15 Quotes for 2014

I’ve become quite the quote collector.

I always keep an eye out for beautiful and true sentences in the writing I read or the films I watch. I also receive a Goodreads “Quote of the Day” daily quote email in my inbox. Any quotes that resonate with me get added into a “Quotes” file—but then, since I know the quotes are safely documented and saved, I usually end up forgetting about them.

This year, I decided not to let those quotes stay hidden in their file and instead review them as a new cathartic New Year’s ritual. At the beginning of every year now, I plan to take a look at the quotes I will have collected over the last 12 months—not only to be reminded of the words that touched me in the previous year, but to also use these words as inspiration for my life in the new year.

So instead of sharing a New Year’s resolution, I’d like to share 15 of my favorite quotes I found in 2013 that will influence how I live in 2014:

1. “Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life’s cruelest irony.” – Douglas Coupland

2. “Be careful, you are not in Wonderland. I’ve heard the strange madness long growing in your soul. But you are fortunate in your ignorance, in your isolation. You who have suffered, find where love hides. Give, share, lose—lest we die, unbloomed.” – From the film Kill Your Darlings

3. “I decided it is better to scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity.” – Nadezha Mandelstam

4. “The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.” — Charles Bukowski

5. “Ghosts don’t haunt us. That’s not how it works. They’re present among us because we won’t let go of them.” – Sue Grafton

6. “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard, are sweeter.” – John Keats

7. “The bravest people are the ones who don’t mind looking like cowards.” – T.H. White

8. “Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you.” – Chuck Klosterman

9. “You will hear thunder and remember, and think: she wanted storms.” – Anna Akhmatova

10. “None of us really changes over time. We only become more fully what we are.” – Anne Rice

11. “You don’t write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid’s burnt socks lying in the road.” – Richard Price

12. “The past is always tense, the future perfect.” – Zadie Smith

13. “Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.” – Dale Carnegie

14. “Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life’s quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result—eventually, astoundingly, and all to briefly—in you.” – Bill Bryson

15. “It’s only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.” – Joseph Conrad

(P.S. Hope you are liking the new blog look. I think this blog will continue to evolve, so don’t be surprised if it has another new look or format soon).