It contained some of my personal favorites such as:
And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be
good.
A single person is missing for you and the whole world
is empty.
-John Steinbeck, East of Eden
How wild it was, to let it be.
-Cheryl Strayed, Wild
I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not
with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up,
and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.
-Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
I would also add:
Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.
For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon,
never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in
resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men. Now,
women forget all those things they don’t want to remember and remember
everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and
do things accordingly.
-Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.
-Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird
Grief does not change you...it reveals you.
-John Green, The Fault in our Stars
So this is reality, I thought. It's hot and bare
and permanent, it's broken and chipped and huge, it will last forever, even if
it ruins, it will make you speechless.
-Susanna Kaysen, Cambridge
Listen. To live is to be marked. To live is to change,
to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals
really know. In perfect stillness, frankly, I've only found sorrow.
-Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
And I could go on and on because I love words and the
feelings they convey when they are soulfully strung together, but I won't.
