Quotes about living
page 31

“Love is an act of faith & its face should always be covered in mystery. Every moment should be lived with feeling & emotion because if we try to decipher it & understand it, the magic disappears.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: The Spy

Love, Faith, Feeling, Understanding

“Daydreamin' drugs the pain of living.”

Joni Mitchell (1943) Canadian musician

Pain

“But then, is there cowardice in the acknowledgment of fear? Is there cowardice in being glad that you lived?”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Fear

“After you find out all the things that can go wrong, your life becomes less about living and more about waiting.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

Life, Waiting

“I miss her. I don't know how to live without her. There is a hole inside me that nothing fills.
If you don't find something to fill that hole, someone else will. And if someone else fills it, they own you. Forever. You'll never get yourself back.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Dreamfever

“I am simply looking for a companion with whom to spend my days, a companion who will cherish as much as I the stupidity of living in the moment, and spend every dull, amazing second with me.”

Heidi Julavits (1968) Novelist, editor

Source: The Effect of Living Backwards

Stupidity

“O great creator of being
grant us one more hour to
perform our art
and perfect our lives”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

An American Prayer (1978)
Context: O great creator of being
grant us one more hour to
perform our art
and perfect our lives The moths & atheists are doubly divine
& dying
We live, we die
and death not ends it

Art, Perfection

“After all, our lives are but a sequence of accidents - a clanking chain of chance events. A string of choices, casual or deliberate, which add up to that one big calamity we call life.”

Rohinton Mistry A Fine Balance

Source: A Fine Balance

Life, Chance

“my brain had begun to endure its familiar siege: panic and dislocation, and a sense that my thought processes were being engulfed by a toxic and unnameable tide that obliterated any enjoyable response to the living world.”

William Styron book Darkness Visible

Source: Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness

World, Sense

“The upshot of her tirade was that I was the devil's spawn and should be locked up in a tower before I unleashed hordes of the living dead to slaughter them all in their sleep. Well, maybe that's an exaggeration, but not by much.”

Kelley Armstrong The Reckoning

Source: The Reckoning

Sleep, Dead

“I live by syllogisms: God is love. Love is blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God. I don't know what I'd believe in if it wasn't for that.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

Love, God

“I too entered the Lager as a nonbeliever, and as a nonbeliever I was liberated and have lived to this day.”

Primo Levi book The Drowned and the Saved

Source: The Drowned and the Saved

“I pray every night that I may live after him; because I would rather be miserable than that he should be — that proves I love him better than myself.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Source: Wuthering Heights

Love, Night

“Both of them were ahead of their time, but they didn't live long enough to see the time they were ahead of.”

Patti Smith Just Kids

Source: Just Kids

Time

“Life is only lived full-time by women with children.”

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

Life, Women, Children, Time

“A story lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken”

Ian McEwan book On Chesil Beach

Source: On Chesil Beach

“You grow ravenous. You run fevers. You know exhilarations. You can't sleep at night, because your beast-creature ideas want out and turn you in your bed. It is a grand way to live.”

Ray Bradbury book Zen in the Art of Writing

Source: Zen in the Art of Writing

Way, Idea, Sleep, Night

“How do our lives ravel out
into the no-wind, no-sound,
the weary gestures wearily recapitulant:
echoes of old compulsions with no-hand on no-string:
in sunset we fall into furious attitudes,
dead gestures of dolls.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying

Dead

“Psychoanalysis has taught that the dead – a dead parent, for example – can be more alive for us, more powerful, more scary, than the living. It is the question of ghosts.”

Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) French philosopher (1930-2004)

Question, Parent, Dead

“You've lived in America for twenty years. Eat badly, damn it.”

Jennifer Crusie (1949) American writer

Source: Faking It

“What's wrong with living in a dream world? You have to wake up.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

World, Dreams

“I don't think any day is worth living without thinking about what you're going to eat next at all times.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Thinking, Time

“Of course she had some pathetic illusions about herself or she would not be able to go on living.”

Jean Rhys (1890–1979) novelist from Dominica

Source: After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie

“This is fusion, when two people become one. They are so close and so well suited to each other that they blend together. They merge and can't live without each other after that.”

Danielle Steel (1947) American author of romance novels

People

“July 24, 6:03 A. M.
The laundry was warm and the rafters were firm, and Michael Holzapfel jumped from the chair as if it were a cliff…
Michael Holzapfel knew what he was doing.
He killed himself for wanting to live.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

“Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and its fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Source: Ode: Intimations Of Immortality From Recollections Of Early Childhood

Lie, Fear, Flowers, Tear

“That is our Fairy Tail!! We don't live like we have already died, like you do!! We live with our lives on the lines, you bastard!! If you don't have the courage to change things then you might as well just die!!!”

Hiro Mashima (1977) Japanese manga artist

Courage, Change

“It's a good thing I've got to live with you two or I'd be putting this on YouTube later. And mocking you”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Fade Out

“Our lives can only be lived forward and understood backwards. Living a life and understanding it occupy different dimensions.”

Hanif Kureishi (1954) English playwright, screenwriter, novelist

Source: Collected Stories

Life, Understanding

“You have a choice. Live or die.
Every breath is a choice.
Every minute is a choice.
Every time you don't throw yourself down the stairs, that's a choice. Every time you don't crash your car, you re-enlist.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Survivor

Variant: Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. To be or not to be. Every time you don't throw yourself down the stairs, that's a choice. Every time you don't crash your car, you re-enlist.
Source: Survivor

Cars, Time

“That drew a mocking laugh from Lillian. “Really, someone should tell St. Vincent that he’s a living cliché. He has become the embodiment of everything they say about reformed rakes.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Devil in Winter

“Live now. When you are eating, eat. When you are loving, love. when you are talking with someone, talk. When you are looking at a flower, look. Catch the beauty of the moment!”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

Love, Beauty, Flowers

“Fate is fickle, and the company of unwilling friends short lived.”

Brian Jacques (1939–2011) British fiction writer known for Redwall animal fantasy novels

Source: The Ribbajack: and Other Haunting Tales

Fate

“Maybe everyone can live beyond what they're capable of.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: I Am the Messenger

Hope

“all my life i have lived and behaved very much like the sandpiper just running down the edges of different countries and continents, looking for something.”

Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979) American poet

Life, Country

“Live your life, take chances, be crazy. Dont wait 'cause right now is the oldest you've ever been & the youngest you'll be ever again”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

Life, Chance, Waiting

“Whenever I see a photograph of some sportsman grinning over his kill, I am always impressed by the striking moral and esthetic superiority of the dead animal to the live one.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Animals, Dead

“The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. The most you can do is live inside that hope, running down its hallways, touching the walls on both sides.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Bean Trees

Animal Dreams.
Animal Dreams (1990)
Variant: The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.
Source: The Bean Trees

Life, Hope

“I live in the present because the future is always chancy. When it comes to being with you, I'm willing to take the risk.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Exiled Queen

Future

“… So please, be tolerant of those who describe a sporting moment as their best ever. We do not lack imagination, nor have we had sad and barren lives; it is just that real life is paler, duller, and contains less potential for unexpected delirium.”

Nick Hornby Fever Pitch

Source: Fever Pitch

Life, Sadness, Imagination, Sport

“Here had lived someone else who knew that the only thing waiting at home was a sense of loneliness.

Sometimes it is comforting.

Most often, it isn't.”

Jim Butcher book Storm Front

Source: Storm Front

Home, Sense, Waiting, Loneliness

“Acting is the most minor of gifts and not a very high-class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four.”

Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) film, stage, and television actress

Age, Way

“What uniform can I wear to hide my heavy heart?
It is too heavy. It will always show.
Jacques felt himself growing gloomy again. He was well aware that to live on earth a man must follow its fashions, and hearts were no longer worn.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Source: The Holy Terrors

Fashion, Heart

“It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.”

Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003)
Context: Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them - a mother's approval, a father's nod - are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.

Children, Understanding, Water, Heart

“They say The Pacific has no memory. That's where I want to live the rest of my life. A warm place with no memory.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption: A Story from Different Seasons

Life, Memory

“If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves.”

John Irving book Last Night in Twisted River

Source: Last Night in Twisted River

“There was a house we all had in common and it was called the past, even though we'd lived in different rooms.”

Angela Carter book Wise Children

Source: Wise Children

Past, Housing

“What the matter, Zarek? You afraid to die? (Thanatos)
Dying’s easy. It’s living that’s hard. (Zarek)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Dance with the Devil

Source: Dance with the Devil

“During our lives… we experience so many setbacks, and fight such a hand-to-hand battle with failure, head down in the rain, just trying to stay upright and to have a little hope.”

Lance Armstrong book It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

Source: It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

Hope, Failure, Fight

“There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Understanding, Dependency

“A man with nothing to die for has even less for which to live.”

Margaret Weis (1948) American fantasy novelist

“We ought to have lived in mental communion, and no more.”

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

Source: Jude the Obscure

“I have great hopes that we shall love each other all our lives as much as if we had never married at all.”

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

Love, Hope

“The masses-I love em-they rush for red lights, risking everything to capture a few seconds, only to get home and waste their lives.”

Arthur Nersesian (1958) American writer

Source: Manhattan Loverboy

Love, Home, Light

“It's true: lives do drift apart for no obvious reason. We're all busy people, we can't spend our time simply trying to stay in touch. The test of a friendship is if it can weather these inevitable gaps.”

William Boyd book Any Human Heart

Source: Any Human Heart

Friendship, People, Business, Time

“For most people, there are only two places in the world. Where they live and their TV set. If a thing happens on television, we have every right to find it fascinating, whatever it is.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Source: White Noise

People, World

“And this is the strangest of all paradoxes of the human adventure; we live inside all experience, but we are permitted to bear witness only to the outside. Such is the riddle of life and the story of the passing of our days.”

Howard Thurman (1899–1981) American writer

Life

“Most of us, even if only for two minutes in our lives, have experienced at some time or another an inexplicable and random sense of complete bliss, unrelated to anything that was happening in the outside world.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

World, Sense, Time

“I will not be just a tourist in the world of images, just watching images passing by which I cannot live in, make love to, possess as permanent sources of joy and ecstasy.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Love, World, Making love, Joy

“The relativism which is not willing to speak about truth but only about ‘what is true for me’ is an evasion of the serious business of living. It is the mark of a tragic loss of nerve in our contemporary culture. It is a preliminary symptom of death.”

Lesslie Newbigin (1909–1998) Christian missionary

Source: The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

Death, Truth, Business, Loss

“If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, I'll bet they'd live a lot differently.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

People, Star, Night

“Unequal lives give rise to unequal dreams.”

Yu Hua (1960) Chinese writer

十個詞彙裡的中國

Dreams

“I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

Speech in Ottawa (10 January 1946), published in Eisenhower Speaks : Dwight D. Eisenhower in His Messages and Speeches (1948) edited by Rudolph L. Treuenfels
1940s

Hate, War, Stupidity

“Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

Variant: Lead your life so you wouldn't be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.

Way

“Surely there can't be so many countries worth dying for.'
Anything worth living for,' said Nately, 'is worth dying for.'
And anything worth dying for,' answered the sacrilegious old man, 'is certainly worth living for.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch 22

Country

“Now I am just an elderly lady who is full of spleen,
who humps around greater Boston in a God-awful hat,
who never lived and yet outlived her time,
hating men and dogs and Democrats.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Men, God, Hate, Dogs

“He'd lived long enough to know that everyone handled grief in different ways, and little by little, they all seemed to accept their new lives.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Choice

Source: The Choice

Way

“For they had lived together long enough to know that love was always love, anytime and anyplace, but it was more solid the closer it came to death.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Love, Death

“While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

“How am I going to live today to create the tomorrow I've committed to?”

Anthony Robbins (1960) Author, actor, professional speaker

Variant: How am I going to live today in order to create the tomorrow I'm committed to?

“I know your mother lives in your head - almost everyone's mother does, I guess - but you can't let her have her way on this one”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

Way

“Changing the world is good for those who want their names in books. But being happy, that is for those who write their names in the lives of others, and hold the hearts of others as the treasure most dear.”

Orson Scott Card book Children of the Mind

Source: Children of the Mind

Happiness, Books, World, Change

“Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Smile

“It's a lot easier to be crazy or mad than to just get on with living.”

Jaclyn Moriarty (1968) Australian writer

Source: The Year of Secret Assignments

Madness

“… I have always lived on contrasts! To me the only death is monotony. Beware of monotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

Death

“She was so fed up with unrequited love and platonic love and all the other kinds of love that weren’t passionate, romantic, can’t-live-without-you, I-have-to-have-you-right-now, the-beat-of-your-heart-matches-the-beat-of-mine love.”

Sarra Manning (1950) British writer

Source: You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

Love, Passion, Heart

“The moment had passed, the door between the lives we could have led and the lives we led had shut in our faces.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

“Perhaps as you went along you did learn something. I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what it was all about.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Variant: I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what is was all about.
Source: The Sun Also Rises

Learning

“Shri Ramakrishna use to say, "As Long as I Live, so long do I learn". That man or that society which has nothing to learn is already in the jaws of death.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Death, Learning

“He had a moment of clarity about how life should be lived: not as a child or as a woman. They were the two worst things to be.”

Alice Sebold book The Lovely Bones

Source: The Lovely Bones

Life

“I never did learn how to live in the moment, but I did learn that moments could be wasted and the world would continue to spin on its axis.”

Eloisa James (1962) American academic

Source: Paris in Love

World, Learning

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours..”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Variant: I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Source: Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

Life, Dreams, Confidence, Imagination