book club

This is an ongoing list of books that I have read and my thoughts on them... As well as many of my favorite quotes. If you want to know more of what I think or what is next on my list to read follow along here.

Currently // An Echo in the Bone

A Breath of Snow and Ashes // Diana Gabaldon
"Either he was dying or he wasn't. If he was, no help was possible. If he wasn't. none was needed."
"The mountains had their own time, and a wise man did not try to hurry them."
"'If I die,' he whispered in the dark, 'donna follow me. The bairns will need ye. Stay for them. I can wait.'"
"'Ye canna be so close to another,' he said finally. 'To be within each other, to smell their sweat, and rub the hairs of your body with theirs and see nothing of their soul.'"
"'You're a very hard person to kill, I think,' I said. 'That's a great comfort to me.'"
"...the devil you ken is better than the devil you don't."
"Why do I see things that don't exist anywhere except inside my brain?"
"We must just meet what comes as we can."
"If the evils of the past canna hinder us—neither then shall fears of the future."
"...solitude was in its own way a balm for loneliness."
"It is myself who kills for her."
"I was still me. Fragile, battered, sore, and wary—but myself."
"I wasna looking at anything save you."
"'I hold no evil in my heart,' he said, hearing his voice come slow, from a long way off. 'This evil does not touch me. More may come, but not this. Not here. Not now.'"
"Come to think, perhaps being nearly killed wasn't always a misfortune—so long as you didn't actually die of it."
"'All I want,' she said softly to the dark, 'is for you to love me. Not because of what I can so or what I look like, or because I love you—just because I am.'"
"'Perfect, unconditional love?' he said just as softly. 'Some would tell ye only God can love that way—but I can try.'"
"In war, government and their armies were a threat, but it was so often the neighbors who damned or saved you."
"Gods are jealous, are they no?"
"I became convinced that it was God I sought. Perhaps it was. But God is not flesh and blood, and the love of God alone could not sustain me."
"'I have yearned always,' he said softly, 'for love given and returned; have spent my life in the attempt to give my love for those who were not worthy of it. Allow me this: to give life for the sake of one who is.'"
"She was a lass who craved love, I think—and took it. But she didna ken how to give it back again."
"'Nay, but I kent him always,' she said very softly. 'He smelled of light.'"
"'I canna look at ye asleep without wanting to wake ye, Sassenach.'...'I suppose I find myself lonely without ye.'"
"'I'm not so brave as I was before, ken?' he said very softly. 'Not brave enough to live without ye anymore.'"
"For your sake, I will continue—though for mine alone...I would not."

The Fiery Cross // Diana Gabaldon
"But the speech of the heart is louder than the word of any oath spoken by lips alone."
"He was not afraid to die with her, by fire or any other way—only to live without her."
"...I found men soothingly logical and—with a few striking exceptions—pleasingly direct."
"Well it's no as though I've never found myself walking between two fires before, Sassenach. I may come out of it a bit scorched round the edges, but I donna think I'll fry."
"Money might not buy happiness, I reflected, but it was useful commodity, nonetheless."
"Peace was hard on professional soldiers."
"Dear Bride, why cannot the past leave us be in what peace we have made with it?"
"The world and each day in it is a gift, mo chridhe—no matter what tomorrow may be."
"If I should lose you—or Jamie—I wouldn't be quite a whole person any longer, but I would still have that left."
"'He's a man,' she said, 'and that's no small thing to be.'"
"He'll be no safer for your hear, will he?"
"'And if she had not come back to me'—he interrupted firmly—'if you have not come—if I had never known—or if I had known for sure that both of you were dead...' He turned his head to look at her, and felt the shift of his body as he lifted his hand from my hair and reached out his other hand to touch her. 'Then I would still have lived, a nighean, and done what must be done. So will you.'"
"—if you say it, then it's true. You make it true."
"So beautiful, you break my heart."
"'To see the years touch ye give me joy, Sassenach,' he whispered, '—for it means that ye live.'"
"Come to me. Cover me. Shelter me, a bhean, heal me. Burn with me, as I burn for you."
"...aye, well, some ways of breaking a sweat are better than others."
"'If I'd known I should meet a damn bear,' Jamie said, grunting as he lifted another stone into place, 'I would have taken another path.'"
"There's a deal of difference, ye ken, between meeting a bear unawares—and hunting one."
"Only one of us can be scared at a time, and it's my turn."
"'Sassenach...I love ye now, and I will love ye always. Whether I am dead—or you—whether we are together or apart. You know it is true,' he said quietly, and touched my face. 'I know it of you, and ye know it of me as well.'"
"Not much ye can do with a female who's not in the mood."
"'That's how he'll know the most of us,' he said instead, resuming his gentle kneading. 'He'll look at himself, aye?'"
"'I'd like a portrait of you,' he said softly, and reached out a finger to trace the curve of cheek and temple. 'So we can look at it when we're very old, and I can tell ye that you haven't changed a bit.'"
"No matter what. We won't forget."
"Men go where they will, they do as they must; it is not a woman's part to bid them stay, not yet to reproach them for being what they are—or for not coming back."
"'There's a difference between cruelty and necessity.'
'Aye,' Jamie said, half under his breath. 'And a thin line, maybe, between a monster and a hero.'"
"The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet it."
"'When the day shall come, that we do part,' he said softly, and turned to look at me, 'if my last words are not 'I love you'—ye'll ken it was because I dinna have time.'"

Drums of Autumn // Diana Gabaldon
"By blood and by choice, we make our ghosts; we haunt ourselves."
"I could know ye all my life, I think, and always love you."
"An Englishman thinks a hundred miles is a long way; an American thinks a hundred years is a long time."
"'You are my courage, as I am your conscience,' he whispered. 'You are my heart—and I your compassion. We are neither of us whole, alone. Do ye not know that, Sassenach?'"
"But do ye not see how verra small a thing is the notion of death, between us two, Claire?"
"Nothing is lost, Sassenach; only changed."
"If ye have to ask yourself if you're in love, laddie—then ye aren't."
"Some people would say you can't miss what you never had—that it's better not to know at all."
"Likely it took women to get men to do anything much."
"I could do with a spot of dullness now and then."
"What I was born does not matter, only what I will make of myself, only what I will become."
"It was a leap of faith—to throw one's heart across a gulf, and trust another to catch it."
"Being certifiably insane is unfortunately no guarantee that someone is likewise wrong."
"'My sin was to love her,' Alexandre said, very softly, 'and that I cannot stop.'"
"Obligation? Love? How in hell could you love without obligation?"

Voyager // Diana Gabaldon
"I think perhaps the greatest burden lies in caring for those we cannot help."
"'He gave you back to me,' she said, so low I could hardly hear her. 'Now I have to give you back to him, Mama.'"
"The most irritating thing about cliches, I decided, was how frequently they were true."
"I know why the Jews and Muslims have nine hundred names for God; one small word is not enough for love."
"Judging by the state of your hair, Sassenach, I shock say that it's going to rain verra soon now."

Dragonfly In Amber // Diana Gabaldon
"We are bound, you and I, and nothing on this earth shall part me from you."
"You are mine, always, if ye will it or no, if ye want me or nay. Mine, and I wilna let you go."
"For I give ye my spirit, 'til our life shall be done."
"Your face is my heart."
"The most important thing I've learned about women, Sassenach, is which one to choose."
"I didn't want to know love, only to have it ripped away once more."
"You cannot save the world, but you might save the man in front of you, if you work fast enough."
"When time strips everything else away, it's only the hardness of the bone that's left."
"You never know, but you have to act anyways, don't you?"

Outlander // Diana Gabaldon
"I had not slept with many men other than my husband, but I had noticed before that to sleep, actually sleep with someone did give a sense of intimacy, as though your dreams had flowed out of you to mingle with his and fold you both in a blanket of unconscious knowing."
"In older, more primitive times (like these? asked another part of my mind), it was an act of trust to sleep in the presence of another person. If the trust was mutual, simple sleep could bring you closer together than the joining of bodies."
"Bruised pride hurts worse than anything, and it bruises easy then."
"To stand against a crowd would take something more than ordinary courage; something beyond human instinct."
"And I'm neither particularly small, nor very sweet, at least at present."
"Aye. That's what marriage is good for; it makes a sacrament out of things we'd otherwise have to confess."
"'He said the greatest thing in a man's life is to lie wi' a woman he loves,' he said softly. He smiled at me, eyes blue as the sky overhead. 'He was right.'"
"'Ye werena the first lass I kissed,' he said softly. 'But I swear you'll be the last.'"
"For where all love is, the speaking is unnecessary. It is all. It is undying. And that is enough."
"I wouldna be hungry if I were about to die, do ye think? Seems a waste."
"Sometimes our best actions result in things that are most regrettable."

Modern Lovers // Emma Straub
"Who needed happiness when you had stability?"
"Some people were the leavers and some were the left."
"Maybe his love was enough for both of them."

The Magicians Nephew // C.S. Lewis
"No great wisdom can be reached without sacrifice."
"Watchin' and listenin's the thing at present; not talking."
"For out of them you were taken and into them you can return."
"For jokes as well as justice come in with speech."
"For what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are."
"When things go wrong, you'll find they usually go on getting worse for some time; but when things once start going right they often go on getting better and better."

One Plus One // Jojo Moyes
"Sometimes you need time away to figure things out in your hear. It makes everything clearer."
"...that there was nothing sadder than a lonely hairless baboon."
"Everyone I've ever met who was worth knowing was a bit different at school. You just need to find your people."
"That was the thing: when you put someone down all the time, eventually they stopped listening to the sensible stuff."
"Because there had to be something wrong, didn't there, if even your own mother didn't really love you?"
"I've decided I like living dangerously."
"There was no point trying to hang on to someone who didn't want you."
"The law is probably combined with the law of large numbers states that to beat the odds, sometimes you have to repeat an event an increasing number of times in order to get you to the outcome you desire. The more you do, the closer you get."

Miller's Valley // Anna Quindlen
"Things seem simple when you're young."
"I figured that most of being a kid consisted of eavesdropping, trying to figure older people out and understand what they were going to do next, because whatever they were going to do next was surely going to have some effect on you."
"Getting older wasn't working out so well for me."
"...but sometimes, I've found there are people you get to be friends with accidentally and then stay friends with because you've always been friends."
"Charm is like tinsel without a tree. What's tinsel without a tree? Shredded tinfoil."
"It's a lot harder to save people than you think it is."
"Nothing is useless, my father used to say, as a key that doesn't open anything anymore."

Dear Mr. You // Dear Mr. You
"Letting someone you don't really like surprise you is evolved, and that would have been impossible if you didn't have the humility I wasn't giving you credit for."
"It's so transparent, how willing we are to dismiss the intelligence of someone who rejects us, as though that renders them incapable of sound judgement."
"You said you would live me until you were ashes."
"I feel full. I feel, if we were forever poor, and had to live with so little, you know, really poor, and this was the best we got, I would be all right with that."
"Time should weep for having spent me without you."
"I wanted to put my head on your shoulder and make a wrinkle there."
"You keep saying you're hungry but there is a doughnut in front of you and you don't eat it."
"You keep saying you're cold but you take off your coat and throw it on the floor."
"No way to take the voices you loved, they would have to stay behind, so you took the ellipses."
"Go find your own dysfunction."
"I said sorry so many times that I believed I was, but was I supposed to be sorry?"
"It's been a cycle of having your arms tied only to liberate yourself again."
"...but like any man, you are happy to be the one who caught something he was chasing, and like certain women, I am happy for a man to find something that was about to hurt me and grab it by the neck."
"It takes bravery to admit that you're petrified and keep soldiering on despite it."

