Elien > Elien's Quotes

“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”
― Lao Tzu

“Never let fear decide your destiny.”
― Lucinda Riley, The Seven Sisters

“We accept the love we think we deserve.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Some people feel like they don't deserve love. They walk away quietly into empty spaces, trying to close the gaps of the past.”
― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

“carrying your sorrows all alone isn’t strength, V. It’s punishment, plain and simple. Whatever happened to you, you’ve got to stop blaming yourself.”
― Shelley Read, Go as a River

“...things get broken, and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realize that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Harold sighs. “Jude,” he says, “there’s not an expiration date on needing help, or needing people. You don’t get to a certain age and it stops.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.”
― Jamie Anderson

“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Happiness [is] only real when shared”
― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

“There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Hier, met het zicht op de pastoor die het vlees goedkeurt en betaalt, overvalt mij een somberheid die al een tijdje is weggebleven, waarvan ik dacht, hoopte, dat ze misschien voorgoed weg was. Ik weet intussen dat er niets bestand is tegen dit gevoel, al zit ik tijdig op een stoel in de juiste klas in een outfit waarin iedereen gewend is me te zien, al sta ik te kijken naar vlees, al sta ik niet te kijken naar vlees. Er ontbreekt me dan iets, alles, alsof ik ooit vollediger ben geweest en iets in me zich nog herinnert hoe dat voelde.”
― Lize Spit, Het smelt

“You," he said, "are a terribly real thing in a terribly false world, and that, I believe, is why you are in so much pain.”
― Emilie Autumn, The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“The world belongs to those who let go.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“Who am I? Who am I?”
“You’re Jude St. Francis. You are my oldest, dearest friend. You’re the son of Harold Stein and Julia Altman. You’re the friend of Malcolm Irvine, of Jean-Baptiste Marion, of Richard Goldfarb, of Andy Contractor, of Lucien Voigt, of Citizen van Straaten, of Rhodes Arrowsmith, of Elijah Kozma, of Phaedra de los Santos, of the Henry Youngs. You’re a New Yorker. You live in SoHo. You volunteer for an arts organization; you volunteer for a food kitchen. You’re a swimmer. You’re a baker. You’re a cook. You’re a reader. You have a beautiful voice, though you never sing anymore. You’re an excellent pianist. You’re an art collector. You write me lovely messages when I’m away. You’re patient. You’re generous. You’re the best listener I know. You’re the smartest person I know, in every way. You’re the bravest person I know, in every way. You’re a lawyer. You’re the chair of the litigation department at Rosen Pritchard and Klein. You love your job; you work hard at it. You’re a mathematician. You’re a logician. You’ve tried to teach me, again and again. You were treated horribly. You came out on the other end. You were always you.”

"And who are you?"
"I'm Willem Ragnarsson. And I will never let you go.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Is it true that you shouted at Professor Umbridge?"
"Yes."
"You called her a liar?"
"Yes."
"You told her He Who Must Not Be Named is back?"
"Yes."
"Have a biscuit, Potter.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

“Everything...affects everything”
― Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why

“Ik riep: “Doornroosje! Je bent ternauwernood meer van belang! Ternauwernood… Nog net wel. Nog niet helemaal niet.
“Ik houd ternauwernood oneindig veel pijnlijk nauwgezet en desalniettemin niet voor herhaling vatbaar nog net wel van jou”, zei ik.
En niet lang daarna:
“Ik houd ternauwernood oneindig veel op zijn minst overdadig en onomkeerbaar pijnlijk nauwgezet bijna achteloos en desalniettemin niet voor herhaling vatbaar nog net wel van jou.”

“Van wie?” (riepen de denkbeeldige meeuwen) “Van wie? Van wie?”
“Van Doornroosje”, zei ik, buiten adem.”
― Toon Tellegen

“The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“Mensen die naar eender waar willen, willen niet per se ergens heen, ze willen gewoon niet blijven.”
― Lize Spit, Het smelt

“Ik kan niet meer, dacht hij. Ik kan niet meer. Ik kan niet meer. Hij schreef het met zijn tenen in het zand:
Ik kan niet
Maar verder kwam hij niet, want hij kon echt niet meer.”
― Toon Tellegen, Het vertrek van de mier

“Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“Julia had a friend, a man named Dennys, who was as a boy a tremendously gifted artist. They had been friends since they were small, and she once showed me some of the drawings he made when he was ten or twelve: little sketches of birds pecking at the ground, of his face, round and blank, of his father, the local veterinarian, his hand smoothing the fur of a grimacing terrier. Dennys’s father didn’t see the point of drawing lessons, however, and so he was never formally schooled. But when they were older, and Julia went to university, Dennys went to art school to learn how to draw. For the first week, he said, they were allowed to draw whatever they wanted, and it was always Dennys’s sketches that the professor selected to pin up on the wall for praise and critique.
But then they were made to learn how to draw: to re-draw, in essence. Week two, they only drew ellipses. Wide ellipses, fat ellipses, skinny ellipses. Week three, they drew circles: three-dimensional circles, two-dimensional circles. Then it was a flower. Then a vase. Then a hand. Then a head. Then a body. And with each week of proper training, Dennys got worse and worse. By the time the term had ended, his pictures were never displayed on the wall. He had grown too self-conscious to draw. When he saw a dog now, its long fur whisking the ground beneath it, he saw not a dog but a circle on a box, and when he tried to draw it, he worried about proportion, not about recording its doggy-ness.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Maybe there's something you're afraid to say, or someone you're afraid to love, or somewhere you're afraid to go. It's gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt because it matters.”
― John Green, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“People always want to know what it feels like, so I’ll tell you: there’s a sting when you first slice, and then your heart speeds up when you see the blood, because you know you’ve done something you shouldn’t have, and yet you’ve gotten away with it. Then you sort of go into a trance, because it’s truly dazzling—that bright red line, like a highway route on a map that you want to follow to see where it leads. And—God—the sweet release, that’s the best way I can describe it, kind of like a balloon that’s tied to a little kid’s hand, which somehow breaks free and floats into the sky. You just know that balloon is thinking, Ha, I don’t belong to you after all; and at the same time, Do they have any idea how beautiful the view is from up here? And then the balloon remembers, after the fact, that it has a wicked fear of heights.
When reality kicks in, you grab some toilet paper or a paper towel (better than a washcloth, because the stains don’t ever come out 100 percent) and you press hard against the cut. You can feel your embarrassment; it’s a backbeat underneath your pulse. Whatever relief there was a minute ago congeals, like cold gravy, into a fist in the pit of your stomach. You literally make yourself sick, because you promised yourself last time would be the last time, and once again, you’ve let yourself down. So you hide the evidence of your weakness under layers of clothes long enough to cover the cuts, even if it’s summertime and no one is wearing jeans or long sleeves. You throw the bloody tissues into the toilet and watch the water go pink before you flush them into oblivion, and you wish it were really that easy.”
― Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care

“It's easy to convince men to love you, Puck. All you have to do is be a mountain they have to climb or a poem they don't understand.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Scorpio Races

“There's no point in asking why, even though everybody will. I know why. The harder question is "why not?" I can't believe she ran out of answers before I did.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Wintergirls

“Stop leaving and you will arrive. Stop searching and you will see. Stop running away and you will be found.”
― Lao Tzu

“Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear?”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“I would die for you. But I won't live for you.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower