a place to lay my head down

“The earliest gardens were walled not to keep out animals, but to keep them in, so they could not be hunted by strangers. The Persian word for these walled sanctuaries was pairidaeza, the Hebrew, pardes, in Greek, paradeiosos. […] The origin of the word ‘paradise’ is simply ‘enclosure.’”

In the Evening

“My biggest regrets in life are being too damn nice, apologizing when I didn’t do anything wrong, and making unworthy people a priority.”

keep going into the world, bird,

“Come love, make me better than I was. Come teach me a kinder way to say my own name.”

“When will you have a little pity for every soft thing that walks through the world, yourself included?”

The struggle you’re in today is developing the strength you need for tomorrow.

“She believed a great happiness awaited her somewhere, and for this reason she remained calm as the days flew by.”

The worst that can happen often happens in silence. It is not the explosion, but the aftermath, when you see through the smoke and ash, that you know how much you have lost.

Then, for the first time in my life, I was really aware of another person’s body, of another person’s smell. We had our arms around each other. It was like holding in my hand some rare, exhausted, nearly doomed bird which I had miraculously happened to find.