Up Down In Life Quotes & Sayings

There was a terrible stretch of time in Einar's life - from the time Hans left Bluetooth until the day he met Greta at the academy - when he lived without anyone to reveal his secrets to. Lili could remember that, the feeling of biting down on one's thoughts and feelings and storing them up for no one. — David Ebershoff

SUCCESS does not mean an absence of problems, it is overcoming problems. Success is not measured by how high we go up in life, but how many times we bounce back when we fall down. — Shiv Khera

Those then who know not wisdom and virtue, and are always busy with gluttony and sensuality, go down and up again as far as the mean; and in this region they move at random throughout life, but they never pass into the true upper world; thither they neither look, nor do they ever find their way, neither are they truly filled with true being, nor do they ever taste of pure and abiding pleasure. — Socrates

If you don't know which road to take in life: do what's loving. Take a path that is loving, with yourself and towards others. That's the only path leading to light. If it's loving, it builds up, if not, it will only tear down. — Sereno Sky

Be brave! Be strong! Be fearless! Once you have taken up the spiritual life, fight as long as there is any life in you. Even though you know you are going to be killed, fight till you "are killed." Don't die of fright. Die fighting. Don't go down till you are knocked down. — Swami Vivekananda

The common approach is, metaphorically speaking, to go out onto the sidewalk and to pick up all the banana skins, so that no one slips. Me, I go down early in the morning and drop more banana skins. People say, 'Well, why would you be doing that?' And I tell them, 'Teaching is not about trying to prevent people from falling down, it's about trying to get them to use their eyes.' If you take the banana skins away, you're saying that life is banana-skin free. Well, it is not. Life is full of banana skins.
I try to teach people to use their eyes, to look where they're stepping. It's my responsibility to respect people, to help them learn the lessons life teaches. When you slip on a banana skin and fall down, discuss what happened and learn from it. I think that it is actually unwise to get in between people and what life is trying to teach them, but we all have a responsibility for each other. — Johann Christoph Arnold

Technology, while providing us many advantages, encourages us to race through our days so that we no longer know what we'd do if we were to slow down. Labor-saving devices seem not only to have failed to enhance the quality of our lives and free up more time, but get between us and the immediate, sensory pleasures of life and increase the pressures on us to do more. Many of us feel cut off from life's blessings, from our neighbors, from the wonders of nature, and from our sense of our own significance in the scheme of things. Modern life leaves us spiritually starved — Kathleen A. Kendall-Tackett

Nicole's door opened, and she stomped down the hall. "I have something to say," she said, giving him the Slitty Eyes of Death. "You're totally unfair, and if I run away, you shouldn't be surprised." "Don't make me put a computer chip in your ear," Liam answered. "It's not funny! I hate you." "Well, I love you, even if you did ruin my life by turning into a teenager," he said, rubbing his eyes. "Did you study for your test?" "Yes." "Good." He looked at his daughter - so much like Emma, way too pretty. Why weren't there convent schools anymore? Or chastity belts? "Want some supper? I saved your plate." She rolled her eyes with all the melodrama a teenager could muster. "Fine. I may as well become a fat pig since I can't ever go on a date." "That's my girl," he said and, grinning, got up to heat up her dinner. — Kristan Higgins

Yes, Boss?'
Dorcas, the last twenty or thirty years I've been a worthless, no-good parasite.'
She yawned again. 'Everybody knows that.'
Nevermind the flattery. There comes a time in every man's life when he has to stop being sensible
a time to stand up and be counted
strike a blow for liberty
smite the wicked.'
Ummm ... '
So quit yawning, the time has come.'
She glanced down. 'Maybe I had better get dressed. — Robert A. Heinlein

Too many people try to do the new job, new spouse, new house, new car thing in 18 months. That's a good way to end up broke. We've got to resist the temptation to catch up with our parents in 18 months. Slow down. You have the rest of your life to play catch up. After all, it's just stuff. — Dave Ramsey

Nobody goes "AAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!" when they sing it. Maybe because it puts the life adventure in such clear and simple terms. The small creature is alive and looks for adventure. Here's the drainpipe
a long tunnel going up toward some light. The spider doesn't even think about it
just goes. Disaster befalls it
rain, flood, powerful foces. And the spider is knocked down and out beyond where it started. Does the spider say, "To hell with that"? No. Sun comes out
clears things up
dries off the spider. And the small creature goes over to the drainpipe and looks up and thinks it really wants to know what is up there. — Robert Fulghum

... the matter was new to me, and I had no material for its treatment. But I got books, read up the facts, laboriously constructed a skeleton out of the dry bones of the real, and then clothed them, and tried to breathe into them life, and in this last aim I had pleasure. With me it was a difficult and anxious time till my facts were found, selected, and properly pointed; nor could I rest from research and effort till I was satisfied of correct anatomy; the strength of my inward repugnance to the idea of flaw or falsity sometimes enabled me to shun egregious blunders; but the knowledge was not there in my head, ready and mellow; it had not been down in Spring, grown in Summer, harvested in Autumn, and garnered through Winter; whatever I wanted I must go out and gather fresh; glean of wild herbs my lap full, and shred them green into the pot. — Charlotte Bronte

Between the ink mage and the wizard, his mouth falling open at the sight. The hulk had nearly let her go after Talbun's shock attack, but he recovered quickly and took her head in his meaty hands. Don't. With appalling ease, the ink mage twisted. The snap was so loud, it made Brasley flinch even from across the chamber. His mouth fell open to scream. "No!" The brute's mouth twisted into a contemptuous grin as he let the limp body fall from his hands. Brasley watched it happen in slow motion, almost like she was floating, eyes closed, face peaceful, hair floating up around her. It was as if life had been some tremendous weight, and now that it was gone, her shell drifted down to the floor like a dry leaf. Talbun's body hit with a dull thud that brought Brasley back to reality. — Victor Gischler

Prusis told me that the fluke's raging in Moscow, and there's nothing to bury people in. All the material's been used up. So I decided to come out and set things straight.'
Ostap, who had been listening curiously to the entire conversation, stepped in. 'Listen, pops. It's Paris where the flu is raging.'
'In Paris?'
'Well, yes. So go to Paris. You'll rake it in there! It's true that you'll have a few difficulties with the visa, but don't get down about it, pops. If Briand takes a shine to you, your life won't be half-bad: you'll be set up as personal coffin-maker to the municipality of Paris. — Ilya Ilf

At last the play was ended. All had grown dark. The tears streamed down his face. Looking up into the sky there was nothing but blackness there too. Ruin and death, he thought, cover all. The life of man ends in the grave. Worms devour us. Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse Of sun and moon, and that the affrighted globe Should yawn - — Virginia Woolf

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

Watching movies (Titanic, Flirting with Disaster, Mannequin, Thelma and Louise, Rushmore, The Goonies, She's Having a Baby, it mattered very little) was a kind of prayer: She knew the characters as well as she knew herself, as well as she knew anything there was to know, and she could chart and rechart their movements and secrets and misunderstandings endlessly, reflecting in any number of new permutations on all of it, each time. Again and again. They were acquaintances - people she'd known her whole life and understood well, people incapable of letting her down by changing or disappearing or offering up the unexpected. The League of Their Own tears were purely for catharsis. When she was done she would reemerge, reborn. She would make new mistakes. Or maybe none at all. Okay, — Elisa Albert

We will live an up-and-down Christian life if our faith is based on circumstances and not our faithful God. Stand firm in God's promises! — Alisa Hope Wagner

The first glance at the pillow showed me a repulsive sentinel perched upon each end of it
cockroaches as large as peach leaves
fellows with long, quivering antennae and fiery, malignant eyes. They were grating their teeth like tobacco worms, and appeared to be dissatisfied about something. I had often heard that these reptiles were in the habit of eating off sleeping sailors' toe nails down to the quick, and I would not get in the bunk any more. I lay down on the floor. But a rat came and bothered me, and shortly afterward a procession of cockroaches arrived and camped in my hair. In a few moments the rooster was crowing with uncommon spirit and a party of fleas were throwing double somersaults about my person in the wildest disorder, and taking a bite every time they stuck. I was beginning to feel really annoyed. I got up and put my clothes on and went on deck.
The above is not overdrawn; it is a truthful sketch of inter-island schooner life. — Mark Twain

And then she realized that his presence was the wall, his presence was destroying her. Unless she could break out, she must die most fearfully, walled up in horror. And he was the wall. She must break down the wall. She must break him down before her, the awful obstruction of him who obstructed her life to the last. It must be done, or she must perish most horribly. — D.H. Lawrence

I'd say that what I do is like a crack in the mirror. If you go back over the books from Carrie on up, what you see is an observation of ordinary middle-class American life as it's lived at the time that particular book was written. In every life you get to a point where you have to deal with something that's inexplicable to you, whether it's the doctor saying you have cancer or a prank phone call. So whether you talk about ghosts or vampires or Nazi war criminals living down the block, we're still talking about the same thing, which is an intrusion of the extraordinary into ordinary life and how we deal with it. What that shows about our character and our interactions with others and the society we live in interests me a lot more than monsters and vampires and ghouls and ghosts. — Stephen King

That night marks my life's dark center, the moment when growing up ended and the long downward slope toward death began. The wonder to me now is that I thought myself worth saving ... I reached out and clung for life with my good left hand like a claw, grasping at moving legs to raise myself from the dirt. Desperate to save myself in a river of people saving themselves. And if they chanced to look down and see me struggling underneath them, they saw that even the crooked girl believed her own life was precious. That is what it means to be a beast in the kingdom. — Barbara Kingsolver

That was it. She came out of it. She never had such a down as that or such an up as the three days that preceded it, not ever again in her life. The rest of her life was like a long thin line with little diminuendos and tiny little crescendos, and friends visiting from out of town. — Sheila Heti

At the end of the day, Esperanza stepped into Myron's office, sat down, and said, "I don't know much about family values or what makes a happy family. I don't know the best way to raise a kid or what you have to do to make him happy and well adjusted, whatever the hell 'well adjusted' means. I don't know if it's best to be an only child or have lots of siblings or be raised by two parents or a single parent or a gay couple or a lesbian couple or an overweight albino. But I know one thing." Myron looked up at her and waited. "No child could ever be harmed by having you in his life." Esperanza — Harlan Coben

There's hardly anybody who hasn't owned or at least ridden a bicycle at some point in his or her life. I mean, sure, you do come across people occasionally who never learned how to ride a bike, but it's rare and a little unsettling. It's like meeting Someone who can't operate a washing machine, or a thirty-two-year-old guy who never learned how to pee standing up. You smile politely, you pity them silently, and then you move on down to the other end of the bar. Despite — BikeSnobNYC

We want gain without pain; we want the resurrection without going through the grave; we want life without experiencing death; we want a crown without going by way of the Cross. But in God's economy, the way up is down. — Nancy Leigh DeMoss

There's a terrible stillness. I notice a small tear in the wallpaper above her shoulder. I notice finger marks grimed on the light switch. Somewhere down in the house, a door opens and shuts. As Zoey turns to face me, I realize that life is made up of a series of moments, each one a journey to the end. — Jenny Downham

This is a part of post-college life that nobody ever warns you about. Your social life is no longer dropped into your lap by virtue of shared classes and extracurricular activities. Relationships, whether with friends, family, or romantic partners - from here on out, they're going to take a lot more work. No more built-in friends at the sorority, or hollering down the stairs when I need my mom. It's certainly not going to be as easy to meet guys now that I'm done with school. It's not like I can just chat up the cute guy in econ class anymore. — Lauren Layne

Bow down and pray in fear and trembling, go way back in the dark afraid; or work harder and harder; or stumble and learn; or raise up your fist and strike-but once the idea comes into your head you'll never be the same again. Oh, test tube of life! Crucible of the South, find the right powder and you'll never be the same again-the cotton will blaze and the cabins will burn and the chains will be broken and men, all of a sudden, will shakes hands, black men and white men, like steel meeting steel! — Langston Hughes

You'll marry me, my dragon, and you'll bear my children, and you'll drive me mad and live in that ramshackle old house with me and I'll even put up with the occasional visit from your sister if
I must. But you'll marry me. Not because you have to. But because I won't let you go."
"Why?" she demanded.
And he answered the only way he could, in French. "Je't'aime," he said. "I love you."
"Je't'aime aussi," she said. "And I will make your life a living hell," she added in the same language.
He smiled down at her. "I'm counting on it. — Anne Stuart

It seemed to me that the people who made the rules of the road had figured out everything that would help a person drive safely right down to having a sign that tells you you're passing through a place where deer cross. Somebody should stick up some signs on the highway of life.
CAUTION: JERKS CROSSING.
Blinking yellow lights when you're about to to something stupid.
Stop signs in front of people who could hurt you.
Green lights shining when you're doing the right thing.
It would make the whole experience easier. — Joan Bauer

The seeds of life - fiery is their force, divine their birth, but they are weighed down by the bodies' ills or dulled by limbs and flesh that's born for death. That is the source of all men's fears and longings, joys and sorrows, nor can they see the heaven's light, shut up in the body's tomb, a prison dark and deep. — Virgil

When we are ready, [Jesus Christ's] pure love instantly moves across time and space, reaches down, and pulls us up from the depths of any tumultuous sea of darkness, sin, sorrow, death, or despair we may find ourselves in and brings us into the light and life and love of eternity. — John H. Groberg

Bree arched, trying to stretch out her muscles and Alessandro gave her a dirty look as if she was displaying herself to him on purpose. Well, maybe she was a little. Even though he blocked her from the hotel attendant's gaze with his body in the doorway, Bree was sure to cover herself with the blanket. Alessandro turned around, pulling in the tray with him and his eyes flared hungrily as he looked down at her. "You look like a beautiful debauched angel," he said, his voice rough with desire. "And you're what, the demon that's corrupted me?" Bree asked raising an eyebrow and letting the blanket fall down to her waist, baring her to him. "It's my life's work, you know?" Alessandro grinned, going down on to his knees and leaning over her. Bree placed a hand on his chest, halting him. "Is that coffee, I smell?" she asked. "The debauched angel is kind of hungry." She bit her lip and smiled up at his frustrated face. — E. Jamie

The rims of his eyelids were burning. A blow received straightens a man up and makes the body move forward, to return that blow, or a punch-to jump, to get a hard-on, to dance: to be alive. But a blow received may also cause you to bend over, to shake, to fall down, to die. When we see life, we call it beautiful. When we see death, we call it ugly. But it is more beautiful still to see oneself living at great speed, right up to the moment of death. Detectives, poets, domestic servants and priests rely on abjection. From it, they draw their power. It circulates in their veins. It nourishes them. — Jean Genet

Most of the members of the convent were old-fashioned Satanists, like their parents and grandparents before them. They'd been brought up to it, and weren't, when you got right down to it, particularly evil. Human beings mostly aren't. They just get carried away by new ideas, like dressing up in jackboots and shooting people, or dressing up in white sheets and lynching people, or dressing up in tie-dye jeans and playing guitars at people. Offer people a new creed with a costume and their hearts and minds will follow. Anyway, being brought up as a Satanist tended to take the edge off it. It was something you did on Saturday nights.
And the rest of the time you simply got on with life as best you could, just like everyone else. — Terry Pratchett

A few moments later the back door of one of the bungalows opened, and a figure in a broad-striped bathing suit flung down the paddock, cleared the stile, rushed through the tussock grass into the hollow, staggered up the sandy hillock, and raced for dear life over the big porous stones, over the cold, wet pebbles, on to the hard sand that gleamed like oil. Splish-Splosh! Splish-Splosh! The water bubbled round his legs as Stanley Burnell waded out exulting. First man in as usual! He'd beaten them all again. And he swooped down to souse his head and neck. "Hail, — Katherine Mansfield

Lindsey and I would lie down on the floor underneath it. I would pretend to be the knight that was pictured, and Holiday was the faithful dog curled up at his feet. Lindsey would be the wife he'd left behind. It always dissolved into giggles no matter how solemn the start. Lindsey would tell the dead knight that a wife had to move on, that she couldn't be trapped for the rest of her life by a man who was frozen in time ...
"You're dead, knight," she would say. "Time to move on. — Alice Sebold

Farewell My Friend

It was beautiful as long as it lasted
The journey of my life.
I have no regrets whatsoever
save the pain I'll leave behind.
Those dear hearts who love and care...
And the strings pulling at the heart and soul...
The strong arms that held me up
When my own strength let me down.
At every turning of my life
I came across good friends,
Friends who stood by me,
Even when the time raced me by.
Farewell, farewell my friends
I smile and bid you goodbye.
No, shed no tears for I need them not
All I need is your smile.
If you feel sad do think of me
for that's what I'll like
when you live in the hearts
of those you love, remember then
you never die. — Gitanjali Ghei

Life was created in the valleys. It blew up onto the hills on the old terrors, the old lusts, the old despairs. That's why you must walk up the hills so you can ride down. — William Faulkner

Braden! How the hell are ya?!" said the guy with the teeth, grabbing Braden's hand and pumping it up and down almost frantically. He looked like a demented Ken doll.

"You're looking quite dashing tonight, Braden," said the cold-looking woman in an even colder voice. "Isn't he, Felicity?" she asked the sullen young woman. I had never seen a more inappropriately named person in my life. She would have made Wednesday Addams look like Doris Day. — N.M. Silber

The FSB's invisible presence continued; the agency became an intangible part of my Moscow life - sometimes loudly, sometimes quietly, with someone in a back room clearly turning the volume of minor persecution up and down. — Luke Harding

If we are sowing lots of thoughts about shoes, cars, clothes, computer games, shopping, guns, and very few thoughts about things of the Lord, we will not reap spiritual maturity, spiritual priorities, greater desire for the Lord, or a closer relationship with the Lord. We will reap vanity, shallowness, and even greater spiritual disinterest and distance from the Lord. If we struggle with being uninterested in the things of the Lord, we need to consider that this is something we have actually done to ourselves. If we sow a desire to charm, amuse, or impress our friends, we will not reap relationships based on a selfless, sacrificial, Christ-like interest in our friend's spiritual welfare. We will reap self-serving, exploitive relationships that can actually drag our friends down. This is a life and death matter: what you are sowing in every little conversation that you have. Are you building up, edifying your friends? — Botkin

Danny had no idea what the thing was. All he knew was that he lived more or less in a constant state of expecting something any day, any hour, that would change everything, knock the world upside down and put Danny's whole life into perspective as a story of complete success, because every twist and turn and snag and fuckup would always have been leading up to this. Unexpected stuff could hit him like the thing at first: a girl he'd forgotten giving his number to suddenly calling up out of the blue, a friend with some genius plan for making money, better yet a person he'd never heard of who wanted to talk. Danny got an actual physical head rush from messages like these, but as soon as he called back and found out the details, the calls would turn out to just be about more projects, possibilities, schemes that boiled down to everything staying exactly like it was. — Jennifer Egan

You are in love, at a point where pride and apprehension scuffle within you. Part of you wants time to slow down: for this, you say to yourself, is the best period of your whole life. I am in love, I want to savour it, study it, lie around in languor with it; may today last forever. This is your poetical side. However, there is also your prose side, which urges time not to slow down but hurry up. How do you know this is love, your prose side whispers like a sceptical lawyer, it's only been around for a few weeks, a few months. You won't know it's the real thing unless you (and she) still feel the same in, oh, a year or so at least; that's the only way to prove you aren't living a dragonfly mistake. Get through this bit, however much you enjoy it, as fast as possible; then you'll be able to find out whether or not you're really in love. — Julian Barnes

Colin had always preferred baths; one of his general policies in life was never to do anything standing up that could just as easily be done lying down — John Green

Understanding the difference between healthy striving and perfectionism is critical to laying down the shield and picking up your life. Research shows that perfectionism hampers success. In fact, it's often the path to depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis. — Brene Brown

Heart, my heart, so battered with misfortune far beyond your strength, up, and face the men who hate us. Bare your chest to the assault of the enemy, and fight them off. Stand fast among the beamlike spears. Give no ground; and if you beat them, do not brag in open show, nor, if they beat you, run home and lie down on your bed and cry. Keep some measure in the joy you take in luck, and the degree you give away to sorrow. All your life is up-and-down like this. — Archilochos

Consummation Of Grief

I even hear the mountains
the way they laugh
up and down their blue sides
and down in the water
the fish cry
and the water
is their tears.
I listen to the water
on nights I drink away
and the sadness becomes so great
I hear it in my clock
it becomes knobs upon my dresser
it becomes paper on the floor
it becomes a shoehorn
a laundry ticket
it becomes
cigarette smoke
climbing a chapel of dark vines. . .
it matters little
very little love is not so bad
or very little life
what counts
is waiting on walls
I was born for this
I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead. — Charles Bukowski

It was a strange lightness, a drifting feeling. Zero gravity. I understood that everything that once seemed solid and immovable might just float away. And that this was a truth of life, not an illusion in the grieving mind of a child. Everything that is hard and heavy in your world is made up of billions of molecules in constant motion offering the illusion of permanence. But it all tends toward breaking down and falling away. Some things just go more quickly, more surprisingly, than others. — Lisa Unger

I? I am the wind,' said Thowra. 'I come, I pass, and I am gone.' The strange feathers moved up and down, the strange voice said tartly: 'And are your sons the same?' 'My son is the lightning that strikes through the black night. My grandson is light that pierces the dark sky at dawning.' 'Ah,' said the first emu, 'and we know your daughter is the snow that falls softly from above and clothes the world in white. You want but the rainbow - that is and was and never will be, and is yet the promise of life - and the glittering ice which is there and is gone: then you and your family will possess all magic. — Elyne Mitchell

My fear in life, I don't have any kind of specifics like snakes or spiders or anything but I think if I was covered in buttermilk naked running down the street being chased by Gandalf, I'd say, or I don't know, I'm just making it up! — Theo James

Life has hurt me. When life hurts you, which way do you go, up or down? When life hurts you what happens to a healthy body, a healthy mind? They gradually, gradually diminish. Evaporate. There was a false self. A Peter who believed in his power, that he could dominate any situation that he found himself in, that he could smoke and drink and be one of the guys but also a Lothario. — Abigail George

The artists who have inspired me the most in my life are the ones who have really had something to say and stand up for. That, to me, is part of being an artist-having the voice to express things that need to be verbalized and brought to light. Unfortunately, I don't think that's a priority for people, because the few artists who do have the nerve to take a stand for what they believe get shut down in a way. — Alicia Keys

The Psalms show us what healthy spiritual life looks like. You name everything that's happening inside of you. You give it language and expression, You articulate exactly what the desolation feels like. If you don't drag it up and give it words, then it's buried down in your being somewhere. And it will come out in other ways. Unhealthy, destructive ways. You'll keep it bottled up. And you'll be miserable. — Rob Bell

When fog is dense, everything slows down because you can't see. If I cast a fog over the land, it will quickly fall in its superiority. The people will rise up and blame my brother for their problems. He will become afraid of them and will fear for his life. Unless he changes, the surrounding lands will also take advantage of his weakness and attack. — L.R.W. Lee

It's true that the people that succeed in life are the people that keep getting up after they fall down, but no one gets through without falling down. — Christopher Gorham

There were two things Chris knew well: his rifle and a woman's body. With either, he could spend hours studying their intracacies, their individual quirks and hots spots ... their flaws.
He knew when one of them was going to jam up and let him down or to give him the shot of his life. Rifles and women - he loved them both, but not necessarily in that order. — Stephanie Tyler

Then came the most exquisite moment of her whole life passing a stone urn with flowers in it. Sally stopped; picked a flower; kissed her on the lips. The whole world might have turned upside down! The others disappeared; there she was alone with Sally. And she felt that she had been given a present, wrapped up, and told just to keep it, not to look at it - a diamond, something infinitely precious, wrapped up, which, as they walked (up and down, up and down), she uncovered, or the radiance burnt through, the revelation, the religious feeling! — Virginia Woolf

She looks up. I've caught her by surprise. Her face opens up and all of a sudden it's like that paper mask is transparent. I'm looking right through it, and I get a flash of some kind of life we could've had - barbecues, dogs, kids flopping over us in bed - it rolls through me fast but strong and clear, like one of those cooking smells that blows in the window so sharp you can pick out the ingredients. And then it's gone. It's gone, and Holly's holding my hand. Finally, after that long long wait, her hand is back on mine. Dry cool fingers, slim. The rings loose. I close my eyes. My hand is so hot, I feel my pulse in every finger. I'm afraid she'll let go but she doesn't let go. She keeps her hand around mine and it's like she's holding all of me in her cool sweetness, calming my fever back down. — Jennifer Egan

You are here, alive and awake and for whatever reasons you have fought your battles, it's time to start focusing on what strengths pulled you up when the entire world had knocked you down.
That's where the virtue in self grows. — Nikki Rowe

I know that Dad was an idol to millions who grew up loving his music and his ideals. But to me he wasn't a musician or a peace icon, he was the father I loved and who let me down in so many ways. After the age of five, when my parents separated, I saw him only a handful of times, and when I did he was often remote and intimidating. I grew up longing for more contact with him but felt rejected and unimportant in his life.
... While Dad was fast becoming one of the wealthiest men in his field, Mum and I had very little and she was going out to work to support us. — Julian Lennon

The first time Raffaele ever saw Adelina, it was a stormy-wracked night that changed her life and, indeed, the world. He recalls looking down from the window in his Dalia lodging to see a girl with silver-bright hair, conjuring an illusion of darkness such that he had never seen. He remembers the day she first came to his chambers in Estenzia, when Enzo was still alive and she was still innocent, and the way she looked up at him with her uncertain, damaged gaze. He remembers her test, and what he said to Enzo that night. How long ago that had been. How he had judged her wrongly. — Marie Lu

When you considered this world
people winched up and lowered down into the earth in steel cages and speed-fed through the tunnels, with doors cracking everywhere, and arctic winds mingling with dusty gaps of fire from the planet's core
it was hard to believe how delicate life was, how breakable things were. — Martin Amis

But as much as life is sometimes about knowing what you want and going after it and finishing, maybe other times it's about slowing down and shutting up and waiting. There's not always a clear beginning and obvious end. Sometimes we're in the middle . . . and it's okay to camp out there for a while. — Melissa Tagg

Once upon a time in the dead of winter in the Dakota Territory, Theodore Roosevelt took off in a makeshift boat down the Little Missouri River in pursuit of a couple of thieves who had stolen his prized rowboat. After several days on the river, he caught up and got the draw on them with his trusty Winchester, at which point they surrendered. Then Roosevelt set off in a borrowed wagon to haul the thieves cross-country to justice. They headed across the snow-covered wastes of the Badlands to the railhead at Dickinson, and Roosevelt walked the whole way, the entire 40 miles. It was an astonishing feat, what might be called a defining moment in Roosevelt's eventful life. But what makes it especially memorable is that during that time, he managed to read all of Anna Karenina. I often think of that when I hear people say they haven't time to read. — David McCullough

And they spoke of their Antigonie, who they called Go, as if she were a friend.
Leo hadn't yet written any music, but he had made drawings on butcher paper stolen from the kitchen. They curled around his walls, intricate doodles, extensions of the boy's own lean, slight body. The shape of Leo's jaw in profile, devestating. The way he gnawed his fingernails to the crescents, the fine shining hairs down the center of his nape, the smell of him, up close, pure and clean, bleaching.
The ones made for music are the most beloved of all. Their bodies a container for the spirit within; the best of them is music, the rest only instrument of flesh and bone.
The weather conspired. Snow fell softly in the windows. It was too cold to be out for long. The world colorless, a dreamscape, a blank page, the linger of woodsmoke on the back of the tongue. — Lauren Groff

I got stuck up a tree when I was about seven, and my dad had to come and get the ladder to get me down. I loved to climb all the way up to the top. I must have been a koala in my past life. — Miranda Kerr

As soon as he had left the room and walked into the air, he knew that he would never return and for the first time his fears lifted. It was a spring morning, and when he walked into Severndale Park he felt the breeze bringing back memories of a much earlier life, and he was at peace. He sat beneath a tree and looked up at its leaves in amazement - where once he might have gazed at them and sensed there only the confusion of his own thoughts, now each leaf was so clear and distinct that he could see the lightly coloured veins which carried moisture and life. And he looked down at his own hand, which seemed translucent beside the bright grass. His head no longer ached, and as he lay upon the earth he could feel its warmth beneath him. — Peter Ackroyd

A lot of life boils down to the question of whether a person is going to be able to realize his fantasies, or else end up surviving only through compromises he can't face up to. The way I figure it, Heaven and Hell are right here on Earth. Heaven is living in your hopes and Hell is living in your fears. It's up to each individual which one he chooses. - Bonanza Jellybean — Tom Robbins

A mother's body against a child's body makes a place. It says you are here. Without this body against your body there is no place. I envy people who miss their mother. Or miss a place or know something called home. The absence of a body against my body created a gap, a hole, a hunger. This hunger determined my life ... The absence of a body against my body made attachment abstract. Made my own body dislocated and unable to rest or settle. A body pressed against your body is the beginning of nest. I grew up not in a home but in a kind of free fall of anger and violence that led to a life of constant movement, of leaving and falling. It is why at one point I couldn't stop drinking and fucking. Why I needed people to touch me all the time. It had less to do with sex than location. When you press against me, or put yourself inside me. When you hold me down or lift me up, when you lie on top of me and I can feel your weight, I exist. I am here. — Eve Ensler

What makes it worth it though, is I love drawing. I LOVE IT. I love making comics. I love starting a new page and buying new paper, ink and brushes. I love telling stories! I love the people I work with, I love the people I meet. I love thinking about the syntax and language of comics. I love esoteric discussions about the comic book industry. I love the opportunities I've had in life because of comics. The second I stop loving it I will find something else to do.
Comics are hard work. Comics are relentless. Comics will break your heart. Comics are monetarily unsatisfying. Comics don't offer much in terms of fortune and glory, but comics will give you complete freedom to tell the stories you want to tell, in ways unlike any other medium. Comics will pick you up after it knocks you down. Comics will dust you off and tell you it loves you. And you will look into it's eyes and know it's true, that you love comics back. — Becky Cloonan

The whirlwind of life
It was true. Sometimes life was like that, a wonderful whirlwind that fills us with joy, like a ride on a merry-go-round when we are children. A whirlwind of love and drunkenness when you sleep in someones arms, in a tiny bed, getting up for breakfast at midday because you've spent the morning making love. But sometimes a whirlwind destroys things, like a violent typhoon that tries to drag us down, when we have been caught by the storm, when we realize that we have to face the tempest alone. And we are afraid. — Guillaume Musso

I live completely without regret. Sure there are plenty of things that someone could second guess, but I see the path of life like driving down the road without a map. The thing is, some dark alleys open up in majestic places, and some bright and shiny highways to the top end in cliffs to the bottom. You never know until you get there. What I know for sure is that if many years ago I actually had a map to the path of life, the destination that I would have chosen is right here, with this family, in this place, and with these smiles. That makes anything that could have been regretful, the best decision in the world. — Michael A. Wood Jr.

Other people - store clerks, burger flippers, software engineers, the whole vocabulary of meaningless jobs that make up Life in America - other people just rely on plain old competition. Better flip your burgers or debug your subroutines faster than your high school classmate two blocks down the strip is flipping or debugging, because we're in competition with those guys, and people notice these things.
What a fucking rat race that is. — Neal Stephenson

What they say is, life goes on, and that is mostly true. The mail is delivered and the Christmas lights go up and the ladders get put away and you open yet another box of cereal. In time, the volume of my feelings would be turned down in gentle increments to a near quiet, and yet the record would still spin, always spin. There was a place for Rose so deeply within myself that it was another country, another world, with its own light and time and its own language. A lost world. Yet its foundations and edges were permanent-the ruins of Pompeii, the glorious remnants or the Forum. A world that endured, even as it retreated into the past. A world visited, imagined, ever waiting, yet asleep — Deb Caletti

As he took possession of it, he was overcome by a sense of something like sacred awe. He carefully spread his horse blanket on the ground as if dressing an altar and lay down on it. He felt blessedly wonderful. He was lying a hundred and fifty feet below the earth, inside the loneliest mountain in France - as if in his own grave. Never in his life had he felt so secure, certainly not in his mother's belly. The world could go up on flames out there, but he would not even notice it here. He even began to cry softly. He did not know who to thank for such good fortune. — Patrick Suskind

SHUT UP!" I yelled all the way down the hall. "FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE, JUST SHUT YOUR STUPID NOSY MOUTH! — James Patterson

It's easy to feel like the bunny rabbi frozen in terror. And it's easy to feel like one of the fire balloons, at the whim of the wind, either rising up out of sight or burning down. Blow one direction or another. — Ava Dellaira

Sometimes when we're feeling sad, it's important just to feel the sadness. Like a snake shedding its skin, old feelings of remorse and regret and hurt and anger often have to come up in order to be released. On the other side we're a better person, capable of a happier life ... who we are when we're no longer burdened by the buried feelings that weighed us down, or the self - defeating patterns that the pain produced. — Marianne Williamson

There'll be moments in life, sweet pea, that stand out in your memories like a photograph. Scenes captured perfectly in your mind, frozen in time with each detail as colorful as it was that first time you saw it. 'Flashbulb memories,' some people call them," she'd told me, her eyes crinkling up and nearly disappearing in a face etched with too many laugh lines to count. "Most people don't recognize those moments as they happen. They look back fifty years later, and realize that those were the most important parts of their entire life. But at the time, they're so busy looking ahead to what's coming down the line or worrying about their future, they don't enjoy their present. Don't be like them, sweet pea. Don't get so caught up in chasing your dreams that you forget to live them. — Julie Johnson

Our actions in the present build the staircase to the future. The question is whether that staircase is going up or down. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

The central attitudes driving Mr. Right are:
You should be in awe of my intelligence and should look up to me intellectually. I know better than you do, even about what's good for you.
Your opinions aren't worth listening to carefully or taking seriously.
The fact that you sometimes disagree with me shows how sloppy your thinking is.
If you would just accept that I know what's right, our relationship would go much better. Your own life would go better, too.
When you disagree with me about something, no matter how respectfully or meekly, that's mistreatment of me.
If I put you down for long enough, some day you'll see. — Lundy Bancroft

The parts of our lives when we write them down seem to belong in different books, by different writers even. What all these bits and pieces make up I don't know. There is no plot. Perhaps meaning is something we invent afterward, putting it all together, like imagined God. — Niall Williams

Occasionally we glimpse the South Rim, four or five thousand feet above. From the rims the canyon seems oceanic; at the surface of the river the feeling is intimate. To someone up there with binoculars we seem utterly remote down here. It is this know dimension if distance and time and the perplexing question posed by the canyon itself- What is consequential? (in one's life, in the life of human beings, in the life of a planet)- that reverberate constantly, and make the human inclination to judge (another person, another kind of thought) seem so eerie ... Two kinds of time pass here: sitting at the edge of a sun-warmed pool watching blue dragonflies and black tadpoles. And the rapids: down the glassy-smooth tongue into a yawing trench, climb a ten-foot wall of standing water and fall into boiling, ferocious hydraulics ... — Barry Lopez

His sensitive nature was still smarting under the lashes of an undivided and squalid way of life. His soul was still disquieted and cast down by the dull phenomenon of Dublin. He had emerged from a two years' spell of revery to find himself in the midst of a new scene, every event and figure of which affected him intimately, disheartened him or allured and, whether alluring or disheartening, filled him always with unrest and bitter thoughts. All the leisure which his school life left him was passed in the company of subversive writers whose jibes and violence of speech set up a ferment in his brain before they passed out of it into his crude writings. — James Joyce

I didn't know what I wanted to Be ... A sense that I had permanently botched things already, embarked on the trip without the map. and it scared me too, that I might end up as a mother of 3 working in a psychiatrist's office, or renting surfboards ... I guess I saw their lives as failed somehow, absent of the Big Win ... What is fate was an inherited trait? What if luck came through the genetic line, and the ability to "succeed" at your chosen "direction" was handed down, just like the family china? Maybe I was destined to be a weed too. — Deb Caletti

It boils down to studenthood-in-perpetuity / curiosity-in-perpetuity / applied fanatic restlessness. That is, a belief that life is ONE BIG LEARNING EXPERIENCE. Something mysterious happens to a curious, fully engaged mind - and it happens as often as not, subconsciously. Strange little sparks are set off, connections made, insights triggered. The results: an exponentially increased ability to tune up / reinvent / WOW-ize today's project at work. — Tom Peters

Being strong means allowing yourself to cry over the things you can't change; laugh when things are funny; smile when you're happy. It means understanding where your breaking point is, and yet, going further and still remaining whole. Strong people push themselves to the limits of pain and joy. They fall to their knees in agony, then they lift up their faces to find the beautiful morning rays shining down on them, and they rise to their feet. Being strong means never giving up, no matter how crushed you are, and finding happiness in the smallest parts of life. — D. Nichole King

She blew a stream of smoke up at the empty clotheslines. 'These silly dreams you have when you're young. I mean, what, Katie and Brendan Harris were going ot make a life in Las Vegas? How long would that little Eden have lasted? Maybe they'd be on their second trailer park, second kid, but it would have hit them sooner or later - life isn't happily ever after and golden sunsets and shit like that. It's work. The person you love is rarely worthy of how big your love is. Because no one is worthy of that and maybe no one deserves the burden of it, either. You'll be let down. You'll be disappointed and have your trust broken and have a lot of real sucky days. You lose more than you win. You hate the person you love as much as you love him. But, shit, you roll up your sleeves and work - at everything -because that's what growing older is. — Dennis Lehane

whenever possible, you need to go to the primary source to make your decisions. Regardless of whether or not you're a student, it is never enough to rely on other people's ideas. You have to look at the thing itself and make up your own mind. That's what it means to study and to learn. Some secondary sources proclaim their points of view so loudly and with such passion you might be tempted just to take their word for it. You might be tempted not to do the work of checking to see for yourself. But there can be a fine line between obedience and laziness, and if you go through life dutifully taking other people's word about what's right, you are putting yourself in the position to be led down some very dark roads. After — Ann Patchett

The poor Sufi dressed in rags walked into a jewelry store owned by a rich merchant and asked him, "Do you know how you're going to die." And the Sufi said, "I do.""How?" asked the merchant.
And the Sufi lay down, crossed his arms, said, "Like this," and died, whereupon the merchant promptly gave up his store to live a life of poverty in pursuit of the kind of spiritual wealth the dead Sufi had acquired. — John Green

Love doesn't happen in an instant. It creeps up on you and then it turns your life upside down. It colors your waking moments, and fills your dreams. You begin to walk on air and see life in brilliant new shades. But it also brings with it a sweet agony, a delicious torture. — Vikas Swarup

There is within the human heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets 'things' with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns 'my' and 'mine' look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do. They are verbal symptoms of our deep disease. The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God's gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution. — A.W. Tozer

She wasn't ready to settle down, she told her friends. That was one way of putting it. Another was would have been that she had not found anyone to settle down with. There had been several men in her life, but they hadn't been convincing. They'd been somewhat like her table - quickly acquired, brightened up a little, but temporary. The time for that kind of thing was running out, however. She was tired of renting. — Margaret Atwood

Walter Mittys with Everest dreams need to bear in mind that when things go wrong up in the Death Zone--and sooner or later they always do--the strongest guides in the world may be powerless to save a client's life; indeed, as the events of 1996 demonstrated, the strongest guides in the world are sometimes powerless to save even their own lives. Four of my teammates died not so much because Rob Hall's systems were faulty--indeed, nobody's were better--but because on Everest it is the nature of systems to break down with a vengeance. — Jon Krakauer

The tendency in our spiritual life but also our more general attitude toward love is that our feelings are all that is going on. And so to us the totality of love is what we feel. But to really love someone requires commitment, fidelity and vulnerability. Mother Teresa wasn't "feeling" Christ's love, and she could have shut down. But she was up at 4:30 every morning for Jesus, and still writing to him, "Your happiness is all I want." — Brian Kolodiejchuk

I beg to differ on Charles Bukowski, who says nothing can save you, except writing. Sometimes, absolutely nothing will save you, not the nights you end up wasting waiting for something grand to happen, not the mornings where coffee has no taste and you wake up knowing the day will not be a blast, not the plans and schemes you write down on your imaginary flipchart to make the world go round. You end up stuck, alone and in the disparate points of chaos that drag you down, you have to come up with something to save yourself. Then you make six impossible wishes before breakfast, start walking and working and learn to seize what you call paranormal activity when it comes true. — Ioana-Cristina Casapu

Every blade in the field - Every leaf in the forest - lays down its life in its season as beautifully as it was taken up. — Henry David Thoreau

What is much harder to handle is the sense that you have to live up to the mark someone else has set for you. The grades become too important, the competition too frantic, the fear of disappointing those who believe in you turns into an overwhelming nightmare. And it is desperately unfair to the boy. He cannot live his parents' life over again for them. He cannot make up for their own lacks, their own unfulfillments. He cannot carry their torch
only his own. — Sydney J. Harris