Alisha > Alisha's Quotes

“I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me.”
― Simone de Beauvoir

“It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Take it easy, but take it.”
― Woody Guthrie

“Time to live, time to lie, time to laugh, and time to die. Take it easy baby. Take it as it comes.”
― Jim Morrison

“I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“All great and precious things are lonely.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Discipline

I am old and I have had
more than my share of good and bad.

I've had love and sorrow, seen sudden death
and been left alone and of love bereft.

I thought I would never love again
and I thought my life was grief and pain.

The edge between life and death was thin,
but then I discovered discipline.

I learned to smile when I felt sad,
I learned to take the good and the bad,
I learned to care a great deal more
for the world about me than before.

I began to forget the "Me" and "I"
and joined in life as it rolled by:
this may not mean sheer ecstasy
but is better by far than "I" and "Me.”
― Meryl Gordon

“It’s [old age] not a surprise, we knew it was coming – make the most of it. So you may not be as fast on your feet, and the image in your mirror may be a little disappointing, but if you are still functioning and not in pain, gratitude should be the name of the game.”
― Betty White, If You Ask Me

“ And then I laugh, because it's so ridiculous and so gorgeous and it's all I an do to not melt into a fit of giggles. So what if I'm ninety-three? So what if I'm ancient and cranky and my body's a wreck? If they're willing to accept me and my guilty conscience, why the hell shouldn't I run away with the circus?
It's like Charlie told the cop. For this old man, this IS home.”
― Sara Gruen

“And then we ease him out of that worn-out body with a kiss, and he's gone like a whisper, the easiest breath.”
― Mark Doty

“You were young, I thought, not once but always before, always always, every day before the day just passed. You were young only minutes ago.”
― Timothy Schaffert, The Coffins of Little Hope

“Our lives can't be measured by our final years, of this I am sure.”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook

“In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own. I learned who I was and who I wanted to be, what I might aspire to, and what I might dare to dream about my world and myself. More powerfully and persuasively than from the "shalt nots" of the Ten Commandments, I learned the difference between good and evil, right and wrong. A Wrinkle in Time described that evil, that wrong, existing in a different dimension from our own. But I felt that I, too, existed much of the time in a different dimension from everyone else I knew. There was waking, and there was sleeping. And then there were books, a kind of parallel universe in which anything might happen and frequently did, a universe in which I might be a newcomer but was never really a stranger. My real, true world. My perfect island.”
― Anna Quindlen, How Reading Changed My Life

“I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.”
― Anna Quindlen

“Try to understand men. If you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love.”
― John Steinbeck

“In this hour, I do not believe that any darkness will endure.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

“I'd rather be partly great than entirely useless.”
― Neal Shusterman, Unwind

“My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.”
― Henry Rollins

“Every story has already been told. Once you've read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird and A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason to ever write another novel. Except that each writer brings to the table, if she will let herself, something that no one else in the history of time has ever had."

[Commencement Speech; Mount Holyoke College, May 23, 1999]”
― Anna Quindlen

“No one is ever quite ready; everyone is always caught off guard. Parenthood chooses you. And you open your eyes, look at what you've got, say "Oh, my gosh," and recognize that of all the balls there ever were, this is the one you should not drop. It's not a question of choice.”
― Marisa de los Santos, Love Walked In

“You are the closest I will ever come to magic.”
― Suzanne Finnamore, The Zygote Chronicles

“Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life's cruelest irony.”
― Douglas Coupland, Shampoo Planet

“Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.”
― Mark Twain

“Never miss a good chance to shut up.”
― Will Rogers

“The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“When we don't know who to hate, we hate ourselves.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“The truest form of love is how you behave toward someone, not how you feel about them.”
― Steve Hall

“It is very risky. But each time a child opens a book, he pushes open the gate that separates him from Elsewhere.”
― Lois Lowry