Glen > Glen'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

“No one knows what he or she is capable of until things are at their darkest.”
― A.G. Howard, Splintered

“Half my life is in book's written pages.
Live and learn from fools and from sages.”
― Steven Tyler

“A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong it is until it's in hot water.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“You'd rather make up a fantasy version of somebody in your head than be with a real person.”
― Jenny Han, To All the Boys I've Loved Before

“Love is scary: it changes; it can go away. That's the part of the risk. I don't want to be scared anymore.”
― Jenny Han, To All the Boys I've Loved Before

“One day I was counting the cats and I absent-mindedly counted myself.”
― Bobbie Ann Mason, Shiloh and Other Stories

“Reyes. Alexander. Farrow," I said.

Seconds after I spoke his name, Reyes walked into his bedroom, and I looked across the open space directly from my room into his.

He waited for me to continue.

"I feel like there's something missing from my bedroom."

A dimple appeared at the corner of his mouth. "You don't say."

"Any idea what that might be?"

He glanced around my room as well, then shrugged. "I can't imagine."

"Oh, wait," I said, stepping from my room into his, "wasn't there something here? Like, I don't know, a wall or something?"

He looked up. "You could be right. I do seem to remember a barrier of some kind here."

"Yep," I said, stepping closer, "I definitely remember a partition separating our apartments." When his only response was a mischievous tilt of his full mouth, I asked, "Where did you put my wall?"

He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against his doorframe. "What makes you think I took it?"

"It was there this morning."

"And that means I took it? Maybe you just misplaced it. Where exactly did you see it last?"

I pressed my lips together. "You tore down my wall."

The smile he wore could've charmed the panties off a nun. Completely unrepentant, he admitted, "I tore down your wall.”
― Darynda Jones, Sixth Grave on the Edge

“You have to kick people out of your head as forcefully as you'd kick someone out of your house.”
― Sophia Amoruso, #Girlboss

“You are worth more than a thousand perfect notes.”
― C.G. Drews, A Thousand Perfect Notes

“You don’t have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily.”
― Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

“Leah.' Mom shakes her head. 'You've got to stop doing this.'
'Doing what?'
'Burning everything to the ground whenever something goes wrong.”
― Becky Albertalli, Leah on the Offbeat

“I have heard all of the stories about girls like me, and I am unafraid to make more of them.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties

“stop doing start dreaming”
― #reputation

“Writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.”
― Shannon Hale

“Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Never taunt the man with the power to tie you up.”
― Navessa Allen, Scandal

“A British professor of theology once described to me the world to which believers will go as “an unknown country with a well-known inhabitant.” When Jesus Christ the courier has already become well known to us through the Gospels and Pastoral Letters of the New Testament, the prospect of transitioning with him into a world in which we shall see him as he is and be constantly in his company will be something we find alluring rather than alarming.”
― J.I. Packer, Finishing Our Course with Joy: Guidance from God for Engaging with Our Aging

“Never talk with any man, or undertake any trifling employment, merely to pass the time away; for every day well spent may become a “day of salvation,” and time rightly employed is an “acceptable time.” And remember, that the time thou triflest away, was given thee to repent in, to pray for pardon of sins, to work out thy salvation, to do the work of grace, to lay up against the day of judgment a treasure of good works, that thy time may be crowned with eternity.”
― Jeremy Taylor, Holy Living and Dying with Prayers

“John Wesley at eighty-five wrote in his journal that the only sign of deterioration that he could see in himself was that he could not run as fast as he used to. With all due deference to that wonderful, seemingly tireless little man, we may reasonably suspect that he was overlooking some things at this point, just as some do when they assure us that they never had a day’s illness in their life. We cannot stop our bodies aging, any more than King Canute’s say-so could stop the tide coming in.”
― J.I. Packer, Finishing Our Course with Joy: Guidance from God for Engaging with Our Aging

“Love is supposed to be based on trust, and trust on love, it's something rare and beautiful when people can confide in each other without fearing what the other person will think.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

“Never give up on your friends. Never give up your faith in them. It's when everything is worse than you could ever imagine it could be, that you'll need your friends the most.”
― Graeme Rodaughan, The Dragon's Den

“The more things we accumulate, the more cluttered our lives become, and the more stressed we feel as we are compelled to think about them. Life is about people not about things.”
― Natalie Vellacott

“It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“What makes big boobs and perkiness so attractive to boys? I mean, really. Two round, mounds of fat and a fake smile. Yeah, winning attributes.”
― Gena Showalter, Oh My Goth

“I'm a mess," he said, halfway joking but halfway not. "I'm demanding and temperamental and I'm terribly high maintenance."

I laughed without even meaning to. "Do you honestly think I don't know all that by now?"

"Then how could you possibly love me?"

I held him tighter, kept kissing his neck. "How can I not?”
― Marie Sexton, Strawberries for Dessert

“I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.”
― Anne Tyler

“Everyone has talent. What's rare is the courage to follow it to the dark places where it leads.”
― Erica Jong

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost