"You have the answer. Just get quiet enough to hear it."
Pat Obuchowski
"If you see something beautiful in someone, speak it."
"I’m just going to do my best and live under the assumption that if there are things in this life that we are supposed to do, if there are people in this world we are supposed to love, we’ll find them."
Taylor Jenkins Reid, Maybe in Another Life
"Why do I always have this awful need to make other people see things as I do? It’s childish, why should they? What it amounts to is that I’m scared of being alone in what I feel."
Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
"Eventually, you will need to stop curating yourself for public consumption. You will need to stop people pleasing. You will need to stop trying to appear perfect all the time. You will need to be vulnerable. A breakdown will occur. Rock bottom will happen. You will be an anxious, stressed, sad and angry mess of a person, and you will rise. You will wish you had known better. You will wish someone would’ve told you that nobody gets to tell you who the f*ck you are. But you will rise, regardless."
"Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them."
François VI de la Rochefoucault
"Even feelings, bodily as well as mental, possess a dialectic of their own. It is well known how the extremes of pain and joy turn into one another; the heart filled with joy relieves itself through tears, and in some circumstances the most poignant melancholy tends to announce itself with a smile."
G. W. F. Hegel, Encyclopaedia Logic, § 81 (Hackett Publishing, 1991)
"None of us really changes over time. We only become more fully what we are."
Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat
"We must get beyond passions, like a great work of art. In such miraculous harmony. We should learn to love each other so much to live outside of time… detached."
Federico Fellini, La Dolce Vita
"The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps - we must step up the stairs."
Vance Havner
"Someday. That’s a dangerous word. It’s really just a code for never."
Knight and Day
"This is one more piece of advice I have for you: don’t get impatient. Even if things are so tangled up you can’t do anything, don’t get desperate or blow a fuse and start yanking on one particular thread before it’s ready to come undone. You have to figure it’s going to be a long process and that you’ll work on things slowly, one at a time."
Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
"You desire to know the art of living? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering."
"Every act of communication is a miracle of translation."
Ken Liu, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
"Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called ‘the love of your fate.’ Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, ‘This is what I need.’ It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment—not discouragement—you will find the strength is there."
Joseph Campbell
"I do not have time for things that have no soul"
"I do not have time for things that have no soul"
Charles Bukowski
"… what I am aches in me."
Fernando Pessoa, from “I See Boats Moving,” Selected Poems
"If you see beauty in something, don’t wait for others to agree."
Sherihan Gamal
"We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness."
Thich Nhat Hanh
"I consider that reality is the last thing we need worry about, because, tediously enough, it will always be there, whereas more beautiful and more necessary things require our attention and care. Reality should not in any circumstances satisfy us, it is not in any circumstances to be worshipped or respected, for it is accidental, it is the refuse of life. And the only way to change this vapid reality, forever disappointing and joyless, is by denying it, and thereby proving that we are stronger than it is."
Hermann Hesse, tr. by Yetta Zolbowski, from Hermann Hesse; Pictorial Biography
"We all either underestimate each other, or else exaggerate each other’s virtues. Very few people are capable of assessing others as they deserve. It is a particular gift. In fact I would even say that only the great are capable of it."
Andrei Tarkovsky, from a diary entry featured in Time Within Time; The Diaries (1970 - 1986
"Every star may be a sun to someone."
Carl Sagan, Cosmos
"I wanted everything because I didn’t want anything enough."
"I am becoming more and more convinced that there is something wrong with the way I live. Something false about everything I do."
Andrei Tarkovsky, from a diary entry featured in Time Within Time; The Diaries (1970 - 1986
"Edit your life frequently and ruthlessly. It’s your masterpiece after all."
"…I have this almost terrible energy in me and nothing seems to help…"
Nathan W. Morris
"…The only thing I want to say I’ve said already, and it’s a bit fucking tedious to say it again, no matter how true it is…"
"…The only thing I want to say I’ve said already, and it’s a bit fucking tedious to say it again, no matter how true it is…"
Sarah Kane, from Sarah Kane: Complete Plays; “Crave”
"Being both soft and strong is a combination very few have mastered."
Yasmin Mogahed
"I think I fall in love a little bit with anyone who shows me their soul. This world is so guarded and fearful. I appreciate rawness so much."
"I belong wherever I want to be."
The Host by Stephenie Meyer
"I tried to bare my heart as much as I could; go deeper, much deeper. At the end I found only a surface, flat and smooth, free of any extremities where the eye could take a hold: the absolute void and a frightening clarity of mind. You feel and see your senses fall and vanish in there like the drops of water at the end of a string."
George Seferis, from a journal entry featured in A Poet’s Journal; Days of 1945 - 1951
"I want to share this emptiness with you; Not fill the silence with false notes, or put tracks through the void. I want to share this wilderness of failure with you. The others have built you a highway; fast lanes in both directions. I offer you a journey without direction, uncertainty, and no sweet conclusion."
Derek Jarman, The Garden
"You will find that it is necessary to let things go; simply for the reason that they are heavy."
C. JoyBell C.
"I think I never will be warm enough."
Marilyn Hacker, from Selected Poems 1965-1990; “The Little Robber Girl Considers the Wide World”
"Whether I shall ever “create” is something I can’t really tell. But I do believe that it is possible to create, even without ever writing a word or painting a picture, by simply molding one’s inner life. And that too is a deed."