#AskGaryVee // Gary Vaynerchuk
"They don't need theory. They need practical, tactical information, stuff they can hear one minute and start applying the next—real-world advice that can be adapted and reshaped do as the commerce and culture shift."
"Ideas are worthless without the execution; execution is pointless without the ideas."
"We have become too entitled. Go out and earn that job."
"My name is 'good' because I made something out of it."
"You want people to recognize and remember your name? Earn it."
"At some point, however, you've got to hike up your big-boy pants, accept the decision you've made, and move on. After all, you made your decision for a reason, so trust your judgement. There's no point in looking back."
"The best way to become something is to do the work required to become something."
"I put zero weight into anyone's opinion about me because I know exactly who I am."
"Because if you're too early in a business or a theory where there's no buy-in, you've lost."
"You have to know their world and speak their language in order to reach them."
"If you want to move mountains, you've got to come with thunder."
"It's become clear to me that it's much better to be a businessperson than an athlete because as a businessperson you have plenty of time to hit your prime."
"You cannot properly market something if you don't even know whether its any good."
"After all, great products don't need that much marketing. Marketing, however, won't fix a crap product or app or service."
"You have to know something in order to be a brand."
"Don't ever think you can hack expertise and branding by relying on social media and modern tech. There is no substitute for honest hard work."
"Hustle and adjusting to business opportunities as they come and adjusting to life as it changes."
"If anything, come from less or from behind can be a huge advantage because you will never, ever assume anything will come to you easily. That breeds a lot of courage and perseverance."
"Stop saying 'but' and you'll be forced to move forward; there will be nothing standing in your way anymore."
"You're success is not predicted on your zip code."
"The quality of a brand's storytelling is directly proportional to the quality of its content. If it's not good, no one will pay attention." 
"If you're not producing content, you don't exist."
"Some experiences have more long-term worth than money."
"It's more likely that they'll like your work if you like your work, so don't ever try to be someone you're not or follow a trend."
"When you have no idea expectations people can sense it, and funny enough, the absence of pressure or obligation actually makes them want to reciprocate."
"Marketing today is for the forward thinking, the brave, and the young at heart."
"Being an entrepreneur or a CEO is a stunningly lonely job."
"The only effective way to truly lead is to practice and model the behavior you want to see in others."
"Positivity is a state of mind."
"Depth matters more than width."
"I hope that the way I carry myself and live my life motivates people to work hard and do their best by others."
"A healthy company culture built on trust and openness make business go faster."
"Being nice is a choice, and how you choose to speak to people even when you're pressed for time will reveal who you really are."
"Money and fame doesn't change people, it exposes them."
"I actually do my best to make my daily interactions with people such that they'd want to come to my funeral."
"A great company is grounded in great culture, and great culture begins and ends with whom you hire, and how they leave."
"If you want people to overdeliver, you'd better overdeliver for them, too."
"Don't let anyone's mind go to waste. Encourage everyone to be an innovator."
"Digital should be seen as the gateway to a human interaction, but not as a replacement for it."

The Last Boy and Girl in the World // Siobhan Vivian
If you are looking for a classic teenage angst novel for the summer look no further. I can really only handle one of these a year but I tend to devour them shockingly fast. Classic boy meets girl with a twist... but the twist is easy to spot. Like within the first chapter easy to spot. 

The Nest // Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
I weirdly love the ending of this book. Not going to spoil anything but it was oddly relatable which is not something that you typically see in literature. Not a conventional book or ending but I fully enjoyed it.
"'Appearances count,' she would tell their kids. 'If you want people to judge you based on the inside, don't distract them from the outside.'"
"I pray if you love me, bear my joy."
"Party is an attitude, not a destination."
"It's not your job to be anyone's mirror."
"If you want to predict a person's behavior, identify his or her incentives."
"Nothing was a sure thing; every choice was just an educated guess, or leap into a mysterious abyss."
"People might not change but their incentives could."
"I loved enough to lose; I felt enough to weep."
"Life gets hard and people bail."

How to Win Friends and Influence People // Dale Carnegie
Read this for our leadership book club. Very straight-forward on the leadership/communication topics that are talked about in the book
"Criticism is dangerous, because it winds a person's precious price, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment."
"As much as we thirst for approval, we dread condemnation."
"Judge not, yet ye be not judged."
"Don't criticize them; they are just what we would be under similar circumstances."
"A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men."
"The only way I can get you to do anything is by giving you what you want."
"I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among people the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as criticisms from superiors. I never criticize anyone. I believe in giving a person incentive to work. So I am anxious to praise but loath to find fault. If I like anything, I am hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise."
"Don't be afraid of enemies who attack you. Be afraid of the friends who flatter you."
"I shall pass this way but once; any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Le me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again."
"Action springs out of what we fundamentally desire...and the best piece of advice which can be given to would be persuaders, whether in business, in the home, in the school, in politics, is: First, arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way."
"If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and seeing from that person's angle as well as from your own."
"People who can put themselves in the place of other people. who can understand the workings of their minds, need never worry about what the future has in store for them."
"Arouse in the other person an eager want."
"People are not interested in you. They are not interested in me. They are interested in themselves—morning, noon, and after dinner."
"It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life and provide the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring."
"We are interested in others when they are interested in us."
"Become genuinely interested in other people."
"I have known people who succeeded because they had a rip-roaring good time conducting their business."
"Act as if you were already happy, and that will tend to make you happy."
"Whenever you go out-of-doors, draw the chin in, carry the crown of the head high, and fill the lungs to the utmost; drink in the sunshine; greet your friends with a smile, and put soul into every handclasp. Do not fear being misunderstood and do not waste a minute thinking about your enemies. Try to fix firmly in your mind what you would like to do; and then, without veering off direction, you will move straight to the goal. Keep your mind on the great and splendid things you would like to do, and then, as the days go gliding away, you will find yourself unconsciously seizing upon the opportunities that are required for the fulfillment of your desire, just as the coral insect takes from the running tide the element it needs. Picture in your mind the able, earnest, useful person you desire to be, and the thought you hold is hourly transforming you into that particular individual... Thought is supreme. Preserve a right mental attitude—the attitude of courage, frankness, and good cheer. To think rightly is to create. All things come through desire and every sincere prayer is answered. We become like that on which our hearts are fixed. Carry your chin in and the crown of your head high. We are gods in the chrysalis."
"The unvarnished truth is that almost all the people you meed feel themselves superior to you in some way, and a sure way to their hearts is to let them realize in some subtle way that you recognize their importance, and recognize it sincerely."
"Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him."
"Talk to people about themselves, and they will listen for hours."
"Make the other person feel important—and do it sincerely."
"Nine times out of ten, an argument ends with each of the contestants more firmly convinced than ever that he is absolutely right."
"A man convinced against his will
Is of the same opinion still."
"If you argue and rankle and contradict, you may achieve a victory sometimes; but it will be an empty victory because you will never get your opponent's good will."
"You may be right, dead right, as you speed along in your argument; but as far as changing another's mind is concerned, you will probably be just as futile as if you were wrong."
"Hatred is never ended by hatred but by love, a misunderstanding is never ended by an argument but by tact, diplomacy, conciliation and a sympathetic desire to see the other person's viewpoint."
"When one yells, the other should listen—because when two people yell, there is no communication, just noise and bad vibrations."
"The only way to get theist of an argument is to avoid it."
"Men must be taught as if you taught them not 
And things unknown proposed as things forgot."
"You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself."
"Be wiser than other people if you can; but do not tell them so."
"One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing."
"You will never get into trouble by admitting that you may be wrong."
"I judge people by their own principles—not my own."
"Show respect for the other person's opinions. Never say, 'You're wrong.'"
"There is a certain degree of satisfaction in having the courage to admit one's errors."
"Any fool can try to defend his or her mistakes—and most fools do—but it raises one above the herd and gives one a feeling of nobility and exultation to admit one's mistakes."
"When we are right, let's try to win people gently and tactfully to our way of thinking, and when we are wrong—and that will be surprisingly often, if we are honest with ourselves—let's admit our mistakes quickly and with enthusiasm."
"By fighting you never get enough, but by yielding you get more than expected."
"If you are wrong, admit it quickly and empathetically."
"They can't be forced or driven to agree with you or me. But they may possibly be led to, if we are gentle and friendly, ever so gentle and ever so friendly."
"It is an old and true maxim that 'a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.' So with men, if you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart; which, say what you will, is the great high road to reason."
"The sun can make you take off your coat more quickly than the wind; and kindliness, the friendly approach and appreciation can make people change their minds more readily than all the bluster and storming in the world."
'Begin in a friendly way."
"He who treads softly goes far."
"Get the other person saying 'yes, yes' immediately."
"If you want enemies, excel your friends; but if you want friends, let your friends excel you."
"Let the other person do a great deal of the talking."
"The reason why rivers and seas receive the homage of a hundred mountain streams is that they keep below them. This they are able to reign over all the mountain streams. So the sage, wishing to be above men, putteth himself below them; wishing to be before them, he putteth himself behind them. Thus, though his place be above men, they do not feel his weight; though his place be before them, they do not count it an injury."
"Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers."
"Cooperativeness in conversation is achieved when you show that you consider the other person's ideas and feelings as important as your own. Starting your conversation by giving the other person the purpose or direction of your conversation, governing what you say by what you would want to hear if you were the listener, and accepting his or her viewpoint will encourage the listener to have an open mind to your ideas."
"I would rather walk the sidewalk in front of a person's office for two hours before an interview than step into that office without a perfectly clear idea of what I was going to say and what that person—from my knowledge of his or her interests and motives—was likely to answer.
"Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view."
"Sympathy the human species universally craves. The child eagerly displays his injury; or even inflicts a cut or bruise in order to reap abundant sympathy. For the same purpose adults... Show their bruises, relate their accidents, illness, especially details of surgical operations. 'Self-pity' for misfortunes real or imaginary is, in some measure, practically a universal practice."
"Be sympathetic with the other person's ideas and desires."
"Appeal to the nobler motives."
"Dramatize your ideas."
"All men have fears, but the brave put down their fears and go forward, sometimes to death, but always to victory."
"The one major factor that motivated people was the work itself. If the work was exciting and interesting, the worker looked forward to doing it and was motivated to do a good job."
"Throw down a challenge."
"Begin with a praise and honest appreciation."
"Call attention to people's mistakes indirectly."
"Admitting one's own mistakes—even when one hasn't corrected them—can help convince somebody to change his behavior."
"Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person."
"Asking questions not only makes an order more palatable; it often stimulates the creativity of the persons whom you ask. People are more likely to accept an order if they have had a part in the decision that caused the order to be issued."
"Ask questions instead of giving direct orders."
"I have no right to say or do anything that diminishes a man in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him, but what he thinks of himself. Hurting a man in his dignity is a crime."
"Let the other person save face."
"Let us praise even the slightest improvement. That inspires the other person to keep on improving."
"Praise is like sunlight to the warm human spirit; we cannot flower and grow without it. And yet, while most of us are only too ready to apply to others the cold wind of criticism, we are somehow reluctant to give our fellow the warm sunshine of praise."
"Everybody likes to be praised, but when praise is specific, if comes across as sincere—not something the other person may be saying just to make one feel good."
"Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be 'hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.'"
"Give a dog a bad name and you may as well hang him."
"Giveth other person a fine reputation to live up to."
"Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct."
"Always make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.
"Men are ruled by toys."
"Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest."

Sex God // Rob Bell
"Our sexuality, then, has two dimensions. First, our sexuality is our awareness of how profoundly we're severed and cut off and disconnected. Second, our sexuality is all the ways we go about trying to reconnect."
"What we are experiencing in these moments of connection is what God created us to experience all of the time. It's our natural state. It's how things are supposed to be."
"You can't be connected with God until you're at peace with who you are."
"And if you can't come to terms with who you are and the life you've been given, you'll never be able to accept others and how they were made and the lives they've been given. And until you're at peace with God and those around you, you will continue to struggle with your role on this planet. and your part to play in ongoing creation of the universe. You will continue to struggle and resist and fail to connect."
"Sexy is when it feels good to be in your own skin. Your own body feels right, it feels comfortable. Sexy is when you love being you."
"The temptation is always to avoid things that are difficult and complex. To go around them rather than through them."
"The truth is, we're crammed full of sexual energy. It's how we're made. We have cravings and desires and urges and temptations that can easily consume us and make us feel helpless in their presence. We have to talk about what we do with the forces that rage within us. We have to get it out or you'll begin to die on the inside."
"Life is not about toning down and repressing your God-given life force. It's about channeling it and focusing it and turning it loose on something beautiful, something pure and true and good, something that connects you with God, with others, with the world."
"When you make a move toward a person,
when you extend yourself to them,
when you invite them to do something,
when you initiate conversation
you give them power.
Power to say yes or no.
Power to decide."
"Love is handing your heart to someone and taking the risk that they will hand it back because they don't want it. That's why it's such a crushing ache on the inside. We gave away a part of ourselves and it wasn't wanted."
"Love is giving away of power. When we love, we give the other person the power in the relationship. They can do what they choose. They can do what they like with our love. They can reject it, they can accept it, they can step toward us in gratitude and appreciation."
"Love is giving away. When we love, we put ourselves out there, we expose ourselves, we allow ourselves to be vulnerable."
"Love is giving up control. It's surrendering the desire to control the other person. The two—love and controlling power over the other person—are mutually exclusive. If we are serious about loving someone, we have to surrender all of our desires within us to manipulate the relationship."
"This is what love does, it threatens the empires of power and control and wealth and manipulation."
"If you have ever given yourself to someone and had your heart broken, you know how God feels."
"If you have ever given yourself to someone and found yourself waiting for their response, exposed and vulnerable, left hanging in the balance, you know how God feels."
"If God can continue to risk, then maybe you can too."
"Agape doesn't love somebody because they're worthy. Agape make the worthy by the strength and power of its love.
Agape doesn't love somebody because they're beautiful. Agape loves in such a way that it makes them beautiful."
"There is a love because, love in order to, love for the purpose of, and then there is love, period. Agape doesn't need a reason."
"Our understanding of how God sees us will shape everything about how we live. What we do comes out of who we believe we are."

The Nightingale // Kristen Hannah
"In love we find who we want to be; in war we find out who we are."
"I always thought it was what I wanted; to be loved and admired. Now I think perhaps I'd like to be known."
"What was love when put up against war?"
"Beauty was just another way to discount her, to not see her."
"People left. She knew that. They especially left her."
"She wanted to say 'Don't leave me,' but she couldn't do it, not again. She was so tired of begging people to love her."
"A broken heart hurts as badly in wartime as in peace."
"Some stories don't have happy endings. Even love stories. Maybe especially love stories."
"But love has to be stronger than hate, or there is no future for us."
"Love is such a slippery thing."

