Lucy Maud Montgomery Quotes

If you haven't been in a war and are wondering how long it takes to get used to losing everything you think you need or love, I can tell you the answer is no time at all.

At that moment, something shifted sweetly inside him. It was forgiveness, beautiful and effortless and complete. For Louie Zamperini, the war was over.

I think sometimes you go through an experience, and you don't feel the impact, especially in a war experience, until way past it.

No one escapes from a war. No one. Not even the survivors. You accept things that would appall you at any other time because life has temporarily lost all meaning.

When all is said and done, the only change that will make a difference is the transformation of the human heart.

That's the worst of a war--you have to go on hearing about it so long.

My father always told me that I was going to be a failure - I think he was more talking about himself, but I didn't know it at the time.

I think a lot of us are looking for the same thing. I feel very lucky to have a definitive moment where I know everything shifted in me, and it was the moment I read that quote. Because I thought, A. That's everything I know about vulnerability. It's not winning, it's not losing, it's showing up and being seen. B. That's who I want to be.

What I mean is this: you meet someone, you think about them. You're already changing because of the way you think about them. You meet them again, you think about them some more, you're changing again. And on it goes. You are changing right now. Before my eyes.

The more I've traveled to war zones, the more I'm convinced that the impact and the effects are way beyond anything we can even begin to imagine.

Wars shatter so many lives. I think especially of children robbed of their childhood.

Any experience deeply felt makes some men better and some men worse. When it has ended, they share nothing but the recollection of a commitment in which each was tested and to some degree found wanting. [...] The consequences of the journey change the voyager so much more than the embarking or the arrival.

And then like a song we'd forgotten was even on the mix, you stepped into the house and my whole life.

Something had changed in me, even if I didn't know what it was just yet. All I could think was that I felt alive for the first time.

You wouldn't believe that so much could change just because a relationship ended.

The war has ruined us for everything.

The war is definitely in the background, only referred to in radio news blips and conversation. I think, ultimately, this film is about the choices these guys are faced with. In that way, I think this is a more personal story about their friendship, about the reaction that they have when they're essentially faced with death, to a certain degree.

I don't really think it comes as a shock to every writer if somebody in their family is mad at them. Yes, it's very upsetting. But it's inherent in the process of trying to make sense of one's life, which is what I think is perhaps at the bottom of writing at all.

Everything that you know about yourself comes from thinking back, and I think I saw religion as the first big betrayal of me.

I look for roles that resonate with me these days. While I love putting out just fabulous entertainment, I think now as artists, especially with so much uncertainty going on in the world, you want to be a part of things that offer or promote healing in some way and perhaps a little introspection once you leave.

I could go on and on about how the statements and concepts that used to depress me now bring me joy, but that is not easily understood for people who think the way I used to think and believe what I used to believe.

I want people to leave the theater and think, "How can I be a better person?" That's the only way things are going to improve.

Each person's life is like a mandala - a vast, limitless circle. We stand in the center of our own circle, and everything we see, hear and think forms the mandala of our life ... everything that shows up in your mandala is a vehicle for your awakening.

Self-knowledge is not the knowledge of a dead self, self-knowledge is the knowledge of the process of the self. It is an alive phenomenon. The self is not a thing, it is an event, it is a process. Never think in terms of things, the self is not there inside you just like a thing waiting in your room. The self is a process: changing, moving, arriving at new altitudes, moving into new planes, going deeper into new depths. Each moment much work is going on and the only way to encounter this self is to encounter it in relationship.

It certainly changes your life. So that may be a cliché, but I think any woman would say that [day when her baby born] would have been the most special day of their life.