Zookeeper

“Everybody I ever loved, I still love a little.”

“Sometimes your world shakes so hard, it’s difficult to imagine that everyone else isn’t feeling it too.”

“There is love in holding and there is love in letting go.”

“You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be. And one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid…. You refuse to do it because you want to live longer…. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab you, or shoot at you or bomb your house; so you refuse to take the stand. Well, you may go on and live until you are 90, but you’re just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.”

“Life is not about who you once were. It’s about who you are right now, and the person you have the potential to be.”

If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can’t know better until knowing better is useless.

“I do understand—and it is terrible.”

I look for the words ... I look for the words because I believe that the words are the way to your heart.

" Some people run away by packing their bags. Others run away by standing in the same place for too long. "

I’m a broken doll and I don’t work quite right. I’m missing so many pieces now. Somebody tore out a button eye here, and another buzzed off all my hair. I am covered in dirt and snot and god only knows what other unholy substances. But I am not well loved. I am well worn. I’ve been played with too many times, not kindly, not sweetly. I was not a little girl’s favorite doll tucked into her side each night. I’ve been trampled in the school yard, left out in the rain, abused, bloodied and bruised. And I’m all alone in this pitch black room laughing like a maniac, because it is so so funny how I always forget. The depth of your love is the depth of your wound.

Then you realize,

“How beautiful, the doomed love! How gorgeous and ambient, the ways we abandon each other! The lovely wars we die in, the poetry of disease!”

“One of the most expensive things you could ever do is pay attention to the wrong people.”

“Just because you’re angry doesn’t mean you have the right to be cruel.”

“The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward.”

“I plant roots so deeply in the people I love that I always lose a piece of myself when they go.”