Alesha Levora > Alesha's Quotes

“In life, people tend to wait for good things to come to them. And by waiting, they miss out. Usually, what you wish for doesn't fall in your lap; it falls somewhere nearby, and you have to recognize it, stand up, and put in the time and work it takes to get to it. This isn't because the universe is cruel. It's because the universe is smart. It has its own cat-string theory and knows we don't appreciate things that fall into our laps.”
― Neil Strauss, The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists

“We have this idea that love is supposed to last forever. But love isn't like that. It's a free-flowing energy that comes and goes when it pleases. Sometimes, it stays for life; other times it stays for a second, a day, a month or a year. So don't fear love when it comes simply because it makes you vulnerable. But don't be surprised when it leaves either. Just be glad you had the opportunity to experience it.”
― Neil Strauss

“Without commitment, you cannot have depth in anything, whether it's a relationship, a business or a hobby.”
― Neil Strauss, The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists

“Unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments.”
― Neil Strauss, The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships

“Most people seem to believe that if a relationship doesn't last until death, it's a failure. But the only relationship that's truly a failure is one that lasts longe than it should. The success of a relationship should be measured by it's depth, not by it's lenght.”
― Neil Strauss, The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships

“A healthy relationship is when two individuated adults decide to have a relationship and that becomes a third entity. They nurture the relationship and the relationship nurtures them. But they’re not overly dependent or independent: They are interdependent, which means that they take care of the majority of their needs and wants on their own, but when they can’t, they’re not afraid to ask their partner for help.” She pauses to let it all sink in, then concludes, “Only when our love for someone exceeds our need for them do we have a shot at a genuine relationship together.”
― Neil Strauss, The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book about Relationships

“We're just fragile machines programmed with a false sense of our own importance. And every now and then the universe sends a reminder that we don't really matter to it...”
― Neil Strauss, Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life

“I've never trusted collaborations, because most people in this world are not closers. They don't finish what they start; they don't live what they dream; they sabotage their own progress because they're afraid they won't find what they seek.”
― Neil Strauss, The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists

“In the dance of infatuation, we see others not as they are, but as projections of who we want them to be. And we impose on them all the imaginary criteria we think will fill the void in our hearts.”
― Neil Strauss, The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships

“The sins of the parents are the destinies of their children. Unless the children wake up and do something about it.”
― Neil Strauss, The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book about Relationships

“Love is when two (or more) hearts build a safe emotional, mental, and spiritual home that will stand strong no matter how much anyone changes on the inside or the outside. It demands only one things and expects only one thing: that each person be his or her own true self.”
― Neil Strauss, The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships

“They say that love is blind, but it’s trauma that’s blind. Love sees what is.”
― Neil Strauss, The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book about Relationships

“Intimacy is sharing your reality with someone else and knowing you’re safe, and them being able to share their reality with you and also be safe.”
― Neil Strauss, The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships

“I used to think that a good relationship meant always getting along. But the secret, I realize, is that when one person shuts down or throws a fit, the other needs to stay in the adult ego state. If both people descend to the wounded child or adapted adolescent, that's when all forces of relationship drama and destruction are unleashed.”
― Neil Strauss, The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships

“My ex-girlfriend Lisa once said that every woman wants the same thing in a relationship: to be adored.”
― Neil Strauss, The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
― Joan Didion, The White Album

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live...We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the "ideas" with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.”
― Joan Didion, The White Album

“I was not going to Honolulu because I wanted to see life reduced to a short story. I was going to Honolulu because I wanted to see life expanded to a novel, and I still do.”
― Joan Didion, The White Album

“The research literature has identified three factors that universally lead to stress: uncertainty, the lack of information and the loss of control.”
― Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No

“Shame is the deepest of the “negative emotions,” a feeling we will do almost anything to avoid. Unfortunately, our abiding fear of shame impairs our ability to see reality.”
― Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress

“The core belief in having to be strong enough, characteristic of many people who develop chronic illness, is a defence. The child who perceives that her parents cannot support her emotionally had better develop an attitude of “I can handle everything myself.” Otherwise, she may feel rejected. One way not to feel rejected is never to ask for help, never to admit “weakness” — to believe that I am strong enough to withstand all my vicissitudes alone.”
― Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress

“Why can’t parents see their children’s pain?” “I’ve had to ask myself the same thing. It’s because we haven’t seen our own.”
― Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No

“It's startling to realize how narrowly we avoid, or miss, living radically different lives.”
― Rachel Aviv, Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us

“The divide between the psychic hinterlands and a setting we might call normal is permeable, a fact that I find both haunting and promising. It’s startling to realize how narrowly we avoid, or miss, living radically different lives.”
― Rachel Aviv, Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us