E.t. > E.t.'s Quotes

“There is only one page left to write on. I will fill it with words of only one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“I'm bored with knitting. I've taken up arson.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, Her Fearful Symmetry

“It's better to keep grief inside. Grief inside works like bees or ants, building curious and perfect structures, complicating you. Grief outside means you want something from someone, and chances are good you won't get it.”
― Hilary Thayer Hamann, Anthropology of an American Girl

“Kindness is everything . . . When you receive it and express it, it becomes the whole meaning of things. It's life, demystified. A place out of self. Not a waltz, the the whirls within a waltz.”
― Hilary Thayer Hamann, Anthropology of an American Girl

“Hell is only loneliness, a place without play for the soul, a place without God. How could there be God in loneliness when God is presence?”
― Hilary Thayer Hamann, Anthropology of an American Girl

“Things speed up as you circle the drain.”
― Armistead Maupin

“This morning I wake to the blue-white light of an approaching spring in New York: the kind of light that promises it will not be this cold forever.”
― Tre Miller Rodriguez, Splitting the Difference: A Heart-Shaped Memoir

“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“Gorgeous, amazing things come into our lives when we are paying attention: mangoes, grandnieces, Bach, ponds. This happens more often when we have as little expectation as possible. If you say, "Well, that's pretty much what I thought I'd see," you are in trouble. At that point you have to ask yourself why you are even here. [...] Astonishing material and revelation appear in our lives all the time. Let it be. Unto us, so much is given. We just have to be open for business.”
― Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”
― Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

“Go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company.”
― Benjamin Franklin Wade

“If you ever find yourself in the wrong story, leave.”
― Mo Willems, Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs

“We like people for their qualities, but we love them for their defects.” In writing this line I meant to say that we must not simply “accept” imperfection when it is revealed to us—we must celebrate it. This, I assure you, is the true sign of friendship.”
― Ron Perlman, Easy Street: The Hard Way

“Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

“Our memories of places, much like people, are subject to our own adaptation process. Once the active living is done, and they pass into memory, we assume control of the narrative. We adapt it, sometimes without meaning to. This is, perhaps, the one advantage of death: when people die, they can live on in our memory as we choose, but places continue to exist, to change.”
― Julia Whelan, My Oxford Year