Laughing And Living Quotes

He wanted to talk to them, if he could, to discover whether they had truths about life which he had never heard before. Here is what he hoped new truths might do for him: enable him to laugh at his troubles, to go on living, and to keep out of the North Wing of the Midland County General Hospital, which was for lunatics. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

In the past there were people who were not rich but contented with their living style, laughing and happy all day. But when the new rich people appear, people look at them and ask, 'why don't I have a life like that too, a beautiful house, car and garden,' and they abandon their values. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Let us express our deepest gratitude for every moment that we spend in loving, laughing, and living out time that we call life. ~ Debasish Mridha

I'm the living dead. I feel no connection to any other human. I have no friends and I don't really care much about my family any longer. I feel no love for them.

I can feel no joy. I'm incapable of feeling physical pleasure. There's nothing to ever look forward to as a result. I don't miss anyone or anything. I eat because I feel hunger pangs, but no food tastes like anything I like.

I wear a mask when I'm with other people but it's been slipping lately. I can't find the energy to hide the heavy weight of survival and its effect on me. I'm exhausted all the time from the effort of just making it through the day.

This depression has made a mockery of my memory. It's in tatters. I have no good memories to sustain me. My past is gone. My present is horrid. My future looks like more of the same. In a way, I'm a man without time. Certainly, there's no meaning in my life. What meaning can there be without even a millisecond of joy? Ah, scratch that. Let's even put aside joy and shoot for lower. How about a moment of being content? Nope. Not a chance.

I see other people, normal people, who can enjoy themselves. I hear people laughing at something on TV. It makes me cock my head and wonder what that's like. I'm sure at sometime in my past, I had to have had a wonderful belly laugh. I must have laughed so hard once or twice that my face hurt. Those memories are gone though. Now, the whole concept of "funny" is dead. I stopped going to movies ~ Ahmed Abdelazeem

And that unfortunate loss? Was that really an accident,or did you lose deliberately so I wouldn't have to pay the bill?"
He shrugged. "My lips are sealed."
"I should have known."
Once on the open highway he turned on the radio,and they both sang along with Garth as he lamented his papa being a rolling stone.
When the song ended,Marilee looked over. "I'll consider that a sermon. According to Garth, a woman would be a fool to lose her heart to a man who'd rather drive a truck than be home with her."
Wyatt winked,and in his best imitation of Daffy's smoky voice he said, "Honey, a man may love the open road,but any female with half a brain can figure out how to compete with a truck.Just bat those pretty little red-tipped lashes at any male over the age of twelve, and his brain turns to mush.Next thing you know, instead of revving up his engine, he's on his hands and knees, carrying a toddler on his back around a living room full of toys and baby gear."
Though the image was a surprisingly pretty one,Marilee had to wipe tears from her eyes,she was laughing so hard. When she caught her breath she managed to say, "You've got Daffy down so perfectly,you could probably answer the phone at the Fortune Saloon and no one would believe it wasn't her."
"She's easy." He chuckled. "I think she's the only female with a voice that's deeper than mine."
She looked out the window at the full moon above Treasure Chest Mountain in the distance. "It's a shame t ~ R.C. Ryan

Someone must be having a big party, Shyla thought as she turned into her neighborhood, the rhythmic salsa beat of Latin music was so loud.

A car she didn't recognize was parked in the middle of her driveway. She had to drive over the grass in order to get around it. She pushed the automatic opener to raise the garage door. Another car was parked where she normally parked, and it wasn't Carl's. It belonged to Pilar. Leaving her car where it was, she got out and went into the house through the back door from the garage.

Inside the house, the noise was almost deafening. Two young children were thrashing one another in the middle of the family room while some woman, presumably their mother, yelled at them in Spanish. The woman barely noticed Shyla.

Shyla went into the living room and could hear other voices and laughter coming from her bedroom. There, she found a young woman going through her jewelry box, and someone else holding up one of her bras. When they saw Shyla, they stopped laughing.

Pilar and another elderly woman were just coming down the stairs when Shyla went back into the living room.

"Shyla, why are you home?" Pilar asked, then shrugged.

Shyla could hardly hear her over the noise. "I live here," she said, too stunned to say anything else. She went back into the family room and turned off the compact disc player. There, on the floor, lay her great grandmother's china clock, broken. ~ Barbara Casey

I wanna be strong, I wanna laugh along, I wanna belong to the living. Alive, alive, I wanna get up and jive, Wanna wreck my stockings in some jukebox dive. ~ Joni Mitchell

The moments that make life worth living are when things are at their worst and you find a way to laugh. ~ Amy Schumer

A thought of the world swept over her, of people living around her, singing, dancing, laughing; it seemed unexpectedly and joyfully that in all this great world of the city there were a thousand places where she might go and live in deep happiness, among friends who were waiting for her here in the stirring crowds of the city. ~ Shirley Jackson

After a couple hours of this, seven-year-old Christo was beside himself. He had never been babysat before. How long was this fuckery going to go on? His sister was hysterical. He paced around our living room, now in his shirtsleeves and black pants. Pulling his golden curls nervously, he looked like the night manager of a miniature diner who had just had a party of six dine and dash. He ranted to his baby sister in Greek, This sent my mother running into the dining room laughing hysterically. I chased her. What? What did he say? Roughly translated it was Oh! My Maria! What is to become of us? ~ Tina Fey

I look around at everybody laughing and joking together and struggle to understand my life has become a living hell that nobody present could even begin to imagine ~ B.A. Paris

My religion consists of laughing at myself. My motto is this: As long as there is a me, there is a reason to laugh out loud! ~ C. JoyBell C.

What are you going to do when he is old enough to go to school?"
"Saab, what do you mean? I am not a rich man. I don't have the means to send him to school. I will teach him my trade and he will grow up and earn an honest living. School is not for the likes of us, Saab."
Vilie paused and looked into the laughing face of the baby. Krishna was probably right. What could school probably teach him that his parents could not improve upon? They were rich in their knowledge of the ways of the forest, the herbs one could use for food, the animals and birds one could trap and the bitter herbs to counteract the sting of a poisonous snake.
"I guess he will go to the best school then," Vilie remarked. ~ Easterine Kire

The same thing happened to me that, according to legend, happened to Parmeniscus, who in the Trophonean cave lost the ability to laugh but acquired it again on the island of Delos upon seeing a shapeless block that was said to be the image of the goddess Leto. When I was very young, I forgot in the Trophonean cave how to laugh; when I became an adult, when I opened my eyes and saw actuality, then I started to laugh and have never stopped laughing since that time. I saw that the meaning of life was to make a living, its goal to be- come a councilor, that the rich delight oflove was to acquire a well-to-do girl, that the blessedness of friendship was to help each other in financial difficulties, that wisdom was whatever the majority assumed it to be, that enthusiasm was to give a speech, that courage was to risk being fined ten dollars, that cordiality was to say "May it do you good" after a meal, that piety was to go to communion once a year. This I saw, and I laughed. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

I soon discovered the Hat and Feathers was a misleading name. In it there was no hat, and absolutely no feathers. There were just heavily inebriated people with red faces laughing at their own jokes. This, I soon discovered, was a typical pub. The 'pub' was an invention of humans living in England, designed as compensation for the fact that they were humans living in England. I rather liked the place. ~ Matt Haig

I had to make her mine, she had to be mine. Now. Yesterday. Tomorrow. Every fucking tomorrow. No games, no more pain. Just me and her, loving and laughing. Living. Really living. Fuck, I could live if I had her. I could really live. ~ Lucian Bane

Jeremy Taylor, Charles I's personal chaplain, wrote a tract, The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living, in 1650 that illustrates that not much has changed in over 360 years. He characterised drunkenness by: Apish gestures. Much talking. Immoderate laughing. Dullness of sense. Scurrility, that is wanton jeering or abusive language. A useless understanding. Stupid sleep. Epilepsies, or ~ Simon Wills

Consider the public. Never fear it nor despise it. Coax it, charm it, interest it, stimulate it, shock it now and then if you must, make it laugh, make it cry, but above all never, never, never bore the living hell out of it. ~ Noel Coward

Beauty is merely defined by the very core of one's soul, which then and only then outlines one's outside features, reflecting beyond the body. With every line representing who you are.
The wrinkles around the eyes from laughing so hard, the callus on ones hands from giving, the scars on one body from "living", the curve of ones mouth from the words their speaking, the lines on one's for curiosity their building.
Truth is we all hold our own definition of beauty, it's that simple. ~ Lisa Abu-Bakr

The trick is to ride the wave,
Fast, wide-open and
in deep Now-magic.
Free, burning fear for fuel
Generous, knowing there is always more where that came from.
Cresting, spray of liquid jewels hanging, shining in the sun and wind.
Flying down the wave in graceful slices.
Rolling, tumbling under, over
Breathless falling, floating into the deep dark beneath.
Rising, face breaks the surface
Laughing
Kneeling, standing
Riding again.
Sunset waits behind the horizon
But daylight begs us to swim
Out beyond
Where our feet can't touch bottom.
Into the deep wild
Where the next wave can
sweep us higher,
Show us what else is possible
In this marvelous place. ~ Jacob Nordby

But, imagining Scott's nights here, I populated the emptiness. This had been one of his places and some small part of his spirit had been left here. Holding my own brief séance for my brother, I conjured vivid faces and loud nights. I saw that smile of his, sudden as a sunray, when he loved what you were saying. I saw the strained expression when he felt you must agree with him and couldn't get you to see that. I caught the way the laughter would light up his eyes when he was trying to suppress it. I heard the laughing when it broke. He must have had some nights here. He had lived with such intensity. The thought was my funeral for him. Who needed possessions and career and official achievements? Life was only in the living of it. How you act and what you are and what you do and how you be were the only substance. They didn't last either. But while you were here, they made what light there was – the wick that threads the candle-grease of time. His light was out but here I felt I could almost smell the smoke still drifting from its snuffing. ~ William McIlvanney

Anne Hathaway
The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -
I hold him in the casket of my widow's head
as he held me upon that next best bed. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

Katherine Mary, we're going to know each other very wel, for many years, I hope. You'll see, you'll come to understand. These big things, these terrible things, are not important ones. If they were, how could one go on living? No, it is the small, little things that make up a day, that bring fullness and happiness to a life. Your sergeant coming home, a good dinner, your little Mary laughing, the smell of the woods- oh, so many things, you know them yourself. ~ Benedict Freedman

Respect the verbs in your life.
Life is a verb. Live is a verb.
Live Life. Action verbs
bring life to writing.
Love is a verb. Be is a verb.
Be in Love
Believe, love, give,
receive,tag,
Believing in love,
giving love, receiving love,
love tag(you are it)
dance, prance, pounce,
smile, try,
trying to smile,
dancing and prancing,
pounce!
laugh, do, go, grow, feel, touch,
touching, feeling, growing, doing,
going, laughing,
sing, walk, run, cook, look,
see, eat, meet, greet, smell,
hear,
look and see the cooking,
singing and then walking
into the kitchen to eat,
eating the yummy food.
running to see,
seeing the food,
meeting and greeting others;
smelling the cooking,
hearing the laughter;
seeing the runners;
touching the icing.
licking the icing. tasting
the licking of the spoon
discover, realize, live,
respect.
discover life, realizing truth,
living, respecting everyone
under the sun,
even all the universe
love and respect all ~ Jerriann Wayahowl Law

The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -
I hold him in the casket of my widow's head
as he held me upon that next best bed.

- Anne Hathaway ~ Carol Ann Duffy

The only kind of love worth having is the kind that goes on living and laughing and fighting and loving. ~ Dalton Trumbo

Shy gold begins to peep through the sombre green - the wattle's wedding dress - and Spring is near. Then suddenly it seems, one golden morning, the Bush awakes, a living thing. Flowers bloom, birds sing, and all the world puts on its gayest dress to greet the laughing Spring. ~ C. J. Dennis

He sprawls on the sand, quietly laughing. His laugh is weak and in need of air but it may still be the greatest sound I've ever heard. It's full of warmth and genuine mirth, as only a living, breathing - um - person can have. ~ Susan Ee

You - you alone will have the stars as no one else has them ... In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night ... You - only you - will have stars that can laugh. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

I've experienced having you in the house. It's like living with a loud motor running all the time. Up, down, into this room and that room, eating supper, jumping from the table, cursing all the time, yelling over the telephone about things, laughing, making deals all the time. You take up a lot of space and make a lot of noise." She ~ Jane Smiley

You have to have humor. If you don't have humor and you take yourself seriously, you're dead in the water. You have to be jostled. I love it. You've gotta have a laugh. It's better than working for a living. ~ Anthony Hopkins

What if something were to happen? What if something suddenly started throbbing? Then they would notice it was there and they'd think their hearts were going to burst. Then what good would their dykes, bulwarks, power houses, furnaces and pile drivers be to them? It can happen any time, perhaps right now: the omens are present. For example, the father of a family might go out for a walk, and, across the street, he'll see something like a red rag, blown towards him by the wind. And when the rag has gotten close to him he'll see that it is a side of rotten meat, grimy with dust, dragging itself along by crawling, skipping, a piece of writhing flesh rolling in the gutter, spasmodically shooting out spurts of blood. Or a mother might look at her child's cheek and ask him: "What's that, a pimple?" and see the flesh puff out a little, split, open, and at the bottom of the split an eye, a laughing eye might appear. Or they might feel things gently brushing against their bodies, like the caresses of reeds to swimmers in a river. And they will realize that their clothing has become living things. And someone else might feel something scratching in his mouth. He goes to the mirror, opens his mouth: and his tongue is an enormous, live centipede, rubbing its legs together and scraping his palate. He'd like to spit it out, but the centipede is a part of him and he will have to tear it out with his own hands. And a crowd of things will appear for which people will have to find new names, st ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Like, okay. Everyone in history thought they were the ones who finally knew everything. In their naissance, right, they were positive they knew exactly how the universe worked. Til the next set of guys came along and proved they were missing like a hundred important things. and then that set of guys were sure they had it all down, til another set came along and showed them parts they were missing." He glances at Julia, checking if she's laughing at him, which she isn't, and if she's listening, which she is, completely. "So." he says, "it's pretty unlikely, mathematically, that we are living in the one single era that has everything figured out. Which means there's a decent possibility that the reason we can't explain how ghosts and stuff could exist is because we haven't figured it out yet, not because they don't. And it is pretty arrogant of us to think it definitely has to be the other way around. ~ Tana French

Life gets so ridiculous, you just have to brush it off like sand and laugh. I think the laughter is good medicine for crap-itis. ~ Ace Antonio Hall

But even as he reached out to cup he face he heard an angry buzzing, and a huge black bee dive-bombed him from out of nowhere. With an oath, Thomas jumped back, swatting ineffectually at the persistent insect. As his left foot came down he turned his ankle and nearly fell.
Alexandria's hand covered her mouth in horror. Aidan, stop it right now!
I cannot imagine what you are accusing me of, Aidan returned innocently from the living room. But I have not done anything. He smiled and moved slowly toward her. Yet.
"Marie!" In a panic, Alexandria called out as loudly as she could.
Aidan laughed as the housekeeper hurried in. Little coward, run while you can.
Though they were half a room apart and Marie was squarely between them, Alexandria felt the brush of his fingers on her skin, her face, her throat. They trailed lower, feather-light, to touch the aching swell of her breast before the sensation was gone.
"What is it, Alexandria?" Marie asked, her hands on her hips, glaring at Aidan.
He held up a placating hand, laughing. "I am innocent. I was a perfect gentleman to her visitor."
"He spilled Thomas's coffee, made him sneeze, smeared whipped cream over him, and chased him with a bee," Alexandria accused.
While Marie struggled to keep a straight face, Alexandria delivered a final outrage. "And he was going to wither my flowers."
"Aidan!" Marie reprimanded sharply, but there was laughter in her eyes. ~ Christine Feehan

Enjoy the present, bid defiance to the future, laugh at all those reasonable beings who exercise their reason to avoid the misfortunes which they fear, destroying at the same time the pleasure that they might enjoy. ~ Giacomo Casanova

Even with all that fine living, that fire stayed with my mama. Caught her up in the night as a child and woke her sweating and screaming. That's why I don't buy it when people say children don't know. That they're too young to understand. If they can walk and talk, they can understand. You look at how much growing a baby does in the first few years of its life - crawling, walking, talking, laughing. The brain just changing and changing. You can't tell me all of it's not becoming a part of their blood. Their memory. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

The present's perfect, young grasshopper, because we're breathing, moving, laughing, crying, and are surprised when we finally meet someone we connect with. Stop living in the past and wasting your present. ~ Alison G. Bailey

At night, you'll look up at the stars. It's too small, where I live, for me to show you where my star is. It's better that way. My star will be...one of the stars, for you. So you'll like looking at all of them. They'll all be your friends. And besides, I have a present for you. He laughed again.
'Ah, little fellow, little fellow, I love hearing that laugh.'
'That'll be my present. Just that...'
People have stars, but they aren't the same. For travelers, the stars are guides. For other people they're nothing but tiny lights. And for still others, for scholars, they're problems. For my businessman, they were gold. But all those stars are silent stars. You though, you'll have stars like nobody else.
'What do you mean?'
When you look up at the sky at night, sincle I'll be living on one of them, since I'll be laughing on one of them, for you it'll be as if all the stars are laughing. You'll have stars that can laugh!
And he laughed again.
...And it'll be as if I had given you, instead of stars, a lot of little bells that know how to laugh. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

I looked around for that welcoming light I'd heard about, but I didn't see it. Instead, everything around me seemed to glow and shimmer in the sunlight. I heard beautiful sounds-not the voices of dead loved ones, but the laughter and singing of my children when they were tiny. I saw James, young and shirtless, chasing them through Mama's garden. Off in the distance I saw Barbara Jean and Clarice, and even myself when we were kids, dancing to music pouring out of my old pink and violet portable record player. Here I was with my fingers brushing up against the frame of the picture I'd been painting for the last fifty-five years, and my beautiful, scarred husband, my happy children, and my laughing friends were right there with me. ~ Edward Kelsey Moore

Life is such a strange thing, she thinks, once she has stopped laughing. Even after certain things have happened to them, no matter how awful the experience, people still go on eating and drinking, going to the toilet and washing themselves - living, in other words. And sometimes they even laugh out loud. And they probably have these same thoughts, too, and when they do it must make them cheerlessly recall all the sadness they'd briefly managed to forget. ~ Han Kang

ROTHKO: (Explodes) 'Pretty.' 'Beautiful.' 'Nice.' 'Fine.' That's our life now! Everything's 'fine'. We put on the funny nose and glasses and slip on the banana peel and the TV makes everything happy and everyone's laughing all the time, it's all so goddamn funny, it's our constitutional right to be amused all the time, isn't it? We're a smirking nation, living under the tyranny of 'fine.' How are you? Fine.. How was your day? Fine. How are you feeling? Fine. How did you like the painting? Fine. What some dinner? Fine ... Well, let me tell you, everything is not fine!!
HOW ARE YOU?! ... HOW WAS YOUR DAY?! ... HOW ARE YOU FEELING? Conflicted. Nuanced. Troubled. Diseased. Doomed. I am not fine. We are not fine. We are anything but fine. ~ John Logan

As soon as the period of mourning for Dona Ester was over and the big house on the corner was finished, Esteban Trueba and Clara del Valle were married in a modest ceremony. Esteban gave his wife a set of diamond jewelry, which she thought beautiful. She packed it away in a shoe box and quickly forgot where she had put it. They spent their honeymoon in Italy and two days after they were on the boat. Esteban was as madly in love as an adolescent, despite the fact that the movement of the ship made Clara uncontrollably ill and the tight quarters gave her asthma. Seated by her side in the narrow cabin, pressing cold compress to her forehead and holding her while she vomited, he felt profoundly happy and desired her with unjust intensity considering the wretched state to which she was reduced. On the fourth day at sea, she woke up feeling better and they went out on deck to look at the sea. Seeing her with her wind-reddened nose, and laughing at the slightest provocation, Esteban swore that sooner or later she would come to love him as he needed to be loved, even if it meant he had to resort to extreme measures. He realized that Clara did not belong to him and that if she continued living in her world of apparitions, three-legged chairs that moved of their own volition, and cards that spelled out the future, she probably never would. Clara's impudent and nonchalant sensuality was also not enough for him. He wanted far more than her body; he wanted control over that undefined and ~ Isabel Allende

No! I don't want to speak of that! But I'm going to. I want you to hear. I want you to know what's in store for you. There will be days when you'll look at your hands and you'll want to take something and smash every bone in them, because they'll be taunting you with what they could do, if you found a chance for them to do it, and you can't find that chance, and you can't bear your living body because it has failed those hands somewhere. There will be days when a bus driver will snap at you as you enter a bus, and he'll be only asking for a dime, but that won't be what you hear; you'll hear that you're nothing, that he's laughing at you, that it's written on your forehead, that thing they hate you for. There will be days when you'll stand in the corner of a hall and listen to a creature on a platform talking about buildings, about the work you love, and the things he'll say will make you wait for somebody to rise and crack him open between two thumbnails; and then you'll hear people applauding him, and you'll want to scream, because you won't know whether they're real or you are, whether you're in a room full of gored skulls, or whether someone has just emptied your own head, and you'll say nothing, because the sounds you could make - they're not a language in that room any longer; but you'd want to speak, you won't anyway, because you'll be brushed aside, you who have nothing to tell them about buildings! Is that what you want? ~ Ayn Rand

It amazed Chess how he'd really believed, almost all along, that there was nothing he'd miss, leaving this world. Only the whole of it, you ass-stupid fool.

Every bit, the living and the dead, and then some; hot sun on his back, the wind and the rain, full-out galloping into battle, feel of his guns in hand, a good hard fuck. Getting drunk - on absinthe, anger, blood. Stomping twice on some enemy's face for good measure, and laughing while he did it; the sound of Asher Rook's voice preaching, or Yancey's, singing. Ed's heartbeat under his cheek. ~ Gemma Files

Seeing people laugh definitely inspires me, and so does seeing people get life lessons about living better. ~ Tyler Perry

The only reason Lenz didn't burst out laughing was because he wasn't alone; his movement - which seemed hidden now inside a second glove, the body of the injured soldier - were mockeries of themselves. Lenz felt as though he was engaged in a kind of manual labour that for him, deep down, was like manipulating shapes in clay or working a piece of wood. Any feelings of empathy were dissolved in professional expertise and in the recognition of his triumph in relation to the body lying on the stretcher. Lenz was alive, on his feet, with his reason intact, and still in control of the use of language: in that room he was the person who determined every Yes and every No - and he had long known that controlling such extreme words was a source of undisputable power.
A startled nurse was asking Dr. Lenz whether he wanted her to pass him another scalpel, one with a fine point, and Lenz replied: No. No, no. Yes, yes,yes.
Let us say that "organic craftsmanship," the most basic craftsmanship, often filled him with enthusiasm. Lenz knew that bullets or bomb shrapnel - in short, all the pieces of metal that find their way into our bodies - were only looking for what any living creature looks for: a shelter, a final home, a home where they can be left alone, where they feel secure. ~ Gonçalo M. Tavares

We sat on a crate of oranges and thought what good men most biologists are, the tenors of the scientific world--temperamental, moody, lecherous, loud-laughing, and healthy. Once in a while one comes on the other kind--what used in the university to be called a 'dry-ball'--but such men are not really biologists. They are the embalmers of the field, the picklers who see only the preserved form of life without any of its principle. Out of their own crusted minds they create a world wrinkled with formaldehyde. The true biologist deals with life, with teeming boisterous life, and learns something from it, learns that the first rule of life is living. The dry-balls cannot possibly learn a thing every starfish knows in the core of his soul and in the vesicles between his rays. He must, so know the starfish and the student biologist who sits at the feet of living things, proliferate in all directions. Having certain tendencies, he must move along their lines to the limit of their potentialities. And we have known biologists who did proliferate in all directions: one or two have had a little trouble about it. Your true biologist will sing you a song as loud and off-key as will a blacksmith, for he knows that morals are too often diagnostic of prostatitis and stomach ulcers. Sometimes he may proliferate a little too much in all directions, but he is as easy to kill as any other organism, and meanwhile he is very good company, and at least he does not confuse a low hormone productivity ~ John Steinbeck

He has always been the kid who cries too easily and laughs too easily, the kid who begins giggling in church for no reason at all, who blinks hotly in shame and frustration whenever he misses a question in class, living in an otherland of sparkling daydreams and imaginary catastrophes. ~ Kevin Brockmeier

Noc knew that his girlfriend was better as he got to the door of Kay's living room. This he could tell by the sound of her screaming at Turney for some infraction on the Son of Time's part. He opened it to see her soaking wet, cornering Turney by the stereo and holding a ball of Hellfire. Noc burst out laughing at the normalcy of the whole thing. ~ Brian Fatah Steele

They communicated without words from the most primitive part of the soul. I remembered her laughing about this, saying that she felt like an animal, and how she realized that we are less human in our times of greatest love and greatest fear. ~ Christy Lefteri

Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. How often I think of that 'ought.' No sugary sentiment there. Just the stern, glorious trumpet call, OUGHT. But can words tell the joy buried deep within? Mine cannot. It laughs at words. ~ Amy Carmichael

Laughing like children, living like lovers, rolling like thunder, under the covers, and I guess that's why they call it the blues. ~ Elton John

And at night you will look up at the stars. It's too small, where I live, for me to show you where my stars is. It's better that way. My star will just be one of the stars, for you. So you'll like looking at all of them. They'll all be your friends. And, besides, I am going to make you a present...' He laughed again.

'Ah, little prince, dear little prince! I love to hear that laughter!'

'That is my present. Just that. It will be as it was when we drank the water...'

'What do you mean?'

'People have stars, but they aren't the same. For travelers, the stars are guides. For other people, they're nothing but tiny lights. And for still others, for scholars, they're problems. For my businessman, they were gold. But all those stars are silent stars. You, though, you'll have stars like nobody else.'

'What do you mean?'

'When you look up at the sky at night, since I'll be living on one of them, since I'll be laughing on one of them, for you it'll be as if all the stars are laughing. You'll have stars that can laugh!'

And he laughed again.

'And when you're consoled (everyone eventually is consoled), you'll be glad you've known me. You'll always be my friend. You'll feel like laughing with me. And you'll open your window sometimes just for the fun of it...And your friends will be amazed to see you laughing while you're looking up at the sky. Then you'll tell them, "Yes, it's the stars; they always ma ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

In Paris the swaying lanterns are lit in the streets; lights shine through water, fuzzy, diffuse. Saint-Just sits by an insufficient fire, in a poor light. He is a Spartan after all, and Spartans don't need home comforts. He has begun his report, his list of accusations; if Robespierre saw it now, he would tear it up, but in a few days' time it will be the very thing he needs. Sometimes he stops, half-glances over his shoulder. He feels someone has come into the room behind him; but when he allows himself to look, there is nothing to see. It is my destiny, he feels, forming in the shadows of the room. It is the guardian angel I had, long ago when I was a child. It is Camille Desmoulins, looking over my shoulder, laughing at my grammar. He pauses for a moment. He thinks, there are no living ghosts. He takes hold of himself. Bends his head over his task. His pen scratches. His strange letterforms incise the paper. His handwriting is minute. He gets a lot of words to the page. ~ Hilary Mantel

Dying and living, weeping and laughing--all parts of our existence here on earth. What would happen in your friendships if together you embraced the hard parts of life and did not fear weeping together? ~ Afton Rorvik

Not long after I'd first met Doc, we were sitting on our rock on the hill behind the rose garden and I had asked him why I was a sinner and what I had done to be condemned to eternal hell fire unless I was born again.
He sat for a long time looking over the valley, and then he said, :Peekay, God is too busy making the sun come up and go down and watching so the moon floats just right in the sky to be concerned with such rubbish. Only man ants always God should be there to condemn this on and save that one. Always it is man who wants to make heaven and hell. God is too busy training the bees to make honey and every morning opening up all the new flowers for business."He paused and smiled "In Mexico there is a cactus that even sometimes you would think God forgets. But no, my friend, this is not so. On a full moon in the desert every one hundred years he remembers and he opens up a single flower to bloom. And if you should be there and you see this beautiful cactus blossom painted silver by the moon and laughing up at the stars, this, Peekay, is heaven.: He looked at me, his deep blue eyes sharp and penetrating. "This is the faith in God the cactus has". We had sat for a while before he spoke again. "it is better just to get on with the business living and minding your own business and maybe, if God likes the way you do things, he may just let you flower for a day or a night. But don't go pestering and begging and telling him all your stupid little sins, that way you will ~ Bruce Courtenay

Don't become a grumpy old dater! Life ids for living, laughing and loving!Stop searching, start finding! ~ Siggy Buckley

Do you recall where the lamps were?" Camille whispered. In the dark, in someone else's home, whispering seemed more appropriate. A clunk off to her right and the screech of table legs skittering across the floor made her cringe.
"I don't remember that being there," Oscar said.
"I'm glad we don't break into houses for a living. We're appalling at it," Camille said, laughing as the room brightened. ~ Angie Frazier

Easing back in her seat, Grace watched the children in the playground opposite, coats off, faces flushed, laughing hysterically with pleasure. They were so vividly alive, completely immersed in the game. She tried to recall a time when she'd been that way and realized she couldn't remember when that had been. She'd lost the knack of forgetting herself. Instead she seemed to look down on herself throughout the day, scrutinizing, judging; finding herself wanting more. ~ Kathleen Tessaro

We know when we are following our vocation when our soul is set free from preoccupation with itself and is able to seek God and even to find Him, even though it may not appear to find Him. Gratitude and confidence and freedom from ourselves: these are signs that we have found our vocation and are living up to it even though everything else may seem to have gone wrong. They give us peace in any suffering. They teach us to laugh at despair. And we may have to. ~ Thomas Merton

Any time I found myself wavering- thinking about death or dying or ends or Dad or the ToD -I'd force myself to think about June instead...
Think about June. Flip my mind overtop of itself, push everything else out until she's all that's left. June laughing at a joke I'd made, or June speaking, or June existing. This didn't serve, exactly, to balance me on the tightrope; it disintegrated the tightrope. It made it so the tightrope had never existed at all. There was no gravity. I could float there, comfortable, and never worry about the fall ever again.
What's the point of living it-
June.
We're all going to die and the universe is indifferent and-
June. Her hands on me and her face close to mine but what does it matter if she, if Dad-
June. June sitting in the driver's seat. Dad decomposing in the driver's seat-
June. Heaven is June in the driver's seat. Hell is June in the driver's seat. There is only June in the driver's seat. And at night, my consciousness would slip away, repeating that smooth, delicious mantra in my head.
There is only June in the driver's seat. ~ Savannah Brown

I know the rules. I've been living here longer than you have."
He cracks a smile then. He nudges me back. "Hardly."
"Born and raised. You're a transplant." I nudge him again, a little harder, and he laughs and tries to catch hold of my arm. I squirm away, giggling, and he stretches out to tickle my stomach. "Country bumpkin!" I squeal, as he grabs out and wrestles me back onto the blanket, laughing.
"City slicker," he says, rolling over on top of me, and then kisses me. Everything dissolves: heat, explosions of color, floating. ~ Lauren Oliver

Children should be living carefree lives and always smiling – laughing, filled with peace and harmony; not worrying about the troubles of what tomorrow may bring. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

But the actual mail was delivered to the little brick post office on the main drag and distributed to the keyed, ornate boxes inside. My family had one of the lower numbers because we'd inherited our box as it was passed down through the Shepherd line.
"So your family is Levan royalty, then?" Moses had teased.
"Yes. We Shepherds rule this town," I replied.
"Who has PO Box number 1?" he inquired immediately.
"God," I said, not missing a beat.
"And box number 2?" He was laughing as he asked.
"Pam Jackman."
"From down the street?"
"Yes. She's like one of the Kennedys."
"She drives the bus, right?" he asked.
"Yes. Bus driver is a highly lauded position in our community." I didn't even crack a smile.
"So boxes 3 and 4?"
"They are empty now. They are waiting for the heirs to come of age before they inherit their mailboxes. My son will someday inherit PO Box #5. It will be a proud day for all Shepherds."
"Your son? What if you have a daughter?" His eyes got that flinty look that made my stomach feel swishy. Talking about having children made me think about making babies. With Moses.
"She's going to be the first female bull-rider who wins the national title. She won't be living in Levan most of the time. Her brothers will have to look after the family name and the Shepherd line . . . and our post office box," I said, trying not to think about how much I would enjoy making little bull-riders with Moses. ~ Amy Harmon

These days every morning begins like a joke
you think you have heard before,
but there is no one telling it
whom you can stop.
One day it's about a cow who walks into a bar,
then about a man with a big nose on his honeymoon,
then about a kangaroo who walks into a bar.
Each one takes up an entire day.
The sun looks like a prank Nathanael West
is pulling on the world; on the drive to work
cars are swinging comically from lane to lane.
The houses and lawns belong in cartoons.
The hours collapse into one another's arms.
The stories arc over noon and descend
like slow ferris wheels into the haze of evening.
You wish you could stop listening and get serious.
Trouble is you cannot remember the punch line
which never arrives till very late at night,
just as you are reaching for the bedside lamp,
just before you begin laughing in the dark. ~ Billy Collins

We often talk about being kind, but how do we define "kind" at its very root? Where is the root and what is the root of "kind" and "kindness"? I truly believe that kindness is rooted in the acceptance of the flaws of life, the acceptance of the turns life has taken which we couldn't have planned for and that we didn't hope for. Kindness is rooted in the acceptance of the fact that life is a wild thing that cannot ever be caged. Some people are going to get married and divorced seven times before they find the one they are meant to be with; that's okay. Some people are going to be born with disabilities; that's okay. Some people are born in heaven while others are born in hell; both are okay. Some people are born in hell later ending up in heaven while others are born in heaven later ending up in hell; it's all okay. Life, whether belonging to you or to others, is never going to be a painting fitting into your prepared picture frame. How dare we come into this monstrous, joyous, incredible, terrible world, thinking that we can dictate what's wrong and right, what's better and what's lesser? Come into this world with your wings and your claws and your paws and your laughters! With your feathers and your fur! Because you're going to need all of it! And when you look at other people, sometimes they are going to be donning feathers and other times they are going to be clawing things, jumping in and out, screaming or laughing or crying or being quiet; it's all okay. Because we are ~ C. JoyBell C.

I had a pretty regular childhood, with a rad mum who taught me to love reading and thinking and laughing, and (as far as I was concerned) a regular dad who drove trucks for a living and did radio interviews on weekends and got stopped in the street a lot when we went out. ~ Brooke Fraser

We may writhe in agony from pain
Or laugh out loud when we find happiness
As long as we're alive tomorrow will come
we become stronger and keep on living
We were born to live ~ Miho Obana

See, my aim is not to survive but to be thrown to the wolfs with adrenaline still pumping in my veins and hear the gods laughing saying "that was one hell of a youth" and everything I do I do in order to push my senses and levels of natural ecstasy. I want to be so awake that I pass out by exhaustion every night with a smile on my face and no thoughts of tomorrow because today was all I ever could make of it and I am sick and tired of boredom. Bored people slumbering boring words about bored habits and I want to get out. ~ Charlotte Eriksson

Is life worth living in the jaws of society's trash can for misfit minds? What can I possibly achieve or contribute to mankind in this steel and concrete box with a damn loud laughing wall that moves? Just give up? ~ Daniel Keyes

When warm weather came, Baby Suggs, holy, followed by every black man, woman, and child who could make it through, took her great heart to the Clearing--a wide-open place cut deep in the woods nobody knew for what at the end of the path known only to deer and whoever cleared the land in the first place. In the heat of every Saturday afternoon, she sat in the clearing while the people waited among the trees.

After situating herself on a huge flat-sided rock, Baby Suggs bowed her head and prayed silently. The company watched her from the trees. They knew she was ready when she put her stick down. Then she shouted, 'Let the children come!' and they ran from the trees toward her.

Let your mothers hear you laugh,' she told them, and the woods rang. The adults looked on and could not help smiling.

Then 'Let the grown men come,' she shouted. They stepped out one by one from among the ringing trees.

Let your wives and your children see you dance,' she told them, and groundlife shuddered under their feet.

Finally she called the women to her. 'Cry,' she told them. 'For the living and the dead. Just cry.' And without covering their eyes the women let loose.

It started that way: laughing children, dancing men, crying women and then it got mixed up. Women stopped crying and danced; men sat down and cried; children danced, women laughed, children cried until, exhausted and riven, all and each lay about the Clearing damp and ~ Toni Morrison

In all of living, have much fun and laughter. Life is to be enjoyed, not just endured. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

A Child of Happiness always seems like an old soul living in a new body, and her face is very serious until she smiles, and then the sun lights up the world ... Children of Happiness always look not quite the same as other children. They have strong, straight legs and walk with purpose. They laugh as do all children, and they play as do all children, they talk child talk as do all children, but they are different, they are blessed, they are special, they are sacred. ~ Anne Cameron

My goofiest-sounding secret is that I also believe in magic. Sometimes I call it God and sometimes I call it light, and I believe in it because every now and then I read a really good book or hear a really good song or have a really good conversation with a friend and they seem to have some kind of shine to them. The list I keep of these moments in the back of my journal is comprised less of times when I was laughing or smiling and more of times when I felt like I could feel the colors in my eyes deepening from the display before me. Times in which I felt I was witnessing an all-encompassing representation of life driven by an understanding that, coincidence or not, our existence is a peculiar thing, and perhaps the greatest way to honor it is to just be human. To be happy AND sad, and everything else. And yeah, living is a pain, and I say I hate everyone and everything, and I don't exude much enthusiasm when sandwiched between fluorescent lighting and vinyl flooring for seven hours straight, and I will probably mumble a bunch about how much I wish I could sleep forever the next time I have to wake up at 6 AM. But make no mistake about it: I really do like living. I really, truly do. ~ Tavi Gevinson

Living is being happy: seeing, hearing, touching, drinking, eating, urinating, defecating, diving into the water and gazing at the sky, laughing and crying. ~ Milan Kundera

Or a mother might look at her child's cheek and ask him: "What's that, a pimple?" and see the flesh puff out a little, split, open, and at the bottom of the split an eye, a laughing eye might appear. Or they might feel things gently brushing against their bodies, like the caresses of reeds to swimmers in a river. And they will realize that their clothing has become living things. And someone else might feel something scratching in his mouth. He goes to the mirror, opens his mouth: and his tongue is an enormous, live centipede, rubbing its legs together and scraping his palate. He'd like to spit it out, but the centipede is a part of him and he will have to tear it out with his own hands. And a crowd of things will appear for which people will have to find new names, stone eye, great three cornered arm, toe crutch, spider jaw. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

In one of those stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night. And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend ... I shall not leave you. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

Out there people are working and arguing and laughing, living their beautiful, terrible lives, falling in love and having babies and being bored out of their skulls and feeling depressed, then being consoled by some little thing like watching the patterns the light makes through the leaves of trees, casting shadows on the sidewalks.
I remember the line from that poem now.
Downward to darkness, on extended wings. ~ Kim Addonizio

I learned this one growing up in Texas and, subsequently, living in Los Angeles: always use the 'usted' form when speaking to a Spanish official. Mexican border patrol cops don't like it when you call them 'amigo,' give them a hardy pat on the back, slip a $20 in their pocket. No bueno, it doesn't fly. By the way, those of you not laughing at that obviously took French in high school, and that was a gay choice. ~ Iliza Shlesinger

Laughing isn't wrong if it's done out of happiness. Dreaming is essential because it gives us wings, and forgetting...well, there's a difference between living and forgetting. ~ Laura Bradford