May 29, 2007

"Scar tissue has no character. It's not like skin. It doesn't show age or illness or pallor or tan. It has no pores, no hair, no wrinkles. It's like a slipcover. It shields and disguises what's beneath. That's why we grow it; we have something to hide." -Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen.

"One day you're in diapers; the next day you're gone. But the memories of childhood stay with you for the long haul." -The Wonder Years

"When I was a teenager I wanted to write the Great American Novel. But then I realized that I didn't even want to read the Great American Novel." -Everybody Loves Raymond

"Beauty fades. Dumb is forever." -Judge Judy

"I don't want to be happy. I want to be with you." -Three's Company

"When someone sees you as you really are and wants to be with you, that's powerful." -Sex Feet Under

"I hate when I'm an idiot and I don't know it. I like to be aware of my idiocy, to really revel in it, take pictures." -Gilmore Girls

"Sometimes when you want to believe so badly, you end up looking too hard." -The X-Files

"I like school. It's a good way to kill time between weekends." -Saved By The Bell

"You see this little hole? This moth's just about to emerge. It's in there right now, struggling. It's digging its way through the thick hide of the cocoon. Now, I could help it - take my knife, gently widen the opening, and the moth would be free - but it would be too weak to survive. Struggle is nature's way of strengthening it." -Lost

“There is a big difference in what we long for, what we settle for, and what we are meant for.”

“Studies have shown that people convince themselves that they're acting rationally when making major decisions-- where to go to college, what to major in, who to kiss or not kiss--when they're really acting on unconscious impulses. The human brain simply can't handle all the complexities that life offers, so emotions kick in and end up making the call. And when that call blows, people don't understand why.” -Megan McCafferty, Charmed Thirds

“Just remember, the same as a spectacular Vogue magazine, remember that no matter how close you follow the jumps: Continued on page whatever. No matter how careful you are, there's going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn't experience it all. There's that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should've been paying attention. Well, get used to that feeling. That's how your whole life will feel some day. This is all practice. None of this matters. We're just warming up.” -Chuck Palahniuk

“When my date takes me home and kisses me good night, if I don't hear the philharmonic in my head, I dump him.” -The Mirror Has Two Faces

“This thing that we call a wedding ceremony is really the final scene of the fairy tale. They never tell you what happens after. They never tell you that Cinderella drove the Prince crazy with her obsessive need to clean the castle, cause she missed her day job, right?” -The Mirror Has Two Faces

“Now you spend an extra hour in front of the mirror every morning and every night. And now you'll be the one to walk into a room and scan it for who looks better than you and who doesn't. And as the years go by, the numbers change. One day you'll walk into a room and you're the last woman any man notices.” -The Mirror Has Two Faces

“It's not a date. We're just agreeing to eat at the same table.” -The Mirror Has Two Faces

“I tell you what I envy about people in love - I'd love it if someone knew me, I mean really knew me. What I like, what I'm afraid of, what kind of toothpaste I use.” -The Mirror Has Two Faces

"She was sorry to have hurt her, but she wanted them all to leave her alone, let her keep it together. Kindness was the last thing she needed. She had to stay in the icy place, the numb place, and their warmth threatened to melt her just when she needed the cold." -Paint It Black, Janet Fitch.

"I've been a miner for a heart of gold." -Neil Young

“True love has spiritual dimensions, while romantic love is a lie. A myth. A soulless manipulation. And speaking of manipulation ... it's like going to the movies and seeing the lovers kiss. The music swells, and we buy it, right? So when my date kisses me, and I don't hear strings, I dump him. The question is, why do we buy it? Because, myth or manipulation, we all want to fall in love. That experience makes us feel completely alive. Our everyday reality is shattered, and we are flung into the heavens. It may only last a moment, an hour, but that doesn't diminish its value. We're left with memories we treasure for the rest of our lives. I read, ''When we fall in love, we hear Puccini in our heads.'' I love that. His music expresses our need for passion and romantic love. We listen to La Bóheme or Turandot, or read Wuthering Heights, or watch Casablanca, and a little of that love lives in us too. So the final question is: Why do people want to fall in love, when it can have such a short run and be so painful? …I think it's because, as some of you may already know ... While it does last, it feels fucking great.” -The Mirror Has Two Faces

“Some of life's best lessons are learned at the worst times." -Ani Difranco

"No one ever talks about it, but no one can disguise the cloud of competition that's hanging behind their eyes." -Ani Difranco

"You've gotta live light enough to see the humor and long enough to see some change." -Ani Difranco

"Each one of us wants a piece of the action; you can hear it in what we say, you can see it in what we do." -Ani Difranco

"If you don't ask the right questions, every answer seems wrong." -Ani Difranco

"Girls suck. It's like they get lobotomized the second they hit puberty. One day you're all milling around in the Rainbow Brite section at FAO Schwartz. The next day someone has breasts... After that, it's all about getting boys to like you and whoever dies the thinnest wins." -Dawson's Creek

"Girls have all these idiotic, misguided notions about boys. We always think we can spruce them up, turn them into something they're not." -Dawson's Creek

"It’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind." -Dawson’s Creek

“Everyone knows they’re going to die, but nobody believes it.’” -Tuesdays With Morrie, Mitch Albom

"Emotion doesn't need translation."

