Iain S Thomas Quotes

The problem with the chemicals in my head is they lead to feelings in the rest of me. ~ Iain S. Thomas

Never apologize for how you feel. No one can control how they feel. The sun doesn't apologize for being the sun. The rain doesn't say sorry for falling. Feelings just are ~ Iain S. Thomas

That everything you want to happen, will happen, if you decide you want it enough. That every time you think a sad thought, you can think a happy one instead.
That you control that completely.
That the people who make you laugh are more beautiful than beautiful people. That you laugh more than you cry. That crying is good for you. That the people you hate wish you would stop and you do too.
That your friends are reflections of the best parts of you. That you are more than the sum total of the things you know and how you react to them. That dancing is sometimes more important than listening to the music.
That the most embarrassing, awkward moments of your life are only remembered by you and no one else ~ Iain S. Thomas

You've got such beautiful words but none I can eat, none which block the rain, none which bandage my wounds, none which build a home.
Nothing beautiful, which did not work, ever became anything more than pretty ~ Iain S. Thomas

I hope that if love hurts, it teaches you something about yourself or about someone else. ~ Iain S. Thomas

This is why it hurts the way it hurts.
You have too many words in your head. There are too many ways to describe the way you feel. You will never have the luxury of a dull ache.
You must suffer through the intricacy of feeling too much ~ Iain S. Thomas

History is a series of difficult choices. The only reason there's anything left of the human race, the only reason we're still here is because men like me made those difficult choices ~ Iain S. Thomas

You cannot fix me because I am not broken. And even though everything has changed, I am still more than I've ever been. ~ Iain S. Thomas

Elsewhere are two letters that were never sent, because of pride, each a declaration of love that would've changed lives ~ Iain S. Thomas

Draw every bad word you've ever called yourself on your body. Stand in the shower and pay attention to the way the words turn back into ink and disappear down the drain. ~ Iain S. Thomas

It's not the things you don't want that drag you under. It's the things you think you want.
Those, are the killers. ~ Iain S. Thomas

You are well within your rights to stand up, interrupt everyone around you and say, 'This is not who I am. This is not what I want. I'm sorry, but you've mistaken me for somebody else. ~ Iain S. Thomas

It was dark and I didn't know if the sun would come out again. ~ Iain S. Thomas

I need you to understand something. I wrote this for you. I wrote this for you and only you. Everyone else who reads it, doesn't get it. They may think they get it, but they don't. This is the sign you've been looking for. You were meant to read these words. ~ Iain S. Thomas

Let's talk about it another time.*

*If I'm honest, sometimes I feel like we've been trying to find each other in every life before this one, and this is as close as we've ever gotten. And I know now that we have to try again because we fucked this up. Maybe we won't even be born on the same continent next time, or the time after that, and we'll just spend those lives searching for something we can't find, miserable for reasons we will never understand. Until we get to try again. Until we somehow find each other in another life. ~ Iain S. Thomas

We only hear the loudest voices when really, we should be listening to the quietest. ~ Iain S. Thomas

When it rains, the river will try and and take you away from me.
Which is why, when it rains, we must hold onto each other, just a little tighter. ~ Iain S. Thomas

She was real to me. And while I can be logical about this, logic has never once mended a broken heart or fixed a sundered soul. She has poisoned the very core of me. A dream has killed me ~ Iain S. Thomas

And if you find someone with a head made of colors and a heart made of secrets, try to love them like they need to be loved. ~ Iain S. Thomas

The Taking Of Turns

Monday, June 14, 2010
You are in some songs that still get played on the radio when the DJ is feeling nostalgic.
You are in a book you once lent me (never returned) with yellowed pages.
You are in trees when I touch them, even ones without names carved into them.
You are in the way someone on the street laughs as I pass them.
You are in a box I keep filled with letters.
You are in a ring I no longer wear.
And, every day, you each get a moment to haunt me. ~ Iain S. Thomas

And he loves her. He loves her like he can never grab enough of her between his fingers ~ Iain S. Thomas

You can hide so much, you forget what it's like to be found. ~ Iain S. Thomas

you weren't mine to begin with. ~ Iain S. Thomas

Not everyone wins the lottery,
but everyone who does
bought a ticket.

To live the life you want,
you have to be brave
and buy the ticket every single day. ~ Iain S. Thomas

The feeling you get when you think of something amazing and then forget it and know that it felt amazing but you cant remember the details. Then, minutes later, you remember it again and you're so grateful because you nearly lost something, forever. Except, this time, its a person. Not an idea. ~ Iain S. Thomas

Now if only I could do something about my neurosis that forces me to narrate my life out loud for everyone to hear, I said, to no one in particular. ~ Iain S. Thomas

Does it hurt? What is it?"
"It's not food poisoning, it's not a hazard to public health."
"What is it?"
"It's just an ache you've given me. I'll live. But only with you. ~ Iain S. Thomas

If you are lucky, one day you'll get the chance to have your life defined by how much you loved and were loved by someone else. ~ Iain S. Thomas

There was a research article I read with the headline, "Love Is A Single Act Committed By Two Brains," because of the way oxytocin levels rose in a mother and a son when they hugged. I wish more poets became scientists ~ Iain S. Thomas

What follows is what happens each time I fall. I do not know if these things really happen but this is what I believe happens. As your eyes move across these words, some sacred engine is coming back to life and I am beginning to fall again. Sometimes, it feels like I'm floating ~ Iain S. Thomas

This is my skin. It keeps out the rain and words I'd rather not hear like "I'm tired" or "I'm fine" or "We need to talk."
This is my skin and it's thick. This is not your skin. Yet you are still under it. ~ Iain S. Thomas

And we're not everything we could be, because we're afraid to allow ourselves to exist all at once, because too many people have told us not to. ~ Iain S. Thomas

The universe is desperately trying to move you into the only spot that truly belongs to you, in the whole entire thing, a space that only you can stand in. I believe it is up to you to decide every single day whether you are moving towards or away from that spot. ~ Iain S. Thomas

There is a kind of light that can shine in anyone, if they give themselves the space to shine. ~ Iain S. Thomas

If you really want to know, I just hope I die before I get boring. ~ Iain S. Thomas

Everyone you meet along the way is just someone at a different point in their story.
So be patient and kind.
But don't let anyone tell you how your story should go. ~ Iain S. Thomas

Let someone love you just the way you are - as flawed as you might be, as unattractive as you sometimes feel, as unaccomplished as you think you are. To believe you must hide all the parts of you that are broken, out of fear that someone else is incapable of loving what is less than perfect, is to believe that sunlight is incapable of entering a broken window and illuminating a dark room. ~ Iain S. Thomas

Sometimes I have a weird dream that we're all relatively brief sparks of consciousness that live on a rock circling a ball of fire. ~ Iain S. Thomas

I hope you never hate anything longer than you need to. ~ Iain S. Thomas

Now listen: You are made of good things. You are capable of incredible things. You are a song the universe sings itself, in every color it can imagine. Some parts are sad. Some parts are happy. Every part of the song, is a part of you. Listen. Listen to the sound of the universe. ~ Iain S. Thomas

I hope you discover that love is both a feeling and an action, like light is both a particle and a wave. ~ Iain S. Thomas

You cannot kill me here. Bring your soldiers, your death, your disease, your collapsed economy because it doesn't matter, I have nothing left to lose and you cannot kill me here. Bring the tears of orphans and the wails of a mother's loss, bring your God damn air force and Jesus on a cross, bring your hate and bitterness and long working hours, bring your empty wallets and love long since gone but you cannot kill me here. Bring your sneers, your snide remarks and friendships never felt, your letters never sent, your kisses never kissed, cigarettes smoked to the bone and cancer killing fears but you cannot kill me here. For I may fall and I may fail but I will stand again each time and you will find no satisfaction. Because you cannot kill me here. ~ Iain S. Thomas

Out-of-date theories are not in principle unscientific because they have been discarded. That ~ Thomas S. Kuhn

Despite all their surface diversity, most jokes and funny incidents have the following logical structure: Typically you lead the listener along a garden path of expectation, slowly building up tension. At the very end, you introduce an unexpected twist that entails a complete reinterpretation of all the preceding data, and moreover, it's critical that the new interpretation, though wholly unexpected, makes as much "sense" of the entire set of facts as did the originally "expected" interpretation.
In this regard, jokes have much in common with scientific creativity, with what Thomas Kuhn calls a "paradigm shift" in response to a single "anomaly." (It's probably not coincidence that many of the most creative scientists have a great sense of humor.) Of course, the anomaly in the joke is the traditional punch line and the joke is "funny" only if the listener gets the punch line by seeing in a flash of insight how a completely new interpretation of the same set of facts can incorporate the anomalous ending.
The longer and more tortuous the garden path of expectation, the "funnier" the punch line when finally delivered. ~ V.S. Ramachandran

Seated at table -
no need for the fracture
of the room's silence; noiselessly
they conversed. ~ R.S. Thomas

Not surprisingly, as the pioneer theme is presented, each goes back in memory to his or her own family line. There are usually examples to identify and which fit the definition of a pioneer: "one who goes before, showing others the way to follow." Some, if not all, made great sacrifices to leave behind comfort and ease and respond to that clarion call of their newly found faith. ~ Thomas S. Monson

When we ponder that vast throng who have died honorably defending home and hearth, we contemplate those immortal words, 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.' The feelings of heartfelt gratitude for the supreme sacrifice made by so many cannot be confined to a Memorial Day, a military parade, or a decorated grave. ~ Thomas S. Monson

The sweetest feeling you can have in this world is to feel the hand of the Lord upon your shoulder. In my patriarchal blessing as a boy, I was promised that I would have the gift of discernment. I have to acknowledge that such a declaration has been abundantly fulfilled in my life. ~ Thomas S. Monson

From the Book of Mormon come other precious promises, including promises of peace, freedom, and blessings if we 'will but serve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ' (Ether 2:12). ~ Thomas S. Monson

A woman needs to be told she is beautiful. She needs to be told she is valued. She needs to be told she is worthwhile. ~ Thomas S. Monson

Avoid any semblance of pornography. It is dangerous and addictive. If you continue to view pornography, your spirit will become desensitized and your conscience will erode. ~ Thomas S. Monson

The Lord's purposes are often accomplished as we pay heed to the guidance of the Spirit. I believe that the more we act upon the inspiration and impressions which come to us, the more the Lord will entrust to us His errands. ~ Thomas S. Monson

I hope his wife feeds him [Clarence Thomas, Justice, U.S. Supreme Court] lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease ... He is an absolutely reprehensible person. ~ Julianne Malveaux

The temples are a refuge from life's storms even a never-failing beacon guiding us to safety. ~ Thomas S. Monson

The Indians must conform to 'the white man's ways', peaceably if they will, forcibly if they must. They must adjust themselves to their environment, and conform their mode of living substantially to our civilization. This civilization may not be the best possible, but it is the best the Indians can get. They cannot escape it, and must either conform to it or be crushed by it. The tribal relations should be broken up, socialism destroyed, and the family and the autonomy of the individual substituted. ~ Thomas Morgan U.S. Commissioner Of Indian Affairs

The road back to God is not nearly so steep nor is it so difficult as some would have us believe. ~ Thomas S. Monson

He who gives money gives some, he who gives time gives more, and he who gives of himself gives all. ~ Thomas S. Monson

Because of Jesus Christ the world has changed, the divine Atonement has been made, the price of sin has been paid, and the fearful spectacle of death yields to the light of truth and the assurance of resurrection. Though the years roll by, His birth, His ministry, His legacy continue to guide the destiny of all who follow Him as He so invitingly urged. ~ Thomas S. Monson

I like this thought: Your mind is a cupboard, and you stock the shelves. Let us make certain that our cupboard shelves, and those of our family members, are stocked with the things which will provide safety to our souls and enable us to return to our Father in Heaven. Such shelves could well be stocked with gospel scholarship, faith, prayer, love, service, obedience, example, and kindness ~ Thomas S. Monson

When we treat people merely as they are, they will remain as they are. When we treat them as if they were what they should be, they will become what they should be. ~ Thomas S. Monson

On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind. Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President, author, scientist, architect, educator, and diplomat ~ George Washington

Many years ago, it was my opportunity to serve as president of the Canadian Mission. There we had a branch with very limited priesthood. We always had a missionary presiding over the branch. I received a strong impression that we needed to have a member of the branch preside there. ~ Thomas S. Monson

I acknowledge that I do not understand the processes of creation, but I accept the fact of it. ~ Thomas S. Monson

She and Don were taken to a hangar where a pair of F-15 fighter jets were waiting: his and hers, as it turned out. "Why?" Don asked uneasily. "We're taking you to the U.S.S. William Jefferson Clinton." "An aircraft carrier? ~ Thomas Waite

It has been said that the door of history turns on small hinges, and so do people's lives. We are constantly making small decisions. The outcome determines the success or failure of our lives. That is why it is worthwhile to look ahead, to set a course, and at least be partly ready when the moment of decision comes. True finishers have the capacity to visualize their objective. ~ Thomas S. Monson

Spiritual strength frequently comes through selfless service. ~ Thomas S. Monson

You can be a rich person alone. You can be a smart person alone. But you cannot be a complete person alone. For that you must be part of, and rooted in, an olive grove. This truth was once beautifully conveyed by Rabbi Harold S. Kushner in his interpretation of a scene from Gabriel García Márquez's classic novel One Hundred Years of Solitude: Márquez tells of a village where people were afflicted with a strange plague of forgetfulness, a kind of contagious amnesia. Starting with the oldest inhabitants and working its way through the population, the plague causes people to forget the names of even the most common everyday objects. One young man, still unaffected, tries to limit the damage by putting labels on everything. "This is a table," "This is a window," "This is a cow; it has to be milked every morning." And at the entrance to the town, on the main road, he puts up two large signs. One reads "The name of our village is Macondo," and the larger one reads "God exists." The message I get from that story is that we can, and probably will, forget most of what we have learned in life - the math, the history, the chemical formulas, the address and phone number of the first house we lived in when we got married - and all that forgetting will do us no harm. But if we forget whom we belong to, and if we forget that there is a God, something profoundly human in us will be lost. ~ Thomas L. Friedman

May we muster courage at the crossroads, courage for the conflicts, courage to say, "no," courage to say, "yes," for courage counts. ~ Thomas S. Monson

If you want to know whats really going on in the world note carefully what is never mentioned in the newspapers meaning of course that is he meant international money swindles & deals between jewish gold merchants & cabinet ministers ~ John Thomas Idlet

He said He was God, in many ways and at many times in the Gospels. If this was not true, that would make Him either an insane fool, if He believed it, or a blasphemous liar, if He didn't. His miracles, like His holiness, His love, and His wisdom, make it impossible to call Him a lunatic or a liar; therefore we must call Him Lord. This is the "Lord, liar, or lunatic" argument made famous by C. S. Lewis and Josh McDowell. It goes back to St. Thomas, to the early Christian apologists like St. Justin Martyr, and, as St. Thomas shows here, implicitly to Christ Himself. ~ Peter Kreeft

Serving throughout the world is a great missionary force going about doing good. Missionaries teach truth. They dispel darkness. They spread joy. They bring precious souls to Christ. ~ Thomas S. Monson

MEXICAN PURPLE Although the source of this exclusive dye was long a Phoenician trade secret, by the time of the classical Greeks it was known to be manufactured from a gland of the murex sea snail. Surprisingly, while traveling in Mexico in the 1830s, Thomas Gage observed that traditional purple dye manufacture there used the same techniques to create dye from the same sea snails.95 ~ S.C. Compton

God can turn stones into bread, and a sinner can turn bread into stones; the bread of life into the stone of stumbling. ~ Thomas Watson

Welsh poet R. S. Thomas often complained of having to go out and "perform cultural exceses on Saxon territory," the term he used for reading his poems to English sudiences. ~ R.S. Thomas

Its assimilation requires the reconstruction of prior theory and re-evaluation of prior fact, an intrinsically revolutionary process that is seldom completed a single man and never overnight ~ Thomas S. Kuhn

....the power of a science seems quite generally to increase with the number of symbolic generalizations its practitioners have at their disposal. ~ Thomas S. Kuhn

In short, if you have any question about whether a particular movie, book, or other form of entertainment is appropriate, don't see it, don't read it, don't participate. ~ Thomas S. Monson

Your mind is a cupboard and you stock the shelves. ~ Thomas S. Monson

Must we learn such costly lessons over and over again? Times change, but truth persists. When we fail to profit from the experiences of the past, we are doomed to repeat them with all their heartache, suffering, and anguish. Haven't we the wisdom to obey Him who knows the beginning from the end - our Lord, who designed the plan of salvation - rather than that serpent, who despised its beauty? ~ Thomas S. Monson

Are we amateurs and not professionals? We know the lessons of history, we know the mistakes and we either act accordingly or collapse. Salvation lies in clarity and the courage to implement change ~ Thomas S. Power

We are surrounded by those in need of our attention, our encouragement, our support, our comfort, our kindness ... We are the Lord's hands here upon the earth, with the mandate to serve and to lift His children. He is dependent upon each of us ~ Thomas S. Monson

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollection of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them. ~ Thomas Jefferson

On July 2, 1964, President Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act. Its enactment, following the longest continuous debate in the history of the U.S. Senate, enshrined into law the basic principle upon which our country was founded - that all people are created equal. ~ Thomas Perez

EB: 'Ll showed me a long verse-letter, very obscene, he'd received from Dylan T[Thomas] before D's last trip here [New York] - very clever, but it really can't be published for a long, long time, he's decided. About people D. met in the U.S. etc. - one small sample: A Streetcar Named Desire is referred to as 'A truck called F - - - .'

RL: 'Psycho-therapy is rather amazing - something like stirring up the bottom of an aquarium - chunks of the past coming up at unfamiliar angles, distinct and then indistinct.'

RL: 'I have just finished the Yeats Letters - 900 & something pages - although some I'd read before. He is so Olympian always, so calm, so really unrevealing, and yet I was fascinated.'

RL: 'Probably you forget, and anyway all that is mercifully changed and all has come right since you found Lota. But at the time everything, I guess (I don't want to overdramatize) our relations seemed to have reached a new place. I assumed that would be just a matter of time before I proposed and I half believed that you would accept. Yet I wanted it all to have the right build-up. Well, I didn't say anything then.'

EB: 'so I suppose I am just a born worrier, and that when the personal worries of adolescence and the years after it have more or less disappeared I promptly have to start worrying about the decline of nations . . . But I really can't bear much of American life these days - surely no country has ever been so filthy rich and so ~ Robert Lowell

Ours is the responsibility to show our gratitude by the actions of our lives. ~ Thomas S. Monson

Pointsman is the only one here maintaining his calm. He appears unruffled and strong. His lab coats have even begun lately to take on a Savile Row serenity, suppressed waist, flaring vents, finer material, rather rakishly notched lapels. In this parched and fallow time, he gushes affluence. After the baying has quieted down at last, he speaks, soothing: "There's no danger."
"No danger?" screams Aaron Throwster, and the lot of them are off again muttering and growling.
"Slothrop's knocked out Dodson-Truck and the girl in one day!"
"The whole thing's falling apart, Pointsman!"
"Since Sir Stephen came back, Fitzmaurice House has dropped out of our scheme, and there've been embarrassing inquires down from Duncan Sandys - "
"That's the P.M.'s son-in-law, Pointsman, not good, not good!"
"We've already begun to run into a deficit - "
"Funding," IF you can keep your head, "is available, and will be coming in before long… certainly before we run into any serious trouble. Sir Stephen, far from being 'knocked out,' is quite happily at work at Fitzmaurice House, and is At Home there should any of you wish to confirm. Miss Borgesius is still active in the program, and Mr. Duncan Sandys is having all his questions answered. But best of all, we are budgeted well into fiscal '46 before anything like a deficit begins to rear its head."
"Your Interested Parties again?" sez Rollo Groast.
"Ah, I noticed Clive Mossmoon from Imperial Chemicals closeted ~ Thomas Pynchon

...Juliana. Should you cease to exist, so would I. ~ Kathleen Collins

The old men ask for more time; the young waste it. And the philosopher simply smiles, knowing there is none there. ~ R.S. Thomas

I know that God lives, my brothers and sisters. There is no question in my mind. I know that this is His work, and I know that the sweetest experience in all this life is to feel His promptings as He directs us in the furtherance of His work. ~ Thomas S. Monson

We all have received the divine injunction: 'Follow thou me.' It guided Peter. It motivated Paul. It can determine our personal destiny. Can we make the decision to follow in righteousness and truth the Redeemer of the world? With his help, a rebellious boy can become an obedient man, a wayward girl can cast aside the old self and begin anew. Indeed, the gospel of Jesus Christ can change lives. ~ Thomas S. Monson

Self-discipline is a rigorous process at best; too many of us want it to be effortless and painless. ~ Thomas S. Monson