Ellen Simon > Ellen's Quotes

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
― Mae West

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

“A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.”
― Steve Martin

“But entertaining isn't a sport or a competition. It's an act of love, if you let it be. You can twist it and turn it into anything you want—a way to show off your house, a way to compete with your friends, a way to earn love and approval. Or you can decide that every time you open your door, it's an act of love, not performance or competition or striving. You can decide that every time people gather around your table, your goal is nourishment, not neurotic proving. You can decide.”
― Shauna Niequist, Bread and Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes

“The patron saint of the ocean is known for containing many parts of herself: she is a nurturer, but she is also a ferocious defender. & so I remember that to walk this world you must be kind but also fierce.”
― Elizabeth Acevedo, Clap When You Land

“Never underestimate the big importance of small things”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“But better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.”
― Khaled Hosseini

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
― Anne Frank, Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings

“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”
― Stephen King

“I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass.”
― maya angelou

“Accept yourself, love yourself, and keep moving forward. If you want to fly, you have to give up what weighs you down.”
― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

“Life becomes easier and more beautiful when we can see the good in other people.”
― Roy T. Bennett

“To love someone is like moving into a house," Sonja used to say. "At first you fall in love in everything new, you wonder every morning that this is one's own, as if they are afraid that someone will suddenly come tumbling through the door and say that there has been a serious mistake and that it simply was not meant to would live so fine. But as the years go by, the facade worn, the wood cracks here and there, and you start to love this house not so much for all the ways it is perfect in that for all the ways it is not. You become familiar with all its nooks and crannies. How to avoid that the key gets stuck in the lock if it is cold outside. Which floorboards have some give when you step on them, and exactly how to open the doors for them not to creak. That's it, all the little secrets that make it your home.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“Ove had never been asked how he lived before he met her. But if anyone had asked him, he would have answered that he didn’t.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“None of us know how long we have, but we do have a choice in whether we love or hate. And every day that we rob people of the ability to live their lives to the fullest, we are undermining the most precious gift we are given as humans.

[... E]ach time we ask anyone—whether they are transgender, Black, an immigrant, Muslim, Native American, gay, or a woman—to sit by and let an extended conversation take place about whether they deserve to be respected and affirmed in who they are, we are asking people to watch their one life pass by without dignity or fairness. That is too much to ask of anyone.”
― Sarah McBride, Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality

“Having certain privileges does not mean that your life is easy or that you do not face challenges. It just means that you don't experience specific kinds of obstacles or barriers faced by someone with a different identity or background. And our empathy should require us to acknowledge the plight of others in both its similarities to ours and in its differences.”
― Sarah McBride, Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality

“And every day that we rob people of the ability to live their lives to the fullest, we are undermining the most precious gift we are given as humans.”
― Sarah McBride, Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality

“A government cannot be “of the people, by the people, and for the people” if wide swaths of the people have no seat at the table,”
― Sarah McBride, Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality

“Representation in popular culture is key. It is often the first way many of us learn about different identities, cultures, and ideas.”
― Sarah McBride, Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality

“No matter how strong you are, no matter how smart you are or tough you can be, the world will find a way to break you. And when it does, the only thing you can do is hold on.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Forever, Interrupted

“I'm just trying to tell you that your life will be very long with zigzags you can't imagine. You won't realize just how young you are until you aren't that young anymore.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Forever, Interrupted

“Sweetheart, I’m telling you, you love someone like that, you love them the right way, and no time would be enough. Doesn’t matter if you had thirty years,” she tells me. “It wouldn’t be enough.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Forever, Interrupted

“You loved him. He loved you. You believed in each other.  That is what you lost. It doesn’t matter whether it’s labeled a husband or a boyfriend. You lost the person you love. You lost the future you thought you had.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Forever, Interrupted

“I feel simultaneously intensely insignificant and hyperaware of how important everyone is.”
― Emily R. Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“Everything matters so much and so little; it is disgusting.”
― Emily R. Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“I find it so bizarre that I occupy space, and that I am seen by other people.”
― Emily R. Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“We can’t have change without loss, which is why so often people say they want change but nonetheless stay exactly the same.”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

“There’s no hierarchy of pain. Suffering shouldn’t be ranked, because pain is not a contest.”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

“The opposite of depression isn’t happiness, but vitality.”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed