I Have To Do Everything Myself Quotes & Sayings

Look at the way you and I have ended up. I renounced and abandoned the world in order to be here and devote myself entirely to the service of Christ far away from people. And now you return to me after embracing Islam, clad in nothing but tunic and waist-cloth, and with nothing to your name but a staff to walk on. Tell me, for Heaven's sake: What is the difference between us? Is not your renunciation of the world the same as mine? And, my dear: Is it not the same rejection of the state of the world and its inhabitants that has impelled both of us to leave everything behind, realizing as we do that there is no hope to be found in this world and that there is nothing left for us but the love of God? — Salwa Bakr

Singing and acting suit me. I made a vow to myself to do everything that I can do with this life that I have, and I have to find the time to do this. Sometimes I need to be an actress. Sometimes I don't need to be Jill. However, everyone is always looking for the Jill in everything. — Jill Scott

The Americans of the United States do not let their dogs hunt the Indians as do the Spaniards in Mexico, but at bottom it is the same pitiless feeling which here, as everywhere else, animates the European race. This world here belongs to us, they tell themselves every day: the Indian race is destined for final destruction which one cannot prevent and which it is not desirable to delay. Heaven has not made them to become civilized; it is necessary that they die. Besides I do not want to get mixed up in it. I will not do anything against them: I will limit myself to providing everything that will hasten their ruin. In time I will have their lands and will be innocent of their death.
Satisfied with his reasoning, the American goes to church where he hears the minister of the gospel repeat every day that all men are brothers, and that the Eternal Being who has made them all in like image, has given them all the duty to help one another. — Alexis De Tocqueville

My main goal is to stay alive. To keep fooling myself into hanging around. To keep getting up every day. Right now I live without inspiration. I go day to day and do the work because it's all I know. I know that if I keep moving I stand a chance. I must keep myself going until I find a reason to live. I need one so bad. On the other hand maybe I don't. Maybe it's all bullshit. Nothing I knew from my old life can help me here. Most of the things that I believed turned out to be useless. Appendages from someone else's life.
Everything I have I would give to not know what I know. To not feel emptiness as my constant companion. To not look into this room and be reminded why I'm in it. I'm not getting enough air. The room feels so small all of a sudden. It's pathetic to be this lonely and know it. To keep breathing. To be silent and alone. And to know. — Henry Rollins

I don't know if it's shocking, but I'm the world's biggest klutz. I have been dancing since I was 3, and I have modeled, and I have good balance, but you wouldn't know it. Hanging out with me, I do everything from spill food on myself to trip up stairs. I'm the queen of that, most definitely. — Tiffany Dupont

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

I don't intend to let my intellect dominate me, and the last thing I want to do is worship knowledge or people who have knowledge! I don't give a damn for anyone's aggregation of facts, except that it be a reflection [of] basic sensitivity which I do demand ... I intend to do everything ... to have one way of evaluating experience - does it cause me pleasure or pain and I shall be very cautious about rejecting the painful - I shall anticipate pleasure everything and find it, too, for it is everywhere! I shall involve myself wholly ... everything matters! The only thing I resign is the power to resign, to retreat: the acceptance of sameness and the intellect. I am alive ... I am beautiful ... what else is there? — Susan Sontag

I'm probably the least harsh on myself, and I try not to scrutinize everything about my body. As a new mom, it is what it is, and we just have to do our best. — Kourtney Kardashian

I have been taking stock of my 50 years since I left Wichita in 1922 at the age of 15 to become a dancer with Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. How I have existed fills me with horror. For I have failed in everything
spelling, arithmetic, riding, tennis, golf; dancing, singing, acting; wife, mistress, whore, friend. Even cooking.
And I do not excuse myself with the usual escape of 'not trying.' I tried with all my heart. — Louise Brooks

Main thought! The individual himself is a fallacy. Everything which happens in us is in itself something else which we do not know. 'The individual' is merely a sum of conscious feelings and judgments and misconceptions, a belief, a piece of the true life system or many pieces thought together and spun together, a 'unity', that doesn't hold together. We are buds on a single tree - what do we know about what can become of us from the interests of the tree! But we have a consciousness as though we would and should be everything, a phantasy of 'I' and all 'not I.' Stop feeling oneself as this phantastic ego! Learn gradually to discard the supposed individual! Discover the fallacies of the ego! Recognize egoism as fallacy! The opposite is not to be understood as altruism! This would be love of other supposed individuals! No! Get beyond 'myself' and 'yourself'! Experience cosmically! — Friedrich Nietzsche

I stayed in therapy long enough to know that nothing that happened to me was my fault. I didn't do anything to invite it or deserve it. But that just makes it worse. Maybe I don't blame myself for what happened, but when they tell you that something was completely and utterly random, they're also telling you something else. That nothing you do matters. It doesn't matter if you do everything right, if you dress the right way and act the right way and follow all the rules, because evil will find you anyway. Evil's resourceful that way ... They tell you it was random to make you feel blameless. But all I hear them telling me is that I have no control, and if I have no control, then I'm powerless. I would have preferred being blamed. — Katja Millay

I had never been so wanted or needed by anyone on earth.
Babies were dangerous ... they made you fall in love before you knew what was happening.
This small, solemn creature couldn't even say my name, and he depended on me for everything.
Everything.
I'd known him for little more than a day. But I would have thrown myself in front of a bus for him. I was shattered by him. This was awful.
"I love you, Luke," I whispered.
He looked completely unsurprised by the revelation.
Of course you love me, his expression seemed to say. I'm a baby. This is what I do. — Lisa Kleypas

There's no real road map to L.A. Everyone's journey is different. You have to persevere and be willing to put everything in it. You have to stick it out. I don't really have a safety net, but what I do is put myself in the best possible position to succeed by working hard. Also, be careful who you let into your life. — Christopher Egan

Cam restored her clothing slowly, his strong hands lifting her from the beech. Crushing her close, he muttered something incomprehensible against her hair. Another spell to bind her, she thought hazily, her cheek pressed to his smooth, hard chest. "You're speaking in Romany," she mumbled.
Cam switched to English. "Amelia, I - " He stopped, as if the right words eluded him. "I can't stop myself from being jealous, any more than I can stop being half Roma. But I'll try not to be overbearing. Just say you'll be my wife."
"Please," Amelia whispered, her wits still scattered, "let me answer later. When I can think clearly."
"You do too much thinking." He kissed the top of her head. "I can't promise you a perfect life. But I can promise that no matter what happens, I'll give you everything I have. We'll be together. You inside me ... me inside you. — Lisa Kleypas

Since I'm an asshat, I thought I'd have a choice with you, that I'd be able to walk away if you disillusioned me or turned out to be a blood-sucking creature of the night - and okay, I would have bailed if you were evil . . . Or maybe not. Knowing myself, I'd want to save you. But you're not evil. The point is, I'm realizing you're the same as everyone else in my life, only a thousand times more potent, and that has nothing to do with where you come from. I can grit my teeth about what you do, but I can't control how I react to your laugh. I would rather be near you, see you touch everything but me, than be holding any other girl. I like being with you, Love. Playing, talking, fighting, not-touching. — Natalia Jaster

I came from nothing. My mother was a single mother in the streets. She did everything she could do. Me and my brother experienced a lot on our own and with me knowing that feeling, I didn't want others to have that feeling, so that's why I fight for the streets. I'm making my own lane and staying true to myself, 'cause at the end of the day, you can't ban the truth. — Trae Tha Truth

I've questioned everything about myself, every step of the way. You have to have the same amount of fear and self-doubt as you do hope and blind optimism. — Taylor Swift

Instead of thanking God for my two strong legs that are able to run and jump and climb, I whined about my "thunder thighs" and "thick" ankles. Instead of rejoicing that I have two capable arms that can lift and carry and balance my body, I complained about the flab that hung beneath them. I have been totally and unbelievably ungrateful for everything. Like a completely spoiled brat, I took my healthy body for granted. I criticized it and despised it. With crystal clarity, I know that I do not deserve the good health that God has mysteriously blessed me with. Not only have I been unappreciative of my body and its amazing working parts, I tortured it by overexercising, and I put my entire health at serious risk by starving myself. What on earth was wrong with me? As I watch these kids with their less-than-perfect bodies, I feel so thoroughly ashamed of myself. I mean, how could I have been so stupid and shallow and self-centered? — Melody Carlson

I would say that during the time that I was 14 and pregnant - I didn't even know what pregnancy was when I got pregnant - I was trying to do everything I could to harm myself. I said to God, "God, if you want me to die, then you're going to have to kill me". — Oprah Winfrey

[On her mother:] I was in nervous flight from her ever since I can remember anything, and from the age of fourteen I set myself obdurately against her in a kind of inner emigration from everything she represented. Girls do have to grow up, but has this battle always been so implacable? — Doris Lessing

I guess if everything went tits up, having no work whatsoever, obviously you have to do something else. At the moment I don't see myself quitting, but I'm open minded about it. — Max Irons

I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish ... You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger. — Simone De Beauvoir

Love myself I do. Not everything, but I love the good as well as the bad. I love my crazy lifestyle, and I love my hard discipline. I love my freedom of speech and the way my eyes get dark when I'm tired. I love that I have learned to trust people with my heart, even if it will get broken. I am proud of everything that I am and will become. — Johnny Weir

People always want an explanation about everything and I cannot give it to them. Because I don't know myself. 'Why did you do a pair of pants like that?' I have no idea. I'm not going to have a 20-minute political discussion about the necessity for slashed, painted leather jeans. Basically, I don't know more than you. — Hedi Slimane

Sean was stung. "I do not fuck everything that has a pulse," he said haughtily. "I have my standards. I limit myself to endoskeletal organisms. I always go for vertebrates. And I dont't do reptiles. Ever. — Shannon McKenna

By my love for you. I realized I loved you more than life itself, and I would rather give myself into your power than live without you. Nothing the magic could do to me could be worse than living without you. I was willing to give it all over to you. I offered the power everything I have. All of my love for you. Once I realized how much I loved you, I was willing to be yours on any terms. I understood that there could be nothing for the magic to harm. I'm already devoted to you; it didn't need to change me. I was protected, because I have already been untouched by your love. I had utter faith that you felt the same, and had no fear of what would happen. Had I had any doubt, the magic would have latched on to that crack and taken me, but I had no doubt. My love for you is smooth and seamless. My love for you protected me from the magic. — Terry Goodkind

I use so much of myself in everything I do. I think every actor does because you have no one else to go to but yourself and your own imagination. — Pierce Brosnan

People's reaction to me is sometimes "Uch, I just don't like her. I hate how she thinks she is so great." But it's not that I think I'm so great. I just don't hate myself. I do idiotic things all the time and I say crazy stuff I regret, but I don't let everything traumatize me. And the scary thing I have noticed is that some people really feel uncomfortable around women who don't hate themselves. So that's why you need to be a little bit brave. — Mindy Kaling

Felicia nodded. "Sometimes I have that problem. I know nearly everything you can learn in a book and very little that you learn in life. Like my fear of spiders. It's silly, really. I've studied arachnids in an effort to get over my ridiculous overreaction, but still, every time I see one ... " She shuddered. "It's not pretty. I simply can't control myself. A flaw - one of many." "If you're not perfect, then you came to the right place," Charlie told her. "Fool's Gold is a lively town with plenty of characters. You'll get a crash course in how the little people live." "I hope I can fit in." Patience saw the concern in Felicia's eyes and touched her arm. "You're going to do just fine. — Susan Mallery

I want to say one last thing, and it's important. Though I am a generally happy person who feels comfortable in my skin, I do beat myself up because I am influenced by a societal pressure to be thin. All the time. I feel it the same way anybody who picks up a magazine and sees Keira Knightley's elegantly bony shoulder blades poking out of a backless dress does. I don't know if I've ever seen my shoulder blades once. Honestly, I'm dubious that any part of my body could be so sharp and firm as to be described as a "blade." I feel it when I wake up in the morning and try on every single pair of my jeans and everything looks bad and I just want to go back to sleep. But my secret is: even though I wish I could be thin, and that I could have the ease of lifestyle that I associate with being thin, I don't wish for it with all of my heart. Because my heart is reserved for way more important things. — Mindy Kaling

If you look around to find meaning in everything that happens, you will end up disappointed. Sometimes there aren't reasons behind the terrible things that go on. I ask myself, If I knew all the answers, would it help? I lie awake and wonder why I don't have parents and wonder what will become of my brother and me. But when the morning comes, I realize that there's nothing to be done about what has already happened. I can only get up and do my chores and push through the day and find the good in it. — Adriana Trigiani

I consider myself a pathfinder. I have been excavating the jungle and making the road for others to walk. I like to be the first in everything I do. — Dhirubhai Ambani

Here is an entry from June 12, 1989, three and a half years after my father's death: I feel so helpless sometimes. I know that my destiny is in my own hands, but to what extent? There is so much to think about - family, friends, career, LIFE! Will my grandchildren read this, years from now, and see it as the only thing to remember me by? No legacy? We're here for such a short time. But what exactly are my ambitions? I thought ambition was viewed as bad, as wrong. It turns out it's the key to everything. Where will I be in ten years? I want to be successful. What do I believe in - really believe in? Hell, Megyn, what do you even know about the world? I want to know what my teachers know. Where is it all? In books? I know where it is - it's in years and years of research and experiences. That's not something I can just have. I have to get it all for myself. I'm just sitting here wondering who I really am inside and - who am I to become? — Megyn Kelly

You actually believe that you have no effect on me huh? You think that I don't actually feel the need you do. I find it hard to think about you without feeling insanely hungry. I have thought about your body every f$$king day since I got my first taste. I control my hunger for you but it is there Sam. Every damn second it is there. I told you that you are under my skin and I meant it. I crave you so badly. Your soft skin, feeling your body and the taste of you, Sam you are so addicting. I want you so badly and today not being able to make love to you drove me out of my mind. I want to bury myself deep inside of you and forget about everything else. — C.A. Harms

He let go and stood back,eyeing me.I could tell he didn't want to say anything to destroy my confidence,but he was afraid he'd created a monster.
"Don't worry.I'm ready to play the game." I nodded solemnly.
"One more thing," he said. "If you do fall-"
I cringed. Some pep talk!
"-If something terrible happens,you still won't lose everything.Now you have good friends,and nothing will ever change that.You're not that girl."
"Oh,Nick." I threw myself at him,literally. He wrapped me in his arms and brushed my hair aside to kiss my forehead again.
I squeezed him hard,then drew away and punched him on his padded arm. "Go ahead,and don't break a leg. — Jennifer Echols

Little story that changed everything." "How so?" Nathan asked. "Well, the story changed the way I looked at change - from losing something to gaining something - and it showed me how to do it. After that, things quickly improved-at work and in my life. "At first I was annoyed with the obvious simplicity of the story because it sounded like something we might have been told in school. "Then I realized I was really annoyed with myself for not seeing the obvious and doing what works when things change. "When I realized the four characters in the story represented the various parts of myself, I decided who I wanted to act like and I changed. "Later, I passed the story on to some people in our company and they passed it on to others, and soon our business did much better, because most of us adapted to change better. And like me, many people said it helped them in their personal lives. "However there were a few people who said they — Spencer Johnson

If Id lived prior to the 1980s, it would have been different, because I would have been playing to prove African Americans are equal. Now, I dont necessarily feel I have to play for black people, because obviously theyre doing everything in all sports. If I can go out there and play for myself and not feel I have to stand for something other than what I want to do, thats good. — Venus Williams

We live in such a consumer-based world. Everything we do, someone else has provided for us, so there is something really empowering about knowing that once I have found the right pieces of wood, I can start a fire and keep myself warm and skin an animal to eat and make its skin into leather. — Neil Jackson

Reflecting on my experience, I find myself agreeing with the eminent Cambridge philosopher, Dr C. D. Broad, 'that we should do well to consider much more seriously than we have hitherto been inclined to do the type of theory which Bergson put forward in connection with memory and sense perception. The suggestion is that the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is in the main eliminative and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful.' According — Aldous Huxley

