Collect quotes and sayings.

When I say, “I love you,” it’s not because I want you or because I can’t have you. It has nothing to do with me. I love what you are, what you do, how you try. I’ve seen your kindness and your strength. I’ve seen the best and the worst of you. And I understand with perfect clarity exactly what you are.
Joss Whedon

One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. “Which road do I take?” she asked. “Where do you want to go?” was his response. “I don’t know,” Alice answered. “Then,” said the cat, “it doesn’t matter.”
Lewis Carroll

Nerds are allowed to /love/ stuff. Like jump-up-and-down-in-a-chair-can’t-control-yourself-love it. When people call people “nerds” mostly what they’re saying is “you like stuff.” Which is just not a very good insult at all like “you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness.”
John Green

Nobody is perfect until you fall in love with them.

He says, “The problem with teachers is what’s a kid going to learn from someone who decided his best option in life is to become a teacher?”

He reminds the other dinner guests, “You know it’s true what they say about teachers: Those who can do, those who can’t teach.”

I decided to bite my tongue instead of his and resist the urge to tell the other dinner guests that it’s also true what they say about lawyers, because we’re eating after all and this is supposed to be polite conversation.

“I mean you’re a teacher Taylor. Come on, be honest, what do you make?”

And I wish he hadn’t done that. Asked me to be honest. Because, you see, I have this little policy about honesty and ass-kicking. Which is: if you ask for it, then I have to let you have it.

“You want to know what I make? I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could. I can make a C+ feel like a congressional medal of honor and make an A- feel like a slap in the face. How dare you waste my time with anything less than your very best?

You want to know what I make? I make kids sit through forty minutes of study hall in absolute silence.

No, you may not work in groups. No, you cannot ask me a question so put your hand down. Why won’t I let you go to the bathroom? Because you’re bored and you don’t really have to go, do you?

I make parents tremble in fear when I call home at around dinner time.

Hi, this is Mr. Mali. I hope I haven’t called at a bad time. I just wanted to talk to you about something that your son said today. He said, “Leave the kid alone, I still cry sometimes, don’t you?” and it was the noblest act of courage that I have ever seen.

I make parents see their children for who they are and who they can be.

You want to know what I make? I make kids wonder. I make them question. I make them criticize. I make them apologize and mean it.

I make them write, write, write. And then I make them read. I make them spell: definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful. Over and over and over again until they will never misspell either one of those words again.

I make them show all their work in math class, and then hide it on their final draft in English.

Here, let me break it down for you so you know what I say is true.

Let me break it down for you so you know what I say is true: Teachers make a goddamn difference. Now, what about you?”
Taylor Mali

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpog1_NFd2Q&feature=feedlik

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
Albert Einstein

Don’t be afraid to be a fool. Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying yes begins things. Saying yes is how things grow. Saying yes leads to knowledge. “Yes” is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say yes.
Stephen Colbert

Protective shells are all well and good, but they make it hard to dance close.
Lessons of a Turtle, Sandy Gingras

Sometimes, I get sad. Then, I remember I have a great butt, and it’s all better. ;D
Jacob Bennett

Postsecret 2/6/11

If you are, at first, lonely, be patient.
If you’ve not been alone much or if, when you were, you weren’t okay with it then just wait.
You’ll find it’s fine to be alone once you’re embracing it.

We could start with the acceptable places:
the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library.
Where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there.
Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books.
You’re not supposed to talk much anyway, so it’s safe there.

There’s also the gym.
If you’re shy you could hang out with yourself in mirrors, you could put headphones in.
And there’s public transportation, because we’ve all got to go places.
And there’s prayer and meditation.
No one will think less if you’re hanging with your breath, seeking peace and salvation.

Start simple.

Things you may have previously avoided based on your “Avoid Being Alone Principles.”
The lunch counter, where you will be surrounded by chow-downers.
Employees that only have an hour and their spouses work across town, so they, like you, will be alone.
Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.

When you’re comfortable with eat lunch and run take yourself out for dinner.
A restaurant with linen and silverware.
You’re no less intriguing a person when you’re eating solo dessert and cleaning whipped cream from the dish with your finger.
In fact, some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.

Go to the movies, where it is dark and soothing.
Alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community.
And then take yourself out dancing to a club where no one knows you.
Stand on the outside of the floor until the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you.
Dance like no one’s watching, because they’re probably not.
And if they are assume it is with best and human intentions.
The way bodies move genuinely to beats is, after all, gorgeous and affecting.
Dance until you’re sweating, and beads of perspiration remind you of life’s best things.
Down your back like a book of blessings.

Go to the woods alone and the trees and squirrels will watch for you.
Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets.
There are always statues to talk to.
And benches made for sitting give strangers a shared existence if only for a minute.
And these moments can be so uplifting, and the conversations you get in by sitting alone on benches might have never happened had you not been there by yourself.

Society is afraid of alone though.
Like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements.
Like people must have problems if, after a while, nobody is dating them.
But lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless.
And lonely is healing if you make it.

You could stand swathed by groups and mobs or hold hands with your partner.
Look both further and farther in the endless quest for company.
But no one’s in your head, and by the time you translate your thoughts some essence of them may be lost or perhaps it is just kept.
Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself.
Perhaps all those sappy slogans from preschool over to high school’s groaning were tokens for holding the lonely at bay.
Because if you’re happy in your head then solitude is blessed and alone is okay.

It’s okay if no one believes like you.
All experience is unique. No one has the same synapses.
Can’t think like you.
For this, be relieved.
Keeps things interesting, life’s magic stays in reach.

And it doesn’t mean you aren’t connected.
The community is now present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it.

Take silence and respect it.

If you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it.
If your family doesn’t get you, or a religious sect is not meant for you don’t obsess about it.
You could be, in an instant, surrounded if you need it.
If your heart is bleeding make the best of it.
There is heat in freezing, be a testament.
Tanya Davis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7X7sZzSXYs