Taylor > Taylor's Quotes

“What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.”
― John Green, Paper Towns

“Its so hard to talk when you want to kill yourself. That's above and beyond everything else, and it's not a mental complaint-it's a physical thing, like it's physically hard to open your mouth and make the words come out. They don't come out smooth and in conjunction with your brain the way normal people's words do; they come out in chunks as if from a crushed-ice dispenser; you stumble on them as they gather behind your lower lip. So you just keep quiet.”
― Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story

“I waste at least an hour every day lying in bed. Then I waste time pacing. I waste time thinking. I waste time being quiet and not saying anything because I'm afraid I'll stutter.”
― Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story

“Things to do today:
1) Breathe in.
2) Breathe out.”
― Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story

“I have a system with bathrooms. I spend a lot of time in them. They are sanctuaries, public places of peace spaced throughout the world for people like me.”
― Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story

“Just be happy, and if you can't be happy, do things that make you happy. Or do nothing with the people that make you happy.”
― Esther Earl, This Star Won't Go Out: The Life and Words of Esther Grace Earl

“We live in a world defined by its boundaries: You cannot travel faster than the speed of light. You must and will die. You cannot escape these boundaries. But the miracle and hope of human consciousness is that we can still conceive of boundlessness.”
― Esther Earl, This Star Won't Go Out: The Life and Words of Esther Grace Earl

“And I realize now that that was . . . that’s the best way to love someone. Hold them close, know that you’re loved, let it wash over you”
― Esther Earl, This Star Won't Go Out: The Life and Words of Esther Grace Earl

“The measure of a friendship is not its physicality but its significance. Good friendships, online or off, urge us toward empathy; they give us comfort and also pull us out of the prisons of our selves.”
― Esther Earl, This Star Won't Go Out: The Life and Words of Esther Grace Earl

“Language does this to our memories—simplifies, solidifies, codifies, mummifies. An oft-told story is like a photograph in a family album; eventually, it replaces the moment it was meant to capture.”
― Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

“In the phrase ' human being,' the word 'being' is much more important than the word 'human.' ”
― Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

“You know how everything seems so normal when you’re growing up,” she asked plaintively, “and then comes this moment when you realize your whole family is nuts?”
― Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

“We are so excited that, in the strangely illuminating phrase my mother favours, we’re completely beside ourselves.”
― Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

“But where you succeed will never matter so much as where you fail.”
― Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

“I’ve come to think of my lizard brain as basically a version of Felix. It’s totally random and makes no sense and you can’t let it run your life. If we let Felix run our lives, we’d all wear superhero costumes all day long and eat nothing but ice-cream. But if you try to fight Felix, all you get is wails and screams and tantrums, and it all gets more and more stressy. So the thing is to listen to him with half an ear and nod your head and then ignore him and do what you want to do. Same with the lizard brain.”
― Sophie Kinsella, Finding Audrey

“I think what I’ve realized is, life is all about climbing up, slipping down, and picking yourself up again. And it doesn’t matter if you slip down. As long as you’re kind of heading more or less upwards. That’s all you can hope for. More or less upwards.”
― Sophie Kinsella, Finding Audrey

“We don't have to reveal everything to each other. It's OK to be private. It's OK to say no. It's OK to say, 'I'm not going to share that.”
― Sophie Kinsella, Finding Audrey

“It won’t be forever. You’ll be in the dark for as long as it takes and then you’ll come out.”
― Sophie Kinsella, Finding Audrey

“I am ashamed of how I acted that day, ashamed of endangering your body. But I am not ashamed because I am a bad father, a bad individual or ill mannered. I am ashamed that I made an error, knowing that our errors always cost us more.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“I, like every kid I knew, loved The Dukes of Hazzard. But I would have done well to think more about why two outlaws, driving a car named the General Lee, must necessarily be portrayed as “just some good ole boys, never meanin’ no harm”—a mantra for the Dreamers if there ever was one. But what one “means” is neither important nor relevant. It is not necessary that you believe that the officer who choked Eric Garner set out that day to destroy a body. All you need to understand is that the officer carries with him the power of the American state and the weight of an American legacy, and they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“To other people, it sometimes seems like nothing at all. You are walking around with your head on fire and no one can see the flames.”
― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

“This isn't a question of strength. Not the stoic, get-on-with-stuff-without-thinking-too-much kind of strength, anyway. It's more of a zooming-in. That sharpening. ... You know, before the age of twenty-four I hadn't realised how bad things could feel, but I hadn't realised how good they could feel either. That shell might be protecting you, but it's also stopping you feeling the full force of that good stuff. Depression might be a hell of a price to pay for waking up to life, ... But it is actually quite therapeutic to know that pleasure doesn't just help compensate for pain, it can actually grow out of it.”
― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive