This little bookworm just turned 32-years-old today! My birthday is always a great excuse to visit bookstores and treat myself to many books. This year is no different as I’m splurging on some new reads and also anticipating gift cards to bookstores because my family knows me well. While I was in my happy place of making my book wish list, I started thinking about all the books I read as a 31-year-old (yep these are the types of random thoughts that run through my head). I have read many inspirational books this past year and I have learned many important lessons from incredible authors.
I usually jot down quotes that speak to me while I’m reading a certain book. Looking back at my notebook, I see that it has been packed with quotes since May 1st 2018. It has been a great year for me and I do believe I have books to partly thank for that. So here are 31 quotes that really found a way into my 31-year-old heart.
*side note: there are certain things in life that remind you of how old you are and a list of 31 things is definitely one of them
1) Becoming by Michelle Obama:
“If you don’t get out there and define yourself, you’ll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others.”
2) Good Vibes, Good Life by Vex King:
“It’s not selfish or a sign of weakness to distance yourself or walk away from those who constantly bring down your vibe. Life is about balance. It’s about spreading kindness, but it’s also about not letting anyone take that kindness away from you”
3) Educated by Tara Westover:
“He said positive liberty is self-mastery—the rule of the self, by the self. To have positive liberty, he explained, is to take control of one’s own mind; to be liberated from irrational fears and beliefs, from addictions, superstitions and all other forms of self-coercion.”
4) Circe by Madeline Miller:
“I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open.”
5) Rising Strong by Brené Brown:
“A lot of cheap seats in the arena are filled with people who never venture onto the floor. They just hurl mean-spirited criticisms and put-downs from a safe distance. The problem is, when we stop caring what people think and stop feeling hurt by cruelty, we lose our ability to connect. But when we’re defined by what people think, we lose the courage to be vulnerable. Therefore, we need to be selective about the feedback we let into our lives. For me, if you’re not in the arena getting your ass kicked, I’m not interested in your feedback.”
6) Notes on a Nervous Planet by Matt Haig:
“Reading isn’t important because it helps to get you a job. It’s important because it gives you room to exist beyond the reality you’re given. It is how humans merge. How minds connect. Dreams. Empathy. Understanding. Escape.”
7) Legendary by Stephanie Garber
“Not everyone gets a true ending. There are two types of endings because most people give up at the part of the story where things are the worst, where the situation feels hopeless. But that’s when hope is needed most. Only those who persevere can find their true ending.”
8) Bloom for Yourself II by April Green
“Be watchful of self-doubt, for it has a way of suffocating your passion; of holding the soul’s desire to create, away from you – far away from you – like galaxies and the sky in between far away. Whenever self-doubt visits, you must always remember that you are a reflection of the Universe – you were created to create. And, it doesn’t matter who else sees your work or likes your work: the value lies in how you feel when you’re producing that work”.
9) The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty:
“Greatness takes time, Banu Nahida. Often the mightiest things have the humblest beginnings.”
10) With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo:
“You can’t control how people look at you, but you can control how far back you pull your shoulders and how high you lift your chin”
11) Everything Beautiful Is Not Ruined by Danielle Younge-Ullman:
“Nothing guarantees happiness. I’m not certain happiness should be the goal. Satisfaction, maybe. A sense of purpose. Contribution. Authenticity. Happiness? It’s a lightweight goal. And meanwhile, I suspect that turning away from yourself will guarantee the opposite of happiness.”
12) The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters by Balli Kaur Jaswal
“Sometimes I just feel sort of captivated by this sensation of fully being. If that makes sense. I don’t want to sound pretentious and say I’m fulfilling my life’s purpose – it’s probably simpler than that. It’s just a profoundly gratifying feeling of being exactly where I want to be”
13) The Gown by Jennifer Robson:
“Worrying about what would become of her work once it was finished was a waste of time, she told herself. The act of creation was what mattered”
14) GMORNING, GNIGHT! by Lin-Manuel Miranda
“Gnight. You are so loved and we like having you around.
* ties one end of this sentence to your heart, the other end to everyone who loves you in this life, even if the clouds obscure your view
* checks knots *
There stay put, you. Tug if you need anything”
15) The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson:
“The desire for more positive experiences is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience”
16) The Wisdom of Sundays by Oprah
“Everybody has a calling. Your real job in life is to figure out why you are here and get about the business of doing it”
17) Braving the Wilderness by Brené Brown:
“There will be times when standing alone feels too hard, too scary, and we’ll doubt our ability to make our way through the uncertainty. Someone, somewhere, will say, “Don’t do it. You don’t have what it takes to survive the wilderness.” This is when you reach deep into your wild heart and remind yourself, “I am the wilderness.”
18) Brave Enough by Cheryl Strayed:
“Hello, fear. Thank you for being here. You’re my indication that I’m doing what I need to do.”
19) The Courage to be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi:
“Your unhappiness cannot be blamed on your past or your environment. And it isn’t that you lack competence. You just lack courage. One might say you are lacking in the courage to be happy.”
20) The Hating Game by Sally Thorne:
“If you knew the kind of little miracles happening every moment you breathe in, you wouldn’t be able to handle it. A valve could close and not open; an artery could split, you could die. At any moment. It’s nothing but miracles inside your tiny city.”
21) The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George:
“Some novels are loving, lifelong companions; some give you a clip around the ear; others are friends who wrap you in warm towels when you’ve got those autumn blues. And some…well, some are pink candy floss that tingles in your brain for three seconds and leaves a blissful void”
22) Bloom For Yourself by April Green:
“Sometimes, there is no reason whatsoever other than the simple truth that the universe just wants to watch you bloom”
23) Love Her Wild by Atticus:
“She was afraid of heights but she was much more afraid of never flying”
24) The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas:
“That’s the problem. We let people say stuff, and they say it so much that it becomes okay to them and normal for us. What’s the point of having a voice if you’re gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn’t be?”
25) The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang:
“This crusade to fix herself was ending right now. She wasn’t broken. She saw and interacted with the world in a different way, but that was her. She could change her actions, change her words, change her appearance, but she couldn’t change the root of herself”
26) Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson:
“You learn to appreciate the fact that what drives you is very different from what you’re told should make you happy. You learn that it’s okay to prefer your personal idea of heaven (live-tweeting zombie movies from under a blanket of kittens) rather than someone else’s idea that fame/fortune/parties are the pinnacle we should all reach for. And there’s something surprisingly freeing about that.”
27) It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover:
Imagine all the people you meet in your life. There are so many. They come in like waves, trickling in and out with the tide. Some waves are much bigger and make more of an impact than others. Sometimes the waves bring with them things from deep in the bottom of the sea and they leave those things tossed onto the shore. Imprints against the grains of sand that prove the waves had once been there, long after the tide recedes.”
28) My Plain Jane by Cynthia Hand:
“But she was a writer, so while she did get this moment of thinking herself somewhat brilliant, it would soon be offset by a crippling doubt that she had a gift of words at all. Such is the way with all writers. Trust us.”
29) Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman:
“Tiny slivers of life—they all added up and helped you to feel that you too could be a fragment, a little piece of humanity who usefully filled a space, however minuscule”
30) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
“It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.”
31) What I Know for Sure by Oprah Winfrey
“Beginning when we are girls, most of us are taught to deflect praise. We apologize for our accomplishments. We try to level the field with our family and friends by downplaying our brilliance. We settle for the passenger’s seat when we long to drive. That’s why so many of us have been willing to hide our light as adults. Instead of being filled with all the passion and purpose that enable us to offer our best to the world, we empty ourselves in an effort to silence our critics. The truth is that the naysayers in your life can never be fully satisfied. Whether you hide or shine, they’ll always feel threatened because they don’t believe they are enough. So stop paying attention to them. Every time you suppress some part of yourself or allow others to play you small, you are ignoring the owner’s manual your Creator gave you. What I know for sure is this: You are built not to shrink down to less but to blossom into more. To be more splendid. To be more extraordinary. To use every moment to fill yourself up.”
There you have it! 31 of my favorite inspirational quotes from the books I read at 31-years-old. I look forward to a whole new years worth of lessons from the books I’ll be reading, starting with my new haul from my birthday.
Happy reading!
Shazia.
(Photo from @khanlibrary)
(Cartoon of me by @maddie.bookish.art)
(Meeting and getting my book signed by Brigid Kemmerer) 
(Our swag bags had so many goodies!)
(I’m a simple person: I hear a wheel spinning, I run towards it) 
(snapshot of us at the Penguin Random House icecream social)
“Love from A to Z” was a book that simply took my breath away. I was excited to meet the author to thank her for writing a book that I wish existed when I was a teen who was trying to make sense of the hate in the world. When I was a teen, there were barely any books with Muslim characters. I never opened a book and saw someone with a name similar to mine during my teenage years. It is thanks to authors like S.K. Ali that teenagers nowadays get to see the perspective of a Muslim character. My heart is full from the conversation I had with this incredible author.
(picture from @khanlibrary)