Harder Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Harder. Here they are! All 100 of them:

β€œ
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.
”
”
Chuck Palahniuk (Diary)
β€œ
This life’s hard, but it’s harder if you’re stupid.
”
”
George V. Higgins (The Friends of Eddie Coyle)
β€œ
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.
”
”
Plato
β€œ
Try a little harder to be a little better.
”
”
Gordon B. Hinckley
β€œ
Death is Peaceful, Life is Harder
”
”
Stephenie Meyer (Twilight (The Twilight Saga, #1))
β€œ
The farther you go...the harder it is to return. The world has many edges and it's easy to fall off.
”
”
Anderson Cooper (Dispatches From The Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival)
β€œ
It hurts to let go. Sometimes it seems the harder you try to hold on to something or someone the more it wants to get away. You feel like some kind of criminal for having felt, for having wanted. For having wanted to be wanted. It confuses you, because you think that your feelings were wrong and it makes you feel so small because it's so hard to keep it inside when you let it out and it doesn't coma back. You're left so alone that you can't explain. Damn, there's nothing like that, is there? I've been there and you have too. You're nodding your head.
”
”
Henry Rollins (The Portable Henry Rollins)
β€œ
Life is very hard. The only people who really live are those who are harder than life itself.
”
”
Nawal El Saadawi (Woman at Point Zero)
β€œ
Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.
”
”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
β€œ
I wondered which was harder, in the end. The act of telling, or who you told it to. Or maybe if, when you finally got it out, the story was really all that mattered.
”
”
Sarah Dessen (Just Listen)
β€œ
The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars, life is your child, but there is in me Older and harder than life and more impartial, the eye that watched before there was an ocean.
”
”
Robinson Jeffers
β€œ
I'm a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
”
”
Thomas Jefferson
β€œ
But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defensless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get.
”
”
Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar)
β€œ
It's hard to believe in coincidence, but it's even harder to believe in anything else.
”
”
John Green (Will Grayson, Will Grayson)
β€œ
The more you love someone, he came to think, the harder it is to tell them. It surprised him that strangers didn't stop each other on the street to say I love you.
”
”
Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything is Illuminated)
β€œ
Expectations were like fine pottery. The harder you held them, the more likely they were to crack.
”
”
Brandon Sanderson (The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, #1))
β€œ
To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul - would you understand why that's much harder?
”
”
Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead)
β€œ
Once someone's hurt you, it's harder to relax around them, harder to think of them as safe to love. But it doesn't stop you from wanting them.
”
”
Holly Black (White Cat (Curse Workers, #1))
β€œ
Do you normally turn up in gentlemen's bedrooms in the middle of the night? If I'd known that, I would have campaigned harder to make sure Charlotte let you stay.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
β€œ
Just give me a second. Attempting to give a fuck...Attempting harder to give a fuck...Sorry, there was an error; fuck not given.
”
”
Suzanne Wright (Feral Sins (The Phoenix Pack, #1))
β€œ
Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.
”
”
Steve Jobs
β€œ
Trusting is hard. Knowing who to trust, even harder.
”
”
Maria V. Snyder (Poison Study (Study, #1))
β€œ
I carried [Rudy] softly through the broken street...with him I tried a little harder [at comforting]. I watched the contents of his soul for a moment and saw a black-painted boy calling the name Jesse Owens as he ran through an imaginary tape. I saw him hip-deep in some icy water, chasing a book, and I saw a boy lying in bed, imagining how a kiss would taste from his glorious next-door neighbor. He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It's his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry.
”
”
Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)
β€œ
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .... enough money within her control to move out and rent a place of her own even if she never wants to or needs to... A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .... something perfect to wear if the employer or date of her dreams wants to see her in an hour... A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ... a youth she's content to leave behind.... A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .... a past juicy enough that she's looking forward to retelling it in her old age.... A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ..... a set of screwdrivers, a cordless drill, and a black lace bra... A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .... one friend who always makes her laugh... and one who lets her cry... A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .... a good piece of furniture not previously owned by anyone else in her family... A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .... eight matching plates, wine glasses with stems, and a recipe for a meal that will make her guests feel honored... A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .... a feeling of control over her destiny... EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW... how to fall in love without losing herself.. EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW... HOW TO QUIT A JOB, BREAK UP WITH A LOVER, AND CONFRONT A FRIEND WITHOUT RUINING THE FRIENDSHIP... EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW... when to try harder... and WHEN TO WALK AWAY... EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW... that she can't change the length of her calves, the width of her hips, or the nature of her parents.. EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW... that her childhood may not have been perfect...but it's over... EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW... what she would and wouldn't do for love or more... EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW... how to live alone... even if she doesn't like it... EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW... whom she can trust, whom she can't, and why she shouldn't take it personally... EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW... where to go... be it to her best friend's kitchen table... or a charming inn in the woods... when her soul needs soothing... EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW... what she can and can't accomplish in a day... a month...and a year...
”
”
Pamela Redmond Satran
β€œ
I love you so much.” His voice is breathless and full of fear. β€œI’ll love you forever. Even when I can’t.” My tears fall harder at his words. β€œAnd I’ll love you forever. Even when I shouldn't.
”
”
Colleen Hoover (Confess)
β€œ
Women fall in love quicker than men. Easier and more often. But when guys fall? We go down harder. And when things go bad? When it's not us who ends it? We don't get to walk away. We crawl.
”
”
Emma Chase (Tangled (Tangled, #1))
β€œ
I hear laughter and someone asks if I need help, not in a nice way. I snarl, 'What I need is for your mother to have thought a little harder nine months before your birthday.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (The Scorpio Races)
β€œ
I swear to you, sitting a throne is a thousand times harder than winning one.
”
”
George R.R. Martin (A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1))
β€œ
And apologies, once postponed, become harder and harder to make, and finally impossible.
”
”
Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind)
β€œ
It was easy enough to kill yourself in a fit of despair. It was easy enough to play the martyr. It was harder to do nothing. To endure your life. To wait.
”
”
Erica Jong (Fear of Flying)
β€œ
No one is exclusively bad, nor is anyone exclusively good. Some are just forced to work harder at suppressing the bad.
”
”
Colleen Hoover (It Ends with Us (It Ends with Us, #1))
β€œ
Life's disappointments are harder to take when you don't know any swear words.
”
”
Bill Watterson
β€œ
It shouldn't be easy to be amazing. Then everything would be. It's the things you fight for and struggle with before earning that have the greatest worth. When something's difficult to come by, you'll do that much more to make sure it's even harder―or impossible―to lose.
”
”
Sarah Dessen (Along for the Ride)
β€œ
You are a slow learner, Winston." "How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four." "Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.
”
”
George Orwell (1984)
β€œ
Artemis felt like he was six again and caught hacking the school computers trying to make the test questions harder
”
”
Eoin Colfer (The Time Paradox (Artemis Fowl, #6))
β€œ
Crocodiles are easy. They try to kill and eat you. People are harder. Sometimes they pretend to be your friend first.
”
”
Steve Irwin
β€œ
Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure.
”
”
F. Scott Fitzgerald
β€œ
Preventing your heart from forgiving someone you love is actually a hell of a lot harder than simply forgiving them.
”
”
Colleen Hoover (It Ends with Us (It Ends with Us, #1))
β€œ
We are not going to die." Butters stared up at me, pale, his eyes terrified. "We're not?" "No. And do you know why?" He shook his head. "Because Thomas is too pretty to die. And because I'm too stubborn to die." I hauled on the shirt even harder. "And most of all because tomorrow is Oktoberfest, Butters, and polka will never die.
”
”
Jim Butcher (Dead Beat (The Dresden Files, #7))
β€œ
It always is harder to be left behind than to be the one to go...
