Excuse my 'Rules of Civility' withdrawals

Grand Central Station circa 1935-1941/Courtesy NYC Municipal Archives

“In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions—we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for decades to come.”

“It is a lovely oddity of human nature that a person is more inclined to interrupt two people in conversation than one person alone with a book.”

“If we only fell in love with people who were perfect for us...then there wouldn't be so much fuss about love in the first place.”

“Anyone who has ridden the subway twice a day to earn their bread knows how it goes: When you board, you exhibit the same persona you use with your colleagues and acquaintances. You've carried it through the turnstile and past the sliding doors, so that your fellow passengers can tell who you are - cocky or cautious, amorous or indifferent, loaded or on the dole. But you find yourself a seat and the train gets under way; it comes to one station and then another; people get off and others get on. And under the influence of the cradlelike rocking of the train, your carefully crafted persona begins to slip away. The super-ego dissolves as your mind begins to wander aimlessly over your cares and your dreams; or better yet, it drifts into ambient hypnosis, where even cares and dreams recede and the peaceful silence of the cosmos pervades.”

“I've come to realize that however blue my circumstances, if after finishing a chapter of a Dickens novel I feel a miss-my-stop-on-the-train sort of compulsion to read on, then everything is probably going to be just fine.”

“Whatever setbacks he had faced in his life, he said, however daunting or dispiriting the unfolding of events, he always knew that he would make it through, as long as when he woke in the morning he was looking forward to his first cup of coffee."

“That's the problem with living in New York. You've got no New York to run away to.”

Inspiring. Gad, I adore Amor Towles.

Day 26 – A book that changed your opinion about something

It changed my perception on life and the future. This book made me feel infinite.

Life is a Great Perhaps.

“When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.”

Photos from weheartit. x

"I'm crazy sad, and somewhere deep inside, all I want is to fly"

The Sky is Everywhere + me = misery loves company

Feeling a bit down. Reread excerpts from The Sky is Everywhere (it's not the champagne-in-my-veins-happy kind of book) but I'm good again. Just craving for heartbreakingly beautiful words that makes me want to cry my heart out and makes me feel alive at the same time.

I look into his sorrowful eyes and he into mine, and I think, He misses her as much as I do, and that's when he kisses me - his mouth: soft, hot, so alive, it makes me moan. I wish I could say I pull away, but I don't. I kiss him back and don't want to stop because in that moment I feel like Toby and I together have, somehow, in some way, reached across time, and pulled Bailey back.


Madly in love with the US edition hardcover.

My favorite parts are Lennie's "scattered poems". These full-colored pages comes with the UK edition.

Read my book feature for this book here. x

Day 17 - Favorite quote from your favorite book/s

It's really hard for me to choose only one so I've picked the best quotes I wrote down from different books.

"And would you rather sir, that your sister could recite by rote the principal rivers of Russia and China or those other shreds of useless knowledge that are nowadays so much the fashion? ...What I call education is not which smothers a woman with incidental accomplishments, but that which instead encourages in her the power and habit of thinking." - Julia Barrett, Presumption

"There are days when you really just need to know there is going to be someone on your side, even if you're the one screwing up." - Theresa Alan, The Girl's Guide to Global Guys

"It isn't the big troubles in life that require character. Anybody can rise to a crisis and face crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh - I really think that requires spirit." - Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

"It isn't the big pleasures that count the most; it's making a great deal out of little ones - I've discovered the secret of happiness, Daddy, and that is to live in the now. Not to be forever regretting the past, or anticipating the future; but to get the most that you can out of this very instant." - Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

"To want things is to be constantly disappointed." - Suzanne Weyn, Reincarnation

"Only fools think they have all the answers." - Suzanne Weyn, Reincarnation

"The whole of man's life on the face of the Earth can be summed up by that search for his Soul Mate. He may pretend to be running after wisdom, money, or power, but none of that matters. Whatever he achieves will be incomplete if he fails to find his Soul Mate." - Paulo Coelho, Brida

“Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. (...) You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.” - John Green, Looking For Alaska


What's your favorite? Hope you liked it! x

Book feature: The Sky Is Everywhere

They were always the Walker girls, the girls, Len and Bailey, Bailey and Len. Two sisters that were opposites of each other yet complements perfectly. Then Bailey dies of a broken heart, leaving Len alone with her poems that she scatters around town. This is a story about loss - how it brings persons together, how it separates them, how we find love in it.

Jandy Nelson is a brilliant writer. She turned the novel into a 311-page poem. Mix in music, poetry, and a forest bedroom? Delicious read.

“Okay, close your eyes,” I say. “I'll lead you.” I reach up from behind him and cover my hands over his eyes and steer him down the path.

There is a bedroom. A whole bedroom in the middle of the forest.

“This is unbelievable, how is this here?”

“There's an inn about a mile away on the river. It was a commune in the sixties, and the owner Sam's an old hippie. he set up this forest bedroom for his guests to happen upon if they hike up here, for surprise romance, I guess, but I've never seen a soul pass through and I've been coming forever... I write at that desk, read in that rocker, lie here on this bed, and daydream. I've never brought a guy here before though.”

He smiles, sits on the bed next to where I'm lying on my back and starts trailing his fingers over my belly.

“What do you daydream about?” he asks.

“This,” I say as his hands spreads across my midriff under my shirt. My breathing's getting faster - I want his hands everywhere.

- The Sky Is Everywhere

Book feature: Twenty Boy Summer

“I pull open the glass door and walk to the middle of the store, letting the smell of old books soak into my lungs. It’s different that I expect; it feels more like a library than a store, and I can totally picture Matt hanging out here. He loved to read. He loved words, the way they string together into sentences and stories…

Love of reading was something I shared with him alone, because of him alone. It was everything to him…

I walk up and down the aisles and run my hands along the spines of books, old and new. An undisturbed layer of dust on one particular shelf makes me think that Matt may have touched the same books the last time he was here.”

-Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler

City Lights was the name of the bookstore in the novel :)

Day 09 - A book you thought you wouldn’t like but ended up loving

I'm picky when it comes to genre and Paulo Coelho doesn't fall under my type. I'm not crazy for Brida but I found myself highlighting quotes from the book. Paulo Coelho makes his readers reflect about life. I didn't expect that kind of effect on me.

Some highlighted quotes:

The whole of man's life on the face of the Earth can be summed up by that search for his Soul Mate. He may pretend to be running after wisdom, money, or power, but none of that matters. Whatever he achieves will be incomplete if he fails to find his Soul Mate.

None of us knows what might happen even the next minute, and yet still we go forward. Because we trust. Because we have Faith.

Whenever you want to find out about something, plunge straight in.

Brida had the feeling that what she was struggling for in life was exactly this, to be able to sit one day and contemplate just such a sunset.

True love allowed each person to follow their own path, knowing that they would never lose touch with their Soul Mate.

Never stop having doubts. If you ever do, it will be because you've stopped moving forward.

x