The Bishop, who was sitting close to him, gently touched his hand. "You could not help telling me who you were. This is not my house; it is the house of Jesus Christ. This door does not demand of him who enters whether he has a name, but whether he has a grief. You suffer, you are hungry and thirsty; you are welcome. And do not thank me; do not say that I receive you in my house. No one is at home here, except the man who needs a refuge. I say to you, who are passing by, that you are much more at home here than I am myself. Everything here is yours. What need have I to know your name? Besides, before you told me you had one which I knew."
The man opened his eyes in astonishment.
"Really? You knew what I was called?"
"Yes," replied the Bishop, "you are called my brother. — Victor Hugo

I must pack my short lifer full of interesting events and creative activity. Philosophy and aesthetic contemplation are not enough. I intend to do everything possible to broaden my experiences and allow myself to reach the fullest development. Then, and before physical deterioration obtrudes, I shall go on some last wilderness trip to a place I have known and loved. I shall not return. — Everett Ruess

I think I love my people more than normal people love their people. My love is so overwhelming and terrifying and uncomfortable and complicated that I need to hide from it. Life and love simply ask too much of me. Everything hurts. I don't know how peple can just let it all hurt so much. I am just not up for all this hurting. I have to do whatever it takes not to feel the hurt. But what i have to do to avoid the hurt for myself hurts everyone else. My survival means I have to keep harming my people. But it is not because I don't love them, it is because I love them too much. All I can say is "I do love you," but it sounds weak, like a like, and their faces don't soften when they hear it. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I recalled the hundreds of occasions when life had died within me only to be reborn. I remembered that I only lived during those times when I believed in God. Then, as now, I said to myself: I have only to believe in God in order to live. I have only to disbelieve in Him, or to forget Him, in order to die. What are these deaths and rebirths? It is clear that I do not live when I lose belief in God's existence, and I should have killed myself long ago, were it not for a dim hope of finding Him. What then is it you are seeking? a voice exclaimed inside me. There He is! He, without whom it is impossible to live. To know God and to live are one and the same thing. God is life.

'Live in search of God and there will be no life without God!' And more powerfully than ever before everything within and around me came to light, and the light has not deserted me since. — Leo Tolstoy

It's very easy to fool yourself that you're working, you know, when you're really not working very hard. I mean, I'm very lazy. So for me, I would always have an excuse, you know, to go - quit early, go to a museum, you know. So I do everything I can to make myself remember this is a job. I keep a schedule. — Robert Caro

If even for a moment, you experience everything around you as a part of yourself, after that do I have to teach you morality - 'Be good to this person, don't harm this person, don't kill this peron.' Anything that you know as 'myself', with that you are in harmony, with that there is no conflict, there is no problem. It is the other which is the problem. — Sadhguru

I think I have the courage to doubt everything; I think I have the courage to fight everything. But I do not have the courage to know anything, nor to possess, to own anything. Most people complain that the world is so prosaic, that life isn't like a romantic novel where opportunities are always so favorable. What I complain of is that life is not like a novel where there are hard-hearted fathers, and goblins and trolls to fight with, enchanted princesses to free. What are all such enemies taken together compared to the pallid, bloodless, glutinous nocturnal shapes with which I fight and to wich I myself give life and being. — Soren Kierkegaard

This dead man is bound up with my life, therefore I must do everything, promise everything in order to save myself; I swear blindly that I mean to live only for his sake and his family, with wet lips I try to placate him--and deep down in me lies the hope that I may buy myself off in this way and perhaps even get out of this; it is a little stratagem: if only I am allowed to escape, then I will see to it. So I open the book and read slowly:--Gerard Duval, compositor.

With the dead man's pencil write the address on an envelope, then swiftly thrust everything back into his tunic.

I have killed the printer, Gerard Duval. I must be a printer, I think confusedly, be a printer, printer... — Erich Maria Remarque

I do not intend to defend capitalism or capitalists. They, like everything human, have their defects. I only say their possibilities of usefulness are not ended.
Capitalism has borne the monstrous burden of the war and today still has the strength to shoulder the burdens of peace ...
It is not simply and solely an accumulation of wealth, it is an elaboration, a selection, a co-ordination of values which is the work of centuries ...
Many think, and I myself am one of them, that capitalism is scarcely at the beginning of its story. — Benito Mussolini

I do not look at myself. I have given up myself. I had to, you know, after the murder. That was what it did for me. And that was how everything began — C.S. Lewis

I will surpass myself in waves, ah, Lord, and may everything come and fall upon me, even the incomprehension of myself at certain white moments because all I have to do is comply with myself and then nothing will block my path until death-without-fear, from any struggle or rest I will rise up as strong and beautiful as a young horse. — Clarice Lispector

So, when I thought June might take you away, I didn't know what to do. I felt like she was taking everything that mattered to me. I felt like she was taking away from you all the things that I didn't have. That's why I'm sorry. I'm sorry because you shouldn't have to be everything to me. I had you, but I'd forgotten that I had myself too. — Marie Lu

KUBLAI: I do not know when you have had time to visit all the countries you describe to me. It seems to me you have never moved from this garden.
POLO: Everything I see and do assumes meaning in a mental space where the same calm reigns as here, the same penumbra, the same silence streaked by the rustling of learn. At the moment when I concentrate and reflect, I find myself again, always, in this garden, at this hour of the evening, in your august presence. — Italo Calvino

Homo sapiens have left themselves few places and scant ways to witness other species in their own worlds, an estrangement that leaves us hungry and lonely. In this famished state, it is no wonder that when we do finally encounter wild animals, we are quite surprised by the sheer truth of them.
Each time I look into the eye of an animal ... I find myself staring into a mirror of my own imagination. What I see there is deeply, crazily, unmercifully confused.
There is in that animal eye something both alien and familiar. There is in me, as in all human beings, a glimpse of the interior, from which everything about our minds has come.
The crossing holds all the power and purity of first wonder, before habit and reason dilute it. The glimpse is fleeting. Quickly, I am left in darkness again, with no idea whatsoever how to go back. — Ellen Meloy

When I have my manuscript finished, more or less, I type it myself, with two fingers. I type fast with two fingers. And then when it's ready, I reread, recorrect, and retype it. Everything is my own work. I do not give it to secretaries or to typists. — Elie Wiesel

I'm in three bands, and I love to produce records of other bands, and I have a family that I love. I wanted to be everything for everybody and do all of that ... I think I just really beat myself up until I got really sick and needed surgery, because it was physically manifesting itself. — Josh Homme

Wow," the empty air finally said. "Wow. That puts a pretty different perspective on things, I have to say. I'm going to remember this the next time I feel an impulse to blame myself for something. Neville, the term in the literature for this is 'egocentric bias', it means that you experience everything about your own life but you don't get to experience everything else that happens in the world. There was way, way more going on than you running in front of me. You're going to spend weeks remembering that thing you did there for six seconds, I can tell, but nobody else is going to bother thinking about it. Other people spend a lot less time thinking about your past mistakes than you do, just because you're not the center of their worlds. I guarantee to you that nobody except you has even considered blaming Neville Longbottom for what happened to Hermione. Not for a fraction of a second. You are being, if you will pardon the phrase, a silly-dilly. Now shut up and say goodbye. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

I've asked myself that a thousand times over and I'm no closer to an answer now than I was when it began. I think that's why I always loved movies so much. In a movie, everything has to make sense. The characters always have to have motivation. Good, solid motivation for everything they do. They can't be a dickhead without reason. If someone turns on a character, they have to have a hardcore, believable reason for it. Unfortunately, in real life you don't. People turn on each other for anything from catching a constipated look on your face when you had gas and thinking it was directed at them, to not liking the brand of shoes you're wearing. People are sick. (Aiden) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I'm not ashamed of what I am - of how I pass through this life. What I am has given me the strength to do it. At my lowest ebb I have never contemplated suicide. I value what is here too much. I have a contribution to make. I am not just take up space in this life. I can add something to the lives I touch. I don't like everything I know about myself, and I'll never be satisfied, but nobody's perfect. I'm not sure where the next years will take me - what they will hold - but I'm open to suggestions. — Lauren Bacall

Sometimes I though about killing myself. The idea of it circled my head, shining and lovely like a tinsel halo. How beautiful it would be if everything could just stop. If I could stop. If I didn't have to feel like this. Yes, I thought about it and thought about it, but I was too exhausted to do anything about it. That should have been funny, right? — Alexis Hall

I'll never let it happen. I'll do everything in my power to keep my sister at home.
"I don't want to have a civilized discussion. My parents want to send my sister to a facility behind my back and my head feels like it's about to split open. Leave me alone, okay?"
Something is sticking out of my pocket. It's Alex's bandanna. Isabel isn't a friend, yet she helped me. And Alex, a boy who cared about me last night more than my own boyfriend did, acted as my hero and is urging me to be real. Do I even know how to be real?
I clutch the bandanna to my chest.
And I allow myself to cry. — Simone Elkeles

Don't give in to your fears," said the alchemist, in a strangely gentle voice. "If you do, you won't be able to talk to your heart." "But I have no idea how to turn myself into the wind." "If a person is living out his Personal Legend, he knows everything he needs to know. — Paulo Coelho

You bring out a side in me I thought I didn't have." His voice is low and reverent somehow, as are his eyes, knowing and grateful. "I've been told that I'm reckless, that I could not be relied upon, that I couldn't make a difference for others - just for myself. My father looked at me as if I was to blame for everything, and Mother as if I would get myself killed. People look at me like I can get them the moon, but you look at me like I already did. Like all I need to do is exist, and you would be happy," he murmurs, tracing his thumb down my earlobe as he smiles at me, his eyes happily twinkling. "I like it, Rachel. — Katy Evans

I can't promise you an ordinary experience, Kate. I wish I could transform myself into a normal man and be there for you, always, without the trauma that defines my life as "the walking dead." Since that isn't possible, I can only reassure you that I will do everything in my power to make it up to you. To give you more than a normal boyfriend could.
I have no idea what that will mean, exactly, but I'm looking forward to finding out. With you. — Amy Plum

The urge to let go of the wheel and just see what happens is compelling. If
I live, I'll wake to find myself in hospital. I won't have to do anything, deal with anybody, talk, be
scared anymore, because I will have become somebody else's responsibility. And if I die, well then
everything's solved. No more being angry like this. — Kirsty Eagar

(on Judy Garland) She was a friend of mine, a trying friend, but a friend. That is what I tell myself: She did everything she ever wanted to do. She never really denied herself anything for me. See, I say, she had a wonderful life; she did what she wanted to do. And I have no right to change her fulfillment into my misery. I'm on my own broom now. — Liza Minnelli

I used to be the guy who wanted to do everything myself, wanted to write and play everything myself, but the older I've gotten, the more collaborations I've gotten. I really enjoy working with other people to create different styles of music, because I really do listen to everything, and I enjoy every kind of music. I think some of the best stuff comes from working with people who have different perspectives on the same thing. — Piggy D.

Working with other people, it's hard to get them to make it sound like what you have in mind. Also, it's really expensive to get your tracks produced, so I thought if I could learn how to do it myself, I could make five albums in a month and it would be free, it would be me, and it would be everything that I'm doing. — Nina Nesbitt

Being a mother is more exhausting than working, and sometimes I push myself too hard and burn myself out. I can appreciate how exhausting it must be for women who have to do everything themselves all the time. — Salma Hayek

Do I have to do everything myself?" The cry was a soul-freezing mixture of rage and torment. "Ain't there no one to stop asking questions and just do my bidding? By God, I'll kill and kill and kill and kill and never stop killing if people don't do what I say. I'll beat you dummies till the blood runs out of your eyes. I'll tie every man on this godforsaken island to a tree and he'll bark like a dog for me to throw him a bone. — Walter Kaylin

Do stories, apart from happening, being, have something to say? For all my skepticism, some trace of irrational superstition did survive in me, the strange conviction, for example, that everything in life that happens to me also has a sense, that it means something, that life speaks to us about itself through its story, that it gradually reveals a secret, that it takes the form of a rebus whose message must be deciphered, that the stories we live compromise the mythology of our lives and in that mythology lies the key to truth and mystery. Is it an illusion? Possibly, even probably, but I can't rid myself of the need continually to decipher my own life. — Milan Kundera

But sometimes you drive me nuts with your lack of confidence in your own abilities."
"I know! I drive myself nuts. I've just never been able to figure out what my abilities even are, so how can I have confidence in them?"
"Well then, instead of assuming you can't do anything, why don't you assume you can do everything?"
"I'm starting to, Kelsey. I'm trying, anyway."
"So make a list of things you like to do and can do well. — Nina Lane

Brooding is more something I do when I'm working. I know so much more about sitting around worrying about a work project than I do about worrying about kids. This could just be a fact of life for older moms. We've worked and worked and worked and if we are lucky enough to finally have a child or two, we find ourselves suddenly catapulted into a most alien kind of chaos.
Work is so much easier. Anyone will tell you that. To have a desk, where you have everything all lined up, and a schedule you more or less get to agree to. Work. I am a worker. This is so funny because I never really think of my work as work. I certainly never though of myself as having a career. Writing, work, this is just who I am. I am a person who sits at a desk and makes phone calls and taps at a computer keyboard and sips coffee and calls her mom at five. That I am anything better or smaller than that has come as sudden news to me.
Brand new.
News. — Jeanne Marie Laskas

It's good you have something to keep you occupied." I smile stiffly and turn away from her. Because I'm this far from asking what the fuck she thinks I do all day. But even through the surge of anger that's rising, I remind myself of what I know is true: she means well. They all do. These women want me to receive all of God's blessings, many of which can be bestowed only after my temple marriage, which should be my first objective. Everything I've done so far (my two graduate degrees, my international travels, my teaching career, my friendships, my creative pursuits), is "preparing." Treading water, keeping time, staying busy until real life begins. — Nicole Hardy

I know very well you can't help me," he said. "But I tell you, because unsuccessful and superfluous people like me find their salvation in talking. I have to generalise about everything I do. I'm bound to look for an explanation and justification of my absurd existence in somebody else's theories, in literary types - in the idea that we, upper-class Russians, are degenerating, for instance, and so on. Last night, for example, I comforted myself by thinking all the time: 'Ah, how true Tolstoy is, how mercilessly true!' And that did me good. Yes, really, brother, he is a great writer, say what you like!" Samoylenko, who had never read Tolstoy and was intending to do so every day of his life, was a little embarrassed, and said: "Yes, all other authors write from imagination, but he writes straight from nature. — Anton Chekhov

The entrepreneur explained that she was having a hard time finding people who were willing to work as hard as she was. "I feel I have to do everything myself. I can't count on anyone to take on some of the things that need to be done," said the entrepreneur. "What you have to do," said the One Minute Manager, "is learn to delegate. — Kenneth H. Blanchard

I did everything wrong," he said. "I misunderstood everything. Moon Child gave me so much, and all I did with it was harm, harm to myself and harm to Fantastica."
Dame Eyola gave him a long look.
No," she said. "I don't believe so. You went the way of wishes, and that is never straight. You went the long way around, but that was your way. And do you know why? Because you are one of those who can't go back until they have found the fountain from which springs the Water of Life. And that's the most secret place in Fantastica. There's no simple way of getting there."
After a short silence she added: "But every way that leads there is the right one. — Michael Ende

I know a lot about birds and bees, but I don't know very much about the birds and the bees. Everything I do know I had to teach myself on the Internet, because I don't have anyone to ask. For example, I know that you give someone a blowjob by putting your penis in their mouth. — Jonathan Safran Foer

These questions are punctuated by other questions, as diverse as "Will I ever do time?" and "Did this girl have a trusting heart?" The smell of meat and blood clouds up the condo until I don't notice it anymore. And later my macabre joy sours and I'm weeping for myself, unable to find solace in any of this, crying out, sobbing "I just want to be loved," cursing the earth and everything I have been taught: principles, distinctions, choices, morals, compromises, knowledge, unity, prayer - all of it was wrong, without any final purpose. All it came down to was: die or adapt. I imagine my own vacant face, the disembodied voice coming from its mouth: These are terrible times. Maggots already writhe across the human sausage, the drool pouring from my lips dribbles over them, and still I can't tell if I'm cooking any of this correctly, because I'm crying too hard and I have never really cooked anything before. — Bret Easton Ellis

