Jac > Jac's Quotes

“The lotus is the most beautiful flower, whose petals open one by one. But it will only grow in the mud. In order to grow and gain wisdom, first you must have the mud --- the obstacles of life and its suffering. ... The mud speaks of the common ground that humans share, no matter what our stations in life. ... Whether we have it all or we have nothing, we are all faced with the same obstacles: sadness, loss, illness, dying and death. If we are to strive as human beings to gain more wisdom, more kindness and more compassion, we must have the intention to grow as a lotus and open each petal one by one. ”
― Goldie Hawn

“Becoming fearless isn't the point. That's impossible. It's learning how to control your fear, and how to be free from it.”
― Veronica Roth, Divergent

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
― Mae West

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“I felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I told him I believed in hell, and that certain people, like me, had to live in hell before they died, to make up for missing out on it after death, since they didn't believe in life after death, and what each person believed happened to him when he died.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I didn't know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of the throat and I'd cry for a week.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
― Bernard M. Baruch

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

“A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.”
― Steve Martin

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”
― Andre Gide, Autumn Leaves

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
― Mark Twain

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“Everything you can imagine is real.”
― Pablo Picasso

“Life cannot defeat a writer who is in love with writing - for life itself is a writer's love until death.”
― Edna Ferber

“You are imperfect, permanently and inevitably flawed. And you are beautiful.”
― Amy Bloom

“There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“My doubts fall away and leave me weightless and whole. I turn. I look. I see the frame of my face in another’s. I see my eyes staring back at me. It’s her. It is her. She is lovely. She is delicate. She is a familiar mix of me. (p. 301)

They’re expecting Aimee. I’m not Aimee. I can’t be anything like the Aimee they imagined me to be, I worried. What if I’m not as easy to love as the baby they gave away? What if this doesn’t work out? What will I tell my daughters? What will I tell myself? (p.295)

Gloria wasn’t all bad; she did have days that made me want to nest in her arms and surrender to her care. The truth is, I very much wanted a mother, and most of the time I wanted her to be my mother. (p.179)

I would have been good. I would have behaved. Eaten my vegetables, cleaned my room, said “please” and “thank you.” I would have made you love me. Somehow. (p. 297)
We have taken our time getting to know one another. Our relationship has had the luxury of a gestation period—a block of time that nature affords to every mother and her offspring. (p. 323)”
― Kathy Hatfield, Secret Storms

“I've never fooled anyone. I've let people fool themselves. They didn't bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn't argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn't.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
― Plato

“People tend to complicate their own lives, as if living weren't already complicated enough.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression, instead, is flat, hollow, and unendurable. It is also tiresome. People cannot abide being around you when you are depressed. They might think that they ought to, and they might even try, but you know and they know that you are tedious beyond belief: you are irritable and paranoid and humorless and lifeless and critical and demanding and no reassurance is ever enough. You're frightened, and you're frightening, and you're "not at all like yourself but will be soon," but you know you won't.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“A poet should be so crafty with words that he is envied even for his pains.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“And then I tasted a sharp acid rising in my stomach. It is an acquired taste, the essence of fear.”
― Kathy Hatfield, The Girl on the Moon: A Novel About Endless Time

“It was as if I had been dropped into the first chapter of a fairy tale - but we all know how fairy tales go.”
― Kathy Hatfield, The Girl on the Moon: A Novel About Endless Time