Colleen > Colleen's Quotes

“We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.”
― Ursula K. LeGuin

“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
― Steve Jobs

“I am here. I am in the present tense. I'm not always here, and sometimes here is a very difficult place. Sometimes it is a labyrinth, or a Minotaur, or a rope I can neither let go of nor follow. It's hard to find the right words, but I guess I would say that it's something like feeling the floor. And that it is my privilege to feel it.”
― Meg Howrey, The Cranes Dance

“Witches, he thought. Always rhyming.”
― Nora Roberts, Morrigan's Cross

“I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it."

(Letter to Étienne Noël Damilaville, May 16, 1767)”
― Voltaire

“Sometimes I wish we could rub out all of our mistakes and start fresh, from the beginning,” I said. “And sometimes I think there isn’t anything to us but our mistakes.”
― Paula McLain, The Paris Wife

“To save myself, I destroyed another, and in doing so, I destroyed myself.”
― Amy Tan, The Valley of Amazement

“What happened to Violet was terrible, and I’m not saying fate happens without blame. But when fate turns out well, everyone should forget the bad road that got us here.”
― Amy Tan, The Valley of Amazement

“Just stories. You and me, everybody, we’re a set of stories, and what those stories are is what makes us what we are.”
― Charles de Lint, The Very Best of Charles de Lint

“There’s stories and then there’s stories,” he said, interrupting her. “The ones with any worth change your life forever, perhaps only in a small way, but once you’ve heard them, they are forever a part of you. You nurture them and pass them on and the giving only makes you feel better. “The others are just words on a page.”
― Charles de Lint, The Very Best of Charles de Lint

“To give to one another and receive from one another is the purpose of a relationship. We don’t need a lot of words. When we share time with someone, what is important is to communicate with feelings, not with words. But if we want to share words, we don’t need anything complicated. It’s just three words: “I love you.” That’s it. What makes you happy is not the love that other people feel for you, but the love you feel for other people.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Voice of Knowledge: A Practical Guide to Inner Peace

“Rage often brings out the real person.”
― Jodi Picoult, Leaving Time

“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.”
― Jimi Hendrix

“there were the occasional idiots who thought witches poisoned people and worshipped their devil (which was a spectacularly odd concept to me; why would someone from a different religion worship someone else’s devil?).”
― Sally Dubats, Veil Between Worlds

“The difference between forgetting something and not remembering it is big enough to drive an eighteen-wheeler through.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, The Impossible Knife of Memory

“Earth, air, water, fire. We call on them, use them, with respect. It’s not our power over them, but the merging of our power with theirs.”
― Nora Roberts, Dark Witch

“You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.”
― Kahill Gibran, The Prophet

“We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties.”
― Oswald Chambers

“Writing is prayer.”
― Franz Kafka

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“There is a particular hapiness in giving a man whom you like very much, good food that you have cooked yourself.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“There is no true life. Your true life is the one you end up with, whatever it may be. You just do the best you can with what you've got.”
― Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups

“the cook’s art is wasted if it is not consumed. Eating is not destruction; it is culmination.”
― Harry Connolly, A Key, an Egg, an Unfortunate Remark

“It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Hard work is what magic aspires to be,” she answered, her hand resting on the pickup’s open driver door. “Hard work is the strongest magic there is.”
― Harry Connolly, A Key, an Egg, an Unfortunate Remark

“even when women can imagine changes that might increase their productivity at work, their happiness at home, or their overall contentment with their lives, their suppressed sense of entitlement creates real barriers to their asking. Because they’re not dissatisfied with what they have and not sure they deserve more, women often settle for less.”
― Linda Babcock, Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide

“Fairness as a principle doesn't work if applied only in response to demand; it must be safeguarded and promoted even when its beneficiaries don't realize what they are missing.”
― Linda Babcock & Sara Laschever

“Yes, I agree with Tennyson, who wrote, “ ’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” But heartbreak knocks the wind out of you, and the feelings of loss and longing can make getting out of bed a monumental task. Learning to trust and lean in to love again can feel impossible.”
― Brené Brown, Rising Strong: The Reckoning. The Rumble. The Revolution.

“Most civilisation is based on cowardice. It's so easy to civilize by teaching cowardice. You water down the standards which would lead to bravery. You restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence in the horizons. You make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos. You teach even the children to breathe slowly. You tame.”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune