Quotes about life
page 55

“Everyone's life is a mess. We all make mistakes… and not just little slip-ups. Major mistakes that hurt us and other people.”

James Alan Gardner Trapped

Source: Trapped

People, Hurt

“They weren't nice words he said. He could've lived a good life and died never having made a person feel rubbed down to bones and too sad to hold together.”

Shannon Hale book Book of a Thousand Days

Source: Book of a Thousand Days

Sadness, Feeling, Personality

“Someday every woman will have orgasms- like every family has color TV- and we can all get on with the business of life.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

Source: How to Save Your Own Life

Family, Color, Business

“I don’t want life to imitate art. I want life to be art.”

Carrie Fisher book Postcards from the Edge

Postcards from the Edge (1987)

Art

“Life is a challenge" he once told me, "and only those who rise to the challenge truly know what it means to live.”

Darren Shan book Vampire Mountain

Source: Vampire Mountain

“The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life.”

Zadie Smith (1975) British writer

“gravity, n.

I imagine you saved my life. And then I wonder if I'm just imagining it.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Imagination

“Survival starts by paying attention to what is close at hand and immediate. To look out with idle hope is tantamount to dreaming one's life away.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Dreams, Hope

“Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another's pain, life is not in vain.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

We Bereaved (1929)

Pain, World

“The bruises go away, and so does how you hate, and so does the feeling that everything you receive from life is something you have earned.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

Hate, Feeling

“But sometimes you have to be brave. Sometimes you have to show people what's important in life.”

Sophie Kinsella book I've Got Your Number

Source: I've Got Your Number

People

“No hour of life is lost that is spent in the saddle.”

Winston S. Churchill book My Early Life

My early life, 1874–1904 (1930), Churchill, Winston S., p. 45 (1996 Touchstone Edition), ISBN 0684823454
My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930)

“Sin, he reflected, is not what it is usually thought to be; it is not to steal and tell lies. Sin is for one man to walk brutally over the life of another and to be quite oblivious of the wounds he has left behind.”

Shūsaku Endō book Silence

Source: Silence

“My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

“If being smart is what you say it is, I will remain a fool my entire life.”

Masashi Kishimoto (1974) Japanese manga artist

Fools

“Angel says that rich people don't like to tolerate much. Money gives you permission to just walk away from everything that isn't pretty and perfect. You can't put up with anything less than lovely. You spend your life running, avoiding, escaping.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Diary

Source: Diary

Love, Money, People, Angels

“Without Obsession, Life Is Nothing”

John Waters (1946) American filmmaker, actor, comedian and writer

“Live and let live, do not judge, take life as it comes and deal with it, everything will be okay.”

James Frey book A Million Little Pieces

Source: A Million Little Pieces

“Sometimes I imagine myself looking back on right now and I think like where will I be standing when I look back Will right now look like the beginning of a great life or… or what”

Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad

Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad

Imagination, Thinking

“When you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Pain, Suffering

“I've met talespinners before, Jake, and they're all cut more or less from the same cloth. They tell tales because they're afraid of life.”

Stephen King The Dark Tower

Source: The Dark Tower

Clothes

“Meditation needs no results. Meditation can have itself as an end, I meditate without words and on nothingness. What tangles my life is writing.”

Hélène Cixous (1937) French philosopher and writer

Source: Coming to Writing and Other Essays

“If you lower the ambient noise of your life and listen expectantly for those whispers of God, your ears will hear them. And when you follow their lead, your world will be rocked.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

God, World

“One of the things that we were trying to do with this show was the complexities of relationships and love. There is both passion and longing and a bittersweet quality to it that is a part of life.”

Tim Burton (1958) American filmmaker

Source: Tim Burton's Corpse Bride: An Invitation to the Wedding

Love, Passion, Parting

“I never regret anything. Because every little detail of your life is what made you into who you are in the end.”

Drew Barrymore (1975) American actress, director and producer

“the force of love will change your life so fast that you will scarcely believe it!”

Rhonda Byrne (1951) Australian writer and producer

Love, Change

“Real life's nasty. It's cruel. It doesn't care about heroes and happy endings and the way things should be. In real life, bad things happen. People die. Fights are lost. Evil often wins.”

Darren Shan (1972) Irish writer of English-language fiction under pen name, real name Darren O'Shaughnessy

Happiness, People, Way, Evil

“Happily ever after?"
"If justice doesn't triumph and love doesn't make the circle in entertainment fiction, what's the point? Real life sucks too often.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Angels Fall

Love, Justice

“And if your life is a suitable exchange for my honor, why is my honor not a suitable exchange for your life?”

Diana Gabaldon book Outlander

Source: Outlander

“We don't read novels to have an experience like life. Heck, we're living lives, complete with all the incompleteness. We turn to fiction to have an author assure us that it means something.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Reading

“If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.”

Emily Dickinson Life, and Death, and Giants —

Life, p. 6
Collected Poems (1993)

Pain, Help, Heart

“The present rearranges the past. We never tell the story whole because a life isn't a story; it's a whole Milky Way of events and we are forever picking out constellations from it to fit who and where we are.”

