“Cease, cows, life is short.”
– Gabriel García Márquez from One Hundred Years of Solitude
“Flawed, imperfect creatures! That’s what we both are, Oga! That’s what we ALL are!”
– Nnedi Okorafor from Who Fears Death
“The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving.”
– Elizabeth Gilbert from Eat, Pray, Love
“Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you’ll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you’ll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.”
– Cheryl Strayed from Tiny Beautiful Things
“Some changes occur suddenly like a brilliant flash of lightning striking across a dark sky. These changes are stunning, exciting but can be quickly forgotten. Other changes happen slowly, gradually, like a flower blooming in early spring, each day unfurling its petals another fraction of an inch towards the warm, nurturing sun. These changes are as inevitable as nature running its course; they’re meant to be.”
– Suzi Davis from Amber Frost
“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side. Or you don’t.”
– Stephen King from The Stand
“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.”
– Ernest Hemingway from A Farewell to Arms
“It’s never the changes we want that change everything.”
– Junot Díaz from The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
“Let yourself be gutted. Let it open you. Start there.”
– Cheryl Strayed from Tiny Beautiful Things
“Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.”
– William Shakespeare from Measure for Measure
“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.
– J.K. Rowling from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
“People are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of.”
– Paulo Coelho from The Alchemist
“Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.”
– Victor Hugo from Les Misérables
“There is nothing foolish about hope.”
– N.K. Jemisin from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
“Memory can make a thing seem to have been much more than it was.”
– Marilynne Robinson from Gilead
“Never be afraid to sit awhile and think.”
– Lorraine Hansberry from A Raisin in the Sun
“I can’t go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.”
– Lewis Carroll from Alice in Wonderland
"So it goes…”
– Kurt Vonnegut from Slaughterhouse-Five