I have grown to love secrecy.

"This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meaness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight."

--Rumi

"When I have a camera in my hand, I know no fear."

--Alfred Eisenstaedt

"I’m really insecure in a lot of ways and I suppose my confidence comes out in my clothes."

--Alexander McQueen

“What you wear is how you present yourself to the world, especially today, when human contacts are so quick. Fashion is instant language.”

--Miuccia Prada

“Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.”

--Gore Vidal

"You cannot really be too concerned with what people think of you. You’re on you’re own adventure of growth and discovery. So it’s not always good to be who people think you are, especially if you subscribe to it as well … which is easily done, because then you don’t have to figure out who you are, you just ask somebody else."

--Tom Waits

"You’ll have bad times, but it’ll always wake you up to the good stuff you weren’t paying attention to."

--Sean, 'Good Will Hunting'

“There are silences harder to take back than words.”

--James Richardson

“You’re going to discover that conversations are best at 4am. The heavier the eyelids, the sincerer the words. Those are the talks you’ll remember. It’s ok not to know the answer and silence is not awkward. It’s shared, so share it more often than not.”

--Jeff Stuckel

“You explain quite a lot by saying little…and even more with nothing at all.”

--Georgia Whots, “Her Last Letter to Ghosts”, 1923

“I love myself when I am laughing… and then again when I am looking mean and impressive.”

--Zora Neale Hurston

“Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.”

--F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I marvel at how even the wrong choices can keep us on the right path. How the worst mistake can wind up being the best thing that ever happened to us.”

--Katie Klein, 'Cross My Heart'

“If you meet someone whose soul is not aligned with yours, send them love & move along.”

--Wayne W. Dyer

“Some people are old at 18 and some are young at 90. Time is a concept that humans created.”

--Yoko Ono, 1977

“Alice: How long is forever?

White Rabbit: Sometimes, just one second.”

--Lewis Carrol

“Everything you own should have value, either because it’s functional or beautiful or you just love it.”

--Peter Walsh

“Heart-shattered lives ready for love, don’t for a moment escape God’s notice…”

--Psalm 51

“Bizarre travel plans are dancing lessons from God.”

--Kurt Vonnegut

“I’ll try to be around and about. But if I’m not, then you know that I’m behind your eyelids, and I’ll meet you there.”

--Terence McKenna

“I’d imagine the whole world was one big machine. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured, if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn’t be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason.”

--Hugo Cabret, 'Hugo'

“From war and dust; love.

From love and thought; opinion.

From opinion; war and dust.”

--Georgia Whots, 'All Wars, Loss & Gain

“Here is a new spiritual practice for you: don’t take your thoughts so seriously.”

--Eckhart Tolle

“When I like people immensely I never tell their names to any one. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy.”

--Oscar Wilde

“Learn to say ‘no’ to the good so you can say ‘yes’ to the best”.

--John C. Maxwell

You have nothing to prove to anybody.

"Can You imagine? For example, what the trees do not only do in lightening storms or the watery dark of a summer's night or under the white nets of winter but now, and now, and now - whenever we're not looking. Surely you can't imagine they don't dance, from the root up, wishing to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly more shade - surely you can't imagine they just stand there loving every minute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark rings of the years slowly and without a sound thickening, and nothing different unless the wind, and then only in its own mood, comes to visit, surely you can't imagine patience, and happiness, like that."

--Mary Oliver

"And if these pictures have anything to say to future generations, it's this; I was here. I existed. I was young, I was happy, and someone cared enough about me in this world to take my picture."

--'One Hour Photo'

“I have less time, less tolerance for bullshit, more interest in good taste, more confidence in my own judgement. The culture with which I surround myself is a reflection of my personality and the circumstances of my life, which is in part how it should be.”

--Nick Hornsby

“I’ve tried so many times to think of a new way to say it— and it’s still I love you— love you— love you.”

--Zelda Fitzgerald

“I want to know you moved and breathed in the same world with me.”

--F. Scott Fitzgerald

“When she walked she carried herself like a ballet-dancer, not slumped down on her hips but held up in the small of her back.”

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

“No one wants to admit we’re addicted to music. That’s just not possible. No one’s addicted to music and television and radio. We just need more of it, more channels, a larger screen, more volume. We can’t bear to be without it, but no, nobody’s addicted. We could turn it off anytime we wanted.”

--Chuck Palahniuk, 'Lullaby'

“I was wise enough to never grow up while fooling most people into believing I had.”

--Margaret Mead

“Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you."

--Annie Dillard

"The bitter taste of poor quality lingers long after the sweetness of the low price is gone."

--Unknown

“Real style is never right or wrong. It’s a matter of being yourself—on purpose.”

--G. Bruce Boyer, Gary Cooper: Enduring Style

"If you can't walk the red carpet in your own home, where then?"

--Carolyne Roehm

“Time wounds all heels.”

--Jane Ace

"Create your own visual style. Let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others."

--Orson Welles

"Real success is finding your lifework, in the work that you love."

--David McCullough

“You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet.”

--Tyler Durden, 'Fight Club'

“You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.”

--Maya Angelou

"There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one."

--Kazuo Ishiguro

"Write drunk; edit sober."

--Ernest Hemingway

“She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes. They would look on and on after every one else’s eyes in the world would have stopped looking.”

--Ernest Hemingway, 'The Sun Also Rises'

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”

--Marcel Proust

“We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.”

--E.E. Cummings

“The picture you have in your mind of what you’re about will come true. It’s kind of a thing you kinda have to keep to your own self because it’s a fragile feeling and you put it out there, somebody’ll kill it. So, it’s best to keep that all inside.”

--Bob Dylan

"Perhaps love is the process of gently leading you back to yourself."

--Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“It may be normal, darling; but I’d rather be natural.”

--Truman Capote

“When you eventually see through the veils to how things really are, you will keep saying again and again, this is certainly not like we thought it was.”

--Rumi

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

I am prepared for amazing things to happen.

"Got you. You're mine now. For the rest of the day, week, month, year, life. Have you guessed who I am? Sometimes I think you have. Sometimes when you're standing in a crowd I feel those sultry, dark eyes of yours stop on me. Are you too afraid to come up to me and let me know how you feel? I want to moan and writhe with you and I want to go up to you and kiss your mouth and pull you to me and say "I love you I love you I love you" while stripping. I want you so bad it stings. I want to kill the ugly girls that you're always with. Do you really like those boring, naive, coy, calculating girls or is it just for sex? The seeds of love have taken hold, and if we won't burn together, I'll burn alone."

--Bret Easton Ellis, 'The Rules of Attraction'

You never really existed

and neither did I

I am just a thought in your dreams

and you are a dream in my thoughts

We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under: the first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public. That is the case with the German singer, the American actress. The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes. They are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. Then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love. And finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers.

"If I had a straw

I’d suck wax into my mouth, let it pool,

take shape. As tired as I am, who knows

when they’d find me, sleeping with a replica

of empty space on my tongue. After a while,

sleep comes so hard and fast you can feel

like you are falling. Everybody knows that."

--Josh Bell, 'Meditation on Insomnia'

“What is happiness? It’s the reflection of a sunbeam: you see it playing on the wall, sitting in your palm, but as soon as you clench your fist, it slips out of your hand and darts about your face and fingers.”

--Nina Lugovskaya

“Inside the heart of each and every one of us there is a longing to be understood by someone who really cares. When a person is understood, he or she can put up with almost anything in the world.”

--Ed Hird

“Give yourself up to find yourself again.”

--Li Mu Bai, 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'

“I let almost no one know me, and I lost the chance to know and learn from most of my peers. It took years after I’d graduated from Amherst to realize that people were actually far more complicated and interesting than books, that almost everyone else suffered the same secret fears and inadequacies as I, and that feeling alone and inferior was actually the great valent bond between us all. I wish I’d been smart enough to understand that when I was an adolescent.”

--David Foster Wallace

“Where do I get my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around in Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him. It was music. I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization.”

--Kurt Vonnegut

“I don’t want to have to do this living. I just walk around. I want to be swept off my feet, you know? I want my children to have magical powers. I am prepared for amazing things to happen. I can handle it.”

--'Me & You & Everyone We Know'

“Think about your life, think about the person you want to be & just start being that person. Let the places that you go add to the person you are, but don’t let them replace it — never let the place you’re from, the place you’re at or the places you’re going become the most interesting thing about you. Don’t do that.”

--James Nord

I'm supposed to cry and junk.

All quotes from the movie 'The United States of Leland'

Sometimes, the most important stuff goes away. It goes away so bad, it's like it was never there.

You have to believe that life is more then just the sum of its parts, kiddo.

I know what they want from me. They want a reason. Something to tie it up with a little bow and bury it in the backyard. Bury it so deep its like it never happened. They want me to say how I'm sorry and how it's my mom's fault, or my dad's fault. It happened cause the TV or movies or some junk like that. Or maybe, I could blame a girl.

I guess I'm supposed to be upset about what happened with her. I'm supposed to cry and junk. But, I'm pretty sure I've cried all the tears outta me by now.

That's when I figured out that tears couldn't make someone who was dead, alive again. There's another thing to learn about tears, they can't make someone who doesn't love you anymore, love you again. It's the same thing with prayers. I wonder how much time people waste crying and praying. If you ask me, the devil makes more sense than God does. I can at least see why people would want him around. That way, people can have someone to blame all the bad stuff they do on. Maybe we don't have God 'cause we're scared of the bad. Maybe, we're scared of the good stuff. When we do bad things, it's cause we want to. Maybe we need the bad stuff to remind us of the good stuff.

But nothing, not getting angry, not prayers, and not tears. Nothing can make something that happened, un-happen.

I think there are two ways you can see the world. You either see the sadness that's behind everything, or you choose to keep it all out. 

It happens at different times for different people, but it happens to everybody. It's the worst part about growing up, heartbreak, but it's a part of life.

I must say, the mind reels.

All quotes from the movie 'Breakfast At Tiffany's'

You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-You-Are? You're chicken. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, 'Okay, life's a fact.' People DO fall in love. People do belong to each other. Because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness. You call yourself a free spirit, a wild thing, yet you're terrified that somebody's gonna put you in a cage. Well, baby, you're already in a cage and you built it yourself. And it's not bound on the east by Somali Land or on the west by Tulip, Texas. It's everywhere you go. Because no matter where you run, you're always going to end up running into yourself.

We belong to nobody, and nobody belongs to us. We don't even belong to each other.

You could always tell what kind of a person a man thinks you are by the earrings he gives you. I must say, the mind reels.

Holly Golightly: You know those days when you get the mean reds? 

Paul Varjak: The mean reds, you mean like the blues? 

Holly Golightly: No. The blues are because you're getting fat and maybe it's been raining too long, you're just sad that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling? 

Paul Varjak: Sure. 

Holly Golightly: Well, when I get it the only thing that does any good is to jump in a cab and go to Tiffany's. Calms me down right away. The quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there. If I could find a real-life place that'd make me feel like Tiffany's, then - then I'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name!

You musn't give your heart to a wild thing. The more you do, the stronger they get, until they're strong enough to run into the woods or fly into a tree. And then to a higher tree and then to the sky.