Kelly Deriemaeker > Kelly's Quotes

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Leef hard en goed en schoon en wild. Kijk goed, voel beter. Wees niet bang. Kies voor wat u blij maakt, wat het ook moge zijn. Durf proberen wat te lastig lijkt. Leg de lat hoog genoeg. Koester en laat u koesteren. Geef anderen wat ze verdienen, en uzelf minstens ook. Blijf hopen, willen, dromen, wensen.”
― Griet Op de Beeck, Vele hemels boven de zevende

“It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig.
Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me.
When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic.
No rhetoric, no tremolos,
no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell.
And of course, no theology, no metaphysics.
Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.

So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.
That’s why you must walk so lightly.
Lightly my darling,
on tiptoes and no luggage,
not even a sponge bag,
completely unencumbered.”
― Aldous Huxley , Island

“How had she become one of those people who wears yoga pants all day? She used to make fun of those people. With their happiness maps and their gratitude journals and their bags made out of recycled tire treads. But now it seems possible that the truth about getting older is that there are fewer and fewer things to make fun of until finally there is nothing you are sure you will never be.”
― Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation

“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“The only thing worse than not having your dream come true is having it come true for a little while.”
― Jonathan Tropper, One Last Thing Before I Go

“Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.”
― Zig Ziglar

“Fairness is for happy people, for people who have been lucky enough to have lived a life defined more by certainties than by ambiguities. Right”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Fairness is for happy people, for people who have been lucky enough to have lived a life defined more by certainties than by ambiguities.
Right and wrong, however, are for—well, not unhappy people, maybe, but scarred people; scared people.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Calling it a simple schoolgirl crush was like saying a Rolls-Royce was a vehicle with four wheels, something like a hay-wagon. She did not giggle wildly and blush when she saw him, nor did she chalk his name on trees or write it on the walls of the Kissing Bridge. She simply lived with his face in her heart all the time, a kind of sweet, hurtful ache. She would have died for him..”
― Stephen King, It

“My heart's with you, Bill, no matter how it turns out. My heart is with all of them, and I think that, even if we forget each other, we'll remember in our dreams.”
― Stephen King, It

“Het is zo, maar het had ook anders kunnen zijn. (Helga Nowotny,”
― Ignaas Devisch, Rusteloosheid

“even if I’m dying, until I actually die, I am still living.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“De tragiek van elk vertrekken is dat het te laat komt.”
― Marijke Schermer, Noodweer

“De ironie van de liefde wil dat we het gemakkelijkst en met de meeste zelfverzekerdheid de mensen verleiden tot wie we ons het minst aangetrokken voelen, aangezien we bij een intens verlangen niet in staat zijn de daarvoor vereiste onverschilligheid op te brengen en bij een aantrekkelijk iemand worden geplaagd door een gevoel van minderwaardigheid ten opzichte van de perfectie die we de aanbedene toedichten.”
― Alain de Botton, On Seeing and Noticing

“Always be reading something, he said. Even when we're not physically reading. How else will we read the world? Think of it as a constant.”
― Ali Smith, Autumn

“Myself, I thought about you the whole time. Even when I wasn't thinking about you, I thought about you.”
― Ali Smith, Autumn

“No one had told her, before she had children, that being a mother would be like reliving her own childhood, only worse. That she’d have to re-feel all the slights and worries a hundredfold.”
― Catherine McKenzie, The Good Liar

“Ik vroeg me af of we alles wat er intussen was gebeurd, of we al die andere mensen van de afgelopen jaren aan elkaar zouden kunnen ruiken, proeven, voelen. En of dat ertoe deed.”
― Nino Haratischwili, Het achtste leven [voor Brilka]

“The downside is life is short and has to end. The upside is it comes with bread, wine and books.”
― Trent Dalton, Boy Swallows Universe

“Leadership is volunteering at the local school, speaking encouraging words to a friend, and holding the hand of a dying parent. It’s tying dirty shoelaces and going to therapy and saying to our families and friends: No. We don’t do unkindness here. It’s signing up to run for the school board and it’s driving that single mom’s kid home from practice and it’s creating boundaries that prove to the world that you value yourself. Leadership is taking care of yourself and empowering others to do the same.”
― Abby Wambach, WOLFPACK: How to Come Together, Unleash Our Power, and Change the Game

“Shut off the past! Let the dead past bury its dead. . . . Shut out the yesterdays which have lighted fools the way to dusty death. . . . The load of tomorrow, added to that of yesterday, carried today, makes the strongest falter. Shut off the future as tightly as the past. . . . The future is today. . . . There is no tomorrow.”
― Dale Carnegie, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living: Time-Tested Methods for Conquering Worry

“Seeing yourself in print is such an amazing concept: you can get so much attention without having to actually show up somewhere.”
― Lamott, Anne

“I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“But my mental health, it turns out, is my responsibility. I probably don’t need to tell you that, but I did need to tell myself. And once I realised that, I wondered why I would ever leave it in the hands of strangers to decide my value.”
― Emilie Pine, Notes to Self

“If we could begin to see much illness itself not as a cruel twist of fate or some nefarious mystery but rather as an expected and therefore normal consequence of abnormal, unnatural circumstances, it would have revolutionary implications for how we approach everything health related.”
― Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture