gleaming, twinkling 💌✨

“… if I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.”

“i was thinking about how i don’t actually have anything of my own that i can keep. i very luckily have some material things, but every material thing goes away eventually. they can get lost, broken, stolen or just deteriorate, including my body. once i die this will all become nothing. and i was thinking about what do i have that’s really actually mine? that can’t be taken away? and i know this is corny but this love that i feel in me, that i’ve created in me, that i’ve built in me, held on to—it’s mine for as long as i want it, for as long as i don’t give it up or let the world take it away from me. and i really do believe that to love is the best thing i ever did in my life. better than any song i've ever written, any achievement by far. to love is truly the best and most beautiful thing i ever did. and then as i was thinking about that, i started thinking about how sad it was that once i die, i couldn’t leave behind this most beautiful thing that i have. i guess it short of dies with me. so i wanted to write a song about how i wish that when i die i could at least leave all this love behind in the world.”

“I know that if women wish to escape the stigma of husband-seeking, they must act and look like marble or clay - cold, expressionless, bloodless; for every appearance of feeling, of joy, sorrow, friendliness, antipathy, admiration, disgust, are alike construed by the world into the attempt to hook a husband. Never mind! well-meaning women have their own consciences to comfort them after all. Do not, therefore, be too much afraid of showing yourself as you are, affectionate and good-heartened; do not too harshly repress sentiments and feelings excellent in themselves, because you fear that some puppy may fancy that you are letting them come out to fascinate him; do not condemn yourself to live only by halves, because if you showed too much animation some pragmatical thing in breeches might take it into his pate to imagine that you designed to dedicate your life to his inanity.”