What is done in love is well done.

“Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.”

--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

There is nothing wrong with loving the crap out of everything.

“If you can think of times in your life that you’ve treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we would treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely loved more than life itself. And I think it’s probably possible to achieve that. I think part of the job we’re here for is to learn how to do it.”

--Unknown

“Whatever’s there to feel, feel it – the riddance, the relief, the fright and freedom, the fear of forgetting, the dull ache of your own mortality. Get with someone you can trust with tears, with anger, and wonderment and utter silence. Get that part done – the sooner the better. The only way around these things is through them.”

--Thomas Lynch, 'The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade'

“Italy is a dream that keeps returning for the rest of your life.”

--Anna Akhmatova

“My shadow serves as the friend I crave."

--Anna Akhmatova

“Instead of saying “I don’t have time” try saying “it’s not a priority,” and see how that feels. Often, that’s a perfectly adequate explanation. I have time to iron my sheets, I just don’t want to. But other things are harder. Try it: “I’m not going to edit your résumé, sweetie, because it’s not a priority.” “I don’t go to the doctor because my health is not a priority.” If these phrases don’t sit well, that’s the point. Changing our language reminds us that time is a choice. If we don’t like how we’re spending an hour, we can choose differently.”

--Unknown

“You either like me or you don’t. It took me twenty-something years to learn how to love myself, I don’t have that kinda time to convince somebody else.”

--Daniel Franzese

“There is nothing wrong with loving the crap out of everything. Negative people find their walls. So never apologize for your enthusiasm. Never. Ever. Never.”

--Ryan Adams

“Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.”

--Mark Victor Hansen

“You know what’s the trouble with you? You’re an expatriate. One of the worst type… You get precious… You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed with sex. You spend all your time talking, not working.”

--Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises

“I want to know you. You seem like someone worth knowing. Every day I feel like I’m surrounded by people with hard edges and sour faces but I get the sense that you’re different. Too often people seem to think that they have the answers to everything. Their faces are trapped in permascowls and they can’t be bothered with anything besides their own narcissism. You aren’t like that. You still ask questions. You’re still looking for the answers.”

--Ryan O’Connell, 'I Want To Know You'

Everything in its perfect time. Everything is unfolding.

“Fear is the cheapest room in the house

I would like to see you living

in better conditions.”

--Hafiz

“Why did he write to her,

“I can’t live without you”?

And why did she write to him,

“I can’t live without you”?

For he went west, she went east,

And they both lived.”

--Carl Sandburg

“The simple lack of her is more to me than others’ presence.”

--Edward Thomas

“When I sing ‘Someone Like You,’ I know that every single person in the room will be able to relate to it. That’s where that emotional connection comes from. I have sympathy for myself, I have sympathy for them, they have sympathy for me, and I know that we are all there knowing exactly how each other feels. It’s like a big pact. You can just feel it. You can slice it.”

--Adele in the March Issue of Vogue

“She writes like she’s starving and reads like she’s feasting.”

--R.D. Larson

“The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life — and one is as good as the other.”

--Ernest Hemingway

“Creativity is just connecting things.”

--Steve Jobs

“Getting dressed is really the only area in my life that I can say I am fearless; I’m terrified of so many things, yet somehow am not afraid to wear anything.”

--Nick Wooster

“The goal for all women should be to make her own living and to support herself, to be self-sufficient. That is the philosophy of her clothes. They are working for modern women, women who do not need to assure their happiness by looking sexy to men, by emphasising their figures, but who attract them with their minds.”

--Rei Kawakubo (in an interview with Nicolas Coleridge in 1988)

“I’ve started my new meaningful life today and I bought a whole new meaningful wardrobe to go with it.”

--Phyllis Nefler, 'Troop Beverly Hills'

“Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend - or a meaningful day.”

--Dalai Lama

“Sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested.”

--Hunter S. Thompson

“Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.”

--Francis Bacon on what may not always be, but very often is, the truth.

“Food, fire, walks, dreams, cold, sleep, love, slowness, time, quiet, books, seasons – all these things, which are not really things, but moments of life – take on a different quality at night-time, where the moon reflects the light of the sun, and we have time to reflect what life is to us, knowing that it passes, and that every bit of it, in its change and its difference, is the here and now of what we have. Life is too short to be all daylight. Night is not less; it’s more.”

--Jeanette Winterson, Why I adore the night

“Remember to look up at the stars, and not down to your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up.”

--Stephen Hawking

“I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”

--Henry David Thoreau

“Loners, if you catch them, are well worth the trouble. Not dulled by excess human contact, nor blasé or focused on your crotch while jabbering about themselves, loners are curious, vigilant, full of surprises. They do not cling. Separate wherever they go, awake or asleep, they shimmer with the iridescence of hidden things seldom seen.”

--Anneli Rufus, 'Party of One: The Loners’ Manifesto'

“Loneliness is black coffee and late-night television; solitude is herb tea and soft music. Solitude, quality solitude, is an assertion of self-worth, because only in the stillness can we hear the truth of our own unique voices.”

--Pearl Cleage

“I change my thoughts, I change my world.”

--Norman Vincent Peale

“Be empty of worrying.

Think of who created thought! Why do you stay in prison

When the door is so wide open?”

--Rumi

“Nothing good gets away.”

--John Steinbeck

“Some things you’re not letting happen right now because the timing isn’t perfect for you. Some you’re not letting happen because you are very aware of where you are. But all things, as they are happening, are happening in perfect order. And if you will relax and begin saying, “Everything in its perfect time. Everything is unfolding. And I’m enjoying where I am now, in relationship to where I’m going. Content where I am, and eager for more,” that is the perfect vibrational stance.”

--Abraham Hicks

“Your 20’s are your ‘selfish’ years. It’s a decade to immerse yourself in every single thing possible. Be selfish with your time, and all the aspects of you. Tinker with shit, travel, explore, love a lot, love a little, and never touch the ground.”

--Kyoko Escamilla

“Don’t ask for guarantees. And don’t look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore.”

--Ray Bradbury

“You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing.”

--Richard P. Feynman

“It’s a sad day when you find out that it’s not accident or time or fortune, but just yourself that kept things from you.”

--Lillian Hellman

"it has been a beautiful

fight

still is."

--Charles Bukowski

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

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

Just say it out loud.

“Suddenly I realize

That if I stepped out of my body I would break

Into blossom.”

--James Wright, 'A Blessing'

“The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words, and that if you know the words that the world is made of, you can make of it whatever you wish.”

--Terence McKenna

“Nothing will work unless you do.”

--Maya Angelou

“Life is never just one note. This is no different. …NO ONE - not one single person - on this earth is all alone with any feeling they have. Everyone has felt something similar at some time - and maybe they’re as scared of it as you are. Just say it! Just say it out loud.”

--o, world

“Admit what you’ve lost and live with the cost; at times it does hurt to be healed.”

--Brian Yorkey, 'Next to Normal'

“Everything has its own place and function. That applies to people, although many don’t seem to realize it, stuck as they are in the wrong job, the wrong marriage, or the wrong house. When you know and respect your Inner Nature, you know where you belong. You also know where you don’t belong.”

--The Tao of Pooh

“I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.”

--Edgar Allan Poe

“A mind that is stretched to a new idea never returns to its original dimension”

--Oliver Wendell Holmes

“You’ve got to know the rules to break them. That’s what I’m here for, to demolish the rules but to keep the tradition.”

--Alexander McQueen

"Failing at something you love to do feels much better than succeeding at something you care nothing about."

--Dallas Clayton

“We need to remember what’s important in life: friends, waffles, and work. Or waffles, friends, work … doesn’t matter. But work is third.”

--Leslie Knope, 'Parks & Recreation'

“I meet you. I remember you. Who are you? You’re destroying me. You’re good for me. How could I know this city was tailor made for love? How could I know you fit me like a glove? I like you. How unlikely. How low all of a sudden. How sweet. You cannot know.”

--Hiroshima Mon Amour, Alain Resnais, 1959

“It’s your choice to decide what looks good on you. What world you fit in. What do you feel about that. And don’t be afraid of having to be one look. Be anything you want to be. And be many things.”

--Ralph Lauren

"I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought, there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it's true I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you."

--Frida Kahlo

“Strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty.”

--Charles Baudelaire

“At times it feels like music is an excuse to be a human. It feels like people need that excuse to go and put their arms in the air and sing their hearts out.”

--Marcus Mumford

“The more I think it over, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”

--Vincent Van Gogh

“I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.”

--Vladimir Nabokov

“I can never say what I want to say. It’s been like this for a while now. I try to say something, but all I get are the wrong words-the wrong words or the exact opposite words from what I mean. I try to correct myself, and that only makes it worse. I lose track of what I was trying to say to begin with. It’s like I’m split in two and playing tag with myself. One half is chasing the other half around the big, fat post. The other me has the right words, but this me can’t catch her.”

--Haruki Murakami, 'Norwegian Wood'

“I have faith in the fact that, as I change, so will the things that I’m interested in, as long as I keep up my own change.”

--Michelle Williams in Interview Magazine

“I had always been kind of obsessed with making a home of my own and was always drawing rooms that I wanted to live in, down to pictures on the wall and the faces that would be in the photographs, and how the couches would be situated.”

--Michelle Williams in Interview Magazine

“…I would roll down the window and hang my head out like a dog, and let the 60-mile-an-hour wind slap me. It was the only way i could get the day off me.”

--Michelle Williams in Interview Magazine

“I still have a hard time giving up on the day and admitting exhaustion.”

--Michelle Williams in Interview Magazine

We contain our own future.

All quotes by author Barbara Kingsolver

"The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than the one who stays away."

"Listen. To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know. In perfect stillness, frankly, I've only found sorrow."

"Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer."

"When we traded homemaking for careers, we were implicitly promised economic independence and worldly influence. But a devil of a bargain it has turned out to be in terms of daily life. We gave up the aroma of warm bread rising, the measured pace of nurturing routines, the creative task of molding our families' tastes and zest for life; we received in exchange the minivan and the Lunchable."

"It's what you do that makes your soul."

"What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, 'What life can I live that will let me breathe in & out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?"

"Solitude is a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and predator to prey, a beginning or an end. Every choice is a world made new for the chosen."

"There's such a gulf between yourself and who you were then, but people speak to that other person and it answers; it's like having a stranger as a house guest in your skin."

"Your dreams, what you hope for and all that, it's not separate from your life. It grows right up out of it."

"Listen. Slide the weight from your shoulders and move forward. You are afraid you might forget, but you never will. You will forgive and remember."

"The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes."

"There is a strange moment in time, after something horrible happens, when you know it's true, but you haven't told anyone yet."

"There were two things about Mama. One is she always expected the best out of me. And the other is that then no matter what I did, whatever I came home with, she acted like it was the moon I had just hung up in the sky and plugged in all the stars. Like I was that good."

"But I've swallowed my pride before, that's for sure. I'm practically lined with my mistakes on the inside like a bad-wallpapered bathroom."

"Thanks for this day, for all birds safe in their nests, for whatever this is, for life."

"If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life."

"At some point in my life I'd honestly hoped love would rescue me from the cold, drafty castle I lived in. But at another point, much earlier I think, I'd quietly begun to hope for nothing at all in the way of love, so as not to be disappointed. It works. It gets to be a habit."

"As long as I kept moving, my grief streamed out behind me like a swimmer's long hair in water. I knew the weight was there but it didn't touch me. Only when I stopped did the slick, dark stuff of it come floating around my face, catching my arms and throat till I began to drown. So I just didn't stop."

"Misunderstanding is my cornerstone. It's everyone's, come to think of it. Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet."

"I've about decided that's the main thing that separates happy people from the other people: the feeling that you're a practical item, with a use, like a sweater or a socket wrench."

"It's the one thing we never quite get over: that we contain our own future."

"It's surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time."

"Now I'm starting to think he wasn't supposed to be my whole life, he was just this doorway to me."

"Wake up now, look alive, for here is a day off work just to praise Creation: the turkey, the squash, and the corn, these things that ate and drank sunshine, grass, mud, and rain, and then in the shortening days laid down their lives for our welfare and onward resolve. There's the miracle for you, the absolute sacrifice that still holds back seed: a germ of promise to do the whole thing again, another time. . . Thanksgiving is Creation's birthday party. Praise harvest, a pause and sigh on the breath of immortality."

"Every one of us is called upon, perhaps many times, to start a new life. A frightening diagnosis, a marriage, a move, loss of a job...And onward full-tilt we go, pitched and wrecked and absurdly resolute, driven in spite of everything to make good on a new shore. To be hopeful, to embrace one possibility after another--that is surely the basic instinct...Crying out: High tide! Time to move out into the glorious debris. Time to take this life for what it is."

"If you ask me, when something extraordinary shows up in your life in the middle of the night, you give it a name and make it the best home you can."

"She is inhumanly alone. And then, all at once, she isn't."

"For if there is any single thing that everyone hopes for most dearly, it must be this: that the youngest outlive the oldest."

"She would just be catching up when I'd go again, swimming farther out into life because I still hadn't found a rock to stand on."

"Children can be your heartache. But that doesn't matter, you have to go on and have them . . . it works out."

"My life is a pitiful, mechanical thing without a past, like a little wind-up car, ready to run in any direction someone points me."

"The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don't know."

All photographs are self portraits.

"People think they know the mystery of living in your skin. They don't. There's no one who knows except the person who carts it around her own self."

--Colum McCann

They had dug their feet down into happiness and weren’t prepared to let go.

“I can’t think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can’t talk to, or worse, someone I can’t be silent with.”

--Mary Ann Shaffer

“Anxiety is practising failure in advance. Anxiety is needless and imaginary. It’s fear about fear, fear that means nothing.”

--Seth Godin

“My mother says that pain is hidden in everyone you see. She says try to imagine it like big bunches of flowers that everyone is carrying around with them. Think of your pain like a big bunch of red roses, a beautiful thorn necklace. Everyone has one.”

--Francesca Lia Block

“You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place, I told him, like you’ll not only miss the people you love but you’ll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you’ll never be this way ever again.”

--Azar Nafisi

“You’re going to meet the most extraordinary men, the sexiest, brightest, funniest men, and you’re going to fall in love with so many of them, and you won’t know until the end of your life who your greatest friends were or your greatest love was.”

--'Milk'

“…acquired tastes can be rewarding. Acquired taste jump-starts new satisfactions where I do not initially find them. Through acquired taste, I grow in my capacity to enjoy what the world has to offer.”

--NYtimes.com

“I love you also means I love you more than anyone loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that no one loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that I love no one else, and never have loved anyone else, and never will love anyone else.”

--Jonathan Safran Foer

"I want someone who will be monogamous, and nice to his mother. And I want someone who likes musicals, but knows to just shut his mouth when I’m watching Lost. And I want someone, who thinks being really into cars is lame, and strip clubs are gross. I want someone who will actually empty the dishwasher instead of just taking out forks as needed, like I do. I want someone with clean hands and feet, and beefy forearms like a damn Disney prince. And I want him to genuinely like me, even when I’m old… that’s what I want."

--Liz Lemon, '30 Rock'

"All photographs are self portraits."

--Minor White

“What I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that though I do not know you and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you, I love you. With all my heart, I love you.”

--'V for Vendetta'

“Instead of focusing on how much you can accomplish, focus on how much you can absolutely love what you’re doing.”

--Leo Babauta

“Sometimes she has imagined what it would be like to fly, to live in the river, to run like a horse. She has dreamed of that freedom, that power, and fears the wildness in herself that wants to live as beasts live, moved purely by need and desire. She has felt torn between the heat of her limbs and the thoughts in her mind telling her to be careful and good and always calm.”

--Francesca Lia Block

“We’re making it up. The world, the universe, life, reality. Especially reality.”

--Tom Robbins

“If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, I’ll bet they’d live a lot differently.”

--Bill Watterson

“What if she was meant to be, or could have been, someone important in my life? I think that’s what scares me: the randomness of everything. That the people who could be important to you might just pass you by. Or you pass them by. How do you know. I felt that by walking away I was abandoning them, that I spent my entire life, day after day, abandoning people.”

--Peter Cameron

“Don’t try to be different. Just be good. To be good is different enough.”

--Arthur Freed

I need you to listen for just a second. I don't care if you only shop at thrift stores. And I don't care if you read nothing but classic novels. It is not important to me whether you are thirteen or thirty four, foreign or native, thin or overweight. I will not judge you. It does not matter to me what kind of haircut you have, what sort of statement you're making while you lead a vegan lifestyle or if you love steaks and fried eggs. Love sex, hate drugs, do cocaine, listen to Simon and Garfunkel. I'm not interested in how superior your taste in underground music is. I couldn't care less if you're wearing Urban Outfitters jeans, thrifted shoes, or a Hollister polo. It is not important to me whether you are a writer, a dreamer, a painter, a gas station clerk, or if you're living off food stamps. I don't give a shit if you're a hippie, a half-assed hipster, an atheist, a devoted Christian, wealthy, dirty, Catholic, homeless, Jewish, Buddhist, a smoker, a drinker, clean, or shy, I will not judge you. It doesn't matter to me how extensive your vocabulary may be, which independent films you've seen, what books you've read, how how your IQ is. I will still open the door for you. I promise. And I will let you sit near me if another seat is unavailable. Even if I disagree with some of your ideas. I will fucking respect you. I will offer you some common decency. And not because it's right, and not because you deserve it, but because that is what makes sense to me. This is what has always made sense to me. I'm a shadow. Neurotic, opaque, and drunk with fascination. I'm your friend. And you don't have to impress me. Because I'm not here to impress you.

Rise above the little things.

“Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you.”

--Hafiz

And is often the case with faith, I thought I was being asked a favor, when in fact I was being given one.

“There is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.”

--DH Lawrence

When you reach the little house, the place your journey started, you will recognize it, although it will seem much smaller than you remember. Walk up the path, and through the garden gate you never saw before but once. And then go home. Or make a home. Or rest.

There's no pleasure in having nothing to do. The fun is in having lots to do, and not doing it.

"I am neither better nor smarter, only luckier. And I should be ashamed of thinking I know everything because you can know the whole world and still feel lost in it. So many people are in pain – no matter how smart or accomplished – they cry, they yearn, they hurt. But instead of looking down on things, they look up, which is where I should be looking too. Because when the world quiets to the sound of your own breathing, we all want the same things: Comfort, love and a peaceful heart."

--Mitch Albom, 'Have A Little Faith'

"It is far more comforting to think God listened and said no, than to think that nobody’s out there."

--Mitch Albom, 'Have A Little Faith'

"If we tend to the things that are important in life, if we are right with those we love and behave in line with our faith, our lives will not be cursed with the aching throb of unfulfilled business. Our words will always be sincere, our embraces will be tight. We will never wallow in the agony of 'I could have, I should have.' We can sleep in a storm. And when it's time, our goodbyes will be complete."

--Mitch Albom, 'Have A Little Faith'

She was either crying or laughing. Her moods never gave warning. But we stuck with her; because that’s what friends do. We see past the bad to the good, to the purpose for loving them.

She decided to free herself, dance into the wind, create a new language. And birds fluttered around her, writing "yes" into the sky.

My thoughts tend to sound better in books I didn’t write, and in the songs I didn’t sing. Even then, sometimes there is no piece of literature, no song, no work of art that can really explain the way you feel. There is a double-edge comfort in knowing that no one really knows.

“Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep moving, trying to slip through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won’t be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there — to the edge of the world. There’s something you can’t do unless you get there.”

--Haruki Murakami

“We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives…not looking for flaws, but for potential.”

--Ellen Goodman

“One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: To rise above the little things.”

--John Burroughs

“We are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of wine.”

--Eduardo Galeano

“You can’t control when you lose your heart. The only thing you can do is trust, trust that the person who has your heart realizes it’s value.”

--'Grey's Anatomy'

“Make a wish and place it in your heart. Anything you want, everything you want. Do you have it? Good. Now believe it can come true. You never know where the next miracle is gonna come from, the next smile, the next wish come true. But if you believe that it’s right around the corner, and you open your heart and mind to the possibility of it, to the certainty of it. You just might get the thing you’re wishing for. The world is full of magic. You just have to believe in it. So make your wish. Do you have it? Good. Now believe in it. With all your heart.”

--'One Tree Hill'

“That’s the point,” he said. “Every kind of animal thinks its own kind of animal is wonderful. so people getting married think they’re wonderful and that they’re going to have a baby that’s wonderful, when actually they’re as ugly as a rhinoceroses. Just because we think we’re so wonderful doesn’t mean we really are. We could be terrible animals and just never admit it because it would hurt so much.”

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

Destiny is up to you.

All quotes by author Richard Bach

"Can miles truly separate you from friends? If you want to be with someone you love, aren't you already there?"

"That’s what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we’ve changed because of it, and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way is winning."

--'The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story'

"No matter how qualified or deserving we are, we will never reach a better life until we can imagine it for ourselves and allow ourselves to have it."

"Remember where you came from, where you're going, and why you created this mess you got yourself into in the first place."

"Of course there’s destiny, but destiny doesn’t push you where you don’t want to go. You’re the ones who choose. Destiny is up to you."

"You're always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past."

"I had grown up in a house with a fence around it, and in this fence was a white smooth wooden gate, two holes bored round and low together so the dog could see through. One night, the moon high, late for me home from the school dance, I remember that I stopped, hand on the gate, and spoke so quietly to myself and to the woman that I would love that not even the dog could have heard. ‘I don’t know where you are, but you’re living right now, somewhere on this earth. And one day you and I are going to touch this gate where I’m touching it now. Your hand will touch this very wood, here! Then we’ll walk through and we’ll be full of a future and of a past and we’ll be to each other like no one else has ever been. We can’t meet now, I don’t know why. But some day our questions will be answers and we’ll be caught in something so bright...and every step I take is one step closer on a bridge we must cross to meet.'"

--'The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story'

"Has it ever happened, you’ve seen a striking film, beautifully written and acted and photographed, that you walk out of the theater glad to be a human being and you say to yourself I hope they make a lot of money from that? I hope the actors, I hope the director earns a million dollars for what they’ve done, what they’ve given me tonight? And you go back and see the movie again and you’re happy to be a tiny part of the system that is rewarding those people with every ticket...the actors I see on the screen, they’ll get twenty cents of this very dollar I’m paying now; they’ll be able to buy an ice cream cone any flavor they want from their share of my ticket alone. Glorious moments in art in books and films and dance, they’re delicious because we see ourselves in glory’s mirror."

--'The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story'

"You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn’t flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn’t have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there."

--'Jonathan Livingston Seagull'

"Nobody means to get carried away in mediocrity, but it happens, it happens unless you think about everything you do, unless you make every choice the best one you know how to make."

--'One'

"It must happen to us all…We pack up what we’ve learned so far and leave the familiar behind. No fun, that shearing separation, but somewhere within, we must dimly know that saying goodbye to safety brings the only security we’ll ever know."

--'Running from Safety: An Adventure of the Spirit'

"The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change."

"The only thing that shatters dreams is compromise."

"What matters is how I use what I know, every minute of every day; how I use it to remember, in the midst of the game."

--'Running from Safety: An Adventure of the Spirit'

"It doesn’t take time to change once you understand the problem. Somebody hands you a rattlesnake, it doesn’t take long to drop it, does it?"

--'One'

"Choose a love and work to make it true, and somehow, something will happen, something you couldn’t plan, will come along to move like to like, to set you loose, to set you on the way to your next brick wall."

--'Running from Safety: An Adventure of the Spirit'

"To fly as fast as thought, you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived."

"From time to time it's fun to close our eyes, and in that dark say to ourselves, 'I am the sorcerer, and when I open my eyes I shall see a world that I have created, and for which I and only I am completely responsible.' Slowly then, eyelids open like curtains lifting stage-center. And sure enough, there's our world, just the way we've built it."

--'The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story'

"How is it we’re the lucky ones, living a life that the children-we-were took for dreams?"

"You don’t want a million answers as much as you want a few forever questions. The questions are diamonds you hold in the light. Study a lifetime and you see different colors from the same jewel. The same questions, asked again, bring you just the answers you need just the minute you need them."

--'Running from Safety: An Adventure of the Spirit'

"Don't be dismayed at good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends."

"The best time to make friends is before you need them."

--Ethel Barrymore

Life is far too short not to have a little umbrella in your drink. The bright hilarity of my kind friends and very dear girls.

We all let people into our lives, but you will find that really good friends let you into your own.

"The bird a nest, the spider a web, the human friendship."

--William Blake

I want to walk like I'm the only woman on earth and I can have my pick.

If you want to see God laugh, make a plan.

"Being kissed on the back of the knee is a moth at the windowscreen."
--Anne Sexton

"The maid of honor - the unambiguous, grown-up equivalent of wearing best friend necklaces."
--Emily Giffin, 'Love The One You're With'

"Whatever you get paid attention for is never what you think is most important about yourself."
--David Foster Wallace

"What do women want? I want a red dress. I want it flimsy and cheap. I want it too tight. I want to wear it until someone tears it off me. I want it sleeveless and backless, this dress, so no one has to guess what's underneath. I want to walk down the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store with all those keys glittering in the window, past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly, hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders. I want to walk like I'm the only woman on earth and I can have my pick. I want that red dress bad. I want it to confirm your worst fears about me, to show you how little I care about you or anything except what I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment from its hanger like I'm choosing a body to carry me into this world, through the birth-cries and the love-cries too, and I'll wear it like bones, like skin, it'll be the goddamned dress they bury me in."
--Kim Addonizio

We are friends for life.

"There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends."
--Sylvia Plath, 'The Bell Jar'

There's not a word yet, for old friends who've just met.

"We are friends for life. When we're together the years fall away. Isn't that what matters? To have someone who can remember with you? To have someone who remembers how far you've come?"
--Judy Blume

I thought I was the only one.

The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, “What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”
--C.S. Lewis

I still find each day too short for all the friends I want to see.

It was quite a compliment to me, as a matter of fact, to have such a person choose me for their best friend.

It's not about the light. It's about meeting people in the tunnel.

"I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see."
--John Burroughs

Being a friend means mastering the art of timing.

Being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny, and a time to pick up the pieces when it’s all over.

I think best friends are the ones who’ve been through what you’ve been through. They understand where you’re coming from and where you’re going. It’s always a challenge to stick by a friend who’s making choices we don’t agree with and are sometimes even dangerous, but it’s at these times that our best friends need us the most.