--Jack Kerouac, 'The Dharma Bums'
“Millions of people have decided not to be sensitive. They have grown thick skins around themselves just to avoid being hurt by anybody. But it is at great cost. Nobody can hurt them, but nobody can make them happy either.”
--Osho
“Remember one thing always — that there is no cause to be anxious in life, and all causes are just excuses. If you decide not to be anxious, then nothing will make you anxious; there is nothing worth it. Life is such a fleeting phenomenon that is going to disappear one day. Why be bothered too much about it? We are only here for so few days. Just play the game and remain aloof. If one can remain a witness, aloof, distant from things, then anxiety is not possible. Anxiety comes into existence only when we become identified with small things. And they all pass.”
--Osho
“There is no one torturing you except yourself. There is nobody except yourself; your whole life is your work—your creation. Once you grasp this, things start changing…transforming. You can play at changing your hell into heaven, or, if you are in love with misery, create as much as you wish.”
--Osho
“If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.”
--Thomas Merton
“As time goes on, you’ll understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn’t, doesn’t. Time solves most things. And what time can’t solve, you have to solve yourself.”
--Haruki Murakami, 'Dance, Dance, Dance'
“Chic is knowing how to buy something that will last.”
--Ellen Wallace
“When a woman says, ‘I have nothing to wear!’, what she really means is, ‘There’s nothing here for who I’m supposed to be today.”
--Caitlin Moran, ‘How to be a Woman’
“I take pleasure in my transformations. I look quiet and consistent, but few know how many women there are in me.”
--Anais Nin
“The less you reveal, the more people can wonder.”
--Emma Watson
“You may think I’m small, but I have a universe in my head.”
--Yoko Ono
"Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary."
--Cecil Beaton
“The truth is undeniably the love of my life, following me in my own tread, helping to keep me up when I falter, and making sure to keep me placed well when my modesty comes up short. & though the truth walks with me aggressively; it is not of my own will or desire. Regardless of how far behind it is, in most cases how ahead, the truth always confronts me. I am always a part of its story, and no matter how many lies I tell, how well I can conceive them or preach them… the truth is always the epilogue of mine.”
--Rakishi, 1956. On Losing My Own Ghosts.
“The artist is by necessity a collector.”
--Paul Rand
“Well, it seems to me that the best relationships - the ones that last - are frequently the ones that are rooted in friendship. You know, one day you look at the person and you see something more than you did the night before. Like a switch has been flicked somewhere. And the person who was just a friend is suddenly the only person you can ever imagine yourself with.”
--Dana Scully, 'The X Files'
"Those who love you are not fooled by mistakes you have made or dark images you hold about yourself. They remember your beauty when you feel ugly; your wholeness when you are broken; your innocence when you feel guilty; and your purpose when you are confused."
--Alan Cohen
“I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together.”
--Lisa Kleypas, 'Blue-Eyed Devil'
“I want to know you moved and breathed in the same world with me.”
--F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Eventually you will come to understand that love heals everything, and love is all there is.”
--Gary Zukav
“My heart is drumming in my chest so hard it aches, but it’s the good kind of ache, like the feeling you get on the first real day of autumn, when the air is crisp and the leaves are all flaring at the edges and the wind smells just vaguely of smoke - like the end and the beginning of something all at once.”
--Lauren Oliver
“Friends were like clothes: Fine while they lasted but eventually they wore thin or you grew out of them.”
--David Nicholls, 'One Day'
“And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.”
--John Steinbeck, 'East of Eden'
“Give your daughters difficult names. Give your daughters names that command the full use of tongue. My name makes you want to tell me the truth. My name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right.”
--Warsan Shire
“Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don’t have to compromise convictions to be compassionate.”
--Rick Warren
“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”
--Henry David Thoreau
“Don’t wish me happiness. I don’t expect to be happy all the time… It’s gotten beyond that somehow. Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor. I will need them all.”
--Anne Morrow Lindbergh
“I’m grateful for anything that reminds me of what’s possible in this life. Books can do that. Films can do that. Music can do that. School can do that. It’s so easy to allow one day to simply follow into the next, but every once in a while we encounter something that shows us that anything is possible, that dramatic change is possible, that something new can be made, that laughter can be shared.”
--Jonathan Safran Foer
“I begin to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. He taught me that if you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good, either. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be.”
--Roald Dahl, 'My Uncle Oswald'
“It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.”
--Vincent van Gogh
