Charlotte Eriksson Quotes That Will Inspire You to Live Your Best Life

1. ... so this is for us.This is for us who sing, write, dance, act, study, run and loveand this is for doing it even if no one will ever knowbecause the beauty is in the act of doing it.Not what it can lead to.This is for the times I lose myself while writing, singing, playingand no one is around and they will never knowbut I will forever rememberand that shines brighter than any praise or fame or glory I will ever have,and this is for you who write or play or read or singby yourself with the light off and door closedwhen the world is asleep and the stars are alignedand maybe no one will ever hear itor read your wordsor know your thoughtsbut it doesn’t make it less glorious.It makes it ethereal. Mysterious.Infinite.For it belongs to you and whatever God or spirit you believe inand only you can decide how much it meantand meansand will forever meanand other people will experience it toothrough you.Through your spirit. Through the way you talk.Through the way you walk and love and laugh and careand I never meant to write this longbut what I want to say is:Don’t try to present your art by making other people read or hear or see or touch it; make them feel it. Wear your art like your heart on your sleeve and keep it alive by making people feel a little better. Feel a little lighter. Create art in order for yourself to become yourselfand let your very existence be your song, your poem, your story.Let your very identity be your book.Let the way people say your name sound like the sweetest melody.So go create. Take photographs in the wood, run alone in the rain and sing your heart out high up on a mountainwhere no one will ever hearand your very existence will be the most hypnotising scar.Make your life be your artand you will never be forgotten. Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

2. 80% of people’s complaints are about situations that can be changed in one day. The other 20% are about real complaints that can’t be changed, and then what does complaining about it do? So you’re unhappy about the situation you’re in? Change it. Now. Cut the ropes. Don’t text her back. Change your job. Learn a new skill. Sell your house and move to a new city. Start over. Get healthy, start running. Or play tennis. Or anything that gets you moving. Cut out processed food. Cut out sugar.Read books. Listen to audiobooks. Or watch YouTube videos.You live in a time where there are zero excuses. You can do anything you want! You want a new life? Well, you can have it? But no one will hand it to you on a silver plate, you will have to stand up from that couch and go get it yourself. Because no one else cares. No one cares about how you live your life but you. He loved me some days. I'm sure he did: 99 essays on growth through loss

3. But I was youngand didn’t know betterand someone should have told me to capture every secondevery kiss & every nightBecause now I’m sitting here alone and it’s getting really hard to breath because tears are growing in my throat and they want to break out, but there are peoplewatchingand I just want to be somewhere silentsomewhere stillBut still I don’t want to be alone because I’m scared and lonelyand I don’t understandBecause I was alone my whole lifeMy whole lifeI was so damn lonely and I was content with thatbecause I liked myself and my own company and I didn’t need anyoneI thoughtBut then there was you .. ...So, someone should have told me that love is for those few brave who can handle the unbearable emptiness,the unbearable guilt and lack of oneself,Because I lost myself to someone I loveand I might get myself back one daybut it will take time, it will take time.This is gonna take some time.I wish someone would have told me this.Someone should have told me this. Empty Roads & Broken Bottles: in search for The Great Perhaps

4. Do you wait for things to happen, or do you make them happen yourself? I believe in writing your own story.

5. I have an urge to strip my life down to the bare bones to get to the core of it. I get intense and angry, accumulating layers around my essential needs, covering up my passions. These layers cover up my marks and scars, wounds and weary heart and I want it to show because sometimes I feel my only purpose here is to say: keep going, you’re doing just fine. And I’d like to be an example of no matter how dark and thick and hopeless it feels, for years maybe, things can and will change. If you want them to. If you’re determined to make them do so. Because I’m in my twenties and I laugh and sing and spend my days doing things that matter so much to me that I’m giving up comfort and pay-checks, but I’d like everyone to know that it wasn’t always like this. I wasn’t always like this. I was the girl in a grey hoodie slamming the door at midnight because I’d had enough. I was the girl not knowing how to speak or walk or pave my way through schools and family dilemmas, and I never had friends because how can you when you’re not a friend to yourself and I just needed salvation. So I smoked and drank and starved and ran, escaped in any way I could, just wanting to find a way. I’m not sure that I found a way, exactly, but I saw a sign like a light in the sky and I followed it religiously. I followed the small, broken signals telling me that this is what you’re good at and this is what makes you smile and I went after it. Determined to create a life for myself that made me excited to wake up. I didn’t necessarily find a way, but I created one. And I’d like to be an example for how you can, too. Everything Changed When I Forgave Myself: growing up is a wonderful thing to do

6. I have lost and loved and won and cried myself to the person I am today. Empty Roads & Broken Bottles: in search for The Great Perhaps

7. I haven’t been very impressed lately.By people,or places,or the way someone said he loved me and then slowly changed his mind.

8. I was free with every road as my home. No limitations and no commitments. But then summer passed and winter came and I fell short for safety. I fell for its spell, slowly humming me to sleep, because I was tired and small, too weak to take or handle those opinions and views, attacking me from every angle. Against my art, against my self, against my very way of living. I collected my thoughts, my few possessions and built isolated walls around my values and character. I protected my own definition of beauty and success like a treasure at the bottom of the sea, for no one saw what I saw, or felt the same as I did, and so I wanted to keep to myself. You hide to protect yourself. Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

9. It's the smell of him in the bathroom, all I need to get ready for the day. Watching him get dressed, and the sound in the kitchen; a slow hum of a song and his movements, picking things to eat. The way I could observe him, for hours, just go on with his day – or as he sleeps – simply breathing in and out, in and out, and it's like the hymn that sings me to peace. I know the world is still out there and I know I'm not yet friendly to its pace, but as long as I know him with me, here, there, somewhere – us – I know I have a chance.

10. Let me wake up next to you, have coffee in the morning and wander through the city with your hand in mine, and I'll be happy for the rest of my fucked up little life. Empty Roads & Broken Bottles: in search for The Great Perhaps

11. So for now,I will miss you like I’ll never see you again,And the next time I see you,I will kiss you like I’ll never kiss you again,And when I fall asleep beside you I will fall asleep as if I’ll never wake up again,because I don’t know if I will.I don’t know if I will.- I Will Love You Like The World Is Ending Empty Roads & Broken Bottles: in search for The Great Perhaps

12. Take a shower. Wash away every trace of yesterday. Of smells. Of weary skin. Get dressed. Make coffee, windows open, the sun shining through. Hold the cup with two hands and notice that you feel the feeling of warmth. 
 You still feel warmth.
Now sit down and get to work. Keep your mind sharp, head on, eyes on the page and if small thoughts of worries fight their ways into your consciousness: threw them off like fires in the night and keep your eyes on the track. Nothing but the task in front of you. Get off your chair in the middle of the day. Put on your shoes and take a long walk on open streets around people. Notice how they’re all walking, in a hurry, or slowly. Smiling, laughing, or eyes straight forward, hurried to get to wherever they’re going. And notice how you’re just one of them. Not more, not less. Find comfort in the way you’re just one in the crowd. Your worries: no more, no less.Go back home. Take the long way just to not pass the liquor store. Don’t buy the cigarettes. Go straight home. Take off your shoes. Wash your hands. Your face. Notice the silence. Notice your heart. It’s still beating. Still fighting. Now get back to work.
Work with your mind sharp and eyes focused and if any thoughts of worries or hate or sadness creep their ways around, shake them off like a runner in the night for you own your mind, and you need to tame it. Focus. Keep it sharp on track, nothing but the task in front of you.Work until your eyes are tired and head is heavy, and keep working even after that. Then take a shower, wash off the day. Drink a glass of water. Make the room dark. Lie down and close your eyes.
Notice the silence. Notice your heart. Still beating. Still fighting. You made it, after all. You made it, another day. And you can make it one more. 
You’re doing just fine.
You’re doing fine.I’m doing just fine. You're Doing Just Fine

13. There are very few friends that will lie down with you on empty streets in the middle of the night, without a word. No questions, no asking why, just quietly lay there with you, observing the stars, until you're ready to get back up on your feet again and walk the last bit home, softly holding your hand as a quiet way of saying I'm here.It was a beautiful night. Empty Roads & Broken Bottles: in search for The Great Perhaps

14. There’s something about arriving in new cities, wandering empty streets with no destination. I will never lose the love for the arriving, but I'm born to leave. Empty Roads & Broken Bottles: in search for The Great Perhaps

15. You were the hardest year of my life and I’ve never been so happy. What does that say about me?

16. ... and I realise the only way to tell the others is through the way my voice can take these broken wordsand turn it into music. Turn it into poetry.And I sing to make myself come alive, but also for you,because I’d like this to mean something.To not disappear with the dark I will enter one day and so now I will tell.If not for you, then for my own heart, because it tells me to,and I'm learning to listen. Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

17. Dear me, one day I'll make you proud. You're Doing Just Fine

18. I am a free soul, singing my heart out by myself no matter where I go and I call strangers my friends because I learn things and find ways to fit them into my own world. I hear what people say, rearrange it, take away and tear apart until it finds value in my reality and there I make it work. I find spaces in between the cracks and cuts where it feels empty and there I make it work.

19. I am not a finished poem, and I am not the song you’ve turned me into. I am a detached human being, making my way in a world that is constantly trying to push me aside, and you who send me letters and emails and beautiful gifts wouldn’t even recognise me if you saw me walking down the street where I live tomorrowfor I am not a poem. I am tired and worn out and the eyes you would see would not be painted or inspiredbut empty and weary from drinking too much at all timesand I am not the life of your party who sings and has glorious words to speakfor I don’t speak muchat alland my voice is raspy and unsteady from unhealthy living and not much sleep and I only use it when I sing and I always sing too muchor not at alland never when people are around because they expect poems and symphonies and I am nota poembut an elegyat my bestbut unedited and uncut and not a lot of people want to work with me because there’s only so much you can do with an audio take, with the plug-ins and EQs and I was born distorted, disordered, and I’m pretty fine with that,but others are not. Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

20. I am not collarbones or drunken letters never sent. I am not the way I leave or left or didn’t know how to handle anything,at any time,and I am not your fault.

21. I just want to be someone, to mean something to anyone…

22. I never have time to write anymore. And when I do I only write about how I never have time. It's work and it's money and I've written more lists than songs lately. I stay up all night to do all these things I need to do, be all these things I want to be, playing with shadows in the darkness that shouldn't be able to exist. Empty bottles and cigarettes while watching the sunrise, why do I complain? I have it all, everything I ever asked for. Empty Roads & Broken Bottles: in search for The Great Perhaps

23. I was clinging to a person so hard that I did not know how to breathe when he let goand I call that an addiction. You're Doing Just Fine

24. I woke up early and took the first train to take me away from the city. The noise and all its people. I was alone on the train and had no idea where I was going, and that’s why I went there. Two hours later we arrived in a small town, one of those towns with one single coffee shop and where everyone knows each other’s name. I walked for a while until I found the water, the most peaceful place I know. There I sat and stayed the whole day, with nothing and everything on my mind, cleaning my head. Silence, I learned, is some times the most beautiful sound.

25. I’d like to be an example of no matter how dark and thick and hopeless it feels, for years maybe, things can and will change. Everything Changed When I Forgave Myself: growing up is a wonderful thing to do

26. I’m not everything I want to be, but I’m more than I was, and I’m still learning. Everything Changed When I Forgave Myself: growing up is a wonderful thing to do

27. It takes so long to learn how to love but I think it starts with messing it up a few times. He loved me some days. I'm sure he did: 99 essays on growth through loss

28. It's 4am again and I'm just getting started. People are boring and I want to burn with excitement or anger and bleed, bleed through my words. I want to get all fucked up and write real and raw and ugly and beautifully. I bet you're sleeping safe and calm, and you can stay there, it's safer there, and you wouldn't stand one night on this journey my mind wanders off to every night you close your eyes. I'll stay here one day and I will never come down. I promise I can fly before I hit the ground. It doesn't even hurt anymore. I swear, it doesn't hurt. Empty Roads & Broken Bottles: in search for The Great Perhaps

29. It's the smell of him in the bathroom, all I need to get ready for the day. Watching him get dressed, and the sound in the kitchen; a slow hum of a song and his movements, picking things to eat. The way I could observe him, for hours, just go on with his day – or as he sleeps – simply breathing in and out, in and out, and it's like the hymn that sings me to peace. I know the world is still out there and I know I'm not yet friendly to its pace, but as long as I know him with me, here, there, somewhere – us – I know I have a chance.

30. Leave that room, kid. Shut the screen off. Take your dirty shoes, not the pretty ones, and go out to feel the wind. Touch water. Touch earth. Touch wood, touch skin, touch everything you can touch and memorise everything because that’s all you will live off in the end, and that’s all you will need. Everything Changed When I Forgave Myself: growing up is a wonderful thing to do