Doing Life Together Quotes & Sayings

I suck at it? You're acting like this is some stupid play you've put together for the neighbors. This is real life, and I'm doing the best I can." "My plays were not stupid. We made a lot of money in admission tickets. I thought Annie was excellent." He snorted. "You can't even sing and you cast yourself as Annie." "You're still pissed because I wouldn't let you play Daddy Warbucks." He plowed ten fingers through his hair and made a noise deep in his throat. "How the hell do you get me on these ridiculous subjects? — Jennifer Probst

Fifteen years ago I knew I had to settle into being a mom and give them a normal life, which I never had. I was always traveling. I had tours. I wanted my kids to settle down, and we kind of did it together ... It was a bumpy transition. There was no director telling me what to do. No script, but I really enjoyed it. I even became president of the PTA. Doing the laundry was a meditative experience. Now, when I start to get nervous and stressed, I go in and start to fold towels. — Pia Zadora

The people they had been last summer, the person she had been
Dicey guessed she'd never be afraid again, not the way she
had been all summer. She had taken care of them all, sometimes well, sometimes badly. And they had covered the distances.
For most of the summer, they had been unattached. Nobody knew who they were or what they were doing. It didn't matter
what they did, as long as they all stayed together. Dicey remembered that feeling, of having things pretty much her own way.
And she remembered the feelings of danger. It was a little bit like being a wild animal, she thought to herself.
Dicey missed that wildness. She knew she would never have it again.
And she missed the sense of Dicey Tillerman against the whole world and doing all right. — Cynthia Voigt

I would never have chosen that life for myself, I know. But God knew what he was doing. And everything I went through turned out to make songs like we write that touch people that have to go through the same kind of things. And if I hadn't gone through what I went through I wouldn't be right here right now. And I'm just talking about how God makes good out of bad, usually all the time, he can always do that. It's just that God works everything together for the good of those who love him. And I'm glad I've gone through what I did. — Lacey Sturm

You can make lots of mistakes, but if you give children avenues for creativity and joy, they will have resources to carry them through. For example, if cooking together, reading, listening to music, coloring, participating in sports, or taking a walk in the woods are paired with pleasure and closeness, throughout life doing these things will kindle old feelings of happiness an/or comfort. — Charlotte Sophia Kasl

Heaven is actually a country that we build within ourselves, or that we continue to build. We come from it, and we harvest materials for it while we are here, doing this through sharing our talents with others, and through being dedicated to our relationships in life, through loving others and through strengthening our ability to believe, through our faith. What is faith? Faith is the strength to believe even when believing is a very difficult thing to do! I think that faith is acquired here in this world, because there is no need to have faith in our eternal countries. But here, as we acquire faith in the midst of our hardships, we are begetting unto our eternal countries the strong glue that holds some buildings and some temples together. — C. JoyBell C.

I draw pleasure in governance, in doing new things and bringing people together. That pleasure is all I need from life. — Narendra Modi

Dustin Wax says it well: No matter how organized you are, how together your system is, how careful you are about processing your inbox, making a task list, and working your calendar, if you don't stop every now and again to look at the "big picture," you're going to get overwhelmed. You end up simply responding to what's thrown at you, instead of proactively creating the conditions of your life.16 Find a time for your weekly review, add it to your calendar, and commit to doing it every week. I really can't over-emphasize the importance of this discipline. — Tim Challies

I asked, can work and leisure and relationships and eating and lovemaking and ministry all really flow from a single passion? Is there something deep enough and big enough and strong enough to hold all that together? Can sex and cars and work and war, and changing diapers and doing taxes really have a God exalting, soul satisfying unity? Now we see that every experience in life is designed to magnify the cross of Christ. Or to say it another way, every good thing in life (or bad thing graciously turned for good) is meant to magnify Christ and Him crucified.
Not to aim to show God is not to love, because God is what we need most deeply ... If you don't point people to God for everlasting joy, you don't love. You waste your life. — John Piper

To have that concentration to act well is like lugging things up staircases in your brain. I think that's a thing people don't understand. It is that exhausting. If you're doing it well, if you're concentrating the way you need to, if your will and your concentration and emotional and imagination and emotional life are all in tune, concentrated and working together in that role, that is just like lugging weights upstairs with your head ... And I don't think that should get any easier. — Philip Seymour Hoffman

The evils which of necessity encompass the life of man are sufficiently numerous. Why should we add to them by voluntarily distressing and destroying one another? Peace, brothers, is better than war. In a long and bloody war, we lose many friends, and gain nothing. Let us then live in peace and friendship together, doing to each other all the good we can. — Thomas Jefferson

Just in case, he had asked Ms. Townson to call him if William talked about leaving town. He hadn't, obviously, making it possible now for him and William to dig through the refrigerator and stand at the counter making sandwiches together, all of which felt delightfully domestic. This would be their life together. Spreading margarine on white bread and debating if Swiss or American cheese was better. With any luck, they would be spending countless days this way, doing little mundane tasks that were so much better with someone to share them with. — Jay Bell

In a perfect Friendship this Appreciative love is, I think, often so great and so firmly based that each member of the circle feels, in his secret heart, humbled before the rest. Sometimes he wonders what he is doing there among his betters. He is lucky beyond desert to be in such company. Especially when the whole group is together; each bringing out all that is best, wisest, or funniest in all the others. Those are the golden sessions; when four or five of us after a hard day's walk have come to our inn; when our slippers are on, our feet spread out toward the blaze and our drinks are at our elbows; when the whole world, and something beyond the world, opens itself to our minds as we talk; and no one has any claim on or any responsibility for another, but all are freemen and equals as if we had first met an hour ago, while at the same time an Affection mellowed by the years enfolds us. Life - natural life - has no better gift to give. Who could have deserved it? — C.S. Lewis

The last ten years it has been the two of us and your flavor of the month. This guy, BE, he's not a flavor of the month. BE is the spice of life. You know it, and I know it. I know how unsettling this is for you. Just know that he won't let you down. He's not going to stand you up. You can focus on doing what needs to be done and soon, you will be together again. — Emma Nichols

For so long, she'd taken her memories of Patty - the memories they'd created together - and held them outside of herself, protecting herself from the pain of carrying them deep within. It was as if she carried all the memories in her jars. But if doing so, it was as if she'd also kept everyone else - those still in her life - at arm's length too. — Tricia Goyer

I may not be the number one movie star, or my films might not be doing too good. I am grateful for what life has offered me. I have got a great family, parents are together, have a great sister, I get to holiday. All these things make me grateful towards life, for everything. I always say - have an attitude of gratitude. — Sonam Kapoor

The body of Christ is about doing life together, and by doing life together sin is revealed. — James MacDonald

She's come to realize that life is a bit like doing laundry
you have to separate the darks from the lights. One's not necessarily better than the other
they're just different. They have different needs, require different levels of care. She knows plenty of customers who don't give it much thought and throw all their laundry in together, and maybe that's the chaotic part of life that just happens, that no matter how hard you try, you can't always keep things separate. A red sock gets mixed in with a load of whites, or a delicate black top gets washed in hot water by accident. These things happen. All you can do is learn from it and move on. Tell your husband to enjoy his pink underwear, give your shrunken top to your little sister or niece. But it doesn't mean that you stop sorting your laundry. You keep sorting
lights from darks, darks from lights
and hope for the best. — Darien Gee

You think I don't know, that I don't understand what that cost you. But you're wrong." She couldn't keep her voice steady, gave up trying. "You're wrong, Roarke. I do know. There's no one else in the world who would want, who would need to kill for me. No one else in the world who would step back from it because I asked it. Because I needed it."
She turned, and the first tear spilled over. "No one but you."
"Don't. You'll do me in if you cry."
"I never in my life expected anyone would love me, all of me. How would I deserve that? What would I do with it? But you do. Everything we've managed to have together, to be to each other, this is more. I'll never be able to find the words to tell you what you just gave me."
"You undo me, Eve. Who else would make me feel like a hero for doing nothing."
"You did everything. Everything. Are everything. — J.D. Robb

Since I'm doing so much science, I think the reason these ideas have occurred to me and not to other people in music is simply the influence that science plays in my life: working in laboratories, thinking of models, hypothesis, putting things together, trying to make sense of it all and so forth. — Dave Soldier

The cloud weeps, and then the garden sprouts. The baby cries, and the mother's milk flows. The nurse of creation has said, Let them cry a lot.
This rain-weeping and sun-burning twine together to make us grow. Keep your intelligence white-hot and your grief glistening, so your life will stay fresh. Cry easily like a little child.
Let body needs dwindle and soul decisions increase. Diminish what you give your physical self. Your spiritual eye will begin to open.
When the body empties and stays empty, God fills it with musk and mother-of-pearl. That way a man gives his dung and gets purity.
Listen to the prophets, not to some adolescent boy. The foundation and the walls of spiritual life are made of self-denials and disciplines.
Stay with friends who support you in these. Talk with them about sacred texts, and how you're doing, and how they're doing, and keep your practices together. — Rumi

I am married, and the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties. I never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what I am doing. When we meet--we do meet occasionally, when we dine out together, or go down to the Duke's--we tell each other the most absurd stories with the most serious faces. My wife is very good at it--much better, in fact, than I am. She never gets confused over her dates, and I always do. But when she does find me out, she makes no row at all. I sometimes wish she would; but she merely laughs at me. — Oscar Wilde

The moments that you share with a person do not stop when that person is not in your life anymore. The relationship that I had with my father did not stop when he passed away. An example is me doing the Pacific swim. If I didn't have the father that I had I wouldn't be doing this. We had a close connection in life, and I still carry that connection in following my dream. This is because of my parents, the closeness that we had and what we share together. — Benoit Lecomte

When I consider what some books have done for the world, and what they are doing, how they keep up our hope, awaken new courage and faith, soothe pain, give an ideal life those whose hours are cold and hard, bind together distant ages and foreign lands, create new worlds of beauty, bring down truth from heaven; I give eternal blessings for this gift, and thank God for books. — James Freeman Clarke

Life is an endless attempt to word the unwordable, to make what cannot be touched walk on the ground, to embody what can never be fit inside a single lifetime.
We see reflections of ourselves in sunrises, hear our perfection in thunderstorms and babies' laughter--touch, taste and feel--and then try to somehow remember all of that while taking out the trash, paying bills and a million other ways we have invented to forget.
We weave together within ourselves mud and spirit, shadow and light, animal and angel.
No wonder humans feel crazy most of the time.

But you aren't crazy. You are doing a heroic thing by being here as yourself. — Jacob Nordby

I invite you to open your mind to new possibilities. Let's fake it till we make it. Let's create visions of an aspirational future. You don't have to quit your job. But think about what might change your trajectory by half a degree. It could be that when you come home every night your first words are "I'm home! How can I help?" Try doing that. You may have a shitty job. You don't like it. You do it for the money, even if the money isn't great. Try to look at your work in a different way. Find something about your life that's great. Follow that thread. Volunteer. Even if you're in the worst possible situation, there's hope. Challenge yourself. Set your own bar. Redefine your success metrics. Create opportunities for yourself. Reassess your situation. We are all marching together. We're headed toward something big, and it's going to be good. — Biz Stone

I'm doing good. I've had a slight nervous breakdown in the '60s. I got through that. And I got through the '70s. And I was in a doctor's program during the '80s and then I met Melinda and we've been together ever since. I've got a happy life. — Brian Wilson

Who'll hold families together, if everybody has to live? Living is a compromise, between doing what you want and doing what other people want. — John Updike

Not completely, but neither of us gets mad when the other doesn't text back or call. Life's super-busy. Obviously you know what they're doing, and you trust them. We're so young that it would almost be like if we lived in the same city, what would happen? We'd be living together. At least this way he's in the same boat as I am: We can go out and have our own lives and know that we have each other. — Jennifer Lawrence

Judge leaned back in the passenger seat of Michaels' truck, content as could be. They'd stayed at the cabin an entire week, after Judge fully convinced Michaels' Lieutenants that they needed the time together. They learned more of each other, physically, but especially emotionally. They were compatible on so many levels. Both men as simple as the days. Relationships were scary and took work, but Judge believed theirs would come easily. Why he'd had such negative thoughts in the beginning was a mystery to him. He knew Michaels loved him, really loved him. Nothing was guaranteed, life didn't promise tomorrow. Michaels was a cop, he had a dangerous job, so Judge would have to learn to trust in his partner's instincts and believe in him. Believe he knew what he was doing and he'd come home to him every night. They — A.E. Via

Sahara dug her fingers into his arms. "You do not do this," she said, and it was an order. "You do not let that monster destroy the life we are going to have together. You are mine, not his. You have always been mine."
The claiming was so absolute, it dared him to fight. Kaleb had no intention of doing so. Shuddering, he crushed her to him. "Yes," he said, battling the rage because if he gave in to it, he would lose Sahara. "I'm yours. I will always be yours. — Nalini Singh

I went back into my bedroom and knelt at my bed the way I did when I was a kid. I folded my hands and pressed the top knuckle joints of my thumbs hard into my forehead. Dear God. I don't know what I want or who I am. Apparently you do. Um ... that's great. Never mind. You have a terrible reputation here. You should know that. Oh, but I guess you do know that. Save me now. Or when it's convenient. We could run away together. This is stupid. What am I doing? I guess this is a prayer. I feel like an idiot, but I guess you knew that already, too. My sister said that god is music. Goodbye, Amen. I lay in my bed and waited for that thick, sweet feeling to wash over me, for that unreal semi-conscious state where the story begins and takes on a life of its own and all you have to do is close your eyes and give in and let go and give in and let go and go and go and go. — Miriam Toews

Sharing our stories is a vital part of doing life together. The disciples shared their stories and changed the world, not because they were extraordinary men, but because they told about an extraordinary God. — Cindee Snider Re

It would be perfect if everyone who makes love, is in love, but this is simply an unrealistic expectation. I'd say 75 percent of the population of people who make love, are not in love, this is simply the reality of the human race, and to be idealistic about this is to wait for the stars to aline and Jupiter to change color; for the Heavens to etch your names together in the sky before you make love to someone. But idealism is immaturity, and as a matter of fact, the stars may never aline, Jupiter may never change color, and the Heavens may never ever etch your names together in the sky for you to have the never-ending permission to make endless love to one another. And so the bottom line is, there really is no difference between doing something today, and doing something tomorrow, because today is what you have, and tomorrow may not turn out the way you expect it to. At the end of the day, sex is an animalistic, humanistic, passionate desire. — C. JoyBell C.

The quickest way to change the world is to be of service to others. Show that your love can make a difference in the lives of people and thereby someone else's love can make a difference in your life. By each of us doing that and working together we change the world one inner person at a time. — Dannion Brinkley

Every job in the world has some built-in boredom. No man can stay excited about something every minute he is doing it. Routine is as necessary to life as water is to beer; it is the base that holds the flavors and spices together. — E.L. Konigsburg

Two damaged people, thrown together in a hostile world, doing their best. What else was there to life, in the end? — Stephen Baxter

Again," Ryan said. "But this time take note of what I'm doing. Slowly." He smiled. "Okay?" Jamie nodded, licked his moist bottom lip and parted his lips, waiting to be kissed. The sight was the weirdest fucking thing Ryan had seen in his life. Trying to shake the feeling off, he leaned in and pressed their lips together again. — Alessandra Hazard

In the closing years of John Wesley's life, he became a friend of William Wilberforce. In England, Wilberforce was a great champion of freedom for slaves before the American Civil War. He was subjected to a vicious campaign by slave traders and others whose powerful commercial interests were threatened. Rumors were spread that he was a wife-beater. His character, morals, and motives were repeatedly smeared during some twenty years of pitched battles. From his deathbed, John Wesley wrote to Wilberforce, "Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be won out by the opposition of men and devils; but if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? Be not weary in well-doing." William Wilberforce never forgot those words of John Wesley. They kept him going even when all the forces of hell were arrayed against him. The — John C. Maxwell

This is exactly the sort of thing that makes traveling wonderful for me, the reason I defied everyone. The two of us together like we have always been, not saying anything, not doing anything special, just on vacation. I know nothing lasts, but even when you know that things are just about over, sometimes you can run back and take a little bit more and no one will notice. — Michael Zadoorian

Lily, if you left this earth and left me behind, I'd be miserable. I probably wouldn't want to live. But you know what? If you left me with our baby girl, I'd spend my whole life raising her the best I could. Making sure I did right by her and by you. Making sure that everything I did would make you happy and proud of me. You'd leave this earth knowing that I would give our children everything. You would have no doubt about that. Not doing that, not taking care of the babies we made together, would mean that I didn't love you, that you didn't mean the world to me. Because if something means that much to you, then it means that much to me. If I were him, I'd grab hold of anything that reminded me of the woman I loved. — Alexa Riley

Well, well, nobody's perfect, but" - here Mr. Garth shook his head to help out the inadequacy of words - "what I am thinking of is - what it must be for a wife when she's never sure of her husband, when he hasn't got a principle in him to make him more afraid of doing the wrong thing by others than of getting his own toes pinched. That's the long and the short of it, Mary. Young folks may get fond of each other before they know what life is, and they may think it all holiday if they can only get together; but it soon turns into working day, my dear. However, you have more sense than most, and you haven't been kept in cotton-wool: there may be no occasion for me to say this, but a father trembles for his daughter, and you are all by yourself here. — George Eliot

I feel that I have had a blow; but it is not, as I thought as a child, simply a blow from an enemy hidden behind the cotton wool of daily life; it is or will become a revelation of some order; it is a token of some real thing behind appearances; and I make it real by putting it into words. It is only by putting it into words that I make it whole; this wholeness means that it has lost its power to hurt me; it gives me, perhaps because by doing so I take away the pain, a great delight to put the severed parts together. — Virginia Woolf

It sounds as if you supposed that argument was the way to keep him out of the Enemy's clutches. That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier. At that time the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning. But what with the weekly press and other such weapons we have largely altered that. Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily 'true' or 'false', but as 'academic' or 'practical', 'outworn' or 'contemporary', 'conventional' or 'ruthless'. Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. — C.S. Lewis

There's no real formula for doing it, it's either just living life and writing down a joke you think of in the middle of the day and then pieces those together later. — Jeff Dunham

So what does it look like to live a life worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ? It looks like walking with, loving with, and doing life with those who are different from you. What binds you together is Christ. It looks like striving together to make Christ known. What motivates you is Christ. And it looks like standing with courage against all oppressors, natural or supernatural. What secures you is Christ. — Matt Chandler

Integrity is the glue that holds our way of life together. What our young people want to see in their elders is integrity, honesty, truthfulness, and faith. What they hate most of all is hypocrisy and phoniness ... Let them see us doing what we would like them to do. — Billy Graham

Art pulls a community together ... Art makes you feel differently. That's what artists are doing all the time, shifting and changing the way you see life. — Lister Sinclair

The relationship I have with my mother now, and photographing her in front of the grave, it opens up discussions, and dealings with the conversations with my mother about, when I was little, how we lived and about suicide and talking about it, so it's something positive, it brought us more together, because people might never discuss that. Some families never go near certain subjects because it's too hurtful or too close or too dangerous. But within doing these photographs, I also wanted to open up a conversation with her about certain things about life. — Jurgen Teller

In all these years we've been together," he said, "I don't think I know an important part of you. You keep secrets inside you. You hide. It's as though I've never seen you naked, and I've had to imagine what you look like behind the drapes."

"I'm not consciously hiding anything." After Ruth said that, she wondered whether it was true. Then again, who revealed everything - the irritations, the fears? How tiresome that would be. What did he mean by secrets?

