Simon Van Booy Quotes

“I think people would be happier if they admitted things more often. In a sense we are all prisoners of some memory, or fear, or disappointment - we are all defined by something we can’t change.”

Source: The Secret Lives of People in Love

People Ifs Thinking Would Be Memories Disappointment Defined Prisoner Can't Change

“We see in others what we want and what we fear.”

Source: The Illusion of Separateness

Want

“I think we keep these moments of rejection and acceptance very close. I think we carry them always, like cracked shells from which a part of us once hatched.”

Source: Everything Beautiful Began After

Thinking Moments Acceptance Rejection Shells Cracked

“If there is such a thing as marriage, it takes place long before the ceremony; in a car on the way to the airport; or as a gray bedrooms fills with dawn, one lover watching the other; or as two strangers stand together in the rain with no bus in sight, arms weighed down with shopping bags. You don't know then. But later you realize - that was the moment.”

Source: The Secret Lives of People in Love

Ifs Knows Way Long Two Moments Together Realizing Car Arms Lovers Rain Sight Stranger Dawn Bags Gray Bus Shopping Bedroom Ceremony One Love Airports

“Sometimes, language is the sound of longing”

Source: The Secret Lives of People in Love

Sometimes Language Sound Longing

“Actually, years mean nothing. It's what's inside them.”

Source: The Secret Lives of People in Love

Years Mean

“I didn’t know who she was, but I had this fire inside me for someone I knew existed.”

Source: The Secret Lives of People in Love

Knows Fire Fire Inside

“Should you ever feel too lonely...listen for the roar of the sea- for in it are all those who've been and all those who are to come.”

Source: The Secret Lives of People in Love

Feels Should Sea Lonely

Author:Simon Van Booy

“Every moment is the paradox of now or never.”

Moments Paradox Now Or Never

“When somebody leaves this plane—or, if you like, goes into another room—those left behind sometimes try and stop loving—but this is a mistake, because even if you have loved only once in your life, you’re ruined.”

Source: The Secret Lives of People in Love

Ifs Trying Sometimes Left Rooms Behinds Mistake Planes Ruined Left Behind Loving Life

“Perhaps we were each allotted only a certain amount of love - enough for only an initial meeting - a serendipitous clumsiness. When it leaves to find others, the difficulty begins because we are faced with our humanness, our past, our very being.”

Source: The Secret Lives of People in Love

Enough Past Certain Amount Difficulty Meetings Our Past Initials Humanness Clumsiness

“There are some lies that, under the right circumstances, are the only truth”

Source: The Secret Lives of People in Love

Lying Circumstances

Author:Simon Van Booy

“Life just swallows you up, doesn't it?Just swallows you up with its everyday things”

Everyday Everyday Things

Author:Simon Van Booy

“The beauty of artifacts is in how they reassure us we’re not the first to die.”

Firsts Dies Artifacts

“Language is like drinking from one's own reflection in still water. We only take from it what we are at the time.”

Source: Everything Beautiful Began After

Stills Language Water Reflection Drinking Still Waters

“I want to feel it somehow happened like that because things happen for a reason. I want to believe this more than anything because if it were just an accident, then God must have died before he could finish the world.”

Source: Everything Beautiful Began After

Ifs World Want Feels Believe Reason Happens Happened Died Accidents Things Happen Happens For A Reason

“Royal Young's writing is that rare blend of irony and beauty.”

Source: The Secret Lives of People in Love

Writing Young Irony Royal

Author:Simon Van Booy

“It's tempting to imagine how we could hurt someone close, because it reminds us how fiercely we love them.”

Hurt Imagine Tempting Hurts Someone

“I suppose the key to a good life is to gently overlook the truth and hope that at any moment we can all be reborn.”

Source: The Secret Lives of People in Love

Moments Life Is Keys Good Life Reborn

“But say you do find the right people - how do you love them without smothering them?...How do you not suffocate them with all the love you've built up in their absence?”

Source: The Secret Lives of People in Love

People Love You Built Absence

“For lonely people, rain is a chance to be touched.”

Source: Everything Beautiful Began After

People Chance Rain Lonely Touched Lonely People

Author:Simon Van Booy

“Love is also a violence, and cannot be undone.”

Love Is Violence Undone

“I read books because I love them, not because I think I should read them.”

Source: The Illusion of Separateness

Thinking Should Book

Book:Love Begins in Winter: Five Stories

Source: Love Begins in Winter: Five Stories

“We touched with a softness that pushed through the skin into memory, like arms plunged into a river - we could feel the weight of each other's stones.”

Feels Memories Arms Rivers Stones Skins Weight Touched Softness

“Whether you know it or not, we leave parts of ourselves wherever we go.”

Source: The Secret Lives of People in Love

Knows

“Anyone who is desperate or alone will agree there is comfort in routine.”

Source: The Illusion of Separateness

Comfort Agree Desperate Routine

“The present grows within the boundaries of the past.”

Source: The Illusion of Separateness

Past Grows Boundaries

“Music helps us understand where we have come from but, more importantly, what has happened to us.”

Source: The Secret Lives of People in Love

Helping Understanding Happened

“Life can unmoor so many feelings; it is a relief we sleep through it. Night unravels the day and reinvents it for the first time. We may mean nothing to time, but to each other we are kings and queens, and the world is a wild benevolent garden filled with chance meetings and unexplained departures.”

Source: The Secret Lives of People in Love

World Firsts May Mean Feelings Night Chance Sleep Kings First Time Garden Filled Meetings Queens Relief Departure Benevolent Unexplained Kings And Queens Chance Meeting

“Hands have their own language.”

Source: The Secret Lives of People in Love

Hands Language

“Love requires imagination more than experience.”

Source: The Secret Lives of People in Love

Imagination

“It's true the people we meet shape us. But the people we don't meet shape us also, often more because we have imagined them so vividly. There are people we yearn for but never seem to meet.”

Source: The Secret Lives of People in Love

People Seems Shapes

“You can't put a price on the rituals of love, because you never know what will happen next. I suppose fear is part of the excitement and we can't have one without the other.”

Source: The Secret Lives of People in Love

Knows Happens Next Love Is Excitement Ritual

“They haven't made love for years but sleep holding hands”

Source: The Secret Lives of People in Love

Years Made Hands Sleep Havens Holding Hands

“Children are the closest we have to wisdom and they become adults the moment that final drop of everything mysterious is strained from them.”

Source: The Secret Lives of People in Love

Children Moments Adults Finals Mysterious Closest