This life was fleeting.

"There are many things in life that will catch your eye, but only a few will catch your heart. Pursue those."

--Michael Nolan

"Isn't that how it is when you must decide with your heart? You are not just choosing one thing over another. You are choosing what you want. And you are also choosing what somebody else does not want, and all the consequences that follow. You can tell yourself, 'That's not my problem,' but those words do not wash the trouble away. Maybe it is no longer a problem in your life. But it is always a problem in your heart."

--Amy Tan, 'The Kitchen God's Wife

“I was never going to be perfect, and what had all my efforts gotten me, really in the end? A boyfriend who pushed me away the minute I cracked, making the mistake of being human. Great grades that would still never be good enough for girls who knew everything. A quiet, still life, free of any risks, and so many sleepless nights to spend within it, my heart heavy, keeping secrets my sister had empowered herself by telling. This life was fleeting, and I was still searching for the way I wanted to spend it that it was, not yet. But something told me I wouldn’t find it here.”

--Sarah Dessen, 'The Truth About Forever'

There is always some madness in love.

"Well, sometimes love seems easy. Like it's easy to love rain and hawks. And it's easy to love wild plums and the moon. But with people, seems like love's a hard thing to know. It gets all mixed up. I mean, you can love one person in one way and another person in another way. But how do you know you love the right one in every way?"

--'Where the Heart Is'

“And I learned what is obvious to a child. That life is simply a collection of little lives, each lived one day at a time. That each day should be spent finding beauty in flowers and poetry and talking to animals. That a day spent with dreaming and sunsets and refreshing breezes cannot be bettered. But most of all, I learned that life is about sitting on benches next to ancient creeks with my hand on her knee and sometimes, on good days, for falling in love.”

--Nicholas Sparks, 'The Notebook'

“True, we love life, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving. There is always some madness in love, but there is also always some reason in madness.”

--Francesco Petrarch

Love is where you find it. Songs on the radio. Friends at the table. Smiles in the backyard. Stories passed around. Kids in the park. Brown leaves. Cool breeze. And finding that special someone.

Everybody in this world has to do a whole lot more than to love the one they spend a lifetime looking for. You just can't keep your love in a cosy little shell. Gotta love the one you love and the whole darn world as well.

The past is behind us, love is in front and all around us.

All quotes from Grey's Anatomy

"All you can do is be brave enough to get out there. You fought, you loved, you lost. Walk tall."

"I make no apologies for how I choose to repair what you broke."

"So chin up. Put your shoulders back, walk proud, strut a little. Don't lick your wounds; celebrate them. The scars you bear are the signs of a competitor. You're in a lion fight. Just because you didn't win doesn't mean you don't know how to roar."

"There comes a moment when it's more than just a game, and you either take that step forward or turn around and walk away. I could quit, but here's the thing: I love the playing field."

It's hardest to love the ordinary things.

All quotes from Story People

"I'm fastest," he said, "when I'm the one that gets to say go."

In those days, we finally chose to walk like giants & hold the world in arms grown strong with love & there may be many things we forget in the days to come, but this will not be one of them.

Whenever she stood in line at the bank, or while waiting for the bus, I noticed her feet. The right always in front & perpendicular to the left just so. Even after 2 children, she still dreamed of being a dancer.

"They only look small," she said, "if you're someone who's fond of being bigger than everyone else."

"I don't have many vices beyond caring what other people think," she said, "but that's a big one."

In her dream, she said she was a bird who fell asleep & dreamed she was a man who wore bright colors & treated women poorly & she asked all the other birds what it could mean & they all thought it was something in the air & everyone agreed how lucky they were to be birds & not men.

He told me that the night his mother died, there were storms & far away he saw purple lightning & someone left the window open & the room filled with a swirl of butterflies & she slipped out quietly without anyone noticing & I'm sure the grief was softer because of that.

"If we all jumped up & down at the same time," I said, "I'll bet we could move the world." She nodded. "I'd throw in five bucks toward it," she said, "just to see the old man get his butt off the couch."

"I still fly a lot in my dreams," she told us, "but I try to stay close to the ground. At my age, a fall can be pretty serious."

Whenever I go on a trip, I think about all the homes I've had & I remember how little has changed about what comforts me.

Can I count on you to be there, no matter what? she said & I said no & she said what kind of friend are you? & I said the kind who won't lie to you any time you want & I think she kept me around as a curiosity after that.

"I like people until they give me reason not to," she said. "Some days they just drop like flies, though," she added.

Everything changed the day she figured out there was exactly enough time for the important things in her life.

I'm not that good at being a tourist because I'm always looking at the way the light shines in your hair or the way your dress opens to the wind & my favorite places in the world are places filled with you.

"My favorite thing is the wind," she said, "& my second favorite is chocolate but I just do that so I don't get too skinny & blow away."

"What do I get for this?" I said & the angel gave me a catalog filled with toasters & clock radios & a basketball signed by Michael Jordan & I said, "But this is just stuff" & the angel smiled at me & swallowed me in her arms. "I'm so glad you said that," she whispered to me. "I knew you still had a chance."

I'm a good jumper, he said, but I'm not so good at landing. Maybe you should stay closer to the ground then, I said & he shook his head & said the ground was the whole problem in the first place.

I have seen him in Hawaiian shirts, she said, so there is nothing hidden between us.

She said you know what heaven is like? & I said I wasn't sure & she laughed & said grown-ups didn't know much at all about important stuff & I said I had to agree with her even though I was one of them myself.

I was never good at hide & seek because I'd always make enough noise so my friends would be sure to find me. I don't have anyone to play those games with any more, but now & then I make enough noise just in case someone is still looking & hasn't found me yet.

There are 7 levels of hell, she said, & I think one of them is reserved for people who bring jello salads to every potluck they go to.

She left pieces of her life behind her everywhere she went. It's easier to feel the sunlight without them, she said.

They left me with your shadow, saying things like Life is not fair & I believed them for a long time. But today, I remembered the way you laughed & the heat of your hand in mine & I knew that life is more fair than we can ever imagine if we are there to live it.

She kept asking if the stories were true. I kept asking her if it mattered. We finally gave up. She was looking for a place to stand & I wanted a place to fly.

This is a wheelbarrow I filled with all my dreams & my favorite clothes & now all I need is someone to help me push it.

There came a moment in the middle of the song when she suddenly felt every heartbeat in the room & after that she never forgot she was part of something much bigger.

"It's hardest to love the ordinary things," she said, "but you get lots of opportunities to practice."

She felt like the original peach of summer.

There is never a sudden revelation, a complete and tidy explanation for why it happened, or why it ends, or why or who you are. You want one and I want one, but there isn't one. It comes in bits and pieces, and you stitch them together wherever they fit, and when you are done you hold yourself up, and still there are holes and you are a rag doll, invented, imperfect. And yet you are all that you have, so you must be enough. There is no other way.

"People who want to make a million borrow a million first."
--Sophie Kinsella

"I love new clothes. If everyone could just wear new clothes everyday, I reckon depression wouldn’t exist anymore."
--Sophie Kinsella

"Think for a minute, darling: in fairy tales it's always the children who have the fine adventures. The mothers have to stay at home and wait for the children to fly in the window."
--Audrey Niffenegger

People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Be good anyway.
Honesty and frankness will make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
In the final analysis, it is between you and God.
It was never between you and them anyway.
--Mother Teresa

“Like a twenty you find crunched up in a pocket or a lollipop in the depths of your purse when you’re on a diet and at the movies willing yourself away from the chocolate-covered peanuts. The thoughts blossomed and evolved into a new perspective. Suddenly, she was hopeful, she was glowing, she felt like the original peach of summer. Turned around, upside down, inside out and loving the fact that for the first time in days she didn’t want to cry when she thought about her future."
--Rebecca Bloom, 'Tanged Up In Daydreams'

"In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets."
--Rebecca Bloom, 'Tanged Up In Daydreams'

It's a mystery of human chemistry, and I don't understand it. Some people, as far as your senses are concerned, just feel like home.

I'll live a life of dreams.

And I won't die today. Yeah, I'll be living, loving, writing down. And I'll live a life of dreams and be grateful I'm around.

Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is the special occasion.

There are four or five people in everybody's life who must be informed immediately of what is happening to us. We can't bare them to go on believing what is no longer true. Not for a minute, for them to believe that we are married when we have just been widowed or that we still have parents when we have suddenly become orphans. That we have company when that company has just left, or are in good health when we have suddenly fallen ill. That they should think us alive when we are dead.

"It's a wonder I'm even alive. Sometimes I think that. I think that I can't believe I haven't killed myself. But there's something in me that just keeps going on. I think it has something to do with tomorrow, that there is always one, and that everything can change when it comes."
--Augusten Burroughs

Breathe in, breathe out, go faster and faster and faster and faster. I don’t feel anything anymore or what I do feel is so powerful that my mind and my body are incapable of allowing it to register. I am comfortable here. This is what I want, what I need, and what I must have, and this is where I have been living for the last few years of my life.

Wondering what the right words would have been.

"Life would be a lot easier if conversations were rewindable and erasable, like videos. Or if you could instruct people to disregard what you just said, like in a courtroom."
--Sophie Kinsella

It was just like that, falling apart and trying to make ends meet. Drinking coffee and wearing long woven sweaters. Looking for milk for your cereal in the morning at nine a.m., then wondering what the right words would have been.