It takes life to love Life.

"What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,

Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?

Degenerate sons and daughters, life is too strong for you--

It takes life to love Life."

--Lucinda Matlock

"There is something about the outside of a horse

that is good for the inside of a man."

--W. Churchill

“Caring is a powerful business advantage.”

--Scott Johnson

“What is your life about, anyway? Nothing but a struggle to be someone. Nothing but a running from your own silence.”

--Rumi

“You know the typical crowd, Wow, it’s Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there? Well, yeah. I’ve never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. That’s all. Sorry for all the millions, but I’ve never been lonely. I like myself. I’m the best form of entertainment I have.”

--Charles Bukowski

“Is it really that bad if someone sees who you are? Why is it humans have a problem with letting someone else see that they are human?”

--Joseph Gogler

“I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.”

--Tropic of cancer

“You are the soul of the soul of the universe, and your name is Love.”

--Rumi

“Simply to be desired is not a high enough aspiration. Outfits that say little more than ‘look at my body’ should be outlawed from one’s wardrobe. English style has always been about expressing one’s intelligence, charm and views through one’s choice of image. Expressing who you are and what you want to be. If what you’re saying is just ‘be my boyfriend’ then you’re not saying much. Looking sexy should always come second to looking interesting - to look interesting is to look beautiful.”

--Luella’s Guide to English Style

“When things are good, say good things. When things are bad, say twice as many good things.”

--R. Todd Michael

“Just look at the animals, at the birds; nobody is worried, nobody is sad, nobody is frustrated. You don’t see a buffalo freaking out. He is perfectly contented chewing the same grass every day. He is almost enlightened. There is no tension; there is a tremendous harmony with nature, with himself, with everything as it is. Buffaloes don’t make parties to revolutionize the world, to change buffaloes into super buffaloes, to make buffaloes religious, virtuous. No animal is concerned at all with human ideas. And they all must be laughing: What has happened to you? Why can’t you be just yourself as you are? What is the need to be somebody else?

So the first thing is a deep acceptance of yourself.”

--Osho

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.”

--Jane Austen

“Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.”

--Oprah Winfrey

“Some women choose to follow men, and some women choose to follow their dreams. If you’re wondering which way to go, remember that your career will never wake up and tell you that it doesn’t love you anymore.”

--Lady Gaga

“I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.”
--Mark Twain

Love and be loved if at all possible.

All quotes by author David Nicholls

"What are you going to do with your life?" In one way or another it seemed that people had been asking her this forever; teachers, her parents, friends at three in the morning, but the question had never seemed this pressing and still she was no nearer an answer... "Live each day as if it's your last', that was the conventional advice, but really, who had the energy for that? What if it rained or you felt a bit glandy? It just wasn't practical. The trick of it, she told herself, is to be courageous and bold and make a difference. Not change the world exactly, just the bit around you. Go out there with your double-first, your passion and your new Smith Corona electric typewriter and work hard at … something. Change lives through art maybe. Write beautifully. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved if at all possible.”

--'One Day'

"This is me.’" He handed her the precious scrap of paper. ‘Call me or I’ll call you, but one of us will call, yes? What I mean is it’s not a competition. You don’t lose if you phone first"

--'One Day'

"She was reaching the limits of how much its possible to change a man."

--'One Day'

"Em, we've known each other five or six years now, but two years properly, as, you know, 'friends', which isn't that long but I think I know a bit about you and I think I know what your problem is. Here it is. I think you're scared of being happy, Emma. I think you think that the natural way of things is for your life to be grim and grey and dour and to hate your job, hate where you live, not to have success or money or God forbid a boyfriend. In fact, I think I'll go further and say that I think you actually get a kick out of being disappointed and under-achieving, because it's easier, isn't it? Failure and unhappiness is easier because you can make a joke out of it."

--'One Day'

"She sometimes wondered what her twenty-two-year-old self would think of today's Emma Mayhew. Would she consider her self-centered? Compromised? A bourgeois sell-out, with her appetite for home ownership and foreign travel, clothes from Paris and expensive haircuts? Would she find her conventional, with her new surname and hopes for a family life? Maybe, but then the twenty-two-year-old Emma Morley wasn't such a paragon either: pretentious, petulant, lazy, speechifying, judgmental. Self-pitying, self-righteous, self-important, all of the selfs except self-confident, the quality that she always needed most."

--'One Day'

"You know what I can't understand? You have all these people telling you all the time how great you are, smart and funny and talented and all that, I mean endlessly, I've been telling you for years. So why don't you believe it? Why do you think people say that stuff, Em? Do you think it's a conspiracy, people secretly ganging up to be nice about you?"

--'One Day'

"...you feel a little bit lost right now about what to do with your life, a bit rudderless and oarless and aimless but that's okay that's alright because we're all meant to be like that at twenty-four."

--'One Day'

"Oh you know me. I have no emotions. I'm a robot. Or a nun. A robot nun."

--'One Day'

"And then some days you wake up and everything's perfect."

--'One Day'

"She had never been a proficient flirt. Her spasms of kittenish behaviour were graceless and inept, like normal conversation on roller skates."

--'One Day'

"Independence is the luxury of all those people who are too confident, and busy, and popular, and attractive to be just plain old lonely. And make no mistake, lonely is absolutely the worst thing to be. Tell someone that you've got a drink problem, or an eating disorder, or your dad died when you were a kid even, and you can almost see their eyes light up with the sheer fascinating drama and pathos of it all, because you've got an issue, something for them to get involved in, to talk about and analyse and discuss and maybe even cure. But tell someone you’re lonely and of course they’ll seem sympathetic, but look very carefully and you'll see one hand snaking behind their back, groping for the door handle, ready to make a run for it, as if loneliness itself were contagious. Because being lonely is just so banal, so shaming, so plain and dull and ugly."

--'Starter for Ten'

"No matter how predictable, banal and listless the rest of my life might be, you can guarantee that there'll always be something interesting going on with my skin."

--'Starter for Ten''

"If she does have a failing, and it's obviously only a tiny one, it's that she doesn't seem particularly curious about other people, or me, anyway."

--'A Question of Attraction: A Novel'

Saying yes begins things.

“Only buy what you absolutely love…it doesn’t mean they have to be expensive, just that you love them. Then start to mix them up in as many looks as possible…the more time that goes by, the more editing you can do until you have a refined selection, and, every day you could literally wear a different outfit that is an expression of your personal style.”

--Norma Kamali

"I’m going to make everything around me beautiful - that will be my life.”
--E. D. W.

"Bad taste bothers me."

--Giorgio Armani

“You don’t make me feel like you used to.

That’s why I’m leaving

That’s why people leave each other

They come to their senses and get selfish again.”

--Henry Rollins, 'See a Grown Man Cry, Now Watch Him Die'

“It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

--J.K Rowling

“There are the friends you meet for the occasional happy hour, and there are friends with whom you have longstanding Taco Tuesdays. Taco Tuesday means a bottle of wine for each person and peeling back the business-casual mask of the weekday while relaying mortifying tales of performed adulthood to one another. You hit reply all. You cried at your desk. You said “I love you” when you were unprepared or drunk or sober. Any day can be Taco Tuesday. These are the people who fill in your blanks. These are the right people.”

--The Hairpin, 'What We Have Going For Us'

"Why not go out on a limb? That's where the fruit is."

--Mark Twain

“Burnout brings strong emotions like anger, fear, jealousy and sadness. Use those feelings to light your creativity on fire.”

--Melissa Gorzela

"In the long run, every project I do is about living, about the flow of life, the riches of the family, where the sun sets, where the sun rises, the climate, the periphery of a building."

--Mike Meire'

"This was an industry that once thrived on exposure. Today I find that the most interesting people are hidden."

--Zac Efron

“She tries it on, like a dress.

She decides it doesn’t fit,

and starts to take it off.

Her skin comes, too.”

--Lola Haskins, 'Love'

“Why don’t you tell me that “if the girl had been worth having, she’d have waited for you?” No, sir, the girl really worth having won’t wait for anybody.”

--F. Scott Fitzgerald

“The happiest people are those who think the most interesting thoughts. Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good company, good conversation, are the happiest people in the world. And they are not only happy in themselves, they are the cause of happiness in others.”

--William Phelps

"Cynics always say no. But saying yes begins things. Saying yes is how things grow. Saying yes leads to knowledge. “Yes” is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say yes.”

--Stephen Colbert

Seize this very minute.

“I love the way you can fall in love with a piece of literature; how words alone can get your heart doing that.”

--Laura Marling

“You have to find the right distance between people. Too close, and they overwhelm you, too far and they abandon you.”

--Hanif Kureishi

“The hardest period in life is one’s 20s. It’s a shame because you’re your most gorgeous and you’re physically in peak condition. But it’s actually when you’re most insecure and full of self-doubt. When you don’t know what’s going to happen, it’s frightening.”

--Helen Mirren in Esquire

"Cherish your solitude. Take trains by yourself to places you have never been. Sleep out alone under the stars. Learn how to drive a stick shift. Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back. Say no when you don't want to do something. Say yes if your instincts are strong, even if everyone around you disagrees. Decide whether you want to be liked or admired. Decide if fitting in is more important than finding out what you're doing here."

--Eve Ensler

“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.”

--Charles Bukowski

“I keep the telephone of my mind open to peace, harmony, health, love, and abundance. Then, whenever doubt, anxiety, or fear try to call me, they will keep getting a busy signal-and soon they’ll forget my number.”

--Edith Armstrong

"Seize this very minute; What you can do, or dream you can, begin it; Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."

--Johnston Wolfgang von Goethe

“You do the right thing even if it makes you feel bad. The purpose of life is not to be happy but to be worthy of happiness.”

--Tracy Kidder

“She remembered something a woman in Paris had told her once. A woman in her forties, much married, elegant, a little world-weary. ‘There is nothing easier in this world,’ this woman had claimed, ‘than getting a man to kiss you.’ ‘Oh really?’ Eva had said, ‘so how do you do that?’ ‘Just stand close to a man,’ the woman had said, ‘very close, as close as you can without touching - he will kiss you in one minute or two. It’s inevitable. For them it’s like an instinct - they can’t resist. Infallible.”

--William Boyd

“Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country."

--Anais Nin

careless in our summer clothes,

Together, we wrote a letter: “Dear August, our muscles are tired.” Standing in the doorway, I caught the last glimpse of July, lazy heat hovering over the parked cars like restless ghosts. Sometimes, mostly when it’s early (or when my headphones can’t save me), I think about all of the people we’ve been with one another. All of those colors that bled us dry, turned us muddy like watercolor water. And in the knee-tall grass with your hands behind your back, I knew there’d always been something between us akin to the wonder that keeps the stars apart (forgive me if I’m paraphrasing). The yellow pins slowly stopped singing, but that’s okay. This was all delicate and harsh, like smoke rings I wore like proud diamonds even when they turned my finger green. I am writing a letter with all of those high altitude thoughts—the ones that made my fingers twitch as I moved backwards through time. But about July, and whatever came before it: I am waving goodbye. Ushering in the change that comes ahead with childlike calls to the backyard. Let’s be barefoot. Let’s give up what we know, not to have it taken away but to abandon it. “Dear July, you were a red herring. Dear August, here we are, please keep our roots from doubling back. Please keep us safe like a kiss on the corner of the mouth. Please don’t write us all off just yet.”
--jenna2step

Cut yourself out of stone.

“Be proud of your mistakes. Well, proud may not be exactly the right word, but respect them, treasure them, be kind to them, learn from them. And, more than that, and more important than that, make them. Make mistakes. Make great mistakes, make wonderful mistakes, make glorious mistakes. Better to make a hundred mistakes than to stare at a blank piece of paper too scared to do anything wrong.”

--Neil Gaiman

“Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit. Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset."

--Saint Francis de Sales

“Isn’t elegance forgetting what one is wearing?”

--Yves Saint Laurent

“Never be the first to arrive at a party or the last to go home, and never, ever be both.”

--David Brown

"Be very, very careful what you put in that head because you will never, ever get it out.”

--Thomas Cardinal Wolsey

“I believe that one defines oneself by reinvention. To not be like your parents. To not be like your friends. To be yourself. To cut yourself out of stone.”

--Henry Rollins

“The truth is that there are a lot of people like you, us, with strange hobbies or talents or gifts and we try to hide it because we’re afraid that it makes us seem weird or it will turn people off, but that’s a mistake. What makes me unique has brought every person I love into my life.”

--Ned, 'Pushing Daisies'

“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.”

--C.S. Lewis

“There is a voice inside of you, that whispers all day long, 'I feel that this is right for me, I know that this is wrong.' No teacher, preacher, parent, friend or wise man can decide what’s right for you— Just listen to the voice that speaks inside.”

--Shel Silverstein

“I will love you if you don’t marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else, your co-star, perhaps, or Y., or even O., or anyone Z. through A., even R. Although sadly I believe it will be quite some time before two women can be allowed to marry and I will love you if you have a child, and I will love you if you have two children, or three children, or even more, although I personally think three is plenty, and I will love you if you never marry at all, and never have children, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all, and I must say that on late, cold nights I prefer this scenario out of all the scenarios I have mentioned. That, Beatrice, is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.”

--Lemony Snicket, 'The Beatrice Letters'