“Let’s play hopscotch in malls. Let’s drive fast with the top down. Let’s turn up the music as loud as it’ll go. Let’s put a couch on an island in the middle of the freeway and wave at everyone on their way to work. Let’s hug strangers in parking lots. Let’s hand out secret messages at traffic lights. Let’s make lists of all the things that make us smile and tick them off, one at a time. The world will carry on without you and me when we’re gone. Let it carry on without us, today.” ~ Iain Thomas, I Wrote This For You
“The words, ‘I love you’ become nothing but noise. But that’s why we kiss. To say with our lips what we couldn’t before.” ~ Iain Thomas, I Wrote This For You
“You are the best parts of all the songs I love.” ~ Iain Thomas, I Wrote This For You
“I’m sure people just kiss each other. I’m sure that sometimes you’re talking and somehow two people move closer and closer to each other and then, they just kiss. I’m sure it happens all the time. But I’m also sure that a kiss is never just a kiss.” ~ Iain Thomas, I Wrote This For You
“We’re here to connect. Love, time, death. Now these three things connect every single human being on earth. We long for love, we wish we had more time and we fear death.” ~ Howard Inlet (Will Smith), Collateral Beauty
“Of course it’s complicated. If it wasn’t, I probably wouldn’t be interested in you.” ~ Iain Thomas, I Wrote This For You
“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.” ~ Iain Thomas, I Wrote This For You
“I know the world is crazy. I know love is not always the way it’s meant to be. I know sometimes, things hurt. But I also know that we’ll get through this. That our hearts will arrive on the other side, in one piece. That everything is beautiful, if we give it the chance to be.” ~ Iain Thomas, I Wrote This For You
“The difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next. The difference between the two is the difference between living fully and just existing.” ~ Michael E. Gerber
“You will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself … the height of a man’s success is gauged by his self-mastery; the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment … And this law is the expression of eternal justice. He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others.” ~ Leonardo da Vinci
“Time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle maneuvers.” ~ Franz Kafka, via Daily Rituals
“Like your private bedroom, your writing room should be private, a place where you go to dream. Your schedule — in at about the same time every day, out when your thousand words are on paper or disk — exists in order to habituate yourself, to make yourself ready to dream just as you make yourself ready to sleep by going to bed at roughly the same time each night and following the same ritual as you go. In both writing and sleeping, we learn to be physically still at the same time we are encouraging our minds to unlock from the humdrum rational thinking of our daytime lives. And as your mind and body grow accustomed to a certain amount of sleep each night —six hours, seven, maybe the recommended eight — so can you train your waking mind to sleep creatively and work out the vividly imagined waking dreams which are successful works of fiction.” ~ Stephen King, via Daily Rituals
“I’ve never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think that the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again.” ~ John Updike, via Daily Rituals
“Before you call someone lazy or judge them, try to imagine their perspective, beliefs, and abilities and forget yours. That is, respond with curiosity and empathy. When you do, I predict you’ll find yourself understanding their choices. You may not like their beliefs and choices, but you’ll understand them.”
Joshua Spodek
“We have to continue to practice mindfulness and reconciliation until we can see a child’s body of skin and bones in Uganda or Ethiopia as our own, until the hunger and pain in the bodies of all species are our own. Then we will have realized nondiscrimination, real love. Then we can look at all beings with the eyes of compassion, and we can do the real work to help alleviate suffering.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step