LEAVES OF GRASS AND MECHANISMS OF THE WORLD: Quotes to live by!

There are times when I run out of inspiration and ambition. Sometimes, when this happens, I read some of my favorite quotes from movies, songs, books, etc. These are but a FEW of them. ENJOY!

 HUGO (the movie):

"I'd imagine the whole world was one big machine. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured, if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn't be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason, too."

"Maybe that's why a broken machine always makes me a little sad, because it isn't able to do what it was meant to do... Maybe it's the same with people. If you lose your purpose... it's like you're broken."

"I enjoy the poetry of Christina Georgina Rossetti. She wrote, "My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a watered shoot; My heart is like an apple-tree Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit."'

I AM THE MESSENGER (by Markus Zusak)

"It's impeccable how brutal the truth can be at times. You can only admire it. Usually, walk around constantly believing ourselves. "I'm okay," we say. "I'm alright." But sometimes the truth arrives on you, and you can't get it off. That's when you realize that sometimes it isn't even an answer---it's a question. Even now, I wonder how much of my life is convinced..."

"I'm not the messenger at all. I'm the message."

"I stood us and walked down the steps. I'd rather chase the sun than wait for it..."

TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE (by Mitch Albom)

 "Take any emotion---love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I'm going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions---if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them---you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.

But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, 'All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.'

I know you think this is just about dying, but it's like I keep telling you. When you learn how to die, you learn how to live."


 "Love is the only rational act."


"Maybe death is the great equalizer, the one big thing that can finally make strangers shed a tear for one another."


 "Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too, even when you're in the dark. Even when you're falling."


  "So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning."


 "But there still seemed to be no clear answers. Do you take care of others or take care of your inner child? Return to traditional values or reject tradition as useless? Seek success or seek simplicity? Just say No or Just Do It?"


WHITE OLEANDER (by Janet Fitch)

 "People didn't fit in slots---prostitute, housewife, saint---like sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideas and angles, changeable as water."

1984 (by George Orwell)  

 "He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth
that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it,
in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was
not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you
carried on the human heritage. He went back to the table,
dipped his pen, and wrote."

 SPEAK (by Laurie Halse Anderson)

 "I have survived. I am here. Confused, screwed up, but here. So, how can I find my way? Is there a chain saw of the soul, an ax I can take to my memories or fears? I dig my fingers into the dirt and squeeze. A small, clean part of me waits to warm and burst through the surface. Some quiet girl I haven't seen in months. That is the seed I will care for."