John Knowles

There was no harm in taking aim, even if the target was a dream.

Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him. It is the moment when his emotions achieve their most powerful sway over him, and afterward when you say to this person "the world today" or "life" or "reality" he will assume that you mean this moment, even if it is fifty years past. The world, through his unleashed emotions, imprinted itself upon him, and he carries the stamp of that passing moment forever.

What I mean is, I love winter, and when you really love something, then it loves you back, in whatever way it has to love.

Nothing endures. Not a tree. Not love. Not even death by violence.

It seemed clear that wars were not made by generations and their special stupidities, but that wars were made instead by something ignorant in the human heart.

Sarcasm... the protest of those who are weak.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.

Love without sacrifice is like theft.

It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one. Those who have followed the assertive idiot rather than the introspective wise person have passed us some of their genes. This is apparent from a social pathology: psychopaths rally followers.

Charm is the ability to insult people without offending them; nerdiness the reverse.

Half of the people lie with their lips; the other half with their tears.

A Stoic is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.

Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking.

When you develop your opinions on the basis of weak evidence, you will have difficulty interpreting subsequent information that contradicts these opinions, even if this new information is obviously more accurate.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn II

The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more tomorrow.

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

Thus it is that no cruelty whatsoever passes by without impact. Thus it is that we always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.

It's an universal law-- intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.

Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.”

In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.

Michael Bassey Johnson

If you truly want to be respected by people you love, you must prove to them that you can survive without them.

True friends are those who came into your life, saw the most negative part of you, but are not ready to leave you, no matter how contagious you are to them.

Someone who smiles too much with you can sometime frown too much with you at your back.

Protect your good image from the eyes of negative viewers, who may look at your good appearance with an ugly fiendish eye, and ruin your positive qualities with their chemical infested tongues.

It is better to lock up your heart with a merciless padlock, than to fall in love with someone who doesn't know what they mean to you.

To be of good quality, you have to excuse yourself from the presence of shallow and callow minded individuals.

Buy a gift for a dog, and you'll be amazed at the way it will dance and swerve its tail, but if don't have anything to offer to it, it won't even recognize your arrival; such are the attributes of fake friends.

George Saunders

Don't be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die, world without end, amen.

Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.

That luminous part of you that exists beyond personality–your soul, if you will–is as bright and shining as any that has ever been....Clear away everything that keeps you separate from this secret luminous place. Believe it exists, come to know it better, nurture it, share its fruits tirelessly.

Humor is what happens when we're told the truth quicker and more directly than we're used to.

It was that impossible thing: happiness that does not wilt to reveal the thin shoots of some new desire rising from within it.

Fuck concepts. Don't be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die, world without end, amen.

Jenny Han

Moments, when lost, can't be found again. They're just gone.

It's the imperfections that make things beautiful.

When someone's been gone a long time, at first you save up all the things you want to tell them. You try to keep track of everything in your head. But it's like trying to hold on to a fistful of sand: all the little bits slip out of your hands, and then you're just clutching air and grit.

I will never look at you in the same way ever again. I'll never be that girl again. The girl who comes running back every time you push her away, the girl who loves you anyway.

You'd rather make up a fantasy version of somebody in your head than be with a real person.

He didn’t give me flowers or candy. He gave me the moon and the stars. Infinity.

Love is scary: it changes; it can go away. That's the part of the risk. I don't want to be scared anymore.

How do you regret one of the best nights of your entire life? You don't. You remember every word, every look. Even when it hurts, you still remember.

People come in and out of your life. For a time they are your world; they are everything. And then one day they’re not. There’s no telling how long you will have them near.

And no matter what you do or how hard you try, you can’t stop
yourself from dreaming.

In the dark you can feel really close to a person. You can say whatever you want.

Og Mandino

I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.

Remind thyself, in the darkest moments, that every failure is only a step toward success, every detection of what is false directs you toward what is true, every trial exhausts some tempting form of error, and every adversity will only hide, for a time, your path to peace and fulfillment.

Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.

Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do so with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.

Your only limitations are those you set up in your mind, or permit others to set up for you.

A smile remains the most inexpensive gift I can bestow on anyone and yet its powers can vanquish kingdoms.

Becca Fitzpatrick

You smell good, too,” said Patch
It’s called a shower.” I was staring straight ahead. When he didn’t answer, I turned sideways. “Soap. Shampoo. Hot water.”
Naked. I know the drill.

Say 'provoking' again. Your mouth looks provocative when you do.

Keep in mind that people change, but the past doesn't.

I don't go out with strangers," I said.
"Good thing I do. I'll pick you up at five.

All this time I've hated myself for it. I thought I'd given it up for nothing. But if I hadn't fallen, I wouldn't have met you.

Susanna Kaysen

Suicide is a form of murder - premeditated murder. It isn't something you do the first time you think of doing it. It takes getting used to. And you need the means, the opportunity, the motive. A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.

Crazy isn't being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It's you or me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child forever.

I told her once I wasn’t good at anything. She told me survival is a talent.

I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't.

Was I ever crazy? Maybe. Or maybe life is… Crazy isn’t being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It’s you or me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child forever. They were not perfect, but they were my friends.

Actually, it was only part of myself I wanted to kill: the part that wanted to kill herself, that dragged me into the suicide debate and made every window, kitchen implement, and subway station a rehearsal for tragedy.

Scar tissue has no character. It's not like skin. It doesn't show age or illness or pallor or tan. It has no pores, no hair, no wrinkles. It's like a slip cover. It shields and disguises what's beneath. That's why we grow it; we have something to hide.

Charles Frazier

Claim your space. Draw a circle of light around it. Push back against the dark. Don't just survive. Celebrate.

He tried to name which of the deadly seven might apply, and when he failed he decided to append an eighth, regret.

What you have lost will not be returned to you; it always be lost. You’re left with only your scars to mark the void. All you can choose to do is go on, or not. But if you go on, it’s knowing you carry your scars with you.

They call this war a cloud over the land. But they made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say 'Shit, it's raining!

Ask her what she craved, and she'd get a little frantic about things like books, the woods, music. Plants and the seasons. Also freedom. Not being bought and sold by some idiot employer, not having the moments of her days valued in fractions of a dollar by somebody other than herself.

That's just pain she said. It goes eventually. And when it's gone, there's no lasting memory. Not the worst of it anyway. It fades. Our minds aren't made to hold on to the particulars of pain the way we do bliss. It's a gift God gives us, a sign of His care for us.