Top 60 Nikki Erlick Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “The measure of your life lies within.”

— Nikki Erlick

2. “The great American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, ‘It is not the length of life, but the depth of life.’ You don’t need a long lifetime to make an impact on this world. You just need the will to do so.”

— Nikki Erlick

3. “Once you know something, you forget what it was like to not know it.”

— Nikki Erlick

4. “If Nina let go, then whatever it was that she was trying to protect – her younger self, her future with Maura – would be left unarmed and vulnerable. Out of her control.”

— Nikki Erlick

5. “Se il per sempre non esiste lo inventeremo noi. Her forehead scrunched, her brain searching for the words. “If forever doesn’t exist,” she said, “we’ll invent it ourselves.”

— Nikki Erlick

6. “And inscribed on every box was a simple, yet cryptic message, written in the native tongue of its recipient: The measure of your life lies within.”

— Nikki Erlick

7. “Nina thought about how often she saw the phrase “Live Like Your String Is Short” emblazoned on T-shirts and tote bags and posters. The popular refrain was heard a lot.”

— Nikki Erlick

8. “I believe in equality. The civil rights activists and women’s rights activists and gay rights activists have all been fighting this fight for generations. And while those of us with short strings may not measure as large in number as those communities, we are not insignificant. And we will not stop fighting, either.”

— Nikki Erlick

9. “If forever doesn’t exist,” she said, “we’ll invent it ourselves.”

— Nikki Erlick

10. “The tree, of course, felt like the perfect structure. The tree of life. The tree of knowledge. The reminder that we will all find our ultimate rest beneath the soil, nourishing the life that grows above us.”

— Nikki Erlick

11. “I watched a lot of people come to the end, and everyone around them kept begging them to fight. It takes real strength to keep on fight, and yes, usually that’s the right answer. Keep fighting, keep holding on, no matter what. But sometimes I think we forget that it also takes strength to be able to let go.”

— Nikki Erlick

12. “That the beginning and the end may have been chosen for us, the string already spun, but the middle had always been left undetermined, to be woven and shaped by us.”

— Nikki Erlick

13. “You don’t need a long lifetime to make an impact on this world. You just need the will to do so.”

— Nikki Erlick

14. “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world. That makes it hard to plan the day.”

— Nikki Erlick

15. “She knew that the world liked to praise the saintly, those who accepted their hardships with peace, rather than rage or complaint.”

— Nikki Erlick

16. “The measure of.”

— Nikki Erlick

17. “Se il per sempre non esiste lo inventeremo noi.”

— Nikki Erlick

18. “If, after fifteen years of chaos and fear, the world had seen enough strings – short and long and every measure in between – to know that any length was possible, and so, perhaps, the length didn’t matter. That the beginning and the end may have been chosen for us, the string already spun, but the middle had always been left undetermined, to be woven and shaped by us.”

— Nikki Erlick

19. “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.” – Matthew 7.”

— Nikki Erlick

20. “We humans have an impulse to mark our existence in some way that feels permanent. We scribble ‘I was here’ onto our desks at school. We spray paint it on walls. We carve it into bark. I was here. I wanted this sculpture to do to the same, to let it be know that these people lived. A testament to the fact that these humans – with their long strings and medium strings and short strings – they were here.”

— Nikki Erlick

21. “It was yesterday’s lead story, tracking the proliferation of new “mind-uploading” companies, hoping to discover a means of scanning the human brain into a computer for perpetual preservation. Anything to satiate the spike in interest among short-stringers looking to extend their lives, in this generation or the next.”

— Nikki Erlick

22. “That’s why, darling, it’s incredible That someone so unforgettable Thinks that I am unforgettable, too.”

— Nikki Erlick

23. “But now, no matter how long my string is, every day just feels so sacred. And I don’t want to waste any time feeling sad or distracted. I just want to be grateful. To live as much life as possible.”

— Nikki Erlick

24. “Its not the length of life, but the depth of life.”

— Nikki Erlick

25. “Nina was the eldest child, the big sister with a tendency toward overprotection. And now that same feeling, the urge to shelter and care for everyone around her, encompassed Maura, too. Nina couldn’t let Maura look by herself. “We’ll do it together,” Nina said.”

— Nikki Erlick

26. “I’ll take your part when darkness comes, and pain is all around.”

— Nikki Erlick

27. “Aren’t there just some things in this world that can’t be explained by facts or science?”

— Nikki Erlick

28. “All those people with the long strings who you thought you saved,” Ben said, “you did save them. Their strings were long because you were meant to save them. Their strings were long because of you.”

— Nikki Erlick

29. “As long as you’d like to keep writing, I promise I’m not going anywhere.”

— Nikki Erlick

30. “A meaningful life, at any length.”

— Nikki Erlick

31. “We already put the art first, the food first, the passion first,” she explained, a sweep of her arm encompassing the entire shop. “And we already put the family first. We did not need the strings to tell us what is most important.”

— Nikki Erlick

32. “Others had begun to believe that they were never even meant to be opened, that the gift was simply receiving any string at all.”

— Nikki Erlick

33. “What’s worse, Maura realized, it was all their fault. They had brought this upon themselves. Even before the boxes appeared, the traditional barriers of privacy had long been collapsing, hers already a society of over-sharers.”

— Nikki Erlick

34. “And the group of people in the waiting room – giddy with delight and a little bit of booze – welcomed the newborn twins into their fold, the newest residents of earth, the latest members in a world of unimaginable pain and unfathomable joy, the two poles never so far from one another.”

— Nikki Erlick

35. “A stranger recently told me that she didn’t want to waste any time feeling sad. She just wanted to live as much life as possible. And I think that’s as good a measure as any.”

— Nikki Erlick

36. “Did a patient receive less care because her string was short, or was a patient’s string short because she received less care?”

— Nikki Erlick

37. “Fight back against those who look to divide us, or pit us against one another, or make anyone feel less than.”

— Nikki Erlick

38. “I know that life can sometimes feel like a battle to be recognized for who you are, and not your circumstances.”

— Nikki Erlick

39. “Help them see that we are all the same, all connected. We are all strung together.”

— Nikki Erlick

40. “These boxes had shown up everywhere, clearly powerful beyond belief. The would had somehow tripped and tumbled through the looking glass, and Amie had read enough novels to recognize that this was the part of the story where nobody knew what the hell was going on, where the characters made rash decision whose consequences would only be revealed chapters later.”

— Nikki Erlick

41. “Which means we can start fresh. Reject the patterns of history. Promise not to repeat old mistakes. We can lead with compassion and empathy. Fight back against those who look to divide us, or pit us against one another, or make anyone feel less than. It is up to us – the ones who have yet to receive our boxes – to decide what type of world we wish to inherit, no matter how much time our strings may give us.”

— Nikki Erlick

42. “For a nation – for a world – with no trouble starting wars, and stoking fears, and standing apart, they hadn’t forgotten how to come together.”

— Nikki Erlick

43. “Maybe there are thousands of other ways we could measure our lives – the true quality of our lives – that lie within us, not within some box.”

— Nikki Erlick

44. “Amie and Maura often asked her to be less controlling. To loosen up. To let it go. But Nina couldn’t let go. Not when she lived in a world of betrayal and heartache, of mysterious boxes and painfully short strings. If Nina let go, then whatever it was that she was trying to protect – her younger self, her future with Maura – would be left unarmed and vulnerable. Out of her control.”

— Nikki Erlick

45. “Some things we just can’t control, she thought. But what about everything else? What about all the choices that we make, each day? Who we choose to be, and how we choose to love?”

— Nikki Erlick

46. “Once she was in the main room, surrounded by the tall wooden shelves and the familiar scent of thousands of pages, Amie felt herself relax. There were few places where she felt more contented than a book store.”

— Nikki Erlick

47. “The great American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, ‘It is not the length of life, but the depth of life.”

— Nikki Erlick

48. “The reminder that we will all find our ultimate rest beneath the soil, nourishing the life that grows above us.”

— Nikki Erlick

49. “In her three decades as a journalist, as the headlines seemed to grow ever more grim, Deborah had seen the words shed their weight a little more with each occurrence, until they barely resembled the dense nouns and heavy adjectives that once pressed upon entire rooms.”

— Nikki Erlick

50. “Look, the only winners here are the gun lobbyists and the politicians in their pockets,” someone said. “It’s the first shooting in this country that they can easily wash their hands of: Don’t blame the guns, or the laws, or the health care system.”

— Nikki Erlick