Quotes & Sayings About Fine Living

[pitching the proposal for Mononoke-hime (1997)] There cannot be a happy ending to the fight between the raging gods and humans. However, even in the middle of hatred and killings, there are things worth living for. A wonderful meeting, or a beautiful thing can exist. We depict hatred, but it is to depict that there are more important things. We depict a curse, to depict the joy of liberation. What we should depict is, how the boy understands the girl, and the process in which the girl opens her heart to the boy. At the end, the girl will say to the boy, "I love you, Ashitaka. But I cannot forgive humans." Smiling, the boy should say, "That is fine. Live with me. — Hayao Miyazaki

Living a lie - pretending everything is fine when we are
actually discontented - is hard work and, in the long run, even bad for our health. We pay a high price
for compromising on this honesty - and neglecting ourselves. Finding our inner passion, our mission
in life, and connecting with who we really are, our spiritual being or our higher self - this is the key to success and fulfilment. Our 'soul' purpose is our sole purpose in life. — Kristiane Backer

If I have to work in McDonalds, fine - I had a really great run and made a living at music for 20 years, and how many other people can say that? — Juliana Hatfield

Do you have a leather jacket? One for a ten-year-old boy?" I asked the man selling leather jackets and gloves in Covent Garden, London. "Yes, I have one right here!" And the man dug out a fine leather jacket that looked styled and tailored for a young boy. "I'm buying this for my son" I said to him. "I love this jacket, it's perfect, I think I will just come back for it tomorrow, though! I'll be back tomorrow, okay?" And the man reached his arms above his head, and said with a big smile upon his face "You only have one life to live! What is the difference if you do something today, or if you do it tomorrow?" I thought about the man's words. And I bought the jacket. He was right, there is no difference, really, between doing something today and doing something tomorrow, when you only have one life to live! Afterall, tomorrow may never come! All you really have is today! — C. JoyBell C.

I think that the ideals of youth are fine, clear and unencumbered; and that the real art of living consists in keeping alive the conscience and sense of values we had when we were young. — Rockwell Kent

Every noble impulse, every unselfish expression of love; every brave suffering for the right; every surrender of self to something higher than self; every loyalty to an ideal; every unselfish devotion to principle; every helpfulness to humanity; every act of self-control; every fine courage of the soul, undefeated by pretense or policy, but by being, doing, and living of good for the very good's sake - that is spirituality. — David O. McKay

What if you wake up one fine morning only to realize that the life you have been living since the last few days was nothing but a dream of yours?

Would you go back to sleep then?

I wake up each morning only to realize you're not by my side. And if this emptiness is nothing but a nightmare, let me wake up and go back to the time we were together... — Sanhita Baruah

I have no real ambition or strategy. If this was all to finish, it's totally fine. There's a lot more to do out there than put on silly frocks and shout for a living. I could always go back to, 'Would you like soup with that?' — Michelle Gomez

I told him that it was very fine for well-fed, over-paid actors flaunting toughness at these deprived people, who are gentle and nice and, if ever tough, only so because of environment. I asked him how tough he would be if he were living the life that some of these unfortunate families must live. How easy for him, with five meals a day beneath that thrust-out chest with his muscles trained and perfect, trying to start something with these people. Of course they were not tough, but when it comes to four years of War, when it comes to losing an arm or a leg, then they are tough. But they are not going around looking for fights unless there is a reason. — Charlie Chaplin

I bought a big-ass house and haven't decorated it yet," Psycho replied defensively. "Patio furniture looks good in my living room. I don't
have a lamp. The red and green Christmas lights work just fine."
"The lights blink."
"So do I. — Kate Angell

At any innocent tea-table we may easily hear a man say, "Life is not worth living." We regard it as we regard the statement that it is a fine day; nobody thinks that it can possibly have any serious effect on the man or on the world. And yet if that utterance were really believed, the world would stand on its head. Murderers would be given medals for saving men from life; firemen would be denounced for keeping men from death; poisons would be used as medicines; doctors would be called in when people were well; the Royal Humane Society would be rooted out like a horde of assassins. Yet we never speculate as to whether the conversational pessimist will strengthen or disorganize society; for we are convinced that theories do not matter. — G.K. Chesterton

I wouldn't say Malkovich is totally insane, but he's not living in the real world. He's living in his world, which is a fine world to live in apparently. — Martha Plimpton

The other aspect of those weekday-evening trips he loved was the light itself, how it filled the train like something living as the cars rattled across the bridge, how it washed the weariness from his seatmates' faces and revealed them as they were when they first came to the country, when they were young and America seemed conquerable. He'd watch that kind light suffuse the car like syrup, watch it smudge furrows from foreheads, slick gray hairs into gold, gentle the aggressive shine from cheap fabrics into something lustrous and fine. And then the sun would drift, the car rattling uncaringly away from it, and the world would return to its normal sad shapes and colors, the people to their normal sad state, a shift as cruel and abrupt as if it had been made by a sorcerer's wand. — Hanya Yanagihara

Growing up is never straight forward.
There are moments when everything is fine, and other moments where you realize that
there are certain memories that you'll never get back, and certain people that are going to change, and the hardest part is knowing that
there's nothing you can do except watch them. — Alden Nowlan

Losing my sight, losing my mind, i wish somebody would tell me im fine. I never realized i was spread too thin untill it was too late and i was empty within. Hungry, feeding on chaos and living on sin. — Papa Roach

Human feelings are queer things
I am much happier
black-leading the stove's
making the beds and sweeping the floors at home, than I should be living like a fine lady anywhere else. — Charlotte Bronte

I thought I had paid for everything. Not like the woman pays and pays and pays. No idea of retribution or punishment. Just exchange of values. You gave up something and got something else. Or you worked for something. You paid some way for everything that was any good. I paid my way into enough things that I liked, so that I had a good time. Either you paid by learning about them, or by experience, or by taking chances, or by money. Enjoying living was learning to get your money's worth and knowing when you had it. You could get your money's worth. The world was a good place to buy in. It seemed like a fine philosophy. In five years, I thought, it will seem just as silly as all the other fine philosophies I've had. — Anonymous

In his way and in his day he was a very modern father. "I want you to see all kinds," he would say to her. "I want you to realize that this whole thing is just a grand adventure. A fine show. The trick is to play in it and look at it at the same time."
"What whole thing?"
"Living. All mixed up. The more kinds of people you see, and the more things you do, and the more things that happen to you, the richer you are. Even if they're not pleasant things. That's living.... — Edna Ferber

I tell myself I'm fine on my own, but am I? No friends to fall back on, no relationships, no support. Left to my own devices, I have no devices. — Jael McHenry

It would all be fine. Darcy could handle any man, living ...
Or dead. — Heather Graham

Even without love, I can live fine alone. It's not like I've always had what I wanted. In my life not even once ... I was never selfish nor full of greed. The things I want to do, the things I want, the things I wish for ... have I ever even had any of those, for at least once in my whole life? I can live fine without love. I will find a way to survive. Dying is hell. Why is living supposed to be hell? — Ma-Roo

To put it another way, every love relationship is based upon unwritten conventions rashly agreed upon by the lovers during the first weeks of their love. On the one hand, they are living a sort of dream; on the other, without realizing it, they are drawing up the fine print of their contracts like the most hard-nosed of lawyers. O lovers! Be wary during those perilous first days! If you serve the other party breakfast in bed, you will be obliged to continue same in perpetuity or face charges of animosity and treason! — Milan Kundera

