Smith Quotes

The world was hers for the reading.

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

There is only one page left to write on. I will fill it with words of only one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love.

The past is always tense, the future perfect.

Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.

You don't love a girl because of beauty. You love her because she sings a song only you can understand.

Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.

I told you. You don't love someone because of their looks or their clothes or their car. You love them because they sing a song only your heart can understand.

You are never stronger...than when you land on the other side of despair.

Each person has a literature inside them.

Katherine," he said. He was still smiling. "Yes." She leaned closer. "Katherine..." "Yes, Damon?" "Go to hell.

People die . . . so love them every day. Beauty fades . . . so look before it's gone. Love changes . . . but not the love you give. And if you love, you'll never be alone.

No one expected me. Everything awaited me.

Where does it all lead? What will become of us? These were our young questions, and young answers were revealed. It leads to each other. We become ourselves.

I know that's what people say-- you'll get over it. I'd say it, too. But I know it's not true. Oh, youll be happy again, never fear. But you won't forget. Every time you fall in love it will be because something in the man reminds you of him.

You can go through life and make new friends every year - every month practically - but there was never any substitute for those friendships of childhood that survive into adult years. Those are the ones in which we are bound to one another with hoops of steel.

The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.

How I wish I lived in a Jane Austen novel!

Throughout life people will make you mad, disrespect you and treat you bad. Let God deal with the things they do, cause hate in your heart will consume you too.

I shouldn't think even millionaires could eat anything nicer than new bread and real butter and honey for tea.

Come on, Rory! It isn't rocket science, it's just quantum physics! -The Doctor (Matt Smith)

It's not the changes that will break your heart; it's that tug of familiarity.

Asleep by the Smiths Vapour Trail by Ride Scarborough Fair by Simon & Garfunkel A Whiter Shade of Pale by Procol Harum Dear Prudence by the Beatles Gypsy by Suzanne Vega Nights in White Satin by the Moody Blues Daydream by Smashing Pumpkins Dusk by Genesis (before Phil Collins was even in the band!) MLK by U2 Blackbird by the Beatles Landslide by Fleetwood Mac Asleep by the Smiths (again!) -Charlie's mixtape

Even when we're apart, we'll be looking at the same sky!

Love is the strangest, most illogical thing in the world.

Winston Smith: Does Big Brother exist? O'Brien: Of course he exists. Winston Smith: Does he exist like you or me? O'Brien: You do not exist.

She wore her sexuality with an older woman's ease, and not like an awkward purse, never knowing how to hold it, where to hang it, or when to just put it down.

Is it better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never to have had it?

Why do people always assume that volume will succeed when logic won’t? - Damon

Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere - be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.

Everything distracted me, but most of all myself.

The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.

He looks at her and smiles. "You're sort of dangerous, you know?" She stares at him. "Me?" "Yeah," he says sitting back. "I'm way too honest with you.

From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived.

The price of a memory, is the memory of the sorrow it brings.

It is sometimes easier to be happy if you don't know everything.

Oh please," said Zacharias Smith, rolling his eyes and folding his arms. "I don't think Expelliarmus is exactly going to help us against You-Know-Who, do you?" "I've used it against him," Harry said quietly. "It saved my life last June.

Evil will never find peace. It may triumph, but it will never find peace.

Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don't abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book." (Acceptance speech, National Book Award 2010 (Nonfiction), November 17, 2010)

She had become accustomed to being lonely. She was used to walking alone and to being considered 'different.' She did not suffer too much.

You know, you've never really cared about anyone," he said. "But someday you will, and it's going to hurt. It's going to hurt a lot.

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.

I wish I wrote the way I thought Obsessively Incessantly With maddening hunger I’d write to the point of suffocation I’d write myself into nervous breakdowns Manuscripts spiralling out like tentacles into abysmal nothing And I’d write about you a lot more than I should

The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.

I fell in love with you. I didn't do it on purpose

Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words.

You're talking!" "I know I am." "And making sense!" "Thank you kindly." "And in sentences!" "I've noticed." - Stefan and Elena

People always think that happiness is a faraway thing," thought Francie, "something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains - a cup of strong hot coffee when you're blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book to read when you're alone - just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness.

Where are you originally from?” “The planet Lorien, three hundred million miles away.” “Must have been a long trip, John Smith.” “Took almost a year. Next time I’m bringing a book.

The name is Salvatore. As in savior.

Dear Diary, Oh, it's all too much to explain and you wouldn't believe it anyway. I'm going to bed. Bonnie

I asked her if she believed in love, and she smiled and said it was her most elaborate method of self-harm.

No furniture is so charming as books.

Controversial' as we all know, is often a euphemism for 'interesting and intelligent.

I am and always will be the optimist, the hoper of far-flung hopes and the dreamer of improblable dreams.

Fear is not real. It is a product of thoughts you create. Do not misunderstand me. Danger is very real. But fear is a choice.

Did you know that people who meet at least three different times within twenty-four hour period are ninety-eight percent more likely to meet again?

Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.

Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams.

Well I haven't fucked much with the past, But I've fucked plenty with the future. - Babelogue

Being soaked alone is cold. Being soaked with your best friend is an adventure.

I only want to write. And there's no college for that except life.

So my last image was as the first. A sleeping youth cloaked in light, who opened his eyes with a smile of recognition for someone who had never been a stranger.

It means that there's only one love for everyone who exists. And when you meet that love, you know them. You know you were meant to be together, and nothing can keep you apart.

He’s like a song she can’t get out of her head. Hard as she tries, the melody of their meeting runs through her mind on an endless loop, each time as surprisingly sweet as the last, like a lullaby, like a hymn, and she doesn’t think she could ever get tired of hearing it.

It's one thing to run away when someone's chasing you. It's entirely another to be running all alone.

Big flashy things have my name written all over them. Well... not yet, give me time and a crayon.

The great thing about being a writer is that you are always re-creating yourself.

Ghouls weren't smart, but like the Energizer Bunny they kept going and going.

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn about anyone else

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.

I used my brains to outsmart teachers—and that wasn't very smart at all.

He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.

And if he left me of his own free will, then he should get ready for the bitch-slapping of his life.

Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even more than suffering yourself can.

Forgiveness is a gift of high value. Yet its cost is nothing.

Why is summer mist romantic and autumn mist just sad?

Sometimes I think it's better to suffer bitter unhappiness and to fight and to scream out, and even to suffer that terrible pain, than to just be... safe. At least she knows she's living.

It's so easy to laugh It's so easy to hate It takes guts to be gentle and kind

Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.

Ash? Get bent and die.

I like how you're neither here nor there. And how there's nowhere else you're meant to be while waiting. You're just sort of suspended.

Who would have guessed that four minutes could change everything?

You know what they say," Dad said. "If you love something set it free." "What if he doesn't come back?" "Something do, somethings don't," he said, reaching to tweak her nose. "I'll always come back to you anyway." "You don't light up," Hadley said, but Dad only smiled. "I do when I'm with you.

When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it - or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don't suppose many people try to do it.

I learned from him that often contradiction is the clearest way to truth

Get away from my brother." - Damon

Each night I lie and dream about the one Who kissed me and awakened my desire I spent a single hour with him alone And since that hour, my days are layed with fire.

Nothing really dies as long as it's not forgotten

If there was only one tree like that in the world, you would think it was beautiful. But because there are so many, you just can't see how beautiful it really is.

I hate all those flirty-birty games that women make up. Life's too short. If you ever find a man you love, don't waste time hanging your head and simpering. Go right up to him and say, 'I love you. How about getting married?

It doesn't matter if you can't say it right now. I'll say it for both of us. And someday you'll learn.

When you're soulmates, it hits you like lightning, and you know that's the one person in the world you were meant to be with. You don't think you're soulmates; you just know it's your destiny whether you like it or not.

I don't need to kill goats to say things. I CAN talk.

Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing.

The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life.

DON'T YOU DARE DIE ON ME, JEZEBEL! DON'T YOU DARE! Or I'll follow you to the next world and KILL you.

Never lie, steal, cheat, or drink. But if you must lie, lie in the arms of the one you love. If you must steal, steal away from bad company. If you must cheat, cheat death. And if you must drink, drink in the moments that take your breath away

What will happen to us?" I asked. "There will always be us," he answered.

Jeremy: "Who did it? Wait-you think I did. Don't you?" Ash: "It did cross our minds at one point. Actually, it seemed to keep crossing them. Back and forth. Maybe we should put in a crosswalk.

I need someone. I need to hold somebody close. And I need more than this holding. I need someone to understand how I feel at a time like now. And the understanding must be part of the holding.

It's come at last", she thought, "the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache.

Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life...And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.

I like seeing people when they can't see me.

Fear is not real. The only place that fear can exist is in our thoughts of the future. It is a product of our imagination, causing us to fear things that do not at present and may not ever exist. That is near insanity. Do not misunderstand me danger is very real but fear is a choice.

What are you really studying?" He leans back to look at her. "The statistical probability of love at first sight." "Very funny," she says. "What is it really?" "I'm serious." "I don't believe you." He laughs, then lowers his mouth so that it's close to her ear. "People who meet in airports are seventy-two percent more likely too fall for each other than people who meet anywhere else.

Who wants to die? Everything struggles to live. Look at that tree growing up there out of that grating. It gets no sun, and water only when it rains. It's growing out of sour earth. And it's strong because its hard struggle to live is making it strong. My children will be strong that way.

Sissy Mae Smith...stumbled into the room loaded down with even more bags. "You pack like a woman," she snarled when she finally dropped the luggage to the floor. "How can one man have so much conditioner?" His mouth filled with French toast, Mitch pointed at his hair and snarled, "Tawny mane! Do you think this shit stays this beautiful on its own? It needs care and love! Which is more than I'm getting from you!

Yeah, tell me I’m a bottle of single malt scotch, she thought. That’s the way to my heart.

And always, there was the magic of learning things.

I have never been in love before," Julian said. "You're my first-and you'll be my only.

I imagined myself as Frida to Diego, both muse and maker. I dreamed of meeting an artist to love and support and work with side by side.

Because I was with you," he tells her. "I feel better when I'm with you.

The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.

Exactly. How can you know it makes you happy if you’ve never experienced it?” “There are different kinds of happy,” she said. “Some kinds don’t need any proof.

There's a formula for how long it takes to get over someone, that it's half as long as the time you've been together.

I need you like - like light. You're light, all right - like a flame to a moth. I told you once that you shouldn't mess with forbidden things - I should have taken my own advice.

Mary-Lynnette: "You have not read 'Pride and Prejudice'." Ash: "Why not?" Mary-Lynnette: "Because Jane Austen was a human." Ash: "How do you know?" Mary-Lynnette: "Well Jane Austen was a woman, and you're a chauvinist pig." Ash: "Yes, well, that I can't argue.

When in doubt, be ridiculous.

I love you," she said. "You made me fall in love with you. I don't care how tall you are or what color your hair is-I care about you. You make me laugh. You're smart. You're gentle. And you're real, you're a real person, not some jock with a facade that's going to fall apart when I get to know him. I know you already, and I love you, you idiot. I don't care what you do with toilet paper.

Damon’s voice was no louder than before. “Get away from my brother.” Bonnie could feel it inside him, a swell of Power like a tsunami. He continued, “Before I tear your heart out.

I think, that if the world were a bit more like ComicCon, it would be a better place.

River Song: Right then. I have questions, but number one is this - what in the name of sanity have you got on your head? The Doctor: It's a fez. I wear a fez now. Fezzes are cool.

I am a restlessness inside a stillness inside a restlessness.

Is it possible not to ever know your type-not to even know you have a type-until quite suddenly you do?

Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea! How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.

Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an angel!

Judge us not equally, Abraham. We may all deserve hell, but some of us deserve it sooner than others

If it’s time to go, remember what you’re leaving. Remember the best.

Time is how you spend your love.

Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it; and this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God.

Don't chase people. Be yourself, do your own thing and work hard. The right people - the ones who really belong in your life - will come to your. And stay.

The thing is- and I know this is going to sound strange-that I seem to love you sort of desperately

Elizabeth: "Your balls, Mr. Darcy?" Darcy: "They belong to you, Miss Bennett.

Joey told me nothing ever goes back exactly the way it was, that things expand and contract- like breathing, but you could never fill your lungs up with the same air twice.

She was made for untidy rooms and rumpled beds.

Freedom is...the right to write the wrong words.

Come on, it’s an American tradition. Apple soup? Mom’s homemade chicken pie?' She chuckled in spite of herself, then winced. 'It’s apple pie and Mom’s homemade chicken soup. But you didn’t do badly, for a start.

People who meet in airports are seventy-two percent more likely to fall for each other than people who meet anywhere else.

Feeling better?” he asked. “As warm as chicken-apple soup.” “I’m never going to hear the end of that, am I?

Even if you kill her, she'll still be alive-here." He tapped his chest. "In me. I keep her here. She's part of me. So until you kill me, you can't really kill her. And you can't win. It's that simple.

And in August it will be fifty-two years together.” “Wow,” Oliver says. “That’s amazing.” “I wouldn’t call it amazing,” the woman says, blinking. “It’s easy when you find the right person.

I don't think," he insisted. "I feel.

We spend money that we do not have, on things we do not need, to impress people who do not care.

The only noise now was the rain, pattering softly with the magnificent indifference of nature for the tangled passions of humans.

Who can know the heart of youth but youth itself?

I want him to love me as much as I love him.

Books mean all possibilities. They mean moving out of yourself, losing yourself, dying of thirst and living to your full. They mean everything.

You don't have favourites among your children, but you do have allies.

That’s the way these things work, kiddo,” he says. “Love isn't supposed to make sense. It's completely illogical.

She likes to read, she reads all the time, and she prefers to be reading several things at once, she says it gives endless perspective and dimension.

Elena startled both of them by flying up so quickly that Stefan had to grab her by the waist to keep her from shooting toward the ceiling. I thought you had gravity!” So did I! What do I do?” Think heavy thoughts!” What if it doesn’t work?” We’ll buy you an anchor!

You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain. We are creatures of consequence.

I can't believe you're here," she says, her voice soft. "I can't believe you found me." "You found me first," he says, and when he leans to kiss her, it's slow and sweet and she knows that this will be the one she always remembers. Because while the other two kisses felt like endings, this one is unquestionably a beginning.

I'm going to kiss you... until you faint

Hadley didn't know it was possible to miss someone who's only a few feet away, but there it is.

We went our separate ways, but within walking distance of one another.

Any woman who counts on her face is a fool.

It was like a song, one of those sweet, wrenching songs that makes the hair on your arms stand up. That makes you want to throw yourself on the floor and just bawl. Or fall backward and surrender to the music utterly.

That's the thing about flying: You could talk to someone for hours and never even know his name, share your deepest secrets and then never see them again.

But there's no such thing as a completely fresh start. Everything new arrives on the heels of something old, and every beginning comes at the cost of an ending.

There’s always a gap between the burn and the sting of it, the pain and the realization.

Whatever God requires is right, no matter what it is, although we may not see the reason there of until all of the events transpire.

For a moment, as Damon glanced toward Elena, their gazes met and something electric passed between them. It made Elena tingle all over, that look did.

I refuse to believe that Hendrix had the last possessed hand, that Joplin had the last drunken throat, that Morrison had the last enlightened mind.

More people would learn from their mistakes if they weren't so busy denying them

Perhaps if I make myself write I shall find out what is wrong with me.

Sometimes you get a flash of what you look like to other people.

In teaching your child, do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character.

I have loved books all my life. There is nothing more beautiful in our material world than the book.

Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper.

