What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this -- two things: I crave truth. And I lie. ― Tana French

---

Life is like an onion; you peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep. ― Carl Sandburg

---

The way I define happiness is being the creator of your experience, choosing to take pleasure in what you have, right now, regardless of the circumstances, while being the best you that you can be. ― Leo Babauta

---

Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth — look at the dying man’s struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment. ― Soren Kierkegaard

---

My eyes were glued on life and they were full of tears. ― Jack Kerouac,

---

Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting, but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no narrow illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of the night; we wake up to it, forever and ever; and we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it. ― Henry James

---

Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not. ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

---

They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life, the voice of Being, the voice of perpetual Becoming. ― Hermann Hesse

---

If you want something you can have it, but only if you want everything that goes with it, including all the hard work and the despair, and only if you're willing to risk failure. ― Philip Pullman

---

I was nineteen. You had your lips on my neck and whispers in my ear. You drove me crazy. But I mistook crazy for absolute happiness. ― Dominic Riccitello

---