“The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.”

--Albert Ellis

"We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures."

--Thornton Wilder

“The end of a trip leaves me with a sad aftertaste the same as the end of a novel… When I am returning from a trip, the best part is not going through the airport or getting home, but the taxi ride in between: you’re still traveling, but not really.”

--Édouard Levé

“I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life—and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.”

--Georgia O’Keefe

“It’s just that I feel so sad these wonderful nights. I sort of feel they’re never coming again, and I’m not really getting all I could out of them.”

--F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I have more memories than if I’d lived a thousand years.”

--Charles Baudelaire, from “Spleen (II)”, in “The Flowers of Evil”, trans. William Aggeler

“I’ve got a bad case of the 3:00 am guilts - you know, when you lie in bed awake and replay all those things you didn’t do right? Because, as we all know, nothing solves insomnia like a nice warm glass of regret, depression and self-loathing.”

--D.D. Barant, 'Dying Bites'

“If you read one book a week, starting at the age of 5, and live to be 80, you will have read a grand total of 3,900 books, a little over one-tenth of 1 percent of the books currently in print.”

--Lewis Buzbee, 'The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop'

“The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.”

--Fernando Pessoa

“Nothing is more alienating to anyone unaccustomed to it than hearing one’s own voice played back on a tape recorder. What the apparatus records - what the objectified ‘others’ hear - is not what resonates inside my head when I speak. The recording makes me conscious that I have no true voice. Instead, I have two voices that do not harmonize, that contradict each other: an interior voice and an exterior one. Others never hear me just as I hear myself. Moreover, this splitting of the voice, or opacity of voice to speaker, can never be directly represented. I can never communicate to another person the sound of my inner voice.”

--Gillian Wearing

“Home is the result of intersecting lives. It is the secondary color created by individuals in relationships… Yes, home is the landscape of people, places, and things upon which we live out life—but it is mostly about people. That is why home can be a suburban neighborhood, or a struggling farm, or a ship at sea, or a war-torn nation. After all, home is where hearts are.”

--Austin Sailsbury in Kinfolk Magazine, Volume V: In Search of Home

“Your body is the house you grew up in, how dare you try to burn it to the ground.”

--Sierra Demulder

“Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It’s like the tide going out, revealing whatever’s been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fish bodies, bones. This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes, not knowing the future.”

--Margaret Atwood, 'Cat’s Eye'

“This is why it hurts the way it hurts. You have too many words in your head. There are too many ways to describe the way you feel. You will never have the luxury of a dull ache. You must suffer through the intricacy of feeling too much.”

--Iain Thomas

“If you had a person in your life treating you the way you treat yourself, you would have gotten rid of them a long time ago.”

--Cheri Huber, 'There Is Nothing Wrong With You'

“That is why it is so important to let certain things go. To release them. To cut loose. People need to understand that no one is playing with marked cards; sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Don’t expect to get anything back, don’t expect recognition for your efforts, don’t expect your genius to be discovered or your love to be understood. Complete the circle. Not out of pride, inability or arrogance, but simply because whatever it is no longer fits in your life. Close the door, change the record, clean the house, get rid of the dust. Stop being who you were and become who you are.”

--Paulo Coehlo

“Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures.”

--Henry David Thoreau

“But sometimes you have to be brave. Sometimes you have to show people what’s important in life.”

--Sophie Kinsella, 'I’ve Got Your Number'

“Buying books is immensely comforting. Maybe I won’t read them immediately, but they make me feel so much better whenever I’m sad and blue. Just their presence, it’s like having more to look forward to.”

--Unknown

"I don't ever want to be taught how to do something artistic, no matter what it is, because I'm always worried that if I'm taught how to do it, I'll do it like the person that taught me."

--Tyler Knott Gregson

“My solitude doesn’t depend on the presence or absence of people; on the contrary, I hate who steals my solitude without, in exchange, offering me true company.”

--Friedrich Nietzsche

“Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”

--Rumi

“I’ve learned that waiting is the most difficult bit, and I want to get used to the feeling, knowing that you’re with me, even when you’re not by my side.”

--Paulo Coelho, 'Eleven Minutes'

“So build yourself as beautiful as you want your world to be. Wrap yourself in light then give yourself away with your heart, your brush, your march, your art, your poetry, your play. And for every day you paint the war, take a week and paint the beauty, the color, the shape of the landscape you’re marching towards. Everyone knows what you’re against; show them what you’re for.”

--Andrea Gibson, 'Evolution'

“Beautiful things should belong to beautiful souls.”

--Muriel Barbery

“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”

--Albert Schweitzer

You will fall in love with someone for one night and one night only. They’ll come to you when you need them and be gone in the morning when you don’t. At first, this will make you feel empty and you’ll try to convince yourself that you could’ve loved this person for longer than a night, but you can’t. Some people are just meant to make cameo appearances, some are destined to be a pithy footnote. That’s okay though. Not every person we love has to stick around. Sometimes it’s better to leave while you’re still ahead. Sometimes it’s better to leave before you get unloved.

You will fall in love with the old couple down the street because to you they represent the impossible: a stable, long-lasting love. You’re trying to get someone to like you for more than ten minutes. A monogamous “never get sick of ya” love seems unfathomable. “What’s your secret, sir? Do you just say yes a lot?”

You will fall in love with smells, the good and the bad kind. You will want to wear your lovers shirt because it makes you feel close to them and you’re okay with being that PYSCHO who is legitimately sniffing their shirt in public. You will fall in love with sweat, certain perfumes, the smell of the season in which you fell in love. This particular love smells like fall. It smells like Halloween and a roaring fire and leaves and fog and mist and candy and food and family and whiskey and sex and the lint that collects on sweaters. When it ends, if it ends, you will never experience another fall without thinking of him, her, it. The memories will stick to the ground like a mound of leaves and will only dissipate when the weather drops.

This is where I’m supposed to tell you that you will fall in love with The One, a person who isn’t too cold or too nice. Their “O” face is perfectly fine and they’re not afraid to show how much they love you. This person is supposed to wait for us at the end of the twenty

something road as some kind of reward for all the heartache and loneliness. We deserve them. We’ve earned this kind of love.

So fine. You’re going to fall in love with The One. You’re going to fall in love with someone who will make sense beyond college or a job or a particular season. They’ll make sense forever and won’t ever want to leave you behind. I’m telling you this not because it’s true but because it NEEDS to be true. Everyone is entitled to this kind of love, so why not? Have it. It’s yours. Blow out the candles on your 30th birthday, holding their hand, and let out an exhale that’s been waiting for ten years. Do it. Now.

--Ryan O’Connell

“For you, a thousand times over.”

Khaled Hosseini, 'The Kite Runner'

“And I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more.”

--Franz Kafka

"There is no shame in being hungry for another person. There is no shame in wanting very much to share your life with somebody."

--Augusten Burroughs

#500 days of summer 

“Sorrow is how we learn to love. Your heart isn’t breaking. It hurts because it’s getting larger. The larger it gets, the more love it holds.”

--Rita Mae Brown, 'Riding Shotgun'

“I’ll walk forever with stories inside me that the people I love the most can never hear.”

--Michelle Hodkin

“People will kill you over time, and how they’ll kill you is with tiny, harmless phrases, like ‘be realistic.’”

--Dylan Moran

“And as we live our lives we discover - drawing toward us the thin threads attached to each - what has been lost. I closed my eyes and tried to bring to mind as many beautiful lost things as I could. Drawing them closer, holding on to them.”

--Haruki Murakami

“I would like to be known as an intelligent woman, a courageous woman, a loving woman, a woman who teaches by being.”

--Maya Angelou

“Forget the future. I’d worship someone who could do that."

--Rumi

“There’s an opposite to déjà vu. They call it jamais vu. It’s when you meet the same people or visit places, again and again, but each time is the first. Everybody is always a stranger. Nothing is ever familiar.”

--Chuck Palahniuk

“If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine. It is lethal.”

--Paulo Coelho

“To be noticed without striving to be noticed, this is what elegance is about.”

--Luciano Barbera

“Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn that anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.”

--David Whyte

People think you’re crazy if you talk about things they don’t understand.”

--Elvis Presley

“You have to be tougher. You have to learn the way to beat your path through, to make yourself felt, and make yourself necessary.”

--Grace Coddington

“People are just as wonderful as sunsets if I can let them be…when I look at a sunset, I don’t find myself saying, “soften the orange a bit on the right hand corner”. I don’t try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds.”

--Carl Rogers 

Happy Monday!

Happy Monday!

“I know today is Monday and you assume it’s going to suck, but according to statistics, there will be over 5,000 weddings, 10,000 childbirths, and 42 million hugs occurring today throughout the United States. Also today, there will be at least 4 people that will win the multimillion dollar lotteries, 600 people will get promotions at work, and 3,000 people will lose their virginity. There will also be 600 dogs adopted, 35,000 balloons sold, and 800,000 skittles eaten. Plus, the words “I love you” will be said over 9 million times. So again, I know today is Monday and you assume it’s going to suck, but just smile, because according to statistics, it should actually be a really nice day.”
--Unknown

“I believe in the power of words, the heat that whiskey settles into my being, and that god willing there is a man out there that will love all the good and bad that is inside me.”

