The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.
John Green, Looking for Alaska
don’t attach yourself to anyone who shows you the least bit of attention because you’re lonely. Loneliness is the human condition. No one is ever going to fill that space. The best you can do is know yourself… know what you want.
Janet Fitch, White Oleander
This is an important lesson to remember when you’re having a bad day, a bad month, or a shitty year. Things will change: you won’t feel this way forever. And anyway, sometimes the hardest lessons to learn are the ones your soul needs most. I believe you can’t feel real joy unless you’ve felt heartache. You can’t have a sense of victory unless you know what it means to fail. You can’t know what it’s like to feel holy until you know what it’s like to feel really fucking evil. And you can’t be birthed again until you’ve died.
Kelly Cutrone, If You Have to Cry, Go Outside: And Other Things Your Mother Never Told You
‘The horror of that moment,’ the King went on, ‘I shall never, never forget!’ ‘You will, though,’ the Queen said, ‘if you don’t make a memorandum of it. ‘
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
You don’t need water to feel like you’re drowning, do you?
Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes
Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.
A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
Someday, we’ll run into each other again, I know it. Maybe I’ll be older and smarter and just plain better. If that happens, that’s when I’ll deserve you. But now, at this moment, you can’t hook your boat to mine, because I’m liable to sink us both.
Gabrielle Zevin, Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac
Some people have lives; some people have music.
John Green and David Levithan , Will Grayson, Will Grayson
Nobody is ready for death. If you ask Joe Blow on the street, he aint gonna tell you he thinks he’ll live forever. But when the end is near you’ll realize you’ve been believing that all along. It’s like getting caught with your pants down. That’s why you gotta live, little one. Yeah stop and smell them roses.
Cristina Garcia, I Wanna Be Your Shoebox
Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to seem like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I’m bullshitting myself, morally speaking?
David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays
People and their rituals. They cling to things so hard sometimes.
Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain
You don’t need water to feel like you’re drowning, do you?
Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes
Money matters but less than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important. So are friends. Envy is toxic. So is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude.
Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World
We had a good run, and now it’s over; what’s wrong with that?
Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain
How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode.
W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil (via helplesslyamazed)
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lines, lyrics and literary fragments that call for a pause