A.X.Y. Grace > A.X.Y.'s Quotes

“To live will be an awfully big adventure.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“Hope that you will always keep your sense of wonder, and never lose your direction in life.”
― A.X.Y. Grace, Adventures of the Restless Youth: The Caster Effect

“...Don’t ye know what rains stand for?"
"R-A-I-N-S. Which stands for, Right Attitude In Negative Situations. Keep that in mind, yeh?”
― A.X.Y. Grace, Adventures of the Restless Youth: The Stendhal Syndrome

“I think that's what they call an adventure. You know, when you don't know what lies around the corner, but you think it might be fun.”
― Emma Eggleston, Escape

“If I dismiss the ordinary — waiting for the special, the extreme, the extraordinary to happen — I may just miss my life… To allow ourselves to spend afternoons watching dancers rehearse, or sit on a stone wall and watch the sunset, or spend the whole weekend rereading Chekhov stories—to know that we are doing what we’re supposed to be doing — is the deepest form of permission in our creative lives. The British author and psychologist Adam Phillips has noted, 'When we are inspired, rather like when we are in love, we can feel both unintelligible to ourselves and most truly ourselves.' This is the feeling I think we all yearn for, a kind of hyperreal dream state. We read Emily Dickinson. We watch the dancers. We research a little known piece of history obsessively. We fall in love. We don’t know why, and yet these moments form the source from which all our words will spring.”
― Dani Shapiro, Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life

“An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered." - On Running After Ones Hat, All Things Considered, 1908”
― G. K. Chesterton

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
― Albert Einstein

“Never grow a wishbone where your backbone ought to be.”
― Clementine Paddleford

“Look at us. Running around, always rushed, always late. I guess that's why they call it the human race. What we crave most in this world is connection. For some people it happens at first site. It's when you know, you know. It's fate working its magic. And that's great for them. They get to live in a pop song; ride the express train. But that's not the way it really works. For the rest of us it's a bit less romantic. It's complicated and it's messy. It's about horrible timing and fumbled opportunities. And not being able to say what you need to say when you need to say it. At least, that's the way it was for me.”
― The Switch

“A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.”
― Samuel Johnson, Works of Samuel Johnson. Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, A Grammar of the English Tongue, Preface to Shakespeare, Lives of the English Poets & more [improved 11/20/2010]

“What we hope ever to do with ease, we must first learn to do with diligence.”
― Samuel Johnson, The Life of Samuel Johnson, and the Journal of His Tour to the Hebrides, Vol. 4 of 5

“If you have made mistakes, even serious mistakes, you may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call "failure" is not the falling down, but the staying down.”
― Mary Pickford

“Somewhere, tucked away in the vastness of it all, hidden between the horizon and the sea, there exists a world where you are loving the one that got away, where the words you never allowed yourself to say flow freely between your teeth. There exists a realm where you did things differently- where you choose the other path. Maybe you are happier there, though that is not the point, for maybe you aren’t. Maybe, just maybe, despite circumstances, despite regret, you are exactly where you need to be. The only thing stopping you from realizing that is the way you whisper ‘what if.”
― Bianca Sparacino

“It is okay to take your time. We live in a generation that romanticizes moving forward as quickly as possible when it comes to careers and our futures and our success within them. But there is no point in rushing quickly towards a life that will not inspire you or fulfill you.”
― Bianca Sparacino, A Gentle Reminder

“Were you looking at the trees just now? Don’t look at the trees man. Look at the gaps between the trees – where you wanna go. Don’t you ski? Same theory…if you think about falling when you’re on a motorcycle, you’ll really go down. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy thing.”
― A.X.Y. Grace, Adventures of the Restless Youth: The Caster Effect

“Listen to both words and silences – things she’s not telling you.”
― A.X.Y. Grace, Adventures of the Restless Youth: The Stendhal Syndrome

“To let such unlikely truths lie.”
― A.X.Y. Grace, Adventures of the Restless Youth: The Stendhal Syndrome

“Don’t use your own gauge to measure the world. You’re always trying too hard to get to the answer in a straight line.”
― A.X.Y. Grace, Adventures of the Restless Youth: The Caster Effect

“Whatever you do, keep that fire in your belly, but ice in your head!”
― A.X.Y. Grace, Adventures of the Restless Youth: The Caster Effect

“Just like forever isn’t for everyone. No point rushing for a bandwagon I can’t catch.”
― A.X.Y. Grace, Adventures of the Restless Youth: The Stendhal Syndrome

“These days, Clarissa believes, you measure people first by their kindness and their capacity for devotion. You get tired, sometimes, of wit and intellect; everybody's little display of genius.”
― Michael Cunningham, The Hours

“For what it’s worth... it’s never too late, or in my case too early, to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit. Start whenever you want. You can change or stay the same. There are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you’ve never felt before. I hope you meet people who have a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start over again.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“For in grief nothing "stays put." One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?

But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?

How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss till this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“Grief’s not a disease, yet it could render one crippled. It’s neither a mental health condition that should be stigmatized by society, nor a plague to be avoided. It’s not a weakness of character, just like how altitude sickness could still affect fit and athletic people.”
― A.X.Y. Grace, The Mostly Untold Solo Latin American Adventures of AXY Grace

“I never reserved books in the library, because I believed that when it's the right time for me to read something, the cosmos would align to make a particular book available.”
― A.X.Y. Grace, The Mostly Untold Solo Latin American Adventures of AXY Grace

“There was a melting pot of cultures for company, grilled steak for dinner, and general satisfaction of our sandboarding accomplishments, yet it was a rueful night, in more ways than one.
 ”
― A.X.Y. Grace, The Mostly Untold Solo Latin American Adventures of AXY Grace

“As with all emotions, grief should have an evolutionary purpose. Besides being a response to bereavement or healing process, it made people re-evaluate life priorities, reflect on past undesirable habits and move forward with more intentional actions.”
― A.X.Y. Grace, The Mostly Untold Solo Latin American Adventures of AXY Grace

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“The pearls and diamonds on them! Galinda was glad she had chosen a simple silver collar with mettanite struts. There was something vulgar about traveling in jewels. As she realized this truth, she codified it into a saying. At the earliest perfect opportunity she would bring it out as proof of her having opinions—and of having traveled. “The overdressed traveler betrays more interest in being seen than in seeing,” she murmured, trying it out, “while the true traveler knows that the novel world about her serves as the most appropriate accessory.” Good, very good.”
― Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“(J)ust because your version of normal isn't the same as someone else's version doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you.”
― John Boyne, The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket