tackle the motherfucking shit out of love.

“Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren’t. I’m not surprised some people prefer books. Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people’s lives, never your own.”

--Julian Barnes, 'Flaubert’s Parrot'

“Rock won’t eliminate your problems. But it will let you sort of dance all over them.”

--Pete Townshend

“When you’re happy, you enjoy the music. But, when you’re sad, you understand the lyrics.”

--Frank Ocean

“She discovered with great delight that one does not love one’s children just because they are one’s children but because of the friendship formed while raising them.”

--Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, 'Love in the Time of Cholera'

“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I do not think I’m easy to define. I have a wandering mind. And I’m not anything that you think I am.”

--Syd Barrett

“If I’ve learned one lesson from all that’s happened to me, it’s that there is no such thing as the biggest mistake of your existence. There’s no such thing as ruining your life. Life’s a pretty resilient thing, it turns out.”

--Sophie Kinsella

“Being effortless is the coolest thing in the world.”

--Stella McCartney

“Dress for the story that you’d like to have people know about you before you even open your mouth.”

--Rachel Roy

“Have you ever analyzed things to the degree where you can’t really remember the difference between what’s real and what you’ve created in your head?”

--Edie Sedgwick

"We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy."

--Joseph Campbell

“It’s about misunderstandings between people and places, being disconnected and looking for moments of connection. There are so many moments in life when people don’t say what they mean, when they are just missing each other, waiting to run into each other in a hallway.”

--Sofia Coppola (trying to explain what lost in translation is about)

"So each had a private little sun for her soul to bask in; some dream, some affection, some hobby, or at least some remote and distant hope…"

--Thomas Hardy, 'Tess of the D’Urbervilles'

"You deserve more than just somebody who’s nice to you. I think that so often these days, niceness seems like it should be enough because it seems like such a rare quality but when you get inside of it, you think, ‘mmmm … I can be pretty nice to myself.’ What about these other things?"

--Michelle Williams

“I love things that are old and beautiful and tell a story, even if it’s a sad one.”

--Michelle Williams

“I want love to be simple. I want to trust without thinking. I want to be generous with my affection and patience and love unconditionally. It is easier to love a person with their flaws than to weed through them. I want to love the whole person, not parts; and this is how I want to be loved.”

--Jewel Kilcher

“There is a mysterious force which draws together those who constantly think of each other. Fools call it “coincidence.”

--Cecil B. DeMille

"Our eyes are glued to the screen, but our thoughts are glued to the spot where our elbows are touching."

--Sonya Sones, 'Stop Pretending'

“I’ve remembered about buttercups, stink bugs and the stars. I read. And I’m finally getting some real writing done for the first time in months. It’s hard to find anything to say about life without immersing yourself in the world, but it’s also just about impossible to figure out what it might be, or how best to say it, without getting the hell out of it again.”

--Tim Kreider

“Don’t forget - no one else sees the world the way you do, so no one else can tell the stories that you have to tell.”

--Charles de Lint, 'The Blue Girl'

“You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight.”

--Elizabeth Gilbert, 'Eat, Pray, Love'

“You don’t need to explain your dreams. They belong to you.”

--Paulo Coelho

“It is untrue that bravery can be measured by a lack of fear. It takes guts to tremble. It takes tremble to love.”

--Unknown

“One day, you’re 17 and you’re planning for someday. And then quietly, without you ever really noticing, someday is today. And then someday is yesterday. And this is your life.”

--'One Tree Hill'

“You will be stupid. You will worry your parents. You will question your own choices, your relationships, your jobs, your friends, where you live, what you studied in college, that you went to college at all… If that happens, you’re doing it right.”

--Ira Glass

“When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others.”

--Peace Pilgrim

“The best thing you can possibly do with your life is to tackle the motherfucking shit out of love.”

--Cheryl Strayed, 'Tiny Beautiful Things'

“What I hate is ignorance, smallness of imagination, the eye that sees no farther than its own lashes.”

--Normand Elli, 'Egyptian Book of the Dead'

"Life has many ways of testing a person's will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen all at once."

--Paulo Coelho

“Sometimes you don’t need to talk things out. Sometimes, with the right person, things just need some time to percolate on their own, without the messy lunge and parry of discussion to hinder them.”

--Jonathan Tropper, 'Everything Changes'