list 43 of my favorite quotes

82. Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it isn’t really about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it isn’t about who can sit can who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe it’s about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing.

- The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood

78. You were careful not to say those words that soon became our private altar. I had said them many times before, dropping them coins into a wishing well, hoping they would make me come true. I had said many times before but not to you. I had given them as forget-me-nots to girls who should have known better. I had used them as bullets and barter. I don’t like think of myself an as insincere person but if I say I love and I don’t mean it then what else am I? Will I cherish you, adore you, make way for you, make myself better for you, look at you and always see you, tell you the truth? And if love is not those things then what things?

- Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

79. Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.

- Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper (I actually hate this book, but this is a lovely quote)

80. On the day when it will be possible for woman to love not in her weakness but in strength, not to escape herself but to find herself, not to abase herself but to assert herself — on that day love will become for her, as for man, a source of life.

- Simone de Beauvoir

81. I asked her, “Could we kiss for a little bit?”

“Excuse me,” she said, although, on the other hand, she didn’t pull her head back.

I told her, “Humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with lips. So in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are.”

“And the more you wage war?”

- JS Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

75. Please believe that I am falling apart.

I am not speaking metaphorically; nor is this the opening gambit of some melodramatic, riddling, grubby appeal for pity. I mean quite simply that I have begun to crack all over like an old jug – that my poor body, singular, unlovely, buffeted by too much history, subjected to drainage above and drainage below, mutilated by doors, brained by spittoons, has started coming apart at the seams. In short, I am literally disintegrating, slowly for the moment, although there are signs of acceleration. I ask you only to accept (as I have accepted) that I shall eventually crumble into (approximately) six hundred and thirty million particles of anonymous, and necessarily oblivious dust. This is why I have resolved to confide in paper, before I forget. (We are a nation of forgetters.)

- Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children

76. Once, I too had ambitions; not your grand ones – simple ambitions: marriage, children, and a house of our own. He died in the mud in France, a good, solid man. You would call him down in the dirt. But he smiled whenever he saw me and we could have built a life on that.

- Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

77. I must learn to love the fool in me- the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries.

— Theodore Isaac Rubin

67. I am invincible. So are you. We do all the things they say we can’t do.

– Ani Difranco

68. I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they are true or not…I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

- Neil Gaiman

69. I did not know that the rules about these things were different if you were female. I did not know that “poetess” was an insult, and that I myself would some day be called one. I did not know that to be told I had transcended my gender would be considered a compliment. I didn’t know — yet — that black was compulsory. All of that was in the future. When I was sixteen, it was simple. Poetry existed; therefore it could be written; and nobody had told me — yet — the many, many reasons why it could not be written by me.

- Margaret Atwood

70. I became a poet at the age of sixteen. I did not intend to do it. It was not my fault.

- Margaret Atwood

71. It’s not that I want people to think I am smart, or even that I am a good writer. I write because I want to end my loneliness.

- Jonathan Safran Foer

72. They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could the world go on? How could we ever get up off our knees? How could we ever recover from the wonder of it?

- Jeanette Winterson

73. I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.

- Anais Nin

74. If all of us acted in unison as I act individually there would be no wars and no poverty. I have made myself personally responsible for the fate of every human being who has come my way.

- Anais Nin

66. Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

- Marianne Williamson

I should update this more so I can keep a proper list of quotes i like.

65. The fears that live inside of us, whatever they are, and however they manifest, prevent us from living our highest potential, as individuals, and as contributors to the human race. If we consciously and vigilantly transmute those fears through compassion for others, and for ourselves, we will know what it is to live a peaceful existance on this planet.

- Gillian Anderson

63. You build up all these defenses. You build up a whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life… You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages.

- Neil Gaiman, The Sandman

64. I’ve spent my entire life doing what she’s done, loving the one not there, somebody I’ve never met. I have a rough idea of what he looks like. I have a more specific take on what he thinks and what he feels. I have an almost exact sense of how he makes me feel. I’ve never met him. I may never meet him. I’ve actually been told he’s not even out there. The men or women in our dreams live in our dreams. And in the real world, we should be allowed to settle for the ones who come close, and that’s what she did. And it was the… reasonable thing to do.

—Ally McBeal

this show kills me.

Ally McBeal quotes! I love this show. Larry Paul stole my heart. And I’m Ally, so.

56. Larry: Don’t you think I’d want to be with Jamie? She’s the mother of my son. All I have to do to be with him every day is get back with her. And in a fleeting second yesterday I wanted to believe it could work if I could just will myself to. God knows my life would be simpler.
Ally: So then why don’t you just do it!
Larry: Because! I love you!
Ally: Fine, fine, that makes it all better, doesn’t it!
Larry: Did you hear what i just said?! I’ve never loved anybody as much as I love you. And I’m only at the beginning of loving you. And you might think the smartest thing for you to do here is just move on. He’s got an ex-wife, he’s got a kid, he kissed somebody else, just move the hell on. Well, it’s not smart, Ally. It’s heart-stupid. ‘Cause you love me too.
Ally: Love isn’t always enough.
Larry: Yes it is. You go without it long enough and you realize it’s everything.

- Ally McBeal

57. Larry: Maybe she just got so used to being rejected that at some point she was no longer open to the idea that, hey, things could work. Sometimes people, on occasion – I’ve been one of them – they get so used to things not working out they strangely become more comfortable with failure than they are with success. Everything could have worked out here. All she had to do was let it.

- Ally McBeal

58. Ally: I just got this piano. And sometimes I sing this song called “Goodnight My Someone” and it’s about, well, basically, it’s a love song to someone you’ve never met but that you know is out there. And, I don’t know, we make so few promises to ourselves as we grow up, and one of them is that on our wedding day we walk down the aisle with somebody we love. Somebody who does make your heart bounce, I guess. And there are some promises, Harry, that I think we just have to keep.

- Ally McBeal

59. Larry: You think i’m just going to sit back and wait for you to get with the program? you might be afraid of all this, Ally, but… i’m not.
Ally: Larry, you have only seen the tip of the neurotic iceberg. i’m demented.
Larry: What else?
Ally: Self absorbed.
Larry: What else?
Ally: Vain.
Larry: What else?
Ally: Beautiful. That’s a good thing.
Larry: What else?
Ally: Maybe incapable of letting myself be loved.
Larry: Well, we’d have to work on that.
Ally: Do you have any idea what you’re getting yourself into? I’m afraid to trust it.
Larry: Then we need to work on that too.

- Ally McBeal

60. Jamie: Wow. You really love this woman.
Larry: Ally—Yeah, I do. And just because I’m still sexually attracted to you, and just because i have a son with you… You and I could never work, you know that.
Jamie: Why not?
Larry: Because, you’re not – you’re not her. I will always love you. You will always be in my life. But she’s it. And even if it’s now over between us, believe me, you don’t want to be following her. Because she’s – she’s it.

- Ally McBeal

61. Larry: Ally, don’t run from me. Don’t run from whatever you’re feeling. You didn’t think I was scared? I’ve been dating one woman after the other, it gets as easy as it does old, and suddenly you’re with somebody who could be right? It’s terrifying.

- Ally McBeal

62. John: The world is no longer a romantic place. Some people still are, however. And therein lies the promise. Don’t let the world win, Ally McBeal.

and I’m sure there will be more. This show. This show.

Death doesn’t just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed.

- The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

Love demands expression. It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no. It will break out in tongues of praise, the high note that smashes the glass and spills the liquid. It is no conservationist love. It is a big game hunter and you are the game. A curse on this game. How can you stick at a game when the rules keep changing? I shall call myself Alice and play crocket with the flamingoes. In Wonderland everyone cheats and love is Wonderland isn’t it? Love makes the world go round. Love is blind. All you need is love. Nobody ever died of a broken heart. You’ll get over it. It’ll be different when we’re married. Think of the children. Time’s a great healer. Still waiting for Mr. Right? Miss Right? and maybe all the little Rights?

It’s the cliches that cause the trouble. A precise emotion seeks a precise expression. If what I feel is not precise then would I call it love? It is so terrifying, love, that all I can do is shove it under a dump bin of pink cuddly toys and send myself a greetings card saying `Congratulations on your Engagement’. But I am not engaged I am deeply distracted. I am desperately looking the other way so that love won’t see me. I want the diluted version, the sloppy language, the insignificant gestures. The saggy armchair of clichés. It’s all right, millions of bottoms have sat here before me. The springs are well worn, the fabric smelly and familiar. I don’t have to be frightened, look, my grandma and grandad did it, he in stiff collar and club tie, she in white muslin straining a little at the life beneath. They did it, my parents did it, now I will do it won’t I, arms outstretched, not to hold you, just to keep my balance, sleepwalking to that armchair. How happy we will be. How happy everyone will be. And they all lived happily ever after.

—Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson