Marie Quotes

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

β€œ
Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.
”
”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Frankenstein)
β€œ
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
”
”
Mary Oliver
β€œ
One day you will kiss a man you can't breathe without, and find that breath is of little consequence.
”
”
Karen Marie Moning (Bloodfever (Fever, #2))
β€œ
Each day means a new twenty-four hours. Each day means everything's possible again. You live in the moment, you die in the moment, you take it all one day at a time.
”
”
Marie Lu (Legend (Legend, #1))
β€œ
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.
”
”
Marie Curie
β€œ
Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.
”
”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Frankenstein)
β€œ
I don't want to be married just to be married. I can't think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can't talk to, or worse, someone I can't be silent with.
”
”
Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β€œ
Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.
”
”
Mary Oliver
β€œ
Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.
”
”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Frankenstein)
β€œ
Funny, when you finally faced reality, it was amazing how clearly you could see things.
”
”
Mary Higgins Clark (Loves Music, Loves to Dance)
β€œ
Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
”
”
Mary Oliver
β€œ
You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
”
”
Mary Oliver
β€œ
Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.
”
”
Mary Oliver
β€œ
Every life has death and every light has shadow. Be content to stand in the light and let the shadow fall where it will.
”
”
Mary Stewart (The Hollow Hills (Arthurian Saga, #2))
β€œ
One must live as if it would be forever, and as if one might die each moment. Always both at once.
”
”
Mary Renault (The Persian Boy (Alexander the Great, #2))
β€œ
I love books, by the way, way more than movies. Movies tell you what to think. A good book lets you choose a few thoughts for yourself. Movies show you the pink house. A good book tells you there's a pink house and lets you paint some of the finishing touches, maybe choose the roof style,park your own car out front. My imagination has always topped anything a movie could come up with. Case in point, those darned Harry Potter movies. That was so not what that part-Veela-chick, Fleur Delacour, looked like.
”
”
Karen Marie Moning (Darkfever (Fever, #1))
β€œ
He pulls me around and kisses me. "You're Mac," he says. "And I'm Jericho. And nothing else matters. Never will. You exist in a place that is beyond all rules for me. Do you understand that?" I do. Jericho Barrons just told me he loves me.
”
”
Karen Marie Moning (Shadowfever (Fever, #5))
β€œ
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
”
”
Mary Oliver (New and Selected Poems, Volume One)
β€œ
Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields...Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.
”
”
Mary Oliver
β€œ
It was her religion to make the best of everything.
”
”
Lyndall Gordon (Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft)
β€œ
Even though you may want to move forward in your life, you may have one foot on the brakes. In order to be free, we must learn how to let go. Release the hurt. Release the fear. Refuse to entertain your old pain. The energy it takes to hang onto the past is holding you back from a new life. What is it you would let go of today?
”
”
Mary Manin Morrissey
β€œ
Cakes are healthy too, you just eat a small slice.
”
”
Mary Berry
β€œ
No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
”
”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
β€œ
Basically, I have been compelled by curiosity.
”
”
Mary Leakey
β€œ
I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.
”
”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Frankenstein)
β€œ
Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
”
”
Mary Oliver
β€œ
Nobody looks good in their darkest hours. But it's those hours that make us what we are.
”
”
Karen Marie Moning (Faefever (Fever, #3))
β€œ
The most confused we ever get is when we're trying to convince our heads of something our heart knows is a lie.
”
”
Karen Marie Moning
β€œ
Isn't that what stories do, make real things fake, and fake things real?
”
”
Marie Rutkoski (The Winner's Curse (The Winner's Trilogy, #1))
β€œ
Some people bring out the worst in you, others bring out the best, and then there are those remarkably rare, addictive ones who just bring out the most. Of everything. They make you feel so alive that you'd follow them straight into hell, just to keep getting your fix.
”
”
Karen Marie Moning (Shadowfever (Fever, #5))
β€œ
He is beauty, inside and out. He is the silver lining in a world of darkness. He is my light.
”
”
Marie Lu (Prodigy (Legend, #2))
β€œ
Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I'll try again tomorrow.
”
”
Mary Anne Radmacher
β€œ
Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzledβ€” to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world.
”
”
Mary Oliver
β€œ
Mary wished to say something very sensible, but knew not how.
”
”
Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
β€œ
You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.
”
”
Mary Oliver (Wild Geese)
β€œ
We are not all born at once, but by bits. The body first, and the spirit later... Our mothers are racked with the pains of our physical birth; we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth.
”
”
Mary Hunter Austin
β€œ
My ambition was to live like music.
”
”
Mary Gaitskill
β€œ
To be content with little is difficult; to be content with much, impossible.
”
”
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (Aphorisms (STUDIES IN AUSTRIAN LITERATURE, CULTURE, AND THOUGHT TRANSLATION SERIES))
β€œ
I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.
”
”
Mary Wollstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights of Woman)
β€œ
I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed.
”
”
Mary Oliver
β€œ
When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it is over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
”
”
Mary Oliver
β€œ
When someone is mean to me, I just make them a victim in my next book.
”
”
Mary Higgins Clark
β€œ
Aerodynamically, the bumble bee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumble bee doesn't know it so it goes on flying anyway.
”
”
Mary Kay Ash
β€œ
If you want to rebel, rebel from inside the system.That's much more powerful than rebelling outside the system.
”
”
Marie Lu (Legend (Legend, #1))
β€œ
Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books.
”
”
Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β€œ
You know, sometimes I wonder what things would be like if I just ... met you one day. Like normal people do. If I just walked by you on some street one sunny morning and thought you were cute, stopped, shook your hand, and said, "Hi, I'm Daniel.
”
”
Marie Lu (Prodigy (Legend, #2))
β€œ
V'lane: Are you busy tomorrow MacKayla ? Barrons: She's working on old texts with me. V'lane: Ah. Old texts. A banner day at the bookstore. Barrons: We're translating Kama Sutra...with interactive aids.
”
”
Karen Marie Moning (Shadowfever (Fever, #5))
β€œ
True friends share everything, except the past before they met.
”
”
Mary Renault (Fire from Heaven (Alexander the Great, #1))
β€œ
Then Day reaches out and touches my hand with his. He encloses it in a handshake. And just like that, I am linked with him again, I feel the pulse of our bond and his- tory and love through our hands, like a wave of magic, the return of a long-lost friend. Of something meant to be. The feeling brings tears to my eyes. Perhaps we can take a step forward together. β€œHi,” he says. β€œI’m Daniel.” β€œHi,” I reply. β€œI’m June.
”
”
Marie Lu (Champion (Legend, #3))
β€œ
Sometimes, the sun sets earlier. Days don’t last forever, you know. But I’ll fight as hard as I can. I can promise you that.
”
”
Marie Lu (Champion (Legend, #3))
β€œ
I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.
”
”
Mary Oliver (Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays)
β€œ
It takes three to make love, not two: you, your spouse, and God. Without God people only succeed in bringing out the worst in one another. Lovers who have nothing else to do but love each other soon find there is nothing else. Without a central loyalty life is unfinished.
”
”
Fulton J. Sheen (Seven Words of Jesus and Mary: Lessons from Cana and Calvary)
β€œ
What a joke! Poor little rich girl's fallen in love with the Republic's most famous criminal.
”
”
Marie Lu (Legend (Legend, #1))
β€œ
Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.
”
”
Marie Curie
β€œ
Be true to yourself. But that's something everyone says and no one means. No one wants you to be yourself. They want you to be the version of yourself that they like.
”
”
Marie Lu (The Young Elites (The Young Elites, #1))
β€œ
I’ve been searching a long time for something I think I lost. I felt like I found something when I saw you back there.
”
”
Marie Lu (Champion (Legend, #3))
β€œ
There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand.
”
”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Frankenstein)
β€œ
Forever and ever, kid, until you're sick and tired of seeing me.
”
”
Marie Lu (Legend (Legend, #1))
β€œ
I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are.
”
”
Philip Pullman (The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, #3))
β€œ
That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you to another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive - all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.
”
”
Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β€œ
The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.
”
”
Mary Oliver
β€œ
If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!
”
”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Frankenstein)
β€œ
The beginning is always today.
”
”
Mary Wollstonecraft
β€œ
Let me die the moment my love dies. Let me not outlive my own capacity to love. Let me die still loving, and so, never die.
”
”
Mary Zimmerman (Metamorphoses)
β€œ
Words can be twisted into any shape. Promises can be made to lull the heart and seduce the soul. In the final analysis, words mean nothing. They are labels we give things in an effort to wrap our puny little brains around their underlying natures, when ninety-nine percent of the time the totality of the reality is an entirely different beast. The wisest man is the silent one. Examine his actions. Judge him by them.
”
”
Karen Marie Moning
β€œ
No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.
”
”
Mary Wortley Montagu
β€œ
It hurts every day, the absence of someone who was once there.
”
”
Marie Lu (Champion (Legend, #3))
β€œ
My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.
”
”
Mary Wollstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights of Woman)
β€œ
I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.
”
”
Mary Oliver (New and Selected Poems, Vol. 2)
β€œ
You're brilliant,"he says."But you're a fool to stay with someone like me." I close my eyes at the touch of his hand."Then we are both fools.
”
”
Marie Lu (Legend (Legend, #1))
β€œ
You're leaving me, Rainbow Girl.
”
”
Karen Marie Moning (Dreamfever (Fever, #4))
β€œ
One day you do meet a man who kisses you and you can’t breathe around it and you realize you don’t need air. Oxygen is trivial. Desire makes life happen. Makes it matter. Makes everything worth it. Desire is life. Hunger to see the next sunrise or sunset. To touch the one you love. To try again.
”
”
Karen Marie Moning (Shadowfever (Fever, #5))
β€œ
Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.
”
”
Marie Curie
β€œ
Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.
”
”
Mary Oliver (Evidence: Poems)
β€œ
The Uses Of Sorrow (In my sleep I dreamed this poem) Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.
”
”
Mary Oliver (Thirst)
β€œ
I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.
”
”
Mary Anne Radmacher
β€œ
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
”
”
Mary Oliver
β€œ
Dying is overrated. Human sentimentality has twisted it into the ultimate act of love. Biggest load of bullshit in the world. Dying for someone isn't the hard thing. The man that dies escapes. Plain and simple. Game over. End of pain...Try living for someone. Through it all-good, bad, thick, thin, joy, suffering. That's the hard thing.
”
”
Karen Marie Moning (Shadowfever (Fever, #5))
β€œ
Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers. How delightful if that were true.
”
”
Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β€œ
The memory fades, and I’m left hanging on to the ghosts of his words.
”
”
Marie Lu (Legend (Legend, #1))
β€œ
I love books, by the way, way more than movies. Movies tell you what to think. A good book lets you choose a few thoughts for yourself.
”
”
Karen Marie Moning (Darkfever (Fever, #1))
β€œ
I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel...
”
”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Frankenstein)
β€œ
You can have the other words-chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it.
”
”
Mary Oliver
β€œ
When everyone else is losing their heads, it is important to keep yours.
”
”
Marie Antoinette
β€œ
Its our actions that define us. What we choose. What we resist. What we're willing to die for.
”
”
Karen Marie Moning
β€œ
Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97: Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now. Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine. Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.
”
”
Mary Schmich
β€œ
Love is illogical, love had consequences--I did this to myself, and I should be able to take it.
”
”
Marie Lu (Prodigy (Legend, #2))
β€œ
Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
”
”
Rainer Maria Rilke
β€œ
To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.
”
”
Mary Oliver
β€œ
Men are more interesting in books than they are in real life.
”
”
Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β€œ
You drive me insane June. You're the scariest, most clever, bravest person I know, and sometimes I can't catch my breath because I'm trying so hard to keep up. There will never be another like you. You realize that, don't you? Billions of people will come and go in this world, but there will never be another like you.
”
”
Marie Lu (Champion (Legend, #3))
β€œ
Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight afforded by these wonderful regions, seems still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth. Such a man has a double existence: he may suffer misery, and be overwhelmed by disappointments; yet, when he has retired into himself, he will be like a celestial spirit that has a halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ventures.
”
”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Frankenstein)
β€œ
The moment I laid eyes on you, I knew you were trouble." "Ditto." "I wanted to drag you between the shelves, fuck you senseless, and send you home." "If you'd done that, I never would have left." "You're still here anyway." "You don't have to sound so sour about it." "You're upsetting my entire existence." "Fine, I'll leave." "Try and I'll chain you up.
”
”
Karen Marie Moning (Shadowfever (Fever, #5))
β€œ
The Journey One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice -- though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. "Mend my life!" each voice cried. But you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do -- determined to save the only life you could save.
”
”
Mary Oliver
β€œ
How I go to the wood Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable. I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours. Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing. If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much.
”
”
Mary Oliver (Swan: Poems and Prose Poems)
β€œ
I don't know if anyone's ever told you this", he begins. He doesn't blush, and his eyes don't dart away. Instead I find myself staring into a pair of oceans - one perfect, the other blemished by that tiny ripple. "You're very attractive." I've been complimented on my appearance before. But never in his tone of voice. Of all the things he's said, I don't know why this catches me off guard. But it startles me so much that without thinking I blurt out, "I could say the same about you." I pause. "In case you didn't know." A slow grin spreads across his face. "Oh, trust me. I know.
”
”
Marie Lu (Legend (Legend, #1))
β€œ
I can feel his presence here in every stone he has touched, every person he has lifted up, every street and alley and city that he has changed in the few years of his life, because he is the Republic, he is our light, and I love you, I love you, until the day we meet again I will hold you in my heart and protect you there, grieving what we never had, cherishing what we did. I wish you were here. I love you, always.
