Five

“I have a history of making decisions very quickly about men. I have always fallen in love fast and without measuring risks. I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone, but to assume that everyone is emotionally capable of reaching his highest potential. I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man, rather than with the man himself, and I have hung on to the relationship for a long time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism.”
— Elizabeth Gilbert

"Promise me you’ll always remember: you’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."

– A.A. Milne, Winne the Pooh

"You want to see a miracle, son? Be the miracle."
– Morgan Freeman

"Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love."

--Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2; Shakespeare

^Oh geez, the fact that its a picture of a tiny asian woman gave my heart a squeeze

"Only the gentle are ever really strong."

--James Dean

"A library should be like a pair of open arms."

--Roger Rosenblatt

"I like to see people reunited, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can’t tell fast enough, the ears that aren’t big enough, the eyes that can’t take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone."

--Jonathan Safran Foer

"Dont sweat the petty things, and dont pet the sweaty things"
-George Carlin
(haha)

"Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured."

--Mark Twain

"Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it… . It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for.

--Erica Jong - How to Save Your Own Life

"This above all: to thine own self be true".

- (Hamlet, Act I, Scene III)

Four

(I cut a few parts out for personal accuracy—but the poem in its entirety is also beautiful. I want to give this to my daughter.)

Daughter by Nicole Blackman

One day I'll have a tiny baby girl
and when she's born she'll scream
and I'll tell her never to stop.

I will kiss her before I lay her down at night
and will tell her a story so she knows
how it is and how it must be for her to survive.

I'll tell her that people must earn the right
to use her nickname,
that forced intimacy is an ugly thing.

I'll help her to see that she will not find God
or salvation in a dark brick building
built by dead men.

I'll make her keep reinventing herself and run fast.
I'll teach her to write her manifestos on cocktail napkins.
I'll make her understand that she is worth more with her clothes on.
I'll teach her to talk hard.

I'll teach her that she has an army inside her
that can save her life.
I'll teach her to be whole, to be holy.
I'll teach her how to live,
to be so much that she doesn't even
need me anymore.

I will make her stronger then I ever was.

"It's a fine thing to establish ones own religion in ones own heart, not to be dependent on tradition and second-hand ideals. Life will seem to you later, not a lesser, but a greater thing." -D.H. Lawrence

"Whatever souls are made of, his and mine are the same."
--Wuthering Heights

^this makes me miss the stoop so much.
I dont even know how my attachment to it got to be so excessive
Maybe its because, despite the mosquitoes eating us alive, or the fact that it was 3AM, people would still come over and just talk.
or maybe its just the people I'm so attached to

^Tree above the stoop.

“For every beauty there is an eye somewhere to behold it…”

-Ivan Panin, Russian Mathematician

“and all the while the conversation was at once meaningless and meaningful--the sort that holds no other purpose then to relish in the sound of a beloved's voice.”

"Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life."

--Langston Hughes, from Theme for English B

Three

Book Suggestion: The History of Love

Horrid title, I know. But its not a love story in the traditional sense. Its more a story about the history of people. I dont know how to explain it, so Im just going to quote it.

"Shy people carried a little bundle of string in their pockets...but people considered loudmouths had no less need for it, since those used to being overheard by everyone were often at a loss for how to make themselves heard by someone."

"Only after they had charged him with the crime of silence did Babel discover how many kinds of silences existed. When he heard music he no longer listened to the notes, but to the silences in between. When he read a book he gave himself over entirely to commas and semicolons, to the space after the period and before the capital letter of the next sentence. He discovered the places in a room where silence gathered. When people spoke to him, he heard less of what they were saying, and more of what they were not."

"Her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering"

"I filled the sink with soapy water, and washed the dirty pots. And with each pot and pan and spoon I put away, I put away a thought I couldn't bear, until my kitchen and my mind had returned to a state of mutual organization."

"As the rifles were pointed at his chest he wondered if what he had taken for the richness of silence was really the poverty of never being heard."

beautiful. I love it. Please read it.

Two

IF you were coming in the fall,
I ’d brush the summer by
With half a smile and half a spurn,
As housewives do a fly.

If I could see you in a year,
I ’d wind the months in balls,
And put them each in separate drawers,
Until their time befalls.

If only centuries delayed,
I ’d count them on my hand,
Subtracting till my fingers dropped
Into Van Diemen’s land.

If certain, when this life was out,
That yours and mine should be,
I ’d toss it yonder like a rind,
And taste eternity.

But now, all ignorant of the length
Of time’s uncertain wing,
It goads me, like the goblin bee,
That will not state its sting.

--Emily Dickinson


It's a still life water color,
Of a now late afternoon,
As the sun shines through the curtained lace
And shadows wash the room.
And we sit and drink our coffee
Couched in our indifference,
Like shells upon the shore
You can hear the ocean roar
In the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs,
The borders of our lives.

And you read your Emily Dickinson,
And I my Robert Frost,
And we note our place with bookmarkers
That measure what we've lost.
Like a poem poorly written
We are verses out of rhythm,
Couplets out of rhyme,
In syncopated time
Lost in the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs,
Are the borders of our lives.

Yes, we speak of things that matter,
With words that must be said,
"Can analysis be worthwhile?"
"Is the theater really dead?"
And how the room is softly faded
And I only kiss your shadow,
I cannot feel your hand,
You're a stranger now unto me
Lost in the dangling conversation.
And the superficial sighs,
In the borders of our lives.

--"Dangling Conversation," Simon and Garfunkel

One

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

--Martin Luther King Jr.

“Anyone can become angry—that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way—this is not easy.”

— Aristotle

"Wouldn’t it be great if people could get to live suddenly as often as they die suddenly?" --Katharine Hepburn

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

"You might have talked to me more when I came to dinner."

"A man who had felt less, might."
--Pride and Prejudice Chapter 60

“Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly.”

— Rose Franken

"Sad thing is, you can still love someone and be wrong for them."
--Elvis Presley

"Trouble is part of your life, and if you don’t share it, you don’t give the person who loves you a chance to love you enough."

--Dinah Shore

"There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief…and unspeakable love."

---Washington Irving

"Know this, that he that is a friend to himself, is a friend to all men."

--Seneca the Elder (54 BC - 39AD

"In your life, you meet people. Some you never think about again. Some, you wonder what happenend to them. There are some that you wonder if they ever think about you. And then there are some you wish you never had to think about again. But you do."

--The Wonder Years