Quotes & Sayings About Being Someone's Person

Have you ever tried to use your eyes to tell someone that you want them, that because of them you're going to do the best you can to survive but that you're willing to die if that's the cost of putting yourself between them and anything that means them harm? That you don't care if they're playing you, or if what you have is really love, or if the two of you have a shot at lasting, that the very fact that they exist has made you come back to life in some way that's terrifying and exhilarating? A few seconds isn't long enough, especially when the person you're looking at is staring back as if she wants to pull you inside her and crush the two of you into one being. — Elliott James

I try my best, but at the same time, I try not to let being out with someone affect my everyday life. Like, if I want to go out and grab a smoothie with a friend who's a male, I'm not gonna let the paparazzi stop me from doing that and living my life and just being a normal person. — Kendall Jenner

And that's when I realized that being attracted to someone happens at a visceral level. It happens when you see and feel the other person's heart and your heart twinges in your chest in reaction. — Kim Holden

I want to change the world in my own way. So I do stuff that's artificial. I don't really like being the guest at someone else's party, because then I have to be entertaining. But I'll host parties because it puts you at the center of things without actually being a social person. — Susan Cain

I sleep for an entire day. And when I wake up I'm a new person. I'm empty. I've cried out everything I had in me. I'm an empty shell waiting to be filled with what comes next. Or I'm just being a total drama queen. I'm not empty. I'm still a person. I cried over a bad thing that happened in my life, but I probably shouldn't have. Compared to Mom's crisis, mine was small. Compared to a thousand other girls' around the world, mine is insignificant. It wasn't bad. Not compared to everyone else. It was just a couple seconds. It wasn't years. It wasn't months, like Mom. It wasn't a family member. Wasn't someone I see anymore. It didn't even hurt. There was no blood. It wasn't bad. Not compared to others'. So I should stop crying. — Sara Wolf

When there is a huge crack in your relationship with someone, you wonder what others do in similar situations. I realize I'm trying as hard as I can to present myself as the most unthreatening being in the world, like a small animal. I hunch into myself, avoiding going back to the same places I frequented with him. Obviously I don't eat the kind of food we ate or made together. But I don't think I'm going to move to a new house, because I have the kitchen and the large fridge that I'd wanted for so long. People say you can't possibly like your lover every single second of your life. But that's not true. I liked and looked to my lover every single second we were together. And I still can't admit that he's gone. True sorrow is when one person desires but the other doesn't. I don't know any better words to describe it, and I can't yet express this feeling through any kind of food. The one thing we know about sorrow is that it's a very personal, individual feeling. — Kyung-ran Jo

I want that, when I'm in my fifties and I look back to my first kiss, I think, Wow! I want to remember it as being amazing. That it's one of the most special moments of my life. I want to remember the person I share that with to be important to me. Not just someone who happened along at the right time. It's not just and act of the body. It's an act of the heart." (Ryan) — Dan Skinner

You want to make the person feel really as they are, special. And accepted as they are and help to open them. I can very well understand the incredible anguish and pain that someone must feel who is cooped up in a room because they are scared of going out and being rejected. And you just hope and pray that they will find a fellowship of people who will embrace and welcome them. It's wonderful to see people who were closed down open up like a beautiful flower in the warmth and acceptance of those around them." What — Dalai Lama XIV

...A huge "army" of immature guys with blinders over their eyes, looking for UNCONDITIONAL LOVE, are going nowhere. Such men are all ending up to be eternal dating losers, because they are simply wasting huge amounts of effort, trying hard and hoping to find something that does not exist on the planet.
To achieve the goal of personal happiness, we have to be honest with ourselves first of all. We need to be brave enough and smart enough to look into the mirror at our true selves, without our comfortable masks of lies or hypocrisy.

LET'S FACE IT:
There are always reasons why we feel love for another person; we don't love someone for no reason at all. We love them for the qualities they possess, which we admire; for those amazing, bright emotions they evoke from within ourselves; for the love and care that we so acceptingly receive from them; and for what good feelings we experience being around them, etc.

Be HONEST with yourself! — Sahara Sanders

You're not a Black man. You're a human being in God's eyes. So when you sit down to talk to someone and you talk to them in really intelligent terms, you ask difficult questions, there's a militancy that's assigned to you without you asking for it, because you are simply judged by what you look like. If you're a white person asking the same questions, you'd be one of these CNN guys and say how brilliant he is. That doesn't work for you, because this is the world we live in. — James McBride

I do want someone, need someone. You're right. And, when I'm with you, I feel like I'm a better person. I feel happier. Less alone, less lonely. But it's not as simple as that, is it? Being with someone? — Naomi Campbell

The thrust here is that Dostoevsky wrote fiction about the stuff that's really important. He wrote fiction about identity, moral value, death, will, sexual vs. spiritual love, greed, freedom, obsession, reason, faith, suicide. And he did it without ever reducing his characters to mouthpieces or his books to tracts. His concern was always what it is to be a human being-that is, how to be an actual person, someone whose life is informed by values and principles, instead of just an especially shrewd kind of self-preserving animal. — David Foster Wallace

Easy, happily-ever-after kind of love is a myth. Love is more than that. It's a decision to care about someone even when you want to strangle them and to forgive them for not being perfect. Love is hard work. It involves real risk and, sometimes, real loss. But if you don't let yourself believe in the person you love, then you miss out on the good in them and the chance to have a real partner in life. — Ruth Cardello

If you are trying to decide among a few people to fill a position hire the best writer. it doesn't matter if the person is marketer, salesperson, designer, programmer, or whatever, their writing skills will pay off. That's because being a good writer is about more than writing clear writing. Clear writing is a sign of clear thinking. great writers know how to communicate. they make things easy to understand. they can put themselves in someone else's shoes. they know what to omit. And those are qualities you want in any candidate. Writing is making a comeback all over our society ... Writing is today's currency for good ideas. — Jason Fried

If you have an image of someone cutting off a relationship, it's the cutting off that will lead to your suffering. If you see the action as their need being expressed, then the message is within them, not you. Any interpretation you put onto another person's message (such as passive-aggressive, withholding, etc.), you will pay for because of how you took it. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

A couple of years ago, I read the findings of a study on the effects of divorced and separated parents talking negatively about their exes in the presence of their children. What I remember about the study most vividly is really just one thing: that it's devastating for a child to hear one parent speak ill of the other. In fact, so much so that the researchers found it was less psychologically damaging if a parent said directly to the child "You are a worthless piece of shit" than it was for a parent to say "Your mother/father is a worthless piece of shit."
I don't remember if they had any theories about why that was so, but it made sense to me. I think we all have something sturdier inside of us that rears up when we're being attacked that we simply can't call upon when someone we love is being attacked, especially if that someone is our parent, half of us-the primal other- and the person doing the attacking is the other half, the other primal other. — Cheryl Strayed

In the context of the autism world (and my outlook in general) this is were I stand equality is for everyone, everybody in the world - I look at both sides of the the coin and take into account peoples realities (that makes me neutral/moderate/in the middle).
That means that you look in a more three dimensional perspective of peoples diverse realities you cannot speak for all but one can learn from EACH OTHER through listening and experiencing.
I also try my best to live with the good cards I was given not over-investing in my autism being the defining factor of my being (but having a healthy acknowledgement of it) that it's there but also thinking about other qualities I have such as being a writer, poet and artist.
I do have disability, I do have autism and I have a "mild" learning disability that is true but I a human being first and foremost. And for someone to be seen as person equal to everyone else is a basic human right. — Paul Isaacs

You are all talking a bit too much, said Armando, who had cautioned them from the beginning to stay out of popular culture and in their own interior worlds.
When you are caught up in the world that you did not design as support for your life and the life of earth and people, it is like being caught in someone else's dream or nightmare. Many people exist in their lives in this way. I say exist because it is not really living. It is akin to being suspended in a dream one is having at night, a dream over which one has no control. You are going here and there, seeing this and that person; you do not know or care about them usually, they are just there, on your interior screen. Humankind will not survive if we continue in this way, most of us living lives in which our own life is not the center. — Alice Walker

For podcasters, people are just being themselves in a public fashion. So when someone is attacking a podcast, they're really attacking the person, because the person is the podcast. So I think that's why podcasters take it to heart. It's a very personal form of media, probably the most personal form of media. — Chris Hardwick

Never say anything in writing that you wouldn't comfortably say in conversation. Be yourself when you write. If you're not a person who says 'indeed' or 'moreover,' or who calls someone an individual ('he's a fine individual'), please don't write it. — William Zinsser

Love is the degree to which you are willing to sacrifice your own interests for those of another. It doesn't matter what sex you are. It doesn't matter who you are, or were. It only matters that you care more for someone else than you do for yourself. It's when you eat minlatta with tarragon oil even when you hate pasta because someone with you enjoys it. It's when you value being alone more than anything but agree to move in with someone because they need you. And believe this, Ellis Rogers, for I am quite certain that love is most certainly when you push away the one person in all the world you want to be with because you think your thoughts would cause them pain. — Michael J. Sullivan

Writing is not about the end product, yes that is extremely important. It's not even about the grammar or style you write in; style and grammar are in the eye of the beholder. With each person, someone will find problems so grammar and style are moot. Writing, truly diving in is about the creative process...discovering a newer side of yourself as you are writing; creating. The adventure from page one to being done is what it is about. Do you feel good with the end product? do you feel good half way through? The point to this is simple...feedback is vital to selling your work, paying attention to hurtful feedback can destroy your pursuit of your dreams. so write for you...sell to others but write from your soul. Whether it's fiction/faction/non fiction or somewhere in between if your heart and soul is not in it...you are not going to be happy with it. — Kyle Williamson

I am the product of living in dictatorships. And someone who's lived in dictatorships and not being allowed to be themselves, it cherishes the ability to be yourself and to have feelings and to speak them when asked. And I am that person. — Teresa Heinz

What people refer to as nerds or geeks, all they really are is people who are passionate about what they like, and aren't afraid of it. To me, it's very frustrating when people are discourage from being enthusiastic about things. This idea of the geek, or the nerd; all that person really is - and I would consider myself one - is someone who is not ashamed of liking what they enjoy. — Andrew W.K.

