"Families were nothing more than hope cast out in a wide net, everyone wanting only the best."
"So much of being a good friend was knowing when to keep your mouth shut."
*Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter*
"But I think some people wait forever, and only at the end of their lives do they realize that their life has happened while they were waiting for it to start."
"This is what happens when you live in dreams, he thought: You dream this and you dream that and you sleep right through your life."
"Rather, he found himself inhabiting the vast, empty plateau where most people live, between boredom and contentment."
"You have to care about your work but not about the result. You have to care about how good you are and how good you feel, but not about how good people think you are or how good people think you look."
"Decide what your currency is early. Let go of what you will never have. People who do this are happier and sexier."
"People are their most beautiful when they are laughing, crying, dancing, playing, telling the truth, and being chased in a fun way."
*The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins*
"Hollowness: that I understand. I'm starting to believe that there isn't anything you can do to fix it. That's what I've taken from the therapy sessions: the holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete; you mould yourself through the gaps."
"I have never understood how people can blithely disregard the damage they do by following their hearts."
"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 the living of it."
*Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert*
"The Bhagavad Gita—that ancient Indian Yogic text—says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection."
"You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions."
"Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't, you will leak away your innate contentment."
"Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me. Insisting on this story was a form of mind control, but for the most part, it worked."
