"...the sea's only gifts are harsh blows and, occasionally, the chance to feel strong. Now, I don't know much about the sea, but I do know that that's the way it is here. And I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong, to measure yourself at least once, to find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions, facing blind, deaf stone alone, with nothing to help you but your own hands and your own head...
"
— Primo Levi

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
— Anaïs Nin

"...make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty."
— Jon Krakauer (Into the Wild)

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."
— Anaïs Nin

"Some people feel like they don't deserve love. They walk away quietly into empty spaces, trying to close the gaps of the past."
— Jon Krakauer (Into the Wild)

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."
— Anaïs Nin

"Mountains make poor receptacles for dreams."
— Jon Krakauer

"I am only responsible for my own heart, you offered yours up for the smashing my darling. Only a fool would give out such a vital organ"
— Anaïs Nin

"The core of mans' spirit comes from new experiences."
— Jon Krakauer (Into the Wild)

"Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country."
— Anaïs Nin

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
— Dr. Seuss

"I am lonely, yet not everybody will do. I don't know why, some people fill the gaps and others emphasize my loneliness. In reality those who satisfy me are those who simply allow me to live with my ''idea of them."
— Anaïs Nin

"You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough"
— Mae West

"I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing."
— Anaïs Nin

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
— Mark Twain

"Love consists of not looking each other in the eye, but of looking outwardly in the same direction"
— Anaïs Nin

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."
— Robert Frost

"There it was, there it is, the place where during the best time of our lives friendship had its home and happiness its headquarters."
— Wallace Stegner (Crossing to Safety)

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."
— Theodore Roosevelt

"It should not be denied... that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom, and the road has always led West."
— Wallace Stegner

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
— Oscar Wilde (Lady Windermere's Fan)

"You can plan all you want to. You can lie in your morning bed and fill whole notebooks with schemes and intentions. But within a single afternoon, within hours or minutes, everything you plan and everything you have fought to make yourself can be undone as a slug is undone when salt is poured on him. And right up to the moment when you find yourself dissolving into foam you can still believe you are doing fine."
— Wallace Stegner (Crossing to Safety)

"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."
— Mark Twain

"Our love of each other was like two long shadows kissing without hope of reality."
— Anaïs Nin

"Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea."
— Robert A. Heinlein

"They wordlessly excused each other for not loving each other as much as they had planned to. There were empty rooms in the house where they had meant to put their love, and they worked together to fill these rooms with midcentury modern furniture. ("Birthmark")."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories)

"I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells."
— Dr. Seuss

"If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire)

"Inelegantly and without my consent, time passed.

How to Tell Stories to Children
p198 "
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories)

"But, like ivy, we grow where there is room for us. "
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories)

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
— Thomas A. Edison

"I looked at other couples and wondered how they could be so calm about it. They held hands as if they weren't even holding hands. When Steve and I held hands, I had to keep looking down to marvel at it. There was my hand, the same hand I've always had - oh, but look! What is it holding? It's holding Steve's hand! Who is Steve? My three-dimensional boyfriend. Each day I wondered what would happen next. What happens when you stop wanting, when you are happy. I supposed I would go on being happy forever. I knew I would not mess things up by growing bored. I had done that once before."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories)

"Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love."
— Mother Teresa

"We were excited about getting jobs; we hardly went anywhere without filling out an application. But once we were hired - as furniture sanders - we could not believe this was really what people did all day. Everything we had thought of as The World was actually the result of someone's job. Each line on the sidewalk, each saltine. Everyone had a rotting carpet and a door to pay for. Aghast, we quit. There had to be a more dignified way to live. We needed time to consider ourselves, to come up with a theory about who we were and set it to music.

Something That Needs Nothing"
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories)

"It is our choices, Harry, that show us who we truly are, far more than our abilities."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)

"Some may say that such a girl is not ready for a relationship with a man, especially a man in his late sixties. But to that I say: We don't know anything. We don't know how to cure a cold or what dogs are thinking. We do terrible things, we make wars, we kill people out of greed. So who are we to say how to love. I wouldn't force her. I wouldn't have to. She would want me. We would be in love. What do you know. You don't know anything. Call me when you've cured AIDS, give me a ring then and I'll listen."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories)

"Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"That day I carried the dream around like a full glass of water, moving gracefully so I would not lose any of it."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories)

"Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. 'Pooh?' he whispered.
'Yes, Piglet?'
'Nothing,' said Piglet, taking Pooh's hand. 'I just wanted to be sure of you.'"
— A.A. Milne (Winnie-the-Pooh)

"Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person's face as you pass on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. There are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories)

"It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it."
— Oscar Wilde

"What a terrible mistake to let go of something wonderful for something real. "
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories)

"It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Some people need a red carpet rolled out in front of them in order to walk forward into friendship. They can't see the tiny outstretched hands all around them, everywhere, like leaves on trees.

Ten True Things"
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories)

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
— Albert Einstein

"We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness."
— George Orwell (1984)

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone)

"Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"Go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company."
— Mark Twain

"And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"
— Kurt Vonnegut (A Man Without a Country)