The Silkworm // Robert Galbraith 
"When women turn, they really turn."
"...because she knew only one way to respond to pain, to wind the transgressor as deeply as possible, with no thought for the consequences herself."
"We don't love each other; we love the idea we have of each other."
"All love, ultimately, is self-love."

City on Fire // Garth Risk Hallberg
"No one (he would think later, after what happened happened) would be able to reverse time's arrow."
"How much simpler the world would be if people could admit openly to hating each other!"
"I don't think you can really change anything unless you're willing to say yes."
"And why love things you were destined to lose? Why let yourself feel things if the feelings were doomed to die?"
"Of course nothing is more attractive than someone who needs saving."
"They were wronged parties, both of them, and whatever this thing was, they were in it together now."
"...though what he'd meant those times he'd said he loved her couldn't possibly have been what she meant when she thought of being loved."
"Or was it possible to love something and hate it at the same time?"
"The Loneliest Man in the World, she said, only has room in his heart for one person, and if he can't have that person, he locks himself away. He tells himself no one could possibly love him, but really, it's that he refuses to love anyone else."
"I mean no matter what you deserve, how far you run, your fate stays stuck to your heels."
"Save for the fire worker himself, no one ever knows the grand finale is the grand finale until it's over."
"You can build a life on this: two people who know each other's failings electing nonetheless to sit together, in socks, in lamplight, reading magazines, trying not to look too far beyond the day just passed, or the one coming up."

Tribes // Seth Godin
I read this book for our leadership book club at work and I was just not the biggest fan. This book reads fairly easy—only about 140 pages and very small. But the content was very repetitive. It had a lot of the same ideas as leadership books that have come before it and it stated them over and over—about 200 times. All in all, would not recommend to most people but if you are looking for an easy book on leadership and you learn best by repetitiveness then this is the book for you. Everyone else, you can get away with reading the first 35 pages and the last 10 to know what the book is all about.
"A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea."
"A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate."
"You can't have a tribe without a leader—and you can't be a leader without a tribe."
"One of the most powerful of our survival mechanisms is to be part of a tribe, to contribute to (and take from) a group of like minded people."
"A movement is exciting. It's the work of many people, all connected, all seeking something better."
"Generous and authentic leadership will always defeat the selfish efforts of someone doing it just because she can."
"Tribes are about faith—about belief in an idea and in a community."
"Heretics are the new leaders."
"Leadership, on the other hand, is about creating change that you believe in."
"Leaders have followers. Managers have employees."
"Marketing is the act of telling stories about the things we make—stories that sell and stories that spread."
"Today, marketing is about engaging with the tribe and delivering products and services with stories that spread."
"Great leaders create movements by empowering the tribe to communicate."
"Instead of always being on the hunt for one more set of eyeballs, true leaders have figured out that the real win is in turning a casual fan into a true one."
"Individuals who push their organizations, who inspire other individuals to change the rules, thrive."
"Whatever the status quo is, changing it gives you the opportunity to be remarkable."
"Ideas that spread, win."
"We choose not to be remarkable because we're worried about criticism."
"Heretics are engaged, passionate, and more powerful and happier than everybody else."
"Great leaders are able to reflect the light onto their teams, their tribes. Great leaders don't want the attention, but they use it. They use it to unite the tribe and to reinforce its sense of purpose."
"If everyone tries to lead all the time, not much happens."
"If you're not uncomfortable in your work as a leader, it's almost certain you're not reaching your potential as a leader."
"An organization, any organization, needs people who aren't just willing to follow, but are eager to follow."
"Leadership is a choice. It's the choice to not do nothing."
"A curious person embraces the tension between his religion and something new, wrestles with it and through it, and then decides whether to embrace the new idea or reject it."
"Through your actions as a leader, you attract a tribe that wants to follow you. That tribe has a worldview that matches the message you're sending."
"Leaders who set out to give are more productive than leaders who seek to get."
"The secret of being wrong isn't to avoid being wrong!"
"The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there. People will follow."
"People won't follow you if they don't believe you can get to where you say you're going."
"If no one cares, then you have no tribe. If you don't care—really and deeply care—then you can't possibly lead."
"People want to be sure you heard what they said—they're less focused on whether or not you do what they said."
"Tribes grow when people recruit other people."
"If your organization requires success before commitment, it will never have either."

Why Not Me? // Mindy Kaling
"The truth is, it's hard to get people to like you, but it's even harder to keep people liking you."
"So my advice to you is: try to befriend a cinematographer and have him or her light you wherever you go."
"...haters are just more people paying attention to you."
"And as everybody knows, the best kind of laughter is laugher born of a shared memory."
"If you have the opportunity to observe someone at work, you are getting mentoring out of them even if they are unaware or resistant."
"'Soul mates' is what you aim for, but soup snakes is what you get sometimes."
"People don't say 'Give me your honest opinion' because they want an honest opinion. They say it because it's rude to say 'Please tell me I'm amazing.''
"I'm the kind of person who becomes silent when I get scared, because I hope Death will not notice me if I am very still and very quiet. I has worked well so far."
"But none of that mattered, because I knew the truth, which is if someone really wants to see you, they always find a way. Always."
"'Cause what are we even doing here if we're not flaunting it?"

Fates and Furies // Lauren Groff
"Grief is for the strong, who use it's fuel for burning."
"If one might die at any moment, one must live!"
"No more risking the hurt that came from contact with others."
"Why, it's your family that tells you who you are. Without a family, you're a nobody."
"What's yours is mine and what's mine is yours."
"It comes over us that we shall never again hear the laughter of our friend, that this garden is forever locked against us. And at that moment begins our true grief."
"The way the old story goes, woman needs an other to complete her circuits, to flick her to fullest blazing."
"Yet—yes!—the sum of her life, she saw, was far greater than its sum of love."

All the Stars in the Heavens // Adriana Trigiani
"Why do people ever leave home? They have to."
"A man pays attention when he's interested."
"What had made her happy was not to be."
"I will tell them that I have desire."
"There's always a girl in the story."
"No longer could you play an angel; you had to be one."
"You work to live."
"It appear to Alda to be the real thing, the most dangerous kind of love of all."
"Isn't it always a tangle when a man loves a woman?"
"How can something you know is wrong make you happy?"
"You can't have redemption without sin."
"You know the worst part of this thing is? You go your whole life looking for this exact thing, and you swear you'll never find it, and then you do, and then you can't have it. It is parceled out to everybody else, so you see it and recognize it, and patiently you wait for your portion, and by the time your turn comes, there isn't enough to go around. Hell of a thing."
"There's nothing worse than a love affair that never bloomed. You have to think like the gardener who snips the heads of the buds that never blossom. It brings down the garden. We are meant to bloom."
"The people that joke about dying young never do."
"Powder and lipstick are the tank and the rifle in a woman's beauty arsenal."
"Time is a tool to use however you wish, You never know anything about anything. That's why you have to grip the rope and climb it. Right now. Right here. In this moment. This could be it for us."
"You have to know what makes a person sad to figure out how to make them happy."
"Life isn't a class where you can get a perfect score. It seems to me you have to keep trying."
"A poem is just a set of instructions. Tells you how to live."
"You can do everything just right, and the river moves through anyway, and it takes you with it."
"I have two gifts to give anyone that loves me and that I love in return: the gift of myself, and my time."
"You can't prove love. You can only offer it."
"Because I'm happy alone, Luca. Nobody hurts me. Nobody breaks my heart. Nobody makes me feel worthless."
"Who are you if you don't love somebody? What kind of life is that?
"A good woman makes a man better."
"'Now that's love,' Gable observed. 'He'd walk down that mountain to marry his girl if he had to. There's no blizzard, no river, no mountain that will keep him from marrying the woman he loves.'"
"If you don't believe in miracles, you might as well not believe in God."
"If I'm given a choice, I'd like to stay right here with you. Neither forward, nor backward, but right here. With you."
"Love is everything to me."
"They appear invincible; it seemed they had all they needed in the company of one another."
"Maybe if she stayed in the moment he would too and they could be together always."
"He's a good man. But sometimes good men get in difficult situations that they can't get themselves out of."
"You can't help me get over him, or put this behind me, because I don't want to."
"A woman is either lucky in love or work."
"...never again would she fall in love with a man's charm, mistaking it for goodness."
"You are enough."
"Don't let love make you angry. It'll kill you."
"She was on the side of love."
"They were forever intertwined, connected, wedded to one another in some deep way that is as instantly familiar and somehow impossible."
"Even that wasn't enough; all she could do was hold him and wait for the darkness to pass."
"They shared equally in their mistakes and missteps, and underneath their shortcomings was always an understanding that the other had the capacity to forgive."
"Work was not a balm or a distraction, but salvation to the broken-hearted."

Me Before You // Jojo Moyes
"You know, you can only actually help someone who wants to be helped."
"But surely if you loved someone it was your job to stick with him?"
"You thought you knew best. Everyone thinks they know what I need."
"It was impossible to be this close to someone, to feel their skin tauten under your fingertips, to breathe in the air that they breathed out, to have their face only inches from yours, without feeling a little unbalanced."
"You only get one life. It's actually your duty to live it as fully as possible."
"I worked out what would make me happy, and I worked out what I wanted to do, and I trained myself to do the job that would make those two things happen."
"If he has love, he will feel he can go on. Without it, I would have sunk many times over."

Wicked // Gregory Maguire
"Woe is the natural end of life, yet we go on having babies."
"We only have babies when we're young enough not to know how grim life turns out."
"History crawls along on the peg legs of small individual lives, and at the same time larger eternal forces converge. You can't attend to both arenas at once."
"'The overdressed traveler betrays more interest in being seen than in seeing,' she murmured, trying it out, 'while the true traveler knows that the novel world about her serves as the most appropriate accessory.'"
"I dress to kill, though."
"That's the real power of art, I think. Not to chide but to provoke challenge. Otherwise why bother?"
"It would be more efficient to ask her and have done with it. At least you'd know."
"'It's the age of daring,' said Bog. 'It's the only time we have. We must live in the present. We are young and alive.'"
"This is why you shouldn't fall in love, it blinds you. Love is wicked distraction."
"'I know this: The wickedness of men is that their power breeds stupidity and blindness,' she said.
'And of women?'
'Women are weaker, but weakness is full of cunning and an equally rigid moral certainty. Since their arena is smaller, their capacity for real damage is less alarming. Though being more intimate they are the more treacherous.'"
"Remember this: Nothing is written in the stars. Not thesis stars, nor any others. No one controls your destiny."
"'I'm no pawn,' said Glinda. 'I take all the credit in the world for my own foolishness. Good gracious, dear, all of life is a spell. You know that. But you do have some choice.'"
"'People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us.' He sighed. 'It's people who claim that they're good, or anyway better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of.'"
"No one controls your destiny. Even at the very worst—there is always a choice."
"Maybe the definition of home is the place where you are never forgiven, so you may always belong there, bound by guilt. And maybe the cost of belonging is worth it."
"Evil is always more easily imagined than good, somehow."

