Becky > Becky's Quotes

“I am not a smart man, particularly, but one day, at long last, I stumbled from the dark woods of my own, and my family's, and my country's past, holding in my hands these truths: that love grows from the rich loam of forgiveness; that mongrels make good dogs; that the evidence of God exists in the roundness of things. This much, at least, I've figured out. I know this much is true.”
― Wally Lamb, I Know This Much Is True

“At the end of his life, the great picture book author and illustrator Maurice Sendak said on the NPR show Fresh Air, “I cry a lot because I miss people. I cry a lot because they die, and I can’t stop them. They leave me, and I love them more.”
He said, “I’m finding out as I’m aging that I’m in love with the world.”
It has taken me all my life up to now to fall in love with the world, but I’ve started to feel it the last couple of years. To fall in love with the world isn’t to ignore or overlook suffering, both human and otherwise. For me anyway, to fall in love with the world is to look up at the night sky and feel your mind swim before the beauty and the distance of the stars. It is to hold your children while they cry, to watch as the sycamore trees leaf out in June. When my breastbone starts to hurt, and my throat tightens, and tears well in my eyes, I want to look away from feeling. I want to deflect with irony, or anything else that will keep me from feeling directly. We all know how loving ends. But I want to fall in love with the world anyway, to let it crack me open. I want to feel what there is to feel while I am here.
Sendak ended that interview with the last words he ever said in public: “Live your life. Live your life. Live your life.”
Here is my attempt to do so.”
― John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

“It's a Buddhist concept. Nonduality. It's about oneness, about how things that seem to be separate are really connected to one another. There are no separations...This is not just a piece of wood. This is also the clouds that brought the rain that watered the tree, and the birds that nested in it and the squirrels that fed on its nuts. It is also the food my grandparents fed me that made me strong enough to cut the tree, and it's the steel in the axe I used. And it's how you know your fox, which allowed you to carve him yesterday. And it's the story you will tell your children when you give this to them. All these things are separate but also one, inseparable. Do you see?”
― Sara Pennypacker, Pax

“It all matters. That someone turns out the lamp, picks up the windblown wrapper, says hello to the invalid, pays at the unattended lot, listens to the repeated tale, folds the abandoned laundry, plays the game fairly, tells the story honestly, acknowledges help, gives credit, says good night, resists temptation, wipes the counter, waits at the yellow, makes the bed, tips the maid, remembers the illness, congratulates the victor, accepts the consequences, takes a stand, steps up, offers a hand, goes first, goes last, chooses the small portion, teaches the child, tends to the dying, comforts the grieving, removes the splinter, wipes the tear, directs the lost, touches the lonely, is the whole thing. What is most beautiful is least acknowledged. What is worth dying for is barely noticed.”
― Laura McBride, We Are Called to Rise

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me why?"
"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
― Albert Einstein

“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”
― Mother Teresa

“Einstein says common sense is just habit of thought. It's how we're used to thinking about things, but a lot of the time it just gets in the way.”
― Rebecca Stead

“Some people are born to make great art and others are born to appreciate it. Don't you think? It is a kind of talent in itself, to be an audience, whether you are the spectator in the gallery or you are listening to the voice of the world's greatest soprano. Not everyone can be the artist. There have to be those who witness the art, who love and appreciate what they have been privileged to see.”
― Ann Patchett, Bel Canto

“To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“The words you can’t find, you borrow.
We read to know we’re not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone. We are not alone.
My life is in these books, he wants to tell her. Read these and know my heart.
We are not quite novels.
The analogy he is looking for is almost there.
We are not quite short stories. At this point, his life is seeming closest to that.
In the end, we are collected works.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“But if you want to find peace, you must first be able to hope it is possible.”
― Suzanne Collins

“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“I needed my mistakes
in their order
to get me here”
― W.S. Merwin, The Moon Before Morning

“Wesley taught me the Way of the Owl. In the human world your value as a person is often intrinsically linked to your wealth or most recent accomplishment. But all the accoutrements of the world were stripped away from me when I got sick. Welsey made me realize that if all I had to give was love, that was enough. I didn't need money, status, accomplishment, glamour or many of the empty things we so value.”
― Stacey O'Brien, Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl

“...it was enough that I knew I was not alone, that, at the very least, standing here beside me was this one person, who, unbeknownst to me till now, had all along been journeying this same journey with me, only from the opposite direction.”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“If a guy like you can stand up and do what you did, then maybe everyone can. Maybe everyone can live beyond what they're capable of. ”
― Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger

“Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Give me all of you!!! I don’t want so much of your time, so much of your talents and money, and so much of your work. I want YOU!!! ALL OF YOU!! I have not come to torment or frustrate the natural man or woman, but to KILL IT! No half measures will do. I don’t want to only prune a branch here and a branch there; rather I want the whole tree out! Hand it over to me, the whole outfit, all of your desires, all of your wants and wishes and dreams. Turn them ALL over to me, give yourself to me and I will make of you a new self---in my image. Give me yourself and in exchange I will give you Myself. My will, shall become your will. My heart, shall become your heart.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere - be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous.”
― Thornton Wilder

“She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Work: A Story of Experience

“Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

“There is no truth on this island of yours. Rather, there are as many truths as there are stars in the sky; and every one of them different.”
― Juliet Marillier, Daughter of the Forest

“Fall down seven times, get up eight.”
― Margi Preus

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"

“I really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty. If ever I get married, I'll certainly try to forget the fact.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“You make me laugh like a loon on loon tablets!”
― Louise Rennison, Then He Ate My Boy Entrancers

“Looking out of the window at the infinite sky, I prayed out, 'Dear Baby Jesus, I am sorry for my sin, even though I do not know what they are, which seems a bit unfair if it is going to be held against me. But that is your way. And I am not questioning your wisdomosity. In future, however, would it be possible for my life to be not so entirely crap? Thank you.”
― Louise Rennison, Away Laughing on a Fast Camel