I disappear a lot.

“The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.”

--The White Rabbit, 'Alice In Wonderland'

"Ever morning, until you dead in the ground, you gone have to make this decision. You gone have to ask yourself, "Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today?"

--Kathryn Stockett, 'The Help'

"Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of each."

--Henry David Thoreau

“The society teaches you, ‘Choose the convenient, the comfortable; choose the well-trodden path where your forefathers and their forefathers and their forefathers, since Adam and Eve, have been walking. Choose the well-trodden path. That is a proof— so many millions of people have passed on it, you cannot go wrong.’ But remember one thing: The crowd has never had the experience of truth. Truth has only happened to individuals. Whenever there are alternatives, beware: Don’t choose the convenient, the comfortable, the respectable, the socially acceptable, the honorable. Choose something that rings a bell in your heart. Choose something that you would like to do in spite of any consequences.”

--Osho

“So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”

--Morrie Schwartz

“I want to be alone and I want people to notice me — both at the same time.”

--Thom Yorke

“An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.”

--Charles Bukowski

“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”

--Maya Angelou

“And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.”

--F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Style is more character than clothes, more attitude than affluence. It’s you making visible your inner self. So forget what you learned about appearance not counting; you can no longer afford to be without style.”

--Hara Estroff Morano

“Sometimes the only company I want is that of a good book, a drink and a cashmere sweater.”

--Ashton Darian

“What sort of diary should I like mine to be? Something loose knit and yet not slovenly, so elastic that it will embrace anything, solemn, slight or beautiful that comes into my mind. I should like it to resemble some deep old desk, or capacious hold-all, in which one flings a mass of odds and ends without looking them through.”

--Virginia Woolf

“We recognize our own mortality, and we are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this earth, what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame – but rather, how well we have loved, and what small part we have played in making the lives of other people better.”

--Barack Obama

“I think if you have a certain kind of taste, that comes through in the different things you do… I guess I put my personality in all my creative endeavours.”

--Sofia Coppola

“A big vocabulary. You want to wake up next to ‘smart’.”

--Darren Criss, on what he looks for in a lady

“Please, I want so badly for the good things to happen.”

--Sylvia Plath

“You just want to sit around and criticize everything and everybody. You don’t want to do anything. Nothing’s good enough for you.”

--Charles Bukowski

“Being noticed can be a burden. Jesus got himself crucified because he got himself noticed. So I disappear a lot.”

--Bob Dylan

“The problem is, after a week of intense googling, we’ve started to burn out on knowing the answer to everything. God must feel that way all the time. I think people in the year 2020 are going to be nostalgic for the sensation of feeling clueless.”

--Douglas Coupland

“We could slip away, wouldn’t that be better? Me with nothing to say and you in your autumn sweater.”

--Yo La Tengo!, 'Autumn Sweater'

“I think there’s a whole region of images and feelings inside us that rarely are given an outlet in daily life”

--Jim Morrison

“Age shouldn’t affect you. It’s just like the size of your shoes - they don’t determine how you live your life! You’re either marvelous or you’re boring, regardless of your age.”

--Steven Morrissey

“Every day I discover more and more beautiful things. It’s enough to drive one mad. I have such a desire to do everything, my head is bursting with it.”

--Claude Monet

“Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.”

--Mary Oliver, 'Evidence (part I)'

“Let’s borrow life preservers and jump over. I think we should do something spectacular. I feel that all our lives have been too restrained.”

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

“I must learn to love the fool in me—the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of my human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my Fool.”

--Theodore I. Rubin

“Sometimes while I ride the subway I try to look at each person and imagine what they look like to someone who is totally in love with them.”

--Dean Spade, ‘For Lovers and Fighters’

“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”

--Harry Truman

“I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it. When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I dare say, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into one’s life.”

--Oscar Wilde

There isn't enough of anything as long as we live.

All quotes by author Raymond Carver

“Cool summer nights. Windows open. Lamps burning.

Fruit in the bowl. And your head on my shoulder.

These the happiest moments in the day.

Next to the early morning hours, of course.

And the time just before lunch. And the afternoon,

and early evening hours. But I do love these

summer nights. Even more, I think, than those other

times. The work finished for the day.

And no one who can reach us now. Or ever.”

"It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love."

"That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones."

"And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth."

"Woke up this morning with a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read."

"Dreams, you know, are what you wake up from."

"There isn't enough of anything

as long as we live. But at intervals

a sweetness appears and, given a chance

prevails."

It takes life to love Life.

"What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,

Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?

Degenerate sons and daughters, life is too strong for you--

It takes life to love Life."

--Lucinda Matlock

"There is something about the outside of a horse

that is good for the inside of a man."

--W. Churchill

“Caring is a powerful business advantage.”

--Scott Johnson

“What is your life about, anyway? Nothing but a struggle to be someone. Nothing but a running from your own silence.”

--Rumi

“You know the typical crowd, Wow, it’s Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there? Well, yeah. I’ve never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. That’s all. Sorry for all the millions, but I’ve never been lonely. I like myself. I’m the best form of entertainment I have.”

--Charles Bukowski

“Is it really that bad if someone sees who you are? Why is it humans have a problem with letting someone else see that they are human?”

--Joseph Gogler

“I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.”

--Tropic of cancer

“You are the soul of the soul of the universe, and your name is Love.”

--Rumi

“Simply to be desired is not a high enough aspiration. Outfits that say little more than ‘look at my body’ should be outlawed from one’s wardrobe. English style has always been about expressing one’s intelligence, charm and views through one’s choice of image. Expressing who you are and what you want to be. If what you’re saying is just ‘be my boyfriend’ then you’re not saying much. Looking sexy should always come second to looking interesting - to look interesting is to look beautiful.”

--Luella’s Guide to English Style

“When things are good, say good things. When things are bad, say twice as many good things.”

--R. Todd Michael

“Just look at the animals, at the birds; nobody is worried, nobody is sad, nobody is frustrated. You don’t see a buffalo freaking out. He is perfectly contented chewing the same grass every day. He is almost enlightened. There is no tension; there is a tremendous harmony with nature, with himself, with everything as it is. Buffaloes don’t make parties to revolutionize the world, to change buffaloes into super buffaloes, to make buffaloes religious, virtuous. No animal is concerned at all with human ideas. And they all must be laughing: What has happened to you? Why can’t you be just yourself as you are? What is the need to be somebody else?

So the first thing is a deep acceptance of yourself.”

--Osho

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.”

--Jane Austen

“Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.”

--Oprah Winfrey

“Some women choose to follow men, and some women choose to follow their dreams. If you’re wondering which way to go, remember that your career will never wake up and tell you that it doesn’t love you anymore.”

--Lady Gaga

“I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.”
--Mark Twain

Love and be loved if at all possible.

All quotes by author David Nicholls

"What are you going to do with your life?" In one way or another it seemed that people had been asking her this forever; teachers, her parents, friends at three in the morning, but the question had never seemed this pressing and still she was no nearer an answer... "Live each day as if it's your last', that was the conventional advice, but really, who had the energy for that? What if it rained or you felt a bit glandy? It just wasn't practical. The trick of it, she told herself, is to be courageous and bold and make a difference. Not change the world exactly, just the bit around you. Go out there with your double-first, your passion and your new Smith Corona electric typewriter and work hard at … something. Change lives through art maybe. Write beautifully. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved if at all possible.”

--'One Day'

"This is me.’" He handed her the precious scrap of paper. ‘Call me or I’ll call you, but one of us will call, yes? What I mean is it’s not a competition. You don’t lose if you phone first"

--'One Day'

"She was reaching the limits of how much its possible to change a man."

--'One Day'

"Em, we've known each other five or six years now, but two years properly, as, you know, 'friends', which isn't that long but I think I know a bit about you and I think I know what your problem is. Here it is. I think you're scared of being happy, Emma. I think you think that the natural way of things is for your life to be grim and grey and dour and to hate your job, hate where you live, not to have success or money or God forbid a boyfriend. In fact, I think I'll go further and say that I think you actually get a kick out of being disappointed and under-achieving, because it's easier, isn't it? Failure and unhappiness is easier because you can make a joke out of it."

