The Way I See Life Quotes & Sayings

You can't imagine fame. You can only ever see it from an outsider and comment on it with the rueful wisdom of a non participant. When it happens to you, it doesn't matter what age or how, it is a very steep learning curve. The imprtanot thing to realize in all of it is that life is short, to protect the ones you love, and not expose yourself to too much abuse or narcissistic reflection gazing and move on. If fame affords me the type of ability to do the kind of work I'm being offered, who am I to complain about the downsides. It's all relative. And this are obviously very high class problems. The way privacy becomes an every shrinking island is inevitable but also manageable and it doesn't necessary have to get that way ... — Benedict Cumberbatch

JAMIE'S SONG 'WHERE YOU ARE':

I left my heart at your door,
Don't tread on it on your way out.
It's convulsing on the floor,
Can't you hear it scream and shout?

I dropped my life by your feet,
Don't kick it as you walk down the street.
I put my dreams in your hand,
Don't let them slip through your fingers like grains of sand.

And my eyes will watch you from afar,
Guide you like a shooting star.

And you'll see that I'll always be where you are.
Where you are.
Yes, you know that I'll always be where you are.

Yes my eyes will watch you from afar,
Guide you like a shooting star.
And you'll see that I'll always be where you are.
Where you are. — Neha Yazmin

Life bullies us son, but God don't. He had good reasons for fixin' it where if'n you git too sick or too hurt to live, why, you can die, same as a sick chicken. I've knowed a few really sick chickens to git well, and lots a-folks git well thet nobody ever thought to see out a-bed agin cept in a coffin. Still and all, common sense tells you this much: everwhat makes a wheel run over a track will make it run over a boy if'n he's in the way. If'n you'd a got kilt, it'd mean you jest didn't move fast enough, like a rabbit that gits caught by a hound dog ... When it comes to prayin' we got it all over the other animals, but we ain't no different when it comes to livin' and dyin'. If'n you give God the credit when somebody don't die, you go'n blame Him when they do die? Call it His Will? Ever noticed we git well all the time and don't die but once't? Thet has to mean God always wants us to live if'n we can. — Olive Ann Burns

Anya, you aren't getting' this but two weeks ago when you walked into my bedroom to use my phone, the life you been livin' which isn't all that good got better. A fuckuva lot better. Because I'm gonna make it that way. And in return, I'm gonna ask very little of you. And right now, all I'm askin' is for you to hang here until I come home so I can spent more time with you since I probably not gonna see you again for another week. — Kristen Ashley

I smell the fresh sea air, and have never felt so at home in my life, out on the open waters, no land as far as the eye can see. It's amazing, beautiful and the air smells of adventure, just the way it should. Just the way it always would if I could control everythig. — Naya S.

Education has fundamentally changed my life. It's perhaps the mission of my life. I'm wed to it in a very powerful and personal way. And I chose the pathway that I believe could make me the most significant on changing the outcomes that we see now in North Carolina. — Bev Perdue

You will then. Listen here ... I've always got this to look forward to: I'll settle down by that man's side. I'll be as virtuous as any woman. I've made up my mind to it and I'll be it. And I'll be bored stiff for the rest of my life. Except for one thing. I can torment that man. And I'll do it. Do you understand how I'll do it? There are many ways. But if the worst comes to the worst I can always drive him silly ... by corrupting the child!' She was panting a little, and round her brown eyes the whites showed. 'I'll get even with him. I can. I know how, you see. And with you, through him, for tormenting me. I've come all the way from Brittany without stopping. I haven't slept ... But I can ... — Ford Madox Ford

There's two things you can do with a kid like that. Way I see it. You can burst his bubble. Or you can wait and let life burst it. Let life do the dirty work for you. If you burst it he'll hate you forever. And he'll never really believe he couldn't have made it. He'll always think it's your fault for standing in his way. For not having more faith in him. Now, life. When life bursts your bubble, well. It's a little harder to argue with life. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

The landscape started hard, sharp black mountains over my shoulder and thirsty young saguaros hugging patchy dirt. Gradually it let go, began to green on me a little. I crossed a river, watched succulents get fatter and farmland start to wave, hoarding the blue above and the few clouds it had to spare.

I knew the route somehow, knew the curves, the directions, the exact way to go. I knew it the way you know the stars are still up in the sky even though white sun obscures them. Everything that had happened before Lukeville and Sonoita began to liquify in memory, feeling more like fiction than personal history. Funerals and pain, girlfriends and mothers, roommates and priests all tumble away with the desert behind me. The only thing that's real is the road I see ahead. The only person in my life is the man sitting silently beside me. The place I'm going is the only place I've ever wanted to go. — Laurie Perez

To make sense of plastic on the mind and to develop a resistance to the perverse patterns that will otherwise run our world for us, I believe an activity of this sort - by way of a blog, an especially redemptive conversation with a coworker, a water coloring or a playlist - is absolutely crucial. It can be done. And when we do it, we begin to see things we didn't know. We have to try to make sense. We have to make time for artful analysis, which is the way we clear a space for the possibility of sanity. It is an outlet for honesty. — David Dark

At the dawn of my days, when still a little child, I had an older brother who died in his youth, before my eyes, being only seventeen years old. And later, making my way through life, I gradually came to see that this brother was, as it were, a pointer and a destination from above in my fate, for if he had not appeared in my life, if he had not been at all, then never, perhaps, as I think, would I have entered monastic orders and set out upon this precious path. That first appearance was still in my childhood, and now, on the decline of my path, a repetition of him, as it were, appeared before my eyes. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

How could he not see all the ways he'd changed my life? How could he not know-
But he didn't. It was in the way he turned his head away, when I just stood there. In the way he closed his eyes. In the small, self-mocking smile that played around his lips that I didn't understand but knew couldn't be good. — Karen Chance

Handicaps are mindsets. Whatever it is that stands in the way of achieving something, that's when it's a handicap. I prefer to see them as obstacles or challenges. This is how I've been my whole life. I don't know any different. I just live my life through my feet. — Jessica Cox

Watch this, Larry. The seeds I saved from last year bring forth plants this year. It's a death, burial, and resurrection. It's this way with the sun also. It comes up in the morning and brings us light all the day long. But in the evening it goes down. Is that the end of the sun? No... It comes up the very next day. Death, burial, and resurrection."
"I never saw it like that, Charlie. Tell me more."
"See Larry, let's go deeper with that. Just for instance, something must die for something to live. You and I eat live substance--whether it is corn or beans, it's a life. That life dies to give us life. Now watch this, Larry. If that works with the physical; then it also works in the spiritual. Jesus Christ had to die to give us life... — Jerrel C. Thomas

When I was young I believed people should be told everything and that, as a pastor, I had a duty to share all my knowledge. Over the years I came to see that was a mistake. A person may know only what they are capable of assimilating. I have been thinking about this for half my life, and especially since I have been in Israel, but there are few people I can confide in. Really only you. You see, it is a terrible thing to disturb someone's equilibrium. If a person has become accustomed to thinking in a particular way, even a slight digression from that can prove painful. Not everybody is open to new ideas, to making their understanding more precise and supplementing it, to change. I have to admit that I am changing. Today my views on many matters have diverged from those generally accepted in the Catholic world, and I am not the only person in that situation. "You see, the birth of the One whom — Lyudmila Ulitskaya

I couldn't go anywhere unless there was a security guard with me. That spoiled my life. It was like being in captivity. Those days are gone, and I don't ever want to see that happen to me again. Now I can wander around the streets of Los Angeles on my own. I like it that way. — Christine McVie

On the trail, all I had to do was walk. It was up to me how far I wanted to walk and where I wanted to end up. I could stop when I wanted, I could eat when I wanted, I could take naps at any point during the day.The trail allowed me to feel a strong sense of freedom. And it helped me to see the oppression of a busy schedule and the way we multitask in civilization. I no longer saw what was civil about filling my life with commitments if I couldn't stop to watch the sunset or listen to the birds sing. — Jennifer Pharr Davis

I was lucky in that I had a mother that was full of this colloquial wisdom and she used to say to me 'You know, failure is not the opposite of success, it's the stepping stone to success. There is nobody who has not failed along the way.' So I think its very important for young women, especially as they are starting in life, to recognize that because otherwise, they only see people's success. So, when I speak, I speak of my failures. — Arianna Huffington

Some people who've read my story think I had a terrible childhood and that I was neglected or even abused, while others feel that my parents, while certainly flawed, also had truly wonderful qualities. And that's the way it should be, because in real life two people can look at the same president and one will see a hero and the other a villain. — Jeannette Walls

As for bread, I count that for nothin'. We always have bread and potatoes enough; but I hold a family to be in a desperate way when the mother can see the bottom of the pork barrel. Give me children that's raised on good sound pork afore all the game in the country. Game's good as a relish and so's bread; but pork is the staff of life ... My children I calkerlate to bring up on pork with just as much bread and butter as they want. — James F. Cooper

We're in a strange situation where people either don't read at all or they read a lot. There's a huge gap in between. That's something that would be good to bridge so it doesn't have to be one thing or the other. Books could be part of life in a more relaxed way. I'd like to see that. — Jeanette Winterson

I remember this scene because it was embarrassing to live through it, and because remembering it is a way of knowing that I am half-true to my beliefs when the time comes. I sit silently defending them and I don't sell them out, but I put on a face that lets people think I'm on the winning team, that I'm laughing along with them instead of just standing among them. I save the best parts for myself and savor them in silence. Number three, power of flight. Number four, marauder. Enough vision to really see something. A stack of gold coins and a ledger. People want all kinds of things out of life, I knew early on. — John Darnielle

I'd like them to see that those things that set us apart or make us different can be wonderful contributions to the world around us. I'd like them to see that size and color are irrelevant to the dreams we envision for ourselves. And I'd also love for them to see that life is a journey, and every step of the way, we can learn something and become stronger and wiser. — Gloria Estefan

The way black women say "girl" can be magical. Frankly, I have no solid beliefs about the survival of consciousness after physical death. But if it's going to happen I know what I want to see after my trek toward the light. I want to see a black woman who will smile and say, "Girl ... — Abigail Padgett

For communication to have meaning it must have a life. It must transcend "you and me" and become "us." If I truly communicate, I see in you a life that is not me and partake of it. And you see and partake of me. In a small way we then grow out of our old selves and become something new. To have this kind of sharing I cannot enter into a conversation clutching myself. I must enter into it with loose boundaries. I must give myself to the relationship, and be willing to be what grows out of it. — Hugh Prather

No Belle, you're wrong. No one will ever make me feel the way I do with you. I know this with the certainty that the sun will set today and rise again tomorrow. The kind of certainty that when the moon rises and the stars blink in the sky that they'll all still look way too dim to me. They'll always look too dim because you are the brightest star in my life and, without you, everything else seems cloudy. I only seem to see things clearly when you're around and I know all of that because you are my soul — Jessie Lane

If I was writing a lifestyle book it would have the same advice on every page, and you'd know it all already. Eat lots of fruit and vegetables, and live your whole life in every way as well as you can: exercise regularly as part of your daily routine, avoid obesity, don't drink too much, don't smoke, and don't get distracted from the real, basic, simple causes of ill health. But as we will see, even these things are hard to do on your own, and in reality require wholesale social and political changes. — Ben Goldacre

To be fully human is perhaps why I'm Christian, because I see in the life of Jesus a way of being fully human. — Barbara Brown Taylor

Brandy says, "Don't you see? Because we're so trained to do life the right way. To not make mistakes." Brandy says, "I figure, the bigger the mistake looks, the better chance I'll have to break out and live a real life. — Chuck Palahniuk

I resolve to be more patient, less selfish, cherish my friends, and in my small way help whoever needs help. I cannot conceivably influence the world's destiny, but I can make my own life more worthwhile. I can give some help to some people; that is not vital to all the world's problems and yet, I think if everyone did just that, we might see quite a world in our time! — Gladys Taber

In German one of the terms for imagination is the compound word Einbildungskraft: literally, the "power ( Kraft)" of "forming ( Bildung)" into "one (Ein)." Here I want us to reflect about faith as a kind of imagination. Faith forms a way of seeing our everyday life in relation to holistic images of what we may call the ultimate environment. Human action always involves responses and initiatives. We shape our action ( our responses and initiatives) in accordance with what we see to be going on. We seek to fit our actions into, or oppose them to , larger patterns of action and meaning. Faith, in its binding us to centers of value and power and in its triadic joining of us into communities of shared trusts and loyalties, gives forms and content to our imaging of an ultimate environment. — James W. Fowler

The way I see it, truth only looks good when you're looking at it from far away. It's kind of like that beautiful girl you see on the street when you're riding past in the bus ... there she is, this amazing girl walking by on the street, and you think if you could only get off this stupid bus and introduce yourself to her, your life would change.
The thing is, she's not as perfect as you think, and if you ever got off the bus to introduce yourself, you'd find out ... This girl is truth. She's not so pretty, not so nice. But then, once you get to know her, all that stuff doesn't seem to matter. — Neal Shusterman

I thought that you said that your name was reserved only for family." A small smile broke through his stoic expression.
"The way I see it, even if you don't come around and realize that you can't resist my striking looks and enticing charm, and that you desperately want to spend the rest of your life in my arms - "
"Which will never happen ... "
" - you'll eventually end up with my silly little brother. Who, just to warn you, despite being a great guy, is nowhere near as handsome and charming as I. — Ada Adams

Walks are never as good during the day. At night, when everyone's apartments are lit up and you can see inside, that's where the action is. Everything about this fascinates me. Windows, lampposts, building facades. Looking into other people's lives. The way it all comes together, this entity greater than the sum of its parts. I feel inspired. I'm excited about my future life. — Susane Colasanti

Cinderella was such a dork. She left behind her glass slipper at the ball and then went right back to her step-monster's house. It seems to me she should have worn the glass slipper always, to make herself easier to find. I always hoped that after the prince found Cinderella and they rode away in their magnificent carriage, after a few miles she turned to him and said, Could you drop me off down the road please? Now that I've finally escaped my life of horrific abuse, I'd like to see something of the world, you know? ... I'll catch back up with you later, Prince, once I've found my own way. — Rachel Cohn

I'm planning to go redneck chic with the wedding," Maddy announced, looking through the racks of dresses.
"What the hell is that?"
"Redneck chic is a nice way of saying I have bad taste, but I'm embracing it."
Sizing up Maddy's blonde girl next door beauty, I found her dressed normal. "Bad taste how? Is this about Tucker because, yeah, I see it?"
Maddy rolled her blue eyes then walked to the next rack. "Tucker is gorgeous. He's the classiest part of my life."
Nearby, Raven burst into laughter to the point of nearly pissing herself. I didn't blame her since we'd all seen Tucker fall off chairs and struggle with push/ pull doors. Classy, he was not. — Bijou Hunter

One thing became crystal clear to me when I couldn't see you anymore. I realized that the only way I had been able to survive until then was having you in my life. When I lost you, the pain and loneliness really got to me. — Haruki Murakami

Christy said. "It's just weird, your seeing him like that. What are you going to do?"
"Nothing. What can I do?"
"Maybe he'll call you to see if you're okay," Katie said.
"No," Christy said, "in the movies he would have told his friend to stop the car, and he would have run back to you with an umbrella and walked you the rest of the way hoe, and you would have made him a pot of tea."
Sierra laughed. "I am drinking tea right now," she said. "Maybe my life is a low budget 'B' movie, and all I get is the tea. No hero. No umbrella."
"Yeah, well then my life is a class 'Z' movie," Katie said. "No tea. No hero. No umbrella. No plot
"
"Yours is more of a mystery," Christy interrupted cheerfully. "The ending will surprise all of us. — Robin Jones Gunn

I heard my old friend Clem's voice coming back to me through the dimness of thirty years: "I see you coming here trying to make sense where there is no sense. Try just living in it. Respond, alter, see what happens." I thought of the African way of perceiving life, as experience to be lived rather than as problem to be solved. — Audre Lorde

Life is our teacher. Life communicates with us all the time and it is a lesson to see how life continuously has led me to the people I need to met, to the situations I need to experience, and to the places I need to be. There has never been any real reason to worry since all small individual rivers are already on their way to the ocean, to the Whole. It is not about swimming, it is about relaxing and to float with the river in a basic trust that life already leads towards the sea of consciousness, towards the Whole. — Swami Dhyan Giten

Inside you is a thing worth putting on a pedestal
worth putting out there for all the world to see. That piece of rock might been knocked around, roughed up a bit, considered scrap, and thrown on the trash pile ... but that's only because they don't know what's on the inside. They can't see like Michaelangelo. 'Cause if they could, they'd know that there's something in there that's just waiting to jump out. Like there is inside you. I'm sorry for the hammer and chisel. I wish life didn't work that way. Just remember ... the velvet cloth ain't far behind. — Charles Martin

The way that I see Christianity is that its role is to enhance the life of every person. — John Shelby Spong

Sometimes I'd see my father, walking past my building on his way to another nowhere. I could have given him a key, offered a piece of my floor. A futon. A bed. But I never did. If I let him inside I would become him, the line between us would blur, my own slow-motion car wreck would speed up. The slogan on the side of a moving company truck read TOGETHER WE ARE GOING PLACES
modified by a vandal or a disgruntled employee to read TOGETHER WE ARE GOING DOWN. If I went to the drowning man the drowning man would pull me under. I couldn't be his life raft. — Nick Flynn

I started to discover the meaning of happiness when I started to discover
and practice
the art of acceptance. When I started to accept life for what it was and I started to accept whatever situation I was in as the way things were, I started to see that my happiness depended on my own attitude. When I started focusing on getting the most out of my life the way it was rather than trying to turn it into what I thought it should be, I started to realize that I was, indeed, becoming a much happier person. — Tom Walsh

When you're really passionate, you're going to grab hold of every rope you see, and wrap them around your arms and legs to claw your way out. And that's the way I've felt in my life. — Viola Davis

If you saw her in these moments, you might think she was collecting her thoughts in order to go forward. But I see it another way: Her mind is being overwhelmed by two processes that must simultaneously proceed at full steam. One is to deal with and live in the present world. The other is to re-experience and mourn something that happened long ago. It is as though her lightness pulls her toward heaven, but the extra gravity around her keeps her earthbound. — Steve Martin

When we are acting like God, we are being ourselves! The ramifications of having God as our Daddy (rather than some ape dragging his knuckles in the African jungle somewhere) is life changing. I hope you can see that what you believe about your origin makes a difference in the way you value yourself and humanity in general. — Kris Vallotton

I would not have put it this way in those days, but because I was born a woman, I could never become an adult. I would always be a minor, my decisions made for me. I would always be
a unit in a vast beehive. I might have a decent life, but I would be dependent - always - on someone treating me well.
I knew that another kind of life was possible. I had read about it, and now I could see it, smell it in the air around me: the kind of life I had always wanted, with a real education, a real job, a real marriage. I wanted to make my own decisions. I wanted to become a person, an individual, with a life of my own. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

He shook his head. You're asking that I make myself vulnerable and that I can never do. I have only one way to live. It doesn't allow for special cases. A coin toss perhaps. In this case to small purpose. Most people don't believe that there can be such a person. You see what a problem that must be for them. How to prevail over that which you refuse to acknowledge the existence of. Do you understand? When I came into your life your life was over. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is the end. You can say that things could have turned out differently. That there could have been some other way. But what does that mean? They are not some other way. They are this way. You're asking that I second say the world. Do you see?
Yes, she said sobbing. I do. I truly do.
Good, he said. That's good. Then he shot her. — Cormac McCarthy

Whenever I visit a market and see the chickens crowded together in tiny cages that give them no room to move around and spread their wings and the fish slowly drowning in the air, my heart goes out to them. People have to learn to think about animals in a different way, as sentient beings who love life and fear death. I urge everyone who can to adopt a compassionate vegetarian diet. — Dalai Lama

I don't want to feel you die,
but if that's the way that God has planned you
Well, I'll put pennies on your eyes.
And it will go away, see?
You've only lived a minute of your life.
I must be dreaming ...
Is someone calling me? No ...
I think I hear a voice,
They're outside the door! — Alice Cooper

We all have a family and I think we all have a perception of our family that we like to keep and we all have our positive memories in a certain way. Then when life catches up to them, when you see a different perspective of them, or when you are a couple degrees over, you can see things differently and it shakes you to the foundation. — David Shapiro

My son was singing to us of our Father! Of Yeshua ... Of himself, the truest part of him, and of me, the me that was now risen and complete, joined in Yeshua's identity, like water in a bowl and the bowl in the water at once. He was the Way. The Truth. Life. No one could know the Father without this joining. And the song said more, all at once, like the opening of eyes to see an entire landscape once darkened by blindness. The mystery Talya sang to me in that single note could fill a hundred scrolls. I stood high in that arena and I trembled with wonder. TALYA — Ted Dekker

that I had to know you, that I needed you in my life. I've never felt that way about anyone, ever. Whatever happens will be up to you, but I'll be a different man if I can't have you. I will never breathe as deeply as I did when I was with you. I'll never see the range of color on a perfectly cloudless sky. I will never smell anything as sweet as you or hear a voice that fills my heart up as much as yours does. That night in my truck, when I had the low, I knew without a doubt, even though I had never been in love before . . . I knew that I was in love with you. — Renee Carlino

The way I see it, every time a man gets up in the morning he starts his life over. Sure, the bills are there to pay, and the job is there to do, but you don't have to stay in a pattern. You can always start over, saddle a fresh horse and take another trail. — Louis L'Amour

To see takes time, like having a friend takes time. It is as simple as turning off the television to learn the song of a single bird. Why should anyone do such things? I cannot imagine - unless one is weary of crossing days off the calendar with no sense of what makes the last day different from the next. Unless one is weary of acting in what feels more like a television commercial than a life. The practice of paying attention offers no quick fix for such weariness, with guaranteed results printed on the side. Instead, it is one way into a different way of life, full of treasure for those who are willing to pay attention to exactly where they are. — Barbara Brown Taylor

I feel jerked around. I feel sympathetic. I feel abused. It's almost harder to see Nathaniel on the good days than the bad, because you let yourself be deceived into thinking he's going to stay that way ... And I can't just walk away. Part of it is the desire to follow through on something that's become more important and meaningful in my life, and to satisfy the human instinct to help someone less fortunate. And maybe there's something more. — Steve Lopez

I had to learn to think, feel and see in a totally new fashion, in an uneducated way, in my own way, which is the hardest thing in the world. I had to throw myself into the current, knowing that I would probably sink. The great majority of artists are throwing themselves in with life-preservers around their necks, and more often than not it is the life-preserver which sinks them. — Henry Miller

Did you see Grace is back with us?"
Megan did see me. She saw me jump off a cliff and crawl under an Iranian fence. Megan has seen plenty. And I can't help but hold my breath, waiting on her answer.
"Hi," Megan says, turning to me. "Welcome home."
Home. The word hits me. I've spent all my life thinking that I didn't have one, but now that I'm back I can't deny that I've spent more my life on Embassy Row than in any other place-that maybe it just wasn't my mother's childhood home. In a way, it's mine, too. — Ally Carter

How big is a man's life?" asked Ultan.
"I have no way of knowing, but isn't it larger than that?"
"You see it from the beginning, and anticipate much. I, recollecting it from its termination, know how little there has been. I suppose that is why the depraved creatures who devour the bodies of the dead seek more. — Gene Wolfe

Those who find no humor in faith are probably those who find the church a refuge for their own black way of looking at life, although I think many of us find the church a refuge for a lot of our personality faults. Those of us, for example, who never learned to dance feel that the church is an ideal place for us if we can find a church that doesn't believe in dancing. Then we can get away with never having learned how to dance. You can carry this in all sorts of directions and see that the church is a refuge for what is really a 'flaw' in your own makeup. — Charles M. Schulz

The way I see it, the difference between farmers and suburbanites is the difference in the way we feel about dirt. To them, the earth is something to be respected and preserved, but dirt gets no respect. A farmer likes dirt. Suburbanites like to get rid of it. Dirt is the working layer of earth, and dealing with dirt is as much a part of farm life as dealing with manure. Neither is user-friendly but both are necessary. — E.L. Konigsburg

I want to say to all you Scribes, Pharisees, heresy hunters, all of you that are going around pickin' little bits of doctrinal error out of everybody's eyes and dividin' the Body of Christ ... get out of God's way, stop blockin' God's bridges, or God's goin' to shoot you if I don't ... let Him sort out all this doctrinal doodoo! ... I refuse to argue any longer with any of you out there! Don't even call me if you want to argue ... Get out of my life! I don't want to talk to you ... I don't want to see your ugly face! — Paul Crouch

Shelley," I say. "You should've let him win. You know, to be polite." Shelley's response is a shake of her head. Applesauce drips on her chin. "That's the way it's going to be, huh?" I say, hoping the scene doesn't gross Alex out. Maybe I'm testing him, to see if he can handle a glimpse of my home life. If so, he's passing. "Wait until Alex leaves. I'll show you who the checkers champion is."
My sister smiles that sweet, crooked smile of hers. It's like a thousand words put into one expression. For a moment I forget Alex is still watching me. It's so weird having him inside my life and my house. He doesn't belong, yet he doesn't seem to mind being here. — Simone Elkeles

Whether you face reality head on and make a life change, or deny your responsibility, you've made a choice. The way I see it you choose either a life of abundant strength and energy, or you're living in the gap, far beneath the quality of life you could be enjoying. — Shawn Phillips

The worst question is, 'Where do you see yourself in five years?' I don't know. Variety is the spice of life. That's the best way to describe it. — Anton Du Beke

I want to see everything now. And while none of it will be me when it goes in, after a while it'll all gather together inside and it'll be me. Look at the world out there, my God, my God, look at it out there, outside me, out there beyond my face and the only way to really touch it is to put it where it's finally me, where it's in the blood, where it pumps around a thousand times ten thousand a day. I'll get hold of it so it'll never run off. I'll hold onto the world so tight some day. I've got a finger on it now; that's a beginning. — Ray Bradbury

So my life and the life of my family has been completely disrupted in absolutely every way. But it's been worth it. It's uncovered a vast cesspool of illegitimate economic and political power in which the Church is immersed right up to its ears, and I intend to dive in headfirst and pull it out of there dripping wet for all the world to see
no matter how long it takes, no matter whose feet get stepped on in the process, no matter how much it costs, no matter how great the personal sacrifice. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

If I had to wish for something, just one thing, it would be that Hannah would never see Tate the way I did. Never see Tate's beautiful, lush hair turn brittle, her skin sallow, her teeth ruined by anything she could get her hands on that would make her forget. That Hannah would never count how many men there were, or how vile humans can be to one another. That she would never see the moments in my life that were full of neglect, and fear, and revulsion, moments I can never go back to because I know they will slow me down for the rest of my life if I let myself remember them for one moment. Tate, who had kept Hannah alive that night, reading her the story of Jem Finch and Mrs. Dubose. And suddenly I know I have to go. But this time without being chased by the Brigadier, without experiencing the kindness of a postman from Yass, and without taking along a Cadet who will change the way I breath for the rest of my life. — Melina Marchetta

There's a hard life for every silver spoon.
There's a touch of gray for every shade of blue.
That's the way I see life.
If there was nothing wrong ...
Then there'd be nothing right. — Shinedown

Dear Pighead, The reason I am so distant is because, well, there are two reasons actually. The first reason is my drinking. I require alcohol, nightly. And nothing can get in the way. The second reason is your disease. I can't stand the idea of getting close to you, or closer, only to have you up and die on me, pulling the carpet out from under my life. You're my best friend. The best friend I ever had. I have to protect that. I don't call you or see you much because I'm killing you off now, while it's easier. Because I can still talk to you. It makes sense to me to separate now, while you're still healthy, as opposed to having it just happen to me one night out of the blue. I'm trying to evenly distribute the pain of loss. As opposed to taking it in one lump sum. — Augusten Burroughs

I am a black bird, a Raven, I am Raven. I know and I am knowing - I know and see life and death, expansion and contraction and I do not shiver and cry - I am unafraid.

I am Raven. I am black as liquid night with wings and my eyes are stars to see by.

The light within me leads the way and it is revealed through my eyes and I am what lies between the dark and light.

I am the balance between. — Sophia Rose

Watching the way he treats you made me realize that maybe I had set my sights too low. After chasing someone who didn't give me the time of day ... I just see how Vincent anticipates your every desire and tries to make it come true for you. How, when he sees you walk into a room, it's like he's transformed into this person who is bigger and better than the one he was just minutes before. I want to be that for someone. I think I deserve it. And I'm not going to pine away for a guy who feels that for someone else. So until my own chivalrous knight shows up, I've decided to live a full life and be happy with my lot. — Amy Plum

I definitely see the good in people. Certainly in my own life I strive to be somebody who is functional and well adjusted and can face conflict in a non-emotional and non-destructive way, and those are the people I try to surround myself with in my life. But as characters, they bore me. — Alan Ball

Ivanov: And this whole romance of ours is commonplace and trite: he lost heart, and he lost his way. She came along, strong and brave in spirit, and gave him an helping hand. That's all very well and plausible in novels, but in life ...
Sasha: In life it's the same.
Ivanov: I see you have a fine understanding of life! — Anton Chekhov

Good evening, London. I would introduce myself, but truth to tell, I do not have a name. You can call me "V". Since mankind's dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We've seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the slaughterhouse. In anarchy, there is another way. With anarchy, from rubble comes new life, hope reinstated. They say anarchy's dead, but see ... reports of my death were ... exaggerated. Tomorrow, Downing Street will be destroyed, the Head reduced to ruins, an end to what has gone before. Tonight, you must choose what comes next. Lives of our own, or a return to chains. Choose carefully. And so, adieu. — Alan Moore

My focus has always been on talent over looks. This theme of people putting an emphasis on looks first has been a constant reminder throughout my life that most people don't see things in the same way that I do. — Jennifer Hudson

I did not see any way that I could possibly give birth to someone else and also give birth to myself. Far from feeling guilty, it was the first time that I had taken responsibility for my own life. — Gloria Steinem

Not the first time. I didn't think my heart could stand it. But the airplane is a wonderful thing. You are still in one place when you arrive at the other. The airplane is faster than the heart. You arrive quickly and you leave quickly. You don't grieve too much. And there is something else about the airplane. You can go back many times to the same place. And something strange happens if you go back often enough. You stop grieving for the past. You see that the past is something in your mind alone, that it doesn't exist in real life. You trample on the past, you crush it. In the beginning it is like trampling on a garden. In the end you are just walking on ground. That is the way we have to learn to live now. The past is here." He touched his heart. "It isn't there." And he pointed at the dusty road. I — V.S. Naipaul

To be honest, I love watching some of the old cartoons and new ones that are popular. It's another way to make me happy and reminisce the good old times. Plus, it makes me forget the recreational world around me. If only the economy would let loose and not tire everyone out. I'm just saying. People have an inner child somewhere. I have one, too. So it's cool to have an inner child at times. It can brighten your day and see another view in life. — Simi Sunny

People always find it so frustrating that there's no structure they can see, that they just have to follow the river downstream and see what they find. They want to know the plot so they can guess the end, because they're afraid of what it might be. I can understand that, even though I know it's not the way things work. I never know what the hell's going to happen next, but I can live with that. — Michael Marshall Smith

I've never seen myself as a celebrity, but I see it in a positive way, the fact that people are still interested in most parts of my life. — David Beckham

For sure we live in a youth-obsessed culture that is constantly trying to tell us that if we're not young and glowing and "hot," we don't matter. But I refuse to buy into such a distorted view of reality. And I would never lie about or deny my age. To do so is to contribute to a sickness pervading our society - the sickness of wanting to be what you're not. I know for sure that only by owning who and what you are can you step into the fullness of life. I feel sorry for anyone who buys into the myth that you can be what you once were. The way to your best life isn't denial. It's owning every moment and staking a claim to the here and now. You're not the same woman you were a decade ago; if you're lucky, you're not the same woman you were last year. The whole point of aging, as I see it, is change. If we let them, our experiences can keep teaching us about ourselves. I celebrate that. Honor it. Hold it in reverence. And I'm grateful for every age I'm blessed to become. — Oprah Winfrey

The way I see it, you can live your life as is, continuing to feel like an underdog, or you can step up. Be someone who matters, and make a change. — Kayla Krantz

Being polite is not only the right way to respond to people but also the easiest. Life is so filled with unavoidable conflict that I see no reason to promote more confrontations. — Dean Koontz

But what I've also really liked about it is that it not only has Marvel set about ... if they just were slavishly trying to bring the comic books to life, literally, I don't the movies would work, because it's different to see something on screen in three dimensions with actors, and they kind of, I believe, are constantly trying to find a way to absolutely respect the source material and at the same time, transform it into something that works and that you believe on screen. — Clark Gregg

True understanding is to see the events of life in this way: 'You are here for my benefit, though rumor paints you otherwise.' And everything is turned to one's advantage when he greets a situation like this: You are the very thing I was looking for. Truly whatever arises in life is the right material to bring about your growth and the growth of those around you. This, in a word, is art
and this art called 'life' is a practice suitable to both men and gods. Everything contains some special purpose and a hidden blessing; what then could be strange or arduous when all of life is here to greet you like an old and faithful friend? — Marcus Aurelius

I'm sorry. I don't know how many times to tell you this for you to know it," I continued. "Francesca ... the night you stayed with me was the best night of my life. I've never felt more alive, more loved, happier, than when I hold you in my arms. Seeing your face makes my heart beat faster, in a good way, and I feel this calmness come over me. I don't know why, but it's always been this way with you. I understand if you can't forgive me, and I know you could do better, but I'm going to try my damnedest to make it up to you when I get out of here. I don't care if it takes a year, or ten, or even twenty. I will make you see how much I care. — Felicia Tatum

But I had learned to survive. I may have felt as if I couldn't breathe freely at times, may have felt caged and desperate, may have questioned all I ever was, but I had learned enough to keep me where I needed to be and to live to see what life would continue to bring my way if I continued to look for it. — Sherry Scott

Some men can be very rude. On the other hand, some clients are absolute angels. One john always brought me a gift every time he came to see me. He brought me a pearl necklace, a ring, a bra or something. But eventually, as much as I really loved all the gifts, he fell in love with me, and he tried to weasel his way into my life. It was too much and I sort of had to 'break up with him. — Annie Sprinkle

What I know now, my son: Evil begets evil. It grows. It transmutes, so that sometimes you cannot see that the evil in the world began as the evil in your own home. I'm sorry you have suffered. I'm sorry for the way your suffering casts a shadow over your life, over the woman you have yet to marry, the children you have yet to have. — Yaa Gyasi

On game days, I could be in the worst mood imagiable-a really bad mood. But sometimes, I'd get a call from the Make-A-Wish Foundation-there would be people, sometimes kids, who anted to meet me before they died. And the foundation would call on a game day and say, "There's kid dying here whose last wish is to see you. Can you just come and see him?" I'd get there and sometimes the kid would be comatose. One day, a kid woke up for a split second and smiled at me. I was told he'd been hanging on. The mom and dad called me later and said, "I don't know what yu did to him, but those few moments were wonderful." And I cried all the way to the game, just cried my eyes out.
It's very scary. It's uplifting, too, but so scary. And then ... I'm bitching because my breakfast is cold? — Charles Barkley

People really do identify with the characters they see on the show, but these days, social media allows you to interact with fans in a really interesting way. On my Twitter account, I'm Chris Carmack, not Will Lexington. I interact with fans and joke with them. I'll post pictures from my life. I think that helps drop the curtain of a character. — Chris Carmack

Well, if I were you, I'd leave him. I'd find someone with a more normal way of looking at things and live happily ever after. There's no way in hell you can be happy with him. The way he lives, it never crosses his mind to try to make himself happy or to make others happy. Staying with him will only wreck your nervous system. To me, it's already a miracle that you've been with him three years. Of course, I'm very fond of him in my own way. He's fun, and he has lots of great qualities.
He has strengths and abilities that I could never hope to match. But in the end, his ideas about things and the way he lives his life are not normal. Sometimes, when I'm talking to him, I feel as if I'm going
around and around in circles. The same process that takes him higher and higher leaves me going around in circles. It makes me feel so empty! Finally, our very systems are totally different. Do you see what I'm saying? — Haruki Murakami

God is the original, master forgiver. Each time we grope our reluctant way through the minor miracle of forgiving, we are imitating his style. I am not at all sure that any of us would have had imagination enough to see the possibilities in this way to heal the wrongs of this life had he not done it first. — Lewis B. Smedes

Carol and I have found that unless God baptizes us with fresh outpourings of love, we would leave New York City yesterday! We don't live in this crowded, ill-mannered, violent city because we like it. Whenever I meet or read about a guy who has sexually abused a little girl, I'm tempted in my flesh to throw him out a fifth-story window. This isn't an easy place for love to flourish. But Christ died for that man. What could ever change him? What could ever replace the lust and violence in his heart? He isn't likely to read the theological commentaries on my bookshelves. He desperately needs to be surprised by the power of a loving, almighty God. If the Spirit is not keeping my heart in line with my doctrine, something crucial is missing. I can affirm the existence of Jesus Christ all I want, but in order to be effective, he must come alive in my life in a way that even the pedophile, the prostitute, and the pusher can see. — Jim Cymbala

See, Cameron. The only things I care about in this life are me, you, Mum, Dad, Steve and Sarah. And maybe Miffy. The rest of the world means nothing to me. The rest of the world can rot.'
Am I like that too?'
You? No way.' There's a slight gap in his words. 'And that's your problem. You care about everything.'
He's right.
I do. — Markus Zusak

See, the thing is, I don't do flings. I don't mess around, I don't have affairs, I don't usually go out on a date with a person unless they're someone I think I could get serious about. I just don't operate that way, because I'm not very casual about my love life. Or my sex life. Those aren't separate things for me. — Elle Parker

I recognized that Christianity had taught me that sacrifice is the way of life. I forgot the neighbor who raped me, but I could see that when theology presents Jesus' death as God's sacrifice of his beloved child for the sake of the world, it teaches that the highest love is sacrifice. To make sacrifice or to be sacrificed is virtuous and redemptive.

But what if this is not true? What if nothing, or very little, is saved? What if the consequence of sacrifice is simply pain, the diminishment of life, fragmentation of the soul, abasement, shame? What if the severing of life is merely destructive of life and is not the path of love, courage, trust, and faith? What if the performance of sacrifice is a ritual in which some human beings bear loss and others are protected from accountability or moral expectations? — Rebecca Ann Parker

My purpose, my whole life, had been to love him and be with him, to make him happy. I didn't want to cause any unhappiness now - in that way, I decided it was probably better than he wasn't here to see this, though I missed him so much at that moment the ache of it was as bad as the strange pains in my belly. — W. Bruce Cameron