Forget the future.

“I’ll walk forever with stories inside me that the people I love the most can never hear.”

--Michelle Hodkin

“People will kill you over time, and how they’ll kill you is with tiny, harmless phrases, like ‘be realistic.’”

--Dylan Moran

“What fascinates me are people who want to be one thing but who behave in a way contradictory to that. Who might say, ‘I want to be happy, but I keep doing things that make me unhappy.”

--Paul Schrader

“And as we live our lives we discover - drawing toward us the thin threads attached to each - what has been lost. I closed my eyes and tried to bring to mind as many beautiful lost things as I could. Drawing them closer, holding on to them.”

--Haruki Murakami

“I’m lost. And it’s my own fault. It’s about time I figured out that I can’t ask people to keep me found.”

--Anne Sexton

“Do not look for a sanctuary in anyone except your self.”

--Siddhārtha Gautama

“I would like to be known as an intelligent woman, a courageous woman, a loving woman, a woman who teaches by being.”

--Maya Angelou

“Forget the future. I’d worship someone who could do that."

--Rumi

“There’s an opposite to déjà vu. They call it jamais vu. It’s when you meet the same people or visit places, again and again, but each time is the first. Everybody is always a stranger. Nothing is ever familiar.”

--Chuck Palahniuk

“Excess is not really something I consider a bad thing; especially when you are talking about living.”

--Oscar de la Renta

“Mad people = people who stand alone and burn. I’m attracted to them because they give me permission to do the same.”

--Susan Sontag

“If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine. It is lethal.”

--Paulo Coelho

“To be noticed without striving to be noticed, this is what elegance is about.”

--Luciano Barbera

“People think you’re crazy if you talk about things they don’t understand.”

--Elvis Presley

“Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn that anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.”

--David Whyte

“You have to be tougher. You have to learn the way to beat your path through, to make yourself felt, and make yourself necessary.”

--Grace Coddington

“People are just as wonderful as sunsets if I can let them be…when I look at a sunset, I don’t find myself saying, “soften the orange a bit on the right hand corner”. I don’t try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds.”

--Carl Rogers 

“I would rather own little and see the world, than own the world and see little of it.”

--Unknown

“Buying books is immensely comforting. Maybe I won’t read them immediately, but they make me feel so much better whenever I’m sad and blue. Just their presence, it’s like having more to look forward to.”

--Unknown

"I don't ever want to be taught how to do something artistic, no matter what it is, because I'm always worried that if I'm taught how to do it, I'll do it like the person that taught me."

--Tyler Knott Gregson

“My solitude doesn’t depend on the presence or absence of people; on the contrary, I hate who steals my solitude without, in exchange, offering me true company.”

--Friedrich Nietzsche

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

--Rumi

“I’ve learned that waiting is the most difficult bit, and I want to get used to the feeling, knowing that you’re with me, even when you’re not by my side.”

--Paulo Coelho, 'Eleven Minutes'

“So build yourself as beautiful as you want your world to be. Wrap yourself in light then give yourself away with your heart, your brush, your march, your art, your poetry, your play. And for every day you paint the war, take a week and paint the beauty, the color, the shape of the landscape you’re marching towards. Everyone knows what you’re against; show them what you’re for.”

--Andrea Gibson, 'Evolution'

“Beautiful things should belong to beautiful souls.”

--Muriel Barbery

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

There’s time. There is time. There’s so much time.

“To make the right choices in life, you have to get in touch with your soul. To do this, you need to experience solitude, which most people are afraid of, because in the silence you hear the truth and know the solutions.”

--Deepak Chopra

“When I am silent, I fall into the place where everything is music.”

--Rumi

“If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”

--Ernest Hemingway, 'A Farewell to Arms'

“What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us. What we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.”

--Albert Pine

“And, if you believe, in very simple terms, that people mean you well, and will treat you kindly, they will. And, if you believe that the world is against you, then so it will be in your experience. And, if you believe that you will begin to deteriorate at age 22, then so you shall.”

--Jane Roberts

“I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.”

--Jane Austen

“Things usually make sense in time, and even bad decisions have their own kind of correctness.”

--Miranda July

“My name is Russell Greene. Maybe you passed me and my family out on the highway. Maybe you were driving some fancy sports car or an old beat up four-door. Maybe you had someplace to be. Or maybe like us you’re living out your dream with your house hitched up behind you, and America the Beautiful up ahead. But whoever you are you be sure to give us a wave the next time you drive by. Cause we’re your neighbors, and we’re all on the road together.”

--Opening credits narration of 'Promised Land'

“So I wait for you like a lonely house

till you will see me again and live in me.

Till then my windows ache.”

--Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

“She said there is a glow to love: she had actually seen it. It is like the entire sun coming to rest in the belly of a kneeling sheep. It is like a glint from the beads of an Italian necklace that hung at her mother’s throat. It is like two lovers flashing mirrors through space and time.”

--Gail Jones, 'Sixty Lights'

“I have disappeared into my love for you - and I think you should either give me back or join me here and lose yourself as well.”

--Charles Hunter

"You can try to escape the story of your life, but you can’t. It happened…heart broke. I knew you when you were young. Heart broke too. I will know you when we are old too. And maybe wise. I know you now. Your story. Mine isn’t the one I would have chosen in the beginning. But, I’ll take it. It is my story. It’s only mine. And, it’s not over. There’s time. There is time. There’s so much time."

---Laura Dern, 'Enlightened'

“Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul.”

--Thomas Merton

“You are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing.”

--E.E. Cummings

“Elegance doesn’t mean being noticed, it means being remembered.”

--Giorgio Armani

“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there’s nothing left to add, but when there’s nothing left to take away”

--A. Saint-Exupery

“She is a girl and would not be afraid to walk the whole world with herself.”

--Augusta Gregory, 'Visions And Beliefs In The West Of Ireland'

“What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story.”

--F. Scott Fitzgerald, 'The Love of the Last Tycoon'

“Don’t feel stupid if you do not like what everyone else pretends to love.”

--Patrick Mimran

“Go out and do something. It isn’t your room that’s a prison, it’s yourself.”

--Sylvia Plath

“There’s a plane leaving for anywhere you want right now, and in an hour, and in a day, and in a year. You can get out whenever you want, it’s comforting I think.”

--Unknown

“A real education takes place, not in the lecture hall or library, but in the rooms of friends, with earnest frolic and happy disputation. Wine can be a wiser teacher than ink, and banter better than books.”

--Stephen Fry

“What people seem to forget is there’s always more than a single road to any given destination. If you get lost, make the best of it. If you hit a dead-end, turn around and try another way. Just don’t give up.”

--Unknown

“I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights sleep, worked too long and too hard in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I’ve lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment.”

--John Steinbeck

“When anything is blocking my head or there’s worry in my life, I just go sit on Mars or something and look back here at Earth. All you can see is this tiny speck. You don’t see the fear. You don’t see the pain. You don’t see thought. It’s just one solid speck. Then nothing really matters. It just doesn’t.”

--Heath Ledger

We've still got the taste dancing on our tongues

"I am suddenly consumed by nostalgia for the little girl who was me, who loved the fields and believed in God, who spent winter days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew and sucking menthol cough drops, who could keep a secret."

--Audrey Niffenegger, 'The Time Traveler's Wife

"I feel like cotton candy: sugar and air."

--Margaret Atwood

"Do stuff... be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager, stay eager."

--Susan Sontag

“Something wonderful, if you took the long view, was about to happen. If you took the short or medium view, something terrible was about to happen. It’s like the difference between seeing a beautiful new star in the winter sky and actually being close to the supernova. It’s the difference between the beauty of morning dew on a cobweb and actually being a fly.”

--Terry Pratchett

"We've still got the taste dancing on our tongues"

--Ellie Goulding

“Sanity is a cozy lie.”

--Susan Sontag

“His soul sounds like my drums and looks like doves. He is fireworks. He is the black-haired angel playing his bass on the top of the tree, on the top of the cake. I want him to see the flowers in my eyes and hear the songs in my hands.”

--Francesca Lia Block

Don't leave. Please. Stay. It's nice to be in the dark, right? You can relax a little. No brittle smiles. No air kisses. No sarcasm. Forget the stress. The worry. The petty skirmishes. Life is too short. Too short for cruelty. Close your eyes.

"Time is a gift, given to you, given to give you the time you need, the time you need to have the time of your life."

--Norton Juster, 'The Phantom Tollbooth'

“Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven’t the answer to a question you’ve been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you’re alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully.”

--Norton Juster, 'The Phantom Tollbooth'

"She seems to have thoughts and emotions. Sometimes I think I understand them, but often I don't. Like a photograph, she cannot say what she let's me see. She is an embodied secret. And I must be a photograph to her."

--Jonathan Safran Foer, 'Eating Animals'

"If nothing matters, there's nothing to save."

--Jonathan Safran Foer, 'Eating Animals'

"Not only the willful causing of unnecessary suffering, but the indifference to it. Cruelty depends on an understanding of cruelty, and the ability to choose against it. Or to choose to ignore it."

--Jonathan Safran Foer, 'Eating Animals'

"The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed; The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures... Whose charms were broken if revealed."

--Charlotte Brontë

"Some might think that the creativity, imagination, and flights of fancy that give my life meaning are insanity."

--Vladimir Nabokov

"And presently I was driving through the drizzle of the dying day, with the windshield wipers in full action but unable to cope with my tears."

--Vladimir Nabokov, 'Lolita'

"Listen: I am ideally happy. My happiness is a kind of challenge. As I wander along the streets and the squares and the paths by the canal, absently sensing the lips of dampness through my worn soles, I carry proudly my ineffable happiness. The centuries will roll by, and schoolboys will yawn over the history of our upheavals; everything will pass, but my happiness, dear, my happiness will remain, in the moist reflection of a street lamp, in the cautious bend of stone steps that descend into the canal's black waters, in the smiles of a dancing couple, in everything with which God so generously surrounds human loneliness."

--Vladimir Nabokov, 'Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Letters 1940-1977'

"Everyone has the right to tell the truth about her own life."

--Ellen Bass

Learn to float.

“Because I know in my life, the movies I watch and the music I listen to and the books I read - those are important to me. It’s very important to me, and I don’t know what I would do without those things. And so to be a part of that exchange is about as meaningful to me as anything I can think of.”

--Joseph Gordon Levitt

''It's good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it's good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven't lost the things that money can't buy.''

--George Horace Lorimer

"Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better."

--Albert Camus

I feel like when she moves, the time doesn’t.

There is no such thing as bad weather only bad attitudes.

"A man should look as if he had bought his clothes with intelligence, put them on with care, and then forgotten all about them."

--Hardy Amies

"You are the music, while the music lasts."

--T.S. Eliot

"We laughed and laughed, together and separately, out loud and silently, we were determined to ignore whatever needed to be ignored, to build a new world from nothing if nothing in our world could be salvaged, it was one of the best days of my life, a day during which I lived my life and didn’t think about my life at all."

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

“I certainly have not the talent which some people possess of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done.”

--Jane Austen

“It always fascinates me how people go from loving you madly, to nothing at all… nothing. It hurts so much. When I feel someone is going to leave me I have a tendency to break up first before I get to hear the whole thing. Here it is, one more one less, another wasted love story. I really loved this one.”

--Marion, '2 Days in Paris'

“We were just talking about those American Apparel ads. They’re fucking gross, man. Look, I love beautiful girls too. I think everyone should be free to have their knee socks and their sweaty shorts, but I’m over it. I’m over this weird, exhausted girl. I’m over the girl that’s tired and freezing and hungry. I like bossy girls, I always have. I like people filled with life. I’m over this weird media thing with all this, like, hollow-eyed, empty, party crap.”

--Amy Poehler

"Memories mean more to me than dresses."

--Anne Frank

"This is true happiness: to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had every ambition. To live far from men, not to need them and yet to love them. To have the stars above, the land to your left and the sea to your right and to realize of a sudden that in your heart, life has accomplished its final miracle: it has become a fairy tale."

--Nikos Kazantzakis

"I am rooted, but I flow."

--Virginia Woolf

"Thoughts are slow and deep and golden in the morning."

--John Steinbeck

"Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside."

--Mark Twain

Learn to float. Both in water and in life.

“Why should it be easy..? Why should love be easy? I’m the work of your life & you’re the work of mine.”

--'The Last Station'

We all fall down.

"Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down."

--Charles F. Kettering

“Thus inevitably does the universe wear our color, and every object fall successively into the subject itself. The subject exists, the subject enlarges; all things sooner or later fall into place. As I am, so I see; use what language we will, we can never say anything but what we are.”

--Emerson

"Everyone knows what their roots are, but you’ve got to explore everywhere. You’ve got to explore the sky too."

--Mick Jagger

"Let’s leave the obviously pretty women to men with no imagination."

--Proust

"Time has a wonderful way of showing us what really matters."

--Marageret Peters

In a city with too many people, I hope to run into you and act surprised.

“Ugliness is in a way superior to beauty because it lasts.”

--Serge Gainsbourgh

“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, 'The acquisition of taste'

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

--Bill Watterson

“There is only one conclusion to every story… We all fall down.”

--'Domino'

“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 saw me branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."

--Sylvia Plath, 'The Bell Jar'

everything will be okay everything will be okay everything will be okay

"I’m a far more flawed human being than you realize. My sickness is a lot worse than you think: it has deeper roots. And that’s why I want you to go on ahead of me if you can. Don’t wait for me. Sleep with other girls if you want to. Don’t let thoughts of me hold you back. Just do what you want to do. Otherwise, I might end up taking you with me, and that is the one thing I don’t want to do. I don’t want to interfere with your life. I don’t want to interfere with anybody’s life. Like I said before, I want you to come to see me every once in a while, and always remember me. That’s all I want."

--Haruki Murakami, 'Norwegian Wood'

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.”

--Vladimir Nabokov, 'Lolita'

“I thought, there is nowhere else in the universe I would rather be at this moment. I could count the places I would not rather be. I’ve always wanted to see New Zealand, but I’d rather be here. The majestic ruins of Machu Picchu? I’d rather be here. A hillside in Cuenca, Spain, sipping coffee and watching leaves fall? Not even close. There is nowhere else I could imagine wanting to be besides here in this car, with this girl, on this road, listening to this song. If she breaks my heart, no matter what hell she puts me through, I can say it was worth it, just because of right now. Out the window is a blur and all I can really hear is the girl’s hair flapping in the wind, and maybe if we drive fast enough the universe will lose track of us and forget to stick us somewhere else.”

--Rob Sheffield, 'Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time'

don’t forget to fly darling, close your eyes take a leap take a chance everything is alright i have me and everyone who loves me so much and everything will be okay everything will be okay everything will be okay. no one can take the me in me away.

--tequilamae

YOU MAKE GOOD CHOICES. LIVE LIFE AND TRUST YOURSELF.

--tequilamae

I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed & that necessary.

--Margaret Atwood, 'Variations on the Word "Sleep"'

“I love mankind, it’s people I can’t stand.”

--Charles M. Schulz

"If it is not beautiful for someone, it does not exist."

--William Gaddis

"I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you."

--Jack Kerouac

"But in the end it wasn’t up to me. The big things never are. Birth, I mean, and death. And love."

--Jeffrey Eugenides

"But maybe the Charm Bracelets understood more about life than I did. From an early age they knew what little value the world placed in books, and so didn’t waste their time with them. Whereas I, even now, persist in believing that these black marks on white paper bear the greatest significance, that if I keep writing, I might be able to catch the rainbow of consciousness in a jar."

--Jeffrey Eugenides

"Still not beautiful enough to make time stop."

--Robin Ekiss

"Meeting your heroes is always going to be tragic. You sit down with your hero and something has to change. That certainly happens to me. When I meet people who, I shall say, I worshipped almost - although I come away and I don’t dislike them - they’re never quite the same. You can never listen to the music in the same way again. And that’s why, as the great Julie Burchill says, maybe it’s best not to have tea with the one you love. You just turn a small corner when you meet them. And a massive chapter of your life is over and it can never be the same again. And maybe it’s just as well. And maybe you can grow up a little and stride into the future."

--Morrissey

“i never had to be the pretty girl. i’m never the girl at the dinner party wearing the tight dress and the high heels. it’s stressful to be someone’s version of beautiful. i feel much more comfortable being silly. as a girl you grow up and you want to be so attractive, and, truthfully, if you take that out of the equation and you just do what you’re interested in, you’re usually more attractive, anyway.”

--kerri russell

"They take pictures of mountain climbers at the top of the mountain. They’re smiling, ecstatic, triumphant. They don't take pictures along the way, because who wants to remember the rest of it. We push ourselves because we have to, not because we like it. The relentless climb, the pain and anguish of taking it to the next level, nobody takes pictures of that, nobody wants to remember. We just want to remember the view from the top. The breathtaking moment at the edge of the world. That’s what keeps us climbing. And it’s worth the pain. That’s the crazy part. It’s worth anything.”

--'Grey's Anatomy'

i’m not going to be one of those people who sit around talking about what they’re going to do. i’m just going to do it. imagining the future is kind of nostalgia. you spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. you just use the future to escape the present.

Time takes it all.

"Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them."

--Dalai Lama

"Strangely enough, this is the past that somebody in the future is longing to go back to."

--Ashleigh Brilliant

I've learned to let go, not hold on so tight. To open the jar at just the right moment, and enjoy the light.

"She wanted to be irresponsible, she wanted to be looked after, to be told that she didn't have to worry about a thing and that someone else would take care of everything. How easy life would be without having grown-up problems to worry about. And then she could grow up all over again..."

--Cecilia Ahern

Time takes it all. Whether you want it to or not. Time takes it all, time bears it away, and in the end, there is only darkness. Sometimes we find others in that darkness. And sometimes we lose them there again.

“And my first bit of free advice is this: You are alive. Your whole life is still before you. More terrible things will happen to you. Wonderful things will happen, too. Don’t run from life. Embrace it.”

--Robin Jones Gunn

“I have only known her for two years. But if you took every memory, every moment, if you stretched them end to end—they’d reach forever.”

--Jodi Picoult, 'My Sister’s Keeper'

“I like to smell things and look at things, and sometimes stay up all night, walking, and watch the sun rise.”

--Ray Bradury

“The positive way to look at this is that from here things can only go up. But I’ve been up, and I always felt like a trespasser. A transient at the top. It’s like I’ve got a visa for happiness, but for sadness I’ve got a lifetime pass.”

--Carrie Fisher

Imagine if you suddenly learned that the people, the places, the moments most important to you were not gone, not dead, but worse, had never been. What kind of hell would that be?

"Fame to me is only a temporary and partial happiness, that's not what fulfills me. It warms you a bit, but the warming is temporary. It might be kind of a relief to be finished. It's sort of like you don't know what kind of yard dash you're running, and then you're at the finish line and you sort of sigh -- you've made it. But fame will go by -- and so long. I've had you, fame. I've always known it was fickle."

--Marilyn Monroe, in her last interview, which Life published a week before her death

To live honestly, truthfully and to be completely present is the ultimate enterprise.

"If you're out there you're vulnerable. People prefer to disappear in life, to repress their personality. That's not living. It's dying. I see them all over the place, the walking dead."

--Grace Jones

This life is collected in things we put in our pockets and people we could have married.

You wanna know what living life to the fullest actually is? It's waking up on a Monday morning with no complaints. It's knowing you always deserve to laugh. It's doing what feels right no matter what. It's doing what you want to, no matter how stupid you look. It's about being yourself, 'cause no one can tell you you're doing it wrong.

"Was I ever crazy? Maybe. Or maybe life is. Crazy isn’t being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It’s you or me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child forever."

--'Girl, Interrupted'

"Ninety percent of the world's woes come from people not knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailties, and even their real virtues. Most of us go all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves – so how can we know anyone else?"

--Sydney J. Harris

“The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”

--Barbara Kingsolver

"A lot of my early work, especially the reflections, was about what I call the surrealism of everyday life .. picking out the strangeness in the world we live in. Those doors are doors that could lead you to other worlds, or what is behind what is in front of you."

--Stephanie Torbert

"But in some ways, the most significant choices one makes in life are done for reasons that are not all that dramatic, not earth-shaking at all; often enough, the choices we make are, for better or for worse, made by default."

— Marya Hornbacher

The expected is what we live for. The unexpected is what changes our lives.

Whatever doesn't kill you, will probably try again.

The saddest thing that I can possibly think of is a dead bird, they make me think about how no matter how free you are one day you will die.

"Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these."

--Susan B. Anthony

"That is how you know you’ve left childhood behind -- when you wish for time to go backward."

--Alice Hoffman, 'Here On Earth'

"It’s the sort of day you wouldn’t mind losing completely, even if it meant your life would be twenty-four hours shorter."

--Alice Hoffman, 'Here On Earth'

What a world we live in. I want to be incredibly close to the heart of it all. To live honestly, truthfully and to be completely present is the ultimate enterprise. And right now, I couldn’t possibly ask for anything more. I am a very lucky girl.

I hope you never think about anything as much as I think about you.

“The nicest thing for me is sleep, then at least I can dream.”

--Marilyn Monroe

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

"Memory is a part of the present. It builds us up inside; it knits our bones to our muscles and keeps our hearts pumping. It is memory that reminds our bodies to work, and memory that reminds our spirits to work too: it keeps us who we are."

--Gregory Maguire, 'Son of a Witch: A Novel'

"Books fall open, you fall in. When you climb out again, you're a bit larger than you used to be."

--Gregory Maguire

"Sex appeal is fifty percent what you've got and fifty percent what people think you've got."

--Sophia Loren

Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on. I hope you never think about anything as much as I think about you.

"Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand - and melting like a snowflake."

--Francis Bacon, Sr.

You are an extraordinary woman. You have a purpose in this world, and hiding behind a fictional story that you are broken or incomplete is not it.

It's during times of disappointment that we make decisions in our minds that limit what is possible for us in the future.

We've got this obsession with material things as if heaven is ours if we're buying our wings.

I don't have a choice but I still choose you.

"It's not how old you are, it's how you are old."

--Jules Renard

If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back.

I'm the sort of person that's always dwelling on the destination rather than the journey. Even when I'm in a great situation... there's always this moving thought that it is all going to have to end.

This is a blank map that lets you go as far as you want in any direction, with no questions asked, but it's no help at all if you want to know if you're going the right way.

--Story People

"It's about how you're like a lighthouse, always searching far into the distance. But the thing you're looking for is usually close to you and always has been. That's why you have to look within yourself to find answers instead of searching beyond."

--Susane Colasanti, 'Waiting For You'

"Time is God’s way of keeping everything from happening at once."

--Wynonna Judd

I wish you'd hold me when I turn my back

The less I give the more I get back

Oh your hands can heal, your hands can bruise

I don't have a choice but I still choose you

--The Civil Wars, Poison & Wine

Look for the dream that keeps coming back. It is your destiny.

"Probably the closest things to perfection are the huge absolutely empty holes that astronomers have recently discovered in space. If there’s nothing there, how can anything go wrong?"

--Richard Brautigan

"No one ever tells you that you’re never going to feel grown up."

--Saroyan

I still feel like you only know what you're doing after you've done it.

"It's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party."

--Nick Hornby, 'High Fidelity'

"Go be that starving Artist you're afraid to be. Open up that journal and get poetic finally. Volunteer. Suck it up and travel. You were not born here to work and pay taxes. You were put here to be part of a vast organism to explore and create. Stop putting it off. The world has much more to offer than what's on 15 televisions at TGI Fridays. Take pictures. Scare people. Shake up the scene. Be the change you want to see in the world. You'll thank yourself for it."

--Jason Mraz

"I still love books. Nothing a computer can do can compare to a book. You can’t really put a book on the Internet. Three companies have offered to put books by me on the Net, and I said, ‘If you can make something that has a nice jacket, nice paper with that nice smell, then we’ll talk.’ All the computer can give you is a manuscript. People don’t want to read manuscripts. They want to read books. Books smell good. They look good. You can press it to your bosom. You can carry it in your pocket."

--Ray Bradbury

"He went down trying not to look long at her, as though she were the sun, but he saw her, as one sees the sun, without looking."

--Leo Tolstoy

"Here's to the few who forgive what you do, and the fewer who don't even care."

--Leonard Cohen

"There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn't."

--Leonard Cohen

"We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out."

--Ray Bradbury

let’s go said he

not too far said she

what’s too far said he

where you are said she

--e. e. cummings

"People work too hard to figure out the meaning of their lives. Why ME, why NOW. The truth is, sometimes things don’t happen to you for a reason. Sometimes it’s just about being in the right place at the right time for someone else."

--Jodi Picoult

Today is the day to: dream of trips to Paris, listen to Simon & Garfunkle, Karen Ann, & Beth Orton, draw comics, celebrate, write letters, drink coffee, believe in more, read books, buy flowers, take a walk, take a compliment, eat fresh fruit, let go, kiss your boyfriend, love your cat, plan on a cupcake, think up new ideas, compliment your mom, rock out, stare at clouds, take polaroids, laugh out loud, make a list, turn off the computer, buy new shoes, shave your legs, talk to muses, feel GREAT, plan a trip, a dream, a way to take over the world, finish something that is still unfinished, believe you can DO IT ALL.

You want to keep the world the way it is. Every generation wants to be the last. Every generation hates the next trend in music they can't understand. We hate to give up those reigns of our culture. To find our own music playing in elevators.

When you least expected it, life surprises you.

The incredible history of my feelings and my thoughts could fill up a dozen leather-bound books. But the story of my life - my behavior, my actions - that’s a slim volume. I’ve always thought it would be terribly boring. What would be in it? Chapter One: My Childhood. I was born, I cried. Chapter Two: The Rest: I maintained myself.

--Wallace Shawn

"We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep — it’s as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we’re very fortunate, by time itself. There’s just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we’ve ever imagined, though everyone knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more. Heaven only knows why we love it so."

--Michael Cunningham

"The trouble with life isn't that there is no answer, it's that there are so many answers."

--Ruth Benedict

"I'm thinking that it might actually be possible for things to work out sometimes. Definitely not everything and maybe not the way you imagined. But sometimes, when you least expected it, life surprises you."

--Susane Colasanti, 'When It Happens'

"If there is no passion in your life, then have you ever really lived? Find your passion, whatever it may be. Become it, and let it become you, and you will find that great things will happen for you, to you, and because of you."

--T. Alan Armstrong

I mainly like life to be peaceful with a few loud noises thrown in to remind me to be grateful for the quiet I have.

--Story People

There's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go.

"Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."

--Christopher Robin to Pooh

It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.

"Just when you think it can't get any worse, it can. And just when you think it can't get any better, it can."

--Nicholas Sparks, 'At First Sight'

Sacrifice. We all make them. You kept thinking about what you lost. You didn’t get it. Sacrifice is a part of life. It’s supposed to be. It’s not something to regret. It’s something to aspire to.

"We're all susceptible to it, the dread and anxiety of not knowing what's coming. It's pointless in the end, because all the worrying and the making of plans for things that could or could not happen, it only makes things worse. So walk your dog or take a nap. Just whatever you do, stop worrying. Because the only cure for paranoia is to be here, just as you are."

--'Grey's Anatomy'

Pain beats regret every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

"Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

You can't stop the future, you can't rewind the past. The only way to learn the secret is to press play.

"Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without words, and never stops at all."

--Emily Dickenson

"Listen; there's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go."

--E.E. Cummings

Travel, travel, travel. Do not settle into the life of the normal average citizen, be more. Realize that time helps, when nothing else can. And that there are two types of people in this world, those who are unhappy, and those who do whatever it takes to ensure their happiness, and you are one of those people.

“There is no such thing as was. To me, no man is himself, he is the sum of his past. There is no such thing really as was, because the past is. It is part of every man, every woman, and every moment.”

--William Faulkner

"Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can."

--Willis Whitney

"Charm. It's a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it you don't need to have anything else; and if you don't have it, it doesn't much matter what else you have."

--James Matthew Barrie

"It is good that the young are beautiful; it is the only advantage they have."

--The Duchess of Windsor

We would often be sorry if our wishes were granted.

"There are two days in the week on which I never worry; One is yesterday and the other is tomorrow."

--Robert Burdette

Independence is the part that drew you in

You said I like the way you know a thing or two

You gotta have hope

You gotta have something

There's always a reason to break

Hope

'Cause nothing less

Will save the day

"Isn't it sad to be in a place where everything is so unbelievable you'd believe anything?"

--'Go Ask Alice'

"If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?"

--'Alice in Wonderland'

"I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near.”

--Margaret Thatcher

She only drinks coffee at midnight

When the moment is not right

Her timing is quite unusual

You see her confidence is tragic

but her intuition: magic

If I'm not going forward, I'm not going anywhere.

I saw a moth fall from the sky. It fell, in smooth, tight spirals, the way seed pods from sycamore trees do. We called them helicopters and they littered the streets of our childhood, on our way home from school in the dusky glow of autumn evenings. I only saw the moth when it reached my eye level. It could have been falling for years.

1. It's late at night.

2. You're driving home.

3. Call your husband and tell him you see a strange light in the sky.

4. Hang up in the middle of the call.

5. Leave the car on the side of the road.

6. Hitch a ride somewhere.

7. Anywhere.

And what if that was the last time I'll ever see him, standing at my door in a kilt at nine o'clock this morning with a sad smile on his face and a battered old bag by his feet? I said I hope you have a good flight, but really I meant to say I love you and I'll miss you. I think he understood. I had cried half a years worth of tears the night before but I wanted to cry again. He walked down the corridor and I went back to sleep. "Dust in the wind," he said.

It happened on a Friday in early August. No, no, it was a Saturday. Back then, days of the week lost all meaning, they all just merged together into one sprawling moment in time that lasted the whole summer. Each day was a chapter within the greater story of one life. Some days two lives shared the same chapter, and those were the days that mattered most. One of those days was a Thursday, when they looked each other in the eye and admitted this was happening. Another was a Monday when they held hands because they didn't know what else to do, and several Mondays later they held hands because it was all they knew. Once, it started on a Saturday and she stroked his arm with her delicate thumb until it was a Sunday and he slept while she could smile and be exhausted and impatient all at once. I miss this.

And when you're sitting on the side of the road crying over what feels like the best goddamn thing you ever had--well, at least you had it.

I knew that no matter how bad you feel, or what horrible thing happens to you, that the world just keeps on going. That the rest of the world doesn’t even realize that the monsters are eating your heart. A long time ago it used to bother me that I could be in such confusion, such pain, and the world just didn’t give a shit. The world, the creation as a whole, is designed to move forward, to keep on keeping on without any one individual person. It feels damned impersonal, and it is. But, then, if the world stopped rotating just because one of us was having a bad day, we’d all be floating out in space.

"The process of growing up was nothing more than figuring out what doors hadn't yet been slammed in your face."

--Jodi Picoult, 'The Tenth Circle'

I need to do something. Tonight I remembered that it feels good to lay in the middle of the street with your friends and look at the sky. Today I remembered riding bikes around the city and sitting by the river. I remembered feeling frustrated and unsure--but inspired and satisfied. I'm always missing something and I just know that I need to make some changes. If I'm not going forward, I'm not going anywhere.

We all grow into the beautiful person that we're supposed to be--some earlier. Some later.

I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than to live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is.

The paper cuts

The cheating lovers

The coffees never strong enough

“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

--Wayne Dyer

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. These are a few of my favorite things.

Rules only work when everyone plays by them.

Envy comes from wanting something that isn't yours. But grief comes from losing something you've already had.

Being brave doesn’t save you from the monsters. It just ups your chances.

“Time is a circus, always packing up and moving away.”

--Ben Hecht

"And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the

greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it."

--Roald Dahl

"Have you really read all those books in your room?" I asked. She laughed. "Oh God no. I've maybe read a third of 'em. But I'm going to read them all. I call it my Life's Library. Every summer since I was little, I've gone to garage sales and bought all the books that look interesting. So I always have something to read. But there is so much to do: cigarettes to smoke, sex to have, swings to swing on. I'll have more time for reading them when I'm old and boring."

At twenty we worry about what others think of us; at forty we don't care about what others think of us; at sixty we discover they haven't been thinking about us at all.

If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain "Move from here to there", and it will move. Nothing will be impossible to you.

"You grow up the day you have your first real laugh -- at yourself."

--Ethel Barrymore

"The odds are very good that worrying is a waste of time. And besides, worrying won't change what happens anyway, will it?"

-Judie Angell, 'A Whisper in the Night'

Grief is like a moving river.

“I guess it’s always changing,” she says. There’s another pause. “What else can I say?” Her voice is breathy and fragile, and she takes a few gulps of air. “I just wake up each day in a slightly different place—grief is like a moving river, so that’s what I mean by ‘it’s always changing’.” She stops again. “It’s a strange thing to say”—her words unravel slowly, her eyes tear up—”because I’m at heart an optimistic person, but I would say in some ways it just gets worse. It’s just that the more time that passes, the more you miss someone. In some ways it gets worse. That’s what I would say.”

- Michelle Williams, on Heath Ledger’s death, Newsweek

All you need is time.

"Time travel is like visiting Paris. You can't just read the guidebook, you've got to throw yourself in. Eat the food, use the wrong verbs, get charged double, and end up kissing complete strangers."
--'Doctor Who'

What is wrong will be right. What is pain will be joy. What is sick will be healthy. What is rough will be smooth. And what is lost will be found. All you need is time.

If you don't know whether you're coming or going maybe it's time to just stop.

You are already dead in my time. But you are still here. You are the whispering wind that sends goose bumps down my spine and the sensation of water as my foot breaks the surface. You are a lover's fingers on my cheek and a drunkard’s elbow in a crowded bar. You are the grass beneath my toes and the sky above my head. So I smile. Because you are in that too.

Times will be tough like old leather and gravel roads occasionally. Times will be easy, like Sunday morning, every now and then.

Some will make a moment feel like forever. But the people who really change your life are the ones that make forever, feel like a moment.

A heart is there to make you bleed. To pass the time. To help you sleep. A heart is there to touch and feel. To mend. And to heal.

The hardest thing you will ever have to do, is wait.

Take your time and craft the things you do. Love them. Love the process. God is in the details. And you can be an artist in everything you do.

Everything that needs to happen, will happen, in the time that it takes to happen, the way it was meant to happen. You need to trust in that.

Put one in front of the other one. Focus on that and everything else will fall into place. One step at a time. You get there in the end.

If winning is getting up one more time than you fall down. If strength is more than muscle. If time teaches us patience. And knowledge gives us grace. Then we will go forward. Remembering the past. But never yearning for it. There is so much more to look forward to.

You can measure time in wrinkles, bursts of clarity and insight, warm beds, waiting in line at the bank or the distance between two kisses. It stretches and shrinks and sometimes even bends. That's why your heart will always keep better time than a clock.

Time is tricky.

Although I may not have had a clue where I was headed, I did know a thing or two about what I was willing to do.

Even as we are, we’re still becoming.

Nothing connects to the moment like music. I count on the music to bring me back - or, more precisely, to bring her forward.

We would sit and wonder about the future, but I'm thinking that today sounds fine to me.

Pile up too many tomorrows and you'll find that you've collected nothing but a bunch of empty yesterdays.

Are you doing what you're doing today because it's what you want to do or because it's what you were doing yesterday?

Maybe we all could use a little grace to know when to run and when to stay in one place.

I used to believe in a lot more. Now, I just see straight ahead. That's not to say I don't have good times, but as for my days, I spend them waiting.

Airplanes flying above me. Everyone on board is in such a hurry to get somewhere and way down here I'm trying my best to be impossibly slow.

"If you start wishing things were different from what they are, the next step is depression, then inactivity, and finally vegetation. No matter what the state of the world, you have got to move. Move."

--Dean Koontz

We have been close forever, but I don’t really have any memories of us together when we were children. I think that’s how everyone is though, they don’t remember things, they just know them.

"Cheers to a new year and another chance to get it right."

--Oprah Winfrey

Time is tricky. You have whole months, even years, when nothing changes a speck. When you don't go anywhere or do anything or think one new thought. And then you can get hit with a day or an hour, or half a second, when so much happens, it's almost like you are born all over again into some brand-new person you for damn sure never expected to meet.

She was illusive. She was today. She was tomorrow. She was the faintest scent of a cactus flower, the flitting shadow of an elf owl. We did not know what to make of her. In our minds we tried to pin her to a corkboard like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew.

It's in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.

But wasn't that always the way. It's never something huge that changes everything, but instead the tiniest of details, irrevocably tweaking the balance of the universe while you're busy focusing on the big picture.

The further you go, the more you have to be proud of. At the same time, in order to come a long way, you have to be behind to begin with. In the end, though, maybe it's not how you reach a place that matters. Just that you get there at all.

It was in a foreign hotel's bathtub I baptized myself and changed. And one by one I drowned all of the people I had been. And I emerged to find the parallels were fewer. I was cleansed. I looked in the mirror and someone new was there.

Strange that I should be here, where I so desperately wanted to be, and ache for what I left behind.

She'd always believed that people come in two varieties: those who look out the windshield and those who stare in the rearview mirror. She'd always been the windshield type: gotta focus on the future, not the past, because that's the only part that's still up for grabs.

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind. The kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

It happens to everyone as they grow up: you find out who you are and what you want and then you realize that the people you've known forever don't see things the way you do. And so you keep the memories but find yourself moving on.

She wanted to feel happy for her friends, really she did, but she couldn’t shake off the feeling of being left behind. Everyone else's lives were moving on except hers.

"One day we're going to have to grow up -- have to get real jobs and be adults. Someday. Just not today."

--Kenny Chesney

It made her wonder if you could know a person only at a single moment in time, because a year from now or a day from now, he might be different.