Eleanor > Eleanor's Quotes

“Sometimes people are beautiful.
Not in looks.
Not in what they say.
Just in what they are.”
― Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger

“Maybe everyone can live beyond what they're capable of.”
― Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger

“I want words at my funeral. But I guess that means you need life in your life.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Huizi would say, never look back to the past. Never regret. Even if there is emptiness ahead, never look back.”
― Xiaolu Guo, Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth

“You want me to give her a key?" the guy asked.
"I want you to give her a possibility," she told him, looking at my necklace again. "And that's what a key represents. An open door, a chance. You know?”
― Sarah Dessen, Lock and Key

“You can't be happy unless you're unhappy sometimes".”
― Lauren Oliver, Delirium

“My heart is drumming in my chest so hard it aches, but it's the good kind of ache, like the feeling you get on the first real day of autumn, when the air is crisp and the leaves are all flaring at the edges and the wind smells just vaguely of smoke - like the end and the beginning of something all at once.”
― Lauren Oliver, Delirium

“I wish I could close my eyes and be blown into dust and nothingness, feel all my thoughts disperse like dandelion fluff drifting off on the wind. But his hands keep pulling me back: into the alley, and Portland, and a world that has suddenly stopped making sense.”
― Lauren Oliver, Delirium

“Sometimes I don't even know if I'm extremely happy or extremely sad. It happens a lot when I think of you”
― Antonia Michaelis, The Storyteller

“Not everyone has to fly high to prove they exist; some of us are perfectly happy flying low and enjoying the view.”
― Mike A. Lancaster, Human.4

“Nothing was easy, and sometimes she failed, and sometimes she thought that the fairy stories were right, that there must indeed be easier ways of living happily ever after; but defeat is a poor ending to any tale, so she kept trying.”
― Sonya Hartnett, The Ghost's Child

“There is nothing that is more beautiful than everything else in the world.”
― Sonya Hartnett, The Ghost's Child

“How does one craft happiness out of something as important, as complicated, as unrepeatable and as easily damaged as life?”
― Sonya Hartnett, The Ghost's Child

“But you can build a future out of anything. A scrap, a flicker. The desire to go forward, slowly, one foot at a time. You can build an airy city out of ruins.”
― Lauren Oliver, Pandemonium

“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“Choose to be optimistic, it feels better.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“I wanted to throw myself into an experience that was too big for me and learn in a way that cost me something”
― Jamie Zeppa, Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan

“Anyone can live anywhere. You think you can't in the beginning, but then you do.”
― Jamie Zeppa

“I knew I seemed a fairly unlikely candidate for an adventure into the unknown. And secretly I doubted that I had what it took, whatever it took, to head off alone to a country most people had never heard of. In light of this, my determination to go puzzled me.”
― Jamie Zeppa

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things..”
― Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays

“In her own experience she's learned that happiness and sadness find their own level no matter what's biting you, mosquitoes or meatskins.”
― Alden Bell, The Reapers are the Angels

“I felt like I had proof that not all days are the same length, not all time has the same weight. Proof that there are worlds and worlds and worlds on top of worlds, if you want them to be there.”
― Carol Rifka Brunt, Tell the Wolves I'm Home

“That's the secret. If you always make sure you're exactly the person you hoped to be, if you always make sure you know only the very best people, then you won't care if you die tomorrow.”
― Carol Rifka Brunt, Tell the Wolves I'm Home

“That's what being shy feels like. Like my skin is too thin, the light too bright. Like the best place I could possibly be is in a tunnel far under the cool, dark earth. Someone asks me a question and I stare at them, empty-faced, my brain jammed up with how hard I'm trying to find something interesting to say. And in the end, all I can do is nod or shrug, because the light of their eyes looking at me, waiting for me, is just too much to take. And then it's over and there's one more person in the world who thinks I'm a complete and total waste of space.
The worst thing is the stupid hopefulness. Every new party, every new bunch of people, and I start thinking that maybe this is my chance. That I'm going to be normal this time. A new leaf. A fresh start. But then I find myself at the party, thinking, Oh, yeah. This again.
So I stand on the edge of things, crossing my fingers, praying nobody will try to look me in the eye. And the good thing is, they usually don't.”
― Carol Rifka Brunt, Tell the Wolves I'm Home

“Love is like moonlight or thunder, or rain on a tin roof in the middle of the night; it is one of those things in life that is truly worth knowing.”
― Sonya Hartnett, The Ghost's Child

“I want my life to be mystifying," she declared, although she didn't know what she meant.”
― Sonya Hartnett, The Ghost's Child

“if
the ocean
can calm itself,
so can you.
we
are both
salt water
mixed with
air.”
― Nayyirah Waheed

“Life is fleeting. Don't waste a single moment of your precious life. Wake up now! And now! And now!”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“The hardest thing about depression is that it is addictive. It begins to feel uncomfortable not to be depressed. You feel guilty for feeling happy.”
― Pete Wentz