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“Don't forget that everything you deal with is only one thing and nothing else.”
― Paulo Coehlo

“Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but ... life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”
― Gabriel García Márquez

“What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.”
― Gabriel Garcia Marquez

“Nobody deserves your tears, but whoever deserves them will not make you cry.”
― Gabriel García Márquez

“1. Be Impeccable With Your Word
Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

2. Don't Take Anything Personally
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.

3. Don't Make Assumptions
Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

4. Always Do Your Best
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.”
― Don Miguel Ruiz

“If you live in a past dream, you don't enjoy what is happening right now because you will always wish it to be different than it is. There is no time to miss anyone or anything because you are alive. Not enjoying what is happening right now is living in the past and being only half alive. This leads to self pity, suffering and tears.”
― Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

“It is when we lose control that we repress the emotions, not when we are in control.”
― Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

“Whatever happens around you, don't take it personally... Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves.”
― Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

“Be impeccable with your word. Don't take anything personally. Don't make assumptions. Always do your best.”
― Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

“If ever there is tomorrow when we're not together... there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we're apart... I'll always be with you.”
― Carter Crocker

“I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not.

I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women.

I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state.

I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste.

I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds.

I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman.

I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself.

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 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, American Gods

“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world.”
― Bette Midler

“Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.”
― Mark Twain

“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.

(Popular misquote of "You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.")”
― Maya Angelou, Letter to My Daughter

“In the end
these things matter most:
How well did you love?
How fully did you live?
How deeply did you let go?”
― Jack Kornfield, Buddha's Little Instruction Book

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”
― Anais Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

“Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering.”
― A.A. Milne

“You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don't try to forget the mistakes, but you don't dwell on it. You don't let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.”
― Johnny Cash

“I was so happy I wanted to fold all the people into paper airplanes and fly them into the lidless eye of that big yellow moon.”
― Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

“Sometimes not talking is effortless, and other times it’s more exhausting than lifting pianos.”
― Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

“Negotiating with memories isn't easy: how to choose between those panting to be told, those still ripening, those already shriveling, and those destined to be mangled by language and come out pulverized?”
― Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

“[I'll teach you] how not to leave the windows of your heart open when it looks like rain and how everyone has a stump where something necessary was amputated. ”
― Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

“I couldn't think of anything other than her and the components of her. For example, her red hair. But was I so primitive I let myself be bewitched by hair? I mean, really. Hair! It's just hair! Everyone has it! She puts it up, she lets it down. So what? And why did all the other parts of her have me wheezing with delight? I mean, who hasn't got a back, or a belly, or armpits? This whole finicky obsession serves to humiliate me even as I write it, sure, but I suppose it isn't that abnormal. That's what first love is all about. What happens is you meet a love object and immediately a hole inside you starts aching, the hole that is always there but you don't notice until someone comes along, plugs it up, and then runs away with the plug.”
― Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

“Don't be afraid to have nothing.”
― Steve Toltz

“The simple things come back to us. They rest for a moment by our ribcages then suddenly reach in and twist our hearts a notch backward.”
― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

“The world spins. We stumble on. It is enough.”
― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

“Don't feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97:

Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.”
― Mary Schmich