"I feel that I'm finally growing weary of waiting to be consumed by you." -Fiona Apple

“Fuck what you know. You need to forget about what you know, that's your problem. Forget about what you think you know about life, about friendship, and especially about you and me.” -Fight Club

“Warning: If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don't you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think every thing you're supposed to think? Buy what you're told to want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned.” -Fight Club

“After fighting, everything else in your life got the volume turned down.” -Fight Club

“If you wake up at a different time in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?” -Fight Club

“Without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing.” -Fight Club

“When you have insomnia, you're never really asleep... and you're never really awake.” -Fight Club

“Every time I look at you... I feel better. It shocks me. It knocks my wind out, but it's true. I don't have to have sex with you, I'd be happy just look at you from across the room. And even that, anything, any piece of you. And, hopefully, all of you. That'd be the best thing. Because I love you.” -Grey’s Anatomy

“We all think we’re going to be great, and we feel a little bit robbed when our expectations aren’t met. But sometimes our expectations sell us short. Sometimes the expected simply pales in comparison to the unexpected. You got to wonder why we cling to our expectations, because the expected is just what keeps us steady. Standing. Still. The expected's just the beginning, the unexpected is what changes our lives.” -Grey’s Anatomy

"And it doesn't matter how many new haircuts you get, or gyms you join, or how many glasses of Chardonnay you drink with your girlfriends. You still go to bed every night going over every detail and wonder what you did wrong or how you could have misunderstood... and how in the hell for that brief moment you could think that you were that happy..." -The Holiday

“If you want to be a better person, stop thinking about it and just live.” -John Mayer

“I can be selfish, impatient, and even insecure. I make mistakes, I'm out of control... and at times I can be hard to handle, but if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.” -Marilyn Monroe

“It's terribly amusing how many different climates of feeling one can go through in a day.“ -Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“It's all about character. Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions, they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.” -Frank Out

“I know there will be better things. That's kind of the best thing about being young... knowing all these things are on their way... these better things.” -Peyton Sawyer

“Your problems will seem inconsequential and trivial when you realize one thing. We’re just a speck of dirt on this golf ball called earth, so get stupid and sing…” -311

“Did you feel it change? I mean how many moments in life can you point to and say, ‘That’s when it all changed’?” -One Tree Hill

“When a defining moment comes along, you can do one of two things. Define the moment, or let the moment define you.” -Tin Cup

“What is it you said to the kid? The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very rough, mean place... and no matter how tough you think you are, it'll always bring you to your knees and keep you there, permanently... if you let it. You or nobody ain't never gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard you hit... it's about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward... how much you can take, and keep moving forward. If you know what you're worth, go out and get what you're worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hit.” -Rocky

“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” -Sir Winston Churchill

“You ever look at a picture of yourself and see a stranger in the background? It makes you wonder how many strangers have pictures of you. How many moments of other people's lives we've been in. Were we a part of a stranger's life when their dream came true? Or were we there when their dreams died? Did we keep trying to get in - as if we were destined to be there? Or did the shot take us by surprise? Just think, you could be a big part of someone else's life and not even know it.” -One Tree Hill

“It's the rule of life that everything you have always wanted comes the very second you stop looking for it.” -Sex & the City

"I wonder what Piglet is doing," thought Pooh. "I wish I were there to be doing it, too." -Winnie the Pooh

“Sometimes the best way to find out who you are, is to get to that place where you don't have to be anything else.” -Dave Matthews Band

“Whenever there is a mirror around, it is almost impossible not to take a look at yourself. Even though we all know what we look like, we all like just to look at our reflections, if only to see how we're doing.” -Lemony Snicket

“You know how every now and then, you have a moment where your whole life stretches out ahead of you like a forked road, and even as you choose one gritty path, you've got your eye on the other the whole time, certain that you're making a mistake?” -Jodi Picoult

“Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years. Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.” -Diane Ackerman

“What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction.” -Chuck Palahniuk

“You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You're chicken, you've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, "Okay, life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness." You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.” -Breakfast at Tiffany’s

“At the end of the day, when it comes down to it, all we really want is to be close to somebody. So this thing where we all keep our distance and pretend not to care about each other, it's usually a load of bull. So we pick and choose who we want to remain close to, and once we've chosen those people, we tend to stick close by. No matter how much we hurt them. The people that are still with you at the end of the day, those are the ones worth keeping. And sure, sometimes close can be too close. But sometimes, that invasion of personal space, it can be exactly what you need.” -Grey’s Anatomy

“What if it turns out that a life isn’t defined by who you belong to or where you came from, by what you wished for or whom you lost, but instead by the moments you spend getting from each of these places to the next.” -Jodi Picoult

"I'd say my biggest fear is that this thing with Michael is about sex. That this is really just sexual attraction and nothing more. And fine, you know, because that can be fun too. But if I’m worried it's all about sex, I guess what I'm really worried about is that for me it only partially has to do with sex. That for me it's about caring for him, so why risk giving into that just to have him leave me?“ -Girl’s Poker Night, Jill Davis

"I think it was the first time in my life I ever felt like I looked 'good.' Do you know what I mean? That nice feeling when you look in the mirror, and your hair's right for the first time in your life? I don't think we should base so much on weight, muscles, and a good hair day, but when it happens, it's nice. It really is." -The Perks of Being a Wallflower

"You see things. You keep quiet about them. And you understand." -The Perks of Being a Wallflower

"She wasn't bitter. She was sad, though. But it was a hopeful kind of sad. The kind of sad that just takes time." -The Perks of Being a Wallflower

"I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going to be who I really am. And I'm going to figure out what that is."-The Perks of Being a Wallflower

"And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have. Good and bad." -The Perks of Being a Wallflower