LALA

“Silence is worse when you know it won’t be broken.”

“Lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that’s all. You can’t see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken, another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it. Life has to end, love doesn’t.”

“Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves.”

“War is no game. If there’s a shot to be made, you make it, you hear? No guilt. No hesitation. You fire and you fire and you don’t think about who you’re shootin’ or killin’ or why, y’hear me? You want to come home again, you just fire, you don’t think. It’s the thinking that gets you killed.”

“back then all emotions felt like play, like I was experimenting with feeling rather than stuck with it. True terror isn’t being scared; it’s not having a choice in the matter.”

“It’s all about sex and vanity to him, nothing else! He can’t possibly love you in the way you deserve to be loved because he’s incapable of seeing you as a real person, a real woman. But I see you. I see the beauty inside you, and also your sadness, your fears, your flaws. I see exactly who you are and I love you for all those things, Lucie. I’ve loved you since the moment we met. I love your family, I love your mind, and I love your art. I want to be there to support your passions and dreams, whatever they are, and I want to know you more so I can love you more.”

“But I was beginning to learn that your life is a story told about you, not one that you tell. Of course, you pretend to be the author. You have to. You think, I now choose to go to lunch, when that monotone beep rings from on high at 12:37. But really, the bell decides. You think you’re the painter, but you’re the canvas.”

“Do the kinds of things that come from the heart. When you do, you won’t be dissatisfied, you won’t be envious, you won’t be longing for somebody else’s things. On the contrary, you’ll be overwhelmed with what comes back.”

“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.”

“The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in. Let it come in. We think we don’t deserve love, we think if we let it in we’ll become too soft. But a wise man named Levine said it right. He said, ‘Love is the only rational act.’”

“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.”

“The tension of opposites?

“The culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. We’re teaching the wrong things. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn’t work, don’t buy it. Create your own.”

“You can act self-righteous in front of me right now, but believe me, when it is all taken away, you won’t know what hit you.”

“He would never give up trying. He would take an impossible situation and make everything possible.”

“All her life she had been treated like a hothouse flower, when in fact she was a wildflower that was never allowed to bloom fully.”