Rachel > Rachel's Quotes

“Sometimes, I don't know that words for things,
how to write down the feeling of knowing
that every dying person leaves something behind.”
― Jacqueline Woodson, Brown Girl Dreaming

“Even the silence
has a story to tell you.
Just listen. Listen.”
― Jacqueline Woodson, Brown Girl Dreaming

“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

“The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves.”
― Vivekananda

“Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.”
― Jim Morrison

“Everything tells me that I am about to make a wrong decision, but making mistakes is just part of life. What does the world want of me? Does it want me to take no risks, to go back to where I came from because I didn't have the courage to say "yes" to life?”
― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

“I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It's all a question of how I view my life.”
― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

“Life always waits for some crisis to occur before revealing itself at its most brilliant.”
― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

“The strongest love is the love that can demonstrate its fragility.”
― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

“Love is not to be found in someone else, but in ourselves; we simply awaken it. But in order to do that, we need the other person. The universe only makes sense when we have someone to share our feelings with.”
― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

“But on paper, things can live forever.
On paper, a butterfly
never dies.”
― Jacqueline Woodson, Brown Girl Dreaming

“I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.”
― Albert Camus, L'Étranger

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”
― Albert Camus

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Because true love never keeps a man from pursuing his destiny”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Love is eternal -- the aspect may change, but not the essence. There is the same difference in a person before and after he is in love as there is in an unlighted lamp and one that is burning. The lamp was there and was a good lamp, but now it is shedding light too, and that is its real function. And love makes one calmer about many things, and that way, one is more fit for one's work.”
― Vincent Willem van Gogh

“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.”
― Roald Dahl

“Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth”
― Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

“It's a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately fill up the space. By waiting, we begin to connect with fundamental restlessness as well as fundamental spaciousness.

-Pema Chodron, from "When Things Fall Apart”
― Pema Chodron

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”
― Anais Nin

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
― Anais Nin

“I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.”
― Anais Nin

“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.”
― Anais Nin

“I must be a mermaid, Rango. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.”
― Anais Nin

“If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.”
― Anais Nin

“Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.”
― Zadie Smith, White Teeth

“The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life.”
― Zadie Smith

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“Don’t bother trying to explain your emotions. Live everything as intensely as you can and keep whatever you felt as a gift from God. The best way to destroy the bridge between the visible and invisible is by trying to explain your emotions.”
― Paulo Coelho, Brida

“Every moment in life is an act of faith”
― Paulo Coelho, Brida