C. JoyBell C.

“It's easy to make me laugh, you can make me laugh, anyone can make me laugh, but that certainly does not mean you can make me do anything.”

“Politeness is okay, but it gets old and boring. You want to attack life with a passion, not a politeness, you want people to think about you and remember you and say "she is so passionate" you don't want people to think about you and remember you and say "she is so polite," because, who cares about polite?”

“Do not yearn to be popular; be exquisite. Do not desire to be famous; be loved. Do not take pride in being expected; be palpable, unmistakable.”

“A clown on a throne is still a clown. A king in rags is still a king.”

“Life has no victims. There are no victims in this life.No one has the right to point fingers at his/her past and blame it for what he/she is today. We do not have the right to point our finger at someone else and blame that person for how we treat others, today.Don’t hide in the corner, pointing fingers at your past. Don’t sit under the table, talking about someone who has hurt you. Instead, stand up and face your past! Face your fears! Face your pain! And stomach it all! You may have to do so kicking and screaming and throwing fits and crying- but by all means- face it!This life makes no room for cowards.”

“...No– but ours is a journey into ourselves, a walk with God every day! Ours is a book that we write, a smile, a love, a tear, a lust, an awakening, a learning, a joy, a laughter, a memory, a dream, a vision, a love, a love, a love and a love. Our life is now. And Heaven is always there, but this life isn't always there, but this life isn't always here. Heaven is always there for us but this life is a gift to us!”

“Heaven is always there for us; but this life... this life is a gift to us.”

“She had a flower tattoo on her wrist; "What does that mean?" he asked her. "Absolutely nothing," she said, "it's just a flower.”

“I'm half good and I'm half bad. My mama is a very good girl and my daddy is a very bad boy. And I guess that leaves me somewhere sort of...here.”

“It's like I get into a roller coaster, and sit there while it goes up and down and upside down and sometimes I get thrown out and I hit my head, but I crawl back in again and the moment I'm back in, it just keeps on going and going again...all of this, so I can find things out and then I write about the things I find out so you can find them out from me. All the bruises, all the wounds, all the bumps on the head, all the scars, just so I can take that and I can write all these things, and sometimes I say "God, I don't want to be in this roller coaster anymore." But when I think about it, if I'm not right here, then where the hell would I be? On the sidewalk? I wasn't born to stand on the sidewalk, I was born to fly around crazy in the sky!”

“The playboy is not necessarily a man who has many girlfriends, or a man who has many women, or a man who has slept with many women. That is old. But there is a new breed of the playboy and he is the man who remains single in attempts to make every woman feel as if he belongs to her, he remains a virgin in order to make every woman feel like she will be the first one, and in the end he may choose a very unattractive woman to adorn his side, so that in all circumstances, he will shine as the more beautiful one. This is the new breed of playboy. And it is a very evil one.”

“Before, I wanted to say: "I found love!" But now, I want to say: "I found a person. And he belongs to me and I belong to him.”

“Maybe we shouldn't be looking for love. Maybe we should be looking for a person. Because maybe you can find love in a person, but not have that person. So if you look for love, what you will find is love. But if you want to belong to someone, and you want someone to belong to you, you should look for a person.”

“I find no importance in showing others that I am happy; it's not important to me that they know or think that I am happy but what is important to me is that I am happy. I am interested in being happy, not in making others think or know that I am.”

“Silk is a fine, delicate, soft, illuminating, beautiful substance. But you can never rip it! If a man takes this tender silk and attempts to tear it, and cannot tear it, is he in his right mind to say "This silk is fake! I thought it was soft, I thought it was delicate, but look, I cannot even tear it" ? Surely, this man is not in his right mind! The silk is not fake! This silk is 100% real. It's the man who is stupid!”

“The only problem with her is that she is too perfect. She is bad in a way that entices, and good in a way that comforts. She is mischief but then she is the warmth of home. The dreams of the wild and dangerous but the memories of childhood and gladness. She is perfection. And when given something perfect, it is the nature of man to dedicate his mind to finding something wrong with it and then when he is able to find something wrong with it, he rejoices in his find, and sees only the flaw, becoming blind to everything else! And this is why man is never given anything that is perfect, because when given the imperfect and the ugly, man will dedicate his mind to finding what is good with the imperfect and upon finding one thing good with the extremely flawed, he will only see the one thing good, and no longer see everything that is ugly. And so....man complains to God for having less than what he wants... but this is the only thing that man can handle. Man cannot handle what is perfect. It is the nature of the mortal to rejoice over the one thing that he can proudly say that he found on his own, with no help from another, whether it be a shadow in a perfect diamond, or a faint beautiful reflection in an extremely dull mirror.”

“Cake is happiness! If you know the way of the cake, you know the way of happiness! If you have a cake in front of you, you should not look any further for joy!”

“Ends are not bad things, they just mean that something else is about to begin. And there are many things that don't really end, anyway, they just begin again in a new way. Ends are not bad and many ends aren't really an ending; some things are never-ending.”

“It's time that I stop referring to myself, thinking about myself, planning for myself, according to the gridlines and the timelines and the guidelines of people. I will expand in this universe, I will not stay on the lines nor within the lines written by this world.”

“The difference between my darkness and your darkness is that I can look at my own badness in the face and accept its existence while you are busy covering your mirror with a white linen sheet. The difference between my sins and your sins is that when I sin I know I'm sinning while you have actually fallen prey to your own fabricated illusions. I am a siren, a mermaid; I know that I am beautiful while basking on the ocean's waves and I know that I can eat flesh and bones at the bottom of the sea. You are a white witch, a wizard; your spells are manipulations and your cauldron from hell yet you wrap yourself in white and wear a silver wig.”

“The most adventurous journey to embark on; is the journey to yourself, the most exciting thing to discover; is who you really are, the most treasured pieces that you can find; are all the pieces of you, the most special portrait you can recognize; is the portrait of your soul.”

“You can see the whole entire world in the eyes of a person who knows how to simply stand there and take all of it into him but then you can look into the eyes of someone else and the whole entire world goes away and all that's left is you.”

“Lucy seemed to be imprisoned by a legion of people in her life who always wanted what was right for her. And as a result, in the eyes of everyone, she had everything... and yet she always, always felt she had nothing. No one.”

“Si WWII ne peut pas nous prendre, elle~même le diable en personne ne pourra nous joindre! ( IF WWII COULDN'T TAKE US DOWN, NOT EVEN THE DEVIL HERSELF CAN TOUCH US! )”

“I don't ask people to keep me.”

“That day, they jumped into the river together. It was hot and nobody needed any clothes.”

“He's better now, Loo. He's taking care of the cats.”

“Loo, life is black and white. You don't know what's good for you, because you don't see the black and white! You don't see where the black lines end and where the white lines begin! You're going to grow up to be no good if you keep on that way. It's impractical. I only have one child, and I won't have her growing up to be impractical. I can't think of a worse thing to be than impractical!”

“Sometimes the things that are felt the most are expressed between two souls over the distance and over time...where no words abide. And others may speak freely, live with one another freely, express themselves freely– just like everyone else, but then there is you... you have no words for proof of reassurance, no tokens of professed love, but you have something. Something worth keeping.”

“And at that moment, Thibaut knew he was a murderer. He had murdered his brother that night; he had taken away his brother's soul.”

“The small smiles everybody wanted to try to figure out – they meant nothing, really. She wasn't so good at talking and the smiles made up for it. They filled the spaces in which she ought to have answers for things with something that gave people more questions.”

“A bitch always smokes." He looks back at Lucy. "A bitch is the opposite of a whore. A bitch doesn't need anybody. Or she wants people to think she doesn't need anybody. And she smokes to prove it.”

“‎They are angry with me, because I know what I am." Said the little eagle. "How do you know that they are angry with you?" "Because, they despise me for wanting to soar, they only want me to peck at the dirt, looking for ants, with them. But I can't do that. I don't have chicken feet, I have eagle wings." "And what is so wrong with having eagle wings and no chicken feet?" Asked the old owl. "I'm not sure, that's what I'm trying to find out." "They hate you because you know that you are an eagle and they want you to think you are a chicken so that you will peck at the ground looking for ants and worms, so that you will never know that you are an eagle and always think yourself a chicken. Let them hate you, they will always be chickens, and you will always be an eagle. You must fly. You must soar." Said the old owl.”

“I feel like, God expects me to be human. I feel like, God likes me just the way I am: broken and empty and bruised. I feel like, God doesn't look at me and wish that I were something else, because He likes me just this way. I feel like, God doesn't want me to close my eyes and pray for Him to make me holy or for Him to make me pure; because He made me human. I feel like, God already knows I'm human...it is I who needs to learn that.”

“There is a law of the natural worlds (the spiritual and the physical) and this is something I have understood: that for every genuine existence, for every real manifestation and occurrence, there are are ten thousand falsities. Before you meet what or who is genuine, you will first have met, or known of, what is fake; and ten thousand times so! There is no need to feel disappointments, any number below ten thousand deceptions renders you a lucky person! And you ask why is there a need for this to happen? Well, if you have not known what is false first, there is no way to understand what then comes which is truth. What is lesser is so afraid of what is genuine, that it finds it necessary to imitate and duplicate that imitation ten thousand times over, for fear that you will finally meet what is real. The more important that one existence is, the more imitations there are in the world.”

“Life is not compassionate towards victims. The trick is not to see yourself as one. It's never too late! I know I've felt like the victim in various situations in my life, but, it's never too late for me to realize that it's my responsibility to stand on victorious ground and know that whatever it is I'm experiencing or going through, those are just the clouds rolling by while I stand here on the top of this mountain! This mountain called Victory! The clouds will come and the clouds will go, but the truth is that I'm high up here on this mountaintop that reaches into the sky! I am a victor. I didn't climb up the mountain, I was born on top of it!”

“I can't decide whether I'm a good girl wrapped up in a bad girl, or if I'm a bad girl wrapped up in a good girl. And that's how I know I'm a woman!”

“I'm unpredictable, I never know where I'm going until I get there, I'm so random, I'm always growing, learning, changing, I'm never the same person twice. But one thing you can be sure of about me; is I will always do exactly what I want to do.”

“There is no quarrel between science and spirituality. I often hear people of science trying to use it to prove the nonexistence of the spiritual, but I simply can't see a chasm in between the two. What is spiritual produces what is scientific and when science is used to disprove the spiritual, it's always done with the intent to do so; a personal contempt. As a result, scientists today only prove their inferiority to the great founding fathers of the sciences who were practitioners of alchemy. Today's science is washed-out and scrubbed-down and robbed of everything mystical and spiritual, a knowledge born of contempt and discontent. Or perhaps, there are a few who wish to keep those secrets to themselves and serve everyone else up with a tasteless version of science and the idiots of today blindly follow their equally blind leaders.”

“When I was a little girl, everything in the world fell into either of these two categories: wrong or right. Black or white. Now that I am an adult, I have put childish things aside and now I know that some things fall into wrong and some things fall into right. Some things are categorized as black and some things are categorized as white. But most things in the world aren't either! Most things in the world aren't black, aren't white, aren't wrong, aren't right, but most of everything is just different. And now I know that there's nothing wrong with different, and that we can let things be different, we don't have to try and make them black or white, we can just let them be grey. And when I was a child, I thought that God was the God who only saw black and white. Now that I am no longer a child, I can see, that God is the God who can see the black and the white and the grey, too, and He dances on the grey! Grey is okay.”

“The only way that we can live, is if we grow. The only way that we can grow is if we change. The only way that we can change is if we learn. The only way we can learn is if we are exposed. And the only way that we can become exposed is if we throw ourselves out into the open. Do it. Throw yourself.”

“Why do we always begin to think about people when they die? I think we should think about people while they're still alive! That way, they can know that we're thinking about them! I always tell people when I'm thinking about them, or that I thought about them, or that I have been thinking about them and it almost always scares them away, but so what, I am practicing the art of life and if that is frightening to them then maybe they need to start living while they're still alive!”

“I think people believe empathy to be compassion, that compassion is an inner sense (a sense of the soul). But empathy is a sense, while compassion isn't a sense. Empathy is an affinity, a communion, a comprehension. They say that empathy is compassion, but I think that the two are independent of each other. You see, through empathy you will feel what another is feeling, including all those plans for manipulation and persuasion. You will feel everything, not just the parts that make you take compassion for the person, but also all the red flags! You see, empathy is a sense that works with the other senses such as foresight and intuition. So, we can feel compassion but we have to move with empathy.”

“Peace is something like happiness; you cannot say "I will be happy when..." and you can't say "I will be peaceful when..." Your happiness shouldn't depend on the situation you're in nor on the circumstances that surround you. In the same breath, you cannot wait for everything around you to become peaceful in order for you to say "I am peaceful." In both happiness and peace, there is a heart of strength, determination and steadfastness; a heart that has the power to make things happen. You have to be at peace. You have to be happy. Now.”

“If anything or anyone removes peace from you or inflicts confusion and judgment on you, this thing or person is not of God regardless of whether or not that person or thing has wrapped itself/himself in the wrapping paper with God's face printed all over it. Don't stop believing in God but stop believing in that person, in that thing. The wrapping paper with God's face stamped all over it isn't really God.”

“It's definitely difficult being a woman and growing up a girl. When you're graceful, people say you lack personality; when you're serene, people say you're boring; when you're confident, people say you're arrogant; when you're feminine, people say you're too girly; and when you climb trees, people say you're too much of a tomboy! As a woman, you really need to develop a very strong sense of self and the earlier you can do that, the better! You have to be all the things that you are, without allowing other people's ignorance change you! I realized that they don't know what grace is, they can't identify serenity, they have inferiority complexes, they are incapable of being feminine, and they don't know how to climb trees!”

“You are never fully dressed without perfume!”

“We must not be defined by what we do, but we must be what and who we are, then only happen to do what we do!”

“I don't look for love. Love looks for me." "Why?" "Because it needs me. Because I'm not afraid of it.”

“Peace is the number one beautiful ornament you can wear, I really believe that. They say you should always wear a smile, but I don't believe that you should "always" wear a smile, seriously, you're going to look stupid! But peace, you should always carry peace within you, its the most beautifying thing you could ever have or do. Peace makes your heart beautiful and it makes you look beautiful, too. You want to have perfect physical posture when you stand, sit, and walk, and peace is the perfect posture of the soul, really. Try perfect posture outside as well as inside. Peace creates grace and grace gives peace.”