I swear we were infinite.

All quotes from 'The Perks of Being A Wallflower' by Stephen Chbosky

I had an amazing feeling when I finally held the tape in my hand. I just thought to myself that in the palm of my hand, there was this one tape that had all these memories and feelings and great joy and sadness. Right there in the palm of my hand. And I thought about how many people have loved those songs. And how many people got through a lot of bad times because of those songs. And how many people enjoyed good times with those songs. And how much those songs really mean.

It was the way she said it that started me feeling.

They spent the rest of the afternoon playing old video games like donkey kong and feeling nostalgic, which as a general statement, I found sad and sweet.

And I was looking at the old photographs, I started thinking that there was a time when these weren't memories. That someone actually took that photograph.

It's like when you are excited about a girl and you see a couple holding hands, and you feel so happy for them. And other times you see the same couple, and they make you so mad. And all you want is to always feel happy for them because you know that if you do, then it means you're happy, too.

The next thing I know, I was wearing nothing but slippers and a bathing suit which somebody had painted gold. I don't know how these things happen to me sometimes.

She really did look sad, and I wished I could have made her feel better, but sometimes, I guess you just can't.

And when she started becoming a "young lady," and no one was allowed to look at her because she thought she was fat. And how she really wasn't fat. And how she actually was very pretty. And how different her face looked when she realized boys thought she was pretty. And how different her face looked the first time she really liked a boy who was not a poster on her wall. And how her face looked when she realized she was in love with that boy.

Girls are weird, and I don't mean that offensively, I just can't put it any other way.

Maybe this is the way things are supposed to be, but it doesn't feel right.

Tell me what's wrong with me. Just tell me how to be different in a way that makes sense. To make this all go away. And disappear.

It was a sick smile. Glazey and numb.

There's nothing like deep breaths after laughing that hard. Nothing in the world like a sore stomach for the right reasons.

Her whisper smelled like cranberry juice and vodka.

It's just that I don't want to be somebody's crush. If somebody likes me, I want them to like the real me, not what they think I am. And I don't want them to carry it around inside. I want them to show me, so I can't feel it, too. I want them to be able to do whatever they want around me. And if they do something I don't like, I'll tell them.

But the thing is, I wasn't being honest. So, why would I care whether or not he loved me when he didn't really even know me?

I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going to be who I really am. And I'm going to figure out what that is. So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy & sad & I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.

As much as I feel sad, I think that not knowing is what really bothers me.

I think it's nice for stars to do interveiws to make us think they are just like us, but to tell you the truth, I get the feeling that it's all a big lie. The problem is, I don't know who's lying.

Maybe it's sad that these are now memories. And maybe it's not sad.

The thing is some girls think they can actually change guys. And what's funny is that if they actually did change them, they'd get bored. They'd have no challenge left. You just have to give girls some time to think of a new way of doing things, that's all. Some of them will figure it out here. Some later. Some never.

And I wonder if anyone is really happy. I hope they are. I really hope they are.

We accept the love we think we deserve.

You see things. You keep quiet about them. And you understand.

And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.

I think it's bad when a boy looks at a girl & thinks that the way he sees the girl is better than the girl actually is. And I think it's bad when the most honest way a boy can look at a girl is through a camera.

More like the movie where the guy meets a smart girl who wears a lot of sweaters & drinks cocoa. They talk about books & issues & kiss in the rain.

I am very interested & fascinated by how everyone loves each other, but no one really likes each other.

The outside lights were on, & it was snowing & it looked like magic. Like we were somewhere else. Like we were somewhere better.

Everyone was quiet. A very sad quiet. But the amazing thing was that it wasn't a bad sad at all. It was just something that made everyone look around at each other & know that they were there.

And I think they knew. Not anything specific, really. They just knew. And I think that's all you can never ask from a friend.

It was the kind of kiss that made me know that I was never so happy in my whole life.

I walked over the the hill where we used to go & sled. There were a lot of little kids there. I watched them flying. Doing jumps & having races. And I thought that all those little kids are going to grow up someday. And all of those little kids are going to do the things that we do. And they will all kiss someone someday. But for now, sledding is enough. I think it would be great is sledding were always enough, but it isn't.

I don't know if you've ever felt like that. That you wanted to sleep for a thousand years. Or just not exist. Or just not be aware that you do exist. Or something like that. I think wanting that is very morbid, but I want it when I get like this. That's why I'm trying not to think. I just want it all to stop spinning.

It was vast & open & thinly quiet, & I felt so small.

It was a movie smile in slow motion & then everything was okay.

It's like looking at all the students & wondering who's had their heart broken that day, & how they are able to cope with having three quizzes & a book report on top of that. Or wondering who did the heart breaking. And why. Especially since I know that if they went to another school, the person who had their heart broken would have had their heart broken by somebody else, so why does it have to be so personal?

But because things change. And friends leave. And life doesn't stop for anybody.

"Well, I think it's all bullshit." And he meant it. And it hurt to see him mean it that much.

It's just hard to see a friend hurt this much. Especially when you can't do anything except "be there." I want to make him stop hurting, but I can't.

All I really cared about was the fact that she got really hurt. And I guess I realized at that moment that I really did love her. Because there was nothing to gain, and that didn't matter.

Because I guess we all forget sometimes.

She wasn't bitter. She was sad, though. But it was a hopeful kind of sad. The kind of sad that just takes time.

Nobody brought up the bad names or the bad times. And nobody felt sad as long as we could postpone tomorrow with more nostalgia.

It's great that you can listen & be a shoulder to someone, but what about when someone doesn't need a shoulder. What if they need the arms or something like that? You can't just sit there & put everybody's lives ahead of yours & think that counts as love. You just can't. You have to do things. Like take their hands when a slow song comes up for a change. Or be the one who asks someone for a date. Or tell people what you need. Or what you want.

And we could all sit around & wonder & feel bad about each other & blame a lot of people for what they did or didn't do or what they didn't know. And I did do that for a while, but then I just couldn't anymore because it wasn't going anywhere. Because it wasn't the point.

So, I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them.

The drill drills on.

What happens when you realize the only thing you'll ever be is average? Do you cry? Do you make your self better? Or do nothing, cause thats what the average person does.

Average is just as close to the bottom as it is to the top.

I just don't understand why things just can't go back to normal at the end of a half hour like on the Brady Bunch or something.

Be kind to everyone. You may not be able to save a person, but at least you weren't one of the people who didn't try.

Her heart still slightly ached for the one she met, but never quite knew.

People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.”

--Harper Lee, 'To Kill A Mockingbird'

I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better.

"There are so many things you can agree on, but anything can have two meanings. Like sides of a coin, it just matters how it falls."

--Sarah Dessen, 'The Truth About Forever'

"Have the courage to fail big and stick around. Make them wonder why you're still smiling."

--'Elizabethtown'

And it's alright to have a little bit of regret every once in a while. It's when you feel it all the time and can't do anything about it... that's when you get into trouble.

It's hard to be the one always waiting. I mean, there's something to be said for the hero who charges off to battle, but when you get right down to it there's a whole story in who's left behind.

There's always someone else with a lot less going through a lot more.

Who are you if you lose your favorite person?

It doesn't really matter whether you grip the arms of the dentist's chair or let your hands lie in your lap. The drill drills on.

If you cannot put your heart in it, take yourself out of it.

"Those with something to 'fall back on' invariably fall back on it."

--A Softer World

I want to learn to ballroom dance, you know to sweep across the floor in a beautiful gown that shows way too much skin, but somehow still is tasteful, being led by a handsome man who's mother taught him when he was young.

Lets play truth or dare. Or just dare because nobody ever really tells the truth anymore.

Charlie Brown: [standing infront of the mailbox] A person has to be very careful with Valentines. [reaching to mailbox] A person could be seriously injured when he opens the mailbox and a flood of Valentines comes pouring out. [jumping away] Stand back! Stand back! [sitting against mailbox empty handed] And even if you only recieved one Valentine, you could get a bad paper cut when you opened it.

"There must be millions of people all around the world who never get any love letters. I could be their leader."

--Charlie Brown

Because whenever I look forward to anything, it ends up sucking. The buildup inevitably leads to a letdown. It's safer to lowball my way through life.

Sometimes words don't work.

I didn't know what I wanted to say, sometimes words get in the way.

sometimes skulls are thick.

sometimes hearts are vacant.

sometimes words don't work.

Do more than exist, Live
Do more than touch, Feel
Do more than look, Observe
Do more than read, Absorb
Do more than hear, listen
Do more than listen, Understand
Do more than think, Ponder
Do more than talk, Say Something

Shyness has a strange element of narcissism, a belief that how we look, how we perform, is truly important to other people.

Silence isn't akward, not like people say. Maybe if you think to yourself that it is, but if you're thinking this isn't akward, silence is perfect.

Everyone knows how to talk, yet no one knows what to say.

"There are some things you just can’t help but talk about. Some things we just don’t want to hear, and some things we say because we can’t be silent any longer. Some things are more than what you say, they’re what you do. Some things you say because there’s no other choice. Some things you keep to yourself. And not too often, but every now and then, some things simply speak for themselves."

--'Grey's Anatomy'

It's kind of hard to hold a lot in. But for her, it's sometimes harder to let it out.

Again, I'd managed to say something wrong, even when I hadn't really thought I'd said anything at all.

Find the right words, string them together in the ideal way, knowing that here they would have the best chance of sounding perfect.

It seemed safer to hold it in, where the only one who could judge was me.

Whenever I have something worth saying, I can’t help but want to say it to you.

Maybe sometime, I would be able to say everything I'd thought at that moment and even more.

Life is a matter of saying the right words.

If you never tell someone something, don't expect them to know.

That is the problem with dealing with someone who is actually a good listener. They don't jump in on your sentences, saving you from actually finishing them or talk over you, allowing what you do manage to get out to be lost or altered in transit. Instead, they wait. So you have to keep going.

The most important things are the hardest things 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 teller, but for want of an understanding ear.

Silence is golden. Remember that next time you say I don't talk enough. I'm just stayin' gold.

I think what's wrong with the world is that no one says what they feel. They always hold it inside. They're sad but don't cry. They are happy but don't sing or dance. Because if they do, they feel ashamed, and that's the worst feeling in the world. So everyone walks around with their heads down, and no one sees how beautiful the sky is.

We are made of star stuff.

Naivety is humankind's downfall. And so I fell.

I was just trying to get it right, whatever that meant.

If you don't know what you want, you end up with a lot you don't.

Sometimes we expect more from others because we would be willing to do that much for them.

And being unheard is the ground floor of giving up, and giving up is the ground floor of doing yourself in.

There's never a dress code if you're cute enough!

"If you're going to San Francisco be sure to wear some flowers in your hair."

--Scott McKenzie

Caring is loving.

Loving is knowing.

Knowing is thinking.

Thinking is overanalyzing.

Overanalyzing is going to kill you.

So that's when all the trouble started. First of all, my long blonde hair kept getting darker and darker until it finally turned brown. I know it doesn't sound that terrible, but one of Mom's magazines said that if you have "dishwater brown" hair, you should take that "boring" hair and make it more "exciting" by dyeing it red or platinum blonde. Then next to the article there were these pictures of three different ladies with brown, red, and blonde hair. The redhead and blonde lady were smiling like those people who go on game shows who win trips to Hawaii, but the lady with the brown hair looked like she was about to cry. So now I'm stuck with hair that makes you cry. But that's just part of what's happened to me since second grade. Believe me, it gets a hundred times worse.

"She's tough. She tries to hide it. She's difficult. But if you make the effort, she's worth it. She's worth the effort."

--'Grey's Anatomy'

It was the first time either of us had ever promised anything. But it felt all right. I guess making little promises made us braver about the bigger ones.

"I make mistakes. That's what I do. I speak without thinking, I act without knowing. I drink so much I can barely walk. I'm a fantastic lover though, and an amazing friend. God knows I mean well."

--'Sex And The City'

We all need something we consider worth getting up in the morning for. Whether it's real or not; healthy or destructive; tangible or false is irrelevant. When you've got nothing to hang onto, deception can seem pretty inviting.

"The truth of the matter is you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it."

--Norman Schwartzkopf

Don't let people make you think that just because you're young you're useless.

Ballet flats: There are a few moments [very few] when you have to give your heels the boot in the name of practicality. Let's review [1] in an airport, when you may have to make mad dashes [2] on the first day of the Barney's sale, when you will have to make mad dashes [3] on sand which is actually quite tragic, because there is no better time for a high heels boost than when you are half naked [4] when driving. Even if you think that you've mastered the technique, you have not. And insurance hikes can put a damper on a girl's shoe budget.

There's a little truth in every "just kidding". There's a little curiosity in every "just wondering". There's a little knowledge in every "I don't know". And there's a little emotion in every "I don't care".

Don't believe that old cliché that good things come to those who wait. I think good things come to those who want something so bad, they can't sit still.

Maybe that's what bothers you. The idea that she might end up happy, and you can't quite get there.

I've come to realize that people are just people, & none of them should make you nervous.

She doesn't have to be your entire world. Just a tiny village. Somewhere. Anywhere. On your map.

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history...with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.

Peace: it does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.

"Dress slutty and they remember the dress; dress impeccably and they remember the woman."

--Coco Chanel

It's never bad enough to just leave or give up, but it's never good enough to feel right.

Opportunity may knock only once, but temptation leans on the doorbell.

Sometimes you're further than the moon; sometimes you're closer than my skin.

If its a good idea to you at the time, go ahead and do it. It's much easier to apologize than it is to get permission.

"The truth is I've never fooled anyone. I've let people fool themselves. They didn't bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn't argue with them."

--Marilyn Monroe

She likes to see the best in people. Me? I like to see the truth.

How beautiful it is to do nothing, and then rest afterwards.

Also people think they're not computers because they have feelings and computers don't have feelings. But feelings are just having a picture on the screen in your head of what is going to happen tomorrow or the next year, or what might have happened instead of what did happen, and if it is a happy picture they smile and if it is a sad picture they cry.

Is anybody satisfied with who they really are? You could be the moon and still be jealous of the stars.

Don't ever take for granted when people look in your eyes; you've no idea how lucky you are. Actually, forget about luck, you've no idea how important it is to be acknowledged.

"All of the rocky and metallic material we stand on, the iron in our blood, the calcium in our teeth, the carbon in our genes were produced billions of years ago in the interior of a red giant star. We are made of star stuff."

--Carl Sagan

Life is divine chaos.

All you've done in your life, every experience, every thought, every movement, has led you to this, has led you to now. Everything that happens is for a reason. Every success, every defeat, everything. Nothing's an accident.

Somebody should tell us right at the start of our lives that we're dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it, I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now. There are only so many tomorrows.

Fall in love or fall in hate. Get inspired of be depressed. Ace a test or flunk a test. Make babies or make art. Speak the truth or lie and cheat. Dance on tables or sit in the corner. Life is divine chaos. Embrace it. Forgive yourself. Breathe and enjoy the ride.

"The truth is, there is no line. There's only your life, how you mess it up, and who is there to save you. Or who isn't."

--Mitch Albom, 'For One More Day'

"I have tried to live my life so that my family would love me and my friends would respect me. The others, they can do whatever the hell they please."

--John Wayne

When you see such photos, you can't help but wonder at just how sweet and sad and innocent all moments of life are rendered by the tripping of a camera's shutter, for at that point the future is still unknown and has yet to hurt us, and also for that brief moment, our poses are accepted as honest.

Only one person in a thousand knows the trick of really living in the present. Most of us spend 59 minutes an hour living in the past, with regret for lost joys or shame for things badly done, both utterly useless and weakening, or in a future which we either long for, or dread. There is only one minute in which you're alive, this minute, here and now. The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable minute, which is exactly what it is.

Sometimes when you're young, you think nothing can hurt you. It's like being invincible. Your whole life is ahead of you, and you have big plans. Big plans. To find your perfect match. The one that completes you. But as you get older, you realize it's not always that easy. It's not until the end of your life that you realize how the plans you made were simply plans. At the end, when you're looking back instead of forward, you want to believe that you made the most of what life gave you. You want to believe that you're leaving something good behind. You want it all to have mattered.

You've gotta have hope.

"When the worst case scenario comes true, clinging to hope is all we've got left."

--Grey's Anatomy

I hope your dreams take you to the corners of your smile, to the highest of your hopes, and to the most special places your heart has ever known.

“Keep looking up,” mama used to tell me, “there’s nothing on the ground but your feet.”

Sorrow looks back, worry looks around, but FAITH looks up.

I hope that in the end, we can all laugh and say it was worth it.

"Beginnings are scary, endings are usually sad, but it's the middle that counts the most. You need to remember that when you find yourself at the beginning. Just give hope a chance to float up...and it will."

--'Hope Floats'

You've gotta have hope. Without hope life is meaningless. Without hope, life is meaning less and less.

Home is where they catch you when you fall.

But as for today all I want is to be home.

"There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort."

--Jane Austen

Home is where your history begins. Home is where they catch you when you fall.

I think what you notice most when you haven't been home in a while is how much the trees have grown around your memories.

Before you decide what you want to be, know where you want to be.

I never realize how much I like being home until I've been somewhere totally different for awhile.

"Who needs a map when there's only one passable road to the future? When you're headed in the only direction that makes any sense to you at all? You don't need a map to find your home."

--Jill A. Davis

What happened to us, you know? I don't know who I am anymore or how I got here. I miss who I used to be. I wanna have a home again, you know? And real friends. You know, the kind of friendships we used to believe in. I miss that, and I miss you. I guess I just miss all of it.

In a world where most things were a clutter, having a peaceful home was vital to her sanity. It was her refuge, her nest, where she could hide from the problems outside her door. At least in her home she was in control, there, unlike in the rest of her life, she allowed in only those whom she wanted, she could decide how long they should stay, and where in her home they could be. Not like a heart, which let people in without permission, held them in a special place she never had any say in, and then yearned for them to remain there longer than planned.

Andrew: "You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff, that idea of home is gone..."

Sam: "I still feel at home in my house."

Andrew: "You'll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it's just gone. And you can never get it back. It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist. I mean it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for you kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place."

--'Garden State'

What is family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they were the ones who showed up, who stayed in there, regardless.

I watched my mother do what she did best, and realized there would never be a way to cut myself from her entirely. No matter how strong or weak I was, she was a part of me, as crucial as my own heart. I would never be strong enough, in all my life, to do without her.

"All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

--Leo Tolstoy

It's your god forsaken right to be loved.

You know how when you're listening to music playing from another room? And you're singing along because it's a tune that you really love? When a door closes or a train passes so you can't hear the music anymore, but you hear the music again you're still in the exact same time with. That's what love is like.

The more I know of love, the less I know it. The more I give to love, the more I owe it.

"Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves."

--Albert Einstein

She did not love him enough to marry him, but she loved him too much to tell him that.

"She belonged to me," he said simply.

"What do you mean by that?"

"She was, you know, all the things I wasn't. And I was all the things she wasn't. She could paint circles around anyone; I can't even draw a straight line. She was never into sports; I've always been."

He lifted his outstretched palm and curled his fingers. 

"Her hand," he said. "It fit mine."

--Jodi Picoult, 'The Pact'

"I could see that she had never been less than what I'd figured her to be. If anything, she was always better than I remembered. And that's what I think love is, when your hindsight's twenty-twenty, and you still wouldn't change a thing."

--Jodi Picoult, 'The Pact'

"People should fall in love with their eyes closed. Just close your eyes. Don't look and it's magic."

--Andy Warhol

I know that these things can make you wacky. He liked enchiladas, I liked enchiladas. I hate enchiladas. you know what I mean?

But some emotions don't make a lot of noise. It’s hard to hear pride. Caring is real faint like a heart beat. And pure love, why some days it's so quiet, you don't even know it's there.

You are not exactly the love of my life, because I expect to love you longer than that. The love of my existence.

It's you god forsaken right to be loved.

Unless it's mad, passionate, extraordinary love, it's a waste of your time. There are too many mediocre things in life, and love shouldn't be one of them.

"And unless you marry your high school sweetheart (and even sometimes then), there is usually a not-so-glorious back story. There are people and places and events that lead you to your final relationship, people and places and events you'd prefer to forget or at least gloss over. In the end, you can slap a pretty label on it--like serendipity or fate. Or you can believe that it's just the random way life unfolds."

--Emily Giffin

"Even big-screen romances have 'it's not going to work' moments. It's nice to strive for romance in life. What are you going to do, throw in the towel because you might get your heart broken?"

--Drew Barrymore

It’s called falling in love for a reason – because, inevitably, you crash at the bottom.

Time is tricky.

Although I may not have had a clue where I was headed, I did know a thing or two about what I was willing to do.

Even as we are, we’re still becoming.

Nothing connects to the moment like music. I count on the music to bring me back - or, more precisely, to bring her forward.

We would sit and wonder about the future, but I'm thinking that today sounds fine to me.

Pile up too many tomorrows and you'll find that you've collected nothing but a bunch of empty yesterdays.

Are you doing what you're doing today because it's what you want to do or because it's what you were doing yesterday?

Maybe we all could use a little grace to know when to run and when to stay in one place.

I used to believe in a lot more. Now, I just see straight ahead. That's not to say I don't have good times, but as for my days, I spend them waiting.

Airplanes flying above me. Everyone on board is in such a hurry to get somewhere and way down here I'm trying my best to be impossibly slow.

"If you start wishing things were different from what they are, the next step is depression, then inactivity, and finally vegetation. No matter what the state of the world, you have got to move. Move."

--Dean Koontz

We have been close forever, but I don’t really have any memories of us together when we were children. I think that’s how everyone is though, they don’t remember things, they just know them.

"Cheers to a new year and another chance to get it right."

--Oprah Winfrey

Time is tricky. You have whole months, even years, when nothing changes a speck. When you don't go anywhere or do anything or think one new thought. And then you can get hit with a day or an hour, or half a second, when so much happens, it's almost like you are born all over again into some brand-new person you for damn sure never expected to meet.

She was illusive. She was today. She was tomorrow. She was the faintest scent of a cactus flower, the flitting shadow of an elf owl. We did not know what to make of her. In our minds we tried to pin her to a corkboard like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew.

It's in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.

But wasn't that always the way. It's never something huge that changes everything, but instead the tiniest of details, irrevocably tweaking the balance of the universe while you're busy focusing on the big picture.

The further you go, the more you have to be proud of. At the same time, in order to come a long way, you have to be behind to begin with. In the end, though, maybe it's not how you reach a place that matters. Just that you get there at all.

It was in a foreign hotel's bathtub I baptized myself and changed. And one by one I drowned all of the people I had been. And I emerged to find the parallels were fewer. I was cleansed. I looked in the mirror and someone new was there.

Strange that I should be here, where I so desperately wanted to be, and ache for what I left behind.

She'd always believed that people come in two varieties: those who look out the windshield and those who stare in the rearview mirror. She'd always been the windshield type: gotta focus on the future, not the past, because that's the only part that's still up for grabs.

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.

It happens to everyone as they grow up: you find out who you are and what you want and then you realize that the people you've known forever don't see things the way you do. And so you keep the memories but find yourself moving on.

She wanted to feel happy for her friends, really she did, but she couldn’t shake off the feeling of being left behind. Everyone else's lives were moving on except hers.

"One day we're going to have to grow up -- have to get real jobs and be adults. Someday. Just not today."

--Kenny Chesney

It made her wonder if you could know a person only at a single moment in time, because a year from now or a day from now, he might be different.

Cheers, No Tears

I'm going to be just about as happy as I can be.

That day she realized that perhaps happiness is not a long-term concept, but rather a collection of moments that make you happy right now. A smile, a sunset, a cup of hot chocolate, or a lover to hold your hand. Smiles turn to frowns, sunsets fade. Cups of hot chocolate are emptied, lovers come & go but that doesn't make the happiness of the moment any less real.

"Be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet."

--Kafka

Life. Liberty. The pursuit of happiness. You know what? If you spend a little more time going after that happiness, you'll be free to have much more of a life.

When what we are is what we want to be, that's happiness.

But through it all, I never understood the point of being sad when I could choose to be happy.

"I believe in pink, I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day, and I believe in miracles."

--Audrey Hepburn

"Barefoot or first thing in the morning, I feel beautiful. I didn't always feel that way, but I feel that way now. When somebody just loves you, and when you make somebody else happy, when your presence seems to make them happy, you suddenly feel like the most beautiful person in the world."

--Angelina Jolie

"Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it."

--Groucho Marx

"Let's be honest. Sometimes there is nothing harder in life than being happy for somebody else."

--Sex and the City

"Remember, cheers no tears."

--Marilyn Monroe

Hey, I've got nothing to do today but smile.

Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.

Being alive is so weird.

I think. I believe. I hope. I'm afraid--that life is more than dinner dates and mocha lattes. I've learned. I've thrown away. I've embraced. I've run--from the idea that you need more than a great pair of shoes to get by.

You asked me if I believe in magic, and I said yes, and that's how. You just step out, start pulling your life out of the air. You make friends, you find work you reallly like doing, you find places. You find diners and Laundromats. You find beaches. You find a junk car and drive it for a month, then leave it beside the road. You find someone to fall in love with you. You make it all up as you go. Or, you know, maybe it makes you up.

We were just a couple of fallen angels, rolling the dice of our lives.

"You should love the life you're living, you should live the life you love."

--Bob Marley

It's a big, sweet life!

I am so much bigger than the life I lead.

--Post Secret

Have you ever lost someone you love and wanted one more conversation, one more chance to make up for the time when you thought they would be here forever? If so, then you know you can go your whole life collecting days, and none will outweigh the one you wish you had back.

"I believe in the good. I believe we survive. I believe that believing that we will survive is what makes us survive."

--'Grey's Anatomy'

You were given this life because you're strong enough to live it.

Generations have been working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they really don't need.

It's all a matter of perspective, the angle you live at. I'm a ninety degree circle spinning in an orbit of music, mayhem and magic and nothing beats that.

"Have a nice rest of your life."

--Nicole Richie

"If my muscles hurt, it just means I've used them. If it hurts to walk up the stairs, it's just cause I've done it a hundred times to lay down next to a man who loved me. My face may have wrinkles, but I have laid under hundreds of skies on sunny days. I look like this, well, because I drank and I smoked and I lived and I loved and I screwed my way through a pretty damn good life. Getting old isn't bad. It's earned."

--'The Guardian'

"Most modern calendars mark the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event."

--Oscar Wilde

"You're alive. Do something. The directive in life, the moral imperative was so uncomplicated. It could be expressed in single words, not complete sentences. It sounded like this: Look. Listen. Choose. Act."

--Barbara Hall

"Be glad of life because it gives you a chance to love and to work and to play and to look at the stars."

--Henry Van Dyke

Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, "Is life a multiple choice test or is it a true or false test?" Then a voice comes to me out of the dark, and says, "We hate to tell you this, but life is a thousand word essay."

--Charlie Brown

I'm a lucky soul to have these memories 

I will always hold them as a part of me 

Live your life, I hope you find meaning

My greatest tragedy in life has not been lack of luck, but rather the inability to recognize it or have the balls to act upon it – and my greatest triumph in life is realizing that, in so many ways, I am truly the luckiest person on the planet.

I hope you get all the moments you deserve.

I didn't particularly want to live much longer than twenty. Life seemed rather daunting. Life seemed like too long a time to have to stick around, a huge span of years through which one would require to tap dance and smile and be great and be happy and be amazing. I was tired of my life by the time I was sixteen. I was tired of being too much, too intense. too manic. I was tired of people and I was incredibly tired of myself. I wanted to do whatever amazing things I was expected to do and be done with it. Go to sleep. Go to a heaven where there was nothing but bathtubs and books.

"I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing."

--Agatha Christie

She tended to have psychic powers when it came to facing the shittiest days of her life.

I think it's really tragic when people get serious about stuff. It's such an absurdity to take anything really serious. I make an honest attempt not to take anything seriously. I worked that attitude out about the time I was eighteen. I mean, what does it all mean when you get right down to it, what's the story here? Being alive is so weird.

You can't control the length of your life. Just the depth.

Life is an endless struggle full of frustrations and challenges, but eventually you find a hair stylist you like.

I have this great imaginary world, but sometimes I just need things to happen for real.

"This life is what you make it. No matter what, you're going to mess up sometimes. It's a universal truth. But the good part is, you get to decide how you're gonna mess it up."

--Marilyn Monroe

"People who shine more lavishly than everyone else seem to be penalized by discontent, as if they're being punished for craving a brighter life."

--'The Bride Stripped Bare'

"Live in the present. Launch yourself on every wave. Find eternity in each moment."

--Henry David Thoreau

How much more can you get than life, how much more can you ask for than life? That's the gift. Life is everything, and you haven't lived it properly until you believe.

"We are mysterious creatures. And at the end, so much of it turns out not to matter."

--'Evening'

"In nineteen minutes, you can mow the front lawn; color your hair; watch a third of a hockey game. In nineteen minutes, you can bake scones or get a tooth filled by a dentist; you can fold laundry for a family of five. In nineteen minutes, you can stop the world; or you can just jump off it."

--Jodi Picoult, 'Nineteen Minutes'

She didn’t like to think long thoughts, to look inside herself and worry about what shed find there. She liked to live. To move, to keep in motion. You didn’t have to think when you were dancing.

She was both wise and stupid in the way that when life got hard she didn't work through her problems; she just danced in her underwear alone in her room until they went away.

.

"Her silence was worth more to her than a thousand words. In that silence, she had peace and clarity. Except during the night, when her own jumbled thoughts would keep her awake, sounding like a thousand voices jumping in, out, and interrupting each other so much that she could barely close her eyes."

I'm terribly, terribly, terribly alone.

Once upon a time, and girl asked a guy "Will you marry me?" The guy said "No" and the girl lived happily ever after and went shopping, drank martinis with friends, always had a clean house, never had to cook, had a closet full of shoes and handbags, stayed skinny, and was never farted on. The End.

Sure, I'm alone. But at least I'm not pretending to love someone.

Sometimes when I'm driving home from work I switch the ring I wear on my right ring finger to my left ring finger and imagine what it would be like to have someone waiting for me at home.

--Post Secret

I think I'm beautiful and am willing to wait for someone who agrees.

--Post Secret

And maybe it hurts being this numb. But then again you don't feel anything. Nothing at all. Except at night sometimes, when I begin to realize that I'm alone. I'm completely alone.

Sometimes I go on through life thinking that love's not something that is meant for me.

I will not be the girl who requires a man to get by.

"I used to feel so alone in the city. All those gazillions of people and then me, on the outside. Because how do you meet a new person? I was very stumped by this for many years. And then I realized, you just say, 'hi.' They may ignore you. Or you may marry them. And that possibility is worth that one word."

--Augusten Burroughs

I never want to be anchored to someone. Maybe that makes me driftwood, but maybe it makes me my own person.

The years of waiting for a boy to literally sweep me off my feet eventually took their toll.

It's hard to breathe when you're standing on your own.

You may feel alone when you're falling asleep

And everytime tears roll down your cheeks

But I know your heart belongs to someone you've yet to meet

Someday you will be loved

We’re here on earth to find that special someone. But I’m not looking, and I don’t have a deadline.

If you don't fall in love, you can't get hurt, but it sure is lonely all by yourself.

"I am alone. Alone here and alone in the world. Alone in my heart and alone in my head. Alone everywhere, all the time, for as long as I can remember. Alone with my family, alone with my friends, alone in a room full of people. Alone when I wake, alone through each awful day, alone when I finally meet the blackness. I am alone in my horror. Alone in my horror. I don't want to be alone. I have never wanted to be alone. I fucking hate it. I hate that I don't have no one to talk to, I hate that I have no one to call, I hate that I have no one to hold my hand, hug me, tell me everything is going to be alright. I hate that I have no one to share my hopes amd my dreams with, I hate that I no longer have any hopes or dreams, I hate that I have no one to tell me to hold on, that I can find them again. I hate that when I scream, and I scream bloody murder, that I am screaming into emptiness. I hate that there is no one to me help how to stop screaming. I hate that what I have to in my lonliness lives in a pipe or a bottle. I hate that what I have turned to in my loneliness is killing me, or has already killed me, or will kill me soon. I hate that I will die alone. I will die alone in my horror. More than anything, all I have ever wanted is to be close to someone. More than anything, all I have ever wanted is to feel as if I wasn't alone."

--James Frey, 'A Million Little Pieces'

Sometimes all I really want to feel is love. Sometimes I'm angry that I feel so angry. Sometimes my feelings get in the way of what I really feel I needed to say.

That was the thing about being alone, in theory or in principle. Whatever happened--good, bad, or anywhere in between--it was always, if nothing else, all your own.

Needing was so easy: it came naturally, like breathing. Being needed by someone else, though, that was the hard part.

She's not a stop along the way, she's a destination.

Any person who lives by themselves for more than three years becomes strange and selfish and has to be hauled back into the world.

There were the endless birthday nights and New Year's Eves of just you in your bed and no one else.

All your life people had been leaving: You never grew up with the expectation that someone would look after you, and stay.

I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.

The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love.

She’d managed, with little effort, to close people out for months. She wasn’t quite sure if the ease of her solitude had been because she’d been unable to hear people trying to break down the walls, or if there’d simply been no one who’d care enough to try.

She was tired of hugging pillows, counting on blankets for warmth, and reliving romantic moments only in her dreams. She was tired of hoping that every day would hurry so she could get on to the next. Hoping that it would be a better day, an easier day. But it never was. Worked, paid the bills, and went to bed but never slept. Each morning the weight on her shoulders got heavier and heavier and each morning she wished for night to fall quickly so she could return to her bed to hug her pillows and wrap herself in the warmth of her blankets.

It was an odd feeling, having someone care about you in that way after so many years of solitude. I decided I liked it.

Who doesn't look for someone to hold, who knows how to love you without being told

Somebody tell me why I'm on my own, if there's a soulmate for everyone

You figured out what's going on in that predictable head of hers in under five minutes, but something tells you her heart would take about five years.

She's the kind of girl you forget as soon as you meet. She is the crust on the bread -- every face you have ever forgotten. She is the verse to that song on the radio, the forgettable.

You should have a guy that makes you feel happier, not upset. Don't think that's too much to ask for.

"It feels like somebody took my heart and dropped it into a bucket of boiling tears. And at the same time, somebody else is hitting my soul in the crotch, with a frozen sledge hammer. And then a third guy walks in and starts punching me in the grief bone, and I'm crying, and nobody can hear me, because I'm terribly, terribly, terribly alone."

--Michael, 'The Office'

"I've thought for a long time that we were going to end up together, so I didn't really care so much about the when of it. Now, though, the long road is starting to seem like the infinite road."

--Jill A. Davis

Her voice thickens, and the coughing starts again. "Story of my life," she says through the cough. "I've never been very lucky."

My mom used to tell me that whatever you do, marry someone who loves you more than you love him.

Did you ever walk through a room that's packed with people, and feel so lonely you can hardly take the next step?

How can someone fall in love with a stranger? I can understand loving your parents and family. I love my country. I love a good beer on Saturday night, and I absolutely love warm apple pie with my Sunday dinner. But I can't love a complete stranger.

Being single means doing what you want whenever you want.