Eileen Quotes

Between memory and reality there are awkward discrepancies...

People truly engaged in life have messy houses.

Here is how I spend my days now. I live in a beautiful place. I sleep in a beautiful bed. I eat beautiful food. I go for walks through beautiful places. I care for people deeply. At night my bed is full of love, because I alone am in it. I cry easily, from pain and pleasure, and I don’t apologize for that. In the mornings I step outside and I’m thankful for another day. It took me many years to arrive at such a life.

By loving them for more than their abilities we show our children that they are much more than the sum of their accomplishments.

I couldn't be bothered to deal with fixing things. I preferred to wallow in the problem, dream of better days.

It's not a competition, it's a doorway.

Idealism without consequences is the pathetic dream of every spoiled brat, I suppose.

Anyway, I don't trust those people who poke around sad people's minds and tell them how interesting it all is up there. It's not interesting.

Regrets are the most useless form of guilt. They always arrive too late to do any good.

I do love you. I think you know that, but just in case...I love you.

A grown woman is like a coyote--she can get by on very little. Men are more like house cats. Leave them alone for too long and they'll die of sadness

Furthermore, as is typical for any isolated, intelligent young person, I thought I was the only one with any consciousness, any awareness of how odd it was to be alive, to be a creature on this strange planet Earth.

Because life doesn't always happen according to a timetable or calendar. And feelings can't be scheduled.

Listen, I have been educated. I have learned about Western Civilization. Do you know What the message of Western Civilization is? I am alone.

People always wanted someone to blame, didn't they?

Art can permeate the very deepest part of us, where no words exist.

You can see wealth in people no matter what they're wearing. It's in the cut of their chins, a certain gloss to the skin, a drag and pause to their responsiveness. When poor people hear a loud noise, they whip their heads around. Wealthy people finish their sentences, then just glance back.

The idea that my brains could be untangled, straightened out, and thus refashioned into a state of peace and sanity was a comforting fantasy.

The miracle of children is that we just don’t know how they will change or who they will become.

If I get a new idea today—or any day—I won't run from it. I won't trash it. If it's something I really want to do—I'll do it.

Autism: Where the "randomness of life" collides and clashes with an individual"s need for the sameness~

No one on earth is so boring and insignificant that he or she is not worth writing or reading about...One thing's for sure—no one but you can be the hero of your story.

A strong relationship is an honest relationship, and no honest relationship is all peaches and cream. Love is the key. Where love abides, anger is but a passing visitor.

Lord, make me now As happy as the field. With flowers enriched...

One of the best things about life is friends. We all agree on that. And yet our shyness with strangers often prevents friendship from ever gaining a foothold. If only we would realize that the other person is probably just as shy as we are and is simply waiting—and hoping—for us to make the first move.

How to put this feeling, this certainty, into something as limited as words?

Something in the air this morning made me feel like flying. . . " Spring Flight

I didn’t like dogs. Not because they scared me—they didn’t—but because their deaths were so much harder to take than people’s.

Dogs make sense. They understand hierarchy and the need to cooperate. They come when you call them. A cat though—a cat will take your number and get back to you. Maybe. If he’s in a good mood.

It’s easy to tell the dirtiest minds—look for the cleanest fingernails.

Don't confine yourself to a select group of friends, often known as a clique. Cliques by definition leave people out. Lock yourself into one, and you'll never know how many terrific friendships you may be missing.

The path of development is a journey of discovery that is clear only in retrospect, and it’s rarely a straight line.

Gratitude helps you to grow and expand; gratitude brings JOY and laughter into your life and into the lives of all those around you.

I hoped they saw right through my death mask to my sad and fiery soul, though I doubt they saw me at all.

I'd never learned how to relate to people, much less how to speak up for myself. I preferred to sit and rage quietly.

I'm Sorry are two of the most powerful words in our language, especially when they are not flipped blithely over the shoulder but spoken from the heart. They help restore order, balance, harmony. They reduce pain. They heal broken friendship. If they were medecine, they'd be called a miracle.

You're so far off base this time you can't even see the base!

In reference to Einstein's definition of insanity... No Mr. Einstein, that is not insanity, that is autism.

It is important from time to time to slow down, to go away by yourself, and simply be.

We're guys. I punched him, he hit me back, and then everything was fine. We went out for ice cream after.

Some families are so sick, so twisted, the only way out is for someone to die.

Women were complicated creatures. Any man who thought he had one figured out simply wasn’t paying attention,

They say talk is cheap. Maybe so. But kindness is even better—it's free! Free to give. Free to receive. Makes you wonder why there's not more of it, huh?

Having someone you can talk to is cool, but it’s been my experience that it is a lot harder to find someone you can be quiet with.

That is what I imagined life to be—one long sentence of waiting out the clock.

Thus, I lived in perpetual fantasy. And like all intelligent young women, I hid my shameful perversions under a facade of prudishness. Of course I did. It's easy to tell the dirtiest minds-look for the cleanest fingernails.

Peace and harmony do not require perfection. Thank goodness for that—because life so often seems to be an itch here, a glitch there, a mess waiting to happen. Harmony is flexible. It bends with imperfection. So should you.

Is it so bad to want something that you know is wrong?

I didn’t believe in heaven, but I did believe in hell.

Why is it they say you always hurt the ones you love? Because you know exactly how to do it.

People died all the time. Why couldn't I?

Why is being an unmarried woman something that we should be ashamed of, as if we’ve failed? Men don’t feel this way. When they haven’t married, they make it sound like they’ve gotten away with something. Their single status makes them even more appealing to the other sex.

We don't go to the ocean for anything as simple as happiness, do we? We go there to feel alive. Like life, the ocean holds chance and change, grief and terror and beauty. It promises mortality, not peace.

Maybe sometimes you have to take a risk without worrying about the potential disaster.

Those people with perfect houses are simply obsessed with death. A house that is so well maintained, furnished with good-looking furniture of high quality, decorated tastefully, everything in its place, becomes a living tomb. People truly engaged in life have messy houses.

I looked so boring, lifeless, immune and unaffected, but in truth I was always furious, seething, my thoughts racing, my mind like a killer’s. It was easy to hide behind the dull face I wore, moping around. I really thought I had everybody fooled. And I didn’t really read books about flowers or home economics. I liked books about awful things—murder, illness, death.

Love is big. Love makes room for conflicting feelings.

No one's hurt is too small, no worry too removed, no blessing so elusive that it cannot be seen by the eyes in the back of the human heart.

How much better might human communication be if words were as precious as diamonds? If each of us were allotted only 100 words per day?

Never be afraid to tread the path alone. Know which is your path and follow it wherever it may lead you; do not feel you have to follow in someone else's footsteps.

Tell me the truth. When you were a kid, did you always color inside the lines?” "Coloring in the lines is the whole point. That’s why they have lines,” I said. “That’s where you’re wrong. The lines are there just to hold you in. Like a prison. Think what you might have created if there hadn’t been any lines.

Life isn't supposed to be predictable.

Who wants to feel everything everyone else feels all the time?

We don't always know why God allows trials. We do know He wants us to trust Him.

In that little pocket-size world of his, he was the absolute master.

I wasn't sure which was worse - to know you were a liar or to believe your own bullshit.

I am always hungry and wanting to have sex. This is a fact.

There is nobody watching you when you’re alone. You decide for yourself what’s right and wrong. There are no prizes for good little girls. If you want something, fight for it. Don’t be a fool.

I deplored silence. I deplored stillness. I hated almost everything. I was very unhappy and angry all the time. I tried to control myself, and that only made me more awkward, unhappier, and angrier. I was like Joan of Arc, or Hamlet, but born into the wrong life—the life of a nobody, a waif, invisible. There's no better way to say it: I was not myself back then. I was someone else. I was Eileen.

I couldn't decide if I was more offended that people thought I was the kind of person who would kill myself over a boyfriend or that I was apparently too stupid to know how to do it right.

Choosing between day and night. Edgar and Heathcliff.

Cease trying to work everything out with your mind. It will get you nowhere. Live by intuition and inspiration and let your whole life be a Revelation.

There’s nothing I detest more than men with happy childhoods.

Life is populated with scarecrows—all those people and things that seem so scary and trouble our sleep. Isn't it nice to know that most of them turn out to be made of nothing but straw?

I've lived with many alcoholic men over the years, and each has taught me that it is useless to worry, fruitless to ask why, suicide to try to help them. They are who they are for better and worse.

Don't call the man a claustrophobe just because small spaces scare him. Right.

I was nervous. It had been a long time since I’d gone any place I wanted to be.

Why was it that the only choices that truly mattered were the ones you felt least prepare to make?

I'm joking," She said to the group. Ah, the joking defense. The tried and true excuse for bullies everywhere.

Literature is love. I think it went like this: drawings in the cave, sounds in the cave, songs in the cave, songs about us. Later, stories about us. Part of what we always did was have sex and fight about it and break each other’s hearts. I guess there’s other kinds of love too. Great friendships. Working together. But poetry and novels are lists of our devotions. We love the feel of making the marks as the feelings are rising and falling. Living in literature and love is the best thing there is. You’re always home.

Do you want to be with someone who loves you for something that isn’t really you? - Jane

But when you slice truth too thin, you deceive.

Looks to me like you need help. Do you know that you're wearing Thursday panties and today's Monday?

Potential is not an endpoint but a capacity to grow and learn.

There's only so much a woman can endure in a single day without a bracing bout of giggles.

I can imagine myself saying at the time that life itself was like a book borrowed from the library—something that did not belong to me and was due to expire. How silly.

