Ella Frances Sanders > Quotes

“Your luminosity is intrinsic, but your brightness will depend on who is looking at you.”
― Ella Frances Sanders, Eating the Sun: Small Musings on a Vast Universe

“VACILANDO v. Traveling when the experience itself is more important than the destination. The best laid plans are not usually conducive to spontaneous adventures. Not sure where to go? Great! Throw the map and the plans out the window, and follow your heart for a while instead. verb”
― Ella Frances Sanders, Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from Around the World

“You see, you are not so soft after all; you are rock and wave and the peeling barks of trees, you are ladybirds and the smell of a garden after the rain. When you put your best foot forward, you are taking the north side of a mountain with you.”
― Ella Frances Sanders, Eating the Sun: Small Musings on a Vast Universe

“AKIHI n. Listening to directions and then walking off and promptly forgetting them means that you’ve gone “akihi.” When they explained how to get there, their directions all made perfect sense—you nodded and looked back with clear understanding. Then you parted ways, and now you can’t remember whether to take a left or a right. noun”
― Ella Frances Sanders, Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from Around the World

“RESFEBER n. The restless beat of a traveler's heart before the journey begins, a mixture of anxiety and anticipation.”
― Ella Frances Sanders, Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from Around the World

“Each year 40,000 tons of this starry dust falls to Earth; it contains the elements that will be used ceaselessly, throughout every living thing, around the entire planet.”
― Ella Frances Sanders, Eating the Sun: Small Musings on a Vast Universe

“I’d like to explain beauty as corridors before people fill them, as a sunrise seen only by birds. It is the thin lines we draw between ourselves and everything else: the making it make sense, the hindsight, the worthwhile, the looking forward, the acts of kindness, the hoping. It is the rabbit making it across the car-streaked road in time.”
― Ella Frances Sanders, Everything, Beautiful: A Guide to Finding Hidden Beauty in the World

“In the Milky Way, which is about 110,000 light-years across, our sun is just one of between 100 and 400 billion stars, most hosting their own planets. Galaxies, like egos, come in varying sizes, and while ours is fairly spacious, there are others like the Andromeda galaxy (our neighbor) that are much, much larger.”
― Ella Frances Sanders, Eating the Sun: Small Musings on a Vast Universe

“While breathing has long been thought of as an automatic process, one driven by the part of the brain that controls life - inherent things like heartbeat and sleeping patterns - it can actually change your mind. Breathing at different speeds, even paying less or more attention to the breath, has been shown to engage different areas of the brain. And we are among the only animals who can actually alter and regulate our breating at will, consciously, rather than it simply happening in response to things such as running, resting, panic.”
― Ella Frances Sanders, Eating the Sun: Small Musings on a Vast Universe

“Everything is fascinating, so don't hold your breath.”
― Ella Frances Sanders, Eating the Sun: Small Musings on a Vast Universe

“At the moment a lot of days don’t make sense. I run out of postage stamps, or I run out of pencil erasers, or I find myself running out of feelings. This will pass, yes, but I suspect this time will be felt, like a leftover bruise, for longer than we might imagine.”
― Ella Frances Sanders, Close Again

“Finding beauty in the darker, damaging things does not alter the weight of them, but it can, if only for a second, provide reflection, provide breath, provide safe pockets in which to shed tears or fury or terror, glimmers to hang our hopes on like hooks in a hallway.”
― Ella Frances Sanders, Everything, Beautiful: A Guide to Finding Hidden Beauty in the World

“The devil of it is that if everybody woke up tomorrow and decided that they liked themselves exactly how they are, capitalism and everything clinging to it would crumble like a piece of stale toast.”
― Ella Frances Sanders, Everything, Beautiful: A Guide to Finding Hidden Beauty in the World