Vivian Quotes

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass...It's about learning to dance in the rain.

You can decorate absence however you want- but your still gonna feel what’s missing.

And no relationship is perfect, ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give something up in order to gain something greater.

By this point Viviane Lavender had loved Jack Griffith for twelve years, which was far more than half of her life. If she thought of her love as a commodity and were to, say, eat it, it would fill 4,745 cherry pies. If she were to preserve it, she would need 23,725 glass jars and labels and a basement spanning the length of Pinnacle Lane. If she were to drink it, she'd drown.

Fall colors are funny. They’re so bright and intense and beautiful. It’s like nature is trying to fill you up with color, to saturate you so you can stockpile it before winter turns everything muted and dreary.

The world ain't straight. You grow up thinking things are a certain way. You think there are rules. You think there's a way that things have to be. You try to live straight. But the world doesn't care about your rules, or what you believe. The world ain't straight, Vivian. Never will be. Our rules, they don't mean a thing. The world just happens to you sometimes, is what I think. And people just gotta keep moving through it, best they can.

Sometimes, when you get something new, you trick yourself into believing it has the power to change absolutely everything about you.

People will tell you not to waste your youth having too much fun, but they’re wrong. Youth is an irreplaceable treasure, and the only respectable thing to do with irreplaceable treasure is to waste it. So do the right thing with your youth, Vivian—squander it.

His next words pitched low and rough. “Tell me what you want, Vivian. Do you want me on my knees?

You see, the best thing about wrong decisions is that they don’t prevent you from making the right decisions later on. It’s harder, but it’s not impossible.

Here I thought you only ate caviar and human hearts.” “Don’t be ridiculous. Caviar tastes awful with human hearts.” Vivian’s laugh evoked a strange sensation in my chest. Heartburn? Investigate later.

Resist change at your own peril, Vivian. When something ends, let it end.

If you don't like vampire games, don't play

To think Viviane was beautiful required a certain acquired taste. It was the kind of beauty perceived only through the eyes of love.

Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass. It's about learning how to dance in the rain.

Vivian, I'd like to give you my heart, but since that might be inconvenient I've brought you someone else's." "Rafe you jerk, this is a sheep's heart.

So, thanks,” Vivian said. “For what?” I looked up at her, confused. “For being stupid enough to love your crazy, murdering lunatic of a sister and being such a pathetic dork that I couldn’t help but love you, too

I let myself have feelings for you despite not knowing how this would end.

That's how inside jokes usually are. Funny to those inside, annoying as shit to the rest of the world.

Why can't I be High Lady as well?

[Waiting for Godot] has achieved a theoretical impossibility—a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats. What's more, since the second act is a subtly different reprise of the first, he has written a play in which nothing happens, twice.

For a very long time, Viviane and Jack lived in that world people inhabit before love. Some people called that place friendship; others called it confusing. Viviane found it a pleasant place with an altitude that only occasionally made her nauseous.

Do you believe in spirits? Or ghosts?...Yes, I do. I believe in ghosts....They're the ones who haunt us. The ones who have left us behind." "Vivian has come back to the idea that the people who matter in our lives stay with us, haunting our ordinary moments. They're with us in the grocery store, as we turn the corner, chat with a friend. They rise up through the pavement; we absorb them through our soles." "The things that matter stay with you, seep into your skin.

The Griffith House was like nothing Viviane remembered, reminding her of how fast the world changed and of how insignificant she was in the grand scheme of things. She thought it unfair that her life should be both irrelevant and difficult. One or the other seemed quite enough.

If you’re super tall, don’t be a dick and stand in front of a short person.

Those Grimm brothers," she said with a sigh, "they'll never amount to anything." And she was right because all they ever became was writers.

If there's one thing I've discovered, it's that stifling yourself will only lead to more misery. [...] I polluted all other happiness because I was afraid to let myself create and change. You have to have courage. Real courage to explore, to fail, and to pick yourself back up again.

Sometimes it's good to shake up the status quo. You just have to make sure that when you turn society on its ear, you don't end up on your coutoure-covered backside."--vivian

You want to know the truth, Vivian? If I loved you as much as he claims to love you, nothing would’ve stopped me from keeping you.

You’re growing old together,” she said to me. “You and what frightens you.

Then again, that's how quickly people's perceptions could change. It only took one mistake, one stupid decision.

you can’t find peace until you find all the pieces. She wants to help Vivian find some kind of peace, elusive and fleeting as it may be.

Maybe you haven't noticed, but everyone shares the same brain around here. It's like a mass cult. They've all drunk the Kool-Aid.

This is your reminder to wear your heart on your sleeve more often.

They'd poisoned me, dammit. Probably to trade my dead body to the barbarians for Wulfgar's safe return. Or maybe just for the fun of it.

I don’t want to be like her, like Vivian. I don’t want to hurt anyone. Am I going to hurt people?” “No one can make you do that, child. You are caught between two worlds, much like my own Lend. You will want the fire, you will want to be filled. It is your nature. I hope you do not fall, but she is much stronger than you are.” She smiled at me, reaching out as though she would wipe away my tears. “Cling to what is good in your life. Be good to my son.

I always thought love made you stupid. Made you weak. A bad Shadowhunter. 'To love is to destroy.'I believed that[...]I used to think being a good warrior meant not caring,[...] And then I met you. You were a mundane. Weak. Not a fighter. Never trained[...] Love didn't make you weak, it made you stronger than anyone I'd ever met. And I realized I was the one who was weak.

The less you know, the more you will be known The less you want, the more you will have The less you are, the more you will be

Principal Colby puts the tiara on Margo's head. She's surprised by the weight. Obviously the rhinestones wouldn't be diamonds, but Margo had always assumed the tiara would be metal. It isn't. It is plastic.

I don’t want to.. you know, fall for you any worse than I already have.

She sighed. Loudly. "Physical appearance is not what is important." Yeah right. Tell that to any girl who hasn't bothered to put on a presentable shirt or fix her hair because she's only running into the grocery store to get a quart of milk for her grandmother, and who does she see tending the 7-ITEMS-OR-LESS cash register but the guy of her dreams, except she can't even say hi—much less try to develop a meaningful relationship—since she looks like the poster child for the terminally geeky.

As the Weaver, so is the Thread

Whatever you’re into is some fascinatingly weird shit.

Survival of the generic.

So is it just human nature to believe that things happen for a reason — to find some shred of meaning even in the worst experiences?" Molly asks when Vivian reads some of these stories aloud. "It certainly helps," Vivian says.

Change wasn't something to fear anymore. And even though my picture was hung on the wall, I didn't care so much about how I'd be remembered. So long as I never forgot.

We have to make room for other people. It's a wheel. You get on. You go to the end. And someone else has the same opportunity to go to the end. And so on. And somebody else takes their place.

Ah, Evelyn and Vivian, I love you both, I love you for your sad lives, the empty misery of your coming home at dawn. You too are alone, but you are not like Arturo Bandini, who is neither fish, fowl nor good red herring. So have your champagne, because I love you both, and you too, Vivian, even if your mouth looks like it had been dug out with raw fingernails and your old child's eyes swim in blood written like mad sonnets.

Don't be the kind of person who sees groups instead of people.

Our dream of happiness is waiting for another universe to collide with our own, and change what we ourselves cannot.

if Saint Bruce doesn't like your poem, he chops your head off.

If you don't leave home you suffocate, if you go too far you lose oxygen.

It was amazing the things a person could get used to when they really had no other choice.

La vie n'est pas d'attendre que l'orage passe, mais plutôt d'apprendre à danser sous la pluie.

I have a master’s degree in medieval literature. Wyverns—or firedrakes, if you prefer—were once common in European mythology and legends.” “But you . . . you’re my accountant,” Sarah sputtered. “Do you have any idea how many English majors are accountants?” Vivian asked with raised eyebrows.

It didn't matter if i was the kind of girl who had sex, or the kind of girl who had her portrait on on a wall in the library, or the kind of girl who who got into the best college, or the kind of girl who didn't tell her parents everything, or the kind of girl who teachers loved. I just needed to be okay with all the kinds of girl I was.

You're the one who made it seem like we were doing something wrong. Maybe you still feel like that, because for whatever reason, you think I'm not good enough for you. But I like you, okay? I've liked you from the very beginning." "It was never going anywhere" "Because you wouldn't let it go anywhere.

It's ridiculous, how people judge talent. Or, rather, don't judge. They just default to what everyone else thinks.

There, close enough to spit on--if I'd been a barbarian and inclined to spit--was the dragon.

Are these the friends and life i want to have?

That's very kind of you," she said bitterly, for she no longer believed in kindness. "And you're willing to do this...why? Because you're fond of helping others?" "I'm fond of revenge," the dragon answered.

Were you feeling all right?" "No, not at all." "Bellyache?" "Yeah, a two-month bellyache called Vivian-itis. Symptoms include desperate longing and inability to do anything but feel like a douchebag. Patient can't do shit on the field but stand there like an ass, wondering what the fuck he's doing with his life. It's chronic. No known cure.

People always talk about good, fresh country air, but I kept getting wiffs of something that was neither good nor fresh but definitely country.

Your best is good enough.

people are willing to overlook all kinds of eccentricities if you present them with enough money.

Life's not about waiting for the storms to pass...It's about learning to dance in the rain.

In order to know the Truth, you have to be out of your mind.

POOR MARCH It is the HOMELIEST month of the year. Most of it is MUD, Every Imaginable Form of MUD, and what isn't MUD in March is ugly late-season SNOW falling onto the ground in filthy muddy heaps that look like PILES of DIRTY LAUNDRY.

She has never tried to find out what happened to her family — her mother or her relatives in Ireland. But over and over, Molly begins to understand as she listens to the tapes, Vivian has come back to the idea that the people who matter in our lives stay with us, haunting our most ordinary moments. They're with us in the grocery store, as we turn a corner, chat with a friend. They rise up through the pavement; we absorb them through our soles.

LIFE isn't about waiting for the storm to pass,it's about learning to DANCE in the rain.

Problems are solved from the inside out not the other way around.

Giannine--What are they going to do: smack me on the head with a pamplet?

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to end, it's about learning do dance in the rain.

Don't you think it seems a little... backward, perhaps...to run around committing mortal sins in order to cleanse the world of sin and evil?

Like each morning he was putting his identity on inside out while dressing in the dark.

The wolf sniffed beneath the door to be sure this was a human cottage. The scent was undeniable. No pigs, except in bacon form. The wolf thought bacon form was a very sensible way for pigs to behave.

Did you just spit something?” he asked, sounding curious and amused … “Never would have pegged you as a spitter, Vivian.” Eyes suddenly wide, I sat straight up, almost levitating from the bed, then rallied. “Only when it’s something not worth swallowing.” Hello line, I believe I just crossed over you. I distinctly heard Clark choke on a sip of what I assumed was his Scotch.

All of her aunts said that Bridget looked exactly like her mother as a teenager. Staring at her, Bridget realised she had no memories of her mother being thin.

She pushes all the pain out of her arms, kicks the hurt free from her legs. She swims her broken heart out.

Some days 'staying put' might feel the same as Going Nowhere. Make a cup of tea, and wait for that feeling to pass.

It's embarrassing, how much effort it took for me to wear something that looks exactly like a blank piece of paper.

People that hurt others, only act on a pain they feel themselves.

What is it, he wondered, that compels the elderly to fill every square inch of space with knickknacks, as if each bit of junk they amass will add another year to their dwindling lives?

A day may come when all hope is lost; when the oceans run red with our blood, and our darkest hour is upon us— and when it comes, that red day of reckoning, we turn, my dears, not to our rulers-in-good-times, but to our leaders-in-bad-times.

The kind of poem I produced in those days was hardly anything more than a sign I made of being alive, of passing or having passed, or hoping to pass, through certain intense human emotions. It was a phenomenon of orientation rather than of art, thus comparable to stripes of paint on a roadside rock or to a pillared heap of stones marking a mountain trail. But then, in a sense, all poetry is positional: to try to express one's position in regard to the universe embraced by consciousness, is an immemorial urge. Tentacles, not wings, are Apollo's natural members. Vivian Bloodmark, a philosophical friend of mine, in later years, used to say that while the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time.

Anticipation. In love and travel, getting there is half the fun. The lustful impatience, the passionate daydreams, the nerve-wracking waiting... lovers and travelers are all alike when they find themselves on the brink of a new adventure.

No one was more stunned by the choice than her mother, who claimed to the saleswoman that she hadn't seen Danielle that dressed up since her first Communion.

She racked her brain for the training session she’d taken on bear encounters, but it had been a long time ago. Stay still. It can’t see me if I don’t move. No, wait - that’s what you’re supposed to do for a T-Rex.

I received an interesting call from my accountant when I was in Paris,” I said in an effort to distract myself from our disturbing proximity. “One hundred thousand dollars charged to my Amex in one day, including ten grand on flowers. Care to explain?” “You gave me a black Amex, I used it,” Vivian said with an elegant shrug. “What can I say? I like flowers. And shoes.” Translation: You were an asshole before you left, and I took it out on your bank account.

From the floor, I see the tops of the Philadelphia skyline out of her window. Staring at it, I realize that the night sky isn't really black, which is the way I've always thought of it. It's actually a dark shade of blue, the darkest possible.

There are two categories of friendship: those in which people enliven one another and those in which people must be enlivened to be with one another. In the first category one clears the decks to be together; in the second one looks for an empty space in the schedule.

Now is the time of fresh starts This is the season that makes everything new. There is a longstanding rumor that Spring is the time of renewal, but that's only if you ignore the depressing clutter and din of the season. All that flowering and budding and birthing--- the messy youthfulness of Spring actually verges on squalor. Spring is too busy, too full of itself, too much like a 20-year-old to be the best time for reflection, re-grouping, and starting fresh. For that you need December. You need to have lived through the mindless biological imperatives of your life (to bud, and flower, and show off) before you can see that a landscape of new fallen snow is THE REAL YOU. December has the clarity, the simplicity, and the silence you need for the best FRESH START of your life.

Vivian Bloodmark, a philosophical friend of mine, in later years, used to say that while the scientist sees everything that happens in one point in space, the poet sees everything that happens in one point in time. Lost in thought, he taps his knee with his wandlike pencil, and at the same instant a car (New York license plate) passes along the road, a child bangs the screen door of a neighbouring porch, an old man yawns in a misty Turkestan orchard, a granule of cinder-grey sand is rolled by the wind on Venus, a Docteur Jacques Hirsch in Grenoble puts on his reading glasses, and trillions of other such trifles occur - all forming an instantaneous and transparent organism of events, of which the poet (sitting in a lawn chair in Ithaca, N.Y.) is the nucleus.

Good, stupid high school boys aren't worth It" She throws an arm over my shoulder. "They're trained to like a certain type of girl, with highlights and pretty nails- the kind who are good at remembering to put on lotion every morning after they shower." She smiles like she's got a dirty secret. "And let's face it..... sluts.

Your badges represent just that: your choice, your conscious choice to place yourselves outside a predefined path; beyond the care of omniscient beings, and into your own capable hands. For a Weaver’s freewill is absolute; a Weaver is a master of their own life; a Weaver creates their own reality – but more importantly – a Weaver is responsible for reality.

They don't understand that it's hard to be her, to be shopping with them. Like when Dana had pointed out a pair of jeans that Jennifer HAD to try, before darting into another section. Skinny girls can walk by a table full of pants, piled in high stacks, and peel a pair off the top. Easy. Effortless. But not girls like Jennifer.

When people asked about his schizophrenia, Eric, who didn’t exactly flaunt his illness but wasn’t ashamed of it, either, offered up the comparison of alcoholism. Not every drunk is a single bourbon away from skid row, just like every schizophrenic is not a tatty-haired, crazy-eyed gunman who delights in murdering alien-people from clock towers. There are functioning alcoholics just as there are functioning schizophrenics, individuals who work, maintain homes, and have hobbies, goals, and relationships like every other slob on the planet.

