Lexi Seidel > Lexi's Quotes

“Tonight I can write the saddest lines
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.”
― Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

“What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“For you, a thousand times over”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“Everyone needs a place. It shouldn't be inside of someone else.”
― richard siken

“How much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it's some kind of murder?”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

“I don’t know what’s worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you’ve always wanted to be, and feel alone.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“We tell people to follow their dreams, but you can only dream of what you can imagine, and, depending on where you come from, your imagination can be quite limited.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood

“You won’t understand what I mean now, but someday you will: the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are—not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving—and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad—or good—it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all. But the best, as well.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“It was precisely these scenes he missed the most from his own life with Willem, the forgettable, in-between moments in which nothing seemed to be happening but whose absence was singularly unfillable.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“He steps back, still looking. In the painting, Willem's torso is directed toward the viewer, but his face is turned to the right so that he is almost in profile, and he is leaning towards something or someone and smiling. And because he knows Willem's smiles, he knows that Willem has been captured looking at something he loves, he knows Willem in that instant is happy. Willem's face and neck dominate the canvas and although the background is suggested rather than shown, he knows that Willem is at their table. He knows it from the way that JB has drawn the light and shadows on Willem's face. He has the sense that if he says Willem's name that the face in the painting will turn toward him and answer; he has the sense that if he stretches his hand out and strokes the canvas he will feel beneath his fingertips Willem's hair, his fringe of eyelashes.
But he doesn't do this, of course, just looks up at last and sees JB smiling at him, sadly. "The title card's been mounted already," JB says, and he goes slowly to the wall behind the painting and sees its title - "Willem Listening to Jude Tell a Story, Greene Street"-and he feels his beneath abandon him; it feels as if his heart is made of something oozing and cold, like ground meat, and it is being squeezed inside a fist so that chunks of it are falling, plopping to the ground near his feet.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“To remain silent in the face of evil is itself a form of evil.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Invention of Wings

“In fact I need you to know it was all true. The friendly guy who helps you move and assists senior citizens in the pool is the same guy who assaulted me. One person can be capable of both. Society often fails to wrap its head around the fact that these truths often coexist, they are not mutually exclusive. Bad qualities can hide inside a good person. That's the terrifying part.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name

“He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It’s his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Miriam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad, Miriam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad. This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate belongings.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“I opened my mouth, almost said something. Almost. The rest of my life might have turned out differently if I had. But I didn’t.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“I only had you for the blink of an eye,” he says.
She laughs. “You had me an entire lifetime. All of mine.”
“That wasn’t enough”
― Fredrik Backman, And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer

“We are all of us more complicated than the roles we are assigned in the stories other people tell”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“For all my obsessing over the consequences of that night, I had misunderstood the vital truth: that its not affecting me, that was its effect.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“Who's the real you? The person who did something awful, or the one who's horrified by the awful thing you did? Is one part of you allowed to forgive the other?”
― Rebecca Stead, Goodbye Stranger

“Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.”
― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

“there are a few rules I know to be true about love and marriage: If you don't respect the other person, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don't know how to compromise, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. If you can't talk openly about what goes on between you, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. And if you don't have a common set of values in life, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. Your values must be alike.”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson

“Why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time. My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“You can't love anything more than something you miss.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“You say you felt a presence, but I only sensed an absence. A vague pain without a source. I was like a patient who cannot tell the doctor where it hurts, only that it does.”
― Khaled Hosseini, And the Mountains Echoed

“Learn this now and learn it well. Like a compass facing north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“I know that's what people say-- you'll get over it. I'd say it, too. But I know it's not true. Oh, youll be happy again, never fear. But you won't forget. Every time you fall in love it will be because something in the man reminds you of him.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Death ends a life, not a relationship.”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson