Ashley Jacobs > Ashley's Quotes

“I hope one day
somebody loves you
so much

that they see violets
in the bags under your eyes,
sunsets in the downward arch
of your lips

that they recognize you
as something green,
something fresh and still growing
even if sometimes
you are growing sideways

that they do not waste their time
trying to fix you.”
― Trista Mateer

“God damn it, you've got to be kind.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

“This is what I know. Don't settle for 40, 50, or even 80 percent. A relationship-it shouldn't be too small or too tight or even a little scratchy. It shouldn't take up space in your closet out of guilty conscience or convenience or a moment of desire. Do you hear me? It shold be perfect for you. It should be lasting. Wait. wait for 100 percent.”
― Deb Caletti, The Secret Life of Prince Charming

“what if
there isn't enough time
to give her what she deserves
do you think
if i begged the sky hard enough
my mother's soul would
return to me as my daughter
so i can give her
the comfort she gave me
my whole life”
― Rupi Kaur, The Sun and Her Flowers

“There is a level of grief so deep that it stops resembling grief at all. The pain becomes so severe that the body can no longer feel it. The grief cauterizes itself, scars over, prevents inflated feeling. Such numbness is a kind of mercy.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, The Signature of All Things

“(self-love)

One day your love for yourself
will outweigh the love
that keeps you holding onto someone
who chooses to hurt you;
one day the love for yourself
will be your strength-
that love will be more than enough reason
for you to walk away for good.”
― R.H. Sin, Whiskey Words & a Shovel II

“My father said that love at first sight should send you running, if you know what's good for you. It's your dark pieces having instant recognition with their dark pieces, he says. You're an idiot if you think it means you've met your soul mate. So I was an idiot.”
― Deb Caletti, Stay

“I want to believe there is a somebody out there for me. I want to believe that I exist to be there for that somebody.”
― Rachel Cohn, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“I used to think that finding the right one was about the man having a list of certain qualities. If he has them, we'd be compatible and happy. Sort of a checkmark system that was a complete failure. But I found out that a healthy relationship isn't so much about sense of humor or intelligence or attractive. It's about avoiding partners with harmful traits and personality types. And then it's about being with a good person. A good person on his own, and a good person with you. Where the space between you feels uncomplicated and happy. A good relationship is where things just work. They work because, whatever the list of qualities, whatever the reason, you happen to be really, really good together.”
― Deb Caletti, The Secret Life of Prince Charming

“I've heard that people stand in bad situations because a relationship like that gets turned up by degrees. It is said that a frog will jump out of a pot of boiling water. Place him in a pot and turn it up a little at a time, and he will stay until he is boiled to death. Us frogs understand this.”
― Deb Caletti, Stay

“The Fight

the fight to prove yourself
to someone who doesn't deserve you
is a losing battle
what is there to achieve
when the one you want
has nothing to give you in return

where is the benefit
in going to war for someone
who'd rather fight against you
instead of beside you”
― R.H. Sin, A Beautiful Composition of Broken

“loneliness was the reason
i held on to you
and holding on to you
was the loneliest thing
i had ever done”
― R.H. Sin

“Grief was not a line, carrying you infinitely further from loss. You never knew when you would be sling-shot backward into its grip. —”
― Brit Bennett, The Mothers

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“just because they don’t hit you doesn’t mean it isn’t abuse.   wouldn’t you think it a crime to look up at the night sky & tell the stars that they have no sparkle?   guess what? you shine brighter than all the starlight there has ever been or ever will be.   - emotional abuse is still abuse.”
― Amanda Lovelace, The Princess Saves Herself in this One

“When someone's been gone a long time, at first you save up all the things you want to tell them. You try to keep track of everything in your head. But it's like trying to hold on to a fistful of sand: all the little bits slip out of your hands, and then you're just clutching air and grit.”
― Jenny Han, To All the Boys I've Loved Before

“Oh my God, what if you wake up some day, and you’re 65, or 75, and you never got your memoir or novel written; or you didn’t go swimming in warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It’s going to break your heart. Don’t let this happen.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act—truth is always subversive.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one”
― Bruce Lee

“We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.”
― Ursula K. LeGuin

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
― Ira Glass

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“I saw us on the roof of the Villas, so young and innocent, falling in love. I saw us spending every day together, full of passion and excitement to have found someone that fit us so perfectly.”
― L.H. Cosway, How the Light Gets In

“A short story is a different thing altogether – a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger.”
― Stephen King, Skeleton Crew

“Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

“We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste!”
― Andre Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Brooklyn’s too cold tonight
& all my friends are three years away.
My mother said I could be anything
I wanted—but I chose to live.
On the stoop of an old brownstone,
a cigarette flares, then fades.
I walk towards it: a razor
sharpened with silence.
A jawline etched in smoke.
The mouth where I’ll be made
new again. Stranger, palpable
echo, here is my hand, filled
with blood thin as a widow’s
tears. I am ready. I am ready
to be every animal
you leave behind.”
― Ocean Vuong

“Language excites me. Irrational thought excites me. I spend most of my time listening instead of writing. A shard of language might come: a phrase, a word, an anagram, and I’d just keep it in my pocket, like a little seed, warming in my fist.”
― Ocean Vuong

“Writing, if nothing else, is a bridge between two people, a bridge made of language. And language belongs to all of us. If I enjoy a poem, that just means I am recognizing within it something of myself, something I must already possess. Therefore, to love a poem is to love a part of myself revealed to me by another person…”
― Ocean Vuong

“Good books don't give up all their secrets at once.”
― Stephen King