I want a spiritual journey, clean out the trash from the corners of my brain, drop all dead psychic weight. I need transformation, to absorb, transcend, to feel alive. Forget about the past and move forward completely.

It was an ill-fated thing to claim that a heart is safe. Hearts are rebellious. The moment they feel trapped, they will strain against their bindings.

There are scars on my heart... I know they're there. I hope some undamaged tissue remains, a patch through which love can come in and flow out. I hope.

When the silence and the aloneness press down and around me, crushing me, carving through me like ice, I need to speak aloud sometimes, if only for proof of life.
... if a woman who's wholly alone occasionally talks to a potted plant, is she certifiable? I'm confident that it is perfectly normal to talk to oneself occasionally. It's not as though I'm expecting a reply. I'm fully aware that Polly is a houseplant.

I do exist, don't I? It often feels as if I'm not here, that I'm a figment of my own imagination. There are days when I feel so lightly connected to the earth that the threads that tether me to the planet are gossamer thin, spun sugar. A strong gust of wind could dislodge me completely, and I'd lift off and blow away, like one of those seeds in a dandelion clock.

Amy once told Joy that she had no idea how lonely it felt to be single. Joy had wanted to tell her that you could still be lonely when you were married, that there had been times when she had woken up day after day crushed with loneliness, and still made breakfast for four children.
She didn't say that to Amy. She said, "Yes, darling, you're right. It must be so hard?'

Anna read and understood, but it was unpleasant for her to read, that is, to follow the reflection of other people‘s lives. She wanted too much to live herself.

Merry Christmas!!! 🎅🏻🎄 God Bless Us, Every One!

I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here?

What is worse? To be confronted with an obvious horror, or to be haunted by a never-ending premonition of what‘s ahead?

The library is for everyone, but some people need it more than others.

Strange, isn‘t it? To love a book. When the words on the pages become so precious that they feel like part of your own history because they are.

...feminism isn't just academic theory. It isn't a matter of saying the right words at the right time. Feminism is the work that you do, and the people you do it for who matter more than anything else.

I see patterns of movement in everything.
Movement is in our blood.
It is part of the collective human condition. We are born out of movement, out of a desire to forge connections with others in order to feel less alone. It's an endless cycle of transit and migration, from one fixed point to another and then another. Each time we move and flow, we change a little, we come closer to becoming that person we always imagined ourselves to be.

When your identity is forbidden, there is a need beyond physical desire, a human need to be who we truly are if only for a moment. For centuries, the only way to satisfy this need was through cruising, and the practice plays this crucial role today in the many places around the world where LGBT people are targeted.

The hard thing about death is that nothing ever changes. The hard thing about life is that nothing stays the same.

Today it‘s time to listen to nothing but naked, undiluted truth. And when you know the truth, as Jesus said: “The truth will make you free.” Abraham Lincoln won‘t make you free. Truth will make you free. When you know the truth, you‘re free.

Knowledge — self-knowledge in particular — is power.

...he closed his eyes, and like millions of his fellow humans, wondered why troubles could never come singly, but in avalanches, so that you became increasingly destabilized with every blow that hit you.

In the animal kingdom, the male performs for the woman, woos her with his beautiful feathers or flowing mane, is always trying to out-strut the other men. Why do humans do it the other way? It doesn‘t make sense. Men need us more than we need them.

There‘s really only two pieces of wisdom worth leaving behind. I worked hard for everything I ever cared about. And nothing I ever cared about cost a single cent.

It‘s hard to let go. Even when what you‘re holding onto is full of thorns, it‘s hard to let go. Maybe especially then.

When you‘re twenty-one, life is a roadmap. It‘s only when you get to be twenty-five or so that you begin to suspect you‘ve been looking at the map upside down, and not until you‘re forty are you entirely sure. By the time you‘re sixty, take it from me, you‘re fucking lost.

Some days are treasure. Sometimes the prizes are real. Sometimes they‘re precious.

I wish I‘d brought a book along. Then I could have held it up, and they‘d have left me alone.

Not knowing was hard for me. It always was. I was too nosy, too hungry for the why.

Maybe it sounds funny to some, but I see my days as trees, like in the Tarzan movies. Every morning I get up, grab a vine, and hope it‘s long enough, my arms powerful enough, to carry me to the next one.

The heart knows nothing, sees nothing, but it kicks up a ruckus, throws tantrums to get what it wants.

A girl discovered almost in the cradle that things would never be fair.

She was like a car engine, revving, revving, revving, making noise, sending sparks out into the world. She wants to get somewhere. Trouble is, she doesn‘t know where she wants to go. That‘s what makes her dangerous.

She was tired of caring what others thought about her, more tired of how they thwarted her. The world kept telling her to look away, to pay no attention to an age-old system, in which men thrived and inconvenient women disappeared. Maddie wasn‘t having it.

In spite of the long squashy sofas, the place felt oddly bare -- and after a second I realized why. It wasn't just the lack of clutter and the minimalist decor but the fact that there wasn't a single book in the whole place. It didn't even feel like a holiday cottage -- every place I've ever stayed in has had a shelf of curling Dan Browns and Agatha Christies. It felt more like a show home.

You don‘t bring it up much as an adult: how you got your heart broken for the first time. But Tom was the next best thing to an anonymous stranger. I was highly unlikely to meet him again after this weekend, and somehow telling him felt like a release.

People don‘t change. They just get more punctilious about hiding their true selves.

How well we think we know those closest to us.

And then, what a shock to the system it is to find out we don‘t know them at all.

“You strike me as a gentle soul,” she says.

I‘ve never thought of myself as gentle. Fragile is more like it. Prone to bruising.

Every so often, life offers you a reset button. When it does, you need to press it as hard as you can.

I love information. Sometimes I feel like an archaeologist, digging for facts, uncovering data with my wits and a pen.

Food is my last great vice and I intend to sin incessantly as long as my palate holds out.

i want you to know
this waz an experiment
to see how selifsh i cd be
if i wd really carry on to snare a possible lover
if i waz capable of debasin my self for the love of another
if i cd stand not being wanted
when i wanted to be wanted
& i cannot
so
with no further assistance & no guidance from you
i am endin this affair

You have to forgive people for being who they are. Otherwise you‘ll just make yourself crazy.

There is no trouble and there is no paradise, there‘s just the life I‘ve chosen. Some days I love it and some days I hate it. But I chose it, and that‘s all.

You know what they say about living well as the best revenge. I did well because it was the one defense I had. Escape has been the motivating force in my life.

We are nothing if not thorough in our deception of others.

We often mistake love for fireworks - for drama and dysfunction. But real love is very quiet, very still. It's boring, if seen from the perspective of high drama. Love is deep and calm - and constant.

I suppose what scares me is giving in to the unknown. I like to know where I‘m going. I need to open my eyes and look — and be aware of life as it‘s happening, and not simply how I want it to be.

We‘re all crazy, I believe, just in different ways.

What could be better than being eighteen and in love? If I could go back, I‘d do everything different.
This big ol‘ world and we only get to go through it once. The saddest thing there is, you ask me.‘

“Why can‘t you just be yourself?” Stella asked once.
“Maybe I don‘t know who that is,” her daughter shot back. And Stella understood, she did. That was the thrill of youth, the idea that you could be anyone... Then adulthood came, your choices solidifying, and you realize that everything you are had been set in motion years before. The rest was aftermath.

I lead a simple life. I buy books and sell them. My adventures come through reading or making a great find.