Rising Strong // Brene Brown
"...I believe that vulnerability—the willingness to show up and be seen with no guarantee of outcome—is the only path to more love, belonging, and joy."
"If we're going to put ourselves out there and love with our whole hearts, we're going to experience heartbreak."
"Yes, if we care enough and dare enough, we will experience heartbreak."
"We are born makers. We move what we're learning from our heads to our hearts through our hands."
"Vulnerability is not winning or losing; its having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome."
"If we are brave enough often enough, we will fall; this is the physics of vulnerability."
"Knowledge is only a rumor until it lives in the muscle."
"The most transformative and resilient leaders that I've worked with over the course of my career have three things in common: First, they recognize the central role that relationships and story play in culture and strategy, and they stay curious about their own emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. Second, they understand and stay curious about how emotions, thoughts, and behaviors are connected in the people they lead, and how those factors affect relationships and perception. And, third, they have the ability and willingness to lean in to discomfort and vulnerability."
"Love is the last thing we need to ration in this world."
"You know after any truly initiating experience that you are part of a much bigger whole. Life is not about you henceforth, you are about life."
"Grace will take you places hustling can't."
"The middle is messy, but it's also where the magic happens."
"Show me a woman who can hold space for a man in real fear and vulnerability, and I'll show you a woman who's learned to embrace her own vulnerability and who doesn't derive her power or status from that man. Show me a man who can sit with a woman in real fear and vulnerability and just hear her struggle without trying to fix it or give advice, and I'll show you a man who's comfortable with his own vulnerability and doesn't derive his power from being Oz, the all-knowing and all-powerful."
"Experience and success don't give you easy passage through the middle space of struggle."
"The goal of the process is to rise from our falls, overcome our mistakes, and face hurt in a way that brings more wisdom and wholeheartedness into our lives."
"The irony is that we attempt to disown our difficult stories to appear more whole or more acceptable, but our wholeness—even our wholeheartedness—actually depends on the integration of all our experiences including the falls."
"Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing we'll ever do."
"Creating is the act of paying attention to our experiences and connecting the dots so we can learn more about ourselves and the world around us."
"I don't even know who a character is until I've seen how they handle adversity. Onscreen and offscreen, that's how you know who someone is."
"Curiosity is a shit-starter. But that's okay. Sometimes we have to rumble with a story to find the truth."
"One of the truisms of wholehearted living is You either walk into your story and own your truth, or you live outside of your story, hustling for your worthiness."
"Curiosity's reason for existing is not simply to be a tool used in acquiring knowledge; it reminds us that we're alive."
"Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected."
"As difficult and dark as some of those times were, they connect to form the real me, the integrated and whole me."
"Curiosity is unruly. It doesnt like rules, or, at least, it assumes that all rules are provisional, subject to the laceration of a smart question nobody has yet thought to ask. It disdains the approved pathways, preferring diversions, unplanned excursions, impulsive left turns. In short, curiosity is deviant."
"It often takes a single brave person to change the trajectory of a family, or of any system, for that matter."
"But no matter what we use, we can't selectively numb emotions—when we numb the dark, we also numb the light."
"Depression and anxiety are two of the body's first reactions to stockpiles of hurt."
"Being all light is as dangerous as being all dark, simply because denial of emotion is what feeds the dark."
"For every emotion we feel, there is a response."
"The most difficult part of our stories is often what we bring to them—what we make up about who we are and how we are perceived by others."
"When we decide to own our stories and live our truth, we bring our light to the darkness."
"The most dangerous stories we make up are the narratives that diminish our inherent worthiness. We must reclaim the truth about our lovability, divinity, and creativity."
"The rumble starts when we have the willingness, ability, and courage to cross the waterline—to wade into that first, uncivilized story we're making up."
"In the absence of data, we will always make up stories."
"Because we are compelled to make stories, we are often compelled to take incomplete stories and run with them."
"Just because someone isn't willing or able to love us, it doesn't mean that we are unlovable."
"Just because we didn't measure up to some standard of achievement doesn't mean that we don't possess gifts and talents that only we can bring to the world. Just because someone failed to see the value in what we create or achieve doesn't change its worth or ours."
"Conspiracy thinking is all about fear-based self-protection and our intolerance for uncertainty."
"Emotional upheavals touch every part of our lives. You don't just lose a job, you don't just get divorced. These things affect all aspects of who we are—our financial situation, our relationships with others, our views of ourselves, our issues of life and death. Writing helps us focus and organize the experience."
"The ability to say 'the story that I'm making up' is extremely helpful in a couple of ways. First, it creates the opportunity for some inner dialogue. It gives me a chance to pause and evaluate what I'm thinking and feeling before I even bring it up with another person. In some cases, that is all I need to do. At times when I need to communicate a frustration or issue, 'the story that I'm making up' gives me permission to speak honestly and candidly without the fear of generating a defensive response. It is also very disarming and almost always results in a productive conversation rather than a heated back-and-forth."
"The difference—the delta—between what we make up about our experiences and the truth we discover through the process of rumbling is where the meaning and wisdom of this experience live."
"...but when shame and fear visit, everything can unravel in a heartbeat if we're not willing to be vulnerable in the exact moment when we most want to self-protect."
"I was reminded that shame is a liar and a story-stealer. I have to trust myself and the people I care about more than the gremlins, even if that means risking being hurt."
"I learned that one of the most vulnerable parts of loving someone is trusting that they love you back, and I need to be generous in my assumptions."
"Integrity is choosing courage over comfort; choosing what is right over what is fun, fast, or easy; and choosing to practice our values rather than simply professing them."
"Two of the most common messages that trigger shame in all of us are 'never good enough' and 'who do you think you are?'"
"Compassionate people ask for what they need. They say no when they need to, and when they say yes, they mean it. They're compassionate because their boundaries keep them out of resentment."
"How can we expect people to put value on our work when we don't value ourselves enough to set and hold uncomfortable boundaries?"
"What is the most generous assumption you can make about this person's intentions or what this person said?"
"Integrity is choosing courage over comfort; choosing what is right over what is fun, fast, or easy; and choosing to practice our value rather than simply professing them."
"I now recognize that people learn how to treat us based on how they see us treating ourselves."
"We can't rise strong when we're on the run."
"It's so hard to be facedown on the arena floor, but if you open your eyes when you're down there and take a minute to look around, you get a completely new perspective on the world. You see things that you don't see when you're standing tall. You see more struggle—more conflict and suffering. It can make you more compassionate if you open your eyes and look around while you're down there.
We can't heal if we can't grieve; we can't forgive if we can't grieve."
"Expectations are resentments waiting to happen."
"A lifetime of unexplored disappointments can make us bitter, and stored-up resentment is toxic."
"The brokenhearted are the bravest among us—they dared to love."
"Heartbreak is what happens when love is lost."
"To love is to know the loss of love."
Longing is not conscious wanting; it's an involuntary yearning for wholeness, for understanding, for meaning, for the opportunity to regain or even simply touch what we've lost."
"In order for forgiveness to happen, something has to die. If you make a choice to forgive, you have to face into the pain. You simply have to hurt."
"Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others."
"The brokenhearted are indeed the bravest among us—they dared to love, and they dared to forgive."
"Connection doesn't exist without giving and receiving. We need to give and we need to need."
"Wholeheartedness is as much about receiving as it is about giving."
"Offering help is courageous and compassionate, but do is asking for help."
"Regret is a tough but fair teacher. To love without regret is to believe you have nothing to learn, no amends to make, and no opportunity to be braver with your life."
"...we are most dangerous to ourselves and to the people around us when we feel powerless. Powerlessness leads to fear and desperation."
"Despair is a spiritual condition. It's the belief that tomorrow will be just like today."
"Hope happens when we set goals, have the tenacity and perseverance to pursue those goals, and belief in our own abilities to act."
"...if you don't put value in your work, no one is going to do that for you."
"Sometimes the most uncomfortable learning is the most powerful."
"We can't be brave in the big world without at least one small safe space to work through our fears and falls."
"When we stop caring what people think, we lose our capacity for connection. But when we are defined by what people thing, we lose the courage to be vulnerable."
"Our identities are always changing and growing, they're not meant to be pinned down."
"Our histories are never all good or all bad, and running from the say is the surest way to be defined by it."
"There is no greater threat to the critics and cynics and fearmongers than those of us who are willing to fall because we have learned how to rise."
"Choosing to live and love with our whole hearts is an act of defiance."

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
"Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving."
"Death is impatient..."
"Until the very end."
"...but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well."
"You are the true master of death, because the true master does not seek to run away from Death. He accepts that he must die, and understands that there are far, far worse things in the living world than dying."
"Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all, those who live without love."
"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"

Furiously Happy // Jenny Han
"You have to confront those decapitated heads because you can't grow without acknowledging that we are all made up from the weirdness that we try to hide from the rest of the world."
"We all get our share of tragedy or insanity or drama, but what we do with the horror is what makes all the difference."
"Decorum is highly overrated and probably causes cancer."
"Sometimes crazy is just right."
"If you put a bunch of chameleons on top of chameleons on top of a bowl of Skittles what would happen? Is that science? Because if so, I finally get why people want to do science."
"They should change 'like finding a needle in a haystack' to 'like finding a pen that works in that drawer filled with pens that don't work.'"
"Pretend you're good at it."
"Victor argued that bears give terrible hugs because they're made of claws and teeth but he's wrong because everyone knows that bears give the best hugs. That's why you call a good hug a 'bear hug.'"
"And when I tear at the outside it makes me feel less torn up on the inside."
"The physical pain distracts me from the mental pain."
"Without the dark there isn't light. Without the pain there is no relief."
"I need my brain. It's where I keep all my best stuff."
"You have to figure out how to survive depression, which is really not easy because when you're depressed you're more exhausted than you've ever been in your life and your brain is lying to you and you feel unworthy of the time and energy (which you often don't have) needed to get help."
"I remind myself that depression lies and that I can't trust my own critical judgement when I'm sick."
"I can tell you that 'Just cheer up' is almost universally looked at as the most unhelpful depression cure even. It's pretty much the equivalent of telling someone who just had their legs amputated to 'just walk it off.'
"When we share our struggles we let others know it's okay to share theirs."
"Just because they're smaller than you, it doesn't give you the right to pick them up without asking."
"Please note: If you're a lizard but you don't have legs, you are a snake. That's how snakes work."
"Trust me. Boomerangs don't work unless you throw them up."
"Everything is a boomerang if you throw it straight up in the air."
"And it was then that I vowed to never take personal responsibility for other people's spoons/attitudes/stupidity, because frankly I have enough to worry about my own s***.
"There will be moments when you have to be a grown-up. Those moments are tricks. Do not fall for them."
"Don't make the same mistakes that everyone else makes. Make wonderful mistakes. Make the kind of mistakes that make people so shocked that they have no other choice but to be a little impressed."
"Don't sabotage yourself. There are plenty of other people willing to do that for free."
"We are wealthy with dirt."
"I'm just struggling with being human and I could use some pointer. My guess is that a lot of us could."
"Having a purse full of spiders is actually less scary than having to think about finances."
"Because there is something wonderful in accepting someone else's flaws, especially when it gives you the chance to accept your own and see that those flaws are the things that make us human."
"Because quitting might be easier, but it wouldn't be better."

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince // J.K. Rowling
"And now, Harry, let us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure."
"You do a disservice by not confiding something this important to them."
"...age is foolish and forget when it underestimates youth..."
"It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more."

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix // J.K. Rowling
"Yeah, size is no guarantee of power."
"Poisonous toadstools don't change their spots."
"Just because you've got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean we all have."
"The mind is not a book to be opened at will and examined at leisure."
"...is that you sort of start thinking anything's possible if you've got enough nerve."
"It's time you learned the difference between life and dreams."
"...the fact that you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength."
"Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike..."
"According to Madam Pomfrey, thoughts could leave deeper scarring than almost anything else..."
"...it always does in the end."

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire // J.K. Rowling
"Courage in the face of the unknown is an important quality in a wizard... Very important."
"Never be ashamed," my ol' dad used ter say, "there's some who'll hold it against you, but they're not worth botherin' with."
"If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals."
"I sometimes find, and I am sure you know the feeling, that I simply have too many thoughts and memories crammed into my mind."
"'Curiosity is not a sin,' he said. 'But we should exercise caution with our curiosity...yes, indeed...'"
"Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it."
"...we are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided."
"Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open."
"We could all do with a few laughs."
"...what would come, would come...and he would have to meet it when it did."

The Screwtape Letters // C.S. Lewis
"Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church."
"By the very act of arguing, you awake the patient's reason; and once it is awake, who can foresee the result?"
"I showed him a newsboy shouting the midday paper, and a No. 73 bus going past, but before he reached the bottom of the steps I had got into him an unalterable conviction that, whatever odd ideas might come into a man's head when he was shut up alone with his books, a healthy does of 'real life' (by which he meant the bus and the newsboy) was enough to show him that all 'that sort of thing' just couldn't be true."
"All the habits of the patient, both mental and bodily, are still in our favor."
"Desiring their freedom, He therefore refuses to carry them, by their mere affections and habits, to any of the goals which He sets before them: He leaves them to 'do it on their own.'"
"If once they get through this initial dryness successfully, they become much less dependent on emotion and therefore much harder to tempt."
"It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things our."
"The simplest is to turn their gaze away from Him towards themselves."
"The Enemy's human partisans have all been plainly told by Him that suffering is an essential part of what He calls Redemption; so that a fifth which is destroyed by a war or a pestilence cannot really have been worth the trouble of destroying."
"He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them."
"On the other hand fear becomes easier to master when the patient's mind is diverted from the thing feared to the fear itself, considered as a present and undesirable date of his own mind; and when he regards the fear as his appointed cross he will inevitably think of it as a state of mind."
"All extremes, except extreme devotion to the Enemy, are to be encouraged."
"Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing."
"We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons."
"It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be."
"He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles."
"All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be."
"A thousand bawdy, or even blasphemous, jokes do not help towards a man's damnation so much as his discovery that almost anything he wants to do can be done, not only without the disapproval but with the admiration of his fellows, if only if can get itself treated as a Joke."
"As long as he remains externally the habits of a Christian he can still be made to think of himself as one who has adopted a few new friends and amusements but whose spiritual state is much the same as it was six weeks ago."
"You can make him waste his time not only in conversation he enjoys with people whom he likes, but in conversations with those he cares nothing about on subjects that bore him."
"Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick."
"How can you have failed to see that a real pleasure was the last thing you ought to have let him meet?"
"When He talks of their losing their selves, He only means abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever."
"You should always try to make the patient abandon the people or food or books he really likes in favour of the 'best' people, the 'right' food, the 'important' books."
"Let him think of it not as self-forgetfulness but as a certain kind of opinion (namely, a low opinion) of his own talents and character."
"The Enemy wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another."
"He wants to kill their animal self-love as soon as possible; but it is His long-term policy, I fear, to restore to them a new kind of self-love—a charity and gratitude for all selves, including their own; when they have really learned to love their neighbours as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neghbours."
"But this is of limited value, for they have some real knowledge of the past and it has a determinate nature and, to that extent, resembles eternity. It is far better to make them live in the Future."
"Nothing is natural on our side."
"They, of course, do tend to regard death as the prime evil and survival as the greatest good. But that is because we have taught them to do so."
"The more he fears, the more he will hate."
"He sees as well as you do that courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality."
"For remember, the act of cowardice is all that matters; the emotion of fear is, in itself, no sin and, though we enjoy it, does us no good."

13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do // Amy Morin
"...I knew that time doesn't heal anything; it's how we deal with that time that determines the speed at which we heal."
"Good habits are important, but it's often our bad habits that prevent us from reaching our full potential."
"You're only as good as your worst habits."
"We work hard to do the things that we think will make us better, but we forget to focus on the things that might be sabotaging our efforts."
"Developing mental strength is about improving your ability to regulate your emotions, manage your thoughts, and behave in a positive manner, despite your circumstances."
"Choose behavior based on balanced emotions and rational thinking."
"Our hearts and our heads need to work together to control our bodies."
"It's about growing, improving, and striving to become a little better than you were yesterday."
"Self-pity can consume you until it eventually changes your thoughts and behaviors."
"As long as you feel sorry for yourself, you can delay any circumstances that will bring you face-to-face with your real fears, and you can avoid taking any responsibility for your actions."
"Instead of pitying ourselves for what we lost, we choose to feel grateful for what we had."
"If you choose to look for the silver lining, even in a bad situation, you'll experience joy and happiness much more often."
"While feeling sorry for yourself is about thinking I deserve better, gratitude is about thinking I have more than I deserve."
"Retaining your power is about being confident in who you are and the choices you make, despite the people around you and the circumstances you're in."
"Anytime you don't set healthy emotional and physical boundaries for yourself, you risk giving away your power to other people."
"Each time you avoid saying no to something you really don't want, you give away your power."
"If you don't make any attempt to get your needs met, you'll give people permission to take things away from you."
"Don't give one person's opinion of you the power to determine who you are."
"The more emotional you feel, the less rational you'll think."
"Keep in mind that one person's opinion of you doesn't make it true."
"Simply reminding yourself that you have a choice in everything you do, think, and feel can be very freeing."
"And if you aren't ready to create change, you likely won't be successful at maintaining it."
"The world will change with or without you."
"The longer you keep the same habits, the harder they can be to break."
"There's no need to change for the sake of change."
"Don't allow your emotions to make the final decision."
"Positive change leads to increased motivation and increased motivation leads to more positive change."
"When you practice adapting to the small changes, you'll be better prepared to deal with the large inevitable changes that come your way."
"Trying to control everything usually starts out as a way to manage anxiety."
"Those who strike the right balance of control recognize how their behaviors can affect their chances of success, but they also identify how external factors, such as being in the right place at the right time, can play a role."
"Acknowledging your fears, and developing an understanding of them, will help you begin to recognize what is within your control and what isn't."
"By focusing on what you can control, it is much easier to let go of worrying about what you can't."
"Even though you might not like the situation you're in, you can choose to accept it."
"If you're constantly doing things to make others happy and you don't think they are appreciative of your efforts, you'll soon experience resentment."
"Just because it's a popular choice doesn't mean it's the right choice."
"When you're faced with decisions in your life, it's important to know exactly what your values are so you can make the best choices."
"A lack of knowledge about how to calculate risk leads to increased fear."
"Sometimes we dwell on the past as a way to distract ourselves from the present."
"Dwelling on past times can be a vicious cycle that keeps you stuck in the same emotional state."
"It's impossible to dwell on the past it you're planning for the future."
"Some of the best life lessons can be learned from the toughest times you've endured."
"When you begin to take away emotion surrounding an event, you're less likely to dwell on it."
"If you want to avoid repeating a mistake, spend some time studying it."
"When you view mistakes not as something negative but instead as an opportunity to improve yourself, you'll be able to devote time and energy into making sure you don't repeat them."
"It is hard to be happy about a friend's accomplishments when you feel bad about yourself."
"When you're able to be happy about other people's accomplishments, you'll attract—rather than repel—successful people."
"It's difficult to succeed without failing at least once."
"If you think you can't improve, you likely won't try to get better."
"Self-compassion means viewing your failures kindly yet realistically. It means understanding that everyone has shortcomings, including you, and that failure doesn't decrease your worth as a person."
"Failure can build character by challenging you in new ways."
"After all, you won't have to think about your problems as long as you keep your brain occupied with pleasant conversation."
"Loneliness is about perceiving that no one is there for you. But solitude is about making a choice to be alone with your thoughts."
"The key to making alone time helpful is that it has to be a choice."
"No matter whether you're the smartest person on the planet or you've persevered through life's roughest circumstances, you don't become more deserving of good fortune than anyone else."
"Progress toward your goal might not always be in a straight line."
"Remember, if you want to change how you feel, you have to change how you think and behave."

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban // J.K. Rowling
"'I don't go looking for trouble,' said Harry, nettled. 'Trouble usually finds me.'"
"That suggests that what you fear most of all is - fear. Very wise, Harry."
"I solemnly swear I am up to no good."
"Mischief managed."
"'Er - shall I make a cup of tea?' said Ron.
Harry stared at him.
'It's what my mum does whenever someone's upset,' Ron muttered, shrugging."
"'Ah, well, people can be a bit stupid abou' their pets,' said Hagrid wisely."
"Your parents gave their lives to keep you alive, Harry. A poor way to repay them - gambling their sacrifice for a bag of magic tricks."
"'If you made a better rat than a human, it's not much to boast about, Peter,' said Black harshly."
"The consequences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed..."
"You think that the dead we have loved ever truly leave us?"

The Generosity Factor // Ken Blanchard & S. Truett Cathy
"I wonder why I feel so dreadfully insignificant."
"This must be what love is all about."
"Perceptiveness is half my job."
"Every car is of equal value to him, no matter the age, the condition, or the miles on the odometer. He values each of us in the same way."
"If I have time on this earth, it's a gift. If I have any talents, they are gifts too. Any money I have is a gift. And I don't believe that gifts are only to be received. They are meant to be given to others. To be shared."
"Moderation means that you balance it all in order to benefit all."
"Held values are what people say. Operational values are what people do."
"The natural by-product of gratitude is generosity."
"The only way to give is to give cheerfully."
"Sometimes it's more meaningful to give out of your scarcity - to share those things that are in shortest supply."
"No matter what your circumstances in life, there are things that you can give. Everyone can have an impact."
"- and love and acceptance are the greatest things anyone can possess."

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets // J.K. Rowling "'We have a very different idea of what disgraces the name of wizard, Malfoy,' he said."
"Natural to want a bit more once you've had the first taste - and I blame myself for giving you that, because it was bound to go to your head - but see there, young man, you can't start flying cars to try and get yourself noticed. Just calm down, all right?"
"If once word of it was true, I'll eat my kettle."
"You know what, Harry? If he doesn't stop trying to save your life he's going to kill you."
"You will also find that help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it."
"Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain."
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

Built From Scratch // Bernie Marcus & Arthur Blank
"When something isn't working in our stores, we don't keep doing it the wrong way simply because the rules say to do it that way. Instead, we do it the right way and change the rules."
"Don't spend time replaying the past; it only keeps you from focusing on the future. Don't spend time on things in which you can't make a difference."
"Why have I been successful my whole life? Because I've surrounded myself with people who are better than I am."
"In the best of marriages, you marry somebody, hopefully, who has your value system but who is still different from  you in lots of ways, and that is how you grow."
"We learned that love and compassion do a hell of a lot more than just buying people."
"You have just been kicked in the a** with a Golden Horseshoe. This is the greatest opportunity!"
"It was time to get on with my life."
"Never be satisfied with how things are."
"There are some things money alone can't buy, as several would-be Home Depot investors learn."
"He taught us that when it comes to people, you must look past the numbers, past the resumes, and look at their heart and soul. And you must treat people as you would want to be treated."
"Because you're not really open if nobody knows about it!"
"We don't own these stores; they do."
"Make mistakes, learn from them, and move on."
"Care for them today and they'll be back tomorrow."
"People want to be part of something bigger than they are."
"With the right values system and the right knowledge to do their job, people can be trusted to make the right decisions."
"People need a balanced life. They need to use their time better."
"Hopefully, it was more like they were working with somebody. Everything was hand in hand."
"That is the most important thing, because you can teach anyone about a drill, but you can't teach people how to smile and be kind to other people."
"Our mothers taught us to clean up our rooms; we teach our associates to be messy."
"Out of every bad thing there can be something good, and what will happen here is that we will have a more inclusive Home Depot."
"Don't you ever have a meeting in Mexico again. Ever. You are forbidden. That entire country is off limits to you."
"Let's take a walk and we'll find it together."
"Whatever it takes."
"The right thing to do is instinctive; it lives in their hearts, not their heads."
"Low prices are just the beginning."
"The competition is always getting better; so should we."
"But when you copy somebody and don't really understand why they're doing what they're doing, you're never going to be as good as the original."
"The essence of keeping our company great is its nonstop reinvention, because if you are in constant motion, nobody can catch you."
"Success was breeding a little arrogance, and we learned that sometimes you believe you can do more than you really can do."
"Failures - especially our own - are great teaching tools."
"The art of communication doesn't mean speaking. The art of communication means speaking and listening."
"For him to know how to do something and not share that knowledge with somebody else was to waste his knowledge."
"When you know something is wrong and you don't challenge it, you have become a bureaucratic."
"Our culture is about making sure people understand that they are empowered to do what is right."
"We believe that the best marriage is two people who share the same values but are different in many ways, because as long as you aren't fighting over values, difference helps you grow."
"We need to judge ourselves not on the quality of work we do today but on the quality of people we train to lead us tomorrow."

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone // J.K. Rowling
The Harry Potter series made me love to reading. I was forbidden to read them when I was younger (sorry, Mom) and I think that added to the allure of the series. I have read them too many times to count. While my big sister Holly was in London, she picked up a set of Bloomsbury paperbacks for me and I am finding these editions extremely fun to read.  
"Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!"
"'Ah, music,' he said wiping his eyes. 'A magic beyond all we do here!'"
"There are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them."
"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."
"After all, to the well organised mind, death is nut the next great adventure."
"The two things most human beings would choose above all - the trouble is, humans do have a knack of choosing precisely those things which are worst for them."
"Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself."
"'The truth,' Dumbledore sighed. 'It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution.'"
"...to have been loved deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection for ever."
"'There are all kinds of courage,' said Dumbledore, smiling. 'It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.

The Meaning of Marriage // Timothy Keller
"If God invented marriage, then those who enter it should make every effort to understand and submit to his purposes for it."
"Any two people who enter into marriage are spiritually broken by sin, which among other things means to be self-centered - living life incurvatus in se."
"The Christian teaching does not offer a choice between fulfillment and sacrifice but rather mutual fulfillment through mutual sacrifice."
"The gospel is this: We are more sinful and clawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope."
"The last mark of Spirit fullness is in this last clause: It is a loss of pride and self-will that leads a person to humbly serve others."
"First, the picture of marriage given here is not of two needy people, unsure of their own value and purpose, finding their significance and meaning in one another's arms."
"The ability to serve another person requires the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, to drive this very gospel into our hearts until it changes us."
"That is, you only discover your own happiness after each of you has put the happiness of your spouse ahead of your own, in a sustained way, in response to what Jesus has done for you."
"To be part of a whole, to become part of a greater unity, you have to surrender your independence."
"You must be willing to give something up before it can be truly yours."
"You must lose yourself to find yourself."
"To fear the Lord is to be overwhelmed with wonder before the greatness of God and his love."
"But when the Bible speaks of love, it measures it primarily not by how much you want to receive but by how much you are willing to give to someone. How much are you willing to lose for the sake of this person? How much of your freedom are you willing to forsake? How much of your precious time, emotion, and resources are you willing to invest in this person?"
"Love needs a framework of binding obligation to make it fully what it should be."
"Real love, the Bible says, instinctively desires permanence."
"...we are largely who we become through making wise promises and keeping them."
"Since promising is the key to identity, it is the very essence of marital love."
"In promising, you limit options now, in order to have wonderful, fuller options later."
"To be loved and not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God."
"Another of the essential characteristics of friendship is transparency and candor."
"Friendship is a deep oneness that develops as two people, speaking the truth in love to each other, journey together to the same horizon."
"When looking for a marriage partner, each must be able to look inside the other and see what God is doing and be excited about being part of the process of liberating the emerging 'new you.'"
"If we let Him...He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal create, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful; but that is what we are in for. Nothing less."
"Marriage by its very nature has the 'power of truth' - the power to show you the truth about who you are."
"But the great thing about the model of Christian marriage we are presenting here is that when you envision the 'someone better,' you can think of the future version of the person to whom you are already married."
"So, more than any other human relationship, marriage has a unique power to heal all hurts and convince us of our own distinctive beauty and worth."
"We must learn to send love in forms that the other person can comprehend."
"The one person in the whole world who holds your heart in her hand, whose approval and affirmation you most long for and need, is the one who is hurt more deeply by your sins that anyone else on the planet."
"Truth without love ruins the oneness, and love without truth gives the illusion of unity but actually stops the journey and the growth. The solution is grace."
"Because, as Genesis says, male and female are 'like-opposite' each other - both radically different and yet incomplete without each other."
"Marriage was created to be a reflection on the human level of our ultimate love relationship and union with the Lord."
"Marriage does and should somewhat limit the extent of friendships you have with others of the opposite sex."
"During times of healing or regrouping, you probably need deep Christian friendship more than dates and ideas of marriage."
"The essence of intimacy in marriage is that finally you have someone who will eventually come to understand you and accept you as you are."
"Marriage partners can say, 'I see what you are becoming and what you will be (even though, frankly, you aren't there yet). The flashes of your future attract me."
"You can't stop birds from flying over your head, but you can stop them from making nests in your hair."

Freakonomics // Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
"We all learn to respond to incentives, negative and positive, from the outset of life."
"An incentive is simply a means of urging people to do more of a good thing and less of a bad thing."
"A broad swath of psychological and economic research has shown that people will pay different amounts for the same item depending on who is providing it."
"The basic reality is that the risks that scare people and the risks that kill people are very different."
"So it.s the imminent possibility of death that drives the fear - which means that the most sensible way to calculate fear of death would be to think about it on a per-hour basis."

The Cuckoos Calling // Robert Galbraith
I only recently found out that Robert Galbraith is J.K. Rowling's pen name so I quickly added this book to my reading list. Then while out thrifting with my friend Keller, I came across this book in hardback and it was too great to pass up, so The Cuckoo's Calling got quickly pushed to the top of the list. I am so glad that it did because this book was extremely entertaining. 
"Humans often assumed symmetry and equality where none existed."
"He wanted his footsteps to be the first to make deep, dark holes in that tantalizing smooth surface: he wanted to disturb and disrupt it."
"The dead could only speak through the mouths of those left behind, and through the signs they left scattered behind them."
"I think it must be punishment, because otherwise it would be too unspeakably cruel, wouldn't it? To make me go through it again, and again, and again."
"People can only bear so much pain."

Eat Mor Chikin: Inspire More People // Truett Cathy
"Customer loyalty to an organization is a direct result of loyalty within that organization."
"By building relationships worthy of trust and commitment, leaders can fundamentally transform the economics of a business - and the lives of those people it touches."
"Never give up. There is some solution for every problem if you explore all possibilities."
"The lesson from the Cows is the lesson of my life: Take advantage of unexpected opportunities."
"The lesson that is continually reinforced in me is that to take advantage of unexpected opportunities, we must leave ourselves available."
The unexpected opportunity I enjoy most is the opportunity to turn a for into a smile."
"To receive a blessing, we often have to take action first."
"Nearly every moment of every day we have the opportunity to give something to someone else - our time, our love, or our resources."
"Unexpected opportunities almost always carry with them the change to be a faithful steward and to influence others positively."
"Children want to grow up in a peaceful home. When they don't the consequences can last a lifetime."
"Courtesy is cheap to provide, and it pays great dividends."
"When we are fully committed, strange and unusual things happen."
"Find something you enjoy, and you will succeed. There's no way you can not succeed because you'll get up every day trying to do your best and enjoying it."
"No goal is too high if we climb with care and confidence."
"When we focus on what we can contribute, I learned, joy abounds."
"When we do offer our faith completely, we experience complete peace and joy, knowing that God is watching over us regardless of our circumstances."
"We like it. Don't change it again."
"You don't build a good reputation by discharging people, but rather by developing people."
"Success in any relationship or endeavor begins with trust."
"Good people attract good people."
"It is when we stop doing our best work that our enthusiasm for the job wanes."
"Lives can be changed if we say the right thing at the right time with the right spirit."

Redeeming Love // Francine Rivers
"Everyone to whom she drew close left her. Sooner or later they walked away. Or died. Or lose interest. Love someone, and it was a guarantee."

The Vacationers // Emma Straub
"Maybe that was the key to all good relationships, having oceans of time apart."
"They were liars and cheaters and awful people, all of them."
"All he wanted was more sleep - sleep could do anything. It could make him feel human again, it could make him forget."
"They had chosen to make the leap and, having let, were delighted to find that the world was even more beautiful then they'd hoped."
"Sometimes love is one-sided. Sometimes love wasn't love at all, but a moment shared on a beach."
"The human heart was a complex organ at any age."
"Marriages, like ships, needed steering, and steady hands at the wheel."

The Casual Vacancy // J.K. Rowling
"It frightened people when you were honest; it shocked them."
"The difficult thing, the glorious thing, was to be who you really were, even if that person was cruel or dangerous, particularly if cruel and dangerous. There was courage in not disguising the animal you happened to be."
"This magnitude of anxiety and shame could not be contained in an instant message or a text; he was alone with it, and even Fats would not understand, and he did not know what to do."
"It was so good to be held. If only their relationship could be distilled into simple, wordless gestures of comfort. Why had humans ever learned to talk?"
"He tried to insulate himself against shocks by pushing himself to imagine the worst: by conjuring awful visions of depravity and betrayal, rather than waiting for the truth to rip like a shell through his innocent delusions."
"A pity beyond all telling is his at the heart of love."
"Was it love when somebody filled a space in your life that yawned inside you, once they had gone?"
"Ever afterwards, Shirley would remember this moment as a death; a life truly ended."

Monkey Mind // Daniel Smith
"You search for threats to your stability and, because this is life, you find them, and have another panic attack."
"Buddhism was made for the anxious like Christianity was made for the downtrodden or AA for the addicted."
"A person in the throes of monkey mind suffers from a consciousness whose constituent parts will not stop bouncing from skull-side to skull-side, which keep flipping and jumping and flinging feces at the walls and swinging from loose neurons like howlers from vines."
"The more practices anxiety sufferers are adept at the art of subterfuge. For the sake of propriety, ambition, desire, or privacy, they learn to deal with their anxiety off from public view."
"A child registers who's raising him."
"The bargain was this: Admit the anxiety as an essential part of yourself and in exchange that anxiety will be converted into energy, unstable but manageable."
"The point is, anxiety is a neurological warning system, the sole purpose of which is to keep the organism safe and whole."
"The counter-phobic impulse keeps people going who might otherwise crumble."
"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something is more important than fear."
"Merely talking is calming. A receptive ear helps. But it doesn't change things."
"Time would do the work all on its own."
"Time is just a distraction to anxiety."
"Anxiety is the stage a person has to pass through on his way to creating himself."
"On the one hand, your very existence means you can and will change things in your life and others. On the other hand, you aren't God, so everything is always going to be drenched in uncertainty and doubt."
"Anxiety is 'a future-oriented emotion, characterized by perceptions of uncontrollability and unpredictability over potentially aversive events and a rapid shift in attention to the focus of potentially dangerous events or one's own affective response to those events.'"
"Fear is the appraisal of danger; anxiety is the unpleasant feeling stat evoked when fear is stimulated."
"Fear - of something, anything - calls it up and, jittery as it is genetically determined to be, it looks for other things to be scared of. It responds to fear by looking for fear, and the world being the world, it finds it."
"With books you can shut the process down at any moment with the flip of a cover."
"Kierkegaard, I would later learn, argued that there is an inverse relationship between humor and anxiety, since humor comes out of taking a detached stance toward something and anxiety is the state of being utterly, hopelessness attached to everything."
"To be anxious wasn't shameful, it was a high calling. It was to be alive to life's contradictions, more receptive to the true nature of things than everyone else. It was to be a person who saw with sharper eyes and felt with more active skin."
"You have put yourself in a position in which you do not want to be."
"IT IS MORE LIEKLY THAT THIS WILL NOT KILL YOU."
" - too selfish - to love anyone, and therefore to be loved in return."
"In the interim I would have to learn how to wall my anxiety off from others, to seal it up inside myself so securely that its indiscriminate uncertainty would no longer be able to influence or infect the people I loved - which is to say, my feelings for the people I loved. I would have to learn how to protect love itself from anxiety."
"Because in love an anxious person becomes a persecutor as well as a masochist."
"In love, anxiety takes victims."
"With no one to be responsible for or to, no one to have to please or gratify or even talk to, I could indulge my needs as much as I wanted. I could convert my life into an emergency room, and myself into both doctor and patient."

In the Unlikely Event // Judy Blume
Judy Blume told a heartbreaking story of multiple plane crashes in the city of Elizabeth over the span of a couple months. Following the storyline of several generations, you got to experience a story of survival in an uncertain time. Wonderful read.
"If onlys don't work."
"Not that memories were enough - they didn't keep you warm on a cold winter's night."
"Now they understand. There would be no reply."
"They're your feet. You'll need them for the rest of your life. Treat them well."
"But I don't want to sleep. If I do I might never wake up."
"friends make all the difference."
"Was this how it was going to be? Always waiting for the next disaster?"
"Terrible things happen, in case you didn't already know."
"Anything could go wrong any day of the week. Whats the point of worrying in advance?"
"Life is a series of unlikely events, isn't it?"
"Proves that everyone, even the person closest to you, can have secrets."

The Girl You Left Behind // Jojo Moyes
"He had reminded me of my own strength, of how much I had left in me with which to fight."
"This was the story of our lives: minor insurrections; tiny victories; a brief chance to ridicule our oppressors; little floating vessels of hope amid a great sea of uncertainty, deprivation, and fear."
"Then God save him. God save us all."
"I want color, Helene. I want life."
"It's because you look at it so often. Sometimes I think we wear our photographs out by looking at them."
"It feels...it feels like we have exchanged one bully for another."
"It was more an understanding that in inhabiting my home, he had already invaded my life, and to seek anything further would be too much of an imposition."
"I often think that the ability to earn a living by doing the thing one loves must be one of life's greatest gifts."
"'It is you, Sophie,' he said, softly. "It is always you...'"
"Loss has hardened you."
"Sometimes, Liv thinks, it is possible to fall into a parallel universe."
"Things are always more perfect if they're cut short."
"They've got to see that there is an alternative to the little boxes they live in.
They've got to understand that their environment affects how they feel."
"She is more than the girl David left behind."
"I never knew real happiness until you."
"If you do this, you cannot go back."
"What it teaches you, Mr. McCafferty, is that there's a whole lot more to life than winning."
"Sometimes life is a series of obstacles, a matter of putting one foot in front of the other. Sometimes, she realizes suddenly, it is simply a matter of blind faith."
"The worst thing that could have happened to me already happened."
"'So this...the painting, the house...it hit me when I heard what happened to Sophie earlier. It's just stuff. They could take all of it, frankly. The only thing that matters is people.' She looks down at his hands, and her voice cracks. 'All that really matters is who you love.'"
"You may not know it now. But you will survive."
"Will we be able to forgive what we cost each other?"
"Nobody listens anymore. Everyone knows what they want to hear, but nobody actually listens."

The Four Loves // C.S. Lewis
"We are born helpless. As soon as we are fully conscious we discover loneliness. We need others physically, emotionally, intellectually; we need them if we are to know anything, even ourselves."
"But man's love for God, form the very nature of the case, must always be very largely, and must often be entirely, a Need-love."
"Man approaches God most nearly when he is in one sense least like God."
"What is near him by likeness is never, by that fact alone, going to be any nearer. But nearness of approach is, by definition, increasing nearness."
"Our Need-love for God is in a different position because our need of Him can never end either in this world or in any other."
"It is Need-love but what it needs is to give. It is Gift-love but it needs to be needed.
"Affection is the humblest of love."
"For Affection is the most instinctive, in that sense the most animal, of the loves; it's jealousy is proportionately fierce."
"Without Eros not of us would have been begotten and without Affection none of us would have been reared; but we can live and breed without Friendship."
"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which gives value to survival."
"The Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others."
"Nothing is shallower than the belief that a love which leads to sin is always qualitatively lower - more animal or more trivial - than one which leads to faithful, fruitful and Christian marriage. The love which leads to cruel and perjured unions, even to suicide-pacts and murder, is not likely to be wandered lust or idle sentiment. It may well be Eros in all his splendour; heart-breakingly sincere; ready for every sacrifice except reunciation."
"Christ did not teach and suffer that we might become, even in the natural loves, more careful of our own happiness."
"If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it."
"By loving Him more than them we shall love them more than we now do."

Freudian Slips // Joel Levy
Psychology has always been something that intrigued me. I think if I had the time or money I would love to study psychology. This book does a really great job of summarizing different types of psychology for those who want a basic knowledge of psychology.
"My secret of success is always to have a little something for everyone."
"There's a sucker born every minute."
"If it is genuine, the carpentered world phenomenon is a potent illustration of the constructive nature of perception."
"Unless precautions such as double-blind controls (where neither experimenter nor subject is in the know) are taken, experimenters can unconsciously affect outcomes, contaminating results."
"The obvious implication is that you could hear the other conversation, and that at some level your brain was processing the auditory information involved - i.e. some part of your mind was listening to the other conversation, even though you may not have been consciously aware of it."
"It suggests, for instance, that there are different levels of consciousness, and that you can be more or less aware of sensory input even when not paying full attention to it."
"Another prediction that follows from dissonance theory is that people will act to filter and control their cognition as so as to prevent dissonance arising in the first place, for instance by not reading or watching material that might conflict with their established beliefs and prejudices."
"Where reinforcement theory says we dislike things that cause us pain, cognitive dissonance theory says we justify our suffering by convincing ourselves that painful things are better."
"Sitters will only remember the hits, forgetting all the misses."
"Dissociation is a common response to physical and mental trauma or stress, presumably acting as a defence mechanism to protect the self/psyche from unbearable feelings."
"To cope with the pain and fear, new personalities are created or split off."
"According to psychoanalysts, dreams rehearse repressed desires and unfulfilled wishes, helping the conscious self or ego deal with the problematic content of the unconscious."
"There are several different models or theories of EI, but all stress a kind of hierarchy, with basic skills or 'competencies' such as being able to recognize emotion in yourself and others; being able to regulate and manage emotions in yourself and in your relationships with others; and being able to put your emotional skills to work in a variety of ways, such as problem solving or adapting to change."
"Memory is a reconstructive and sometimes purely constructive process."
"In a sense, all memories are false in that they are not objective duplicates of events and experiences."
"Like an iceberg, the vast bulk of the human personality exists below the surface, and although it is not "visible" in the sense of being consciously accessible, its gravity and inertia influence and even control the conscious mind."
"Evolution favours the development of heuristic biases, but these in turn lead to phenomena such as the halo effect."
"This amazing finding was interpreted as proof that for a majority of people the urge to obey an authority figure was more powerful than morality or empathy."
"Control the environment and you will see order in behaviour."
"In face, according to operant-conditioning theory there is no such thing as free will, and put mental lives are merely window dressing to behaviours controlled by feedback loops."

Wearing God // Lauren F. Winner
"Some days God feels like the father I always wanted, and some days God seems like the Father I actually have."
"The characteristics we attribute to God will always be those characteristics we value most highly in our own society: we will value what we take God to be."
"The invitation is to discovery: discovery of who God is, and what our friendship with God might become."
"God is like your grandmother, and she yearns of you to visit her. When we speak of repentance, that is what we are speaking of - paying a visit to God, just as you might visit your grandmother, after a long time away."
"You can discover things about God by looking around your ordinary, everyday life."
"How we talk about God matters because how we talk always matters : language does more to us and for us than we know."
"God is so committed to working with us and for us that God works inside our own limitations, even the limitations of our sin."
"Clothing not only creates bonds between individuals, such as the understanding between the bereaved mourner and her neighbor. It also creates communities and sustains communal identity."
"God clothes us, and then God invites us to join God in the business of clothing others."
"Smelling someone's scent can infuse you, the smeller, with a sense of security."
"It is the smell of our prayers that connects us to God, and God finds the smell comforting."
We are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life."
"So to speak of God as bread is to speak of God's most elemental provision for us."
"In one of those endless imagery loops, God is the meal and God also provides the meal."
"To hear Jesus call Himself the vine, then, was to hear a metaphor of startling vulnerability: I, God, am one of you; I have come down from the manager's office to become, with you, part of the vineyard."
"Perhaps, if I received Jesus as wine, I would know divine intoxication again."
"They compel me because in their suggestion of a divine body that suffers, changes, swells, leaks."
"The work of bringing forth new life does not come without effort and cost on God's part."
"God chooses a participation that does not fight the pain, but works from inside the pain."
"God not only births for our sake; God also submits to being born for our sake."
"The best laughter now is laughter that bespeaks a heaven in which those who have been made to weep by earthly rulers will, in the fullness of time, heartily laugh."
"Laughter arranges power, and God provokes us to laugh as testimony - testimony to our belief in a God who is ruling over a calamitous or oppressive situation, despite all signs to the contrary."
"God has made a negative judgement  God is still open to me. I am still open to myself, even to my small, sinful, curdling parts. I will welcome them with laughter."
"Jesus brings the fire, and the fire He brings is Himself."
"Fire means love, and fire means suffering. Fire holds the things we need for survival and flourishing, and the promise of destruction."
"The God who is fire wants to hold our gaze - and indeed, our bodies - as a lover does."

Paper Towns // John Green
Once you get past the teenage-angst (that seems to be a theme in John Green's novels) this is a semi pleasant story. With a lot of twists and turns it slows down a bit towards the end - so much so, that the last 30 pages were the hardest pages to get through. Prepare to love/hate all the characters in this book. Soon to be a movie in 2015
"Yeah. I'm a big believer in random capitalization. The rules of capitalization are so unfair to words in the middle."
"Those of us who frequent the band room have long suspected that Becca maintains her lovely figure by eating nothing but the souls of kittens and the dreams of impoverished children."
"It didn't feel like fun; it felt like a heart attack."
"If I ever end up being the kind of person who has one kid and seven bedrooms, do me a favor and shoot me."
"Margo's beauty was kind of sealed vessel of perfection - uncracked and uncrackable."
"'Everything's uglier close up,' she said.
'Not you,' I answered before thinking better of it."
"It was a lone string, for sure, but it was the one I had left, and every paper girl needs at least one string, right?"
"I always felt like you had to be important to have enemies."
"I doubted I could explain it to someone like Margo, but drawing circles through life struck me as a kind of reasonable insanity."
"I don't know who she is anymore, or who she was, but I need to find her."
"So grass is a metaphor for life, and for death, and for equality, and for connectedness, and for children, and for God, and for hope."
"It's so hard for anyone to show us how we look, and so hard for us to show anyone how we feel."
"The fundamental mistake I had always made - and that she had, in fairness, always led me to make - was this: Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl."
"I honestly never thought of her as anything but my crazy beautiful friend who does all the crazy beautiful things."
"That was perfect, I thought: you listen to people so that you can imagine them, and you hear all the terrible and wonderful things people do to themselves and to one another, but in the end the listening exposes you even more than it exposes the people you're trying to listen to."
"The town was paper, but the memories were not."
"How do you pinpoint a spot on the map when the spot seems to be moving from metropolis to metropolis?"
"It is easy to forget how full the world is of people, full to bursting, and each of them imaginable and consistently misimagined."
"But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defenseless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thing blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at."
"Forever is composed of nows."
"I think future deserves our faith."
"But as for me: I must ask the wounded man where he is hurt, because I cannot become the wounded man. The only wounded man I can be is me."
"Nothing ever happens like you imagine it will."
"But then again, if you don't imagine, nothing ever happens at all."
"We are now as I wished we could be then."
"Maybe it's more like you said before, all of us being cracked open. Like, each of us starts out as a water tight vessel. And these things happen - these people leave us, or don't love us, or don't get us, or we don't get them, and we lose and fail and hurt one another. And the vessel starts to crack open in places. And I mean, yeah, once the vessel cracks open, the end becomes inevitable."
"But there is all this time between when the cracks start to open up and we finally fall apart. And it's only in that time that we can see one another, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others through theirs."
"Yes, I can see her almost perfectly in this cracked darkness."

Dirty Rush // Taylor Bell
If you want a semi-accurate depiction of what Greek life is like then give this wide-ride story a chance. Warning: not for the faint hearted. Please note there were quite a few quotes that I did love from this book but some of the content was not exactly the best. Overall, this book has a wonderful picture of what a Greek sisterhood is often like.
"A few good texts can change your relationship with the entire world."

The Girl On the Train // Paula Hawkins
I devoured this book in three days... A record for someone who has very little time on their hands, if I do say so myself. The twists and turns will have you craving until you finish the last page. Excellent.
"Sometimes I catch myself trying to remember the last time I had meaningful physical contact with another person, just a hug or a heartfelt squeeze of my hand, and my heart twitches."
"Life is not a paragraph, and death is no parenthesis."
"They're what I lost, they're everything I want to be."
"...it's as if people can see damage written all over me. can see it in my face, the way I hold myself, the way I move."
"I close my eyes and let the darkness grow and spread until it morphs from a feeling of sadness into something worse: a memory, a flashback."
"I don't understand how anyone does it - there is literally nothing to do but wait. Wait for a man to come home and love you. Either that or look around for something to distract you."
" I have felt this way before. On a larger scale, to a more intense degree, of course, but I remember the quality of the pain. You don't forget it."
"I have never understood how people can blithely disregard the damage they do by following their hearts."
"I will never begrudge him happiness - I only wish it could be with me."
"I don't know. I don't know where that strength went, I don't remember losing it. I think that over time it got chipped away, bit by bit, by life, by living of it."
"There is nothing to remember. It is, will always be, a black hole in my timeline."
"I don't believe in soul mates, but there's an understanding between us that I just haven't felt before, or at least not for a long time. It comes from shared experience, from knowing how it feels to be broken."
"You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete; you mould yourself through the gaps."
"She made a mistake. It happens. We are none of us perfect."
"To have someone waiting for me."
"And I've just got to let myself feel the pain, because it I don't, if I keep numbing it, it'll never really go away."
"Don't you bloody dare cry, not after what you just did."

As You Wish // Cary Elwes
Inconceivable... This book was a hilariously written tell all of the making of the much beloved, cult-classic The Princess Bride. But beware: there are spoilers to the movie, and you will desperately want to watch it after you finish.
"I have very few regrets about the life I've been fortunate to lead."
"This is my favorite thing I've ever written in my life. I want it on my tombstone."
"I guess Rob knew what he wanted, and I was fortunate enough to be in his field of vision."
"That was my lucky fate - they were exhausted."
"I mean, it figures that Rob would find someone talented to play Buttercup, but to have that combination of beauty and comic sensibility...that's a rare and wonderful thing."
"I wasn't just a novice; I was clueless."
"You are so talented you don't have to try; just get out of your own way."
"Cary, you don't have to worry. You're him. You got him, without even knowing it. It's all there inside of you."
"When it gets to be both fun and work at the same time, it can be a truly wonderful, rewarding experience, as it was on this movie."
"Someone who views the entire process as an adventure, and invited everyone along for the ride."
"It's an odd and no doubt particularly male reaction to feign indifference when confronted with injury in a public setting, especially when that injury is the by-product of one's own foolish behavior."

The Opposite of Loneliness // Marina Keegan
Devastating read simply because of the loss of such a talented writer. Would've loved to have read many more essays. Such a great memory of her work. Many tears and many laughs were had while reading this book.
"We don't have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that's what I want in life."
"It's not quite love and it's not quite community; it's just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together."
"We have these impossibly high standards and we'll probably never live up to our perfect fantasies of our future selves. But I feel like that's okay."
"What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over."
"Someone to update and get updates from, to inform of a comic discovery, to imagine while dancing in a lonely basement, and to return to, finally, when the music stopped."
"Alive, his biggest flaw was most likely that he liked me. Dead, his perfections were clearer."
"Perhaps it's not a problem so much as a crutch, but I have this pathetic fantasy that I'd be more productive if I were less attractive."
"Lately I've felt a kind of numbness. Like this feeling like I'm faking it all - but maybe it's because I'm used to being in love."
"Not disgusting - but vacant, punched, like someone had taken a wrench and shoved it into my stomach and twisted it around."
"But as I watched him smile back at me and zip his coat, I saw everything in the world build up and then everything in the world fall down again."
"Aging is harder for beautiful people..."
"I study God, not worship him."
"She imagined his fingers tracing her fingers in backstage shadows, the pulse of the crowd turning air to endorphin."
"High off the heat of their bowing bodies, all she could hear was the rhythm of their breath."
"I miss dreaming forwards."
"I dream in sounds and tastes and textures."
"She understood silence the way he understood darkness - running from neither as the sun set and the words ran out."
"He was never certain with her. He could only guess, wonder, speculate until he told himself he was being silly, being egocentric, being sick."
"I wanted to crawl into something and lie with our faces touching for as long as it took to feel like I didn't miss him anymore."
"I imagined what it would be like if every crater had a couple at its center, looking up."
"But the articulation of his crime would have been meaningless; he would never have understood just how deeply that tiny turn of his wrist had pierced me."
"I can speak now. I can hear now."
"He'd found someone else and I never did. Never even fell in love again. Not really."
"The baby asked if we really meant our forevers; he said yes, and I said I didn't know."
"But I never met anyone better. I dated other men, but I seemed to pass them by, waiting for someone who'd trace my back while I slept and take me to church on Sundays. I'd meet Him in Paris, after Paris, in graduate school, at work. But each location passed as I rolled them off my shoulders."
"My car's love for parking tickets made me an easy target, but I rarely received other violations.
"The distress call of a lone whale is enough to prompt its entire pod to rush to its side - a gesture that lands them nose to nose in the same sand."
"I worry sometimes that humans are afraid of helping humans. There's a less risk associated with animals, less fear of failure, fear of getting too involved."
"Fifty stranded whales are a tangible crisis with a visible solution."
"I knew he was going to die, and he knew he was going to die, and we both understood that there was nothing either of us could do about it."
"Beached whales die on their sides, one eye pressed into the sand, the other facing up and forced to look at the moon, at the orb that pulled the water out from under its fins."
"In many ways, I think mortality is more manageable when we consider our eternal components, our genetics and otherwise that carry on after us."
"What a gift we've been given to be born in an atmosphere with oxygen and carbon dioxide and millions of years and phenotypes cheering us on with recycles of energy."
"I don't pretend to know any more about this world than the rest of us. In fact, I probably know less."
"...but to me there's something sad about so many of us entering a line of work in which we're not (for the most part) producing something, or helping someone, or engaging in something that we're explicitly passionate about. Even if it's just for two or three years. That's a lot of years!"
"In fact, I think that working hard to earn a decent amount of money can be quite notable."
"Everyone else is so successful, and I hate them."
"Success is transparent and accessible, hanging down where it can tease but not touch us."
"Everything will be destroyed no matter how hard we work to create it."
"I'm so jealous. Laughable jealousies, jealousies of everyone who might get a change to speak from the dead."
"There's a good chance I'll never do anything. It's selfish and self-centered to consider, but it scares me."
"The generation flying its tiny cars would think of itself special. Until one day, vaguely, the sun would flicker out and they'd realize that none of is are. Or that all of us are."

The Royal We // Heather Cocks, Jessica Morgan
A modern fairytale is always something very enjoyable. And Bex is just so relatable as a character. I throughly enjoyed this book until the very last page. I can honestly say I was very sad when I finished because that was the end of the world that was Bex & Nick. 
"Looking back at this conversation, I want to hug both of us. We really did think we could handle anything as long as we had each other."
"And so in his wake I found myself glued to that cold metal floor, knowing my next step would be the first in a string of them that would take us further and further away from each other."
"'And our timing was terrible,' I pointed out. 
'Once,' Bea said airily. 'Maybe not forever.'"
"The criminal loss of one dredge up the egregious loss of the other..."
"Please help me not be sad. Just for a little while."
"...but when I touched you, it was like I'd finally woken up after sleepwalking for two years."
"It is amazing how many tears the human body can produce once it gets going."
"And we joined hands, wordlessly, and walked into the sun, blithely unaware that there could ever again be darkness."
"To take an outstretched hand knowing it would lead me on a journey I could not reverse."
"And as I gazed upon thousands of racegoers holding up camera phones; shouting at us joyously, I floated outside myself and saw a person who was learning for the first time what it was like to belong, not just to someone else, but to something much bigger than herself."
"We can't scorch the earth forever just because we're unhappy now."
"I don't know why it takes something monumentally destructive to remind you what you want to save.
I'm yours for life. Whether you want me or not."

All the Bright Places // Jennifer Niven
Violet and Finch. Finch and Violet. These two make for a beautiful story with a dark twisted ending. You will laugh, cry, and fall in love amongst these pages.
"Maybe no one else will ever visit them or appreciate them or take the time to think they're important, but maybe even the smallest places mean something. And if not, maybe they can mean something to us."
"So come on. Let's go. Let's count for something. Let's get off that ledge."
"I'm still here, and grateful, because otherwise I would be missing this. Sometimes it's good to be awake."
"It's a way to prove we've been there, and a way to leave a part of us behind."
"It's nicer in here than out there, because in here I'm whatever I want to be."
"See, I don't necessarily think it's late. I think it's early. Early in our lives. Early in the new year. If you're counting, you'll notice the earlys outnumber the lates."
"Love is truly the great manifesto; the urge to be, to count for something, and, if death must come, to die valiantly, with acclamation - in short, to remain a memory."
"I forgive everyone and ask forgiveness of everyone. OK? Not too much gossip, please."
"You were on that ledge because you didn't know where else to turn and what else to do. You'd lost all hope."
"This time will be different. This time, I will stay awake."
"I learned that there is good in this world, if you look hard enough for it. I learned that not everyone is disappointing, including me, and that a 1,257-foot bump in the ground can feel higher than a bell tower if you're standing next to the right person."
"You have been in every way all that anyone could be... If anybody could have saved me it would have been you."
"This is the person who knows your worst secret."
"You need to jump back on that camel. Otherwise you're going to stay up on the ledge you've made for yourself."
"It's not your fault. And sorry wastes time. You have to live your life like you'll never be sorry."
"Lovely' is a lovely word that should be used more often."
"There's a built-in ending to everything in the world, right?"
"Growth itself contains the germ of happiness."
"None of us knows how long we have, maybe another month, maybe another fifty years - I like living as if I only have that two days."
"I'm most afraid of me."
"You deserve better. I can't promise you I'll stay around, not because I don't want to. It's hard to explain. I'm a f*ckup. I'm broken, and no one can fix it. I've tried. I'm still trying. I can't promise I won't pick you apart, piece by piece, until you're a thousand pieces, just like me. You should know what you're getting into before getting involved."
"If there's one thing I know, it's that no one can promise anything."
"It will be alright.
I will be all right.
It won't fall apart.
It will be all right.
It will be okay.
I'm okay. Okay. Okay."
"I want to bawl, but I tell myself: Disguise the pain. Don't call attention. Don't be noticed."
"They explain people away as illnesses."
"Actually I am, which is part of the problem; we are all alone, trapped in these bodies and our own minds, and whatever company we have in this life is only fleeting and superficial."
"You have been in every way all that anyone could be... If anybody could have saved me it would have been you."
"We do not remember days, we remember moments."
"We can't always see what others don't want us to."
"Your hope lies in accepting your life as it now lies before you, forever changed. If you can do that, the peace you seek will follow."
"What a terrible feeling to love someone and not be able to help them."
"Like the most logical thing to do because what else is there?"

All the Light We Cannot See // Anthony Doerr
This book took a little while to devour but was well worth it. As someone who is sort of a history nerd I knew this was a must read. Doerr does not disappoint in this thrilling WWII novel.
"Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever."
"'We are mice,' he thinks, 'and the sky swirls with hawks.'"
"You know the greatest lesson of history? It's that history is whatever the victors say it is. That's the lesson. Whoever wins, that's who decides the history. We act in our own self-interest. Of course we do. Name me a person or a nation who does not. The trick is figuring out where your interests are."
"'Like a snail,' she overhears Etienne say outside her door. 'Curled up so tight in there.'"
"Don't you want to be alive before you die?"
"'Doesn't everything,' he says, 'die at last and too soon?'"
"'Don't you ever get tired of believing, Madame? Don't you ever want proof?' - 'You must never stop believing. That's the most important thing.'"
"'Your problem, Werner,' says Frederick, 'is that you still believe you own your life.'"
"If your same blood doesn't run in the arms and legs of the person you're next to, you can't trust anything."
"Time is a slippery thing: lose hold of it once, and its string might sail out of your hands forever."
"What you could be."
"It seems big enough to contain everything anyone could ever feel."
"We are a volley of bullets, we are cannonballs. We are the tip of the sword. Who is the weakest?"
"But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?"
"We rise again in the grass. In the flowers. In songs."

The Beauty of Grace // Dawn Camp
I have been reading this book for a couple months during my Jesus time and it has been a blessing to me during this season in life. I attempted to only read a section or two a day but it was difficult because I really wanted to devour this book very quickly. Check out my full review here.
"We're given these snapshots for a reason, I believe. To learn. To see. To realize that this big world we live in is made up of individual people struggling, trying, growing, living."
"The plain and simple truth, if we take big lessons in life and strip them down to the bare essentials, is that we are tiny blips on a very big screen."
"Tasks like laundry, nose-wiping, errand-running, and job-clocking stop becoming a burden and start becoming ingredients for our spirituality - a real one, where we relish in the fact that we are God's and God is ours, regardless of our usefulness."
"Ora et labora."
"Daily work is not drudgery or pressure-packed, but cadence and beauty. This work is our slow dance with God."
"In a moment I am overcome no longer by what I've lost, but by what I possess. I cannot outlive Him. I cannot outlove Him. He will never leave nor forsake me."
"He knows that the path ahead gets tricky, and by briefly arresting your speed, He is giving you a chance to get your bearings...and trust His leading."
"Despite how we feel about it right now, the answer might not change everything. It might not change anything."
"The messy life I have, the one He chose for me, is far more beautiful than any comfortable relaxing moment I can imagine, because He is in it."
"When God breaks my offering, He breaks me. I want to give my life away. Piece by piece. He blesses it. Multiple my insignificant gift and makes it enough."
"The storms show us we're not in charge, we're in over our heads; we have days when we say I did not choose this path."
"The difference in living a fearless life versus a fearful life, however, is unmistakeable. One seeks out the good, while the other lives to control the bad."
"Acquiescing to fear might seem easier. But the cost of living less than the life God intended is also steeper than it appears."
"Our God Watch is a reminder to gaze at His goodness and to rest in His reassurances, but more importantly, it's a whisper of willingness to choose joy in the midst of doubt."
"Because here's the thing: it's easier to sit on your couch than to risk failing. It's easier to sit on your couch than to be out in the world where you're vulnerable and open to being hurt or disappointed."
"It's too much for us to do in our strength because we will mess it up, but He knows that and uses us anyway."
"Show us how to love like you
And smile like we are all barefoot
Walking in the wrong direction."
"Life is about letting your feet rub against the dirty feet of your neighbor and feeling like you know your purpose."
"But friend, you are strong. Hang on to the tree that is even stronger. Hold tight to the tree that has already redeemed you, the tree that has already redeemed you, the tree that bore every ache you could fathom, the tree onto which every sin was nailed. Hold on to the tree that held your Savior."
"When we hit up against the raw places inside us, we have a choice: numb or respond."

Yes Please // Amy Poehler

I am obsessed with Amy Poehler and this book made it possible. I always liked her from SNL and Parks & Rec but this book made me love her. She made me cry, she made me sad, but most importantly she made me laugh and gave so much insight in 300 pages its ridiculous. 

"Saying 'yes' doesn't me I don't know how to say 'no,' and saying please doesn't mean I am waiting for permission."

"We all have a whispery voice inside of us, but the bad ones are usually at a lower register and come through a little clearer."

"Sleep helps you win at life."

"It's important to know when it's time to turn in your kazoo."

"Try to care less. Practice ambivalence. Learn to let go of wanting it. Treat your career like a bad boyfriend."

"However, if you do start crying in an argument and someone asks why, you can always say, 'I'm just crying because of how wrong you are.'"

"People are their most beautiful when they are laughing, crying, dancing, playing, telling the truth, and being chased in a fun way."

"Telling me to relax or smile when I'm angry is like brining a birthday cake into an ape sanctuary."

"If you can surf your life rather than plant your feet, you will be happier."

"A bossy woman is someone who cares and commits and is a natural leader."

"I think if you can dance and be free and not embarrassed you can rule the world."

Eleanor & Park // Rainbow Rowell

Again, teenage angst. A recommendation from another bookclub but I am still happy I read it. It shows a love that two outsiders found and the story goes deeper by Park helping Eleanor escape a horrible living situation. 

"She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something."

"If you can't save your own life, is it even worth saving."

"He tried to remember how this happened--how she went from someone he'd never met to the only one who mattered."

"The me that's me right now is yours. Always."

"It's our last chance.

No. No, I can't... I, no, I need to believe that it isn't our last chance... Eleanor? Can you hear me? I need you to believe it too."

"You saved my life. Not forever, not for good. Probably just temporarily. But you saved my life, and not I'm yours."

The Fault in Our Stars // John Green

I loved this book but I saw the movie first so I knew the tragic ending that was bound to happen. Of course, after seeing the movie first I made comparisons constantly. I am happy to report that the movie did this book justice. As for the book, I love how the story and romance progresses between Augustus and Hazel. 

"As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once."

"Some infinities are bigger than other infinities."

"The marks humans leave are too often scars."

"It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you."

"Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you."

"Maybe 'okay' will be our 'always.'"

"I'm a grenade and at some point I'm going to blow up and I would like to minimize the casualties, okay?"

"Because you are beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence."

"It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if things we'd done were less real and important than before."

"You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful."

"I'm on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friend."

"You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, but you do have some say in who hurts your. I like my choices."

To All the Boys I've Loved Before // Jenny Han

I read this with the Lauren Conrad Bookclub. This book felt like teenage angst, the whole time. The love triangles in this book was hard for me to read especially when the author was obviously trying to develop a love story between Lara Jean and Peter. There were times I didn't know which boy I should be rooting for, which was slightly confusing.

"I'd rather make up a fantasy version of somebody in your head than be with that person."

"Love is scary: it changes; it can go away. That's part of the risk. I don't want to be scared anymore."

"I don't have to be so afraid of good-bye, because good-bye doesn't have to be forever."

"Smirking, he says, "Whatever spell you just tried to cast on me, it didn't work, so I think you need to go back to Hogwarts."

"I delete the picture of him from my phone; I delete his number. I think that if I just delete him enough, it will be like none of it ever happened and my heart won't hurt so badly."

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