Somebody Said It Better

"Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!
Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore.’"

"I didn’t want my picture taken because I was going to cry. I didn’t know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of my throat and I’d cry for a week. I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full."

"Resist much, obey little."

"All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know."

"This is how we go on: one day a time, one meal at a time, one pain at a time, one breath at a time. Dentists go on one root canal at a time; boat builders go on one hull at a time. If you write books, you go on one page at a time. We turn from all we know and all we fear. We study catalogues, watch football games, choose Sprint over AT&T. We count the birds in the sky and will not turn from the window when we hear the footsteps behind as something comes up the hall; we say yes, I agree that clouds often look like other things - fish and unicorns and men on horseback - but they are really only clouds. Even when the lightning flashes inside them we say they are only clouds and turn our attention to the next meal, the next pain, the next breath, the next page. This is how we go on."

"If you ever see me being beaten up by the cops, put down the video camera and come help me, alright?"

"When I say it’s you I like, I’m talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed."

"I wish you all good things. Live your life. Live your life. Live your life."

"We’re animals. We’re violent. We’re criminal. We’re not so far away from the gorillas and the apes, those beautiful creatures. … And then, we’re supposed to be civilized. We’re supposed to go to work every day. We’re supposed to be nice to our friends and send Christmas cards to our parents. We’re supposed to do all these things which trouble us deeply because it’s so against what we naturally would want to do. And if I’ve done anything, I’ve had kids express themselves as they are, impolitely, lovingly - they don’t mean any harm. They just don’t know what the right way is. And as it turns out sometimes the so-called “right way” is utterly the wrong way. What a monstrous confusion."

"I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can’t stop them. They leave me and I love them more."

"It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself."

"There are some things that it is better to begin than to refuse, even though the end may be dark."

"The unhappiest people in this world, are those who care the most about what other people think."

"It is one of life’s bitterest truths that bedtime so often arrives just when things are really getting interesting."