"...the blues are because you’re getting fat or maybe it’s been raining too long. You’re sad that’s all. The mean reds are horrible. You’re afraid, and you sweat like hell, but you don’t know what you’re afraid of. Except something bad is going to happen, only you don’t know what it is. You’ve had that feeling?’
‘Quite often. Some people call it angst.’
‘All right. Angst. But what do you do about it?’
'What I’ve found does the most good is to just get into a taxi and go to Tiffany’s. It calms me down right away, the quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there, not with those kind of men in their nice suits, and that lovely smell of silver and alligator wallets. If I could find a real-life place that made me feel like Tiffany’s, then I’d buy some furniture and give the cat a name.”
-- Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's
“Does it break my heart? Of course. Every moment of every day, into more pieces than my heart was made of. I never thought of myself as quiet, much less silent. I never thought about things at all. Everything changed, the distance that wedged itself between me and my happiness wasn't the world, it wasn't the bombs and burning buildings, it was me, my thinking, the cancer of never letting go. Is ignorance bliss?-- I don't know, but it's so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me? To what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
"Tell me, if a person falls apart alone in the dark, does it make a sound? And if it doesn't make a sound, is it as loud and devastating as a decaying broken heart when it is finally found? Or is the sound a soft strangulation hidden that we miss all the time hidden behind words like 'I'm fine.'"
-- Nikita Gill
"When we talk about God, we're talking about that sense you have-- however stifled, faint, or repressed it is-- that hope is real, that things are headed somewhere, and that that somewhere is somewhere good."
-- Rob Bell
"The world is violent and mercurial-- it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love. Love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent, being a writer, being a painter, being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love."
-- Tennessee Williams
“These people who can see right through you never quite do you justice, because they never give you credit for the effort you're making to be better than you actually are, which is difficult and well meant and deserving of some little notice.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
"Those who travel to mountain-tops are half in love with themselves, and half in love with oblivion."
-- Robert MacFarlane
"I belong to a generation that has often felt abandoned by God and betrayed by mankind; and yet, I believe we must not give up on either. We must choose between the violence of adults and the smiles of children; between the ugliness of hate and the will to oppose it. Even in dark, it is possible to create light and encourage compassion. There it is: I still believe in man, in spite of man."
-- Elie Wiesel
"I go to seek a Great Perhaps."
-- John Green
"The only way that we can live, is if we grow. The only way that we can grow is if we change. The only way that we can change is if we learn. The only way we can learn is if we are exposed. And the only way that we can become exposed is if we throw ourselves out into the open. Do it. Throw Yourself."
-- C. Joybell C.
"And Oh there are days in this life, worth life and worth death."
-- Charles Dickens
"The core of your true self is never lost. Let go of all the pretending and the becoming you've done to belong. Curl up with your rawness and come home. You don't have to find yourself; you just have to let yourself in"
-- d. antoinette foy
"I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. If you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it with full speed. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it, and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good.
-- Roald Dahl
"Quite simply, I was in love with New York. I do not mean 'love' in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city the way you love the first person who ever touches you and you never love anyone quite that way again."
-- Joan Didion
"To the city of New York: I had this crazy, juvenile idea you were going to make all my dreams come true. And you did."
-- Brandon Stanton, HONY
"It isn't down on any map. True places never are."
-- Herman Melville
"There are no rules. The weekend is yours. And Europe is waiting."
--Barbara Ireland, The New York Times
"In the midst of winter, I found there was within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there's something stronger- something better- pushing right back."
-- Albert Camus
"You may have the Universe if I may have Italy."
-- Guiseppe Verdi
“Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.”
-- Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
"It all means more than I can tell you. So you must not judge what I know by what I find words for."
-- Marilynne Robinson
"To build a city where it is impossible to build a city is madness in itself, but to build there, one of the most elegant and grandest of cities is the madness of genius."
-- Alexander Herzen
"I am free, and that is why I'm lost."
-- Franz Kafka
"Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well."
-- Jack Kornfield
"Now that you don't have to perfect, you can be good."
-- John Steinbeck
"I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to put rout all that was not life and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
-- Henry David Thoreau
"You've got to say no to the things that don't honor you. No to the things that don't bring you joy. And you don't have to eplain your no."
-- Iyanla Vanzant
"We can't ask people to give us something we don't feel worthy of receiving. And you will know you feel worthy of receiving, when you start to trust yourself above all others."
-- Brene Brown
"What kills a soul? Exhaustion, secret-keeping, image-keeping. What brings it back from the dead: Honesty, connection, grace."
-- Shauna Niequiet
"I am human, so nothing human can be foreign to me."
-- Maya Angelou
"How wild it was to let it be."
-- Cheryl Strayed
