When people are happy they have a reserve, she had told Elizabeth, upon which to draw, whereas she was like a wheel without a tyre (she was fond of such metaphors), jolted by every pebble...
Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf

Years ago my mother used to say to me, she'd say, "In this world, Elwood, you must be" - she always called me Elwood - "In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.
Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey

I'm just going to hide here in this paper bag until death comes, she said. It could be a long time, I said. There was a pause & then her head popped out. You think I should have a hobby while I wait? she said.
"StoryPeople" Brian Andreas

I would rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach 10,000 stars how not to dance."
e.e.cummings

Our lives are at once ordinary and mythical. We live and die, age beautifully or full of wrinkles. We wake in the morning, buy yellow cheese, and hope we have enough money to pay for it. At the same instant we have these magnificent hearts that pump through all sorrow and all winters we are alive on the earth. We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded. This is how writers must think, this is how we must sit down with pen in hand. We were here; we are human beings; this is how we lived. Let it be known the earth passed before us.
Natalie Goldberg

"What do you want, my child, that is not already a part of you?"
I hear my voice as if it belongs to someone else, someone young and afraid, crouched on the floor of the bathroom in the Midwest behind a rattling door. A child who can ask for nothing, not even the protection of a lock. "What am I allowed to want?" "Allowed?" she howls. "Allowed?" Her voice is a wind in my chest. "You are allowed to seek anything that is already a part of you."
Ruby Francesca Lia Block

Oh, she said, what I've discovered is that with lovers as with everything, there are cycles, seasons. If you live your life in such a way as to become free rather than to become not free, she continued, you will find Life presents you with regular summers and winters and autumns and springs.
Now Is the Time To Open Your Heart Alice Walker

Two or three things I know for sure and one is that I would rather go naked than wear the clothes the world has made for me.
Dorothy Allison