It's not brave if you're not scared

"It's interesting how we often can't see the ways in which we are being strong - like, you can't be aware of what you're doing that's tough and brave at the time you're doing it because if you knew that it was brave then you'd be scared," 

-Lena Dunham

Savasana

"I want to be the type of person who know show to let it all go. I don't want to be the sum of a million-and-one dried up corsages, breakup letters and loose ends. I want closure in the sense that I am finally able to open up my hands and say to God, 'You get all of it. You can have all of it.' I will not try to hold onto it any longer."

-Hannah Brencher 

Holy thickness

“Holy places are dark places. It is life and strength, not knowledge and words, that we get in them. Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood.”

- C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

To become presence

“Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.”

- The Little Prince 

Because I look at you

“Who looked at you and said you were not worth it, who looked at you and decided that you were not for them? Because I look at you and wonder how you could be anything other than who you are, for you are as important as an ocean and all that lays underneath it, and a sky full of all the colors ever known. I look at you, and I wonder who could ever see anything else other true beauty with a heartbeat.”

- T.B. LaBerge // Thoughts at 11:41pm  tblaberge 

Reading you

“Loving you is like reading my favorite book. It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve read it. It doesn’t matter that I’ve underlined so much that the pages are starting to get thin. It doesn’t matter that I’ve read it too many times to count. Because every time when I thought that I’ve gotten everything out of that book that I possibly could, I still find myself underlining, highlighting, and finding new things to love each time I pick it up. That’s what it’s like to love you. I could read you over, and over again until I could recite the words written in your soul. Until your pages grow thin and your bindings start to come undone. I could pick you up and read you cover to cover for the rest of my life and never close you. And despite knowing that there are millions of other books out there, your pages and your words are the only ones my heart has the desire to read.”

- Tanner Shindeldecker 

Not everyone is going to like you

“Sometimes, people think aesthetics are superficial. But I think they can be deep. I love the atmosphere and the visuals. So, I do what I love. Some people connect with it, and others don’t. It reminds me of something Anjelica told me in my 20s: “Not everyone is going to like you.” It saved me years of disappointment.”

- Sofia Coppola (via / NYTimes.com)

Passing people

“You will be shocked, kids, when you discover how easy it is in life to part ways with people forever. 

That’s why, when you find someone you want to keep around, you do something about it.”

- How I Met Your Mother  

You are tired

“You are tired,

(I think)
And so am I.
Tired of things that break, and—
Just tired.
So am I.

Come with me, then,
And we’ll leave it far and far away—
(Only you and I, understand!)"

- e.e cummings, from you are tired (i think)

Forward March

“I’ve survived a lot of things, and I’ll probably survive this.”

- J.D. Salinger  

Gutted or Hopeful

"And I guess we could either feel gutted or hopeful. Gutted or hopeful. There are the two options. We could either chase people in Grand Central that are getting what we want or we could see the truth: the ones who have that "one thing" are probably often waiting for something else. We won't always know what that is. We are all waiting on secret things that we neglect to write in our diaries at night."

Hannah Brencher

Mockingbird Forever

“Just remember that sometimes, the way you think about a person isn’t the way they actually are.”

- Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill A Mockingbird 

Same

“Our ‘almost’ will always haunt me.”

- six word story #29 (m.f.)  (via artofephemera)

Explodes in poetry

“It is always what is under pressure in us, especially under pressure of concealment—that explodes in poetry.”

-Adrienne Rich, in an essay on Emily Dickinson

Cut ties

"We keep dresses we'll never wear again, but we throw away our ex-boyfriends."

- Carrie, sex and the city 

Expiration Dates

“I’m just going to lay it out there straight for you, Hannah,” she said. A heaping bowl of guacamole, freshly mashed by the waiter, stood as the only divider between us. “You have to figure out what you want. Plain and simple, figure out what you want.”             Her words came draped with no tones of sympathy. There was no other option. That was it. Figure out what you want. Figure it out as if it was the only option left for your little life. Stop creating barriers and hurdles and excuses. Set expiration dates and move on. here’s something you want. You’ll waste the whole week talking about the fact that you don’t know. You know. You do. It’s in there. It burns. It keeps you up at night and makes you feel unworthy when you go to ask for it in prayer. You know it. Please stop staying on the fringes of it. -Hannah Brencher

-Hannah Brencher

This is how it works

And we drink our coffee and pretend not to look at each other.


 | Charles Bukowski

Tell the truth

Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that’s the whole art and joy of words. 

| C.S. Lewis

Vulnerability

Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence. 

| Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Brain on Fire

Someone once asked, “If you could take it all back, would you?” At the time I didn’t know. Now I do. I wouldn’t take that terrible experience back for anything in the world. Too much light has come out of my darkness.


 | Susannah Cahalan, Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness

Laughing eyes

When I make him laugh, I feel like the most beautiful girl in the world. 

| Drew Barrymore

Be baffled

"It may be that when we no longer know which way to go that we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that signs. "

 | Wendell Berry

Branch out

“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”

-Nietzsche

Problem Solvers?

“If education is not dedicated to empowering our youth to solve the problems they face in their communities, in our nation and in our world, then it isn’t really an education at all—it is an indoctrination designed to reproduce oppression.”

-Jesse Hagopian

Light up your little corner

"Self-hate is stealth...showing up mostly as a running monologue that is so familiar you don't even hear it most of the time. Self-hate is the part of you that is telling you that your life will never work, that you'll never be happy...and by the way, you're fat.

Once you are in a place of self-love, your job becomes about loving people - being a channel of something other than your own self-obsession - to really just light up your little corner of the universe."

-Tracy McMillan

The moral of the story

"There are 1,000,001 reasons why you should give new cities a try. people might never understand it. People might never understand why you pack up all your bags and move 16 hours away for a little while. But God is good. And he is faithful. And when he whispers, you should listen. Because he has these magnificent extravagant plans that are a little too big for your little brain to process.

 And when he calls you away from all the things you've ever loved--people, seasons, bricks and bones-- he promises to hold even more in store. He will give you good people. And sweet laughter.

And he will always always bring you back to the moral of the story: we were not designed and we were not made to try and go this thing alone. Life is hard. Light hits you sometimes. You fall down sometimes. Just let someone meet you, wherever you're at, for coffee, dates, and a chance to hear, 'I am glad you're here. I'm always glad you're here'."

-Hannah Brencher

layers, cells, constellations

"We do not grow chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations. 

-Anais Nin

What was light was dark

"Did I believe I had a clear mind? It was like the water of a river flowing shallow over the ice. And now that the rising water has broken the ice, I see that what I thought was the light is part of the dark."

-Wendell Berry

End is a beginning

"To make an end is to make a beginning."

-T.S. Eliot

Ships at a distance

"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board."

-Nora Zeale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Delivered to you

"How many times have you rushed something only to see that the act of rushing and pushing made the situation worse? And how many of those times would have worked out maybe even better than you thought if you just would have waited a moment and not given in to the apparent sense of urgency?

The world of sensations is always there to tempt you. The more you want something the more you will want to push and fight for it. But the next time you find yourself taking action from a place of panicked desire, back off for a moment and breathe. 

Practice non-attachment. Open your mind and heart to receive a solution that is beyond your ability to see and then be patent while all that you ask for (and maybe more) is being delivered to you."

-kinoyoga

This second is life

"With me, the present is forever, and forever is always shifting, flowing, melting. This second is life."

-Sylvia Plath