Something is always falling apart in me

All quotes from My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

But ever since then, we’ve been too busy looking over our shoulders to run headlong into growing up.

In my family, we seem to have a tortured history of not saying what we ought to and not meaning what we do.

So I do what I do best. I move in the opposite direction.

That’s pretty much the way it goes – fix one leak in the dike just in time to watch another one start spouting. Something is always falling apart in me.

There are so many things I have to work hard at now, that I used to be able to carry out instinctively – draw in oxygen, keep my silence, do the right thing.

Like coloring the sky in with a crayon; there is no language for grief this big. I can’t do this, I whisper.

Honey, I'm home.

All quotes from The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Because quite frequently my life depends on running faster than whoever’s chasing me.

Home is where the heart is. But my heart is here. So I must be home… Hi, honey, I’m home. I’m home.

He is coming, and I am here.

And you are perfect. I mean, as much as I love you, back there, it’s the shared life, the knowing each other… the fact that there are bad times makes it more real. It’s the reality that I want.

It’s different when you don’t care.

Do you worry sometimes that all the really great stuff has already happened?

“I do get tired of humans.”

“Yeah. Too many maniacs, not enough Michelangelos.”

You know I've got this theory, there are two kinds of people in the world. There are lyric people and music people. You know, the lyrics people tend to be analytical. You know, all about the meaning of the song. They're the ones you see with the CD insert out like 5 minutes after buying it, pouring over the lyrics, interpreting the hell out of everything. Then there's the music people who could care less for the lyrics as long as its just got like a good beat and you could dance to it. I don't know, sometimes it might be easier to be a music girl and not a lyric girl. But since I'm not, let me just say this. Sometimes things find you when you need them to find you, I believe that. And for me it's usually song lyrics.

Time takes it all.

"Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them."

--Dalai Lama

"Strangely enough, this is the past that somebody in the future is longing to go back to."

--Ashleigh Brilliant

I've learned to let go, not hold on so tight. To open the jar at just the right moment, and enjoy the light.

"She wanted to be irresponsible, she wanted to be looked after, to be told that she didn't have to worry about a thing and that someone else would take care of everything. How easy life would be without having grown-up problems to worry about. And then she could grow up all over again..."

--Cecilia Ahern

Time takes it all. Whether you want it to or not. Time takes it all, time bears it away, and in the end, there is only darkness. Sometimes we find others in that darkness. And sometimes we lose them there again.

“And my first bit of free advice is this: You are alive. Your whole life is still before you. More terrible things will happen to you. Wonderful things will happen, too. Don’t run from life. Embrace it.”

--Robin Jones Gunn

“I have only known her for two years. But if you took every memory, every moment, if you stretched them end to end—they’d reach forever.”

--Jodi Picoult, 'My Sister’s Keeper'

“I like to smell things and look at things, and sometimes stay up all night, walking, and watch the sun rise.”

--Ray Bradury

“The positive way to look at this is that from here things can only go up. But I’ve been up, and I always felt like a trespasser. A transient at the top. It’s like I’ve got a visa for happiness, but for sadness I’ve got a lifetime pass.”

--Carrie Fisher

Imagine if you suddenly learned that the people, the places, the moments most important to you were not gone, not dead, but worse, had never been. What kind of hell would that be?

"Fame to me is only a temporary and partial happiness, that's not what fulfills me. It warms you a bit, but the warming is temporary. It might be kind of a relief to be finished. It's sort of like you don't know what kind of yard dash you're running, and then you're at the finish line and you sort of sigh -- you've made it. But fame will go by -- and so long. I've had you, fame. I've always known it was fickle."

--Marilyn Monroe, in her last interview, which Life published a week before her death

It's all in your head

“He said it's all in your head, and I said, so’s everything - but he didnt get it.”

--Fiona Apple, 'Paper Bag'

“You’re going to come across people in your life who will say all the right words at all the right times. But in the end, it’s always their actions you should judge them by. It’s actions, not words, that matter.”

--Nicholas Sparks

Little things, stupid things, that were left unsaid. And all these things that were left unsaid piled up, like the clutter in our storage room. And after awhile, there was so much that was left unsaid, that we barely said anything at all.

I want to love, and be loved.

“I heard what you said. I’m not the silly romantic you think. I don’t want the heavens or the shooting stars. I don’t want gemstones or gold. I have those things already. I want…a steady hand. A kind soul. I want to fall asleep, and wake, knowing my heart is safe. I want to love, and be loved.”

--Shana Abé

A girl only needs three things in her life: love to make her weak, alcohol to make her strong, and friends to pick her up when the first two make her hit the ground.

You may not be her first, her last, or her only. She loved before she may love again. But if she loves you now, what else matters? She’s not perfect - you aren’t either, and the two of you may never be perfect together but if she can make you laugh, cause you to think twice, and admit to being human and making mistakes, hold onto her and give her the most you can. She may not be thinking about you every second of the day, but she will give you a part of her that she knows you can break - her heart. So don’t hurt her, don’t change her, don’t analyze and don’t expect more than she can give. Smile when she makes you happy, let her know when she makes you mad, and miss her when she’s not there.

--Bob Marley

EVERY WOMAN...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE

enough money within her control to move out and rent a place of her own even if she never wants to or needs to

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE

something perfect to wear if the employer or date of her dreams wants to see her in an hour

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE

a youth she’s content to leave behind

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE

a past juicy enough that she’s looking forward to retelling it in her old age

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE

a set of screwdrivers, a cordless drill, and a black lace bra

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE

one friend who always makes her laugh and one who let's her cry

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE

a good piece of furniture not previously owned by anyone else in her family

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE

eight matching plates, wine glasses with stems, and a recipe for a meal that will make her guests feel honored

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE

a feeling of control over her destiny

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW

how to fall in love without losing herself

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW

how to quit her job, break up with a lover, and confront a friend without ruining the friendship

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW

when to try harder and when to walk away

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW

that she can’t change the length of her calves, the width of her hips, or the nature of her parents

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW

that her childhood may not have been perfect, but it’s over

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW

what she would and wouldn’t do for love or more

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW

how to live alone, even if she doesn’t like it

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW

whom she can trust, whom she can’t, and why she shouldn’t take it personally

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW

where to go… be it to her best friend’s kitchen table, or a charming inn in the woods, when her soul needs soothing

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW

what she can and can’t accomplish in a day… a month… and a year.

--Pamela Redmond Satran

I've spent my life walking on my tiptoes. Mistakes. I hate mistakes. Neither my limbs nor my lips match my heart. They do not know each other. So many mistakes. When I was younger my mistakes were only mine and I could deal with them in the dark when the world stopped and I cried. Now mistakes count against me. Every one. Every mistake proof that I do not deserve to be relied upon, trusted, or invested in. Not because my true self isn't worth it. But because my hand may slip and injure you beyond healing. And I have learned those are unforgivable mistakes. So I walk on my tiptoes. I remember when I never cried. You thought I didn't care. I remember when I learned to cry and for a little while it meant something. It erased mistakes because crying meant I regretted them. Or at least that I cared. But then I cried all the time and to you that just meant I made more mistakes than I could keep up with. More mistakes than I was worth. Mistakes. I hate mistakes. I hate walking on my tiptoes.

Someone stop her

“I realize full well how hard it must be to go on living alone in a place from which someone has left you, but there is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope for.”

--Haruki Murakami

You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.

"The world always seems brighter when you’ve just made something that wasn’t there before."

--Neil Gaiman

"Luxury is not a necessity to me, but beautiful and good things are."

--Anais Nin

"To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time."

--Leonard Bernstein

“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”

--Maya Angelou

Rediscover you. Admire yourself more often. You are as beautiful as your heart remembers.

Starting over is the bravest kind of starting there is.

"That’s the nice thing about dreams, the way you wake up before you fall."

— Marya Hornbacher

The most universal secret is 'I hurt'.

“You just analyze everything until it barely even exists.”

--My So-Called Life

“You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.”

--James Allen

“Your clothes should be tight enough to show you’re a woman but loose enough to show you’re a lady.”

--Marilyn Monroe

“I’m thankful for women. I think women are more intelligent than men. Also, without women, there would be no cookies.”

--Norm MacDonald

i'm lovesick

homesick

sick of what i've got

and sick for what i've lost

i just want

i just want to be well

i've got just enough

of what i used to have

to remind me of what i can't have

and just enough

of what i've got

to keep me lovesick

homesick

sick of what i've got

and sick for what i've lost

and i just want

i just need

to be well.

Someone stop her

the girl

with all the beautiful things

slow

slow her down

she enjoys

only

the finding and

not

the having

someone stop her

teach

her to see what

she has

already found

teach her

to enjoy it a little

longer

show

her she has found

enough

she has enough

someone

stop her

I don't really have any secrets.

She held her grief behind her eyes like an ocean and when she leaned forward into the day it spilled onto the floor and she wiped at it quickly with her foot and pretended no one had seen.

I don't really have any secrets, she told me once. I just forget a lot of stuff.

There are things I refuse to show you, my mirror told me. You've got enough to worry about already.

I mainly want someone to tell me I'm right & then pay me, he said. Is that too much to ask? & I said as long as you're living in a dream world, you might as well make it work for you.

Love yourself first and everything else falls into line.

"Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. Your really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world."

--Lucille Ball

I am very fortunate to have a loving fiance who leaves me notes in unexpected places. I would absolutely, without a doubt, send my first note to him to let him know just how lucky I am to be marrying someone as wonderful and thoughtful as he is. I would have it tucked in a safe place for him to find on our wedding day, so that hopefully it would brighten such a special day the same way he has brightened all my ordinary ones.

Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something, and has lost something.

"Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable."

--C.S. Lewis

"My music was different when I was in high school. I was singing about love. You know, things I don't care about anymore."

--Lady Gaga

"The hardest of all is learning to be a well of affection, and not a fountain, to show them that we love them, not when we feel like it, but when they do.”

--Nan Fairbrother

Every girl should have one old love she can imagine going back to, and one who reminds her how far she has come. Every girl should have a past juicy enough that she's looking forward to retelling it to her grandkids. Every girl should know when to try harder, and when to walk away.

I don't know what to say.

“The tongue is the only tool that gets sharper with use”

--Washington Irving

"The true genius shudders at incompleteness - and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be."

--Edgar Allan Poe

"Suddenly, I don't know what to say. It happens often to me. I know what I want to say, I think about whether it is what I mean, but when the moment comes to speak, I can't say it."

--Nana, Vivre Sa Vie

To live honestly, truthfully and to be completely present is the ultimate enterprise.

"If you're out there you're vulnerable. People prefer to disappear in life, to repress their personality. That's not living. It's dying. I see them all over the place, the walking dead."

--Grace Jones

This life is collected in things we put in our pockets and people we could have married.

You wanna know what living life to the fullest actually is? It's waking up on a Monday morning with no complaints. It's knowing you always deserve to laugh. It's doing what feels right no matter what. It's doing what you want to, no matter how stupid you look. It's about being yourself, 'cause no one can tell you you're doing it wrong.

"Was I ever crazy? Maybe. Or maybe life is. Crazy isn’t being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It’s you or me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child forever."

--'Girl, Interrupted'

"Ninety percent of the world's woes come from people not knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailties, and even their real virtues. Most of us go all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves – so how can we know anyone else?"

--Sydney J. Harris

“The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”

--Barbara Kingsolver

"A lot of my early work, especially the reflections, was about what I call the surrealism of everyday life .. picking out the strangeness in the world we live in. Those doors are doors that could lead you to other worlds, or what is behind what is in front of you."

--Stephanie Torbert

"But in some ways, the most significant choices one makes in life are done for reasons that are not all that dramatic, not earth-shaking at all; often enough, the choices we make are, for better or for worse, made by default."

— Marya Hornbacher

The expected is what we live for. The unexpected is what changes our lives.

Whatever doesn't kill you, will probably try again.

The saddest thing that I can possibly think of is a dead bird, they make me think about how no matter how free you are one day you will die.

"Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these."

--Susan B. Anthony

"That is how you know you’ve left childhood behind -- when you wish for time to go backward."

--Alice Hoffman, 'Here On Earth'

"It’s the sort of day you wouldn’t mind losing completely, even if it meant your life would be twenty-four hours shorter."

--Alice Hoffman, 'Here On Earth'

What a world we live in. I want to be incredibly close to the heart of it all. To live honestly, truthfully and to be completely present is the ultimate enterprise. And right now, I couldn’t possibly ask for anything more. I am a very lucky girl.

Love is a ghost train howling on the radio.

All quotes by Adam Duritz

"And so, she's suddenly beautiful. And we all want something beautiful. Man, I wish I was beautiful."

"I said I’m sorry by now, at least once to just about everyone."

"I took the cannonball down to the ocean

Watched the diesel disappear beneath the tumbling waves

Love is a ghost train howling on the radio

'Remember everything,' she said 'when only memory remains.'"

"I want to be a lion, everybody wants to pass as cats."

"And I dream of Michelangelo when I'm lying in my bed

I see God upon the ceiling

I see angels overhead

And he seems so close

As he reaches out his hand

We are never quite as close

As we are led to understand."

"I kept thinking how much my life in retrospect feels like the moments captured on all the Polaroids I kept looking at. It's just this series of flashes, isn't it? You wander around in the dark and then there's this flash and something gets caught in the light like a trap. Flash. A memory. Flash. A birthday. Flash. A series of chords on the piano. Flash. She laughs. Flash. A girl in a yellow hat. Flash. A sly smile at the door and a green dress. Flash. Something you should have kept."