Fue en la cocina donde empecé a comprender el significado de la palabra "esposa”. Ahí estábamos, una pareja de 24 años: un día éramos una estudiante de doctorado y un artista, y al día siguiente éramos marido y mujer. Antes siempre habíamos puesto juntos sobre la mesa las rudimentarias comidas que tomábamos. Ahora, de pronto, Stefan estaba cada noche en su taller, dibujando o leyendo y yo estaba en la cocina, esforzándome por preparar y servir una comida que ambos pensábamos que debía ser adecuada. Recuerdo pasar me cobra y media preparando algún espantoso plato de cuchara sacado de una revista femenina para terminar engulléndolo los dos en 10 minutos, pasarme después una hora limpiando los cacharros y quedarme mirando el fregadero, pensando: "¿Será esto así durante los siguientes cuarenta años?”.

The way we live our lives is not sustainable. I don’t just mean recycling and turning off the faucet while brushing your teeth. I mean the way we treat each other. The way we pick and choose whose lives are important – who we actually treat as human. There is nobody on this earth whose life is not of value. And that includes those of us who have been left behind. Maybe they did go to some Christian heaven. But what I’m saying is, we’re good people too. We’re worthwhile people. I’d vouch for every last one of you.

THOSE BORN UNDER Pacific Northwest skies are like daffodils: they can achieve beauty only after a long, cold sulk in the rain. Henry, our mother, and I were Pacific Northwest babies. At the first patter of raindrops on the roof, a comfortable melancholy settled over the house. The three of us spent dark, wet days wrapped in old quilts, sitting and sighing at the watery sky. Viviane, with her acute gift for smell, could close her eyes and know the season just by the smell of the rain. Summer rain smelled like newly clipped grass, like mouths stained red with berry juice — blueberries, raspberries, blackberries. It smelled like late nights spent pointing constellations out from their starry guises, freshly washed laundry drying outside on the line, like barbecues and stolen kisses in a 1932 Ford Coupe. The first of the many autumn rains smelled smoky, like a doused campsite fire, as if the ground itself had been aflame during those hot summer months. It smelled like burnt piles of collected leaves, the cough of a newly revived chimney, roasted chestnuts, the scent of a man’s hands after hours spent in a woodshop. Fall rain was not Viviane’s favorite. Rain in the winter smelled simply like ice, the cold air burning the tips of ears, cheeks, and eyelashes. Winter rain was for hiding in quilts and blankets, for tying woolen scarves around noses and mouths — the moisture of rasping breaths stinging chapped lips. The first bout of warm spring rain caused normally respectable women to pull off their stockings and run through muddy puddles alongside their children. Viviane was convinced it was due to the way the rain smelled: like the earth, tulip bulbs, and dahlia roots. It smelled like the mud along a riverbed, like if she opened her mouth wide enough, she could taste the minerals in the air. Viviane could feel the heat of the rain against her fingers when she pressed her hand to the ground after a storm. But in 1959, the year Henry and I turned fifteen, those warm spring rains never arrived. March came and went without a single drop falling from the sky. The air that month smelled dry and flat. Viviane would wake up in the morning unsure of where she was or what she should be doing. Did the wash need to be hung on the line? Was there firewood to be brought in from the woodshed and stacked on the back porch? Even nature seemed confused. When the rains didn’t appear, the daffodil bulbs dried to dust in their beds of mulch and soil. The trees remained leafless, and the squirrels, without acorns to feed on and with nests to build, ran in confused circles below the bare limbs. The only person who seemed unfazed by the disappearance of the rain was my grandmother. Emilienne was not a Pacific Northwest baby nor a daffodil. Emilienne was more like a petunia. She needed the water but could do without the puddles and wet feet. She didn’t have any desire to ponder the gray skies. She found all the rain to be a bit of an inconvenience, to be honest.