Quotes & Sayings About Knowing One's Place

Forgetting myself for a moment, I stopped to study the menu that was elegantly exposed in a show window. I read, realizing that a few days earlier I could have gone in and ordered anything on the menu. But now, though I was the same person with the same appetite, the same appreciation and even the same wallet, no power on earth could get me inside this place for a meal. I recalled hearing some Negro say, "You can live here all your life, but you'll never get inside one of the great restaurants except as a kitchen boy." The Negro often dreams of things separated from him only by a door, knowing that he is forever cut off from experiencing them. — John Howard Griffin

So when you're nervous, you count?"
"Not just when I'm nervous," I said. "It's ... all the time. I count the seconds during pauses in conversations. I count the minutes when I'm waiting on something. Sometimes, when I'm kind of panicked or anxious, I count my heartbeats. Something about counting makes me feel like ... like I have the power. Like knowing how much time has passed or how many steps I've taken from one place to another will somehow keep me in control of the situation. — Kody Keplinger

All great human deeds both consume and transform their doers. Consider an athlete,or a scientist, or an independent business creator. in service of their goals they lay down time and energy and many other choices and pleasures; in return, they become most truly themselves. A false destiny may be spotted by the fact that it consumes without transforming, without giving back the enlarged self. Becoming a parent is one of these basic human transformational deeds. By this act, we change our fundamental relationship with the universe- if nothing else, we lose our place as the pinnacle and end-point of evolution, and become a mere link. The demands of motherhood especially consume the old self, and replace it with something new, often better and wiser, sometimes wearier or disillusioned, or tense and terrified, certainly more self-knowing, but never the same again. — Lois McMaster Bujold

You can study God through everything and everyone in the universe, because God is not confined in a mosque, synagogue or church. But if you are still in need of knowing where exactly His abode is, there is only one place to look for Him: in the heart of a true lover. — Elif Shafak

In my innocent cynicism I didn't see that Cleveland was not trying to look tough; he just didn't care. Which is to say, he knew what he was, and was, if not content with, at least resigned to knowing that he was an alcoholic. And an alcoholic is nothing if not sensitive to the proper time and place for his next drink; his death is one of the most carefully planned and prepared for events in the world. — Michael Chabon

One could never know anything except through desire, real desire, which was not the same thing as greed or lust; a pure, painful and primitive desire, a longing for everything that was not in oneself, a torment of the flesh, that carried one beyond the limits of one's mind to other times and other places, and even, if one was lucky, to a place where there was no border between oneself and one's image in the mirror. — Amitav Ghosh

Still, he could feel a fine cord stretched between them, a thin luminous fiber that ran from his chest all the way across the continent and forked into theirs. Never before had he lived through a fever without his mother; when he'd been sick in Debrecen she'd taken the train to be with him. Never had he finished a year at school without knowing that soon he'd be home with his father, working beside him in the lumberyard and walking through the fields with him in the evening. Now there was another filament, one that linked him to Klara. And Paris was her home, this place thousands of kilometers from his own. He felt the stirring of a new ache, something like homesickness but located deeper in his mind; it was an ache for the tie when his heart had been a simple and satisfied thing, small as the green apples that grew in his father's orchard. — Julie Orringer

There are always rebels and radicals, I suppose,' McCleethy allows. 'Those who live on the fringes of society. But what do they contribute to the society itself? They reap its rewards without experiencing its costs. No. I submit that loyal, hardworking citizens who push aside their own selfish desires for the good of the whole are the backbone of the world. What if we all decided to run off and live freely without thought or care for society's rules? Our civilization would crumble. There is a joy in duty and a security in knowing one's place ... It is the only way. — Libba Bray

One of the experiences of prayer is that it seems that nothing happens. But when you start with it and look back over a long period of prayer, you suddenly realize that something has happened. What is most close, most intimate, most present, often cannot be experienced directly but only with a certain distance. When I think that I am only distracted, just wasting my time, something is happening too Immediate for knowing, understanding, and experiencing. Only in retrospect do I realize that something very important has taken place. — Henri Nouwen

Time is just an illusion. Einstein told us that. If this is the first time you have heard it, you may find it a hard concept to get your head around, because you see everything happening - one thing after the other. What quantum physicists and Einstein tell us is that everything is happening simultaneously. If you can understand that there is no time, and accept that concept, then you will see that whatever you want in the future already exists. If everything is happening at the one time, then the parallel version of you with what you want already exists! It takes no time for the Universe to manifest what you want. Any time delay you experience is due to your delay in getting to the place of believing, knowing, and feeling that you already have it. It is you getting yourself on the frequency of what you want. When you are on that frequency, then what you want will appear. — Rhonda Byrne

Knowing about God is crucially important for the living of our lives. As it would be cruel to an Amazonian tribesmen to fly him to London, put him down without explanation in Trafalgar Square and leave him, as one who knew nothing of English or England, to fend for himself, so we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it .The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know about God. Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfold, as it were , with no sense of direction, and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul. — J.I. Packer

Cyclic knowledge is mind - knowledge - however vast and encompassing the mind may be. It is structural knowledge. It is only one mode of knowing; but this mode is all-important in situations where disorder, confusion, and emotional biases prevail. It does not take the place of direct experience, whether at the personal or the spiritual level; but it enables the experiencer to place his experience in a frame of reference which reveals their eonic significance - i.e. the function they occupy within the entire life-span. — Dane Rudhyar

Before he reached the door the old man called to him again. The boy turned and stood. The matrix will not help you, the old man said. He said to catch the wolf the boy should find that place where the acts of God and those of man are of one piece. Where they cannot be distinguished ... The old man said that it was not a question of finding such a place but rather of knowing it when it presented itself. He said that it was at such places that God sits and conspires in the destruction of that which he has been at such pains to create. — Cormac McCarthy

When someone cries so hard that it hurts their throat, it is out of frustration or knowing that no matter what you can do or attempt to do can change the situation. When you feel like you need to cry, when you want to just get it out, relieve some of the pressure from the inside - that is true pain. Because no matter how hard you try or how bad you want to, you can't. That pain just stays in place. Then, if you are lucky, one small tear may escape from those eyes that water constantly. That one tear, that tiny, salty, droplet of moisture is a means of escape. Although it's just a small tear, it is the heaviest thing in the world. And it doesn't do a damn thing to fix anything. — Chase Brooks

There were some times-when things got bad-that I saw something flash across Rogerson's face, like he couldn't believe what he'd done. Like he'd just woken up and found himself standing over me, fist still clenched, looking down in disbelief at the place on my shoulder/arm/stomach/back/leg where he'd just hit me. I wondered if he was thinking of his father, and the marks he'd left behind. And even as I felt the spot with my own fingers, knowing already what the bruise would look like, I felt sorry for him, like for that one second he was just as scared as I was. It was so strange. Sorry for him. — Sarah Dessen

AFTER BEING IN LOVE, THE NEXT RESPONSIBILITY
Turn me like a waterwheel turning a millstone.
Plenty of water, a Living River.
Keep me in one place and scatter the love.
Leaf-moves in wind, straw drawn toward amber,
all parts of the world are in love,
but they do not tell their secrets. Cows grazing
on a sacramental table, ants whispering in Solomon's ear.
Mountains mumbling an echo. Sky, calm.
If the sun were not in love, he would have no brightness,
the side of the hill no grass on it.
The ocean would come to rest somewhere.
Be a lover as they are, that you come to know
you Beloved. Be faithful that you may know
Faith. The other parts of the universe did not accept
the next responsibility of love as you can.
They were afraid they might make a mistake
with it, the inspired knowing
that springs from being in love — Rumi

How can another see into me, into my most secret self, without my being able to see in there myself? And without my being able to see him in me. And if my secret self, that which can be revealed only to the other, to the wholly other, to God if you wish, is a secret that I will never reflect on, that I will never know or experience or possess as my own, then what sense is there in saying that it is my secret, or in saying more generally that a secret belongs, that it is proper to or belongs to some one, or to some other who remains someone. It's perhaps there that we find the secret of secrecy. Namely, that it is not a matter of knowing and that it is there for no one. A secret doesn't belong, it can never be said to be at home or in its place. The question of the self: who am I not in the sense of who am I but rather who is this I that can say who? What is the- I and what becomes of responsibility once the identity of the I trembles in secret? — Jacques Derrida

But if you were going to change the chain of events that killed your child, where would you begin? How far back would you go? All the way back to their birth? And how many times had you saved your child's life without even realizing how close you'd just come to disaster, to being one link too late in a chain of events that would wrap around your neck and choke you forever? How close had you come to knowing this place - the place where you collapse on your knees with one fist in your belly and the other clutching a blue GAP bag containing your baby's ruined clothes, the place from which there is no going back? — Kelly Kittel

Was I still myself? If so, who was I? I wasn't really interested in knowing that. It had no sort of importance for me anymore. Some moorings had broken, some taboos had fallen, and a world of spells and anathemas was springing up from their ruins. What was terrifying about this whole affair was the ease with which I passed from one universe to another without feeling out of place. Such a smooth transition. I had gone to bed a docile, courteous boy, and I'd awakened with an inextinguishable rage lodged in my very flesh. I carried my hatred like a second nature; it was my armor and my shirt of Nessus, my pedestal and my stake; it was all that remained to me in this false, unjust, arid, and cruel life. — Yasmina Khadra

This is as good a place as any for you to locate the bastard," Tam said.
"Bastard? I thought you said you never met Rache."
"I haven't. He hurt you, he's hunting Chigaru, therefore he's a bastard. The goblin language has much more accurate terms, but that one will do for now."
"Do you mean jak'aprit?" Vegard asked helpfully.
Tam inhaled with intense satisfaction. "The very word. Well done, Vegard."
The big Guardian grinned. "I believe in knowing how to insult a man in every language. — Lisa Shearin

I read and reread and recommended and rarely rejected, became one of those readers who will read trashy stories as long as they're not too terrible
well, even perhaps the truly terrible ones
and will reread something she's already read, even if it's something like a detective novel, when you'd suspect that knowing who had really killed the countess would materially detract from the experience. (It doesn't, and besides, I often can't remember who the murderer was in the first place.) — Anna Quindlen

Live without regret. Follow your dreams and follow your heart, no matter where it may lead you. Everyone's life ends in death. The setting, be it spaceships or a quiet hospital room in one of our many cities, will always be different. However, they all lead to a single closing moment in which we take a last breath. Take that breath knowing you made your mark on the world around you. In fact, live every single moment of your life as if it were your last. In doing so, everything else will fall into place. Your loved ones will know where you stand. Your life will be full of happiness. Most importantly, when your moment finally arrives, you'll be able to leave smiling. That's what matters in the end. — John M. Davis

Whenever that happened, Joey clung to Troy's hand, willing him to know that Riker meant nothing.
Well, maybe not nothing. He'd given Joey a valuable gift; he'd taught him what love wasn't. During their showdown in the men's room, it had dawned on Joey what love was. Love took long walks, spent time together talking about nothing. It gave smiles, and hugs, and trips to the beach when it really didn't want to go, because it wanted to share a special place with someone else. Love gave away possessions it valued, knowing the receiver valued them more. Love admitted being wrong, said it was sorry, and did whatever it took to make things right. It called in favors and put a town on the map to make life better for one person who lived there.
Love was Troy. — Eden Winters

To find the point where hypothesis and fact meet; the delicate equilibrium between dream and reality; the place where fantasy and earthly things are metamorphosed into a work of art; the hour when faith in the future becomes knowledge of the past; to lay down one's power for others in need; to shake off the old ordeal and get ready for the new; to question, knowing that never can the full answer be found; to accept uncertainties quietly, even our incomplete knowledge of God; this is what man's journey is about, I think. — Lillian Smith

Few coffee shops have books, fewer have good books, and even less will have one book that can change your whole life. Now, the question is: How many people can find that book? And, among those who do, how many will read it? Because, you see, life always provides opportunities, but not many can see them, when they're just there, waiting to be found, when they come our way, even if in the most unexpected place in the world. One has to be very sharp to recognize a window of opportunity in a wall of illusions. And the ability to redirect attention, demands that one can be capable as well of knowing his own limitations in the vast sea of energy and vibrations. Now, I could be talking about a book, a group or a person, as the axiom remains true to itself. — Robin Sacredfire

We could become quite satisfied with ourselves because we are sitting in meditation and are endeavoring to practice the spiritual path. Such satisfaction with ourselves is not the same as contentment. Contentment is necessary, self-satisfaction is detrimental. To be content has to include knowing we are in the right place at the right time to facilitate our own growth. But to be self-satisfied means that we no longer realize the need for growth. All these aspects are important parts of our commitment and makes us into one whole being with a one-pointed direction. — Ayya Khema

Living isn't about perfection. It isn't about always winning - a lesson that was extremely hard to learn. It is, however, about believing in yourself when no one else does. It is about standing tall and knowing that if you place one foot in front of the other, your feet will find the path they were meant to be on and the burden you carry upon your back will one day make you stronger. The — Liz Schulte

You seem to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps ... Their power [is] the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves. — Thomas Jefferson

By day certainly the combatants have a clearer notion, though even then by no means of all that takes place, no one knowing much of anything that does not does not go on in his own immediate neighborhood; but in a night engagement ( and this was the only one that occurred between great armies during the war) how could anyone know anything for certain? — Thucydides

You can never totally hate someone who sang you to sleep like that, can you? Who calmed you down and eased your fears. You can feel angry and betrayed, but some part of you will always love them for being there on those scary nights, for giving you a place to run to where your nightmares couldn't follow, the one place where you could descend finally into slumber knowing, at least for the time being, that you were completely safe. — Jonathan Tropper

And any room that I enter may become a sideshow tent where I must take my place upon a rickety old bench on the verge of collapse. Even now the Showman stands before my eyes. His stiff red hair moves a little toward one shoulder, as if he is going to turn his gaze upon me, and moves back again; then his head moves a little toward the other shoulder in this never-ending game of horrible peek-a-boo. I can only sit and wait, knowing that one day he will turn full around, step down from his stage, and claim me for the abyss I have always feared. Perhaps then I will discover what it was I did - what any of us did - to deserve this fate. — Thomas Ligotti

It feels like coming home - not just to any home, but a childhood home, a place left behind a lifetime ago; it's the familiarity of walking up stairs and knowing exactly which one is going to creak. — Paula Hawkins

One day a friend came by the job site and asked them separately what they were doing. The first said, "Aw, we're just laying brick. We've been doing this for thirty years. It's so boring. One brick on top of the other." Then the friend asked the second bricklayer. He just lit up. "Why, we're building a magnificent skyscraper," he said. "This structure is going to stand tall for generations to come. I'm just so excited that I could be a part of it." Each bricklayer's happiness or lack of it was based on their perspective. You can be laying a brick or you can be building a beautiful skyscraper. The choice is up to you. You can go to work each day and just punch in on the clock and dread being there and do as little as possible. Or you can show up with enthusiasm and give it your best, knowing that you're making the world a better place. — Joel Osteen

Plato asked Socrates what is love ...
Socrates: Go into the field and get me the most special leaf ...
Plato returned with no leaf at hand
said: I found the most beautiful leaf in the field but I didn't pick it up for I might find a better one, but when I returned to the place, it was gone ...
Socrates: We always look for the best in life. When we finally see it, we take it for granted and expecting a better one ...
NOT KNOWING IT WAS THE BEST AND LAST!!! — Plato

One of the rules says, You can study God through everything and everyone in the universe, because God is not confined in a mosque, synagogue, or church. But if you are still in need of knowing where exactly His abode is, there is only one place to look for Him: in the heart of a true lover. There is no one who has lived after seeing Him, just like there is no one who has died after seeing Him. Whoever finds Him will remain with Him forever. — Elif Shafak

Of all the things I want for them, connection to this place and a sense of knowing how they fit into this world usurps all others. I want this for them more than happiness, because I think mere happiness is a shallow elucidation of the human experience, and by itself is not a particularly sturdy emotional foundation upon which to build a fulfilling life. I want this for them more than success, at least insofar as our culture has come to define success as being a product of money and power and recognition. I want this for them more than physical vitality, because I believe that good health--and not just health of body, but also of emotion and spirit--is only possibly when one feels connected to and secure in their place. — Ben Hewitt

I stood there feeling the lightness of my bones, knowing now this was not only lack of sleep that had transformed my bones into feathers, but my body's recognition that soon I would be leaving this place I had inhabited for one year, this place made entirely of grief. — Anne Spollen

She felt compelled to conclude that he was mortified to have kissed her in the first place and was hoping she would forget it ever happened. While knowing any well-bred lady would do simply that, Alexia had enjoyed the experience and did not feel like behaving properly over it. Still, she must conclude that all agreeable sensations were entirely one-sided, and now Lord Maccon felt nothing more than a palpable wish never to see her again. He would treat her with painful correctness in the meantime. — Gail Carriger

All I know is that there is comfort in knowing one's place in the universe, even if that means our light is less beautiful than it otherwise would have been. What say you, then, of the night sky? — David Adams

You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place. — Miriam Adeney

My dear children, I am very anxious that you should know something about the History of Jesus Christ. For everybody ought to know Him. No one ever lived, who was so good, so kind, so gentle, and so sorry for all people who did wrong, or were in anyway ill or miserable, as he was. And as he is now in Heaven, where we hope to go, and all to meet each other after we are dead, and there be happy always together, you never can think what a good place Heaven is, without knowing who he was and what he did.
Charles Dickens - 1849
The Life Of Our Lord — Charles Dickens

If in the place of God we write "Reality", "Nature", "Unknowable", or "Zero", it matters not one whit; the equation is just as obscure; for all we have done is to replace a by b, c, d, or e, not knowing what these letters mean. The symbol has changed, but what it symbolizes remains as inscrutable. — J. F. C. Fuller

The child in each of us Knows paradise. Paradise is home. Home as it was Or home as it should have been. Paradise is one's own place, One's own people, One's own world, Knowing and known, Perhaps even Loving and loved. Yet every child Is cast from paradise- Into growth and new community, Into vast, ongoing Change. — Octavia Butler

A single name of a multitude of practices centered about the auto-driven auto. Flashing across the country in the sure hands of an invisible chauffeur, windows all opaque, night dark, sky high, tires assailing the road below like four phantom buzzsaws - and starting from scratch and ending in the same place, and never knowing where you are going or where you have been - it is possible, for a moment, to kindle some feeling of individuality in the coldest brainpan, to produce a momentary awareness of self by virtue of an apartness from all but a sense of motion. This is because movement through darkness is the ultimate abstraction of life itself - at least that's what one of the Vital Comedians said, and everybody in the place laughed. — Roger Zelazny

Howard Roark built a temple to the human spirit. He saw man as strong, proud, clean, wise and fearless. He saw man as a heroic being. And he built a temple to that. A temple is a place where man is to experience exaltation. He thought that exaltation comes from the consciousness of being guiltless, of seeing the truth and achieving it, of living up to one's highest possibility, of knowing no shame and having no cause for shame, of being able to stand naked in full sunlight. He thought that exaltation means joy and that joy is man's birthright. He tho ... ught that a place built as a setting for man is a sacred place. That is what Howard Roark thought of man and of exaltation. — Ayn Rand

It's our work, our job, the most important gig of all: to make a place that belongs to us, a structure composed of our own moral code. Not the code that only echoes imposed cultural values, but the one that tells us on a visceral level what to do. You know what's right for you and what's wrong for you. And that knowing has nothing to do with money or feminism or monogamy or whatever other things you say to yourself when the silent exclamation points are going off in your head. — Cheryl Strayed

For a while, the world for me was like a set of monkey bars. I swung from one place to the next, sometimes backward, sometimes forward, capitalizing on my own momentum, knowing that at some point my arms ... would give out, and I'd fall to the ground. — Amanda Lindhout

God causes grains and seeds to split and sprout, for He brings life from death and death from life. That's how God is to you, so how is it that you're so deceived (about His nature)? [95] He splits the dawn (from the night) and made the night for rejuvenation and rest, while the sun and the moon are for counting the passage of time. That's how He's arranged (for your world to work, for He's) the Powerful and the Knowing. [96] He's the One Who made the stars (as reference points) to guide you on your way through the unknown regions of land and sea, and this is how We explain Our signs for people who know. [97] He's the One Who produced you all from a single soul. (So understand that this world that you inhabit) is a place to linger, and it's also a point of departure. This is how We explain Our verses for people who understand. He's the One Who sends down water from the sky and uses it to produce plants of every kind. — Anonymous

the feeling of a steering wheel under one's hand, the ability to pick up a receiver and call someone miles away, knowing that a train could carry you to see a friend in a fraction of the time horse travel would have taken, all of this somehow made the world seem smaller. When people saw the world as a smaller place would they finally realize that each person, each creature they shared it with was indeed a neighbor and that hatred without just cause was indeed destructive? — Keair Snyder

Sometimes different cities follow one another on the same site and under the same name, born and dying without knowing one another, without communication among themselves. At times even the names of the inhabitants remain the same, and their voices' accent, and also the features of the faces; but the gods who live beneath names and above places have gone off without a word and outsiders have settled in their place. It is pointless to ask whether the new ones are better or worse than the old, since there is no connection between them, just as the old postcards do not depict Maurilia as it was, but a different city which, by chance, was called Maurilia, like this one. — Italo Calvino

In order to succeed he must remain true to the feeling that had inspired him in the first place. It didn't matter that other people would do it in a different way; in fact this was inevitable. He would keep to the roads because, despite the odd fast car, he felt safer there. It didn't matter that he had no mobile phone. It didn't matter that he had not planned his route, or brought a road map. He had a different map, and that was the one in his mind, made up of all the people and places he had passed. He would also stick to his yachting shoes because, despite the wear and tear, they were his. He saw that when a person becomes estranged from the things they know, and is a passerby, strange things take on a new significance. And knowing this, it seemed important to allow himself to be true to the instincts that made him Harold, as opposed to anyone else. — Rachel Joyce

THE POWER OF A COMPELLING CAUSE RESTS IN THE SOUL OF ITS CREATOR, because a cause springs from the soul. It is a spiritual statement from one soul that cannot be the result of many. It comes from a deep place of knowing, some conviction that a richly imagined future could in some way, dramatically and positively, change the world. — Lance Secretan

For most things in life, you need time: to learn a new skill, build a house, become an expert, make a cup of tea ... Time is useless, however, for the most essential thing in life, the one thing that really matters: self-realization, which means knowing who you are beyond the surface self - beyond your name, your physical form, your history, your story.
You cannot find yourself in the past or future. The only place where you can find yourself is in the Now.
Spiritual seekers look for self-realization or enlightenment in the future. To be a seeker implies that you need the future. If this is what you believe, it becomes true for you: you will need time until you realize that you don't need time to be who you are. — Eckhart Tolle

Be brave enough to live creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You cannot get there by bus, only by hard work, risking and by not quite knowing what you are doing. What you will discover will be wonderful: Yourself. — Alan Alda

I was lost a long time, without knowing it. Without the Faith, one is free, and that is a pleasant feeling at first. There are no questions of conscience, no constraints, except the constraints of custom, convention and the law, and these are flexible enough for most purposes. It is only later that terror comes. One is free - but free in chaos, in an unexplained and unexplainable world. One is free in a desert, from which there is no retreat but inward, toward the hollow core of oneself. There is nothing to build on but the small rock of one's own pride, and this is a nothing, based on nothing ... I think, therefore I am. But what am I? An accident of disorder, going no place. — Morris L. West

It seems to me that fire leaves nothing behind at all - the ash really isn't part of the flame, it's part of the fuel. Fire changes it from one thing to another, drawing off its energy and turning it into . . . well, into more fire. Fire doesn't create anything new, it simply is. If other things must be destroyed in order for fire to exist, that's all right with fire. As far as fire is concerned, that's what those things are there for in the first place. When they're gone, the fire goes, too, and though you may find evidence of its passing you'll find nothing of the fire itself - no light, no heat, no tiny red fragments of cast-off flame. It disappears back to wherever it came from, and if it feels or remembers, we have no way of knowing if it feels or remembers us. — Dan Wells

When does God turn a want into a need? When you feel the same way almost every day. Your thoughts can be distracted for a short period of time, but your mind will always take you back to the one place that feels like home. — Shannon L. Alder

There was no back home any more, not in the essential way, and that was part of Paris too. Why we couldn't stop drinking or talking or kissing the wrong people no matter what it ruined. Some of us had looked into the faces of the dead and tried not to remember anything in particular. Ernest was one of these. He often said he'd died in the war, just for a moment; that his soul had left his body like a silk handkerchief, slipping out and levitating over his chest. It had returned without being called back, and I often wondered if writing for him was a way of knowing his soul was there after all, back in its place. Of saying to himself, if not to anyone else, that he had seen what he'd seen and felt those terrible things and lived anyway. That he had died but wasn't dead any more. — Paula McLain

Playing those one-dimensional characters is actually really difficult because you're not dealing with somebody you would ever really know. I don't think anybody here could imagine actually knowing Cindy Campbell from Scary Movies. So, in a way, your job is so much easier when you're playing a person that you really understand and that seems very relatable. I think I was coming to a place in my career where I was like, "I'd like to do something a little more rewarding." — Anna Faris

Rose was the one who knew the path, but these were the things Rose knew, and I wondered if maybe it was this knowing the back of things, the shortcuts, the forgotten stories, that gives you the right to call a place home. — Catherine Landis

We will have to remember where our cranks belong in our national life, so that they can resume their proper roles as lonely guardians of the frontiers of the national imagination, prodding and pushing, getting us to think about things in new ways, but also knowing that their place is of necessity a lonely and humble one. There is nothing wrong with a country that has people who put saddles on their dinosaurs. It's a wonderful show and we should watch them and applaud. We have no obligation to climb aboard and ride. — Charles P. Pierce

A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky, the very last place you would expect astonishing things to happen. Harry Potter rolled over inside his blankets without waking up. One small hand closed on the letter beside him and he slept on, not knowing he was special, not knowing he was famous, not knowing he would be woken in a few hours' time by Mrs. Dursley's scream as she opened the front door to put out the milk bottles, nor that he would spend the next few weeks being prodded and pinched by his cousin Dudley ... He couldn't know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: To Harry Potter - the boy who lived! — J.K. Rowling

Great changes are about to take place in the whole universe. It will not be a comfortable time. It is important that each one has no fear, no concern, knowing that this great upheaval is necessary before the next step can be taken. — Eileen Caddy

The first draft is the child's draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later. — Anne Lamott

But that was life: Nobody got a guided tour to their own theme park. You had to hop on the rides as they presented themselves, never knowing whether you would like the one you were in line for ... or if the bastard was going to make you throw up your corn dog and your cotton candy all over the place. — J.R. Ward

I always wanted to be that guy who pushed the envelope in all kind of ways and tried something new. When I keep that rule going, it always takes me to a new place. There are times when I fail miserably, but I always find myself knowing one more thing better, doing one more thing that I never did before. — Terry Crews

Ugh. Why did I have to have so many thoughts? Why couldn't I just be a normal girl and bask in the glow of finally knowing that the boy I wanted wanted me back?
I slipped in the back door,and as I did, one of the maids gave me a quick curtsy. Ah,right. Because I wasn't a normal girl.
I had hoped to get back to my room without seeing anyone else, but I met Cal on the landing. Wonderful.
"Hey," he said, taking in my disheveled appearance. "Why are you up so early?"
"Oh,I was just,you know, exercising." I jogged in place for a second before realizing that I probably looked like a mental patient.
"Okaaay," Cal said slowly, confirming my suspicions. — Rachel Hawkins

Consider the mind-set of the anarchist who plans to sacrifice himself for a cause.
For the weeks, months, possibly years leading up to the day he straps a thermal detonator to his chest and executes his task, he has lived in and strengthened by the secret he carries, knowing the toll his act will take. So it has been for the Sith, residing in a secret, sacred place of knowledge for one thousand years, and knowing the toll our acts will take. This is power, Sidious. Where the Jedi, by contrast, are like beings who, as they move among the healthy, keep secret the fact that they are dying of a terminal illness. The true power needn't bare claws or fangs, or announce itself with snarls and throaty barks, Sidious. It can subdue with manacles of shimmer silk, purposeful charisma and political astuteness"
-Darth Plagueis — James Luceno

One of my superstitions had always been when I started to go anywhere or do anything, not to turn back, or stop until the thing intended was accomplished. I have frequently started to go places where I had never been and to which I did not know the way, depending upon making inquiries on the road, and if I got past the place without knowing it, instead of turning back, I would go until a road was found turning in the right direction, take that, and come in by the other side. — Ulysses S. Grant

We are special in the sense that we can know our place in the cosmos. We can know our place in space. We are at least one of the cosmos's ways of knowing itself. That fills me with reverence and joy. Another insight I really want people to consider is this: everyone has gotten this far. Everyone you meet has made it this far. Nobody is superior to anyone else from an evolutionary standpoint. — Bill Nye

At a few times in my life, I've not been aware that I've just stepped onto a large X. Change might not be on my mind. Why change? I've always admired lives that flourish in place. The taproot reaches all the way to the aquifer, the leaves bud, flourish, fall, and grow again. I like generations following one another in the same house, where lamplight falls through the windows in squares of light on the snow, and somebody's height chart still marks the kitchen doorway. But there I stand on the X, not knowing it's time to leap, when, really, I'd only meant to pause. — Frances Mayes

One of the things people always say to you if you get upset is, don't take it personally, but listen hard to what's going on and, please, I beg you, take it personally. Understand: every attack on Hillary Clinton for not knowing her place is an attack on you. Underneath almost all those attacks are the words: get back, get back to where you once belonged. — Nora Ephron

Finally Exi spoke. "There are some important things to remember always, no matter how hard life presses at you. One of these things is that wherever you are, and no matter for how long, there must be a home to hold you. You cannot know who you are unless you are contained in some way that gives you shape. Otherwise you are like a small wind, or like water losing itself in sand." He paused thoughtfully, looking at us, who had all stopped to listen. "You see," he continued, "at any place or time we have no way of knowing if we will be there a day or a week. We must let our destiny come to us. In one sense this is always true. Therefore it is needful for each of us to be defined-to live, not just wait to live. Do you understand? — Sheila Moon

One generation's pleasure became a burden for another. Hence, entire collections from father to son were sold for a song, and the vendors, knowing nothing about literature, would place a price on the books. (about secondhand literature book) — Murzban F. Shroff

Remember, never give up on love. It is easier to give up in search of a better prize, because the brain always keeps craving for new stimulants, but this way you only keep on searching, never to find peace in love. Let me tell you a story. There was a student who asked his teacher, what is love. The teacher said go into the field and bring me the most beautiful flower. The student returned with no flower at hand and
said, I found the most beautiful flower in the field but I didn't pick it up for I might find a better one, but when I returned to the place, it was gone.
We always look for the best in life. When we finally see it, we take it for granted and after some time start expecting a better one, not knowing that it's the best. Seek for your love, and once you have it never ever give up on it, no matter the situations. — Abhijit Naskar

Perhaps knowing one place intimately is to have a way of knowing all places. — Richard Mabey

But one "surefire" way for a guy to attract a member of the opposite sex was to place a piece of bread in his armpit and leave it there for a while, before feeding it to the target individual without her knowing exactly what she was eating (Lid — J.T. Sibley

Inside of us is a place that is all-knowing, all mighty, which is a fragment of God. Nourishing, healing elements with in us. There is a spark in each one of us. — Wayne W. Dyer

Jenna reached over and held one of my hands, Kara held the other, and I felt like the universe was holding us all.
For that night, maybe just for that magic moment, it all seemed to make so much sense, like the thousand puzzle pieces of my life were all in place and I knew the How and Why of all things. It was one of those moments that I was sure would stay impressed on me forever because it was real and true. It was as tangible as the blanket beneath me. I felt lik I had touched something, something as big as the universe, and it had touched me back.
I didn't know that even a big moment like that could be snuffed out in a matter of days by packing to go home, by the wrong teacher on the wrong school schedule, or by my uncle getting his brains blown out at a traffic stop.
But all that just made Kara and Jenna brighter stars in my sky. I had no way of knowing that, in a matter of weeks, even those stars would be snuffed out. — Mary E. Pearson

You have great power inborn in you, and you used that power wrongly, to work a spell over which you had no control, not knowing how that spell affects the balance of light and dark, life and death, good and evil. And you were moved to do this by pride and by hate. Is it any wonder the result was ruin? You summoned a spirit from the dead, but with it came one of the Powers of unlife. Uncalled it came from a place where there are no names. Evil, it wills to work evil through you. The power you had to call it gives it power over you: you are connected. It is the shadow of your arrogance, the shadow of your ignorance, the shadow you cast. Has a shadow a name? — Ursula K. Le Guin