Eventually You'll Realize Quotes

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Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you'll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you'll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.
Cheryl Strayed (Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar)
There will always be a part of you that misses her. You'll see something that reminds you of her and want to tell her about it, only to realize she's not there anymore. Then you'll feel her loss all over again. (Ravyn) You're not helping me, Ravyn. (Jack) I know, buddy. But you will eventually make peace with yourself, and that's the most important thing. Eventually, you'll even be able to smile again when you think about her. (Ravyn)
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Dark Side of the Moon (Dark-Hunter, #9; Were-Hunter, #3))
And the thing is, when you lose someone, you realize you'll eventually lose everyone.
John Green
As we grow up we realize that even the person who was supposed to never let you down probably will. You will probably have your heart broken more than once and it gets harder every time. You'll break hearts too, so remember how it felt when your's was broken. You'll fight with your best friend. You'll blame a new love for things an old one did. You'll cry because time is passing too fast, and you'll eventually lose someone you love, so take many pictures, laugh to much and love like you've never been hurt because every sixty seconds you spend upset is one minute of happiness you'll never get back.
Andy Sixx
When you lose someone, you realize you'll eventually lose everyone.
John Green (Turtles All the Way Down)
See, if you analyze stuff long enough, you’ll eventually break ideas down to the quantum level where nothing makes sense and there’s no longer any meaning to anything. And then when you try to put it all back together again, you realize the pieces just don’t fit anymore. Worse, you realize that the pieces never fit in the first place. And then you’re left with a heap of broken ideas and beliefs that are shattered beyond repair. That’s reality, and that’s what I write about.
P.S. Baber (Cassie Draws the Universe)
Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you’ll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you’ll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.
Cheryl Strayed (Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar)
you keep going, you’ll eventually realize that the one true answer to all your questions is: Of course it doesn’t make sense—what business do you have expecting things to make sense?
Allie Brosh (Solutions and Other Problems)
Being bipolar is like having an ax to grind with an ax you need to split the wood to keep you warm in a cold dark forest you only might eventually realize you’ll never make your way out of.
Tommy Orange (There There)
I worry about this new America. People can’t go around laughing all the time. Eventually, everyone will come around to that realization. Mom doesn’t get it. She says, if you frown too long on the outside, eventually you’ll grow a frown on the inside. How could this apply to me? And who cares?
Michael Benzehabe (Zonked Out: The Teen Psychologist of San Marcos Who Killed Her Santa Claus and Found the Blue-Black Edge of the Love Universe)
Happiness is a choice as much as anything. Or you could choose to be angry, and if you stay angry long enough, it will become comfortable, like an old robe. But eventually you’ll realize that old robe is all you've got, and there isn't anything else in the wardrobe that fits. And at that point, you’re just waiting to trade the robe for a shroud.” Grace March
Kate Quinn (The Briar Club)
TRANSFORMING You’ll eventually reach a point in your life where you start to realize your own worth, and you’ll find that you won’t take shit from anyone anymore because you’re strong enough to know that you deserve better.
Charlotte Freeman (Everything You’ll Ever Need: You Can Find Within Yourself)
When you begin to walk your own journey, to have your own unique conversation, you will naturally stop feeling envious of others. Not because you’ll realize your desires are different from theirs, but because they are so similar. You’ll discover the difference between doing well and pretending to do well, between being happy and pretending to be happy, between healthy relationships and staged ones. You’ll see just how many obstacles lie on any path. You’ll realize that it takes the same amount of effort to work on building up the quality of the conversations in your life as it does to broadcast to the public, constantly, that those conversations are already perfect. You can either build up the mask or build up the authentic self. And you, brave and beautiful you, will make the right choice eventually. Be it now or on your deathbed. We all realize soon enough.
Vironika Tugaleva
Let your own experience serve as your guide and inspiration. Let yourself enjoy the view as you travel along the path. The view is your own mind, and because your mind is already enlightened, if you take the opportunity to rest awhile along the journey, eventually you’ll realize that the place you want to reach is the place you already are.
Yongey Mingyur (The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness)
Him: And the thing is, when you lose someone, you realize you'll eventually lose everyone.
John Green (Turtles All the Way Down)
If you truly want to grow spiritually, you’ll realize that keeping your stuff is keeping you trapped. Eventually you’ll want out, at any cost. You will then realize that life is actually trying to help you. Life is surrounding you with people and situations that stimulate
Michael A. Singer (The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself)
As you go through various stages of your career, you’ll start to realize how much uncertainty there is in the world. It’s a pretty universal truth that once you get the job you thought you wanted, the enjoyment eventually fades and you find yourself looking for something else. You think you want to work for that cool startup, and you get there only to find it’s a mess. You think you want to be a manager, only to discover that the job is hard and not rewarding in the ways you expected. In all of this uncertainty, the only person you can rely on to pull through it is yourself.
Camille Fournier (The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change)
10 facts about abusive relationships (what i wish i'd known) 1. it's not always loud. it's not always obvious. the poison doesn't always hit you like a gunshot. sometimes, it seeps in quietly, slowly. sometimes, you don't even know it was ever there until months after. 2. love is not draining. love is not tiring. this is not how it is supposed to be. 3. apologies are like band-aids, when what you really need is stitches– they don't actually fix anything long-term. soon enough, you'll be bleeding again, but they will never give you what you really need. 4. this is not your fault. you did not turn them into this. this is how they are, how they've always been. you can't blame yourself. 5. there will be less good days than bad days but the good days will be so amazing that it will feel like everything is better than it actually is. your mind is playing tricks on itself and your heart is trying to convince itself that it made the right choice. 6. they do not love you. they can not love you. this is not love. 7. you're not wrong for wanting to run, so do it. listen to what your gut is telling you. 8. you will let them come back again and again before you realize that they only change long enough for you to let them in one more time. 9. it's okay to be selfish and leave. there is never any crime in putting yourself first. when they tell you otherwise, don't believe them. don't let them tear you down. they want to knock you off your feet so that they can keep you on the ground. 10. after, you will look back on this regretting all the chances given, all the time wasted. you will think about what you know now, and what you would do differently if given the chance. part of you will say that you would never have even given them the time of the day, but another part of you, the larger one, will say that even after everything, you wouldn't have changed a thing. and as much as it will bother you, eventually, you will realize that that is the part that is right. because as much as it hurts, as much as you wish you'd never felt that pain, it has taught you something. it has helped you grow. they brought you something that you would have never gotten from somebody else. at the end of the day, you will accept that even now, you wouldn't go about it differently at all.
Catarine Hancock (how the words come)
I thought that you said that your name was reserved only for family.” A small smile broke through his stoic expression. “The way I see it, even if you don’t come around and realize that you can’t resist my striking looks and enticing charm, and that you desperately want to spend the rest of your life in my arms—” “Which will never happen…” “—you’ll eventually end up with my silly little brother. Who, just to warn you, despite being a great guy, is nowhere near as handsome and charming as I.
Ada Adams (ReAwakened (Angel Creek, #2))
You go out into your world, and try and find the things that will be useful to you. Your weapons. Your tools. Your charms. You find a record, or a poem, or a picture of a girl that you pin to the wall and go, "Her. I'll try and be her. I'll try and be her - but here." You observe the way others walk, and talk, and you steal little bits of them - you collage yourself out of whatever you can get your hands on. You are like the robot Johnny 5 in Short Circuit, crying, "More input! More input for Johnny 5! as you rifle through books and watch films and sit in front of the television, trying to guess which of these things that you are watching - Alexis Carrington Colby walking down a marble staircase; Anne of Green Gables holding her shoddy suitcase; Cathy wailing on the moors; Courtney Love wailing in her petticoat; Dorothy Parker gunning people down; Grace Jones singing "Slave to the Rhythm" - you will need when you get out there. What will be useful. What will be, eventually, you? And you will be quite on your own when you do all this. There is no academy where you can learn to be yourself; there is no line manager slowly urging you toward the correct answer. You are midwife to yourself, and will give birth to yourself, over and over, in dark rooms, alone. And some versions of you will end in dismal failure - many prototypes won't even get out the front door, as you suddenly realize that no, you can't style-out an all-in-one gold bodysuit and a massive attitude problem in Wolverhampton. Others will achieve temporary success - hitting new land-speed records, and amazing all around you, and then suddenly, unexpectedly exploding, like the Bluebird on Coniston Water. But one day you'll find a version of you that will get you kissed, or befriended, or inspired, and you will make your notes accordingly, staying up all night to hone and improvise upon a tiny snatch of melody that worked. Until - slowly, slowly - you make a viable version of you, one you can hum every day. You'll find the tiny, right piece of grit you can pearl around, until nature kicks in, and your shell will just quietly fill with magic, even while you're busy doing other things. What your nature began, nature will take over, and start completing, until you stop having to think about who you'll be entirely - as you're too busy doing, now. And ten years will pass without you even noticing. And later, over a glass of wine - because you drink wine now, because you are grown - you will marvel over what you did. Marvel that, at the time, you kept so many secrets. Tried to keep the secret of yourself. Tried to metamorphose in the dark. The loud, drunken, fucking, eyeliner-smeared, laughing, cutting, panicking, unbearably present secret of yourself. When really you were about as secret as the moon. And as luminous, under all those clothes.
Caitlin Moran (How to Build a Girl (How to Build a Girl, #1))
You think you’ll get over the loss of someone. Eventually. Because it seems we get over everything, given enough time. And I guess in a lot of ways I’ve partially gotten over the traumatic event of her passing. But what you don’t realize, until you have to live it, is that it’s the absence of the person that’s the trouble. The ongoing absence. And when you’re missing someone, a longer time without them doesn’t solve the problem. The longer you don’t see someone, the more you miss them.
Catherine Ryan Hyde (Say Goodbye for Now)
Growing up is terrifying. When you’re young, you have this feeling inside of you that you’ll eventually get the chance to do and try everything in life, because life looks so infinitely long from the perspective of a kid. Then suddenly, you realize that every choice you make unchooses all the other ones. This isn’t a video game. There’s no reset button and no infinite lives. Every single decision I make is permanent, and the more I make, the slimmer my path becomes in this shrinking, dark forest we call adulthood.
Daryl Banner (Bromosexual)
Above all, believe. Cultivate your swagger. Make this your new religion: You are funny and talented, and you’re going to try something new. This is the exact right time for that. This is the most important year of your life, and for once you are NOT going to let yourself down. If you fall down and feel depressed, you will get back up. If you feel lethargic and scared, you will try something else: a new routine, a new roommate situation, a healthier diet. You will read books about comedy. You will work tirelessly and take pride in your tireless work. And you will take time every few hours to stop and say to yourself, “Look at me. I’m doing it. I’m chasing my dream. I am following my calling.” It doesn’t matter if your dreams come true, if agents swoon and audiences cheer. Trust me on that: It truly doesn’t matter. What matters is the feeling that you’re doing it, every day. What matters is the work—diving in, feeling your way in the dark, finding the words, trusting yourself, embracing your weird voice, celebrating your quirks on the page, believing in all of it. What matters is the feeling that you’re not following someone else around, that you’re not half-assing this, that you’re not waiting for something to happen, that you’re not waiting for your whole life to start. What matters is you, all alone at your desk at five in the morning. I write this from my own desk at five in the morning, my favorite place, a place where I know who I am and what I’m meant to accomplish in this life. Savor that precious space. That space will feel like purgatory at first, because you’ll realize that it all depends on you. That space will feel like salvation eventually, because you’ll realize that it all depends on you.
Heather Havrilesky (How to Be a Person in the World: Ask Polly's Guide Through the Paradoxes of Modern Life)
And the thing is, when you lose someone, you realize you’ll eventually lose everyone
John Green (Turtles All the Way Down)
Eventually, you’ll realize you’re wasting a lot of energy fighting me. I’m here, Chloe. I’m not going anywhere. And if you won’t tell me what you want or need, I’ll cover all my bases.
Adriana Locke (The Arrangement (Brewer Family, #2))
If you keep going, you’ll eventually realize that the one true answer to all your questions is: Of course it doesn’t make sense—what business do you have expecting things to make sense?
Allie Brosh (Solutions and Other Problems)
You will forget him.” He tried to find the words to say, “This boy is only the first of many that you will meet over your life. They will stack upon one another, week by week. You’ll try to keep them in your head but, eventually, you’ll become too full and they’ll spill out and be left behind. And then, one day, you’ll grow older and you’ll realize that you’ve forgotten his name—the name of the first dead Black boy that you promised yourself you wouldn’t forget—and you’ll hate yourself. You’ll hate your memory. You’ll hate the world. You’ll hate the way you’ve failed to stop the flow of dead bodies that have piled up in your mind. You’ll try to fix it, and fail, and you’ll drown in rage. You’ll turn on yourself for not fixing everything and you’ll drown in sadness. And you’ll do it over, and over, and over again for years and, one day, you’ll have a son and you’ll see him staring down the same road that you’ve been on and you’ll want to say something that fixes him, something that saves him from it all . . . and you won’t know what to say.” William wanted to say all of the correct words to Soot, but they were not in his mind. All that was in William’s mind was the image of his son lying on the concrete, dead, just like all the boys that came and went on television.
Jason Mott (Hell of a Book)
There were times when I cursed the trail and the weather for hours. But after you sulk and consider your options, you eventually realize that you can sit there and cry, or you can walk... It doesn't matter so much if you cry or walk -- I did a lot of both -- but if you turn on your partner, you'll never make it together.
Adrienne Hall (A Journey North: One Woman's Story of Hiking the Appalachian Trail)
~ The stark truth is that you'll inevitably outgrow your surroundings, including friends and loved ones. Eventually, you'll realize that familiar things have changed. There will come a time when you'll notice that things are no longer the same. You cannot preserve every aspect of your past, and not everyone will align with your current path. Embrace this reality and keep moving forward without dwelling on the past.
Carson Anekeya
She narrowed her eyes at him. She wanted to tell him that it was his fault, that she would never have tripped if he’d just stayed the same old Jay he’d always been, gangly and childlike. But she knew that she was being irrational. He was bound to grow up eventually; she’d just never imagined that he’d grow up so well. Instead she accused him: “Well, maybe if you hadn’t pushed me I wouldn’t have fallen.” She made the outlandish accusation with a completely straight face. He shook his head. “You’ll never be able to prove it. There were no witnesses—it’s just your word against mine.” She giggled and hopped down. “Yeah, well, who’s gonna believe you over me? Weren’t you the one who shoplifted a candy bar from the Safeway?” She limped over to the sink while she taunted him with her words, and she washed the dirt from the minor scrapes on her palms. “Whatever! I was seven. And I believe you were the one who handed it to me and told me to hide it in my sleeve. Technically that makes you the mastermind of that little operation, doesn’t it?” He came up behind her, and reaching around her, he poured some of the antibacterial wash onto her hands. She was taken completely off guard by the intimate gesture. She froze as she felt his chest pressing against her back until that was all she could think about for the moment and the temporarily forgot how to speak. She watched as the red scrapes fizzed with white bubbles from the disinfectant. He leaned over her shoulder, setting the bottle down and pulling her hands up toward him. He blew on them too. Violet didn’t even notice the sting this time. And then it was over. He released her hands, and as she stood there, dazed, he handed her a clean towel to dry them on. When she turned around to face him, she realized that she had been the only one affected by the moment, that his touch had been completely innocent. He was looking at her like he was waiting for her to say something, and she was suddenly aware that her mouth was still open. She finally gathered her wits enough to speak again. “Yeah, well, maybe if you hadn’t done it right in front of the cashier, we might have gotten away with it. Instead, you got both of us grounded for stealing.” He didn’t miss a beat, and he seemed unaware of her temporary lapse. “And some might say that our grounding saved us from a life of crime.” She hung the towel over the oven’s door handle. “Maybe it saved me, but the jury’s still out on you. I always thought you were kind of a bad seed.” He gave her a questioning look. “Seriously, a ‘bad seed’, Vi? When did you turn ninety and start saying things like ‘bad seed’?” She pushed him as she walked by, even though he really wasn’t in her way. He gave her a playful shove from behind and teased her, “Don’t make me trip you again.” Now more than ever, Violet hoped that this crush of hers passed soon, so she could get back to the business of being just friends. Otherwise, this was going to be a long—and painful—year.
Kimberly Derting (The Body Finder (The Body Finder, #1))
Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail may be one of the greatest metaphors for life. No matter what obstacle is put in your path, if you simply keep putting one foot in front of the other, eventually you will rise above it. One day, you’ll look back at the mountains you’ve climbed and the trials you’ve endured and you’ll realize you are where you are at today, not despite those obstacles, but because of them. Life itself is a grand adventure.
Erin Miller (Hikertrash: Life on the Pacific Crest Trail)
Competition is the spice of sports; but if you make spice the whole meal you'll be sick. The simplest single-celled organism oscillates to a number of different frequencies, at the atomic, molecular, sub-cellular, and cellular levels. Microscopic movies of these organisms are striking for the ceaseless, rhythmic pulsation that is revealed. In an organism as complex as a human being, the frequencies of oscillation and the interactions between those frequencies are multitudinous. -George Leonard Learning any new skill involves relatively brief spurts of progress, each of which is followed by a slight decline to a plateau somewhat higher in most cases than that which preceded it…the upward spurts vary; the plateaus have their own dips and rises along the way…To take the master’s journey, you have to practice diligently, striving to hone your skills, to attain new levels of competence. But while doing so–and this is the inexorable–fact of the journey–you also have to be willing to spend most of your time on a plateau, to keep practicing even when you seem to be getting nowhere. (Mastery, p. 14-15). Backsliding is a universal experience. Every one of us resists significant change, no matter whether it’s for the worse or for the better. Our body, brain and behavior have a built-in tendency to stay the same within rather narrow limits, and to snap back when changed…Be aware of the way homeostasis works…Expect resistance and backlash. Realize that when the alarm bells start ringing, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re sick or crazy or lazy or that you’ve made a bad decision in embarking on the journey of mastery. In fact, you might take these signals as an indication that your life is definitely changing–just what you’ve wanted….Be willing to negotiate with your resistance to change. Our preoccupation with goals, results, and the quick fix has separated us from our own experiences…there are all of those chores that most of us can’t avoid: cleaning, straightening, raking leaves, shopping for groceries, driving the children to various activities, preparing food, washing dishes, washing the car, commuting, performing the routine, repetitive aspects of our jobs….Take driving, for instance. Say you need to drive ten miles to visit a friend. You might consider the trip itself as in-between-time, something to get over with. Or you could take it as an opportunity for the practice of mastery. In that case, you would approach your car in a state of full awareness…Take a moment to walk around the car and check its external condition, especially that of the tires…Open the door and get in the driver’s seat, performing the next series of actions as a ritual: fastening the seatbelt, adjusting the seat and the rearview mirror…As you begin moving, make a silent affirmation that you’ll take responsibility for the space all around your vehicle at all times…We tend to downgrade driving as a skill simply because it’s so common. Actually maneuvering a car through varying conditions of weather, traffic, and road surface calls for an extremely high level of perception, concentration, coordination, and judgement…Driving can be high art…Ultimately, nothing in this life is “commonplace,” nothing is “in between.” The threads that join your every act, your every thought, are infinite. All paths of mastery eventually merge. [Each person has a] vantage point that offers a truth of its own. We are the architects of creation and all things are connected through us. The Universe is continually at its work of restructuring itself at a higher, more complex, more elegant level . . . The intention of the universe is evolution. We exist as a locus of waves that spreads its influence to the ends of space and time. The whole of a thing is contained in each of its parts. We are completely, firmly, absolutely connected with all of existence. We are indeed in relationship to all that is.
George Leonard
Yet there is dynamism in our house. Day to day, week to week, Cady blossoms: a first grasp, a first smile, a first laugh. Her pediatrician regularly records her growth on charts, tick marks indicating her progress over time. A brightening newness surrounds her. As she sits in my lap smiling, enthralled by my tuneless singing, an incandescence lights the room. Time for me is now double-edged: every day brings me further from the low of my last relapse but closer to the next recurrence—and, eventually, death. Perhaps later than I think, but certainly sooner than I desire. There are, I imagine, two responses to that realization. The most obvious might be an impulse to frantic activity: to “live life to its fullest,” to travel, to dine, to achieve a host of neglected ambitions. Part of the cruelty of cancer, though, is not only that it limits your time; it also limits your energy, vastly reducing the amount you can squeeze into a day. It is a tired hare who now races. And even if I had the energy, I prefer a more tortoiselike approach. I plod, I ponder. Some days, I simply persist. If time dilates when one moves at high speeds, does it contract when one moves barely at all? It must: the days have shortened considerably. With little to distinguish one day from the next, time has begun to feel static. In English, we use the word time in different ways: “The time is two forty-five” versus “I’m going through a tough time.” These days, time feels less like the ticking clock and more like a state of being. Languor settles in. There’s a feeling of openness. As a surgeon, focused on a patient in the OR, I might have found the position of the clock’s hands arbitrary, but I never thought them meaningless. Now the time of day means nothing, the day of the week scarcely more. Medical training is relentlessly future-oriented, all about delayed gratification; you’re always thinking about what you’ll be doing five years down the line. But now I don’t know what I’ll be doing five years down the line. I may be dead. I may not be. I may be healthy. I may be writing. I don't know. And so it's not all that useful to spend time thinking about the future - that is, beyond lunch.
Paul Kalanithi (When Breath Becomes Air)
He got in beside her and impatiently reached for her seat belt, snapping it in place. “You always forget,” he murmured, meeting her eyes. Her breath came uneasily through her lips as she met that level stare and responded helplessly to it. He was handsome and sexy and she loved him more than her own life. She had for years. But it was a hopeless, unreturned adoration that left her unfulfilled. He’d never touched her, not even in the most innocent way. He only looked. “I should close my door to you,” she said huskily. “Refuse to speak to you, refuse to see you, and get on with my life. You’re a constant torment.” Unexpectedly he reached out and touched her soft cheek with just his fingertips. They smoothed down to her full, soft mouth and teased the lower lip away from the upper one. “I’m Lakota,” he said quietly. “You’re white.” “There is,” she said unsteadily, “such a thing as birth control.” His face was very solemn and his eyes were narrow and intent on hers. “And sex is all you want from me, Cecily?” he asked mockingly. “No kids, ever?” It was the most serious conversation they’d ever had. She couldn’t look away from his dark eyes. She wanted him. But she wanted children, too, eventually. Her expression told him so. “No, Cecily,” he continued gently. “Sex isn’t what you want at all. And what you really want, I can’t give you. We have no future together. If I marry one day, it’s important to me that I marry a woman with the same background as my own. And I don’t want to live with a young, and all too innocent, white woman.” “I wouldn’t be innocent if you’d cooperate for an hour,” she muttered outrageously. His dark eyes twinkled. “Under different circumstances, I would,” he said, and there was suddenly something hot and dangerous in the way he looked at her as the smile faded from his chiseled lips, something that made her heart race even faster. “I’d love to strip you and throw you onto a bed and bend you like a willow twig under y body.” “Stop!” she whispered theatrically. “I’ll swoon!” And it wasn’t all acting. His hand slid behind her nape and contracted, dragging her rapt face just under his, so close that she could smell the coffee that clung to his clean breath, so close that her breasts almost touched his jacket. “You’ll tempt me once too often,” he bit off. “This teasing is more dangerous than you realize.” She didn’t reply. She couldn’t. She was throbbing, aroused, sick with desire. In all her life, there had been only this man who made her feel alive, who made her feel passion. Despite the traumatic experience of her teens, she had a fierce physical attraction to Tate that she was incapable of feeling with any other man. She touched his lean cheek with cold fingertips, slid them back, around his neck into the thick mane of long hair that he kept tightly bound-like his own passions. “You could kiss me,” she whispered unsteadily, “just to see how it feels.” He tensed. His mouth poised just above her parted lips. The silence in the car was pregnant, tense, alive with possibilities and anticipation. He looked into her wide, pale, eager green eyes and saw the heat she couldn’t disguise. His own body felt the pressure and warmth of hers and began to swell, against his will. “Tate,” she breathed, pushing upward, toward his mouth, his chiseled, beautiful mouth that promised heaven, promised satisfaction, promised paradise. His dark fingers corded in her hair. They hurt, and she didn’t care. Her whole body ached. “Cecily, you little fool,” he ground out. Her lips parted even more. He was weak. This once, he was weak. She could tempt him. It could happen. She could feel his mouth, taste it, breathe it. She felt him waver. She felt the sharp explosion of his breath against her lips as he let his control slip. His mouth parted and his head bent. She wanted it. Oh, God, she wanted it, wanted it, wanted it…
Diana Palmer (Paper Rose (Hutton & Co. #2))
But Holbrooke brought to every job he ever held a visionary quality that transcended practical considerations. He talked openly about changing the world. “If Richard calls you and asks you for something, just say yes,” Henry Kissinger said. “If you say no, you’ll eventually get to yes, but the journey will be very painful.” We all said yes. By the summer, Holbrooke had assembled his Ocean’s Eleven heist team—about thirty of us, from different disciplines and agencies, with and without government experience. In the Pakistani press, the colorful additions to the team were watched closely, and generally celebrated. Others took a dimmer view. “He got this strange band of characters around him. Don’t attribute that to me,” a senior military leader told me. “His efforts to bring into the State Department representatives from all of the agencies that had a kind of stake or contribution to our efforts, I thought was absolutely brilliant,” Hillary Clinton said, “and everybody else was fighting tooth and nail.” It was only later, when I worked in the wider State Department bureaucracy as Clinton’s director of global youth issues during the Arab Spring, that I realized how singular life was in the Office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan—quickly acronymed, like all things in government, to SRAP. The drab, low-ceilinged office space next to the cafeteria was about as far from the colorful open workspaces of Silicon Valley as you could imagine, but it had the feeling of a start-up.
Ronan Farrow (War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence)
We’ll go out tomorrow morning, then. First thing,” she ventures, more to Silas than me. “Though how the hell are we supposed to hunt? The Fenris certainly can’t see my face, and he’ll recognize Rosie. We’ve got no bait, unless you think you’ll look pretty in a dress, Silas.” “Okay, one, I would look great in a dress,” Silas begins. He turns to lean against the bathroom door, seemingly forgetting that I’m still in a towel. When he sees me, he averts his eyes and flushes a little. “And two,” he continues in a forced voice, “you’ve been luring Fenris on your own for pages, Scarlett. The Apple Time Festival is tomorrow. Perfect place for a Fenris to hang out, even if you don’t take into account all the red people will be wearing. We’ll go there.” Scarlett nods curtly. No one moves for a few minutes as water continues to trickle off my back and onto the shower floor. Finally, Scarlett gives me another cold look, turns on her heel, and storms down the hall. “Sorry I got you in trouble,” Silas whispers guiltily, his voice the only sound other than the steady pattering of water hitting the tile floor. “I was worried about you when you took off, and then I realized it was probably your first solo . . .” I shake my head. “I had to tell her eventually.” “For what it’s worth,” he says, eyes still averted respectfully, “I thought you did great.” “Thanks, Silas.” He finally meets my eyes, keeping his gaze firmly on my face. I tug the towel a little tighter. “You’re welcome. And I’m sorry for barging in. I didn’t . . . um, see anything. I promise.
Jackson Pearce (Sisters Red (Fairytale Retellings, #1))
There," he said, admiring his own handiwork. "Good as new." Violet glanced at the ridiculously huge Band-Aids on her knees and looked at him doubtfully. "You really think so? 'Good as new'?" He smiled. "I think I did pretty good. It's not my fault you can't walk." She narrowed her eyes at him. She wanted to tell him that it was his fault, that she would never have tripped if he'd just stayed the same old Jay he'd always been, gangly and childlike. But she knew that she was being irrational. He was bound to grow up eventually; she'd just never imagined that he'd grow up so well. Instead she accused him: "Well, maybe if you hadn't pushed me I wouldn't have fallen." She made the outlandish accusation with a completely straight face. He shook his head. "You'll never be able to prove it. There were no witnesses-it's just your word against mine." She giggled and hopped down. "Yeah, well, who's gonna believe you over me? Weren't you the one who shoplifted a candy bar from the Safeway?" She limped over to the sink while she taunted him with her words, and she washed the dirt from the minor scrapes on her palms. "Whatever! I was seven. And I believe you were the one who handed it to me and told me to hide it in my sleeve. Technically that makes you the mastermind of that little operation, doesn't it?" He came up behind her, and reaching around her, he poured some of the antibacterial wash onto her hands. She was taken completely off guard by the intimate gesture. She froze as she felt his chest pressing against her back until that was all she could think about for the moment and she temporarily forgot how to speak. She watched as the red scrapes fizzed with white bubble from the disinfectant. He leaned over her shoulder, setting the bottle down and pulling her hands up toward him. He blew on them too. Violet didn't even notice the sting this time. And then it was over. He released her hands, and as she stood there, dazed, he handed her a clean towel to dry them on. When she turned around to face him, she realized that she had been the only one affected by the moment, that his touch had been completely innocent. He was looking at her like he was waiting for her to say something, and she was suddenly aware that her mouth was still open. She finally gathered her wits enough to speak again. "Yeah, well, maybe if you hadn't done it right in front of the cashier, we might have gotten away with it. Instead, you go both of us grounded for stealing." He didn't miss a beat, and he seemed unaware of her temporary lapse. "And some might say that our grounding saved us from a life of crime." She hung the towel over the oven's door handle. "Maybe it saved me, but the jury's still out on you. I always though you were kind of a bad seed." He gave her a questioning look. "Seriously, a 'bad seed,' Vi? When did you turn ninety and start saying things like 'bad seed'?" She pushed him as she walked by, even though he really wasn't in her way. He gave her a playful shove from behind and teased her, "Don't make me trip you again." Now more than ever, Violet hoped that this crush of hers passed soon, so she could get back to the business of being just fiends. Otherwise, this was going to be a long-and painful-year.
Kimberly Derting (The Body Finder (The Body Finder, #1))
I’ll never forget the time I went duck-hunting with my buddy Mike Williams; you’ll read a lot about our adventures and shenanigans in this book. Mike and I were hunting blue-winged teal ducks, which tend to move en masse, so typically you’ll either shoot your limit or not see a duck. In other words, there is a lot of idle time involved with teal hunting, so we usually bring along our fishing poles. After a hunt with Mike one morning, in which we had not seen a single teal, I hooked a four-pound bass. Almost simultaneously, one lone blue-winged teal flew over our heads. As I was reeling in the bass, I reached for my shotgun, raised it with only my left hand, and shot the duck. Now, I’m right-handed but left-eye dominant. It was the first duck I ever shot left-handed, but it would be the first of many. I eventually made the switch to shooting left-handed permanently. It was the hardest obstacle I’ve ever had to overcome in hunting, but it made me a better shot because I’m left-eye dominant. When Mike and I went back to my dad’s house and told him what happened, Phil didn’t believe us, even though we had the teal and bass as evidence. He’d told us about a similar feat many times before, when his friend Hookin’ Bull Thompson pulled in a fish with one hand and shot a duck with the other. I had heard the story many time, but only then did I realize it had now been duplicated. No matter how many times we told Phil about what I did, he didn’t believe us. He thought we made the entire story up because of the countless times he’d bragged about witnessing his buddy’s epic feat. Now, Mike is one of the most honest people you’ll meet, so he couldn’t believe Phil thought we were lying to him. “I’m going to sign an affidavit about what you did,” Mike told me. “Maybe then he’ll believe us.” “Oh, drop it,” I said. “That’s just how my family rolls.
Jase Robertson (Good Call: Reflections on Faith, Family, and Fowl)
ONCE YOU’VE HOOKED readers, your next task is to put your early chapters to work introducing your characters, settings, and stakes. The first 20-25% of the book comprises your setup. At first glance, this can seem like a tremendous chunk of story to devote to introductions. But if you expect readers to stick with you throughout the story, you first have to give them a reason to care. This important stretch is where you accomplish just that. Mere curiosity can only carry readers so far. Once you’ve hooked that sense of curiosity, you then have to deepen the pull by creating an emotional connection between them and your characters. These “introductions” include far more than just the actual moment of introducing the characters and settings or explaining the stakes. In themselves, the presentations of the characters probably won’t take more than a few scenes. After the introduction is when your task of deepening the characters and establishing the stakes really begins. The first quarter of the book is the place to compile all the necessary components of your story. Anton Chekhov’s famous advice that “if in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired” is just as important in reverse: if you’re going to have a character fire a gun later in the book, that gun should be introduced in the First Act. The story you create in the following acts can only be assembled from the parts you’ve shown readers in this First Act. That’s your first duty in this section. Your second duty is to allow readers the opportunity to learn about your characters. Who are these people? What is the essence of their personalities? What are their core beliefs (even more particularly, what are the beliefs that will be challenged or strengthened throughout the book)? If you can introduce a character in a “characteristic moment,” as we talked about earlier, you’ll be able to immediately show readers who this person is. From there, the plot builds as you deepen the stakes and set up the conflict that will eventually explode in the Inciting and Key Events. Authors sometimes feel pressured to dive right into the action of their stories, at the expense of important character development. Because none of us wants to write a boring story, we can overreact by piling on the explosions, fight sequences, and high-speed car chases to the point we’re unable to spend important time developing our characters. Character development is especially important in this first part of the story, since readers need to understand and sympathize with the characters before they’re hit with the major plot revelations at the quarter mark, halfway mark, and three-quarters mark. Summer blockbusters are often guilty of neglecting character development, but one enduring exception worth considering is Stephen Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. No one would claim the film is a leisurely character study, but it rises far above the monster movie genre through its expert use of pacing and its loving attention to character, especially in its First Act. It may surprise some viewers to realize the action in this movie doesn’t heat up until a quarter of the way into the film—and even then we have no scream-worthy moments, no adrenaline, and no extended action scenes until halfway through the Second Act. Spielberg used the First Act to build suspense and encourage viewer loyalty to the characters. By the time the main characters arrive at the park, we care about them, and our fear for their safety is beginning to manifest thanks to a magnificent use of foreshadowing. We understand that what is at stake for these characters is their very lives. Spielberg knew if he could hook viewers with his characters, he could take his time building his story to an artful Climax.
