Daniell > Daniell's Quotes

“I want to talk about creating your life. There’s a quote I love, from the poet Mary Oliver, that goes:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

I so clearly remember what it was like, being young and always in the grip of some big fat daydream. I wanted to be a writer always, but more than that, I wanted to have an extraordinary life. I’m sure I dreamed it a million different ways, and that plenty of them were ridiculous, but I think the daydreams were training for writing, and I also think they spurred me to pursue my dreams for real.

Daydreaming, however awesome it is, is passive. It happens in your head. Learning to make dreams real is another matter, and I think it should be the work of your life. Everyone’s life, whatever their dream (unless their dream is to be an axe murderer or something.)

It took me a while to finish a book. Too long. And you know, it doesn’t matter how good a writer you are unless you finish what you start! I think this is the hardest part for most people who want to write. I was in my mid-30s before I figured it out. The brain plays tricks. You can be convinced you’re following your dream, or that you’re going to start tomorrow, and years can pass like that. Years.

The thing is, there will be pressure to adjust your expectations, always shrinking them, shrinking, shrinking, until they fit in your pocket like a folded slip of paper, and you know what happens to folded slips of paper in your pocket. They go through the wash and get ruined. Don’t ever put your dream in your pocket. If you have to put it somewhere, get one of those holsters for your belt, like my dad has for his phone, so you can whip it out at any moment.

Hello there, dream.

Also, don’t be realistic. The word “realistic” is poison. Who decides?

And “backup plan” is code for, “Give up on your dreams,” and everyone I know who put any energy into a backup plan is now living that backup plan instead of their dream. Put all your energy into your dream. That’s the only way it will ever become real.

The world at large has this attitude, “What makes you so special that you think you deserve an extraordinary life?”

Personally, I think the passion for an extraordinary life, and the courage to pursue it, is what makes us special. And I don’t even think of it as an “extraordinary life” anymore so much as simple happiness. It’s rarer than it should be, and I believe it comes from creating a life that fits you perfectly, not taking what’s already there, but making your own from scratch.

You can let life happen to you, or you can happen to life. It’s harder, but so much better.”
― Laini Taylor

“Once, this had been the life I’d wanted. Even chosen. Now, though, I couldn’t believe that there had been a time when this kind of monotony and silence, this most narrow of existences, had been preferable. Then again, once, I’d never known anything else.”
― Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever

“There is no such thing as a child who hates to read; there are only children who have not found the right book.”
― Frank Serafini

“Never say 'I can't.' 'I can't' is a limit, and life is about breaking through limits. Say 'I will' instead.”
― Heather Vogel Frederick, Pies & Prejudice

“So when you feel like hope is gone,
look inside you and be strong,
and you'll finally see the truth -
that a hero lies in you.”
― Mariah Carey

“I realize now that dying is easy. Living is hard.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“I'm not sure this is a world I belong in anymore. I'm not sure that I want to wake up.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“It would’ve been easier to die. It’s not that I want to be dead now. I don’t. I have a lot in my life that I get satisfaction from, that I love. But some days, especially in the beginning, it was so hard. And I couldn’t help but think that it would’ve been so much simpler to go with the rest of them. But you—you asked me to stay. You begged me to stay. You stood over me and you made a promise to me, as sacred as any vow.”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“But still, I find the need to remind myself of the temporariness of a day, to reassure myself that I got through yesterday, I'll get through today.”
― Gayle Forman , Where She Went

“We are like Humpty Dumpty and all these king's horses and all these king's men cannot put us back together again”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“I don't really care. I shouldn't have to care. I shouldn't have to work this hard. I realize now that dying is easy. Living is hard.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn’t you - all of the expectations, all of the beliefs - and becoming who you are. (in Bill Moyers' Healing and the Mind)”
― Rachel Naomi Remen

“Most of us lead far more meaningful lives than we know. Often finding meaning is not about doing things differently; it is about seeing familiar things in new ways. ”
― Rachel Naomi Remen, My Grandfather's Blessings : Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging

“Wounding and healing are not opposites. They're part of the same thing. It is our wounds that enable us to be compassionate with the wounds of others. It is our limitations that make us kind to the limitations of other people. It is our loneliness that helps us to to find other people or to even know they're alone with an illness. I think I have served people perfectly with parts of myself I used to be ashamed of. ”
― Rachel Naomi Remen

“The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words. ”
― Rachel Naomi Remen

“I wanted to tell him then how loneliness can become a tangible thing, after a while. It’s something that you carry with you on your shoulder, hold up like a friend with a twisted ankle. It sits with you and walks the streets with you. It’s a selfish thing and it refuses to let go or even split its attention. Of course, like a particularly annoying itch, you can convince yourself for a while that it’s not there. You can go to libraries and sit with friends and drink more coffee than your body can handle and you can feel surrounded and happy. But eventually you have to scratch it. Loneliness steals you away from the world, as if you’ve been cut loose and you’re lost, untethered, somewhere far above everyone else. Just you and this feeling that you just need someone to put a hand on your shoulder and turn you around, to look at you and tell you the three words that matter most: You’re not alone. Don’t be scared. I am here. It’s not about love or lust or any other inadequate word; it’s about being touched and realising that you are no longer by yourself.”
― Chloe Rattray, Sacré Noir

“People aren’t always what you want them to be. Sometimes they disappoint you or let you down, but you have to give them a chance first. You can’t just meet someone and expect them to be everything you’re looking for and then be angry when they’re not every hope and aspiration you projected onto them. It’s foolish to believe that someone will be what you imagine them to be. And sometimes, when you give them a chance, they turn out to be better than you imagined. Different, but better.”
― Chloe Rattray, Sacré Noir

“How often – even before we began – have we declared a task “impossible”? And how often have we construed a picture of ourselves as being inadequate? . . . A great deal depends upon the thought patterns we choose and on the persistence with which we affirm them.”
― Piero Ferrucci

“What I focus on in life is what I get. And if I concentrate on how bad I am or how wrong I am or how inadequate I am, if I concentrate on what I can't do and how there's not enough time in which to do it, isn't that what I get every time? And when I think about how powerful I am, and when I think about what I have left to contribute, and when I think about the difference I can make on this planet, then that's what I get. You see, I recognize that it's not what happens to you; it's what you do about it.”
― W. Mitchell

“Shame is a virus that creates paralysis in its hosts. When you're busy telling yourself what a bad person you are, you expend most of your energy obsessing over your self- not what you may have done wrong, not what you can do to fix it. For this reason, shame creates a moat around girls' potential. It limits their ability or willingness to face challenges. It makes them want to be alone, isolating them from friends, their most important buffer against stress. Shame is therefore a major threat to girls' resilience.”
― Rachel Simmons, The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence

“Many of the most accomplished girls are disconnecting from the truest parts of themselves, sacrificing essential self-knowledge to the pressure of who they think they ought to be.”
― Rachel Simmons, The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence

“Every time you don't follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual sadness.”
― Shakti Gawain

“Whatever our individual troubles and challenges may be, it’s important to pause every now and then to appreciate all that we have, on every level. We need to literally 'count our blessings,' give thanks for them, allow ourselves to enjoy them, and relish the experience of prosperity we already have.”
― Shakti Gawain

“What I am actually saying is that we need to be willing to let our intuition guide us, and then be willing to follow that guidance directly and fearlessly.”
― Shakti Gawain

“The more light you allow within you, the brighter the world you live in will be.”
― Shakti Gawain

“When I'm trusting and being myself as fully as possible, everything in my life reflects this by falling into place easily, often miraculously.”
― Shakti Gawain

“We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own and other's people's models, learn to be ourselves and allow our natural channel to open.”
― Shakti Gawain

“When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Toughest Indian in the World

“I didn't want to wake up. I was having a much better time asleep. And that's really sad. It was almost like a reverse nightmare, like when you wake up from a nightmare you're so relieved. I woke up into a nightmare.”
― Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story