

"It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life."
Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett

"Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry."

Terry Pratchett

Gabriel García Márquez

"Perhaps this is what the stories meant when they called somebody heartsick. Your heart and your stomach and your whole insides felt empty and hollow and aching."

Gabriel García Márquez

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Kate DiCamillo

"My favorite six letter word is
always
because it promises
so much.

My favorite five letter word is
never
because it insists on contradicting
the promise.

My favorite four letter word is
once
because it says it
happened then.

My favorite three letter word is
yes
because I’m just now learning
to say it
to my heart.

My favorite two letter word is
if
because it makes
all things possible
like this:

If not always
If not never
Then once.

Yes."

Kate DiCamillo

Cornellia Funke

"Her curiosity was too much for her. She felt almost as if she could hear the books whispering on the other side of the half-open door. They were promising her a thousand unknown stories, a thousand doors into worlds she had never seen before."

Cornellia Funke

Barbara Kingsolver

"April is the cruelest month, T.S. Eliot wrote, by which I think he meant (among other things) that springtime makes people crazy. We expect too much, the world burgeons with promises it can't keep, all passion is really a setup, and we're doomed to get our hearts broken yet again. I agree, and would further add: Who cares? Every spring I go out there anyway, around the bend, unconditionally. ... Come the end of the dark days, I am more than joyful. I'm nuts. "

Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver

"April is the cruelest month, T.S. Eliot wrote, by which I think he meant (among other things) that springtime makes people crazy. We expect too much, the world burgeons with promises it can't keep, all passion is really a setup, and we're doomed to get our hearts broken yet again. I agree, and would further add: Who cares? Every spring I go out there anyway, around the bend, unconditionally. ... Come the end of the dark days, I am more than joyful. I'm nuts. "

Barbara Kingsolver

Scott Westerfeld

"Never give us what we really want. Cut the dream into pieces and scatter them like ashes. Dole out the empty promises. Package our aspirations and sell them to us, cheaply made enough to fall apart."

Scott Westerfeld

Chuck Palahniuk

"When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?"

Chuck Palahniuk

Friday, November 13, 2009

Stephenie Meyer

"I can't live in a world where you don't exist."

Stephenie Meyer

Winston S. Churchill

"If you are going through hell, keep going."

Winston S. Churchill

Plato

"Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song."

Plato

J.K. Rowling

"It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default."

J.K. Rowling

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Scott Dunlop

Sometimes I am the angry indication of an accidental fire, blanketing the innocents around me.
Sometimes I am a jet stream, a memory of power, of surging to a destination.
Sometimes I am just a wisp, a series of horse tails flicking at the cool outer reaches of the atmosphere, remote.
Sometimes I am the big-bellied pregnant mother of the skies, threatening to break water over needy landscapes.
Sometimes, I am a gallery of surreal portraits, none remaining constant- I can’t stay still.
Sometimes I am the accessories drawer to the sun, my purples and pinks and oranges there to show off her beauty.
Sometimes I am a magician, with my pockets full of rainbows.
Sometimes I am an artist, my palette and my canvas full of blank promise.
Sometimes I like to lean on mountains for support- they never shift.
Sometimes I wait for the evening to descend, and in the morning, like an afterthought, I lift.
Sometimes I lift the hems of my cloak, to display my hoarded silver.
Sometimes I seem as full-bodied as the earth, and
Sometimes I am merely an echo of breath on a cool morning.
Sometimes I am as small as a man’s hand, cupped over the horizon, and
Sometimes I dominate, a shadow-parent adopting all of mankind.

Scott Dunlop

Re-posted with permission.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

A.S. Byatt

"Vocabularies are crossing circles and loops. We are defined by the lines we choose to cross or to be confined by."

A.S. Byatt

A.S. Byatt

" There are things that happen and leave no discernible trace, are not spoken or written of, though it would be very wrong to say that subsequent events go on indifferently, all the same, as though such things had never been."

A.S. Byatt

Lisa Kleypas

"The span of three or four minutes is pretty insignificant in the scheme of things. People lose hundreds of minutes everyday, squandering them on trivial things. But sometimes in those fragments of time, something can happen you'll remember the rest of your life."

Lisa Kleypas

George Washington

"The turning points of lives are not the great moments. The real crises are often concealed in occurrences so trivial in appearance that they pass unobserved."

George Washington

Sarah Dunn

"There was a guy roasting chestnuts on the street corner, and the smell wafted over, hinting at the coming winter, but in a good way, in the way that makes you think about Christmas and snow days and fires crackling away in fireplaces."

Sarah Dunn

Sarah Dunn (Secrets to Happiness: A Novel)

"She never got a chance to fall out of love, to do it properly, slowly and thoroughly, and the result was he was like a phantom limb. Gone but still there. And like a true phantom limb, the preponderance of feelings associated with him were painful.

Sarah Dunn (Secrets to Happiness: A Novel)

St. Augustine

"Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two."

St. Augustine

Saturday, November 7, 2009

J.M. Barrie

"You know that place between sleeping and awake, that place where you can still remember dreaming? That's where I'll always think of you."

J.M. Barrie

Mark Z. Danielewski (House of Leaves)

"Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes. The violence comes from a combination of giving up, not caring, and a resignation that getting past it is all you can hope to accomplish. So you kill the hour. You do not work, you do not read, you do not daydream. If you sleep it is not because you need to sleep. And when at last it is over, there is no evidence: no weapon, no blood, and no body. The only clue might be the shadows beneath your eyes or a terribly thin line near the corner of your mouth indicating something has been suffered, that in the privacy of your life you have lost something and the loss is too empty to share."

Mark Z. Danielewski (House of Leaves)

David Benioff (City of Thieves)

"I've always envied people who sleep easily. Their brains must be cleaner, the floorboards of the skull well swept, all the little monsters closed up in a steamer trunk at the foot of the bed."

David Benioff (City of Thieves)

Poppy Z. Brite

"The night is the hardest time to be alive and 4am knows all my secrets."

Poppy Z. Brite

Friday, November 6, 2009

One Tree Hill (Peyton Sawyer)

"And so I wish for patience, and grace, and strength to just let him be happy. Mostly I pray for the strength to not make his life worse because of what I want. That's the toughest part, letting go, you know? That's the part that really sucks."

One Tree Hill (Peyton Sawyer)

Stephenie Meyer

"I used to think of you that way, you know. Like the sun. My personal sun. You balanced out the clouds nicely for me."

Stephenie Meyer

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

John Bunyan

"You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you."

John Bunyan

Mark Twain

"How often we recall with regret that Napoleon once shot at a magazine editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember with charity that his intentions were good."

Mark Twain

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Every heart has its secret sorrows which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

John Irving

"The thing that is most hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most wind up in parentheses."

John Irving

Stephenie Meyer

"Happy and sad, elated and miserable, secure and afraid, loved and denied, patient and angry, peaceful and wild, complete and empty...all of it. I would feel everything. It would all be mine."

Stephenie Meyer

John Greenleaf Whittier

"Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.'"

John Greenleaf Whittier

Monday, November 2, 2009

Jeff Lindsay

"In my life long study of human beings, I have found that no matter how hard they try, they have found no way yet to prevent the arrival of Monday morning. And they do try, of course, but Monday always comes, and all the drones have to scuttle back to their dreary workday lives of meaningless toll and suffering."

Jeff Lindsay

Steven Wright

"Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7 of your life."

Steven Wright

Terry Pratchett

"The universe contains any amount of horrible ways to be woken up, such as the noise of the mob breaking down the front door, the scream of fire engines, or the realization that today is the Monday which on Friday night was a comfortably long way off ... "

Terry Pratchett

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Carson McCullers

"The way I need you is a loneliness I cannot bear."

Carson McCullers

Ana Castillo

"I ask the impossible: love me forever.
Love me when all desire is gone.
Love me with the single mindedness of a monk.
When the world in its entirety,
and all that you hold sacred advise you
against it: love me still more.
When rage fills you and has no name: love me.
When each step from your door to our job tires you--
love me; and from job to home again, love me, love me.
Love me when you're bored--
when every woman you see is more beautiful than the last,
or more pathetic, love me as you always have:
not as admirer or judge, but with
the compassion you save for yourself
in your solitude.
Love me as you relish your loneliness,
the anticipation of your death,
mysteries of the flesh, as it tears and mends.
Love me as your most treasured childhood memory--
and if there is none to recall--
imagine one, place me there with you.
Love me withered as you loved me new.
Love me as if I were forever--
and I, will make the impossible
a simple act,
by loving you, loving you as I do"

Ana Castillo

Jonathan Safran Foer

"He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others--the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by the mid afternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad."

Jonathan Safran Foer

Robert Frost

"They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars—on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places."

Robert Frost

Charles Bukowski

"Real loneliness is not necessarily limited to when you are alone."

Charles Bukowski

Charlotte Brontë

"The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely."

Charlotte Brontë

Elizabeth Gilbert

"So tonight I reach for my journal again. This is the first time I’ve done this since I came to Italy. What I write in my journal is that I am weak and full of fear. I explain that Depression and Loneliness have shown up, and I’m scared they will never leave. I say that I don’t want to take the drugs anymore, but I’m frightened I will have to. I am terrified that I will never really pull my life together.In response, somewhere from within me, rises a now-familiar presence, offering me all the certainties I have always wished another person would say to me when I was troubled. This is what I find myself writing on the page:

I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long. I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it—I will love you through that, as well. If you don’t need the medication, I will love you, too. There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and Braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.

Tonight, this strange interior gesture of friendship—the lending of a hand from
me to myself when nobody else is around to offer solace—reminds me of something that happened to me once in New York City. I walked into an office building one afternoon in a hurry, dashed into the waiting elevator. As I rushed in, I caught an unexpected glance of myself in a security mirror’s reflection. In that moment, my brain did an odd thing—it fired off this split-second message: “Hey! You know her! That’s a friend of yours!” And I actually ran forward toward my own reflection with a smile, ready to welcome that girl whose name I had lost but whose face was so familiar. In a flash instant of course, I realized my mistake and laughed in embarrassment at my almost doglike confusion over how a mirror works. But for some reason that incident comes to mind again tonight during my sadness in Rome, and I find myself writing this comforting reminder at the bottom of the page.

Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend …

I fell asleep holding my notebook pressed against my chest, open to this most recent assurance. In the morning when I wake up, I can still smell a faint trace of depression’s lingering smoke, but he himself is nowhere to be seen. Somewhere during the night, he got up and left. And his buddy loneliness beat it, too."

Elizabeth Gilbert

Edgar Allan Poe

"I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom."

Edgar Allan Poe

Anaïs Nin

"I am lonely, yet not everybody will do. I don't know why, some people fill the gaps and others emphasize my loneliness. In reality those who satisfy me are those who simply allow me to live with my 'idea of them.'

Anaïs Nin

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Derek Bok

"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."

Derek Bok

Anthony Doerr

"Here's what I mean by the miracle of language. When you're falling into a good book, exactly as you might fall into a dream, a little conduit opens, a passageway between a reader's heart and a writer's, a connection that transcends the barriers of continents and generations and even death..... and here's the magic. You're different. You can never go back to being exactly the same person you were before you disappeared into that book.

Anthony Doerr

Jane Austen

"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W.

I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never.

Captain Wentworth to Anne Elliot"

Jane Austen

Friday, October 30, 2009

Stolen ... but inspired

  • Thou shalt not steal if there is a direct victim.
  • Thou shalt not worship pop idols or follow lost prophets.
  • Thou shalt not take the names of Johnny Cash, Joe Strummer, Johnny Hartman, Desmond Decker, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix or Syd Barret in vain.
  • Thou shalt not read NME.
  • Thou shalt not stop liking a band just because they’ve become popular.
  • Thou shalt not question Stephen Fry.
  • Thou shalt not judge a book by its cover.
  • Thou shalt not judge Lethal Weapon by Danny Glover.
  • Thou shalt not buy Coca-Cola products.
  • Thou shalt not buy Nestle products.
  • Thou shalt not go into the woods with your boyfriend’s best friend, take drugs and cheat on him.
  • Thou shalt not fall in love so easily.
  • Thou shalt not use poetry, art or music to get into girls’ pants. Use it to get into their heads.
  • Thou shalt not watch Hollyoaks.
  • Thou shalt not attend an open mic and leave
The Sex Pistols ... just a band.
The Clash ... just a band.
Crass ... just a band.
Minor Threat ... just a band.
The Cure ... just a band.
The Smiths ... just a band.
Nirvana… Just a band.
The Pixies ... just a band.
Oasis ... just a band.
Radiohead ... just a band.
Bloc Party ... just a band.
The Arctic Monkeys ... just a band.
The Next Big Thing ... JUST A BAND.
  • Thou shalt give equal worth to tragedies that occur in non-English speaking countries as to those that occur in English speaking countries.
  • Thou shalt remember that guns, bitches and bling were never part of the four elements and never will be.
  • Thou shalt not make repetitive generic music,
  • thou shalt not make repetitive generic music,
  • thou shalt not make repetitive generic music,
  • thou shalt not make repetitive generic music.
  • Thou shalt not pimp my ride.
  • Thou shalt not scream if you wanna go faster.
  • Thou shalt not move to the sound of the wickedness.
  • Thou shalt not make some noise for Detroit.
  • When I say “Hey” thou shalt not say “Ho”.
  • When I say “Hip” thou shalt not say “Hop”.
  • When I say, he say, she say, we say, make some noise … kill me.
  • Thou shalt not quote me happy.
  • Thou shalt not shake it like a Polaroid picture.
  • Thou shalt not wish your girlfriend was a freak like me.
  • Thou shalt spell the word “Pheonix” P-H-E-O-N-I-X not P-H-O-E-N-I-X, regardless of what the Oxford English Dictionary tells you.
  • Thou shalt not express your shock at the fact that Sharon got off with Bradley at the club last night by saying “Is it”.
  • Thou shalt think for yourselves.
  • And thou shalt always… thou shalt always..to thine own self be true.
John Dunlop

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Adriana Trigiani

"...I've made it my business to observe fathers and daughters. And I've seen some incredible, beautiful things. Like the little girl who's not very cute - her teeth are funny, and her hair doesn't grow right, and she's got on thick glasses - but her father holds her hand and walks with her like she's a tiny angel that no one can touch. He gives her the best gift a woman can get in this world: protection. And the little girl learns to trust the man in her life. And all the things that the world expects from women - to be beautiful, to soothe the troubled spirit, heal the sick, care for the dying, send the greeting card, bake the cake - all of those things become the way we pay the father back for protecting us..."

Adriana Trigiani

Adriana Trigiani

"...I've made it my business to observe fathers and daughters. And I've seen some incredible, beautiful things. Like the little girl who's not very cute - her teeth are funny, and her hair doesn't grow right, and she's got on thick glasses - but her father holds her hand and walks with her like she's a tiny angel that no one can touch. He gives her the best gift a woman can get in this world: protection. And the little girl learns to trust the man in her life. And all the things that the world expects from women - to be beautiful, to soothe the troubled spirit, heal the sick, care for the dying, send the greeting card, bake the cake - allof those things become the way we pay the father back for protecting us..."

Adriana Trigiani

Janet Evanovich

"Romance novels are birthday cake and life is often peanut butter and jelly. I think everyone should have lots of delicious romance novels lying around for those times when the peanut butter of life gets stuck to the roof of your mouth."

Janet Evanovich

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Thomas Jefferson

"But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine."

Thomas Jefferson

George Bernard Shaw

"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."

George Bernard Shaw

Jeanette Winterson

"I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had."

Jeanette Winterson

Jodi Picoult

"In the space between yes and no, there's a lifetime. It's the difference between the path you walk and the one you leave behind; it's the gap between who you thought you could be and who you really are; its the legroom for the lies you'll tell yourself in the future."

Jodi Picoult

Emily Giffin

"Maybe that's what it all comes down to. Love, not as a surge of passion, but as a choice to commit to something, someone, no matter what obstacles or temptations stand in the way. And maybe making that choice, again and again, day in and day out, year after year, says more about love than never having a choice to make at all."

Emily Giffin

Sherman Alexie

"He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day.
Choice: that was the thing."

Sherman Alexie

Stephenie Meyer

I didn't know if there ever was a choice, really. I was already in too deep. Now that I knew - if I knew - I could do nothing about my secret. Because when I thought of him, of his voice, his hypnotic eyes, the magnetic force of his personality, I wanted nothing more than to be with him ... "

Stephenie Meyer

John Steinbeck

"But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.’"

John Steinbeck

Sylvia Plath

"I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between."

Sylvia Plath

J.K. Rowling

"It is our choices, Harry, that show us who we truly are, far more than our abilities."

J.K. Rowling

Monday, October 26, 2009

H Jackson Brown Jr

  • Never give up on anybody. Miracles happen every day.
  • Be brave. Even if you're not, pretend to be. No one can tell the difference.
  • Think big thoughts, but relish small pleasures.
  • Overtip breakfast waitresses.
  • Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have.
  • Never resist a generous impulse.
  • Become the most positive and enthusiastic person you know.
  • Never go to bed with dirty dishes in the sink.
  • Leave everything a little better than you found it.
  • Call your mother.
  • Accept a breath mint if someone offers you one.
  • Love deeply and passionately. You might get hurt, but it's the only way to live life completely.
  • Never drive while holding a cup of hot coffee between your knees.
  • In disagreements, fight fairly. No name calling.
  • Eat a piece of chocolate to cure bad breath from onions or garlic.
  • Never remind someone of a kindness or act of generosity you have shown him or her.
  • Bestow a favour and forget it.
  • When you get really angry, stick your hands in your pockets.
  • Accept the fact that regardless of how many times you're right, you will sometimes be wrong.
  • Every once in a while ask yourself the question, If money weren't a consideration, what would I like to be doing?
  • Never give anybody a fondue set or anything painted avocado green.
  • Remember the 3 Rs: Respect for self; Respect for others; Responsibility for all your actions.
  • Plant zucchini only if you have lots of friends.
  • Take along a small gift for the host or hostess when you're a dinner guest. A book is a good choice.
  • Never be photographed with a cocktail glass in your hand.
  • Don't marry a woman who picks at her food.
  • Take off the convention badge as soon as you leave the convention hall.
  • Write a short note inside the front cover when giving a book as a gift.
  • Never give a gift that's not beautifully wrapped.
  • Don't think expensive equipment will make up for a lack of talent or practice.
  • Learn to say "I love you" in French, Italian, and Swedish.
  • When you are totally exhausted but have to keep going, wash your face and hands and put on clean socks and a clean shirt. You will feel remarkably refreshed.
  • Life will sometimes hand you a magical moment. Savour it.
  • Don't confuse comfort with happiness.
  • Check for toilet paper before sitting down.
  • Marry a woman you love to talk to. As you get older, her conversational skills will be as important as any other.
  • Don't believe all you hear, spend all you have, or sleep all you want.
  • Live a good, honourable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll get to enjoy it a second time.
  • Purchase one piece of original art each year, even if it's just a small oil painting by a high school student.
  • Keep your private thoughts private.
  • Don't do business with anyone who has a history of suing people.
  • Never say anything uncomplimentary about your wife or children in the presence of others.
  • Apologise immediately when you lose your temper, especially to children.
  • Get organised. Know where you are headed. But if something wonderful and unexpected comes along, be flexible enough to follow it.
  • Remember that nothing important ever happens until someone takes a chance.
  • Never pick up anything off the floor of a cab.
  • In disagreements with loved ones, deal with the current situation. Don't bring up the past.
  • Leave change where a child can find it.
  • Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality.
  • When travelling the back roads, stop whenever you see a sign that reads "Honey for Sale."
  • Don't outlive your money.
  • When your dog dies, frame its collar and put it in a window facing west.
  • Remember that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
  • Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
  • Let some things remain mysterious.
  • Never eat a sugared doughnut when wearing a dark suit.
  • Keep and file the best business letters you receive.
  • Hire people more for their judgement than for their talents.
  • Love someone who doesn't deserve it.
  • Regardless of the situation, react with class.

H. Jackson Brown Jr

H. Jackson Brown Jr

"Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon"

H. Jackson Brown Jr

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Ayn Rand

"Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swaps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours."

Ayn Rand

Paulo Coelho

"It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting."

Paulo Coelho

Sunday, October 18, 2009

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Part 1: DEATH AND CHOCOLATE

First the colors.
Then the humans.
That’s usually how I see things.
Or at least, how I try.

***HERE IS A SMALL FACT ***
You are going to die.

I am in all truthfulness attempting to be cheerful about this whole topic, though most people find themselves hindered in believing me, no matter my protestations. Please, trust me. I most definitely can be cheerful. I can be amiable. Agreeable. Affable. And that’s only the A’s. Just don’t ask me to be nice. Nice has nothing to do with me.

***Reaction to the ***
AFOREMENTIONED fact
Does this worry you?
I urge you–don’t be afraid.
I’m nothing if not fair.

–Of course, an introduction.

A beginning.

Where are my manners?

I could introduce myself properly, but it’s not really necessary. You will know me well enough and soon enough, depending on a diverse range of variables. It suffices to say that at some point in time, I will be standing over you, as genially as possible. Your soul will be in my arms. A color will be perched on my shoulder. I will carry you gently away.

At that moment, you will be lying there (I rarely find people standing up). You will be caked in your own body. There might be a discovery; a scream will dribble down the air. The only sound I’ll hear after that will be my own breathing, and the sound of the smell, of my footsteps.

The question is, what color will everything be at that moment when I come for you? What will the sky be saying?

Personally, I like a chocolate-colored sky. Dark, dark chocolate. People say it suits me. I do, however, try to enjoy every color I see–the whole spectrum. A billion or so flavors, none of them quite the same, and a sky to slowly suck on. It takes the edge off the stress. It helps me relax.

***A SMALL THEORY ***
People observe the colors of a day only at its beginnings and ends, but to me it’s quite clear that a day merges through a multitude of shades and intonations, with each passing moment.
A single hour can consist of thousands of different colors.

Waxy yellows, cloud-spat blues. Murky darknesses.
In my line of work, I make it a point to notice them.

As I’ve been alluding to, my one saving grace is distraction. It keeps me sane. It helps me cope, considering the length of time I’ve been performing this job. The trouble is, who could ever replace me? Who could step in while I take a break in your stock-standard resort-style vacation destination, whether it be tropical or of the ski trip variety? The answer, of course, is nobody, which has prompted me to make a conscious, deliberate decision–to make distraction my vacation. Needless to say, I vacation in increments. In colors.

Still, it’s possible that you might be asking, why does he even need a vacation? What does he need distraction from?

Which brings me to my next point.
It’s the leftover humans.
The survivors.

They’re the ones I can’t stand to look at, although on many occasions I still fail. I deliberately seek out the colors to keep my mind off them, but now and then, I witness the ones who are left behind, crumbling among the jigsaw puzzle of realization, despair, and surprise. They have punctured hearts. They have beaten lungs.

Which in turn brings me to the subject I am telling you about tonight, or today, or whatever the hour and color. It’s the story of one of those perpetual survivors–an expert at being left behind.

It’s just a small story really, about, among other things:
* A girl
* Some words
* An accordionist
* Some fanatical Germans
* A Jewish fist fighter
* And quite a lot of thievery …

Alexandra - Mongane Wally Serote

Were it possible to say,
Mother, I have seen more beautiful mothers,
A most loving mother,
And tell her there I will go,
Alexandra, I would have long gone from you.
But we have only one mother, none can replace,
Just as we have no choice to be born,
We can't choose mothers;
We fallout of them like we fallout of life to death.

And Alexandra,
My beginning was knotted to you,
Just like you knot my destiny.
You throb in my inside silences
You are silent in my heart-beat that's loud to me.
Alexandra often I've cried.
When I was thirsty my tongue tasted dust,
Dust burdening your nipples.
I cry Alexandra when I am thirsty.
Your breasts ooze the dirty waters of your dongas,
Waters diluted with the blood of my brothers, your children,
Who once chose dongas for death-beds.
Do you love me Alexandra, or what are you doing to me?

You frighten me, Mama,
You wear expressions like you would be nasty to me,
You frighten me, Mama,
When I lie on your breast to rest, something tells me,
You are bloody cruel.
Alexandra, hell
What have you done to me?
I have seen people but I feel like I'm not one,
Alexandra what are you doing to me?

I feel have sunk to such meekness!
I lie flat while others walk on me to far places.
I have gone from you, many times,
I come back.
Alexandra, I love you;
I know
When all these worlds became funny to me,
I silently waded back to you
And amid the rubble I lay,
Simple and black.

Mongane Wally Serote

George Gordon Byron

"In secret we met -
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee? -
With silence and tears"

George Gordon Byron

Haruki Murakami

"Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who's in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It's like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven't seen in a long time."

Haruki Murakami

Lemony Snicket

"...you know that a good, long session of weeping can often make you feel better, even if your circumstances have not changed one bit."

Lemony Snicket

Mahatma Gandhi

"Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart."

Mahatma Gandhi

Helen Keller

"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us."

Helen Keller

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Chicago Tribune: 01/06/97

"Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97:

Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone.

Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.

T.S. Eliot

"We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;"

T.S. Eliot

Nicole Krauss

"He was gone, and all that was left was the space you'd grown around him, like a tree that grows around a fence. For a long time, it remained hollow. Years, maybe. And when at last it was filled again, you knew that the new love you felt for a man would have been impossible without him. If it weren't for him, there would never have been an empty space, or the need to fill it."

Nicole Krauss

Gabriel García Márquez

"Perhaps this is what the stories meant when they called somebody heartsick. Your heart and your stomach and your whole insides felt empty and hollow and aching."

Gabriel García Márquez

Friday, October 16, 2009

Jeffrey Eugenides

"Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. "

Jeffrey Eugenides

Haruki Murakami

"But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in ...a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives."

Haruki Murakami

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Vernon McLellan

"When it comes to giving, some people stop at nothing."

Vernon McLellan

Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

"Be like the sun for grace and mercy. Be like the night to cover others' faults. Be like running water for generosity. Be like death for rage and anger. Be like the Earth for modesty. Appear as you are. Be as you appear."

Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Wendy Mass

"A fight is going on inside me," said an old man to his son. "It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf is evil. He is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other wolf is good. he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you."

The son thought about it for a minute and then asked, "Which wolf will win?"

The old man replied simply, "The one you feed."

Wendy Mass

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Yutang Lin

"If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live"

Yutang Lin

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

"People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within."

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Jodi Picoult

"There are two kinds of love...in the safe kind you look for someone who's exactly like you. It's what most folks settle for. But then there's the other kind of love. Everyone's born with a ragged edge, and some folks crave that piece that's a perfect fit. You'll search for it forever, if you have to. And if you're lucky enough to find it, it looks so right, you start to tear at your own seams, thinking, maybe I could look just as perfect. But then, of course, when you try to get close to their other half, you don't fit anymore. That kind of love...you come out of it a different person than you were when you started."

Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult

"I wondered what happened when you offered yourself to someone, and they opened you, only to discover you were not the gift they expected and they had to smile and nod and say thank you all the same."

Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult

"Once you had put the pieces back together, even though you may look intact, you were never quite the same as you'd been before the fall."

Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult

"In the space between yes and no, there's a lifetime. It's the difference between the path you walk and the one you leave behind; it's the gap between who you thought you could be and who you really are; its the legroom for the lies you'll tell yourself in the future."

Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult

"Love is not an equation, it is not a contract, and it is not a happy ending. Love is the slate under the chalk, the ground that buildings rise, and the oxygen in the air. It is the place you come back to, no matter where your headed ..."

Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult

"It's disappointing to know that someone can see right through you."

Jodi Picoult

Friday, October 9, 2009

Imagination

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.

Orison Swett Marden

Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.

Joseph Addison

Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.

Jessamyn West

I am imagination. I can see what the eyes cannot see. I can hear what the ears cannot hear. I can feel what the heart cannot feel.

Peter Nivio Zarlenga

I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see.

Duane Michals

I doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an eggplant.

Ursula K. Le Guin

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities.

Theodor Geisel

I never did very well in math - I could never seem to persuade the teacher that I hadn't meant my answers literally.

Calvin Trillin

I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.

Pablo Picasso

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

Michelangelo

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.

George S. Patton

Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.

Simone Weil

Imagination has brought mankind through the dark ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity.

L. Frank Baum

Imagination rules the world.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

Carl Sagan

It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object; beware of this stumbling block.

Paul Gauguin

It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.

Lewis Carroll

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.

Henry David Thoreau

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

Stephen Covey

Monday, October 5, 2009

Maya Angelou

"My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; get my work done; try to love somebody; and have the courage to accept their love in return".

Maya Angelou

David Icke

"Today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut, that held its ground".

David Icke

Friday, October 2, 2009

Life

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

Mark Twain

Every man dies. Not every man really lives.

William Wallace

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Everything in life is luck.

Donald Trump

Fortunately analysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself still remains a very effective therapist.

Karen Horney

God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny.

Garrison Keillor

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you're alive, it isn't.

Richard Bach

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

E. B. White

I have a simple philosophy: Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches.

Alice Roosevelt Longworth

I love life because what more is there.

Anthony Hopkins

I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.

John Burroughs

I think I've discovered the secret of life - you just hang around until you get used to it.

Charles M. Schulz

Henry Ellis

"All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on".

Henry Ellis

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Elizabeth Gilbert

"In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices."

Elizabeth Gilbert

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Friendship

A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same.

Elbert Hubbard

A friendship can weather most things and thrive in thin soil; but it needs a little mulch of letters and phone calls and small, silly presents every so often - just to save it from drying out completely.

Pam Brown

A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A single rose can be my garden... a single friend, my world.

Leo Buscaglia

A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.

Arnold H. Glasow

An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.

Buddha

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.

George Washington

But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine.

Thomas Jefferson

Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one's own despised and unwanted feelings.

Alice Duer Miller

Don't ever dare to take your college as a matter of course - because, like democracy and freedom, many people you'll never know have broken their hearts to get it for you.

Alice Duer Miller

Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends.
Shirley MacLaine


Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.

Aristotle

Friendship is one mind in two bodies.

Mencius

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

C. S. Lewis

Friendship needs no words - it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.

Dag Hammarskjold

Friendship... is not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.

Muhammad Ali

I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing.

Katherine Mansfield

I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.

Plutarch

I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world.

Thomas A. Edison

I value the friend who for me finds time on his calendar, but I cherish the friend who for me does not consult his calendar.

Robert Brault

If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give.

George MacDonald

If it's very painful for you to criticize your friends - you're safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that's the time to hold your tongue.

Alice Duer Miller

In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.

Albert Schweitzer

It is important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to friendship that we are not.

Mignon McLaughlin

It is not so much our friends' help that helps us, as the confidence of their help.

Epicurus

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It takes a long time to grow an old friend.

John Leonard

It's the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.

Marlene Dietrich

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.

Marcel Proust

Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.

Oprah Winfrey

Many a person has held close, throughout their entire lives, two friends that always remained strange to one another, because one of them attracted by virtue of similarity, the other by difference.

Emil Ludwig

Men kick friendship around like a football, but it doesn't seem to crack. Women treat it like glass and it goes to pieces.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Mighty proud I am that I am able to have a spare bed for my friends.

Samuel Pepys

Nothing but heaven itself is better than a friend who is really a friend.

Plautus

One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.

George Santayana

She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.

Toni Morrison

Silences make the real conversations between friends. Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts.

Margaret Lee Runbeck

Since there is nothing so well worth having as friends, never lose a chance to make them.

Francesco Guicciardini

The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.

William Blake

Anne Lamott

"You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp."

Anne Lamott

G.K. Chesterton

"The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost."

G.K. Chesterton

Faith

A man of courage is also full of faith.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

All who call on God in true faith, earnestly from the heart, will certainly be heard, and will receive what they have asked and desired.

Martin Luther

As your faith is strengthened you will find that there is no longer the need to have a sense of control, that things will flow as they will, and that you will flow with them, to your great delight and benefit.

Emmanuel Teney

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.

Mother Teresa

Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.

Kahlil Gibran

Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.

Henry Ward Beecher

Faith and doubt both are needed - not as antagonists, but working side by side to take us around the unknown curve.

Lillian Smith

Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.

Voltaire

Faith has to do with things that are not seen and hope with things that are not at hand.

Saint Thomas Aquinas

Faith indeed tells what the senses do not tell, but not the contrary of what they see. It is above them and not contrary to them.

Blaise Pascal

Faith is a passionate intuition.

William Wordsworth

Faith is not contrary to reason.

Sherwood Eddy

Faith is reason grown courageous.

Sherwood Eddy

Faith is spiritualized imagination.

Henry Ward Beecher

Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.

Saint Augustine

Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch.

E. M. Forster

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Have faith in God; God has faith in you.

Edwin Louis Cole

He who has faith has... an inward reservoir of courage, hope, confidence, calmness, and assuring trust that all will come out well - even though to the world it may appear to come out most badly.

B. C. Forbes

Age

A comfortable old age is the reward of a well-spent youth. Instead of its bringing sad and melancholy prospects of decay, it would give us hopes of eternal youth in a better world.

Maurice Chevalier

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.

Robert Frost

Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey's end.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

After thirty, a body has a mind of its own.

Bette Midler

Age considers; youth ventures.

Rabindranath Tagore

Age does not diminish the extreme disappointment of having a scoop of ice cream fall from the cone.

Jim Fiebig

Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.

Tom Stoppard

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.

Mark Twain

Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.

Don Marquis

All diseases run into one, old age.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her.

Agatha Christie

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.

Henry Ford

As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

As long as any adult thinks that he, like the parents and teachers of old, can become introspective, invoking his own youth to understand the youth before him, he is lost.

Margaret Mead

Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.

Aristotle

Economists report that a college education adds many thousands of dollars to a man's lifetime income - which he then spends sending his son to college.

Bill Vaughan

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

George Bernard Shaw

Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age.

Victor Hugo

Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy person has no time to form.

Andre Maurois

Ray Bradbury

"If we listened to our intellect we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go in business because we'd be cynical: "It's gonna go wrong." Or "She's going to hurt me." Or,"I've had a couple of bad love affairs, so therefore . . ." Well, that's nonsense. You're going to miss life. You've got to jump off the cliff all the time and build your wings on the way down."

Ray Bradbury

Stephenie Meyer

"I couldn't let you walk away from me. It hurts just to imagine it."

Stephenie Meyer

Friday, September 25, 2009

Plato

"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men afraid of the light"

Plato

Tim Burton

"Son, are you happy?
I don't mean to pry,
but do you dream of Heaven?
Have you ever wanted to die?"

Tim Burton

Anatole France

"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another."

Anatole France

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Max Lucado

"A book should be a garden that fits in the hands. Word-petals of color. Stems of strength. Roots of truth. Turn a page and turn the seasons. Read the sentence and enjoy the roses. "

Max Lucado

Joanne Harris

"I could do with a bit more excess. From now on I'm going to be immoderate--and volatile--I shall enjoy loud music and lurid poetry. I shall be rampant."

"Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive."

"A thing named is a thing tamed."

"The right circumstances sometimes happen of their own accord, slyly, without fanfare, without warning. Layman's alchemy. . . . The magic of everyday things."

"I let it go. It's like swimming against the current. It exhausts you. After a while, whoever you are, you just have to let go, and the river brings you home."

Joanne Harris
"Some things can be both real and imaginary at the same time, . . . some lies can be true, . . . broken faith may be restored."

"The process of giving is without limits."

"I speak as I must and cannot be silent."

"Wine talks; ask anyone. The oracle at the street corner; the uninvited guest at the wedding feast; the holy fool. It ventriloquizes. It has a million voices. It unleashes the tongue, teasing out secrets you never meant to tell, secrets you never even knew. It shouts, rants, whispers. It speaks of great plans, tragic loves, and terrible betrayals. It screams with laughter. It chuckles softly to itself. It weeps in front of its own reflection. It revives summers long past and memories best forgotten. Every bottle a whiff of other times, other places, everyone...a humble miracle""

"Remember, it's the winners write the history books, and the losers get the leavings."

"Everything comes home, my mother used to say; every word spoken, every shadow cast, every footprint in the sand. It can't be helped; it's part of what makes us who we are. "

"A few hundred years ago there were no differences between magic and medicine."

"It's a feeling which tells me that any woman can be beautiful in the eyes of a man who loves her."

"That wind. I see it's blowing now. Furtive but commanding, it has dictated every move we've ever made. My mother felt it, and so do I - even here, even now - as it sweeps us like leaves into his backseat corner, dancing us to shreds against the stones. V'la l'bon vent, v'a l'joli vent. I though we'd silenced it for good. But the smallest thing can wake the wind@ a word, a sign, even a death. There's no such thing as a trivial thing. Everything costs; it all adds up until finally the balance shifts and we're gone again, back on the road, telling ourselves - well maybe next time"

"The real magic - the magic we'd lived with all our lives, my mother's magic of charms and cantrips, of salt by the door and a red silk sachet to placate the little gods - had turned sour on us that summer, somehow, like a spider that turns from good luck to bad at the stroke of midnight, spinning its web to catch our dreams. And for every little spell of charm, for every card dealt and every rune cast and every sign scratched against a doorway to divert the path of malchance, the wind just blew a little harder, tugging at our clothes, sniffing at us like a hungry dog, moving us here and moving us there."

"A man who casts no shadow isn't really a man at all."

"Drunkenness, she told us in a rare moment of confidence, is a sin against the fruit, the tree, the wine itself. Wine, distilled and nurtured from bud into fruit; it deserves reverence. Joy. Gentleness.

Joanne Harris

Karen Maezen Miller

"You don't have to wait for happiness, because there's no time but now to be happy. You don't have to go somewhere else, because there's no place but here to find it. You don't have to do something else, because there's nothing more to it. You don't have to get something else, because everything you already have is enough. You just have to be happy. ..."

Karen Maezen Miller

Stephenie Meyer

"It was more like my heart had grown, swollen up to twice its size in that moment. All that extra space, already filled."

Stephenie Meyer

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Ayn Rand

"I regret nothing. There have been things I missed, but I ask no questions, because I have loved it, such as it has been, even the moments of emptiness, even the unanswered-and that I loved, that is the unanswered in my life."

Ayn Rand

Jeffrey Eugenides

"Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. "

Jeffrey Eugenides

Haruki Murakami

"But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than one or two such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives."

Haruki Murakami

On Friendship

"There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature."

Jane Austen

"It's the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter."

Marlene Dietrich

"A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words."

Donna Roberts

"Life is an awful, ugly place to not have a best friend."

Sarah Dessen

"It takes much bravery to stand up to our enemies but we need as much bravery to stand up to our friends."

J.K. Rowling

"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares."

Henri J.M. Nouwen

"I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light."

Helen Keller

"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."

J.R.R. Tolkien

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Rita Mae Brown

"The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four people is suffering from a mental illness. Look at your 3 best friends. If they're ok, then it's you."

Rita Mae Brown

Mark Twain

"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."

Mark Twain

Thursday, September 17, 2009

P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast

Last time I saw you, I said that it hurt too much to love you. But I was wrong about that. The truth is it hurts too much not to love you.

P.C. Cast & Kristin Cast

William S. Burroughs

"There is no intensity of love or feeling that does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. It is a duty to take this risk, to love and feel without defense or reserve. "

William S. Burroughs

Bob Marley

"Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that you’ve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more. You share hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When something wonderful happens, you can’t wait to tell them about it, knowing they will share in your excitement. They are not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself. Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel like you are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful. There is never any pressure, jealousy or competition but only a quiet calmness when they are around. You can be yourself and not worry about what they will think of you because they love you for who you are. The things that seem insignificant to most people such as a note, song or walk become invaluable treasures kept safe in your heart to cherish forever. Memories of your childhood come back and are so clear and vivid it’s like being young again. Colours seem brighter and more brilliant. Laughter seems part of daily life where before it was infrequent or didn’t exist at all. A phone call or two during the day helps to get you through a long day’s work and always brings a smile to your face. In their presence, there’s no need for continuous conversation, but you find you’re quite content in just having them nearby. Things that never interested you before become fascinating because you know they are important to this person who is so special to you. You think of this person on every occasion and in everything you do. Simple things bring them to mind like a pale blue sky, gentle wind or even a storm cloud on the horizon. You open your heart knowing that there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure that’s so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life ... ."

Bob Marley

Joss Whedon

"Passion. It lies in all of us. Sleeping ... waiting ... and though unwanted, unbidden, it will stir ... open its jaws and howl. It speaks to us ... guides us. Passion rules us all. And we obey. What other choice do we have? Passion is the source of our finest moments. The joy of love ... the clarity of hatred ... the ecstasy of grief. It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion, maybe we'd know some kind of peace. But we would be hollow. Empty rooms, shuttered and dank. Without passion, we'd be truly dead."

Joss Whedon

Laurell K. Hamilton

"There comes a point when you just love someone. Not because they're good, or bad, or anything really. You just love them. It doesn't mean you'll be together forever. It doesn't mean you won't hurt each other. It just mean you love them. Sometimes in spite of who they are, and sometimes because of who they are. And you know that they love you, sometimes because of who you are, and sometimes in spite of it."

Laurell K. Hamilton

Louise Erdrich

"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up."

Louise Erdrich

Chuck Palahniuk

"You know how they say you only hurt the ones you love? Well, it works both ways."

Chuck Palahniuk

C.S. Lewis

"Why love if losing hurts so much? We love to know that we are not alone."

C.S. Lewis

Stephenie Meyer

"You are my life. You're the only thing it would hurt to lose."

Stephenie Meyer

Mother Teresa

"I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love."

Mother Teresa

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Sex

"The difference between sex and love is that sex relieves tension and love causes it."

Woody Allen

"Is sex dirty? Only when it's being done right."

Woody Allen

"Love is the answer, but while you are waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions."

Woody Allen

"Someone told me the delightful story of the crusader who put a chastity belt on his wife and gave the key to his best friend for safekeeping, in case of his death. He had ridden only a few miles away when his friend, riding hard, caught up with him, saying 'You gave me the wrong key!'"

Anaïs Nin

"She was pleased to have him come and never sorry to see him go."

Dorothy Parker

"We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it's our job to invent something better."

Chuck Palahniuk

"Man may have discovered fire, but women discovered how to play with it.

Carrie Bradshaw

"He'd noticed that sex bore some resemblance to cookery: it fascinated people, they sometimes bought books full of complicated recipes and interesting pictures, and sometimes when they were really hungry they created vast banquets in their imagination - but at the end of the day they'd settle quite happily for egg and chips. If it was well done and maybe had a slice of tomato."

Terry Pratchett

"It's woman's spirit and mood a man has to stimulate in order to make sex interesting. The real lover is the man who can thrill you by touching your face or smiling into your eyes or just staring into space."

Marilyn Monroe