But I digress. I've been clearing out some photos & I've found so many quotes I've taken pictures of, but have yet to post up. So here goes!
(Also, my Iceland trip post is in the works, so stay tuned!)
The Flavours of Love, Dorothy Koomson
Revelations this huge should be delivered straight away - you can comfort and cosset the blow afterwards, the preamble takes the listener to all sorts of places they don't need to visit before fully receiving the news.
Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through is now like something from the distant past. We're so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past, like ancients stars that have burnt out, no longer in orbit about our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about every day, too many new things to learn... But still, no matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone.
And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it may be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your own hands, your own blood and the blood of others.
And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.
Where Rainbows End, Cecilia Ahern
Anyway, my point is, I don't want to be one of those easily forgotten people, so important at the time, so special, so influential and so treasured, yet years later just a vague face and a distant memory.
Lone Wolf, Jodi Picoult
Hope and reality lie in inverse proportions inside the walls of a hospital... Doubt is like dye. Once it spreads into the fabric of excuses you've woven, you'll never get rid of the stain.
The Woman He Loved Before, Dorothy Koomson
It's good to have things that you love. They keep you grounded, make you realise how much you have to lose. It's good to love people. But if you don't have anyone you can truly give your heart to, then having something that means the world to you can often act as a good stand-in.
It soon became apparent that happiness shouldn't be a destination in your life. It should be part of the journey of your life... Putting everything on hold to achieve the one thing you think will make you happy will actually mean that you're miserable along the way to getting there, and when you get there, you might find that the thing you wanted doesn't make you as happy as you thought it would. Or worse, you've completely forgotten how to be happy.
Will Grayson, Will Grayson, John Green
Love is always a miracle, everywhere, every time. But for us, it's a little different. I don't want to say it's more miraculous. It is, though.
When you date someone, you have the markers along the way, right: You kiss, you have The Talk, you say the Three Little Words, you sit on a swing set and break up. You can plot the points on a graph. And you check up with each other along the way: Can I do this? If I say this will you say it back?
But with friendship, there's nothing like that. Being in a relationship, that's something you choose. Being friends, that's just something you are.
I'd pick you. Fuck it, I do pick you. I want you to come over to my house in twenty years with your dude and your adopted kids and I want our fucking kids to hang out and I want to, like, drink wine and talk about the Middle East or whatever the fuck we're gonna want to do when we're old. We've been friends too long to pick, but if we could pick, I'd pick you.
I just think if you don't say the honest thing, sometimes the honest thing never becomes true.
I think about how much depends upon a best friend. When you wake up in the morning you swing your legs out of bed and you put your feet on the ground and you stand up. You don't scoot to the edge of the bed to make sure the floor is there. The floor is always there. Until it's not.
I will admit there's a certain degree of giving a fuck that goes into not giving a fuck: By saying you don't care if the world falls apart, in some small way you're saying you want it to stay together, on your terms.
When things break, it's not the actual breaking that prevents them from getting back together again. It's because a little piece gets lost - the two remaining ends couldn't fit together even if they wanted to. The whole shape has changed.
Hang me
like a dead rose
Preserve me
and my petals won't fall
until you touch them
and I dissolve.
Not all flowers
depend on light
to grow.
You like someone who can't like you back because unrequited love can be survived in a way that once-requited love cannot.
I feel like my life is so scattered right now. Like it's all these small pieces of paper and someone's turned on the fan. But talking to you makes me feel like the fan's been turned off for a little bit. Like things could actually make sense. You completely unscatter me, and I appreciate that so much.
Keeper of the Light, Diane Chamberlain
How would it feel, paying someone to ease the pain of a body suffering from neglect?
Sing You Home, Jodi Picoult
Everyone who's gay has had the unfortunate circumstance of falling for someone who's not. The first time it happens, you think I can change her. I know her better than she knows herself. And invariably, you are left with a broken relationship and an even more broken heart. The straight equivalent, in a way, is the woman who's sure that the guy she loves - the one who beats her every night - will eventually stop. The bottom line in both cases is that people don't change; that no matter how charming you are and how fiercely you love, you cannot turn a person into someone she's not.
Believe me, being gay is not a choice. No one would choose to make life harder than it has to be, and no matter how confident and comfortable a gay person is, he and she can't control the thoughts of others.
Every life has a soundtrack... If you ask me, music is the language of memory.
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Jamie Ford
But now, deep down, Henry wanted to tell his son everything. How seemingly unfair life was in retrospect, and how remarkable it was that they'd all just accepted what they had and made the best of it.
But choosing to lovingly care for her was like steering a plane into a mountain as gently as possible. The crash is imminent; it's how you spend your time on the way down that counts.
But in the end, each of them occupied a solitary grave. Alone forever. It didn't matter who your neighbours were. They didn't talk back.
How to Fall in Love, Cecilia Ahern
I understood everyone's confusion and inability to believe me. It had a lot to do with how well I had hidden my unhappiness and it had everything to do with my timing.
Before I Fall, Lauren Oliver
I've never really though about it before, but it's a miracle how many kinds of light there are in the world, how many skies: the pale brightness of spring, when it feels like the whole world is blushing; the lush bright boldness of a July noon; purple storm skies and a green queasiness just before lightning strikes and crazy multicoloured sunsets that look like someone's acid trip.
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Also:
My poor heart is sentimental
Not made of wood
I got it bad and that ain't good
- Duke Ellington, 1941
The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
- Nelson Mandela
All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.
- T. E. Lawrence
That's all for now heh. Just rows & rows of quotes. Currently working on my Iceland trip video & post. Hopefully I should be done soon!
Till then! :)
