"I was in a curious position in New York; it never occurred to me that I was living a real life there … I am not sure that it is possible for anyone brought up in the East to entirely appreciate what New York, the idea of New York, means to those of us who come out of the West and the South … New York was no mere city. It was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself. To think of ‘living’ there was to reduce the miraculous to the mundane; one does not ‘live’ at Xanadu … [I]t was a very long time indeed before I stopped believing in new faces and began to understand … that it is distinctly possible to stay too long at the fair."

Joan Didion, Farewell to the Enchanted City

"i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)

i fear
no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)"

e.e. cummings

"It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another—but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good."

John Steinbeck

I Used to Love Her, But I had to Flee Her: On Leaving New York →

When I told my East Coast friends I was going to LA most all of them sneered, but those in New York sneered most of all. In Brecht’s Threepenny Opera, at one point Mack the Knife proclaims, “One must live well to know what living is.” I always thought that might be a good slogan for New York, where people have a tendency to believe life outside the boroughs is a wretched waste.

"If you think it long and mad, the wind of banners that passes through my life, and you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots, remember that on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms and my roots will set off to seek another land. But if each day, each hour, you feel that you are destined for me with implacable sweetness, if each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me, ah my love, ah my own, in me all that fire is repeated, in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten, my love feeds on your love, beloved, and as long as you live it will be in your arms without leaving mine."

Pablo Neruda, excerpt from If You Forget Me

"We are all failures—at least the best of us are."

J.M. Barrie

"A wise man once told me that we are all God in drag. I like that. Sometimes when I’m in a public place or sitting at a stop light, I’ll watch people walking by and I’ll silently say to myself, “He’s God. She’s God. He’s God. She’s God.” Before long I always find myself feeling a warm sense of affinity for these strangers. The experience is even more powerful when I do this while observing a person who is clearly suffering. On occasion I’ll test my little spiritual practice by turning on Fox News. Within minutes I become an atheist."

Church Lorre, Vanity Card #240

"Though lovers be lost love shall not."

Dylan Thomas

"We recognize our own mortality, and we are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this Earth, what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame—but rather, how well we have loved—and what small part we have played in making the lives of other people better."

Barack Obama, Remarks at a Memorial Service for the Victims of the Shooting in Tucson, Arizona (Jan. 12, 2011)

(Source: whitehouse.gov)