❝ if the heart has devoted itself to love, there is not a single inch of emptiness. ❞

• — Mary Oliver, from ❝Honey Locust❞, Devotions

❝ how can i describe my life to you? i think a lot, listen to music. i'm fond of flowers. ❞

• — Susan Sontag, from ❝Death Kit❞, (1967)

❝ perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. ❞

• — Rainer Maria Rilke, from ❝Letters to a Young Poet❞

❝ i was made for another planet altogether. i mistook the way. ❞

• — Simone de Beauvoir, from ❝The Woman Destroyed❞

❝ wasn’t friendship its own miracle, the finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem somehow less lonely? wasn’t this house, this beauty, this comfort, this life a miracle? ❞

• — Hanya Yanagihara, from ❝A Little Life❞

❝ to love life, to love it even / when you have no stomach for it / and everything you've held dear / crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, / your throat filled with the silt of it. / when grief sits with you, its tropical heat / thickening the air, heavy as water / more fit for gills than lungs; / when grief weights you down like your own flesh / only more of it, an obesity of grief / you think, "how can a body withstand this?" / then you hold life like a face / between your palms, a plain face, / no charming smile, no violet eyes,/ and you say, yes, i will take you / i will love you, again. ❞

• — Ellen Bass, from ❝The Thing Is❞, Poetry Of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems

❝ you can mold a beautiful future for yourself. you need to stop intellectualizing and turning love into a puzzle. you need to stop accepting less than you deserve, artistically and emotionally. you can't settle for the monastic loneliness you describe. you need to open your heart not just to your art but to the world and the people around you. ❞

• — Heather Havrilesky, from ❝How to Be a Person in the World❞

❝ a writer, i think, is someone who pays attention to the world. ❞

• — Susan Sontag, [Speech upon being awarded the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels (Peace Prize of the German Book Trade), Frankfurt Book Fair, October 12, 2003]