#insightful

That's the big mistake a lot of people make when they wonder how soldiers can put their lives on the line day after day or how they can fight for something they may not believe in. Not everyone does. I've worked with soldiers on all sides of the political spectrum; I've met some who hated the army and others who wanted to make it a career. I've met geniuses and idiots, but when all is said and done,we do what we do for one another. For friendship. Not for country, not for patriotism, not because we're programmed killing machines, but because of the guy next to you. You fight for your friend, to keep him alive, and he fights for you, and everything about the army is built on this simple premise. ↗

— Nicholas Sparks

#friendship

I just looked at the pattern of my life, decided I didn't like it, and changed. ↗

— David Sedaris

#insightful #change

Magic," her mother said, "is a kind of hope. And wishes are like dreams. When we have them, we can make things change. Without, we stay the same. ↗

— Avi

#inspirational #change

Louie found the raft offered an unlikely intellectual refuge. He had never recognized how noisy the civilized world was. Here, drifting in almost total silence, with no scents other than the singed odor of the raft, no flavors on his tongue, nothing moving but the slow porcession of shark fins, every vista empty save water and sky, his time unvaried and unbroken, his mind was freed of an encumbrance that civilization had imposed on it. In his head, he could roam anywhere, and he found that his mind was quick and clear, his imagination unfettered and supple. He could stay with a thought for hours, turning it about. ↗

— Laura Hillenbrand

#inspirational #imagination

I was, but then I realized that I was holding on to something that didn't exist anymore. That the person I missed didn't exist anymore. People change. The things we like and dislike change. And we can wish they couldn't all day long but that never works. ↗

— Sarah Ockler

#insightful #change

Denial does not change reality for everyone else. Only for the one denying and those who are foolish enough to believe the fantasy. ↗

— Elle Casey

#change

A mere redrawing of borders, a change in governments, those things can never faze a Jewess with a good supply of hand wipes in her bag. ↗

— Michael Chabon

#insightful #change

As he drove away, I began to think that what kept us together was perhaps not even our romance with an imaginary France. That was just a veneer, an illusion. Rather, it was our desperate inability to lead ordinary lives with ordinary people anywhere--ordinary loves, ordinary homes, ordinary careers, watching ordinary television, eating ordinary meals, with ordinary friends--even ordinary friends we didn't have, or couldn't keep. ↗

— André Aciman

#home

I have an iron deficiency. You can tell by how wrinkled my clothes are.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#clue #clues #humor #insight #insightful

Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoast than some people imagine. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#imagination