to love is to live

Hi, Amy, it's mom. Well, by the time you see this, I won't be here anymore, and I know how much that sucks, for both of us. So seeing as how I won't be around to thoroughly annoy you, I thought I would give you a little list of the things that I wish for you.

Well, there's the obvious. An education. Family. Friends. And a life that is full of the unexpected. Be sure to make mistakes. Make a lot of them, because there's no better way to learn and to grow, all right? And, um, I want you to spend a lot of time at the ocean, because the ocean forces you to dream, and I insist that you, my girl, be a dreamer.

God. I've never really believed in God. In fact, I've spent a lot of time and energy trying to disprove that God exists. But I hope that you are able to believe in God, because the thing that I've come to realize, sweetheart... is that it just doesn't matter if God exists or not. The important thing is for you to believe in something, because I promise you that that belief will keep you warm at night, and I want you to feel safe always.

And then there's love. I want you to love to the tips of your fingers, and when you find that love, wherever you find it, whoever you choose, don't run away from it. But you don't have to chase after it either. You just be patient, and it'll come to you, I promise, and when you least expect it, like you, like spending the best year of my life with the sweetest and the smartest and the most beautiful baby girl in the world. You don't be afraid, sweetheart. And remember, to love is to live.

- Jen in Dawson's Creek

to miss a friend

I learned a lot from the stories my uncle, aunts, and grandparents told me: that no one is perfect but most people are good; that people can't be judged only by their worst or weakest moments; that harsh judgments can make hypocrites of us all; that a lot of life is just showing up and hanging on; that laughter is often the best, and sometimes the only, response to pain.

- Bill Clinton

if they could come true...

I would love to spend all my time writing to you... I'd love to share with you all that goes through my mind, all that weighs on my heart, all that gives air to my soul... phantoms of art, dreams that would be so beautiful if they could come true...

- Luigi Pirandello

Flame of God

From prayer that asks that I may be
Sheltered from winds that beat on Thee,
From fearing when I should aspire,
From faltering when I should climb higher
From silken self, O Captain, free
Thy soldier who would follow Thee.

From subtle love of softening things,
From easy choices, weakenings,
(Not thus are spirits fortified,
Not this way went the Crucified)
From all that dims Thy Calvary
O Lamb of God, deliver me.

Give me the love that leads the way,
The faith that nothing can dismay
The hope no disappointments tire,
The passion that will burn like fire;
Let me not sink to be a clod;
Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God.

- Amy Wilson Carmichael

what lies ahead

There are moments in our lives when we find ourselves at a crossroads. Afraid. Confused. Without a road map. The choices we make in those moments can define the rest of our days. Of course, when faced with the unknown, most of us prefer to turn around and go back. But once in a while people push on to something better; something found just beyond the pain of going it alone, and just beyond the bravery and courage it takes to let someone in. Or to give someone a second chance. Something beyond the quiet persistence of a dream. Because it's only when you're tested, that you truly discover who you are. And it's only when you're tested, that you discover who you can be.

The person you want to be does exist; somewhere on the other side of hard work and faith and belief, and beyond the heartache and fear of what lies ahead.

- Lucas Scott in One Tree Hill

a force confining

Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul. If either be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas. For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.

- Khalil Gibran

the human road

... And the gods go on inspite of themselves; and the human road stretches out before us; and we walk, like wounded children, waiting for the strength to run.

- Galilee by Clive Barker

the dark and the light

The dark is generous, and it is patient, and it always wins--but in the heart of its strength lies its weakness: one lone candle is enough to hold it back

Love is more than a candle.

Love can ignite the stars.

- Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith by Matthew Woodring Stover

misconception

We are looked upon as deceivers, yet we are true;
As obscure, yet we are known;
As dying, yet behold, we live on;
As chastened, yet not put to death;
As sorrowful, yet ever glad;
As poor, yet enriching many;
As having nothing, and yet possessing all things.

- 2 Corinthians 6:8-10

Prometheus Unbound

The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered fire.

- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

the world is mine

The woman I love... burns with jealousy, leaps to conclusions, cries and turns to ice. But when she laughs, the world is mine.

- Maison Ikkoku

how soon is now

Looking back, I have this to regret, that too often when I loved, I did not say so.

- David Grayson

the path of honor

A craven can be as brave as any man, when there is nothing to fear. And we all do our duty, when there is no cost to it. How easy it seems then to walk the path of honor. Yet soon or late in every man's life comes a day when it is not easy, a day when he must choose.

- A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

neglectful friends

It isn't that I forget. But at a certain point the memory of a person stops accompanying me wherever I go. It stays behind, the way a city stays behind as a train pulls out of the station. It's there, somewhere behind you, and you could go back and make sure of it. But why should you?

- The Reader by Bernhard Schlink (modified quote)

paradise lost

Was there a part of the soul that reached out, somehow, towards possibilities barely missed, futures that would never be, because of such a little distance in a forest at night?

- Flidais in The Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay

i must confess

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them - words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller, but for want of an understanding ear.

- Gordie Lachance in The Body [Different Seasons] by Stephen King

heartsbane

What is a person who moves through his days as he has always moved, who speaks and walks and labours, eats, makes love, sleeps, sometimes even finds access to laughter, but whose heart has been cut out from his living body? Leaving no scar at all to be seen. No wound by which to remember the sliding blade.

- Dianora in Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay

the grace of God

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.

- 1 Corinthians 15:10

the curse of Sisyphus

I fear as I always had, that all that was ever meant was loneliness, hard work, striving to make a difference when no difference could possibly be made.

- Rowan Mayfair in Taltos by Anne Rice

heart and stone

You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men; you are manifestly an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart.

- 2 Corinthians 3:2-3

the anatomy of pain

Pain, you just have to ride it out, hope it goes away on its own, hope the wound that caused it heals. There are no solutions, no easy answers, you just breath deep and wait for it to subside. Most of the time pain can be managed but sometimes the pain gets you where you least expect it. Hits way below the belt and doesn't let up. Pain, you just have to fight through, because the truth is you can't outrun it and life always makes more.

- Meredith Grey in Grey's Anatomy

memory versus recollection

One may be born with the potential for a prodigious memory, but one is not born with a disposition to recollect; this comes only with changes and separations in life – separations from people, from places, from events and situations, especially if they have been of great significance, have been deeply hated or loved...

Discontinuity and nostalgia are most profound if, in growing up, we leave or lose the place where we were born and spent our childhood, if we become expatriates or exiles, if the place, or the life, we were brought up in is changed beyond recognition or destroyed.

- An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks

here and now

If friendship depends on things like space and time, then when we have finally overcome space and time, we've destroyed our brotherhood. Overcome space, and all we have left is here. Overcome time, and all we have left is now. And in the middle of here and now, don't you think that we might see each other once or twice?

- Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach

the way of all flesh

Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months is with Thee, and Thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass...

- Job 14:5

the beauty of words

Did I say that she was beautiful? I was wrong. Beauty is too tame a notion; it evokes only faces in magazines. A lovely eloquence, a calming symmetry; none of that describes this woman's face. So perhaps I should assume I cannot do it justice with words. Suffice it to say that it would break your heart to see her; and it would mend what was broken in the same moment; and you would be twice what you'd been before.

- Edmund Maddox Barbarossa in Galilee by Clive Barker