Impossible Quotes

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

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It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at allβ€”in which case, you fail by default.
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J.K. Rowling
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Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.
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Shel Silverstein
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Becoming fearless isn't the point. That's impossible. It's learning how to control your fear, and how to be free from it.
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Veronica Roth (Divergent (Divergent, #1))
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There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.
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Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)
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Nothing is impossible, the word itself says 'I'm possible'!
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Audrey Hepburn
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It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.
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Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
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When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
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Arthur Conan Doyle (The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes, #9))
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Everything is possible. The impossible just takes longer.
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Dan Brown (Digital Fortress)
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Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
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Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland)
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People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.
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A.A. Milne (Winnie-the-Pooh (Winnie-the-Pooh, #1))
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It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
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Walt Disney Company
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Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.
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Mark Twain
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Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.
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Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game (Ender's Saga, #1))
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So many things are possible just as long as you don't know they're impossible.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
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George Orwell (Animal Farm)
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Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.
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Victor Hugo (William Shakespeare)
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It's possible to go on, no matter how impossible it seems, and that in time, the grief . . . lessens. It may not go away completely, but after a while it's not so overwhelming.
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Nicholas Sparks (Dear John)
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Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.
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Doris Lessing
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You’re dangerous,” he says. β€œWhy?” β€œBecause you make me believe in the impossible
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Simone Elkeles (Rules of Attraction (Perfect Chemistry, #2))
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The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.
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Agatha Christie (Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot, #10))
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When people say impossible, they usually mean improbable.
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Leigh Bardugo (Siege and Storm (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #2))
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When you trip over love, it is easy to get up. But when you fall in love, it is impossible to stand again.
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Albert Einstein
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Without you in my arms, I feel an emptiness in my soul. I find myself searching the crowds for your face - I know it's an impossibility, but I cannot help myself.
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Nicholas Sparks (Message in a Bottle)
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That's the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it's impossible to ever see the end.
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Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)
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What i like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.
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Karl Lagerfeld
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The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
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Arthur C. Clarke
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It always seems impossible until it's done.
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Nelson Mandela
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Why it's simply impassible! Alice: Why, don't you mean impossible? Door: No, I do mean impassible. (chuckles) Nothing's impossible!
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Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass)
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True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.
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Mortimer J. Adler (How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading)
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The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving.
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Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
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To be content with little is difficult; to be content with much, impossible.
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Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (Aphorisms (STUDIES IN AUSTRIAN LITERATURE, CULTURE, AND THOUGHT TRANSLATION SERIES))
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What are the chances you’d ever meet someone like that? he wondered. Someone you could love forever, someone who would forever love you back? And what did you do when that person was born half a world away? The math seemed impossible.
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Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
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In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them.
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Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game (Ender's Saga, #1))
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Time passes. Even when it seems impossible. Even when each tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does. Even for me.
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Stephenie Meyer (New Moon (The Twilight Saga, #2))
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We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.
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Ray Bradbury
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The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.
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Fernando Pessoa
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Maybe I was destined to forever fall in love with people I couldn’t have. Maybe there’s a whole assortment of impossible people waiting for me to find them. Waiting to make me feel the same impossibility over and over again.
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Carol Rifka Brunt (Tell the Wolves I'm Home)
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It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.
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Arthur Schopenhauer
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Only those who attempt the absurd can achieve the impossible.
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Albert Einstein
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It was impossible, of course. But when did that ever stop any dreamer from dreaming.
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Laini Taylor (Strange the Dreamer (Strange the Dreamer, #1))
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Only he who attempts the absurd is capable of achieving the impossible.
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Miguel de Unamuno
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Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said. 'One can't believe impossible things.' I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!
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Lewis Carroll
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But hoping," he said, "is how the impossible can be possible after all.
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Marissa Meyer (Heartless)
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So many things are possible as long as you don't know they are impossible.
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Mildred D. Taylor (The Land (Logans, #1))
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I only know now that the scientists are wrong. The world is flat. I know because I was tossed right off the edge and I've been trying to hold on for 17 years. I've been trying to climb back up for 17 years but it's nearly impossible to beat gravity when no one is willing to give you a hand.
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Tahereh Mafi (Shatter Me (Shatter Me, #1))
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Hysteria is impossible without an audience. Panicking by yourself is the same as laughing alone in an empty room. You feel really silly.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
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Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." [Remarks on the first anniversary of the Alliance for Progress, 13 March 1962]
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John F. Kennedy
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The universe is big, its vast and complicated, and ridiculous. And sometimes, very rarely, impossible things just happen and we call them miracles. And that's the theory. Nine hundred years, never seen one yet, but this would do me.
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Steven Moffat
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I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible.
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Friedrich Nietzsche
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Start by doing what is necessary, then what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
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Francis of Assisi
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Watch and pray, dear, never get tired of trying, and never think it is impossible to conquer your fault.
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Louisa May Alcott (Little Women)
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There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened.
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Douglas Adams (Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (Dirk Gently, #1))
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You must find the place inside yourself where nothing is impossible.
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Deepak Chopra
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I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.
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Orson Scott Card (Ender’s Game (Ender's Saga, #1))
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Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century: Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others; Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected; Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it; Refusing to set aside trivial preferences; Neglecting development and refinement of the mind; Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.
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Marcus Tullius Cicero
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It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future.
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Frank Herbert (Dune (Dune, #1))
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Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.
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Muhammad Ali
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Go back?" he thought. "No good at all! Go sideways? Impossible! Go forward? Only thing to do! On we go!" So up he got, and trotted along with his little sword held in front of him and one hand feeling the wall, and his heart all of a patter and a pitter.
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J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit, or There and Back Again (The Lord of the Rings, #0))
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If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world. It's impossible.
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J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)
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Die, enemies of Ra!" Sekhemet yelled. "Perish in agony!" "She's almost as annoying as you," I told Horus. "Impossible," Horus said. "No one bests Horus.
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Rick Riordan (The Red Pyramid (The Kane Chronicles, #1))
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There are moments when mental overload can render words impossible.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Choice)
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People want to forget the impossible. It makes their world safer.
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Neil Gaiman (The Graveyard Book)
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But what was happiness but an extravagance, an impossible state to maintain, partly because it was so difficult to articulate?
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Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
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It is easy to crush an enemy outside oneself but impossible to defeat an enemy within.
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Eiji Yoshikawa (Musashi: An Epic Novel of the Samurai Era)
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The future has several names. For the weak, it is impossible; for the fainthearted, it is unknown; but for the valiant, it is ideal.
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Victor Hugo (Les MisΓ©rables)
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Using words to talk of words is like using a pencil to draw a picture of itself, on itself. Impossible. Confusing. Frustrating ... but there are other ways to understanding.
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Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1))
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There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.
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Mark Twain
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God is a mean-spirited, pugnacious bully bent on revenge against His children for failing to live up to his impossible standards.
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Walt Whitman
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I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.
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Neil Gaiman (American Gods (American Gods, #1))
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There are winds of destiny that blow when we least expect them. Sometimes they gust with the fury of a hurricane, sometimes they barely fan one’s cheek. But the winds cannot be denied, bringing as they often do a future that is impossible to ignore.
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Nicholas Sparks (Message in a Bottle)
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The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving. I didn't want to destroy anything or anybody. I just wanted to slip quietly out the back door, without causing any fuss or consequences, and then not stop running until I reached Greenland.
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Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
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The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.
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Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)
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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.
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Sarah Dessen (Along for the Ride)
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He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others--the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by the midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad.
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Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything is Illuminated)
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Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed.
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Terence McKenna
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I wished my mother was here tonight, which is stupid, because it’s an impossible wish.” He shrugs and turns to me, drowning the smile that cracks me every time. β€œIt’s not stupid to want to see her again.” β€œIt wasn’t so much that I wanted to see her again,” he says, looking at me with the depth of more than seventeen years in his eyes. β€œI wanted her to see you.
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Katja Millay (The Sea of Tranquility)
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Soul Mates I don’t know how you are so familiar to meβ€”or why it feels less like I am getting to know you and more as though I am remembering who you are. How every smile, every whisper brings me closer to the impossible conclusion that I have known you before, I have loved you beforeβ€”in another time, a different place, some other existence.
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Lang Leav
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I'll tell them how I survive it. I'll tell them that on bad mornings, it feels impossible to take pleasure in things because I'm afraid it could be taken away. That's when I make a list in my head of every act of goodness I've seen someone do. It's like a game. Repetitive. Even a little tedious after more than twenty years. But there are much worse games to play.
