Sarah Obsesses over Books & Cookies > Sarah Obsesses over Books & Cookies's Quotes

“Are you looking for me?
I am in the next seat.
My shoulder is against yours.
you will not find me in the stupas,
not in Indian shrine rooms,
nor in synagogues,
nor in cathedrals:
not in masses,
nor kirtans,
not in legs winding around your own neck,
nor in eating nothing but vegetables.
When you really look for me,
you will see me instantly —
you will find me in the tiniest house of time.
Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.”
― Kabir

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
― Oscar Wilde

“We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it's our job to invent something better.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“It is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself. The freedom to lead and plan your own life is frightening if you have never faced it before. It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question 'who am I' except the voice inside herself.”
― Betty Friedan

“The planet is fine. The people are fucked.”
― George Carlin

“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”
― E.L. Doctorow, Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews, 2nd Series

“Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.”
― Richard P. Feynman

“People don't expect too much from literature. They just want to know they're not alone with being confused.”
― Jonathan Ames

“The best index to a person's character is how he treats people who can't do him any good, and how he treats people who can't fight back.”
― Abigail Van Buren

“In the end, just three things matter:

How well we have lived
How well we have loved
How well we have learned to let go”
― Jack Kornfield

“There is no more disastrous mania, no more dangerous whim, than the speculation over roads not taken.”
― Juan Gabriel Vásquez, The Sound of Things Falling

“A writer needs four things to achieve greatness, Pasquale: desire, disappointment, and the sea.”
“That’s only three.”
Alvis finished his wine. “You have to do disappointment twice.”
― Jess Walter, Beautiful Ruins

“Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?”
― Henry Ward Beecherr

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”
― Plato

“Boy meets girl. So what?”
― Bertolt Brecht

“It is interesting to note that the people who had a good relationship with the person who died often heal their grief much more easily than those whose relationship with the deceased was filled with turmoil, bitterness, or disappointment. The reason is that a positive relationship is associated with good memories, and remembering and reprocessing these memories helps in the healing process. When people who had a bad relationship think back on it, they have to relive the pain. In their mind, they are still trying to fix what was wrong, to heal the wound, but they can’t. In addition, the guilt they carry with them impairs the healing process. Donna is a case in point. Donna and her mother had had a stormy relationship, fighting constantly over things that seemed insignificant in and of themselves. Yet in spite of their problems, the year after her mother’s death was the hardest of Donna’s life. Her husband could not understand the force of her grief; all he had ever heard her do was complain that her mother was selfish and uninterested in her. What he failed to understand was that Donna had to grieve not only over her mother’s death, but also over the fact that now she would never have the mother-daughter bond she had always wanted. Death had ended all her hopes.”
― Daniel G. Amen, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life: The Breakthrough Program for Conquering Anxiety, Depression, Obsessiveness, Anger, and Impulsiveness

“Books fall open, you fall in.”
― David T.W. McCord

“You need to know it's your actions that will make you a good person, not desire.”
― Matthew Quick, The Silver Linings Playbook

“There is freedom waiting for you,
On the breezes of the sky,
And you ask "What if I fall?"
Oh but my darling,
What if you fly?”
― Erin Hanson

“I woke up thinking a very pleasant thought. There is lots left in the world to read.”
― Nicholson Baker, The Anthologist

“Treat those who are good with goodness, and also treat those who are not good with goodness. Thus goodness is attained. Be honest to those who are honest, and be also honest to those who are not honest. Thus honesty is attained.”
― Lao Tzu, The Sayings Of Lao Tzu

“I was just telling Claire about a guy I met in bread class. I hate him, but he could be my soul mate.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost

“Adults are always asking little kids what they want to be when they grow up ’cause they’re looking for ideas.”
― Paula Poundstone

“Reader's Bill of Rights

1. The right to not read

2. The right to skip pages

3. The right to not finish

4. The right to reread

5. The right to read anything

6. The right to escapism

7. The right to read anywhere

8. The right to browse

9. The right to read out loud

10. The right to not defend your tastes”
― Daniel Pennac

“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.”
― Thomas Paine

“Every now and then I like to do as I'm told, just to confuse people.”
― Tamora Pierce, Melting Stones

“Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.”
― Mark Twain

“I am thirty-five years old, and it seems to me that I have reached the age of grief. Others arrive there sooner. Almost no one arrives much later. I don't think it is the years themselves, or the disintegration of the body. Most of our bodies are better taken care of and better looking than ever. What it is, is what we know, now that in spite of ourselves we have stopped to think about it. It is not only that we know that love ends, children are stolen, parents die feeling that their lives have been meaningless. It is not only that, by this time, a lot of acquaintances and friends have died and all the others are getting ready to sooner or later. It is more that the barriers between the circumstances of oneself and the rest of the world have broken down, after all - after all that schooling, all that care. Lord, if it be thy will, let this cup pass from me. But when you are thirty-three, or thirty-five, the cup must come around, cannot pass from you, and it is the same cup of pain that every mortal drinks from.”
― Jane Smiley, The Age of Grief

“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions