so, i thought i had to become more than i was, more than i'd been. / but that wasn’t it. it seemed rather that / something had to go. / something had to be let go of. ― marie howe

both. i want to stay. i want to leave. i am three oceans away from my soul. ― nayyirah waheed

yes, i deserve a spring–i owe nobody nothing. ― virginia woolf

my audience is God, because who the hell else could understand me? who else has been dead twice? ― margaret atwood

the slogan of hell: eat or be eaten. the slogan of heaven: eat and be eaten. ― w.h. auden

in a field. with the moon. and the dark. and the dirt. with your mouth. and just one word: god god god. ― daphne gottlieb

you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life … all the things that have deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it–tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. but if it should really become manifest–if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself–you would know it. beyond all possibility of doubt you would say ‘here at last is the thing i was made for'. ― c.s. lewis

i have no fear of losing you, for you aren’t an object of my property, or anyone else’s. i love you as you are, without attachment, without fears, without conditions, without egoism, trying not to absorb you. i love you freely because i love your freedom, as well as mine. ― anthony de mello

i want to talk about what happened without mentioning how much it hurt. there has to be a way. to care for the wounds without reopening them. to name the pain without inviting it back into me. ― lora mathis

if the gospel is a gospel of liberation for the oppressed, then Jesus is where the oppressed are. Jesus is not safely confined in the first century. he is our contemporary, proclaiming release to the captives and rebelling against all who silently accept the structure. if perchance he is not…where [people] are living at the brink of existence, but is rather in the easy life of the suburb, then he lied and christianity is a mistake. ― james cone

we have to realize that all of us are a complex mixture of light and shadows. the other person is much more than the sum of the little things that annoy me. love does not have to be perfect for us to value it. The other person loves me as best they can, with all their limits, but the fact that love is imperfect does not mean that it is untrue or unreal. it is real, albeit limited and earthly. if i expect too much, the other person will let me know, for he or she can neither play God nor serve all my needs. ― pope francis