”
”
Brock Thoene (Shiloh Autumn)
β€œ
It's very easy to get a boy to leave the room. It's much harder to get him to leave your thoughts.
”
”
Elizabeth Eulberg (Prom & Prejudice)
β€œ
Death is a strange thing. People live their whole lives as if it does not exist, and yet it's often one of the great motivations for living. Some of us, in time, become so conscious of it that we live harder, more obstinately, with more fury. Some need its constant presence to even be aware of its antithesis. Others become so preoccupied with it that they go into the waiting room long before it has announced its arrival. We fear it, yet most of us fear more than anything that it may take someone other than ourselves. For the greatest fear of death is always that it will pass us by. And leave us there alone.
”
”
Fredrik Backman (A Man Called Ove)
β€œ
The harder you fall, the heavier your heart; the heavier your heart, the stronger you climb; the stronger you climb, the higher your pedestal.
”
”
Criss Jami (Killosophy)
β€œ
I was in the biggest breakdown of my life when I stopped crying long enough to let the words of my epiphany really sink in. That whore, karma, had finally made her way around, and had just bitch-slapped me right across the face. The realization only made me cry harder.
”
”
Jennifer Salaiz
β€œ
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
”
”
Mark Twain (Pudd'nhead Wilson (Bantam Classics))
β€œ
Truth, she thought. As terrible as death. But harder to find.
”
”
Philip K. Dick (The Man in the High Castle)
β€œ
Going back to something is harder than you think.
”
”
Mitch Albom (For One More Day)
β€œ
Tell me again what you said at the revel,” he says, climbing over me, his body against mine. β€œWhat?” I can barely think. β€œThat you hate me,” he says, his voice hoarse. β€œTell me that you hate me.” β€œI hate you,” I say, the words coming out like a caress. I say it again, over and over. A litany. An enchantment. A ward against what I really feel. β€œI hate you. I hate you. I hate you.” He kisses me harder. β€œI hate you,” I breathe into his mouth. β€œI hate you so much that sometimes I can’t think of anything else.
”
”
Holly Black (The Wicked King (The Folk of the Air, #2))
β€œ
Was it harder to die, or harder to be the one who survived?
”
”
Ruta Sepetys (Between Shades of Gray)
β€œ
Let me get this straight. So you left the Dauntless compound to get ready for war... and took your makeup bag with you?" "Yep. Figured it would be harder for anyone to shoot me if they saw how devastatingly attractive I was...
”
”
Veronica Roth (Insurgent (Divergent, #2))
β€œ
It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.
”
”
Virginia Woolf (The Death of the Moth and Other Essays)
β€œ
She wondered that hope was so much harder then despair.
”
”
Patricia Briggs (Cry Wolf (Alpha & Omega, #1))
β€œ
All shall be done, but it may be harder than you think.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia, #1))
β€œ
When someone has been mean to you, why would you want to be good to them?' 'You wouldn't want to. That's what makes it hard. You do it anyway. Being good is hard. Much harder than being bad.
”
”
Jeanne DuPrau (The People of Sparks (Book of Ember, #2))
β€œ
I don’t think you have to do something so big to be brave. And it’s the little things that are harder anyway.
”
”
Morgan Matson (Since You've Been Gone)
β€œ
All marriages have a time limit if you enter them for the wrong reasons. Marriage doesn't get easier...it only gets harder. If you marry someone hoping it will improve things, you might as well set your timer the second you say, 'I do.
”
”
Colleen Hoover (Hopeless (Hopeless, #1))
β€œ
Live hard, love harder. Chase dreams, seek adventures … capture moments. Live beautifully.
”
”
Tillie Cole (A Thousand Boy Kisses (NEW BONUS CONTENT))
β€œ
That’s sad. How plastic and artificial life has become. It gets harder and harder to find something…real.” Nin interlocked his fingers, and stretched out his arms. β€œReal love, real friends, real body parts…
”
”
Jess C. Scott (The Other Side of Life)
β€œ
When you work on something that only has the capacity to make you 5 dollars, it does not matter how much harder you work – the most you will make is 5 dollars.
