Isabel > Isabel's Quotes

“It's not that you should never love something so much that it can control you.
It's that you need to love something that much so you can never be controlled.
It's not a weakness.
It's your best strength.”
― Patrick Ness, The Ask and the Answer

“I think I am just tired. I am tired of fighting and tired of losing and tired of deceiving and tired of trying to swim against the ride. i am tired of trying to please a master who cannot be pleased; a ravenous hungry Voice which cannot be sated. I am sick and tired of being sick of tired.”
― Nancy Tucker, The Time in Between: A Memoir of Hunger and Hope

“Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“What did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think. I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“In this world of numbness and information overload, the ability to feel, my boy, is a rare gift indeed.”
― Patrick Ness, The Ask and the Answer

“You do not write your life with words...You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“That's the secret. If you always make sure you're exactly the person you hoped to be, if you always make sure you know only the very best people, then you won't care if you die tomorrow.”
― Carol Rifka Brunt, Tell the Wolves I'm Home

“She wants to know if I love her, that's all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that love is there, like new batteries in the flashlight in the emergency kit in the hall closet.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“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

“A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don’t get to choose our own hearts. We can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or what’s good for other people. We don’t get to choose the people we are.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“Time is a slippery thing: lose hold of it once, and its string might sail out of your hands forever.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I like it when somebody gets excited about something. It's nice.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Wasn’t friendship its own miracle, the finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem somehow less lonely?”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I'm little but I'm old.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else? If contributing to the suffering of billions of animals that live miserable lives and (quite often) die in horrific ways isn't motivating, what would be? If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn't enough, what is? And if you are tempted to put off these questions of conscience, to say not now, then when?”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals

“If we are not given the option to live without violence, we are given the choice to center our meals around harvest or slaughter, husbandry or war. We have chosen slaughter. We have chosen war. That's the truest version of our story of eating animals.

Can we tell a new story?”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals

“All you can do, Rosemary – all any of us can do – is work to be something positive instead. That is a choice that every sapient must make every day of their life. The universe is what we make of it. It’s up to you to decide what part you will play.”
― Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

“He did not run from his grief, nor did he deny its existence. He could study his grief from a distance, like a scientist observing animals. He embraced it, accepted it, acknowledged that it would never go away. It was as much a part of him as any pleasant feeling. Perhaps even more so.”
― Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

“If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it's no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“I feel like I'm way down this deep, deep hole and I'm looking up and all there is is this little dot of light and I have to shout at the top of my lungs for anyone to hear me and even when I do, I say the wrong thing or they don't really listen or they're just humouring me.”
― Patrick Ness, The Rest of Us Just Live Here

“It felt like waiting for something to happen. Which has to be the worst part of being young. So many of your decisions aren't yours; they're made by other people. Sometimes they're made badly by other people. Sometimes they're made by other people who have no idea what the consequences of those decisions might be. The bastards.”
― Patrick Ness, The Rest of Us Just Live Here

“Not everyone has to be the Chosen One. Not everyone has to be the guy who saves the world. Most people just have to live their lives the best they can, doing things that are great for them, having great friends, trying to make their lives better, loving people properly. All the while knowing that the world makes no sense but trying to find a way to be happy anyway.”
― Patrick Ness, The Rest of Us Just Live Here

“Feelings don't try to kill you, even the painful ones. Anxiety is a feeling grown too large. A feeling grown aggressive and dangerous. You're responsible for its consequences, you're responsible for treating it. But...you're not responsible for causing it. You're not morally at fault for it. No more than you would be for a tumor.”
― Patrick Ness, The Rest of Us Just Live Here

“All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry - all forms of fear - are caused by too much future, and
not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms
of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“Somewhere I read that anorexia recovery is more painful for the sufferer than actively engaging in the eating disordered behaviours”
― Nancy Tucker, The Time in Between: A Memoir of Hunger and Hope

“A plan is a real thing, and things projected are experienced. A plan once made and visualized becomes reality along with other realities—never to be destroyed but easily to be attacked.”
― John Steinbeck, The Pearl

“Someone who thinks death is the scariest thing doesn't know a thing about life.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees