Roberta > Roberta's Quotes

“it's a smile, it's a kiss, it's a sip of wine ... it's summertime!”
― Kenny Chesney

“Most people lose the ability to see silver linings even though they are always there above us almost every day.”
― Matthew Quick, The Silver Linings Playbook

“That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is. Most people love you for who you pretend to be. To keep their love, you keep pretending - performing. You get to love your pretence. It's true, we're locked in an image, an act - and the sad thing is, people get so used to their image, they grow attached to their masks. They love their chains. They forget all about who they really are. And if you try to remind them, they hate you for it, they feel like you're trying to steal their most precious possession.”
― Jim Morrison

“We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“You wear a mask for so long, you forget who you were beneath it.”
― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

“The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!”
― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

“There's a difference between playing and playing games. The former is an act of joy, the latter — an act.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“Love is made up of three unconditional properties in equal measure:

1. Acceptance
2. Understanding
3. Appreciation

Remove any one of the three and the triangle falls apart.

Which, by the way, is something highly inadvisable. Think about it — do you really want to live in a world of only two dimensions?

So, for the love of a triangle, please keep love whole.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“Sometimes, reaching out and taking someone's hand is the beginning of a journey.

At other times, it is allowing another to take yours.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that you’ve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more. You share hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When something wonderful happens, you can’t wait to tell them about it, knowing they will share in your excitement. They are not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself. Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel like you are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful. There is never any pressure, jealousy or competition but only a quiet calmness when they are around. You can be yourself and not worry about what they will think of you because they love you for who you are. The things that seem insignificant to most people such as a note, song or walk become invaluable treasures kept safe in your heart to cherish forever. Memories of your childhood come back and are so clear and vivid it’s like being young again. Colours seem brighter and more brilliant. Laughter seems part of daily life where before it was infrequent or didn’t exist at all. A phone call or two during the day helps to get you through a long day’s work and always brings a smile to your face. In their presence, there’s no need for continuous conversation, but you find you’re quite content in just having them nearby. Things that never interested you before become fascinating because you know they are important to this person who is so special to you. You think of this person on every occasion and in everything you do. Simple things bring them to mind like a pale blue sky, gentle wind or even a storm cloud on the horizon. You open your heart knowing that there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure that’s so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life.”
― Bob Marley

“I am nothing special, of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts and I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten, but I've loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough..”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook

“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain

“He moved like a dancer, which is not surprising; a horse is a beautiful animal, but it is perhaps most remarkable because it moves as if it always hears music.”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

“As long as you have life and breath, believe. Believe for those who cannot. Believe even if you have stopped believing. Believe for the sake of the dead, for love, to keep your heart beating, believe. Never give up, never despair, let no mystery confound you into the conclusion that mystery cannot be yours.”
― Mark Helprin, A Soldier of the Great War

“She felt as if she knew the stars, and had been among them, or would be.”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

“The beauty of truth is that it need not be proclaimed or believed. It skips from soul to soul, changing form each time it touches, but it is what it is, I have seen it, and someday you will, too.”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

“What is apparent is not always what is true.”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

“A horse is a beautiful animal, but it is perhaps most remarkable because it moves as if it always hears music.”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

“The best thing in the world is the truth. You find it out anyway, in the end, or sooner.”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

“How just it would be if for our final reward we were to be made the masters of time, and if those we love could come alive again not just in memory, but in truth.”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

“As I understand it, miracles come to those who risk defeat in seeking them. They come to those who have exhausted themselves completely in a struggle to accomplish the impossible.”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

“Every city has its gates, which need not be of stone. Nor need soldiers
be upon them or watchers before them. At first, when cities were jewels in a
dark and mysterious world, they tended to be round and they had protective
walls. To enter, one had to pass through gates, the reward for which was
shelter from the overwhelming forests and seas, the merciless and taxing
expanse of greens, whites, and blues - wild and free - that stopped at the
city walls.

In time, the ramparts became higher and the gates more massive, until they
simply disappeared and were replaced by barriers, subtler than stone, that
girded every city like a crown and held in its spirit. Some claim that the
barriers do not exist, and disparage them. Although they themselves can
penetrate the new walls with no effort, their spirits (which, also, they
claim do not exist) cannot, and are left like orphans around the periphery.

To enter a city intact it is necessary to pass through one of the new gates.
They are far more difficult to find than their solid predecessors, for they
are tests, mechanisms, devices, and implementations of justice.”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

“When you die, you know, you hear the insistent pounding that defines all things, whether of matter or energy, since there is nothing in the universe, really, but proportion.”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

“The abandoned stars were hers for the many rich hours of sparkling winter nights, and, unattended, she took them in like lovers.”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

“They danced on the shore in marvelous, civilized, humorous reels in which the old contributed wit when they could not contribute grace, and the young listened to their elders, who told them in their dancing to hold on, to love, to be patient, and most of all, to trust.”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

“The abandoned stars were hers for the many rich hours os sparkling winter nights, and, unattended, she took them in like lovers. She felt that she looked out, not up, into the spacious universe, she knew the names of every bright star and all the constellations, and (although she could not see them) she was familiar with the vast billowing nebulae in which one filament of a wild and shaken mane carried in its trail a hundred million worlds. In a delirium of comets, suns, and pulsating stars, she let her eyes fill with the humming, crackling, hissing light of the galaxy's edge, a perpetual twilight, a gray dawn in one of heaven's many galleries.”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

“The beauty of the truth is that it need not to be proclaimed or believed. It skips from soul to soul, changing form each time it touches, but it is what it is, I have seen it, and someday you will too.”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

“Nothing is random, nor will anything ever be, whether a long string of perfectly blue days that begin and end in golden dimness, the most seemingly chaotic political acts, the rise of a great city, the crystalline structure of a gem that has never seen the light, the distributions of fortune, what time the milkman gets up, the position of the electron, or the occurrence of one astonishing frigid winter after another. Even electrons, supposedly the paragons of unpredictability, are tame and obsequious little creatures that rush around at the speed of light, going precisely where they are supposed to go. They make faint whistling sounds that when apprehended in varying combinations are as pleasant as the wind flying through a forest, and they do exactly as they are told. Of this, one is certain.

And yet, there is a wonderful anarchy, in that the milkman chooses when to arise, the rat picks the tunnel into which he will dive when the subway comes rushing down the track from Borough Hall, and the snowflake will fall as it will. How can this be? If nothing is random, and everything is predetermined, how can there be free will? The answer to that is simple. Nothing is predetermined, it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined. No matter, it all happened at once, in less than an instant, and time was invented because we cannot comprehend in one glance the enormous and detailed canvas that we have been given - so we track it, in linear fashion piece by piece. Time however can be easily overcome; not by chasing the light, but by standing back far enough to see it all at once. The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was is; everything that ever will be is - and so on, in all possible combinations. Though in perceiving it we image that it is in motion, and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful. In the end, or rather, as things really are, any event, no matter how small, is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible; and, when all is perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent not as something that will be, but something that is.”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

“Justice can sleep for years and awaken when it is least expected. A miracle is nothing more than dormant justice from another time arriving to compensate those it has cruelly abandoned. Whoever knows this is willing to suffer, for he knows that nothing is in vain.”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale