Under the Tuscan Sun is about a woman (Diane Lane) who buys a large house in Tuscany, on a whim, after a painful divorce has drastically changed her outlook on life.

“You have to live spherically, in many directions. Never lose your childish enthusiasm and things will come your way.”

She realizes as she’s remodeling this beautiful beast of a home that she has no purpose for it. It has lots of bedrooms and a big kitchen, but she has no one to live in those rooms, no one to cook for.

“Life offers you a thousand chances… all you have to do is take one.”

Through the course of the movie, various friends offer comments that make her realize her current state of despair and uncertainty are only temporary. But this is the one that reminded me that just because my life isn’t what I want it to be doesn’t mean I shouldn’t prepare for it to be everything I want:

“Signora, between Austria and Italy, there is a section of the Alps called the Semmering. It is an impossibly steep, very high part of the mountains. They built a train track over these Alps to connect Vienna and Venice. They built these tracks even before there was a train in existence that could make the trip. They built it because they knew some day, the train would come.”

Whatever is happening in your life right now, however hard and awful it may seem, remember that your train will come one day. So prepare the track now.

“Regrets are a waste of time. They’re the past crippling you in the present.“