β
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.
β
β
Bernard M. Baruch
β
It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at allβin which case, you fail by default.
β
β
J.K. Rowling
β
Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
β
β
Ralph Waldo Emerson
β
It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart.
β
β
Suzanne Collins (Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3))
β
Believe in yourself. You are braver than you think, more talented than you know, and capable of more than you imagine.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
And once the storm is over, you wonβt remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You wonβt even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you wonβt be the same person who walked in. Thatβs what this stormβs all about.
β
β
Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)
β
Books are like mirrors: if a fool looks in, you cannot expect a genius to look out.
β
β
J.K. Rowling
β
It's a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
β
β
Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland)
β
If you want to be happy, do not dwell in the past, do not worry about the future, focus on living fully in the present.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final
β
β
Rainer Maria Rilke
β
Learn to light a candle in the darkest moments of someoneβs life. Be the light that helps others see; it is what gives life its deepest significance.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.
A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.
A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master...
β
β
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
β
But I donβt want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you canβt help that," said the Cat: "weβre all mad here. Iβm mad. Youβre mad."
"How do you know Iβm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldnβt have come here.
β
β
Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland)
β
We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
β
β
Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion)
β
Forever is composed of nows.
β
β
Emily Dickinson
β
No amount of regretting can change the past, and no amount of worrying can change the future.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.
β
β
Nelson Mandela
β
I think if I've learned anything about friendship, it's to hang in, stay connected, fight for them, and let them fight for you. Don't walk away, don't be distracted, don't be too busy or tired, don't take them for granted. Friends are part of the glue that holds life and faith together. Powerful stuff.
β
β
Jon Katz
β
Sometimes it seems safer to hold it all in, where the only person who can judge is yourself.
β
β
Sarah Dessen
β
Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.
β
β
Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland)
β
I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it's these things I'd believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn't all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything.
β
β
F. Scott Fitzgerald
β
If you are a dreamer come in
If you are a dreamer a wisher a liar
A hoper a pray-er a magic-bean-buyer
If youre a pretender com sit by my fire
For we have some flax golden tales to spin
Come in!
Come in!
β
β
Shel Silverstein
β
The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.
β
β
Eleanor Roosevelt
β
But it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he has Cassius note, βThe fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Let us find the dam snack bar," Zoe said. "We should eat while we can."
Grover cracked a smile. "The dam snack bar?"
Zoe blinked. "Yes. What is funny?"
"Nothing," Grover said, trying to keep a straight face. "I could use some dam french fries."
Even Thalia smiled at that. "And I need to use the dam restroom."
...
I started cracking up, and Thalia and Grover joined in, while Zoe just looked at me. "I do not understand."
"I want to use the dam water fountain," Grover said.
"And..." Thalia tried to catch her breath. "I want to buy a dam t-shirt.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Titanβs Curse (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #3))
β
What day is it?β asked Pooh.
βItβs today,β squeaked Piglet.
βMy favorite day,β said Pooh.
β
β
A.A. Milne
β
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Selected Poems, 1956-1968)
β
If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?
β
β
Lewis Carroll (Aliceβs Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass)
β
I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.
β
β
Robert Louis Stevenson (Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson)
β
Curiouser and curiouser!
β
β
Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland)
β
I know of a cure for everything: salt water...in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea.
β
β
Karen Blixen
β
The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.
β
β
Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)
β
because nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff. Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-canβt-control-yourself love it. Hank, when people call people nerds, mostly what theyβre saying is βyou like stuff.β Which is just not a good insult at all. Like, βyou are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousnessβ.
β
β
John Green
β
You might want to lie down," Magnus advised. "I find that it helps when the crushing sense of horrible realization sets in.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments, #2))
β
I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is inprobably biased toward the consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it-or my observation of it-is temporary?
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Headline?" he asked.
"'Swing Set Needs Home,'" I said.
"'Desperately Lonely Swing Set Needs Loving Home,'" he said.
"'Lonely, Vaguely Pedophilic Swing Set Seeks the Butts of Children,'" I said.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.
β
β
Alan Alda
β
Believe in your infinite potential. Your only limitations are those you set upon yourself.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
True friends are always together in spirit.
