Nicole Jakosalem > Nicole's Quotes

“We memorialize our past. Everything seems better in a memory.”
― Renee Carlino, Before We Were Strangers

“Life was passing me by at high speed as I sat back with my feet up, rejecting change, ignoring the world, shrugging off anything that threatened to have meaning of relevance.”
― Renee Carlino, Before We Were Strangers

“The pain of losing someone is always worse when you know you could have prevented it.”
― Renee Carlino, Sweet Thing

“I loved you before you existed, and I’ll love you after I’m gone.”
― Renée Carlino, Nowhere but Here

“Sometimes it takes the love of others to show us who we really are.”
― Renee Carlino, Sweet Thing

“To exist in each other’s souls so strongly that you are bound without a physical tie is the greatest mark of love…”
― Renée Carlino, Nowhere but Here

“Love is not the same thing as a marriage or a relationship or having children. Love is not work. Love is a feeling, pure and simple. It’s a feeling you can have one moment, in which you believe you could throw yourself in front of a speeding train for someone; and it can vanish the next, when they tear your heart out and steal every last beat for themselves.”
― Renée Carlino, Nowhere but Here

“You are your mother and your father. You are your experiences and your fears and the love you let yourself feel. You are your degree and your talent and your passion. You are your pain, your joy, and your fantasies. You are me and Sheil and Jenny and Will and every person that touches your soul..but most of all you are you, whoever you dream that to be.”
― Renee Carlino, Sweet Thing

“Sometimes we're just along for the ride. We can't control everything; we can only do our best to control our reactions when life doesn't go our way.”
― Renée Carlino, Sweet Little Thing

“Love life and life will love you back.’ ”
― Renée Carlino, Sweet Thing

“I realized a long time ago that if you keep all that stuff inside, the stuff that makes you most uniquely you, then you will never find your person. You’ll just wither from within and forget who you are, and if you can’t see you, then he can’t see you. Don’t be scared. I’ve seen you, Kate, who you really are, and you’re worth it. You’re worth all of it.”
― Renée Carlino, Nowhere but Here

“Isn’t it weird that we had nothing at the time … but somehow it felt like we had everything.”
― Renee Carlino, Swear on This Life

“sometimes we figure things out, and then life changes and we have to figure it all out again.”
― Renée Carlino, Sweet Thing

“It seemed like everything I knew at twenty-five morphed into everything I didn't know by twenty-six, when I was suddenly hit with the realization that many of the decisions we make in our early twenties are permanent.”
― Renée Carlino, Sweet Thing

“Love equals a morbid and relentless fear of losing the other person. It’s a freak-accident fear, a piece of space junk falling from the sky and obliterating him, leaving nothing but his smoking boots. It’s the unfortunate-organ-defect fear—suddenly, on his thirtieth birthday, the little crack in his heart that’s been there since birth will rear its ugly head and take him in his sleep while he’s spooning you. It’s the only way to know you’re really in love, when you ask the question would it be harder to watch him die, or to know he’ll watch me die? Is there more mercy in being the one who does the watching or in being the one who does the dying? It’s when you realize what mercy-killing actually means, it’s when you actually care to the point of tormenting worry. It’s not roses and white horses, it’s fucking brutal and it can send a person running for the hills. To love is brave and Will was the bravest person I knew.”
― Renée Carlino, Sweet Thing

“Whispers, that’s what she calls them. They’re signs, small sounds, or little reminders, letting you know that there’s something bigger than us out there. That there’s a force working hard to make things right in the universe.”
― Renée Carlino, Nowhere but Here

“We can’t always control our circumstances, who our parents are, where we live, or how much money we make, but in those rare moments when we can shape our fate, when we do have the power to make our own happiness, we can’t be too scared to do it.”
― Renee Carlino, Swear on This Life

“In real life we have a hard time recognizing serendipitous moments because we’re not making the story up as we go along. It’s not a lie—it’s really happening to us, and we have no idea how it will end. Some of us will look back on our lives and recall events that were a bit too perfect, but until you know the whole story, it’s impossible to see the universe at work, or even admit that there is something bigger than us, making sure everything that should happen does happen. If you can surrender to the idea that there might be a plan, instead of reducing every magical moment to a coincidence, then love will find you.”
― Renee Carlino, Swear on This Life

“In all my years, I’ve learned that life delivers many storms for us to weather. Some will be slow, brooding, quiet beasts, and others will be loud, thunderous, and frightening. But if you’re willing to look close enough, no matter how devastating the storm may be, after the rain you’ll always find new life sprouting in the aftermath.”
― Renée Carlino, After the Rain

“I learned that you can’t predict your future, there’s no crystal ball or formula for happiness. You can’t control the weather just like you can’t control the way others behave, but what you can control is how much love you give. Surrendering to this crazy thing called life is hard, but we don’t have to be the soulless sheets of paper tarrying along in the wind. We can find our people, love, respect them, and then hang on for dear life because it’s not where you go on this journey but who you’re with that matters the most.”
― Renée Carlino, Sweet Little Thing

“This could be the best thing for us, after it stops being the worst.”
― Renee Carlino, Swear on This Life

“You know how they say behind every great man there’s a great woman? My mother would say, No, the woman is three steps ahead.”
― Renee Carlino, After the Rain

“that I had to know you, that I needed you in my life. I’ve never felt that way about anyone, ever. Whatever happens will be up to you, but I’ll be a different man if I can’t have you. I will never breathe as deeply as I did when I was with you. I’ll never see the range of color on a perfectly cloudless sky. I will never smell anything as sweet as you or hear a voice that fills my heart up as much as yours does. That night in my truck, when I had the low, I knew without a doubt, even though I had never been in love before . . . I knew that I was in love with you.”
― Renée Carlino, Nowhere but Here

“Those decisions seem easy for some and, sure, you could say those people are just the shallow puddles we trudge through, but I would argue that those people are lucky because right now as I watch this girl—the past me—looking serenely self-possessed, I know that she is standing on a great precipice. I can tell by looking at her that she is the still water you only ever skip rocks over. The world as she knows it is about to be turned upside down, and if she doesn’t learn to swim, her own depth will drown her. I feel a strong desire to whisper “surrender,” but I don’t. Like everyone in this airport, she is headed somewhere, possibly the first stop on that brutal journey of self-discovery. Like the rest of us, she will have to learn the hard way that we are not always in control. Sometimes it takes the love of others to show us who we really are.”
― Renée Carlino, Sweet Thing

“I’m not sure why I had to weather the stages of grief after hearing the news that night. Maybe it was the death of my singledom or the death of my own childhood that scared me. For some reason, when you’re faced with the realization that you’re going to become a parent, it immediately changes how you view yourself. You no longer think of yourself as someone else’s child because you can’t be a parent and a child. It’s an official good-bye, and good-byes always scared the hell out of me.”
― Renee Carlino, Sweet Little Thing

“We weren't wrong for being ourselves; we were wrong for each other.”
― Renee Carlino, Sweet Thing

“Everyone tells a story about who they are in their own head. That story defines you, dictating all your actions and all your mistakes. If your own story is filled with guilt and fear and self-hatred, life can look pretty miserable. But, if you're very lucky, you might have a person who tells you a better story, one that takes up residence in your soul, speaking louder than the woeful tale of which you've convinced yourself. If you let it speak loudly within your heart, it becomes your passion and your purpose.”
― Mia Sheridan, Leo

“nothing is louder
than overthinking
after midnight”
― R.H. Sin, Whiskey, Words & a Shovel I

“you can't force someone to realize
that you're what's best for them”
― R.H. Sin, Whiskey, Words & a Shovel I

“give me raw conversation without filters or restraints. i yearn for something deeper, i long for understanding.”
― R.H. Sin