Pieces Of My Life Quotes & Sayings

That day a dead leaf makes it way into my cell and I pick up, close my fist over it and let the broken pieces fall to the ground. There is no wind to blow it away so I let the fragments surround me like an homage to it's once beautiful life. Here I am with the remnants of the dead and here I sit waiting to crumble into pieces. — Celia Mcmahon

I have this clutter of questions all churned together in my mind and they won't stop churning. I've found out too much and not enough. there are too many pieces that could go together too many ways and I can't stop shifting them around. There has to be some way it all makes sense and it doesn't yet."
"You're asking a lot of life if you want it to make sense."
Most of the time, Joliffe was of the same opinion, but he shook his head against it now like against a fly's buzz and said nothing, frowning at the pen he was still twirling.
Basset watched him a moment, then said,
"Well, if you can't let it go, go at it as if you were trying to make a story of all these pieces you have. Shift them around and fill the gaps until they make the sense you want. — Margaret Frazer

It feels like I've just conceded a little bit of my soul. But Des has been collecting pieces of my soul since the night I took my father's life. As far as I'm concerned, he can have it; I know he'll take good care of it. Des's — Laura Thalassa

I walked out of the classroom and felt like dancing and singing. It all gave me hope. It gave me a little bit of joy. And I kept trying to find the little pieces of joy in my life. That's the only way I managed to make it through all of that death and change — Sherman Alexie

It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life. — Haruki Murakami

I envy Johnny and at the same time I get sore as hell watching him destroy himself, misusing his gifts, and the stupid accumulation of nonsense the pressure of his life requires. I think that if Johnny could straighten out his life, not even sacrificing heroin, if he could pilot that plane better, maybe he'd end up worse, maybe go crazy altogether, or die, but not without having played it to the depth, what he's looking for in those sad a posteriori monlogues, in his retelling of great, fascinating experiences which, however, stop right there, in the middle of the road. And all this I back up with my own cowardice, and maybe basically I want Johnny to wind up all at once like a nova that explodes into a thousand pieces and turns astronomers into idiots for a whole week, and then one can go off to sleep and tomorrow is another day. — Julio Cortazar

I worked as a cryptologist, where I decoded puzzles, even thought I can't make the jagged pieces of my own life fit. — DiAnn Mills

I can't remember a single year of my life when I haven't made a piece of theatre. — Simon McBurney

But most of all books (I say again and again) are like the Thirty-Mile Woman from Toni Morrison's Beloved: 'She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.' ~ Junot Diaz, author of the Pulitzer Prize novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. — Leah Price

I think there's a secret part of me that would like to drop my entire life off a cliff and watch it break into a million pieces — Suzanne Morrison

My life had become a puzzle - its pieces scattered about like paper in the wind, with no one there to chase them but me. — Meredith T. Taylor

The street is the most impactful for me really, always, and the Internet. I guess I'd like to sell some more light pieces so I can rent some more billboards; that's my only ambition in life really. Then I'd like to save up some money so I can buy a very simple wooden house, and then after that I'd like to start buying billboards. I'd like to buy a bunch of billboards in different cities so we owned them and I could give them to Occupy to tell the truth with. — Robert Montgomery

I lived willy-nilly. Without any sense of being part of the order of things. I lived by fragments, pieces, scraps, in the moment, at random, from incident to incident, as if buffeted by ebb and flow. Oftentimes I had the impression that someone had torn the majority of pages out of the book of my life, because they were empty, or because they belonged not to me but to someone else's life. — Wieslaw Mysliwski

Kyle Busch is going to get his ass whipped shortly I hope. He better sit his ass in his motor home or I'm going to come find him and he's going to have to hold my watch because I'm going to whip his ass. He's the biggest whining little piece of [expletive] I've ever seen in my whole life. — Kevin Harvick

Afghan Girl

Ice blue eyes that look to the morning sky as I knit the pieces and remnants of my life. I have No books, no paper, no pencils, and no black boards. I look at the holes in my life as I see the hills of the Appalachians that echo. I think to myself, who will I marry? Is my life-like Pari?

These strings please come together.

Snowflakes give me hope, and my dreams dance all around me. I'll put another log on the fire. I watch the brown paper bag over the broken glass pane letting the cold wind in; I'll take some of these remnants and stuff it.

These strings are come together.

Mama told me that life would be hard. I bartered for flour the other day, and the chickens ain't laying no eggs. I struggle with life and these strings. My hands are worn and tired. Now, I have granny square hands.
I am unclean, unblemished, and finished,

Afghan girl. — Edna Stewart

Just dabbing pieces of my heart into things that make me shine, my little young simple life. — Nikki Rowe

Many years ago a very wise man named Bernard Baruch took me aside and put his arm around my shoulder. "Harpo my boy," he said, "I'm going to give you three pieces of advice, three things you should always remember." My heart jumped and I glowed with expectation. I was going to hear the magic password to a rich, full life from the master himself. "Yes sir?" I said. And he told me the three things. I regret that I've forgotten what they were. — Harpo Marx

The details of my thoughts bled into thin pieces of paper, spread across miles to touch hearts of the people; who've lost their truest homes- themselves. — Nikki Rowe

'Trilogy' was more of a claustrophobic body of work. Before it was released, I hadn't left my city for 21 years, and I had never been on a plane, not once. I spent my entire life on one setting; that's probably why pieces of the album feel like one long track, because that's what my life felt like. It felt like one long song. — The Weeknd

I have met a great many people, nearly all friendly, many of whom I was fairly intimate with in one way of another, but nobody has seemed as close to me in spirit as you are. That was why I thought only of you at those times when my life seemed in danger of falling to pieces. — Tennessee Williams

How can I describe Peter's face, the pieces of him that stick to my heart? Peter sometimes looked aloof and distant; sometimes his face was open and soft as a bruise. Sometimes he looked completely at Tiger Lily, as if she were the point on which all the universe revolved, as if she were the biggest mystery of life, or as if she were a flame and he couldn't not look even though he was scared. And sometimes it would all disappear into carelessness, confidence, amusement, as if he didn't need anyone or anything on this earth to feel happy and alive. — Jodi Lynn Anderson

I think I take little pieces of inspiration, then kind of do what's real to me and what's going on in my life or what I observe from other people's experiences and hope other people connect with it, too. — Tess Henley

They always say, doing what I do for a living, write what you know and then people will respond to it. I luckily had a very charming, lovable mom who I think everybody could see bits and pieces of their mom in. All I had to do was write a character that was like my mom, and it made my life easier. — Dan Fogelman

In [my] life ... I did not understand steam machinery, but I tried to understand that much more complicated piece of mechanism - man. — Andrew Carnegie

Each of us needs an adequate biography: How do I put together into a coherent image the pieces of my life? How do I find the basic plot of my story? — James Hillman

My brethren, let me say, be like Christ at all times. Imitate him in "public." Most of us live in some sort of public capacity-many of us are called to work before our fellow-men every day. We are watched; our words are caught; our lives are examined-taken to pieces. The eagle-eyed, argus-eyed world observes everything we do, and sharp critics are upon us. Let us live the life of Christ in public. Let us take care that we exhibit our Master, and not ourselves-so that we can say, "It is no longer I that live, but Christ that lives in me." — Charles Spurgeon

Language, at least, may give up the secrets of life and death, leading us through the maze to the original Word as monster or angel, to the mournful place where we may meet Job and hear his cry, 'How long will you vex my soul and break me in pieces with words? — Janet Frame

We cannot afford the luxury of self pity. Our top priority now is to get on with the building process. My personal peace has come through helping boys and girls reach beyond the ordinary and strive for the extraordinary. We must teach our children to weather the hurricanes of life, pick up the pieces, and rebuild. We must impress upon our children that even when troubles rise to seven-point- one on life's Richter scale, they must be anchored so deeply that, though they sway, they will not topple — Mamie Till

Death is deceitful, pretending that peace is on the horizon. The truth is that chaos is left in its wake, claiming the souls of those stranded in life. Death is the enemy of love in its purest form. It's the one thing that can tear our souls out and rip our hearts to pieces. The miraculous part of this process is that all it needs to do is extinguish a single, solitary breath. That's all it takes to steal the future of someone; someone who deserves to live more than all the others. If only I could capture that breath before it was taken to replace it with my own. — J.D. Stroube

Tlaloci's head exploded in a shower of brains and bone. The pieces rained down on me, and the body fell to one side, obsidian blade scraping along the stone floor as the hand convulsed around the hilt. I stared across the cave and saw Olaf standing at the foot of the stone steps. He was still standing in his shooting stance, one-handed, gun still pointed at where the priest had been standing. He blinked, and I watched the concentration leave his face, watched something close to human spill across his face. He started walking towards me, gun at his side. The other hand held a knife, bloody to the hilt. I was wiping Tlaloci's brains off my face when Olaf came to stand in front of me. "I never thought I'd say this, but damn I'm glad to see you." He actually smiled. "I saved your life." That made me smile. "I know." Ramirez — Laurell K. Hamilton

I took to writing as my medicine to help me stay afloat in acting career journey. I wrote about me breaking hearts, and my heart being broken. I wrote about my views whether they were liberal or conservative. I wrote about everything. I wrote about my life. When I did not have paper coming in as green backs, I'd use random pieces of paper for stories. It was like, I got no money, but I have paper to write. So I wrote. — Omari Hardwick

Jack, who apparently always had to be moving in some way, had made up for the missing knife by grabbing a half loaf of French bread and methodically ripping it into tiny pieces.
"What," I said, narrowing my eyes. "Why don't faeries like bread?"
"Hmm?" Jack looked up, then shrugged. "I dunno."
Lend picked up a piece, crumbling it. "My dad said he thought it was because it was the staff of life for people."
"Nasty stuff tastes like mold," Jack said. "I tried a piece once a while ago when I was still trying to force myself to eat normal food so I could stay here. It was like a shock to my whole system." He shuddered at the memory. — Kiersten White

Patrul Rinpoche tells the story of an old frog who had lived all his life in a dank well. One day a frog from the sea paid him a visit. "Where do you come from?" asked the frog in the well. "From the great ocean," he replied. "How big is your ocean?" "It's gigantic." "You mean about a quarter of the size of my well here?" "Bigger." "Bigger? You mean half as big?" "No, even bigger." "Is it ... as big as this well?" "There's no comparison." "That's impossible! I've got to see this for myself." They set off together. When the frog from the well saw the ocean, it was such a shock that his head just exploded into pieces. — Sogyal Rinpoche

My head whips back from the impact and my ribs twang like a dropped guitar. The sky spins above me like a penny. My bike has dematerialized, and my iPod is strewn about the intersection in a million glittering pieces. When I try to move, ten different parts of my body light up at once, like someone's pressing all the buttons at an anatomy exhibit. The magnolia tree blows me a kiss of perfumed air, and I can't decide if what I'm feeling is incredible bliss of excruciating pain. This might just be the greatest moment of my life. It's possible. And if it is, I don't want to waste it lying around in the middle of the road. For a single, golden second I breathe galaxies. — Hilary T. Smith

I am a southern guy who likes dressing up and looking sharp but who lives a busy life of working and traveling, and I need reliable, stylish pieces in my wardrobe that will service multiple occasions. — Cam Newton

Readers," continued Miss Winter, "are fools. They believe all writing is autobiographical. And so it is, but not in the way they think. The writer's life needs time to rot away before it can be used to nourish a work of fiction. It must be allowed to decay. That's why I couldn't have journalists and biographers rummaging around in my past, retrieving bits and pieces of it, preserving it in their words. To write my books, I needed my past left in peace, for time to do its work. — Diane Setterfield

I could feel the baby being torn from my insides. It was really painful ... Three-quarters of the way through the operation I sat up ... In the cylinder I saw the bits and pieces of my little child floating in a pool of blood. I screamed and jumped up off the table ... I just couldn't stop throwing up ... — Randy Alcorn

Once they leave to see to their other duties, I go to stand before the fire, feeling once again as if I have been completely upended and remade anew, when in truth, I have barely caught my breath from the first time my life shattered before my eyes.

But this- this is different. This is no shattering, but rather some great knitting together of the broken pieces into a stronger whole.

I feel cleansed, not only of sin- but of artifice. I am stripped down to nothing but my raw self. As uncomfortable as it makes me feel, there is freedom in it as well, for there is no place left for others' expectations and desires of me to hide. — Robin LaFevers

Yeah so - nothing gets lost. Cal isn't, and not just because he'll still be a little part of my life. I get to carry him with me, the way you do all your memories and mistakes. He started out a mistake I had no memory of, and he wound up being, well, my kid.
Maybe thinking any one person can show up and give you all you need is as much of a delusion as thinking you can find truth in a bottle. Maybe you can just find what you need in little pieces, in people who show up for one crucial moment - or a whole chain of them - even if they can't solve it all. Maybe this is the secret of big families, like the Garretts ... and like AA. People's strengths can take their turn. There can be more of us than their is trouble. — Huntley Fitzpatrick

When I first took this job at the factory it was not my intention to work there very long, for I once possessed higher hopes for my life, although the exact nature of these hopes remained rather vague in my youthful mind. While the work was not arduous, and my fellow workers congenial enough, I did not imagine myself standing forever at my designated assembly block, fitting together pieces of metal into other pieces of metal, with a few interruptions throughout that day for breaks that were supposed to refresh our minds from the tedium of our work or for meal breaks to allow us to nourish our bodies. Somehow it never occurred to me that the nearby town where I and the others at the factory lived, travelling to and from our jobs along the same fog-strewn road, held no higher opportunities for me or anyone else, which no doubt accounts for the vagueness, the wispy insubstantiality, of my youthful hopes. — Thomas Ligotti

My home, my world, my comfort zone, as Rachel says? It's not a place. It's not a frozen moment in time. It's inside, in my heart, full of the pieces of everyone I love. Things will change. But love won't — Kelly Bingham

In my room, I looked around at all the pieces of my life, neat and tidy on their little shelves, my clothes and books and telephones, my shoes and hair barrettes, and tried to care about them. Mine, mine, mine. But they were only things, things that could have belonged to anyone. — Aryn Kyle

It's inevitable. He's so adamant about the things he doesn't want out of life, and I'm starting to understand just how serious he is. So much as I want to protect my heart from him, it's pointless. He's going to break it eventually, yet I continue to allow him to fill it. Every time I'm with him, he fills my heart up more and more,and the more it's filled with pieces of him, the more painful it'll be when he rips it out of my chest as though it never belonged there in the first place. — Colleen Hoover

If we can't forget, how can we forgive? I believe that forgiving can't be done by willpower alone. I can will myself to write out my own memories and feelings. I can will myself to imagine onto the page how someone else may have felt. I can will myself to research someone else's life in order to better understand what happened. But I don't think I can forgive by simply willing to forgive. Forgiving happens to us when our hearts are ready. Sometimes it takes the form of working on our own story until quietly, often surprisingly, we simply let go of the hurt. Sometimes forgiving makes it possible to pick up the pieces of a broken relationship and begin again. Sometimes it means letting a relationship go. We can't forgive through willpower. What we can do is work toward readiness of heart. Writing as a spiritual practice can be that kind of work.
When our heart is ready, we often don't even know it until forgiveness happens within us. It is a gift. — Pat Schneider

Here's a nice image for a life in balance," she said. "You're juggling these four balls that you've named work, family, friends, spirit. Now, work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it bounces back. The other balls they're made of glass."
"I've dropped a few of those glass balls in my day. Sometimes they chip, sometimes they shatter to pieces. — James Patterson

I can feel blood dripping from the wounds on my face and I can feel my heart beating and I can feel the weight of my life beginning to drop and I realize why dawn is called mourning. — James Frey

The tattoo artist inflicts pain and I take it. With each breath I count to one again. Each inhale, each exhale, time passes in the smallest of pieces, and pieces still smaller than those.
This is how you count a life. This is how you go through it. Each second of hurt is a second that's already passed, one you never have to go through again. I have counted in pieces that small, when walking from the bed to the fridge seemed an insurmountable goal. I have counted my breaths, my steps, my eye-blinks, my hiccups, the tiny pulse in my thumb. And when I started getting tattooed, two of the things I used to need were gone: to write on myself, and to find irrelevant things to count. A second of intense pain is the most profound thing you can live through. And another, and another, and another, and then you know what it is to feel, and to struggle through that feeling one small agonizing increment at a time, and if you know that, you know what it is to live with mental illness. — Stacy Pershall

The bones of the oak tree that had stood by the spring branch during my youth were scattered about the ground, pieces of the skeleton of a majestic life that had passed while I was off growing up and old. — Dan Groat

I'm the kind of person who would rather get my hopes up really high and watch them get dashed to pieces than wisely keep my expectations at bay and hope they are exceeded. This quality has made me a needy and theatrical friend, but has given me a spectacularly dramatic emotional life. — Mindy Kaling

My energy and curiosity may be renewed but the larder isn't. There is probably less food in the house than there has ever been. I trudge out to buy a few chicken pieces and a bag of winter greens to make a soup with the spices and noodles I have in the cupboard. What ends up as dinner is clear, bright and life-enhancing. It has vitality (that's the greens), warmth (ginger, cinnamon) and it is economical and sustaining too. I suddenly feel ready for anything the New Year might throw at me. — Nigel Slater

It's like this old patchwork quilt my momma used to have ... Each piece on that quilt meant something. And some of those pieces were the damn ugliest things you've ever seen ... But some of the pieces were so beautiful they almost hurt my eyes to look at when I was a kid ... That's the best you can hope for, Danny. That your life turns out like that patchwork quilt. That you can add some bright, sparkling pieces to the dirty, stained ones you have so far. That in the end, the bright patches might take up more space on your quilt than the dark ones. — Brooke McKinley

Love does not terrify me. But the going away of it does. I have been made terribly aware of how everything can be wrenched away from you and your life torn apart. If I had known very secure nights all my life, if I had never seen or felt the fear of being tortured or deported or blown up into a million pieces, then I would not fear it. — Audrey Hepburn

But my best friend from college was silent for a long time. She, of all of my friends, had seen the parade of sad wrecks through my life, date after bad date after bad boyfriend. She was the one who'd picked up the pieces after the musician, the investment banker, the humanitarian who was human to everyone but me.
When at last she spoke, she said, Oh, hell.
And, after that: Hallelujah. — Lauren Groff

I'd given him bits and pieces of my peculiar life, but colored softer and funnier than they had been. I'd painted my dad as Don Quixote in a semi, on a quest for philosophical truths and the best cup of coffee in the nation. — Laurie Halse Anderson

Everything good or bad in my life had started and ended within the limits of that town. It was over now, though, and a new chapter was beginning. Nothing would ever be the same as it had been before. I just hoped this chapter wouldn't be the final one in the book. — Rose Wynters

I was shaking so hard, I could barely get the door unlocked. I just got the door shut behind me when I sank to my knees and fell apart. I cried so hard I was nearly convulsing. I had never felt such raw emotions in my life. I felt like someone had ripped my heart out of my chest and tore it to pieces. I curled into a ball on the floor and tried desperately to disappear. But no matter how small I got, I was still here. I still existed. And for a short while, I thought I had mattered to someone. I guess I was wrong. I mattered to no one. — Dakota Madison

I feel my life is so scattered right now. Like it's all these small pieces of paper and someone's turned on the fan. — John Green

I got a lot of paradoxes in my life. I guess I'm a real confused person, but there are some focused parts to my life now, and I'm slowly trying to put all the pieces back together. — Stevie Ray Vaughan

Writing poetry, we live among the wild beasts, and when we touch a man, the stuff of someone in whom we believed, and he goes to pieces like a rotten pie, you ... gather together whatever can be salvaged, while I cup my hands around the live coal of life. — Pablo Neruda

Back the, my life was mostly pieces-tire swings and lemonade, dogwood petals drifting down and going brown in the grass. Cotton dresses, bedsheets flapping on the line. An acre of front porch. A year of hopscotch rhymes. — Brenna Yovanoff

You've shown me joy where before I saw only despair. You've taught me hope where before I knew only hopelessness. I may be broken, but all my pieces are yours. And I'll work every day of my life to deserve you. — Penny Reid

I want nothing more than what I have, for what I have is enough. I'm grateful for it. I foresee no reward, no eternal life. I expect only to leave further pieces of my heart in one place or another, but I love God nonetheless, with every atom of my being, and will love Him until I fall into black oblivion. — Mark Helprin

When I look back on my life I come to one simple conclusion: there exists an intelligent, loving Presence in the Cosmos that will ultimately have its desire for relationship with us fulfilled; even our arrogant dismissal of its existence will not stop it in its tracks. The Enlightenment's god, the great idol of free will, lies smashed in pieces in its wake. The jealous Presence patiently draws us homeward like some gigantic electromagnetic beam. The Death Star in reverse. This divinity is, I believe, the 'Abba' of Jesus, a transcendence that will not be boxed in by religious misrepresentation... — Dylan Morrison

Politics disappears; it vanishes. What remains constant is human life. So I try to develop a perspective in my writing where politics is just one of the pieces of furniture in this furnished world. It is not the purpose. It is not the goal. — Tatyana Tolstaya

I read a whole bunch of bits and pieces over the years, obviously from the fan magazines and the rest of the stuff, and I just wanted to give a little more insight into what's happening in my personal life. — Davy Jones

Life is subjective as far as memories are concerned. I mean, what pieces of your own life do you really remember? Some good times, some bad times definitely, but mostly you remember those times that really stand out, those times that define who you are as an individual. Now's the time my life flashes before me - flickering recollections, vacations, holidays, friendships, the moments that made a difference. Mostly I remember that weekend with Kaylee. — Megan Bostic

In that moment, I wanted to cut out all my sins from my body and lay them down upon the earth before you. Like pieces of bark they are rough and dead, once clutching onto my very skin, all a part of me. You make me want to strip myself bare and lay myself out to you, I want you to see all my flaws, I want you to know I am not beautiful, yet all the while wanting you to take me anyway. I am composed of things that are dead, I am not a tree, I do not give life, I am just bark, flaws, stitched together with hope for something more. I wish for love, I wish for more. — Joshua Allen

It reminds me suddenly that in real life, Patrick and I used to fight sometimes, big and messy ... And I hadn't been scared to argue with him, because I'd never feared him walking away.
So why am I so scared to fight with Dan now? Or with anyone in my life, for that matter? I've spend the last decade thinking of myself as even-tempered and reasonable. But what if I've just been a chicken? What if I'm so terrified of losing the people I love that I've been slowly giving away pieces of myself just to avoid confrontation? — Kristin Harmel

The behaviour of the English people I had run into was making it very difficult to nail down a theory that the reason my trip so far had been such a bizarre success, was that Irish people were crazy. One Englishman had spent a morning on the telephone trying to organise a helicopter to take me out to an island, when a boat was leaving only a few yards away, and here was another, making a two-hour round trip for no reason other than to lend a helping hand. Two of the more eccentric pieces of behaviour hadn't been performed by the Irish, but by my fellow countrymen. However, both Andy and Tony had embraced wholeheartedly a love of the Irish way of living life. — Tony Hawks

Every piece of legislation which came to my desk in the coming years as the governor, I came down on the side of preserving the sanctity of life. — Mitt Romney

All events, no matter how earthshaking or bizarre, are diluted within moments of their occurrence the the continuance of the necessary routines of day-to-day.
-Fitz
Most prisons are of our own making. A man makes his own freedom, too.
-Chade
When you cut pieces out of the truth to avoid looking like a fool, you end up sounding like a moron instead.
-Burrich
We left. Walking uphill and into the wind. That suddenly seemed a metaphor for my whole life.
-Fitz — Robin Hobb

"Well, well!" said my aunt. "I only ask. I don't depreciate her. Poor little couple! And so you think you were formed for one another, and are to go through a party-supper-table kind of life, like two pretty pieces of confectionery, do you, Trot?" — Charles Dickens

I make a point to appreciate all the little things in my life. I go out and smell the air after a good, hard rain. I re-read passages from my favorite books. I hold the little treasures that somebody special gave me. These small actions help remind me that there are so many great, glorious pieces of good in the world. — Dolly Parton

This life is difficult. We lose fathers, brothers, mothers, songbirds and pieces of ourselves. Whips strike the innocent, honors go to the guilty, and there is too much loneliness. I would be a fool to pray for my children to escape all of that. Ask for too much and it might actually turn out worse. But I can pray for small things, like fertile fields, a mother's love, a child's smile - a life that's less bitter than sweet. — Nadia Hashimi

When I think about the past and how blind I was in that life, I compare it to being a god and losing everything when being cast out. I had the unlimited power to destroy myself and everything around me. It's like having been in a cave for years and I'm finally out of the cave. The sun burns my eyes and skin. I don't recognize my surroundings. No one looks authentic, and now I'm on the hunt for people that have the pieces to my puzzle that will help me on my quest. I have no cave to hide in, and I'm just left with the sediment of a previous life and my own mortality. — Phil Volatile

I understood it all. I understood Pablo. I understood Mozart, and somewhere behind me I heard his ghastly laughter. I knew that all the hundred thousand pieces of life's game were in my pocket. A glimpse of its meaning had stirred my reason and I was determined to begin the game afresh. I would sample its tortures once more and shudder again at its senselessness. I would traverse not once more, but often, the hell of my inner being. — Hermann Hesse

I don't see boundaries between styles, such as modern or contemporary. I've collected each piece from a different experience or period of my life. — Carlos Miele

O, you have torn my life all to pieces ... made me be what I prayed you in pity not to make me be again! — Thomas Hardy

Whatever reader desires to have a thorough comprehension of an author's thoughts cannot take a better method than by putting himself into the circumstances and postures of life that the author was in upon every important passage as it flowed from his pen; for this will introduce a parity and strict correspondence of ideas between the reader and the author. Now, to assist the diligent reader in so delicate an affair, as far as brevity will permit, I have recollected that the shrewdest pieces of this treatise were conceived in bed in a garret; at other times (for a reason best known to myself) I thought fit to sharpen my invention with hunger; and in general, the whole work was begun, continued, and ended under a long course of physic and great want of money. — Jonathan Swift

My memory is coming back. It is curious how it comes. Each day, a rush of pieces, loosely connected, unimportant bits, snake through me. They click, click, click into my brain, like links being snapped together. And then they are done. A small chain of memories that fill in one tiny part of my life. They come out of nowhere, and most are not important. — Mary E. Pearson

My life's a tangle of past and present, like two separate puzzles with their pieces tumbled together. Nothing fits. — Emily Murdoch

How could I let a love go - one I'd been holding onto for so long - one that felt like home? It's not easy to let go of the pieces, even though they're the reason for my pain. I gripped them so hard that my blood fell like rain. But nothing, nothing could have prepared me for a new life with you - one I didn't deserve, one I want to pursue. — Rachel Van Dyken

Metaphor is the currency of knowledge. I have spent my life learning incredible amounts of disparate, disconnected, obscure, useless pieces of knowledge, and they have turned out to be, almost all of them, extremely useful. — Chandler Burr

I imagined Kandinsky's mind, spread out all over the world, and then gathered together. Everyone having only a piece of the puzzle. Only in a show like this could you see the complete picture, stack the pieces up, hold them to the light, see how it all fit together. It made me hopeful, like someday my life would make sense too, if I could just hold all the pieces together at the same time. — Janet Fitch

There's just all this feeling pouring out of me, but it's wild and fierce and rapturous, like I've been waiting for it my whole life and everything makes sense now. And it's not that I'm complete, or some shit like that, because I always was, but there's a bunch of pieces of me that fit together in a way they didn't before. With Laurie. Because of Laurie. The — Alexis Hall

He pulled me toward him, and all I could do was stand there with arms at my sides and head against his chest. Broken, I feared even the slightest movement would cause pieces of me to snap off and fall to the gritty pavement. — Jodi LaPalm

I've had to adapt my wardrobe to my various roles, both at the office, as a mom, and for television. When I shop for the season I look for pieces that will suit every facet of my daily life, not just one single occasion. — Nina Garcia

Oh, I was lucky, you know, to get anyone. I was what they called an old bride of twenty-six. Of course I married him. Everyone needs to keep something private from their family.
Like a shutter in a rainstorm, banging against the window, I venture forth, retreat back, try afresh, retreat again. Nothing changes in my life and yet nothing is the same.
That did not help, Ed knew as the words hung between them and he had that all-too-familiar sensation of wanting to claw them from the air and stuff them back in his mouth.
We were all in small pieces that didn't fit together, too many countries, too many scars, too many secrets inside us.
How do you make a stranger so intimate when they could easily destroy you? — Tracy Chevalier

You completely redefine my idea of what love is and should be. That it needn't be possessive, volatile or detrimental to your well-being, but can be selfless, gentle and consistent -- and should empower you to pursue your passions. That it should balance and enrich a life, not tear it to pieces. — Beau Taplin

Perhaps winning requires that we love the game unconditionally. Life provides all the pieces. When I accepted certain parts of life and denied and ignored the rest, I could only see my life a piece at a time - the happiness of a success or a time of celebration, or the ugliness and pain of a loss or a failure I was trying hard to put behind me out of sight. But like the dark pieces of the puzzle, these sadder events, painful as they are, have proven themselves a part of something larger. — Rachel Naomi Remen

The name of life is Pain right now,
Growing pain, a familiar pain,
pain the tares my soul apart,
Pain that only those who have seen death face to face can understand,
Pain that forces me to look up, or down, and then within,
The name of life is pain right now,
Pain that tares my heart and soul to pieces,
Pain that kills, and burns,
Growing pain; that 's the name life right now. — Quetzal

I am the cockroach, I am my leg, I am my hair, I am the section of brightest light on the wall plaster - I am every Hellish piece of myself - life is so pervasive in me that if they divide me in pieces like a lizard, the pieces will keep on shaking and writhing. I am the silence etched on a wall, and the most ancient butterfly flutters in and looks at me: just the same as always. From birth to death is what I call human in myself, and I shall never actually die. But this is not eternity, it is condemnation.
How opulent this silence is. It is the accumulation of centuries. It is the silence of the cockroach looking. The world looks at itself in me. Everything looks at everything, everything experiences the other; in this desert things know things. — Clarice Lispector

My life might fall to shambles because of you." "Well, I'll be there to help you pick up the pieces. — Katie Kaleski

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

My advice is really this: what we hear the philosophers saying and what we find in their writings should be applied in our pursuit of the happy life. We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching, and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application - not far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech - and learn them so well that words become works. No one to my mind lets humanity down quite so much as those who study philosophy as if it were a sort of commercial skill and then proceed to live in a quite different manner from the way they tell other people to live. — Seneca.

Some Things, Say the Wise Ones Some things, say the wise ones who know everything, are not living. I say, you live your life your way and leave me alone. I have talked with the faint clouds in the sky when they are afraid of being left behind; I have said, Hurry, hurry! and they have said: thank you, we are hurrying. About cows, and starfish, and roses, there is no argument. They die, after all. But water is a question, so many living things in it, but what is it, itself, living or not? Oh, gleaming generosity, how can they write you out? As I think this I am sitting on the sand beside the harbor. I am holding in my hand small pieces of granite, pyrite, schist. Each one, just now, so thoroughly asleep. — Mary Oliver

Every time the phone rang, my heart jumped. Was it Alexander? And when it wasn't him my heart would break into a million pieces. It had been two longs days since I had seen my Gothic mate. I was so preoccupied with Alexander, dreaming of the next time we'd be together, nothing else mattered. I didn't wash the spot where his tender love lips had pressed against my flesh. I was acting like I was straight out of a Gidget movie! What had happened to me? I was losing my edge! For the first time in my life I was really afraid. Afraid of never seeing him again and afraid of being rejected. — Ellen Schreiber

More than that, I liked being known, and for the first time in my life, I was known by another. I'm not saying I liked what she knew about me, not proud of the bits and pieces, but somehow she was standing inside my skin and yet I didn't experience shame at her reflection. — Charles Martin

The pieces of my life can never seem to stay in one place. — Lauren DeStefano

I saw myself, sharply, as a wanderer, an adventurer, rocking through the world, unanchored.
[ ... ]
The wind of my life was blowing me away.
[ ... ]
I take the blue envelope ... and tear it slowly into many pieces, watching them dance in the wind, watching the wind carry them away. Yet as I turn and begin walking toward the waiting people, the wind blows some of them back on me. — James Baldwin