This is the thing about life I've never really understood until now: we try so hard to control it, but bad things happen anyway. The only real control is an anti-control, a letting go. -R.A. Nelson, Teach Me

When you're a little kid, you're a little bit of everything. Artist, scientist, athlete, scholar... Sometimes it seems like growing up is the process of giving those things up. One by one. I guess we all have one thing we regret giving up. One thing we really miss. That we gave up because we were too lazy or, we couldn't stick it out or, because we were afraid. -The Wonder Years

But that was the problem with having the answers. It was only after you gave them that you realized they sometimes weren't what people wanted to hear.

Things fall apart so that other things can fall together.

Time is tricky. You have whole months, even years, when nothing changes a speck, when you don't go anywhere or do anything or think one new thought. And then you can get hit with a day or an hour, or half a second, when so much happens its almost like you are born all over again into some brand-new person you for damn sure never expected to meet.- Life is Funny

Nobody’s life is filled with perfect little moments. And if it were, they wouldn’t be perfect little moments. They would just be normal. How would you ever know happiness if you never experienced downs? -Cecilia Ahern, PS I Love You

Some people say you are going the wrong way, when it's simply a way of your own. -Angelina Jolie

We're just afraid, period. Our fear is free floating. We're afraid this isn't the right relationship or we're afraid it is. We're afraid they won't like us or afraid they will. We're afraid of failure or we're afraid of success. We're afraid of dying young or we're afraid of growing old. We're more afraid of life than we are death. -Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love

If your ship doesn't come in, swim out to it. -Jonathan Winters

This is turning into one of those repeating nightmares where you keep falling but never hit the floor. Only I feel like I just smacked into the ground at a hundred miles an hour. -Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

It was more work than it seemed, looking through a telescope, as the Earth was continually moving and you had to move along with it. You don't realize how fast this actually happens and its kind of both creepy and wonderful when you stop to think about it. And it makes you realize there is absolutely no way to avoid change. You can sit there cross your arms and refuse it, but underneath you, things are still spinning away. -Deb Caletti, Wild Roses

It's not supposed to be this way. The artists, and scientists, and poets, none of them fit in at 17. You're supposed to get past it. Adults, they see kids killing kids and they think it's a tragedy because they used to be those kids. The bullies, the beaten, the loners, but you're supposed to get past it. You're supposed to live long enough to take it back. -One Tree Hill

The truth is I've never fooled anyone. I've let people fool themselves. They didn't bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn't argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn't. -Marilyn Monroe

It wasn't new, this realization that I would never be like them. What was different now was that I was glad.

I think this had to happen ; today, tomorrow, someday. I mean, it’s not like we’re kids anymore. Everybody grows up. It’s not like Peter Pan or something. -The Wonder Years

People who go to college are incredible. We go to classes. We sleep very little. We become attached to close friends. We all have separate lives, families, backgrounds, and pasts. We live totally different from how we used to live. We are frustrated and sometimes want to give up, but we never stop trying. We try to sort out our minds, which are filled with studies, worries, problems, memories, emotions. We hurt -- a lot. We keep going though, because above all else, we never stop learning, growing, changing, and most important, dreaming. Dreams keep us going and they always will. All we can do is be thankful that we have something to hold onto, like dreams and each other.

No matter how bad things are at any one moment, no moment lasts. good or bad, time moves on because it has to. And so do you.

Every path has it's puddle.

I nodded my head and took it all in as if it made sense. And in a sense, I suppose, it did. We live in a crazy world, and if you want to get through it with your body and soul even a little bit intact, you might as well be crazy yourself. It couldn't hurt. And it just might help. -Kinky Friedman, Kill Two Birds and Get Stoned