Jaclyn > Jaclyn's Quotes

“It's the way that life asserts itself, no matter what the circumstances. Of course it must be a miserable existence. How could it not be? Yet those little girls manage to live; to breathe; to enjoy themselves. They laugh and they are full of curiosity and tenderness. They adjust, I believe that's the word. They adjust and they reach for the stars in their own way. I tell you it's wondrous to me. They make me think of the wild flowers that grow in the cracks of pavement, just pushing up into the sun, no matter how many feet crush them down.”
― Anne Rice

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain

“I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“The greatest danger to our future is apathy.”
― Jane Goodall

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories

“Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“For us to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other and especially to ourselves. The lies are necessary because, without them, many deplorable acts would become impossibilities.”
― Derrick Jensen, The Culture of Make Believe

“What if the point of life has nothing to do with the creation of an ever-expanding region of control? What if the point is not to keep at bay all those people, beings, objects and emotions that we so needlessly fear? What if the point instead is to let go of that control? What if the point of life, the primary reason for existence, is to lie naked with your lover in a shady grove of trees? What if the point is to taste each other's sweat and feel the delicate pressure of finger on chest, thigh on thigh, lip on cheek? What if the point is to stop, then, in your slow movements together, and listen to the birdsong, to watch the dragonflies hover, to look at your lover's face, then up at the undersides of leaves moving together in the breeze? What if the point is to invite these others into your movement, to bring trees, wind, grass, dragonflies into your family and in so doing abandon any attempt to control them? What if the point all along has been to get along, to relate, to experience things on their own terms? What if the point is to feel joy when joyous, love when loving, anger when angry, thoughtful when full of thought? What if the point from the beginning has been to simply be?”
― Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words

“If you had a person in your life treating you the way you treat yourself, you would have gotten rid of them a long time ago...”
― Cheri Huber, There Is Nothing Wrong with You: Going Beyond Self-Hate

“I'm not telling you it's going to be easy - I'm telling you it's going to be worth it.”
― Art Williams

“Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“You can’t change the world if your motive is revenge. Vibes like that just aren’t productive.”
― Charlie Huston, Already Dead

“People don’t tend to listen to the boring truth when someone else is spreading interesting lies.”
― Eli Yance, House 23

“I remained too much inside my head and ended up losing my mind”
― Edgar Allen Poe

“Then he thought about what Bill himself might want. It was easy to guess. “Bill,” he said, “I like you so much, and I am such a big shot in the Universe, that I will make your three biggest wishes come true.” He opened the door of the cage, something Bill couldn’t have done in a thousand years. Bill flew over to a windowsill. He put his little shoulder against the glass. There was just one layer of glass between Bill and the great out-of-doors. Although Trout was in the storm window business, he had no storm windows on his own abode. “Your second wish is about to come true,” said Trout, and he again did something which Bill could never have done. He opened the window. But the opening of the window was such an alarming business to the parakeet that he flew back to his cage and hopped inside. Trout closed the door of the cage and latched it. “That’s the most intelligent use of three wishes I ever heard of,” he told the bird. “You made sure you’d still have something worth wishing for—to get out of the cage.” ***”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“Thinking and dreaming of what happened is a far different experience than giving voice to events that haunt you. You cry when you tell someone something. You shake. You get sick. You seek comfort. When you don’t speak about it and just think it, you don’t fall apart.”
― Gregg Olsen, Lying Next to Me

“Trust and stupidity are close friends. Of course, no one really knows that until it’s too late.”
― Gregg Olsen, Lying Next to Me

“whenever she stumbled, it was the land that caught her. Until at last, at some unclaimed moment, the heart-pain seeped away like water into sand. Still there, but deep. Kya laid her hand upon the breathing, wet earth, and the marsh became her mother.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“Leaning on someone leaves you on the ground.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“Pain isn’t something we can accept or reject, it’s inevitable. Suffering, however, comes when we resist the pain that’s natural. Suffering is pain plus resistance. Could it be that peace is simply pain plus acceptance?”
― David Achata, In the Caverns: The Darkness of Grief & The Dawn of Life Change

“You can make any choice you want if you’re willing to make the adjustments required.”
― David Achata, In the Caverns: The Darkness of Grief & The Dawn of Life Change

“birds and flowers live in a way of complete dependence on outside forces. They don’t wonder what will happen tomorrow. Life for them has always come and will continue to do so, regardless of their effort. Our naïve human assumption is that there’s a relation between cause and effect. But anyone in the thick of pain learns the truth. Even when we do everything as best as we can, sometimes our world falls apart anyway.”
― David Achata, In the Caverns: The Darkness of Grief & The Dawn of Life Change

“Wasting mental energy on what hadn’t yet happened, I missed so many things. Without knowing it, what I perceived to be thoughtful foresight was really despair in disguise.”
― David Achata, In the Caverns: The Darkness of Grief & The Dawn of Life Change

“In suffering, the things we say are sometimes more about ourselves than anyone else. We don’t know how to be in the discomfort, and it leaks out.”
― David Achata, In the Caverns: The Darkness of Grief & The Dawn of Life Change

“A tenet of stoicism advises to live according to your nature. If you try to be something you aren’t, you’ll self-destruct.”
― Blake Crouch, Desert Places

“Having damaged boundaries is like living in a house without locks on the doors.”
― John Bradshaw, Healing the Shame that Binds You

“Action is powerful. Sometimes you can move past a fear quickly, if you are willing to act. When you avoid what you fear, your anxieties are apt to worsen over time.”
― Harriet Lerner, The Dance of Fear: Rising Above Anxiety, Fear, and Shame to Be Your Best and Bravest Self

“He said that “intellectualizing about our problems is complex but easy, while doing something about them is simple but difficult.” Shame-based intellectuals love to analyze.”
― John Bradshaw, Healing the Shame that Binds You

“Toxic shame is soul murder. Because of it we become other-ated human doings, without an inner life and without inner peace. Shame-based people long for true inner serenity and peace. The spiritual life is an inner life. It cannot be attained on the outside. The spiritual life is its own reward and seeks nothing beyond itself. Once we achieve inner peace and conscious contact, we want to overflow.”
― John Bradshaw, Healing the Shame that Binds You