This Is A Book Quotes

This is a book about me, at what I hope is the beginning of the second half of my life and not the brief, final tenth. ~ John Hodgman

This is a book about Heaven. I know it now. It floats among us like a cloud and is the realest thing we know and the least to be captured, the least to be possessed by anybody for himself. It is like a grain of mustard seed, which you cannot see among the crumbs of earth where it lies. It is like the reflection of the trees on the water. ~ Wendell Berry

This is a book for those of you who want to be parents as well as people, who don't want to feel guilty about taking some time for yourself or your relationship (if you're even in one). It's for those folks who might, every once in a while, want to get drunk, and have sloppy sex without worrying that they're going to roll over on their kid because you all sleep in a "family bed" since that's how they do it in Taiwan and they have the highest math scores of any country on earth. ~ Brett Berk

This is a book about getting naked - not physically, but spiritually. It's about stripping away the symbols and status of public religion - the Sunday-dress version people often call "organized religion." And it's about attending to the well-being of the soul clothed only in naked human skin. ~ Brian D. McLaren

This is a book about winning, ~ Dave Ramsey

this is a book about something ~ C.S. Lewis

This is a book about seeing, about becoming more and more alive and aware, orienting ourselves around the God who I believe is the ground of our being, the electricity that lights up the whole house, the transcendent presence in our tastes, sights, and sensations of the depth and dimension and fullness of life, from joy to agony to everything else. ~ Rob Bell

If anything could be a book, there was no telling what you could learn, if you knew what to look for. Smooth river stones spelled out across a mossy floor. Lines drawn in the sand. Or inscribed on the side of a fallen log, half-obscured by twigs and mulch: This is a book. ~ Traci Chee

Alexis Coe rescues a buried but extraordinarily telling episode from the 1890s that resonates in all sorts of ways with today. That in itself would be an accomplishment. But this is a book that is truly riveting, a narrative that gallops. Lizzy Borden eat your heart out. Here's a real crime of passion. Or was it? I dare you to pick this one up and try, just try to put it down. ~ Peter Orner

This is a book of raw flesh. ~ Helene Cixous

This is a book of warning. It is a reminder that what we have is valuable, and that sometimes we take what we value for granted. There ~ Ray Bradbury

REGARDING THE MARCHING BAND: How much more interesting it would be to see a creeping band. ~ Demetri Martin

Edin Viso's poetry and prose bear the obvious marks of dark drama-of a soul variously splayed apart and cinched back together...This is a book of psalms-at once craggy and rough as the Balkan landscape, and sublime as sunrise on the Aegean Sea. There are calluses on the palms, dried blood on the knuckles, and dirt under the fingernails of these pieces. And there is grace...Edin is a poet who knows the value of a blanket, a single orange, a moment shared...He is a man who is unafraid, and who does, in the pages before you, "take off his skin and dance in his bones.". ~ Stephen T. Berg

When I was a boy in the midwest I used to go out and look at the stars at night and wonder about them.

I guess every boy does that.

When I wasn't looking at the stars, I was running in the my old or my brand-new tennis shoes, on my way to swing in a tree, swim in a lake, or delve in the town library to read about dinosaurs or time machines.

I guess every boy has done that, too.

This is a book about those stars and those tennis shoes. Mainly about the stars, beacuse that is the way I grew up, getting more and more involved with rockets and space as I moved toward my twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth years.

Not that I have forgotten the tennis shoes and their powerful magic, as you will see in the last story here, which I have included not because it concerns the future, but because it gives you some sort of idea of the kind of boy I was when I was looking at the stars and thinking of the years ahead.

Nor have I forgetten the dinosaurs that all boys love; they are here, too, along with a machine that travels back in time to step on a butterfly.

This is a book then by a boy who grew up in a small illinois town and lived to see the space age arrive, as he hoped and dreamt it would.

I dedicate these stories to all boys who wonder about the past, run swiftly in the present, and have high hopes for our future.

The stars are yours, if you have the head, the hands, and the heart for th ~ Ray Bradbury

It is illegal to yell "fire" in a crowded theater. If there is a fire, please yell something else instead, like "Flames!" or "Smoke maker!" or "Bad hot! ~ Demetri Martin

Catch-22 is the greatest satirical work in English since Erewhon ... remarkable ... This is a book that I could wish everyone to read. It is a book which should help us feel more clearly ~ Philip Toynbee

This is a book for any girl who ever felt she didn't fit in. You are not alone. You come from a long line of bold, strong, fearless women. Glory in that. ~ Jason Porath

I read everything. I'll read a John Grisham novel, I'll sit and read a whole book of poems by Maya Angelou, or I'll just read some Mary Oliver - this is a book that was given to me for Christmas. No particular genre. And I read in French, and I read in German, and I read in English. I love to see how other people use language. ~ Jessye Norman

A writer is a man like any other: he dreams. And my dream was to be able to say of this book, when I finished: 'This is a book about Alentejo'. ~ Jose Saramago

This is a book that looks at how we can use the challenges, joys, struggles, and celebrations of marriage to draw closer to God and to grow in Christian character. ~ Gary L. Thomas

It is a place of fine weather, and this is a book of fine weather, a book written in Spring. I will not remember the winter and the rain. It was the Spring that brought Sarah Brown to Mitten Island, and the Spring that first showed her magic. It was the Spring that awoke her on her first morning in the House of Living Alone. ~ Stella Benson

This is a book by a grown-ass woman written for other grown-ass women. This is a book for women who expect to be taken seriously and for men who take grown women seriously. This is a book for women who know shit is fucked up. These women want to change things but don't know where to begin. ~ Brittney Cooper

This is a book called Women in the Shade of Islam. It's published by the government of Saudi Arabia. I picked it up in Pakistan, where the Taliban Ladies Auxiliary, and our young wife in California would've picked up an item like this. And it puts out that Salafi-Wahhabi ideology that is ultimately the toxic poison that is crossing all these borders. ~ Dalia Mogahed

Interference is a terrific page-turner, but it's also a haunting, powerful look at the way families and friendships entangle us all. Berry is a sharp-eyed, engaging writer, and she deftly captures the terrors, ruptures and intimacies of one seemingly ordinary neighborhood, always finding a precarious beauty in her characters' lives. This is a book that is terrifying, startling, and very hard to put down. ~ Rebecca Godfrey

This is not a book about Millennials; indeed, Millennials are getting a bad rap these days, as many people erroneously attribute recent campus trends to them. This is a book about the very different attitudes toward speech and safety that spread across universities as the Millennials were leaving. ~ Greg Lukianoff

This is a book that respects kids and their ideas. And in that regard, it places Chasing Vermeer in the tradition of classic favorites fondly recalled from our own childhoods. ~ Elizabeth Taylor

A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return. ~ Salman Rushdie

Like an unexpected wet mop in the face of tired complacency, The Sovereignty Solution works on the receptive mind as a pry bar works on a tightly sealed box. Written with courage and passion, this is a book whose often counterintuitive clarity shakes entombed assumptions like an earthquake. Whether you end up convinced or not, you will never think about American national security the same way ever again. ~ Adam Garfinkle

This is a book about lost faith and blaming God when He allows bad things to happen to good people. But, it is also about the wounds we carry around with us when we fail to make a diiference when a difference was needed, whether real or perceived. But there is hope for us all! We are NOT alone! ~ Norman Whaler

Can we really put Ben (hereby representing all men) on such a pedestal? Having tamed those beasts set aside for him, is it not like Ben to seek out that which has historically (regardless of how brief a history) been set aside for women? Woolf criticizes the masculine in her work with the repetition of the phrases uttered by that inconsiderate individual who makes the claim that women cannot paint or write. Is Ben not committing the same crime as that unfortunate character?
In stating "[b]etter like this, bitch," Ben employs a word that I would consider to be demasculinizing, rather than feminine. In using the word bitch, he seizes this scholarly investigation and, if you will, pisses on it, claiming it as his own. His statement is an outright challenge. This is a book I stole from women, and I urinated on it. You'd better appreciate my conquest or I will also urinate on you. ~ Caris O'Malley

Don't look at me like that. This is a book about a sex scandal: did you really expect me to be a nun and/or the Virgin Mary? ~ Laura Steven

This is a book, and a book is a world, and words are the seeds in which meanings are curled. Pages of oceans and margins of land are civilizations you hold in the palm of your hand. But look at your world and your life seems to shrink to cities of paper and seas made of ink. Do you know who you are, or have you been misled? Are you the reader, or are you the read? ~ Traci Chee

The Unthinkable is not a book about disaster recovery; it's about what happens in the midst - before the po­lice and firefighters arrive, before reporters show up in their rain slickers, before a structure is imposed on the loss. This is a book about the survival arc we all must travel to get from danger to safety. ~ Amanda Ripley

Why in the world a book on Christ for Unitarian Universalists (UUs)? Less than 20 percent of us identify as Christians.1 But more than 70 percent of Americans identify as Christian, and we UUs are only 0.3 percent of America at best.2 So, primarily, this is a book to help us talk intelligently about Christ with our Christian friends. We Unitarian Universalists actually have had a lot to say about Christ over the years as well (that is, centuries, and perhaps even millennia), and we have generally done that in dialogue with mainstream Christians. But not much anymore. This book is meant to encourage us to do so again, not just by referencing our history, but also by speaking freshly as Unitarian Universalists in the twenty-first century.

Why in the world a book on Christ for Unitarian Universalists, when we virtually never use that title for the historical figure
of Jesus of Nazareth? Again, primarily because that's how the rest of the world speaks. They refer to themselves and others who stand in the tradition of Jesus as Christ-ians, not Jesus-ians. Why? Because they tend to be less interested in the Jesus of history than in the Christ of their present faith. Jesus lives with them in their daily lives now as the Christ. Christ is an honorific title that technically means "the anointed one" of God. For most Christians, Jesus is the post-Easter Christ, the resurrected Christ, who is actually with them now in real time - who companions them and comforts them and ~ Scotty McLennan

John Green has written a powerful novel - one that plunges headlong into the labyrinth of life, love, and the mysteries of being human. This is a book that will touch your life, so don't read it sitting down. Stand up, and take a step into the Great Perhaps. ~ KL Going

This is a book about notable achievements made while dead. ~ Mary Roach

This is a book about texts as well as their authors, it is not a textbook so much as a context book and a pretext book, concerned with settings and motives as well as the works themselves. Its success will be measured by the readers who pick up Plato's Republic, Hobbes's Leviathan, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, and find themselves engrossed rather than baffled - and even when they are baffled, are happy to go on reading, interrogating, and arguing with their authors for themselves. ~ Alan Ryan

Remember to take a flood book with you wherever you go. This is a book on hand for whenever there is a "flood" or something unexpected that leads to a free moment. Such moments include: waiting in line someplace, waiting for a friend to be ready, waiting for something to start, waiting for a thunderstorm to pass, or waiting at the doctor's office. The list goes on and on. Follow the Boy Scout motto and be prepared. ~ Bruce Johnson

If girls can be anything, let them be anything.

This is a book for any girl who ever felt she didn't fit in. You are not alone. You come from a long line of bold, strong, fearless women. Glory in that.

This is a book for anyone who ever underestimated a girl. ~ Jason Porath

Nicole Baart has written a novel that satisfies on every level. Sleeping In Eden is a compelling mystery, a tragic love story, a perceptive consideration of the callous whim of circumstance and, perhaps most important, a beautiful piece of prose. I guarantee this is a book that will haunt you long after you've turned the last page. ~ William Kent Krueger

It's tempting to preface everything with "In my life I've found" so that people can't yell at me for being wrong (I often am) or misinformed (sure) or overly emotional (HOW DARE YOU). But this is a book about my life so I have to simply hope that unsaid disclaimer is just implied. This is my life, and my observations of it, and they change as I change. That's one of the frightening things about writing a book that no one ever tells you. You have to pin down your thoughts and opinions and then they exist on a page, ungrowing, forever. You may convince yourself that you were never stupid or coarse or ignorant but one day you reread your seventh-grade diary and rediscover the person who one day becomes you, and you vacillate between wanting to hug this unfinished, confused stranger and wanting to shake some damn sense into her. ~ Jenny Lawson

This is a book which I would recommend to anyone who is walking through the pain of abuse. A book of courage in the face of overwhelming odds; a book which will touch your heart and give you hope. ~ Ruth Hawkey

In England on a hot day, women are happy to walk around with their bra straps showing. In Paris, they don't shave their armpits. And you just can't mention Germany and style in the same book, let alone the same sentence. It's the same story in America too, where the Farrah Fawcett haido of 1975 still reigns supreme. In Italy, even the policemenists look like they've just come off a catwalk. One I found, standing on a rostrum in the middle of a Roman square, was immaculate, as was his routine. Each wave of the hand, each toot of the whistle and each twist of the body was Pans People perfect. Never mind that the traffic was completely ignoring him, he looked good, and that's what mattered. Looking good in Italy is even more important than looking where you're going. ~ Jeremy Clarkson

Given the power and influence that science increasingly has in our daily lives, it is important that we as citizens of an open and democratic society learn to separate good science from bunk. This is not just a matter of intellectual curiosity, as it affects where large portions of our tax money go, and in some cases even whether people's lives are lost as a result of nonsense. ~ Massimo Pigliucci

St. Thomas adopts a division of the nine choirs into three groups, according to their intellectual perfection and consequent nearness in being to God - Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones; Dominations, Virtues, Powers; Principalities, Archangels, Angels. Other writers suggest different arrangements; and there is a mass of magnificent theological speculation as to the difference of function between one choir and another. But the Church has defined nothing upon this matter. ~ Frank Sheed

It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write. ~ George Orwell

The 21st Amendment gives the states the right to decide what the drinking ages should be and other aspects relative to alcoholic beverages, and I support that. As a United States senator, I want to weigh in - this is not my agenda. ~ Pete Coors

It is the nature and pleasure of townspeople to distrust the city. All the guiding principles that might flow from a center of ideas and cultural energies are regarded as corrupt, one or another kind of pornography. This is how it is with towns. ~ Don DeLillo

Widen your vision of what beauty is. Realize and keep close the fact that a beauty standard has been created by the very people who sell it, and that it is no accident that the accepted "beauty standard" can easily be described as "perfect." Flaws are not tolerated if you want to be perfect. But the models that we see most often--even the tallest and thinnest and most doe-eyed--are still pinned and sprayed and pulled into place. Then they are manipulated digitally until, literally, everything that might be perceived as a "flaw" is erased. This is a way to sell product. It has nothing to do with real life. It has nothing to do with you. We are made of so-called "flaws." They are the thread that stitches our parts together and keeps us from being generic cut-out paper dolls. You are beautiful. You are enough, now and always. You have always been enough. ~ Lindsey Gates-Markel

Confident fighters are dangerous fighters. I know that. But there other fighters who said before a fight they were stronger than me, hit harder, were going to knock me out. Walters is a good champion but really how many quality fights has he been in compared to where I have been in my career? We both have speed, we both have power. It's an explosive fight. This is going to end in a knockout. I will go into the ring and do my best. ~ Nonito Donaire

In my contact with people I find that, as a rule, it is only the little, narrow people who live for themselves, who never read good books, who do not travel, who never open up their souls in a way to permit them to come into contact with other souls -- with the great outside world. No man whose vision is bounded by colour can come into contact with what is highest and best in the world. In meeting men, in many places, I have found that the happiest people are those who do the most for others; the most miserable are those who do the least. I have also found that few things, if any, are capable of making one so blind and narrow as race prejudice. I often say to our students, in the course of my talks to them on Sunday evenings in the chapel, that the longer I live and the more experience I have of the world, the more I am convinced that, after all, the one thing that is most worth living for -- and dying for, if need be -- is the opportunity of making some one else more happy and more useful. ~ Booker T. Washington

The trick in writing children's books is to set up danger, mystery and excitement on page one. Force the kid to turn the page ... Then in the middle of each chapter there's a dramatic point of excitement, and at chapter's end, a cliffhanger. ~ Jerry West

It has always been a favorite idea of mine, that there is so much of the human in every man, that the life of any one individual, however obscure, if really and vividly perceived in all its aspirations, struggles, failures, and successes, would command the interest of all others. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Think of silence as a violence, when silence means being made a frozen sea. Think of speaking as a violence, when speaking is a house that dresses your life in the tidiest wallpaper. It makes your grief sit down, this house. It makes you chairs when you need justice. It keeps your rage room temperature. ~ Chen Chen

I am not a parliamentarian. I am a politician. Some MPs leave and are itching to get back. I don't feel that. This is just a work environment. ~ David Blunkett

I ended my Twitter account a week after I got on the show. I felt like, "This is not a good tool for me to keep my narcissism at bay," so I cut it off. ~ Mireille Enos

You only benefit from books if you can give something back to them. What I mean is, if you approach them in the spirit of a duel, so you can both wound and be wounded, so you are willing to argue, to overcome and be overcome, and grow richer by what you have learned, not only in the book, but in life, or by being able to make something of your work. ~ Sandor Marai

And, you know, the fact is, if you believe in evolution, we all have a common ancestor, and we all have a common ancestry with the plant in the lobby. This is what evolution tells us. And, it's true. It's kind of unbelievable. ~ Jeff Hawkins

I am more touched, still, that you are trying to understand - through rational thought - that which cannot be understood at all. The divine, as Boehme said, is unground, unfathomable, something outside the world as we experience it. But this is a difference of our minds, dearest one. I wish to arrive on wings, while you advance steadily on foot, magnifying glass in hand. I am a smattering wanderer, seeking God within the outer contours, searching for a new way of knowing. You stand upon the ground, and consider the evidence inch by inch. Your way is more rational and more methodical, but I cannot change my way. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

This Pandemic should not be a political tool, it doesn't care about our borders, it is a worldwide killer! So let's put aside our conflicts, put our hands together and fight against this disease to serve the humanity. ~ Bruce Mbanzabugabo

But through years of myth-making and fear-sowing, Christianity meta-morphosed antichrists into a single Antichrist, an apocalyptic villain and Christian bogeyman used to scare people as much as Santa Claus is used to regulate children's behavior. After years of studying the concept, I began to realize the Antichrist is a character--a metaphor--who exists in nearly all religions under different names, and maybe there is some truth in it, a need for such a person. But from another perspective, this person could be seen as not a villain but a final hero to save people from their own ignorance. The apocalypse doesn't have to be fire and a brimstone. It could happen on a personal level. ~ Marilyn Manson

Wait," I say. "I think you're mistaken. Saying there is no dream is the same as saying everything is a dream. Isn't it? Everyone's a dreamer? Extraordinary things happen all the time even when we're awake. What I meant to suggest to you, if indeed that was me in your dream doing the suggesting, is that there is only one world. This one. The dream is real. The ordinary is the wonderful. The wonderful is the ordinary. ~ Samantha Hunt

School Library Journal
Gr 3–6 - This interactive manual is fun to read and even more fun to put into practice. From hopscotch to dodge ball, jacks to solitaire, and string games to memory games, all types of activities are included. Games to play with a ball, with cards, in a car on the go, alone, or in a group are all here to be enjoyed. The instructions are clear and easy to follow. There are also historical and factual asides for many of the entries. Some include variations on the main game or alternate names for the activity that have been used through the years. The illustrations depict children demonstrating a particular aspect of a game or just enjoying themselves playing. This is a great resource for parents and teachers, as well as for children. - Cynde Suite, Bartow County Library System, Adairsville, GA ~ J.J. Ferrer

Be sure that Christ is not behind you, but before, calling and drawing you on. This is the liberty, the beautiful liberty of Christ. Claim your glorious privilege in the name of a disciple; be no more a servant, when Christ will own you as a friend. ~ Horace Bushnell

The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.' "'But,' says Man, 'the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.' "'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. "'Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and ~ Douglas Adams

Cannibalism is a problem. In many cases the practice is rooted in ritual and superstition rather than gastronomy, but not always. A French Dominican in the seventeenth century observed that the Caribs had most decided notions of the relative merits of their enemies. As one would expect, the French were delicious, by far the best. This is no surprise, even allowing for nationalism. The English came next, I'm glad to say. The Dutch were dull and stodgy and the Spaniards so stringy, they were hardly a meal at all, even boiled. All this sounds sadly like gluttony. - PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR ~ Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

Sometimes it takes having differences, not understanding one another, and even being a little bit irritated by and bored with one another, to remind us that the church is a family and not a club. At its best, this family dynamic of the local church functions as God's fertile soil for growing us beyond mere tolerance toward true expressions of love and unity. ~ Scott Sauls

I am sorry to say that it is a common practice with romancers to announce their hero as a man of extraordinary genius, and to leave his works entirely to the reader's imagination; so that at the end of the book you whisper to yourself ruefully that but for the author's solemn preliminary assurance you should hardly have given the gentleman credit for ordinary good sense. ~ George Bernard Shaw

There is no better adviser than a good book. ~ Debasish Mridha

When someone hears that I've written a book about 1897, I'm usually met with blank stares. And the first thing they say is, 'Was there even an L.A. back then?' A lot of people don't even think there was a city before the movies appeared. That concept of Los Angeles is so strong in the popular imagination that celebrity overrides everything. ~ Liz Goldwyn

What's wrong? Where's Gavin?" Mabellio grabbed my shoulders as I tried to barge through the door. "He's fine." He paused. "Now."
"Oh my God," I cried. "I want to see him."
Golar spoke in a calm, soothing tone. "You may, but understand he will need time to heal before he can journey anywhere. You both are welcome to stay, along with Oliver, of course, until he is able."
I nodded my head quickly. "Thank you." I started to walk through the doorway but turned back towards Golar and Mabellio. "Do you know how or why he is even here? I am utterly confused. This is my dream. My nightmare. How is he a part of that? ~ Brynn Myers

This is the same power that I feel propelling me forward into the next phase of my life. God saved my soul and spared my life for a reason: He left me to tell my story to others and show as many people as possible the healing power of His love and forgiveness. ~ Immaculee Ilibagiza

So this is what commodity corn can do to a cow: industrialize the miracle of nature that is a ruminant, taking this sunlight- and prairie grass-powered organism and turning it into the last thing we need: another fossil fuel machine. This one, however, is able to suffer. ~ Michael Pollan

They are trying to look within, to differentiate, to discriminate, to analyze, and in doing so are bringing themselves into deeper bondage. Now this is a situation which is really dangerous to Christian life, for inward knowledge will never be reached along the barren path of self-analysis. ~ Watchman Nee

Not that she means anything by it, he knows. This is simply her lifelong habit of moderation at work, her need to tamp everything down to the routine, the modest, the tepid everyday. He understands the whole concept of boundaries, but there's a point where this mania for normalizing turns toxic. ~ Ben Fountain

The tone of every book is slightly different; there's a music that each has that is distinct from all the others. ~ Paul Auster

The Song Of The Happy Shepherd

The woods of Arcady are dead,
And over is their antique joy;
Of old the world on dreaming fed;
Grey Truth is now her painted toy;
Yet still she turns her restless head:
But O, sick children of the world,
Of all the many changing things
In dreary dancing past us whirled,
To the cracked tune that Chronos sings,
Words alone are certain good.
Where are now the warring kings,
Word be-mockers? - By the Rood,
Where are now the watring kings?
An idle word is now their glory,
By the stammering schoolboy said,
Reading some entangled story:
The kings of the old time are dead;
The wandering earth herself may be
Only a sudden flaming word,
In clanging space a moment heard,
Troubling the endless reverie.
Then nowise worship dusty deeds,
Nor seek, for this is also sooth,
To hunger fiercely after truth,
Lest all thy toiling only breeds
New dreams, new dreams; there is no truth
Saving in thine own heart. Seek, then,
No learning from the starry men,
Who follow with the optic glass
The whirling ways of stars that pass -
Seek, then, for this is also sooth,
No word of theirs - the cold star-bane
Has cloven and rent their hearts in twain,
And dead is all their human truth.
Go gather by the humming sea
Some twisted, echo-harbouring shell.
And to its lips thy story tell,
And ~ W.B. Yeats

These are my cards on the table. I think you're beautiful. I feel like I'm an idiot with dirt on his face sitting next to someone out of a painting. I think...I think I'm just plain stupid for you. I know that's not exactly sweet talk out of a play. Frankly, I'd kiss your shadow. I'd kiss dirt that had your heel print on it. I like feeling this way. I don't give a damn what you or anyone else thinks...this is how it feels every time I look at you. ~ Scott Lynch

Let us reflect in this way, too, that there is good hope that death is a blessing, for it is one of two things: either the dead are nothing and have no perception of anything, or it is, as we are told, a change and a relocation for the soul from here to another place. ~ Socrates

You may think this a strange story, but it is not. There are people whose lives are every bit as unusual as Bobby Box's
I can promise you that. Not all of them end as well, of course. For many people, the world is a place of sadness and sorrow, which is a great pity, as we have only one chance at life, and it is very bad luck if things do not go well.
But even if you think they are not going well, you can still wish, as Bobby Box did. And sometimes those wishes will come true, as his did, and the world will seem filled with light and happiness. That can happen, you know. So never give up hope; never think things are so bad that they can never get better. They can get better, and they do. And if you have the chance to make things easier for another person, never miss it. Stretch out your hand to help them, to cheer them up, to wipe away their tears. Stretch out your hand as that man and that woman did to Bobby Box. Stretch out your hand and see what happens. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

That which draws us by its mystical force; what every created thing, even the very stones, feels with absolute certainty as the center of its being ... is the force of love. Christians call this "eternal blessedness." It is a necessity of man for growth and joy. ~ Gustav Mahler

The all-consuming selves we take for granted today are "merely empty receptacles of desire." Infinitely plastic and decentered, the modern citizen of the republic of consumption lives on slippery terrain, journeying to nowhere in particular. So too, nothing could be more corrosive of the kinds of social sympathy and connectedness that constitute the emotional substructure of collective resistance and rebellion.
Instead, consumer culture cultivates a politics of style and identity focused on the rights and inner psychic freedom of the individual, one not comfortable with an older ethos of social rather than individual liberation. On the contrary, it tends to infantilize, encouraging insatiable cravings for more and more novel forms of a faux self-expression. The individuality it promises is a kind of perpetual tease, nowadays generating, for example, an ever-expanding galaxy of internet apps leaving in their wake a residue of chronic anticipation. Hibernating inside this "material girl" quest for more stuff and self-improvement is a sacramental quest for transcendence, reveries of what might be, a "transubstantiation of goods, using products and gear to create a magical realm in which all is harmony, happiness, and contentment… in which their best and most admirable self will emerge at last." The privatization of utopia! Still, what else is there? ~ Steve Fraser

I'm the drummer for Stage Dive." Mat set the crazily expensive camera on the seat beside him. "You can't order me around, child bride."
"It's so cute that you think that's still funny, calling me child bride." From her back jean pocket, Ev pulled out her cell. "Am I calling Anne to tattle on you for refusing to give Jimmy and Lena some privacy or not?"
"You wouldn't dare."
Her fingers moved across the screen. "Oh, I think I would."
David and Ben chuckled in ther manly way, but did as told and went back into the recording studio. They clearly weren't messing with the girl.
A second later, Mal followed. "I do not like you women all being friends. This is not okay."
"And you should tell your grilfriend all about it when you see her tonight. I'd love to know what she says." With a final wave, Ev followed him back inside the mixing room or whatever it was called. ~ Kylie Scott

I have my husband and children near me in Rome, and I feel this is where we are temporarily belonging. But personally, all my life, I have felt the absence of a sense of history. ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

Love ... is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. ~ C.S. Lewis

The tragedy of her father's absence had never actually been an acutely tragic event for her. As she grew up and came to understand the world, he was a part of it. An already dead part. His absence was the landscape of her family. Increasingly, as the years went on, she didn't really know what she was missing, but that didn't stop her from missing it. She fixated on him. She prayed to him. She attempted to research him, found obscure publications of his in scientific journals. The language was so formal, she could barely understand it. But she told herself, This is familiar. This is mine, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. She thought, There was a feeling he had, when he wrote this, when he was alive. He communicated it to me, even though everyone who reads this article only gets a lot of information about this scientific test subject, and his reaction to all these oils. She dreamed her father was still out there [ . . . though] her belief that her father was still living did not stop her from telling stories about his death. ~ Lydia Netzer