perksofbeingmel

Every single book I pick up automatically becomes a part of me the second I indulge my mind into it.  The words make up my insides.  I decided to make a note of my favorite quotes from my most precious books.  I’ll admit my spectrum of book genres aren’t very broad, but I like what I like.  Whenever I read a book, I always highlight the parts that hit closest to home.  When I really love a book, I could highlight the entire thing.  Which is exactly what I did with the books listed below.  So my absolute favorite quotes by some extraordinary, and beautiful writers are what is listed below.

Starting with one of my absolute favorite books, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Steven Chbosky:

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“And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.

                                                           Love always,

                                                           Charlie”

“To tell you the truth, I love Sam.  It’s not a movie kind of love either.  I just look at her sometimes, and I think she is the prettiest and nicest person in the whole world.”

“…I am very interested and fascinated by how everyone loves each other, but no one really likes each other.”

“I don’t know if you’ve ever felt like that.  That you wanted to sleep for a thousand years.  Or just not exist.  Or just not be aware that you do exist.  Or something like that.  I think wanting that is very morbid, but I want it when I get like this.  That’s why I’m trying not to think.  I just want it all to stop spinning.  If this gets any worse, I might have to go back to the doctor.  It’s getting that bad again.”

“I wanted to ask Sam about the other side of “sometimes” but I didn’t want to be too personal, and I didn’t want to know deep down.  I wish I could stop being so in love with Sam.  I really do.”

“The movie itself was very interesting, but I didn’t really think it was very good because I didn’t really feel different when it was over.”

“Maybe this is the way things are supposed to be, but it doesn’t feel right.”

“When I lay down in bed that night, I put on the Billie Holiday record, and I started reading the book of e. e. cummings poems.  After I read the poem that compares the woman’s hands to flowers and rain, I put the book down and went to the window.  I stared at my reflection and the trees behind it for a long time.  Not thinking anything.  Not feeling anything.  Not hearing the record.  For hours.  Something is really wrong with me.  And I don’t know what it is.”

“So, I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons.  And maybe we’ll never know most of them.  But even if we don’t have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there.  We can still do things.  And we can try to feel okay about them.”

“That was the amazing part.  Things just keep going.  We didn’t talk about anything heavy or light.  We were just there together.  And that was enough.”

“Just tell me how to be different in a way that makes sense.”

“The truth is, when it gets really quiet, when the silence gets too loud, I really start to miss everyone.”

“So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I’m still trying to figure out how that could be.”

—

Next book is “Silver Linings Playbook” by Matthew Quick:

“I do not want to stay in the bad place, where no one believes in silver linings or love or happy endings…”

“…because that’s just how much he does not believe in silver linings, making it his business to preach apathy and negativity and pessimism unceasingly.  But I make sure he understands that he has failed to infect me with his depressing life philosophies…”

“I believe in happy endings,” I tell him.  “And it feels like this movie has gone on for the right amount of time.”

“…because now my own life is the movie I will watch, and well, it’s always on.”

“If clouds are blocking the sun, there will always be a silver lining that reminds me to keep on trying, because I know that while things might seem dark now, my wife is coming back to me.”

 

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Next is “The Element” by Sir Ken Robinson.  This book is extremely fascinating, and offers a strong view on many topics.

“What makes the SAT bad is that it has nothing to do with what kids learn in high school.  As a result, it creates a sort of shadow curriculum that furthers the goals of neither educators nor students…The SAT has been been sold as snake oil; it measured intelligence, verified high school GPA, and predicted college grades.  In fact, it’s never done the first two at all, nor a particularly good job at the third.”

“The diversity of intelligence is one of the fundamental underpinnings of the Element.  If you don’t embrace the fact that you think about the world in a variety of ways, you severely limit your chances of finding the person you were meant to be.”

“Every person’s intelligence is as unique as a fingerprint.”

“In my experience, most people have a narrow view of intelligence, tending to think of it mainly in terms of academic ability.  This is why so many people who are smart in other ways end up thinking that they’re not smart at all.  There are myths surrounding creativity as well.

“We can conjecture, we can hypothesize, we can speculate, and we can suppose.  In a word, we can be imaginative.  As soon as we have the power to release our minds from the immediate here and now, in a sense we are free.”

—

“Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Freshly Phrased” by Joseph Gallagher:

“All these things remind me that you too will be wasted by Time –  since persons sweet and beautiful all lose their charms in the end.”

“For your inward or outward beauty cannot be forever maintained by Time’s brush or my novice pen.”

“All right – do your worst, old Time.  Despite your crimes, my love and my beloved will live forever young in my poetry.”

“Let me looks, then, be my eloquence.  Let them be the imperfect intimations of what my heart is saying.  They plead on behalf of love, and long for a return of love…”

“My eyes have played the painter, and etched your lovely shape on the canvas of my heart.”

“Why did you promise lovely weather that prompted me to go out without my cloak, and then let ugly clouds overtake me on my way…”

‘”Your love and mine are in harmony, even tough our lives are afflicted by an outside spite that separates us.  That spite does not change the single mindedness of our love, but it does rob that love of sweet hours of delight.”

“All days will seem but nights until I see you, but my nights turn into sunny days when you show up in my dreams.”

“For when you are away, I cannot come bounding over these many miles between us.  But since I am composed of earth and water, I must grievingly endure the slowness of time.”

“My love is such a faithful food that it would find no fault in anything you did.”

“My role is to wait, even though such waiting be hell.  It is not my role to blame your pleasure seeking, whether it does harm or good.”

“But my spirit is yours, and that’s the better part of me.”

“Realize this, sweet love: I’m always writing about you.  You and love are my constant themes.”

“Respect me for my mute thoughts, which find their voice in actions.”

“Love is not true love if it changes when it encounters change, or deviates in response to a partner’s distancing.”

—

“Why We Broke Up” by Daniel Handler: ❤

“You know that I want to be a director, but you could never truly see the movies in my head and that, Ed, is why we broke up.”

“You either have the feeling or you don’t.”

“…the thing with your heart’s desire is that your heart doesn’t even know what it desires until it turns up.”

“…let’s go together toward something extraordinary and I started making plans, thinking we would get that far.”

“I looked at you.  Ed, you were goddamn beautiful that day…”

“Jesus Christ and his biological Father.”

“Wherever it’s good, whatever strange faraway lang, let’s go there, and let’s stay in that place alone.”

“Because Min, listen, I love you.”

“We didn’t do a lot, as you promised.  We did a little, and the little is gone…”

“I stayed there loving you, though the love made me, not sad but I guess melancholy, for a reason I couldn’t point to.”

To be continued…