Random Quotes..

No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes

No one knows what it's like
To be hated
To be fated
To telling only lies

But my dreams
They aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be

I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free


No one knows what it's like
To feel these feelings
Like I do
And I blame you

No one bites back as hard
On their anger
None of my pain and woe
Can show through

But my dreams
They aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be

I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free

When my fist clenches, crack it open
Before I use it and lose my cool
When I smile, tell me some bad news
Before I laugh and act like a fool

If I swallow anything evil
Put your finger down my throat
If I shiver, please give me a blanket
Keep me warm, let me wear your coat

No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes

-Artist: The Who Lyrics
Song: Behind Blue Eyes Lyrics

Jonathan's Obituary(from the movie Serendipity)

Dean: Jonathan Trager, prominent television producer for ESPN, died last night from complications of losing his soul mate and his fiance. He was thirty-five years old. Soft-spoken and obsessive, Trager never looked the part of a hopeless romantic. But in the final days of his life, he revealed an unknown side of his psyche. This hidden quasi-Jungian persona surfaced during the Agatha Christie-like pursuit for his long, reputed soul mate; a woman whom he only spent a few precious hours with. Sadly, the protracted search ended late Saturday night in complete and utter failure. Yet even in certain defeat, the courageous Trager secretly clung to the belief that life is not merely a series of meaningless accidents or coincidences. Uh-uh. But rather, it is a tapestry of events that culminate into an exquisite, sublime plan. Ask about the loss of his dear friend, Dean Kansky, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and executive editor of New York Times, described Jonathan as a changed man in the last days of his life. Things were clearer for him, Kansky noted. Ultimately, Jonathan concluded that if we are to live life in harmony with the universe we must all possess a powerful faith, of what the ancients used to call fatum; what we currently refer to as destiny.
-Marc Klein


So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have you found? The same old fears.
Wish you were here.

~ Pink Floyd

... And I promise to touch you ever so gently, That you'll mistake my caress for a swift breeze born for the simple sake of blowing your troubles away.
You are safe child.
But if pain ever dare threaten the safety of our love,
Then I would grant you wings to lift your spirit above the sky and allow your tears to free fall onto the face of the earth, so that its children begin to believe that the rain comes from an angel crying.
So let it rain, let it rain, let it rain and I will stand a hundred miles beneath you with my hands lifted towards the heavens collecting your teardrops in crystal glasses of wine.
Because I believe that this love potion number nine holds the remedy for time and just one taste would allow me to love you forever...

-Alan Maramag




Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got. Yet today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have been to ballparks for seventeen years and I have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans. Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn't consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure I'm lucky. Who wouldn't have considered it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball's greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I'm lucky. When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat and vice versa, sends you a gift, that's something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in the white coats remember you with trophies, that's something. When you have a father and mother who work all their lives so that you can have an education and build your body, it's a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed, that's the finest I know. So I close by saying that I might have had a bad break, but I have an awful lot to live for. Thank you.

-Lou Gehrig


After so long together, so many words passed between you and him, and all the love you thought there could ever be was shared, you wake up out of this dream only to realize that the hand you reached for every morning is no longer there, as it never will be again. You wonder why God chose you to go through this nightmare, this pain of wanting something you can't have back, and why everything; the love of your life ever said to you was all lies. He's found somebody else, and as your heart is breaking, his is being over taken by her. But remember this, everyone has that one person out there who will love you and cherish you until your dying day, and even though it may not seem true now, that day will come, and you will realize that the man you were once in love with was just a taste of everything to come in this new love, and the feeling of finally knowing you've found that one person will over turn the feeling of pain and suffering, learn to let go, and learn to trust again, for if you live your life in wonder, thats wasted time of what could be passion, and happiness, and if that happiness is wasted, it's a moment never to be givin back. Love life and live it to the fullest.

-Shalindali Routh

Wherever life takes you, big cities, small towns you will inevitably come across small minds. People who think they are better than you are. People who think that material things or being pretty or popular makes you a worthwhile human being. But none of these things matter unless you have a strength of character, integrity, sense of pride. And if you have these things, don't ever sell them. Don't ever sell out. So when you meet a person for the first time, please don't judge them by their station in life. Because who knows, that person just might end up being your best friend.
-Dawson’s creek


A couple of hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin shared with the world the secret of his success. Never leave that till tomorrow, he said, which you can do today. This is the man who discovered electricity. You think more people would listen to what he had to say. I don't know why we put things off, but if I had to guess, I'd have to say it has a lot to do with fear. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, sometimes the fear is just of making a decision, because what if you're wrong? What if you're making a mistake you can't undo? The early bird catches the worm. A stitch in time saves nine. He who hesitates is lost. We can't pretend we hadn't been told. We've all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning us about wasted time, heard the damn poets urging us to seize the day. Still sometimes we have to see for ourselves. We have to make our own mistakes. We have to learn our own lessons. We have to sweep today's possibility under tomorrow's rug until we can't anymore. Until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin really meant. That knowing is better than wondering, that waking is better than sleeping, and even the biggest failure, even the worst, beat the hell out of never trying.
Meredith Grey--Grey's Anatomy

Phoebe: If you buy a mattress from Janice's ex-husband, isn't that like betraying Chandler?
Monica: Not at these prices!


Rachel: Oh honey, please, no, I can't get started with all that Ross stuff again. I mean he's going to be screwed up for a long time. And besides, you know, I don't go for guys right after they get divorced.
Monica: Right, you only go for them 5 minutes before they get married.


Chandler: All right, let's get some perspective here, ok? These things, they happen for a reason.
Monica: Yeah. You!
Chandler: All right, Pheebs, back me up here, ok? You believe in that karma crap, don't you?
Phoebe: Yeah, by the way, good luck in your next life as a dung beetle.
-Friends

I sit here in the dark and stare up at the sky,
But I can't give my heart one good reason why.
Everywhere I look it's lovers that I see.
It seems like everyone's in love with everyone but me.
I guess I must be wishing on someone else's star.
It seems like someone else keeps gettin what I'm wishing for.
Why can't I be as lucky as those other people are?
I guess I must be wishing, on someone else's star.
Bryan White

Nickolas:You dont have to worry about your emotions they're either black and white
Lucky: Well you either love Emily or you love Courtney
Nickolas:There you go,black and white. You just want me to be with Emily
Lucky:Nickolas, I want you to be happy. What gets you there is up to you.
-Lucky To Nickolas on General Hospital

Sometimes it's important to work for that pot of gold. But other times it's essential to take time off and to make sure that your most important decision in the day simply consists of choosing which color to slide down on the rainbow.
Douglas Pagels
from These Are the Gifts I'd Like to Give to You

Always obey and follow the guidelines set before you, but always follow your heart too, because without that, you have nothing! It is your eternal guide, it is what will lead you to salvation! If that is how you feel and that is what you believe - then that is how you will be judged... in the eye's of God! If you feel it's wrong, then don't do it. Always do what's best, and what you feel is the right thing to do. One of my favorite quotes is "stand up for what you believe in, even if that means standing alone" Remember this earth was created for both you and me!
-Robert William Black

A hundred days have made me older
Since the last time that i saw your pretty face
A thousand lies have made me colder
And i don't think i can look at this the same
But all these miles that seperate
Disappear now when i'm dreaming of your face

I'm here without you baby
But you're still on my lonely mind
I think about you baby
And i dream about you all the time
I'm here without you baby
But you're still with me in my dreams
And tonight it's only you and me
-Here Without You - 3 Doors Down

That's neither here nor there. Anyway, I saw this widow and she's a wreck. She has just lost the person she loved the most in this world and I realised we're all going to lose the people we love. That's how it is, but not me. Not now. Because the person *I* love the most is standing right here and I'm not ready to lose you yet. Claire, I'm not standing here asking you to marry me, I'm just asking you not to marry *him* and maybe take a walk, take a chance.
-wedding crashers


As Gandhi stepped aboard a train one day, one of his shoes slipped off and landed on the track. He was unable to retrieve it as the train was moving. To the amazement of his companions, Gandhi calmly took off his other shoe and threw it back along the track to land close to the first. Asked by a fellow passenger why he did so, Gandhi smiled. "the poor man who finds the shoe lying on the track," he replied, "will now have a pair he can use.
Author unknown. First quoted in The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes.

There are 82 letters in here, and they're all addressed to you. I wrote them all this summer, one a day, but I never sent them because I was afraid. I was afraid of getting my heart broken again, like before, because it hurt so bad and I was afraid to be vulnerable and I was afraid of you and the way you make me feel - and I know that doesn't matter now after what I did, I just thought that you should know. This is how I spent my summer - wanting you. I was just too scared to admit it.
One Tree Hill - Brooke Davis

Somewhere out there is the man you're supposed to marry and if you don't get him first, somebody else will...and then, you'll have to spend the rest of your life thinking that somebody else is married to your husband.
When Harry Met Sally


But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield.
As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard.
This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.
Lao-Tzu

My Dearest Allie. I couldn't sleep last night because I know that it's over between us. I'm not bitter any more, because I know that what we had was real. And if in some distant place in the future we see each other in our new lives, I'll smile at you with joy and remember how we spent the summer beneath the trees, learning from each other and growing in love. The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds, and that's what you've given me. That's what I hope to give to you forever. I love you. I'll be seeing you. Noah
The Notebook

Most of you have been where I am tonight. The crash site of unrequited love. You ask yourself, How did I get here? What was it about? Was it her smile? Was it the way she crossed her legs, the turn of her ankle, the poignant vulnerability of her slender wrists? What are these elusive and ephemeral things that ignite passion in the human heart? That's an age-old question. It's perfect food for thought on a bright midsummer's night.


-Martin Sage and Sybil Adelman



You know how when you were a little kid and you believed in fairy tales, that fantasy of what your life would be, white dress, prince charming who would carry you away to a castle on a hill. You would lie in bed at night and close your eyes and you had complete and utter faith. Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, Prince Charming, they were so close you could taste them, but eventually you grow up, one day you open your eyes and the fairy tale disappears. Most people turn to the things and people they can trust. But the thing is its hard to let go of that fairy tale entirely cause almost everyone has that smallest bit of hope, of faith, that one day they will open their eyes and it will come true.


Meredith Grey-Grey's Anatomy

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. And, I want you to spend a lot of time at the ocean, because the ocean forces you to dream, and I insist that you 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, 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. Don't be afraid. And remember, to love is to live.


Jen from Dawson's Creek (DT)

I went down that river when I was a kid. There's a place in the river.. I can't remember... Must have been a gardenia plantation at one time. All wild and overgrown now, but about five miles you'd think that heaven just fell on the earth in the form of gardenias...
Have you ever considered any real freedoms ? Freedoms - from the opinions of others... Even the opinions of yourself.


Marlon Brandon in Apocalypse now


When you come to the edge of all the light you have known, and are about to step out into darkness, Faith is knowing one of two things will happen; There will be something to stand on, or you will be taught to fly.


Richard Bach -Jonathan Livingston Seagull

I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me...
but it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm
seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life.
You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure... but don't worry...You will someday.

-Kevin Spacey in American Beauty

Travel Quotes

‘There’s no place like home… There’s no place like home ‘, and while I don’t have to keep repeating it like Dorothy did in the Wizard of Oz.. I know that the lines are true…nonetheless here are some travel quotes that I’ve found interesting, some even ring true…. …

"Travel is the realm of the improbable adventure, the quick fix, the ship passing in the night. It entitles you to meet interesting people, whom you would never meet, even if you laid traps or advertised for them. Not only do you meet them, but also unmeet them, all in the space of, it often seems, a mere compacted evening. As there is so little time, bodies in motion drop their guard and immediatly get on with their stories. Then the proverbial ships part, each to its destination, never again to brush each other's wake."
- Lawrence Millman, "Last Places”

". . . I am going away with him to an unknown country where I shall have no past and no name, and where I shall be born again with a new face and an untried heart."
- Colette

"Stripped of your ordinary surroundings, your friends, your daily routines, your refrigerator full of food, your closet full of clothes - with all this taken away, you are forced into direct experience. Such direct experience inevitably makes you aware of who it is that is having the experience. That's not always comfortable, but it is always invigorating."
- Michael Crichton


"Internal burning . . . wandering fever . . ."
- Kalevala

"If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things."
- Henry Miller


"Eat dessert first
Life is uncertain"
- Anonymous

". . .life is short and the world is wide"
- Simon Raven

"When I was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. . . In other words, I don't improve, in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable."
- John Steinbeck

"Traveling is like flirting with life. It's like saying, 'I would stay and love you, but I have to go; this is my station.'"
- Lisa St. Aubin de Teran

"To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world."
- Freya Stark


"Traveling carries with it the curse of being at home everywhere and yet nowhere, for wherever one is some part of oneself remains on another continent."
- Margot Fonteyn

"A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to find it."
- George Moore 1852-1933: the Brook Kerith

"All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it."
- Samuel Johnson

"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost"
- J. R. R. Tolkien "Lord of the Rings"


"All the above is, of course, a gross simplification. There are deeper reasons to travel - itches and tickles on the underbelly of the unconscious mind. We go where we need to go, and then try to figure out what we're doing there."
- Jeff Greenwald "Shopping for Buddhas"

"There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign."
- Robert Louis Stevenson

"The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready. "
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

"Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going."
- Paul Theroux



"Muhammad says, 'Love of one's country is a part of the faith.'
But don't take that literally! Your real 'country' is where you're heading, not where you are.
Don't misread that hadith."
- Rumi

"Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest."
- The late modernist painter Georgia O'Keeffe, in an introduction to her work displayed on a newly opened museum dedicated to her art in New Mexico.

"Your true traveler finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty-his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure."
- Aldous Huxley

"Sailing round the world in a dirty gondola oh, to be back in the land of Coca-Cola!"
- Bob Dylan

"Travel at its truest is thus an ironic experience, and the best travelers . . . seem to be those able to hold two or three inconsistent ideas in their minds at the same time, or able to regard themselves as at once serious persons and clowns."
- Paul Fussel

"If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears."
- Glenn Clark

". . .If people and their manner of living were alike everywhere, there would not be much point in moving from one place to another."
- Paul Bowles

"A study of the Great Malady; horror of home."
- Baudelair, Journaux Intimes

"Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe."
- Anatole France

"When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don't know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in. . ."
- D. H. Lawrence

". . .the grand tour is just the inspired man's way of heading home."
- Paul Theroux

"To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries."
- Aldous Huxley


". . .travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living."
- Miriam Beard

"I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine."
- Caskie Stinnett

"Better far off to leave half the ruins and nine-tenths of the churches unseen and to see well the rest; to see them not once, but again and often again; to watch them, to learn them, to live with them, to love them, till they have become a part of life and life's recollections."
- Augustus Hare

"We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment."
- Hilaire Belloc

"When you are everywhere, you are nowhere.
When you are somewhere, you are everywhere."
- Rumi

"Spirit of place! It is for this we travel, to surprise its subtlety; and where it is a strong and dominant angel, that place, seen once, abides entire in the memory with all its own accidents, its habits, its breath, its name."
- Alice Meynell

"Old men and far travelers may lie with authority."
- Anonymous

"That same preface also contains a single line that really does sum everything up: 'Some other places were not so good but maybe we were not so good when we were in them.'"
- Jeff Greenwald - Big World dispatch #20


"He gave the impression that very many cities had rubbed him smooth."
- Graham Greene

"A good traveler has no fixed plan and is not intent on arriving."
- Lao Tzu

"Trust in Allah, but tie your camel."
- Old Muslim Proverb

"A good holiday is one that is spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours."
- J. B. Priestley

"There are only three things which make life worth living: to be writing a tolerably good book, to be in a dinner party of six, and to be travelling south with someone whom your conscience permits you to love."
- Cyril Connolly

"What you've done becomes the judge of what you're going to do -- especially in other people's minds. When you're traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road."
- William Least Heat Moon, Blue Highways
"The journey not the arrival matters."
- T.S. Eliot

"Travelling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things - air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it."
- Cesare Pavese

"The border means more than a customs house, a passport officer, a man with a gun. Over there everything is going to be different; life is never going to be quite the same again after your passport has been stamped."
- Graham Greene

"To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive."
- Robert Louis Stevenson

"Remember that happiness is a way of travel - not a destination."
- Roy M. Goodman

"Once in a while it really hits people that they don't have to experience the world in the way they have been told to."
- Alan Keightley

"Every exit is an entry somewhere else."
- Tom Stoppard

"The fastest way to travel is to be there already."
- Terry Pratchett

"It is not down in any map; true places never are."
- Herman Melville

"The first experience can never be repeated. The first love, the first sun-rise, the first South Sea Island, are memories apart, and touched a virginity of sense."
- Robert Louis Stevenson

"Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will-whatever we may think."
- Lawrence Durrell

"Is there anything as horrible as starting on a trip? Once you're off, that's all right, but the last moments are earthquake and convulsion, and the feeling that you are a snail being pulled off your rock."
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

". . .Destination is merely a byproduct of the journey."
- Eric Hansen

"Too often. . .I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen."
- Louis L'Amour

"What am I doing here?"
- Rimbaud writing home from Ethiopia

"All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware."
- Martin Buber

"It is almost axiomatic that the worst trains take you through magical places."
- Paul Theroux

"One of the gladdest moments of human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of habit, the leaden weight of routine, the cloak of many cares and the slavery of home, man feels once more happy."
- Sir Richard Burton

". . .I have learned that the cost of everything from a royal suite to a bottle of soda water can be halved by the simple expedient of saying it must be halved."
- Robert Byron, on bargaining in the Middle East, The Road to Oxiana, 1933

"People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home."
- Dagobert D. Runes, US writer

"We are a plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner! I can't think what anybody sees in them!"
- Bilbo to Gandalf on their first meeting

"Here I am, safely returned over those peaks from a journey far more beautiful and strange than anything I had hoped for or imagined - how is it that this safe return brings such regret?"
- Peter Matthiessen

"It is a strange thing to come home. While yet on the journey, you cannot at all realize how strange it will be."
- Selma Lagerlof

"It may be that the satisfaction I need depends on my going away, so that when I've gone and come back, I'll find it at home."
- Rumi

"If there is anything worse than the aching tedium of staring out of car windows, it is the irritation of getting tickets, packing, finding trains, lying in bouncing berths, washing without water, digging out passports, and fighting through customs. To live in Carlsbad is seemly and to loaf at San Remo healing to the soul, but to get from Carlsbad to San Remo is of the devil."
- Sinclair Lewis on the toil of travel

"An involuntary return to the point of departure is, without doubt, the most disturbing of all journeys."
- Iain Sinclair

"The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
Let others follow it who can!
Let them a journey new begin,
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet."
- J.R.R Tolkien

"The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land;
it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land."
- G. K. Chesterton

"I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world."
- Mary Anne Radmacher Hershey

"One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it's left behind."
- Charles Dickens


"Travel is the most private of pleasures. There is no greater bore than the travel bore. We do not in the least want to hear what he has seen in Hong-Kong."
- Vita Sackville-West

". . .the understatement, the self-ridicule, the delight in the foreignness of foreigners, the complete denial of any attempt to enlist the sympathies of his readers in the hardships he has capriciously invited."
- Evelyn Waugh, on the properties of a good travel writer (speaking of Eric Newby)

"We found in the course of our journey the convenience of having disencumbered ourselves, by laying aside whatever we could spare; for it is not to be imagined without experience, how in climbing crags and treading bogs, and winding through narrow and obstructed passages, a little bulk will hinder, and a little weight will burden; or how often a man that has pleased himself at home with his own resolution, will, in the hour of darkness and fatigue, be content to leave behind him everything but himself."
- Samuel Johnson, on packing for travel

"These spiritual windowshoppers,
who idly ask, 'How much is that?' Oh, I'm just looking.
They handle a hundred items and put them down,
shadows with no capital.
What is spent is love and two eyes wet with weeping.
But these walk into a shop,
and their whole lives pass suddenly in that moment,
in that shop.
Where did you go? 'Nowhere.'
What did you have to eat? 'Nothing much.'
Even if you don't know what you want,
buy something, to be part of the exchanging flow.
Start a huge, foolish project,
like Noah.
It makes absolutely no difference
what people think of you."
- Rumi

"A year to go around the world! A whole twelve months of scenes and curious happenings in far-off foreign lands! You have thought of doing this, almost promised yourself that when you got old enough, and rich enough, and could "spare the time," you too would go around the world. Most of us get old enough; some of us get rich enough; but the time! the time! - to spare the time, to cut loose from goods and lands, from stocks and dreary desks, quit clients, patients, readers, home and friends - ay, and our enemies whom we so dearly love! Full many a promise must be broken and few the voyagers round the world."
- D.N. Richardson, "A Girdle Round the Earth", 1888

"In the old days, people used to risk their lives in India or in the Americas in order to bring back products which now seem to us to have been of comically little worth, such as [brazilwood and pepper, which] added a new range of sense experience to a civilization which had never suspected its own insipidity. . .[From] these same lands our modern Marco Polos now bring back the moral spices of which our society feels an increasing need as it is conscious of sinking further into boredom, but that this time they take the form of photographs, books, and travelers tales."
- Claude Levi-Strauss on the motivation of travel


"Back home in the Wild West, time whips by with the relentless and terrible purpose of a stranglevine vine filmed in fast motion. A week, two months, ten years snap past like amnesia, a continual barrage of workdays, appointments, dinner dates and laundromats, television shows and video cassettes, parking meters, paydays and phone calls.
You can watch it from Asia. You read the newspapers, you think about your friends back home - marching along in the parade of events - and you know it's still happening. It's happening there. On the other side. Yesterdays, todays and tomorrows are tumbling after each other like Sambo and the tiger, blending into an opaque and viscous ooze. There is no such thing as now; only a continual succession of laters, whipping their tendrils around the calendar. The clutches of the vine. . .
In Nepal, the phenomenon is reversed. Time is a stick of incense that burns without being consumed. One day can seem like a week; a week, like months. Mornings stretch out and crack their spines with the yogic impassivity of house cats. Afternoons bulge with a succulent ripeness, like fat peaches. There is time enough to do everything - write a letter, eat breakfast, read the paper, visit a shrine or two, listen to the birds, bicycle downtown to change money, buy postcards, shop for Buddhas - and arrive home in time for lunch."
- Jeff Greenwald "Shopping for Buddhas"

"[The traveler] may feel assured, he will meet with no difficulties or dangers, excepting in rare cases, nearly so bad as he beforehand anticipates. In a moral point of view, the effect ought to be, to teach him good-humored patience, freedom from selfishness, the habit of acting for himself, and of making the best of every occurrence. . . Traveling ought also to teach him distrust; but at the same time he will discover, how many truly kind-hearted people there are, with whom he never before had, or ever again will have any further communication, who yet are ready to offer him the most disinterested assistance."
- Charles Darwin

"Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living."
- Miriam Beard

"Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life."
- Jack Kerouac

"The autumn leaves are falling like rain,
Although my neighbors are all barbarians,
And you, you are a thousand miles away,
There are always two cups at my table"
- T'ang Dynasty

"Travel, instead of broadening the mind, often merely lengthens the conversation."
- Elizabeth Drew

"Own only what you can carry with you; know language, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag."
- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

"The map is not the territory."
- Alfred Korzybski

"Travel is glamorous only in retrospect."
- Paul Theroux

"If you come to a fork in the road, take it."
- Yogi Berra

"It is no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase 'as pretty as an airport' exist."
- Douglas Adams, "Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul"

"He won't fly on the Balinese airline, Garuda, because he won't fly on any airline where the pilots believe in reincarnation."
- Spalding Gray

". . . people don't take trips--trips take people."
- John Steinbeck

"I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list."
- Susan Sontag


"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance."
- Anonymous

"Most travel is best of all in the anticipation or the remembering; the reality has more to do with losing your luggage."
- Regina Nadelson

"I think that wherever your journey takes you, there are new gods waiting there, with divine patience -- and laughter."
- Susan M. Watkins


"There is no such thing as 'the Queen's English'. The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!"
- Mark Twain, on English

"Travel - to go, move or journey from one place to another."
- Anonymous



By the time we are, in our superior wisdom, decided to make a start, we discover that those who have gone fearlessly on before, have, in their blundering way, traveled a considerable distance. If you start now, you will know a lot next year that you don't know now, and that you will not know next year, if you wait. The William Feather Magazine.

A traveller without observation is a bird without wings. Moslih Eddin Saadi (1184-1291)

A wise traveler never despises his own country. Carlo Goldoni.

When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable. Clifton Fadiman.


Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.
* Bertrand Russell



"It's a battered old suitcase and a hotel someplace and a wound that will never heal."
(Tom Waits)

"No one speaks English and everything is broken."
(Tom Waits)

"I love to travel, But hate to arrive."
(Albert Einstein)



"Don't tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you traveled."
(Mohammed)


"Travel is the frivolous part of serious lives, and the serious part of frivolous ones."
(Anne Sophie Swetchine)


"If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel."
(Will Kommen)


"It is solved by walking."
((Algerian Proverb))

"Bizarre travel plans are dancing lessons from God."
(Kurt Vonnegut)



How beautiful it is to do nothing and then rest afterwards. Spanish Proverb
The further one goes the less one knows- Lao-tzu (sixth century BC)

I love to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts. Heman Melville

It's a death trap it's a suicide rap We gotta get out while we're young `Cause tramps like us baby we were born to run -Bruce Springsteen



Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore Andre Gide

The people here are bound to think this is the best place, or they wouldn't be here, would they? William Sutcliffe

A ship in harbor is safe -- but that is not what ships are for." --John A. Shedd

Let your heart guide you. It whispers so listen closely. -- The Land Before Time

A guest never forgets the host who had treated him kindly. Homer

Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time -Stephen Wright

Heroes take journeys confront dragons and discover the treasure of their true selves -Carol Pearson

I'd rather wake up in the middle of nowhere than in any city on earth. Steve McQueen

If an ass goes travelling he will not come home a horse Thomas Fuller

It was kind of solemn drifting down the big still river laying on our backs looking up at stars and we didn't even feel like talking aloud Mark Twain

Love has given me wings so I must fly. -- A Knight's Tale

NOT I NOT ANYONE else can travel that road for you You must travel it for yourself. Walt Whitman

O public road I say back I am not afraid to leave you yet I love you you express me better than I can express myself Walt Whitman

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry but by demonstrating that all peoples cry laugh eat worry and die it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other we may even become friends. Maya Angelou

Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough. Charles Dudley Warner

The only journey is the one within. Rainer Maria Rilke

The universe is a big place perhaps the biggest. Kurt Vonnegut

Travel has a way of stretching the mind. The stretch comes not from travel's immediate rewards the inevitable myriad new sights smells and sounds but with experiencing firsthand how others do differently what we believed to be the right and only way -Ralph Crawshaw


We don't go anywhere. Going somewhere is for squares. We just go! -Marlon Brando The Wild One (1954)

We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time T. S. Elliot
What we do in life echoes in eternity. -- Gladiator


Travel and society polish one, but a rolling stone gathers no moss, and a little moss is a good thing on a man.
- John Burroughs

To roam giddily, and be everywhere but at home, such freedom doth a banishment become.
- Dr. John Donne



Traveling makes men wiser, but less happy.
- Thomas Jefferson


We've traveled too far, and our momentum has taken over; we move idly towards eternity, without possibility of reprieve or hope of explanation.
- Tom Stoppard

From my desktop....

I’m cleaning up my office space in college, and deleting assignments , photos and other files from the computer I’ve used for past two years.. I found these quotes that I intended to post previously, but somehow didn’t ….

There is a dream dreaming us. -- A Kalahari Bushman, as quoted by Joseph Campbell

Did I do anything wrong today, or has the world always been like this and I've been too wrapped up in myself to notice?
—Arthur Dent (Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.
—Douglas Adams

I had that sense of recognition . . . here was something which I had known all my life, only I didn't know it . . . . -- Ralph Vaughan Williams

The trouble with the future is that it keeps becoming the present. -- "Calvin and Hobbes"

Why be normal? -- Bumper sticker

I'd rather be reading! -- Bumper sticker

Do not think you are on the right road just because it is a well-beaten path. -- Unknown

If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience. -- Woodrow Wilson

It was so cold I almost got married. -- Shelley Winters, American actress

Happy New Year

“Another fresh new year is here . . .
Another year to live!
To banish worry, doubt, and fear,
To love and laugh and give!

This bright new year is given me
To live each day with zest . . .
To daily grow and try to be
My highest and my best!

I have the opportunity
Once more to right some wrongs,
To pray for peace, to plant a tree,
And sing more joyful songs!”
William Arthur Ward


“Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.”
Oprah Winfrey

“New Year's eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted; and yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that come with the coming of darkness on other nights”
Hamilton Wright Mabie


“Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson

“We meet today
To thank Thee for the era done,
And Thee for the opening one”
John Greenleaf Whittier

“New year, same goal.”
Joe King

What’s in a Name?. . . . . . . . . . . . .Complete Speaker’s Almanac, p. 22
"Here we are in a month named after the Roman god Janus, an appropriate personification of the start of the new year. This particular Roman god had two faces so that he could look ahead toward the future and back at the past at the same time. As we get rid of an old year and look forward to a new one, we all try to be a little like Janus. We know through experience what we did wrong and what we did right, and hope to do better this year. Some people make ambitious new year’s resolutions; others just take a deep breath and hope for the best.…"


"A Morning Wish". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . W.R. Hunt
"The sun is just rising on the morning of another day, the first day of the new year. What can I wish that this day, that this year, may bring to me?
Nothing that shall make the world of others poorer, nothing at the expense of others; but just those few things which in their coming do not stop with me but touch me rather, as they pass and gather strength:
• A few friends who understand me, and yet remain my friends.
• A work to do which has real value without which the world would feel the poorer.
• A return for such work small enough not to tax unduly anyone who pays.
• A mind unafraid to travel, even though the trail be not blazed.
• An understanding heart.
• A sight of the eternal hills and unbelting sea, and of something beautiful the individual hand has made.
• A sense of humor and the power to laugh.
• A little leisure with nothing to do.
• A few moments of quiet, silent meditation. The sense of the presence of God.
• And the patience to wait for the coming of these things, with the wisdom to know them when they come."
Guide words: An Anthology of Inspiration and Humor, p. 13


Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunder-storm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols. - Thomas Mann


Harry Burns: I love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.
-When Harry met Sally

I do think New Year's resolutions can't technically be expected to begin on New Year's Day, don't you? Since, because it's an extension of New Year's Eve, smokers are already on a smoking roll and cannot be expected to stop abruptly on the stroke of midnight with so much nicotine in the system. Also dieting on New Year's Day isn't a good idea as you can't eat rationally but really need to be free to consume whatever is necessary, moment by moment, in order to ease your hangover. I think it would be much more sensible if resolutions began generally on January the second. ~Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones's Diary

Neil Gaiman quotes

“I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing.”

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”


“You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.”

“But he did not understand the price. Mortals never do. They only see the prize. Their hearts desire, their dream....But the price of getting what you want is getting what you once wanted.”

“Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and adventures are the shadow truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes and forgotten”

“Is the chemical aftertaste the reason why people eat hot dogs, or is it some kind of bonus?”

Lives are snowflakes - forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'd mistake one for another, after a minute's close in”

“This is a work of fiction. All the characters in it, human and otherwise, are imaginary, excepting only certain of the fairy folk, whom it might be unwise to offend by casting doubts on their existence. Or lack thereof.”

“It was a dark and stormy nightmare”

“I'll come to you tonight, dear, when it's late,
You will not see me; you may feel a chill.
I'll wait until you sleep, then take my fill,
And that will be your future on a plate.
They'll call it chance, or luck, or call it Fate.”

Life - and I don't suppose I'm the first to make this comparison - is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal.

People kill what they fear. They burned, and drowned, and hanged those they saw as witches, the devil's servants: the wise women and the cunning men, the unfortunate, the lost and the strange

"-People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes."

A life less ordinary..

....In a short story by Jhumpa Lahiri, this reality is summed up succinctly. In the story, we read the words of an Indian who had come to Boston as a young man on the day the Americans first landed on the moon:

"While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly 30 years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination."



"If it can be allowed that the passport is a kind of book, then the immigration officer, holding a passport in his hand, is also a reader. Like someone in a library or even, in the course of a pleasant afternoon, on a bench beneath a tree. Under the fluorescent lights, he reads the entries made in an unfamiliar hand under categories that are all too familiar. He examines the seals, the stamps, and the signatures on them.
He looks up. He reads the immigrant's responses to his questions, the clothes, the accent. The officer's eyes return to the passport. He appears to be reading it more carefully. He frowns. Suddenly he turns around and tries to catch a colleague's eye. It is nothing, he wants more coffee.
You notice all this if you are an immigrant ..."

Passport Photos, Amitava Kumar

The Unknown Errors of Our Lives

"The Unknown Errors of Our Lives"
-Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
………. It would have been the worst error of her life, and she wouldn't even have known it. It saddens her to think of all the errors people make (she has been musing over such things lately)--the unknown errors of their lives, the ones they can never put down in a book and are therefore doomed to repeat………

Another quote compilation.... WooHooo!!!

It’s been a while since I posted some quotes …. Long one..hope you find some you like .

"May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house."
- George Carlin

A man said to the Universe: "Sir, I exist!" "However," replied the Universe, "the fact has not created in me a sense of obligation."
- Stephen Crane

When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.
- Woody Allen

I have the world's largest collection of seashells. I keep it on all the beaches of the world... perhaps you've seen it?


I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.
- Kahlil Gibran

Better keep yourself clear and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.
- George Bernard Shaw

I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
- Etienne de Grellet

"The darker the night, the brighter the stars."
- Vasily Rozanov

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.
- Helen Keller

"Do you know a cure for me?"
"Why yes," he said, "I know a cure for everything. Salt water."
"Salt water?" I asked him.
"Yes," he said, "In one form or another; sweat, tears or the salt sea."
- Isak Dinesen


KAHLIL GIBRAN
Seven times have I despised my soul:
The first time when I saw her being meek
that she might attain height.
The second time when I saw her
limping before the crippled.
The third time when she was given to choose
between the hard and the easy, and she chose the easy.
The fourth time when she committed a wrong,
and comforted herself that others, also commit wrong.
The fifth time when she forbore for weakness,
and attributed her patience to strength.
The sixth time when she despised the ugliness of a face,
and knew not that it was one of her own masks.
And the seventh time when she sang a song of praise,
and deemed it a virtue

ON THE STEPS OF THE TEMPLE

Yester-eve, on the marble steps of the Temple, I saw a woman sitting
between two men. One side of her face was pale, the other was
blushing.

FACES

I have seen a face with a thousand countenances, and a face that
was but a single countenance as if held in a mould.

I have seen a face whose sheen I could look through to the ugliness
beneath, and a face whose sheen I had to lift to see how beautiful
it was.

I have seen an old face much lined with nothing, and a smooth face
in which all things were graven.

I know faces, because I look through the fabric my own eye weaves,
and behold the reality beneath.

"THE PERFECT WORLD"

God of lost souls, thou who are lost amongst the gods, hear me:

Gentle Destiny that watchest over us, mad, wandering spirits, hear
me:

I dwell in the midst of a perfect race, I the most imperfect.

I, a human chaos, a nebula of confused elements, I move amongst
finished worlds--peoples of complete laws and pure order, whose
thoughts are assorted, whose dreams are arranged, and whose visions
are enrolled and registered.

Their virtues, O God, are measured, their sins are weighed, and
even the countless things that pass in the dim twilight of neither
sin nor virtue are recorded and catalogued.

Here days and night are divided into seasons of conduct and governed
by rules of blameless accuracy.

To eat, to drink, to sleep, to cover one's nudity, and then to be
weary in due time.

To work, to play, to sing, to dance, and then to lie still when
the clock strikes the hour.

To think thus, to feel thus much, and then to cease thinking and
feeling when a certain star rises above yonder horizon.

To rob a neighbour with a smile, to bestow gifts with a graceful
wave of the hand, to praise prudently, to blame cautiously, to
destroy a sound with a word, to burn a body with a breath, and then
to wash the hands when the day's work is done.

To love according to an established order, to entertain one's best
self in a preconceived manner, to worship the gods becomingly,
to intrigue the devils artfully--and then to forget all as though
memory were dead.

To fancy with a motive, to contemplate with consideration, to be
happy sweetly, to suffer nobly--and then to empty the cup so that
tomorrow may fill it again.

All these things, O God, are conceived with forethought, born with
determination, nursed with exactness, governed by rules, directed
by reason, and then slain and buried after a prescribed method.
And even their silent graves that lie within the human soul are
marked and numbered.

It is a perfect world, a world of consummate excellence, a world of
supreme wonders, the ripest fruit in God's garden, the master-thought
of the universe.

But why should I be here, O God, I a green seed of unfulfilled
passion, a mad tempest that seeketh neither east nor west, a
bewildered fragment from a burnt planet?

Why am I here, O God of lost souls, thou who art lost amongst the gods?



If you want to feel rich, just count all of the things you have that money can't buy.
- Anon

The edge of the world does not look far away, to that I am on my way running.
- Papago Indian song for a young girl

"All of the people I could be, they got fewer and fewer until finally they got reduced to only one — and that's who I am. The weather man."
- David in "The Weatherman"

I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe.
- Marcus Cole , "Babylon 5 "

"Who am I? I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all that I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am everything that happens after I've gone that would not have happened if I had not come.... to understand me you must swallow a world."
- Salman Rushdie, "Midnight's Children"

Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
- Saul Bellow

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
- Oscar Wilde, "The Portrait of Mr. W.H."

Two often mentioned motivations for travels are to see another world and to disappear. In that sense, a journey in the footsteps of someone who disappeared in search of another world was the perfect journey.
- Nicholas Jubber, "The Prester Quest"

One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don't come home at night.
- Margaret Mead

"The people you care about you never really say goodbye to."
- MTV's "The Real World"

Basically, I have this theory that there are five kinds of truth. There is the truth you tell to casual strangers and acquaintances. There is the truth you tell to your general circle of friends and family members. There is the truth you tell to only one or two people in your entire life. There is the truth you tell to yourself. And finally, there is the truth that you do not admit even to yourself.
- JMS's Theory Of The Five Truths

Nine-tenths of the people were created so you would want to be with the other tenth.
- Horace Walpole

Those of you who think that you know everything are particularly annoying to those of us who do.
- Anon

Once I dreamed I was a butterful, and now I no longer know whether I am Chuang Tzu, who dreamed I was a butterfly, or whether I am a butterful dreaming that I am Chuang Tzu.
- Chuang Tzu


The trouble with being a young female is that you have to sound like Hermione Grainger in the classroom and look like Beyonce on a night out. This standard of perfection is so excessiev that it's taking a terrible toll.
- Medb Ruane, "The Irish Independent"

I’ve never liked the Valentine’s Day holiday. Our culture celebrates romantic love morning, noon, and night 364 days a year – and then sets aside one special day every February to really rub the lovelesses’ noses in it. Not so nice. So: if you are lucky enough to have a sweetheart, of course you must kiss her (or him) today. But if you want to do a good deed, give a thought to the many lonely people around you: the divorced, the widowed, the unlucky – and maybe, if you have a spare dollar or two, you might want to send a small anonymous bouquet to one of them. Oh – and send it to the office, where everybody can see.
- David Frum

"Why am I always at, uh, weddings, and never actually getting married, now?"
"It's probably 'cause you're a bit scruffy. Or it could also be 'cause you haven't met the right girl."
"Ah, but you see, is that it? Maybe I have met the right girls. Maybe I meet the right girls all the time. Maybe it's me. "
- "Four Weddings & A Funeral

"I'm quite certain that to to make you happy, look after you, and keep you safe is the purpose of my life."
- Jerry Burton, second-time lucky with the girl of his dreams, "Miss Marple: The Moving Finger"

"You make me want to be a better man."
"That's maybe the best compliment of my life."
"Well maybe I overshot a little, because I was aiming at just enough to keep you from walking out. "
- Melvin Udall & Carol, "As Good As It Gets"

"Love is when you look into someone's eyes and suddenly you go all the way inside, to their soul, and you both know instantly. I always imagined I'd fall in love nursing a blind soldier who was wounded in battle. Or maybe while rescuing someone in the middle of a blizzard, seconds before the avalanche hits. I thought at least by the age of 15 I'd have a love life, but I don't even have a _like_ life."
- Angela, "My So Called Life"

"I have to believe that it works...that when two people come together they stay together. I have to take that to bed with me at night even if I'm going to bed alone. That's a McBealism."
-Ally, "Ally McBeal"

"You would be the greatest choice I would ever make."
- Andy to Nina on "Everwood"



"Look at it mathematically. If just one person hooks up with somebody who isn't their soulmate, you got a chain reaction that screws it up for everybody on the planet."
- Jonesy to David, "Buying the Cow"

"I realized at that moment, there is no such thing as the one. it's more of a mind boggling whole hell of a lot of pontential ones, and while that should be comforting, it's actually pretty terrifying. We'd all like to kick back, and wait for some magical force to show us who we should spend the rest of our lives with, but the truth is there isn't a lightning bolt that slaps you on the ass and tells you to pick this person over all others. If anything its like the rain. Rain falls all the time, sometimes you're prepared for it, sometimes you're not, and depending on where you are when it hits you either get caught in it, or you dont. In fact most of us try like hell to avoid it. You might miss the bus, you might catch the bus. Maybe you remembered your umbrella, maybe you didn't. No big signs just random torrential bursts of opportunity."
- David, "Buying the Cow"

Remember tonight, for it is the beginning of always.
- Dante

Love? Pah. Overrated. Here, look, these are my three wives: Pestilence, Famine and Death. Do you think I married them for their personalities? Their personalities could shatter entire planets! Arranged marriages, every one, but they worked out. They inspired me. Knowing that they are waiting at home for me is what keeps me here -- 75 light years away.
- Londo, "Babylon 5 - The War Prayer"

And then the question dreaded by all singletons, "How's the love life?"
- Bridget, "Bridget Jones's Diary"



In her own special category, she was quite beautiful. This was the category of all the women, in his entire life, who had ever thought he was worth smiling at.
- Terry Pratchett, "Guards! Guards!"

Sorry. I thought I recognized landmarks in your face, felt familiar contours along the bones of your hand, caught a cry that tore in flight across your voice. Forgive me for staring. Someone I knew once lived there.
- Leslie Crutchfield Tompkins

I discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, "To hell with you."
- Saul Bellow

"She's got character, she doesn't even take it out on other people when she's having a bad day."
- Rob describes Laura, "High Fidelity"

Words to live by

The Sufis advise us to speak only after our words have managed to pass through three gates. At the first gate, we ask ourselves, 'Are these words true?' If so, we let them pass on; if not, back they go. At the second gate, we ask, 'Are they necessary?' At the last gate, we ask, 'Are they kind?' -Eknath Easwaran (1911-1999)

- from my favorite quote book …. And here it is in its original context

Meditation by Eknath Easwaran
Chapter 5, Training the Senses
Section 7 of 9

Selecting Entertainment


“……………………..In the name of hard-hitting communication, the media increasingly also offer us debased language – a few shopworn vulgarities, hauled out to serve every occasion. Presumably they are supposed to shock us, but what I find shocking is that people will allow the full range of their expressiveness to be encapsulated in a few stale interjections. It may seem old-fashioned, but I would recommend standing guard over the gate of the mouth to ensure that only the right kind of words come out. It is another form of sense training. Vulgar speech, sarcasm, gossip, even pointless chatter, should all be denied exit visas.

The Sufis capture this idea in a splendid metaphor. They advise us to speak only after our words have managed to issue through three gates. At the first gate we ask ourselves, “Are these words true?” If so, let them pass on; if not, back they go.

At the second gate, we ask, “Are they necessary?” They may be true, but it doesn’t follow that they have to be uttered; they must serve some meaningful purpose. Do they clarify the situation or help someone? Or do they strike a discordant or irrelevant note?

At the last gate we ask, “Are they kind?” If we still feel we must speak out, we need to choose words that will be supportive and loving, not words that embarrass or wound another person. All of us understand what blows can do to someone, but we do not realize that words can create a more painful injury, one that can last for many years. Nor do we understand the terribly destructive impact words can have on the consciousness of the person who uses them………………….”

Live your best Life (TM -O magazine!)

"The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another."
-- George Bernard Shaw, "Pygmalion," act 5

There is no word yet for old friends who have just met

I have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.
-- Rebecca West, in 1913

I was about half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are.
--J.D.Salinger, from The Catcher in the Rye

In later life, as in earlier, only a few persons influence the formation of our character; the multitude pass us by like a distant army. One friend, one teacher, one beloved, one club, one dining table, one work table are the means by which one's nation and the spirit of one's nation affect the individual.
-- Jean Paul Richter


Two step formula for handling stress:
1. Don't sweat the small stuff.
2. Remember that it's all small stuff.
--Anthony Robbins


When one loves somebody, everything is clear - where to go, what to do - it all takes care of itself and one doesn't have to ask anybody about anything.
--Maxim Gorky

We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.
-- e. e. cummings


Serendipity -The pleasant surprise of happening upon a fortunate discovery when you weren't in search of it.
Coined by Henry Walpole in The Princess of Serendip (Ceylon), (1754)

Here today, up and off somewhere else tomorrow! Travel, change, interest, excitement!
Mr. Toad in The Wind in the Willows (1908) by Kenneth Grahame

Even Santa Claus believes in YOU, Can you picture that?
from 'Can You Picture That?' sung in The Muppet Movie (1979), by Jim Henson's Muppets

There is no word yet for old friends who have just met.
from The Muppet Movie (1979)

Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
from Orthodoxy (1908) by G. K. Chesteron

We are the music makers,
We are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams; --
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
We are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
Ode by Arthur O'Shaughnessy (1844-1881)

Life is made up of sobs, sniffles and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
from The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry (William Sidney Porter) (1862-1910)

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: 'It might have been.'
from Maud Muller (1856) by John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.
* W. Somerset Maugham


True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.
* François Duc de La Rochefoucauld

Of Irish Blessings, Goodbyes and then some...

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of His hand.
traditional gaelic blessing

“May those who love us, love us; and those who don't love us, may God turn their hearts; and if He doesn't turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles so we'll know them by their limping.”

Irish Blessings

“May God grant you always...A sunbeam to warm you, a moonbeam to charm you, a sheltering Angel so nothing can harm you. Laughter to cheer you. Faithful friends near you. And whenever you pray, Heaven to hear you.”

Irish Blessings

“May flowers always line your path and sunshine light your day. May songbirds serenade you every step along the way. May a rainbow run beside you in a sky that's always blue. And may happiness fill your heart each day your whole life through.”

Irish Blessings


“May God give you...For every storm a rainbow, for every tear a smile, for every care a promise and a blessing in each trial. For every problem life sends, a faithful friend to share, for every sigh a sweet song and an answer for each prayer.”

Irish Blessings


“May you have the hindsight to know where you've been, The foresight to know where you are going, And the insight to know when you have gone too far”

Irish Blessings

“Why can't we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together? I guess that wouldn't work. Someone would leave. Someone always leaves. Then we would have to say good-bye. I hate good-byes. I know what I need. I need more hellos.”

Snoopy quotes (Fictional character from the comic strip Peanuts, by Charles M. Schulz)


“Don't be dismayed at goodbyes, a farewell is necessary before you can meet again and meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.”

Richard Bach quotes (American Writer, author of 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull', b.1936)

“You and I will meet again, When we're least expecting it, One day in some far off place, I will recognize your face, I won't say goodbye my friend, For you and I will meet again”

Tom Petty quotes (American Guitarist and Singer (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers) b.1950)

“You have four years to be irresponsible here. Relax. Work is for people with jobs. You'll never remember class time, but you'll remember time you wasted hanging out with your friends. So, stay out late. Go out on a Tuesday with your friends when you have a paper due Wednesday. Spend money you don't have. Drink 'til sunrise. The work never ends, but college does..."”

Tom Petty

“A sad thing in life is that sometimes you meet someone who means a lot to you only to find out in the end that it was never bound to be and you just have to let go.”

“Say goodbye to the oldies, but goodies, because the good old days weren't always good and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems”
Billy Joel quotes (American Pianist, Singer and Song Writer, b.1949)


“Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.”

Henry David Thoreau quotes (American Essayist, Poet and Philosopher, 1817-1862)

“So many faces in and out of my life; some will last, some will be just now and then. Life is a series of hellos and good byes, I'm afraid it's time for goodbye again.”

“Are you upset little friend? Have you been lying awake worrying? Well, don't worry...I'm here. The flood waters will recede, the famine will end, the sun will shine tomorrow, and I will always be here to take care of you. -Charlie Brown to Snoopy”
Snoopy quotes (Fictional character from the comic strip Peanuts, by Charles M. Schulz)


“Maybe I could have loved you better. Maybe you should have loved me more. Maybe our hearts were just next in line. Maybe everything breaks sometime.”
Jewel quotes (American Singer, Songwriter and Guitarist, b.1974)

“Never let go of hope. One day you will see that it all has finally come together. What you have always wished for has finally come to be. You will look back and laugh at what has passed and you will ask yourself... 'How did I get through all of that?”


“Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again.”
William Shakespeare quotes (English Dramatist, Playwright and Poet, 1564-1616)

“I must learn to love the fool in me the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries”
Theodore Isaac Rubin quotes (American Writer and psychiatrist, He has been a columnist for the Ladies Home Journal, since 1968. Wrote Lisa and David (1961). b.1923)

Tell me about it!!!

Thank you for the lines Sups… they make a lot of sense!!! ..I actually called my mom after reading this ..ok ok was gonna call anyway..but will say this for dramatic effect :)..seriously 'Lage Raho' …is immensely watchable…something I can watch with my parents without my dad changing the channel.. and it appeals to all demographics me thinks…..

Shehar ki is daud mein doud ke karna kya hai?
Agar yahi jeena hai dosto, to phir marna kya hai?
Pehli baarish mein train late hone ki phikar hai?
Bhul gaye, bhigte hue tehalnna kya hai?
Serial ke khirdaron ka saara haal hai maaloom,
Par maa ki haal puchne ki phursat kahan hai?
Ab reth pe nange paav tehalte kyon nahi?
Ek sau aat(108) hai channel, par dil behalte kyon nahi?
Internet pe to duniya se touch mein hain,
Lekin padose mein kaun rehta hai, jaante tak nahi...
Mobil, landline, sab ki bharmaar hai
Lekin jigri dost tak pahunche aisi taar kaha hai?
Kab doobte hue suraj ko dekha tha e yaad hai?
Kab jaana tha sham ka guzarna kya hai?
To doston, shehar ki is daud mein doud ke karna kya hai?
Agar yahin jeena hai to phir marna kya hai?

Some more good stuff!!

What can I say!!! I'm addicted to browsing for quotes!!!!

"We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations."
- Anais Nin

"The only real people are the people who never existed."
-Oscar Wilde

"Love and stoplights can be cruel."
- Sesame Street

When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."-Friedrich Nietzsche

"'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?' 'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat. 'I don’t much care where--' said Alice. 'Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,' said the Cat. '--so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation. 'Oh, you’re sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.'


'Take some more tea,' the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly. 'I’ve had nothing yet,' Alice replied in an offended tone: 'so I can’t take more.' 'You mean you can’t take LESS,' said the Hatter: 'it’s very easy to take MORE than nothing.'

'I see nobody down the road,' said Alice. 'I only wish I had such eyes,' the King remarked in a fretful tone. 'To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance too! Why, it’s as much as I can do to see real people, by this light!'


"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!"

‘Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.’”

'There is no use in trying,' said Alice; 'one cannot believe impossible things.' 'I dare say you haven’t had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour each day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'"

-Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland



You were right about the stars;
Each one is a setting sun.
-Jeff Tweedy, “Jesus, etc.”

What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain til you see their speck dispersing?—it’s the too huge world vaulting us, and it’s goodbye. But we lean forward to the next crazy adventure beneath the skies.
-Jack Kerouac, “On The Road”

Jadis! Jadis! Jadis, on etait ensemble, non? Ensemble! Ce grand môt d’amour…
A long time, a very long, long time ago, we were together, right? Together! This great name for love…
-Jack Kerouac, in a letter to friend Sebastian Sampas

The stars were the same then as they are tonight.
-Jack Kerouac, “The Dharma Bums”

My witness is the empty sky.
-Jack Kerouac

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars...
-Jack Kerouac, "On the Road"


Take it easy, but take it.
-Woody Guthrie

Maybe the human animal has contributed really nothing to the universe but kissing and comedy--but by God that's plenty.
-Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

This is love, isn't it? When you notice someone's absence and hate that absence more than anything? More, even, than you love his presence?
-Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated


What would we be without wishful thinking?
-Jeff Tweedy, "Wishful thinking"

Summer afternoon—summer afternoon…the two most beautiful words in the English language.
-Henry James, Portrait of a Lady

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
~Nietzsche

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
-Steve Jobs

[upon discovering their TV has been stolen} This sucks more than anything has ever sucked before.
— Butthead, from Beavis and Butthead Do America

Calvin: People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world. Hobbes: Isn't your pants' zipper supposed to be in the front?

May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.
— George Carlin

Oh my God, I'm my father! I've been trying so hard not to be my mother that I didn't see this coming.
— Rachel from Friends

There's only one thing better than getting what you want, and that's getting what you want and pissing someone else off at the same time.
— Bender on Futurama

You coveteth my ice cream bar, but you cannot have it. I have had this ice cream bar since I was a child.
— Ren, from Ren and Stimpy

Be strong little marshmallow.
~Seen on a bumpersticker

You define yourself by the people you love and that's enough.
-Jeff Tweedy


The universe had not yet beckoned.
-George Eliot, “Middlemarch”

Gentle moon, find us soon.
-Mark Kozelek

Who am I, but my own past?
-Katherine Mansfield, “A Married Man’s Story”

Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are.
Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.
- Captain Corelli's Mandolin

"From every human being there rises a light that reaches straight to heaven. And when two souls that are destined to be together find each other, their streams of light flow together, and a single brighter light goes forth from their united being."
--Unknown

. "The most wonderful of all things in life is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a growing depth, beauty and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing; it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of divine accident, and the most wonderful of all things in life."
--Sir Hugh Walpole

"True love begins when nothing is looked for in return."
--Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
Anonymous

Women and cats will do as they please. Men and dogs had better get used to it.
Robert Heinlein

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.
Nelson Mandela



Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back,
always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation,
there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless
ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits
oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help
one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of
events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of
unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no
man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you
can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and
magic in it. Begin it now. " -- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

" Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs.
Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others."
-John F. Kennedy

Practical people would be a lot more practical -
if they were just a little more dreamy."
-- J.P. McEvoy


We say we love flowers, yet we pluck them. We say
we love trees, yet we cut them down. And people still
wonder why some are afraid when told they are loved."
-anonymous

" I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge
That myth is more potent than history
That dreams are more powerful than facts
That hope always triumphs over experience
That laughter is the only cure for grief
And I believe that love is stronger than death."
--- Robert Fulghum

" When your heart is in your dream, no request is too extreme."
--Jiminy Crickett

" To be a star, You must shine your own light, Follow your own
path, And don't worry about the darkness, For that is when
stars shine brightest! " --- Author unknown

I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that
if at the end, when I come to lay down the reigns of power,
I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have
one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside me."
--Abe Lincoln

Out of India

Think of your husband as a lover from another life,
And wonder what you did to deserve him.

From 'How to live in Suburbia when your heart is in the Himalayas' by Gwen Davis

Enchanting thought isn’t it… just extending it could lovers in this life become husbands in another.. wishful thinking and I wonder what we would have done to deserve it..also maybe husbands in previous lives appear as lovers or people we encounter in this life!!! just a cosmic joke giving us a glimpse of what had been once ….Goes back to the whole eternal reccurance idea… life is just the sum of finite experisnes and people that you keep going back to

Actually went to the library to borrow “White Mughals” by William Darlymple, but chanced upon ‘Out of India’ a collection of snippets from Indian Writing through the ages… a very interesting read, given that I am so interested in collecting vignettes myself . Also got introduced to “Meghdoot” by Kalidas..i think I may have read bout it before ..but it was good to read it again…

Love Story

Love Story is a pretty good book by Erich Segal, I like ‘Acts of Faith’ as well …as far as pop romances go, and there’s no better type of romance novel right!!??!!… ‘The Promise’ by Danielle Steel is in this category of books any reader of romantic fiction should have read, just because they were so popular some 20-30 years ago. Was reminded of Love Story today and here are a few quotes , the first one appeals much more to me than the never having to say you’re sorry bit!!!

What can you say about a 25-year-old girl who died? That she was beautiful? And brilliant. That she love Mozart and Bach. And the Beatles. And me.


True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights. If you hear bells, get your ears checked.

Love means not ever having to say you're sorry.

80's Forever

"We are the children of the Eighties. We are not the first "lost generation"; in fact, we think we know just where we stand - or are discovering it as we speak. We are the ones who played with Lego Building Blocks when they were just building blocks and gave Malibu barbie crewcuts with safety scissors that never really cut. We collected garbage Pail Kids and Cabbage Patch Kids and My Little Ponies and Hot Wheels and He-Man action figures and thought She-Ra looked just a little bit like I would when I was a woman. Big Wheels and bicycles with streamers were the way to go, and sidewalk chalk was all you needed to build a city. Imagination was the key. It made the Ewok Treehouse big enough for you to be Luke and the kitchen table and an old sheet dark enough to be a tent in the forest. Your world was the backyard and it was all you needed. With your pink portable tape player, Debbie Gibson sang back up to you and everyone wanted a skirt like the Material Girl and a glove like Michael Jackson's. Today, we are the ones who sing along with Bruce Stringsteen and The Bangles perfectly and have no idea why. We recite lines with the Ghostbusters and still look to The Goonies for a great adventure. We flip through T.V. stations and stop at The A Team and Knight Rider and Fame and laugh with The Cosby Show and Family Ties and Punky Brewster and what you talkin' 'bout Willis? We hold strong affections for The Muppets and The Gummy Bears and why did they take the Smurfs off the air? After school specials were only about cigarettes and step-families, the Mr. Rodgers was nothing like Barney, and aren't the Power Rangers just Voltron reincarnated? We are the ones who still read Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, the Bobbsey Twins, Beverly Clearly and Judy Blume, Richard Scary and the Electric Company. Friendship bracelets were ties you couldn't break and friendship pins went on shoes - preferably hightop Velcro Reebox - and pegged jeans were in, as were Units belts and layered socks and jean jackets and jams and charm necklaces and side pony tails and just tails. Rave was a girl's best friend; braces with colored rubberbands made you cool. The backdoor was always open and Mom served only red Kool-Aid to the neighborhood kids- never drank New Coke. Entertainment was cheap and lasted for hours. All you needed to be a princess was high heels and an apron; the Sit'n'Spin always made you dizzy but never made you stop; Pogoballs were dangerous weapons and Chinese Jump Ropes never failed to trip someone. In your Underoos you were Superman or Wonder Woman or Spider Man and in your treehouse you were king. In the Eighties, nothing was wrong. Did you know the president was shot? Star Wars was not only a movie. Did you ever play in a bomb shelter? Did you see the Challenger explode or feed the homeless man? We forgot Vietnam and watched Tiananman's Square on CNN and bought pieces of the Berlin Wall at the store. AIDS was not the number one killer in the United States. We didn't start the fire, Billy Joel. In the Eighties, we redefined the American Dream, and those years defined us. We are the generation in between strife and facing strife and not turning our backs. The Eighties may have made us idealistic, but it's that idealism that will push us and be passed on to our children - the first children of the twenty-first century. Never forget: We are the children of the Eighties. if this is familiar, you are one of us... pass it on to all the others... May God's blessings of true happiness be upon each of us in every endeavor we undertake and in every circumstance we encounter."
-Author Unknown