So I've Heard

On Life

“Listen to the mustn’ts, child. Listen to the don’ts. Listen to the shouldn’ts, the impossibles, the won’ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me… Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”

- Shel Silverstein -

On Life

“Do you want to live a safe life or an authentic one?”

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On Life

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -

On Travel

“I want to be free — free to know people and their backgrounds — free to move to different parts of the world so I may learn that there are other morals and standards besides my own.”

- Sylvia Plath -

On Life

“You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can’t control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.”

- Marcus Aurelius -

On Life

“For me, it was almost like winter didn’t count.  Summer was what mattered. My whole life was measured in summers.”

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On Life

“The most beautiful people to be around are the ones with open minds.  The ones who will tell you that sorrow is just as important as bliss and that at any moment, you can be whoever you want to be and love whoever and whatever you want to love, pain or a certain religion, I sit at bars and linger in coffee shops just to find these kinds of people.  Without knowing it, they are slowly changing the world.”

- Christopher Poindexter -

On Love & Relationships

“He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing.”

- Sherman Alexie -

On Travel

“There is a kind of magicness about going far away and then coming back all changed.” 

- Kate Douglas Wiggins -

On Life

“There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life — happiness, freedom, and peace of mind — are always attained by giving them to someone else.”

- Peyton Conway March -

On Life

“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.”

- Goethe -

On Life

“Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better. Don’t wish for less problems, wish for more skills. Don’t wish for less challenges, wish for more wisdom. The major value in life is not what you get. The major value in life is what you become. Success is not to be pursued; it is to be attracted by the person you become.”

- Jim Rohn -

On Travel

“You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place. Like you’ll not only miss the people you love but you’ll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you’ll never be this way ever again.”

- Azar Nafisi -

On Love & Relationships

“At the end of their relationship she asked if they could still remain friends. His face stayed expressionless until he said ‘No’. Because we put friends in boxes. You see them once in awhile, or even a lot, but still they have their box in your life, their specific place. Their *category.* That’s one of the great things about being someone’s love— you have no box in their life because you’re part of all their boxes. You’re their friend, their lover, their confidante— all those things. I don’t want to be put in one of your boxes and I don’t want to shrink you to fit into one of mine.”

- Jonathan Carroll -

On Love & Relationships

“The world is never saved in grand gestures, but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion; everyday acts of compassion.”

- Chris Abani -

On Life

“I will prove by my life that my critics are liars.”

- Plato -

On Love & Relationships

“Maybe that’s what it all comes down to. Love, not as a surge of passion, but as a choice to commit to something, someone, no matter what obstacles or temptations stand in the way. And maybe making that choice, again and again, day in and day out, year after year, says more about love than never having a choice to make at all.”

- Emily Giffin -

On Life

“Those who do things that count never stop to count them.”

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On Life

“All people dream, but not equally.  Those who dream by night in the dusty recess of their minds wake in the morning to find that it was vanity.  But the dreamers of the day are dangerous people for they dream their dreams with open eyes and make them come true.”

- T.E. Lawrence -

On Words & Books

“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness, I hope you read some fine books, and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art (write or draw or build or sing) as only you can and somewhere in the next year I hope you surprise yourself.”

- Neil Gaiman -

On Life

“Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.”

- Samuel Ullman -