#on

All of us, each and every one, lives a life that is, in its own right, an epic. ↗

— Richard Hammond

#life #my-story #on-the-edge #richard-hammond #life

Great artists make the roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain't no free rides, baby. No hitchhiking. And if you want to strike out in any new direction — you go alone. With a machete in your hand and the fear of God in your heart. ↗

— Ursula K. Le Guin

#direction #life #roads #life

I just read this great quote by Junot Diaz, he was talking about true intimacy, and he was saying that it was the willingness to be vulnerable and to be found out. That’s what I felt that YA did. It wasn't pretentious, and it wasn’t hiding its heart. It wanted to be found out... It felt like those moments when you go to a party and you're standing around for a long time, going, I don't fit in here, what am I going to talk to these people about? And everybody's getting drunk, and then you find this one person, and you end up sitting in some corner talking about all these arcane things. And then before you know it you're having a conversation about the meaning of life and it's four o’clock in the morning. That kind of feeling, that kind of intimacy — I felt like that's what I got from YA. ↗

— Libba Bray

#junot-diaz #vulnerability #ya #young-adult-fiction #life

Arraigned at my own bar, Memory having given her evidence of the hopes, wishes, sentiments I had been cherishing since last night-- of the general state of mind which I have indulged for nearly a fortnight past; Reason having come forward and told in her own quiet way , a plain, unvarnished tale, showing how I had rejected the real, and rabidly devoured the ideal;-- I pronounced judgment to this effect:-- That a greater fool than Jane Eyre had never breathed the breath of life: that a more fantastic idiot had never surfeited herself on sweet lies, and swallowed the poison as if it were nectar. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#lies #life

Religion is so frequently a source of confusion in political life, and so frequently dangerous to democracy, precisely because it introduces absolutes into the realm of relative values. ↗

— Reinhold Niebuhr

#politics #religion #life

I plant my elbows on the kitchen table, prop up my chin and think: When the hell did the compass needle get out of whack and lead my life astray? ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#life

...if your friend knows you at all, she is being rude by pressuring you to do something that is bad for you. Yes, bad for you. Engaging in a painful activity that leaves you feeling crummy about yourself is self-destructive. But your friend is probably not a jerk—you wouldn’t have chosen her for a friend if she were. She’s just following the social rules. And you may be following them too. ↗

— Laurie Helgoe

#life

I was a lawyer for 10 years, and several of my clients had the misfortune, through no fault of my own, of going to prison. I visited them occasionally. ↗

— John Grisham

#fault #going #had #i #lawyer

To express want is to own the desire, to stand in your own reality. The easier alternative is the language of impairment: “I can’t come because I’m run down, overworked, under the gun, tired, sick, or not up to it.” The underlying message is, “I cannot attend because I am impaired,” rather than the more honest and self-respecting response: “I choose to not attend because I prefer the other option. ↗

— Laurie Helgoe

#life

...efforts to make work fun only annoy most of us, especially the introvert. ↗

— Laurie Helgoe

#life