Everyone gets things backwards sometimes.

And there are thousands in the crowd outside everyday. And everyone's there. And they love me. And I don't care. Because they're not you.

All the hardest, coldest people you meet were once as soft as water. And that's the tragedy of living.

You think that you're fundamentally "you". That even without three meals a day, the people around you and the things you've been exposed to, you would still be the same person with the same ideas, morals, values and attitude towards life. But you wouldn't be. You would be "them". The great "them" that seem so stupid and alien and far away in other countries. And they're reading this right now, wondering if they could be you.

I always thought that I was sick and you were the cure. But everyone gets things backwards sometimes.

Being enlightened doesn't mean being happy. It means you're ok even when things aren't.

Unfortunately, you don't get what you deserve. You get what you think you deserve.

You'd think it would be easy for them to mark with red the cigarette that killed you so that you wouldn't smoke it, the drink that does you in with a label cautioning you not to, the kiss that ends the world with flashing lights that spell out the words "Stay Away."

If I were you, I'd be beautiful.

You're at the top of my list of meaningful decisions I need to make.

But nothing is wasted. There's no song you can listen to, no person you can speak to, no moment it takes to see things as they are that doesn't teach you something. You need everything you know.

Did you think I would forget how to love? It's like riding a bike. Everyone falls off and scrapes their knees sometimes.

You are the best parts of all the songs I love.

To find you and love you for all that you are. That's the reason I was sent to Earth.

We help people when big things happen to them, when you see them getting hit by a car, when a brother or a sister or a father or a mother dies, we're there for them because we can see that death kills more than the person it takes. And yet, the people around us who die a little all the time, moment by moment, who require the least help, the smallest sacrifice, are the ones we ignore completely.

Not the first one in the morning or the one on the TV, the well-meaning phone call on a Monday night one or some you find on the radio - The voice that whispers between your ears before you fall asleep, that's the one you pay attention to.

These things take time to remember. But you weren't always like this. I knew you before.

You are so full of the things that you don't have that you don't have space for the things you do.

So if you love me but you don't need me, you don't love me.

So may you find in each other what you came here for. And trust that this is love because it is (love is trust). And tangled lives you may lead but into each other, never apart, till you cannot distinguish between being and being together.

Small people only want one thing from you: Someone else to be as small as they are. Stay big.

If it was easy, everyone would do it. But it's not. Which is why it's up to you.

So this is how they send the angel.

All quotes from 'The History of Love' by Nicole Krauss -- Part Four

Why do people always get named after dead people? If they have to be named after anything at all, why can't it be things, which have more permanence, like the sky or the sea, or even ideas, which never really die, not even the bad ones?

BEING ALONE. Like the Living, angels sometimes get tired of each other and want to be alone. Because the houses they live in are crowded, and there's nowhere to go, the only thing an angel can do at such moments is shut his eyes and put his head down on his arms. When an angel does this, the others understand that he is trying to fool himself into feeling alone, and they tiptoe around him. To help things along, they might talk about him as if he weren't there. If they happen to bump into him by accident, they whisper: "It wasn't me."

FOR BETTER OR WORSE. Angels don't get married. To begin with they are too busy, and secondly they don't fall in love with each other. (If you don't know what it feels like to have someone you love put a hand below your bottom rib for the first time, what chance is there for love?)

I SHOULD
Get out more, join some clubs. I should buy some new clothes, dye my hair blue, let Herman Cooper take me on a ride in his father's car, kiss me, and possibly even feel my nonexistent breasts. I should develop some useful skills like public speaking, electric cello, or welding, see a doctor about my stomachaches, find a hero that it not a man who wrote a children's book and crashed his plane, stop trying to set up my father's tent in record time, throw away my notebooks, stand up straight, and cut this habit of answering any question regarding my well-being with a reply fit for a prim English schoolgirl who believes life is nothing but a long preparation for a few finger sandwiches with the Queen.

Dr. Vishnubakat asked me how I got the name Bird. I told him I just did. If you want to know why Dr. Vishnubakat is called Dr. Vishnubakat it's because he's from India. If you want to remember how to say it just think of Dr. Fishinabucket.

So this is how they send the angel. With the name of the girl you always loved.

Sometimes I thought about nothing and sometimes I thought about my life. At least I made a living. What kind of living? A living. I lived. It wasn't easy. And yet. I found out how little is unbearable.

I remember the first time I could make myself see something that wasn't there. I was ten years old, walking home from school. Some boys from my class ran by shouting and laughing. I wanted to be like them. And yet. I didn't know how. I'd always felt different from the others, and the difference hurt. And then I turned the corner and saw it. A huge elephant, standing alone in the square. I knew I was imagining it. And yet. I wanted to believe. So I tried. And I found I could.

There are so many ways to be alive, but only one way to be dead.

Sometimes I thought about my life and sometimes I didn't think. From time to time, when the urge struck, I conducted a quick survey: No to the question: Can you feel your legs? No to the question: Buttocks? Yes to the question: Does your heart beat?

Now that mine is almost over, I can say that the thing that struck me most about life is the capacity for change. One day you're a person and the next day they tell you you're a dog. At first it's hard to bear, but after a while you learn not to look at it as a loss. There's even a moment when it becomes exhilarating to realize just how little needs to stay the same for you to continue the effort they call, for lack of a better word, being human.

It's strange what the mind can do when the heart is giving the directions.

I couldn't speak. I was afraid I'd choose the wrong sentence.

This dress has pockets
You put your hands in the dress' pockets.
You are behind me.
We are watching music being played on a stage.
Orange saxophones
A facilitating piano
Violins like tree branches.
Your body moves behind me.
My dress moves.
I put my hands in my pockets.
My hands
with your hands
in the pockets of a dress.

There are no mistakes, only lessons.

This is where I have always been coming to. Since my time began. And when I go away from here, this will be the midpoint, to which everything ran, before, and from which everything will run.

On rainy days I just want to sit home and wonder about what is going on. I want to wonder and let my mind wander. I want things to not make sense. I want to go back to my five year old self. I want a vanilla cupcake. I want to go to the front of my door and watch the rain fall down. I want to listen to soft, beautiful music. I want to make love. I want to make out for over two hours. I want tea. I want chardonnay. I want beautiful things. I want to write down how I feel and not be ashamed. I want peace and love and everything in between.

You want one thing that is simple and that exists just purely to please you.

It’s been one of those days. You know... those days where the only thought going through your head is, “I want to be on my bed, in the four o’clock sun with absolutely nothing to do but drift in and out of purple and gold dreams.” One of those days where your eyes burn and you can’t stop yawning and you need a couple gallons of scalding tea and an acoustic guitar. One of those days where you’d like to stop everything and learn how to knit, so you can knit yourself into socks and matching cloudy blue mittens and be cozy with someone. One of those days when you realize that waiting is making you exhausted and you only want to get to that place. You know that place... the one everyone says you’ll get to, that place where you’ll stop being tired and be overwhelmed with contentment and a tickling sense of belonging. Somewhere you can sit down, sprawl out on the grass, splayed like a star in the sun, and say, “Yes. This was worth the wait. This is where I need to be.”

"Remember, there are no mistakes, only lessons. Love yourself, trust your choices, and everything is possible."
--Cherie Carter-Scott

"The world is smaller than you think, and the people on it are more beautiful than you think."
--Bertram van Munster

Sometimes, if you aren’t sure about something, you just have to jump off the bridge and grow your wings on the way down.

It’s a funny thing about coming home… Looks the same, smells the same, feels the same. You’ll realize that what’s changed is you.

The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are.

Sometimes I wonder about things, just things in general. They start to wander in my head. They try to form sentences, but they're usually short. A noun or so.

We were talking and I didn't say half the things I needed to say.

“Well,” said Pooh, “what I like best—” and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.”
--Winnie the Pooh

There are a few things I will miss, a girl with no shirt on lighting a cigarette and brushing her hair in the mirror; the sound of a mailbox opening, somewhere, and closing at two in the morning of the first snow, and the words for them.

The glass is always half empty.

It had been a long time in coming, like the swollen soot clouds of a coming storm, like the too-ripe fruit ready to fall, like the sun baking chocolate dirt desperate to bloom. So she let it come, the slow wet rising reaching her eyes, beginning to fall and fall.

The things about life that I've learned is that you're going to get hurt. You're going to have emotional nights and cry yourself to sleep for hours. You're going to suffer some kind of heartbreak, some kind of loss. But you will also have those moments where you heal. Those moments are the best. You feel like you smile for the first time again. You feel like you're alive again. Life just kind of restarts.

Today is one of those gray cloudy days where it seems like the sky just doesn't give a piece of crap. There's no texture. It's one flat shade of gray. It makes me wonder if the sky ever gets tired of its job.

I guess I just prefer to see the dark side of things. The glass is always half empty. And cracked. And I just cut my lip on it. And chipped a tooth.

It seems like the simplest concept: just push them all away and you’ll never get hurt. However, the simplest isn’t always the most effective. Someday, somebody’s gonna find their way in, and they’re going to leave you on your knees.

Sometimes, love lost does not hurt half as bad as a love that never had a chance to grow. Sometimes you meet people that change everything, but more often, you change everything for someone you never even meet.

This life, it hurts sometimes, and you cry to sleep and you wake up heavy-hearted, but remember: the earth does not stop. Your heart keeps going and your limbs keep moving and you sleep it off, you wake up new, and you face the day with eager, shining eyes, and you love with a full, full heart.

“Sure, it’s good to feel things, and if it hurts, we’re doing it to ourselves, or so the saying goes, but there should be a different music here. There should be just one safe place in the world, I mean this world. People get hurt here. People fall down and stay down and I don’t like the way the song goes.”
--Richard Siken

Life has not forgotten you.

Close my eyes, open them back up. Plan a new life, and then another one. All the same. And so very different.

You can spend your whole life preparing, and still never learn the most valuable lessons that only come with doing. Quit worrying that you aren't ready, worthy or qualified. You aren't, and you won't be until you're actively in the thick of it all. Jump in and get started already. You're in luck; the very best time for beginnings is now.

You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall.

The nine hour work day, the family problems, the best friend getting married. The chaos. The older brother who is a drug addict. The little brother who might just possibly be following in the same foot steps. The roots that are starting to show at the top of your head, the ruined mascara. The new black pants that just got dirty. The annoying customers. The mom who has lung cancer. The grandparents who try too much and who love with all of their hearts. The friends that have forgotten about you, the friends that you are trying not to forget about. The memories, the beauty. The things that you don't want to remember. Words. Sentences. Paragraphs, weeks and months. Years and lost friends. Life. Moving on. Getting somewhere. Making it, even if it was just barely making it.