Joy Joy

"Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation."
-Andre Gide

Love has Teeth

"Love isn't soft, like those poets say. Love has teeth which bite and the wounds never close."

-Stephen King, The Body

I

"Do you remember the way the girls
would call out "love you!"
conveniently leaving out the "I"
as if they didn't want to commit
to their own declarations.

I agree that the "I" is a pretty heavy concept."

-David Berman, "Self Portrait at 28"

I'm Soft

"I'm soft. It's taken me most of my life to realize this. I've tried to be hard, to make my skin sheets of metal, to build an armor that would tell the rest of the world how strong I am despite what I may feel inside. I tried not to care about things, tried no to feel hurt like it was a virus I couldn't let infect me. I've pushed and pushed away too many people and too many emotions but they all seep back in wham I go to sleep at night. I wake up with boys I wouldn't let touch me on my skin, and feelings of anger at the back of my throat. It seeps in and softens me. And I'm realizing I want to be that softness. That earth. I want to feel everything, and let everyone in. Because I've been cold for too long. My New Year's resolution is to be softer, warmer, lighter."

-Misguided Ghosts

Jump through the fear...

“You’re waiting to not be afraid and that’s never going to happen. If you want this, it’s there for you. But you have to jump through the fear. "

-darlingmagazine.org

Full Force Mistakes

“It’s better to make a mistake with the full force of your being than to timidly avoid mistakes with a trembling spirit. Responsibility means recognizing both pleasure and price, action and consequence, then making a choice." 

— The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, Dan Millman    

Endings are Beginnings

“There are endings and there are beginnings and the two always meet." 


— 'anew' by Della Hicks-Wilson 

Tell the truth but tell it slant

Tell all the truth but tell it slant,
Success in circuit lies,
Too bright for our infirm delight
The truth's superb surprise;

As lightning to the children eased
With explanation kind,
The truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind. 

Emily Dickinson

LIFE Motto

"To see things thousands of miles away, things hidden behind walls and within rooms, things dangerous to come to, to draw closer, to see and be amazed."

Life Magazine motto

Crammed

"I sometimes find, and I am sure you know the feeling, that I simply have too many thoughts and memories crammed into my mind."

— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire 

Flowing Complexity

"I am profoundly enchanted by the flowing complexity in you."

— John Keats, from a letter to Fanny Brawne dated 5 November 1820

True Story

"Make it all up — but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way."

— Ernest Hemingway, from a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald

Sundays

"Time flows in a strange way on Sundays."

-Haruki Murakami

Miss

"It’s weird to feel like you miss someone you’re not even sure you know."

▼

  David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest 

Poison Through the Pen

“I could say that being a writer gives me a high need to emotionally process things and find their meaning. I could say that every rotten thing that happens to a writer is still, in its own way, a gift. An inspiration. But I won’t. What I will say is this: being a writer makes me a healthier person. The poison leaves through the pen. I don’t walk around carrying it all day. Whenever I read my work to a room, I give it away.”

- MEGAN FALLEY, INTERVIEWED FOR PETRICHOR REVIEW

Sees Me

“The way he looked at me, all serious and attentive, was more flattering than any compliment I’d ever had. "

— Hester Browne, The Little Lady Agency and the Prince 

Love's Conviction

"Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved."

-Victor Hugo, Les Mis

Something to Say Festers

"I think maybe the most frustrating feeling in the world is to have something to say but not know how to put it into words. To have lived through something but not be able to get it out of you before it festers."

-?

Authentic Magnetism

"She had authentic magnetism. The way she listened was more eloquent than speech. "
— Laura (1944)

On Rothko

"Rothko was grappling with such deep issues he felt that figures of any kind got in the way of the deeper meaning…therefore, he poured his heart and soul into color balance, brushwork, and dominating one's field of vision."

-Coco James

Tell Them Love

“Opening your heart and being courageous and telling people that you care about them or like them or that you think they’re special only makes you a better, bigger, kinder, softer, more loving person and it only attracts more love into your life. "

— Amy Poehler   

Sometimes People

“Sometimes you meet someone, and it’s so clear that the two of you, on some level belong together. As lovers, or as friends, or as family, or as something entirely different. You just work, whether you understand one another or you’re in love or you’re partners in crime. You meet these people throughout your life, out of nowhere, under the strangest circumstances, and they help you feel alive. I don’t know if that makes me believe in coincidence, or fate, or sheer blind luck, but it definitely makes me believe in something.”

— unknown 

A Thousand Ways

"Let the beauty of what you love be what you do. There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground, there are a thousand ways to go home again."

Rumi

Meditation

"Duration is not the major concern. One can easily sit still an hour with closed eyes and accomplish nothing. One can as easily give God only an instant, an din that instant join with Him completely. Perhaps the one generalization that can be made is this-as soon as possible after waking, take your quiet time, continuing a minute or two after you begin to find it difficult. You may find that the difficulty will diminish and drop away. If not, that is the time to stop."

-A Course in Miracles

Exactly Wrong

"When you do something exactly wrong, you always turn up something."

-Andy Warhol

Wide Quietness

And in the midst of this wide quietness
A rosy sanctuary will I dress
With the wreath'd trellis of a working brain…

-John Keats, "Ode to Psyche"

Judgement

"The arousing of prejudice, pity, anger, and similar emotions has nothing to do with the essential facts, but is merely a personal appeal to the man who is judging the case."
-Aristotle

Truth Like a Lion

"The truth is like a lion. You don’t have to defend it. Let it loose. It will defend itself." | St. Augustine

Innate Worth

The moment you feel like you have to prove your worth to someone is the moment to absolutely and utterly walk away. | Alysia Harris

Our Hearts

"For our hearts are not pure; our hearts are filled with need and greed as much as with love and grace; and we wrestle with our hearts all the time. The wrestling is who we are. How we wrestle is who we are. What we want to be is never what we are. Not yet. Maybe that’s why we have these relentless engines in our chests, driving us toward what we might be. " | Brian Doyle

Unravel Synonyms

Tahereh Mafi, Unravel Me

Memory has You

"Your memory is a monster; you forget—it doesn’t. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you—and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you."

- John Irving

Let Go

"You can be as mad as a mad dog at the way things went. You could swear, curse the fates, but when it comes to the end, you have to let go."

— The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Not Drawn Astray

"Let yourself be drawn to the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray."

— Rumi 

Claws

“Everything I’ve ever let go of had claw marks on it." 
— David Foster Wallace

Wait

“Don’t wait to realize you shouldn’t have waited."
— Ofer Moses 

Alone

"I like drinking tea alone, and reading alone.

I like riding the bus alone, and walking home alone.

It gives me time to think, and set my mind free.

I like eating alone, and listening to music alone.

But when I see a mother with her child;

A girl with her lover;

Or a friend laughing with their best friend;

I realize that even though I like being alone

I don’t fancy being lonely."

-unknown

Love and Lessen

“The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation.

For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.”

-- Neil deGrasse Tyson (reddit, 2012)

Thin Lines

"The line between happy and crazy is very thin. The distance between joy and depression is fragile."
-Sarah Kathleen Peck

Harmony

"Harmony makes small things grow, lack of it makes great things decay."
-Sallust