Daring Greatly

“1. Nobody is going to save you. You have to be your own hero. So take care of yourself. 2. Have as much fun as you can. Even if you don’t feel like laughing it will help - at least a little bit. 3. Set yourself goals and keep them in mind. 4. Opening your skin won’t let out the demons and bad thoughts - opening your heart and soul will. Be creative. Do what you love. As often as you can. 5. Music will never leave you alone or disappoint you.”

“She was the kind of pretty where her tongue dug into your lungs and stripped you of oxygen, where her hands could tear your heart out of your chest with one motion, where her kisses made you so weak you forgot you had knees, where her mind was an open passage to a new life, a better one. She was the kind of pretty where the ugliness of the world could never exist because her smile was too goddamn beautiful to let the bad parts in.”

The romantic soulmate is only one aspect of this notion. 

“All the hardest, coldest people you meet were once as soft as water. And that’s the tragedy of living.”

“Everyone who terrifies you is sixty-five percent water. And everyone you love is made of stardust, and I know sometimes you cannot even breathe deeply, and the night sky is no home, and you have cried yourself to sleep enough times that you are down to your last two percent, but nothing is infinite, not even loss. You are made of the sea and the stars, and one day you are going to find yourself again.”

“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly – they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”

“People are just as wonderful as sunsets if you let them be. When I look at a sunset, I don’t find myself saying, ‘Soften the orange a bit on the right hand corner.’ I don’t try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds.”

“She slept better wrapped in love. Even without arms to enclose her, her questions were quieted. Love like arms reaching around her, a reassurance that surrounded her with warmth. Love held her that night and offered a peace that soothed her, stilled her. That’s all she really needed, after all. A quieting love, a present love. In love, she finally found a place she could rest.”