Quotes about living
page 56

“You see they could never, never understand that I live like I do because that's the way I want to live.”

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

“Was it the happiest day of our lives? Probably not, if only because the truly happy days tend not to involve so much organisation, are rarely so public or so expensive. The happy ones sneak up, unexpected.”

David Nicholls book Us

Source: Us

Happiness

“Hundreds of butterflies flitted in and out of sight like short-lived punctuation marks in a stream of consciousness without beginning or end.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

“We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality" says Iris Murdoch.
But given the state of the world, is it wise?”

Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) British writer and philosopher

Life, World, Reality

“Are we all living like this? Two lives, the ideal outer life and the inner imaginative life where we keep our secrets?”

Jeanette Winterson book Sexing the Cherry

Source: Sexing the Cherry

Life, Secret, Imagination

“All love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction. Love is therefore the only law of life. He who loves lives, he who is selfish is dying. Therefore love for love's sake, because it is the only law of life, just as you breathe to live.”

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

Source: Letters of Swami Vivekananda

Love, Life, Law, Selfishness

“Over this odd world, this half the world that's dark now, I have to hunt a thing that lives on tears.”

Thomas Harris The Silence of the Lambs

Source: The Silence of the Lambs

World, Tear

“Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that's all. There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable, monotonous addition.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Source: Nausea

People, Change

“The trick is not how much pain you feel--but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain. Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses.”

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

Life, Pain, Feeling, Joy

“Facts are simple and facts are straight.
Facts are lazy and facts are late.
Facts all come with points of view.
Facts don't do what I want them to.
Facts just twist the truth around.
Facts are living turned inside out.”

David Byrne (1952) Scottish alternative rock musician and promoter of world music

Truth

“Books mean all possibilities. They mean moving out of yourself, losing yourself, dying of thirst and living to your full. They mean everything.”

Ali Smith (1962) Scottish writer

Books

“I would build a cloudy House
For my thoughts to live in;
When for earth too fancy-loose
And too low for Heaven!
Hush! I talk my dream aloud -
I build it bright to see, -
I build it on the moonlit cloud,
To which I looked with thee.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

Dreams, Housing

“I’ve never had anyone’s approval, so I’ve learned to live without it.”

Pat Conroy book The Great Santini

Source: The Great Santini

Learning

“It’s better to die than to live in the knowledge that you’ve done something that needs forgiveness.”

Andrzej Sapkowski book Blood of Elves

Source: Blood of Elves

Forgiveness, Knowledge

“Love - true love - is a precious thing. It is painful, uncomfortable, makes fools of us all, but it is what breathes meaning and color and purpose into our lives.”

Kate Mosse book Sepulchre

Source: Sepulchre

Love, Pain, Fools, Color

“I'm happy that I have brought laughter because I have been shown by many the value of it in so many lives, in so many ways.”

Lucille Ball (1911–1989) American actress and businesswoman

Happiness, Way, Laughter

“The point wasn’t that you tried to live forever; the point was that you lived, and did everything you could to live well. The point was the choices you made and the people you loved.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Angels Twice Descending

Love, People

“To care passionately for another human creature brings always more sorrow than joy; but at the same time, Elinor, one would not be without experience. Anyone who has never really loved has never really lived..”

Agatha Christie book Sad Cypress

Source: Sad Cypress

Love, Passion, Time, Joy

“There is a point of no return, unremarked at the time, in most lives.”

Graham Greene book The Comedians

Source: The Comedians (1966)

Time

“My reaction to porno films is as follows: After the first ten minutes, I want to go home and screw. After the first twenty minutes, I never want to screw again as long as I live.”

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

Home

“I do not know how to distinguish between waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?”

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

Life, Dreams, Imagination

“Very few of the people who accentuate the futility of life remark the futility of themselves. Perhaps they think that in proclaiming the evil of living they somehow salvage their own worth from the ruin - but they don't, even you and I…”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

Life, People, Thinking, Evil

“So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

Children, World, Light

“The longer you live, the better you get.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

“Living well is an art that can be developed: a love of life and ability to take great pleasure from small offerings and assurance that the world owes you nothing and that every gift is exactly that, a gift.”

Maya Angelou book Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

Source: Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

Love, Life, Pleasure, World

“There are times when God leaves huge question marks as tools in our lives to stretch our our faith.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Source: Battlefield of the Mind: Winning the Battle in Your Mind

God, Faith, Question, Time

“One of the most dynamic and significant changes you can make in your life is to make the commitment to drop all negative references to your past, to begin living now.”

Richard Carlson (1961–2006) Author, psychotherapist and motivational speaker

Source: Don't Worry, Make Money: Spiritual and Practical Ways to Create Abundance and More Fun in Your Life

Life, Change, Past

“We could do it, you know," Gale says quietly.

"What?" I ask.

"Leave the district. Run off. Live in the woods. You and I, we could make it," says Gale.

I don't know how to respond. This idea is so preposterous.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Idea

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”

Joan Didion book The White Album

Source: "The White Album", in The White Album

“A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.”

Jane Austen book Emma

Source: Emma

“he might die for her, but living for her would be quite different.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

“When others asked the truth of me, I was convinced it was not the truth they wanted, but an illusion they could bear to live with.”

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

November, 1933
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

Truth

“Lively, intelligent, and quite immature, [Emily] usually burst out with exactly the comment that summed up the situation beautifully and therefore could never in politeness be said.”

Clare B. Dunkle book The Hollow Kingdom

Source: The Hollow Kingdom

Intelligence

“The spirit who inhabits her animates us all. Destroy the host, you destroy the power. The young die first; the old wither slowly; the eldest perhaps would go last. But she is the Queen of the Damned, and the Damned can't live without her.”

Anne Rice book The Queen of the Damned

Source: The Queen of the Damned

Animals

“Live not for Battles Won.
Live not for The-End-of-the-Song.
Live in the along.”

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) American writer

Source: Report from Part One

“It is no way to live, to wait to love.”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

Love, Way, Waiting

“We were young, and we had no need for prophecies. Just living was itself an act of prophecy.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“I know, but no matter what I choose I have to live with it. Forever. I have to be able to go forward and not look back anymore. Can you understand that?”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Understanding

“Balthazar pledged to die defending his royal house of Lumuatere. Finnikin swore to be their protector and guide for as long as he lived. Lucian vowed he would be the light whom they traveled toward in times of need.”

Melina Marchetta Finnikin of the Rock

Source: Finnikin of the Rock

Travel, Light, Time, Housing

“To live is to be hunted.”

Philip K. Dick book Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

Variant: To live is to be hunted.
Source: Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (1974), Chapter 27 (p. 213)
Source: Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

“They laugh at this, the idea that one might keep herds of friendly deer or elk that walk happily to their slaughter whenever it's time for the human to eat meat. Some ask openly if there aren't consequences of a life so easy to live.”

Joseph Boyden book The Orenda

Source: The Orenda

Life, Idea, Time

“How different our lives are when we really know what is deeply important to us, and keeping that picture in mind, we manage ourselves each day to be and to do what really matters most.”

Stephen R. Covey (1932–2012) American educator, author, businessman and motivational speaker

“But it seemed to me that this was the way we all lived: full to the brim with gratitude and joy one day, wrecked on the rocks the next. Finding the balance between the two was the art and the salvation.”

Elizabeth Berg (1948) American novelist

Source: The Year of Pleasures

Art, Way, Joy, Gratitude

“Beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: Killing Rage: Ending Racism

World, Communication

“We spent our whole lives in unconsous excercise of the art of expressing our thoughts with the help of words”

Vincent Van Gogh book The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Source: The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Art, Help

“Living by your wits is always knowing where the wasps are.”

Stephen King book The Shining

Source: The Shining (1977)

“There is no struggle too vast, no odds too overwhelming, for even should we fail - should we fall - we will know that we have lived.”

Steven Erikson book Toll the Hounds

Source: Toll the Hounds

“Difference in opinions has cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine.”

Jonathan Swift book Les Voyages de Gulliver

Source: Gulliver's Travels

Wine

“there is no moment more precious than the exact moment you are living now”

Obert Skye book Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo

Source: Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo

“The dead should not rule the living.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Dead

“All people live in a fantasy in which they are the main character.”

Keiichi Sigsawa (1972) Japanese writer

Source: Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World

People

“Novels tell us the most truth about life: what it is, how we live it, what it might be for, how we enjoy and value it, and how we lose it.”

Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending

Source: The Sense of an Ending

Life, Truth

“I don't mind pointing out some of the failings of old age, because we are all headed in that direction, unless of course we take our own lives before we become a burden. I'm not advocating suicide, oh wait, I guess I am.”

Amy Sedaris (1961) American comedian

Source: I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence

Age, Suicide, Waiting

“The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Soul, Hell

“Perhaps they were right putting love into books. Perhaps it could not live anywhere else.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

Love, Books

“The only way to have eternal love is to never let your heart forget what it’s like to live without it.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Night Play

Love, Way, Heart, Forgetting

“He was reading from the beginning so that he could get to the end, where the reader was assured that the knight and the fair maiden lived together happily ever after.”

Kate DiCamillo book The Tale of Despereaux

Source: The Tale of Despereaux

Reading

“I'm dating three men, living with two more, and having occasional sex with two others. That's seven men. I'm like a pornographic Snow White. I think seven is plenty.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Danse Macabre

Source: Danse Macabre

Men, Sex, Thinking

“Appreciation - Learn to give flowers while people are still living”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

People, Flowers, Learning

“Yesterday was a memory. Tomorrow was a hope. Today was another day to live and do one's best to love”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Into the Dreaming

Love, Hope, Memory

“I suppose you could call me… Soot," said the thing. "Yes… Soot. I have breathed it, lived in it, and eaten it for so long that it is a fitting name."
"Eaten it?" asked Suzy. "Why eat soot?"
"Boredom," said Soot.”

Garth Nix book Grim Tuesday

Source: Grim Tuesday

“Sometimes… you have to try to forget people you love just so you can keep living.”

Jacqueline Woodson (1963) American writer

Source: Between Madison and Palmetto

Love, People, Forgetting

“There are two kinds of people,’ she’d said. ‘Those who coast through life like ducks in a row, following one after the other, and those who ride the waves.’” Tears spilled down my cheeks, and my voice cracked. “‘Ride the waves, baby, and live. Live.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Oh My Goth

Life, People, Tear, Baby

“The fear of becoming old is born of the recognition that one is not living now the life that one wishes.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Life, Fear

“Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.”

Steven Pressfield book The War of Art

Source: The War of Art (2002), p. 13

Life, Courageous

“You two. You can do a cleaning spell."
One slurred, "But Nixie, I'm really pre-hung-over."
Nix's eyes went wide. "Do it, or the photos go live!"
The witch shook her fist to the sky, crying, "Damn you, Valkyrie! Damn you and your digital ways!”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Kiss of a Demon King

Way, Photo, Cry

“Ignorance is hardly unusual, Miss Davar. The longer I live, the more I come to realize that it is the natural state of the human mind. There are many who will strive to defend its sanctity and then expect you to be impressed with their efforts.”

Brandon Sanderson book The Way of Kings

Source: The Way of Kings

Nature, Effort

“Your life story is a novel; and people, though they love novels wound between two yellow paper covers, are oddly suspicious of those which come to them in living vellum.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Love, Life, People

“A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence (1886)

Life, Food, Animals

“Well, I live a double life. Tonight, I'll escort you to dinner. Then I have to rush home and finish my calculus homework.'
'You're not joking, are you?'
'I never joke about calculus homework.”

Rick Riordan book The Sword of Summer

Source: The Sword of Summer

Life, Home

“This was her life. Not the life she had once dreamed of, not a life her younger self would ever have imagined or desired, but the life she was living, with all its complexities. This was her life, built with care and attention, and it was good.”

Kim Edwards book The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Source: The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Life, Dreams, Imagination

“they danced as though they'd been waiting all their lives for each song.”

Amy Bloom (1953) Fiction writer, screenwriter, social worker, psychotherapist

Source: Come to Me

Waiting, Dance

“Humans were so stupid. They had something so precious, and they barely safeguarded it at all. They threw away their lives for money, for packets of powder, for a stranger's charming smile.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Money, Stupidity, Smile

“Children do live in fantasy and reality; they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do.”

Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) American illustrator and writer of children's books

As quoted in Questions to an Artist Who Is Also an Author : A Conversation between Maurice Sendak and Virginia Haviland (1972) by Virginia Haviland
Context: I believe there is no part of our lives, our adult as well as child life, when we're not fantasizing, but we prefer to relegate fantasy to children, as though it were some tomfoolery only fit for the immature minds of the young. Children do live in fantasy and reality; they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do.

Children, Way, Reality

“They're betting on how long I'll live!" I burst out. "They're not my friends!"

"Well, try and pretend!" snaps Effie. Then she composes herself and beams at me. "See, like this. I'm smiling at you even though you're aggravating me.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Smile

“I have a black sense of humor. You try living my life, see what color yours turns.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Dreamfever

Life, Color, Sense

“A good book should leave you…. slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.”

William Styron (1925–2006) American novelist and essayist

Interview in Writers at Work, First Series (1958), edited by George Plimpton
Variant: A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.
Source: Conversations with William Styron

Books, Reading

“Our lives may be more productive, but less inventive.”

Richard Louv book Last Child in the Woods

Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

“Now, I'm not very vain. If I'd ever been, making my living covered in various grease and dirt mixtures would have cured me quickly. Still, I wasn't up to facing two sexy men when I had one eye swollen mostly shut and half of my face black and blue.”

Patricia Briggs book Blood Bound

Source: Blood Bound

Men

“If I can laugh, I can live.”

Christopher Reeve (1952–2004) actor, director, producer, screenwriter

“You kidding? So many preservatives in these things, I'll live forever.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

“Learn how to live and you'll know how to die; learn how to die, and you'll know how to live.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

Learning

“Something with inner beauty will live forever, like the scent of a rose.”

Alex Flinn book Beastly

Source: Beastly

Beauty, Beauty

“I know what every colored woman in this country is doing.... Dying. Just like me. But the difference is they dying like a stump. Me, I'm going down like one of those redwoods. I sure did live in this world.”

Toni Morrison book Sula

Sula (1973)

World, Color, Country

“I wish there is a world where any one can know the truth and speak there mind with freedom without having to fear for their lives (Rinko, Basara, Vol. 13)”

Yumi Tamura Manga artist

Source: Basara, Vol. 13

Truth, World, Fear, Freedom

“In the lives of children, pumpkins turn into coaches, mice and rats turn into men. When we grow up, we realize it is far more common for men to turn into rats.”

Gregory Maguire book Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

Source: Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

Men, Children

“We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

World

“I think people believe in heaven because they don't like the idea of dying, because they want to carry on living and they don't like the idea that other people will move into their house and put their things into the rubbish.”

Mark Haddon book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Source: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

People, Idea, Thinking, Housing

“Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.”

Ayn Rand book The Romantic Manifesto

The Romantic Manifesto (1969)

Future, Fight

“Helped are those who are content to be themselves; they will never lack mystery in their lives and the joys of self-discovery will be constant.”

Alice Walker book The Temple of My Familiar

Source: The Temple of My Familiar

Help, Joy

“Once you have lived in New York and made it your home, no place else is good enough”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Home

“It is the experiences, the memories, the great triumphant joy of living to the fullest extent in which real meaning is found. God it's great to be alive! Thank you. Thank you.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

God, Memory, Joy

“To affirm is not to bear, carry, or harness oneself to that which exists, but on the contrary to unburden, unharness, and set free that which lives.”

Gilles Deleuze book Nietzsche and Philosophy

Source: Nietzsche and Philosophy

“The actual writing is what you live for. The rest is something you have to get through in order to arrive at the point.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

“Endure pain, find joy, and make your own meaning, because the universe certainly isn't going to supply it. Always be a moving target. Live. Live. Live.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

Vorkosigan Saga, Barrayar (1991)
Source: Cordelia's Honor
Context: Welcome to Barrayar, son. Here you go: have a world of wealth and poverty, wrenching change and rooted history. Have a birth; have two. Have a name. Miles means "soldier," but don't let the power of suggestion overwhelm you. Have a twisted form in a society that loathes and fears the mutations that have been its deepest agony. Have a title, wealth, power, and all the hatred and envy they will draw. Have your body ripped apart and re-arranged. Inherit an array of friends and enemies you never made. Have a grandfather from hell. Endure pain, find joy, and make your own meaning, because the universe certainly isn't going to supply it. Always be a moving target. Live. Live. Live.

Pain, Universe, Joy