”
”
Idowu Koyenikan (Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability)
β€œ
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow.
”
”
Thomas Paine
β€œ
That was the thing about the world: it wasn't that things were harder than you thought they were going to be, it was that they were hard in ways that you didn't expect.
”
”
Lev Grossman (The Magician King (The Magicians, #2))
β€œ
She kissed me harder, breath huffing into my mouth, and bit my lip. Oh, hell that was amazing. I growled before I could stop myself.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (Shiver (The Wolves of Mercy Falls, #1))
β€œ
So, what can't you take? Decide which of the two options is harder, and do the other. That way, no matter how hard your choice turns out to be, at least you can find comfort in knowing you're avoiding something even worse.
”
”
Josephine Angelini (Starcrossed (Starcrossed, #1))
β€œ
Life is hard, and children have to be told how hard life can be…So they will be sympathetic to others. So they will understand that some people have it harder than they do and that a trip through this world can be a wildly different experience, depending on what chemicals are raging through one’s mind.
”
”
Matthew Quick (The Silver Linings Playbook)
β€œ
We are, largely, who we remember ourselves to be. That's why habits are so hard to break. If we know ourselves to be liars, we expect not to tell the truth. If we think of ourselves as honest, we try harder.
”
”
Holly Black (White Cat (Curse Workers, #1))
β€œ
[Life]It is what you make it. If you think you can't change the world, then go on and follow the path already carved out for you. But there are other roads to choose, they're just harder to trudge through. Changing the world is'nt easy, but I sure as hell am going to keep trying. Are you?
”
”
Simone Elkeles (Perfect Chemistry (Perfect Chemistry, #1))
β€œ
It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for a bird to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)
β€œ
Let's face it: I'm scared, scared and frozen. First, I guess I'm afraid for myself... the old primitive urge for survival. It's getting so I live every moment with terrible intensity. It all flowed over me with a screaming ache of pain... remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I've taken for granted. When you feel that this may be good-bye, the last time, it hits you harder.
”
”
Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
β€œ
Sometimes you make up your mind about something without knowing why, and your decision persists by the power of inertia. Every year it gets harder to change.
”
”
Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)
β€œ
Do not whine... Do not complain. Work harder. Spend more time alone.
”
”
Joan Didion (Blue Nights)
β€œ
It is easy to mourn the lives we aren't living. Easy to wish we'd developed other other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we'd worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn't make and the work we didn't do the people we didn't do and the people we didn't marry and the children we didn't have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. But it is not lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy. We can't tell if any of those other versions would of been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.
”
”
Matt Haig (The Midnight Library)
β€œ
It is harder to crack prejudice than an atom.
”
”
Albert Einstein
β€œ
Deciding whether or not to trust a person is like deciding whether or not to climb a tree because you might get a wonderful view from the highest branch or you might simply get covered in sap and for this reason many people choose to spend their time alone and indoors where it is harder to get a splinter.
”
”
Lemony Snicket (The Penultimate Peril (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #12))
β€œ
The secret is not to dream," she whispered. "The secret is to wake up. Waking up is harder. I have woken up and I am real. I know where I come from and I know where I'm going. You cannot fool me any more. Or touch me. Or anything that is mine.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (The Wee Free Men (Discworld, #30; Tiffany Aching, #1))
β€œ
It is after all so easy to shatter a story. To break a chain of thought. To ruin a fragment of a dream being carried around carefully like a piece of porcelain. To let it be, to travel with it, as Velutha did, is much the harder thing to do.
”
”
Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things)
β€œ
I promise you I will try harder to be better. I have battled with things inside me for longer than you know; I do not know what they are or why they are there, I only know that they feel manageable, defeatable, when I am around You.
”
”
Tyler Knott Gregson
β€œ
Be an Encourager: When you encourage others, you boost their self-esteem, enhance their self-confidence, make them work harder, lift their spirits and make them successful in their endeavors. Encouragement goes straight to the heart and is always available. Be an encourager. Always.
”
”
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β€œ
I didn't think I was a personal problem. You hate me, remember?" "Every inch of you," Andrew said. "That doesn't mean I wouldn't blow you." The world tilted a little bit sideways. Neil dug his shoes harder into the floor so he wouldn't fall over. "You like me." "I hate you," Andrew corrected him, but Neil barely heard him.
”
”
Nora Sakavic (The King's Men (All for the Game, #3))
β€œ
I tried the key in all the doors, even though he said he didn't recognize it. It's not that I didn't trust him, becuase I did. It's that at the end of my search I wanted to be able to say: I don't know how I could have tried harder.
”
”
Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close)
β€œ
But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defensless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get." I know what she's talking about. The something deeper and more secret. It's like cracks inside of you. Like there are these fault lines where things don't meet up right.
”
”
John Green (Paper Towns)
β€œ
Maybe I could love you someday." If you ever do," he said, "come and let me know. You know where to find me." Her teeth were chattering harder. "I can't lose you, Simon. I can't." You never will. I'm not leaving you. But I'd rather have what we have, which is real and true and important, than have you pretend anything else. When I'm with you, I want to know I'm with the real you, the real Clary." She leaned her head against his, closing her eyes. He still felt like Simon, despite everything; still smelled like him, like his laundry soap. "Maybe I don't know who that is." But I do.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments, #2))
β€œ
A secret is a strange thing. There are three kinds of secrets. One is the sort everyone knows about, the sort you need at least two people for. One to keep it. One to never know. The second is a harder kind of secret: one you keep from yourself. Every day, thousands of confessions are kept from their would-be confessors, none of these people knowing that their never-admitted secrets all boil down to the same three words: I am afraid. And then there is the third kind of secret, the most hidden kind. A secret no one knows about. Perhaps it was known once, but was taken to the grave. Or maybe it is a useless mystery, arcane and lonely, unfound because no one ever looked for it. Sometimes, some rare times, a secret stays undiscovered because it is something too big for the mind to hold. It is too strange, too vast, too terrifying to contemplate. All of us have secrets in our lives. We’re keepers or keptfrom, players or played. Secrets and cockroaches β€” that’s what will be left at the end of it all.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, #2))
β€œ
I like the dark part of the night, after midnight and before four-thirty, when it's hollow, when ceilings are harder and farther away. Then I can breathe, and can think while others are sleeping, in a way can stop time, can have it so – this has always been my dream – so that while everyone else is frozen, I can work busily about them, doing whatever it is that needs to be done, like the elves who make the shoes while children sleep.
”
”
Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius)
β€œ
freedom isn't free. It shouldn't be a bragging point that "Oh, I don't get involved in politics," as if that makes you somehow cleaner. No, that makes you derelict of duty in a republic. Liars and panderers in government would have a much harder time of it if so many people didn't insist on their right to remain ignorant and blindly agreeable.
”
”
Bill Maher (When You Ride Alone You Ride With Bin Laden: What the Government Should Be Telling Us to Help Fight the War on Terrorism)
β€œ
If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away. The more the outside world tries to reinforce an image of you, the harder it is to continue to be an artist, which is why a lot of times, artists have to say, β€œBye. I have to go. I’m going crazy and I’m getting out of here.” And they go and hibernate somewhere. Maybe later they re-emerge a little differently.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
β€œ
It’s harder to talk about, but what I really, really, really want for Christmas is just this: I want to be 5 years old again for an hour. I want to laugh a lot and cry a lot. I want to be picked or rocked to sleep in someone’s arms, and carried up to be just one more time. I know what I really want for Christmas: I want my childhood back. People who think good thoughts give good gifts.
