Larmoyante
“To separate oneself from the burden, the angst, the anguish that we all encounter everyday. To say I am alive, I am wonderful, I am. I am. That is something to aspire to.”
—Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain
July 2012
“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”
—Marcus Aurelius
“Your flaws single you out, set you apart, make you different from the rest, and thank god. I don’t just… accept your blemishes, I like them. I like them because they make you human, and humans are easier to love than photographs and illusions and ideals; humans fit more easily between arms and between legs; humans are welcome to their imperfections because if there’s one thing humans can do perfectly, it’s love. Humans can love, they can do it flawlessly.”
—Stephanie Georgopulos, I Like Your Flaws
“I see you everywhere, in the stars, in the river, to me you’re everything that exists; the reality of everything.”
—Virginia Woolf, Night and Day
“Study me as much as you like, you will never know me. For I differ a hundred ways from what you see me to be. Put yourself behind my eyes, and see me as I see myself. Because I have chosen to dwell in a place you can’t see.”
—Rumi
“The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity.”
—Graham Greene, The End of the Affair
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
—Rumi
“Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.”
—Zelda Fitzgerald
“I’ve been very lonely in my isolated tower of indecipherable speech.”
—Being John Malkovich
“No human being can be there for you the way a record can. I mean, your friends are your friends, and that’s great, that’s amazing if you’re having a hard time—and I clearly know about this at this point in my life—but nothing can compare with putting on a record and grieving silently or, conversely, celebrating personally.”
—Ben Gibbard in Autumn de Wilde’s Elliot Smith
“There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.”
—Sophia Loren
“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.”
—Albert Einstein
Summer Reading List 2012
Thank you so much to everyone who contributed to our reading list! We have over eighty suggestions, ranging from drama, to fantasy, to romance! This list can also be found under our Explore page and we will also publish a list of all of our amazing followers that made this possible. We hope that you will have fun reading this summer!
“Once people got used to staying away, they always stayed away.”
—Untamed Heart (1993)
“Don’t wish to be normal. Wish to be yourself. To the hilt. Find out what you’re best at, and develop it, and hopscotch your weaknesses. Wish to be great at whatever you are.”
—Lois McMaster Bujold, Labyrinth
“It’s funny what the body remembers that the mind forgets.”
—Puccini for Beginners
“We had one of those almost collisions complete strangers have. We stopped and stood there so as not to collide. It happened so fast, barely time to react. Still there was time. It happened in an instant yet time stopped all together. 10:00 AM on April 2nd. ‘Excuse me,’ and like that, our paths diverged. What an intense brief moment in life. I can still recall the color of your hoodie, the color of your gloves, your cup of coffee, the fact you weren’t wearing a jacket, the streetwise seller, and the sun before the rain.”
—Sophia Blackall, Missed Connections
“You smell like a flower that is neither alive nor dead, because no one has changed its water for weeks. You have a sleepy smell, like when you wake up in the morning and you’ve been dreaming too long.”
—Legături bolnăvicioase (Love Sick)
“He had these signature moves that I liked. The hand around my waist, for one, but then there was this thing that made me crazy; the way he cupped his fingers around the back of my neck, putting them just so that his thumb touched a pulse point. It’s so hard to explain, but it gave me a chill every time, almost like he was touching my heart.”
—Sarah Dessen, This Lullaby
