Neil Gaiman:
“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”
“I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing.”
“Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.”
“You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.”
“But he did not understand the price. Mortals never do. They only see the prize. Their hearts desire, their dream....But the price of getting what you want is getting what you once wanted.”
Albert Einstein:
“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
“I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent.”
“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
“We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.”
“I have no particular talent. I am merely inquisitive.”
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
Monday, November 23, 2009
Quotes from Brilliant Minds
Love Me 'Til My Heart Stops
“I try to talk to you, but I don't know what to say. I am afraid you don't want me to say anything. So I don't. But inside of me there are words waiting to come out. And tell you how I feel-like how I miss you. And how I love you despite my broken heart. And how I need you in my life. And especially how much I want you. But those words may forever stay in my heart-locked inside. Sometimes I wonder if there are words locked inside you too... but I'll never know.”
“I miss you when something really good happens, because you are the one I want to share it with. I miss you when something is troubling me, because you are the one who understands me so well. I miss you when I laugh and cry because I know that you are the one that makes my laughter grow and my tears disappear. I miss you all the time, but I miss you most when I lay awake at night and think of all the wonderful times we spent with eachother; for those were some of the best times of my life.”
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Let's Make Cupcakes!
So, I've never really been that big of a fan of cake, I've always preferred pie. But I have recently fallen in love with cupcakes. I think they are the cutest things. I guess it started awhile back when I got these cute little pink cupcake earrings (earrings are another love of mine). They just make me happy. And then, with my recent love of WeHeartIt.com, I've saved tons of cute cupcake images. So I decided I would love to own a bunch of cupcake supplies and make cupcakes. People love cupcakes. They're cute and make people happy. And they're delicious of course! I wish I could own a little cupcake shop, but I'm no expert. So instead, I will make cupcakes for myself and people I know just for fun. I went to the store this week and bought a vanilla funfetti cake mix, a strawberry cake mix, vanilla frosting, a big tub of sprinkles, and some sugar cookie dough (to make heart and star-shaped cookies as well!). My first experiment: strawberry cupcakes with vanilla frosting and sprinkles. They were so delicious and it was so fun. Here's some pictures of them and soon I hope to have more supplies to make even cuter cupcakes! Oh, and one of those cupcake cake pans to make a giant cupcake!
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips
1 (18.25 ounce) box yellow cake mix
1 1/3 cups water
1/3 cup canola oil
3 eggs
1. Whisk together the flour, baking soda, and sea salt; set aside. Beat the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar with an electric mixer in a large bowl until smooth. Add 1 egg and the vanilla extract and beat until smooth. Mix in the flour mixture until just incorporated. Fold in the chocolate chips; mixing just enough to evenly combine. Form the dough into tablespoon-sized balls; place onto a baking sheet, and freeze until solid, about 2 hours.
2. Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Line 24 muffin cups with paper liners.
3. Beat 3 eggs in a large bowl with an electric mixer to break up. Add the cake mix, water, and canola oil; continue beating for 2 minutes on medium speed. Spoon into the prepared cupcake liners, filling each 2/3 full. Place a frozen cookie dough ball on the top center of each cupcake.
4. Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted into the cake portion of the cupcake (not the cookie dough ball) comes clean, about 20 minutes. Cool in the pans for 10 minutes before removing to cool completely on a wire rack.
Heartfelt
Recently, there have been a few things that have really made me realize certain things and see the beauty in life.
1. My Humanities 1300 class: Our teacher really wants us to focus on how what we learn can affect and be applied in our own lives. I have been able to relate to this class personally so much and I have learned a lot. It has to do with art, culture, history, mythology, philosophy, and psychology and human nature. It has made me see some of my own flaws, what I need to do in my life, and why I have done certain things in my life so far. I've seen that this is how life works, this is how we learn. I feel lucky to realize some things about myself that some people will never discover.
2. WeHeartIt.com (my personal page is http://weheartit.com/wishdreamhope): I'm in love with this website. All it is is a social bookmarking site, but for images. People save their favorite images to their account and you can follow each other and save your own images. I love browsing through these images. They are inspiring, beautiful, lovely, and amazing. I become slightly obsessed whenever I go to the site. It is also extremely interesting to see that there are a lot of people who think like me because whenever I see someone save a bunch of images that I find lovely and I look at their page, I see that everything they've saved would be something that I too would save or have already saved. It's also interesting that these people and I who share an eye for these certain lovely things have common interests in general. I've never experienced that kind of likeness on any other site.
3. Music: I have a love for music and I have realized I need it in my life. It sounds sillly, but it really opens up my heart, my soul, my emotions. It makes me feel. I feel the pain, I feel the joy, I see the beauty. If I hadn't met a certain person, I probably would've never had the chance to have such a beautiful thing in my life. A few days ago, I went to an Imogen Heap concert with my friend Becky. It was amazing. I loved the music, the atmosphere, the people who loved the same thing. It made me long for more, realize my need for it, and miss being with people who enjoy it as well.
4. Reading and PostSecret: PostSecret is an art project where people send in their secrets anonymously. They are written on beautiful, creative, artisic postcards and printed in books and online. I've read a couple of the books and they were amazing. It was slightly depressing to see everyones secrets, but it is a beautiful idea and it made me think of my own secrets. It's good to know that everyone has secrets and there is only one person who knew every secret about me. I've also been reading a lot more recently because I have a love for books and words and I've missed it. It's hard to find the time. But I've found some great books and reading really opens up your mind.
5. What I have learned from these things collectively: It's a secret. But lets just say I know myself better and know what I want in my life and what makes me happy and what I miss and need.
Not All Girls Are Like That
I had to post another Facebook conversation on here because some interesting stuff came up and I wanted to remember it. Surprisingly, some great conversations with valuable information about how guys and girls view things come up. Basically, a guy friend of mine and his friend seemed to think that every girl they knew or dated ended up marrying someone who was old, bald, and rich. Another girl and I responded to them and let them know that that's not always how it is and gave them some advice.
BR:
Old, Bald, and Rich... apparently those are the three things that I lack...
SL:
you forgot why you lack them.... apparently these are the three things ALL girls look for in guys...... especially all my ex-girlfriends....
BR:
SL... that is correct...
NMF:
ur friend SL is mistaken...not ALL girls look for old bald and rich, look at me i don't want ANY of those and i'm a girl :D
SL:
i think that's what i'm going to write my exploratory paper on..... it's so fascinating how this phenomenon happens....
SL:
hey NMF, i don't know. just send me a picture of the dude you get married to and we'll see, ha ha. me and BR just were thinking one night of all the guys these girls have married and they had all those three things in common
Ashley Schmidt:
Wow guys, you are just silly! I don't even know what you're talking about! That is not always true! Maybe you just haven't met the right type of girl and need to branch out from the girls you typically know who are like this.
Ashley Schmidt:
Sorry guys, one more thing... I promise you not ALL girls look for those things, but the ones that do, don't even worry about it. Maybe they're happy and maybe they're not. And if they're not, it's their loss, honestly, because they didn't see what truly matters. Haha, ok sorry, we just talked about this in school and I was just thinking about it!
NMF:
hahaha SL! ummm the man i will marry will not be bald, rich or old silly silly. when that time comes i'll prove it to u! and like ashley said you need to branch out and find the right girls...these girls you seem to run into um appear to be looking for the wrong things yup lol :D
SL:
i don't know what it is ha ha, true true, branching out is a good idea, Here's a question..... where are those types of girls that aren't like that...... cause it seems all my life it's been like this...........ha ha.....
NMF:
well SL the key...these girls are ALL around you you just have to know what to look for and apaprently you're lookin' for the wrong things and possibly the wrong girls :D
Ashley Schmidt:
Yes, true. And sometimes it's hard to tell, but...
1. Maybe you're talking to some right now, haha. Just kidding :)
2. Maybe not in Utah? No, just kidding, you can find them here, I promise.
3. Ask yourself, what do you typically look for? You can't go only for looks, attraction is good, but that's just the lowest step. There has to be more than that. Friendship is good, common interest, things to talk about or enjoy or find interesting about each other, even if you're different. Then, I would say look for someone who is smart and I don't know, not so naive in a way that they're not very intellectual. Also look for people who are caring and compassionate, girls who help others, and work hard because these girls will truly care about you and not just money or age or whatever the problem is. So where do you find these girls? Everywhere, and I would say good places such as school. Maybe places that you enjoy and you'll meet some girl who does too. Just get to know different people, look for different things than you usually do, and just be yourself and live your life the best you can because there will be someone that you just click with. It happens. Honestly, don't even worry. Don't feel pressure or something from those people getting married. Everything will all work out and you never know when you'll meet someone special. Haha, sorry, I tend to write a lot, but I hope you feel less hopeless. Or, you could just think I'm crazy! And that's ok too, because I know what I say is true.
SL:
dang ashley, you need to write a book :) that's a lot of good advice
BR:
hear hear! true that SL, good advice!
NMF:
ASHLEY! that's BRILLIANT! you said it best! don't think anyone could say it better! support u all the way girl! boys...take her advice to heart, she speaks the truth....the WHOLE truth!
Ashley Schmidt:
Haha, thanks guys, it's nothing much, I just do what I can to help a brother out! Because I know girls are confusing. I even think so! Haha, a book? It's crossed my mind once or twice when I think of these things, but only for a second. I'm no expert. But if you guys ever need any advice or whatever, you now know who's got a lot of probably unwanted advice. :) Here's a good quote for ya, "True love does not come by finding the perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly." Nobody is perfect, but you will find someone who, in your eyes, is. And with these words, I leave you on your journey. Haha, don't you love that cheesiness? It makes me proud. And again, look how much I wrote! It's a sickness.
Ashley Schmidt:
Oh, and thanks NMF! You're sweet! And I totally agree with everything you said too!
BR:
I don't think you need a book ashley. Just copy and paste. haha jk
SL:
"True love does not come by finding the perfect person, buy by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly" we need to talk more about this stuff more often....
Ashley Schmidt:
Haha BR! True! And I will in fact probably copy and paste this to remember it and maybe post it in my blog. Although I won't include names of course. I did that before with another good facebook conversation I had where I had asked a question about guys, and some guys, and girls, answered me and I got some really good answers and different points of view. And SL, yes, it's true. Society makes us see things a certain way, but there is a lot more to it. And that stuff I said just comes from things I've learned in life so far and things I've learned in school. I guess some of those things came from a discussion we had in my humanities class about Carl Jung and his theory of individuation. And we read the myth, Amor and Psyche, which, at first hand seems like a story about a really stupid girl who gets everything handed to her, but it actually represents the process of individuation and her becoming her "whole" self. Anyways, those things, and that quote I actually found the day before I wrote it here, are how I answered these questions and maybe you could look into them yourself. I know they made me see things more clearly.
Ashley Schmidt:
But when it really comes down to it, just do what makes you happy and be with someone who makes you happy. There's no wrong choice, it's just that some people don't realize or haven't learned certain things about themselves and others, and so it doesn't always work out. And some people just aren't meant for each other. But there are plenty of people who it will work out with, or you'll find these things together. That's what life's about right? It's a journey. Ok, wow, just tell me to shut up already. I definitely don't talk this much, but when I get writing, it's easier for me to put down my thoughts. :)
