Quote of the Week

When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.

~Franklin D. Roosevelt

Quote of the Week

Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.

~Harvey Fierstein

Quote of the Week

The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.

~Barbara Kingsolver

Quote of the Week

Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.

~C.S. Lewis

Quote of the Week

The deepest cuts come from those we love the most.

~Mario Escobar, The Teacher of Warsaw

Quote of the Week

Knowing is better than wondering, waking is better than sleeping, and even the biggest failure—even the worst—beats the hell out of not trying.

~Meredith Grey, Grey’s Anatomy

Quote of the Week

The best use of life is love. The best expression of love is time. The best time to love is now.

~Rick Warren

Quote of the Week

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.

~Mother Teresa

Quote of the Week

You make mistakes, mistakes don’t make you.

~Maxwell Maltz

Quote of the Week

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.

~Marcus Aurelius

Quote of the Week

Life is short. Focus on what really matters most. You have to change your priorities over time.

~Roy T. Bennett

Quote of the Week

It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.

~Vincent Van Gogh

Quote of the Week

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.

~Lao Tzu

Quote of the Week

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

~Aristotle

Quote of the Week

When you get to the end of all the light you know and it’s time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: either you will be given something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly.

~Edward Teller

Quote of the Week

Most times, even if giving your heart away ends in heartbreak, the risk was still worth it. Sometimes, that risk gives you little miracles. and sometimes, that risk gives you life lessons that allow you to grow and learn more about yourself.

~Max Monroe

Quote of the Week

There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true. The other is to refuse to believe what is true.

~Søren Kierkegaard

Quote of the Week

You’re nobody’s doorway but your own and the only one who gets to tell you how your story ends is you.

~Seanan McGuire

Quote of the Week

Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.

~Fyodor Dostoevsky

Quote of the Week

There are three things you can do with your life: You can waste it, you can spend it, or you can invest it. The best use of your life is to invest it in something that will last longer than your time on Earth.

~Rick Warren

Quote of the Week

When people don’t express themselves, they die one piece at a time.

~Laurie Halse Anderson

Quote of the Week

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.

~Lao Tzu

Quote of the Week

Love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. When we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused.

~Paulo Coelho

Quote of the Week

Not everything is supposed to become something beautiful and long-lasting. Sometimes people come into your life to show you what is right and what is wrong, to show you who you can be, to teach you to love yourself, to make you feel better for a little while, or to just be someone to walk with at night and spill your life to. Not everyone is going to stay forever, and we still have to keep on going and thank them for what they’ve given us.

~Emery Allen

Quote of the Week

Learn to light a candle in the darkest moments of someone’s life. Be the light that helps others see; it is what gives life its deepest significance.

Roy. T. Bennett

Quote of the Week

Never assume that the person you are dealing with is weaker or less important than you are. Some people are slow to take offense, which may make you misjudge the thickness of their skin, and fail to worry about insulting them. But should you offend their honor and their pride, they will overwhelm you with a violence that seems sudden and extreme given their slowness to anger. If you want to turn people down, it is best to do so politely and respectfully, even if you feel their request is impudent or their offer ridiculous.

~Robert Greene

Quote of the Week

Time is a slippery thing: lose hold of it once, and its string might sail out of your hands forever.

~Anthony Doerr

Quote of the Week

I love books. I adore everything about them. I love the feel of the pages on my fingertips. They are light enough to carry, yet so heavy with worlds and ideas. I love the sound of the pages flicking against my fingers. Print against fingerprints. Books make people quiet, yet they are so loud.

~Nnedi Okorafor

Quote of the Week

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.

~Seneca

Quote of the Week

You can get away from envy by enjoying the pleasures that come your way, by doing the work that you have to do, and by avoiding comparisons with those whom you imagine, perhaps quite falsely, to be more fortunate than yourself.

~Bertrand Russell

Quote of the Week

There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.

Laurell K. Hamilton

Quote of the Week

No matter what, nobody can take away the dances you’ve already had.

~Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Quote of the Week

How satisfying it is to leave a mark on a blank surface. To make a map of my movement – no matter how temporary.

~Craig Thompson

Quote of the Week

Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.

~Isaac Asimov

Quote of the Week

Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.

~James Baldwin

Quote of the Week

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.

~Nicolas Chamfort

Quote of the Week

The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

~Thomas Merton

Quote of the Week

But who can say what’s best? That’s why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.

~Haruki Murakami

Quote of the Week

To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced life.

~Elizabeth Gilbert

Quote of the Week

You know how they say you only hurt the ones you love? Well, it works both ways.

~Chuck Palahniuk

Quote of the Week

Make sure, as often as possible, you are doing something you’d be happy to die doing.

~Matt Haig

Quote of the Week

“It’s true: lives do drift apart for no obvious reason. We’re all busy people,we can’t spend our time simply trying to stay in touch. The test of a friendship is if it can weather these inevitable gaps.”

~William Boyd

Quote of the Week

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

~Truman Capote

Quote of the Week

Life consists of two days, one for you one against you. So when it’s for you don’t be proud or reckless, and when it’s against you be patient, for both days are test for you.

~Hazrat Ali Ibn Abu-Talib A.S

Any Human Heart by William Boyd

If you’ve never read a William Boyd novel, this is a good one to start with.

Any Human Heart is a fictionalized journal of a fictional character, Logan Mountstuart. It is a story of a life well-lived and a journey deep into a very human heart. The book is easy to read, the chapters weren’t too long, it is powerful, realistic and a beautiful story.  Logan is generous, smart, naïve and selfish which makes him so real and interesting. And like any human journeys, his life has its own ups and downs, accidents, coincidences, tragedies and triumphs.

Aging is also addressed in this book in which there are moments where it is absolutely depressing, you see Logan at his worst. But there are also moments where you’ll see how aging made him wiser. He was never envious of youth.

William Boyd was able to make it like everything is true and that it is indeed from a dead man’s journal. I don’t know if others will agree but this is such an amazing novel where it’s hard to believe that Logan Mountstuart never existed.

And in the end, we get to ask ourselves, “What defines success?” “What is a life well-lived?” Logan reassures us that, “Every life is both ordinary and extraordinary – it is the respective proportion of those two categories that make that life appear interesting or humdrum.”

Quotable Quotes:

“I have to start my real life soon, before I die of boredom and frustration.”

“It’s true: lives do drift apart for no obvious reason. We’re all busy people,we can’t spend our time simply trying to stay in touch. The test of a friendship is if it can weather these inevitable gaps.”

“I felt shocked and then saddened. life does this to you sometimes – leads you up a path and then drops you in the shit, to mix a metaphor.”

Rating : 5/5 stars

Quote of the Week

Better never means better for everyone… It always means worse, for some.

~Margaret Atwood

Quote of the Week

I keep telling you the future isn’t set in stone. It’s not all decided yet. The future is just what’s down the road we decided to walk on today. You can change roads anytime. And that changes where you end up.

~Catherine Ryan Hyde

Quote of the Week

Keep your mind open. The meaning of things lies in how people perceive them. The same thing could mean different meanings to the same people at different times.

~Roy T. Bennett

Quote of the Week

Success is getting what you want, happiness is wanting what you get.

~W.P. Kinsella

Quote of the Week

Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.

~Edward Abbey