Michelle > Michelle's Quotes

“Your kids require you most of all to love them for who they are, not to spend your whole time trying to correct them.”
― Bill Ayers

“Children are people, and they should have to reach to learn about things, to understand things, just as adults have to reach if they want to grow in mental stature. Life is composed of lights and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows. Most things are good, and they are the strongest things; but there are evil things too, and you are not doing a child a favor by trying to shield him from reality. The important thing is to teach a child that good can always triumph over evil.”
― Walt Disney

“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.”
― Dorothea Lange

“Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.”
― Marc Riboud

“He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others--the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by the midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“The worst type of crying wasn't the kind everyone could see--the wailing on street corners, the tearing at clothes. No, the worst kind happened when your soul wept and no matter what you did, there was no way to comfort it. A section withered and became a scar on the part of your soul that survived. For people like me and Echo, our souls contained more scar tissue than life.”
― Katie McGarry, Pushing the Limits

“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

“A void in my chest was beginning to fill with anger. Quiet, defeated anger that guaranteed me the right to my hurt, that believed no one could possibly understand that hurt.”
― Rachel Sontag, House Rules: A Memoir

“I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.”
― John Keats

“Then, one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...you give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore.”
― Neil Gaiman , The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

“Be an independent thinker at all times, and ignore anyone who attempts to define you in a limiting way.”
― Sherry Argov, Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl―A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship

“To me it seems that too many young women of this time share the same creed. 'Live, laugh, love, be nothing but happy, experience everything, et cetera et cetera.' How monotonous, how useless this becomes. What about the honors of Joan of Arc, Beauvoir, Stowe, Xena, Princess Leia, or women that would truly fight for something other than just their own emotions?”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“You’ve gotta taste the light, like my friend and fellow shooter Chip Maury says. And when you see light like this, trust me, it’s like a strawberry sundae with sprinkles.”
― Joe McNally, The Moment It Clicks: Photography Secrets from One of the World's Top Shooters

“You will manage to keep a woman in love with you, only for as long as you can keep her in love with the person she becomes when she is with you.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“When you're following your inner voice, doors tend to eventually open for you, even if they mostly slam at first.”
― Kelly Cutrone, If You Have to Cry, Go Outside: And Other Things Your Mother Never Told You

“If you're reading this...
Congratulations, you're alive.
If that's not something to smile about,
then I don't know what is.”
― Chad Sugg, Monsters Under Your Head

“Most people don't know there are angels whose only job is to make sure you don't get too comfortable & fall asleep & miss your life. ”
― Brian Andreas

“Time stands still best in moments that look suspiciously like ordinary life.”
― Brian Andreas

“Everything changed the day she figured out there was exactly enough time for the important things in her life.”
― Brian Andreas

“I sometimes wake in the early morning & listen to the soft breathing of my child & I think to myself, this is one thing I will never regret & I carry that quiet with me all day long.”
― Brian Andreas

“They came to sit & dangle their feet off the edge of the world & after awhile they forgot everything but the good & true things they would do someday. ”
― Brian Andreas

“I've always liked the time before dawn because there's no one around to remind me who I'm supposed to be so it's easier to remember who I am.”
― Brian Andreas, Trusting Soul: Collected Stories & Drawings

“There are lives I can imagine without children but none of them have the same laughter & noise.”
― Brian Andreas

“In the end, I think that I will like that we were sitting on the bed, talking & wondering where the time had gone.”
― Brian Andreas

“Real Reason:
There are things you do because they feel right & they may make no sense & they may make no money & it may be the real reason we are here: to love each other & to eat each other's cooking & say it was good.”
― Brian Andreas

“I have too much to lose, she said, if I cross that line. Like what? I said. She could not think of anything that day so she said she'd get back to me. Since then I've been thinking what I would lose if I cross my line & I haven't come up with anything either. There's always another line somewhere.”
― Brian Andreas

“Falling into Place:
deciding everything is falling into place perfectly as long as you don't get too picky about what you mean by place. Or perfectly.”
― Brian Andreas

“I used to be afraid of failing at something that really mattered to me, but now I'm more afraid of succeeding at things that don't matter.”
― Bob Goff, Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World

“Living a life fully engaged and full of whimsy and the kind of things that love does is something most people plan to do, but along the way they just kind of forget. Their dreams become one of those "we'll go there next time" deferrals. The sad thing is, for many there is no "next time" because passing on the chance to cross over is an overall attitude toward life rather than a single decision.”
― Bob Goff, Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World

“I don't think anyone aims to be typical, really. Most people even vow to themselves some time in high school or college not to be typical. But still, they just kind of loop back to it somehow. Like the circular rails of a train at an amusement park, the scripts we know offer a brand of security, of predictability, of safety for us. But the problem is, they only take us where we've already been. They loop us back to places where everyone can easily go, not necessarily where we were made to go. Living a different kind of life takes some guts and grit and a new way of seeing things.”
― Bob Goff, Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World