The Shooting Star Quotes

“How could I explain in words my craving for freedom, that longing for anonymity, the need to distance myself from everything I knew in my universe?”
― Shivya Nath, The Shooting Star

“The world is full of books, movies and stories about how the loss of a loved one, or a change in fortune, or a severe illness or another tragedy of such magnitude catapulted someone to reset their lives and chase long-forgotten dreams. I’m thinking of Cheryl Strayed, who hiked the Pacific Crest Trail solo after the unexpected and heartbreaking death of her mother, and Elizabeth Gilbert, who embarked on a year-long journey around the world after a painful divorce and depression. I admire their grit to pick themselves up and do something extraordinary in the face of tragedy. But what about the tragedy of a mundane, average, unfulfilling life?”
― Shivya Nath, The Shooting Star: A Girl, Her Backpack and the World

“I remember the years I had been too afraid to dream of sitting on the ledge of a humble yellow house, chatting with a family that wasn’t my own, chatting in a language that wasn’t my own, in a part of the world so far away from the one I grew up in and yet not that different.”
― Shivya Nath, The Shooting Star

“After all, we were not put on earth to be prisoners of an unpredictable future. We were put on earth to live our present with a fierce courage, that when the future comes we can look it in the eye without a hint of fear and charm it with the adventures of our past.”
― Shivya Nath, The Shooting Star: A Girl, Her Backpack and the World

“I wanted so much to find the words to explain to her the strange longing that had washed over me, to share with her the quiet rebellion that had brewed within me all these years. But no words poured out of me.”
― Shivya Nath, The Shooting Star

“Unbeknownst to me, it had become my mission to prove that the world isn't the horrible place we often make it out to be. That just because there are some dirty fish, it doesn't mean the entire ocean is dirty and we need to confine ourselves to the shores we know. The fear bred by the news compels people to stay at home - trapped in a shrinking comfort zone - like it had once compelled me. I had much to unlearn for the sake of the freedom I chased, the victimhood I despised and my mission to build unlikely friendships.”
― Shivya Nath, The Shooting Star

“It didn't occur to me that solitude is like a mysterious drug; at first, you fear it and reject it. But when you finally try it, you begin to crave the way it makes you feel.”
― Shivya Nath, The Shooting Star

“solitude is like a mysterious drug; at first, you fear it and reject it. But when you finally try it, you begin to crave the way it makes you feel.”
― Shivya Nath, The Shooting Star: A Girl, Her Backpack and the World

“Paradise is just the place where your heart belongs.”
― Shivya Nath, The Shooting Star

“We tend to make big changes only when tragedy strikes. We tend to look for alternative paths only when we feel we've hit rock bottom. We tend to ask existential questions about happiness only when we are at our most miserable.”
― Shivya Nath, The Shooting Star

“War is too big for us. Poverty is too alienating for us. Corruption is too complicated for us. But the killing of innocent voiceless animals for food that we relish in our dining rooms-that is something we can change.”
― Shivya Nath, The Shooting Star

“As that Monday progressed and I tried to sink back into my cubicle routine, I realized, much to my astonishment, that I was dispensable at work. Handling social media at the Singapore Tourism Board, I had developed the self-flattering notion that without me, the work I do and the work that stems from it would crumble. That is the feeling many of us live with, in office and at home, the feeling that obliges us to continue doing what we’ve always done, giving ourselves a false sense of importance. But on that Monday, I realized that not much had crumbled in the two months I’d been away. Maybe except for something within me.”
― Shivya Nath, The Shooting Star: A Girl, Her Backpack and the World

“You can't start a business unless you're really passionate about a concept, but can't sustain a business unless you're equally passionate about the revenue it generates - and that is the conflict I began to hate.”
― Shivya Nath, The Shooting Star