I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. -J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

Love is what you've been through with somebody.

-James Thurber

I turned on the radio and found a station playing "Hey Jude." It was true, I didn't want to make it bad. I wanted to make it better. It's just that I didn't know how.
-Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase. -Martin Luther King Jr.

His words are like the sound of a needle dragging across a record. A sinking, sickening feeling washes over me. This is why you should never get your hopes up. This is why you should see the glass as half empty. So when the whole things spills, you arent' as devastated.
-Emily Giffin, Something Borrowed

Write every day, line by line, page by page, hour by hour. Do this despite fear. For above all else, beyond imagination and skill, what the world asks of you is courage, courage to risk rejection, ridicule and failure. As you follow the quest for stories told with meaning and beauty, study thoughtfully but write boldly. -Robert McKee

Go then, there are other worlds than these.
— Stephen King, The Gunslinger

If that's all you will be, you'll be a waste of time
You've dreamed a thousand dreams, none seem to stick in your mind
Two points for honesty
It must make you sad to know that nobody cares at all
- Guster, Two Points for Honesty

We're cleaning the windows between us two
Funny, you do it once, and then again, and pretty soon
The fingerprints and dust...
But I've begun to trust the view here
- The Weepies, Slow Pony Home

But don't you think that it's better to be extremely happy for a short while, even if you lose it, than to be just okay for your whole life? -Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife

Real integrity is doing the right thing knowing that nobody is going to know whether you did it or not.
–Oprah Winfrey

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. -Victor Frankl

I've looked around enough to know that you're the one I want to go through time with.
-Jim Croce

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other. -Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

And I realized at that moment that I really did love her. Because there was nothing to gain and that didn't matter.
- Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Sometimes love isn't firecrackers. Sometimes love just comes softly.
- Love Comes Softly

half of my heart's got a grip on the situation

half of my heart takes time.

- john mayer, half of my heart

In my old life, I longed for someone to see what was special in me. You did, and for that, you'll always be in my heart. But what I really needed was for me to see it. And now I do. You're a good man, Tom. But you live in a world that has no place for someone like me. -Catwoman

You were there when I needed you without me even having to ask.

- Scrubs

I know he's watching me; I can see him through the cracks. His eyes are small and shy on my back.
- Ani Difranco, 4th of July

A good friend is a connection to life―a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world. -Lois Wyse

I'd rather spend the rest of my life cooking for one than being with someone who can do without me.
- Everwood

Every dreamer knows that its entirely possible to be homesick for a place you've never been to, perhaps more homesick than for familiar ground.
- Judith Thurman

I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.
- Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

Every time she does something that tells you she's no good, you ignore it. And every time she comes through and surprises you, she wins you over, and you lose that argument with yourself, that she's not for you.-The Holiday

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
-Oscar Wilde

I suppose I think about love more than anyone really should. I am constantly amazed by its sheer power to alter and define our lives.
-The Holiday

In my opinion, the best thing you can do is find a person who loves you for exactly what you are. Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, handsome, what have you, the right person will still think the sun shines out your ass. That's the kind of person that's worth sticking with.
-Juno

I heard what you said. I’m not the silly romantic you think. I don’t want the heavens or the shooting stars. I don’t want gemstones or gold. I have those things already. I want…a steady hand. A kind soul. I want to fall asleep, and wake, knowing my heart is safe. I want to love, and be loved. -Shana Abe

My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return. -Maya Angelou

If a dude isn't calling you when he says he will, or making sure you know that he's dating you, then you already have your answer. Stop making excuses for him; his actions are screaming the truth: he's just not that into you.

- Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo , He's just not that into you

Afraid and shy, I let my chance go by; the chance that you might love me, too. You give your hand to me, and then you say goodbye.
- Jann Arden

I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together, in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane. John Green, Looking for Alaska

There's nothing like deep breaths after laughing that hard. Nothing in the world like a sore stomach for the right reasons. -Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

In some ways we grow up. We have families, we get married, divorced, but for the most part, we still have the same problems that we did when we were fifteen. No matter how much we grow taller, grow older, we are still forever stumbling, forever wondering, forever young.
-Grey's Anatomy

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. -Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Road to Daybreak: A Spiritual Journey

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. -Rainer Maria Rilke

Sure, she’s pretty, but it’s about more than that. You two connect. Anything you throw at her, she can throw right back. You figured out what’s going on in that predictable head of hers in under five minutes, but something tells you her heart would take about five years.
- What She Doesn’t Know Will Kill You

It's not that some people have willpower and some don't. It's that some people are ready to change and others are not. -James Gordon

What is it you want, Mary? What do you want? You want the moon? Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around it and pull it down. Hey. That's a pretty good idea. I'll give you the moon, Mary.
- It's a Wonderful Life

I love you. And not in a friendly way, although I think we're great friends. And not in a misplaced affection, puppy-dog way, although I'm sure that's what you'll call it. And it's not because you're unattainable. I love you. Very simple, very truly. You're the epitome of every attribute and quality I've ever looked for in another person. . . . But I had to say it. I can't take this anymore. I can't stand next to you without wanting to hold you. I can't look into your eyes without feeling that longing you only read about in trashy romance novels. I can't talk to you without wanting to express my love for everything you are. And if we never speak again, please know that I am forever changed because of who you are and what you've meant to me. -Chasing Amy

I do my thing, and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful. -Frederick E. Perl

And what happens if the person you're supposed to be with never appears, or she does, and you're too distracted to notice? -Ever After

Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose. -The Wonder Years

for those of us who try to keep remembering,
try to do our better than our best.
think of all the children in the drifts of snow.
winners never quit, but winters never rest.
- she & him

Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

What if I were smiling and running into your arms? Would you see then what I see now?
-Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

Alone people don't like to hear about the together people...It's just sort of mean. It's sort of like bringing a 6-pack to an AA meeting.
- Grey's Anatomy

So she had to satisfy herself with the idea of love--the loving of things whose existence she didn't care at all about. Love itself became the object of her love. She loved herself in love, she loved loving love, as love loves loving, and was able, in that way, to reconcile herself with a world that fell so short of what she would have hoped for. It was not the world that was the great and saving lie, but her willingness to make it beautiful and fair, to live a once-removed life, in a world once-removed from the one in which everyone else seemed to exit.
- Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

If you don't leap, you'll never know what it's like to fly.
-Guy Finley