Sometimes in utter hopelessness I put my cheek on the table like it was someone. I wanted to wake my brain up and be loved.

Hey, this is it—right now!—the time when you find out who you are and what you can do. And how will you ever know if you don't try new stuff?

Personally, I felt pretty safe. Librarians are like priests. You can tell them you want information on just about any subject and they never look at you weird. It's like a rule or something. I figured even in a small town like this, my question wouldn't be the strangest one the librarian had heard. I didn't know if librarians had any sort of official privacy code, but I was counting on confidence. They're not big talkers. It comes from being forced to be quiet all the time.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you do something embarrassing like fall down the stairs in front of a group of people, you are required to act like you are fine, even if you aren't. Your arm could have a bone jutting out, and you would still try to laugh it off as if everything were hunky dory. This compound fracture? It's nothing! I like to let my bones out of my body once in a while for fresh air. It's good for them.

If passion was a substance I would say it is dark brown, and then blood red. It's like wet grass, tons of it soaked in mud. It's warm and it stinks like shit and it's unaccountably and endlessly good. It's thick and it goes on for miles and it isn't so much deep as bottomless and it holds you in its grip, you never drown. And then it goes. That's all you know.

Set your sights high, the higher the better. Expect the most wonderful things to happen, not in the future but right now. Realize that nothing is too good. Allow absolutely nothing to hamper you or hold you up in any way.

She wasn’t entertainment for him. He didn’t need her to make him laugh or bolster his ego or to figure him out so he wouldn’t have to. A lot of men who said they were looking for a relationship really wanted a combination sex buddy, therapist, and mirror.

She wasn’t a bird in a cage. A bird in a cage, when the cage is opened, can still fly away. She was a bird embroidered onto a screen — a white bird in clouds of gold stitched onto a screen of melancholy satin. The years passed; the bird’s feathers darkened, mildewed, and were eaten by moths, but the bird stayed on the screen even in death.

You should step out of the box more often. See what the world has to offer.” “I stepped out of the box the night I broke the statue, and look where that got me.” “Exactly! You had a chance to get to know me as a result. Talk about lucky. Think what could happen if you tried again.

I hope you all find yourself sleeping with someone you love, maybe not all of the time, but a lot of the time. The touch of a foot in the night is sincere. I hope you like your work, I hope there's mystery and poetry in your life, not even poems, but patterns. I hope you can see them. Often these patterns will wake you up, and you will know that you are alive, again and again.

Great achievement goes through, not around, discouragement. Is there a roadblock in my way, keeping me from something I want to achieve? Am I discouraged? I understand now that discouragement often precedes achievement. Instead of retreating from the roadblock or seeking a way around it, I will boldly punch a hole through it and continue toward my goal.

I need to check your ankle.” “Ask.” “If you object, I—” “Giving me a chance to object is not the same as asking permission. You’re used to telling people what to do. That works with those guards you’re in charge of. You aren’t in charge of me. You have to ask.” One corner of his mouth turned up. “It’s more efficient my way.” “If your primary goal in life is efficiency, you should just die.” That startled him. His head actually jerked back. “What?” “The most efficient way to live a life is to die a couple seconds after you’re born. Pfft. Done.” She dusted her hands to demonstrate that. “It’s too late for you to achieve optimal efficiency, but you could still . . .

She had been wrong in thinking Christ had been called up against his will to fight in a war. He didn't look - in spite of the crown of thorns - like someone making a sacrifice. Or even like someone determined to "do his bit". He looked instead like Marjorie had looked telling Polly she'd joined the Nursing Service, like Mr Humphreys had looked filling buckets with water and sand to save Saint Paul's, like Miss Laburnum had looked that day she came to Townsend Brothers with the coats. He looked like Captain Faulknor must have looked, lashing the ships together. Like Ernest Shackleton, setting out in that tiny boat across icy seas. Like Colin helping Mr Dunworthy across the wreckage. He looked ... contented. As if he was where he wanted to be, doing what he wanted to do. Like Eileen had looked, telling Polly she'd decided to stay. Like Mike must have looked in Kent, composing engagement announcements and letters to the editor. Like I must have looked there in the rubble with Sir Godfrey, my hand pressed against his heart. Exalted. Happy. To do something for someone or something you loved - England or Shakespeare or a dog or the Hodbins or history - wasn't a sacrifice at all. Even if it cost you your freedom, your life, your youth.

Besides, I thought it was kind of cool that you noticed I have good dexterity." he waved his fingers in front of my face. "I like the idea of you thinking about what my hands can do." He winked before turning to leave. I flushed even redder. "I wasn't thinking about your hands," I called after him. "Sure you weren't." "I wasn't. I was trying to be nice." Drew turned around to face me, leaning against the doorjamb. "Admit it. you're thinking about it now." He saluted and left. I kicked the cart Darn it. Now I was thinking about it.