A boy spends his time finding a girl to sleep with. A real man spends his time looking for the one worth waking up to.
There are three things in life which are real: God, human folly and laughter. Since the first two are beyond our comprehension, we must do what we can with the third.
The purpose of foreign policy is not to provide an outlet for our own sentiments of hope or indignation; it is to shape real events in a real world.
In a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there.
Real men stay faithful. They don’t have time to look for other women because they’re too busy looking for new ways to love their own.
Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because – like all real love stories – it will die with us, as it should. I’d hoped that he’d be eulogizing me.
I don’t see a future where we’re all taught by robots. The real life, physical experience of being in a classroom and having conversations with knowledgeable people is immeasurably valuable and irreplaceable.
When did we see each other face-to-face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.
Leaving feels good and pure only when you leave something important, something that mattered to you. Pulling life out by the roots. But you can’t do that until your life has grown roots.
I find it really offensive when people say that the emotional experiences of teenagers are less real or less important than those of adults. I am an adult, and I used to be a teenager, and so I can tell you with some authority that my feelings then were as real as my feelings are now.
Whether you’re studying electrical engineering or poetry, college is not about maximizing income, it’s about becoming a better and more informed observer of the universe. And for me, at least, that what’s leads to a more fulfilling life.
I love being in cities with lots of other people, because I’m reminded that there are billions of people like me, and we are each stuck inside of our minds, feverishly trying to crawl out to make connections with other people.
What I eventually realized is that the real business of books is not done by awards committees or people who turn trees into paper or editors or agents or even writers. We’re all just facilitators. The real business is done by readers.
We’re all just facilitators. The real business is done by readers.
You are going to live a good and long life filled with great and terrible moments that you cannot even imagine yet.
We’re invisible. I’ve never been here with someone else. It’s different being invisible with someone.
Breaking up isn’t something that gets done to you; its something that happens with you.
I smiled. She smiled. I believed the smile.
You had been a paper boy to me all these years – two dimensions as a character on the page and two different, but still flat, dimensions as a person. But that night you turned out to be real.
For me, the hero’s journey is not the voyage from weakness to strength. The true hero’s journey is the voyage from strength to weakness.