Alexi > Alexi's Quotes

“Do you know about the spoons? Because you should. The Spoon Theory was created by a friend of mine, Christine Miserandino, to explain the limits you have when you live with chronic illness. Most healthy people have a seemingly infinite number of spoons at their disposal, each one representing the energy needed to do a task. You get up in the morning. That’s a spoon. You take a shower. That’s a spoon. You work, and play, and clean, and love, and hate, and that’s lots of damn spoons … but if you are young and healthy you still have spoons left over as you fall asleep and wait for the new supply of spoons to be delivered in the morning. But if you are sick or in pain, your exhaustion changes you and the number of spoons you have. Autoimmune disease or chronic pain like I have with my arthritis cuts down on your spoons. Depression or anxiety takes away even more. Maybe you only have six spoons to use that day. Sometimes you have even fewer. And you look at the things you need to do and realize that you don’t have enough spoons to do them all. If you clean the house you won’t have any spoons left to exercise. You can visit a friend but you won’t have enough spoons to drive yourself back home. You can accomplish everything a normal person does for hours but then you hit a wall and fall into bed thinking, “I wish I could stop breathing for an hour because it’s exhausting, all this inhaling and exhaling.” And then your husband sees you lying on the bed and raises his eyebrow seductively and you say, “No. I can’t have sex with you today because there aren’t enough spoons,” and he looks at you strangely because that sounds kinky, and not in a good way. And you know you should explain the Spoon Theory so he won’t get mad but you don’t have the energy to explain properly because you used your last spoon of the morning picking up his dry cleaning so instead you just defensively yell: “I SPENT ALL MY SPOONS ON YOUR LAUNDRY,” and he says, “What the … You can’t pay for dry cleaning with spoons. What is wrong with you?” Now you’re mad because this is his fault too but you’re too tired to fight out loud and so you have the argument in your mind, but it doesn’t go well because you’re too tired to defend yourself even in your head, and the critical internal voices take over and you’re too tired not to believe them. Then you get more depressed and the next day you wake up with even fewer spoons and so you try to make spoons out of caffeine and willpower but that never really works. The only thing that does work is realizing that your lack of spoons is not your fault, and to remind yourself of that fact over and over as you compare your fucked-up life to everyone else’s just-as-fucked-up-but-not-as-noticeably-to-outsiders lives. Really, the only people you should be comparing yourself to would be people who make you feel better by comparison. For instance, people who are in comas, because those people have no spoons at all and you don’t see anyone judging them. Personally, I always compare myself to Galileo because everyone knows he’s fantastic, but he has no spoons at all because he’s dead. So technically I’m better than Galileo because all I’ve done is take a shower and already I’ve accomplished more than him today. If we were having a competition I’d have beaten him in daily accomplishments every damn day of my life. But I’m not gloating because Galileo can’t control his current spoon supply any more than I can, and if Galileo couldn’t figure out how to keep his dwindling spoon supply I think it’s pretty unfair of me to judge myself for mine. I’ve learned to use my spoons wisely. To say no. To push myself, but not too hard. To try to enjoy the amazingness of life while teetering at the edge of terror and fatigue.”
― Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

“Unlike baked beans, loaves of breads, or Fuji apples, books, once consumed, do not disappear.”
― John Sutherland, How to Read a Novel

“I thought an hour ago that I loved you more than any woman has ever loved a man, but a half hour after that I knew that what I felt before was nothing compared to what I felt then. But ten minutes after that, I understood that my previous love was a puddle compared to the high seas before a storm.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“Hello" and "good-bye" were a pair of bookends, propping up a vast library of blank volumes, void almanacs, novels full of sentiment I couldn't apprehend”
― Lauren Collins, When in French: Love in a Second Language

“Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

“And I’d choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you and I’d choose you.”
― Kiersten White, The Chaos of Stars

“Be a little kinder than you have to.”
― E. Lockhart, We Were Liars

“She is sugar, curiosity, and rain.”
― E. Lockhart, We Were Liars

“Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest. I was standing on the lawn and I fell. The bullet hole opened wide and my heart rolled out of my rib cage and down into a flower bed. Blood gushed rhythmically from my open wound,
then from my eyes,
my ears,
my mouth.
It tasted like salt and failure. The bright red shame of being unloved soaked the grass in front of our house, the bricks of the path, the steps of the porch. My heart spasmed among the peonies like a trout.”
― E. Lockhart, We Were Liars

“He looked at you like you were the brightest planet in the galaxy.”
― E. Lockhart, We Were Liars

“The universe was good because he was in it.”
― E. Lockhart, We Were Liars

“She confused wit with intelligence, and made people laugh rather than lightening their hearts or making them think.”
― E. Lockhart, We Were Liars

“Someone once wrote that a novel should deliver a series of small astonishments. I get the same thing spending an hour with you.

Also, here is a green toothbrush tied in a ribbon. It expresses my feelings inadequately.”
― E. Lockhart, We Were Liars

“We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom.
We lived in the gaps between the stories.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“I feel like the word shatter.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“War is what happens when language fails.”
― Margaret Atwood

“A word after a word after a word is power.”
― Margaret Atwood

“Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

“Nature is to zoos as God is to churches.”
― Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

“He has to find more and better ways of occupying his time. His time, what a bankrupt idea, as if he's been given a box of time belonging to him alone, stuffed to the brim with hours and minutes that he can spend like money. Trouble is, the box has holes in it and the time is running out, no matter what he does with it.”
― Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

“He’d developed a strangely tender feeling towards such words, as if they were children abandoned in the woods and it was his duty to rescue them.”
― Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

“Love is the madness which allows us to believe in magic.”
― Keith Donohue, The Motion of Puppets

“Books may well be the only true magic.”
― Alice Hoffman

“My darling girl, when are you going to realize that being normal is not necessarily a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage." - Aunt Frances”
― Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic

“Do you ever just put your arms out and just spin and spin and spin? Well, that's what love is like; everything inside of you tells you to stop before you fall, but for some reason you just keep going.”
― Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic

“Write it down, boy. If you come across a passage in your reading that you’d like to remember, write it down in your little book; then you can read it again, memorize it, and have it whenever you wish.”
― Keith Donohue

“It's only a story.' As if such words made it less real. But I did not believe him even then, for stories were written down, and the words on the page were proof enough. Fixed and permanent in time, the words, if anything, made the people and places more real than the everchanging world.”
― Keith Donohue, The Stolen Child

“Imaginary friends often leave without warning.”
― Keith Donohue, The Boy Who Drew Monsters

“The flickering candlelight conspired with the silence, and we only interrupted each other’s reading to share a casual delight.”
― Keith Donohue

“bundle of nerves, swaddled in a blanket of panic.”
― Jen Lancaster, Welcome to the United States of Anxiety: Observations from a Reforming Neurotic