- "Do you always think this much, Charlie?" "Is that bad?" "Not necessarily. It's just that sometimes people use thought to not participate in life." "Is that bad?"
- "Sir, if you were my husband, I would poison your drink." "Madam, if you were my wife, I would drink it."
- "You don't have to say I love you to say I love you," you said with a shrug. "All you have to do is say my name and I know." "Can't you hear it?" you said. "When you love someone, you say their name different. Like it's safe inside your mouth."
- A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. It is one of the few havens remaining where a man's mind can get both provocation and privacy.
- A dream is a wish your heart makes, when you're fast asleep.
- A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
- A girl worth kissing is not easily kissed.
- A person doesn't ask permission to fall in love; not even of themselves.
- A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
- A photo says, you were happy, and I wanted to catch that. A photo says, you were so important to me that I put down everything else to come watch.
- A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?
- A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
- A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong it is until it's in hot water.
- Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.
- Ah! There is nothing like staying at home, for real comfort.
- All great and precious things are lonely.
- All secrets become deep. All secrets become dark. That's in the nature of secrets.
- Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.
- An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.
- And yet, the only exciting life is the imaginary one.
- Be the change that you wish to see in the world.
- Beauty is truth, truth beauty.
- Better was it to go unknown and leave behind you an arch, then to burn like a meteor and leave no dust.
- But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.
- By eating meat we share the responsibility of climate change, the destruction of our forests, and the poisoning of our air and water. The simple act of becoming a vegetarian will make a difference in the health of our planet.
- Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.
- Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
- Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
- Death ends a life, not a relationship.
- Death is contagious; it is contracted the moment we are conceived.
- Death reminds us that we are nothing.
- Delay is the deadliest form of denial.
- Depression is about as close as you get to somewhere between dead and alive, and it's the worst.
- Did you ever walk through a room that's packed with people, and feel so lonely you can hardly take the next step?
- Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.
- Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?
- Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.
- Don't forget that I cannot see myself, that my role is limited to being the one who looks in the mirror.
- Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.
- Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
- Enjoy it. Because it's happening.
- Expectation is the root of all heartache.
- Extraordinary things are always hiding in places people never think to look.
- Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
- For attractive lips, speak words of kindness. For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people. For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry. For beautiful hair, let a child run their fingers through it once a day. For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone. People, more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed. Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of each of your arms. As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself and the other for helping others.
- For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don't believe, no proof is possible.
- Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one."
- Friendship with oneself is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.
- God sends meat and the devil sends cooks.
- Goodbye, said the fox. And now here is my secret, a very simple secret. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.
- Hemingway has his classic moment in "The Sun Also Rises" when someone asks Mike Campbell how he went bankrupt. All he can say is, "Gradually, then suddenly." That's how depression hits. You wake up one morning, afraid that you're gonna live.
- Here's to books, the cheapest vacation you can buy.
- History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
- Home is where my habits have a habitat.
- Homesickness is just a state of mind for me. I'm always missing someone or someplace or something, I'm always trying to get back to some imaginary somewhere. My life has been one long longing.
- How can you hide from what never goes away?
- I always knew looking back on the tears would make me laugh. But I never knew looking back on the laughs would make me cry.
- I am a girl ready to explode into nothing.
- I can feel the hurt. There's something good about it. Mostly it makes me stop remembering.
- I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited.
- I don't want any more of this try, try again stuff. I just want out. I've had it. I am so tired. I am twenty and I am already exhausted.
- I don't want to be alone, I want to be left alone.
- I don't want to see anyone. I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing over me like a sluggish wave. Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. I have done something wrong, something so huge I can't even see it, something that's drowning me. I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead.
- I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do.
- I finally understood what true love meant. Love meant that you care for another person's happiness more than your own, no matter how painful the choices you face might be.
- I have to be alone very often. I'd be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That's how I refuel.
- I just hope I remember to tell my kids that they are as happy as I look in my old photographs. And I hope that they believe me.
- I love the nostalgic myself. I hope we never lose some of the things of the past.
- I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university.
- I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won't tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it wouldn't change the fact that they were upset. And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have.
- I wanted to laugh. Or maybe get mad. Or maybe shrug at how strange everyone was, especially me.
- I was so scared to give up depression, fearing that somehow the worst part of me was actually all of me.
- I was such a quiet kid, so shy and calm and in my own head. Of course I knew about being sad. Maybe that's the reason I saved all the things I thought were pretty.
- I would die for you. But I won't live for you.
- I'm not running away, I'm moving on.
- I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.
- I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.
- I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
- If I'm honest I have to tell you I still read fairy-tales and I like them best of all.
- If only my whole life could be words and music, if only everything else could slip away.
- If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.
- If we knew each other's secrets, what comforts we should find.
- If you are chronically down, it is a lifelong fight to keep from sinking.
- If you are going through hell, keep going.
- If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.
- If you're bored with life, if you don't get up every morning with a burning desire to do things, you don't have enough goals.
- In a strange way, I had fallen in love with my depression. Dr. Sterling was right about that. I loved it because I thought it was all I had. I thought depression was the part of my character that made me worthwhile. I thought so little of myself, felt that I had such scant offerings to give to the world, that the one thing that justified my existence at all was my agony.
- In the meantime, I could withdraw to my room, could hide and sleep as if I were dead.
- In those pamphlets that they give at mental health centers where they list the ten or so symptoms that would indicate a clinical depression, 'suicide threats' or even simple 'talk of suicide' is considered cause for concern. I guess the point is that what's just talk one day may become a real activity the next. So perhaps after years of walking around with these germinal feelings, these raw thoughts, these scattered moments of saying I wish I were dead, eventually I too, sooner or later, would succumb to the death urge. In the meantime, I could withdraw to my room, could hide and sleep as if I were dead.
- Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.
- Is anyone anywhere happy?
- It always seems impossible until it's done.
- It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.
- It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.
- It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
- It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.
- It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life.
- It is so hard to learn to put sadness in perspective so hard to understand that it is a feeling that comes in degrees, it can be a candle burning gently and harmlessly in your home, or it can be a full-fledged forest fire that destroy almost everything and is controlled by almost nothing. It can also be so much in-between.
- It is such a mysterious place, the land of tears.
- It's better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone.
- It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.
- It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.
- It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.
- It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.
- Just going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in your garage makes you a car.
- Just when you think it can't get any worse, it can. And just when you think it can't get any better, it can.
- Laughter is timeless. Imagination has no age. And dreams are forever.
- Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.
- Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.
- Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.
- Life is too short when you think of the length of death.
- Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
- Life is what you make it. Always has been, always will be.
- Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
- Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering - because you can't take it in all at once.
- Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.
- Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.
- Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.
- My room is so quiet and empty it hurts.
- My weirdness aside, if I am to find any friends, particularly a girlfriend, she will almost certainly have to be a human. My previous track record tends to suggest that of all species that exist on the planet, it has so far been exclusively humans to whom I find myself sexually attracted. This is a good thing legally if nothing else.
- Nature didn't need an operation to be beautiful. It just was.
- Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.
- Never, never, never give in!
- No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.
- No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one.
- No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
- No one has ever become poor by giving.
- No one here gets out alive.
- Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.
- Nothing ever becomes real 'til it is experienced.
- Nothing is real.
- Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.
- Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die.
- Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines he wrote a poem, and he called it "Chops" because that was the name of his dog, and that's what it was all about, and his teacher gave him an A and a gold star, and his mother hung it on the kitchen door and read it to his aunts. That was the year Father Tracy took all the kids to the zoo and he let them sing on the bus, and his little sister was born with tiny toenails and no hair, and his mother and father kissed a lot, and the girl around the corner sent him a Valentine signed with a row of X's, and he had to ask his father what the X's meant, and his father always tucked him in bed at night and was always there to do it. Once on a piece of white paper with blue lines he wrote a poem, and he called it "Autumn" because that was the name of the season and that's what it was all about, and his teacher gave him an A and asked him to write more clearly, and his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because of its new paint, and the kids told him that Father Tracy smoked cigars and left butts on the pews and sometimes they would burn holes. That was the year his sister got glasses with thick lenses and black frames, and the girl around the corner laughed when he asked her to go see Santa Claus, and the kids told him why his mother and father kissed a lot, and his father never tucked him in bed at night and got mad when he cried for him to do it. Once on a paper torn from his notebook he wrote a poem and he called it "Innocence: A Question" because that was the question about his girl and that's what it was all about, and his professor gave him an A and a strange steady look, and his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because he never showed her. That was the year that Father Tracy died, and he forgot how the end of the Apostle's Creed went, and he caught his sister making out on the back porch, and his mother and father never kissed or even talked, and the girl around the corner wore too much makeup that made him cough when he kissed her but he kissed her anyway because that was the thing to do, and at three a.m. he tucked himself into bed, his father snoring soundly. That's why on the back of a brown paper bag he tried another poem, and he called it "Absolutely Nothing" because that's what it was really all about and he gave himself an A and a slash on each damned wrist, and he hung it on the bathroom door because this time he didn't think he could reach the kitchen.
- One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.
- One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.
- Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.
- Perhaps it is our imperfections that make us so perfect for one another.
- Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.
- Promise me you'll never stop dreaming.
- Question everything.
- Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
- Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.
- She wasn't bitter. She was sad, though. But it was a hopeful kind of sad. The kind of sad that just takes time.
- Show me somebody who is always smiling, always cheerful, always optimistic, and I will show you somebody who hasn't the faintest idea what the heck is really going on.
- So many books, so little time.
- So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.
- Some friends don't understand this. They don't understand how desperate I am to have someone say, I love you and I support you just the way you are because you're wonderful just the way you are. They don't understand that I can't remember anyone ever saying that to me. I am so demanding and difficult for my friends because I want to crumble and fall apart before them so that they will love me even though I am no fun, lying in bed, crying all the time, not moving. Depression is all about If you loved me you would.
- Something still exists as long as there's someone around to remember it.
- Sometimes people are beautiful. Not in looks. Not in what they say. Just in what they are.
- Sometimes, I get so consumed by depression that it is hard to believe that the whole world doesn't stop and suffer with me.
- Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
- Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
- That is all I want in life: for this pain to seem purposeful.
- That's the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it's impossible to ever see the end.
- The beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears, the figure that she carries, or the way she combs her hair. The beauty of a woman is seen in her eyes, because that is the doorway to her heart, the place where love resides. True beauty in a woman is reflected in her soul. It's the caring that she lovingly gives, the passion that she shows & the beauty of a woman only grows with passing years.
- The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
- The best way of keeping a secret is to pretend there isn't one.
- The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.
- The earth does not belong to us. We belong to the earth.
- The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
- The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
- The more I see, the less I know for sure.
- The nicest thing for me is sleep, then at least I can dream.
- The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person.
- The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.
- The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
- The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.
- There are so many things that I want so badly to tell you but I just can't.
- There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.
- There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.
- There is no refuge from confession but suicide; and suicide is confession.
- There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness and death.
- There was a moment in my life when I really wanted to kill myself. And there was one other moment when I was close to that... But even in my most jaded times, I had some hope.
- There's always going to be bad stuff out there. But here's the amazing thing - light trumps darkness, every time. You stick a candle into the dark, but you can't stick the dark into the light.
- Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn't stop for anybody.
- Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.
- Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
- Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.
- Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its shortness.
- Those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.
- Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.
- To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
- To follow by faith alone is to follow blindly/
- Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn't.
- Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.
- War is what happens when language fails.
- Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
- We accept the love we think we deserve.
- We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us.
- We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.
- We are what we imagine ourselves to be.
- We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
- We have too many high sounding words and too few actions that correspond with them.
- We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.
- We read to know that we are not alone.
- We spend a good part of our lives dreaming, especially when we're awake.
- We who think we are about to die will laugh at anything.
- What could we accomplish if we knew we could not fail?
- What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.
- What you do, the way you think, makes you beautiful.
- When all is said and done, more is said than done.
- When I fall in love, it will be forever.
- When I was a kid--10, 11, 12, 13--the thing I wanted most in the world was a best friend. I wanted to be important to people; to have people that understood me. I wanted to just be close to somebody. And back then, a thought would go through my head almost constantly: "There's never gonna be a room someplace where there's a group of people sitting around, having fun, hanging out, where one of them goes, 'You know what would be great? We should call Fiona. Yeah, that would be good.' That'll never happen. There's nothing interesting about me." I just felt like I was a sad little boring thing.
- When the remembering was done, the forgetting could begin.
- When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionable.
- When you love someone you let them take care of you.
- When you're curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.
- When you're lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you've just wandered off the path, that you'll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it's time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don't even know from which direction the sun rises anymore.
- When you're struggling with something, look at all the people around you and realize that every single person you see is struggling with something, and to them, it's just as hard as what you're going through.
- When you're surrounded by all these people, it can be lonelier than when you're by yourself. You can be in a huge crowd, but if you don't feel like you can trust anyone or talk to anybody, you feel like you're really alone.
- Whenever I talk to anyone I care about, I am always seeking approval. There is always a pleading lilt in my voice that demands love. Even the people I work with, the ones I am supposed to have a professional relationship with, all business, get pulled into my need. I can't help it. I want to be adored.
- Whoever is happy will make others happy.
- Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow-creatures is amusing in itself.
- Without suffering, there'd be no compassion.
- Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
- You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him.
- You can't live your life for other people. You've got to do what's right for you, even if it hurts some people you love.
- You cannot find peace by avoiding life.
- You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.
- You don't love someone because they're perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they're not.
- You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.
- You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us. And the world will live as one.
- You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.
- You'll never get ahead of anyone as long as you try to get even with him.
- You're never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you're never as bad as they say when you lose.
mar 14 2012 ∞
jul 8 2012 +
jul 8 2012 +