Taylor Dean > Taylor's Quotes

“Oh, I see;" said the Tin Woodman. "But, after all, brains are not the best things in the world."
Have you any?" enquired the Scarecrow.
No, my head is quite empty," answered the Woodman; "but once I had brains, and a heart also; so, having tried them both, I should much rather have a heart.”
― L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

“Believe it. Know it. Accept it.”
― Taylor Dean, Lancaster House

“I wear this because it suits me, it’s a part of who I am, of what I am. My soul is black, my life is black—as black as the nothingness that surrounds me.”
― Taylor Dean, Lancaster House

“I’ve known people that the world has thrown everything at to discourage them...to break their spirit. And yet something about them retains a dignity. They face life and don’t ask quarters.”
― Horton Foote

“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.”
― Joyce Carol Oates

“Quiet people have the loudest minds.”
― Stephen Hawking

“It isn’t right that one human being can hold such power over another. One person’s reality is another person’s crazy. Aren’t crazy people just regular people who don’t fit into someone else’s version of normal and acceptable behavior?”
― Taylor Dean, Lancaster House

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
― Toni Morrison

“We read to know we're not alone.”
― William Nicholson, Shadowlands: A Play

“A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.”
― C.S. Lewis

“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“There's something about houses that intrigues me. I mean, they're the place where families spend all their time together, making the house filled with love, life, and laughter. I always look at houses and wonder what's going on inside. Without the people who lived in them, they're just a shell, but once they're filled, they become sacred ground, the place where memories are made.”
― Taylor Dean, I Have People

“You should date a girl who reads.
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.”
― Rosemarie Urquico

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“When I write I feel like I can breathe. It’s like yoga for the brain.”
― Elise Stokes, Cassidy Jones and the Secret Formula

“I have spread my dreams under your feet.
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
― W.B. Yeats

“she wouldn’t rest until the entire world was beautiful.”
― Taylor Dean, Lancaster House

“We both have a past that doesn’t include each other. It’s a part of who we are whether we like it or not.”
― Taylor Dean, Lancaster House

“One person’s reality is another person’s crazy.”
― Taylor Dean, Lancaster House

“We always love and crave the things we can’t have, it’s human nature…”
― Taylor Dean, Lancaster House

“Aren’t crazy people just regular people who don’t fit into someone else’s version of normal and acceptable behavior?”
― Taylor Dean, Lancaster House