“This moment was extraordinary. I was there, motionless and icy, plunged in a horrible ecstasy. But something fresh had just appeared in the very heart of this ecstasy; I understood the nausea, I possessed it. To tell the truth, I did not formulate my discoveries to myself. But I think it would be easy for me to put them in words now. The essential thing is contingency. I mean that one cannot define existence as necessity. To exist is simply to be there; those who exist let themselves be encountered, but you can never deduce anything from them. I believe there are people who have understood this. Only they tried to overcome this contingency by inventing a necessary, casual being. But no necessary being can explain existence: contingency is not a delusion, a probability which can be dissipated; it is the absolute, consequently, the perfect free gift. All is free, this park, this city and myself. When you realize that, it turns your heart upside down and everything begins to float.” ~Nausea, Jean-Paul Sartre

“When we hold each other, in the darkness, it doesn’t make the darkness go away. The bad things are still out there. The nightmares still walking. When we hold each other we feel not safe, but better. “It’s all right” we whisper, “I’m here, I love you.” and we lie: “I’ll never leave you.” For just a moment or two the darkness doesn’t seem so bad.” ~Neil Gaiman

“Some people meet the way the sky meets the earth, inevitably, and there is no stopping or holding back their love. It exists in a finished world, beyond the reach of common sense.” ~Louise Erdrich

“Happiness isn’t what happens when you whistle along, pretending bad things don’t exist… Happiness is earned, like everything else. It’s achieved.” ~Marisa de los Santos

“All I ever wanted you to do was feel this feeling. Be this way. Exhale the sky.

All you ever did was feel different. Be away. Wash your hands with air.

All I love is a feeling. I still feel this way. I cannot breathe.

I still forget there’s air out there.

I still forget how white hot everything was.

I still forget myself.

There’s nothing wrong with this.

There’s nothing true about this.

There’s nothing.

You were once everything I felt.

You were once everything.

You were, once.

And if love moves like air, then teach me how to dig my nails into the palm of my hand so I can remember what you once felt like.” ~I Wrote This For You

“We need to remember the value of nothing. It’s like breathing: you can’t inhale all day.

We need to learn to make peace with the information we don’t know, to embrace the zeroes, to relearn the pleasures of hunger, need, interruption, restraint. We need to work up our ignorance muscles. We need to organize our internal absences to create meaning. We are responsible, in other words, now and forever, for our own deletionism.” ~Sam Anderson

“I think that you find your own way. You have your own rules. You have your own understanding of yourself, and that’s what you’re going to count on. In the end, it’s what feels right to you. Not what your mother told you. Not what some actress told you. Not what anybody else told you but the still, small voice.” ~Meryl Streep

“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.” ~Anne Lamott

“To separate oneself from the burden, the angst, the anguish that we all encounter everyday. To say I am alive, I am wonderful, I am. I am. That is something to aspire to.” ~Garth Stein

“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” ~Albert Einstein