Everything Beautiful Began After

You were unsure which pain is worse -- the shock of what happened or the ache for what never will.

For those who are lost, there will always be cities that feel like home.

Loneliness is like being the only person left alive in the universe, except that everyone else is still here.

The passions we cannot control are the ones that define us.

But those who seek only reassurance from life will never be more than tourists—seeing everything and trying to possess what can only be felt. Beauty is the shadow of imperfection.

To love again, you must not discard what has happened to you, but take from it the strength you'll need to carry on.

We see in others what we want and what we fear.

Death is the most sophisticated form of beauty, and the most difficult to accept.

Love is life but longer

Maybe happiness is just finding the right people at the right time." "But how do you find them?" ... "But say you do find the right people - how do you love them without smothering them?...How do you not suffocate them with all the love you've built up in their absence?" "You don't. And that's the whole point - it works in a way it just wouldn't with other people.

. . . truth is just a lie that everyone believes.

Everything you are afraid of will never happen. It’s the events you cannot conceive of that happen.

Language is like drinking from one's own reflection in still water. We only take from it what we are at the time.

And he is enchanted by the beauty of small things: hot coffee, wind through an open window, the tapping of rain, a passing bicycle, the desolation of snow on a winter's day.

The love of a man is like a drop of color into something clear.

You are in the place that was meant for you. Everything had to be arranged like this to get you here.

The beauty of artifacts is in how they reassure us we’re not the first to die.

And you realize that you've finally grown up. That youth has finished. In its place you have knowledge, which you must carry. You must also learn to accept that death is the most sophisticated form of beauty, and the most difficult to accept. From this moment on, you will always be conscious of what you are doing. And any future feeling, whether joy or grief or excitement or regret, will come now with an awareness of its own end - with shadows you never noticed in youth. Variation of feeling will become depth of feeling. And you will appreciate tiny things - and step with the confidence of someone overjoyed to know he is doomed.

. . . a stiff breeze had claimed Athens, filling bedrooms, rearranging the tops of desks, touching everything and nothing, as if searching for something it no longer recognized.

But how do you find the right people-how do you love without smothering them? How do you not suffocate them with all the love you’ve built up in their absence?

Your grief is something to be admired – the pain of severance. A scar where something used to be.

Beauty is the shadow of imperfection.

adrift in private thoughts, anchored to the world by unfamiliar shadows.

Royal Young's writing is that rare blend of irony and beauty.

Humans may come and go—but the thread of hope is like a rope we pull ourselves up with.

The telephone about to ring.