sometimes

you have to take

a step or

two

back,

re-treat

take

a month

off

don’t

do anything

don’t

want to

do anything

peace is

paramount

pace is

paramount

whatever

you want

you aren’t going to

get

it by

trying too

hard.

--Charles Bukowski

Be willing to be split open.

“No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.”

--Samuel Johnson

“Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.”

--Norman Vincent Peale

“Here I am: a bundle of past recollections and future dreams knotted up in a reasonably attractive bundle of flesh.”

--Sylvia Plath

“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.”

--Rumi

“It’s the only time I feel like me, she said, & everyone else just thinks it’s dress up.”

--Brian Andreas

"Find out who you are and you will always be beautiful."

--Lou Doillon

“Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to have woken up, I am alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it, I am going to use all of my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others, to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings, I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry, or think badly about others, I am going to benefit others as much as I can.”

--The Dalai Lama

“Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.”

--Natalie Goldberg

“What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?”

--Ralph Ellison, 'Invisible Man'

“There are only two kinds of people in this world. The realists and the dreamers. The realists know where they are going and the dreamers have already been there.”

--Robert Orben

“Don’t let yourself feel worthless: often through life you will really be at your worst when you seem to think best of yourself; and don’t worry about losing your “personality,” as you persist in calling it: at fifteen you had the radiance of early morning, at twenty you will begin to have the melancholy brilliance of the moon, and when you are my age you will give out, as I do, the genial golden warmth of 4 p.m.”

--F. Scott Fitzgerald, 'This Side of Paradise'

"Your life is always under construction. It is your job to learn how to untangle the threads and weave a tapestry that matches your desires."

--Dannye Williamsen

“It was one of those perfect autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.”

--P. D. James

“I believe in me. I’m a little screwed up but I’m beautiful.”

--Steve McQueen

For you.

I started this blog for myself to keep quotes that I loved, never expecting so many of you to find me here. I just want to say thank you to everyone who has left a comment or sent me an email, reminding me that you're out there reading, too. Even though I don't always respond to each comment individually, I appreciate them all the same.

xo...Paige

“Until I was 30, I dated only boys. I’ll tell you why: Men scared the sh*t out of me. Men know what they want. Men own alarm clocks. Men sleep on a mattress that isn’t on the floor. Men buy new shampoo instead of adding water to a nearly empty bottle of shampoo. Men make reservations. Men go in for a kiss without giving you some long preamble about how they’re thinking of kissing you. Men wear clothes that have never been worn by anyone else before […] At this point you might want to smack me and say: “Are you seriously just another grown woman talking about how she wants a man who isn’t afraid of commitment?” Let me explain! I’m not talking about commitment to romantic relationships. I’m talking about commitment to things—houses, jobs, neighborhoods. Paying a mortgage. When men hear women want a commitment, they think it means commitment to a romantic relationship, but that’s not it. It’s a commitment to not floating around anymore. I want a guy who is entrenched in his own life. Entrenched is awesome.”

--Mindy Kaling in Glamour Magazine

Your ship comes in because you’re the captain.

“I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.”

--Roger Ebert

“Despite whoever created it, it’s my world, & the only one I’ve got. Might as well make the best of it, right? Might as well have a little fun while I’m here. Or a lot of fun. Might be dead tomorrow.”

--Ellen Hopkins

“If there is no wind, row.”

--Unknown

“This is a world where everybody’s gotta do something. Ya know, somebody laid down this rule that everybody’s gotta do something, they gotta be something. You know, a dentist, a glider pilot, a narc, a janitor, a preacher, all that … Sometimes I just get tired of thinking of all the things that I don’t wanna do. All the things that I don’t wanna be.”

--Charles Bukowski

“So now I have started living my own life. Imperfect and clumsy as it may look, it is resembling me now, thoroughly.”

--Elizabeth Gilbert

“Oh, it is wonderful to wake up in the morning with things to look forward to!”

--Dodie Smith, 'I Capture the Castle'

“I believe that one defines oneself by reinvention. To not be like your parents. To not be like your friends. To be yourself. To cut yourself out of stone.”

--Henry Rollins

“I will spread myself like wings. I am a billion tiny feathers. You have no idea what’s happened to me.”

--Dave Eggers

“Society goes on telling you, “This is right, and that is wrong”—that is conscience. It becomes ingrained, implanted in you. You go on repeating it. That is worthless; that is not the real thing. The real thing is your own consciousness. It carries no ready-made answers about what is wrong and what is right, no. But immediately, in what-ever situation arises, it gives you light —you know immediately what to do”

--Osho

“I do not think that I will ever reach a stage when I will say, ‘This is what I believe. Finished.’ What I believe is alive and open to growth.”

--Madeleine L’Engle

“When I work hard for something, I don’t like people telling me, Oh you’re so lucky. I aint lucky. Your ship comes in because you’re the captain.”

