Janine > Janine's Quotes

“I'm so alive.

As I stand facing the beauty of the never-ending Pacific Ocean, a late afternoon breeze blows down from the hills behind. As always, it is a beautiful day. The sun is making its final descent. The magic is about to begin. The skies are ready to burn with brilliance, as it turns from a soft blue to a bright orange. Looking towards the West, I stare in awe at the hypnotic power of the waves. A giant curl begins to take form, then breaks with a thundering clap as it crashes on the shore.”
― Dave Pelzer, A Child Called "It"

“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”
― Neil Gaiman

“At the end, all that's left of you are your possessions. Perhaps that's why I've never been able to throw anything away. Perhaps that's why I hoarded the world: with the hope that when I died, the sum total of my things would suggest a life larger than the one I lived.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“Holding hands, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together.”
― Nicole Krauss

“Even now, all possible feelings do not yet exist, there are still those that lie beyond our capacity and our imagination. From time to time, when a piece of music no one has ever written or a painting no one has ever painted, or something else impossible to predict, fathom or yet describe takes place, a new feeling enters the world. And then, for the millionth time in the history of feeling, the heart surges and absorbs the impact.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“He wondered if what he had taken for the richness of silence was really the poverty of never being heard [...]. How could he have forgotten what he had always known: there is no match for the silence of God.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“Wittgenstein once wrote that when the eye sees something beautiful, the hand wants to draw it. I wish I could draw you.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“What about you? Are you happiest and saddest right now that you've ever been?" "Of course I am." "Why?" "Because nothing makes me happier and nothing makes me sadder than you.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“...An average of seventy-four species become extinct every day, which was one good reason but not the only one to hold someone's hand...”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“If at large gatherings or parties, or around people with whom you feel distant, your hands sometimes hang awkwardly at the ends of your arms - i you find yourself at a loss for what do with them, overcome with sadness that comes when you recognize the foreignnes of your own body - it's because your hands remember a time when the division between mind and body, brain and heart, what's inside and what's outside, was so much less. ”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“In the beginning it was always the same. But. I kept trying. Then one day I accidentally moved as the shutter clicked. A shadow appeared. The next time I saw the outline of my face, and a few weeks later my face itself. It was the opposite of disappearing.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“Tell me, was I the sort of person who took your elbow when cars passed on the street, touched your cheek while you talked, combed your wet hair, stopped by the side of the road in the country to point out certain constellations, standing behind you so that you had the advantage of leaning and looking up?”
― Nicole Krauss, Man Walks into a Room

“Without memories to cloud it, the mind perceives with absolute clarity. Each observation stands out in stark relief. In the beginning, when there's not yet a smudge, the slate still blank, there is only the present moment: each vital detail, shocked color, the fall of light. Like film stills. The mind relentlessly open to the world, deeply impressed, even hurt by it: not yet gauzed by memory.”
― Nicole Krauss

“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent”
― Victor Hugo

“What Is Love? I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul”
― Victor Hugo , Les Misérables

“The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.”
― Victor Hugo

“Everyone should be able to do one card trick, tell two jokes, and recite three poems, in case they are ever trapped in an elevator.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.”
― Albert Einstein

“If a book about failures doesn't sell, is it a success?”
― Jerry Seinfeld

“I came from a real tough neighborhood. Once a guy pulled a knife on me. I knew he wasn't a professional, the knife had butter on it.”
― Rodney Dangerfield

“If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be 'meetings.”
― Dave Barry

“The problem with winter sports is that -- follow me closely here -- they generally take place in winter.”
― Dave Barry

“A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.”
― Dave Barry

“Your hand and your mouth agreed many years ago that, as far as chocolate is concerned, there is no need to involve your brain.”
― Dave Barry

“Reading... a vacation for the mind....”
― Dave Barry

“Camping is nature's way of promoting the motel business. ”
― Dave Barry

“Eating rice cakes is like chewing on a foam coffee cup, only less filling.”
― Dave Barry

“You should not confuse your career with your life.”
― Dave Barry

“Through Nic's drug addiction, I have learned that parents can bear almost anything....I shock myself with my ability to rationalize and tolerate things once unthinkable. The rationalizations escalate....It's only marijuana. He gets high only on weekends. At least he's not using hard drugs....”
― David Sheff, Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction