QUOTES

I have always been a lover of quotes, since I was in middle school. I used to spend hours jotting down phrases and motivational words on my journal, circling them with colorful hearts, barely aware of the teacher's voice blatering about Maths in the background.

Here's a collection of my favourite quotes about writing, life and love. Some of them I've written myself, and I would be happy to share your quotes if you feel inclined to send them this way.


I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork - Peter de Vries

Man is born to live and not to prepare to live – Boris Pasternak

We will either find a way, or make one – Hannibal

There was nowhere I could go that wouldn't be you – J. Eugenides

Know something, sugar? Stories only happen to people who can tell them - Allan Gurganus

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self - Cyril Connolly

What we see depends mainly on what we look for – Sir John Lubbock

The longest journey starts with a single step – Lao Tzu

Not all who wander are lost – J. R. R. Tolkien

If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right – Henry Ford

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us - O. W. Holmes

What you are shouts so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say - R. W. Emerson

I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member - Groucho Marx

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit - Aristotle

If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. If you can dream it you can become it - W. A. Ward

It took me my whole life to learn how to paint like a child again - P. Picasso

There are no shortcuts to anywhere worth going – Beverly Sills

If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door - pinterest

Find what you love and let it kill you – Charles Bukowsky

What's inside her; never dies – Amy Winehouse

How easy it is to forget that while we spend our time chasing sunlight, the darkness spends its time chasing us – Tyler Knott

It was rather beautiful: the way he put her insecurities to sleep. The way he dove into her eyes and starved all the fears and tasted all the dreams she kept coiled beneath her bones – Christopher Poindexter

I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday – Lemony Snicket

If people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane – John Green

I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun – Katharine Hepburn

I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it's true I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you – Frida Kahlo

It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things – Leonardo Da Vinci

You belong somewhere you feel free – Tom Petty

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories - Michel de Montaigne

There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other - Douglas Everett

There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there - Indira Gandhi

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity – Simone Weil

Arise! Awake! And stop not till the goal is reached – Swami Vivekananda

An old Cherokee told his grandson, "My son, there is a battle between two wolves inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, inferiority, lies and ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy and truth." The boy thought about it, and asked: "Grandfather, which wolf wins?" The old man quietly replied: "The one you feed" – Cherokee proverb

Our battered suitcases were piled up on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life – J. Kerouac

All my life my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name – Sylvia Plath

Memories are what warm you up from the inside. But they are also what tear you apart – Haruki Murakami

Sometimes your only available transportation is a leap of faith – Margaret Shepard

Everything I like is either illegal immoral fattening addictive expensive or impossible – pinterest

Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one" – C. S. Lewis

I love you, and I will love you until I die, and if there is life after that, I'll love you then – Douglas Coupland

There is no friend as loyal as a book – Ernest Hemingway

When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace – Jimi Hendrix

I woke up from a nice dream. My reality was better – Lisa Agosti

It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out; it's the grain of sand in your shoe – Robert W. Service

A pity beyond all telling is hid at the heart of love – W. B. Yeats

I was twenty-eight, with nothing but the fringey skirt I stood up in and suddenly all the years I'd spent moving from country to country seemed wasted. It was a horrible, horrible time and I ricocheted around like a lost soul, directionless and terrified – Marian Keyes

I won't think about forever, I won't even think about next week, I'll just think about getting through today. Break it down into small pieces and you might find that you can do for one day something that, if you thought about having to do it for the rest of your life, would kill you – Marian Keyes

It's a Buddhist thing. There's a goose trapped in a bottle – how do you get it out? [...] Wait long enough and the goose will be thin enough to slip out of the bottle. Or if he gets fed, he'll grow and break the bottle himself. But all you have to do is nothing – Marian Keyes

So what if my ideal man was a selfish, dependable, unfaithful, loyal, treacherous, loving flirt who thought the world of me, never called when he said he would, made me feel like the most special woman in the universe and flirted with all my friends? - Marian Keyes

I had never fallen in love with a man who had a real job and I hoped I never would. I couldn't imagine anything duller than a man with a regular income, a man who was sensible with money, a man who knew how to live within his means. I found financial insecurity a great aphrodisiac – Marian Keyes

Popular myth has it that women are desperate to trap men, that men are afraid of being trapped, so the best way to trap them is to pretend that you don't want to trap them – Marian Keyes

He did not hate the Winter now, for he knew that it was merely the Spring asleep, and that the flowers were resting – Oscar Wilde

Love is all very well in its way, but friendship is much higher. Indeed, I know of nothing in the world that is either nobler or rarer than a devoted friendship – Oscar Wilde

I often have long conversations all by myself, and I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying – Oscar Wilde

She has the fascinating tyranny of youth, and the astonishing courage of innocence – Oscar Wilde

When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers – Oscar Wilde

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance – Oscar Wilde

The duty of youth is to challenge corruption - Kurt Cobain

An idea is salvation by imagination - Frank Lloyd Wright

Kind words will unlock an iron door – Turkish proverb

I never laugh until I've had my coffe – Clark Gable

Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining – Anne Lamott

There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind – C. S. Lewis

Isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes but when you look back everything is different – C. S. Lewis

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned – Buddha

I have no special talents. I am only passionately curios – Albert Einstein

I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet – Mahatma Gandhi

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage – Anais Nin

Sometimes the only way to catch your breath is to lose it completely – Tyler Knott

Look up to the sky. You will never find rainbows if you’re looking down - Charlie Chaplin 

The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off – Gloria Steinem

I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life – Voltaire

We should always know that we can do anything – Jónsi

No man can walk out on his own story – Rango

Before writing we should learn to think – N. Boileau

Imagination is more important than knowledge – Albert Einstein

Nothing stay forgotten for long, Elly. Sometimes we simply have to remind the world that we're special and that we're still here – Sarah Winman

In the darkest hour, look at yourself, how you are standing, how you are alive - Lisa Agosti

Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all – Emily Dickinson

Spend your money on the things money can buy. Spend your time on the things money can't buy – Haruki Murakami

You've been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn't worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens – Louise Hay

Popularity, my dear, is as overrated as a large member – Sarah Winman

I am here but I am not yours – Sarah Winman

Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute – F. Dostoevsky

When I travelled, I travelled to see new places; when he travelled, he travelled to find new parts of himself. I guess when you're trying to find all the parts of yourself, it's difficult to be with someone who's already fully intact – Cecelia Ahern

Life has a way of getting what it wants when it really knows what it wants – Cecelia Ahern

The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones – Confucius

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them – Henry David Thoreau

You've got to be careful if you don't know where you're going, 'cause you might not get there – Yogi Berra


It’s by living that you live more. By waiting you wait more. Every waiting day makes your life a little less. Every lonely day makes you a little smaller. Every day you put off your life makes you less capable of living it – Ann Brashares

Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things... I am tempted to think... there are no little things - Bruce Barton