"the world is entire, and I am outside of it, crying." - virginia wolf.

"what is a home if not the first place you learn to run from?" - clementine von radics.

"i have been locked by the lawless. Handcuffed by the haters. Gagged by the greedy. And, if i know anything at all, it’s that a wall is just a wall and nothing more at all. It can be broken down." - assata sakur.

"i see you everywhere, in the stars, in the river, to me you're everything that exists; the reality of everything." - virginia wolf.

"…fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gift of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over." - neil gaiman.

"i could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; i would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. i would know him in death, at the end of the world." - madeline miller.

"grief, i’ve learned, is really just love. it’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. all that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. grief is just love with no place to go." - jamie anderson.

"fiction is truth, even if it is not a fact. if you believe only in facts and forget stories, your brain will live, but your heart will die.” - cassanda clare.

"i am a mosaic of all the people i've ever loved, even for a heartbeat."

"i want to change the pronouns. it’s not that i don’t want to write about him, but that it is so much more natural to write about her. my heart beats with the sound of her, my mouth craves the taste of her; i want to write about her so maybe i want to change the pronouns. maybe i want this poem to be about her. maybe i want all the poems to be about her."

"i love you enough to be terrified that you deserve better than what i can give you."

"you love him, you do; and here’s the miracle: he loves you too. you are allowed to lick the color from his lips, to listen to the hymns in his pulse, to bask in the sunlight of his voice. you are allowed to have him. you love each other, you do; and here’s the tragedy: it’s not enough. you are allowed to watch the sun swallow him whole and burn him up, to stain your fingers to the bone holding him together, to count the constellations in his eyes as they blink out. you are not allowed to save him. you can love him, but you can’t keep him."

"it took him a while to trust people, a minute to love them and a lifetime to accept that he was loved too."

"you make me feel seen like no one ever has, and you make me want to, to look every person I meet in the eyes so maybe they can get even a tenth, a tiny reflection, of the connection I feel whenever you look at me."

"love isn't a fact. it's a hunch at first. and then later it's a series of decisions, a lifetime of decisions. that's love."

"love is awful. it’s awful. it’s painful. it’s frightening. it makes you doubt yourself, judge yourself, distance yourself from the other people in your life. it makes you selfish. it makes you creepy, makes you obsessed with your hair, makes you cruel, makes you say and do things you never thought you would do. it’s all any of us want, and it’s hell when we get there. so no wonder it’s something we don’t want to do on our own. i was taught if we’re born with love then life is about choosing the right place to put it."

"I’m not everything I want to be, but I’m more than I was, and I’m still learning."

"The secret to getting ahead is getting started. The secret to getting started is breaking down your complex overwhelming tasks int0 small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one."

"the world should have protected you but you have been asked to protected it. what an honor, what an injustice."

"They say that, “Love is a friendship caught on fire.” But ours is a friendship that was struck by lightning. You and I are our own force of nature. And I promise today to continuing loving you with my whole heart."

"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive."

"You’re addicted to loneliness and desperation. It’s the strongest emotion you’ve ever known, so your subconscious tells you that it’s your destiny."

"But the answers — the answer. It’s you. It’s us. We are what I was searching for, the meaning of everything."

"Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you’ve been ruined."

"it's a tragedy, the way he loves you; it is a tragedy that star crossed lovers will read about you a hundred years later, and weep over blood not yet spilt — because if you two could not make it, no one will."

"My darling, you will never be unloved by me. You are too well tangled in my soul."

"The blood on my teeth begins to taste like a poem, like religion, like the way you look at me."

"It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show from happiness. We learn so little from peace."

"WRITE IT BADLY. Write it badly, write it badly, write it badly, write it badly. Stop what you’re doing, open a Word document, put a pencil on some paper, just get the idea out of your head. Let it be good later. Write it down now. Otherwise it will die in there."

"loneliness is the human condition. cultivate it. the way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. never expect to outgrow loneliness. never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. an intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. if you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. the best you'll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way."

"Just because you are soft doesn't mean you are not a force. Honey and wildfire are both the color gold."

"you’re the closest thing to heaven i’ll ever need."

"throw away the memories, burn all my things. i know i don’t deserve to be a story."

"dying is an art, like everything else. i do it exceptionally well. i do it so it feels like hell."

"i know nothing with any certainty but the sight of the stars makes me dream"

"perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as understood."

"things don’t always stop hurting, but you learn to make room for it. you learn to coexist with the hurt. it’s hard, and some days it’s so, so much worse than others, but it’s still worth it to try."

"You will fall in love with your friends. Deep, passionate love. You will create a second family with them, a kind of tribe that makes you feel less vulnerable. Sometimes our families can’t love us all the time. Sometimes we’re born into families who don’t know how to love us properly. They do as much as they can but the rest is up to our friends. They can love you all the time, without judgement. At least the good ones can."

"I fall in love with ideas and fantasies rather than whole beings and then I sit here and wonder why I’m still alone. It’s because I don’t f*cking pay attention. I’m too busy thinking about tomorrow that today falls through the cracks."

"I don't want to have to be the one who mourns everything when everyone else has clearly forgotten. It's mortifying. It's mortifying to be the one who remembers"

"You are a dream that the world once dreamt and now you're part of it's song. That's why you are here, in the place where you're meant, for this is right where you belong"

"you realize, at last, that you can change without disappearing, that all you had to do was wait until the storm passes you over and you find that—yes—your name is still attached to a living thing."

"My mother doesn't hug me. She doesn't know what to do with me. My father had the kind of anger all fathers do. Loud and terrible. It lingers for your whole life."

"I think we deserve a soft epilogue, my love. We are good people and we've suffered enough."

"Change will always be terrifying, but I cannot help looking at this spring's bloom with envy. I, too, want to blossom and for once that desire may finally outweigh the fear."

"A few choice words can sometimes be the life raft that gets you home. To be seen. To be found. Isn’t that what we’re all searching for?"

"Let me die the moment my love dies. Let me not outlive my own capacity to love. Let me die still loving, and so, never die."

“There’s a part of me that wishes that everything could just stay the same. That we could all just stay like this forever. There’s a part of me that doesn’t really want to grow up. I’m not sure if I’m ready for it. I’m not sure I’m ready for the world. But things can’t stay the same and they shouldn’t. No matter how scary it is, we have to move on. And we have to grow up because things might just change for the better. So we have to be brave. And if our dreams get broken along the way, we have to make new ones from the pieces.”

“Lately I’ve been thinking about who I want to love, and how I want to love, and why I want to love the way I want to love, and what I need to learn to love that way, and who I need to become to become the kind of love I want to be…and when I break it all down, when I whittle it into a single breath, it essentially comes out like this: Before I die, I want to be somebody’s favorite hiding place, the place they can put everything they know they need to survive, every secret, every solitude, every nervous prayer, and be absolutely certain I will keep it safe. I will keep it safe.”