”
”
Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)
β€œ
His chest, heaving harder this time. His words, almost gasping this time. β€œYou destroy me.” I am falling to pieces in his arms. My fists are full of unlucky pennies and my heart is a jukebox demanding a few nickels and my head is flipping quarters heads or tails heads or tails heads or tails heads or tails β€œJuliette,” he says, and he mouths the name, barely speaking at all, and he’s pouring molten lava into my limbs and I never even knew I could melt straight to death. β€œI want you,” he says. He says β€œI want all of you. I want you inside and out and catching your breath and aching for me like I ache for you.” He says it like it’s a lit cigarette lodged in his throat, like he wants to dip me in warm honey and he says β€œIt’s never been a secret. I’ve never tried to hide that from you. I’ve never pretended I wanted anything less.
”
”
Tahereh Mafi (Unravel Me (Shatter Me, #2))
β€œ
They say that war is death's best friend, but I must offer you a different point of view on that one. To me, war is like the new boss who expects the impossible. He stands over your shoulder repeating one thin, incessantly: 'Get it done, get it done.' So you work harder. You get the job done. The boss, however, does not thank you. He asks for more.
”
”
Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)
β€œ
An unarticulated crush is very different from an unrequited one, because at least with an unrequited crush you know what the hell you're doing, even if the other person isn't doing it back. An unarticulated crush is harder to grapple with, because it's a crush that you haven't even admitted to yourself. The romantic forces are all there -- you want to see him, you always notice him, you treat every word from him as if it weighs more than anyone else's. But you don't know why. You don't know that you're doing it. You'd follow him to the end of the earth without ever admitting that your feet were moving.
”
”
David Levithan (Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd)
β€œ
The alley and the music all fell away, and there was nothing but her and the rain and Jace, his hands on her. . . He made a noise of surprise, low in his throat, and dug his fingers into the thin fabric of her tights. Not unexpectedly, they ripped, and his wet fingers were suddenly on the bare skin of her legs. Not to be outdone, Clary slid her hands under the hem of his soaked shirt, and let her fingers explore what was underneath: the tight, hot skin over his ribs, the ridges of his abdomen, the scars on his back. This was uncharted territory for her, but it seemed to be driving him crazy: he was moaning softly against her mouth, kissing her harder and harder, as if it would never be enough, not quite enough β€”
”
”
Cassandra Clare (City of Fallen Angels (The Mortal Instruments, #4))
β€œ
This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
”
”
George Bernard Shaw
β€œ
Do the things that interest you and do them with all your heart. Don't be concerned about whether people are watching you or criticizing you. The chances are that they aren't paying any attention to you. It's your attention to yourself that is so stultifying. But you have to disregard yourself as completely as possible. If you fail the first time then you'll just have to try harder the second time. After all, there's no real reason why you should fail. Just stop thinking about yourself.
”
”
Eleanor Roosevelt (You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life)
β€œ
Often men who have been emotionally neglected and abused as children by dominating mothers bond with assertive women, only to have their childhood feelings of being engulfed surface. While they could not 'smash their mommy' and still receive love, they find that they can engage in intimate violence with partners who respond to their acting out by trying harder to connect with them emotionally, hoping that the love offered in the present will heal the wounds of the past. If only one party in the relationship is working to create love, to create the space of emotional connection, the dominator model remains in place and the relationship just becomes a site for continuous power struggle.
”
”
bell hooks
β€œ
What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
”
”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (Self-Reliance: An Excerpt from Collected Essays, First Series)
β€œ
A Short Alternative Medical Dictionary Definitions courtesy of Dr Lemuel Pillmeister (also known as Lemmy) Addiction - When you can give up something any time, as long as it's next Tuesday. Cocaine - Peruvian Marching Powder. A stimulant that has the extraordinary effect that the more you do, the more you laugh out of context. Depression - When everything you laugh at is miserable and you can't seem to stop. Heroin - A drug that helps you to escape reality, while making it much harder to cope when you are recaptured. Psychosis - When everybody turns into tiny dolls and they have needles in their mouths and they hate you and you don't care because you have THE KNIFE! AHAHAHAHAHAHA!
