Know who you are, and be it. Know what you want, and go out and get it!
Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it.
Being human is not hard because you’re doing it wrong, it’s hard because you’re doing it right.
The trick. . .is to find the balance between the bright colors of humor and the serious issues of identity, self-loathing, and the possibility for intimacy and love when it seems no longer possible or, sadder yet, no longer necessary.
It takes no more time to see the good side of life than to see the bad.
Do not look back and grieve over the past, for it is gone; and do not be troubled about the future, for it has yet to come. Live in the present, and make it so beautiful that it will be worth remembering
That’s how stories happen — with a turning point, an unexpected twist. There’s only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.
Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.
Do you believe a man can truly love a woman and constantly betray her? Never mind physically but betray her in his mind, in the very “poetry of his soul”. Well, it’s not easy but men do it all the time.
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
If you don’t know where you’re going, any road’ll take you there
It takes half your life before you discover life is a do-it-yourself project.
I look back on my life like a good day’s work, it was done and I am satisfied with it.
To me, history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn’t just part of our civic responsibility. To me, it’s an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is.”
[The Title Always Comes Last; NEH 2003 Jefferson Lecturer interview profile]
My life has been one great big joke,
A dance that’s walked,
A song that’s spoke,
I laugh so hard I almost choke,
When I think about myself.
Pain and death are part of life. To reject them is to reject life itself.
We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.
Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, ‘Where have I gone wrong’.
Then a voice says to me, ‘This is going to take more than one night.
Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness.
Listen to it carefully.
Because there was a hunger in me to see everything and do everything. I wanted to be everyone I saw. I wasn’t enough for me. Can you understand that?
Per aspera ad astra, Papa,’ I whispered. Through hardship to the stars.
Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it’s time for them to be hurt.
Never judge someone’s character based on the words of another. Instead, study the motives behind the words of the person casting the bad judgment.
No one is without troubles, without personal hardships and genuine challenges. That fact may not be obvious because most people don’t advertise their woes and heartaches. But nobody, not even the purest heart, escapes life without suffering battle scars.
You’re only here for a short visit. Don’t hurry, don’t worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way.
Fuck it… That’s really the attitude that keeps a family together, it’s not “we love each other”, it’s just “fuck it, man.
Where am I? Who am I?
How did I come to be here?
What is this thing called the world?
How did I come into the world?
Why was I not consulted?
And If I am compelled to take part in it, where is the director?
I want to see him.
Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to was never there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place… Nothing outside you can give you any place… In yourself right now is all the place you’ve got.
War had bled color from everything, leaving nothing but a storm of gray.
Try patting them on the back or shoulder and telling them everything is going to be fine. Lots of times when girls cry, they don’t want you to fix the problem, they just want to be consoled.
I love you. I hate you. I like you. I hate you. I love you. I think you’re stupid. I think you’re a loser. I think you’re wonderful. I want to be with you. I don’t want to be with you. I would never date you. I hate you. I love you…..I think the madness started the moment we met and you shook my hand. Did you have a disease or something?
There’s no need to wait for the bad things and bullshit to be over. Change now. Love now. Live now. Don’t wait for people to give you permission to live, because they won’t.
You are free to choose what you want to make of your life. It’s called free agency or free will, and it’s your birthright.
My biggest fault is that the faults I was born with grow bigger each year.
Not forever does the bulbul sing
In balmy shades of bowers,
Not forever lasts the spring
Nor ever blossom the flowers.
Not forever reigneth joy,
Sets the sun on days of bliss,
Friendships not forever last,
They know not life, who know not this.
All of life is peaks and valleys. Don’t let the peaks get too high and the valleys too low.
Well, I can understand how you feel. You worked hard, studying for the spelling bee, and I suppose you feel you let everyone down, and you made a fool of yourself and everything. But did you notice something, Charlie Brown?”
“What’s that?”
“The world didn’t come to an end.
Moral wounds have this peculiarity – they may be hidden, but they never close; always painful, always ready to bleed when touched, they remain fresh and open in the heart.
How many slams in an old screen door? Depends how loud you shut it. How many slices in a bread? Depends how thin you cut it. How much good inside a day? Depends how good you live ’em. How much love inside a friend? Depends how much you give ’em.
Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.
If you live long enough, you’ll make mistakes. But if you learn from them, you’ll be a better person. It’s how you handle adversity, not how it affects you. The main thing is never quit, never quit, never quit.
I think choosing between men and women is like choosing between cake and ice cream. You’d be daft not to try both when there are so many different flavors.
I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.
You were made by God and for God and until you understand that, life will never make sense.
It is wise to direct your anger towards problems — not people; to focus your energies on answers — not excuses.
The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
You can’t get much done in life if you only work on the days when you feel good.
You’d think, ‘What if I make a mistake today, I’ll regret it’. I don’t believe in regret, I feel everything leads us to where we are and we have to just jump forward, mean well, commit and just see what happens.
When she is happy, she can’t stop talking, when she is sad she doesn’t say a word.
The flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful of all.
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.