--'One Day'

"She sometimes wondered what her twenty-two-year-old self would think of today's Emma Mayhew. Would she consider her self-centered? Compromised? A bourgeois sell-out, with her appetite for home ownership and foreign travel, clothes from Paris and expensive haircuts? Would she find her conventional, with her new surname and hopes for a family life? Maybe, but then the twenty-two-year-old Emma Morley wasn't such a paragon either: pretentious, petulant, lazy, speechifying, judgmental. Self-pitying, self-righteous, self-important, all of the selfs except self-confident, the quality that she always needed most."

--'One Day'

"You know what I can't understand? You have all these people telling you all the time how great you are, smart and funny and talented and all that, I mean endlessly, I've been telling you for years. So why don't you believe it? Why do you think people say that stuff, Em? Do you think it's a conspiracy, people secretly ganging up to be nice about you?"

--'One Day'

"...you feel a little bit lost right now about what to do with your life, a bit rudderless and oarless and aimless but that's okay that's alright because we're all meant to be like that at twenty-four."

--'One Day'

"Oh you know me. I have no emotions. I'm a robot. Or a nun. A robot nun."

--'One Day'

"And then some days you wake up and everything's perfect."

--'One Day'

"She had never been a proficient flirt. Her spasms of kittenish behaviour were graceless and inept, like normal conversation on roller skates."

--'One Day'

"Independence is the luxury of all those people who are too confident, and busy, and popular, and attractive to be just plain old lonely. And make no mistake, lonely is absolutely the worst thing to be. Tell someone that you've got a drink problem, or an eating disorder, or your dad died when you were a kid even, and you can almost see their eyes light up with the sheer fascinating drama and pathos of it all, because you've got an issue, something for them to get involved in, to talk about and analyse and discuss and maybe even cure. But tell someone you’re lonely and of course they’ll seem sympathetic, but look very carefully and you'll see one hand snaking behind their back, groping for the door handle, ready to make a run for it, as if loneliness itself were contagious. Because being lonely is just so banal, so shaming, so plain and dull and ugly."

--'Starter for Ten'

"No matter how predictable, banal and listless the rest of my life might be, you can guarantee that there'll always be something interesting going on with my skin."

--'Starter for Ten''

"If she does have a failing, and it's obviously only a tiny one, it's that she doesn't seem particularly curious about other people, or me, anyway."

--'A Question of Attraction: A Novel'

Saying yes begins things.

“Only buy what you absolutely love…it doesn’t mean they have to be expensive, just that you love them. Then start to mix them up in as many looks as possible…the more time that goes by, the more editing you can do until you have a refined selection, and, every day you could literally wear a different outfit that is an expression of your personal style.”

--Norma Kamali

"I’m going to make everything around me beautiful - that will be my life.”
--E. D. W.

"Bad taste bothers me."

--Giorgio Armani

“You don’t make me feel like you used to.

That’s why I’m leaving

That’s why people leave each other

They come to their senses and get selfish again.”

--Henry Rollins, 'See a Grown Man Cry, Now Watch Him Die'

“It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

--J.K Rowling

“There are the friends you meet for the occasional happy hour, and there are friends with whom you have longstanding Taco Tuesdays. Taco Tuesday means a bottle of wine for each person and peeling back the business-casual mask of the weekday while relaying mortifying tales of performed adulthood to one another. You hit reply all. You cried at your desk. You said “I love you” when you were unprepared or drunk or sober. Any day can be Taco Tuesday. These are the people who fill in your blanks. These are the right people.”

--The Hairpin, 'What We Have Going For Us'

"Why not go out on a limb? That's where the fruit is."

--Mark Twain

“Burnout brings strong emotions like anger, fear, jealousy and sadness. Use those feelings to light your creativity on fire.”