She was made up of more, too. She was the books she read in the library. She was the flower in the brown bowl. Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard. She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly. She was Katie's secret, despairing weeping. She was the shame of her father stumbling home drunk. She was all of these things and of something more...It was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is given life - the one different thing such as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike.

As she read, at peace with the world and happy as only a little girl could be with a fine book and a little bowl of candy, and all alone in the house, the leaf shadows shifted and the afternoon passed.

Rose: My mum's here. The Doctor: Oh, that's just what I need! Don't you dare make this place domestic! Mickey Smith: You ruined my life, Doctor. [the Doctor turns and looks at him, irritated] They thought she was dead, I was a murder suspect because of you! The Doctor: [looks at Rose] See what I mean? Domestic! Mickey: I bet you don't even remember my name! The Doctor: Ricky. Mickey: It's Mickey! The Doctor: No, it's Ricky. Mickey: I think I know my own name! The Doctor: You think you know your own name? How stupid are you?

A lie was something you told because you were mean or a coward. A story was something you made up out of something that might have happened. Only you didn't tell it like it was, you told it like you thought it should have been.

Winter is coming, Elena," he said, and his voice was clear and chilling even over the howling of the wind, "An unforgiving season. Before it comes, you'll have learned what I can and can't do. Before winter is here, you'll have joined me. You'll be mine.

You always were selfish. Your one fault. Not willing to share anything, are you?" Suddenly, Damon's lips curved up in a singularly beautiful smile. But fortunately the lovely Elena is more generous. Didn't she tell you about our little liaisons? Why? The first time we met she almost gave herself to me on the spot." "That's a lie!" "Oh, no, dear brother, I never lie about anything important. Or do I mean unimportant? Anyway, your beauteous damsel nearly swooned into my arms. I think she likes men in black." As Stefan stared at him, trying to control his breathing, Damon added, almost gently, "You're wrong about her, you know, You think she's sweet and docile like Katherine. She isn't. She's not your type at all, my saintly brother. She has a spirit and a fire in her that you wouldn't know what to do with." "And you would, I suppose." Damon uncrossed his arms and slowly smiled again. "Oh, yes.

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages

You want a love that consumes you. You want passion and adventure, and even a little danger... I want you to get everything you're looking for. But for right now, I want you to forget that this happened. Can't have people knowing I'm in town yet. Goodnight, Elena.

Stop worrying about your identity and concern yourself with the people you care about, ideas that matter to you, beliefs you can stand by, tickets you can run on. Intelligent humans make those choices with their brain and hearts and they make them alone. The world does not deliver meaning to you. You have to make it meaningful...and decide what you want and need and must do. It’s a tough, unimaginably lonely and complicated way to be in the world. But that’s the deal: you have to live; you can’t live by slogans, dead ideas, clichés, or national flags. Finding an identity is easy. It’s the easy way out.

The artist seeks contact with his intuitive sense of the gods, but in order to create his work, he cannot stay in this seductive and incorporeal realm. He must return to the material world in order to do his work. It's the artist's responsibility to balance mystical communication and the labor of creation.

And see those clouds?' 'Hard to miss' 'Those are cumulus clouds. Did you know that?' 'I'm sure I should.' They're the best ones.' 'How come?' Because they look the way clouds are supposed to look, the way you draw them when you're a kid. Which is nice, you know? ...

You love her, don't you?' [Rob] said to Gabriel. Gabriel finall seemed able to break their locked stare. He looked away, at the carpet. His face was bleak. Yes' he said More than anything,' Rob persisted. 'You'd crawl on your belly over broken glass for her. Easy.' Yes, damn you,' Gabriel said. 'Happy now?

If religion is the opiate of the people, tradition is an even more sinister analgesic, simply because it rarely appears sinister. If religion is a tight band, a throbbing vein, and a needle, tradition is a far homelier concoction: poppy seeds ground into tea; a sweet cocoa drink laced with cocaine; the kind of thing your grandmother might have made.

Because," explained Mary Rommely simply, "the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe. She must start out by believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination. I, myself, even in this day and at my age, have great need of recalling the miraculous lives of the Saints and the great miracles that have come to pass on earth. Only by having these things in my mind can I live beyond what I have to live for.

It's a funny thing about the modern world. You hear girls in the toilets of clubs saying, "Yeah, he fucked off and left me. He didn't love me. He just couldn't deal with love. He was too fucked up to know how to love me." Now, how did that happen? What was it about this unlovable century that convinced us we were, despite everything, eminently lovable as a people, as a species? What made us think that anyone who fails to love us is damaged, lacking, malfunctioning in some way? And particularly if they replace us with a god, or a weeping madonna, or the face of Christ in a ciabatta roll---then we call them crazy. Deluded. Regressive. We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship. Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.

How many times have you tried to talk to someone about something that matters to you, tried to get them to see it the way you do? And how many of those times have ended with you feeling bitter, resenting them for making you feel like your pain doesn't have any substance after all? Like when you've split up with someone, and you try to communicate the way you feel, because you need to say the words, need to feel that somebody understands just how pissed off and frightened you feel. The problem is, they never do. "Plenty more fish in the sea," they'll say, or "You're better off without them," or "Do you want some of these potato chips?" They never really understand, because they haven't been there, every day, every hour. They don't know the way things have been, the way that it's made you, the way it has structured your world. They'll never realise that someone who makes you feel bad may be the person you need most in the world. They don't understand the history, the background, don't know the pillars of memory that hold you up. Ultimately, they don't know you well enough, and they never can. Everyone's alone in their world, because everybody's life is different. You can send people letters, and show them photos, but they can never come to visit where you live. Unless you love them. And then they can burn it down.

The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is I'm not afraid to die on a treadmill. I will not be out-worked, period. You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, you might be sexier than me, you might be all of those things you got it on me in nine categories. But if we get on the treadmill together, there's two things: You're getting off first, or I'm going to die. It's really that simple, right? You're not going to out-work me. It's such a simple, basic concept. The guy who is willing to hustle the most is going to be the guy that just gets that loose ball. The majority of people who aren't getting the places they want or aren't achieving the things that they want in this business is strictly based on hustle. It's strictly based on being out-worked; it's strictly based on missing crucial opportunities. I say all the time if you stay ready, you ain't gotta get ready.

The keys to life are running and reading. When you're running, there's a little person that talks to you and says, "Oh I'm tired. My lung's about to pop. I'm so hurt. There's no way I can possibly continue." You want to quit. If you learn how to defeat that person when you're running. You will how to not quit when things get hard in your life. For reading: there have been gazillions of people that have lived before all of us. There's no new problem you could have--with your parents, with school, with a bully. There's no new problem that someone hasn't already had and written about it in a book.

The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs... In fact, the Athanasian paradox that one is three, and three but one, is so incomprehensible to the human mind, that no candid man can say he has any idea of it, and how can he believe what presents no idea? He who thinks he does, only deceives himself. He proves, also, that man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without a rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck. [Letter to James Smith discussing Jefferson's hate of the doctrine of the Christian trinity, December 8 1822]

The Standard of Truth has been erected; no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done.

Right. I look fine. Except I don't,' said Zora, tugging sadly at her man's nightshirt. This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldn't be able to protect them from self-disgust. To that end she had tried banning television in the early years, and never had a lipstick or a woman's magazine crossed the threshold of the Belsey home to Kiki's knowledge, but these and other precautionary measures had made no difference. It was in the air, or so it seemed to Kiki, this hatred of women and their bodies-- it seeped in with every draught in the house; people brought it home on their shoes, they breathed it in off their newspapers. There was no way to control it.

I believe that we, that this planet, hasn't seen its Golden Age. Everybody says its finished ... art's finished, rock and roll is dead, God is dead. Fuck that! This is my chance in the world. I didn't live back there in Mesopotamia, I wasn't there in the Garden of Eden, I wasn't there with Emperor Han, I'm right here right now and I want now to be the Golden Age ...if only each generation would realise that the time for greatness is right now when they're alive ... the time to flower is now.

The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. The slightest observation, however, might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented. Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice.

It's come at last," she thought, "the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache. When there wasn't enough food in the house you pretended that you weren't hungry so they could have more. In the cold of a winter's night you got up and put your blanket on their bed so they wouldn't be cold. You'd kill anyone who tried to harm them - I tried my best to kill that man in the hallway. Then one sunny day, they walk out in all innocence and they walk right into the grief that you'd give your life to spare them from.

But the problem with readers, the idea we're given of reading is that the model of a reader is the person watching a film, or watching television. So the greatest principle is, "I should sit here and I should be entertained." And the more classical model, which has been completely taken away, is the idea of a reader as an amateur musician. An amateur musician who sits at the piano, has a piece of music, which is the work, made by somebody they don't know, who they probably couldn't comprehend entirely, and they have to use their skills to play this piece of music. The greater the skill, the greater the gift that you give the artist and that the artist gives you. That's the incredibly unfashionable idea of reading. And yet when you practice reading, and you work at a text, it can only give you what you put into it. It's an old moral, but it's completely true.

Damon: I wanted to apologize. Elena: Good. Damon: Let me finish. I said I wanted to. And then I realized, I’m not sorry. Elena: You would rather die than be human, and you expect me to be okay with that? Damon: I didn’t say you were supposed to be okay with it, I just said I’m not sorry. But you know what I really am? Selfish, because I make bad choices that hurt you. Yes, I would rather have died than be human. I’d rather die right now than spend a handful of years with you, only to lose you when I’m too old and sick and miserable and you’re still you. I’d rather die right now than spend my last final years remembering how good I had it and how happy I was, because that’s who I am, Elena, and I’m not gonna change. And there’s no apology in the world that encompasses all the reasons that I’m wrong for you. Elena: Fine, then I’m not sorry either. I’m not sorry that I met you. I’m not sorry that knowing you has made me question everything, that in death you’re the one that made me feel most alive. You’ve been a terrible person, you’ve made all the wrong choices, and of all the choices that I’ve made this will prove to be the worst one. But I am not sorry that I’m in love with you. I love you, Damon. I love you.

Betrayal is too kind a word to describe a situation in which a father says he loves his daughter but claims he must teach her about the horrors of the world in order to make her a stronger person; a situation in which he watches or participates in rituals that make her feel like she is going to die. She experiences pain that is so intense that she cannot think; her head spins so fast she can't remember who she is or how she got there. All she knows is pain. All she feels is desperation. She tries to cry out for help, but soon learns that no one will listen. No matter how loud she cries, she can't stop or change what is happening. No matter what she does, the pain will not stop. Her father orders her to be tortured and tells her it is for her own good. He tells her that she needs the discipline, or that she has asked for it by her misbehavior. Betrayal is too simple a word to describe the overwhelming pain, the overwhelming loneliness and isolation this child experiences. As if the abuse during the rituals were not enough, this child experiences similar abuse at home on a daily basis. When she tries to talk about her pain, she is told that she must be crazy. "Nothing bad has happened to you;' her family tells her Each day she begins to feel more and more like she doesn't know what is real. She stops trusting her own feelings because no one else acknowledges them or hears her agony. Soon the pain becomes too great. She learns not to feel at all. This strong, lonely, desperate child learns to give up the senses that make all people feel alive. She begins to feel dead. She wishes she were dead. For her there is no way out. She soon learns there is no hope. As she grows older she gets stronger. She learns to do what she is told with the utmost compliance. She forgets everything she has ever wanted. The pain still lurks, but it's easier to pretend it's not there than to acknowledge the horrors she has buried in the deepest parts of her mind. Her relationships are overwhelmed by the power of her emotions. She reaches out for help, but never seems to find what she is looking for The pain gets worse. The loneliness sets in. When the feelings return, she is overcome with panic, pain, and desperation. She is convinced she is going to die. Yet, when she looks around her she sees nothing that should make her feel so bad. Deep inside she knows something is very, very wrong, but she doesn't remember anything. She thinks, "Maybe I am crazy.