The discrepancy is that the ethical self should be found immanently in the despair, that the individual won himself by persisting in the despair. True, he has used something within the category of freedom, choosing himself, which seem to remove the difficulty, one that presumably has not struck many, since philosophically doubting everything and then finding the true beginning goes one, two, three. But that does not help. In despairing, I use myself to despair, and therefore I can indeed despair of everything by myself. But if I do this, I cannot come back by myself. It is in this moment of decision that the individual needs divine assistance, whereas it is quite correct that in order to be at this point one must first have understood the existence-relation between the aesthetic and the ethical; that is to say, by being there in passion and inwardness, one surely becomes aware of the religious - and of the leap. — Soren Kierkegaard

Right now, I've got the weight of several worlds on my shoulders. My best friend is living in a cancer ward, and there's nothing I can do for him. The Serpents have hired the Jester to spark race riots with faked news stories, and I don't know how to smoke him out. My enemies are hiding all around, watching everything I do, and I can't find them. For the first time in months I find myself in the familiar, paralyzing grip of overwhelming depression. — Mark Waid

The tulips are too excitable; it is winter here
Look at how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed in
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands
I am nobody, I have nothing to do with explosions
I have given my name and my dayclothes to the nurses, and my history to the anesthetist, and my body to the surgeons — Sylvia Plath

I just desperately wanted to be happy again in a way that wasn't forced. I wanted to feel like I accomplished something. I did this. I finished this record. I'm doing all the promo. I'm doing everything that I said I was going to do. I really wanted to be happy and normalized and I was tired of people saying I was volatile. I'm not. I'm a pretty normal person. I have problems like anyone else but I've worked so hard to be OK and I don't think that I gave myself enough credit for that. — Michael Angelakos

She seemed dressed in all of me, stretched across my shame.
All the torment and the pain leaked through and covered me.
I'd do anything to have her to myself.
Just to have her for myself
Now I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do when she makes me sane.
She is everything to me.
The unrequited dream
A song that no one sings.
The unattainable, Shes a myth that I have to believe in
All I need to make it real is one more reason
I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do when she makes me sad. — Slipknot

Of course a miracle may happen, and you may be a great painter, but you must confess the chances are a million to one against it. It'll be an awful sell if at the end you have to acknowledge you've made a hash of it."
"I've got to paint," he repeated.
"Supposing you're never anything more than third-rate, do you think it will have been worth while to give up everything? After all, in any other walk in life it doesn't matter if you're not very good; you can get along quite comfortably if you're just adequate; but it's different with an artist."
"You blasted fool," he said.
"I don't see why, unless it's folly to say the obvious."
"I tell you I've got to paint. I can't help myself. When a man falls into the water it doesn't matter how he swims, well or badly: he's got to get out or else he'll drown. — W. Somerset Maugham

The slave's self-consciousness, according to Hegel, not the master's, sublates into Absolute Knowledge.
This was changing everything for me. Sublation meant cancelling out and preservation; both, together, at the same time. You could get rid of something and protect it too. I realized that I wanted to sublate myself to Elijah. I wanted to be consumed by him and elevated by him and preserved in the process. I didn't know how to do this. This didn't seem inevitable. Did I have to struggle to the death? — Tamara Faith Berger

I'm disappointed in myself. In my life. All my life, everything I tried, I only got halfway there. You try to take advantage of the time you have. That's what they tell you to do. But when you're old, you look back and you see all you did, with all that time, is waste it. All you have is a story of things you never started or couldn't finish. Things you fought with all your heart to build that didn't last or fought with all your heart to get rid of and they're all still around. I'm ashamed of myself. — Michael Chabon

I climb out of the Jacuzzi, go to the edge of the pool, curl my toes around the border tiles, and do a standing flip, which I pretzel into a can opener, leaning back just far enough to truly propel a geyser but not so far as to hit my head.

Going under, I hear maximal vacuum suckage. Everything shudders. An aquatic bomb explodes. I surface to see that I have drenched half the banshees.

They stare at me in saucer-eyed wonderment, because I have just done in one dive what they have failed to do in a hundred- shellacked the ceiling, which is now dripping wet, especially around the central light fixture.

I'm kind of disguted with myself for showing off, but it's important to let them know that there are standards in the world. — Conrad Wesselhoeft

Eddie gave a long suffering sigh as he bent down to pick up his bedazzled bag. "Glory be, why do I debase myself with ignoramuses like you? The Kinsey scale is a very basic way of measuring where you fit in terms of hetero versus homo." he pulled his coat on and held his hands out at a distance, fingers straight, like he was measuring a fish. "Imagine a line. At one side you have hetero, at the other you have homo. And then there is everything in the middle. It's not actually that basic. In fact it's far more complicated, but I don't have time to tell you now since I need to walk home before I get any drunker. — Micaela Vee

And then you came along and you spoke to me and nobody had looked me in the eye for years. ( ... ) But I remember you that day and you looked at peace with yourself and it made me reconsider everything I had planned to do. Because I thought to myself, you can't do this to her, not after the Hermit thing."
"Do what to me? I don't think leaving me on that platform would have changed my life, Griggs," I lie.
"You being on that platform changed mine. — Melina Marchetta

