"Leonard asks me if there's anything I need to know before he dies, I think about it for a minute, turn to him, say what's the meaning of life, Leonard? He laughs, says that's an easy one, my son, it's whatever you want it to be."
— James Frey (My Friend Leonard)

"Gauguin was a stockbroker in Paris, married, had five kids. One day he came home from work and told his wife he was leaving, that he was through supporting the family, that he had had enough. Just like that he fucking took off. He said he had always felt that he was a painter, so he moved to a rat-infested shithole and started painting. His wife begged him to come back, his bosses told him he was insane, he didn't care, he was following his heart. He left Paris, moved to Rouen, went from Rouen to Arles, from Arles to Tahiti. He was searching for peace, contentment, trying to fill that fucking hole he felt inside, and he believed he could fill it. He died in Tahiti, blind and crazy from syphilis, but he did it. He filled his fucking hole, made beautiful work, made beautiful, beautiful work... It takes a brave man to walk away, to care so much that he doesn't care about anything else, to be willing to obey what he feels inside, to be willing to suffer the consequences of living for himself. Every time I stand before his work it makes me cry, and I cry because I'm proud of him, and happy for him, and because I admire him.
"
— James Frey (My Friend Leonard)

"On the other couch a women sits with a young boy looking through a picture book about Babar the Elephant. When I find a magazine and I lean back to start reading it, I can see the women watching me out of the corner of her eye. She moves closer to the child and she leans over and kisses his forehead. I know why she does it and i don't blame her."
— James Frey (A Million Little Pieces)

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."
— Mark Twain

"Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend."
— Albert Camus

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."
— Abraham Lincoln

"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

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."
— Elie Wiesel

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

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool."
— William Shakespeare (As You Like It)

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
— Mark Twain

"Whenever I feel the need to exercise, I lie down until it goes away."
— Robert Maynard Hutchins

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
— Oscar Wilde

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye."
— Miss Piggy

"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

"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."
— Oscar Wilde

"Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why we call it 'The Present'."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
— Maya Angelou

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."
— Oscar Wilde

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

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be."
— Douglas Adams

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

"It is never too late to be what you might have been."
— George Eliot

"We read to know that we are not alone."
— C.S. Lewis

"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go..."
— Dr. Seuss

"People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be."
— Abraham Lincoln

"Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be."
— Shel Silverstein

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined."
— Henry David Thoreau

"...we accept the love we think we deserve."
— Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

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

"It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are."
— e.e. cummings

"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us."
— Helen Keller

"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."
— Anaïs Nin

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

"The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go."
— Dr. Seuss

"Everything you can imagine is real."
— Pablo Picasso

"I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally. "
— W.C. Fields

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
— Mark Twain

"Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple."
— Dr. Seuss

"An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind."
— Mahatma Gandhi (GANDHI: An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth)

"People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.

A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.

A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master..."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song."
— Maya Angelou

"Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You."
— Dr. Seuss (Happy Birthday to You!)

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
— Albert Einstein

"The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."
— Robert Frost

"God has no religion."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"You get a little moody sometimes but I think that's because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up."
— Pat Conroy (The Prince of Tides)

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. "
— Leo Tolstoy