Rachel > Rachel's Quotes

“In order to rise
From its own ashes
A phoenix
First
Must
Burn.”
― Octavia Butler, Parable of the Talents

“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”
― E.L. Doctorow

“To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

“We live, we die. Somewhere along the way, if we're lucky, we may find someone to help lighten the load.”
― Justin Cronin, The Passage

“It happened fast. Thirty-two minutes for one world to die, another to be born.”
― Justin Cronin, The Passage

“Before she became the Girl from Nowhere-the One Who Walked In, the First and Last and Only, who lived a thousand years-she was just a little girl in Iowa, named Amy. Amy Harper Bellafonte.”
― Justin Cronin, The Passage

“Rust, corrosion, wind, rain. The nibbling teeth of mice and the acrid droppings of insects and the devouring jaws of years. The was of nature upon machines, of the planet's chaotic forces upon the works of humankind. The energy that man had pulled from the earth was being inexorably pulled back into it, sucked like water down a drain. Before long, if it hadn't happened already, not a single high-tension pole would be left standing on the earth.

Mankind had built a world that would take a hundred years to die. A century for the last light to go out.”
― Justin Cronin, The Passage

“And while I tell him all my thoughts, I don't always share my secrets.”
― Alex Adams, White Horse

“Detach or go crazy.”
― Alex Adams, White Horse

“Otherwise I'll do something that I won't be able to live with. And that's important to me, being able to live with my actions. My thoughts are a different story. They've my own and they don't hurt anyone but me.”
― Alex Adams, White Horse

“Killing a man should be harder than waving a length of pipe in their direction. It should take long enough for one's conscience to get in the way.”
― Hugh Howey, The Unraveling

“I've always found that the most beautiful people, truly beautiful inside and out, are the ones who are quietly unaware of their effect." His eyes searched mine intently, and for a moment we stood there toe to toe. "The ones who throw their beauty around, waste what they have? Their beauty is only passing. It's just a shell hiding nothing but shadows and emptiness.”
― Jennifer L. Armentrout, Obsidian

“The day my internet was hooked up was better than having a hot guy check out my butt and ask for my phone number.”
― Jennifer L. Armentrout, Obsidian

“I never thought it was fair that anatomy decided what my brain was fit for.”
― C.J. Redwine, Defiance

“Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.”
― Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

“We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.”
― Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

“There was something in the pages of these books that had the power to make him feel better about things, a life raft to cling to before the dark currents of memory washed him downstream again, and on brighter days, he could even see himself going on this way for some time. A small but passable life.

And then, of course, the end of the world happened.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“It goes something like this: I am one person among 6.5 billion people on Earth at the moment. That's one person among 6,500,000,000 people. That'a lot of Wembley Stadiums full of people, and even more double-decker buses (apparently the standard British measurements for size). And we live on an Earth that is spinning at 67,000 miles an hour through space around a sun that is the centre of our solar system (and our solar system is spinning around the centre of the Milky Way at 530,000 mph). Just our solar system (which is a tiny speck within the entire universe) is very big indeed. If Earth was a peppercorn and Jupiter was a chestnut (the standard American measurements), you'd have to place them 100 metres apart to get a sense of the real distance between us.

And this universe is only one of many. In fact, the chances are that there are many, many more populated Earths - just like ours - in other universes.

And that's just space.

Have a look at time, too. If you're in for a good run, you may spend 85 years on this Earth. Man has been around for 100,000 years, so you're going to spend just 0.00085 percent of man's history living on this Earth. And Man's stay on Earth has been very short in the context of the life of the Earth (which is 4.5 billion years old): if the Earth had been around for the equivalent of a day (with the Big Bang kicking it all off at midnight), humans didn't turn up until 11.59.58 p.m. That means we've only been around for the last two seconds.

A lifetime is gone in a flash. There are relatively few people on this Earth that were here 100 years ago. Just as you'll be gone (relatively) soon.

So, with just the briefest look at the spatial and temporal context of our lives, we are utterly insignificant. As the Perspective Machine lifts up so far above the woods that we forget what the word means, we see just one moving light. It is beautiful. A small, gently glowing light. It is a firefly lost somewhere in the cosmos. And a firefly - on Earth - lives for just one night. It glows beautifully, then goes out.

And up there so high in our Perspective Machine we realize that our lives are really just like that of the firefly. Except the air is full of 6.5 billion fireflies. They're glowing beautifully for one night. Then they are gone.

So, Fuck It, you might as well REALLY glow.”
― John C. Parkin, F**k It: The Ultimate Spiritual Way

“There is a curious comfort in letting go. After the agony, letting go brings numbness, and after the numbness, clarity. As if I can see the world for the first time, and my place in it, independent of you, a whole vista of what may be. Even if it is not grand or inspiring, it is real and solid, unlike the fantasy I've built around you. I will do this.
I will triumph over you.”
― Julie Berry, All the Truth That's in Me

“I never kid about my warrior demigod status."
"Oh. My. God." I lower my voice, having forgotten to whisper. "You are nothing but a bird with an attitude. Okay, so you have a few muscles, I’ll grant you that. But you know, a bird is nothing but a barely evolved lizard. That’s what you are.”
― Susan Ee, Angelfall

“Anybody that ties you to a chair at gunpoint is a bad guy. Do I really need to explain this?”
― Susan Ee, Angelfall

“Animals, like us, are living souls. They are not things. They are not objects. Neither are they human. Yet they mourn. They love. They dance. They suffer. They know the peaks and chasms of being.”
― Gary Kowalski, The Souls of Animals

“You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world.”
― Woodrow Wilson

“I have lived on the lip
of insanity, wanting to know reasons,
knocking on a door. It opens.
I've been knocking from the inside.”
― Rumi

“If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?”
― Rumi

“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”
― Rumi

“Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”
― Rumi

“We all have an innate feeling of being separate from the world, peering out at life from behind our own little self, and vying against other isolated selves. But how can we truly be separate from the same world that created us? “Dust to dust” isn’t just something they say at funerals, it’s the truth. You can no more disconnect from the universe and its inhabitants than a wave can extricate itself from the ocean.”
― Dan Harris, 10% Happier

“retreat, with nothing to look forward to, nowhere to be, nothing to do, we are forced to confront the “wound of existence” head-on, to stare into the abyss and realize that so much of what we do in life—every shift in our seat, every bite of food, every pleasant daydream—is designed to avoid pain or seek pleasure. But if we can drop all that, we can, as Sam once said in his speech to the angry, befuddled atheists, learn how to be happy “before anything happens.” This happiness is self-generated, not contingent on exogenous forces; it’s the opposite of “suffering.” What the Buddha recognized was a genuine game changer.”
― Dan Harris, 10% Happier

“The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as we have defined it.”
― David W. Orr, Ecological Literacy: Educating Our Children for a Sustainable World