Our lives are all different and yet the same.

All quotes by Anne Frank

"Because paper has more patience than people."

"The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As long as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles."

"Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness. People are just people, and all people have faults and shortcomings, but all of us are born with a basic goodness."

"Earning happiness means doing good and working, not speculating and being lazy. Laziness may look inviting, but only work gives you true satisfaction."

"We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same."

"And I came to the important discovery that questions which you either can't or shouldn't ask in public, or questions which you can't put into words, can easily be solved in your own head. So the word 'why' not only taught me to ask, but also to think. And thinking has never hurt anyone. On the contrary, it does us all a world of good."

"Memories mean more to me than dresses."

"Boys will be boys. And even that wouldn't matter if only we could prevent girls from being girls."

"It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideas, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart."

Some things in life are out of your control.

All quotes by author Nora Roberts

"Life is like a moustache. It can be wonderful or terrible. But it always tickles."

"You spend your life getting walked on, you learn to recognize the tread."

"She knew there were women who worked successfully out of the home. They ran businesses, created empires and managed to raise happy, healthy, well-adjusted children who went on to graduate magna cum laude from Harvard or became world-renowned concert pianists. Possibly both. These women accomplished all this while cooking gourmet meals, furnishing their homes with Italian antiques, giving clever, intelligent interviews with Money magazine and People, and maintaining a brilliant marriage with an active enviable sex life and never tipping the scale at an ounce over their ideal weight. She knew those women were out there. If she'd had a gun, she'd have hunted every last one of them down and shot them like rabid dogs for the good of womankind."

--'Birthright'

"She surrounded herself with books at work and at home. Her living space was a testament to her first and abiding love with shelves jammed with books tables crowded with them. She saw them not only as knowledge, entertainment, comfort, even sanity, but as a kind of artful decoration."

--'Key of Knowledge'

"'A woman doesn't want to be told she looks nice,' Jude nuttered as she sat down beside maud's grave. 'She wants to be told she's beautiful, sexy. That she looks outrageous. It doesn't matter if its not true.' She sighed and laid the flowers against the headstone. 'Because for the moment, when the words are said and the words are heard, it's perfect truth.'"

"'What do you know about life?' Bitterness ached in her throat. 'You were born with everything. You never had to struggle for a single thing you wanted, never had to worry if you'd be accepted or loved or wanted back.' He stared at her, grateful for the moment that she couldn't see that he'd spent nearly half of his life worrying that she, the single thing he wanted, would accept him, love him, and want him back.'"

--'Daring to Dream'

"We all look. The lucky find."

--'Heart of the Sea'

"Some things in life are out of your control. You can make it a party or a tragedy."

--'Vision in White'

Destiny is up to you.

All quotes by author Richard Bach

"Can miles truly separate you from friends? If you want to be with someone you love, aren't you already there?"

"That’s what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we’ve changed because of it, and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way is winning."

--'The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story'

"No matter how qualified or deserving we are, we will never reach a better life until we can imagine it for ourselves and allow ourselves to have it."

"Remember where you came from, where you're going, and why you created this mess you got yourself into in the first place."

"Of course there’s destiny, but destiny doesn’t push you where you don’t want to go. You’re the ones who choose. Destiny is up to you."

"You're always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past."

"I had grown up in a house with a fence around it, and in this fence was a white smooth wooden gate, two holes bored round and low together so the dog could see through. One night, the moon high, late for me home from the school dance, I remember that I stopped, hand on the gate, and spoke so quietly to myself and to the woman that I would love that not even the dog could have heard. ‘I don’t know where you are, but you’re living right now, somewhere on this earth. And one day you and I are going to touch this gate where I’m touching it now. Your hand will touch this very wood, here! Then we’ll walk through and we’ll be full of a future and of a past and we’ll be to each other like no one else has ever been. We can’t meet now, I don’t know why. But some day our questions will be answers and we’ll be caught in something so bright...and every step I take is one step closer on a bridge we must cross to meet.'"

--'The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story'

"Has it ever happened, you’ve seen a striking film, beautifully written and acted and photographed, that you walk out of the theater glad to be a human being and you say to yourself I hope they make a lot of money from that? I hope the actors, I hope the director earns a million dollars for what they’ve done, what they’ve given me tonight? And you go back and see the movie again and you’re happy to be a tiny part of the system that is rewarding those people with every ticket...the actors I see on the screen, they’ll get twenty cents of this very dollar I’m paying now; they’ll be able to buy an ice cream cone any flavor they want from their share of my ticket alone. Glorious moments in art in books and films and dance, they’re delicious because we see ourselves in glory’s mirror."

--'The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story'

"You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn’t flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn’t have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there."

--'Jonathan Livingston Seagull'

"Nobody means to get carried away in mediocrity, but it happens, it happens unless you think about everything you do, unless you make every choice the best one you know how to make."

--'One'

"It must happen to us all…We pack up what we’ve learned so far and leave the familiar behind. No fun, that shearing separation, but somewhere within, we must dimly know that saying goodbye to safety brings the only security we’ll ever know."

--'Running from Safety: An Adventure of the Spirit'

"The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change."

"The only thing that shatters dreams is compromise."

"What matters is how I use what I know, every minute of every day; how I use it to remember, in the midst of the game."

--'Running from Safety: An Adventure of the Spirit'

"It doesn’t take time to change once you understand the problem. Somebody hands you a rattlesnake, it doesn’t take long to drop it, does it?"

--'One'

"Choose a love and work to make it true, and somehow, something will happen, something you couldn’t plan, will come along to move like to like, to set you loose, to set you on the way to your next brick wall."

--'Running from Safety: An Adventure of the Spirit'

"To fly as fast as thought, you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived."

"From time to time it's fun to close our eyes, and in that dark say to ourselves, 'I am the sorcerer, and when I open my eyes I shall see a world that I have created, and for which I and only I am completely responsible.' Slowly then, eyelids open like curtains lifting stage-center. And sure enough, there's our world, just the way we've built it."

--'The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story'

"How is it we’re the lucky ones, living a life that the children-we-were took for dreams?"

"You don’t want a million answers as much as you want a few forever questions. The questions are diamonds you hold in the light. Study a lifetime and you see different colors from the same jewel. The same questions, asked again, bring you just the answers you need just the minute you need them."

--'Running from Safety: An Adventure of the Spirit'

"Don't be dismayed at good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends."

Fairy tales are more than true.

All quotes by author G.K. Chesterton

“Fairy tales, are more than true. Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be defeated.”

"Fairy tales make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water."

"There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less."

"You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink."

"We should always endeavor to wonder at the permanent thing, not at the mere exception. We should be startled by the sun, and not by the eclipse. We should wonder less at the earthquake, and wonder more at the earth."

"There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there."

"There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one."

She’s cinnamon on the tongue, and deep lung air, the space between heartbeats, and dreamless seconds. She’s gravity and bent light, years of inescapable regret. She’s a bruised tattoo and a muffled note sounding sad negation, baby skin, and straight flush vertigo; queen high, aphasia, and too much wine. The beginning’s whispered word and insomnia. She’s finish line sweat and denied kisses, dew wet roses and ropes bathed in starlight. She’s candle wax and burnt offerings, a razor wrist, the atom split, lightning dance and a tear of joy. She’s a child tickled too long and quivering lip. She’s dragon chasing smoke raised in prayer, a C4 bunny, three to a match and a bullet; to whom it may concern, sucking chest wound heartbreak. She’s crime in a $4 t-shirt and yesterday’s shorts. She’s her smile and walk, cricket comfort and lumbering grace, electrochemical shock therapy. She’s the fast right hand captured in unnatural acts. She’s unclean thoughts, and unrepentance, salvation offered only in darkness. She’s the better half of a timeless equation, π factored past infinity, an easy answer to an impossible problem. She’s unknown and unknowable, an unopened gift gathering dust, another man’s name on the tag.

I'm alive, but so what.

All quotes by author Douglas Coupland

"I thought I'd finally played my cards right, and now I'm just one more of those broken, sad people out there, figuring out a year in advance where they can have Easter and Christmas dinner without feeling like a burden or duty to others, cursing the quality of modern movies because it's so hard to fill weeknights with movies when they're all crap, and waiting, just waiting, for those three drinks a night to turn into four - and then, well, then I'll be applying my make-up in the morning, combing my hair, washing my clothes, but it's not really for anyone. I'm alive, but so what."

--'Hey Nostradamus!'

"And then I felt truly old for the first time - old in the sense that I was beyond the point of ever doing something radical or bold to change the course of my life."

"Kaitlin thinks I'm claustrophobic, but that's not true - I love elevators and small cars. What I don't like is being exposed to unfiltered social contact, like at parties or meetings, when just anyone can talk to you with no other reason than that you happen to be there."

--'Life After God'

"Because in the end we forget everything, anyway. We're human; we're amnesia machines."

"You stole my loneliness."

"When you're young, you always feel that life hasn't yet begun -- that "life" is always scheduled to begin next week, next month, next year, after the holidays -- whenever. But then suddenly you're old and the scheduled life didn't arrive. You find yourself asking, 'Well then, exactly what was it I was having -- that interlude -- the scrambly madness -- all that time I had before?'"

--'Life After God'

I didn't think. I just was.

"Maybe that whole love thing is just a grown up version of Santa Claus, just a myth that we have been fed since childhood, so we keep buying magazines and joining clubs and doing therapy and watching movies with hip hop songs played over love montages in this pathetic attempt to explain why our love Santa keeps getting caught in the chimney."

--'Kate and Leopold'

What we do is, we start over everyday. I choose you, you choose me.

"People are inspired to do remarkable things to find and be with the one they love. Big movies are made about it, and every relationship you admire bursts with a greatness that you hope for in your own life. And the more you value yourself, the more chance you’ll have of getting it."

--He’s Just Not That In To You

And they meet late on a Saturday, in the grip of winter's chapped lips. One's blind to all she has inside; one's sure that he knows what life's got in store. And when the stars and drunks have left the bar, he says, “We've just met, but I've seen you around. Can we share a car? Back to my place with movies made about outer space.” And so it seems they're off to share their waste.

"When I picked up the phone I realized that out of the billions of people on the planet, you were the one I wanted to speak to the most. It was like the deepest part of me took control and said what it felt, unafraid of embarrassment or rejection or any of that other stuff that normally leaves me paralyzed with fear. I didn't think. I just was."

--Mike Gayle, 'My Legendary Girlfriend'

Time grabs you by the hand and pulls you fast.

I guess I should say thank you, for cutting all my strings. But if it's all the same to you, I wish you'd left my wings.

You think bravery is to fight and courage is to die. But the bravest ones stand in front of those who would and say "We will not fight. Because courage is to live."

Where you are, right here and now, this is how bad stories end. But it's also how the best stories, begin.

Because you're looking for a date, not love. Because you're more interested in who you go to bed with than who you wake up next to. Because you tick boxes in your head instead of crossing lines in your heart.

Time grabs you by the hand and pulls you fast. Sometimes faster. And we don't notice at first because we're all still shocked at being alive.

I'll understand your silence. Because sometimes, you'll have to understand mine.

There's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go.

"Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."

--Christopher Robin to Pooh

It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.

"Just when you think it can't get any worse, it can. And just when you think it can't get any better, it can."

--Nicholas Sparks, 'At First Sight'

Sacrifice. We all make them. You kept thinking about what you lost. You didn’t get it. Sacrifice is a part of life. It’s supposed to be. It’s not something to regret. It’s something to aspire to.

"We're all susceptible to it, the dread and anxiety of not knowing what's coming. It's pointless in the end, because all the worrying and the making of plans for things that could or could not happen, it only makes things worse. So walk your dog or take a nap. Just whatever you do, stop worrying. Because the only cure for paranoia is to be here, just as you are."

--'Grey's Anatomy'

Pain beats regret every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

"Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

You can't stop the future, you can't rewind the past. The only way to learn the secret is to press play.

"Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without words, and never stops at all."

--Emily Dickenson

"Listen; there's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go."

--E.E. Cummings

Travel, travel, travel. Do not settle into the life of the normal average citizen, be more. Realize that time helps, when nothing else can. And that there are two types of people in this world, those who are unhappy, and those who do whatever it takes to ensure their happiness, and you are one of those people.

“There is no such thing as was. To me, no man is himself, he is the sum of his past. There is no such thing really as was, because the past is. It is part of every man, every woman, and every moment.”

--William Faulkner

"Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can."

--Willis Whitney

"Charm. It's a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it you don't need to have anything else; and if you don't have it, it doesn't much matter what else you have."

--James Matthew Barrie

"It is good that the young are beautiful; it is the only advantage they have."

--The Duchess of Windsor

We would often be sorry if our wishes were granted.

"There are two days in the week on which I never worry; One is yesterday and the other is tomorrow."

--Robert Burdette

Independence is the part that drew you in

You said I like the way you know a thing or two

You gotta have hope

You gotta have something

There's always a reason to break

Hope

'Cause nothing less

Will save the day

"Isn't it sad to be in a place where everything is so unbelievable you'd believe anything?"

--'Go Ask Alice'

"If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?"

--'Alice in Wonderland'

"I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near.”

--Margaret Thatcher

She only drinks coffee at midnight

When the moment is not right

Her timing is quite unusual

You see her confidence is tragic

but her intuition: magic

Live your life to the fullest.

“What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.”

--Boris Pasternak

"I live by this credo: Have a little laugh at life and look around you for happiness instead of sadness. Laughter has always brought me out of unhappy situations. Even in your darkest moment, you usually can find something to laugh about if you try hard enough."

--Red Skelton

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”

--Steve Jobs

Eat the damn chocolate cake, get your hair wet, love someone, dance in those muddy puddles, tell someone off, draw a picture with crayons like you're still 6 years old and then give it to someone who is very important to you. Take a nap, go on vacation, do a cartwheel, make your own recipe, dance like no one sees you, paint each nail a different color, take a bubble bath, laugh at a corny joke. Get on that table and dance, pick strawberries, take a jog, plant a garden, make an ugly shirt and wear it all day learn a new language, write a song, date someone you wouldn't usually go for, make a scrap book, go on a picnic, relax in the sun, make your own home video, kiss the un-kissed, hug the un-hugged, love the unloved, and live your life to the fullest. So at the end of the day. You'll have no regrets, no sorrows, no disappointments.

Words aren't necessary.

A person who can speak many languages is not necessarily more valuable than a person who can listen in one.

“When I say beautiful things, I'm not necessarily living them; when I live them, the beautiful thing is that words aren't necessary.”

--Brock Tully

Sixty-five days, three hundred more and nothing's gonna change

Except the day I wish you back to me

“Lonely men seek companionship. Lonely women sit at home and wait. They never meet.”

--Abraham Lincoln

And everyone just spends their day thinking of someone who's thinking of someone else.

No two loves are identical.

"How different this moment feels, for so many reasons. I tell myself that no two loves are identical--but that I don't have to compare anymore."

--Emily Griffin, 'Love The One You're With'

"I couldn't help but wonder if that was what love was--believing that someone was going to come through, in the end, and that it would still count."

--Laura Dave, 'London Is the Best City in America'

If my heart was a house you'd be home

"Maybe finding one's true self is like building a house and then making it home."

--Anna Esaki-Smith, 'Meeting Luciano'

"When we're two balloons, and together our direction is up, chances are we've found the right person. Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life."