--Melissa Gorzela

"In the long run, every project I do is about living, about the flow of life, the riches of the family, where the sun sets, where the sun rises, the climate, the periphery of a building."

--Mike Meire'

"This was an industry that once thrived on exposure. Today I find that the most interesting people are hidden."

--Zac Efron

“She tries it on, like a dress.

She decides it doesn’t fit,

and starts to take it off.

Her skin comes, too.”

--Lola Haskins, 'Love'

“Why don’t you tell me that “if the girl had been worth having, she’d have waited for you?” No, sir, the girl really worth having won’t wait for anybody.”

--F. Scott Fitzgerald

“The happiest people are those who think the most interesting thoughts. Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good company, good conversation, are the happiest people in the world. And they are not only happy in themselves, they are the cause of happiness in others.”

--William Phelps

"Cynics always say no. But saying yes begins things. Saying yes is how things grow. Saying yes leads to knowledge. “Yes” is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say yes.”

--Stephen Colbert

Seize this very minute.

“I love the way you can fall in love with a piece of literature; how words alone can get your heart doing that.”

--Laura Marling

“You have to find the right distance between people. Too close, and they overwhelm you, too far and they abandon you.”

--Hanif Kureishi

“The hardest period in life is one’s 20s. It’s a shame because you’re your most gorgeous and you’re physically in peak condition. But it’s actually when you’re most insecure and full of self-doubt. When you don’t know what’s going to happen, it’s frightening.”

--Helen Mirren in Esquire

"Cherish your solitude. Take trains by yourself to places you have never been. Sleep out alone under the stars. Learn how to drive a stick shift. Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back. Say no when you don't want to do something. Say yes if your instincts are strong, even if everyone around you disagrees. Decide whether you want to be liked or admired. Decide if fitting in is more important than finding out what you're doing here."

--Eve Ensler

“If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery—isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.”

--Charles Bukowski

“I keep the telephone of my mind open to peace, harmony, health, love, and abundance. Then, whenever doubt, anxiety, or fear try to call me, they will keep getting a busy signal-and soon they’ll forget my number.”

--Edith Armstrong

"Seize this very minute; What you can do, or dream you can, begin it; Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."

--Johnston Wolfgang von Goethe

“You do the right thing even if it makes you feel bad. The purpose of life is not to be happy but to be worthy of happiness.”

--Tracy Kidder

“She remembered something a woman in Paris had told her once. A woman in her forties, much married, elegant, a little world-weary. ‘There is nothing easier in this world,’ this woman had claimed, ‘than getting a man to kiss you.’ ‘Oh really?’ Eva had said, ‘so how do you do that?’ ‘Just stand close to a man,’ the woman had said, ‘very close, as close as you can without touching - he will kiss you in one minute or two. It’s inevitable. For them it’s like an instinct - they can’t resist. Infallible.”

--William Boyd

“Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country."

--Anais Nin

careless in our summer clothes,

Together, we wrote a letter: “Dear August, our muscles are tired.” Standing in the doorway, I caught the last glimpse of July, lazy heat hovering over the parked cars like restless ghosts. Sometimes, mostly when it’s early (or when my headphones can’t save me), I think about all of the people we’ve been with one another. All of those colors that bled us dry, turned us muddy like watercolor water. And in the knee-tall grass with your hands behind your back, I knew there’d always been something between us akin to the wonder that keeps the stars apart (forgive me if I’m paraphrasing). The yellow pins slowly stopped singing, but that’s okay. This was all delicate and harsh, like smoke rings I wore like proud diamonds even when they turned my finger green. I am writing a letter with all of those high altitude thoughts—the ones that made my fingers twitch as I moved backwards through time. But about July, and whatever came before it: I am waving goodbye. Ushering in the change that comes ahead with childlike calls to the backyard. Let’s be barefoot. Let’s give up what we know, not to have it taken away but to abandon it. “Dear July, you were a red herring. Dear August, here we are, please keep our roots from doubling back. Please keep us safe like a kiss on the corner of the mouth. Please don’t write us all off just yet.”
--jenna2step