GreatPerhaps

“Fall in love gently. Remind yourself that you are the longest relationship of your life. Remind yourself that you are a child of this universe and that you are worthy of happiness. Fall in love with the way you feel things deeply. The color of someone’s laughter. The texture of someone’s kindness. The nostalgia of going back to places that caused you so much pleasure and pain. You are an old soul trapped in a body that’s slowly, slowly decaying. You are a traveler of both the outer world and the inner world. Fall in love with your failures. The events that shaped you into becoming who you are today. Embrace your shortcomings for they serve as a lesson in your formless memory. Forgive yourself for everything that is causing you so much pain. It is a brutal process, and you must get through it. Self-hate can only generate more worry in your life. Let it go. You don’t have to carry it forever. Fall in love with your body. Romanticize it. The freckles on your face are constellations. The heart-shaped birthmark right behind your hips. The positive aura of your gummy smile. The way that your body is working hard to keep you alive like electricity lighting up a whole city on a cloudless night. Fall in love with your existence. The little things that make you who you are. The poetry that you write. The instrument that you play. The way you put your makeup on as you face another challenging day. These little things that make you who you are come from the way you express your being. Fall in love with yourself until you finally feel like home.”

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.

…I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.

Torment yourself as little as possible, then you’ll torment me less.

Writers wear their hearts on their sleeves. The blood in their veins is saturated with emotion. Words of love, life, death, and heartbreak infused in their very DNA. Language is their sword and their shield, wielding roses and thorns that grace the world with their beauty and cut right down to the bone.

Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.

When you love someone, you say their name different. Like it’s safe inside your mouth.

Aren’t we all waiting to be read by someone, praying that they’ll tell us that we make sense?

My worst fear is being stuck. Being stuck in a place that isn’t comfortable, or that bores me, being stuck with people that I don’t care for, being stuck doing a job I can’t stand.

Fear is only your enemy if you allow it to be.