Leave the house before you find something worth staying in for.

I thank you God

for most this amazing day;

for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky;

and for everything which is natural, which is

infinite, which is yes.

--E.E. Cummings

In each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain,

choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice.

We’re each of us our own chiaroscuro, our own bit of illusion

fighting to emerge into something solid, something real.

We’ve got to forgive ourselves that.

I must remember to forgive myself.

Because there is a lot of grey to work with.

No one can live in the light all the time.

--Libba Bray, Gemma Doyle Trilogy

"It's more interesting to have just a picture of a small detail - then you can dream all the rest around it. Because when you see the whole thing, what is there to imagine?"

--Dries Van Noten

"Plant lots of flowers, so when you take the time to smell them, they'll be there."

--Bette Midler

There is shadow under this red rock,

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you.

--TS Eliot, The Waste Land

Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.

"Happiness? The color of it must be spring green…."

--Frances Mayes, American memoirist

"No Winter lasts forever; no Spring skips its turn."

--Hal Borland

"Nothing in the world is more common than unsuccessful people with talent, leave the house before you find something worth staying in for. "

--Banksy

“I mean, they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.”

--Banksy

“Because we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think our lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs! So people pretend there is drama where there is none.”

--Kurt Vonnegut

“Isn’t it strange that we talk least about the things we think about most.”

--Charles Lindbergh

“A career is born in public, talent in privacy.”

--Marilyn Monroe

“I don’t know what’s worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you’ve always wanted to be, and feel alone.”

--Daniel Keyes, 'Flowers for Algernon'

“For everyone, there are those moments when you have great days with someone you wouldn’t expect to. Then you have to go back to your real lives, but it makes an impression on you.”

--Sofia Coppola

“The biggest scars are unseen and unremembered, always from a smile you forgot long ago. We would never get anything done otherwise.”

--Iain Thomas

“Here I am, a bundle of past recollections and future dreams, knotted up in a reasonably attractive bundle of flesh. I remember what this flesh had gone through; I dream of what it may go through. I record here the actions of optical nerves, of taste buds, of sensory perception. And, I think: I am but one more drop in the great sea of matter, defined, with the ability to realize my existence.”

--Sylvia Plath

“A year from now you will wish you had started today.”

--Karen Lamb

Because of you

I can feel

myself

slowly but

surely

becoming

the me

I have always

dreamed

of

being.

--Tyler Knott Gregson, 'Becoming'

“Well, after I’ve been to university, I’m going to be French, and I’m going to Paris, and I’m going to smoke and wear black, and listen to Jacques Brel, and I won’t speak. Ever.”

--'An Education'

“When you like your work, everyday is a holiday.”

--Frank Tyger

“People often ask me questions that I cannot very well answer in words, and it makes me sad to think they are unable to hear the voice of my silence.”

--Inayat Khan

“The music was too loud for us to talk. Once we got out of Jefferson Park, we rolled down the one window that worked so the world would know we had good taste in music.”

--Quentin Jacobsen, 'Paper Towns'

"I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world."

--Mary Anne Radmacher

“I think she was afraid to love sometimes. I think it scared her. She was the type to like things that were concrete, like the ocean. Something you could point to and know what it is. I think that’s why she always struggled with God. And I think that’s why she also struggled with love. She couldn’t touch it. She couldn’t hold on to it and make sure it never changed. But sometimes it’s those things you can’t touch that you need to hold on to the most.”

--Carrie Ryan

“I don’t want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic. I try to give that to people. I do misrepresent things. I don’t tell truths. I tell what ought to be truth.”

--Blanche DuBois, 'A Streetcar Named Desire'

“I mean, I have the feeling that something in my mind is poisoning everything else.”

--Vladimir Nabokov, 'Lolita'

“I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.”

--Eleanor Roosevelt

“Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we’re still alive. We wish to assert our existence, like dogs peeing on fire hydrants. We put on display our framed photographs, our parchment diplomas, our silver-plated cups; we monogram our linen, we carve our names on trees, we scrawl them on washroom walls. It’s all the same impulse. What do we get from it? Applause, envy, respect? Or simply attention, of any kind we can get?

At the very least we want a witness. We can’t stand the idea of our own voices falling silent finally, like a radio winding down.”

--Margaret Atwood

"To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable; and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly… to listen to stars and buds, to babes and sages, with open heart; await occasions, hurry never… This is my symphony."

--William Henry Channing

Are you the love letter unwritten?

The song left abandoned in the neck of the guitar?

Are you the moments that pass between strangers

as neither says “hello” ?

--Dallas Clayton, 'Be More'

Live without pretending, love without depending, listen without defending, speak without offending.

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”

--Edith Wharton

“If you reach for the stars, all you’ll get are the stars, but we’ve found a whole new spin: if you reach for the heavens, you get the stars thrown in.”

--Mary Poppins, the Musical