There are two good reasons for being nice to the underdogs in this life. One, because if the underdog grows up to be the kind of person that starts shooting, you'll have a chance at survival. Two, because it's the right thing to do the third reason being that the wheel of fortune is always spinning, spinning. And just because you're at the top today doesn't mean it'll always be so. When you're at the bottom, you'll want someone to be there for you too. — Lauren Baratz-Logsted

What's the purpose of being single, if all your going to do is play game? What's the purpose of saying your single, when you're still chasing your Ex? What's the purpose of knowing you're single, if you're going to compare the new to your last? What's the purpose of being single, if your not going open up to let a person know you? What's the purpose of saying you're single, if you're going to let someone else decide on who you deal with? So before you say you're single! Ask yourself, are you're really single or someone else's back up plan. And if so, are you happy? — Jerome D. Williams

The whole point of being in love with someone is to make sure their life is the best life it can be. It's not about being selfish. It's not about how great that person makes you life, It's about making their life wonderful. — Cherie M. Hudson

Charles," Bones said distinctly. "You'd better have a splendid explanation for her being on top of you."
The black-haired vampire rose to his feet as soon as I jumped off, brushing the dirt off his clothes.
"Believe me, mate, I've never enjoyed a woman astride me less. I came out to say hello, and this she-devil blinded me by flinging rocks in my eyes. Then she vigorously attempted to split my skull before threatening to impale me with silver if I so much as even
twitched! It's been a few years since I've been to America, but I daresay the method of greeting a person has changed
dramatically!"
Bones rolled his eyes and clapped him on the shoulder. "I'm glad you're still upright, Charles, and the only reason you are is because she didn't have any silver. She'd have staked you right and proper otherwise. She has a tendency to shrivel someone first
and then introduce herself afterwards. — Jeaniene Frost

The absolute worst part of being depressed is the food. A person's relationship with food is one of their most important relationships. I don't think your relationship with your parents is that important. Some people never know their parents. I don't think your relationship with your friends are important. But your relationship with air-that's key. You can't break up with air. You're kind of stuck together. Only slightly less crucial is water. And then food. You can't be dropping food to hang with someone else. You need to strike up an agreement with it. — Ned Vizzini

If you want to be like someone, there's nothing stopping you from modeling yourself after someone else. You don't have to BE them - that's not your job in life. Your job in life is not to be someone else. You just want to be as good at being you as that person is at being them. — Jenna Marbles

Most people, myself included, really want to be liked - and not just because it feels good. Being liked is also a key factor in both professional and personal success. A willingness to make an introduction or advocate for or promote someone depends upon having positive feelings about that person. We need to believe in her ability to do the job and get along with everyone while doing it. That's why, instinctively, many of us feel pressure to mute our accomplishments. — Sheryl Sandberg

True love is not:
A person's looks
A person's career or accomplishments
Longevity of a relationship
Children together
Memories made
Words spoken or declared
Chance meetings you feel are fate
Hobbies and interests shared
Or, Religious beliefs in common
True love is:
Seeing the potential in someone and helping them to rise and meet it. It is selfless. It doesn't care about being right or winning. It cares about you choosing right. It is your heart breaking when they go against the goodness in their nature and it is your heart rejoicing when he or she does something so generous and kind for others, that it inspires you to be even better. It is confidence that doesn't seek to possess, rather to set your soul free. — Shannon L. Alder

You can't just play crazy. It makes you push yourself to stay in the realm of reality. And when you do that, it's a lot funnier. That's my favorite, when you think it's a real strange person and not just someone being wacky. — Melissa McCarthy

Each living creature is said to be alive and to be the same individual
as for example someone is said to be the same person from when he is a child until he comes to be an old man. And yet, if he's called the same, that's despite the fact that he's never made up from the same things, but is always being renewed, and losing what he had before, whether it's hair, or flesh, or bones, or blood, in fact the whole body. And don't suppose that this is just true in the case of the body; in the case of the soul, too, its traits, habits, opinions, desires, pleasures, pains, fears
none of these things is ever the same in any individual, but some are coming into existence, others passing away. — Plato

If we all could be a true friend to someone, praying and encouraging one person somehow, that's a first step in being part of making the world a better place, — Nick Vujicic

Maybe that's what Hell is, in the end. All of your wrongful shit played out there in front of you while you're being pumped from behind by someone you've hurt. That you've screwed over in life. Or worse, worse still...some person who doesn't really love you anymore. No one to ever look at again, make contact with. Just you being fucked as your life splashes out across this big headboard in the Devil's bedroom. Maybe. Even if that's not it, even if Hell is all fire and sulfur and that sort of thing, it couldn't be much worse than that. — Neil LaBute

I wrote an album about being in love. I don't think it's possible to write an album while you're in love - why on earth would you bother? I mean, Christ. If you're in there writing songs about someone rather than just being with them and kissing their every molecule, surely the person that you're with must be asking some questions as well. — Gary Lightbody

I have heard that sometimes when a person has an operation to transplant someone else's heart or liver or kidney into his body, his tastes in foods change, or his favorite colors, as if the organ has brought with it some memory of its life before, as if it holds within it a whole past that must find a place within its new host. This is the way I carry Lexy inside me. Since the moment she took up residency within me, she has lent her own color to the way I see and hear and taste, so that by now I can barely distinguish between the world as it seemed before and the way it seems now. I cannot say what air tasted like before I knew her or how the city smelled as I walked its streets at night. I have only one tongue in my head and one pair of eyes, and I stopped being able to trust them a long time ago. — Carolyn Parkhurst

You think you know someone, but that person always changes, and you keep changing, too. I understood it suddenly, how that's what being alive means. Our own invisible plates shifting inside of our bodies, beginning to align into the people we are going to become. — Ava Dellaira

Loss and loneliness, loneliness being the sadder and grayer of the two. Loss means that someone beloved is irretrievable, and as bad as that is, a person can eventually accept the fact of permanent absence. But loneliness is terrible because it's specific, open-ended, and alive. You want precisely whom you want, no one else, and it's torturous because they're out there somewhere but you can't be with them - and that's when you realize that the hollow isolation in your gut will never go away. — T.M. Goeglein

If someone is being unkind or petty or jealous or distant or weird, you don't have to take it in. You don't have to turn it into a big psychodrama about your worth. That behavior so often is not even about you. It's about the person who's being unkind or petty or jealous or distant or weird. If this were summed up on a bumper sticker, it would say: Don't own other people's crap. The world would be a better place if we all did that. — Cheryl Strayed

Every time we focus on someone else's darkness, we are blocking our own view of the light. We think the person we are involved with has attacked us or has withheld love from us, when they really haven't. We focus on their guilt instead of their innocence. Frequently people are just being themselves and we start projecting our own childhood dramas onto them, pushing away the very love we want so much. — Marianne Williamson

Hire great writers If you are trying to decide among a few people to fill a position, hire the best writer. It doesn't matter if that person is a marketer, salesperson, designer, programmer, or whatever; their writing skills will pay off. That's because being a good writer is about more than writing. Clear writing is a sign of clear thinking. Great writers know how to communicate. They make things easy to understand. They can put themselves in someone else's shoes. They know what to omit. And those are qualities you want in any candidate. — Jason Fried

We call someone a saint in a world in which everyone is abnormal. The normal person becomes extraordinary. But there's nothing extraordinary about being a saint, that's just someone who's somewhat online with life. — Frederick Lenz

Things change so quickly. Just when you get used to something, zap! It
changes. Just when you begin to understand someone, zap! They grow up. The
same is happening with Katie. She changes every day; her face just becomes so
much more grown-up every time I look at her. Sometimes I have to stop pretending
I'm interested in what she's saying in order to realize that I actually am
interested. We go shopping for clothes together and I take her advice, we eat
out for lunch and giggle over silly things. I just can't cast my mind back to the
time when my child stopped being a child and became a person. — Cecelia Ahern

What matters is that someone - that you - know me that well. When a person can see into your soul, it's hard. It forces you to be open. Vulnerable. It's much easier being with someone who's just more of a casual friend. — Richelle Mead

Almost always, jealousy is rooted in some sort of fear: of abandonment, of being replaced, of losing the attention of someone you love, of being alone. Jealousy isn't really about the person you feel jealous of. It's about you: your feeling that you might lose something precious. — Franklin Veaux

I'd never say I'll never have a facelift, but I'm way too scared of looking like a different person. I have no philosophical or political position on plastic surgery; I just don't want to look crazy. And I don't like not being able to tell how old someone is: It's creepy. — Ellen Barkin

Most of us fall in love with someone's persona and spend the next three to five years discovering who that person really is. If you can stay connected through that process of raw vulnerability, I think you have a shot at the prize of knowing and accepting another human being for who and what they really are after years of highs and lows. — Jennifer Aniston

When a person can see into your soul, it's hard. It forces you to be open.
Vulnerable. It's much easier being with someone who's just more of a casual friend. - Dimitri — Richelle Mead

I guess they have to label someone the sexiest person in the world, and it is always someone who is on telly even if it's the weatherman. For a couple of years it was me and then it was someone else. It's nicer being the sexiest man than the most ugly man. I live with it, and I don't mind it, but I don't go around with a big smile on my face everyday. — Mads Mikkelsen

You're right, though - the easy, happily-ever-after kind of love is a myth. Love is more than that. It's a decision to care about someone even when you want to strangle them and to forgive them for not being perfect. Love is hard work. It involves real risk and, sometimes, real loss. But if you don't let yourself believe in the person you love, then you miss out on the good in them and the chance to have a real partner — Ruth Cardello

One year I went as a pirate, but from then on I went as a hobo. It's a word you don't hear anymore. Along with 'tramp,' it's been replaced by 'homeless person,' which isn't the same thing. Unlike someone who was evicted or lost his house in a fire, the hobo roughed it by choice. Being at liberty, unencumbered by bills and mortgages, better suited his drinking schedule, and so he found shelter wherever he could, never a bum, but something much less threatening, a figure of merriment, almost. — David Sedaris

Soul ties. The thing that can make you hear an old-school slow jam and think of somebody you haven't seen in years. Soul ties. The thing that makes old people who've been together for years finish each other's sentences. Don't you wish mama had told you when you were young that, when you lie with someone, you lie not just with her body but also with her soul? And whatever condition the other person's soul is in, you are guaranteed to take a piece with you - whether you want to or not. Instead of being amazed at her booty, you should have focused on her mind. — Kirk Franklin

It's really about making opportunities for yourself and connecting with people on a more-than-normal level. That opens doors. You never know if the caterer's brother is someone. You don't know who someone is having dinner with that night. So being a nice person and touching people creates opportunity. — Gigi Hadid

If a person measures his spiritual fulfillment in terms of cosmic visions, surpassing peace of mind, or ecstasy, then he is not likely to know much spiritual fulfillment. If, however, he measures it in terms of enjoying a sunrise, being warmed by a child's smile, or being able to help someone have a better day, then he is likely to know much spiritual fulfillment. — Arthur Miller

You're a rule person," he said.
"My sister was a cheater. It sort of became necessary."
"She cheated at this game?"
"She cheated ateverything ," I said. "When we played Monopoly, she always
insisted on being banker,
then helped herself to multiple loans and 'service fees' for every real estate
transaction. I was, like, ten or
eleven before I played at someone else's house and they told me you couldn't do
that."
He laughed, the sound seeming loud in all the quiet. I felt myself smiling,
remembering.
"During staring contests," I said, "she always blinked.Always . But then she'd
swear up and down she
hadn't, and make you go again, and again. And when we played Truth, she lied.
Blatantly. — Sarah Dessen

I still can't believe that someone as hot as you has validation issues but I also know that being a very sensitive person on this planet is painful and some of us are built like sieves, or have holes where any external validation just pours right through and we never get full, and I also know it's ultimately an inside job anyway and no amount of external validation will ever be enough (though damn it can feel good in the moment, and it sort of makes me mad at god, actually, like, okay god, you built me like this so teach me how to validate myself in a way that feels as good as when a boy does it or the Internet does it, because there is always a cost when a boy does it or when the Internet does it): a love story. — Melissa Broder

I have never cataloged what I would want in a marriage. I might as well do it now ... I want an arrangement in which love and passion mingle and last. I want a rock to lean against. I want sex to pierce reality and come blazing out the other side. I want to feel that someone has my back. I want it to be us against the world. I want marriage to be cool. I want the words wife and husband to resonate with joy. I want our intimacy to be inviolate. I want it all under one roof. I want the institution to deserve my energy and my commitment and the last decades of my life.I want what Jane Cooper called "A radiance of attention/Like the candle's flame when we eat." I want to wake up next to a person who feels what I feel - that there is a constant, self-renewing joy in being with the other. — Wendy Plump

I think that, generally, people of the world typify a "free and wild" person as someone who's uprooted, detached and uninhibited. But I don't believe in that kind of freedom. I think that's an infantile concept. Freedom means something when it has escaped something! Those people who escaped things - their inner cages, cages set by others around them - when those people are able to roam free and say, "This is who I am because this is who I choose to be", THAT is freedom. Freedom isn't being stupid; freedom is being so smart that you develop a strength strong enough to break free and become your own person. A better person than what your circumstances would like to define you as. — C. JoyBell C.

If you're like most people, you'll do one thing for two to three years, then something else for two to three years, and then - somewhere in that five- to seven-year distance from Yale - you'll see a need to fully commit to something that's a longer-term project: graduate school, for example, or a job you need to stick with for some real time. The question is: where do you need to be with yourself such that when the time comes to 'cast your whole vote,' you're reasonably confident you're not being either fear-based or ego-driven in your choice . . . that the journey you're on is really yours, and not someone else's? If you think of your first few jobs after Yale in this way - holistically and in terms of your growth as a person rather than as ladder rungs to a specific material outcome - you're less likely to wake up at age forty-five married to a stranger." Yikes! — Marina Keegan

It's easy to like someone from a distance. But when she stopped being this amazing unattainable thing or whatever, and started being, like, just a regular girl with a weird relationship with food and frequent crankiness wh's kind of bossy
then I had to basically start liking a whole different person. — John Green

What people do isn't determined by where they live. It happens to be their damned fault. They decided to watch TV instead of thinking when they were in high school. They decided to blow-off courses and drink beer instead of reading and trying to learn something. They decided to chicken out and be intolerant bastards instead of being openminded, and finally they decided to go along with their buddies and do things that were terribly wrong when there was no reason they had to. Anyone who hurts someone else decides to hurt them, goes out of their way to do it ... The fact that it's hard to be a good person doesn't excuse going along and being an asshole. If they can't overcome their own fear of being unusual, it's not my fault, because any idiot ought to be able to see that if he just acts reasonably and makes a point of not hurting others, he'll be happier. — Neal Stephenson

To listen fully means to pay close attention to what is being said beneath the words. You listen not only to the 'music,' but to the essence of the person speaking. You listen not only for what someone knows, but for what he or she is. Ears operate at the speed of sound, which is far slower than the speed of light the eyes take in. Generative listening is the art of developing deeper silences in yourself, so you can slow our mind's hearing to your ears' natural speed, and hear beneath the words to their meaning. — Peter Senge

Being transgender guarantees you will upset someone. People get upset with transgender people who choose to inhabit a third gender space rather than "pick a side." Some get upset at transgender people who do not eschew their birth histories. Others get up in arms with those who opted out of surgical options, instead living with their original equipment. Ire is raised at those who transition, then transition again when they decide that their initial change was not the right answer for them. Heck, some get their dander up simply because this or that transgender person simply is not "trying hard enough" to be a particular gender, whatever that means. Some are irked that the Logo program RuPaul's Drag Race shows a version of transgender life different from their own. Meanwhile, all around are those who have decided they aren't comfortable with the lot of us, because we dared to change from one gender expression or identity to some other. — Kate Bornstein

No mean person is mean all the time. The whole point of being mean is to fluctuate so that you can hold out the hope for someone. So someone will hold out the hope that they're gonna catch you on the sunny side or that you're gonna be nice this time. The tyranny is inconsistency. Somebody thats consistently mean is something that is pretty easy to sort out. The reality is that the meanest people can be wonderful sometimes. That's the whole point of meanness because otherwise it's too obvious. It's the niceness that gets you trapped in the dysfunction. That is the problem and so the fact that you have this belief that there is hope in the relationship is foundational to the dysfunction. — Stefan Molyneux

If Hitch were a person, he'd be Mother Theresa or Gandhi or someone who treated all living creatures with the respect they deserve. It's depressing how my dog is a better human being than I am. — McCall Hoyle

There are many injustices in the world, but some are worse than others. You can hate someone because he's poor, because of the clothes he wears, or for his political views. But a person can change that. If you hate someone for being a Jew or an Arab, he cannot rub off his skin. That sort of prejudice is the greatest injustice...next to taking someone's life. — Shane Peacock

These days, though, tolerance means that you accept the other person's views as being true or legitimate. If you claim that someone is wrong, you can get accused of being intolerant
even though, ironically, the person making the charge of intolerance isn't being accepting of your beliefs. — Paul Copan

A Champion is all they can be in every facet of their lives. They prioritize what they need to get done. But for me it's someone who works every single day on being a better person. — Shannon Higgins-Cirovski

I prize my downtime, count on it as a writer, a parent, a person. Sometimes I think of Woody Allen's remark about masturbation, that it is sex with someone he loves. I feel as though being alone is hanging out with someone I like. — Anna Quindlen

It's just such a big commitment," Brandy says, "being a girl, you know. Forever."
Taking the hormones. For the rest of her life. The pills, the patches, the injections, for the rest of her life. And what if there was
someone, just one person who would love her, who could make her life happy, just the way she was, without the hormones and make-up and the clothes and shoes and surgery? She has to at least look around the world a little. — Chuck Palahniuk

Sometimes in someone's gestures you can notice how a parent is somehow inhabiting that person without there being any awareness of that. Sometimes you can look at your hand and see your father. — Sam Shepard

When I was a child, my behavior was far from being what most people would label 'intelligent.' It was often limited, repetitive and anti-social. I could not do many of the things that most people take for granted, such as looking someone in the eye or deciphering a person's body language, and only acquired these skills with much effort over time. — Daniel Tammet

Our society puts too much emphasis on finding someone who will love you; our culture focuses too much on being loved and not enough on being a loving person. — Harold S. Kushner

Being in love is a very strange thing. Your thoughts constantly drift towards this other person, no matter what you're doing. You could be reaching for a glass in the cupboard or brushing your teeth or listening to someone tell a story, and your mind will just start drifting towards their face, their hair, the way they smell, wondering what they'll wear, and what they'll say the next time they see you. And on top of the constant dream state you're in, your stomach feels like it's connected to a bungee cord, and it bounces and bounces around for hours until it finally lodges itself next to your heart. — Pittacus Lore

The problem about cutting out the best of your heart and giving it to people, is that 1. It hurts to do that; and 2. You never know if they are going to throw it away or not. But then you should still do it. Because any other way is cowardice. At the end of the day, it's about being brave and we are only haunted by the ghosts that we trap within ourselves; we are not haunted by the ghosts that we let out. We are haunted by the ghosts that we cover and hide. So you let those ghosts out in that best piece of your heart that you give to someone. And if the other person throws it away? Or doesn't want it to begin with? Someone else will come along one day, cut out from his/her heart that exact same jagged shape that you cut out of your own heart, and make their piece of heart fit into the rest of yours. Wait for that person. And you can fill their missing piece with your soul. — C. JoyBell C.

Invitations not obligations: Our expectations of other people can be a big drain on our emotions. When we ask someone to do something, or, worse, have a belief that someone should do something and insist that he or she comply, it places a great stress on us. And the other person, noting our anxiety and insistence that they conform to our expectations, may actually become less inclined to respond as we like.
Instead, consider everything you want someone else to do to be an invitation that the other person may or may not choose to accept. Of course, if you are an employer or a parent who is trying to ensure a child's safety, you must have parameters and ground rules. Everyone else, however, should be released from the obligation of doing, being, living, and acting as you feel they should. — Will Bowen

Aren't you afraid, though?" Ayumi asked Aomame.
"Afraid of what?"
"Don't you see? You and he might never cross paths again. Of course, a chance meeting could occur, and I hope it happens. I really do, for your sake. But realistically speaking, you have to see there's a huge possibility you'll never be able to meet him again. And even if you do meet, he might already be married to somebody else. He might have two kids. Isn't that so? And in that case, you may have to live the rest of your life alone, never being joined with the one person you love in all the world. Don't you find that scary?
Aomame stared at the red wine in her glass. "Maybe I do," she said. "But at least I have someone I love. — Haruki Murakami

As long as you are forced to be a woman first instead of a person, by default, you need to be a feminist. That's it. Men are people, women are women? Screw that. Screw that. I am sick of having words aimed to shut me up. I am sick of having to be anything other than a person first. Zounds! I enjoy being a girl, whatever that means. For me, that meant Star Wars figurines, mounds of books, skirts and flats. It meant Civil War reenacting and best girlfriends I'd give a kidney to and best guy friends I'd ruin a liver with and making messes and cleaning up some of them and still not knowing how to apply eye shadow. That's being a girl. That's being a person. It's the same damn thing. I wish Rush had just called me an idiot. I'm happy to be called an idiot! On the day when someone on the Internet calls me an idiot first and ugly second, I will set down my feminist battle flag and heave a great sigh. Then I will pick it back up and keep climbing. There are many more mountains to overcome. — Alexandra Petri

You can't live with the idea that someone might leave. So instead of being happy for me, like any normal person, you're pissed off because ooh, oh no, Hassan doesn't like me anymore. You're such a sitzpinkler. You're so goddamned scared of the idea that someone might dump you that your whole fugging life is built around not gettting left behind. Well, it doesn't work, kafir. I just - it's not just dumb, it's ineffective. Because then you're not being a good friend or a good boyfriend or whatever, because you're only thinking they-might-not-like-me-they-might-not-like-me, and guess what? When you act like that, no one likes you. There's your goddamned Theorem. — John Green

Loneliness is necessary for pure poetry. When someone intrudes into the poet's life (and any sudden personal contact, whether in the bed or in the heart, is an intrusion) the poet loses his or her balance for a moment, slips into being what he or she is, uses his or her poetry as one would use money or sympathy. The person who writes the poetry emerges, tentatively, like a hermit crab from a conch shell. The poet, for that instant, ceases to be a dead person. — Jack Spicer

In the Lakota/Sioux tradition, a person who is grieving is considered most wakan, most holy. There's a sense that when someone is struck by the sudden lightning of loss, he or she stands on the threshold of the spirit world. The prayers of those who grieve are considered especially strong, and it is proper to ask them for their help.
You might recall what it's like to be with someone who has grieved deeply. The person has no layer of protection, nothing left to defend. The mystery is looking out through that person's eyes. For the time being, he or she has accepted the reality of loss and has stopped clinging to the past or grasping at the future. In the groundless openness of sorrow, there is a wholeness of presence and a deep natural wisdom. — Tara Brach

Israeli minister of defense Moshe Dayan - the architect of Israel's astonishing victory in the 1967 Six-Day War - also wrote an essay on the story of David and Goliath. According to Dayan, David fought Goliath not with inferior but (on the contrary) with superior weaponry; and his greatness consisted not in his being willing to go out into battle against someone far stronger than he was. But in his knowing how to exploit a weapon by which a feeble person could seize the advantage and become stronger. — Malcolm Gladwell

When I see someone not performing, I am frank enough to tell the person that it's not working out. I request him or her to leave or change jobs within the group. But I see many of our senior colleagues, including my brothers, sons and nephews, empathetic towards non-performers. They don't want to face the issue. They tend to become comfortable with such people and they get protection. They tend to choose people who become personally loyal to them rather than to the company. I think it's important to be professional about such matters. Protecting a non-performer is not good for the business and also the person being protected. This is unprofessional too. The non-performer may be in the wrong job and thus not doing what he or she is best at doing. Empathy that results in protection would lead to a negative result for the employee as well. He or she might be better off in another job within the group or elsewhere. — Subhash Chandra

Being with Anna is easy. She's the one."
The one. It stops my heart. I thought Max was the one, but ... there's that other one.
The first one.
"Do you believe in that?" I ask quietly. "In one person for everyone?"
Something changes in St Clair's eyes. Maybe sadness. "I can't speak for anyone but myself," he says. "But, for me, yes. I have to be with Anna. But this is something you have to figure out on your own. I can't answer that for you, no one can."
"Oh."
"Lola." He rolls his chair over to my side. "I know things are shite right now. And in the name of friendship and full disclosure, I went through something similar last year. When I met Anna, I was with someone else. And it took a long time before I found the courage to do the hard thing. But you have to do the hard thing."
I swallow. "And what's the hard thing?"
"You have to be honest with yourself. — Stephanie Perkins

No, I guess I don't see the point of pretending and putting on airs. I'm not ashamed of who I am. At one point, yes, I was embarrassed about who I was, and the clothes that I wore, and where I lived. But I learned that those things weren't important. What's most important to me is family and being proud of the person I am. I'm not going to pretend I'm someone I'm not. — Chanda Hahn

At some point, I figured that it would be more effective and far funnier to embrace the ugliest, most terrifying things in the world
the Holocaust, racism, rape, et cetera. But for the sake of comedy, and the comedian's personal sanity, this requires a certain emotional distance. It's akin to being a shrink or a social worker. you might think that the most sensitive, empathetic person would make the best social worker, but that person would end up being soup on the floor. It really takes someone strong
someone, dare I say, with a big fat wall up
to work in a pool of heartbreak all day and not want to fucking kill yourself. But adopting a persona at once ignorant and arrogant allowed me to say what I didn't mean, even preach the opposite of what I believed. For me, it was a funny way to be sincere. And like the jokes in a roast, the hope is that the genuine sentiment
maybe even a goodness underneath the joke (however brutal) transcends. — Sarah Silverman

