I was on Twitter a while ago and found this link posted by my friend Alyssa. Date A Girl Who Reads. Isn`t that an interesting title?

 

Okay. I`m tempted to tell you what I love about this, but I`m not gonna give you a spoiler.  I`ll give you my thoughts next time… haha Enjoy!

 

 

---

 

Date A Girl Who Reads

by Rosemary Urquico

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

 

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

 

 
She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.
Buy her another cup of coffee.

 

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

 

 

 
It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

 

She has to give it a shot somehow.

 

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.
Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

 

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

 

 

 

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

 

 

—Rosemary Urquico

 

Photos by Rosanna Bell, Shootingstaaarr  and GastroGirl on Tumblr.

---

Okay, okay. I was just looking for good quotes online to inspire me for the day (it had been a really crazy day—with all the mistakes I made in decision making! I actually left the house with not enough money so I ended up in a little adventure) and  I found some cute stuff while looking at serious quotes, which you guys might love to read since it`s only three weeks to Valentines. haha ;) Any plans, by the way?

 

Before I go on listing it all up, let me first share with you that my youngest sister Viola is now in a relationship with a friend she met in youth missions trip three years ago. They had been together in missions for a year and had been friends since. She was 17 then and now she`s 21. They had fallen in love… I can`t remember since when. Seems like they`ve loved each other from the beginning.  After much praying and seeking counsel from their  leaders and parents, they`re officially “In a relationship”! You should see their Facebook statuses. Everyone`s left a sweet comment and it`s so, so funny. Ava and I are busy following after new comments and teasing Viola every time.

 

Since love is in the air, here`s the  quotes you`ve been waiting for.

 

Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one’s life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one’s side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music; perhaps . . . perhaps . . . love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath."                                                                                                                           — L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Avonlea) quoted in Boy Meets Girl (Joshua Harris)

Deep inside we know the truth: the lights of love and relationship don`t snap on like a floodlight at the flip of a magic switch. They twinkle on—one at a time—like stars, like the fireflies glowing from the unexpected corners of a still summer night. –Dee Lee Wilson

There is a time for risky love. There is a time for extravagant gestures. There is a time to pour out your affections on one you love. And when the time comes --seize it, don't miss it. -Max Lucado.

Biblically, waiting is not just something we have to do until we get what we want. Waiting is part of the process of becoming what God wants us to be. -John Ortberg

Intimacy without commitment is defrauding. Intimacy without friendship is superficial. A relationship  based on solely physical attraction and romantic feelings will only last as long as the feelings last.” - Joshua Harris

 Love is not a possession but a growth. The heart is a lamp with just oil enough to burn for an hour, and if there be no oil to put in again its light will go out. God's grace is the oil that fills the lamp of love. --Henry Ward Beecher

When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. –C.S. Lewis

When ours are interrupted, his are not. His plans are proceeding exactly as scheduled, moving us always (including those minutes or hours or years which seem most useless or wasted or unendurable) "toward the goal of true maturity" (Rom 12:2 JBP). -Elisabeth Elliot

Until the will and the affections are brought under the authority of Christ, we have not begun to understand, let alone to accept, His lordship. -Elisabeth Elliot

Real love is always fated. It has been arranged before time. It is the most meticulously prepared of coincidences. And fate, of course, is simply a secular term for the will of God, and coincidence for His grace. --Mike Mason, The Mystery of Marriage

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen nor touched…but are felt in the heart. –Helen Keller

Deepening intimacy without defining a level of commitment is dangerous. It`s like going mountain climbing with a partner who isn't sure she wants the responsibility of holding your rope.
When you've climbed two thousand feet up a mountain face, you don`t want to have a conversation about how she feels
"tied down" by your relationship. In the same way, many people experience deep hurt when they open themselves up emotionally
and physically only to be abandoned by someone who proclaims he's not ready for a serious commitment. -  Joshua Harris, I Kissed Dating Goodbye

I didn`t have  much to do the other day so I pulled the box under my bed where I`ve been keeping my old stuff—writings, journals, scripts, and illustrations. I was looking for a story I have written `cause I`m planning to rewrite it and then I saw my old Steno Notebook, the one I used as a journal when I was on my first year in college.

 

I totally forgot that after that semester, I used that notebook to compile quotes I have loved when I was in high school.  I`ve also written excerpts from books and magazine articles. But I could write everything here, so I just chose the quotes that I find beautiful and somewhat timely.

 

I hope you`ll have time to read on. Some are really sweet, some are important lessons to learn, some maybe treasures you would also not want to forget.

 

On Friendship

No birth certificate is issued when a friendship is born. There is nothing tangible. There is just a feeling that your life is different and that your capacity to love and care has miraculously been enlarged without any effort on your part. It`s like having a tiny apartment and somebody moves in with you, but instead of becoming cramped, the space expands, and your discover rooms you never knew you had until your friend moved in with you.

 

On Love

Real love is always fated. It has been arranged before time. It is the most meticulously prepared of coincidences. And fate, of course, is simply a secular term for the will of God, and coincidence for His grace. --Mike Mason, The Mystery of Marriage

One does not fall in love, one grows into love and love grows in him. —Karl A. Menninger

Listening is an attitude of the heart, a genuine desire to be with another which both attracts and heals. –J. Isham

Love is known best by the blind, for it is meant to be known by the heart, not by the eyes.  –Peter Streiter

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen nor touched…but are felt in the heart. –Helen Keller

Girls who are critical can`t fall in love. They think of themselves highly. In other words, they are in love with themselves.

Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one`s life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down. Perhaps it crept to one`s side like an old friend through quiet ways. Perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages, betrayed the rhythm and the music; perhaps…perhaps… love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath. –Anne of Avonlea

 

On Character

Talent is a gift but character is a choice… We do choose our character… We create it every time we make choices—to cop out or dig out of a hard situation, to bend the truth or stand on the weight of it, to take the easy money or pay the price.                             –John Maxwell

How many giving trees have there been in my life? How many released part of themselves so I might grow, so I might accomplish my goals, find wholeness and satisfaction and reach beyond the tiny, limited playground of my childhood? So, so many…

Now I, like the tree, have grown up. Now it`s my turn to give and some of that hurts. Apples, branches, sometimes the trunk. – Growing Strong In The Seasons of Life

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation. Your character is really what you are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

It`s the action, not the fruit of the action, that`s important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, not be in your time, that there`ll be any fruit. But that doesn`t mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know  what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.

Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape.

Surviving your life successfully requires courage; the goals and dreams you`re seeking require courage and risk-taking. Learn from the turtle—it only makes progress when it sticks its neck out.

If you don`t try, you have no chance.

To be sensitive is one thing, and to sense is another. One is an affair of the soul; the other, an affair of judgment.