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Kindle Notes & Highlights
Everyone lies about their lives. What would happen if you shared the truth instead? The one thing that defines you, that makes everything else about you fall into place? Not on the internet, but with those real people around you?
an artist, I watched people. I analyzed their relationships, and I noticed there is always a balance of power. One partner is more loved, and the other more loving.
Julian wore his solitude and loneliness like old, ill-fitting shoes. He was used to them—in many ways they had grown comfortable—but over time they were bending him out of shape, causing calluses and bunions that would never go away.
Preparation is the key to effective spontaneity.
“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift,” she’d chant to herself as she brushed her teeth. “It’s not happy people who are grateful, it’s grateful people who are happy,” she’d say as she brushed her hair.
Meet force with softness. Recipe for life. Now you understand.” And, strangely, he did.
“In China, we say one meal won’t make a fat man. You need to do little and often.
She wished she could re-create the relaxed, uncomplicated, happy relationship they’d had, but she couldn’t. It was like trying to get a stain out of the carpet. You could scrub and steam and brush for as long as you liked, but there would always be a faint outline of what had spilled.
Sometimes you didn’t want a room to make a statement or to say anything about you, you just wanted it to shut up and be a room.
It feels like everyone has a piece of me except for myself.
You’re like the sun. When you’re interested in someone, you turn your rays toward them and they luxuriate in your warmth. But then you turn somewhere else, leaving them in the shadow, and they spend all their energy trying to re-create the memory of the light.”
Surely it would be better to live a messy, flawed, sometimes not very pretty life that was real and honest, than to constantly try to live up to a life of perfection that was actually a sham?
