"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."
— Marilyn Monroe

"You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts."
— Kahlil Gibrán

"Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are the eternity and you are the mirror."
— Kahlil Gibrán (The Prophet)

"When love beckons to you follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And when he speaks to you believe in him, Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden. For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth......

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure, Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor, Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears. Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.

Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love. And think not you can direct the course of love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course. Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself."

But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully."
— Kahlil Gibrán (The Prophet)

"To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to."
— Kahlil Gibrán

"Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second."
— Marc Riboud

"Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart."
— Kahlil Gibrán

"When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight."
— Kahlil Gibrán

"Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife."
— Kahlil Gibrán

"We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them."
— Kahlil Gibrán

"An eye for an eye, and the whole world would be blind.
"
— Kahlil Gibran

"A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you."
— Elbert Hubbard

"In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them."
— Mark Twain

"Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness."
— Kahlil Gibrán

"Without music, life would be a mistake."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle. As a child I was taught what was right, but I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit. Unfortunately an only son (for many years an only child), I was spoilt by my parents, who, though good themselves (my father, particularly, all that was benevolent and amiable), allowed, encouraged, almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing; to care for none beyond my own family circle; to think meanly of all the rest of the world; to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own. Such I was, from eight to eight and twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

""In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.""
— André Maurois

"There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved."
— George Sand

"The world breaks us all. Afterward, some are stronger at the broken places."
— Ernest Hemingway

"I ask the impossible: love me forever.
Love me when all desire is gone.
Love me with the single mindedness of a monk.
When the world in its entirety,
and all that you hold sacred advise you
against it: love me still more.
When rage fills you and has no name: love me.
When each step from your door to our job tires you--
love me; and from job to home again, love me, love me.
Love me when you're bored--
when every woman you see is more beautiful than the last,
or more pathetic, love me as you always have:
not as admirer or judge, but with
the compassion you save for yourself
in your solitude.
Love me as you relish your loneliness,
the anticipation of your death,
mysteries of the flesh, as it tears and mends.
Love me as your most treasured childhood memory--
and if there is none to recall--
imagine one, place me there with you.
Love me withered as you loved me new.
Love me as if I were forever--
and I, will make the impossible
a simple act,
by loving you, loving you as I do
"
— Ana Castillo (I Ask the Impossible: Poems)

"The man you love cooking for you is good for you too."
— Ana Castillo (Peel My Love Like an Onion: A Novel)

"He dug so deeply into her sentiments that in search of interest he found love, because by trying to make her love him he ended up falling in love with her. Petra Cotes, for her part, loved him more and more as she felt his love increasing, and that was how in the ripeness of autumn she began to believe once more in the youthful superstition that poverty was the servitude of love. Both looked back then on the wild revelry, the gaudy wealth, and the unbridled fornication as an annoyance and they lamented that it had cost them so much of their lives to find the paradise of shared solitude. Madly in love after so many years of sterile complicity, they enjoyed the miracle of living each other as much at the table as in bed, and they grew to be so happy that even when they were two worn-out people they kept on blooming like little children and playing together like dogs."
— Gabriel García Márquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude)

"One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving."
— Paulo Coelho

"So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you."
— Paulo Coelho

"Life is too short, or too long, for me to allow myself the luxury of living it so badly."
— Paulo Coelho

"This is what we call love. When you are loved, you can do anything in creation. When you are loved, there's no need at all to understand what's happening, because everything happens within you."
— Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)

"What's the world's greatest lie?... It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate."
— Paulo Coelho

"When we cannot bear to be alone, it means we do not properly value the only companion we will have from birth to death - ourselves."
— Eda LeShan

"Passion makes a person stop eating, sleeping, working, feeling at peace. A lot of people are frightened because, when it appears, it demolishes all the old things it finds in its path.

No one wants their life thrown into chaos. That is why a lot of people keep that threat under control, and are somehow capable of sustaining a house or a structure that is already rotten. They are the engineers of the superseded.

Other people think exactly the opposite: they surrender themselves without a second thought, hoping to find in passion the solutions to all their problems. They make the other person responsible for their happiness and blame them for their possible unhappiness. They are either euphoric because something marvelous has happened or depressed because something unexpected has just ruined everything.

Keeping passion at bay or surrendering blindly to it - which of these two attitudes is the least destructive?

I don't know."
— Paulo Coelho (Eleven Minutes: A Novel)

"When I had nothing to lose, I had everything. When I stopped being who I am, I found myself."
— Paulo Coelho (Eleven Minutes: A Novel)

"We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it's another to think that yours is the only path."
— Paulo Coelho

"In real life, love has to be possible. Even if it is not returned right away, love can only survive when the hope exists that you will be able to win over the person you desire."
— Paulo Coelho (By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept)

"Don't give in to your fears. If you do, you won't be able to talk to your heart."
— Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)

"When someone leaves, it's because someone else is about to arrive."
— Paulo Coelho (The Zahir)

"A child can teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires."
— Paulo Coelho