Etty Hillesum, fom a diary entry featured in An Interrupted Life: the Diaries, 1941-1943 and Letters from Westerbork
"…give your sorrow all the space and shelter in yourself that is its due…"
Franz Kafka, from a letter to Ottille Kafka featured in Letters to Ottla and the Family (1909 - 1924)
"You wish you could’ve learned to play piano. You wish you could’ve started drawing when you were young. You wish you could’ve figured out who you wanted to be before you graduated college. You wish you could’ve learned to love yourself sooner. Well you know what? You didn’t. And that’s just something you’re going to have to learn to deal with. But just because you didn’t do it sooner, doesn’t mean you can’t start now."
Daren Colbert, Life Decisions
"Try to create something that springs organically from your own experience. For only then does it stand the slightest chance of being genuinely interesting…that’s precisely why the film industry in the so-called first world is in such a rut. There is just so much recycling. We don’t have the capability to represent authentic experiences because there is so little we do experience. At the most basic level, all we’re concerned about here are our material possessions and sexual urges. There really isn’t much more to our lives."
"We limit ourselves when we adopt specific identities, and then believe that this is truly who we are and must be."
H.H. the Karmapa
"There is a vast silence in me that continues to grow."
Etty Hillesum, fom a diary entry featured in An Interrupted Life: the Diaries, 1941-1943 and Letters from Westerbork
"…I have this almost terrible energy in me and nothing seems to help…"
Anne Sexton, quoted in “Anne Sexton: A Biography” written by Diane Wood Middlebrook
"I don’t know where you are. You are where I am but never at the same time."
María Irene Fornés, from Selected Plays: María Irene Fornés; “The Danube,”
"A girl’s life is: you are born, you bleed, you burn."
Kathleen Glasgow, from Girl in Pieces
"…seeing too much is seeing nothing."
Wong Kar Wai
"You live so much in me."
Ingeborg Bachmann, from a letter to Paul Celan, featured in Paul Celan: Selections
"My fear of being real, of being seen, paralyzes me into silence. I crave the touch and the connection, but I’m not always brave enough to open my hand and reach out. This is the great challenge: to be seen, accepted, and loved, I must first reveal, offer, and surrender."
Anna White, Mended: Thoughts on Life, Love, and Leaps of Faith
"Blessed is he who has learned to admire but not envy, to follow but not imitate, to praise but not flatter, and to lead but not manipulate."
"Give away what you discover."
"Give away what you discover."
Barbara Marciniak, Earth
"I wonder if I will ever have the strength to hold onto something. Or if I will always be someone who destroys."
Ally Condie, Matched
"Be humble for you are made of earth.
Be noble for you are made of stars."
Be noble for you are made of stars."
Servian Proverb
"– She acts her life away. […]"
Anne Sexton, from a session tape w. Dr. Martin Orne, featured in “Anne Sexton: A Biography,” written by Diane Wood Middlebrook
"Know that you can start late, look different, be uncertain and still succeed."
"In order to love who you are, you cannot hate the experiences that shaped you."
Misty Copeland
"In order to love who you are, you cannot hate the experiences that shaped you."
Andrea Dykstra
"The words you speak
become the house you live in."
become the house you live in."
"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares."
Henri J.M. Nouwen, Out of Solitude
"It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is."
Hermann Hesse
"I’m not jealous or envious of any other woman, other than the woman I’m trying to become. She has everything I desire and I can’t wait to be her."
MR
"The problem is everyone assumes that they’re the main character in everyone else’s lives, when the truth of the matter is, we’re just background characters. We’re just the ensemble. I’m not the hero in everyone’s story, the same way I’m not the love interest in everyone’s life. I regret the times I’ve been the villain too, but people are allowed to make me whoever they want in their own story. I don’t care anymore. In my story, I used to be the damsel in distress, but now I am the girl who falls in love with hurricanes and doesn’t look back. And eventually we’ll all just become stories, and fading memories, we’ll become pictures on family trees, and life’s too short to keep trying to be so important in somebody else’s story, that you stop writing your own."
laceerainspoetry, The People Are Books I Can’t Stop Reading
"She was a fantastic figure, an extremely generous woman, but even so it was not easy to be with her. She carried a load of anxiety that I have rarely seen in my life. It’s very difficult to be around someone like that. Full-time self-centered, not because she wanted to be, out of vanity, but a real difficulty, in connecting. She couldn’t turn herself off, and when her anxiety heated up, it reached overpowering levels, and she had no rest, she could not calm down. At those times living was a torment for her. She couldn’t stand herself. And other people couldn’t stand her."
Andréa Azulay, describing Clarice Lispector, featured in Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector
"As if the clay you were made of, was kneaded with rose water
وكأن طينك الذي خلقت منه ، مجبول بماء الورد"
وكأن طينك الذي خلقت منه ، مجبول بماء الورد"
Rami al-Tobasi
"we’re vulnerable. we’re sensitive and we’re complicated people, too. so many people rolled into one. we contain so much. so much creativity. so much energy. so many contradictions. so much confusion. so much clarity. so many moments of faith and fear. so many different characters live within us. all looking for love."
janet jackson
"As long as white Americans take refuge in their whiteness—for so long as they are unable to walk out of this most monstrous of traps—they will allow millions of people to be slaughtered in their name, and will be manipulated into and surrender themselves to what they will think of—and justify—as a racial war. They will never, so long as their whiteness puts so sinister a distance between themselves and their own experience and the experience of others, feel themselves sufficiently human, sufficiently worthwhile, to become responsible for themselves, their leaders, their country, their children, or their fate."
James Baldwin : Open Letter to My Sister, Angela Davis
"You were heartbreakingly tender."
Hélène Cixous, from The Selected Plays of Hélène Cixous; “Black Sail White Sail,”
"I’m not an open book. Not a free spirit. But I will show you respect like you’ve never experienced before. Through good and bad."
Capricorn
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