She felt like the original peach of summer.

There is never a sudden revelation, a complete and tidy explanation for why it happened, or why it ends, or why or who you are. You want one and I want one, but there isn't one. It comes in bits and pieces, and you stitch them together wherever they fit, and when you are done you hold yourself up, and still there are holes and you are a rag doll, invented, imperfect. And yet you are all that you have, so you must be enough. There is no other way.

"People who want to make a million borrow a million first."
--Sophie Kinsella

"I love new clothes. If everyone could just wear new clothes everyday, I reckon depression wouldn’t exist anymore."
--Sophie Kinsella

"Think for a minute, darling: in fairy tales it's always the children who have the fine adventures. The mothers have to stay at home and wait for the children to fly in the window."
--Audrey Niffenegger

People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Be good anyway.
Honesty and frankness will make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
In the final analysis, it is between you and God.
It was never between you and them anyway.
--Mother Teresa

“Like a twenty you find crunched up in a pocket or a lollipop in the depths of your purse when you’re on a diet and at the movies willing yourself away from the chocolate-covered peanuts. The thoughts blossomed and evolved into a new perspective. Suddenly, she was hopeful, she was glowing, she felt like the original peach of summer. Turned around, upside down, inside out and loving the fact that for the first time in days she didn’t want to cry when she thought about her future."
--Rebecca Bloom, 'Tanged Up In Daydreams'

"In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets."
--Rebecca Bloom, 'Tanged Up In Daydreams'

It's a mystery of human chemistry, and I don't understand it. Some people, as far as your senses are concerned, just feel like home.

I'll live a life of dreams.

And I won't die today. Yeah, I'll be living, loving, writing down. And I'll live a life of dreams and be grateful I'm around.

Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is the special occasion.

There are four or five people in everybody's life who must be informed immediately of what is happening to us. We can't bare them to go on believing what is no longer true. Not for a minute, for them to believe that we are married when we have just been widowed or that we still have parents when we have suddenly become orphans. That we have company when that company has just left, or are in good health when we have suddenly fallen ill. That they should think us alive when we are dead.

"It's a wonder I'm even alive. Sometimes I think that. I think that I can't believe I haven't killed myself. But there's something in me that just keeps going on. I think it has something to do with tomorrow, that there is always one, and that everything can change when it comes."
--Augusten Burroughs

Breathe in, breathe out, go faster and faster and faster and faster. I don’t feel anything anymore or what I do feel is so powerful that my mind and my body are incapable of allowing it to register. I am comfortable here. This is what I want, what I need, and what I must have, and this is where I have been living for the last few years of my life.

Wondering what the right words would have been.

"Life would be a lot easier if conversations were rewindable and erasable, like videos. Or if you could instruct people to disregard what you just said, like in a courtroom."
--Sophie Kinsella

It was just like that, falling apart and trying to make ends meet. Drinking coffee and wearing long woven sweaters. Looking for milk for your cereal in the morning at nine a.m., then wondering what the right words would have been.

Chocolate is a bandaid no matter what they say.

She had been too busy trying to transform herself into the kind of person who doesn't need anything from anybody, a wall of pure bricks. In the meantime, she had forgotten that when people walk into walls of bricks, they get hurt.

I read somewhere that if you think you're going to cry, you can recite the colors of things to make it stop. Green tree. Red windmill. Blue sky. Blue jeans. Blue eyes.

Chocolate is a bandaid no matter what they say, shoes don't stretch, and men don't change.

Time ticks by; we grow older. Before we know it, too much time has passed and we've missed the chance to have had other people hurt us. To a younger me this sounded like luck; to an older me this sounds like a quiet tragedy.

People aren't pictures.

Which is why when you feel that it'll take everything you have and you think that it'll take a lifetime to accomplish, you need to remember that that's exactly what you have.

The heart is a muscle like any other and the best exercise you can do for it is called picking yourself up off the floor.

It's when you hold eye contact for that second too long or maybe the way you laugh. It sets off a flash and our memories take a picture of who we are at that point when we first know "This is love." And we clutch that picture to our hearts because we expect each other to always be the people in that picture. But people change. People aren't pictures. And you can either take a new picture or throw the old one away.

So you look for patterns because that's what humans do to try and make sense of things. In hope of some divine order. And you look in movies and songs and the things that you read for symbols, points and swirls that match your own. But the only real pattern there is, is the one you make when you hold up a mirror. And reflect.

So yes, we could kiss. I could kiss you and you could kiss me. There's no science, plane ticket or clock stopping us. But if we kiss, it will end the world. And I've ended the world before. No one survived. Least of all me.

There are so many people reading these words now that if you put your hand against the screen, I can promise you, no matter what time it is, no matter where you are, someone else who feels the same is doing it too.

You are more than welcome to copy me and the things I do. I'll be busy doing new things while you do that.

You think you’re waiting for help. For someone to tell you what the right thing to do is. Even though, at the back of your mind, you already know what that is. So all you’re really waiting for, is a time when you’re forced to do it.

If I wanted loneliness, I'd choose to go

“If I wanted silence, I would whisper
and if I wanted loneliness, I’d choose to go
and if I liked rejection, I’d audition
and if I didn’t love you, you would know”
--Maria Mena

Unlonely
How to Be Alone
Remember that at any given moment
There are a thousand things
You can love

I don't worry 'bout things that I can't change

“We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.”
--Tom Stoppard

“Time’s fun when you’re having flies.”
--Kermit

Fear less, hope more
Whine less, breathe more
Talk less, say more
Hate less, love more
And all good things are yours
--Swedish Proverb

“Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don’t turn up at all.”
--Sam Ewig

“Everyone tries to define this thing called Character. It’s not hard. Character is doing what’s right when nobody’s looking.”
--J. C. Watts

Baby come home, baby don't even bother, baby you are not my baby anymore.

You fit just right. No fireworks, no champagne on New Year's Eve out of the bottle. Not the ride of your life, but that cup of coffee in the morning. It's the things that keep us warm and it's where we are happy, not wanting to stuff our faces. We're just looking to sit in the sunlight, hopefully a little breeze.

The trouble is that you think you have time.

"Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability."
--Sam Keen

"The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."
--Dorothy Parker

"I don't know much about being a millionaire, but I'll bet I'd be darling at it."
--Dorothy Parker

It's not a secret if it's half known

“Man, these are brutal. Kind of want to fold you up in a big comforter and give you a hot chocolate or something — tell you it won’t feel so bad in the sunlight tomorrow.”

Standin' proud, standin' tall
Standin' smack dab in the middle of it all
I don't worry 'bout things that I can't change

“A goal is a dream with a deadline.”
--Napoleon Hill

It doesn't matter if others are interested. It's about you taking your stuff and shouting out into the void.

Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun.

Time doesn't exist. Clocks exist.

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

If you believe, you'll touch the sky.
If you dream, you'll land on the moon,
If you have faith, you'll become someone.
If you have hope, things will fall into place.
If you breathe, everything will be okay.

Every oak tree started out as a couple of nuts who decided to stand their ground.

"When you taste this one, you can still sense the heaviness left behind. It's the shadow under the sweet, the question on the tip of your tongue."

Maybe you had to leave in order to really miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was.

If you were aware of how precious today is you could hardly live through it.

“Our lives teach us who we are.”
--Salman Rushdie

“We can never be born enough”
--E. E. Cummings

"Life is too brief a journey to be scared of taking risks, especially the ones that have the chance of making you happy."
--Donna Schoenrock

"And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?"
"I did."
"And what did you want?"
"To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth."

"Like when you're thinking about the rest of your life," she said, and she put her hand over her eyes, "you're never really thinking more than a couple years down the road."

"In the entire history of the universe, let alone in your own history, there has never been another day just like today. And there will never be another just like it again. Today is the point to which all your yesterdays have been leading since the hour of your birth, it is the point from which your tomorrows will proceed until the hour of your death. If you were aware of how precious today is you could hardly live through it, unless you are aware of how precious it is you can hardly be said to be living at all."
--Frederick Buecttner

I dream of a love that even time will lie down and be still for.

"How many people can you love before it's too much? she said & I said I didn't think there was any real limit as long as you didn't care if they loved you back."
--'Story People'

Every heart is a package tangled up in knots someone else tied.

Forgive me, love, for wanting you. Blame it on those eyebrows arching over baby blues.

"You don't have to say I love you to say I love you," you said with a shrug. "All you have to do is say my name and I know." "Can't you hear it?" you said. "When you love someone, you say their name different. Like it's safe inside your mouth."

"Four be the things I'd have been better without: love, curiosity, freckles and doubt."
--Dorothy Parker

"May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live."
--Rober A. Heinlein

And everything around me
Are things I dearly love
And every night I get on my knees
And thank the Lord above

I have this dream of being whole... of not going to sleep each night wanting, but still sometimes, when the wind is warm or the crickets sing, I dream of a love that even time will lie down and be still for.

All lyrics by Sugarland

Knowing that we will always end up right where we start
'Cause I got time on my hands and hope in my heart

April showers bring May flowers
I have seen rain before
But if Sunday morning lets that sun in
What are we waiting for
'Cause love leaves an open door

Cowboys ride into sunsets
The good guy always gets the girl
Cinderella has just fit
A glass slipper that changed her world
We all know the stories
We all know the fairy tales
We all get the glory of making it for ourselves
From the beginning
We're all looking for a happy ending
Every dream of winning
Every love we've been in
Right from the beginning
We're looking for a happy ending

And all those dreamers who have come and gone
Who've reached for the stars, who've overcome
You're the hope, you're the wish, you're the truth
Baby, here's the proof
Baby's born in this ghetto
Baby's born with a silver spoon
One tells his Mama I have a dream
One tells his Mama I want the moon

And if I count all my blessings, I get a smile on my face
Still hard to find faith

I need a deep margarita to help me unwind
Leave my troubles behind

It's written on our palms and it's written on our hearts
It's written in our songs and it's written in the stars
Sometimes all we can do is stand up tall
They're standing in line just to watch us fall

Sometimes it feels like we won't make it through
But the hard times pass like the good ones do

Baby, climb up here, watch the city glow
Let's make a wish on the fireworks below
We're making moments we won't forget
We fill in ones that haven't happened yet

I'm slow to trust but I'm quick to love
I push too hard and I give too much
I ain't saying I'm perfect, but I promise I'm worth it

What if I said yes
What if I'd gone out that night
What if you'd turned left
Everything would've turned out alright
What if I'd spoke up
What'd if I'd took the keys
What if I had tried a little harder instead of always trying to please

It's hard to say goodbye
'Cause baby, it's a good life

It's takes a lot of tears to find love
The kind of love you can be proud of
That suits me just fine

That's life, if you open up your eyes
You'll find it gets better all the time

I never really noticed when he moved in next to me
Sometimes it's amazing just how blind a girl can be
If I weren't busy runnin'
I might have seen it comin'

Lips like gravity pull me under
Wreckless weather on his breath
Smells like rain, it hits like thunder
A storm is coming, I got nothing left