”
”
Marie Lu (Champion (Legend, #3))
β€œ
No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Here’s a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages 1) Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didn’t stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. 2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5. 3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on β€œBright Eyes.” 4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank. 5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13. 6) Nadia ComΔƒneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14. 7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15. 8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil. 9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19. 10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961. 11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936. 12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 23 13) Issac Newton wrote PhilosophiΓ¦ Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 24 14) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record 15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity 16) Lance E. Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France 17) Michelangelo created two of the greatest sculptures β€œDavid” and β€œPieta” by age 28 18) Alexander the Great, by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world 19) J.K. Rowling was 30 years old when she finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter 20) Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean 21) Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind 22) Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest 23) Martin Luther King Jr. was 34 when he wrote the speech β€œI Have a Dream." 24) Marie Curie was 35 years old when she got nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics 25) The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36) invented and built the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight 26) Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died virtually unknown, yet his paintings today are worth millions. 27) Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon. 28) Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and 49 years old when he wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 29) Christopher Columbus was 41 when he discovered the Americas 30) Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to obey the bus driver’s order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger 31) John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he became President of the United States 32) Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T came out. 33) Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote "The Hunger Games" 34) Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species came out. 35) Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa. 36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became president. 37) Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds Franchise and took it to unprecedented levels. 38) Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote "The Cat in the Hat". 40) Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived 41) Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise 42) J.R.R Tolkien was 62 when the Lord of the Ring books came out 43) Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the US 44) Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats 45) Nelson Mandela was 76 when he became President
”
”
Pablo
β€œ
Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97: Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now. Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine. Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday. Do one thing everyday that scares you. Sing. Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours. Floss. Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself. Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how. Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements. Stretch. Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't. Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone. Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's. Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own. Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room. Read the directions, even if you don't follow them. Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly. Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future. Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young. Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel. Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders. Respect your elders. Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out. Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85. Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth. But trust me on the sunscreen.
”
”
Mary Schmich (Wear Sunscreen: A Primer for Real Life)
β€œ
I want you to tell me about every person you’ve ever been in love with. Tell me why you loved them, then tell me why they loved you. Tell me about a day in your life you didn’t think you’d live through. Tell me what the word home means to you and tell me in a way that I’ll know your mother’s name just by the way you describe your bedroom when you were eight. See, I want to know the first time you felt the weight of hate, and if that day still trembles beneath your bones. Do you prefer to play in puddles of rain or bounce in the bellies of snow? And if you were to build a snowman, would you rip two branches from a tree to build your snowman arms or would leave your snowman armless for the sake of being harmless to the tree? And if you would, would you notice how that tree weeps for you because your snowman has no arms to hug you every time you kiss him on the cheek? Do you kiss your friends on the cheek? Do you sleep beside them when they’re sad even if it makes your lover mad? Do you think that anger is a sincere emotion or just the timid motion of a fragile heart trying to beat away its pain? See, I wanna know what you think of your first name, and if you often lie awake at night and imagine your mother’s joy when she spoke it for the very first time. I want you to tell me all the ways you’ve been unkind. Tell me all the ways you’ve been cruel. Tell me, knowing I often picture Gandhi at ten years old beating up little boys at school. If you were walking by a chemical plant where smokestacks were filling the sky with dark black clouds would you holler β€œPoison! Poison! Poison!” really loud or would you whisper β€œThat cloud looks like a fish, and that cloud looks like a fairy!” Do you believe that Mary was really a virgin? Do you believe that Moses really parted the sea? And if you don’t believe in miracles, tell me β€” how would you explain the miracle of my life to me? See, I wanna know if you believe in any god or if you believe in many gods or better yet what gods believe in you. And for all the times that you’ve knelt before the temple of yourself, have the prayers you asked come true? And if they didn’t, did you feel denied? And if you felt denied, denied by who? I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirror on a day you’re feeling good. I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirror on a day you’re feeling bad. I wanna know the first person who taught you your beauty could ever be reflected on a lousy piece of glass. If you ever reach enlightenment will you remember how to laugh? Have you ever been a song? Would you think less of me if I told you I’ve lived my entire life a little off-key? And I’m not nearly as smart as my poetry I just plagiarize the thoughts of the people around me who have learned the wisdom of silence. Do you believe that concrete perpetuates violence? And if you do β€” I want you to tell me of a meadow where my skateboard will soar. See, I wanna know more than what you do for a living. I wanna know how much of your life you spend just giving, and if you love yourself enough to also receive sometimes. I wanna know if you bleed sometimes from other people’s wounds, and if you dream sometimes that this life is just a balloon β€” that if you wanted to, you could pop, but you never would β€˜cause you’d never want it to stop. If a tree fell in the forest and you were the only one there to hear β€” if its fall to the ground didn’t make a sound, would you panic in fear that you didn’t exist, or would you bask in the bliss of your nothingness? And lastly, let me ask you this: If you and I went for a walk and the entire walk, we didn’t talk β€” do you think eventually, we’d… kiss? No, wait. That’s asking too much β€” after all, this is only our first date.
”
”
Andrea Gibson