--Richard Bach

Love is a form of prejudice. You love what you need, you love what makes you feel good, you love what is convenient. How can you say you love one person when there are ten thousand people in the world that you would love more if you ever met them? But you'll never meet them.

“When you’re in love, you don’t need words. A look, a touch, a sigh — you’ve said it all.”

--Juliet Mills

"Many people love in themselves what they hate in others."

--Benzel Sternan

"The best time to make friends is before you need them."

--Ethel Barrymore

Life is far too short not to have a little umbrella in your drink. The bright hilarity of my kind friends and very dear girls.

Why can't I ever be happy where I am?

"Paris," she whispered.

"Paris," he promised.

I miss what I already have and I surround myself with things that are missing.

It's hard to sleep without you here, but it's nice to care about someone enough to miss them so much.

I got a letter in the mail today from Matthew. It's nice to be reminded that your friends still care about the things you care about and they are still thinking of you even though they aren't calling you up to tell you every time it happens. We talked last night about how it was sad to see people you might have thought you missed just to find them caught up in the same bullshit you left months ago. And today I read a poem about what we built falling to pieces, about what was ours being taken away. It was a slow invasion, but it sure worked. It's hard to say but maybe if we had claimed what was ours that town would still be our town and that house would have been our home.

There is only one state in between Illinois and Ohio. And New Hampshire is right next to Massachusetts, but right now I'm in Florida and he is in North Carolina. I'm at least three states away from everyone I love.

1. You were what I was missing when I had everything else.

2. Now I'm missing everything else.

I can pin point every goddamn thing that bothers me and I feel completely helpless because I know exactly how to change it and I'm just not doing it.

You and I could be anywhere, I just wish anywhere wasn't here.

Today was the first time I hung out with someone in this town without alcohol there. I thought it was nice and they thought it was boring. Why can't I ever be happy where I am?

Things I find to be annoying:

1. Bug bites

2. People who feel like they need to be drunk all the time.

3. People who pride themselves on that.

4. When my dog won't go to the bathroom when we're outside and I know she has to go.

5. Asking "Are you hiring?"

6. When people don't pick up after themselves.

It's been too hot to do anything besides sit in the living room and I'm too busy thinking all the time that I never have the time to actually stop and think. What am I doing? Where do I want to go? And what's the best way to get there?

You're next to me and I'm holding my breath and you're holding my waist.

Life is chaos.

This isn't torture. Torture happens in small, dark rooms in countries with names you struggle to spell. This is just mildly unpleasant. This isn't heroism. Heroism happens in churches that are also schools, performed by teachers with no names and no place to stay. This is just a good deed for the day. This isn't loss. Loss happens on fields filled with poppies, in hospitals buzzing with flies, in distant deserts and late at night when there's no good reason for the phone to ring. This is just longing. This isn't important. Important happens on bended knees and is breathed on last breaths with hands clutched tight, hearts tighter. This is just a distraction.

If it doesn't happen magically over night, you might want to try doing it manually, every day.

If our arms aren't strong enough, we'll rip the roof off with our hearts. If the road is dark, our dreams will light the way. If there isn't space in the back, we'll make space in our hopes. Pack a bag with everything you want to keep and leave the rest behind. Because I'm coming to pick you up.

You buy things and you keep them clean. You take care of them. Keep them in a special pocket. Away from keys and coins. Away from other things that should be kept clean and taken care of as well. Then they get scratched. And scratched again. And again. And again. And again. Soon, you don't care about them anymore. You don't keep them in a special pocket. You throw them in the bag with everything else. They've surpassed their form and become nothing but function. People are like that. You meet them and keep them clean. In a special pocket. And then you start to scratch them. Not on purpose. Sometimes you just drop them by accident or forget which pocket they're in. But after the first scratch, it's all downhill from there. You see past their form. They become function. They are a purpose. Only their essence remains.

Don't be afraid of the world. We're just all the people you could've been.