--Kat Keegan

“It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living, I want to know what you ache for. It doesn’t interest me how old you are, I want to know if you are willing to risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine. It doesn’t interest me where you live or how rich you are, I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and be sweet to the ones you love. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and truly like the company you keep in the empty moments of your life.”

--Jon Blais

“It’s not hard to decide what you want your life to be about. What’s hard, she said, is figuring out what you’re willing to give up in order to do the things you really care about.”

--Shauna Niequist, 'Bittersweet'

“She had not simply assured him that she loved him, but had gone so far—in answer to his question, what she loved him for—as to explain what for. She told him that she loved him because she understood him completely, because she knew what he would like, and because everything he liked was good. And this seemed to him perfectly clear.”

--Leo Tolstoy, 'Anna Karenina'

““Think how you love me,” she whispered. “I don’t ask you to love me always like this, but I ask you to remember.” “You’ll always be like this to me.” “Oh no; but promise me you’ll remember.” Her tears were falling. “I’ll be different, but somewhere lost inside me there’ll always be the person I am tonight.””

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

“Pay attention, don’t let life go by you. Fall in love with the back of your cereal box.”

--Jerry Seinfeld

“We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive.”

--Thich Nhat Hanh

"The most important thing in life, is to do what you love -- and what makes you happy. At the end of the day, your actions should reflect your -- Your business, your music, your photography, your friends -- your life."

--Andre Supa

“Everyone who terrifies you is sixty-five percent water. And everyone you love is made of stardust, and I know sometimes you cannot even breathe deeply, and the night sky is no home, and you have cried yourself to sleep enough times that you are down to your last two percent, but nothing is infinite, not even loss. You are made of the sea and the stars, and one day you are going to find yourself again.”

--Finn Butler

“There’s nothing more intimate in life than simply being understood… And understanding someone else.”

--Brad Meltzer, 'The Inner Circle'

“Don’t plant your bad days. They grow into weeks. The weeks grow into months. Before you know it, you got yourself a bad year. Take it from me - choke those little bad days. Choke ‘em down to nothing.”

--Tom Waits

“In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.”

--Buddhist Saying

“When I first met you, I felt a kind of contradiction in you. You’re seeking something, but at the same time, you are running away for all you’re worth.”

--Haruki Murakami

“You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.”

--Thich Nhat Hanh

“Only the strong go crazy. The weak just go along.”

--Assata Shakur

“Only the strong go crazy. The weak just go along.”

--Assata Shakur

"The moment you fall in love feels like it has centuries behind it, generations - all of them rearranging themselves so this precise, remarkable intersection could happen. In your heart, in your bones, no matter how silly you know it is, you feel that everything has been leading to this, all the secret arrows were pointing here, the universe and time itself crafted this long ago, and you are just now realizing it, you are just now arriving at the place you were always meant to be.”

--David Levithan, 'Every Day'

“I notice you, I want to say. Even when no one else does, I do. I will.”

--David Levithan, 'Every Day

"You’ll need coffee shops and sunsets and road trips. Airplanes and passports and new songs and old songs, but people more than anything else. You will need other people and you will need to be that other person to someone else, a living breathing screaming invitation to believe better things.”

--Jamie Tworkowski

“You should bring something into the world that wasn’t in the world before. It doesn’t matter what that is. It doesn’t matter if it’s a table or a film or gardening — everyone should create. You should do something, then sit back and say, “I did that.”

--Ricky Gervais

“Sometimes you’re 23 and standing in the kitchen of your house making breakfast and brewing coffee and listening to music that for some reason is really getting to your heart. You’re just standing there thinking about going to work and picking up your dry cleaning. And also more exciting things like books you’re reading and trips you plan on taking and relationships that are springing into existence. Or fading from your memory, which is far less exciting. And suddenly you just don’t feel at home in your skin or in your house and you just want home but “Mom’s” probably wouldn’t feel like home anymore either. There used to be the comfort of a number in your phone and ears that listened everyday and arms that were never for anyone else. But just to calm you down when you started feeling trapped in a five-minute period where nostalgia is too much and thoughts of this person you are feel foreign. When you realize that you’ll never be this young again but this is the first time you’ve ever been this old. When you can’t remember how you got from sixteen to here and all the same feel like sixteen is just as much of a stranger to you now. The song is over. The coffee’s done. You’re going to breathe in and out. You’re going to be fine in about five minutes.”

--Kalyn Roseanne