What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.
This is love, she thought, isn’t it? When you notice someone’s absence and hate that absence more than anything? More, even, than you love his presence?
…the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again.
That is their mystery and their magic.
People aren’t interested in the truth, Dafar. They’re interested in what keeps them safe. They’re interested in being looked after. They’re interested in a tale being spun… Mighty men have moments of great despair that common people do not want to know about.
God! ask me not to record your wonders,
I admit the stars and the suns
And the countless worlds.
But I have measured their distances
And weighed them and discovered their substances.
I have devised wings for the air,
And keels for water,
And horses of iron for the earth.
I have lengthened the vision you gave me a million times,
And the hearing you gave me a million times,
I have leaped over space with speech,
And taken fire for light out of the air.
I have built great cities and bored through the hills,
And bridged majestic waters.
I have written the Iliad and Hamlet;
And I have explored your mysteries,
And searched for you without ceasing,
And found you again after losing you
In hours of weariness—
And I ask you:
How would you like to create a sun
And the next day have the worms
Slipping in and out between your fingers?
Hata ucheze kwenye maji, wenye husda na wewe watasema unawatimulia vumbi.
Some people bring out the worst in you, others bring out the best, and then there are those remarkably rare, addictive ones who just bring out the most. Of everything. They make you feel so alive that you’d follow them straight into hell, just to keep getting your fix.
Sometimes beautiful things come into our lives out of nowhere. We can’t always understand them, but we have to trust in them. I know you want to question everything, but sometimes it pays to just have a little faith.
Your love, it is my truth.
I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.
We mustn’t linger; it is easy to get lost in memories.
What are men to rocks and mountains?
What truly is logic? Who decides reason? My quest has taken me to the physical, the metaphysical, the delusional, and back. I have made the most important discovery of my career – the most important discovery of my life. It is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logic or reasons can be found. I am only here tonight because of you.
The closer a man approaches tragedy the more intense is his concentration of emotion upon the fixed point of his commitment, which is to say the closer he approaches what in life we call fanaticism.
I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together.
Acceptance is when you can look back and say, hey, I may not be okay with the fact that that happened, and I may not ever be, but there are new things in my mind and heart. New things to take my energy and attention. Things that actually deserve it. Things that don’t force me into having to accept anything I don’t want to or move on. Acceptance is tomorrow. Even if the pain is still there, you realize it may always be, and somehow, that’s okay.
When you start to know someone, all their physical characteristics start to disappear. You begin to dwell in their energy, recognize the scent of their skin. You see only the essence of the person, not the shell. That’s why you can’t fall in love with beauty. You can lust after it, be infatuated by it, want to own it. You can love it with your eyes and your body but not your heart. And that’s why, when you really connect with a person’s inner self, any physical imperfections disappear, become irrelevant.
I am strong because I am weak. I am beautiful because I know my flaws. I am a lover because I am a fighter. I am fearless because I have been afraid. I am wise because I have been foolish. & I can laugh because I’ve known sadness.
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
You can spend minutes, hours, days, weeks, or even months over-analyzing a situation; trying to put the pieces together, justifying what could’ve, would’ve happened… or you can just leave the pieces on the floor and move the f*ck on.
I ain’t much, baby—but I’m all I’ve got.
The poor disgust us because they are us, shorn of our illusions. They show us what we’d look like without our fine clothes, how we’d smell without perfume.
Don’t think about what can happen in a month. Don’t think about what can happen in a year. Just focus on the 24 hours in front of you and do what you can to get closer to where you want to be!
I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.
Sometimes the place you are used to is not the place you belong. You belong where you believe you belong. Where is that for you?
The size of your dreams must always exceed your current capacity to achieve them. If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.
Nobody ever wrote down a plan to be broke, fat, lazy, or stupid. Those things are what happen when you don’t have a plan.
We are not perfect human beings, nor do we have to pretend to be, but it is necessary for us to be the best version of ourselves we can be.
He wants to put his story next to hers.
The only thing I did to end up here was put the work in.