I don't know if you felt that or not. But it felt like two people kissing after hours of thinking about it. It felt like two people talking after nights of silence. It felt like two people touching after weeks of being numb. It felt like two people facing each other after months of looking away. It felt like two people in love after years of being alone. And it felt like two people meeting each other, after an entire lifetime of not meeting each other.

And you keep whispering the same story to yourself "I'll be unhappy now because that'll make me happy later. Because that's how a story works." So your happiness will always happen later, never now. Life isn't a story. Life is chaos.

I won't compose prose every morning you open your eyes next to me (I won't compare you to a summer's day). I won't kiss the tears from your cheeks whenever you cry. I won't remember every appointment. I won't keep the sheen on my armour. I won't know what to say sometimes. I won't get your order right. I'll be late. I'll fuck-up. But I'll write something for you when you least expect it (in summer or winter). But I'll hold you as tight as I can whenever I can. But I'll burst through the door as soon as I remember. But I'll polish it until it shines again. But I'll say something anyway. But I'll go back and make it right. But I'll get there. But I'll try.

Something has moved and bumped the cradle of everything. The world is out of sync. Birds fly backwards and the fish swim through the air. Hours pass like seconds and seconds pass like hours. The light fades before the sun leaves. The stars shine before the night falls. I am here early. You are here late.

Oh shut up. Every time it rains, it stops raining. Every time you hurt, you heal. After darkness, there is always light and you get reminded of this every morning but still you choose to believe that the night will last forever. Nothing lasts forever. Not the good or the bad. So you might as well smile while you're here.

If you've got the time, we can play a game. It’s easy. We just see if I’m the same shape as the space you have inside you. If everything fits, we both win. If it doesn’t, don’t force it. That's how you get splinters in your heart.

There's not enough soil in the earth for how deep I want to be buried. There's not enough water in the oceans for how slowly I want to sink. There's not enough fire in the sun for how brightly I want to burn. There aren't enough words in my head to say all the things I can't. There's not enough blood in my body for all I need to bleed. There's aren't enough couches in the world for how long I want to sleep. There's not enough life in me, for all I want to live. All I've had enough of, is you.

You would like to hand your heart to her and say touch it but then give it back.

All quotes by Charles Bukowski

"I don't know if this is true to you but for me sometimes it gets so bad that anything else, say like, looking at a bird on an overhead power line seems as great as a Beethoven symphony. Then you forget it and you're back again."

--'A Moment'

"That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen."

--'Women: A Novel'

"My ambition is handicapped by laziness."

--'Factotum'

"There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him, I say, stay in there, I'm not going to let anybody see you."

"If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is."

--'Factotum'

"Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice."

--'Women: A Novel'

"You boys can keep your virgins. Give me hot old women in high heels with asses that forgot to get old."

"I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of."

"Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you're allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It's like killing yourself, and then you're reborn. I guess I've lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now."

"There is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock."

"Pain is strange. A cat killing a bird, a car accident, a fire. Pain arrives--bang! And there it is, it sits on you. It's real. And to anybody watching, you look foolish. Like you've suddenly become an idiot. There's no cure for it unless you know somebody who understands how you feel, and knows how to help."

"We are like roses that have never bothered to bloom when we should have bloomed and it is as if the sun has become disgusted with waiting."

"If you get married they think you're finished and if you are without a woman they think you're incomplete."

"But now and then, a woman walks up, full blossom, a woman just bursting out of her dress…a sex creature, a curse, the end of it all."

"Dogs and angels are not very far apart."

"I never met another man I'd rather be. And even if that's a delusion, it's a lucky one."

"In that drunken place you would like to hand your heart to her and say touch it but then give it back."

"Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside—remembering all the times you've felt that way."

"She was desperate and she was choosey at the same time, and, in a way, beautiful, but she didn't have quite enough going for her to become what she imagined herself to be."

"I stopped looking for a Dream Girl, I just wanted one that wasn't a nightmare."