The Universe, The Stars and Me

 Believing that I was blinded by love, I doubted everything, but doubt, far from paralysing me, pushed me in the direction of oceans whose very existence I couldn't admit.

- Paulo Coelho

His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what her eyes said to him from beneath their cowl and knew that in some dim past, whether in life or revery, he had heard their tale before.

- James Joyce

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

-  Galileo Galilei

Winter winds

I still catch myself feeling sad about things that don’t matter anymore. 

- Kurt Vonnegut

His words reminded her of those in the wind, whispered to her on cold winter nights, calming but too late to do any good. Promises that were whispered could be as deceiving as the reflection of the full moon. She remembered clearly the moon on the lake beside her grandmother's cottage. She wasted her whole summer holiday trying to get hold of it. 

Quotes by Kazuo Ishiguro

Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading. 

Indeed — why should I not admit it? — in that moment, my heart was breaking. 

It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you've made, and there's this panic because you don't know yet the scale of disaster you've left yourself open to. 

There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one.

- Quotes by Kazuo Ishiguro

Quotes by Fernando Pessoa

What has happened to us has happened to everyone or only us; if to everyone, then it's no novelty, and if only to us, then it won't be understood. 

We all have two lives: The true, the one we dreamed of in childhood and go on dreaming of as adults in a substratum of mist; the false, the one we love when we live with others, the practical, the useful, the one we end up by being put in a coffin.

I feel as if I'm always on the verge of waking up. 

I've always been an ironic dreamer, unfaithful to my inner promises. Like a complete outsider, a casual observer of whom I thought I was, I've always enjoyed watching my daydreams go down in defeat. I was never convinced of what I believed in. I filled my hands with sand, called it gold, and opened them up to let it slide through. Words were my only truth. When the right words were said, all was done; the rest was the sand that had always been.

I'd woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist. 

To live is to be someone else. Feeling is impossible if we feel today as we felt yesterday: to feel today the same thing we felt yesterday is not to feel at all--it's merely to remember today what we felt yesterday, since today we are the living cadaver of yesterday's lost life.

I've always rejected being understood. To be understood is to prostitute oneself. I prefer to be taken seriously for what I'm not, remaining humanly unknown, with naturalness and all due respect.
 

The painful intensity of my sensations, even when they're happy ones; the blissful intensity of my sensations, even when they're sad. 

- Quotes by Fernando Pessoa

Quotes by Alice Hoffman

Some things you cannot wish away or think away. They become part of you when you remember them.

Fear is contagious. It doubles within minutes; it grows in places where there’s never been any doubt before.

The past stays with a man, sticking to his heels like glue. Invisible and heartbreaking and unavoidable, threaded to the future, just as surely as day is sewn to night.

You can't change what's means to be. 

He had a way of taking your hand, which made it clear he'd have to be the one to let go.
 

This was what it was. The ruin of it. The depth of it. Have it once and you can have it again. That’s the riddle. That’s the truth.

The original fairy tale was about the youngest sister going into a room in the castle and finding all the bodies of the wives that came before her - she is confronted with truth, thinking about how often we think we know people and we really don't.

Your mistake was walking down the road where I was. My mistake was everything else.

- Quotes by Alice Hoffman

Moonlight Dance

Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide going out, revealing whatever's been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fish bodies, bones. This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes, not knowing the future. The ruin you've made. 

– Margaret Atwood  

Adversity is like a strong wind. I don't mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be. 

– Arthur Golden

She knew it the way people say they know they are about to be hit by lightning, yet remain powerless to run, unable to avoid their fate. She panicked, as anyone might have when disparate parts of her life were about to crash into each other, certain to leave a path of anguish and debris. 

It was true that devotion could be lost as quickly as it was found, which was why some people insisted that love letters be written in ink. How easy it was for even the sweetest words to evaporate, only to be rewritten as impulse and infatuation might dictate. How unfortunate that love could not be taught or trained, like a seal or a dog. Instead it was a wolf on the prowl, with a mind of its own, and it made its own way, undeterred by the damage done. 

-Alice Hoffman

Quotes by Alice Hoffman

Sometimes, running away means you're headed in the exact right direction.

Never look back, that's what she's told herself. Don't think about swans or being alone in the dark. Don't think of storms, or lightning and thunder, or the true love you won't ever have. Life is brushing your teeth and making breakfast for your children and not thinking about things. 

What do they know about love? You make bargains you’d never imagine you’d agreed to, and you do it over and over again.

At first it seemed that he believed Sara would return, but as the years went by I understood that his loyalty asked for no reward, and that love comes in unexpected forms. 

Margaret thought of all she knew for certain, that day would always follow night, that love was never wasted nor was it lost.

Anyway, the sort of love that will not wait is probably best to pass by.

You could tell she didn't want to, she was trying with all her might to hold it back, but sometimes it's impossible to do that. I know from personal experience. You have to turn yourself cold as ice in order to stop yourself, and then if anything falls from your eyes it will only be blue ice crystals, hard and unbreakable as stone.

- Quotes by Alice Hoffman

Quotes by Haruki Murakami

She waited for the train to pass. Then she said, "I sometimes think that people’s hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what’s at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while."

Saul Leiter

"What is it?"
"It's not something you can get across in words. The real response is something words can't express."
"There you go," Sada replies. "Exactly. If you can't get it across in words then it's better not to try."
"Even to yourself?" I ask. "Yeah, even to yourself," Sada says. "Better not to try to explain it, even to yourself. 

Saul Leiter

 
Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. 

But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library.

That’s how stories happen — with a turning point, an unexpected twist. There’s only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story. 

Saul Leiter

And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about .

Closing your eyes isn't going to change anything. Nothing's going to disappear just because you can't see what's going on. In fact, things will even be worse the next time you open your eyes. That's the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won't make time stand still.

Saul Leiter

In everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive. 

Saul Leiter

No matter what they wish for, no matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves. That's all.

- Quotes by Haruki Murakami

Quotes by John Mayer

If you never stop when you wave goodbye you just might find, if you give it time, you will wave hello again.

My dear, we're slow dancing in a burning room.

 

When you're dreaming with a broken heart, the waking up is the hardest part.
You roll outta bed and down on your knees, and for the moment you can hardly breathe. 

She's just like a maze where all of the walls all continually change. And I've done all I can to stand on her steps, with my heart in my hands. Now I'm starting to see, maybe it's got nothing to do with me.

Lightning strikes inside my chest to keep me up at night
Dream of ways to make you understand my pain 

Push it in and twist the knife again. Watch my face as I pretend to feel no pain.

Disappointment has a name, it's heartbreak warfare.

I love you more than songs can say,
But i can't keep running after yesterday.

Anything other than yes is no,
Anything other than stay is go,
Anything less than I love you is lying. 

- Quotes by John Mayer