words i carry with me

“The salvation that systems of oppression offer us is a kind of perfection of self-flagellation, that we have to make ourselves perfect in order to be loved.

“You not knowing the next step is actually you being wide open to all possibilities. You being willing to feel whatever comes up in your not-knowing provides you with the capacity and stamina to carry on. We’re not supposed to know. We came here for the adventure of navigating the mystery and the only North Star you need to remember to guide yourself with is within.”

“The misogyny that shapes every aspect of our civilization is the institutionalized form of male fear and hatred of what they have denied and therefore cannot know, cannot share: that wild country, the being of women.”

"Perfectionism is very addictive because it is very seductive. It's so great to think, 'There's a way I can do things where I can never be held in judgment by other people, that I can totally escape criticism?

"If only I could visit you as a foreigner goes into a new country, learn the language of you, wander past all borders into every private and secret place, I would stay forever. I would become a citizen of you.”

“I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”

“If you don't become the ocean, you'll be seasick every day.”

“God, I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night.”