“There’s a Japanese phrase that I like: koi no yokan. It doesn’t mean love at first sight. It’s closer to love at second sight. It’s the feeling when you meet someone that you’re going to fall in love with them. Maybe you don’t love them right away, but it’s inevitable that you will.”
“Maybe part of falling in love with someone else is also falling in love with yourself.”
“We are capable of big lives. A big history. Why settle? Why choose the practical thing, the mundane thing? We are born to dream and make the things we dream about.”
“Sometimes your world shakes so hard, it's difficult to imagine that everyone else isn't feeling it too.”
“Stars are important," I say, laughing.
"Sure, but why not more poems about the sun? The sun is also a star, and it's our most important one. That alone should be worth a poem or two.”
“I don't believe in love."
"It's not a religion," he says. "It exists whether you believe in it or not.”
“I didn't know you this morning, and now I don't remember not knowing you.”
“The thing about falling is you don't have any control on your way down.”
“Growing up and seeing your parents' flaws is like losing your religion. I don't believe in God anymore. I don't believe in my father either.”
“How can you trust something that can end as suddenly as it begins?”
“We have big, beautiful brains. We invent things that fly. Fly. We write poetry. You probably hate poetry, but it’s hard to argue with ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate’ in terms of sheer beauty. We are capable of big lives. A big history. Why settle? Why choose the practical thing, the mundane thing? We are born to dream and make the things we dream about.”
“I wonder if she realizes how passionate she is about not being passionate.”
“People just want to believe. Otherwise they would have to admit that life is just a random series of good and bad things that happen until one day you die.”
“The trouble with getting your hopes too far up is: it's a long way down.”
“People make mistakes all the time. Small ones, like you get in the wrong checkout line. The one with the lady with a hundred coupons and a checkbook.
Sometimes you make medium-sized ones. You go to medical school instead of pursuing you passion.
Sometimes you make big ones.
You give up.”
“I think all the good parts of us are connected on some level. The part that shares the last double chocolate chip cookie or donates to charity or gives a dollar to a street musician or becomes a candy striper or cries at Apple commercials or says I love you or I forgive you. I think that's God. God is the connection of the very best parts of us.”
“It's not up to you to help other people fit you into a box.”
“I kiss him to get him to stop talking. If he keeps talking I will love him, and I don't want to love him. I really don't. As strategies go, it's not my finest. Kissing is just another way of talking except without the words.”
“Observable Fact: I don't believe in magic.
Observable Fact: We are magic.”
“I love this part of getting to know someone. How every new piece of information, every new expression, seems magical. I can't imagine this becoming old and boring. I can't imagine not wanting to hear what she has to say.”
“Do you think it's funny that both of our favourite memories are about the people we like the least now?" I ask.
"Maybe that's why we dislike them," she says. "The distance between who they were and who they are is so wide, we have no hope of getting them back.”
“We're kindling amid lightning strikes, a lit match and dry wood, fire danger signs and a forest waiting to be burned.”
“It’s hard trying to hold on to a place that doesn’t want you.”
“Some people exist in your life to make it better. Some people exist to make it worse.”
“The universe stops and waits for us.”
“If people who were actually born here had to prove they were worthy enough to live in America, this would be a much less populated country.”
“I know there’s no such thing as meant-to-be, and yet here I am wondering if maybe I’ve been wrong.”
“Denigration afflicted our vaunted ideals long ago, but such inflictions are difficult to measure, to rise up and point a finger to this place, this moment, and say: here, my friends, this was where our honour, our integrity died. The affliction was too insipid, too much a product of our surrendering mindful regard and diligence. The meanings of words lost their precision – and no-one bothered taking to task those who cynically abused those words to serve their own ambitions, their own evasion of personal responsibility. Lies went unchallenged, lawful pursuit became a sham, vulnerable to graft, and justice itself became a commodity, mutable in imbalance. Truth was lost, a chimera reshaped to match agenda, prejudices, thus consigning the entire political process to a mummer’s charade of false indignation, hypocritical posturing and a pervasive contempt for the commonry. Once subsumed, ideals and the honour created by their avowal can never be regained, except, alas, by outright, unconstrained rejection, invariably instigated by the commonry, at the juncture of one particular moment, one single event, of such brazen injustice that revolution becomes the only reasonable response. Consider this then a warning. Liars will lie, and continue to do so, even beyond being caught out. They will lie, and in time, such liars will convince themselves, will in all self-righteousness divest the liars of culpability. Until comes a time when one final lie is voiced, the one that can only be answered by rage, by cold murder, and on that day, blood shall rain down every wall of this vaunted, weaning society. Impeached Guild Master’s Speech Semel Fural of the Guild of Sandal-Clasp Makers”
“You cannot hide from danger. Death floats on the air, creeps through the window, comes with the handshake of a stranger. If we stop living because we fear death, then we have already died.
-Raistlin Majere”
“Shall I tell you why young men love war? . . . In peace, there are a hundred questions with a thousand answers! In war, there is only one question with one right answer. . . . Going to war makes you a man. It is emotionally exciting and morally restful.”
“Perhaps some of us will have learned enough to make a difference, to influence things for the better, to wait until the moment is right, and then act.
And despite appearances, despite all indications to the contrary, despite reticence for fear of what others might think, I still felt we all possessed this quiet belief.
A quiet belief in angels.”
“I'm not what they expect. About once a year I get discovered, get called a diamond in the rough.”
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