Lisa > Lisa's Quotes

“To grow, you must be willing to let your present and future be totally unlike your past. Your history is not your destiny.”
― Alan Cohen

“You asked why I couldn't forgive you," Nick said, very quietly, and I jumped a little. "It was because you were the love of my life, Harper. And you didn't want to be. That's hard to let go.”
― Kristan Higgins, My One and Only

“The back of her neck smelled like a parakeet’s tummy, sweet hay and fluff.”
― John L. Parker Jr., Once a Runner

“These fundamental imbalances led them into concentric circles of ever decreasing size: a nautilus shell of their discontent.”
― John L. Parker Jr., Once a Runner

“Dogs are the broccaflower of the animal kingdom.”
― David Duchovny, Holy Cow

“You want some of this?” The dog now angled his backside close to Shalom’s nose. This was not going to end well. “Can you tell they feed me steak? Go on, have a whiff. I would share with you, meine kleine bitch.”
― David Duchovny, Holy Cow

“But here’s the problem you’re not addressing. While yes we can both agree the sudden recovery of this footage smells not a little, and that we appear to be bits of tinfoil-on-string to some malevolent government kitten, yes yes yes but, Borlú, however they’ve come by the evidence, this is the correct decision.”
― China Miéville, The City & The City

“And I’m left alone with my “strength,” staring at the ceiling.”
― Paulo Coelho, Adultery

“What is really contagious is fear, the constant fear of never finding someone to accompany us to the end of our days. And in the name of this fear we are capable of doing anything, including accepting the wrong person and convincing ourselves that he or she’s the one, the only one, who God has placed in our path. In very little time the search for security turns into a heartfelt love, and things become less bitter and difficult. Our feelings can be put in a box and pushed to the back of the closet in our head, where it will remain forever, hidden and invisible.”
― Paulo Coelho, Adultery

“that the things you want, you never get them. And if you do, they’re not what you thought they’d be. But you’d still do anything to keep them. Because you’d wanted them for so long.”
― Megan Abbott, You Will Know Me

“Where’s the everlasting peace? Is there even such a thing? Or do we war like alien races war, eternally, against ourselves? I hope that’s not right. I hope that’s not how it all works. “Beacon”
― Hugh Howey, Beacon 23

“Addiction was the inverse of honest work. It was everything, right now. I drank away nervousness, and I drank away boredom, and I needed to build a new tolerance. Yes to discomfort, yes to frustration, yes to failure, because it meant I was getting stronger. I refused to be the person who only played games she could win.”
― Sarah Hepola, Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”
― E. B. White

“We are highly judgmental survival-and-replication machines. We constantly walk around thinking, “I need this,” or “I need that,” trapped in the web of desires. Happiness is the state when nothing is missing. When nothing is missing, your mind shuts down and stops running into the past or future to regret something or to plan something.”
― Eric Jorgenson, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness

“We worry because we feel unsafe, and want to be safe. Yet it is perfectly useless to say that we should not want to be safe. Calling a desire bad names doesn’t get rid of it. What we have to discover is that there is no safety, that seeking it is painful, and that when we imagine that we have found it, we don’t like it. In other words, if we can really understand what we are looking for—that safety is isolation, and what we do to ourselves when we look for it—we shall see that we do not want it at all. No one has to tell you that you should not hold your breath for ten minutes. You know that you can’t do it, and that the attempt is most uncomfortable.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“In any relationship, you may want to check whether you have understood the other person. If it is a relationship that is harmonious, in which communication is good, then happiness is there. If communication and harmony exist, it means mutual understanding is there. Don’t wait until the other person has left or is full of anger to ask the important question “Do you think I understand you enough?” The other person will tell you if you haven’t understood enough. He will know if you’re able to listen with compassion. You may say, “Please tell me, please help me. Because I know very well that if I don’t understand you, I will make a lot of mistakes.” That is the language of love.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Communicating: Mastering Life's Most Important Skill Through Mindfulness, Personal Growth, and Effective Interpersonal Relations with Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh

“The faster things move in circles, the sooner they become indistinguishable blurs. It is obvious that the only interesting people are interested people, and to be completely interested is to have forgotten about “I.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“All our efforts won’t make water any wetter.”
― Barry Magid, Ending the Pursuit of Happiness: A Zen Guide

“I see now that the path I choose through the maze makes me what I am. I am not only a thing, but also a way of being—one of many ways—and knowing the paths I have followed and the ones left to take will help me understand what I am becoming.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“It is impossible to tell what proportion is memory and what exists here and now—so that a strange compound is formed of memory and reality; past and present; response to stimuli stored in my brain centers, and response to stimuli in this room. It’s as if all the things I’ve learned have fused into a crystal universe spinning before me so that I can see all the facets of it reflected in gorgeous bursts of light. . . .”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“God isn’t good or evil, doesn’t favor you or hate you, and yet God is better partnered than fought.” “Your God doesn’t care about you at all,” Travis said. “All the more reason to care about myself and others. All the more reason to create Earthseed communities and shape God together. ‘God is Trickster, Teacher, Chaos, Clay.’ We decide which aspect we embrace—and how to deal with the others.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“You’re an animal, Sibling Dex. You are not separate or other. You’re an animal. And animals have no purpose. Nothing has a purpose. The world simply is. If you want to do things that are meaningful to others, fine! Good! So do I! But if I wanted to crawl into a cave and watch stalagmites with Frostfrog for the remainder of my days, that would also be both fine and good. You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live. That is all most animals do.”
― Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

“This is the problem with knowledge: its inexhaustible craving. The madness inherent in knowing there is only more to know. It’s a problem of mortality, of seeing the invariable end from the immovable beginning, of determining that the more you try to fix it, the more beginnings there are to discover, the more ways to reach the same unavoidable end.”
― Olivie Blake, The Atlas Complex