All quotes by Lemony Snicket

“Strange as it may seem, I still hope for the best, even though the best, like an interesting piece of mail, so rarely arrives, and even when it does it can be lost so easily.”

"People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict."

"No matter who you are, no matter where you live, and no matter how many people are chasing you, what you don't read is often as important as what you do read."

"It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things."

"It is one of life's bitterest truths that bedtime so often arrives just when things are really getting interesting."

"Everyone should be able to do one card trick, tell two jokes, and recite three poems, in case they are ever trapped in an elevator."

"When some is crying, of course, the noble thing to do is to comfort them. But if someone is trying to hide their tears, it may also be noble to pretend you do not notice them."

Just my imagination speaking again.

You have to find something. Something that anchors you, something that keeps you looking forward. Even on the bad days, the days when you're tempted to look back.

She does, she did, and she'll do it again.

Promise yourself to be strong, that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. Look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true. Think only of the best, work only for the best, and expect only the best. Forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. Give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others. Live in the faith that the whole world is on your side as long as you are true to the best that is in you.

"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

It's when you cry just a little, but you laugh in the middle.

Walk with the dreamers, the believers, the courageous, the cheerful, the planners, the doers. The successful people with their heads in the clouds and their feet on the ground. Let their spirit ignite a fire within you to leave this world better than when you found it.

Did you ever wish that your eye was a camera? So when you blinked, there’d be a photograph. Just my imagination speaking again.

I shake a little, start a fire. Blow it out. Close my eyes when something scary is about to happen. A mix between fireflies and Christmas lights. Belly-ache year or two, not sure what to say, not sure what to do.

Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.

Alone is something you'll be quite a lot!

"Don't fix your life so that you're left alone right when you come to the middle of it."
--'The Object of My Affection'

"Do you ever feel that way?"
"Lonely?"
I search for the words. "Restless. As if you haven't really met yourself yet. As is you'd passed yourself once in the fog, and your heart leapt -- 'Ah! There I Am! I've been missing that piece!' But it happens too fast, and then that part of you disappears into the fog again. And you spend the rest of your days looking for it."

It takes one to know one, and I have always known that in the end, I would fly alone.

"All alone! Whether you like it or not, alone is something you'll be quite a lot!"
--Dr. Seuss, 'Oh, The Places You'll Go!"

"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

All quotes from Story People

"I read once that the ancient Egyptians had fifty words for sand and the Eskimos had a hundred words for snow. I wish I had a thousand words for love, but all that comes to mind is the way you move against me while you sleep and there are no words for that."

"You're the strangest person I ever met," she said and I said, "you too" and we decided we'd know each other a long time.

"She said she usually cried at least once each day not because she was sad, but because the world was so beautiful and life was so short."

"Anyone can slay a dragon, but try waking up every morning and loving the world all over again. That's what takes a real hero."

"Time stands still best in moments that look suspiciously like ordinary life."

"I wish you could have been there for the sun and the rain and the long, hard hills. For the sound of a thousand conversations scattered along the road. For the people laughing and crying and remembering at the end. But, mainly, I wish you could have been there."

"If you hold on to the handle," she said, "it's easier to maintain the illusion of control. But it's more fun if you just let the wind carry you."

We lay there and looked up at the night sky and she told me about stars called blue squares and red swirls and I told her I'd never heard of them. "Of course not," she said, "the really important stuff they never tell you. You have to imagine it on your own."

"I have too much to lose," she said, "if I cross that line." "Like what?" I said. She could not think of anything that day so she said she'd get back to me. Since then I've been thinking what I would lose if I cross my line and I haven't come up with anything either. There's always another line somewhere.

"Most people don't know there are angels whose only job is to make sure you don't get too comfortable and fall asleep and miss your life."

"They came to sit and dangle their feet off the edge of the world and after awhile they forgot everything but the good and true things they would do someday."

"I spent a long time trying to find my center until I looked closely at it one night and found it had wheels and moved easily in the slightest breeze. So now I spend less time sitting and more time sailing."

In my dream, the angel shrugged and said, "If we fail this time, it will be a failure of imagination," and then she placed the world gently in the palm of my hand.

"Feels like some kind of ride but it's turning out just to be life going absolutely perfectly."

"I once had a garden filled with flowers that grew only on dark thoughts, but they need constant attention and one day I decided I had better things to do."

"He loved her for almost everything she was and she decided that was enough to let him stay for a very long time."

A few said they'd be horses. Most said they'd be some sort of cat. My friend said she'd like to come back as a porcupine. "I don't like crowds," she said.

"Trapped mainly by wanting things to be exactly as they are, only better."

"I'm not sure if there's one right place I'm supposed to be," he said, "but I know a couple of wrong places I'd give a second try in a heartbeat."

"I don't really like coffee," she said, "but I don't really like it when my head hits my desk when I fall asleep either."

"This is a giant block of whatever is most difficult for you to carry, and trust me on this, you'll carry it more times than you can count until you decide that's exactly what you want to do most and then it won't weigh a thing anymore."

"If you were smart, you'd probably spend more time stretching," he said and I said, "If I were really smart, I'd probably spend more time just sitting in the shade drinking lemonade."

"If you're right and I'm not, I'm going to be hell to live with," she said. "So, you better think about that next time you want to be right."

"Waiting for the pen to dry up so he can start fresh with thoughts that are worth new ink."

"There are your fog people and your sun people," he said. I said I wasn't sure which kind I was. He nodded. "Fog'll do that to you," he said.

"She is willing to accept that she creates her own reality, except for some of the parts where she can't help but wonder what the hell she was thinking."

Life is about falling in love.

Life, I really believe, is about falling in love. With ideas, with stories, with experiences, mistakes, adventures, poetry, imaginations, old books, new books, movies, music, and, of course, people. Everything that is worthwhile in this world is worth falling in love with, and I can’t imagine a better way to live one’s life than to be always head over heels.

"What about love?"
"Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate."

Now, I think the whole world is filled with signs.

"It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it."
--Oscar Wilde

“May you always have walls for the winds, a roof for the rain, tea beside the fire, laughter to cheer you, those you love near you and all your heart might desire.”
--Irish Blessings

"I used to wait for a sign, she said, before I did anything. Then one night I had a dream and an angel in black tights came to me and said, you can start any time now, and then I asked is this a sign? and the angel started laughing and I woke up. Now, I think the whole world is filled with signs, but if there's no laughter, I know they're not for me."
--Story People

"This is the center of the universe at this moment unless you're looking in another direction, or are thinking about something from a long time ago, in which case it will wait quietly right here until you return."
--Story People

“The main thing in one's own private world is to try to laugh as much as you cry.”
--Maya Angelou

“Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; its when you had everything to do, and you’ve done it.”
--Margaret Thatcher

All quotes by author Miranda July

“There was no apology in her eyes, no love or caring. But she saw me, I existed, and this lifted the beams off my shoulders. It takes so little.”

“Like ivy, we grow where there is room for us.”

“He reached around and pulled me down onto his back and I lay there, like on the warm sand of a beach. Just that. That is all there is. That is the whole point of everything.”

“I was never good at jumping in, letting go of one element and embracing another. I could stand there all day, letting the other kids go in front of me forever.”

“You seem incredibly faraway to me, like someone on the other side of a lake. A dot so small that it isn’t male or female or young or old; it is just smiling.”

“Or a long, laughing, rambling phone message in which every person this person has ever known is talking on a speakerphone and they are all saying, You have passed the test, it was all just a test, we were only kidding, real life is so much better than that.”

“The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be”
--Marcel Pagnol

“Everyone wants stuff. We wake up everyday with a list of wishes a mile long and maybe we spend our lives trying to make those wishes come true. But just because we want them doesn’t mean we need them to be happy.”
--Ned, 'Pushing Daisies'

You can do anything.

“Our children will be born of our actions. Our accidents will become their destinies. Oh, the actions will remain. It is a simple matter of what you will do when the chips are down, my friend. When the fat lady is singing. When the walls are falling in, and the sky is dark, and the ground is rumbling. In that moment our actions will define us. And it makes no difference whether you are being watched by Allah, Jesus, Buddah, or whether you are not. On cold days a man can see his breath, on a hot day he can’t. On both occasions, the man breathes.”
--Zadie Smith, 'White Teeth'

“Nothing is as obnoxious as other people’s luck.”
--F. Scott Fitzgerald

“The only job where you start at the top, is digging a hole.”
--Anonymous

"The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me."
--Ayn Rand

"It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else."
--Erma Bombeck

"If a woman never lets herself go, how will she ever know how far she might have got? If she never takes off her high-heeled shoes, how will she ever know how far she could walk or how fast she could run?"
--Germaine Greer

“How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.”
--Oscar Wilde

“Just one thing,” she says, raising her head and looking me straight in the eye. “I want you to remember me. If you remember me, then I don’t care if everyone else forgets.”
--Haruki Murakami, 'Kafka on the Shore'

“To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else’s heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her for fear of destroying the spell.”
--Gabriel Gárcia Márquez, 'Love in the Time of Cholera'

“At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.”
--Lao Tzu

“You can do anything, but not everything.”
--David Allen

“There are four things you cannot recover. The stone, after the throw. The word, after it’s said. The occasion, after the loss. And the time.. after it’s gone.”
--Unknown

I am yours. You are mine.

I guess the Lord made me hard to handle So lovin’ me might be a long shot gamble
--Dierks Bentley

“I love him to hell and back and heaven and back, and have and do and will.”
--Sylvia Plath

I am yours.
You are mine.
Of this we are certain.
You are lodged in my heart.
The small key is lost.
You must stay there forever.

The love that was summer.

The love that was summer. It ended like it never happened.

“He sat in the big chair and held out his arms so that she could nestle inside them. ‘I knew you’d come tonight,’ she said softly, ‘like summer just when I needed you most.’”
--F. Scott Fitzgerald, 'This Side of Paradise'

“Summer was on the way; Jem and I awaited it with impatience. Summer was our best season; it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the tree house; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape."
--Harper Lee, 'To Kill A Mockingbird'

All quotes by author Mary Anne Radmacher

"Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, 'I will try again tomorrow.'"

"Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Listen Hard. Practice wellness. Play with abandon. Laugh. Choose with no regret. Appreciate your friends. Continue to learn. Do what you love. Live as if this is all there is."

"Speak quietly to yourself and promise there will be better days. Whisper gently to yourself and provide assurance that you really are extending your best effort. Console your bruised and tender spirit with reminders of many other successes. Offer comfort in practical and tangible ways - as if you were encouraging your dearest friend. Recognize that on certain days the greatest grace is that the day is over and you get to close your eyes. Tomorrow comes more brightly."

"In the cold you wrap me. In my uncertainty you listen. In all my joys you celebrate. At every turn you meet me with competence and grace. What a fine dance we have together."

"Lean forward into your life. Catch the best bits and the finest wind. Just tip your feathers in flight a wee bit and see how dramatically that small lean can change your life."

"Living eulogy. She danced. She sang. She took. She gave. She loved. She created. She dissented. She enlivened. She saw. She grew. She sweated. She changed. She learned. She laughed. She shed her skin. She bled on the pages of her days. She walked through walls. She lived with intention."

“The jump is so frightening between where I am and where I want to be, because of all I may become I will close my eyes and leap!”

“Shake structures. School yourself. Look twice at a thing, once upside down. Answer yourself clearly.”