Diane > Diane's Quotes

“The point of living in the world is just to stay interested.”
― Kathleen Rooney, Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk

“My conversation is probably something like the rain. On some days it pours, and then on other days there's just a clear sky- not a word in sight.”
― Heather O'Neill, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“Rough as life can be, I know in my bones we are supposed to stick around and play our part. Even if that part is coughing to death from cigarettes, or being blown up young in a house with your mother watching. And even if it's to be that mother. Someone down the line might need to know you got through it. Or maybe someone you won't see coming will need you. Like a kid who asks you to help him clean motel rooms. Or some ghost who drifts your way, hungry. And good people might even ask you to marry them. And it might be you never know the part you played, what it meant to someone to watch you make your way each day. Maybe someone or something is watching us all make our way. I don't think we get to know why. It is, as Ben would say about most of what I used to worry about, none of my business.”
― Bill Clegg, Did You Ever Have a Family

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“...a God that did everything we thought was right and good wouldn't be the creator of the universe. He would be our puppet.”
― Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

“I’ve never travelled,” I told her. “Oh, you absolutely should,” she insisted, “if only so that you can come home and really see it for what it is. That’s my favourite part.”
― Paula McLain, Circling the Sun

“Denys understood how nothing ever holds still for us, or should. The trick is learning to take things as they come and fully, too, with no resistance or fear, not trying to grip them too tightly or make them bend.”
― Paula McLain, Circling the Sun

“It is a sad but unavoidable fact of life," he began, "that as we age our social circles grow smaller. Whether from increased habit or diminished vigor, we suddenly find ourselves in the company of just a few familiar faces.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“He had said that our lives are steered by uncertainties, many of which are disruptive or even daunting; but that if we persevere and remain generous of heart, we may be granted a moment of lucidity—a moment in which all that has happened to us suddenly comes into focus as a necessary course of events, even as we find ourselves on the threshold of the life we had been meant to lead all along.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“What if we had a chance to do it again and again, until we finally did get it right? Wouldn't that be wonderful?”
― Kate Atkinson, Life After Life

“No point in thinking, you just have to get on with life. We only have one after all, we should try and do our best. We can never get it right, but we must try.”
― Kate Atkinson, Life After Life

“Sylvie’s knowledge, like Izzie's, was random yet far-ranging, ‘The sign that one has acquired one’s learning from reading novels rather than an education…”
― Kate Atkinson, Life After Life

“She had never been without a book for as long as she could remember. An only child never is.”
― Kate Atkinson, A God in Ruins

“Why is everything an 'adventure' with you?" Sylvie said irritably to Izzie."

"Because life is an adventure, of course."

"I would say it was more of an endurance race," Sylvie said. "Or an obstacle course.”
― Kate Atkinson, Life After Life

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
― Bernard M. Baruch

“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.”
― W.H. Auden , Another Time

“The best thing for being sad ... is to learn something.”
― T.H. White, The Sword in the Stone

“You know everything you need to know about a person from the answer to the question, What is your favorite book?”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“Accepting things as they are is difficult. A lot of people go to war with reality.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

“I try to be one of the exceptional people who can live with the complexity of things, who are at peace with the unknown and the unknowable, who leave all the cages open. I tell myself: There's so much that you don't know, you can't know, you aren't ever going to know.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

“Learn to say no. And when you do, don’t complain and don’t explain. Every excuse you make is like an invitation to ask you again in a different way.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

“Do your work, I tell myself. And after? Find a patch of lawn and sit down and hug your knees to your chest and let everything you’ve ever been told and everything you’ve ever seen mingle together in a show just for you, your own eye-popping pageant of existence, your own twelve-thousand-line epic poem. The tickle of the grass on your thighs, the sky moving over you, sunless or blue, echoes from a homily or a wedding toast or a letter your grandmother sent. Remember something good, a sunburn you liked the feeling of, a plate of homemade pasta. Do your work, Kelly. Then lean back. Rest from the striving to reduce. Like the padre said, life is a mystery to be lived. Live your mystery.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

“Consider rereading, how risky it is, especially when the book is one that you loved. Always the chance that it won't hold up, that you might, for whatever reason, not love it as much. When this happens, and to me it happens all the time (and more and more as I get older), the effect is so disheartening that I now open old favorites warily.”
― Sigrid Nunez, The Friend

“Ah, now she knew what divorce really was. Sharing decisions with a person you would run down on the street.”
― Judy Blundell, The High Season

“A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
enough money within her control to move out
and rent a place of her own even if she never wants
to or needs to...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
something perfect to wear if the employer or date of her
dreams wants to see her in an hour...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
a youth she's content to leave behind....
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
a past juicy enough that she's looking forward to
retelling it in her old age....
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .....
a set of screwdrivers, a cordless drill, and a black
lace bra...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
one friend who always makes her laugh... and one who
lets her cry...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
a good piece of furniture not previously owned by anyone
else in her family...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
eight matching plates, wine glasses with stems, and a
recipe for a meal that will make her guests feel honored...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
a feeling of control over her destiny...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
how to fall in love without losing herself..
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
HOW TO QUIT A JOB,
BREAK UP WITH A LOVER,
AND CONFRONT A FRIEND WITHOUT RUINING THE FRIENDSHIP...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
when to try harder... and WHEN TO WALK AWAY...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
that she can't change the length of her calves,
the width of her hips, or the nature of her parents..
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
that her childhood may not have been perfect...but it's over...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
what she would and wouldn't do for love or more...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
how to live alone... even if she doesn't like it...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
whom she can trust,
whom she can't,
and why she shouldn't
take it personally...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
where to go...
be it to her best friend's kitchen table...
or a charming inn in the woods...
when her soul needs soothing...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
what she can and can't accomplish in a day...
a month...and a year...”
― Pamela Redmond Satran

“Happiness, as it exists in the wild—as opposed to those artificially constructed moments like weddings and birthday parties, where it’s gathered into careful piles—is not smooth. Happiness in the real world is mostly just resilience and a willingness to arch oneself toward optimism. To believe that people are more good than bad. To believe that the waves carrying you are neither friendly nor malicious, and to know that you’re less likely to drown if you stop struggling against them.”
― Carolyn Parkhurst, Harmony

“Your only job is creating a life that contains a story worth telling.”
― Carolyn Parkhurst, Harmony

“Above all, I didn't want to fall into the trap that Buddhists call idiot compassion - an apt phrase, given John's worldview. In idiot compassion, you avoid rocking the boat to spare people's feelings, even though the boat needs rocking and your compassion ends up being more harmful than your honesty. People do this with teenagers, spouses, addicts, even themselves. Its opposite is wise compassion, which means caring about the person but also giving him or her a loving truth bomb when needed.”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed