Yen Tran > Yen's Quotes

“What makes music beautiful is the distance between one note and another. What makes speech eloquent is the appropriate pause between words. From time to time we should take a breath and notice the silence between sounds.”
― Haemin Sunim, The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to be Calm in a Busy World

“I wish you could see my true nature. Beyond my body and labels, there is a river of tenderness and vulnerability.”
― Haemin Sunim, The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to be Calm in a Busy World

“Being a critic is easy.
But if the critic tries to run the operation, he soon understands that nothing is as easy as his criticisms.
Criticism without a solution is merely an inflation of the critic's ego.”
― Haemin Sunim, The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to Be Calm in a Busy World

“Love is trusting someone, being there for someone, being ready to listen with a tender heart for no other reason than love. At times we are not sure whether what we feel is love. At that moment, ask yourself this: “Am I happy to give more even after having given a lot?” If the answer is yes, and there is no regret afterward, then that is probably love.”
― Haemin Sunim, The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to be Calm in a Busy World

“When I look deeply within myself, I realize what it is that I really want from others: attentive ears that listen to what I am saying, kind words that acknowledge my existence and worth, gentle eyes that accept my flaws and insecurities.

I resolve to be that person for those around me.”
― Haemin Sunim, The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to Be Calm in a Busy World

“We know the world only through the window of our mind. When our mind is noisy, the world is as well. And when our mind is peaceful, the world is, too. Knowing our minds is just as important as trying to change the world.”
― Haemin Sunim, The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to be Calm in a Busy World

“Sometimes I wrote things because I couldn't say them, couldn't sort out my feelings about them, couldn't keep them bottled inside me.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“When we're afraid, we lose all sense of analysis and reflection. Our fear paralyzes us. Besides, fear has always been the driving force behind all dictators' repression.”
― Marjane Satrapi, The Complete Persepolis

“Where are you going on vacation?”
“Nowhere. I’m going to read. I love reading.”
― Marjane Satrapi, The Complete Persepolis

“I have been feeling very clearheaded lately and what I want to write about today is the sea. It contains so many colors. Silver at dawn, green at noon, dark blue in the evening. Sometimes it looks almost red. Or it will turn the color of old coins. Right now the shadows of clouds are dragging across it, and patches of sunlight are touching down everywhere. White strings of gulls drag over it like beads.

It is my favorite thing, I think, that I have ever seen. Sometimes I catch myself staring at it and forget my duties. It seems big enough to contain everything anyone could ever feel.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“You know the greatest lesson of history? It’s that history is whatever the victors say it is. That’s the lesson. Whoever wins, that’s who decides the history. We act in our own self-interest. Of course we do. Name me a person or a nation who does not. The trick is figuring out where your interests are.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“Grumpy. Angry. Stupid. How long since last sleep, question?”
― Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

“But I have to save humanity first. Stupid humanity. Getting in the way of my hobbies.”
― Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

“Evil is not a thing. It cannot take possession of you. It’s the opposite; it’s a void, an absence of goodness. The only thing you can be frightened of here is yourself.”
― Jo Nesbø, The Snowman

“It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“I don’t live in either my past or my future. I’m interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we’re living now.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“When each day is the same as the next, it’s because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“If you start by promising what you don't even have yet, you'll lose your desire to work towards getting it.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. The lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glare of the lover’s inward eye.”
― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

“Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. It is a lovely surging.”
― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

“Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.”
― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

“If happiness is anticipation with certainty, we were happy.”
― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

“People—and I’m no exception—seem capable of forgetting almost anything, much as if our island were unable to float in anything but an expanse of totally empty sea.”
― Yōko Ogawa, The Memory Police