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0207709 I wasn't sure about that, but one never knows. Sometimes a neighborhood, like a culture or civilization, is strong enough to absorb and acculturate any number of newcomers. But I don't know if that's true around here any longer. The outward forms and appearances look the same - [...]- but the substance has been altered. life philosophy Nelson DeMille
56e2ece Bombay is a city where gossip is treated as a commodity. gossip india life mumbay wisdom Tahir Shah
e2fc005 The living cell is the most complex system of its size known to mankind. Its host of specialized molecules, many found nowhere else but within living material, are themselves already enormously complex. They execute a dance of exquisite fidelity, orchestrated with breathtaking precision. Vastly more elaborate than the most complicated ballet, the dance of life encompasses countless molecular performers in synergetic coordination. Yet this is a dance with no sign of a choreographer. No intelligent supervisor, no mystic force, no conscious controlling agency swings the molecules into place at the right time, chooses the appropriate players, closes the links, uncouples the partners, moves them on. The dance of life is spontaneous, self-sustaining, and self-creating. cells complexity evolution life materialism molecules naturalism nature science Paul Davies
d58f7c0 "I was waiting for you," said Gregory. "Might I have a moment's conversation?" "Certainly. About what?" asked Syme in a sort of weak wonder. Gregory struck out with his stick at the lamp-post, and then at the tree. "About this and this," he cried; "about order and anarchy. There is your precious order, that lean, iron lamp, ugly and barren; and there is anarchy, rich, living, reproducing itself--there is anarchy, splendid in green and gold." "All the same," replied Syme patiently, "just at present you only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the lamp by the light of the tree." life light order G.K. Chesterton
800a860 "Maybe everything bad that happens to you makes you weaker," said Giovanni, as though he had not heard me, "and so you can stand less and less." giovanni-s-room james-baldwin life weakened weaker James Baldwin
91a958e "Son, anything can happen to anyone," my father told me, "but it usually doesn't." happenings life probability Philip Roth
5d0fd82 Life's always a big fucking compromise. You don't always get what you want, no matter how smart you are, how hard you work, how good you are. That's a myth. We're all hanging in the best way we can. asian-american hundred-secret-senses life Amy Tan
46444c1 Arguably the greatest technological triumph of the century has been the public-health system, which is sophisticated preventive and investigative medicine organized around mostly low- and medium-tech equipment; ... fully half of us are alive today because of the improvements. life medicine public-health science technology triumph Richard Rhodes
067a217 This very pride in keeping his word was that he was keeping it to miscreants. It was his last triumph over these lunatics to go down into their dark room and die for something that they could not even understand. The barrel-organ seemed to give the marching tune with the energy and the mingled noises of a whole orchestra; and he could hear deep and rolling, under all the trumpets of the pride of life, the drums of the pride of death. life pride G.K. Chesterton
9b8251b But I know nothing; my future is a wide-open vista, leading to an unknown country - The Rest Of My Life. inspirational knowledge life Kate Atkinson
73044a4 Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid. life living meaning mortality Muriel Spark
072f96a ...courage wasn't something you were bequeathed at birth, and it wasn't a lack of fright. It was overcoming your fear, because the ones you love mattered more. courage jodi-picoult life love Jodi Picoult
0fcdfd3 And what have you been up to? she asked. Oh, I don't know really, I said. Not much. Learning how to be a good loser. life losers Miriam Toews
c034968 ...he allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them them over and over again to give birth to themselves. identity life self Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
ae181ef What a huge inaccessible lumber-room of thought and experience we amounted to, I thought; how much we are, how little we transmit. inner-life life thought H.G. Wells
f4b59e5 No one can ever amount to anything in this life without someone else to believe in him. life support Paul Auster
22b92f0 "So life isn't exciting?" continued Gary. "Great. Give me boredom. At least I know where I'm going to eat and sleep tonight. I'll still have a job on Monday. Yeah?" He turned and looked at Richard. Richard nodded, hesitantly. "Yeah." life Neil Gaiman
23ed252 But life in the fast lane took a toll on men who cared and it was eating Jonas one small piece at a time. life Christine Feehan
35f8d51 I wrote this book to show you that a cure is entirely possible because I've seen it happen over and over again. addiction-and-recovery addiction-cure addiction-free alcohol-abuse alcohol-addiction alcohol-addiction-treatment alcoholism-cure amazon author book bookstore chris-prentiss cure-addiction drug-abuse drug-addiction drug-addiction-treatment end-the-cycle freedom great-authors great-books kindle life new-book nook passages-malibu passages-ventura philosophy self-help sober sobriety wisdom Chris Prentiss
81b645c We recognize that you've used substances to try to regain your lost balance, to try to feel the way you did before the need arose to use addictive drugs or alcohol. We know that you use substances to alter your mood, to cover up your sadness, to ease your heartbreak, to lighten your stress load, to blur your painful memories, to escape your hurtful reality, or to make your unbearable days or nights bearable. addiction-cure addiction-treatment-center alcohol-abuse chris-prentiss dependency drug-abuse heartache heartbreak holistic-health holistic-rehab holistic-therapy holistic-treatment holistic-treatment-center life live memories non-12-step pain passages-malibu passages-ventura pax-prentiss sadness substance-abuse survival Chris Prentiss
65b0769 "Last night I thought about all that kerosene I've used in the past ten years. And I thought about books. And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of the books. A man had to think them up. A man had to take a long time to put them down on paper. And I'd never even thought that thought before." He got out of bed. "It took some man a lifetime maybe to put some of his thoughts down, looking around at the world and life and then I come along in two minutes and boom! it's all over." "Let me alone," said Mildred. "I didn't do anything." "Let you alone! That's all very well, but how can I leave myself alone? We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were bothered? About something important, about something real?" books bother create creation creativity destruction ignorance important kerosene life lifetime observation real reality reality-check thought time work world Ray Bradbury
a48a099 "Granger stood looking at Montag. "Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime." life Ray Bradbury
fa7df4f I know friends should be supportive of each other's life decisions and all that. friendships life supportive Sophie Kinsella
4ed9830 You think you can get rid of things, and people too--leave them behind. You don't know yet about the habit they have, of coming back. life Margaret Atwood
60a1f9a I think this is an alarming trend, Bethany, this whole 'passionate' thing. I'm guessing it started about four years ago, and it's driving me nuts. Let's be practical: Earth was not built for six billion people all running around and being passionate about things. The world was built for about twenty million people foraging for roots and grubs. [...] My hunch is that there was some self-help bestseller a few years back that told people to follow their passion. What a sucky expression. I can usually tell when people have recently read that book because they're a bit distracted, and maybe they've done their hair a new way, and they're always trying to discuss the Big Picture of life and failing miserably. And then, when you bump into them again six months later, they appear haggard and bitter, the joy drained from them-and this means that the universe is back to normal and that they've given up searching for a passion they're doomed to never find. Want a chocolate? life passion wisdom Douglas Coupland
0236314 You can't undo loss. You can't unmake a mistake. christmas first-kiss holiday life love my-true-love-gave-to-me winter Stephanie Perkins
d3bb3dc "When I reach the end of one row, I continue straight on away from the barn and the farm and the road. I walk until I come to a pile of hay bales and plop myself down. The sun is bright and the air is sharp. In the distance I hear the lowing of cows. It's so peaceful here. "Merry Christmas, " I whisper to myself. "Merry Christmas, Nate." cora hope life loneliness nate peace sadness Lisa Ann Sandell
53ec32e The clown knows that life is cruel. The ancient jester's motley coloured costume turned his usually melancholy expression in to a joke. The clown is used to loss. Loss is his prologue. clown humour life loss John Berger
10054a5 "I've just been thinking it would be a lot of fun to live in a defunct shopping mall! Totally abandoned, Yet still frozen in time, Bright white lights shining, Artificial turquoise fountains spewing out clear water, Eerie eighties elevator music drifting by... Dancing erratically, shouting to the top, Because it's sad to see these places die. They're a testament to the hubris of modern America, which is dying in and of itself. Let's face it. We know we can't compete with Online shopping And Made-in-China products And eBay And Amazon. Those of us who spent our High school And college days Being wage slaves to these dying malls, We'll be old and nostalgic someday, Telling our grandkids about these wonderful buildings! They housed sets of trendy clothes Which nobody was rich enough to afford Or thin enough to fit in. We'll tell them about the first time We were almost trampled in a Black Friday stampede. The first time we saw a kid Vomit in the ugly rainbow ball pit At the children's play area, Dumped by babysitters to grow up there, Spending their childhood draped in neon. The first time eating greasy pad-thai And hamburgers At the food court. The first time falling in love In the dark movie theatre That charges too much for stale popcorn. Holding hands in the sunlit rays Of the dusty projector... Totally lost in moments. What is the meaning of this voyage? Our grandkids, Who will probably have Smartphones Surgically implanted to their brains And identical glass condominiums by then, They'll gasp in shock and say, "Wow, that sounds SO cool!" childhood consumerism dead-mall eerie life love mall nostalgia shopping Rebecca McNutt
6c517a1 It is better for a man to die at peace with himself than to live haunted by an evil conscience! life James Fenimore Cooper
02249c5 Accept the unknown. There are no secondary characters. Each one is silhouetted against the sky. All have the same stature. Within a given story some simply occupy more space. life place-in-life John Berger
3d1c64a "happiness is a choice. If you choose to mope and be glum, you shall be; but if you wish to be happy and determine to enjoy what life has to offer, then you can have that as well. "She said that nothing is all good or all bad, that life offers everyone a mix of both--though sometimes it does not seem so, and bad is all we can see in our lives, while in the lives of others we see only good and feel envy. She said we must enjoy the good despite the bad, else life can beat us down and leave us hopeless, and that is no way to live." envy good happiness life Lynsay Sands
96f393f My change from girl to boy was far less dramatic than the distance anybody travels from infancy to adulthood. gender life Jeffrey Eugenides
429e5af Reading yourself as a fiction as well as a fact is the only way to keep the narrative open - the only way to stop the story from running away under its own momentum, often towards an ending no one wants. end fiction life reading stories Jeanette Winterson
d6ae115 It was as though she had veered, accidentally, into her own life. life Carol Shields
383102c But I was living my life sideway. I did not act on what I wanted, I did not say the things I thought, and being so stifled and clamped all the time left me exhausted; no matter what I was doing, I was always imagining something else. anxiety life Curtis Sittenfeld
146da4f This is life. Things get taken away. You will learn to start over many times-or you will be useless. life Mitch Albom
917797f I want you to know that if I could've stayed with you I would have. I fought as hard as I could. I will never understand why I had to be taken from you so soon, but I have accepted it. Yet I want you to know that there is nothing more important to me than you. I loved you from the moment I saw you. And the happiest day of my life was when you agreed to share your life with mine. I promised that I would always be there for you. And my love for you is so strong that even though I won't be there physically, I will be there in every other way. I will watch over you. I will be there if you need to talk. I will never stop loving you. Not even death is powerful enough to overcome my feelings for you. My love for you, Lizzie, is stronger than anything. inspirational life love marriage powerful David Baldacci
9b51922 ...the antidote to death was and always would be the heat and fury of life itself. life passion sex A.J. Hartley and David Hewson
2b31999 It took him half an hour to reach the little mission chapel. From his position on his back in the river he could see just the tip of the steeple, but for the most part he gazed upward at the constellations. Rudy knew his constellations, because each one of his daughters had done a science project on them and they'd spent hours lying on their backs in the middle of the Edgar Lee Masters campus looking up at the sky. As the river bent to the south, he could see Virgo and Centaurus coming into view. At first they reminded him of true beauty, and he was overwhelmed. He knew that this heart-piercing ache, however painful, was the central experience of his life and that he would have to come to terms with it. No one - not Aristotle, not Epicurus, not Siva Singh - would ever convince him otherwise. But then it occurred to him that Virgo and Centaurus were just as arbitrary as the rudimentary classification system he'd used for his books - Helen's books. There were a lot of stars left out of the constellations, and nothing to stop you from drawing the lines in different ways to create different pictures. He wanted to lift his wings and fly, but he didn't have the power. He could only let the river carry him along. life river Robert Hellenga
d68f494 Alle menschlichen Fehler sind Ungeduld, ein vorzeitiges Abbrechen des Methodischen, ein scheinbares Einpfahlen der scheinbaren Sache. life philosophy sin truth Franz Kafka
2650fe9 But what now if all the peace, the comfort, the contentment were to come to a horrible end? happiness life Franz Kafka
0b34c64 I do understand that they fall when I'm least able to pay attention because poems fall not from a tree, really, but from the richly pollinated boughs of an ordinary life, buzzing, as lives do, with clamor and glory. They are easy to miss but everywhere: poetry just is, whether we revere it or try to put it in prison. It is elementary grace, communicated from one soul to another. grace life poems poetry Barbara Kingsolver
8641e47 You know, it's really very peculiar. To be mortal is the most basic human experience, and yet man has never been able to accept it, grasp it, and behave accordingly. Man doesn't know how to be mortal. And when he dies, he doesn't even know how to be dead. dying immortality life living mortality philosophy Milan Kundera
be01f5a [mother] belonged to a realm of other creatures: smaller, lighter, more easily blown away. humanity life Milan Kundera
f1634da Every day, when you're on the run, is the whole of your life. Every free minute is a short story with a happy ending. life running-away Gregory David Roberts
0264fc6 One afternoon, I am complaining about the confusion of my age, what is expected of me versus what I want for myself. life relationships Mitch Albom