For me life is an inn where I must stay until the carriage from the abyss calls to collect me [ ... ] I could consider this inn to be a prison, since I'm compelled to stay here; I could consider it a kind of club, because I meet other people here. However, unlike others, I am neither impatient nor sociable. I leave those who chatter in the living room, from where the cosy sound of music and voices reaches me. I sit at the door and fill my eyes and ears with the colours and sounds of the landscape and slowly, just for myself, I sing vague songs that I compose while I wait.
Night will fall on all of us and the carriage will arrive. I enjoy the breeze given to me and the soul given to me to enjoy it and I ask no more questions, look no further. If what I leave written in the visitors' book is one day read by others and entertains them on their journey, that's fine. If no one reads it or is entertained by it, that's fine too. — Fernando Pessoa

Americans are ugly unwashed clods that live off of government cheese. If I could, I'd take every living American, grind them up into a fine paste and use that paste to feed the dolphins, because they are neglected by the evil Americans. — Thom Yorke

If a journalist shows a facility for praise he's liable to be offered a job in public relations or advertising and the next thing you know he's got a big office, a huge salary and is living in a fine home with a lovely wife and swell kids - another career blown to hell. — P. J. O'Rourke

Republicans approve of the American farmer, but they are willing to help him go broke. They stand four-square for the American home
but not for housing. They are strong for labor
but they are stronger for restricting labor's rights. They favor minimum wage
the smaller the minimum wage the better. They endorse educational opportunity for all
but they won't spend money for teachers or for schools. They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine
for people who can afford them. They consider electrical power a great blessing
but only when the private power companies get their rake-off. They think American standard of living is a fine thing
so long as it doesn't spread to all the people. And they admire of Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it. — Harry Truman

Wine glasses, like fine wines, have always been a symbol of civilized living. — Alexis Lichine

Fine art, that exists for itself alone, is art in a final state of impotence. If nobody, including the artist, acknowledges art as a means of knowing the world, then art is relegated to a kind of rumpus room of the mind and the irresponsibility of the artist and the irrelevance of art to actual living becomes part and parcel of the practice of art. — Angela Carter

John Updike: our greatest suburban chic-boutique man of letters. A smug and fatal complacency has stunted his growth beyond hope of surgical repair. Not enough passion in his collected works to generate steam in a beer can. Nevertheless, he is considered by some critics to be America's finest *living* author: Hold a chilled mirror to his lips and you will see, presently, a fine and dewy moisture condensing
like a faery breath!
upon the glass. — Edward Abbey

You know, when you choose to make your living as an actor, it's all fine and good to look at it as some kind of artistic endeavor. At its best, it is that. But the fact is, most of the actors out there don't earn $3 million a picture and can't afford to take two years off between films and look for the right thing. Most of us are tradesmen. — James Spader

And the fact was that he remembered once thinking that he was fine with dying anywhere at any time ... but now, gazing at each corpse in turn, he thought with all his heart, I'm glad I didn't die there. I have to go home. I've still got things to do. — Yukako Kabei

There are clouds, between us and them, pointed out Isten of the Hungarians. He had a fine black moustache, a large, dusty black hat, and the grin of a man who makes his living selling aluminum siding and new roofs and gutters to senior citizens but who always leaves town the day after the checks clear whether the work is done or not. — Neil Gaiman

Fine # wine is a living liquid ... Its life comprises youth, maturity, old age, and death. — Julia Child

To fly! to live as airmen live! Like them to ride the skyways from horizon to horizon, across rivers and forests! To free oneself from the petty disputes of everyday life, to be active, to feel the blood renewed in one's vein - ah! that is life ... Life in finer and simpler. My will is freer. I appreciate everything more, sunlight and shade, work and my friends. The sky is vast. I breathe deep gulps of the fine clear air of the heights. I feel myself to have achieved a higher state of physical strength and a clearer brain. I am living in the third dimension! — Henri Mignet

I remember all of these things happening and the places we lived in and the fine times and the bad times we had in that year. But much more vividly I remember living in the book and making up what happened in it every day. Making the country and the people and the things that happened I was happier than I had ever been. Each day I read the book through from the beginning to the point where I went on writing and each day I stopped when I was still going good and when I knew what would happen next. The fact the book was a tragic one did not make me unhappy since I believed that life was a tragedy and knew it could have only one end. But finding you were able to make something up; to create truly enough so that it made you happy to read it; and to do this every day you worked was something that gave a greater pleasure than any I had ever known. Beside it nothing else mattered. — Ernest Hemingway,

There's a fine line between living in the moment and being downright stupid. — Kamini Patel

I do have health insurance (don't fine me, [Barack] Obama!). And while we agree that career is important, my mother has an AOL email address and shares articles she finds interesting on Facebook by screen shotting and posting a picture of them. So, if mother doesn't understand links, she's not going to understand what I do for a living. I'm confident in my current career trajectory, so this will be another Mother's Day disappointment. — Kate Siegel

There are many deaf people who couldn't imagine living in a marriage without someone who doesn't speak their language. For me, I believe that hearing or deaf is fine as long as both parties are willing to communicate in each other's language. But if there's no communication, then the marriage, I believe, will be difficult if not doomed. — Marlee Matlin

Survivors create survival mechanisms. Mine is pushing through. I push everything to the side, out of my line of vision, out of my mind and I focus relentlessly on my goal. Not sure what you'd call it, but who cares? I'm a fighter and that's enough. I live each day happy to wake up each morning to my children's bright eyes and warm cheeks. If pushing through gives me more days with the family I've created, with my writing, with my loves - fine by me. Call it what you want. I call it living. -Broken Places — Rachel Thompson

It's fine for people to say, "If you can't stand the heat and if you can't stand the criticism, then just don't use the Internet"; unfortunately, that is not an option. The Internet is where we make our living and where we make our work, especially if we're independents and we cannot afford to not engage, because that's where our business is driving from. It's just not an option. — Amanda Palmer

The man they'd come to see was up and standing at the window with his back to them, so that only Sophia saw his squared stance and his shoulders and the brown hair fastened back above the collar of his shirt. He wore no coat, just breeks and boots, and in the fine white shirt he stood there pale and like a ghost, the only thing of light in that dull room.
He spoke again, not looking round, his voice grown hoarser from the illness. 'Did you ye see her? Was she well?'
'She will be now,' the colnel gently said ...
Sophia could not move from where she stood. Could not believe it.
Then he turned, a ghost no longer, but a breathing man. A living man, whose shadowed eyes grew brighter in the grip of hard emotion as he left the window and in two strides crossed to fold her in his arms ... — Susanna Kearsley

Okay." Nate took a deep breath. "Now that we're all caught up on the new no-no's of the house, what do you say we find a tarp and some duct tape and MacGyver ourselves a new window in the living room? Just, you know, to keep out the wind ... and the leaves ... and any sharp-toothed woodland creatures prone to attacking people in their sleep."
Tristan raised a brow.
"What?" Nate shrugged. "Death by dragon? Awesome. Death by rabid forest squirrel? Not cool, man. Not cool. — Chelsea Fine

The devout life does not solely entail living as a monk or ascetic, though that is fine. The devout life requires bringing God into all things. — David Paul Kirkpatrick

Life isn't worth living unless you are young and surrounded by other young people in a beautiful cold garden perfumed by dirt and flowers and fallen leaves, gleaming in the string of lights, listening to the quiet city on the last fine night of the year. — Lauren Groff

I think that the status that you have in life should be reflected in official documents. If you are married, fine, if you are living with someone, fine, if you are single, fine. We don't want to tell people how to live their lives. — Iain Duncan Smith

My best day ever. Got up. Had breakfast. Came to school. Bored, as usual. Wishing I wasn't there, like usual. Kids ignoring me, suits me fine. Sitting with the other retards - we're so special. Wasting my time. Yesterday was the same, and it's gone, anyway. Tomorrow may never come. There is only today. This is the best day and the worst day. Actually it's crap. — Rachel Ward

All night the angelic made me gasp for breadth and dream of drowning in sand or earth or mud. I got up, my chest still racked, but glad to be finished with the phantasms which magnify a reality difficult enough in itself. Coffee so bitter it was undrinkable. A big roar. Two big roars. No relief. The mornings only consolation was of a faecal nature. Unexpectedly and impeccably i produced a magnificent turd, so long it had to curve at the ends to fit into the bowl. I contemplated fondly the fine chubby little babe of living clay i'd just brought forth, and my zest for life returned. — Michel Tournier

I am lucky because I do fine art, and that is half of my living. And then illustration provides the other half. — Molly Crabapple

If we don't watch out, the pleasure o be gained from the discriminating enjoyment of food will be lost. It may not be long before the art of fine cooking is viewed as the invention of a handful of snobs ... A whole aspect of living well, of civilization itself, is threatened with extinction. — Benoite Groult

Everything's gonna be fine, okay?" He reached toward me and gently started to move a lock of my hair behind my ear.
"Maybe for you," I said, smacking his hand away. "Some of us are gonna be living out the rest of our lives in a rice paddy wearing a big hat."
"Wow, you get racist when you're panicky."
"Shut your pathetic, useless mouth."
"And bitchy. — Cherry Cheva

Fine vapors escape from whatever is doing the living. The night is cold and delicate and full of angels Pounding down the living. The factories are all lit up, The chime goes unheard. We are together at last, though far apart. - from "The Ecclesiast" by John Ashbery — Philip Pullman

It taught me that it is easier to be an insider as an outsider than to be an outsider as an insider. If a white guy chooses to immerse himself in hip-hop culture and only hang out with black people, black people will say, "Cool, white guy. Do what you need to do." If a black guy chooses to button up his blackness to live among white people and play lots of golf, white people will say, "Fine. I like Brian. He's safe." But try being a black person who immerses himself in white culture while still living in the black community. Try being a white person who adopts the trappings of black culture while still living in the white community. — Trevor Noah

In any case, once you're dealing on a nonverbal level, ambiguity is unavoidable. But it's the ambiguity of all art, of a fine piece of music or a painting - you don't need written instructions by the composer or painter accompanying such works to 'explain' them. "Explaining" them contributes nothing but a superficial 'cultural' value which has no value except for critics and teachers who have to earn a living. — Stanley Kubrick

Everything was fine with the Zen Lunatics, the nut wagon was too far away to hear us. But there was a wisdom in it all, as you'll see if you take a walk some night on a suburban street and pass house after house on both sides of the street each with the lamplight of the living room, shining golden, and inside the little blue square of the television, each living family riveting its attention on probably one show; nobody talking; silence in the yards; dogs barking at you because you pass on human feet instead of on wheels. You'll see what I mean, when it begins to appear like everybody in the world is soon going to be thinking the same way and the Zen Lunatics have long joined dust, laughter on their dust lips. — Jack Kerouac

You don't have to fight to be brave. Millions of good, fine, decent folks show more bravery than heavyweight champs just by getting out of bed every morning, going out to do a good day's work and living the best life they know how against the law of odds. — John Wayne

I find what I call the [bleep] side of the industry very difficult. You won't see me at other peoples' premiers. I mean, I go to my own premiers because I have to help my film, but I don't enjoy that whole side of it. I don't enjoy celebrityhood. I love getting a seat in a restaurant. I love it when people say hi when I don't know them. I mean, that's fine, but apart from that, I like the elements of celebrityhood which make living in the world like living in your own village. — Jeremy Irons

And while the paths and outcomes of creative living will vary wildly from person to person, I can guarantee you this: A creative life is an amplified life. It's a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life. Living in this manner - continually and stubbornly bringing forth the jewels that are hidden within you - is a fine art, in and of itself. Because creative living is where Big Magic will always abide. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Love is only one fine star away, even though the living is sometimes laced with lies. — Stevie Nicks

Agnes Shay had the true spirit of a maid. Moistened with dishwater and mild eau de cologne, reared in narrow and sunless bedrooms, in back passages, back stairs, laundries, linen closets, and in those servants' halls that remind one of a prison, her soul had grown docile and bleak...Agnes loved the ceremonies of a big house. She drew the curtains in the living room at dark, lighted the candles on the table, and struck the dinner chimes like an eager altar boy. On fine evenings, when she sat on the back porch between the garbage pails and the woodbins, she liked to recall the faces of all the cooks she had known. It made her life seem rich. — John Cheever

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on. — Havelock Ellis

Lena scowled at the empty space in her living room. "Oh sure, thanks, I had fun too." She'd stayed awake, spilled a cup of perfectly good tea, and for what? A spirit with the noncorporeal equivalent of erectile dysfunction. Mostly she was fine being permanently on-call in the Veil. On nights like this, however, it sucked. — Laura Oliva

Living for beauty is all very fine, but it's a hard regimen and burns up the heart very quickly. — Andrew Holleran

He pictured her living alone in that tranquil house with its fine old furnishings, tending her flowers and fruit trees. — Julia Glass

Life is a wonderfully fine thing. Go live it. — Fennel Hudson

Life is not easy and comfortable, with nothing ever going wrong as long as you buy the right product. It's not true that if you have the right insurance everything is going to be fine. That's not what it's really like. Terrible things happen. And those are the things we learn from. — Madeleine L'Engle

As for LSD, I highly recommend it. We had a fine, wild weekend and no trouble at all. The feeling it produces is hard to describe. 'Intensity' is a fair word for it. Try half a cube at first, just sit in the living room and turn on the music - after the kids have gone to bed. But never take it in uncomfortable or socially tense situations. And don't have anybody around whom you don't like. — Hunter S. Thompson

[ ... ] Y'know, the Duchess Regan is living here at the tower now? I took your advice about not talking about her boffnacity [footnote], even with the duke dead and all, can't be too careful. Although, I caught sight of her in a dressing gown one day she was up on the parapet outside her solar. Fine flanks on that princess, despite the danger of death and all for sayin' so, sir." -Yeomen
Aye, the lady is fair, and her gadonk as fine as frog fur [ ... ]" -Pocket
footnote: Boffnacity: an expression of shagnatiousness, fit. from the Latin boffusnatious — Christopher Moore

Here was a man some twenty thousand miles from home, by the way of Cape Horn, that is - which was the only way he could get there - thrown among people as strange to him as though he were in the planet Jupiter; and yet he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving the utmost serenity; content with his own companionship; always equal to himself. Surely his was a touch of fine philosophy; though no doubt he had never heard there was such a thing as that. But, perhaps, to be a true philosopher, we mortals should not be conscious of so living or so striving. So soon as I hear that such or such a man gives himself out for a philosopher, I conclude that, like the dyspeptic old woman, he must have 'broken his digester. — Herman Melville

I had to do this album. I tried thinking, "I'm not going to do it." But then I'm sitting there getting all suicidal and depressed, and I just start writing. It's like this inner drive. If I could choose, I would probably be living in the countryside and be fine with that, but I'm not. — Lykke Li

ROTHKO: (Explodes) 'Pretty.' 'Beautiful.' 'Nice.' 'Fine.' That's our life now! Everything's 'fine'. We put on the funny nose and glasses and slip on the banana peel and the TV makes everything happy and everyone's laughing all the time, it's all so goddamn funny, it's our constitutional right to be amused all the time, isn't it? We're a smirking nation, living under the tyranny of 'fine.' How are you? Fine.. How was your day? Fine. How are you feeling? Fine. How did you like the painting? Fine. What some dinner? Fine ... Well, let me tell you, everything is not fine!!
HOW ARE YOU?! ... HOW WAS YOUR DAY?! ... HOW ARE YOU FEELING? Conflicted. Nuanced. Troubled. Diseased. Doomed. I am not fine. We are not fine. We are anything but fine. — John Logan

... the unimaginable age of the mountains and the fine mesh of living things that lay across them would remind him that he was part of this order and insignificant within it, and he would be set free. — Ian McEwan

To be sensitive is fine, but it makes day-to-day living- life -rather painful. — Marisha Pessl

It's fine to have talent, but talent is the last of it. In an acting career, as in an acting performance, you've got to have vitality. The secret of successful acting is identical with a woman's beauty secret: joy in living. — Rosalind Russell

We'd be recording and I'd go down to Greenpoint where Rostam was living and track stuff ... It was a busy time. I felt like in general, I was just super psyched with the prospect of getting to be a musician, that it became a thing that I would think about more than I would think about my studies and stuff like that. I still did fine, but it was an interesting time in my life. — Chris Baio

It is the fine excesses of life that make it worth living. — Richard Le Gallienne

Sandy fidgeted with his pen. "There's something I didn't write down. Maybe I shouldn't tell you, you being a judge and all, but, well, Jake Wexler ... he's a bookie."
No, he should not have told her. "A small-time operator, I'm sure, Mr. McSouthers," the judge replied coldly. "It can have no bearing on the matter before us. Sam Westing manipulated people, cheated workers, bribed officials, stole ideas, but Sam Westing never smoked or drank or placed a bet. Give me a bookie any day over such a fine, upstanding, clean-living man. — Ellen Raskin

Says a fine Greek adage, "is the gift of nature; but beautiful living is the gift of wisdom.") — Will Durant

I'm fine," [her dad] said gently. "Back on the horse, Cath.'
'What's the horse?' she sighed, watching him pull on a South High hoodie. 'Jogging? Working too much?'
'Living,' he said, a little too loud. 'Life's the horse. — Rainbow Rowell

It is our duty and our privilege to exhaust our lives for Jesus. We are not to be living specimens of men in fine preservation, but living sacrifices, whose lot is to be consumed — Charles Spurgeon

Being Lulu, it made me realize that all my life I've been living in a small, square room, with no windows and no doors. And I was fine. I was happy, even. I thought. Then someone came along and showed me there was a door in the room. One that I'd never even seen before. Then he opened it for me. Held my hand as I walked through it. And for one perfect day, I was on the other side. I was somewhere else. Someone else. And then he was gone, and I was thrown back into my little room. And now, no matter what I do, I can't seem to find that door. — Gayle Forman

There is in fact a category of people who get unusually close to the truth about themselves and the world. Their self-perceptions are more balanced,they assign responsibility for success and failure more even-handedly, and their predictions for the future are more realistic. These people are living testimony to the dangers of self-knowledge. They are the clinically depressed. — Cordelia Fine

As long as you think like that, you'll be as brainless and helpless as the actual cuff of Astia. Use your will, Elli, for surely you have one. How else did you survive the torture that nearly killed you? How else did you make it to the woods? How else are you right here, after weeks of winter spent living in a cave, for stars' sake, looking stronger and healthier than I ever expected? No will, my arse. — Sarah Fine

Secluded in her living room, the midday sun dimmed by long, burgundy drapes - the soft velvet cloth a steal on EBay - Circe watches the soapies on her plasma screen TV. Her elegant fingers deliver fine chocolates to her perfect lips. Her divine green eyes are dull, her expression glazed. — Georgina Anne Taylor

Life itself will protect you. You will graduate to living a better life than you have ever lived till now! Your treatment and patience has paid off! You are life's own student and have seen life from all the angles. You have come full circle and now it is time to rejoice. Say you are absolutely fine and it will be granted to you! — Sanchita Pandey

Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ian Fleming may have been very practical about writing James Bond, but at heart he was a romantic. He ... was tapping directly into a deep wellspring of his own imagination, which he laced with the usual blend of sex, travel, culinary detail and fine living that encapsulated the aspirations of the age, and was absolutely an expression of Fleming himself. He may have dismissed his creation as idle fantasy, but he was entirely serious about the world he had created ... Ian Fleming could not put any clear water between himself and his fiction because he was living his work as he wrote it ... To discover the origins of James Bond one has to begin by exploring the deep streams that fed the well of Fleming's imagination, and his own complicated personality. — Henry Chancellor

One would think that potential motherhood should make women as a class as sacred as the priesthood. In common parlance we have much fine-spun theorizing on the exalted office of the mother, her immense influence in moulding the character of her sons; "the hand that rocks the cradle moves the world," etc., but in creeds and codes, in constitutions and Scriptures, in prose and verse, we do not see these lofty paeans recorded or verified in living facts. As a class, women were treated among the Jews as an inferior order of beings, just as they are to-day in all civilized nations. And now, as then, men claim to be guided by the will of God. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

THERE was a curious social situation in Black Hawk. All the young men felt the attraction of the fine, well-set-up country girls who had come to town to earn a living, and, in nearly every case, to help the father struggle out of debt, or to make it possible for the younger children of the family to go to school. — Willa Cather

Although a man may wear fine clothing, if he lives peacefully; and is good, self-possessed, has faith and is pure; and if he does not hurt any living being, he is a holy man. — Denis Diderot

Lissa's hotel suite had a expansive living room and work area, with an adjacent bedroom accessible through frosted-glass French doors. Serena nodded towards them."How about I just go in there?" A smart idea. Provided privacy but kept her close by. Then, Serena realised her implications, and she blushed. " I mean ... unless you guys want to go in there and I'll-"
"No," exclaimed Lissa, growing more and more embarrassed. "This is fine. We'll stay in here. We're just talking. — Richelle Mead

I often hear that Gintama is very kind to losers. The thought that "a failure like me can still keep living when I read this manga." But I didn't intentionally draw losers. I've been told that it's because I'm a loser too. Well, fine. But honestly, I think everyone's a loser. The only difference is the skin we put on. Once you open the lid and look inside, everyone's the same. — Hideaki Sorachi

Somehow they stayed that way
For those 5 days in May
Made all the stars around them shine
Funny how you can look in vain
Living on nerves and such sweet pain
The loneliness that cuts so fine
To find the face you've seen a thousand times — Blue Rodeo

Living in the middle of beauty like this, we've no call to have puny ideas about God. Why do you suppose His world is so fancy-fine, so full of wonderment if He doesn't want everything to be good and perfect and right and healthy? But we can spoil His good work. When we mess things up, then we shouldn't blame Him and try to make ourselves feel better by contending that it's what He wanted. — Catherine Marshall

For a time you can be alone and doing fine and never give a thought to living any other way and then you meet someone and suddenly you become lonely. It stabs at you, almost like a physical pain, and you feel both deprived and angry, deprived because you wish to be with that person, and angry because their absence brings you misery. It's a strange feeling, akin to desperation, a feeling that makes you wait by the phone even though you know that the call is an hour away. — Ilona Andrews

A fine poem combines the elements of meaning, music, and a form like a living frame that holds it together. — Arnold Adoff

Why should the wealth of the country be stored in banks and elevators while the idle workman wanders homeless about the streets and the idle loafers who hoard the gold only to spend it in riotous living are rolling about in fine carriages from which they look out on peaceful meetings and call them riots? — Erik Larson

Living your life is a long and doggy business ... And stories and books help. Some help you with the living itself. Some help you just take a break. The best do both at the same time. — Anne Fine

Some of you will have fine monuments by which the living may remember the evil done to you. Some of you will have only crude wooden crosses or painted rocks, while yet others of you must remain hidden in the shadows of history. — Kazuo Ishiguro

A creative life is an amplified life. It's a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life. Living in this manner - continually and stubbornly bringing forth the jewels that are hidden within you - is a fine art, in and of itself. — Elizabeth Gilbert

With a living person you're always burdened with this idea of fair representation, treading this fine line between honoring the person, and yet you really look at the word "honor," it implies that you then have to address struggle and hardship and failure, and all these things that it means to be human, that you show the fullness of their life. If the person's living, they are able to interject. — Brian Lindstrom