Life
"It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped."
"One day can change your life. One day can ruin your life. All life is is three or four big days that change everything."
"Kindness, I’ve discovered, is everything in life."
"...he asked, "Where are you today, right now?"Eagerly, I started talking about myself. However, I noticed that I was still being sidetracked from getting answers to my questions. Still, I told him about my distant and recent past and about my inexplicable depressions. He listened patiently and intently, as if he had all the time in the world, until I finished several hours later."Very well," he said. "But you still have not answered my question about where you are.""Yes I did, remember? I told you how I got to where I am today: by hard work.""Where are you?""What do you mean, where am I?""Where Are you?" he repeated softly."I'm here.""Where is here?""In this office, in this gas station!" I was getting impatient with this game."Where is this gas station?""In Berkeley?""Where is Berkeley?""In California?""Where is California?""In the United States?""On a landmass, one of the continents in the Western Hemisphere. Socrates, I...""Where are the continents?I sighed. "On the earth. Are we done yet?""Where is the earth?""In the solar system, third planet from the sun. The sun is a small star in the Milky Way galaxy, all right?""Where is the Milky Way?""Oh, brother, " I sighed impatiently, rolling my eyes. "In the universe." I sat back and crossed my arms with finality."And where," Socrates smiled, "is the universe?""The universe is well, there are theories about how it's shaped...""That's not what I asked. Where is it?""I don't know - how can I answer that?""That is the point. You cannot answer it, and you never will. There is no knowing about it. You are ignorant of where the universe is, and thus, where you are. In fact, you have no knowledge of where anything is or of What anything is or how is came to be. Life is a mystery."My ignorance is based on this understanding. Your understanding is based on ignorance. This is why I am a humorous fool, and you are a serious jackass."
"I thought that if I owned nothing, had nothing, was nothing, I would have nothing left to lose, and I wouldn't be scared anymore. Because my whole life I’ve been so damn scared. Scared to live because I was scared to die. But at the same I was so scared of living, so I wanted to die. Or maybe so scared of dying that I refused to live. You don't have to be afraid to fall, when you're already on the ground. You don't have to be scared to lose someone, when there's no one around to lose."
"HOBBES:If you don't get a goodnight kiss you get Kafka dreams."
"The span of three or four minutes is pretty insignificant in the scheme of things. People lose hundreds of minutes everyday, squandering them on trivial things. But sometimes in those fragments of time, something can happen you'll remember the rest of your life."
"But I think we both knew, even then, that what we had was something even more rare, and even more meaningful. I was going to be his friend, and was going to show him possibilities. And he, in turn, would become someone I could trust more than myself."
"There are no happy endings... There are no endings, happy or otherwise. We all have our own stories which are just part of the one Story that binds both this world and Faerie. Sometimes we step into each others stories - perhaps just for a few minutes, perhaps for years - and then we step out of them again. But all the while, the Story just goes on."
"If you want to be a new man you have to stay in new places, and do new things, with people who never knew you before. If you go back to the same old ways, what else can you be but the same old person?"
"There are a million rules for being a girl. There are a million things you have to do to get through each day. High school has things that can trip you up, ruin you, people say one thing and mean another, and you have to know all the rules, you have to know what you can and can't do."
"I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense."
"The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another."
"Oh sorry, I was taking life seriously."
"It doesn't matter who you are, or where you come from, or how much money you've got in your pocket. You have your own destiny and your own life ahead of you."
"You had to risk your life to get love. You had to get right to the edge of death to ever be saved."
"The difference between school and life? In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson."
"We all have such fateful objects -- it may be a recurrent landscape in one case, a number in another -- carefully chosen by the gods to attract events of specific significance for us: here shall John always stumble; there shall Jane's heart always break."
"Letting go is the lesson. Letting go is always the lesson. Have you ever noticed how much of our agony is all tied up with craving and loss?"
"I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it’ll make sense."
"The greatest wealth is health"
"If her enemies were Brigan's friends and her friends were Brigan's enemies, then the two of them could walk through the world arm in arm and never be hit by arrows again."