The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby

• Even a rough sketch, a shadow, a tiny fragment of a dad is still a dad.
• Success soothes my aching muscles.
• The BMW's doors click softly shut. Someone once told me that you can tell a good car by the quality of that click.

5/31/2009--2:03 PM

One For the Money by Janet Evanovich

• There are some men who enter a woman's life and screw it up forever.
• In my opinion, the only good spider is a dead spider, and woman's rights aren't worth dick if they mean I can't ask a man to do my bug squashing.
• Fear is not a logical emotion. No one can physically hurt me on the phone.
• Never let your guard down. You have to see everything, every second. You let your mind wander, and you could be dead.
• Some promises are meant to be broken.
• I understand that you're scared. I get scared, too. But we're the good guys, and the good guys always win.
• You do something often enough, and you become complacent.

5/21/2009--8:54 P.M.

The Shack by William P. Young

• I suppose that since most of our hurts come through relationships so will our healing, and I know that grace rarely makes sense for those looking in from the outside.
• While some things may not be scientifically provable, they can still be true nonetheless.
• There is often some compensation in every trial, if one looked hard enough.
• It is so easy to get sucked into the if-only game, and playing it is a short and slippery slide into despair.
• There are times when you choose to believe something that would normally be considered absolutely irrational. It doesn't mean that it is actually irrational, but it surely is not rational. Perhaps there is supra rationality: reason beyond the normal definitions of fact or data-based logic; something that only makes sense if you can see a bigger picture of reality. Maybe that is where faith fits in.
• Sometimes honesty can be incredibly messy.
• As much as he longed to stop the ache in his heart, he knew he could not add to their hurt.
• It does a soul good to let the waters run once in a while--the healing waters.
• Don't go because you feel obligated. That won't get you any points around here. Go because it's what you want to do.
• Life takes a bit of time and a lot of relationship.
• Love always makes a significant mark.
• Humans are not defined by their limitations, but by the intentions that I have for them; not by what they seem to be, but by everything it means to be created in my image.
• It is not about winning and losing, but about love and respect.
• Once you begin to know the being behind the very pretty or very ugly face, as determined by your bias, the surface appearances fade away until they simply no longer matter.
• I am with you and I'm not lost. I'm sorry it feels that way, but hear me clearly. You are not lost.
• Dreams are sometimes important, you know. They can be a way of openin' up the window and lettin' the bad air out.
• I don't need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside. It's not my purpose to punish it; it's my joy to cure it.
• Humans have a great capacity for declaring something good or evil, without truly knowing.
• I tend to sound justifiably angry when somebody is threatening my 'good,' you know, what I think I deserve. But I'm not really sure I have any logical ground for deciding what is actually good or evil, except how something or someone affects me.
• Who doesn't jump to conclusions about others from the way they impact us.
• The darkness hides the true size of fears and lies and regrets. The truth is they are more shadow than reality, so they seem bigger in the dark. When the light shines into the places they live inside you, you start to see them for what they are.
• Each choice ripples out through time and relationships, bouncing off of other choices.
• You're only seeing the institution, a man-made system. That's not what I came to build. What I see are people and their lives, a living breathing community of all those who love me, not buildings and programs.
• You don't need to have it all figured out. Just be with me.
• I don't create institutions; that's an occupation for those who want to play God.
• If you try to live this without me, without the ongoing dialogue of us sharing this journey together, it will be like trying to walk on the water by yourself. You can't! And when you try, however well-intentioned, you're going to sink.
• All I want from you is to trust me with what little you can, and grow in loving people around you with the same love I share with you. It's not your job to change them, or to convince them. You are free to love without an agenda.
• Grace doesn't depend on suffering to exist, but where there is suffering you will find grace in many facets and colors.
• Guilt'll never help you find freedom in me. The best it can do is make you try harder to conform to some ethic on the outside. I'm about the inside.
• Lies are one of the easiest places for survivors to run. It gives you a sense of safety, a place where you only have to depend on yourself.
• Lies are a little fortress; inside them you can feel safe and powerful. Through your little fortress of lies you try to run your life and manipulate others. But the fortress needs walls, so you build some. These are the justifications for your lies. You know, like you are doing this to protect someone you love, to keep them from feeling pain. Whatever works, just so you feel okay about the lies.
• Nobody knows what horrors I have saved the world from 'cuz people can't see what never happened.
• Love that is forced is no love at all.
• It is not the nature of love to force a relationship but it is the nature of love to open the way.
• For you to know or not has nothing at all to do with whether I am actually here or not. I am always with you; sometimes I want you to be aware in a special way--more intentional.
• Emotions are the colors of the soul; they are spectacular and incredible. When you don't feel, the world becomes dull and colorless.
• Just because you believe something firmly doesn't make it true. Be willing to reexamine what you believe. The more you live in the truth, the more your emotions will help you see clearly. But even then, you don't want to trust them more than me.
• There are a lot of smart people who are able to say a lot of right things from their brain because they have been told what the right answers are, but they don't know me at all. So really, how can their answers be right even if they are right, if you understand my drift? So even though they might be right, they are still wrong.
• In Jesus you are not under any law. All things are lawful.
• Responsibilities and expectations are the basis of guilt and shame and judgment, and they provide the essential framework that promotes performance as the basis for identity and value. You know well what it is like not to live up to someone's expectations.
• Each relationship between two persons is absolutely unique. That is why you cannot love two people the same. It simply is not possible. You love each person differently because of who they are and the uniqueness that they draw out of you. And the more you know another, the richer the colors of that relationship.
• If Papa had wanted him to know, he would have told him.
• Forgiveness is not about forgetting. It is about letting go of another person's throat.
• Forgiveness does not create a relationship.
• Forgiveness in no way requires that you trust the one you forgive.
• Just say it out loud. There is power in what my children declare.
• If anything matters then everything matters. Because you are important, everything you do is important. Every time you forgive, the universe changes; every time you reach out and touch a heart or a life, the world changes; with every kindness and service, seen or unseen, my purposes are accomplished and nothing will ever be the same again.

5/17/2009--6:53 PM

Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer

• His touch brought with it the strangest sense of relief--as if I'd been in pain and that pain had suddenly ceased.
• The right thing isn't always real obvious. Sometimes the right thing for one person is the wrong thing for someone else. So...good luck figuring that out.
• There's always a compromise.
• A smart person looks at all sides of a decision.
• Some people will go to any lengths to delude themselves.
• It's possible to love more than one person at a time.
• I couldn't allow what hurt me to influence my decisions anymore. It was too little, much too late, but I had to do what was right now. Maybe it was already done for me.
• I may gain forgiveness, but that doesn't let me escape the consequences.
• Broken rules demand a consequence.
• You are safe inside your mind. No one can reach you there.

4/25/2009 12:37pm

New Moon by Stephenie Meyer

• No one wants a spotlight when they're likely to fall on their face.
• Some people's lives are better because I exist.
• Change was coming. I could feel it. It wasn't a pleasant prospect, not when life was perfect the way it was.
• I saw no reason for fear. I couldn't imagine anything in the world that there was left to be afraid of, not physically at least. One of the few advantages of losing everything.
• It didn't feel like the pain had weakened over time, rather that I'd grown strong enough to bear it.
• He could steal my pictures and reclaim his gifts but that didn't put things back the way they'd been before I'd met him.
• Where was the logic in sticking to an agreement that had already been violated by the other party?
• Love gave someone the power to break you.
• Sometimes...things are set in motion, and then it's too late.
• When people get too excited, accidents happen...
• Once you cared about a person, it was impossible to be logical about them anymore.
• It's not what you are, stupid, it's what you do!
• Love is irrational. The more you loved someone, the less sense anything made.
• How many ways can one heart be mangled and still be expected to keep beating?
• After all the thousand times I've told you I love you, how could you let one word break your faith in me?
• Why can you believe the lie, but not the truth?
• What if you were so stubbornly sure that you were right, that you wouldn't even consider the truth? Would the truth be silenced, or would it try to break through?
• Being angry about things was easier than feeling guilty.

4/2/2009--10:30 PM

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

• When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it's not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end.
• I do a good job of blocking painful, unneccessary things from my memory.
• Sometimes I wondered if I was seeing the same things through my eyes that the rest of the world was seeing through theirs.
• It was hard to believe that someone so beautiful could be real. I was afraid that he might disappear in a sudden puff of smoke, and I would wake up.
• I decided as long as I was going to hell, I might as well do it thoroughly.
• I wasn't going out without taking someone with me.
• If leaving is the right thing to do, then I'll hurt myself to keep from hurting you.
• I like the night. Without the dark, we'd never see the stars.
• I had to keep reminding myself that I'd made my choice, and I wasn't going back on it.
• Even the strongest of us fall off the wagon, don't we?
• There's nothing like an unsolved mystery to keep you up at night.
• Human memories fade.
• The future isn't set in stone. Things change.
• If I could dream at all, it would be about you. And I'm not ashamed of it.
• Isn't it supposed to be like this? The glory of first love, and all that. It's incredible, isn't it, the difference between reading about something, seeing it in the pictures, and experiencing it?
• Just because we've been...dealt a certain hand...it doesn't mean that we can't choose to rise above--to conquer the boundaries of a destiny that none of us wanted.
• Love and lust don't always keep the same company.
• There are exceptions to every rule.
• Memories were better than any reality.
• It's possible to take bravery to the point where it becomes insanity.

3/16/2009 12:24am

The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger

• I tried to forget that this was my life, the reason I'd spent four long years memorizing poems and examining prose, the result of good grades and lots of kissing up.
• I was reasonably sure that I had reached a new moral low--what was worrisome was that I'd sunk to it so naturally.
• I lied quickly, remembering a Cosmo article I'd read that had exhorted me to "keep it light and airy and happy" when talking to a new guy because most "normal" guys didn't respond so well to hard-bitten cynicism.
• Don't talk about yourself too much, don't dominate the conversation, get him comfortable enough to chat about his favorite and most familiar topic: him.
• She loved anyone and anything that didn't love her back, so long as it made her feel alive.
• It was just when it came time to look in the mirror that everyone genuinely saw a wildebeest staring back.
• She's lucky she's got you for a friend. Otherwise she'd be all alone in the world.
• I could only imagine how much Miranda was hating being addressed as "ma'am," which, as everyone knows, connotes old lady all the way.
• If she didn't think you did a great job, she'd have gotten rid of you already.
• FASHION IS NOT FOR ADVERTISING YOUR FAVE SEX ACTS ON YOUR SHIRT.
• Everything would just sort itself out if I just stopped worrying so much.
• Any armchair shrink could easily point out that my outward enthusiasm was meant to overcompensate for all that was lacking inwardly.
• Early morning was always preferred because people's makeup would be fresh and their clothes unwrinkled.
• We hung up on good terms, but I couldn't shake the feeling that my own parents were disappointed in me.

3/10/2009--12:11 a.m.