The Measure Quotes

“That the beginning and the end may have been chosen for us, the string already spun, but the middle had always been left undetermined, to be woven and shaped by us.”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world. That makes it hard to plan the day.”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“The great American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, ‘It is not the length of life, but the depth of life.’ You don’t need a long lifetime to make an impact on this world. You just need the will to do so.”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“If forever doesn’t exist,” she said, “we’ll invent it ourselves.”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“I watched a lot of people come to the end, and everyone around them kept begging them to fight. It takes real strength to keep on fight, and yes, usually that’s the right answer. Keep fighting, keep holding on, no matter what. But sometimes I think we forget that it also takes strength to be able to let go.”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“Once you know something, you forget what it was like to not know it.”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“Its not the length of life, but the depth of life”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“The measure of your life lies within.”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“She didn’t want to talk about the ending. So she talked about the story itself. “It’s easy to look at our time together and think that we were so unlucky. But isn’t it better to spend ten years really loving someone, rather than forty years growing bored or weary or bitter? When we think about the greatest love stories ever written, we aren’t judging them by their length. Many of them were even briefer than my marriage with Maura. But our story—mine and Maura’s—it felt deep, and it felt whole, despite its length. It was an entire, wonderful tale in and of itself, and even though I’ve been given more chapters than Maura, her pages were the ones you couldn’t put down. The ones that I’ll keep rereading, over and over, for the rest of my life. Our decade together, our story, was a gift.”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“sometimes we screw up, and sometimes the system screws with us, but if you live your life with enough passion and boldness, then that’s what you’ll be remembered for. Not the crap that happened along the way.”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“We already put the art first, the food first, the passion first,” she explained, a sweep of her arm encompassing the entire shop. “And we already put the family first. We did not need the strings to tell us what is most important.”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“You don’t need a long lifetime to make an impact on this world. You just need the will to do so.”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“No matter what happens, I still feel the same,”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“All those people with the long strings who you thought you saved,” Ben said, “you did save them. Their strings were long because you were meant to save them. Their strings were long because of you.”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“We humans have an impulse to mark our existence in some way that feels permanent. We scribble ‘I was here’ onto our desks at school. We spray paint it on walls. We carve it into bark. I was here. I wanted this sculpture to do to the same, to let it be know that these people lived. A testament to the fact that these humans — with their long strings and medium strings and short strings — they were here.”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“Maybe the boxes are like that, too. Nobody can offer any foolproof explanation for them, so they just end up meaning whatever we want them to mean — whether that’s God or fate or magic. And no matter how long your string is, that, too, can mean whatever you want it to — a license to behave however you want, to stop dieting, to seek revenge, to quit your job, to take a risk, to travel the world.”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“The woman shrugged. “I hear of these Americans, they say the strings have made them think again about their lives. How do you say, their . . .” “Priorities?” Maura offered. “Sì, sì. Their priorities. But, in Italy, I think we already knew. We already put the art first, the food first, the passion first,” she explained, a sweep of her arm encompassing the entire shop. “And we already put the family first. We did not need the strings to tell us what is most important.”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“That apparently it’s possible to regret something, or at least wonder about something, while still knowing it was the right choice.”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“it’s that living long is not the same as living well.”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“But now, no matter how long my string is, every day just feels so sacred. And I don’t want to waste any time feeling sad or distracted. I just want to be grateful. To live as much life as possible.”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“but maybe that’s not the only measure we have. Maybe there are thousands of other ways we could measure our lives—the true quality of our lives—that lie within us, not within some box. And, by your own measure, you can still be happy. You can live well.”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“... and so, perhaps, the length didn't matter. That the beginning and the end may have been chosen for us, the string already spun, but the middle had always been left undetermined, to be woven and shaped by us.”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“Once she was in the main room, surrounded by the tall wooden shelves and the familiar scent of thousands of pages, Amie felt herself relax. There were few places where she felt more contented than a book store.”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“I think we're raised to believe that happiness is something we've been promised. That we all deserve to be happy. Which is why this really fucked-up thing that's happening to some of us is so hard to accept. Because we're supposed to be happy.”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“We don’t just march because we hope it will trigger change. We march to remind them of our numbers. To remind them that they can’t forget about us.”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“Which means we can start fresh. Reject the patterns of history. Promise not to repeat old mistakes. We can lead with compassion and empathy. Fight back against those who look to divide us, or pit us against one another, or make anyone feel less than. It is up to us—the ones who have yet to receive our boxes—to decide what type of world we wish to inherit, no matter how much time our strings may give us.”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“Some things we just can’t control, she thought. But what about everything else? What about all the choices that we make, each day? Who we choose to be, and how we choose to love?”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“You didn’t need to die and be reborn in order to shift from one life to the next,”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“But sometimes I think we forget that it also takes strength to be able to let go.”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“We segment ourselves based on race or class or religion or whatever fucking distinctions we decide to make up, and then we insist on treating each other differently.”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure