The answer is dreams.

“The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time.”

--Haruki Murakami

“You rest, you rust.”

--Oscar de la Renta

“I love big bags because all my eyeglasses are so big, and it’s very hard to get any bag that fits them. And I always have to carry a lot of stuff. I’m always dragging. When you’re a bag lady, you’re a bag lady.”

--Iris Apfel

“I like the idea of wearing a glamourous coat with comfortable shoes; evening dresses with flats. I like it when there are two messages in one silhouette. I like it when it’s not first-degree sexy; when it’s not first-degree severe. I like it when everything is mixed.”

--Guillaume Henry, Creative Director of Carven

“And make no mistake about it, you are dumb. You’re a group of incredibly well-educated dumb people. I was there. We all were there. You’re barely functional. There are some screw-ups headed your way. I wish I could tell you that there was a trick to avoiding the screw-ups, but the screw-ups, they’re a-coming for ya. It’s a combination of life being unpredictable, and you being super dumb.”

--Remarks by Aaron Sorkin ‘83 at Syracuse University’s 158th Commencement and the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry’s 115th Commencement

“You know when sometimes you meet someone so beautiful and then you actually talk to them and five minutes later they’re as dull as a brick? Then there’s other people, when you meet them you think, “Not bad. They’re okay.” And then you get to know them and…and their face just sort of becomes them. Like their personality’s written all over it. And they just turn into something so beautiful.”

--Amelia Pond

“What you are is a complicated girl with simple needs. You need your books and time to read, and you need a few friends and you need someone-not to take care of you, but to care for you. If you have all those things, you’ll always be alright.”

--Brian Morton, 'Breakable You'

“She did not need much, wanted very little. A kind word, sincerity, fresh air, clean water, a garden, kisses, books to read, sheltering arms, a cosy bed, and to love and be loved in return.”

--Starra Neely Blade

"Do magic. Enter her heart without touching her."

--Unknown

Everything takes time.

All quotes by author David Foster Wallace

“Everything I’ve ever let go of had claw marks on it.”

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.” 

--'This Is Water'

“Try to learn to let what is unfair teach you.” 

--'Infinite Jest'

“I like the fans’ sound at night. Do you? It’s like somebody big far away goes like: it’sOKit’sOKit’sOKit’sOK, over and over. From very far away.” 

--'Infinite Jest'

“She wanted only tall smooth bottles whose labels spoke of Proof.” 

--'Infinite Jest'

“You have decided being scared is caused mostly by thinking."

“We're all lonely for something we don't know we're lonely for. How else to explain the curious feeling that goes around feeling like missing somebody we've never even met?” 

“Everything takes time. Bees have to move very fast to stay still.” 

--'Brief Interviews With Hideous Men'

“I'd like to be the sort of person who can enjoy things at the time, instead of having to go back in my head and enjoy them.”

“Look. Listen. Use ears I'd be proud to call our own. Listen to the silence behind the engine's noise. Jesus, Sweets, listen. Hear it? It's a love song. For whom? You are loved.” 

--'Girl With Curious Hair'

“Tell them there are no holes for your fingers in the masks of men. Tell them how could you ever even hope to love what you can't grab onto.” 

--'Girl With Curious Hair'

“What the really great artists do is they're entirely themselves. They're entirely themselves, they've got their own vision, they have their own way of fracturing reality, and if it's authentic and true, you will feel it in your nerve endings.”

“I have this -- here’s this thing where it’s going to sound sappy to you. I have this unbelievably like five-year-old’s belief that art is just absolutely magic. And that good art can do things that nothing else in the solar system can do. And that the good stuff will survive, and get read, and that in the great winnowing process, the shit will sink and the good stuff will rise.”

Epitaph

“Your epitaph will begin: “She redefined what it meant to be a good woman.” It will say: “She scaled mountains, in hiking boots and in heels. She started in her own backyard and then went all the way around the world. She accepted challenges with curiosity and determination. She emerged victorious regardless of outcome, knowing both the pleasure of success and the grace of failure. She tasted long hot days and cool still nights, at home wherever she found herself. She wasn’t always popular, but she was always true. She wasn’t always comfortable, but no one can say she didn’t enjoy her life. She explored her edges, increased her capacity, and lived as big as she could dream. Moved equally by bliss and pain, she played her heart out one moment at a time. She was dialed in. She was courageous. She was turned on.””

--The Turned-on Woman’s Manifesto

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
--Mary Oliver

I think I made you up inside my head.

“Relationships are both wonderful and tricky. The wonderful traits of a person are all sparkly and shiny, and we are attracted to that. But the real work is learning to find good in the gnarly aspects. It is a real art. Believing in the other person’s goodness and integrity enough to be content with working with the challenging parts. The sparkly parts are easy to love. Our job is to make the love bigger than an argument or an intense disagreement. You see, this is being authentic, vulnerable and true. And much more than a fairytale type romance. The real and honest and courageous decision is to love the warts and all. That is the true miracle.”

--Rachel Sat Siri Dougherty

“I wish we could spend July by the sea, browning ourselves and feeling water-weighted hair flow behind us from a dive. I wish our gravest concerns were the summer gnats. I wish we were hungry for hot dogs and dopes, and it would be nice to smell the starch of summer linens and the faint odor of talc in blistering summer bath houses… We could lie in long citoneuse beams of the five o’clock sun on the plage at Juan-les-Pins and hear the sound of the drum and piano being scooped out to sea by the waves.”

--Zelda Fitzgerald

“Happiness often slips in through a door you didn’t know you left open.”

--John Barrymore

“I have never found anybody who could stand to accept the daily demonstrative love I feel in me, and give back as good as I give.”

--Sylvia Plath

“I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane. (I think I made you up inside my head.)”

--Sylvia Plath

“You don’t need to make your tastes a self-conscious statement about who you are. Just unapologetically like the things you like.”

--Adulting: Step 179: Stop enjoying things ironically. Just enjoy them.

“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.”

--Margaret Atwood

"The sun was warm but the wind was chill. 

You know how it is with an April day."

--Robert Frost

“You can’t ever be really free if you admire somebody too much.”

--Tove Jansson

“Some people are uncomfortable with silences. Not me. I’ve never cared much for call and response. Sometimes I will think of something to say and then I ask myself; is it worth it? And it just isn’t.”

--Miranda July

“A daydreamer is prepared for most things.”

--Joyce Carol Oates

“Vulnerability is one of the last things we share with people, yet one of the first things they try to recognize.”

--Dallas Clayton 

“It’s great when you finally realise that being miserable doesn’t protect you from bad stuff happening.”

--Alain de Botton

“One of the mixed blessings of being twenty and twenty-one and even twenty-three is the conviction that nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has ever happened to anyone before.”

--Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

“A girl should be two things: who and what she wants.”

--Coco Chanel

“God is within her, she will not fall;

God will help her at break of day.”

--Psalm 46:5

“The world is simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.”

--Henry Miller

“The essence of pleasure is spontaneity.”

--Germaine Greer

“Every stylish girl knows that when the sun goes down, the heel goes up.”

--Nina Garcia

“There is in the soul a desire for not thinking. For being still. Coupled with this a desire to be strict, yes, and rigorous. But the soul is also a smooth son of a bitch, not always trustworthy. And I forgot that.”

--Raymond Carver, 'All of Us: The Collected Poems'

“Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.”

--Eckhart Tolle

“It is one of the defects of my character that I cannot altogether dislike anyone who makes me laugh.”

--W. Somerset Maugham, 'The Moon and Sixpence'

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

Beautiful people do not just happen.

“I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart.”

--Vincent Van Gogh

“For me, a woman who is absorbed in her work, who does not care about gaining one’s favor, strong yet subtle at the same time, is essentially more seductive. The more she hides and abandons her femininity, the more it emerges from the very heart of her existence.”

--Yohji Yamamoto

“When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”

--Haruki Murakami

“But whereas a girl of nineteen draws her confidence from a surfeit of attention, a woman of twenty-nine is nourished on subtler stuff. Desirous, she chooses her apéritifs wisely, or, content, she enjoys the caviare of potential power. Happily she does not seem, in either case, to anticipate the subsequent years when her insight will often be blurred by panic, by the fear of stopping or the fear of going on. But on the landings of nineteen or twenty-nine she is pretty sure that there are no bears in the hall.”

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

“‎Close your eyes & imagine the best version of you possible. That’s who you really are, let go of any part of you that doesn’t believe it.”

--C. Assaad

"The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with a compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen."

--Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

“You have to be different, great or first.”

--Loretta Lynn

"I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me."

--Humphrey Bogart

“I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”

--John Green, 'The Fault in Our Stars'

“My love lacked passion, I seemingly ran circles in sentences trying to say what I couldn’t. I had not a brittle bone of romanticism in me… But all the impossible trying, the countless errors, they were the reasons he knew I loved him.”

--Georgia Whots

“There is no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.”

--Jack Welch, former CEO of GE

“Unless you have a feeling for that secret knowledge that modest things can be more beautiful than anything expensive, you will never have style.”

--Andrée Putman, French interior designer

"To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable; and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly… to listen to stars and buds, to babes and sages, with open heart; await occasions, hurry never… this is my symphony."

--William Henry Channing