K.M. Weiland (Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys for Writing an Outstanding Story)
Though you may not realize it now, you’ll eventually recognize it when you take the same disciplined approach in tackling a particular challenge.
Arnold Schwarzenegger (The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding: The Bible of Bodybuilding, Fully Updated and Revised)
Another quality that comes naturally as you learn to surf is renunciation. Jerry and I had to practice renunciation every day. Because we wanted to surf in the afternoons, we renounced driving our souped-up cars up and down the street in front of Palo Alto High after school where everyone could see us. Jerry renounced smoking so he could keep his lungs in good shape to handle the strong currents and mammoth waves. We even had to renounce hanging out with girls in the afternoons. It wasn’t easy to give up these things that we liked, but we had fallen in love with surfing, so we did it. Renunciation is a matter of putting aside our immediate desires just a little bit so we can stay focused on something bigger. As Jerry and I waited in the water, watching the horizon for a wave big enough to carry us all the way in to shore, we were often tempted to take whatever wave came along. Resisting that temptation was another form of renunciation. Training in renunciation involves seeing our immediate desires as they arise without indulging them. If you indulge a desire, what happens next? Another desire arises. And another and another. The faster you indulge your desires, the faster they come. You’ll never learn to surf if you are distracted by the small waves that constantly lap at your surfboard. After a while, the small steady waves of desire no longer distract you. Eventually, even the surfboard begins to dissolve because you no longer need it. Suddenly, you realize that you are right there in the surf with no gap, no separation between you and the waves, completely immersed in the ocean. Wave by wave is how we stay engaged with life. It is the only way to experience the immediacy and vigor that real life offers. Sure, it’s raw. But we don’t need to protect ourselves from the moods and nuances of life’s great ocean. We can stay right with it, in placid times and in turbulent times. Life is always offering us the energy and vitality we need—just let the salt water seep into your pores.
Tim Burkett (Zen in the Age of Anxiety: Wisdom for Navigating Our Modern Lives)
Growing up is terrifying. When you’re young, you have this feeling inside of you that you’ll eventually get the chance to do and try everything in life, because life looks so infinitely long from the perspective of a kid. Then suddenly, you realize that every choice you make unchooses all the other ones. This isn’t a video game. There’s no reset button and no infinite lives. Every single decision I make is permanent, and the more I make, the slimmer my path becomes in this shrinking, dark forest we call adulthood
Daryl Banner (Bromosexual)
57. Every Time You Surprise Yourself…You Inspire Yourself SAS selection is designed to test you. Any mental flaw, any physical failing will be exposed by the relentless series of challenges aimed at finding your breaking point. Lung-bursting cross-mountain marches through the snow, uphill sprints, carrying another recruit in a fireman’s lift up and down steep hills, often in driving rain, sometimes in sub-zero temperatures. As selection goes on, these ‘beasting’ sessions get harder and harder. And yet I also found that the more of them I came through in one piece (albeit exhausted and battered), the more easily I could cope with them. It was the SAS way of testing our mental resolve through physical battering. Selection is all about realizing that the pain never lasts for ever. And every time I was tested and I hung on in there, the better I understood that it was just a question of doing it again - one more time - until someone eventually said it was the end, and I had passed. I now know that unless you really, truly test yourself, you’ll never have any idea just how capable you can be. And with each small achievement, your confidence will grow. Most people never reach their limit because they are never sufficiently tested. This means I’ve got two good pieces of news for you. The first is that whenever you do something beyond your ‘comfort zone’ and realize you are still standing, the more you will believe that the impossible is actually possible. And on the road to success, belief is everything. And the second piece of news is that we all have much further to push ourselves than we might initially imagine. Inside us all, just waiting to be tested, is a better, bolder, braver version of who we think we are. All you have to do is give it an opportunity to be unleashed. So pick big targets and surprise yourself with how capable you really are deep down. Remember David and Goliath? Rather than David, the young shepherd boy, looking at this giant of a warrior and thinking, ‘Yikes, he’s huge, I’m beat’ - he thought, ‘With a target that big, how can I possibly miss!’ Success, in life and adventure, is dependent on the retraining of our mind.
Bear Grylls (A Survival Guide for Life: How to Achieve Your Goals, Thrive in Adversity, and Grow in Character)
It’s going to hurt for a long time. And then one day, you’ll wake up, and it will hurt a little less. And then a little less the next day. Until eventually, you can feel where there’s a part of you that’s missing, but you realize that you can finally breathe without the ache.
C.R. Jane (Make Me Wild (Rich Demons of Darkwood, #3))
We are too often told that anger is an unhealthy emotion, but when someone or something has stolen your soul and destroyed your life, anger is a natural response. I am not talking about irrational rage, which can be disastrous and lead you down an even darker hole. I am talking about controlled anger, which is a natural source of energy that can wake you the fuck up and help you realize that what you went through wasn’t right. I have cracked open anger several times. It has warmed me when I was freezing, it has turned my fear into bravery, and it has given me fight when I had none. And it can do the same for you. Anger will snap you out of the spell you’re in until you are no longer willing to remain confined in your mental prison. You’ll be scratching and clawing at the walls, looking for cracks where the light leaks in. Your fingernails will be broken, the tips of your fingers bloody and raw, and you will continue to fight to expand those cracks because your anger will be purifying and the human mind loves progress. Keep at it, and eventually, those walls will tumble until you are free, standing in a debris field one more time, with your eyes wide open. That’ll work. Because destruction always breeds creation.
David Goggins (Never Finished)
Try it,” she said at last. Reka blinked. “Try what?” “Happiness.” Grace rose, smoothing her skirt. “It’s a choice as much as anything. Or you could choose to be angry, and if you stay angry long enough, it will become comfortable, like an old robe. But eventually you’ll realize that old robe is all you’ve got, and there isn’t anything else in the wardrobe that fits.
Kate Quinn (The Briar Club)
choose to be angry, and if you stay angry long enough, it will become comfortable, like an old robe. But eventually you’ll realize that old robe is all you’ve got, and there isn’t anything else in the wardrobe that fits. And at that point, you’re just waiting to trade the robe for a shroud
Kate Quinn (The Briar Club)
A life constantly lived trying to be enough for other people is exhausting. Eventually I hope you learn to breathe, choose yourself, and realize that as long as you're enough for yourself, you'll never need to overpour in someone else's cup to keep them around or keep them happy.
Billy Chapata
Oh, honey. Eventually, you’ll get used it. You’ll start to realize that’s just the smell of Chicago in summer.
