Daphne Kapsali > Quotes

“Dancing on the street's not crazy. What's crazy is trying to capture freedom with rules, and how we make our lives so small that there's no room for dancing.”
― Daphne Kapsali, 100 days of solitude

“Depression isn’t cool, and happy isn’t shallow, and nothing worth having is
hard. Nothing comes easy except the things that belong to you. An easy life
is what you have when you’re living the way you’re supposed to, whichever
way that might be. When you stop overcoming and just glide.”
― Daphne Kapsali, 100 days of solitude

“And my story, it seems, is woven with strands of poetry and legend and myth, encyclopaedic citations and other people’s imaginations, all coming together to shape the meaning of my days. Everything is connected.   It”
― Daphne Kapsali, 100 days of solitude

“I think all of our disappointments come from expectations, the context that we build around everything we do, blocking our view.”
― Daphne Kapsali, 100 days of solitude

“On my last walk, I arrived at the beach just as the sun was being swallowed up by the horizon, at the edge of the sea. I allowed the twin feelings of melancholy and joy, sadness and awe to settle, and waded into the water. I dunked my head and flipped over and floated on my back. Deep breaths, eyes closed. And then I had one of those moments that we promise to remember, but always forget; one of those moments that can save our lives. It was a sense of being completely alone and completely connected. Of missing everyone and everything and nothing, absolutely nothing at all. Of being utterly bereft and entirely fulfilled. And I understood, for that moment, for that life-saving moment that I’ll soon forget, what it means to be alive. That life is a balancing act between the things we long for and the things we have, between contentment and being restless for other, for more, between gratitude and self-pity, between the draw of hope and the pull of despair. And somewhere amidst all of this, amongst the chaos of conflicting emotions that make up the human psyche, at some place that’s at its centre only in a metaphorical sense, there is a state of peace. Not neutral, because the contradictions don’t cancel each other out, but balanced. A state of being aware of the feelings on either side, but not participating in them, of feeling both the draw and the pull and staying put. Of experiencing everything and nothing. That’s how I felt, for a moment, as I floated in the sea on my back. That’s what I promised myself not to forget.”
― Daphne Kapsali, For Now: Notes on living a deliberate life

“It’s a disconcerting thing, to be surprised by yourself. To allow yourself to be surprised. To step outside the margins of your story, the story you’ve been telling yourself so far, and go further. To actually get to know yourself outside the story, and be surprised. A”
― Daphne Kapsali, 100 days of solitude

“I struggle with compliments: I don’t know how to handle them, and my first instinct is to reject the nice thing that’s been said about me, to prove that it somehow isn’t so.”
― Daphne Kapsali, 100 days of solitude

“writing is a very lonely occupation. You have no colleagues, but your office space is shared with countless horrible little demons of self-doubt, and insecurity, despondency and hopelessness. And they’re not very supportive at all. It’s hard enough pouring your soul into something that may just come to absolutely nothing, without feeling that no one gives a shit, one way or the other. You need accountability, and sometimes all it takes is someone to show an interest, ask a question or two, acknowledge this scary, crazy thing you’re doing. And it keeps the demons quiet for a little while.”
― Daphne Kapsali, 100 days of solitude

“And heroes become heroes by overcoming adversity, finding their way around the obstacles strewn in their path, and triumphing over the villains.”
― Daphne Kapsali, 100 days of solitude

“We all have our dreams, but they are often sacrificed in the name of survival, of paying bills and getting mortgages and putting kids through school. They are put aside for another, better time, a “one day” when they’ll be possible; we stash them away, and they often fester and make us bitter and defensive. We are all too easy with the criticism, all too ready to dismiss other people’s dreams, to belittle them so they don’t loom over us, mocking us with their out-of-reach possibilities. We respond with fear or anger or both, because we perceive them as attacks on our own choices and the dreams we keep secret in our heads.”
― Daphne Kapsali, 100 days of solitude

“I set out to do a thing by myself. I thought it was a lonely thing, but I have never felt less lonely in my life.”
― Daphne Kapsali, 100 days of solitude

“But our realistic often borders on the cynical and though I’m guilty of that myself, I still believe that we are all of us entitled to our dreams, as ambitious as they may be, entitled to living as if they are within our reach. And we owe it to ourselves to reach.”
― Daphne Kapsali, 100 days of solitude

“I seem to have inadvertently touched upon something universal, our need to believe in dreams, and to believe that our dreams will come true.”
― Daphne Kapsali, 100 days of solitude

“We retreat into our own lives, desperate to preserve the precarious balance that we’ve achieved to keep us going, and poised to protect it against anything that threatens to disturb it, or bring it into question.”
― Daphne Kapsali, 100 days of solitude

“I’d put up a fence around me, to protect myself. ‘A fence?’ Polyna laughed. ‘That’s no fence; it’s prison bars!”
― Daphne Kapsali, 100 days of solitude

“So screw the bigger picture that we’re constantly instructed to consider in everything we do. The bigger picture means worrying about January in September. The bigger picture means having to squint to make out the details of today. It makes the little things seem even smaller, and that’s crazy,”
― Daphne Kapsali, 100 days of solitude

“Solitude is a decision we make, and loneliness might be implied, but it doesn't have to be chosen; it's just one of the interpretations available.”
― Daphne Kapsali, 100 days of solitude

“sometimes we need a little crazy to take us where we want to be.”
― Daphne Kapsali, 100 days of solitude

“When you look, it's no worse than you imagine. You might see it, but you don't have to take it with you. You can choose what you carry, and what you leave behind. We're capable of so much more happiness than we know.”
― Daphne Kapsali, 100 days of solitude

“it’s not hits that I’m after, but readers.”
― Daphne Kapsali, 100 days of solitude

“So what does it mean, to live a deliberate life? I think it means to actually live your life rather than letting it slip past or slide over you; to be a thing that happens to this world instead of just letting things happen to you or despite you. To stretch out towards the horizons and trust that your life will expand to contain you. To step into each day with eyes and mind a little more open, so that you can allow for extraordinary moments to break through the mundane, so you can notice them when they do, and to collect them so that you never have to wonder what it's all about. To be a little more open-hearted and let the good things in and give the good things out. To be deliberately positive, deliberately happy, deliberately alive to all this life brings; to put a deliberate twist on your story so that it takes you where you want to go. To never dismiss an extraordinary moment as being too tiny, and to let for now be enough, until it isn't. Until you're ready to move on and change your mind.

We're allowed.”
― Daphne Kapsali, For Now: Notes on living a deliberate life

“That there will be days like this, and there’ll be other days, better, worse, good and terrible, days when I will question everything, and days when I will slay the fiercest dragons and be crowned Queen of Sifnos. And each day will be worth as little or as much as the one before, and the one after.”
― Daphne Kapsali, 100 days of solitude

“I’ve done away with weeks and months and dates, and there’s no more Monday, or Tuesday or Sunday: there’s only ever today. And that’s where I live.”
― Daphne Kapsali, 100 days of solitude

“This is a choice I'm making, and its making me more social, not less. Loneliness isn't the price. It's the space to see other people for what they are, the space to let them in,”
― Daphne Kapsali, 100 days of solitude

“Never miss an opportunity to go to the beach. Never walk past a beautiful thing. Stop and look. Pick flowers. Pick herbs. Stare at clouds. Watch the waves rolling in and rolling out. Look at the mountains every day. Look at the horizon. Look for the beauty. Remember where you are.”
― Daphne Kapsali, 100 days of solitude

“because its those little things that make our lives distinguishable from all the other lives, and our stories worth telling.”
― Daphne Kapsali, 100 days of solitude