”
”
Nikki Sixx (The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star)
β€œ
...it's like this. Sometimes, when you've a very long street ahead of you, you think how terribly long it is and feel sure you'll never get it swept. And then you start to hurry. You work faster and faster and every time you look up there seems to be just as much left to sweep as before, and you try even harder, and you panic, and in the end you're out of breath and have to stop--and still the street stretches away in front of you. That's not the way to do it. You must never think of the whole street at once, understand? You must only concentrate on the next step, the next breath, the next stroke of the broom, and the next, and the next. Nothing else. That way you enjoy your work, which is important, because then you make a good job of it. And that's how it ought to be. And all at once, before you know it, you find you've swept the whole street clean, bit by bit. what's more, you aren't out of breath. That's important, too...
”
”
Michael Ende (Momo)
β€œ
I mean, I don’t know how the world broke. And I don’t know if there’s a God who can help us fix it. But the fact that the world is broken - I absolutely believe that. Just look around us. Every minute - every single second - there are a million things you could be thinking about. A million things you could be worrying about. Our world - don’t you just feel we’re becoming more fragmented? I used to think that when I got older, the world would make so much more sense. But you know what? The older I get, the more confusing it is to me. The more complicated it is. Harder. You’d think we’d be getting better at it. But there’s just more and more chaos. The pieces - they’re everywhere. And nobody knows what to do about it. I find myself grasping, Nick. You know that feeling? That feeling when you just want the right thing to fall into the right place, not only because it’s right, but because it would mean that such a thing is still possible? I want to believe that.
”
”
Rachel Cohn (Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist)
β€œ
On Writing: Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays 1. A beginning ends what an end begins. 2. The despair of the blank page: it is so full. 3. In the head Art’s not democratic. I wait a long time to be a writer good enough even for myself. 4. The best time is stolen time. 5. All work is the avoidance of harder work. 6. When I am trying to write I turn on music so I can hear what is keeping me from hearing. 7. I envy music for being beyond words. But then, every word is beyond music. 8. Why would we write if we’d already heard what we wanted to hear? 9. The poem in the quarterly is sure to fail within two lines: flaccid, rhythmless, hopelessly dutiful. But I read poets from strange languages with freedom and pleasure because I can believe in all that has been lost in translation. Though all works, all acts, all languages are already translation. 10. Writer: how books read each other. 11. Idolaters of the great need to believe that what they love cannot fail them, adorers of camp, kitsch, trash that they cannot fail what they love. 12. If I didn’t spend so much time writing, I’d know a lot more. But I wouldn’t know anything. 13. If you’re Larkin or Bishop, one book a decade is enough. If you’re not? More than enough. 14. Writing is like washing windows in the sun. With every attempt to perfect clarity you make a new smear. 15. There are silences harder to take back than words. 16. Opacity gives way. Transparency is the mystery. 17. I need a much greater vocabulary to talk to you than to talk to myself. 18. Only half of writing is saying what you mean. The other half is preventing people from reading what they expected you to mean. 19. Believe stupid praise, deserve stupid criticism. 20. Writing a book is like doing a huge jigsaw puzzle, unendurably slow at first, almost self-propelled at the end. Actually, it’s more like doing a puzzle from a box in which several puzzles have been mixed. Starting out, you can’t tell whether a piece belongs to the puzzle at hand, or one you’ve already done, or will do in ten years, or will never do. 21. Minds go from intuition to articulation to self-defense, which is what they die of. 22. The dead are still writing. Every morning, somewhere, is a line, a passage, a whole book you are sure wasn’t there yesterday. 23. To feel an end is to discover that there had been a beginning. A parenthesis closes that we hadn’t realized was open). 24. There, all along, was what you wanted to say. But this is not what you wanted, is it, to have said it?
”
”
James Richardson
β€œ
Do you know when they say soul-mates? Everybody uses it in personal ads. "Soul-mate wanted". It doesn't mean too much now. But soul mates- think about it. When your soul-whatever that is anyway-something so alive when you make music or love and so mysteriously hidden most of the rest of the time, so colorful and big but without color or shape-when your soul finds another soul it can recognize even before the rest of you knows about it. The rest of you just feels sweaty and jumpy at first. And your souls get married without even meaning to-even if you can't be together for some reason in real life, your souls just go ahead and make the wedding plans. A soul's wedding must be too beautiful to even look at. It must be blinding. In must be like all the weddings in the world-gondolas with canopies of doves, champagne glasses shattering, wings of veils, drums beating, flutes and trumpets,showers of roses. And after that happens-that's it, this is it. But sometimes you have to let that person go. When you are little, people , movie and fairy tales all tell you that one day you're going to meet this person. So you keep waiting and it's a lot harder than they make it sound. Then you meet and you think, okay, now we can just get on with it but you find out that sometimes your sould brother partner lover has other ideas about that.
”
”
Francesca Lia Block (Dangerous Angels (Weetzie Bat, #1-5))
β€œ
Dear Max - You looked so beautiful today. I'm going to remember what you looked like forever. ... And I hope you remember me the same way - clean, ha-ha. I'm glad our last time together was happy. But I'm leaving tonight, leaving the flock, and this time it's for good. I don't know if I'll ever see any of you again. The thing is, Max, that everyone is a little bit right. Added up all together, it makes this one big right. Dylan's a little bit right about how my being here might be putting the rest of you in danger. The threat might have been just about Dr. Hans, but we don't know that for sure. Angel is a little bit right about how splitting up the flock will help all of us survive. And the rest of the flock is a little bit right about how when you and I are together, we're focused on each other - we can't help it. The thing is, Maximum, I love you. I can't help but be focused on you when we're together. If you're in the room, I want to be next to you. If you're gone, I think about you. You're the one who I want to talk to. In a fight, I want you at my back. When we're together, the sun is shining. When we're apart, everything is in shades of gray. I hope you'll forgive me someday for turning our worlds into shades of gray - at least for a while. ... You're not at your best when you're focused on me. I mean, you're at your best Maxness, but not your best leaderness. I mostly need Maxness. The flock mostly needs leaderness. And Angel, if you're listening to this, it ain't you, sweetie. Not yet. ... At least for a couple more years, the flock needs a leader to survive, no matter how capable everyone thinks he or she is. The truth is that they do need a leader, and the truth is that you are the best leader. It's one of the things I love about you. But the more I thought about it, the more sure I got that this is the right thing to do. Maybe not for you, or for me, but for all of us together, our flock. Please don't try to find me. This is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, besides wearing that suit today, and seeing you again will only make it harder. You'd ask me to come back, and I would, because I can't say no to you. But all the same problems would still be there, and I'd end up leaving again, and then we'd have to go through this all over again. Please make us only go through this once. ... I love you. I love your smile, your snarl, your grin, your face when you're sleeping. I love your hair streaming out behind you as we fly, with the sunlight making it shine, if it doesn't have too much mud or blood in it. I love seeing your wings spreading out, white and brown and tan and speckled, and the tiny, downy feathers right at the top of your shoulders. I love your eyes, whether they're cold or calculating or suspicious or laughing or warm, like when you look at me. ... You're the best warrior I know, the best leader. You're the most comforting mom we've ever had. You're the biggest goofball, the worst driver, and a truly lousy cook. You've kept us safe and provided for us, in good times and bad. You're my best friend, my first and only love, and the most beautiful girl I've ever seen, with wings or without. ... Tell you what, sweetie: If in twenty years we haven't expired yet, and the world is still more or less in one piece, I'll meet you at the top of that cliff where we first met the hawks and learned to fly with them. You know the one. Twenty years from today, if I'm alive, I'll be there, waiting for you. You can bet on it. Good-bye, my love. Fang P.S. Tell everyone I sure will miss them
”
”
James Patterson