Martha Bayne (Rust Belt Chicago: An Anthology)
little. “I know we haven’t known each other long,” he continued, “but it’s been long enough for me to realize that you’re very special and that I enjoy being with you in a way I haven’t experienced with anyone else.” How could that be true? Even if he’d enjoyed her company so far, surely he would eventually come to realize that she was no one special. “I’m a man of forty years and have already lived a full life. I don’t know how many days I have left on this earth. Therefore, I see no reason to wait to express how I feel, or to play the flirtatious games of the young, or to prolong getting to know each other in a lengthy courtship.” “If you’ll allow me, and if Ridley approves”—Guy nodded at Ridley, and by doing so she saw that he understood how Ridley was much more to her than just a coachman—“I’d like to marry you.” Had she heard him correctly? “Marry me?” The words squeaked high and off-key. He released a chuckle that rumbled with nervousness. “My proposal is rather sudden. But at my age, I know myself much better and have a great deal more wisdom now than I did when I was a young man. And I’ve become more proficient at judging the heart and character of others.” “You may be a good judge of character.” She fumbled to slow down the conversation. “But you can’t possibly know the real me in so short a time.” It had only been a month since the first Sunday she’d gathered enough courage to speak to him. “I know you’re the most incredible woman I’ve ever met.” His expression was so sincere that for a moment she could almost believe him. “I admire so many things about you—your determination, unflinching spirit, practicality, humility, and so much more.” She gave a shaky laugh. “I’m not sure if you’re describing the right person, Reverend.” “Not to mention . . .” His voice dropped an octave. “You’re beautiful.” Heat flared in her cheeks. “Now I know you’re telling tales.” “I’d like to spend the rest of my life proving to you that I mean every word.” He held her gaze, and she saw something in his eyes that pricked her with fear.
Jody Hedlund (An Awakened Heart (Orphan Train, #0.5))
That night I realized that losing someone doesn't necessarily mean losing. Every time someone walks out of your life, someone new eventually walks into it. Losing someone means you'll eventually gain someone even better.
Alissa DeRogatis (Call It What You Want)
Happiness.” Grace rose, smoothing her skirt. “It’s a choice as much as anything. Or you could choose to be angry, and if you stay angry long enough, it will become comfortable, like an old robe. But eventually you’ll realize that old robe is all you’ve got, and there isn’t anything else in the wardrobe that fits. And at that point, you’re just waiting to trade the robe for a shroud—or at least, that’s what I’ve always thought.
Kate Quinn (The Briar Club)
Happiness is a choice as much as anything. Or you could choose to be angry, and if you stay angry long enough, it will become comfortable, like an old robe. But eventually you’ll realize that old robe is all you've got, and there isn't anything else in the wardrobe that fits. And at that point, you’re just waiting to trade the robe for a shroud.
Kate Quinn (The Briar Club)
Being bipolar is like having an ax to grind with an ax you need to split the wood to keep you warm in a cold dark forest you only might eventually realized you'll never make you way out of.
Tommy Orange (There There)
A recovery friend of mine once belonged to an AA group called “What’s Your Motivation?” She said she’d always ask herself that in situations where she had to say or do something she might regret, and she’d ask others as well. She asked me that once or twice. So, you start out by asking yourself that question when the situation arises, and a lot of time you realize there is no good motive behind the thing you want to do or say, so you don’t say it. You don’t do it. After a while, it becomes second nature. Unfortunately, however, so many people out there are living their lives while untreated for their afflictions. Whether it’s addiction, including alcoholism, or a type of personality disorder, their behavior often stems from how they feel about themselves based on other people’s words and actions, things they had inadvertently taken on and clung to fiercely. They may have a desperate need for attention, validation, admiration, and respect. Maybe their delusions distort their perception of themselves and how others view them. They are so busy worrying about themselves that they are often oblivious to their motives and may not realize how little regard they have for others. In a genuine sense, they are fighting for themselves, but they’re not winning. Many of us have lived that way once upon a time and, because of it, spent a copious amount of energy on damage control. Knowing we said something we shouldn’t have said or did something we shouldn’t have done and going into this anxiety-ridden desperation to save our “image”—an image that likely isn’t real but a delusion. When we should be more concerned about apologizing or making amends, we’re more obsessed with not wanting to be seen in a negative light and having to act in order to change the negative perception. It takes recovery, healing, and time to learn that if you are intent on doing the right thing, doing right by people, and having everyone’s best interests at heart, you’ll know how to react and respond to things. And if you ever say or do something you regret, you simply say you were wrong and apologize. Empathy for others and for ourselves is what makes it possible. It makes us care about how we treat people and the effect it’s having on not only them but on our lives and the lives of anyone who cares about us. We eventually understand that how we treat people is just as important as catering to our own needs. I think it’s important to understand what made us a certain way in life and to acknowledge that, but then we have to fix it. It becomes our job and responsibility to heal that so that we grow and change. Too many people never get to a point where they can see it, let alone understand it, so those of us who do are quite fortunate.
D.K. Sanz
Imagine that you get a car as a birthday present, with the key in the ignition, but you have never heard of cars before and have absolutely no information about how they work. Being an inquisitive person, you get inside and start messing with the various buttons, knobs and levers. Eventually, you figure out how to use it and get quite good at driving. But unbeknownst to you, somebody has removed the letter R by the gearshift and messed with the transmission so that you need to apply a crazy amount of force to shift into Reverse. This means that unless someone tells you, you’ll probably never figure out that the car can drive backwards as well. If asked to describe how the car worked, you’d incorrectly assert that, without exception, as long as the engine is running, the harder you push on the accelerator pedal, the faster the car moves forward. If in a parallel universe, the car had instead required huge force to shift into forward drive mode, you’d have concluded that this strange machine worked differently and only moved backwards. Our Universe is very much like this car. As illustrated in Figure 6.6, it has a bunch of “knobs” that control how it works: the laws according to which things move when you do various things to them and so forth—what we’re told in school are the laws of physics, including so-called constants of nature. Each setting of the knobs corresponds to one of the phases of space, so if there are 500 knobs with 10 possible settings each, there are 10500 different phases. When I was in high school, I was incorrectly taught that these laws and constants were always valid, and never changed either from place to place or from time to time. Why this mistake? Because an enormous amount of energy—much more than we have at our disposal—is required to change the settings of these knobs, just as the gearshift on that car, so we didn’t realize that the settings could be changed. Nor that there even were any settings to change: unlike gearshifts, nature’s knobs are well hidden. They come in the form of so-called high-mass fields and other obscure entities, and huge energy is required not only to alter them, but even to detect that they exist in the first place.
Max Tegmark (Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality)
looked over at him and said, “Yeah. Sorry, buddy, but that’s not really how anxiety works.” I reminded him of his sister’s ADHD. “Everyone gets distracted sometimes, but for people with ADHD, it’s an all-the-time thing. They are almost always distracted. Being distracted, struggling to focus, it’s the default, and it doesn’t necessarily need a trigger.” He nodded, but continued looking out the window. “So?” he asked in a very typical “What does this have to do with me?” teenager way. “Anxiety is the same way,” I said. “Everyone has anxious moments, but at least for me, and probably you too, the anxiety is kind of always there, even when things are going well. Just last Christmas I had a horrible anxiety attack, so I get it. Most of the time, it just happens without a trigger at all. But the part that sucks the most is how you’ll think to yourself that something must be triggering it, so you start to associate the anxiety with irrational things, like organization, or not getting enough exercise or sleep, or the fear that something bad might happen even though it’s unlikely. For me, that’s when my anxiety turns into obsessive-compulsive disorder. But the anxiety is always there, regardless of good times or bad times.” I went on for a moment more. Eventually, I looked over at Tristan. He was still looking out the window, gripping his stress grip harder than before, and I wondered if I was doing more harm than good, but I also realized how much I wished I’d learned all of this at his age, rather than in my midthirties. It was quiet for a moment, and finally I said, “It’s not hopeless, buddy. I promise. Listen, I still hate it. But I know that it’s part of me, and there are things I have to do to manage it. But as long as I do them, I’m pretty okay. Most days I don’t even notice it.” He thought about what I said.
Clint Edwards (Anxiously Ever After: An Honest Memoir on Mental Illness, Strained Relationships, and Embracing the Struggle)
In time, you’ll realize that your kind heart will be the wind at your back in this life. You’ll see. It’s painful now, but eventually, you’ll figure out your strengths and what you’re really interested in. There, at the intersection of what you love and what you’re good at, is a magical place of success and happiness. It’s just hard to find.
A.G. Riddle (Quantum Radio)
You’ll eventually have to realize that you can’t spiritualize anything that is not spirit, which means you can’t really spiritualize anything in the universe of form. The truly spiritual is only outside of it. That is where you really belong, and will eventually return.
Gary R. Renard (The Disappearance of the Universe: Straight Talk about Illusions, Past Lives, Religion, Sex, Politics, and the Miracles of Forgiveness)
Eventually, you become wise enough to realize that you do not want that stuff inside of you. It doesn’t matter who stimulates it. It doesn’t matter what situation hits it. It doesn’t matter whether it makes sense, or whether it seems fair or not. Unfortunately, most of us are not that wise. We’re really not trying to be free of our stuff; we’re trying to justify keeping it. If you truly want to grow spiritually, you’ll realize that keeping your stuff is keeping you trapped.
Michael A. Singer (The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself)
...Kellen, it’s all just trial and error and making up your mind to live with a shitload of errors.” “Thank you for ripping the romanticism right out of love and crushing it,” Kellen said dryly. “Well, there’s good things about loving someone too. If you pick the right one, you’ll know you have someone to stand beside you no matter what life throws your way. It’s all peaks and valleys. That’s what marriage is. You’re stuck in a rotation of loving someone with all your heart and wanting to smother them with a pillow. It gets better when you’re older because you’re too tired to start over, plus prison isn’t a good place for a woman in her seventies.” Kellen smiled at Trulee. “I don’t know if you realize this or not, but you’re steadily talking me out of wanting to fall in love.” “Let’s deal in reality, honey. If you and Stevie have a long life together, she will eventually have the desire to smother you. Sleep with one eye open, and don’t dry your socks in the microwave like your uncle did this morning. The damn thing smells like a pickle sweltering on fresh asphalt in August. I couldn’t even rewarm my coffee in it. I’m not a good person to talk to about love right now because I’m definitely on the wanting to smother side of the rotation.” “So you’re saying my problem with having to tell Walt might be resolved by tomorrow morning after you’ve smothered him?” Kellen asked with a laugh. “Maybe by this afternoon, Walt does like to take a nap after a fishing trip.” Trulee laughed, too, and bumped Kellen with her shoulder. “Think about this, too. You won’t only want to smother Stevie, you’re gonna want to take a pillow to everyone in her family. The saying ‘you marry your in-laws’ is very true.” “Whew, that’s a sobering thought.” “You hang on to those sobering thoughts for dear life. No one is completely perfect, we all come with baggage. I’d been married to Walt a few months when I learned he enjoyed yodeling, and he wasn’t even any good at it. That was the first little bag he unpacked, the second was full of belches and farts. I started unpacking my bags, too, and one of them had my momma in it. I had her over to the house all the time because I missed her. I have only encountered Joan Sealy twice, and if Stevie unpacks her, you’d better have a pillow handy.” Kellen grinned. “Stop it.
Robin Alexander (Kellen's Moment)
When you lose someone, you realize you'll eventually lose everyone. And once you know that, you can never forget it.
John Green (The Bay of Seven Islands: And Other Poems)
It’s funny, when you’re younger, you think your friendships are everlasting, you think you’ll always be there for each other, that nothing will ever change no matter what. And day to day, nothing changes. But then one day you wake up and realize priorities shifted, people got married, took jobs across the country, started families. You keep in touch online at first, chatting and sending messages for hours on end when you catch each other online at the same time. But eventually life gets in the way of that too and you might be lucky to get a “happy birthday” text once a year.
Winter Renshaw (The Cruelest Stranger)
There is a big problem that arises from keeping the company of those with limited perceptions. At first you'll think you're being kind, or doing people a favour, but the problem you'll eventually face, comes with the realization that we exist to other people not always as we are; but very often, we exist to people as THEY are. So, imagine taking photos with a primitive lens: the primitive lens will capture your view only within its own capacity to do so, and you end up having an image that does not display a true understanding of what it shot. The same thing happens when you allow yourself to be surrounded by primitive mindsets. And you must not do that to yourself; you must not allow all these images of you floating around, none of which do you any justice at all.
C. JoyBell C.
What i believe: Born and we're there just going with the flow,we observe and watch every blink every move,every smile.Only then we start to learn by blind imitation and take our first walk as a lesson. Obviously,it's learning the first thing that we start doing in life,but damn we fail... we fail a lot,we touch the bottom we kiss the ground... then we're up.What we don't anticipate,is that with every failure we learn something with a hidden pleasure in it that forge the way to success.It has never been a shame to fail as long as you learn from it.You my not feel it,but as the time passes,you will realize how fare you're gone and you will keep going forward always asking for more even death can't stop you and can't make an end to the impact yoru doing by your existing.At that point in time,eventually, you will be convinced that ain't no grave can hold your body down;you'll be the stars,you'll be the moon,you'll be two particles collide creating a black hole...you know what you'll be a piece of shit too. After all, maybe the most important thing that we're learning by walking this long path is that every end is a new beginning.
Zakher B.
Don't worry, love. You'll get there eventually. You'll realize you've been in love with me for the past eight years.
Courtney Thorne (Potions, Poisons, and Policies)
Because I’m not,” I sob. “I just mess everything up. I don’t deserve you. You think I’m so great now, but you’ll realize eventually that I’m not good enough, and you’ll leave me. Like everyone does.
Sara Cate (Praise (Salacious Players Club, #1))
Reka blinked. “Try what?” “Happiness.” Grace rose, smoothing her skirt. “It’s a choice as much as anything. Or you could choose to be angry, and if you stay angry long enough, it will become comfortable, like an old robe. But eventually you’ll realize that old robe is all you’ve got, and there isn’t anything else in the wardrobe that fits. And at that point, you’re just waiting to trade the robe for a shroud—or at least, that’s what I’ve always thought.
Kate Quinn (The Briar Club)