Top 35 M.J. Rose Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Needing someone doesn’t make you weak, it makes you feel. And feeling is how you know you’re alive.”

— M.J. Rose

2. “Not a coincidence, but events coming full circle. The infinite possibilities of energy and spirit.”

— M.J. Rose

3. “We’re all broken in one way or another, but it’s through the cracks in our souls that the light comes through. And the light, Jenny, that’s our art. Now, paint. Paint as if your life depends on it.”

— M.J. Rose

4. “There is no glory in honesty if it is destructive. And no shame in dishonesty if its goal is to offer grace.”

— M.J. Rose

5. “The owl is one of the most curious creatures. A bird that stays awake when the rest of the world sleeps. They can see in the dark. I find that so interesting, to be mired in reality when the rest of the world is dreaming. What does he see and what does he know that the rest of the world is missing?”

— M.J. Rose

6. “The secret, which is not so secret after all, is that the people who we love live on in our hearts, in the beat of our blood.”

— M.J. Rose

7. “Does having three other children lessen your pain over the one who is lost? Not lessen the pain, no. But it keeps me wanting to draw breath. It keeps me alive. In nurturing and caring for another child you can love the child you lost.”

— M.J. Rose

8. “There’s no one thing you can do to have success, but if you have a plan and you keep doing things, you’ll eventually build to a success.”

— M.J. Rose

9. “There’s an answer to every question even if it’s elusive. The Kabbalah tells us that there’s a level of our souls where we all connect to all the world’s accumulated knowledge. Jung agreed, just used different words and called it the collective unconscious. It manifests itself in an inner voice we all can hear if we listen deeply enough.”

— M.J. Rose

10. “They called it the Great War, but that implied worthiness and grandeur, not violence and helplessness and the utter waste and devastation our country, our city, our people endured.”

— M.J. Rose

11. “No, the sadness will soften, its edges will become less rough. In time missing him will be the way you love him.”

— M.J. Rose

12. “Regret isn’t like grief; it never lessens, just stays the same. A little hard ball in the pit of your stomach.”

— M.J. Rose

13. “Spend lavishly on creams. Wash your hair with henna at the first sign of gray. Never spend one minute thinking about what you do not have. And most importantly, indulge in everything but love.”

— M.J. Rose

14. “Look at that magic. Light mattered to Monet, to Cezanne, to Manet, and now Matisse is moving into almost flat color, and everyone is following. And Picasso? He doesn’t care about light at all. But you can’t have beauty without light, and beauty is the only worthwhile quest. Don’t lose your way trying to become popular.”

— M.J. Rose

15. “Too many people try to assuage pain that can never be eradicated. All you can do is salute the grief, acknowledge that you carry it, too, and that even though we all travel that path alone, we are not alone in traveling it.”

— M.J. Rose

16. “The Kabbalah says if we have not fulfilled our condition during one life, we must commence another... until we have acquired the condition that fits our reunion with God.”

— M.J. Rose

17. “Aunt Grace had once told me that we can romanticize the unknown far too easily. It is much harder but more satisfying to assign wonder to what we were familiar with.”

— M.J. Rose

18. “The ancients had instincts and abilities that are lost to civilization today. Magic was real. It lived inside the shamans. Inside the priests. They passed it on from generation to generation. You have the dregs of that power in you. It it not the strength that it was, but you can access it. But to do so you must be willing to travel deep into your own darkness and be open to risk. To pull from the earth’s energy.”

— M.J. Rose

19. “The business of living can steal away the wonder of life.”

— M.J. Rose

20. “But it’s been a wonderful change. I’ve found myself. I am stronger than I have ever been. I am painting, and I’m good at it. I have goals and desires. That’s a positive change. Not something to be afraid of.”

— M.J. Rose

21. “The soul can recall what the mind forgets.”

— M.J. Rose

22. “Jenny Bell, you’re quite an enigma. But that’s true of every artist. And I’d rather be with a woman who can’t be fully known than one who is all surface and no soul.”

— M.J. Rose

23. “Sometimes love worked out, but more often it failed.”

— M.J. Rose

24. “Art frees us from our prejudices and gives us the chance to become our best selves, individuals who dare to dream. And even if those dreams aren’t always as pretty as we’d like, or don’t conform, or frighten us, it is our duty to encourage art to flourish. All art. Every kind.”

— M.J. Rose

25. “What we do is a wonder, an art, and we have a responsibility to do it well.”

— M.J. Rose

26. “I wouldn’t think it happens easily or often, never for some people. I imagine a love like that is like a fire starting with a spark and growing into a blaze becoming an engulfing passion too hot for most people to withstand.”

— M.J. Rose

27. “Every culture has its version. It’s universal. One of the things that is most fascinating about studying mythology is how so many of the stories and symbols are the same through the centuries and cultures. Just renamed and slightly altered.”

— M.J. Rose

28. “All you have to do is open yourself up to the cosmos as it lays itself before you. See it in all its mysterious dimensions. Without prejudice. Without assumption... All you ever needed was the key to open yourself to it. And that key is the wonder of the world. All the songs you could never remember but couldn’t forget? You can find them now.”

— M.J. Rose

29. “More than 3,500 hardcover novels are published each year. Even the most avid reader buys fewer than one a week.”

— M.J. Rose

30. “There was, for many of us, a great escape in reading about the fantastic and supernatural during wartime. Terrors more terrible than those we were living through gave us an outlet for our anxiety.”

— M.J. Rose

31. “One man’s ugliness can blind another to the world’s magic.”

— M.J. Rose

32. “I felt his voice. Fingers rubbing moss. Smoke curling. Wood worn and smoothed over time. His voice had darkness in it that hovered close to the ground, like a mist hanging over a lake deep in a forest at dusk. A bolt of sea-green velvet. A sensation as much as a series of sounds. It reverberated inside me.”

— M.J. Rose

33. “The lines change. Did you know that? Destiny is not fixed. It’s a probable path, but life alters it. Otherwise, how boring life would be, non?”

— M.J. Rose

34. “Always love to the point of madness,” he said, “or else what is the point of love?”

— M.J. Rose

35. “One of the great mysteries,” he said, running his finger down my cheek, “is what makes two people right for each other.”

— M.J. Rose