And even if you don’t have material possessions, pretending like you have your shit together is the best way to have your shit together until you actually do.

The Betches, Nice Is Just a Place in France: How to Win at Basically Everything

If you find yourself caring about something, just remind yourself that you don’t need to give a fuck. Caring is for nicegirls.

The Betches, Nice Is Just a Place in France: How to Win at Basically Everything

Limit yourself to wines with names you can’t pronounce that are made from grapes harvested during or before Full House season one.

The Betches, Nice Is Just a Place in France: How to Win at Basically Everyth

Tears are like lies. The more you use them, the less they’re worth. The moral of the story is: STOP FUCKING CRYING.

The Betches, Nice Is Just a Place in France: How to Win at Basically Everything

“But hope is no less realistic than despair. It is still our choice whether to live in the light or lie down in darkness”

—	The Isle of Blood, Rick Yanc

“There are moments when you can’t believe something wonderful is happening. And there are moments when your entire consciousness is filled with knowing absolutely that something wonderful is happening.”

—	Rainbow Rowell, Attachments

“I stood in front of my mirror and turned slowly, watching the skirt twirl up and fall around my knees. I wanted to be a girl that could wear a dress like this. Instead, the girl in the mirror looked back at me, and I hardly recognized her. She was just some strange girl who’d tumbled off a pyramid, falling into a dream, and now waited, in a beautiful dress, like some princess in a forgotten fairy tale, for someone to come save her.”

—	Dreamland; Sarah Dessen

Why did you do all this for me?' he asked. 'I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you.' 'You have been my friend,' replied Charlotte. 'That in itself is a tremendous thing. 

Charlotte's Web by E.B. White

“If you’re twenty-two, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel – as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live and eat and cook. Learn from them – wherever you go.” 

― Anthony Bourdain, Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook

“Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter-faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. 

To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. 

Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food. The body, these waterheads imagine, is a temple that should not be polluted by animal protein. It's healthier, they insist, though every vegetarian waiter I've worked with is brought down by any rumor of a cold. 

Oh, I'll accomodate them, I'll rummage around for something to feed them, for a 'vegetarian plate', if called on to do so. Fourteen dollars for a few slices of grilled eggplant and zucchini suits my food cost fine.” 

― Anthony Bourdain in Kitchen Confidental

“Do we really want to travel in hermetically sealed popemobiles through the rural provinces of France, Mexico and the Far East, eating only in Hard Rock Cafes and McDonalds? Or do we want to eat without fear, tearing into the local stew, the humble taqueria's mystery meat, the sincerely offered gift of a lightly grilled fish head? I know what I want. I want it all. I want to try everything once.” 

― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

"In our travels, we have come across many equations--math for understanding the universe, for making music, for mapping stars, and also for tipping, which is important. Here is our favorite equation: Us plus Them equals All of Us. It is very simple math. Try it sometime. You probably won’t even need a pencil."

-The Copenhagen Interpertagtion, ffrom 'Going Bovine', by Libba Bray

Tzu-kung asked about government. The Master said, “Sufficient food, sufficient weapons, and the confidence of the common people.” Tzu-kung said, “Suppose you were forced to dispense with one of these three, which would you forgo?” The Master said, “Weapons.” Tzu-kung said, “Suppose you were forced to dispense with one of the two that were left, which would you forgo?” The Master said, “Food. For…death has been the lot of all men, but a people that no longer trusts its rulers is lost indeed.”
--Confucius, Analects

The single most powerful statement to come out of brain research…is this:
“We are as different from one another on the inside of our heads as we appear to be different on the outside of our heads.”
--Robert Fulghum, It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It

Is my occupation what I get paid money for, or is it something larger and wider and richer—a matter of who I am or how I think about myself. Making a living and having a life are not the same thing. Making a living and making a life that’s worthwhile are not the same thing. Living the good life and living a good life are not the same thing. A job title doesn’t even come close to answering the question, “What do you do?”
--Robert Fulghum, It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It

I think I feel things far too much, not all of the time, but when I do it’s like traveling through space at the speed of light and it hits hard enough to bruise. When I love a person or a place or a thing I just can’t do it in small amounts, I love whatever it is so much that I feel like I could spontaneously combust. Starbursts in my head, raw nerves in my heart, electricity in my stomach. It’s desperate and sad and heartbreaking and it’s there. It’s the difference between thinking and feeling, and it is fiercer than a lion.

"In my son's eyes I see the ambition that had first hurled me across the world. In a few years he will graduate and pave his way, alone and unprotected. But I remind myself that he has a father who is still living, a mother who is happy and strong. Whenever he is discouraged, I tell him that if I can survive on three continents, then there is no obstacle he cannot conquer. While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my acheivement 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." "The Third and Final Continent," a story by Jhumpa Lahiri

Inside a snow globe on my father’s desk, there was a penguin wearing a red-and-white-striped scarf. When I was little my father would pull me into his lap and reach for the snow globe. He would turn it over, letting all the snow collect on the top, then quickly invert it. The two of us watched the snow fall gently around the penguin. The penguin was alone in there, I thought, and I worried for him. When I told my father this, he said, “Don’t worry, Susie; he has a nice life. He’s trapped in a perfect world”-Alice Sebold (The Lovely Bones)

"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 (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)

"The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a tellar but for want of an understanding ear." The Gunslinger by Stephen King