--Patti Smith

“The things we hate about ourselves aren’t more real than things we like about ourselves.”

--Ellen Goodman

“Because there’s nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it’s sent away.”

--Sarah Kay

“To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life.”

--Czeslaw Milosz, 'Learning'

“You only lose what you cling to.”

--Buddha

I disappear a lot.

“The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.”

--The White Rabbit, 'Alice In Wonderland'

"Ever morning, until you dead in the ground, you gone have to make this decision. You gone have to ask yourself, "Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today?"

--Kathryn Stockett, 'The Help'

"Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of each."

--Henry David Thoreau

“The society teaches you, ‘Choose the convenient, the comfortable; choose the well-trodden path where your forefathers and their forefathers and their forefathers, since Adam and Eve, have been walking. Choose the well-trodden path. That is a proof— so many millions of people have passed on it, you cannot go wrong.’ But remember one thing: The crowd has never had the experience of truth. Truth has only happened to individuals. Whenever there are alternatives, beware: Don’t choose the convenient, the comfortable, the respectable, the socially acceptable, the honorable. Choose something that rings a bell in your heart. Choose something that you would like to do in spite of any consequences.”

--Osho

“So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”

--Morrie Schwartz

“I want to be alone and I want people to notice me — both at the same time.”

--Thom Yorke

“An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.”

--Charles Bukowski

“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”

--Maya Angelou

“And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.”

--F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Style is more character than clothes, more attitude than affluence. It’s you making visible your inner self. So forget what you learned about appearance not counting; you can no longer afford to be without style.”

--Hara Estroff Morano

“Sometimes the only company I want is that of a good book, a drink and a cashmere sweater.”

--Ashton Darian

“What sort of diary should I like mine to be? Something loose knit and yet not slovenly, so elastic that it will embrace anything, solemn, slight or beautiful that comes into my mind. I should like it to resemble some deep old desk, or capacious hold-all, in which one flings a mass of odds and ends without looking them through.”

--Virginia Woolf

“We recognize our own mortality, and we are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this earth, what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame – but rather, how well we have loved, and what small part we have played in making the lives of other people better.”

--Barack Obama

“I think if you have a certain kind of taste, that comes through in the different things you do… I guess I put my personality in all my creative endeavours.”

--Sofia Coppola

“A big vocabulary. You want to wake up next to ‘smart’.”

--Darren Criss, on what he looks for in a lady

“Please, I want so badly for the good things to happen.”

--Sylvia Plath

“You just want to sit around and criticize everything and everybody. You don’t want to do anything. Nothing’s good enough for you.”

--Charles Bukowski

“Being noticed can be a burden. Jesus got himself crucified because he got himself noticed. So I disappear a lot.”

--Bob Dylan

“The problem is, after a week of intense googling, we’ve started to burn out on knowing the answer to everything. God must feel that way all the time. I think people in the year 2020 are going to be nostalgic for the sensation of feeling clueless.”

--Douglas Coupland

“We could slip away, wouldn’t that be better? Me with nothing to say and you in your autumn sweater.”

--Yo La Tengo!, 'Autumn Sweater'

“I think there’s a whole region of images and feelings inside us that rarely are given an outlet in daily life”

--Jim Morrison

“Age shouldn’t affect you. It’s just like the size of your shoes - they don’t determine how you live your life! You’re either marvelous or you’re boring, regardless of your age.”

--Steven Morrissey

“Every day I discover more and more beautiful things. It’s enough to drive one mad. I have such a desire to do everything, my head is bursting with it.”

--Claude Monet

“Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.”

--Mary Oliver, 'Evidence (part I)'

“Let’s borrow life preservers and jump over. I think we should do something spectacular. I feel that all our lives have been too restrained.”

--F. Scott Fitzgerald, 'Tender is the Night'

“I must learn to love the fool in me—the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of my human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my Fool.”

--Theodore I. Rubin

“Sometimes while I ride the subway I try to look at each person and imagine what they look like to someone who is totally in love with them.”

--Dean Spade, ‘For Lovers and Fighters’

“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”

--Harry Truman

“I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it. When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I dare say, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into one’s life.”

--Oscar Wilde

There isn't enough of anything as long as we live.

All quotes by author Raymond Carver

“Cool summer nights. Windows open. Lamps burning.

Fruit in the bowl. And your head on my shoulder.

These the happiest moments in the day.

Next to the early morning hours, of course.

And the time just before lunch. And the afternoon,

and early evening hours. But I do love these

summer nights. Even more, I think, than those other

times. The work finished for the day.

And no one who can reach us now. Or ever.”

"It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love."

"That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones."

"And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth."

"Woke up this morning with a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read."

"Dreams, you know, are what you wake up from."

"There isn't enough of anything

as long as we live. But at intervals

a sweetness appears and, given a chance

prevails."