Thewindupbird B-) > Thewindupbird B-)'s Quotes

“Don't aim to fix people. Fixing seems so permanent, so absolute. Like there's no room for error. Aim to make things better.”
― Phil Stamper, The Gravity of Us

“I'm a planner. Plans can change, I'm cool with that, but not having a plan at all? It terrifies me.”
― Phil Stamper, The Gravity of Us

“I saw the world from the stars' point of view, and it looked unbearably lonely.”
― Shaun David Hutchinson, We Are the Ants

“I realize how awful people are to each other, how a pervasive cynicism exists in most of us that stops us from seeing the best parts of one another.”
― Suzanne Redfearn, In an Instant

“Regret is a tough emotion to live with, impossible to move on from, because what’s done is done.”
― Suzanne Redfearn, In an Instant

“It’s strange and wonderful, the things we do that we don’t realize we’ve done.”
― Suzanne Redfearn, In an Instant

“If every person in this room made it a rule that wherever you are, whenever you can, you will try to act a little kinder than is necessary - the world really would be a better place. And if you do this, if you act just a little kinder than is necessary, someone else, somewhere, someday, may recognize in you, in every single one of you, the face of God.”
― R.J. Palacio, Wonder

“Sometimes I think my head is so big because it is so full of dreams”
― R.J. Palacio, Wonder

“I've always had this theory that God is a sitcom writer who loves to put me in ridiculous situations.”
― Angie Thomas, On the Come Up

“I mean, it's one thing to wanna do something. It's another to think it's possible. Rapping has been my dream forever, but dreams aren't real. You wake up from them or reality makes them seem stupid. Trust, every time my fridge is almost empty, all of my dreams seem stupid.”
― Angie Thomas, On the Come Up

“If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“Sometimes the truth is a secret you're keeping from yourself because living a lie is easier.”
― Adam Silvera, They Both Die at the End

“If I like a book, I devour it in one sitting, and then I forget a lot. It's fine with me, because I read them over and over again.”
― Francesca Zappia, Eliza and Her Monsters

“Nature doesn’t care if we feel so heavy we might sink into the ground and never be able to pull ourselves out again.”
― Francesca Zappia, Eliza and Her Monsters

“MirkerLurker: I thought the characters were the reason anyone read Monstrous Sea.

rainmaker: You mean like, shipping?

MirkerLurker: No, not shipping - shipping's great, and I do it all the time, but I mean... the characters themselves. The struggles they have to go through, and when you really love them, how much they affect you. When the characters are good, they make you care about everything else. That's why I draw them. It probably sounds dumb, but they're like real people to me. And this will probably sound worse, but sometimes I like them better than real people. I can empathize with characters. Real people are harder.”
― Francesca Zappia, Eliza and Her Monsters

“There is a small monster in my brain that controls my doubt.”
― Francesca Zappia, Eliza and Her Monsters

“Ideas are the asexual reproduction of the mind. You don’t have to share them with anyone else.”
― Francesca Zappia, Eliza and Her Monsters

“I am an absolute wreck of a human being, and right now I am completely okay with it.”
― Francesca Zappia, Eliza and Her Monsters

“How can I want something so badly but become so paralyzed every time I think about taking it?”
― Francesca Zappia, Eliza and Her Monsters

“If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail. Aim to be you. Aim to look and act and think like you. Aim to be the truest version of you. Embrace that you-ness. Endorse it. Love it. Work hard at it. And don't give a second thought when people mock it or ridicule it. Most gossip is envy in disguise.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“It is easy to mourn the lives we aren't living. Easy to wish we'd developed other other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we'd worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga.
It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn't make and the work we didn't do the people we didn't do and the people we didn't marry and the children we didn't have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out.
But it is not lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy.
We can't tell if any of those other versions would of been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“What were you before you met me?"
"I think I was drowning"
"And what are you now?"
"Water”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“I am thinking of beauty again, how some things are hunted because we have deemed them beautiful. If, relative to the history of our planet, an individual life is so short, a blink, as they say, then to be gorgeous, even from the day you're born to the day you die, is to be gorgeous only briefly.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“In Vietnamese, the word for missing someone and remembering them is the same: nhớ. Sometimes, when you ask me over the phone, Có nhớ mẹ không? I flinch, thinking you meant, Do you remember me?

I miss you more than I remember you.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“To sum up: We need to accomplish something gigantic we have never done before, much faster than we have ever done anything similar.”
― Bill Gates, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need

“If given the chance, I will always open Pandora’s box.”
― Dan Frey, The Future Is Yours

“Yeah, but art students are supposed to be malnourished and overcaffeinated wrecks. It’s part of our aesthetic.”
― Anna Meriano, This Is How We Fly

“You think that just because it's already happened, the past is finished and unchangeable? Oh no, the past is cloaked in multicolored taffeta and every time we look at it we see a different hue.”
― Milan Kundera, Life is Elsewhere