Alex > Alex's Quotes

“i bleed every month. but do not die. how am i not magic. – the lie”
― Nayyirah Waheed, salt.

“It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.”
― William Ernest Henley, Echoes of Life and Death

“My experience of life is that it is not divided up into genres; it’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky.”
― Alan Moore

“I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.”
― e.e. cummings

“Out there people are working and arguing and laughing, living their beautiful, terrible lives, falling in love and having babies and being bored out of their skulls and feeling depressed, then being consoled by some little thing like watching the patterns the light makes through the leaves of trees, casting shadows on the sidewalks.
I remember the line from that poem now.
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.”
― Kim Addonizio, Little Beauties

“Resist much, obey little.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open road, healthy, free, the world before me.”
― Walt Whitman

“Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.”
― Walt Whitman

“It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.”
― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; Christopher Roden; Tsukasa Kobayashi; Akane Higashiyama; Hiroshi Takata

“All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default.”
― J.K. Rowling

“Saying 'I notice you're a nerd' is like saying, 'Hey, I notice that you'd rather be intelligent than be stupid, that you'd rather be thoughtful than be vapid, that you believe that there are things that matter more than the arrest record of Lindsay Lohan. Why is that?' In fact, it seems to me that most contemporary insults are pretty lame. Even 'lame' is kind of lame. Saying 'You're lame' is like saying 'You walk with a limp.' Yeah, whatever, so does 50 Cent, and he's done all right for himself.”
― John Green

“I want to taste and glory in each day, and never be afraid to experience pain; and never shut myself up in a numb core of nonfeeling, or stop questioning and criticizing life and take the easy way out. To learn and think: to think and live; to live and learn: this always, with new insight, new understanding, and new love.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“One's not half of two; two are halves of one.”
― E.E. Cummings

“Sure, each night we staggered home, unfired, unglazed, already broken without knowing it. But at least we were trying.”
― Miguel Syjuco, Ilustrado

“I am one of the searchers. There are, I believe, millions of us. We are not unhappy, but neither are we really content. We continue to explore life, hoping to uncover its ultimate secret. We continue to explore ourselves, hoping to understand. We like to walk along the beach, we are drawn by the ocean, taken by its power, its unceasing motion, its mystery and unspeakable beauty. We like forests and mountains, deserts and hidden rivers, and the lonely cities as well. Our sadness is as much a part of our lives as is our laughter. To share our sadness with one we love is perhaps as great a joy as we can know - unless it be to share our laughter.
We searchers are ambitious only for life itself, for everything beautiful it can provide. Most of all we love and want to be loved. We want to live in a relationship that will not impede our wandering, nor prevent our search, nor lock us in prison walls; that will take us for what little we have to give. We do not want to prove ourselves to another or compete for love.

For wanderers, dreamers, and lovers, for lonely men and women who dare to ask of life everything good and beautiful. It is for those who are too gentle to live among wolves.”
― James Kavanaugh, There are men too gentle to live among wolves

“Now he haunts me seldom: some fierce umbilical is broken,
I live with my own fragile hopes and sudden rising despair.
Now I do not weep for my sins; I have learned to love them
And to know that they are the wounds that make love real.
His face illudes me; his voice, with its pity, does not ring in my ear.
His maxims memorized in boyhood do not make fruitless and pointless my experience.
I walk alone, but not so terrified as when he held my hand.
I do not splash in the blood of his son
nor hear the crunch of nails or thorns piercing protesting flesh.
I am a boy again--I whose boyhood was turned to manhood in a brutal myth.
Now wine is only wine with drops that do not taste of blood.
The bread I eat has too much pride for transubstantiation,
I, too--and together the bread and I embrace,
Each grateful to be what we are, each loving from our own reality.”
― James Kavanaugh, There Are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves

“We live in a world where joy and empathy and pleasure are all around us, there for the noticing.”
― Ira Glass

“A bit of trash now and then is good for the severest reader. It provides the necessary roughage in the literary diet.”
― Phyllis McGinley

“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”
― Rumi

“expect sadness
like
you expect rain.
both,
cleanse you.”
― Nayyirah Waheed

“i loved you
because
it was easier
than
loving myself.”
― Nayyirah waheed

“if
the ocean
can calm itself,
so can you.
we
are both
salt water
mixed with
air.”
― Nayyirah Waheed

“it is being honest
about
my pain
that
makes me invincible.”
― Nayyirah Waheed

“i do not want to have you
to fill the empty parts of me
i want to be full on my own

i want to feel so complete
i could light a whole city
and then
i want to have you
cause the two of
us combined
could set
it on fire”
― Rupi Kaur

“We are unusual and tragic and alive.”
― dave eggers

“Where are you hiding my love?
Each day without you will never come again.
Even today you missed a sunset on the ocean,
A silver shadow on yellow rocks I saved for you,
A squirrel that ran across the road,
A duck diving for dinner.
My God! There may be nothing left to show you
Save wounds and weariness
And hopes grown dead,
And wilted flowers I picked for you a lifetime ago,
Or feeble steps that cannot run to hold you,
Arms too tired to offer you to a roaring wind,
A face too wrinkled to feel the ocean's spray.”
― James Kavanaugh, There Are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves