Quotes: Volume II

“We need to

stop

teaching daughters

to always be quiet

and apologetic.

They are instructed

to walk on ice

and carefully string words

as they trip over thin tongues

while our sons

run rampant.”

      —   Michelle K., Growing Up With a Brother

“I will, in few words. You are cold, because you are alone: no contact strikes the fire from you that is in you. You are sick; because the best of feelings, the highest and the sweetest given to man, keeps far away from you. You are silly, because, suffer as you may, you will not beckon it to approach, nor will you stir one step to meet it where it waits you.”

       —   Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it. A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts it will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.”

        —   Roald Dahl, The Twits

“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. 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 I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.”

—            Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“I remembered that, and, remembering that, I remembered everything.”

—            Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

  

“My mother taught me

the distinct smell before the rain,

the promise of cleansing.

Didn’t anyone warn you

I’m what natural disasters

are named after?

I am a river,

good luck controlling me

good luck slowing me down.

There isn’t an ounce of age

to my soul.”

—            Michelle K., Aries in the Mornings

“The less I needed, the better I felt.”

—            Charles Bukowski

“Let me tell you what I do know: I am more than one thing, and not all of those things are good. The truth is complicated. It’s two-toned, multi-vocal, bittersweet. I used to think that if I dug deep enough to discover something sad and ugly, I’d know it was something true. Now I’m trying to dig deeper. I didn’t want to write these pages until there were no hard feelings, no sharp ones. I do not have that luxury. I am sad and angry and I want everyone to be alive again. I want more landmarks, less landmines. I want to be grateful but I’m having a hard time with it.”

—            Richard Siken

“At fifteen you had the radiance of early morning, at twenty you will begin to have the melancholy brilliance of the moon.”

—            F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

“You speak like the fire

which burned my home

and know nothing

but ashes that fall.

I tried to kiss your raging

skin but you draw

my tongue out of my mouth

replacing it with such

profane utterances.

When will I ever be enough

to douse everything in fire?

I feel drought living

on my chest.

Maybe mother was right,

soon— I’d die in my own flames

and in my death, all i could

hear is your voice,

setting my eulogy ablaze.”

“He may love you. He probably does. He probably thinks about you all the time. But that isn’t what matters. What matters is what he’s doing about it, and what he’s doing about it is nothing. And if he’s doing nothing, you most certainly shouldn’t do anything. You need someone who goes out of their way to make it obvious that they want you in their life.”

“We live in an age where we feel guilt whenever we have to cut someone off but the reality is that some relationships do need to die, some people do need to be unfollowed and defriended. We aren’t meant to be this tethered to the people in our past. The Internet mandates that we don’t burn bridges and keep everyone around like relics but those expectations are unrealistic and unhealthy. Simply put, we don’t need to know what everyone else is up to. We’re allowed to be choosy about who we surround ourselves with online and in real life, even if it might hurt people’s feelings.”

—            Ryan O’Connell, You Don’t Have To Be Friends With Everybody

“Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud.”

—            Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“Even under the best of circumstances, there’s just something so damn tragic about growing up.”

—            Jonathan Tropper, This Is Where I Leave You

“The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you”

—            Neil deGrasse Tyson

“When your past calls, don’t answer. It has nothing new to say.”

“I get so attached so easily, and it’s what will destroy me in the end.”

—            Azaria Franco

“If you remember your past too well you start blaming your present for it. Look what they did to me, that’s what caused me to be like this, it’s not my fault. Permit me to correct you: it probably is your fault. And kindly spare me the details.”

—            Julian Barnes, Talking It Over

“I was a normal eighteen-year-old: shuttered, self-conscious, untravelled and sneering; violently educated, socially crass, emotionally blurting.”

—            Julian Barnes

“I love being horribly straightforward. I love sending reckless text messages (because how reckless can a form of digitized communication be?) and telling people I love them and telling people they are absolutely magical humans and I cannot believe they really exist. I love saying, “Kiss me harder,” and “You’re a good person,” and, “You brighten my day.” I live my life as straight-forward as possible.

Because one day, I might get hit by a bus.

Maybe it’s weird. Maybe it’s scary. Maybe it seems downright impossible to just be—to just let people know you want them, need them, feel like, in this very moment, you will die if you do not see them, hold them, touch them in some way whether its your feet on their thighs on the couch or your tongue in their mouth or your heart in their hands.

But there is nothing more beautiful than being desperate.

And there is nothing more risky than pretending not to care.

We are young and we are human and we are beautiful and we are not as in control as we think we are. We never know who needs us back. We never know the magic that can arise between ourselves and other humans.

We never know when the bus is coming.”

—            Rachel C. Lewis, Tell The People You Love That You Love Them

“Kindness should be the natural way of life, not the exception.”

—            Buddha

“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”

—            Muhammad Ali

“Beautiful things don’t ask for attention.”

—            James Thurber, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

“You are here. You are not the one who will go and come. Let what you’re suffering from go and come, not you. You stay put.”

—            Mooji

* Once again, I tried to include a source for all the ones I could