Commerce is considered by classical economists to be a positive-sum
game. The act of selling and buying always benefits both the seller
and the buyer. It is unfortunate that popular culture has propagated
the Marxist myth that one person gains in business at the expense of
another, that capitalism is evil because it is a zero-sum game - somebody
wins while someone else loses. When liberals make the argument
that capitalism is the cause of all of our problems, they are either
speaking out of abject ignorance or being totally disingenuous to
protect their interests. We have not had true free-market capitalism
in this country on any wide scale. Where we have had economic
successes in this nation's history, it has been those times when people
have done something outside of the government's involvement. Every
time the federal government has been involved, it has created chaos,
waste, and corruption. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

When we allow material things to be more important than spiritual things, we lost a lot of very important ways in life, many fear dying and are so concerned about what they do if someone stole all their position, did we not come into this world naked? can we take all our riches with us when we pass? is success what really makes a man or women hear? can we actually buy real love? the twisted ways of thinking come from greedy people, a person who work hard should be paid more than one who work less but that's not the case here, it is all backwards this is what a man has brought forth because of the attitude that being certainly religion or family tree entitles them to it what they really forget is what we are from the same family — Wisdom

That's what being shy feels like. Like my skin is too thin, the light too bright. Like the best place I could possibly be is in a tunnel far under the cool, dark earth. Someone asks me a question and I stare at them, empty-faced, my brain jammed up with how hard I'm trying to find something interesting to say. And in the end, all I can do is nod or shrug, because the light of their eyes looking at me, waiting for me, is just too much to take. And then it's over and there's one more person in the world who thinks I'm a complete and total waste of space.
The worst thing is the stupid hopefulness. Every new party, every new bunch of people, and I start thinking that maybe this is my chance. That I'm going to be normal this time. A new leaf. A fresh start. But then I find myself at the party, thinking, Oh, yeah. This again.
So I stand on the edge of things, crossing my fingers, praying nobody will try to look me in the eye. And the good thing is, they usually don't. — Carol Rifka Brunt

When I was twelve, my sixth-grade English class went on a field trip to see Franco Zeffirelli's film adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. From that moment forward I dreamed that someday I'd meet my own Juliet. I'd marry her and I would love her with the same passion and intensity as Romeo. The fact
that their marriage lasted fewer than three days before they both were dead
didn't seem to affect my fantasy. Even if they had lived, I don't think their
relationship could have survived. Let's face it, being that emotionally aflame, sexually charged, and transcendentally eloquent every single second can really start to grate on a person's nerves. However, if I could find someone to love just a fraction of the way that Montague loved his Capulet, then marrying her would be worth it. — Annabelle Gurwitch

Society nowadays tells people that their happiness is all that matters but happiness is never found if it costs someone else's theirs. That is not what happiness is, nor would such a person deserve it, because happiness is forged by the setting aside of self and in doing for others to make them happy first and foremost, so if you have to hurt another human being to "find your happiness," then you have no clue what the word actually means or what it's willing to do, and in being so self-centered and entitled, it's veritably tragic that the only care and concern you have is for yourself. — Donna Lynn Hope

A person who breaks a promise diminishes herself. It's like losing a finger. It's worse than being paralyzed, which is merely physical. Someone whose promises are worthless has a disabled soul. — Ken Follett

I wrote stories from the time I was a little girl, but I didn't want to be a writer. I wanted to be an actress. I didn't realize then that it's the same impulse. It's make-believe. It's performance. The only difference being that a writer can do it all alone. I was struck a few years ago when a friend of ours - an actress - was having dinner here with us and a couple of other writers. It suddenly occurred to me that she was the only person in the room who couldn't plan what she was going to do. She had to wait for someone to ask her, which is a strange way to live. — Joan Didion

When it's new and important, you have to rest in between times. And anyway, even when I like a person there is a weariness that comes. I can be with someone and everything is fine and then all of a sudden it can wash over me like a sickness, that I need the quiet of my own self. I need to unload my head and look at what I've got in there so far. See it. Think what it means. I always need to come back to being alone for a while. — Elizabeth Berg

For me, romance isn't an over-the-top act. It's someone offering to help and to support me. Or if that person thinks I'm making the wrong decision, he'll tell me. I want him to be honest, because being that honest takes a lot of guts. — Thora Birch

I think I'm someone who is really prone to melancholy, and the super heavy, thick shows kind of spiral me out into not being able to be as happy a person as I think I deserve to be, so I tend to watch things like 30 Rock and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Anything Tina Fey's involved in. And Parks and Rec. I love comedies! — Sara Bareilles

People say, "I have heart disease," not "I am heart disease." Somehow the presumption of a person's individuality is not compromised by those diagnostic labels. All the labels tell us is that the person has a specific challenge with which he or she struggles in a highly diverse life. But call someone "a schizophrenic" or "a borderline" and the shorthand has a way of closing the chapter on the person. It reduces a multifaceted human being to a diagnosis and lulls us into a false sense that those words tell us who the person is, rather than only telling us how the person suffers. — Martha Manning

That's the person I plan on being for a very long time: someone who stands up, someone who is an advocate for people, [even if it's for] something that some people think is only hair. I think it's more than just that. I want to be a spokesperson for self-love and for diversity. — Zendaya