Quotes about living
page 46

“In a world where everyone struggles to survive whatever the cost, how could one judge those people who decide to die? No one can judge. Each person knows the extent of their own suffering or the total absence of meaning in their lives.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

People, World, Suffering, Personality

“Show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and eight times out of nine I'll show you a man with detestable spiritual qualities.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Tales of ordinary madness (1967-83)

Time

“These are our few live seasons. Let us live them as purely as we can, in the present.”

Annie Dillard book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Source: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Season

“She lived frugally, but her meals were the only things on which she deliberately spent her money. She never compromised on the quality of her groceries, and drank only good-quality wines.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

Money, Wine

“What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

" Inversnaid http://www.bartleby.com/122/33.html, lines 13-16 <br class="br">Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918) <br class="br">Source: Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Complete Poems

World

“I can see us, living in the woods, her wearing that A, me with a S maybe, S for silent, S for stupid, for scared. S for silly. For shame.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Stupidity

“My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living.”

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

Idea

“You play games with people's lives.(…) You forget that they are fragile.”

Patricia Briggs (1965) American writer

Source: Dragon Blood

People, Game, Forgetting

“And now brothers, I will ask you a terrible question, and God knows I ask it also of myself. Is the truth beyond all truths, beyond the stars, just this: that to live without him is the real death, that to die with him the only life?”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Source: The Magnificent Defeat (1966)

Life, Death, God, Truth

“Dear Jack,

I love you, too.

And I think I know the secret to a long and happy marriage— just choose someone you can't live without.

For me, that would be you.

So if you insist on being traditional…

Yes.

—Ella”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Smooth Talking Stranger

Love, Marriage, Happiness, Secret

“Are artists and writers the only people entitled to lives of their own?”

Richard Yates book Revolutionary Road

Source: Revolutionary Road

People

“A person who longs to leave the place where he lives is an unhappy person.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

pg 27
Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part One: Lightness and Weight

Personality

“I'm tired of carrying around the weight of the world. I'm just going to lay it down now. It's my time to die, and it's your time to live. Don't mess it up.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

World, Time

“The warlock's gaze, on the flames, was remote and distant, as if he were looking back into the past. Simon couldn't help but remember what Magnus had said to him once, about living forever:
Someday you and I will be the only two left.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Distant, Past, Help

“Your reality, isn’t restricted by this cell we live in. If you read something, if you study something, you transcend any cell you’re inside of”

Manuel Puig (1932–1990) Argentine author and screenwriter

Reality, Study, Reading

“After a while the middle-aged person who lives in her head begins to talk to her soul, the kid.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Joe Jones

Age, Soul, Personality

“As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.”

George Bernard Shaw Overruled

1910s
Source: Overruled (1912)

Death

“The magic is over, but its effects will live forever.”

Alex Flinn book Beastly

Source: Beastly

“Men. You can't live with them, you can't… no. That's about it.”

Regina King (1971) actress

Men

“When I got older I decided I wanted to be a real writer. I tried to write about real things. I wanted to describe the world, because to live in an undescribed world was too lonely.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love (2005), P. 7

World

“… for nightinggales - we know - can’t live on fairytales.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

Fairytale

“Who can live with this Consciousness and not wake frightened at sunrise?”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

Source: The Fall of America: Poems of These States 1965-1971

“Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

Life

“Besides we are men, and after all it is our business to risk our lives.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Three Musketeers

Source: The Three Musketeers

Men, Business

“Everything else just kept picking and picking, hacking away. And nothing was interesting, nothing. The people were restrictive and careful, all alike. And I've got to live with these fuckers for the rest of my life, I thought.”

Charles Bukowski book Ham on Rye

Ham On Rye (1982)
Source: Ham on Rye
Context: And my own affairs were as bad, as dismal, as the day I had been born. The only difference was that now I could drink now and then, though never often enough. Drink was the only thing that kept a man from feeling forever stunned and useless. Everything else just kept picking and picking, hacking away. And nothing was interesting, nothing. The people were restrictive and careful, all alike. And I've got to live with these fuckers for the rest of my life, I thought. God, they all had assholes and sexual organs and their mouths and their armpits. They shit and they chattered and they were dull as horse dung. The girls looked good from a distance, the sun shining through their dresses, their hair. But get up close and listen to their minds running out of their mouths, you felt like digging in under a hill and hiding out with a tommy-gun. I would certainly never be able to be happy, to get married, I could never have children. Hell, I couldn't even get a job as a dishwasher.

Life, People

“We live not in the world outside, but in a world inside ourselves.”

Harun Yahya (1956) Turkish author

Source: The Little Man in The Tower

World

“I’m not sure what I’ll do, but— well, I want to go places and see people. I want my mind to grow. I want to live where things happen on a big scale.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Source: The Ice Palace and Other Stories

People

“An Immense hatred keeps me alive… i would live for a thousand years if i were certain of seeing the whole world croak.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) French writer

World

“Those of us who do not live forever do not like change perhaps as much as those of you who do.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Change

“For death is life. It is only living that is lifeless.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Groan

Source: Titus Groan

Life, Death

“People never leave, we are always here in our past and future lives.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Source: Aleph

People, Past, Future

“A tattoo is a true poetic creation, and is always more than meets the eye. As a tattoo is grounded on living skin, so its essence emotes a poignancy unique to the mortal human condition.”

V. Vale (1942) American writer

Source: Modern Primitives: An Investigation of Contemporary Adornment and Ritual

Tattoo

“Rabbits live close to death and when death comes closer than usual, thinking about survival leaves little room for anything else.”

Richard Adams book Watership Down

Source: Watership Down

Death, Thinking

“You know, you could live a thousand lifetimes and not deserve him.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

“We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force, a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

Life, Way, Thinking

“It was scary how a girl couldn't live without friends.”

Candace Bushnell book The Carrie Diaries

Source: The Carrie Diaries

Girl

“But fear of making mistakes can itself become a huge mistake, one that prevents you from living, for life is risky and anything less is already a loss.”

Rebecca Solnit (1961) Author and essayist from United States

Source: A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Life, Fear, Loss

“She seems to have had the ability to stand firmly on the rock of her past while living completely and unregretfully in the present.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Past

“I sit there thinking about how much courage it takes to live an ordinary life.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Life, Courage, Thinking

“And all meet in singing, which braids together the different knowings into a wide and subtle music, the music of living.”

Alison Croggon (1962) contemporary Australian poet, playwright and fantasy novelist

Source: The Naming

Music, Singing

“The past tempts us, the present confuses us, and the future frightens us. And our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast terrible in-between. But there is still time to seize that one last fragile moment.”

J. Michael Straczynski (1954) American writer and television producer

Time, Past, Future

“Beyond the picket fences and the oil wells, the happy endings, and the fairy tales, is the reality of shattered lives and broken dreams. We carry on.”

Tim McGraw (1967) American country singer

Happiness, Dreams, Reality

“I have to tell you it was the first time even after all these years of expecting my own death that i truly knew what it meant to die because with you gone there was nothing left for me to live for.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: The Viscount Who Loved Me

Death, Time

“He knew these last lines by heart and mouthed them now in the darkness. My reason for life. Not living, but life. That was the touch. And she was his reason for life, and why he must survive.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Life, Heart

“I live in my own little world. But its ok, they know me here.”

Lauren Myracle (1969) American children's writer

World

“Then realization had dawned. "Oh, my God, you're the one who hurt Davis, the boy I was with. You saw us together, and you threw him down a gully. He broke both of his legs!"

"He lived?" Gaze narrowing, Lothaire had murmured, "Not for much Longer.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Lothaire

God, Boy, Hurt

“Which would be worse, to live as a monster or to die as a good man?”

Dennis Lehane book Shutter Island

Source: Shutter Island

“When you live alone, your furnishings, your possessions, are always confronting you with the thinness of your existence.”

Zoë Heller (1965) British writer

Source: Notes on a Scandal: What Was She Thinking?

“So this, I believe, is the central question upon which all creative living hinges: Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?”

Elizabeth Gilbert Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Source: Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Courage, Question

“Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.”

Agnes de Mille (1905–1993) American dancer and choreographer

“if there is any secret to this life i live, this is it: the sound of what cannot be seen sings within everything that can. and there is nothing more to it than that.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Life, Secret, Singing

“Nykyrian gave him a feral grimace. But when he spoke, his soft, lilting tone belied his fierce expression. “Syn… what can I say? I love you, man. I can’t live without you. are the air I breathe.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of Silence

Love

“Here is my experience. Stay away from the ones you love too much. Those are the ones who will kill you. What you want to live and be happy in the world is a woman who has her own life and lets you have yours.”

Donna Tartt book The Goldfinch

Source: The Goldfinch

Love, Life, Happiness, World

“If the living are haunted by the dead. Then the dead are haunted by their own mistakes.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Damned

Source: Damned (2011)

Dead

“Life is a series of pulls back and forth… A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. Most of us live somewhere in the middle. A wrestling match… Which side win? Love wins. Love always wins”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

Love, Life

“I am alive, I live, I breathe, I put my hand out, unfolded, into the sunlight.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

“Should I ask about the handcuffs? (Tate)
Not unless you want to live… otherwise if anyone asks, tell them I died of a heart attack during a wild sexcapade with her. (Kyrian)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Night Pleasures

Source: Night Pleasures

Heart

“They lived and laughed and loved and left.”

James Joyce book Finnegans Wake

Source: Finnegans Wake

Love

“What could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn't lived it”

Edward Albee (1928–2016) American playwright

Variant: You're alive only once, as far as we know, and what could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn't lived it?

Life

“I lived my grief; I slept mourning and ate sorrow and drank tears. I ignored all else.”

Robin Hobb book Fool's Assassin

Source: Fool's Assassin

Tear

“Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Life

“If Miss Honeychurch ever takes to live as she plays, it will be very exciting--both for us and for her.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

“Some lives, conducted with grace, are beautiful arcs bridging this world to eternity.”

Dean Koontz Odd Thomas

Source: Odd Thomas

World, Beauty

“Only now that my son was gone did I realize how much I'd been living for him. When I woke up in the morning it was because he existed, and when I ordered food it was because he existed, and when I wrote my book it was because he existed to read it.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Books, Food, Reading

“They [Percy and Annabeth] held the Doors shut as the elevator shuddered and the music played, while somewhere below them, a Titan and a giant sacrificed their lives for their escape.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Music

“She wondered if she was doomed to be one of those people who spend their lives trying things.”

David Nicholls book One Day

Source: One Day

People

“Holly is alive,' thought Foaly
'My princess lives,'exulted Orion. 'And we're chasing a dragon”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Princess

“Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

"Emotions", p. 36.
The Second Sin (1973)

Happiness, Children, Dead, Funny

“I live in my house as I live inside my skin: I know more beautiful, more ample, more sturdy and more picturesque skins: but it would seem to me unnatural to exchange them for mine.”

Primo Levi (1918–1987) Italian chemist, memoirist, short story writer, novelist, essayist

Beauty, Housing

“She was no longer a slow dreamer watching the flowers grow. She was a warrior now. Warriors need something to fight for though, beside their lives, because otherwise their lives will not be worth it.”

Francesca Lia Block (1962) American children's writer

Source: The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold

Flowers, Fight

“billions of women must be out there on this seven-billion-person planet being told that they are not reliable witnesses to their own lives, that the truth is not their property, now or ever.”

Rebecca Solnit book Men Explain Things To Me

Source: Men Explain Things to Me

Women, Truth, Personality

“Can it be that I have not lived as one ought?" suddenly came into his head. "But how not so, when I've done everything as it should be done?”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: The Death of Ivan Ilych

“You are incredibly wise. (Kat)
Only when it comes to other people. It’s easy to see how to fix their lives. It’s much harder to see the cracks in your own house. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Devil May Cry

People, Housing

“In the wild, an elephant mother and daughter stay in close proximity their whole lives; I hope I am that lucky.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Leaving Time

Hope, Daughters

“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late to be whoever you want to be. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.”

Eric Roth (1945) American screenwriter

Source: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Screenplay

Life, Hope

“I've always thought anyone can make money. Making a life worth living, that's the real test.”

Robert Fulghum (1937) American writer

Life, Money

“You're probably wondering what's going to happen to you. That's easy. The same thing is going to happen to you that has happened to every other human being who has ever lived. You're going to die. We all die. That's just how it is.”

Ernest Cline book Ready Player One

Source: Ready Player One

“The only one," he murmured. His chin dipped a little bit. "You know that, Dru? You're the only person who's ever believed in me. You know what that'll do to a guy?"

What?"I-"

"It makes him want to live up to it.”

Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer

Source: Reckoning

Guy, Personality

“You must not for one instant give up the effort to build new lives for yourselves.”

Daisaku Ikeda (1928) Japanese writer

Effort

“Sometimes all you need to live one more day is a good reason to stick around.”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

“Battle with unconditioned breath the unconditioned air. Shun electric wire. Communicate slowly. Live a three-dimensional life; stay away from screens.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Life, Communication

“So we contemplate each other, and we want each other, and I give it life and warmth, and it gives me my reason for living.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Life

“I fight with love, and I laugh with rage.
You've gotta live light enough to see the humor,
And long enough to see some change.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Pick Yer Nose
Song lyrics

Love, Light, Rage, Change

“Eat till you're full. Play anytime you want. Sleep as much as you like. Cry. Get angry. Laugh. Live. Live. Live.”

Kazuya Minekura (1975) Japanese manga artist

Sleep, Cry

“She had a lively, playful disposition that delighted in anything ridiculous.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

“Where did you live before you came here?" I asked.
"The moon," he said smoothly. "We left because the place had no atmosphere.”

Laurie Halse Anderson (1961) American children's writer

Source: The Impossible Knife of Memory

“How you're still always trapped.

How your head is the cave, your eyes the cave mouth. How you live inside your head and only see what you want. How you only watch the shadows and make up your own meaning.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Diary

Source: Diary

“Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.”

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

Dreams, Reality

“Anyone who believes that a second is faster than a decade did not live life.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Life

“The problem with every story is you tell it after the fact. Every play-by-play description on the radio, the home runs and strikeouts, even that's delayed a few minutes. Even live television is postponed a couple seconds. Even Sound and light can only go so fast.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 1

Home, Problem, Light

“Art is the reason I get up in the morning, but the definition ends there. It doesn't seem fair that I'm living for something I can't even define.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Out of Habit
Song lyrics
Variant: Art is why I get up in the morning; my definition ends there.
You know it doesn't seem fair,
That I'm living for something I can't even define.
And there you are right there, in the mean time.

Art

“Reality means you live until you die… the real truth is nobody wants reality.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Survivor

Source: Survivor

Truth, Reality

“You only live once, buy Picassos whenever possible.”

James Frey My Friend Leonard

Source: My Friend Leonard

“Night is not something to endure until dawn. It is an element, like wind or fire. Darkness is its own kingdom; it moves to its own laws, and many living things dwell in it.”

Patricia A. McKillip book Harpist in the Wind

Source: Harpist in the Wind

Law, Night

“We sleep 1/3 of our lives away.”

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

Sleep

“Each of our lives is a Shakespearean drama raised to the thousandth degree.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Remarks to her friend Lydia Chukovskaya (March 1956), as quoted in Joseph Stalin : A Biographical Companion (1999) by Helen Rappaport, p. 2
Context: Each of our lives is a Shakespearean drama raised to the thousandth degree. Mute separations, mute black, bloody events in every family. Invisible mourning worn by mothers and wives. Now the arrested are returning, and two Russias stare each other in the eyes: the ones that put them in prison and the ones who were put in prison. A new epoch has begun. You and I will wait for it together.

“You have to live to really know things, my love”

Dan Simmons book Hyperion

Source: Hyperion

Love