"I want us to be intimate. I want to know what you want. Not just with us, but from life. What makes you happiest? Are you doing what you want to do? — Amy Tan

I will not be speaking here about skinheads or militias or survivalists or Klansmen, or even about the unashamed racism that has emerged in public life in recent years, not only in America. I will be speaking about a deeper tectonics that, in my opinion, produces the energy behind all these surface tremors and disruptions. If my remarks seem political, the whole of our life together is political, and to banish whatever sounds like politics from a conversation about where we are going and what we are doing is to trivialize and disable the conversation. — Marilynne Robinson

I happened to write a book about the stuff I've been involved in over the years. It just so happened that my profession is that I was a cop in the New York City Police Department. I guess people thought it was pretty interesting to have these two things meshed together. My life is pretty boring, I don't know why they're doing this. It's fun. — Ralph Sarchie

Within this Christian vision for marriage, here's what it means to fall in love. It is to look at another person and get a glimpse of the person God is creating, and to say, "I see who God is making you, and it excites me! I want to be part of that. I want to partner with you and God in the journey you are taking to his throne. And when we get there, I will look at your magnificence and say, 'I always knew you could be like this. I got glimpses of it on earth, but now look at you!'" Each spouse should see the great thing that Jesus is doing in the life of their mate through the Word, the gospel. Each spouse then should give him- or herself to be a vehicle for that work and envision the day that you will stand together before God, seeing each other presented in spotless beauty and glory. — Timothy Keller

With all of our doing. With all of our leading. With all of our teaching, the most important thing we can do for those whom we lead is to cultivate in their hearts a living, vital, vibrant testimony and knowledge of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of the world, the Author of our salvation, He who atoned for the sins of the world and opened the way of salvation and eternal life. I would hope that in all we do we would somehow constantly nourish the testimony of our people concerning the Savior. I am satisfied--I know it's so--that whenever a man has a true witness in his heart of the living reality of the Lord Jesus Christ, all else will come together as it should... That is the root from which all virtue springs among those who call themselves Latter-day Saints. — Gordon B. Hinckley

I walked the streets of New York; I would feel the presence of Daredevil. I would see him up on the rooftop. What you are doing in your life, you start to see in your book. It all starts to merge together. — Ann Nocenti

You seem to forget that I am married, and the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties. I never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what I am doing. When we meet - we do meet occasionally, when we dine out together, or go down to the Duke's - we tell each other the most absurd stories with the most serious faces. — Oscar Wilde

In order to change, however, you have to be willing to acknowledge the need for change - in other words, you have to come to terms with the fact that everything in your life isn't perfect. There is this concept - among not just Scientologists, but everyone - that we are all supposed to have it together. Whether it's our work, love lives, family relationships, or even feelings about ourselves, we need to present this idealized image to others. We are so conditioned when asked "How are you?" to say "Good" or "Great." But why not "I don't know. I hate everyone today." Why are we so scared to be judged imperfect or to talk about how we really feel? To be authentic? If we can just tell each other how and what we are really doing, step outside of what we believe others think we should be, the result can be therapeutic. — Leah Remini

A quarter of my life has been spent on 'Secret Life.' I'm 20 and I've been doing it for five years, so I think the best moments have been when all the cast members get to work together and we get to collaborate and share experiences. We all grew up together. — Shailene Woodley

Everyone has tests in their life. They come in lots of different forms. I had two or three together, which definitely challenged me as a person and as a sportsman. The big thing is how you react to those situations. You want to come out positively at the other end, and that's what I focused on doing. — Brian O'Driscoll

I can't keep doing this to myself, getting my hopes up so high, only to have them come crashing down. I can't keep waiting for him to come to his senses, having my whole emotional state rest on what he decides. What if he never wakes up to how perfect we'd be together? What if I spend another year pining for him - or longer even? In a terrible flash, I see my future stretching out before me: waiting for his calls, rearranging my life around college visits, and decoding texts and instant messages like they could be something real, something true.
This isn't love; this is pure torment. — Abby McDonald

He and his wife loved each other and brought each other daily pain. Everything else he was doing in his life, even his longing for Lalitha, amounted to little more than flight from circumstance. He and Patty couldn't live together and couldn't imagine living apart. Each time he thought they'd reached the unbearable breaking point, it turned out that there was still further they could go without breaking. — Jonathan Franzen

Dearest Fear: Creativity and I are about to go on a road trip together. I understand you'll be joining us, because you always do. I acknowledge that you believe you have an important job to do in my life, and that you take your job seriously. Apparently your job is to induce complete panic whenever I'm about to do anything interesting - and, may I say, you are superb at your job. So by all means, keep doing your job, if you feel you must. But I will also be doing my job on this road trip, which is to work hard and stay focused. And Creativity will be doing its job, which is to remain stimulating and inspiring. There's plenty of room in this vehicle for all of us, so make yourself at home, but understand this: Creativity and I are the only — Elizabeth Gilbert

Accordingly, I believe the most adequate description of prayer is simply, "Talking to God about what we are doing together." That immediately focuses the activity where we are but at the same time drives the egotism out of it. Requests will naturally be made in the course of this conversational walk. Prayer is a matter of explicitly sharing with God my concerns about what he too is concerned about in my life. And of course he is concerned about my concerns and, in particular, that my concerns should coincide with his. This is our walk together. Out of it I pray. — Dallas Willard

We've had a wonderful, wonderful life together. We've been in many places, we've had the experiences, and now we have the memories. But most of all we have developed the solid knowledge and understanding and background regarding the foundation stones of life, so that we know for a surety that what we are doing [in helping to build the Kingdom of God] is true. Those foundation stones are granite stones; not soft, not limestones. They are granite. — David B. Haight

To accept responsibility for your own feelings, your own triggers, and your own experience does not mean to stop communicating with others about how their words and actions affect you. You can own your emotions by not blaming others, and still give the people in your life gentle, loving feedback about how they can treat you in a way that helps your healing and happiness. Creating safe spaces is an interdependent process. It's not ever all about you and it's not ever all about the other person. It's about you coming together and working on the dynamics of your relationship together, taking responsibility for your own part and doing what you can to contribute to the well-being of the other. — Vironika Tugaleva

Without doubt, it is a delightful harmony when doing and saying go together. — Michel De Montaigne

I want a tutor," Layla said. "It would make doing homework so much easier."
"Me too," said Kaitlyn. "If Layla gets one, I get one."
"No daughter of mine will ever have a tutor," Dad said.
"What if we're failing a course?" asked Layla.
His graying eyebrows drew together. "If you fail a single course, young lady, we will pull you out of school and get you a job scrubbing toilets for the rest of your life. — Claire LaZebnik

In the time we spend reeling in confusion, grasping at straws trying to piece our egos together, we forget to acknowledge some things. Society created gender roles and categorizations and lifestyles and names and titles because we fear the unknown, especially when the unknown is us.
It's as though we're stranded in the middle of an ocean, but we were promised the current would bring us back ashore. We're given all we need on the life raft. As far as we can see, we're being led back, slowly. We don't know when we'll approach the shore, but all evidence points to the fact that we will. But we don't spend our time looking around, enjoying the view, seeing who came with us, and riding out the waves. We sit and panic about what we're doing and why we came here.
It doesn't matter where we started because we may never know. It matters where we're going, because that, we do. We begin and we end. We've seen one, so there's only one other option. — Brianna Wiest

She opened her eyes and looked into his rather intensely.
"What?" Alex asked.
"This cannot be."
"What can't be?" Alex asked her, more bafflement in his voice this time.
"I have been reading people all my life. I can even read cats and dogs. I've been doing it all my life and i've been here longer than the two of you put together."
"And?" Alex wanted to get to the point. Whatever the truth may be, he just wanted to hear it, wanted it on the table before them so he could get this over with and they can go home.
"AND ... you are the first person that has nothing for me to see."
"And here I was hoping you'd say I'd win the lottery or get married to a supermodel or something." Alex said, starting to laugh.
"You don't understand. I don't see anything, anything at all. There is nothing to you, nothing but what I see before me."
"So ... what does that mean?"
"It means you don't exist. — J.C. Joranco

I think trying to write is a religious exercise. You are trying to understand life, and you can only get the illusion of doing it fully by writing. That is, it's the only way I can come to understand things fully. When I create, when I put my own mark on something and form it, I begin to know the whole truth about it, how it was put together. Then you can begin to change things around. You know all this after you have written a lot. You really know. And it has become the most important thing in your life. It has nothing to do with craft, or even art, in a way. It is making sense of life. It is coming to understand yourself. — Peter Taylor

This book is just not meant for pretty reading. It's not for coffee-table curiosity and other such cameo appearances. Think of it instead as industrial-grade survival gear. Duct tape and superglue. Leather straps lashed around it. Old shoelaces maybe. In tight double knots. Whatever it takes to keep it all together. Because this is war. The fight of your life. A very real enemy has been strategizing and scheming against you, assaulting you, coming after your emotions, your mind, your man, your child, your future. In fact, he's doing it right this second. Right where you're sitting. Right where you are. But I say his reign of terror stops here. Stops now. He might keep coming, but he won't have victory anymore. Because it all starts failing when we start praying. — Priscilla Shirer

He decides he wants both more and less. He'd like to hang out with Beyonce in a nice way, get to know her by doing small pleasant things like going out for icecream, or how about this, a three-week trial run in some tropical paradise where they can hang together in that nice way and possibly fall in love, and meanwhile fuck each other's brains out in their spare time. He wants both, he wants the entire body-soul connect because anything less is just demeaning. Has the war done this to him, he wonders, inspired by these deeper sensitivities and yearnings of his? Or is it just because he's going on his twentieth year of life? — Ben Fountain

Even after you leave someone, or they leave you and you start your life all over again, pretending that you have moved on. There is always a piece of you that you have left behind with them. You can never get that back, even years together after you said you moved on. The moment you see them you are going to remember the first time you spoke, the first time you walked together. The way each other's fingers touched accidentally for the first time and the way you felt inside their arms. Each and every moment that made you weak. That is what the piece you had left behind of them is capable of doing to you. — Akshay Vasu

Speaking generally, however, when you interact with someone else, you are doing outer work (physical time, play time, connecting time) ... as many sociologists have pointed out, this area of life used to dominate everyday existence, at a time when families sat around the fire of an evening and ate every meal together.
That's no longer true. Families today are often loose constellations. Contact is intermittent and rushed. everyone has their own space. Activity is scattered all around town, not confined to the home. Cars have made everyone mobile, but central heating may be the most powerful force in shaping modern society. — Deepak Chopra

The stewardess was none other than Brenda Vaccaro, my great friend in real life. Brenda decks me. I fall to the floor of the plane, out of commission. She's saved the day. Brenda and I took longer to do our fight scene than any of our other scenes, because we fell down laughing for three takes. The wonderful absurdity of my turning the heavy wheel to open the plane door, her hand on my shoulder, turning me to look at her cute face, then doing our rehearsed one, two, three punches and shoves, just broke us up. My legs were jelly, I was wheezing with laughter - it was the closest I'd gotten to being in a school play. Sympathy for our nervous young director pulled us together just enough to get through it. — Lee Grant

Will rose slowly to his feet. He could not believe he was doing what he was doing, but it was clear that he was, clear as the silver rim around the black of Jem's eyes. "If there is a life after this one," he said, "let me meet you in it, James Carstairs."
"There will be other lives." Jem held his hand out, and for a moment, they clasped hands, as they had done during their parabatai ritual, reaching across twin rings of fire to interlace their fingers with each other. "The world is a wheel," he said. "When we rise or fall, we do it together."
Will tightened his grip on Jem's hand, which felt thin as twigs in his. "Well, then," he said, through a tight throat, "since you say there will be another life for me, let us both pray I do not make as colossal a mess of it as I have this one. — Cassandra Clare

Where and how did my relationship with Kumiko go wrong? That's what I can't understand. Not that I'm saying everything was perfect until that point. A man and a woman in their twenties, with two distinct personalities, just happen to meet somewhere and start living together. There's not a married couple anywhere without their problems. But I thought we were doing OK, basically, that any little problems would solve themselves over time. But I was wrong. I was missing something big, making some kind of mistake on a really basic level, I suppose. — Haruki Murakami

They don't really listen to speeches or talks. They absorb incrementally, through hours and hours of observation. The sad truth about divorce is that it's hard to teach your kids about life unless you are living life with them: eating together, doing homework, watching Little League, driving them around endlessly, being bored with nothing to do, letting them listen while you do business, while you negotiate love and the frustrations and complications and rewards of living day in and out with your wife. Through this, they see how adults handle responsibility, honesty, commitment, jealousy, anger, professional pressures, and social interactions. Kids learn from whoever is around them the most. — Rob Lowe