the me QUOTES

1 " Once again, I've been thwarted by the massive difference between my vision of the successful me and the me I'm currently stuck with. "

― Lauren Graham , Someday, Someday, Maybe

2 " And it means snapshots, because that's what all stories I write come down to; each is a snapshot of who I was during however many days and weeks it was written. A fictional reflection of my mind fossilized, set in paper and ink, instead of stone. Memorialized, for better or worse. This is who I was, and this, and this, and this, and that, and most times I look back and wince. I'm rarely kind to who I was. But other times, looking back is bittersweet. Sometimes, I'm even grateful to the me of then who left a snapshot for the me of now. Maybe I should let go and join those who pretend the past is past, but it's a falsehood I've never learned to spin. "

― Caitlín R. Kiernan , Two Worlds and in Between: The Best of Caitlin R. Kiernan, Volume One

3 " Today, I choose not to take my life for granted.
I choose not to look upon the fact that I am healthy, have food in my refrigerator and have clean water to drink as givens. They are not givens for so many people in our world. The fact that I am safe and (relatively) sane are not givens. That I was born into a family who loves me and into a country not ravaged by war are not givens. It is impossible to name all of the circumstances in my life I’ve taken for granted. All of the basic needs I’ve had met, all of the friendships and job opportunities and financial blessings and the list, truly, goes on and on. The fact that I am breathing is a miracle, one I too rarely stop to appreciate. I’m stopping, right now, to be grateful for everything I am and everything I’ve been given. I’m stopping, right now, to be grateful for every pleasure and every pain that has contributed to the me who sits here and writes these words. I am thankful for my life. This moment is a blessing. Each breath a gift. That I’ve been able to take so much for granted is a gift, too. But it’s not how I want to live—not when gratitude is an option, now when wonder and awe are choices. I choose gratitude. I choose wonder. I choose awe. I choose everything that suggest I’m opening myself to the miraculous reality of simply being alive for one moment more. "

― Scott Stabile

4 " The aching in my chest
isn't because I miss you,
it's realizing that you have
become someone I no longer know,
your fears, your 4 am thoughts,
your achievements,
are things I no longer have an equivalent to.
Who we were and who we are
are four different people,
and the me from now
doesn't relate to the me from then,
let alone to the you from now.
-Tanzy Sayadi and Jarod Kintz "

― Jarod Kintz , liQUID PROse QUOtes

5 " Today, I choose not to take my life for granted.

I choose not to look upon the fact that I am healthy, have food in my refrigerator and have clean water to drink as givens. They are not givens for so many people in our world. The fact that I am safe and (relatively) sane are not givens. That I was born into a family who loves me and into a country not ravaged by war are not givens. It is impossible to name all of the circumstances in my life I've taken for granted. All of the basic needs I've had met, all of the friendships and job opportunities and financial blessings and the list, truly, is endless. The fact that I am breathing is a miracle, one I too rarely stop to appreciate.

I'm stopping, right now, to be grateful for everything I am and everything I've been given. I'm stopping, right now, to be grateful for every pleasure and every pain that has contributed to the me who sits here and writes these words.

I am thankful for my life. This moment is a blessing. Each breath a gift. That I've been able to take so much for granted is a gift, too. But it's not how I want to live—not when gratitude is an option, not when wonder and awe are choices.

I choose gratitude. I choose wonder. I choose awe. I choose everything that suggests I'm opening myself to the miraculous reality of simply being alive for one moment more. "

― Scott Stabile

6 " It's just a feeling I have. What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real. My enemy is, among other things, the me inside me. "

― Haruki Murakami , After the Quake

7 " I am who I say I am,
I'm not some fantasy
of how you think you think you know
or who I ought to be.
I am a girl who is growing up
in my own sweet time,
I am a girl who knows enough
to know this life is mine.
I am this and I am that and
I am everything in-between.
I'm a dreamer, I'm a dancer,
I'm a part-time drama queen.
I'm a worrier, I'm a warrior,
I'm a loner and a friend,
I'm an outspoken defender
of justice to the end.
I'm the girl in the mirror
who likes the girl she sees,
I'm the girl in the gypsy shawl
with music in her knees.
I'm a singer and a scholar,
I'm a girl who has been kissed.
I'm a solver of equations
wearing bangles on my wrist.
I am bigger than i ever knew,
I am stronger than before,
I am every girl I have ever been,
and all that are in store.
I am who I say I am.
I'm not some fantasy.
I am the me I am inside.
I am who
I chose
to be. "

― James Howe

8 " I used to be lost in us. Blurred were the lines that separated us. But now, I see our togetherness in our separateness. I see the you in me and the me in you. We are two independent beings who complement one another like photographs that are beautiful on their own but are enhanced when juxtaposed, creating an altogether new photograph. "

― Kamand Kojouri

9 " Passing beneath the dance hall, thinking again of this book, I realized suddenly that our life had come to an end: I realized that the book I was planning was nothing more than a tomb in which to bury her - and the me which had belonged to her. That was some time ago, and ever since I have been trying to write it. Why is it so difficult? Why? Because the idea of an " end" is intolerable to me. "

10 " I've made a discovery, and it's that grief isn't like sadness at all. Sadness is only something that's part of you. Grief becomes you, it wraps you up and changes you and makes everything--every little thing--different than it was before. I remember the me before we got the telegram saying he was gone, but it's like I'm remembering someone else. It feels like an earthquake has gone through me... "

― Jodi Lynn Anderson , Midnight at the Electric

11 " And she knew that this was the thing that would harm Dionne in the end, not her foolishness but the foolhardy way in which she clung to her own terrible ideas. She knew that this was Avril's undoing, not that she'd made the wrong choices, but that she'd been so unwilling to let anyone in to see the lie of her marriage, this masking was worse than the original mistake. Sixty-three years on this earth has taught Hyacinth that it wasn't so much the mistakes that people made but how flexible they were in the aftermath that made all the difference in how their lives turned out. It was the women who held too tightly to the dream of their husband's fidelity who unraveled, the parents who clasped their children too close who lost them, the me who grieved too deeply the lives they'd wanted and would never have who saw their sadness consume them. Hyacinth worried about Dionne because of her hard way of being in the world, the way she could only see the world through the lens of her own flawed feelings. "

― Naomi Jackson , The Star Side of Bird Hill

12 " Trippers and askers surround me,People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the ward andcity I live in, or the nation,The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors oldand new,My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues,The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,The sickness of one of my folks or of myself, or ill-doing or lossor lack of money, or depressions or exaltations,Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news,the fitful events;These come to me days and nights and go from me again,But they are not the Me myself.Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog withlinguists and contenders,I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait. "

13 " Not like the me was some tough somebody, or somebody she had put together for show. But like, like somebody she favored and could count on. A secret somebody you didn't have to feel sorry for or have to fight for. -Felice "

― Toni Morrison , Jazz (Beloved Trilogy, #2)

14 " ...ambition or contentment? This simple question led me back to a more balanced view of life and put me in touch with the Me I used to know... "

15 " I don’t see the me that you see. I wish for just a little bit I could climb into you and then you could climb into me and then we could tell each other what we saw there. "

16 " The real gift of today is somehow finding the me I knew ought to exist but has not. "

17 " He wanted to break me, the me I'd made, the me I'd needed to make, my need, mine, my whole life since I could remember. I didn't want to hear him that night. When I was ready to change I'd change. When life opens up before you, when you don't really know death ... it's easy to promise yourself change. Keeping the lines hard, the parts of me separate, was what I knew, how I lived. "

― Adam Berlin , Number of Missing

18 " I respond to many names.Sometimes I am different people.Sometimes I am the me that howls in the night.Sometimes I am the sickening silence.I wear moonlight in my hair and bare my teeth. "

19 " Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the truth, maybe I didn't want things to turn abstract, but I felt I should say it, because this was the moment to say it, because it suddenly dawned on me that this was why I had come, to tell him " You are the only person I'd like to say goodbye to when I die, because only then will this thing I call my life make any sense. And if I should hear that you died, my life as I know it, the me who is speaking with you now, will cease to exist. "

20 " Reading all my old love letters was disorienting. You remember thinking the thoughts and writing the words but, man, you can't TOUCH those feelings. Its like they belonged to someone else. Someone you don't even know. I'm aware, in an intellectual way. That I felt all those things about him, but this emotions are far away now.
What's so strange to me is that I can't even force my heart back to that place where I felt that all consuming passion. That makes me feel distant from myself. Who WAS I then? Will I ever be able to get back to that place? Reading the letters again made me wonder: Which is the real me? The one who saw the world in that emotionally saturated way, or the me who sees it the way I do now? "

― , Other People's Love Letters: 150 Letters You Were Never Meant to See

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