Rebecca Solnit book The Faraway Nearby

Source: The Faraway Nearby

Way, Past

“I am a writer who came from a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.”

Eudora Welty (1909–2001) American author

Source: On Writing (2002)

“Simon’s love life was complicated, but there was a pang, just for a moment, for this woman talking graphic novels with him.
Ah, well. Tessa Gray, foxy nerd, was probably dating someone already.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Whitechapel Fiend

Love

“Her pupils were at once her salvation and her despair. They gave her the means of supporting life, but they made life hardly worth supporting.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Support, Despair

“It is the encounters with people that make life worth living.”

Guy De Maupassant (1850–1893) French writer

Variant: It is the lives we encounter that make life worth living.

People

“Love is a wonderful thing. It makes life worthwhile. I love being in love.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Choice

Source: The Choice

Love

“For, in the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work.”

James C. Collins (1958) American business consultant and writer

Source: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

“I knew it, I just knew it! The person who had the job of writing my life's dialogue used to work on a very low budget soap opera.”

Marian Keyes (1963) Irish writer

Source: Watermelon

Personality

“Sometimes you didn't really arrive at a conclusion about your life, you just discovered that you already had.”

Guy Gavriel Kay book Lord of Emperors

Source: Lord of Emperors

“The at-home mother's life: it was a race with no finish line.”

Kristin Hannah (1960) American writer

Source: Firefly Lane

Home

“I am a woman in process. I'm just trying like everybody else. I try to take every conflict, every experience, and learn from it. Life is never dull.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Learning

“You can con God and get away with it, Granny said, if you do so with charm and wit. If you live your life with imagination and verve, God will play along just to see what outrageously entertaining thing you'll do next.”

Dean Koontz Odd Thomas

Source: Odd Thomas

God, Imagination

“A man who denies his past is a man who truly denies himself a future, for he refuses to know himself, and to deny knowledge of oneself is to stumble through life as handicapped as the blind mute.”

Tobsha Learner (1959) British writer

Source: The Witch of Cologne

Knowledge, Past, Future

“I am fading away. Slowly but surely. Like the sailor who watches his home shore gradually disappear, I watch my past recede. My old life still burns within me, but more and more of it is reduced to the ashes of memory.”

Jean-Dominique Bauby book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Source: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Home, Memory, Past

“Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings,--a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

Love, Heart

“The details are the life of it, I insist, say everything on your mind, don’t hold back, don’t analyze or anything as you go along, say it out.”

Jack Kerouac book The Subterraneans

Source: The Subterraneans

“You're a hero and a gentleman, you're kind and honest, but more than that, you're the first man I ever truly loved. And no matter what the future brings, you always will be, and I know that my life is better for it.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Love, Future

“If you have experienced an evening more exciting than any in your life, you're sad to see it end; and yet you still feel grateful that it happened.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Sadness, Feeling

“When at last I came upon the right book, the feeling was violent: it blew open a hole in me that made life more dangerous because I couldn't control what came through it.”

Nicole Krauss book Great House

Source: Great House

Books, Feeling

“To many people, free will is a license to rebel not against what is unjust or hard in life but against what is best for them and true.”

Dean Koontz book The Darkest Evening of the Year

Source: The Darkest Evening of the Year

People

“Life is fraught with opportunities to keep your mouth shut.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

“The flames surround me, and I feel myself slipping further from life, thinning to only the faintest shiver in the air. I yearn for the darkness and silence of the underworld, where I can rest.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

Feeling, Silence

“Life consists of what man is thinking about all day.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Variant: You become what you think about all day long.

Thinking

“We know from daily life that we exist for other people first of all, for whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Happiness, People, Smile, Dependency

“The meaning of life has not much to do with good and evil, right and wrong, duty, honor, country, or any of that.

It has to do with cutting the right deal.”

Nelson DeMille (1943) American writer

Evil, Country

“Jericho."
"Mac."
"Thank you for saving my life. Again.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Bloodfever

“Why bother inflicting enormous pain on yourself when sooner or later Life would certainly get around to doing it for you?”

Jeff Lindsay (1952) American playwright and crime novelist Jeffry P. Freundlich

Source: Dexter By Design

Pain

“Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Beauty, Passion

“We get out of life what we put into it. The way we treat others is the way we ourselves get treated.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

Way

“Anything a person chases in life runs away.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl-A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship

Personality

“Oh sorry, I was taking life seriously.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

“Love comes like lightning, and disappears the same way. If you are lucky, it strikes you right. If not, you'll spend your life yearning for a man you can't have.”

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (1956) novelist, short story writer, poet, and essayist

Source: The Palace of Illusions

Love, Way

“It may, after all, be the bad habit of creative talents to invest themselves in pathological extremes that yield remarkable insights but no durable way of life for those who cannot translate their psychic wounds into significant art or thought.”

Theodore Roszak (1933–2011) American social historian, social critic, writer

Art, Way

“From the moment of my birth, I lived with pain at the center of my life. My only purpose in life was to find a way to coexist with intense pain.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Pain, Way, Birth

“But I want to feel like life matters. I
had something real with you, but then the realness scared me. I decided to go for other things instead.”

David Levithan Boy Meets Boy

Source: Boy Meets Boy

Feeling

“And I was struck all at once how life was out there going through its regular courses, and I was suspended, waiting, caught in a terrible crevice between living my life and not living it.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees (2002)

Waiting

“I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he's not careful.”

Yann Martel (1963) Canadian author best known for the book Life of Pi

“Think pink. A better way of life.”

Kay Thompson book Eloise

Source: Eloise

Way, Thinking

“Anything less than mad, passionate, extraordinary love is a waste of time. There are too many mediocre things in life to deal with and love shouldn't be one of them.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Love, Passion, Time, Madness

“Life is not about negative circumstances that happen to you, it's about what you do with the golden opportunities hidden within!”

Rhonda Byrne (1951) Australian writer and producer

Source: Hero

“No one gets to tell you what your life means!”

Jess Walter book Beautiful Ruins

Source: Beautiful Ruins

“Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect.”

Margaret Mitchell (1900–1949) American author and journalist

Sad, Depressing, Hope, Hurtful

“I used to think it was possible for an artist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory.”

Don DeLillo Mao II

Part 1, Ch. 3
Source: Mao II (1991)
Context: There's a curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists... Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. They make raids on human consciousness. What writers used to do before we were all incorporated.

Thinking

“Life likes to be taken by the lapel and told, "I'm with you kid. Let's go!”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

“He was so different from her, yet in his presence she felt the possibility of another kind of life, a life she had never imagined could be hers. A life without the rigid limitations others had always set for her.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Choice

Source: The Choice

Imagination

“Tea… is a religion of the art of life.”

Kakuzo Okakura book The Book of Tea

Source: The Book of Tea

Religion, Art, Tea

“Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, And yet a third of life is passed in sleep.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Death, Men, Sleep

“We are all the fools of time and terror: Days
Steal on us and steal from us; yet we live,
Loathing our life, and dreading still to die.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Fools, Time

“I don't need anything to get high. I'm high on life.”

Melissa de la Cruz Blue Bloods

Source: Blue Bloods

“what you have to decide, is how you want your life to be. if your forever was ending tomorrow, would this b the way you'd want to have spent it?”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Way

“Greatness is best measured by how well an individual responds to the happenings in life that appear to be totally unfair, unreasonable, and undeserved.”

Marvin J. Ashton (1915–1994) Apostle of the LDS Church

Appearance

“Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

"Dreams," from the anthology Golden Slippers: An Anthology of Negro Poetry for Young Readers, ed. Arna Bontemps (1941)

Dreams, Bird, Flying, Wise

“Life is uncharted territory. It reveals its story one moment at a time.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

Time

“I finally figured out that not every crisis can be managed. As much as we want to keep ourselves safe, we can't protect ourselves from everything. If we want to embrace life, we also have to embrace chaos.”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Source: Breathing Room

“He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

“All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Letter (9 April 1945); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

Time

“When the past is recaptured by the imagination, breath is put back into life.”

Marguerite Duras (1914–1996) French writer and film director

Imagination, Past

“I have no regrets. I wouldn't have lived my life the way I did if I was going to worry about what people were going to say.”

Ingrid Bergman (1915–1982) Film actress from Sweden

"An Uncommon Scold," by Abby Adams, 1989.

People, Way

“He saved your life,” Clary pointed out.
“Details,” said Simon dismissively.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“Life is so unfair.”

Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer

By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

“I've been so ridiculous all my life that a little bit more or a little bit less hardly matters now.”

Jean Rhys book Good Morning, Midnight

Source: Good Morning, Midnight

“A disciple… can never imitate his guide's steps. You have your own way of living your life, of dealing with problems, and of winning. Teaching is only demonstrating that it is possible. Learning is making it possible for yourself.”

Paulo Coelho book The Pilgrimage

Source: The Pilgrimage

Way, Problem, Learning

“And you’ll return to real life. You need to live it to the fullest. No matter how shallow and dull things might get, this life is worth living. I guarantee it.”

Haruki Murakami book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“Life can seem short or life can seem long, depending on how you live it.”

Paulo Coelho book The Devil and Miss Prym

Source: The Devil and Miss Prym

Dependency

“When I hear somebody sigh that "Life is hard," I am always tempted to ask, "Compared to what?"”

Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986) American journalist

"Purely Personal Prejudices" http://books.google.com/books?id=DLcEAQAAIAAJ&q=%22When+I+hear+somebody+sigh+that+Life+is+hard+I+am+always+tempted+to+ask+Compared+to+what%22&pg=PA241#v=onepage <br class="br">Strictly Personal (1953)

Funny, Inspirational, Business