Quotes & Sayings About Living In My Shoes

I was beginning to realize that all the food in the world, and all the running shoes, could not make me happy. The material things were worthless. I had lost my family. I wasn't loved, I wasn't free, and I wasn't safe. I was alive, but everything that made life worth living was gone. — Yeonmi Park

Listen, you might want to pack a few of your things together before going to bed. The former bishop of Turkey will be coming tonight along with six to eight black men. They might put some candy in your shoes, they might stuff you into a sack and take you to Spain, or they might just pretend to kick you. We don't know for sure, but we want you to be prepared.
This was the reward for living in the Netherlands. As a child you get to hear this story, and as an adult you get to turn around and repeat it. — David Sedaris

Don't waste your life by living in another person's shoes — Kishore Bansal

And a ride in a hearse tells us we're all close to that final cruise ... when the body dies and we move on. It's just the body, man. It's just the body. The soul's already gone. So don't be afraid of a dead body absent a soul. It's empty, man. No resident. What you need to worry about is a living body that's lost its soul. Now that is scary, man. - Funk N. Wagnalls, owner of the Grim Reapers auto lot, a character in Professor Brown Shoes Teaches the Blues. — David Mutti Clark

I love living my life in flip-flops. I met a guy in the islands a while ago who told me he hadn't worn a pair of shoes in three years! I thought, 'Man, that's the life!' — Kenny Chesney

In the end, I take my shoes off and stick my feet in, letting the lukewarm water lick at my ankles. It feels good, and not just because I'm stoned. I make a mental note to add this to Dulcie's list of things worth living for. For some reason, I keep seeing her rolling her eyes at me, that big, goofy grin stretching her face like Silly Putty. On my private list, I add her smile. She doesn't have to know. — Libba Bray

Wisteria hangs over the eaves like clumps of ghostly grapes. Euphorbia's pale blooms billow like sea froth. Blood grass twists upward, knifing the air, while underground its roots go berserk, goosing everything in their path. A magnolia, impatient with vulvic flesh, erupts in front of the living room window. The recovering terrorist
holding a watering can filled with equal parts fish fertilizer and water, paisley gloves right up over her freckled forearms, a straw hat with its big brim shading her eyes, old tennis shoes speckled with dew
moves through her front garden. Her face, she tells herself, like a Zen koan. The look of one lip smiling. — Zsuzsi Gartner

As I look back, in many instances, I simply followed the natural course of things. And great things happened, mostly. But over time I realized they weren't necessarily great things for me. They were maybe someone else's great things, and I was both taking up the space that was meant for them and not standing in my own space, like wearing someone else's shoes, leaving them barefoot. — Shauna Niequist

As they scuffled in the grass, Adam closed his eyes and leaned his head back. He could nearly scry just like this. The quiet and the cold breeze on his throat would take him away and the dampness of his toes in his shoes and the scent of living creatures would keep him here. Within and without. He couldn't tell if he was letting himself idolize this place or Ronan, and he wasn't sure there was a difference.
When he opened his eyes, he saw that Ronan was looking at him, as he had been looking at him for months. Adam looked back, as he had been looking back for months. — Maggie Stiefvater

I believe in the Lord, Jesus Christ, and His Mother, Holy Mary. Jesus was a living baby once. He went bare-footed like we do in the summer. I saw a picture where He was a boy and had no shoes on. And when He was a man, He went fishing, like papa did once. And they could hurt Him, too, like they couldn't hurt God. Jesus wouldn't go around punishing people. He knew about people. So I will always believe in Jesus Chirst.'
They made the sign of the cross as Catholics do when mentioning Jesus' name. Then she put her hand on Neely's knee and spoke in a whisper.
'Neely, I wouldn't tell anybody but you, but I don't believe in God anymore.'
'I want to go home,' said Neely. He was shivering. — Betty Smith

We ought not to treat living creatures like shoes or household belongings, which when worn with use we throw away. — Plutarch

It was Kelda who said she wished there was a pool in Belvedere, because they were obviously very lucky to have a swim coach living in town. I hadn't said I was a swim coach, but I knew what she meant. It was a shame.
Then a strange thing happened. I was looking down at my shoes on the brown linoleum floor and I was thinking about how I bet this floor hadn't been washed in a million years and I suddenly felt like I was going to die. But instead of dying, I said: I can teach you how to swim. And we don't need a pool. — Miranda July

The great decisions of human life have as a rule far more to do with the instincts and other mysterious unconscious factors than with conscious will and well-meaning reasonableness. The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases. Each of us carries his own life-form- an indeterminable form which cannot be superseded by any other. — Carl Jung

Forbes cost of living extremely well index (CLEWI) An amazing thing I came across while researching the question of just what it is that very very rich people do with their money. As Forbes says, the CLEWI is to the very rich what the CPI is to "ordinary people." There are forty items on it, and they are hilarious, though perhaps you shouldn't show them to your left-wing aunt if she's suffering from high blood pressure: Russian sable fur coats from Bloomingdale's, shirts from Turnbull and Asser, Gucci loafers, handmade John Lobb shoes, a year at Groton boarding school, a yacht, a horse, a pool, a Learjet, a Roller, a case of Dom Perignon, forty-five minutes at a psychiatrist's on the Upper East Side (!), an hour's estate planning with a lawyer, and, amusingly/annoyingly, a year at Harvard.36 In 2012, the CLEWI went up 2.6 percent but the CPI went up only 1.4 percent. — John Lanchester

Racism and sexism are not "problems" or "topics." They are ways of defining reality and living our lives that most of us learned along with learning how to tie our shoes and how to drink from a cup. — Paula Rothenberg

I'm no part time dilettante photographer, unlike the bartenders, shoe salesmen, floorwalkers plumbers, barbers, grocery clerks and chiropractors whose great hobby is their camera. All their friends rave about what wonderful pictures they take. If they're so good, why don't they take pictures full - time, for a living, and make floor walking, chiropractics, etc., their hobby? But everyone wants to play it safe. They're afraid to give up their pay checks and their security they might miss a meal. — Weegee

Bring peace to the Earth by bringing peace to all those whose lives you touch. Be peace. Feel and express in every moment your Divine Connection with the All, and with every person, place, and thing. Embrace every circumstance, own every fault, share every joy, contemplate every mystery, walk in every man's shoes, forgive every offense (including your own), heal every heart, honor every person's truth, adore every person's God, protect every person's rights, preserve every person's dignity, promote every person's interests, provide every person's needs, presume every person's holiness, present every person's greatest gifts, produce every person's blessing, and pronounce every person's future secure in the assured love of God. Be a living, breathing example of the Highest Truth that resides within you. — Neale Donald Walsch

Nathan smoothly touched the bottom with a palm. His shirt and shoes were off. When his head and chest rose out of the water, I was in awe of the muscles that were defined in his body. Unlike Silas whose bulk of muscle was smooth, Nathan was a precision machine. The ripples of muscles along his abdomen fit together like a living puzzle. A smile broke on his lips as those penetrating blue eyes fixed on my face. Did you find out? — C.L.Stone

Golden Rule Living is the great simplifier. It places us in another soul's shoes, taking what can appear to be a com- plex decision that involves another and streamlining it to a one-step process of deciding, If I wouldn't like this done to me, then I shall not do it to another. — Molly Friedenfeld

You know that my spells come from God, and that I would not harm any living creature. You believe that everyone should worship God in the way revealed to him. But that is not the way of this country. The way here is for all to do alike. I am despised because I do not wear shoes, because I do not cut my hair, and because I have visions. At home, in the old country, there were many like me, who had been touched by God, or who had seen things in the graveyard at night and were different afterward. We thought nothing of it, and let them alone. But here, if a man is different in his feet or in his head, they put him in the asylum ... That is the way; they have built the asylum for people who are different, and they will not even let us live in the holes with the badgers. — Willa Cather

I didn't die, and that's the point. Doesn't matter how close you come if you walk away whole. — Courtney Schafer

The soles of Cynthia Sawyer's shoes squeaked on the damp flagstone walkway that meandered through Hawthorne Manor's formal gardens. Hazy rays of sun kissed the sprint morning dew, glistening on the early-blooming flowers and foliage soon to blossom into a Southern Living-worthy wonderland. Perfect for tiny Maple Creek, Maryland's annual garden party - the most exciting event of the season, especially for the quirky retirees. Last year, crazy old Mrs. Osworth got lost in the winding boxwood maze and called 911 to get "one of those strong young firemen" to come rescue her. She'd said she felt faint, and claimed she'd need mouth-to-mouth resuscitation the moment they showed up. — Tracy March

Another great mistake is this; another understandable error is this: living to live the footprints of others when you have your own foot! Live your footprints! You were born unique! If possible, put the shoes of others, (they must fit you however) but don't walk as they walked and as much as possible, don't leave the same footprints they left except you were born to be like them or you can change the face of their footprints into a unique artifact! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Creating music to fit the marketplace, so that music can be heard? If ever I thought that I even came close to catering to the marketplace, or designing my productions and my music to cater to what is currently fashionable, I would sell shoes for a living. For me, the marketplace can rot in hell. I will do music for the love of music and for the love of people who listen to music, and absolutely nothing else will drive me. — Daniel Lanois

The Alps are a simple folk, living on a diet of old shoes. And the Lord Alps those who alp themselves. — Groucho Marx

One didn't understand, until one had seen a great many bodies, the unconscious effort that one must be making every minute simply to keep one's hands and face and clothes clean. The world's surfaces were so filthy that the living touched them only with the tips of their fingers and the soles of their shoes. How grubby it was to die, to give up making that effort. — Chris Cleave

Sudden I stopped. I was out of breath. I asked myself, "What is this all about? What is the meaning of this ceaseless rush? This is ridiculous!" Then I declared independence, and said, "I do not care if I go to dinner. I do not care whether I make a talk. I do not have to go to this dinner and I do not have to make a speech." So deliberately and slowly I walked back to my room and took my time about unlocking the door. I telephoned the man downstairs and said, "If you want to eat, go ahead. If you want to save a place for me, I will be down after a while, but I am not going to rush any more." So I removed my coat, sat down, took off my shoes, put my feet up on the table, and just sat. Then I opened the Bible and very slowly read aloud the 121st Psalm, "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help." I closed the book and had a little talk with myself, saying, "Come on now, start living a slower and more relaxed life," and then I affirmed, "God is here and His — Norman Vincent Peale

A large percentage of those living in developed societies are told what brand of soda they should drink, what cigarettes they should smoke, what clothes and shoes they should wear, what they should eat and what brand of food they should buy. Their political ideas are supplied in the same way. Every year a trillion dollars is spent on advertising. — Fidel Castro

We forget our health and comfort and notice a pinching shoe. Much of living well is detaching from our boring stories of pain and shifting focus — Derren Brown

Feisty, am I? My husband is a member of the Congregation. A posse of men is coming on horseback to accuse me of harming a friendless old woman. I'm in a strange place and keep getting lost on my way to the bedroom. I still have no shoes. And I'm living in a dormitory full of adolescent boys who never stop talking!" I fumed. "But you needn't trouble yourself on my account. I can take care of myself! — Deborah Harkness

It's fascinating, really, when you think about it. How a person can slip into a new life as one would a new pair of shoes. At first there's a keen awareness of the fit: a stiffness at the heel, the binding of the width, the curve pressed to the arch. But with time and enough steps, the feel becomes so natural you almost forget you're wearing them at all. — Kristina McMorris

The Christian shoemaker does his duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship. — Martin Luther

Now wait a second ... " Kenneth butted in.
"Yeah, we haven't asked you the questions yet," Brandon finished for Kenneth.
"Yeah, like what are your intentions toward our little Ryan," Patrick added, smirking.
"What do you do for a living?" Brandon added.
"Can you support Ryan's shoe fetish?" Kenneth threw his question in too.
"Hmm, okay, here are my answers. I plan on feeding him, dancing with him and God willing fucking him until he can't walk straight. I help infertile chickens have baby chickens, and I think so. I'm hoping his feet are about my size. We can share shoes and everything," Phillip answered. — Crystal Rose

They were empowered and fulfilled. They dated occasionally but were just as happy living the feminist dream of a professional woman not answerable to any man. Do what they wanted to, go where they wanted to and spend indecent amount of money on clothes and shoes, it was all good. There were not slaves to diets, shaving hairy legs, waxing eyebrows, dying their roots, endless showers, applying tons of make-up and trying to be domestic goddesses. They could slum around in leisure suits and runners reading Cosmo with a fag in their mouth and a cup of coffee in their hands. There could be slummy mummies or tidy queens or takeaway junkies it all depended on their daily rota and social live. Good, freedom was definitely good. One husband in a lifetime was enough for them — Annette J. Dunlea

Sure, Tod's makes shoes and bags. But we make them using leather, which is a living substance to me. And behind each shoe and bag, which in itself may be attractive and useful and comfortable to carry and wear, there is this Italian spirit, this Italian dream. — Diego Della Valle

My life was typical. I played a little Little League baseball. I never wanted for food. I always had shoes. I had a room. There were no great tragedies. There were the typical ups and downs but I wouldn' t say it was at all sad. We were Jewish and living in the suburbs so there was a slightly neurotic bent to it, but I can't point to anything where a boy overcame a tragedy to become a comedian. As my grandmother used to say, 'I can't complain. — Jon Stewart

Write, if you must; not otherwise. Do not write, if you can earn a fair living at teaching or dressmaking, at electricity or hod-carrying. Make shoes, weed cabbages, survey land, keep house, make ice-cream, sell cake, climb a telephone pole. Nay, be a lightning-rod peddler or a book agent, before you set your heart upon it that you shall write for a living ... Living? It is more likely to be dying by your pen; despairing by your pen; burying hope and heart and youth and courage in your ink-stand. — Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

When she got to Eileen Reilly, Eileen turned red and said, "I would rather not say." This astounded me, for her father was a handsome, charming salesman at Home Savings Shoes on Main Street - Stan the Shoe Man, my mother affectionately called him. But his daughter had absorbed some disappointment - his, or her mother's - and did not want to speak of how he earned his living. Perhaps that was the moment I learned this as a source of personal shame, or observed the possibility of it. — Lorrie Moore

Our father came to sleep in our house that night. He carried a small suitcase with a black mourning suit and a pair of polished shoes. Corrigan stopped him as he made his way up the stairs. 'Where d'you think you're going?'Our father gripped the bannister. His hands were liverspotted and I could see him trembling in his pause. 'That's not your room,' sad Corrigan. Our father tottered on the stairs. He took another step up. 'Don't,' said my brother. His voice was clear, full, confidant. Our father stood stunned. He climbed one more step and then turned, descended, looked around, lost.
'My own sons,' he said.
We made a bed for him on a sofa in the living room, but even then Corrigan refused to stay under the same roof; he went walking in the direction of the city center and I wondered what alley he might be found in later that night, what fist he might walk into, whose bottle he might climb down inside. — Colum McCann

Each day we wake up and make myriad choices that affect others. We clothe ourselves with shirts, pants, and shoes that may have been sewn together by women working in factories fourteen-plus hours a day for a nonliving wage; we buy products manufactured in ways the destroy forests, pollute waterways, and poison the air; we wash our hair with shampoos that may have been squeezed into the eyes of conscious rabbits or force-fed to them in quantities that kill; and on and on. As Derrick Jensen has written in his book "The Culture of Make Believe", "It is possible to destroy a culture without being aware of its existence. It is possible to commit genocide or ecocide from the comfort of one's living room — Zoe Weil

What Francis heard on February 24, 1208, was this: go and preach, even without formation or ordination! No gold, no silver, no money not even for alms! No bag for provisions! One habit only! No shoes, no staff! It was an amputation of every superfluous item, of every precaution for life, and, at the same time, of every protection that an institution like the church could provide at the time. It was also a refusal to he recognized as a regular order, a refusal of the legal privileges associated with such status, and a refusal of priestly ordination. Poverty in the institutional sense means to he excluded from privileges.

. . . "No brother is to hold a position of power or a ruling office, especially not among the brothers themselves. No one in this way of living is to be called prior; instead all are to be known simply as minor brothers. And all are to wash one another's feet" (rule of 1221). — Dorothee Solle

It's rebellious, in a way, to choose joy, to dance, to love your life. It's much easier and much more common to be miserable. We could just live our normal, day-to-day lives, saving all the good living up for someday, but I think it's our job to live each day like it's a special occasion, because we've been given a gift. We get to live in this beautiful world. When I live purposefully and well, when I dance instead of sitting it out, when I let myself laugh hard, when I wear my favorite shoes on a regular Tuesday, that regular Tuesday is better. — Shauna Niequist

My parents grew up during the space race, and I think they imagined the future would be us living on moon bases and everyone has rocket shoes. — Brian K. Vaughan

My pacifism came after I joined the army and was shipped over to Korea. There was a little one-room orphanage there called Song-do. There were 180 babies in there, and they were GI babies. The U.S. government would not acknowledge this, and the Korean government had nothing to do with them. They were living on a 100-pound bag of rice a month. Some of those kids, when they were old enough, would go out and shine shoes. They would show up at the gate of our compound to shine shoes, and you'd swear they were looking for their fathers. — Utah Phillips

It is well known that women carry poison in their pockets. Did you expect a gun? A woman with a gun would be just another policeman. We fall in love with the convicts, remember that. Policemen marry girls from the neighborhood, high school looms over their unions, the first uniform is her prom dress and his black bow tie and white shirt. But the girls are thinking of poison, thinking of poison as the lights go out on the dresser where the revolver has been placed with care for the night. The black shoes, the fine, thick serge of the coat, shoulders and thighs of stallions. And the policemen are usually shot down by someone out of shape, thin, thin, nothing but living bones. Remember that. — Elizabeth Hardwick

[I hate] the ways that people want their special needs to be met, whether it's their food allergies or their special lotions or shoes. Or the ways that people want their neighborhoods and restaurants curated in a way that's really tailored to them. Growing up with someone who was living by these very strict, repressive rules for themselves - it made me very allergic to the idea of denial. — Carrie Brownstein

Theater is a living creature. It takes a while to break in, like a new pair of shoes. — Darren Criss

There is no place so benighted and godforsaken that some moron won't go there on vacation. People could be living in an open sewer and swallowing dirt to stop the hunger, and there'd be a couple from Larchmont wearing comfortable shoes there to take pictures of them. — Thomas Perry

Yours are the only shoes made to walk your journey. — Charles F. Glassman

Step into my shoes follow my journey my mountains my valleys my surprise potholes and if you can keep going the way I keep going perhaps you'll understand my choices & strength. — Karen Salmansohn

Damn it. Why didn't the United States know when to declare a real war? Those running the country he loved were making a mockery of it. Misusing the word war had become a joke, like The War on Drugs or The War on Women. What was taking place in Guatemala was being run the same way as the fake War on Terror. Similar to Afghanistan, it didn't take long before he realized he was in a no man's land where the dead piled up in silence and the living had nothing to say. Hordes of beggars and gang members roamed the area seeking food, money or young women to rape. Life was cheap. People were killed for a pair of shoes or a handful of pills. — Ava Armstrong

I find that, once you get into a position where you can afford a pair of shoes and a decent level of living, success in itself is empty. — Michael Eisner

The Lady: a fluty voice, sensible shoes, a melancholy sense of living by rules few still remember. — Mason Cooley

Reducing your life down to three pairs of jeans, two skirts, a couple of shirts, and a few pairs of shoes was so nice for me. I really loved living in this tiny room where I didnt have space for anything. It sounds really lame, but it made me feel a lot more free, because I just didnt have as many choices. — Emma Watson

I've really dreamed of doing television. All of us do television, coming up. But when I was coming up, television was a black hole for actors. Now, television has a certain cache. Now everybody wants to be on TV because they're doing adult dramas. If you're an actor, it's like, "Well, get me on television," because it's the only place you can do it and also make a living at it. If my kids need shoes, I better do a TV show because I damn sure don't make any money with independent films. — Billy Bob Thornton