Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.
There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I’m likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.
Life is not a spectator sport. Win, lose or draw, the game is in progress, whether we want it to be, or not. So, go ahead, argue with the refs, change the rules… cheat a little, take a break… and tend to your wounds. But play. Play. Play hard. Play fast. Play loose and free. Play as if there’s no tomorrow.
I owe whatever I was in life to your hope that would not give me up, to your love that saw me still as good.
There was just such a man when I was young—an Austrian who invented a new way of life and convinced himself that he was the chap to make it work. He tried to impose his reformation by the sword, and plunged the civilized world into misery and chaos. But the thing which this fellow had overlooked, my friend, was that he had a predecessor in the reformation business, called Jesus Christ. Perhaps we may assume that Jesus knew as much as the Austrian did about saving people. But the odd thing is that Jesus did not turn the disciples into strom troopers, burn down the Temple at Jerusalem, and fix the blame on Pontius Pilate. On the contrary, he made it clear that the business of the philosopher was to make ideas available, and not to impose them on people.
Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be returned, how much more simple life would be. One could plod through the Siberian salt mines of existence without being bothered about happiness. Unfortunately happiness is there. There is always the chance (about eight hundred and fifty to one) that another heart will come to mine. I can’t help hoping and keeping faith and loving beauty. Quite frequently I am not so miserable as it would be wise to be.
I like to tell myself that I wasn’t really in love with you but even on the months I forget to pay my credit card bills, I still remember to check your horoscope.
I read once that the ancient Egyptians had fifty words for sand & the Eskimos had a hundred words for snow. I wish I had a thousand words for love, but all that comes to mind is the way you move against me while you sleep & there are no words for that.
When we think that something is going to bring us pleasure, we really don’t know what’s going to happen. When we think something is going to give us misery, we don’t know. Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all. We try to do what we think is going to help. But we don’t know. We never know if we’re going to fall flat or sit up tall. When there’s a big disappointment, we don’t know if that’s the end of the story. It may be just the beginning of a great adventure. Life is like that. We call something bad; we call it good. But really we just don’t know.
I wonder whose arms would I run and fall into if I were drunk in a room with everyone I have ever loved.
I’m gonna tell you this one from my point of view so you can put yourself in there. So the story goes: The guy falls in love with a girl the second he meets her, but it takes them a lifetime to get it together. When they do they end up on a boat, and they realise the only way they can stay together is to never go ashore. So they raise the yellow colour flag so no port would take them and they drift out to sea ’til the end. And it makes you realize there are people in your life so important that they dwarf everything else. It’s up to you to figure out who they are. If you have to give up everything else and spend the rest of your days on a boat, who are the must haves, the ones you can’t live without? Figure out your own list and then do everything you can to let them know how much they mean to you.
The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection.
What was it like to lose him?
It was like hearing every goodbye ever said to me—said all at once.
Now and then I pace my place I can’t retrace how I got here. I cheat the light to check my face, it’s slightly harder than last year. And all at once it gets hard to take, it gets hard to fake what I won’t be. Cause one of these days I’ll be born and raised.
As a kid, I would count backwards from ten and imagine at one, there would be an explosion–perhaps caused by a rogue planet crashing into Earth or some other major catastrophe. When nothing happened, I’d feel relieved and at the same time, a little disappointed. I think of you at ten; the first time I saw you. Your smile at nine and how it lit up something inside me I had thought long dead. Your lips at eight pressed against mine and at seven, your warm breath in my ear and your hands everywhere. You tell me you love me at six and at five we have our first real fight. At four we have our second and three, our third. At two you tell me you can’t go on any longer and then at one, you ask me to stay. And I am relieved, so relieved–and a little disappointed.
Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure
Most people want to save the entire world. It’s a lovely thought, and I’m not saying it’s not a noble pursuit – but it’s impossible to save everyone. You just have to pick your little corner of the world and focus your energy there. That’s the only way you will ever make a difference
Who am I, you ask? I am made from all the people I’ve encountered and all the things I have experienced. Inside, I hold the laughter of my friends, the arguments with my parents, the chattering of young children, the warmth of kind strangers and the bright night time stars. Inside, there are stitchings from cracked hearts, bitter words from heated arguments, music that gets me through and emotions I cannot convey. I am made from all these people, these moments and the universe. That is who I am.
I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people-to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it’s the effect or vice versa.
Maybe life isn’t about avoiding the bruises. Maybe it’s about collecting the scars to prove we showed up for it.
I don’t ask you to love me always like this but I ask you to remember. Somewhere inside of me there will always be the person I am tonight.
You do not get to choose the events that come your way nor the sorrows that interrupt your life. They will likely be a surprise to you, catching you off guard and unprepared. You may hold your head in your hands and lament your weak condition and wonder what you ought to do. To suffer, that is common to all. To suffer and still keep your composure, your faith, and your smile, that is remarkable. Pain will change you more profoundly than success or good fortune. Suffering shapes your perception of life, your values and priorities, and your goals and dreams. Your pain is changing you.
We are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday we’ll all be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but we won’t. And we’re just learning this fact.
No matter how long a log stays in the water, it doesn’t become a crocodile.
There isn’t time, so brief is life, for bickerings, apologies, heart burnings, callings to account. There is only time for loving, and but an instant, so to speak, for that.
There’s nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it’s sent away.
He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.
If you figure a way to live without serving a master, any master, then let the rest of us know, will you? For you’d be the first person in the history of the world.
Sometimes the healing is in the aching.
Hata inzi akiacha ujinga anaweza kutengeneza asali.
In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or to step back into safety.