Lauren

“The difference between an ordinary life and an extraordinary life is only a matter of perspective. Pull the blinds. Look around you. It is a weird, wonderful world and you do not require a ten digit savings account to immerse yourself in it. Travel down long winding roads without a destination in mind, climb the nearest mountain and scream your heart out into the void, kiss strangers, make love, skinny dip in a lake, get lost and lose yourself (these are two separate things), explore the wilderness (particularly the one within), think less of destiny and more of the moment right here. Because in the end, as you reflect back on your life in that hospital bed, fame won’t matter, nor will the extent of your wealth. You are only the sum of the stories you can tell.” - Beau Taplin, “An extraordinary life.”  via

“I knew that you were that person I’d spend the rest of my time trying to find in everybody else I came across.”

“When you find somebody you love, all the way through, and she loves you—even with your weaknesses, your flaws, everything starts to click into place. And if you can talk to her, and she listens, if she makes you laugh, and makes you think, makes you want, makes you see who you really are, and who you are is better, just better with her, you’d be crazy not to want to spend the rest of your life with her.” - Nora Roberts, Happy Ever After

“Sometimes you can do everything right and things will still go wrong. The key is to never stop doing right.” - Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give

“But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.”

Look, let me put it this way: with me, you’re number one and there isn’t even a number two.

Listen to me: it’s ok to be a mess. It’s ok to have thighs and questions and cracker crumbs in your bra. You’re 17 or 23 or 48, and you’re still too in love with him to move on. Too scared to quit the job you hate or get the help you need or wear cherry lipstick to the bar and kiss the stranger. Too wild to sit and wait and do what they want. Sharp and shy and a lazy pile in your bed every Sunday. That cackle from your father and kindness from your mother and a pocketful of dirty jokes from your older brother. A pinch of this and that and pale pastels and finger paint. This whole damn gallery of insanity. Abstract and absurd, but alive more than anything. That’s what you are. So alive that it makes your eyes burn. It makes your heart beat.

No one ever takes a photograph of something they want to forget.