I want to make love to you, Rhone. I want to fill your ass with my penis and fuck you until you love it just as much as I do. I want to suck your dick and eat your balls until your cum coats my tongue and throat. I want you to do the same to me. I want to come inside you, in your mouth, in your ass, on your chest, marking you as mine in a way you can feel even when I'm not by your side. That's what I want. It's what I've wanted ever since you told me I could have a different, better life and then took the time to care and to show me how to care about myself. I want everything you can give, and I want to offer you everything that I am. — Cameron Dane

I have been studying for forty years, which is to say forty wasted years; I teach others yet am ignorant of everything; this state of affairs fills my soul with so much humiliation and disgust that my life is intolerable. I was born in Time, I live in Time, and do not know what Time is. I find myself at a point between two eternities, as our wise men say, yet I have no conception of eternity. I am composed of matter, I think, but have never been able to discover what produces thought. I do not know whether or not I think with my head the same way that I hold things with my hands. Not only is the origin of my thought unknown to me, but the origin of my movements is equally hidden: I do not know why I exist. Yet every day people ask me questions on all these issues. I must give answers, yet have nothing worth saying, so I talk a great deal, and am confused and ashamed of myself afterwards for having spoken. — Voltaire

I should like to have friends, I confess. I do not suppose I ever shall. But there have been moments when I have realized what friendship might be. Rare moments - but never forgotten. Friendship is a binding, as solemn as marriage. We take each other for life, through everything - forever. But it's not enough to say we will do it. I think, myself, it is pride which makes friendship most difficult. To submit, to bow down to the other is not easy, but it must be done if one is to really understand the being of the other. Friendship isn't merging. One doesn't thereupon become a shadow and one remain a substance. Yet, it is terribly solemn - frightening, even. — Katherine Mansfield

Everything I have said or done is in the hands of God. I commit myself to Him! I certify to you that I would do or say nothing against the Christian faith. — Joan Of Arc

I detach myself from preconceived outcomes and trust that all is well. Being myself allows the wholeness of my unique magnificience to draw me in those directions most beneficial to me and to all others. This is really the only thing I have to do. And within that framework, everything that is truly mine comes into my life effortlessly, in the most magical and unexpected ways imaginable, demonstrating every day the power and love of who I truly am. — Anita Moorjani

I do triage on everything that comes through the door, and if it's not something we need (now, for real-not maybe someday) or something that deserves to be saved for posterity, it's discarded. I stop before I let myself drop something into a drawer or set it down on the piano. 'Where does it belong?' I think. If I don't have a place for it, I make a place. — Michelle Herman

If I could," he went on, "I would remain like this indefinitely - clasped by you, held inside you, a part of you - without moving at all. When we make love, I fight climax with everything I have. I don't want to come; I do not want it to end. No matter how long I make it last, it isn't nearly long enough. I am furious when I cannot hold back any longer. Why, Jess? If all I seek is the physical relief of natural lust, just as I would seek sleep or food, why would I deny myself?"
She turned her head and caught his mouth with hers, kissing him desperately.
"Tell me you understand," he demanded, his lips moving beneath hers. "Tell me you feel it, too."
"I feel you," she breathed, as intoxicated by his ardency as she was by the finest claret. "You have become everything to me. — Sylvia Day

Punishment? You don't have any right to punish me. And I can curse. I choose not to most of the time, but don't think it doesn't go through my head, asshole. I was trying to give you something. I was trying to give you my body."
"That's where you fucked up, little girl. I don't want your body. I want your soul. I want your everything. And I definitely want your orgasms. I want them all. I'll be a greedy bastard, savoring them and hoarding them all for myself. You wanted to give me your body? I can buy that on a street corner, sweetheart. You're the one who's being selfish now."
"How is it selfish to offer to have sex? I don't understand what you want."
"First off, I want you to stop hiding yourself from me. You're the one making this tawdry by pretending it's dirty and not worthy of the light of day."
"I didn't mean it that way."
"We're going to do this my way. We tried yours and it didn't work, so I'm taking control. I should have done it in the first place. — Lexi Blake

This is the truth: We are a nation accustomed to being afraid. If I'm being honest, not just with you but with myself, it's not just the nation, and it's not just something we've grown used to. It's the world, and it's an addiction. People crave fear. Fear justifies everything. Fear makes it okay to have surrendered freedom after freedom, until our every move is tracked and recorded in a dozen databases the average man will never have access to. Fear creates, defines, and shapes our world, and without it, most of us would have no idea what to do with ourselves. Our ancestors dreamed of a world without boundaries, while we dream new boundaries to put around our homes, our children, and ourselves. We limit our potential day after day in the name of a safety that we refuse to ever achieve. We took a world that was huge with possibility, and we made it as small as we could. — Mira Grant

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right. — Soren Kierkegaard

I shall be your poet! I do not want to be a poet for others; make your appearance, and I shall be your poet. I shall eat my own poem, and that will be my food. Or do you find me unworthy? Just as a temple dancer dances to the honor of the god Gudutl, so I have consecrated myself to your service; light, thinly clad, limber, unarmed, I renounce everything. I own nothing; I desire to own nothing; I love nothing; I have nothing to lose-but have I not thereby become more worthy of you, you who long ago must have been tired of depriving people of what they love, tired of their craven sniveling and craven pleading. Surprise me-I am ready — Soren Kierkegaard