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"If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can't survive."
— Brené Brown
“I treat myself like I would my daughter. I brush her hair, wash her laundry, tuck her in goodnight. Most importantly, I feed her. I do not punish her. I do not berate her, leave tears staining her face. I do not leave her alone. I know she deserves more. I know I deserve more.”
— I Know I Deserve More, Michelle K
“But I’m endlessly fascinated by how if you just talk to someone long enough, how almost anyone — probably everyone — has something that’s shockingly interesting, it’s just about trying to see if they’ll talk about it or seeing whether or not it’ll come out. I mean, everyone is really fascinating — every person on the earth, probably.”
— Nathan Fielder
“It is hard to even describe what it’s like to have someone use your own revelation of suffering as a way to accuse you of being cruel.”
— Little Weirds, Jenny Slate
“There’s a Korean word my grandma taught me. It’s called jung. It’s the connection of two people that can’t be severed. Even when love turns to hate, you will always have tenderness in your heart for them. Gen and I have jung. Part of us will always be tied to one another.”
— To All The Boys: P.S. I Still Love You
“People think that intimacy is about sex. But intimacy is about truth. When you realize you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to them, when you stand in front of them and their response is “you’re safe with me” - that’s intimacy.”
— The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Taylor Jenkins Reid
“Picture a wave in the ocean. You can see it, measure it, its height, the way sunlight refracts when it passes through. And it's there and you can see it, you know what it is, it's a wave. And then it crashes on the shore, and it's gone. But the water is still there. The wave was just a different way for the water to be, for a little while...The wave returns to the ocean. Where it came from. Where it’s supposed to be.”
— The Good Place
“You know what kind of plan never fails? No plan. No plan at all. You know why? Because life cannot be planned...You can’t go wrong with no plans. We don’t need to make a plan for anything. It doesn’t matter what will happen next. Even if the country gets destroyed or sold out, nobody cares. Got it?”
— Parasite
“Nothing is trite if you film people with empathy and love, if you find them extraordinary as I did.”
— Agnes Varda
“I think there are people that help you become the person that you end up being, and you can be grateful for them even if they were never meant to be in your life forever.”
— Bojack Horseman
"The longest journey is the journey inward, for he who has chosen his destiny has started upon his quest for the source of his being."
— Dag Hammarskjöld
"Love is understanding, not transformation, and if you find somebody that doesn't understand you, at whichever point in your life, run. Love them as they are or leave them be."
— Guillermo Del Toro
“A thought occurred to me today – so obvious, so always obvious! It was absurd to suddenly comprehend it for the first time – I felt rather giddy, a little hysterical: – There is nothing, nothing that stops me from doing anything except myself… What is to prevent me from just picking up and taking off?”
— Susan Sontag, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963
— excerpts from an interview with kathee muzin about the first time she fell in love with another woman, published in the montreal gazette, december 1991
“I was nowhere. It’s the most important place in the world — nowhere. Everyone should spend time there. It’s scary, empty, and cold; it’s sad beyond all bearing; it’s where all human communication is lost, where all your sins, all your shortcomings, all lies and half-truths and double-dealings emerge from the dusk to look you in the eye with neither disapproval nor empathy, but simply and matter-of-factly. Here we are. Here you are. “And filled with revulsion, you read the story of your life.” And you make decisions. / Я была нигде. Это самое важное место на свете: нигде. Всякий должен там побывать. Там страшно, там пусто, там холодно, там нестерпимо печально, там оборваны все человеческие связи; и все твои грехи, все пороки, все лжи, все лукавства и двурушничества чередой выходят из летних ленинградских сумерек и смотрят тебе в лицо без осуждения, без сочувствия, а просто по факту, как есть. Вот мы. Вот ты. И это правильно. Так и должно быть. И с отвращением ты читаешь жизнь свою. И принимаешь решения.”
— Tatyana Tolstaya (born 1951), from “Nowhere” in: “Aetherial Worlds. Stories”, translated from the Russian by Anya Migdal
"There might be days where you are certain you are over it and there might be days you feel everything all over again. But no matter the day, there will still be songs to listen to. And when you don’t feel like singing, there will still be rhythms to breathe to, for grace is still at work in you."
— Morgan Harper Nichols
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Journal of My Other Self
"That's not true anymore... We're gonna be fine. We're gonna be fucking fine. There's always hope for women. We are hope. We are the hope in the world."
— Fiona Apple, when asked about her 20 year old quote, "There's no hope for women."
"What is the self, anyways? Who am I, really, when I am not being constantly drawn into some directionless orchestra of busyness? Or when I am not being constructed/instructed in perfect dyadic tandem by that vast, external capitalistic force that demands me to produce? Although it does feel hyper-personal, my obsession with productivity is something that does not end or begin with me, it would be too self-involved to think so. It is possibly a very human and touching attempt to locate meaning in the face of constant meaninglessness. We are deeper and more in need of interpersonal intimacy than we think we are. In the face of an economic engine that has evolved to structure the very basis of how we are allowed (able?) to think and be. We are still awake within ourselves. Looking for something. Victims of economic thinking. Transactional exchanges become the norm. I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine! Sterile beings versus beings of heart. Point me to the room where I can simply love you."
— Dominique Mkhonza, The self under quarantine: we are not machines
"'Cause I just want to show my friends what I have for them, I have my whole heart for them. So why am I hiding in my room again? This always happens. I'm afraid I've misplaced the strength to not give a shit."
— Lady Lamb, "We've Got A Good Thing Going"
"I once saw a sunset so vivid and warm that I swore it was perfect. I once had a lover, I'm not sure if I'll recover, but I know it was worth it. Then, last night in the car, the falling raindrops looked like stars of some incalculable speed. Then later my friends said, "Good to see you again, this is a home to me"... Cynicism isn't wisdom, it's a lazy way to say that you've been burned. It seems certain after everything you ever learned."
— Nana Grizol, "Cynicism"
— Brenna Twohy
“Another secret of the universe: sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere. The clearest summer could end in a downpour. Could end in lightning and thunder.”
— Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
"In order to lead a happy life I'm gonna have to disappoint my parents a bit"
— Anna Akhmatova, The Guest
"Happiness and tranquility are a pain-free body, an anxiety free mind, and the enjoyment of simple pleasures."
— Epicurus
"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."
— Anaïs Nin
"I never really thought about the oppression of fitting in before. The good thing about being different is that no one expects you to be like them."
— The Half of It (dir. Wu, 2020)
“My mom once said to me, ‘I can tell you over and over to leave the situation, but you won’t until you are ready. One day you will wake up and realize that this isn’t what you want to feel like anymore and you’ll be done.’ And I think it’s important that everyone hears this.”
— Bri Lampert
"You'll never waste my time twice."
“…the horror of radical closeness, the sweetness of that horror,”
— Delmira Agustini, from The Empty Chalices: Poems; “Vision,” wr. c. 1913
"i wish there could be an invention that bottled up a memory like perfume and it never faded, never got stale. then, whenever i wanted to, i could uncork the bottle and live the memory all over again."
- Rebecca (dir. Hitchcock, 1940)
“There is no special love exclusively reserved for romantic partners. Genuine love is the foundation of our engagement with ourselves, with family, with friends, with partners, with everyone we choose to love.”
— bell hooks, from All About Love: New Visions
— audre lorde
“Eventually soulmates meet, for they have the same hiding place.”
— Robert Brault
— Fleabag
“I was— am— terrified of being owned. By a god or a man or a child or a place. By anyone or anything but myself.”
— Brenna Womer, from “Empire Blue,” Atypical Cells of Undetermined Significance
“Sometimes suffering is just suffering. It doesn’t make you stronger. It doesn’t build character. It only hurts.”
— Kate Jacobs, Comfort Food
“One of the hardest things you will ever have to do, is to grieve the loss of a person who is still alive.”
— A.Y.
“The truth does not change according to your ability to stomach it.”
— Flannery O’Connor.
“… to be ourselves causes us to be exiled by many others, and yet to comply with what others want causes us to be exiled from ourselves. It is a tormenting tension and it must be borne, but the choice is clear.”
— Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves
“I go through phases. Some days I feel like the person I’m supposed to be, and then some days I turn into no one at all. There is both me and my silhouette. I hope that on the days you find me and all I am are darkened lines, you still are willing to be near me.”
— Mary Kate Teske
“Being smart will count for nothing if you don't make the world a better place. You have to use your smarts to count for something, to serve life, not death.”
— Horizon: Zero Dawn
“My therapist taught me to interrupt my anxious thinking with thoughts like: “What if things work out” and “What if all my hard work pays off?” So, I’m passing that onto you wherever you are, whatever you’re leaving, or whomever you’re becoming.”
— Sinclair P. Ceasar III
“Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.”
— bell hooks, All About Love - New Visions
“This is all you need in life: a computer, a camera, and a cat.”
— Agnès Varda
“I can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly, even though I feel that here in this world there’s no undisturbed place for our love, neither in the village nor anywhere else; and I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more.”
— Franz Kafka
“Do you think she... chose us? Usually, you can't choose your own parents, but then, maybe it's stronger when you choose them yourself.”
//
“Giving birth automatically makes you a mother?”
— Shoplifters, dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda
“You’re important to me. I think if there’s anything that will last forever, it’s that. Whether we separate, stay in touch or rarely speak again, you will always be that little someone I really do care for, that I would sacrifice everything for to protect and keep safe.”
— Beau Taplin, The Promise
“You hang onto your pain like it means something, like it's worth something, well, let me tell you, it's not worth shit. Let it go. Infinite possibilities, and all he can do is whine.” “Well, what am I supposed to do?” “What do you think? You can do anything, you lucky bastard, you're alive! What's a little pain compared to that?” “It can't be that simple.” “What if it is?”
— Six Feet Under, "Untitled"
“Truth and relationships don't make life better, David. They make life possible.”
— Six Feet Under, "Twilight"
“Language is real. The power of it is that it gets deeper than any human touch. If I were to touch you right now, I would only get to your skin. But when I speak to you, I’m all the way through.”
— Ocean Vuong
“As adults, we try to develop the character traits that would have rescued our parents.”
— Alain de Botton
“Sometimes, all you need is permission to feel. Sometimes, what causes the most pain is actually the attempt to resist feeling, or the shame that grows up like thorns around it.”
— Olivia Laing, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone
“If I get through this year, no matter how badly, it will be the biggest victory I’ve ever done.”
jan 9 2021 +