β
β
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1))
β
If everybody minded their own business, the world would go around a great deal faster than it does.
β
β
Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland)
β
Never, never, never give in!
β
β
Winston S. Churchill
β
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
β
β
Ralph Waldo Emerson
β
there is no shortage of fault to be found amid our stars
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
to live in this world
you must be able
to do three things
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go
β
β
Mary Oliver (New and Selected Poems, Volume One)
β
Books fall open, you fall in.
β
β
David T.W. McCord
β
I always worried someone would notice me, and then when no one did, I felt lonely.
β
β
Curtis Sittenfeld (Prep)
β
What's up?" I asked.
You tell me," he said. "You were the one about ready to start making out with Adrian."
It was an experiment," I said. "It was part of my therapy."
What the hell kind of therapy are you in?
β
β
Richelle Mead (Shadow Kiss (Vampire Academy, #3))
β
Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.
β
β
Leonardo da Vinci
β
When did we see each other face-to-face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
He pulls back to look down at me and when he sees my tears, he brings his hands up to my cheeks. βIn the future... if by some miracle you ever find yourself in the position to fall in love again... fall in love with me.
β
β
Colleen Hoover (It Ends with Us (It Ends with Us, #1))
β
She believed, of course ... because without something to believe in, life would be intolerable.
β
β
Rosamunde Pilcher (The Shell Seekers)
β
Life is a journey, not a destination.
β
β
Ralph Waldo Emerson
β
If you believe very strongly in something, stand up and fight for it.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
β
β
Henry David Thoreau (Walden)
β
Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can't tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like betrayal
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
When someone won't let you in, eventually you stop knocking.
β
β
Ransom Riggs (Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #1))
β
The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only.
β
β
Victor Hugo (Les MisΓ©rables)
β
Alice: How long is forever?
White Rabbit: Sometimes, just one second.
β
β
Lewis Carroll
β
I'll fight it. I'll fight it for you. Don't you worry about me, Hazel Grace. I'm okay. I'll find a way to hang around and annoy you for a long time.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
why are trying so hard to fit in, when you're born to stand out
β
β
Oliver James
β
We are all alone, born alone, die alone, andβin spite of True Romance magazinesβwe shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonelyβat least, not all the timeβbut essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.
β
β
Hunter S. Thompson (The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967)
β
Come in. And try not to murder any of my guests."
Jace edged into the doorway, sizing up Magnus with his eyes. "Even if one of them spills a drink on my new shoes?"
"Even then.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β
Mad Hatter: βWhy is a raven like a writing-desk?β
βHave you guessed the riddle yet?β the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.
βNo, I give it up,β Alice replied: βWhatβs the answer?β
βI havenβt the slightest idea,β said the Hatter
β
β
Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland)
β
The only person who can pull me down is myself, and I'm not going to let myself pull me down anymore.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
Why it's simply impassible!
Alice: Why, don't you mean impossible?
Door: No, I do mean impassible. (chuckles) Nothing's impossible!
β
β
Lewis Carroll (Aliceβs Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass)
β
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.
β
β
Henry David Thoreau
β
You - you alone will have the stars as no one else has them...In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night...You - only you - will have stars that can laugh.
β
β
Antoine de Saint-ExupΓ©ry (El Principito)
β
We can't be afraid of change. You may feel very secure in the pond that you are in, but if you never venture out of it, you will never know that there is such a thing as an ocean, a sea. Holding onto something that is good for you now, may be the very reason why you don't have something better.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
Weβre as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and weβre not likely to do either.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
β
No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.
β
β
Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)
β
The more you leave out, the more you highlight what you leave in.
β
β
Henry Green
β
It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being.
β
β
John Joseph Powell (The Secret of Staying in Love)
β
Thereβs a crack (or cracks) in everyoneβ¦thatβs how the light of God gets in.
β
β
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
β
I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I took joy in the things that made me happy.
β
β
Neil Gaiman (The Ocean at the End of the Lane)
β
Augustus Waters was a self-aggrandizing bastard. But we forgive him. We forgive him not because he had a heart as figuratively good as his literal one sucked, or because he knew more about how to hold a cigarette than any nonsmoker in history, or because he got eighteen years when he should've gotten more.'
'Seventeen,' Gus corrected.
'I'm assuming you've got some time, you interupting bastard.
'I'm telling you,' Isaac continued, 'Augustus Waters talked so much that he'd interupt you at his own funeral. And he was pretentious: Sweet Jesus Christ, that kid never took a piss without pondering the abundant metaphorical resonances of human waste production. And he was vain: I do not believe I have ever met a more physically attractive person who was more acutely aware of his own physical attractiveness.
'But I will say this: When the scientists of the future show up at my house with robot eyes and they tell me to try them on, I will tell the scientists to screw off, because I do not want to see a world without him.'
I was kind of crying by then.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw Jace shoot her a look of white rage - but when she glanced at him, he looked as he always did: easy, confident, slightly bored.
"In future, Clarissa," he said, "it might be wise to mention that you already have a man in your bed, to avoid such tedious situations."
"You invited him into bed?" Simon demanded, looking shaken.
"Ridiculous, isn't it?" said Jace. "We would never have all fit."
"I didn't invite him into bed," Clary snapped. "We were just kissing."
"Just kissing?" Jace's tone mocked her with its false hurt. "How swiftly you dismiss our love.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β
Look," Luke went on, "In all the years I've known him, there's always been exactly one place Simon wanted to be, and he's always fought like hell to make sure he got there and stayed there."
"Where's that?"
"Wherever you were.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments, #2))
β
At the end of life we will not be judged by how many diplomas we have received, how much money we have made, how many great things we have done.
We will be judged by "I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat, I was naked and you clothed me. I was homeless, and you took me in.
β
β
Mother Teresa
β
It's just that most really good-looking people are stupid, so I exceed expectations.'
'Right, it's primarily his hotness,' I said.
'It can be sort of blinding,' he said.
'It actually did blind our friend Isaac,' I said.
'Terrible tragedy, that. But can I help my own deadly beauty?'
'You cannot.'
'It is my burden, this beautiful face.'
'Not to mention your body.'
'Seriously, don't even get me started on my hot bod. You don't want to see me naked, Dave. Seeing me naked actually took Hazel Grace's breath away,' he said, nodding toward the oxygen tank.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
What else? She is so beautiful. You donβt get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You donβt get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathingβthey are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.
β
β
Stephen Fry (Moab Is My Washpot (Memoir, #1))
β
I cannot go to school today"
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
"I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry.
I'm going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I've counted sixteen chicken pox.
And there's one more - that's seventeen,
And don't you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut, my eyes are blue,
It might be the instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I'm sure that my left leg is broke.
My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button's caving in.
My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained,
My 'pendix pains each time it rains.
My toes are cold, my toes are numb,
I have a sliver in my thumb.
My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There's a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is ...
What? What's that? What's that you say?
You say today is .............. Saturday?
G'bye, I'm going out to play!
β
β
Shel Silverstein
β
From the backstabbing co-worker to the meddling sister-in-law, you are in charge of how you react to the people and events in your life. You can either give negativity power over your life or you can choose happiness instead. Take control and choose to focus on what is important in your life. Those who cannot live fully often become destroyers of life.
β
β
AnaΓ―s Nin
β
Closing your eyes isn't going to change anything. Nothing's going to disappear just because you can't see what's going on. In fact, things will even be worse the next time you open your eyes. That's the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won't make time stand still.
β
β
Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)
β
Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don't blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being "in love", which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.
β
β
Shawn Slovo (Captain Corelli's Mandolin filmscript)
β
Isabelle drifted over, Jace a pace behind her. She was wearing a long black dress with boots and an even longer cutaway coat of soft green velvet, the color of moss. "I can't believe you did it!" she exclaimed. "How did you get Magnus to let Jace leave?"
"Traded him for Alec," Clary said.
Isabelle looked mildly alarmed. "Not permanently?"
"No," said Jace. "Just for a few hours. Unless I don't come back," he added thoughtfully. "In which case, maybe he does get to keep Alec. Think of it as a lease with an option to buy."
Isabelle looked dubious. "Mom and Dad won't be pleased if they find out."
"That you freed a possible criminal by trading away your brother to a warlock who looks like a gay Sonic the Hedgehog and dresses like the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?" Simon inquired. "No, probably not.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments, #2))
β
There was a clatter as the basilisk fangs cascaded out of Hermione's arms. Running at Ron, she flung them around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth. Ron threw away the fangs and broomstick he was holding and responded with such enthusiasm that he lifted Hermione off her feet.
"Is this the moment?" Harry asked weakly, and when nothing happened except that Ron and Hermione gripped each other still more firmly and swayed on the spot, he raised his voice. "OI! There's a war going on here!"
Ron and Hermione broke apart, their arms still around each other.
"I know, mate," said Ron, who looked as though he had recently been hit on the back of the head with a Bludger, "so it's now or never, isn't it?"
"Never mind that, what about the Horcrux?" Harry shouted. "D'you think you could just --- just hold it in, until we've got the diadem?"
"Yeah --- right --- sorry ---" said Ron, and he and Hermione set about gathering up fangs, both pink in the face.
β
β
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
β
This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor...Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Pain is a pesky part of being human, I've learned it feels like a stab wound to the heart, something I wish we could all do without, in our lives here. Pain is a sudden hurt that can't be escaped. But then I have also learned that because of pain, I can feel the beauty, tenderness, and freedom of healing. Pain feels like a fast stab wound to the heart. But then healing feels like the wind against your face when you are spreading your wings and flying through the air! We may not have wings growing out of our backs, but healing is the closest thing that will give us that wind against our faces.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-runβin the long-run, I say!βsuccess will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it
β
β
Viktor E. Frankl (Manβs Search for Meaning)
β
Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.
And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.
And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.
β
β
Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)
β
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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It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
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Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #2))
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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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I run for I don't know how long. Hours, maybe, or days. Alex told me to run. So I run. You have to understand. I am no one special. I am just a single girl. I am five feet two inches tall and I am in-between in every way. But I have a secret. You can build walls all the way to the sky and I will find a way to fly above them. You can try to pin me down with a hundred thousand arms, but I will find a way to resist. And there are many of us out there, more than you think. People who refuse to stop believing. People who refuse to come to earth. People who love in a world without walls, people who love into hate, into refusal, against hope,and without fear. I love you. Remember. They cannot take it.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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Maybe its like you said before, all of us being cracked open. Like each of us starts out as a watertight vessel. And then things happen - these people leave us, or donβt love us, or donβt get us, or we donβt get them, and we lose and fail and hurt one another. And the vessel starts to crack in places. And I mean, yeah once the vessel cracks open, the end becomes inevitable. Once it starts to rain inside the Osprey, it will never be remodeled. But there is all this time between when the cracks start to open up and when we finally fall apart. And its only that time that we see one another, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others through theirs. When did we see each other face to face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade, but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.
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John Green (Paper Towns)
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You never called me back," he said. "I called you so many times and you never called me back."
Magnus looked at Alec as if he'd lost his mind. "Your city is under attack," he said. "The wards have been broken, and the streets are full of demons. And you want to know why I haven't called you?"
Alec set his jaw in a stubborn line. "I want to know why you haven't called me back."
Magnus threw his hands up in the air in a gesture of utter exasperation. Alec noted with interest that when he did it, a few sparks escaped from his fingertips, like fireflies escaping from a jar. "You're an idiot."
"Is that why you haven't called me? Because I'm an idiot?"
"No." Magnus strode toward him. "I didn't call you because I'm tired of you only wanting me around when you need something. I'm tired of watching you be in love with someone else - someone, incidentally, who will never love you back. Not the way I do."
"You love me?"
"You stupid Nephilim," Magnus said patiently. "Why else am I here? Why else would I have spent the past few weeks patching up all your moronic friends every time they got hurt? And getting you out of every ridiculous situation you found yourself in? Not to mention helping you win a battle against Valentine. And all completely free of charge!
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Cassandra Clare (City of Glass (The Mortal Instruments, #3))