c65fb76 Even if we have grown so far apart that we don't recognize each other when we pass, we have this life, this block of time, and what do you think about that? life marriage promises sharing vows Jodi Picoult
3ce96b0 If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? [...] Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. life love science Yann Martel
4619243 You learn to feel it less, child; or you learn to love other things. life love selflove Naomi Novik
fc79326 Under the pathologist's microscope, life and death fight in an illuminated circle in a sort of cellular bullfight. The pathologist's job is to find the bull among the matador cells death life metaphor microscope pathologist pathology Yann Martel
ab24c3b The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life. -William Morris. elevate everyday genuine happy hygge interest life secret Louisa Thomsen Brits
da3a710 It's got to be a nice life, long as you don't get caught. life Jodi Picoult
9ba15b4 But in life you have to take lots of deductions and if you don't take decisions you would never do anything because you would spend all your time choosing between things you could do.So it is good to have a reason why you hate some things and why you like others. life Mark Haddon
f4efc0e From this vantage point he came to a realization that everything that had happened to him before this had been a journey upward through time, everything that occurred after it a descent. If he could not control his fate, why be born? frustration life Irving Stone
1b4f8c7 What was the power that turned the worm into a moth? It was greater than any power the Builders had had, he was sure of that. The power that ran the city of Ember was feeble by comparison... intelligent-design life power Jeanne DuPrau
efadb14 You don't ask people with knives in their stomachs what would make them happy; happiness is no longer the point. It's all about survival; it's all about whether you pull the knife out and bleed to death or keep it in, in the hope that you might be lucky, and the knife has actually been staunching the blood. You want to know the conventional medical wisdom? The conventional medical wisdom is that you keep the knife in. Really. life science survival wisdom Nick Hornby (Author)
3644764 "Maybe someday, if I succeed at something, I'll stop saying, "It isn't fair" about everything else." aims ambition dedication determination difficulties dreams equality fairness hardships life perseverance success trials Lois Lowry
6cb46bd I will walk without noise and I will open the door in darkness and I will death everything-is-illuminated life sad Jonathan Safran Foer
8d01b76 "Holly steps back. Being warned about a ghost and seeing him are not the same. 'What did they death immortality life metaphor mortality speech time title David Mitchell
9e433ba When you win, the rules change, and you find you've lost life meaning meaning-of-life David Mitchell
e173991 Yes it's me, I myself, what I turned out to be, (...) I'm the one here in myself, it's me. (...) Whatever I was, whatever I wasn't--it's all in what I am. Whatever I wanted, whatever I didn't want--all of this has shaped me. Whatever I loved, or stopped loving--in me it's the same nostalgia (Alvaro de Campos) life loneliness love nostalgia self-knowledge Fernando Pessoa
68e78ff But the lost one is with you. Her tenderness strengthens you, Her gaiety uplifts you, Her honor purifies you. More than memory, The lost one is found. life memory Gail Carson Levine
fb668e9 All sorts of strange people were around, people who looked more at home than she was, even the homeless ones who spoke no English, more at home maybe because they were younger, and when she went out it seemed to her that she too had migrated, that everyone migrates, even if we stay in the same houses our whole lives, because we can't help it. We are all migrants through time. home house life migrants migration people time Mohsin Hamid
0aa81e7 It's amazing what the gene pool will do to perpetuate itself. life perpetuation procreation Mohsin Hamid
cd30614 I have always said that the way to deal with the pain of other's is by sympathy, which is suffering with, and that the way to deal with one's own pain is to put one foot after the other. Yet I was never willing to suffer with others, and when my own pain hit me, I crawled into hole. Sympathy I have failed in, stoicism I have barely passed. But I have made straight A's in irony- that curse, that evasion, that armor, that way of staying safe while seeming wise. One thing I have learned hard, if indeed I have learned it now: it is a reduction of our humanity to hide from pain, our own or other's. to hide from anything. That was Marian's text. Be open, be available, be exposed, be skinless. Skinless? Dance around in your bones. humanity life pain suffering Wallace Stegner
7e66bde See what's inside a drop of water. The whole seed of the universe. Come, come. See what's inside a drop of blood. The composition of life. It's all there. Hate as well. We approach the mystery of life, but it's impossible to understand the mystery of hate. The kind of hate that causes people not only to kill, but to want to erase you from the census of births. I have to concentrate on that mystery. Read everything there is. It has to be in a drop of blood. It has to have its chemistry. life war Manuel Rivas
8f1ca73 The faith in an afterlife, however much our reason ridicules it, very modestly extends our faith that each moment of our consciousness will be followed by another - that a coherent matrix has been prepared for this precious self of ours. The guarantee that our self enjoys an intended relation to the outer world is most, if not all, of what we ask from religion. God is the self projected onto reality by our natural and necessary optimism. He is the not-me personified. faith god life self-consciousness John Updike
4dc40a3 Realize that God uses the fires of life to purify your faith, to shape you into Christ's image, and to cause you to love Him...even more! christian faith fire god image life love pure realize shape Elizabeth George
95355b7 She had refused to draw the monster. She feared to give him form. christina-dodd fear life monster suspense thriller virtue-falls Christina Dodd
75f7b54 Life, I announced, is not a B picture. Well, it ain't no De Mille epic either, boss. Things'll work out, Bernie. life Lawrence Block
bf122fb Duerme, vuela, reposa: !Tambien se muere el mar! dreams life poetry Federico García Lorca
de61940 I was always moved when mean people were suddenly nice to me. It was a weakness that would lead me into some bad relationships later in life. bad canada life love montréal pg-76 relationships thirteen weakness Heather O'Neill
f8053ff But death is not easy, and life can win by simulating it. life life-and-death Iris Murdoch
982ddf2 One that society can't forgive, but I can. compassion confess forgivable friendship grace healing heartache kindness life love surrender truth unforgiven Dennis Lehane
6f2c7fb He'll have to do without me, Jamie thought, not looking back. And then clearly, as if he'd been told, he knew Grenville /could/ do without him. There was somewhere else he had to go now, somewhere else he had to be. dark death emotional life light mental-hospital sailor vampire S.E. Hinton
caefadc Every breath we draw wards off the death that constantly impinges on us.... Ultimately death must triumph, for by birth it has already become our lot and it plays with its prey only for a short while before swallowing it up. However, we continue our life with great interest and much solicitude as long as possible, just as we blow out a soap-bubble as long and as large as possible, although with the perfect certainty that it will burst. life Irvin D. Yalom
fc86fd4 God doesn't mock us. He never gives us a goal that we cannot accomplish in His strength. I want to assure you, you can glorify God, you MUST glorify God. But you have to determine deep within your heart that you're going to do it His way. god life strength Charles R. Swindoll
e9e2b24 I don't want to reject my life. I want to change my life without changing my life. life Gretchen Rubin
dc8e6ee Pardon me, but my father says that it is a lie that Americans have everything. You have no sheep, no goats, no trees, no oil, no vines, no wine, not even chickens. He asks, 'What kind of life is that?' He says, 'No wonder you don't sing or dance or recite poetry very often. culture life meaningfulness Robert Fulghum
072ab11 A funeral is like a little game, really. You have to just play along and say the right thing and behave the right way until it's over. Be pleasant but don't smile too much; be sad but don't overdo it or the family will feel worse than they already do. Be hopeful but don't let your optimism be taken as a lack of empathy or an inability to deal with the reality. Because if anybody was to be truly honest there would be a lot of arguments, finger-pointing, tears, snot, and screaming. empathy funerals honesty life optimism reality society sympathy Cecelia Ahern
b474c51 That paper-- it sits there, open at the employment section. It sits there like a war, and each small advertisement is another trench for a person to dive into. To hope and fight in. fight life struggle unemployment Markus Zusak
061851b When you see something, it can't be unseen. When you hear a sound, it can never be unheard. I know, deep down, that this evening I have learned something that can never be unlearned. And the part of my world that is altered will never be the same. life Cecelia Ahern
6e63d8b Are you looking at a dead man now? life Markus Zusak
7c4f66d You do not give your precious body to the billy clubs of Birmingham sheriffs, nor to the insidious activity of the streets. black-power blackness inspirational inspirational-quotes life life-lessons life-lessons-quotes living living-life living-now people-of-color strength Ta-Nehisi Coates
91ff8bc It is a mere cowardice to seek safety in negations. No character becomes strong in that way. You will be thrown into the world some day and then every rational satisfaction your nature that you deny now will assault like a savage appetite. decisions emotions fear inconfidence life rationalism safety weakness George Eliot
4541ade She thought of all the people in all the paintings she had seen that day, not just Father's, in all the paintings of the world, in fact. Their eyes, the particular turn of a head, their loneliness or suffering or grief was borrowed by an artist to be seen by other people throughout the years who would never see them face to face. People who would be that close to her, she thought, a matter of a few arms' lengths, looking, looking, and they would never know her. life painting Susan Vreeland
270c760 I was beginning to understand something I couldn't articulate. It was a jazzy feeling in my chest, a fluttering, a kind of buzzing in my brain. Warmth. Life. The circulation of blood. Sanguinity. I don't know. I understood the enormous risk of telling the truth, how the telling could result in every level of hell reigning down on you, your skin scorched to the bone and then bone to ash and then nothing but a lingering odour of shame and decomposition, but now I was also beginning to understand the new and alien feeling of taking the risk and having the person on the other end of the telling, the listener, say: Bad shit at home? You guys are running away? Yeah, I said. I understand, said, Noehmi. feeling irma-voth life literature miriam-toews novel Miriam Toews
e1f5874 Listen! I know it's not right to talk. Better to set an example, better to just start - I have already started - and - and can one really be unhappy? Oh, what do my grief and my misfortune matter if I have the strength to be happy? You know, I don't understand how one can walk by a tree and not be happy at the sight of it! Or to speak with a man and not be happy in loving him? Oh, it's just that I can't express it - and yet there are so many things at every stop so beautiful that even the most desolate of men find them beautiful. Look at a child, look at Go's sunrise, look at the grass, how it grows, look into eyes that look at you and love you - life love meaning-in-life Fyodor Dostoyevsky
9da2d31 As humans we are inclined to feel that life must have a point. We have plans and aspirations and desires. We want to take constant advantage of all the intoxicating existence we've been endowed with. But what's life to a cell? Yet it's impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours - perhaps even stronger. Life just wants to be. desires existence history humans impulse life Bill Bryson
ffd5ba2 But the characteristic that is truly special about our species...[is] our ability to model our world and understand both it and where we fit into its overall scheme.... human-life life Arthur C. Clarke
d120831 Long ago the signalling had become no more than a meaningless ritual, now maintained by an animal which had forgotten to learn and a robot which had never known to forget. intelligence life Arthur C. Clarke
d3883a3 The real troubles with living is that living is so banal. life living James Baldwin
41f7e15 For years of our lives the days pass waywardly, featureless, without meaning, without particular happiness or unhappiness. Then, like turning over a tapestry when you have only known the back of it, there is spread the pattern. life patterns Jane Gardam
46e2e79 ...it had probably been a long enough life. Yet suddenly it all seemed like an illusion, a dream that had happened to someone else. What an odd thing existence was. illusion life life-is-a-dream reflection Kate Atkinson
cfbea94 Of all the women he knew, she had meant the most; and was the one person in his life he felt he had missed, in some ways. felt he-knew his-life life love love-of-his-life meant-the-most missed one-person only-love women Larry McMurtry
bc27c28 Life is a long failure of understanding, a long, mistaken shutting of the heart. heart life mistaken shutting understanding Patricia Highsmith
fd0b93e Fear doesn't stop a warrior. It pushes you further. life Chloe Neill
b76510d For marriage has nothing in common with love. marriage makes for security; love makes only for suffering. On the other hand, love could be so distilled, spun so fine as to implicate third and fourth persons, as to take up three or four exciting acts in a play. life love marriage nobel-prize quotes Günter Grass
01ef7bc All of one's life is a struggle towards that; the narrow path between freedom and belonging. I have sometimes sacrificed freedom in order to belong, but more often I have given up all hope of belonging. freedom life Jeanette Winterson
8677916 Part fact part fiction is what life is. And it is always a cover story. I wrote my way out. life writers Jeanette Winterson
3ec0d1c Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently. life perspective truths Jeanette Winterson
5eb9e81 Pursuing happiness, and I did, and I still do, is not at all the saem as being happy - which I think is fleeting, dependent on circumstances, and a bit bovine. If the sun is shining, stand in it - yes, yes, yes. Happy times are great, but happy times pass - they have to - because time passes. The pursuit of happiness is more elusive; it is life-long, and it is not goal-centred. What you are pursuing is meaning - a meaningful life. life Jeanette Winterson
738e2b8 "She glanced around at the tombstones. "You're surrounded by death here. Way too depressing. You really might want to think about getting another job." "You see death and sadness in these sunken patches of dirt, I see lives lived fully and the good deeds of past generations influencing the future ones." caretaker death good-deeds graveyard inspiration life tombstones David Baldacci
83b91bf Although I am unconvinced that I desire life, I am not yet ready to embrace death. fate life living Charles Stross
5915692 The way you remember or dream about your loved ones - the ones who are gone - you can't stop their endings from jumping ahead of the rest of their stories. You don't get to choose the chronology of what you dream, or the order of events in which you remember someone. In your mind - in your dreams, in your memories - sometimes the story begins with the epilogue. death end family friends inspiration life love memories memory nostalgia relationships thoughts John Irving
a158b28 And just as music is the space between notes, just as the stars are beautiful because of the space between them, just as the sun strikes raindrops at a certain angle and throws a prism of color across the sky - so the space where I exist, and want to keep existing, and to be quite frank I hope I die in, is exactly this middle distance: where despair struck pure otherness and created something sublime. life life-and-death Donna Tartt
8b99f5c He began to see the truth, that Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark. In the Creation of Ea, which is the oldest song, it is said, 'Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky. coming-of-age death evil fear good-and-evil life manhood self-knowledge Ursula K. Le Guin
7a2a722 Y lo que, por el contrario, me sucede a mi en las raras horas de placer, lo que para mi es delicia, suceso, elevacion y extasis, eso no lo conoce, ni lo ama, ni lo busca el mundo mas que si acaso en las novelas; en la vida, lo considera una locura. Y en efecto, si el mundo tiene razon, si esta musica de los cafes, estas diversiones en masa, estos hombres americanos contentos con tan poco tienen razon, entonces soy yo el que no la tiene, entonces es verdad que estoy loco, entonces soy efectivamente el lobo estepario que tantas veces me he llamado, la bestia descarriada en un mundo que le es extrano e incomprensible, que ya no encuentra ni su hogar, ni su ambiente, ni su alimento. existencialismo existentialism hesse life lobo lobo-estepario modern-life vida-moderna Hermann Hesse
9a6b936 Now, he thought, since all these most easily perishing things have slipped from me again, now I'm standing here under the sun again just as I have been standing here a little child, nothing is mine, I have no abilities, there is nothing I could bring about, I have learned nothing. How wondrous is this! Now, that I'm no longer young, that my hair is already half gray, that my strength is fading, now I'm starting again at the beginning and as a child! Again, he had to smile. Yes, his fate had been strange! Things were going downhill with him, and now he was again facing the world void and naked and stupid. But he could not feel sad about this, no, he even felt a great urge to laugh, to laugh about himself, to laugh about this strange, foolish world. life Hermann Hesse
9bb5cb6 What are you doing?' Hugh moaned as I stepped out of the dressing room. 'That's three pairs of culottes you'll own now.' All I could say in my defense was 'Maybe I have a busy life. life David Sedaris
38dfe1d In fact, I can't think of much I'd like better than for him to step into the room right now, glasses fogged and smelling of damp wool, shaking the rain from his hair like an old dog and saying: 'Dickie, my boy, what you got for a thirsty old man to drink tonight? donna-tartt the-secret-history horror humor life ocd Donna Tartt
abfe21b People who think dying is the worst thing don't know a thing about life. life life-lessons Sue Monk Kidd
e7996dc Has God created millions of people over tens of thousands of years who are going to spend eternity in anguish? Can God do this, or even allow this, and still claim to be a loving God? Does God punish people for thousands of years with infinite, eternal torment for things they did in their few finite years of life? death god hell life religion Rob Bell
abc4d93 Because we are human we have a long childhood, and one of the jobs of that childhood is to sculpt our brains. We have years--about twelve of them--to draw outlines of the shape we want our sculpted brain to take. Some of the parts must be sculpted at critical times. One cannot, after all, carve out toes unless he knows where the foot will go. We need tools to do some of the fine work. The tools are our childhood experiences. And I'm convinced that one of those experiences must be children's books. And they must be experienced within the early years of our long childhood. brains childhood children children-s-books children-s-lit children-s-literature development experiences life life-experiences literature reading E.L. Konigsburg
f9aa364 For we die every day; oblivion thrives Not on dry thighbones but on blood-ripe lives, And our best yesterdays are now foul piles Of crumpled names, phone numbers and foxed files. life time Vladimir Nabokov
07830f5 If we had directions, it wouldn't be life. It would be an assignment. Grunt work. life life-and-living James Patterson
6a8a9eb When one grows older one learns that happiness--complete and unadulterated happiness--comes only in moments, and must be recognized and savored to the full, for even in the happiest life, the complete joy is not always present. joy life Victoria Holt
65cd5c6 I know now it is children who accept life; grown people cover it up and pretend it is different with drinks. children drinking life Rumer Godden
5237405 [W]hat makes earth feel like Hell is our expectation that it should feel like Heaven. heaven-and-hell hell life life-and-death Chuck Palahniuk
0677a76 If you won't share my life with me, maybe you'll share my death. death life pygmy Chuck Palahniuk
132249d When you understand that what you're telling is just a story. It isn't happening anymore. When you realize the story you're telling is just words, when you can just crumble it up and throw your past in the trash can, then we'll figure out who you're going to be. life Chuck Palahniuk
08cf036 I don't want to have these burdens. But I can't bear to turn them over to anyone else, either. Because, despite all the work, I like being in control of my own life. control life Robin Hobb
9d74e3a One day, I will look up and all the people I know will be dead or abroad. life memories Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
f5334e0 To study the self is to forget the self. Maybe if you sat enough zazen, your sense of being a solid, singular self would dissolve and you could forget about it. What a relief. You could just hang out happily as part of an open-ended quantum array. japanese life meditation physics quantum-mechanics science sense-of-self spirituality Ruth Ozeki
77b66db And that fear I'd felt, the disembodying confusion, seemed to be a drug I was now addicted to, because moving through the ordinary world- watching CNN, reading the Times, walking to Sant Ambroeus to have a coffee at the bar- made me feel exhausted, even depressed. Perhaps I was suffering from the same problem as the man who'd sailed around the world and now on land, facing his farmhouse, his wife and kids, understood that the constancy of home stretching out before him like a dry flat field was infinitely more terrifying than any violent squall with thirty-foot swells. fear life settling Marisha Pessl
356d30f He sat down and collected his thoughts. They were quite easy to collect, because there weren't very many of them, and they all concerned the same subject--what a burden his life was. life thinking thoughts troubles Philip Pullman
d1adb32 Kids must spend half their lives throwing things at the ducks in Regent's Park. How come he managed to pick a duck that pathetic? humor life Nick Hornby
9ddb79d Not always getting what you want, but sometimes getting what you need. christmas first-kiss holiday life love my-true-love-gave-to-me winter Stephanie Perkins
99503b3 Things didn't turn out the way they were suppsed to, but qhat can you do? You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it. life Yann Martel
d34eb94 Das wirkliche Leben, meint er, sei ja so anders... Jedenfalls das seine, denkt er: da erkennt man keinen klaren Ablauf und keinen roten Faden, da zerrinnt es einfach, ohne Abschnitt und ohne Tat, die Leidenschaft zerrinnt in eine Stimmung, und auch die Entschlusse sind wie Sand, der leise durch die Finger rinnt, immer wieder nimmt man eine neue Handvoll, und wenn man sie aufmacht, ist wieder nichts darin geblieben, man ist verzweifelt, und auch das zerrinnt, wie die Hoffnung und der Jubel und der Schmerz und alles, wie das ganze Leben. life pain schmerz Max Frisch
28c76d4 "Nothing expresses Kafka's innermost sense of self more profoundly than his lapidary definition of "writing as a form of prayer": he was a writer. Not a man who wrote, but one to whom writing was the only form of being, the only means of defying death in life." -- kafka life writers writing Ernst Pawel
1ee3893 Things are not always how they seem. christmas first-kiss holiday life love my-true-love-gave-to-me winter Stephanie Perkins
38c9be7 If you like someone, you should have to make an effort. christmas first-kiss holiday life love my-true-love-gave-to-me winter Stephanie Perkins
488deab Indoors herself, partaking of tea with old Mrs Butterworth, she reflected that it is impossible to foretell the future with any degree of accuracy, that it is impossible to rehearse life. A fault in the scenery, a face in the audience, an irruption of the audience onto the stage, and all our carefully planned gestures mean nothing, or mean too much. em-forster forster life E.M. Forster
7d70fe1 Do you think I lie to you? No. But you think I might lie to you about dying. Yes. Okay. I might. But we're not dying. Okay. lies life Cormac McCarthy
05e28b0 "Why is it when people are proud of me that my life sucks?" "Because growing up means making tough choices, and doing the right thing doesn't necessarily mean doing the thing that feels good." -- life mrs-collins noah-hutchins right-thing sucks Katie McGarry
3e03b2f Meaning. If you're going to die, you want to find meaning in life. You want to connect the dots. death find franny-billingsley life meaning Franny Billingsley
a9ee426 She says screens are the cigarettes of our age. They're toxic, and we're only going to realize the damage they're doing when it's too late. bully family friendship funny life starbucks sunglasses Sophie Kinsella
ab2514e Don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore. life ray-bradbury self-help Ray Bradbury
1dc2fd1 It actually felt harder, not easier, to be with people. The toughest challenge was my face; maintaining a 'normal' expression was utterly exhausting. life love moving-on sad wife Marian Keyes
7db365b Why did people always get tangled up with other people? Why put ourselves through this shit? life J.D. Robb
28529d9 I am a sacrifice bound with cords to the horns of the world's rock altar, waiting for worms. I take a deep breath, I open my eyes. Looking, I see there are worms in the horns of the altar like live maggots in amber, there are shells of worms in the rock and moths flapping at my eyes. A wind from no place rises. A sense of the real exults me; the cords loosen: I walk on my way. life purpose Annie Dillard
b8e2ac6 "An acre of poppies and a forest of spruce boggle no one's mind. Even ten square miles of wheat gladdens the hearts of most . . . No, in the plant world, and especially among the flowering plants, fecundity is not an assault on human values. Plants are not our competitors; they are our prey and our nesting materials. We are no more distressed at their proliferation than an owl is at a population explosion among field mice . . . but in the animal world things are different, and human feelings are different . . . Fecundity is anathema only in the animal. "Acres and acres of rats" has a suitably chilling ring to it that is decidedly lacking if I say, instead, "acres and acres of tulips"." gross human life nature page-164 perspective plants Annie Dillard
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