Collector of quotes. Chaser of Words. Eater of Paper Mice

Author I fell in love with unexpectedly:

passivity is often mistaken for weakness. Really, it’s just a different way to cope. To survive. The safest way I learned to react to situations was to endure. To let things blow over. To please. To peace keep.

I do know I’m beautiful. Any beautiful person who says otherwise is lying. Sometimes, it’s to fish for compliments. But mostly, it’s because they have been taught by society—men, in particular—that we have to downplay our beauty, to only let them determine it. To seem humble. But I don’t have to be humble.

That’s the thing with trauma to the body—it shows up instantly. In breaks and bruises, in burns and in blood. But the trauma on the inside, that’s harder to see. It creeps around your mind, poisons you with disquiet. It can hit you out of nowhere, debilitating and ruinous. There are no marks visible for those. None, save the shadows in your eyes.

"Power is a strange and fickle thing,” he said. “Sometimes it’s just a matter of saying the right words at the right moment. Those who try to grab power find it impossible to hold, and it slips through their fingers. Their mistake is in thinking power is something that can be taken. That’s not how it is.True power is in giving. It is the willingness to give."

They may fail but they pick themselves up and try again. He said that was the mark of a true hero: someone who made life obey them, instead of obeying life

“I don’t think it’s possible to live without responsibility,” she said finally. “The things we choose to bind us are the things that make us free."

Knowledge is a gift of hope. Passing it on means you believe people will survive and thrive. People who have given up don’t share knowledge. Learning is a huge act of faith in the future

everyone could be a giant tree, and not a skinny stunted thing, if they were given room to grow, and that that room to grow had to be inside their own heads and hearts as well as out in the world

A curse or a blessing was like a bird. It had wings and could fly. And the stronger the blessing or the curse, the stronger the wings and the farther the bird could go.

Was home a country? The land beneath one’s feet? Or was home people?

She did not fear death, so she knew death would not come. Fear was like that. Fear called out to fate, and fate always answered.