The sins of the Midwest: flatness, emptiness, a necessary acceptance of the familiar. Where is the romance in being buried alive? In growing old?
Stewart O'Nan
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I thought I would write a love letter. But then, I wrote a book." - Suzy Davies, on "Johari's Window
SUZY DAVIES We can leave a place behind, or we can stay in that place and leave our selfishness (often expressed...
JOHN H. GROBERG She wasn't bitter. She was sad, though. But it was a hopeful kind of sad. The kind of sad that just ...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY So, I guess we are who we are for alot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I love my mom so much. I don't care if that's corny to say. I think on my next birthday, I'm going t...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY We Are All Infinite
STEPHEN CHBOSKY You can't just sit there and put everyone's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You ...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I saw other people there. Old men sitting alone. Young girls with blue eye shadow and awkward jaws. ...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY That one moment when you know you are not a sad story. You are ALIVE.
STEPHAN CHBOSKY Somos quienes somos por un montón de razones.Quizás nunca conozcamos la mayoría de ellas.Pero aun...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY Ambos dijeron que tomara asiento y parecían hablar en serio, así que me senté.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I know these will all be stories some day, and our pictures will become old photographs. We all beco...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybewe'll never know most of them.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY There's nothing like the deep breathes after laughing that hard. Nothing in the world like a sore st...
STHEPHEN CHBOSKY no more pencils, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks, when the teacher rings the bell, drop...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I don't know the significance of this, but I find it very interesting.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY Maybe it’s sad that these are now memories. And maybe it’s not sad.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY It is so torturous to be in the crowd not only because the voice there is usually loud, but also oft...
ANUJ SOMANY There is no greater glory than to die for love.
GABRIEL GARCíA MáRQUEZ Together they had overcome the daily incomprehension, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal nasti...
GABRIEL GARCíA MáRQUEZ She would defend herself, saying that love, no matter what else it might be, was a natural talent. S...
GABRIEL GARCíA MáRQUEZ She was intimidating and all I could do was sit back on the couch as she paced back and forth, slowl...
IN THE MAKING Without God there could be no American form of government nor an American way of life. Recognition o...
DWIGHT DAVID EISENHOWER Life begins somewhere and ends somewhere with time but to get somewhere with the life you have depen...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH There will always be people who will accept you for what you are!
SAKURA TSUKUBA Only by acceptance of the past, can you alter it.
T.S. ELIOT I don't know if I have a favorite color.
KATE MIDDLETON It's very special having a new little girl.
KATE MIDDLETON I was very grateful to have heard it again. Because I guess we all forget sometimes. And I think eve...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY No one should let yesterday use up too much of today. Easy to say, hard to live.
ANDREA HAIRSTON It may be the kind where, at the age of thirty, you sit in some bar hating everybody who comes in lo...
J.D. SALINGER There was a house at the foot of the tower, close to the thunder of the waves breaking against the c...
GABRIEL GARCíA MáRQUEZ To get over the past, you first have to accept that the past is over. No matter how many times you r...
MANDY HALE You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.
HENRY JAMES You've never really trusted him, though you don't understand why. Something about the fact that he's...
N.K. JEMISIN Is the mask magic?" he demanded with sudden, passionate interest.
"Yes." I bowed my head, so th...
SUSAN KAY Now is the only time we have, and the only time that we have any control over.
RICHARD CARLSON In the beginning, there was nothing and from nothing came our species then behold the dawn of music....
GARY F EVANS... She said 'Over my dead body!' so I took her at her word.
DIANA WYNNE JONES The end of the world is a strange concept. The world is always ending, and the end is always being a...
NEIL GAIMAN What is the Other?" they ask.
The Other is the one who taught me whatI should be like, but not ...
PAULO COELHO You're full of contradictions, Ms. Wallace."
I looked up at him and arched a brow. "I'm a girl...
TAMMARA WEBBER The only way he could have her was to shatter this stubborn faith of hers. In doing so, would he sha...
FRANCINE RIVERS Dive into the river of the present, but don't thrash about, go with the flow.
JIM GENOVESE Our surroundings fade and we exist in unison, two people who once shared cups of coffee, unprecedent...
CAROLINE GEORGE Look, my friends!' he called. 'Here's a pretty hobbit-skin to wrap an elven princeling in! If it wer...
J.R.R. TOLKIEN The mark of a real man, is a man who can allow himself to fall deeply in love with a woman. But the ...
C. JOYBELL C. When you live in the present, the past is forgotten & the future takes care of itself.
MANDY HALE When life gives you lemons, say cool, what else you got?
CARMEN IN THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS We fall back into the past, we jump ahead into the future, and in this we lose our entire lives.
THICH NHAT HANH If I provide for this life and turn away from the Lord, I am wise for a moment, but lost forever.
FRANCINE RIVERS The only way he could have her was to shatter this stubborn faith of hers. In doing so, would he sha...
FRANCINE RIVERS The battle is not physical, it is spiritual and your mind is the battleground. Keep your mind pure a...
JEANETTE CORON Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you...
C. JOYBELL C. It's all to do with the training: you can do a lot if you're properly trained.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II Like all best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters and...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II My husband has quite simply been my strength and stay all these years, and I owe him a debt greater ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II It is easy enough to define what the Commonwealth is not. Indeed this is quite a popular pastime.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I have to be seen to be believed.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I have in sincerity pledged myself to your service, as so many of you are pledged to mine. Throughou...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I hope that tomorrow we can all, wherever we are, join in expressing our grief at Diana's loss, ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I myself prefer my New Zealand eggs for breakfast.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II The British constitution has always been puzzling and always will be.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I have behind me not only the splendid traditions and the annals of more than a thousand years but t...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II To what greater inspiration and counsel can we turn than to the imperishable truth to be found in th...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II What were once only hopes for the future have now come to pass; it is almost exactly 13 years since ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II First, I want to pay tribute to Diana myself. She was an exceptional and gifted human being. In good...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I cannot lead you into battle. I do not give you laws or administer justice but I can do something e...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts an...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II Grief is the price we pay for love.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II The upward course of a nation's history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II At its heart, engineering is about using science to find creative, practical solutions. It is a nobl...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II At Christmas, I am always struck by how the spirit of togetherness lies also at the heart of the Chr...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II For many, Christmas is also a time for coming together. But for others, service will come first.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II The lessons from the peace process are clear; whatever life throws at us, our individual responses w...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your s...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II Therefore I am sure that this, my Coronation, is not the symbol of a power and a splendor that are g...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II We lost the American colonies because we lacked the statesmanship to know the right time and the man...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II Madam President, speaking here in Dublin Castle it is impossible to ignore the weight of history, as...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II These wretched babies don't come until they are ready.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I know of no single formula for success. But over the years I have observed that some attributes of ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II The events that I have attended to mark my Diamond Jubilee have been a humbling experience. It has t...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II In remembering the appalling suffering of war on both sides, we recognise how precious is the peace ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II Like all the best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II No one who knew Diana will ever forget her. Millions of others who never met her, but felt they knew...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I have been aware all the time that my peoples, spread far and wide throughout every continent and o...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I was suddenly very aware of the fact it was me standing up in that tunnel with the wind over my fac...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY The only perspective is to really be there.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I didn't feel like reading that night, so I went downstairs and watched a half-hour long commercial ...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY In Hong Kong, I read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “Love in the Time of Cholera”, in which the hero...
GRAEME SIMSION My dear fellow, the way you flirt with Gwendolen is perfectly disgraceful. It is almost as disgracef...
OSCAR WILDE I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ...
KELLY JONES There is no such thing as objectivity. We are all just interpreting signals from the universe and tr...
BONES THE DOCTOR IN THE PHOTO Here was one with an air of high nobility such as Aragorn at times revealed, less high perhaps, yet ...
J.R.R. TOLKIEN Hail to you gods, on that day of the great reckoning. Behold me, I have come to you, without sin, wi...
THE BOOK OF THE DEAD When a man takes one step toward God, God takes more steps toward that man than there are sands in t...
THE WORK OF THE CHARIOT As you get to know what takes you away from life, you have more moments throughout your day where yo...
MARY O'MALLEY (All the grief she had suffered over her lifetime had moulded her face into a mask of eternal sadnes...
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And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers...
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MICHELLE O'LEARY She paused and saw him tense in expectation. He wouldn’t like to hear this, but better from her th...
MICHELLE O'LEARY I’m not bipolar, I’ve just had a bipolar life foisted upon me.
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MARY O'MALLEY It's not the face, but the expressions on it. It's not the voice but the things you say. It's not th...
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HEATHER O'BRIEN People give you a hard time about being a kid at twelve. They didn't want to give you Halloween cand...
HEATHER O'NEILL Everybody wants to save the Earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.
P.J. O'ROURKE Don't stand unmoving outside the door of a crying baby whose only desire is to touch you. Go to your...
PEGGY O'MARA Marry for love. But also choose to marry a man or woman who you love that treats you with the ultima...
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AMIE O'BRIEN You cannot borrow half of who you are from someone else, yet people try to do it all of the time, th...
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Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore,
May the relief ...
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FLANN O'BRIEN In our deepest moments we say the most inadequate things.
EDNA O'BRIEN It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a seagull or ...
EUGENE O'NEILL It could be a meeting on the street, or a party or a lecture, or just a simple, banal introduction, ...
JOHN O'DONOHUE The world rests in the night. Trees, mountains, fields, and faces are released from the prison of sh...
JOHN O'DONOHUE Your noble friend will not accept pretension but will gently and very firmly confront you with your ...
JOHN O'DONOHUE The ego is the false self-born out of fear and defensiveness.
JOHN O'DONOHUE If you try to view yourself through the lenses that others offer you, all you will see are distortio...
JOHN O'DONOHUE Love allows understanding to dawn, and understanding is precious. Where you are understood, you are ...
JOHN O'DONOHUE We do not need to go out and find love; rather, we need to be still and let love discover us.
JOHN O'DONOHUE Beauty is the illumination of your soul.
JOHN O'DONOHUE Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. Friendship i...
JOHN O'DONOHUE When love awakens in your life, in the night of your heart, it is like the dawn breaking within you....
JOHN O'DONOHUE No one else has access to the world you carry around within yourself; you are its custodian and entr...
JOHN O'DONOHUE Your beloved and your friends were once strangers. Somehow at a particular time, they came from the ...
JOHN O'DONOHUE Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore...
JOHN O'DONOHUE If you send out goodness from yourself, or if you share that which is happy or good within you, it w...
JOHN O'DONOHUE Every friendship travels at sometime through the black valley of despair. This tests every aspect of...
JOHN O'DONOHUE All you can ever achieve is a sense of your soul. You gain little glimpses of its light, colors, and...
JOHN O'DONOHUE You are as young as you feel. If you begin to feel the warmth of your soul, there will be a youthful...
JOHN O'DONOHUE Behind your image, below your words, above your thoughts, the silence of another world waits.
JOHN O'DONOHUE You are like nobody since I love you"
-Pablo Neruda
This art of love discloses the ...
JOHN O'DONOHUE Real intimacy is a sacred experience. It never exposes its secret trust and belonging to the voyeuri...
JOHN O'DONOHUE If you try to avoid or remove the awkward quality, it will pursue you. The only effective way to sti...
JOHN O'DONOHUE The heart is the inner face of your life. The human journey strives to make this inner face beautifu...
JOHN O'DONOHUE It is lovely to meet an old person whose face is deeply lined, a face that has been deeply inhabited...
JOHN O'DONOHUE Inspiration is always a surprising visitor.
JOHN O'DONOHUE you can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care...
TIM O'BRIEN It’s a hard thing to explain to somebody who hasn’t felt it, but the presence of death and dange...
TIM O'BRIEN ...his love was too much for him, he felt paralyzed, he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe...
TIM O'BRIEN But this too is true: stories can save us.
TIM O'BRIEN They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of th...
TIM O'BRIEN The wait is long, my dream of you does not end.
NUALA O'FAOLAIN There is the solitude of suffering, when you go through darkness that is lonely, intense, and terrib...
JOHN O'DONOHUE I’d begun to think of the Immortality Bus as the Entropy Bus, and of ourselves as trundling across...
MARK O'CONNELL It's not enough to be nice in life. You've got to have nerve.
GEORGIA O'KEEFFE Darkness is drawn to light, but light does not know it; light must absorb the darkness and therefore...
EDNA O'BRIEN I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to t...
P.J. O'ROURKE And although in many cases these unions proved happy enough, sailors being excellent husbands, often...
PATRICK O'BRIAN Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless ...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR I write to discover what I know.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I s...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR My body is not my own any more. They have stamped their names all over it.
LOUISE O'NEILL The beauty that emerges from woundedness is a beauty infused with feeling; a beauty different from t...
JOHN O'DONOHUE Then Dad started going on about the complex geological formations in this part of the coast until Mu...
KERRIE O'CONNOR Having a Coke with You
is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biar...
FRANK O'HARA Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay....
FLANNERY O'CONNOR I would not hurt you, little man,' he said.
'I think that I got the disorder in Mullingar...
FLANN O'BRIEN Fame stole my yellow. Yellow is the color you get when you're real and brutally honest. Yellow is wi...
ROSIE O'DONNELL Grace changes us and change is painful".
FLANNERY O'CONNOR The high-school English teacher will be fulfilling his responsibility if he furnishes the student a ...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR There's a certain grain of stupidity that the writer of fiction can hardly do without, and this is t...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR Your criticism sounds to me as if you have read too many critical books and are too smart in an arti...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR She looked at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR She would've been a good woman," said The Misfit, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every ...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR I am so far from being a pessimist...on the contrary, in spite of my scars, I am tickled to death at...
EUGENE O'NEILL I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.
FRANK O'HARA Stand up, be counted. We have the numbers.
BILL O'REILLY Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those ...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR People spot a big black lens, and they worry about what they're doing, or how their hair looks. Nobo...
ERICA O'ROURKE I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite...
GEORGIA O'KEEFFE That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death has been a stumbling block for readers w...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR She hated her job the same way I hated my jobs because she knew she was worth more, but she also hat...
TAWNI O'DELL Romance and romantic are different. Death, itself, can be romantic. Nature and a destructive snowsto...
R.B. O'BRIEN The robot successfully dismounted the car, proceeding at a slight crouch, and with exaggerated cauti...
MARK O'CONNELL To create one's world in any of the arts takes courage.
GEORGIA O'KEEFFE Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the i...
GEORGIA O'KEEFFE I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way... things I had n...
GEORGIA O'KEEFFE I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I've never let it keep me from doing a si...
GEORGIA O'KEEFFE Don’t tell me my writing is misogynistic or anti-feminist just because I or my heroines like to be...
R.B. O'BRIEN That's the trouble with you preachers," he said. "You've all got too good to believe in anything," a...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR When a man died, there had to be blame. Jimmy Cross understood this. You could blame the war, You co...
TIM O'BRIEN The rocking of the boat by the waves was soothing but unknown. The men on the shore were asleep. Not...
JOSEPH O'NEILL When you steal a people's language, you leave their soul bewildered.
JOHN O'DONOHUE Words, too, have genuine substance -- mass and weight and specific gravity.
TIM O'BRIEN Relationships take up energy; letting go of them, psychiatrists theorize, entails mental work. When ...
MEGHAN O'ROURKE We are fascinated, all of us, by the implacable otherness of others. And we wish to penetrate those ...
TIM O'BRIEN It's sad when you learn you're not much of a hero.
TIM O'BRIEN Experience has taught me that what you love, you should love all the harder because someday it will ...
RONAN O'BRIEN A hat should be taken off when greeting a lady, and left off the rest of your life. Nothing looks mo...
P.J. O'ROURKE Rising up into the air, they took to the sky and flew. From west and beyond west, into the wind and ...
PAT O'SHEA You're the fire burning inside of me.
KELVIN O'RALPH I will not be a common man. I will stir the smooth sands of monotony. I do not crave security. I wis...
PETER O'TOOLE I guess relationships are just funny like that. It's impossible to figure out why some work out and ...
JENNY O'CONNELL If you work really hard, and you're kind, amazing things will happen.
CONAN O'BRIEN Lasting healing comes from being curious rather than controlling, from mercy rather than manipulatio...
MARY O'MALLEY What the hell is that?" he asked.
"Magic mushrooms."
"I've always wanted to try those," he...
HEATHER O'NEILL I've always been a pretty good researcher," said Bronwyn modestly.
Oh, so that we sha...
DANIEL O'MALLEY The weirder you're going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When ...
P.J. O'ROURKE The Universe and Spirit do not understand limitations...PEOPLE invented limitations!
JENNIFER O'NEILL Not only have we not done the good things that God really wants us to do, but in fact, we’ve done ...
ERIN O'RIORDAN Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR You have to quit confusing a madness with a mission.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR By subsidiarity is meant the principle that responsibilities should be devolved to the lowest viable...
DENIS O'BRIEN For me it is the virgin birth, the Incarnation, the resurrection which are the true laws of the fles...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR The truth is not distorted here, but rather a distortion is used to get at truth.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR There are some of us who have to pay for our faith every step of the way and who have to work out dr...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR