What good books have you read this year? I’m currently in the middle of a good one, and it’s filled with so many beautiful passages. It got me thinking about other lines I’ve read over the years that have resonated with me. Here are a few standouts, and I’m curious to hear yours…

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“How strange that the nature of life is change, yet the nature of human beings is to resist change. And how ironic that the difficult times we fear might ruin us are the very ones that can break us open and help us blossom into who we were meant to be.”― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open

“Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
― Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

“I love my boys so much I fear my heart will explode. I wonder if this love will crack open my chest and split me in half. It is scary. This love.” ― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“I didn’t get to grow up and pull away from her and bitch about her with my friends and confront her about the things I’d wished she’d done differently and then get older and understand that she had done the best she could and realize that what she had done was pretty damn good and take her fully back into my arms again. Her death had obliterated that. It had obliterated me. It had cut me short at the very height of my youthful arrogance. It had forced me to instantly grow up and forgive her every motherly fault at the same time that it kept me forever a child, my life both ended and begun in that premature place where we’d left off. She was my mother, but I was motherless. I was trapped by her, but utterly alone. She would always be the empty bowl that no one could fill. I’d have to fill it myself again and again and again.” ― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“When shit brings you down, just say ‘fuck it’, and eat yourself some motherfucking candy.” ― David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day

“In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame. On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming.” ― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

(Photo of Marilyn Monroe, and the cool story behind it, by Eve Arnold)