Alejandra > Alejandra's Quotes

“Egypt was living through one tragedy after another. People were killed every day because of something. This became our own Columbine reality on a weekly basis. There was always this challenge of trying to make people laugh amid such terrible circumstances. But what could we do?”
― Bassem Youssef, Revolution for Dummies: Laughing through the Arab Spring

“The danger is that if we invest too much in developing AI and too little in developing human consciousness, the very sophisticated artificial intelligence of computers might only serve to empower the natural stupidity of humans.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

“When we find out we might be wrong, a standard defense is “I’m entitled to my opinion.” I’d like to modify that: yes, we’re entitled to hold opinions inside our own heads. If we choose to express them out loud, though, I think it’s our responsibility to ground them in logic and facts, share our reasoning with others, and change our minds when better evidence emerges.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Today, we turn to one person to provide what an entire village once did: a sense of grounding, meaning, and continuity. At the same time, we expect our committed relationships to be romantic as well as emotionally and sexually fulfilling. Is it any wonder that so many relationships crumble under the weight of it all?”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

“Love enjoys knowing everything about you; desire needs mystery. Love likes to shrink the distance that exists between me and you, while desire is energized by it. If intimacy grows through repetition and familiarity, eroticism is numbed by repetition. It thrives on the mysterious, the novel, and the unexpected. Love is about having; desire is about wanting. An expression of longing, desire requires ongoing elusiveness. It is less concerned with where it has already been than passionate about where it can still go. But too often, as couples settle into the comforts of love, they cease to fan the flame of desire. They forget that fire needs air.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

“The grand illusion of committed love is that we think our partners are ours. In truth, their separateness is unassailable, and their mystery is forever ungraspable. As soon as we can begin to acknowledge this, sustained desire becomes a real possibility. It’s remarkable to me how a sudden threat to the status quo (an affair, an infatuation, a prolonged absence, or even a really good fight) can suddenly ignite desire. There’s nothing like the fear of loss to make those old shoes look new again.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence

“I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. Sylvia Plath”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“For all the technology he has at his disposal, empathy, Johnny Bravo says, is the single greatest asset he has to do his job.”
― Simon Sinek, Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't

“True love, in the evolutionary sense, means peace of mind.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“Not only do they influence how we feel about ourselves but also the degree to which we believe in ourselves and whether we will attempt to achieve our hopes and dreams.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“Dex realized with a stomach-souring thud that they were standing on the wrong side of the vast gulf between having read about doing a thing and doing the thing.”
― Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

“being your authentic self, which has been found to contribute to our general feelings of happiness and fulfillment, and being happy and fulfilled is probably one of the most attractive traits you can offer a partner.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“research shows that key to learning new skills is simply believing you can learn them.”
― Franklin Veaux, More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory

“Living in fear won’t stop us from losing what we love, it will only stop us from enjoying it.”
― Franklin Veaux, More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory

“The skill of expectation management means more than trying to navigate between reasonable and unreasonable expectations. It means recognizing that a desire on my part does not constitute an obligation on your part. And we can never reasonably be upset at someone for failing to live up to our expectations if we haven’t talked about our expectations in the first place.”
― Franklin Veaux, More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory

“A veces anhelaba con impaciencia la definitiva descarga, que lo redimiría, mal o bien, de su vana tarea de imaginar”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones

“How much we know and understand ourselves is critically important, but there is something that is even more essential to living a Wholehearted life: loving ourselves.”
― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

“People may call what happens at midlife “a crisis,” but it’s not. It’s an unraveling—a time when you feel a desperate pull to live the life you want to live, not the one you’re “supposed” to live. The unraveling is a time when you are challenged by the universe to let go of who you think you are supposed to be and to embrace who you are.”
― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

“As much as we need and want love, we don’t spend much time talking about what it means. Think about it. You might say “I love you” every day, but when’s the last time you had a serious conversation with someone about the meaning of love?”
― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

“The problem is that when we don’t care at all what people think and we’re immune to hurt, we’re also ineffective at connecting. Courage is telling our story, not being immune to criticism. Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection.”
― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

“If we want to live a Wholehearted life, we have to become intentional about cultivating sleep and play, and about letting go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth.”
― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

“Well, then, why should I listen to my heart?” “Because you will never again be able to keep it quiet. Even if you pretend not to have heard what it tells you, it will always be there inside you, repeating to you what you’re thinking about life and about the world.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist: A Fable About Following Your Dream

“But the root of the word integrity means “whole.” Focusing on integrity, for us, means intense examination of the present moment: What am I doing right now, and is it in alignment with my most authentic self? If I look back at myself in ten years, would I like the person I see?”
― Franklin Veaux, More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory

“I’m always seeing the world with magic eyes,” he said. “I’m exploding with childish wonder.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“Memory, you realized long ago, is a game that a healthy-brained person can play all the time, and the game of memory is won or lost on one criterion: Do you leave the formation of memories to happenstance, or do you decide to remember?”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“the next step is to say “Even if things change, I have worth. I believe my partners will make choices that honor and cherish our connection, whatever may come, because I add value to their lives.”
― Franklin Veaux, More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory

“It’s when you set aside your distractions, he said, that you begin to see what you were distracting yourself from.”
― Johann Hari, Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again

“The more novels you read, the better you were at reading other people’s emotions. It was a huge effect. This wasn’t just a sign that you were better educated—because reading nonfiction books, by contrast, had no effect on your empathy.”
― Johann Hari, Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again

“He has found that the more you let your mind wander, the better you are at having organized personal goals, being creative, and making patient, long-term decisions. You will be able to do these things better if you let your mind drift, and slowly, unconsciously, make sense of your life.”
― Johann Hari, Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again

“To pay attention in normal ways, you need to feel safe. You need to be able to switch off the parts of your mind that are scanning the horizon for bears or lions or their modern equivalents, and let yourself sink down into one secure topic.”
― Johann Hari, Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again