My favorite thing is saying something true

All quotes from StoryPeople

One of those rare bumblebees who agreed with the engineers about not being able to fly so he mainly sits around & watches the other bees work themselves to death.

If there is any secret to this life I live, this is it: the sound of what cannot be seen sings within everything that can. & there is nothing more to it than that.

I sometimes wake in the early morning & listen to the soft breathing of my children & I think to myself, this is one thing I will never regret & I carry that quiet with me all day long.

Only her skin between her life & a return to the great wide ocean

The birds brought seed & flowers & bits of brightly colored string & placed them in her hair while she slept so that she would remember the wild joy of spring when she finally awoke.

No hurt survives for long without our help, she said & then she kissed me & sent me out to play again for the rest of my life.

Of course I want to save the world, she said, but I was hoping to do it from the comfort of my regular life.

I'm not worried about ghosts in general, she said. Just the ones that are related to me.

I've always thought death was a lot like Christmas, he said. I can't wait to find out if being good the whole time was worth it.

Contains all the stuff I've decided to keep from the public for my own good

My favorite thing is saying something true, she said, but I'm a lot older than you & don't have to worry so much about my reputation.

I think of it as an opportunity to find out how much money means to me, she said. So far, it means a lot more than I think is probably healthy.

I don't know if I really believe in all the saints, she said, but I pray to them anyway. It makes every night feel more like a slumber party.

he looks fierce mainly because he hates the beginning of winter & the only thing that seems to help is gritting your teeth

I have a really great power suit she said, but I never wear it because no one talks to me on those days.

You have to not care either way about it, she told me, & when you wake up in the middle of the night with anxiety attacks, it's best to lie & say it's because you thought you heard something downstairs

Leaving a trail of destruction behind her even though her current affirmation is happy happy joy joy.

map of some places not discovered quite yet because when people get too close it stands up & trots away

I'll bet even an angel's butt itches if he has to do too much sitting on hard places.

It's hard to say the right words without practice, I said & she whispered in my ear, Say them as many times as you like & we practiced late into the night.

Someday, the light will shine like a sun through my skin & they will say, What have you done with your life? & though there are many moments I think I will remember, in the end, I will be proud to say, I was one of us.

this is a yo-yo that teaches everything there is to know about life, but it spins so fast it's all a blur & it takes a long time to figure out that that's exactly what it's trying to teach you

If you had to balance as much stuff as I do, she said, you'd take an hour in the bathroom every morning too.

I don't care if no one likes it, she said, unless no one likes it.

Every weekend, she went to the city & looked through the bones of the dead for old clothes & bits of fashion jewelry. She always seemed a bit tattered, but I didn't say much about it. I was still young & hadn't settled on a past I was comfortable with yet either.

places where the light & rain get in with no regard for your virtues or reputation

In the end, I think that I will like that we were sitting on the bed, talking & wondering where the time had gone.

she's prepared for almost any transportation mishap, as long as none of them require her to just sit still & think

My favorite thing

is being your lap

while we sit there

together & love

the whole world.

I'm just going to hide here in this paper bag until death comes, she said. It could be a long time, I said. There was a pause & then her head popped out. You think I should have a hobby while I wait? she said.

I know I promised I wouldn't complain, she said, but I'm not ready to start just yet.

The smallest things take up the most room in your heart.

"Doubt everything. Find your own light."

--Siddhārtha Gautama

"One never learns how the witch became wicked."

--Gregory Maguire

"There's a million guys out there at a million bars having a million drinks about you tonight."

--Steven Tyler

You can have it if you want but someday I’ll make a better one.

--Lykke Li, I Know Places

“Shower, keep clean, enjoy colors and animals. People, if possible.”

--Sylvia Plath

“I automatically assume people won’t like me, so I don’t talk to them unless they approach me first. I can’t become a part of a crowd because I can’t get past that feeling that I don’t belong.”

--Stephanie Kuehnert

“I’ve been savin’ this money for a dee-vorce if ever I get a husband!”

--Annie, 'It’s a Wonderful Life'

“Dear God,” she prayed, “let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry… have too much too eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere — be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.”

--'A Tree Grows In Brooklyn'

“You are a good person, though. I can tell that much from looking at you. I can tell these things after seven years of watching people come up and go here: there are people who can open their hearts and people who can’t. You’re one of the ones who can. Or, more precisely, you can if you want to.” “What happens when people open their hearts?” Cigarette dangling from her lips, Reiko clasped her hands together on the table. She was enjoying this, “They get better,” she said.”

--Haruki Murakami, 'Norwegian Wood'

“Anyway, I want a cat,” she said, “I want a cat. I want a cat now. If I can’t have long hair or any fun, I can have a cat.”

--Hemingway

“Why didn’t I learn to treat everything like it was the last time? My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future.”

--Jonathan Safran Foer, 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close'

“One of my big concerns these past few years is that I’ve been losing the ability to feel things with the same intensity - the way I felt when I was younger. It’s scary - to feel your emotions floating away and just not caring.”

--Douglas Coupland

“'Sometimes,’ said Pooh, ‘the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.'”

--A.A. Milne

“We are the water

sitting so still and waiting

to be splashed into.”

--Tyler Knott Gregson

“I don’t change my handbag every season. I believe in the Yves Saint Laurent woman who either has her hands in the pockets of her pantsuit or is holding her lover’s hand. She doesn’t need a bag.”

--Carine Roitfeld

“Sweatpants are a sign of defeat. You lost control of your life so you bought some sweatpants.”

--Karl Lagerfeld

“I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.”

--Franz Kafka

“Certainly we talk to ourselves; there is no thinking being who has not experienced that. One could even say that the word is never a more magnificent mystery than when, within a man, it travels from his thought to his conscience and returns from his conscience to his thought. This is the only sense of the words, so often used in this chapter, “he said,” “he exclaimed”; we say to ourselves, we speak to ourselves, we exclaim within ourselves, without breaking the external silence. There is great tumult within; everything within us speaks, except the tongue. The realities of the soul, though not visible and palpable, are nonetheless realities.”

--Victor Hugo, 'Les Misérables'

“I am eternally, devastatingly romantic, and I thought people would see it because “romantic” doesn’t mean “sugary”. It’s dark and tormented — the furor of passion, the despair of an idealism that you can’t attain.”

--Catherine Breillat

“I wonder if four-leaf clovers have any insecurities about their deformity that could be healed with the knowledge that people value them.”

--Haley G Hoover

“Normally I didn’t see a great deal. I didn’t hear a great deal either. I didn’t pay attention. Strictly speaking I wasn’t there. Strictly speaking I believe I’ve never been anywhere.”

--Samuel Beckett

“As I grow to understand life less and less, I learn to love it more and more.”

--Jules Renard

“Nothing I like to do pays well.”

--Charles Portis, 'True Grit'

“It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.”

--Agnes Repplier

“Loneliness is something I’ve never been bothered with because I’ve always had this terrible itch for solitude.”

--Charles Bukowski

“The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely.”

--Louisa May Alcott

“She was like the moon—part of her was always hidden away.”

--Dia Reeves

“Nothing makes a woman more beautiful than the belief that she is beautiful.”

--Sophia Loren

“I wonder what it is in women,” she said. “Whenever they find a big strong guy with a wide adolescent streak running through him, they get a powerful urge to hold his head in their laps.”

--Robert Parker

holding my breath with the wonder of it all.

All quotes from StoryPeople

Why is the world so confusing? he said & I said it's only confusing if you believe it has to make sense & he looked at me & shook his head. I can't believe they let just anyone have children, he said.

Sitting there in your pajamas & all the time in the world & if I could keep any moment it would be this: watching you & holding my breath with the wonder of it all.

1: trying on new looks because the old ones take too long in the morning & everyone just thinks "O, she's wearing that old thing again" anyway 2: really small mirror so she doesn't have to take the shock all at once

Loving the sound of her own voice as long as she doesn't have to nag

She learned to love him before he thought it was even possible, so he didn't have a chance to hide & mess it up & while it was a little scary at times, mainly he could not even imagine the world without her there.

when he was three, he used to make cooking noises with his mouth & we would wake to the sound of bacon frying & eggs being stirred with a fork so we had some idea that food was in his future

melting in the slow heat of a summer night, damp with the dark air & thoughts of you

I'm sick & tired of all these judgmental people, she said, & I hope they burn in hell for it.

Are you a princess? I said & she said I'm much more than a princess, but you don't have a name for it yet here on earth.

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.

finally stretching out into his life because it doesn't look like there are any real alternatives

Tied together by stuff too difficult to explain to someone new

There are things you do because they feel right & they may make no sense & they may make no money & it may be the real reason we are here: to love each other & to eat each other's cooking & say it was good.

I held out my hands & asked where I could help & somebody grabbed me & pointed me towards the future & said, You've got your work cut out for you & I said, isn't there anything easier? & he laughed & said you could dig around in the past, but it's just busywork & that made perfect sense so I shrugged & started right where I was, along with everyone else

cave filled with stuff that people will kill for, which only goes to show you how confused people are about important things

I've learned not to look too closely, she said. Otherwise I'd just keep finding out stuff that'd bug me & we'd never get along.

Does everyone seem taller than usual? she said & I said that's what usually happens when you stop pretending you don't care

We stood out on the porch before we went inside & she told me her secret. Pretend you're just visiting, she said. That way you'll forget that they're family.

I think my life would be easier, she said, if I could just get my selves to agree on something.

sending postcards to himself saying 'Wish you were here' so when he gets back home he doesn't forget

Death take me now & spare me the pain, she said. It was difficult for me to get that excited. Get a grip, I said, it's only aerobics.

They drove south one winter until they could stand outside with no coats on & we never saw them again.

My grandmother told me once that a city has enough windows for everybody. I still want to believe her.

What's that supposed to be? I said. That's a Christmas dragon, he said. If Santa rode around with this instead of all those reindeer I think it'd put real teeth in the naughty-or-nice thing.

You seem very calm for a woman who's getting married, I said & she nodded. It's on my to-do list, she said, so there's no point in agonizing about it

When do you get to be a grown-up? she said. When you can read & write & lie without laughing, I said & her eyes got big & she said she didn't know it was that hard

this is a world filled with love & other things that have the sense not to waste time talking about everything under the sun & see how it glows with no help from us whatsoever

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

All quotes by Rumi

"My wish for you is that you fall into love like a burning coal that falls into water and keeps burning."

"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."

"When I am with you, we stay up all night.

When you're not here, I can't go to sleep.

Praise God for those two insomnias!

And the difference between them."

"Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free."

"Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form."

"Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."

"In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art."

"My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there."

"This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet."

"A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home."

"Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of what you truly love."

"Give up to grace. The ocean takes care of each wave 'til it gets to shore. You need more help than you know."

Leave the house before you find something worth staying in for.

I thank you God

for most this amazing day;

for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky;

and for everything which is natural, which is

infinite, which is yes.

--E.E. Cummings

In each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain,

choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice.

We’re each of us our own chiaroscuro, our own bit of illusion

fighting to emerge into something solid, something real.

We’ve got to forgive ourselves that.

I must remember to forgive myself.

Because there is a lot of grey to work with.

No one can live in the light all the time.

--Libba Bray, Gemma Doyle Trilogy

"It's more interesting to have just a picture of a small detail - then you can dream all the rest around it. Because when you see the whole thing, what is there to imagine?"

--Dries Van Noten

"Plant lots of flowers, so when you take the time to smell them, they'll be there."

--Bette Midler

There is shadow under this red rock,

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you.

--TS Eliot, The Waste Land

Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.

"Happiness? The color of it must be spring green…."

--Frances Mayes, American memoirist

"No Winter lasts forever; no Spring skips its turn."

--Hal Borland

"Nothing in the world is more common than unsuccessful people with talent, leave the house before you find something worth staying in for. "

--Banksy

“I mean, they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.”

--Banksy

“Because we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think our lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs! So people pretend there is drama where there is none.”

--Kurt Vonnegut

“Isn’t it strange that we talk least about the things we think about most.”

--Charles Lindbergh

“A career is born in public, talent in privacy.”

--Marilyn Monroe

“I don’t know what’s worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you’ve always wanted to be, and feel alone.”

--Daniel Keyes, 'Flowers for Algernon'

“For everyone, there are those moments when you have great days with someone you wouldn’t expect to. Then you have to go back to your real lives, but it makes an impression on you.”

--Sofia Coppola

“The biggest scars are unseen and unremembered, always from a smile you forgot long ago. We would never get anything done otherwise.”

--Iain Thomas

“Here I am, a bundle of past recollections and future dreams, knotted up in a reasonably attractive bundle of flesh. I remember what this flesh had gone through; I dream of what it may go through. I record here the actions of optical nerves, of taste buds, of sensory perception. And, I think: I am but one more drop in the great sea of matter, defined, with the ability to realize my existence.”

--Sylvia Plath

“A year from now you will wish you had started today.”

--Karen Lamb

Because of you

I can feel

myself

slowly but

surely

becoming

the me

I have always

dreamed

of

being.

--Tyler Knott Gregson, 'Becoming'

“Well, after I’ve been to university, I’m going to be French, and I’m going to Paris, and I’m going to smoke and wear black, and listen to Jacques Brel, and I won’t speak. Ever.”

--'An Education'

“When you like your work, everyday is a holiday.”

--Frank Tyger

“People often ask me questions that I cannot very well answer in words, and it makes me sad to think they are unable to hear the voice of my silence.”

--Inayat Khan

“The music was too loud for us to talk. Once we got out of Jefferson Park, we rolled down the one window that worked so the world would know we had good taste in music.”

--Quentin Jacobsen, 'Paper Towns'

"I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world."

--Mary Anne Radmacher

“I think she was afraid to love sometimes. I think it scared her. She was the type to like things that were concrete, like the ocean. Something you could point to and know what it is. I think that’s why she always struggled with God. And I think that’s why she also struggled with love. She couldn’t touch it. She couldn’t hold on to it and make sure it never changed. But sometimes it’s those things you can’t touch that you need to hold on to the most.”

--Carrie Ryan

“I don’t want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic. I try to give that to people. I do misrepresent things. I don’t tell truths. I tell what ought to be truth.”

--Blanche DuBois, 'A Streetcar Named Desire'

“I mean, I have the feeling that something in my mind is poisoning everything else.”

--Vladimir Nabokov, 'Lolita'

“I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.”

--Eleanor Roosevelt

“Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we’re still alive. We wish to assert our existence, like dogs peeing on fire hydrants. We put on display our framed photographs, our parchment diplomas, our silver-plated cups; we monogram our linen, we carve our names on trees, we scrawl them on washroom walls. It’s all the same impulse. What do we get from it? Applause, envy, respect? Or simply attention, of any kind we can get?

At the very least we want a witness. We can’t stand the idea of our own voices falling silent finally, like a radio winding down.”

--Margaret Atwood

"To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable; and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly… to listen to stars and buds, to babes and sages, with open heart; await occasions, hurry never… This is my symphony."

--William Henry Channing

Are you the love letter unwritten?

The song left abandoned in the neck of the guitar?

Are you the moments that pass between strangers

as neither says “hello” ?

--Dallas Clayton, 'Be More'

Live without pretending, love without depending, listen without defending, speak without offending.

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”

--Edith Wharton

“If you reach for the stars, all you’ll get are the stars, but we’ve found a whole new spin: if you reach for the heavens, you get the stars thrown in.”

--Mary Poppins, the Musical

What better way to surface strength than to find yourself in someone else, so we peel back layers of one another's skin to see what's beyond the smoother texture, so we pick through parts of each other's brains to learn where the storm is coming from. Because I learn how I seem through the reflection in your eyes, because you learn how you speak through echoes in my ears. I am a soft atmosphere with a red hot core and it may burn your fingertips or singe your tongue, but it isn't about the destination, and you are an endless list of legends and biographies with a sharp edge and I may cut my corners or bleed myself dry, but it isn't about the rivers and streams, but the ocean.

You see, I am pulling out your hair to find the skin underneath it and I am testing the waters to see what breaks you, and you are softening the conversation to see what sends me to sleep and you are brewing up questions to see what makes me boil over

and it's quest fiction, and this is the call to adventure and I am tired but I am willing, so I am plunging. Do not catch me, do not cradle me, for I desire to see how far I must fall.

--Alexis Mire

Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.

All quotes by author Haruki Murakami

“‘You’re here,’ I continued. ‘At least you look as if you’re here. But maybe you aren’t. Maybe it’s just your shadow. The real you may be someplace else. Or maybe you already disappeared, a long, long time ago. I reach out my hand to see, but you’ve hidden yourself behind a cloud of probablys. Do you think we can go on like this forever?’”

--'South of the Border, West of the Sun'

"If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking."

--'Norwegian Wood'

"But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives."

--'Norwegian Wood'

"Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?"

--'Sputnik Sweetheart'

"I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do."

--'Sputnik Sweetheart'

"Here's what I think, Mr. Wind-Up Bird," said May Kasahara. "Everybody's born with some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source that runs each person from the inside. I have one too, of course. Like everybody else. But sometimes it gets out of hand. It swells or shrinks inside me, and it shakes me up. What I'd really like to do is find a way to communicate that feeling to another person. But I can't seem to do it. They just don't get it. Of course, the problem could be that I'm not explaining it very well, but I think it's because they're not listening very well. They pretend to be listening, but they're not, really. So I get worked up sometimes, and I do some crazy things."

--'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle'

"I have this strange feeling that I'm not myself anymore. It's hard to put into words, but I guess it's like I was fast asleep, and someone came, disassembled me, and hurriedly put me back together again. That sort of feeling."

--'Sputnik Sweetheart'

"Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library."

--'Kafka on the Shore'

"Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting."

"For both of us, it had simply been too enormous an experience. We shared it by not talking about it. Does this make any sense?"

--'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle'

M: So I made up my mind I was going to find someone who would love me unconditionally three hundred and sixty-five days a year.

W: Wow, and did your search pay off?

M: That's the hard part. I guess I've been waiting so long I'm looking for perfection. That makes it tough.

--'Norwegian Wood'

"Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment. "

--'Norwegian Wood'

"These days I just can't seem to say what I mean. I just can't. Every time I try to say something, it misses the point. Either that or I end up saying the opposite of what I mean. The more I try to get it right the more mixed up it gets. Sometimes I can't even remember what I was trying to say in the first place. It's like my body's split in two and one of me is chasing the other me around a big pillar. We're running circles around it. The other me has the right words, but I can never catch her."

--'Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories'

"I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this?"

--'Norwegian Wood'