Laziness will not do.

“Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.”

--Mark Twain

“I think there are people who want to be looked at. As a writer or observer, I’m more interested in looking.”

--Sofia Coppola

"Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while."

--Groucho Marx

“Praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and sorrow come and go like the wind. To be happy, rest like a giant tree, in the midst of them all.”

--Buddha

“When so many are lonely, as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.”

--Tennessee Williams

"I want to get more familiar with you. I love you. I loved you when you came and sat on the bed--all that second afternoon was like warm mist--and I hear again the way you say my name--with that queer accent of yours. You arouse in me such a mixture of feelings, I don't know how to approach you. Only come to me--get closer and closer to me. It will be beautiful, I promise you."

--Henry Miller

"Where it all ends I can't fathom, my friends.

If I knew, I might toss out my anchor."

--Jimmy Buffett

“To love what you do and feel that it matters—how could anything be more fun?”

--Katharine Graham

“It ain’t dying I’m talking about, it’s living. I doubt it matters where you die, but it matters where you live.”

--Larry McMurtry, 'Lonesome Dove'

“So avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women - and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do.”

--'Dead Poets Society'

“Start copying what you love. Copying, copying, copying. And at the end of the copy, you will find yourself.”

--Yohji Yamamoto

"…I love your feet only because they walked upon the earth and upon the wind and upon the waters, until they found me…"

--Pablo Neruda

“Be hole, be dust, be dream, be wind

Be night, be dark, be wish, be mind,

Now slip, now slide, now move unseen,

Above, beneath, betwixt, between.”

--Neil Gaiman

“I get my ideas out of my dreams…if you’re lucky enough to use something you see in a dream, it is purely original. It’s not in the world — it’s in your head. I think that is amazing.”

--Alexander McQueen

You feel like running, but life is on a stroll.

All quotes by author Donald Miller

"I think this is when most people give up on their stories. They come out of college wanting to change the world, wanting to get married, wanting to have kids and change the way people buy office supplies. But they get into the middle and discover it was harder than they thought. They can't see the distant shore anymore, and they wonder if their paddling is moving them forward. None of the trees behind them are getting smaller and none of the trees ahead are getting bigger. They take it out on their spouses, and they go looking for an easier story."

"I can't do it. It would be like, say, trying to fall in love with somebody, or trying to convince yourself that your favorite food is pancakes. You don't decide those things, they just happen to you. If God is real, He needs to happen to me."

"I can no more understand the totality of God than the pancake I made for breakfast understands the complexity of me."

"Even our beliefs have become trend statements. We don’t even believe things because we believe them anymore. We only believe things because they are cool things to believe."

"My most recent faith struggle is not one of intellect. I don’t really do that anymore. Sooner or later you just figure out there are some guys who don’t believe in God and they can prove He doesn't exist, and there are some other guys who do believe in God and they can prove He does exist, and the argument stopped being about God a long time ago and now it’s about who is smarter, and honestly I don’t care."

"There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing. (They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz.) And as I lay there, it occurred to me that God is up there somewhere. Of course, I had always known He was, but this time I felt it, I realized it, the way a person realizes they are hungry or thirsty. The knowledge of God seeped out of my brain and into my heart. I imagined Him looking down on this earth, half angry because His beloved mankind had cheated on Him, had committed adultery, and yet hopelessly in love with her, drunk with love for her."

"It is always the simple things that change our lives. And these things never happen when you are looking for them to happen. Life will reveal answers at the pace life wishes to do so. You feel like running, but life is on a stroll."

"Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself."

"No, life cannot be understood flat on a page. It has to be lived; a person has to get out of his head, has to fall in love, has to memorize poems, has to jump off bridges into rivers, has to stand in an empty desert and whisper sonnets under his breath…"

"I always thought the Bible was more of a salad thing, you know, but it isn't. It's a chocolate thing."

"I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently."

"I fell in love with books. Some people find beauty in music, some in painting, some in landscape, but I find it in words. By beauty, I mean the feeling you have suddenly glimpsed another world, or looked into a portal that reveals a kind of magic or romance out of which the world has been constructed, a feeling there is something more than the mundane, and a reason for our plodding."

"When you live on your own for a long time, however, your personality changes because you go so much into yourself you lose the ability to be social, to understand what is and isn't normal behavior. There is an entire world inside yourself, and if you let yourself, you can get so deep inside it you will forget the way to the surface. Other people keep our souls alive, just like food and water does with our body."

"I am something of a recluse by nature. I am that cordless screwdriver that has to charge for twenty hours to earn ten minutes use. I need that much downtime."

"The most difficult lie I have ever contended with is this: life is a story about me."

"Everybody wants to be fancy and new. Nobody wants to be themselves. I mean, maybe people want to be themselves, but they want to be different, with different clothes or shorter hair or less fat. It's a fact. If there was a guy who just liked being himself and didn't want to be anybody else, that guy would be the most different guy in the world and everybody would want to be him."

"I don't wonder anymore what I'll tell God when I go to heaven when we sit in the chairs under the tree, outside the city... I'll tell these things to God, and he'll laugh, I think and he'll remind me of the parts I forgot, the parts that were his favorite. We'll sit and remember my story together, and then he'll stand and put his arms around me and say, "well done," and that he liked my story. And my soul won't be thirsty anymore. Finally he'll turn and we'll walk toward the city, a city he will have spoken into existence a city built in a place where once there'd been nothing. "

“And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves…We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn’t it? I want to repeat one word for you: Leave. Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn’t it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don’t worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed.”

I got a sweet little angel

"You spend too much time reading, Spenser. You know more stuff that don't make you money than anybody I know."

--Robert B. Parker, 'Mortal Stakes'

“It takes a lot of forms … The world is being constantly circled as though by gulfstream forces, ideas, and creativity that want to be made manifest, and they’re looking for portals to come through in people, and if you don’t do it, they’ll go find someone else. So you have to convince it that you’re serious and you have to show it respect and you have to talk to it and let it know that you’re there.”

--Liz Gilbert, on creativity/genius/muses

“Happiness is not a big house… It’s being in each other’s way. That’s what brings memories.”

--Karina Gentinetta

“I know that I’m good inside. And if people don’t, I shouldn’t mind.”

--Laura Marling, Mama, How Far I’ve Come

"Leave early enough to be missed but stay long enough to be remembered."

--Lisa Taddeo

The days that make us happy make us wise.

“Enough of laziness and doing nothing! Open this notebook every day and write down half a page at the very least. If you have nothing to write down, then at least, following Gogol’s advice, write down that today there’s nothing to write. Always write with attention and look on writing as a holiday.”

--Daniil Kharms, Today I Wrote Nothing: Selected Writings

"Even if our efforts of attention seem for years to be producing no result, one day a light that is in exact proportion to them will flood the soul."

--Simone Weil

"To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul."

--Simone Weil

"Be content with what you have, rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you."

--Tzu

I got a sweet little angel,

I love the way she spreads her wings.

--B.B. King, Sweet Little Angel

“I love you, even if there isn’t any me, or any love, or even any life. I love you.”

--Zelda Fitzgerald

RAIN

Suddenly this defeat.

This rain.

The blues gone grey

and browns gone grey

and yellow

a terrible amber.

In the cold streets

your warm body.

In whatever room

your warm body.

Among all the people

your absence.

The people who are always

not you.

I have been easy with trees

too long.

Too familiar with mountains.

Joy has been a habit.

Now

suddenly

this rain.

--via

My favorite thing is saying something true

All quotes from StoryPeople

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My favorite thing

is being your lap

while we sit there

together & love

the whole world.

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

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

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

"Doubt everything. Find your own light."

--Siddhārtha Gautama

"One never learns how the witch became wicked."

--Gregory Maguire

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

--Steven Tyler

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

--Lykke Li, I Know Places

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

--Sylvia Plath

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

--Stephanie Kuehnert

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

--Annie, 'It’s a Wonderful Life'

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

--'A Tree Grows In Brooklyn'

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

--Haruki Murakami, 'Norwegian Wood'

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

--Hemingway

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

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

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

--Douglas Coupland

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

--A.A. Milne

“We are the water

sitting so still and waiting

to be splashed into.”

--Tyler Knott Gregson

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

--Carine Roitfeld

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

--Karl Lagerfeld

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

--Franz Kafka

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

--Victor Hugo, 'Les Misérables'

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

--Catherine Breillat

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

--Haley G Hoover

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

--Samuel Beckett

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

--Jules Renard

“Nothing I like to do pays well.”

--Charles Portis, 'True Grit'

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

--Agnes Repplier

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

--Charles Bukowski

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

--Louisa May Alcott

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

--Dia Reeves

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

--Sophia Loren

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

--Robert Parker

holding my breath with the wonder of it all.

All quotes from StoryPeople

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whenever I go on a trip, I think about all the homes I've had & I remember how little has changed about what comforts me.

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

Tied together by stuff too difficult to explain to someone new

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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