Michelle > Michelle's Quotes

“[...]the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“Learn this from me. Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“There is no such thing as 'too late' in life.”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson

“Fairness," he said, 'does not govern life and death. If it did, no good person would ever die young.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“In order to move on, you must understand why you felt what you did and why you no longer need to feel it.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“Never trust a man who can dance.”
― E.L. James, Fifty Shades of Grey

“The scariest moment is always just before you start.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“The real lover is the man who can thrill you by kissing your forehead or smiling into your eyes or just staring into space.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“Charm is the ability to make someone else think that both of you are pretty wonderful.”
― Kathleen Winsor

“I suspect the most we can hope for, and it's no small hope, is that we never give up, that we never stop giving ourselves permission to try to love and receive love.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“Alone had always felt like an actual place to me”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“Yes, of course duct tape works in a near-vacuum. Duct tape works anywhere. Duct tape is magic and should be worshiped.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one.”
― Maya Angelou

“I've never wanted a quiet life.”
― Lydia Cacho

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”
― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad / Roughing It

“Now more than ever do I realize that I will never be content with a sedentary life, that I will always be haunted by thoughts of a sun-drenched elsewhere.”
― Isabelle Eberhardt, The Nomad: Diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt

“You don't have to understand everything. Some things don't make sense. Go with the flow. Move on.”
― Sue Fitzmaurice

“Everything is easier said than done. Don't give yourself that excuse.”
― Sue Fitzmaurice

“I forced myself not to write to him or call him; it took so much willpower to cling on to the last bit of my self-respect when all I wanted to do was beg him to come and see me,..”
― Jenny Blackhurst, How I Lost You

“In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or to step back, into safety. -Abraham Maslow”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“It made me sad when I caught myself pretending that everybody out there in cyberspace cared about what I thought, when really nobody gives a shit. And when I multiplied that sad feeling by all the millions of people in their lonely little rooms, furiously writing and posting to their lonely little pages that nobody has time to read because they’re all so busy writing and posting, it kind of broke my heart.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“Assumptions and expectations will kill any relationship, so let’s you and me not go there, okay?”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“There are lots of superheroes with different superpowers, and some of them are big and flashy, like super strength and super speed, and molecular restructuring, and force fields. But these abilities are really not so different from the superpower stuff that old Jiko could do, like moving superslow, or reading people's minds, or appearing in doorways, or making people feel okay about themselves by just being there.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“He's got this thing about Canada. He says it's like America only with health care and no guns, and you can live up to your potential there and not have to worry about what society thinks or about getting sick or getting shot.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“if you look someone in the eye and call them a ‘fat, worthless, syphilitic puddle of badger crap’ it doesn’t mean you don’t like them. It can be – and often is – a term of endearment.”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“Assume the worst. About everybody. But don't let this poisoned outlook affect your job performance. Let it all roll off your back. Ignore it. Be amused by what you see and suspect. Just because someone you work with is a miserable, treacherous, self-serving, capricious and corrupt asshole shouldn't prevent you from enjoying their company, working with them or finding them entertaining.”
― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“So, here you are
too foreign for home
too foreign for here.
Never enough for both.”
― Ijeoma Umebinyuo, Questions for Ada

“What if I forgave myself? I thought. What if I forgave myself even though I'd done something I shouldn't have? What if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I'd done other than because it was what I wanted and needed to do? What if I was sorry, but if I could go back in time I wouldn't do anything differently than I had done? What if I'd actually wanted to fuck every one of those men? What if heroin taught me something? What if yes was the right answer instead of no? What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn't have done was what also had got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“It kills me sometimes, how people die.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“That's what it feels like when I write, like I have this beautiful world in my head, but when I try to remember it in order to write it down, I change it, and I can't ever get it back.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being