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Suzanne Collins (Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3))
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Heroes didn't leap tall buildings or stop bullets with an outstretched hand; they didn't wear boots and capes. They bled, and they bruised, and their superpowers were as simple as listening, or loving. Heroes were ordinary people who knew that even if their own lives were impossibly knotted, they could untangle someone else's. And maybe that one act could lead someone to rescue you right back.
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Jodi Picoult (Second Glance)
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Hmm?' I looked away, flustered automatically using irritation to cover my discomfort up. 'What does 'hmm' have to do with anything? Could you ever use more that five words? All this grunting and minced words make you come across-- primal.' His smile tipped higher. 'Primal.' 'You're impossible.' 'Me Jev, you Nora.
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Becca Fitzpatrick (Silence (Hush, Hush, #3))
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I wanted to tell her everything, maybe if I'd been able to, we could have lived differently, maybe I'd be there with you now instead of here. Maybe... if I'd said, 'I'm so afraid of losing something I love that I refuse to love anything,' maybe that would have made the impossible possible. Maybe, but I couldn't do it, I had buried too much too deeply inside me. And here I am, instead of there.
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Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close)
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As for my brothers," Zeus said, "we are thankful"-he cleared his throat like the words were hard to get out-"erm, thankful for the aid of Hades." The lord of the dead nodded. He had a smug look on his face, but I figure he'd earned the right. He patted his son Nico on the shoulders, and Nico looked happier than I'd ever seen him. "And, of course," Zeus continued, though he looked like his pants were smoldering, "we must...um...thank Poseidon." "I'm sorry, brother," Poseidon said. "What was that?" "We must thank Poseidon," Zeus growled. "Without whom . . . it would've been difficult-" "Difficult?" Poseidon asked innocently. "Impossible," Zeus said. "Impossible to defeat Typhon.
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Rick Riordan (The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #5))
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People say, 'I'm going to sleep now,' as if it were nothing. But it's really a bizarre activity. 'For the next several hours, while the sun is gone, I'm going to become unconscious, temporarily losing command over everything I know and understand. When the sun returns, I will resume my life.' If you didn't know what sleep was, and you had only seen it in a science fiction movie, you would think it was weird and tell all your friends about the movie you'd seen. They had these people, you know? And they would walk around all day and be OK? And then, once a day, usually after dark, they would lie down on these special platforms and become unconscious. They would stop functioning almost completely, except deep in their minds they would have adventures and experiences that were completely impossible in real life. As they lay there, completely vulnerable to their enemies, their only movements were to occasionally shift from one position to another; or, if one of the 'mind adventures' got too real, they would sit up and scream and be glad they weren't unconscious anymore. Then they would drink a lot of coffee.' So, next time you see someone sleeping, make believe you're in a science fiction movie. And whisper, 'The creature is regenerating itself.
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George Carlin (Brain Droppings)
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The Doctor: Doctor Song, you've got that face on again. River: What face? The Doctor: The "He's hot when he's clever" face. River: This is my normal face. The Doctor: Yes it is. River: Oh, shut up. The Doctor: Not a chance.
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Steven Moffat
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Even now, all possible feelings do not yet exist, there are still those that lie beyond our capacity and our imagination. From time to time, when a piece of music no one has ever written or a painting no one has ever painted, or something else impossible to predict, fathom or yet describe takes place, a new feeling enters the world. And then, for the millionth time in the history of feeling, the heart surges and absorbs the impact.
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Nicole Krauss (The History of Love)
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you are a horse running alone and he tries to tame you compares you to an impossible highway to a burning house says you are blinding him that he could never leave you forget you want anything but you you dizzy him, you are unbearable every woman before or after you is doused in your name you fill his mouth his teeth ache with memory of taste his body just a long shadow seeking yours but you are always too intense frightening in the way you want him unashamed and sacrificial he tells you that no man can live up to the one who lives in your head and you tried to change didn't you? closed your mouth more tried to be softer prettier less volatile, less awake but even when sleeping you could feel him travelling away from you in his dreams so what did you want to do love split his head open? you can't make homes out of human beings someone should have already told you that and if he wants to leave then let him leave you are terrifying and strange and beautiful something not everyone knows how to love.
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Warsan Shire
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For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
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Stephen Hawking
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Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print. [Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Nov. 1980), pp. 16-32]
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Barbara W. Tuchman
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Have you kissed many boys before?" he asked quietly. His question brought my mind back into focus. I raised an eyebrow. "Boys? That's an assumption." Noah laughed, the sound low and husky. "Girls, then?" "No." "Not many girls? Or not many boys?" "Neither," I said. Let him make of that what he would. "How many?" "Whyβ€”" "I am taking away that word. You are no longer allowed to use it. How many?" My cheeks flushed, but my voice was steady as I answered. "One." At this, Noah leaned in impossibly closer, the slender muscles in his forearm flexing as he bent his elbow to bring himself nearer to me, almost touching. I was heady with the proximity of him and grew legitimately concerned that my heart might explode. Maybe Noah wasn't asking. Maybe I didn't mind. I closed my eyes and felt Noah's five o' clock graze my jaw, and the faintest whisper of his lips at my ear. "He was doing it wrong.
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Michelle Hodkin (The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer, #1))
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Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since – on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made, are not more real, or more impossible to displace with your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!
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Charles Dickens (Great Expectations)
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I ask the impossible: love me forever. Love me when all desire is gone. Love me with the single mindedness of a monk. When the world in its entirety, and all that you hold sacred advise you against it: love me still more. When rage fills you and has no name: love me. When each step from your door to our job tires you-- love me; and from job to home again, love me, love me. Love me when you're bored-- when every woman you see is more beautiful than the last, or more pathetic, love me as you always have: not as admirer or judge, but with the compassion you save for yourself in your solitude. Love me as you relish your loneliness, the anticipation of your death, mysteries of the flesh, as it tears and mends. Love me as your most treasured childhood memory-- and if there is none to recall-- imagine one, place me there with you. Love me withered as you loved me new. Love me as if I were forever-- and I, will make the impossible a simple act, by loving you, loving you as I do
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Ana Castillo (I Ask the Impossible)
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Some people see a magic trick and say, β€˜Impossible!’ They clap their hands, turn over their money, and forget about it ten minutes later. Other people ask how it worked. They go home, get into bed, toss and turn, wondering how it was done. It takes them a good night’s sleep to forget all about it. And then there are the ones who stay awake, running through the trick again and again, looking for that skip in perception, the crack in the illusion that will explain how their eyes got duped; they’re the kind who won’t rest until they’ve mastered that little bit of mystery for themselves. I’m that kind.” β€œYou love trickery.” β€œI love puzzles. Trickery is just my native tongue.
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Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1))
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Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains ... an unuprooted small corner of evil. Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956 (Abridged))
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Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience. Any attempt to escape the negative, to avoid it or quash it or silence it, only backfires. The avoidance of suffering is a form of suffering. The avoidance of struggle is a struggle. The denial of failure is a failure. Hiding what is shameful is itself a form of shame. Pain is an inextricable thread in the fabric of life, and to tear it out is not only impossible, but destructive: attempting to tear it out unravels everything else with it. To try to avoid pain is to give too many fucks about pain. In contrast, if you’re able to not give a fuck about the pain, you become unstoppable." ~~~~ Mark Manson
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Mark Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life)
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Don't exist. Live. Get out, explore. Thrive. Challenge authority. Challenge yourself. Evolve. Change forever. Become who you say you always will. Keep moving. Don't stop. Start the revolution. Become a freedom fighter. Become a superhero. Just because everyone doesn't know your name doesn't mean you dont matter. Are you happy? Have you ever been happy? What have you done today to matter? Did you exist or did you live? How did you thrive? Become a chameleon-fit in anywhere. Be a rockstar-stand out everywhere. Do nothing, do everything. Forget everything, remember everyone. Care, don't just pretend to. Listen to everyone. Love everyone and nothing at the same time. Its impossible to be everything,but you can't stop trying to do it all. All I know is that I have no idea where I am right now. I feel like I am in training for something, making progress with every step I take. I fear standing still. It is my greatest weakness. I talk big, but often don't follow through. That's my biggest problem. I don't even know what to think right now. It's about time I start to take a jump. Fuck starting to take. Just jump-over everything. Leap. It's time to be aggressive. You've started to speak your mind, now keep going with it, but not with the intention of sparking controversy or picking a germane fight. Get your gloves on, it's time for rebirth. There IS no room for the nice guys in the history books. THIS IS THE START OF A REVOLUTION. THE REVOLUTION IS YOUR LIFE. THE GOAL IS IMMORTALITY. LET'S LIVE, BABY. LET'S FEEL ALIVE AT ALL TIMES. TAKE NO PRISONERS. HOLD NO SOUL UNACCOUNTABLE, ESPECIALLY NOT YOUR OWN. IF SOMETHING DOESN'T HAPPEN, IT'S YOUR FAULT. Make this moment your reckoning. Your head has been held under water for too long and now it is time to rise up and take your first true breath. Do everything with exact calculation, nothing without meaning. Do not make careful your words, but make no excuses for what you say. Fuck em' all. Set a goal for everyday and never be tired.
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Brian Krans (A Constant Suicide)
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The axiom of equality states that x always equals x: it assumes that if you have a conceptual thing named x, that it must always be equivalent to itself, that it has a uniqueness about it, that it is in possession of something so irreducible that we must assume it is absolutely, unchangeably equivalent to itself for all time, that its very elementalness can never be altered. But it is impossible to prove. Always, absolutes, nevers: these are the words, as much as numbers, that make up the world of mathematics. Not everyone liked the axiom of equality––Dr. Li had once called it coy and twee, a fan dance of an axiom––but he had always appreciated how elusive it was, how the beauty of the equation itself would always be frustrated by the attempts to prove it. It was the kind of axiom that could drive you mad, that could consume you, that could easily become an entire life. But now he knows for certain how true the axiom is, because he himself––his very life––has proven it. The person I was will always be the person I am, he realizes. The context may have changed: he may be in this apartment, and he may have a job that he enjoys and that pays him well, and he may have parents and friends he loves. He may be respected; in court, he may even be feared. But fundamentally, he is the same person, a person who inspires disgust, a person meant to be hated.
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Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
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I saw the prince when I was in Os Alta,” said Ekaterina. β€œHe’s not bad looking.” β€œNot bad looking?” said another voice. β€œHe’s damnably handsome.” Luchenko scowled. β€œSince when—” β€œBrave in battle, smart as a whip.” Now the voice seemed to be coming from above us. Luchenko craned his neck, peering into the trees. β€œAn excellent dancer,” said the voice. β€œOh, and an even better shot.” β€œWho—” Luchenko never got to finish. A blast rang out, and a tiny black hole appeared between his eyes. I gasped. β€œImposs—” β€œDon’t say it,” muttered Mal.
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Leigh Bardugo (Ruin and Rising (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #3))
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When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern. The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits - islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh (Gift from the Sea)
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AnaΓ―s, I don't know how to tell you what I feel. I live in perpetual expectancy. You come and the time slips away in a dream. It is only when you go that I realize completely your presence. And then it is too late. You numb me. [...] This is a little drunken, AnaΓ―s. I am saying to myself "here is the first woman with whom I can be absolutely sincere." I remember your saying - "you could fool me, I wouldn't know it." When I walk along the boulevards and think of that. I can't fool you - and yet I would like to. I mean that I can never be absolutely loyal - it's not in me. I love women, or life, too much - which it is, I don't know. But laugh, AnaΓ―s, I love to hear you laugh. You are the only woman who has a sense of gaiety, a wise tolerance - no more, you seem to urge me to betray you. I love you for that. [...] I don't know what to expect of you, but it is something in the way of a miracle. I am going to demand everything of you - even the impossible, because you encourage it. You are really strong. I even like your deceit, your treachery. It seems aristocratic to me.
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Henry Miller (A Literate Passion: Letters of AnaΓ―s Nin & Henry Miller, 1932-1953)
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It's impossible to be the Mockingjay. Impossible to complete even this one sentence. Because now I know that everything I say will be directly taken out on Peeta. Result in his torture. But not his death, no, nothing so merciful as that. Snow will ensure that his life is much more worse than death. "Cut," I hear Cressida say quietly. "What's wrong with her?" Plutarch says under his breath. "She's figured out how Snow's using Peeta," says Finnick. There's something like a collective sigh of regret from that semicircle of people spread out before me. Because I know this now. Because there will never be a way for me to not know this again. Because, beyond the military disadvantage losing a entails, I am broken. Several sets of arms would embrace me. But in the end, the only person I truly want to comfort me is Haymitch, because he loves Peeta, too. I reach out for him and say something like his name and he's there, holding me and patting my back. "It's okay. It'll be okay, sweetheart." He sits me on a length of broken marble pillar and keeps an arm around me while I sob. "I can't do this anymore," I say. "I know," he says.
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Suzanne Collins (Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3))