ASHLEY > ASHLEY's Quotes

“When adults can’t speak to their discontent, when they can’t quite figure out what it is they’re wanting, they will try anything. They drink or commit adultery or quit their jobs or run away or live vicariously through their kids or stonewall their husbands. They knock things off the counter just to feel some control. They burn down their own house to escape it, without really knowing where else to go. This is the tragedy of being an animal with a mind. We are punching the walls to stop the ache in our chest.”
― Jedidiah Jenkins, Like Streams to the Ocean: Notes on Ego, Love, and the Things That Make Us Who We Are

“If you’re reading this, if there’s air in your lungs on this November day, then there is still hope for you. Your story is still going. And maybe some things are true for all of us. Perhaps we all relate to pain. Perhaps we all relate to fear and loss and questions. And perhaps we all deserve to be honest, all deserve whatever help we need. Our stories are all so many things: Heavy and light. Beautiful and difficult. Hopeful and uncertain. But our stories aren’t finished yet. There is still time, for things to heal and change and grow. There is still time to be surprised. We are still going, you and I. We are stories still going.”
― Jamie Tworkowski

“I find this a fascinating phenomenon: the ability we have to manipulate ourselves so that the foundation of our beliefs is never shaken.”
― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

“A whole crowd of people, and not one true human among them.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“And the rest of the world goes about its business; we eat, we drink, we sleep, we attend to our needs, and that’s it. Oh yes, we know people are fighting somewhere. How do you expect me to feel about it—I, who have everything I need. No, but really, people are dying of hunger out there, we say, while stuffing ourselves with every kind of dish imaginable. I want music, and I turn the wireless dial, tuning out the news and replacing it with Tino Rossi’s beautiful voice, cooing about Barcelona again. There, that’s better. Indifferent. We are completely indifferent. Eyes closed, naïve and innocent, we do nothing but talk—we shout—we fight and make up—and all that time, men are dying.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“Dear Milena,
I wish the world were ending tomorrow. Then I could take the next train, arrive at your doorstep in Vienna, and say: “Come with me, Milena. We are going to love each other without scruples or fear or restraint. Because the world is ending tomorrow.” Perhaps we don’t love unreasonably because we think we have time, or have to reckon with time. But what if we don't have time? Or what if time, as we know it, is irrelevant? Ah, if only the world were ending tomorrow. We could help each other very much.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“Are the days of winter sunshine just as sad for you, too? When it is misty, in the evenings, and I am out walking by myself, it seems to me that the rain is falling through my heart and causing it to crumble into ruins.”
― Gustave Flaubert, November

“Traveling alone, you get to be whoever you want. I don't mean lie. I mean you get to be a blank slate. You can't leave behind your skin color, or your height, or the handsomeness or homeliness of your face. But you can leave your story behind. If you've broken hearts, the new place doesn't know. If you've lost trust in people and yourself, the new place doesn't know. If everyone thinks you love Jesus, but you never really have figured out what you believe, the new place doesn't care. It may assume you have it all tied nicely in a bow. All your thoughts and histories. Just feeling like your past isn't a vice to hold you in place can be very freeing. Feeling like your family and the expectations and the traditions and the judgments are absent... it can fill your veins with possibility and fire.”
― Jedidiah Jenkins, To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret

“Whenever I moved to a new city or started a new relationship, I’d always change my perfume,” she’d told me. “That way I’d be able to look back and relive my best memories from that time whenever I smelled it. So whenever you feel a shift or start a new chapter in life, find a new scent to go with it.”
― Mikki Brammer, The Collected Regrets of Clover

“we”
― Mikki Brammer, The Collected Regrets of Clover

“You’re never going to get good at it if you don’t put yourself out there and try.” Sylvie divided the last of the wine between our glasses. “Love is kind of like scratching a mosquito bite—painful and euphoric at the same time. You’ve just got to get out of your head and into your heart.”
― Mikki Brammer, The Collected Regrets of Clover

“Precisely. Engaging people helps them let their guard down and be vulnerable. To feel, to express themselves. And that’s what photography is all about—making people feel seen. Of course, we look at people every day, but we rarely stop to really see them for who they are.”
― Mikki Brammer, The Collected Regrets of Clover

“is suspended and they’re simply allowing themselves to be.”
― Mikki Brammer, The Collected Regrets of Clover

“Give me autumn any day. Give me precious days made more precious by encroaching night, and halos of lamplight through fine rain. Give me crisp orange leaves that crunch underfoot, hands warmed by hot chocolate in thick ceramic mugs, and people planted firmly next to log fires, their bodies blocking the heat for the rest of us. Give me pumpkins and candles and kids heaving stolen shopping trolleys up muddy hills, full of wood for the bonfire.”
― Hazel Hayes, Better by Far

“I savoured every heartbeat, every rise and fall of your chest under my hand, not allowing myself to drift off in case I missed even a moment of this night, which I knew would be our last. I stared at you, your profile vaguely backlit by the pale glow of a waxing moon outside, and I tried to memorise the topography of your face: tired eyes tracing your chin, your nose, your forehead, the peaks and troughs of this terrain I’ve come to know as home.”
― Hazel Hayes, Better by Far

“What if it was love at first sight? What if Finn was your soulmate?” “Okay, firstly, I think we’ve proven he wasn’t. But secondly, I don’t believe in love at first sight. And I don’t believe in soulmates. I believe that with seven billion people knocking about, there’s bound to be at least a couple hundred you could happily spend the rest of your life with. Some of whom you’ll never meet. Some of whom you’ll meet at the wrong time. And some of whom you’ll meet and never even know you met.”
― Hazel Hayes, Better by Far

“I believe that with seven billion people knocking about, there’s bound to be at least a couple hundred you could happily spend the rest of your life with. Some of whom you’ll never meet. Some of whom you’ll meet at the wrong time. And some of whom you’ll meet and never even know you met.”
― Hazel Hayes, Better by Far

“Every couple thinks that they discovered love. Invented it, even. I only claim to have known love that night. To have known it. And to have lost it.”
― Hazel Hayes, Better by Far

“She sees me sitting quietly and starts chatting to me, taking my silence as an indication of inactivity when it’s exactly the opposite; the stiller I seem on the surface, the deeper I’m diving inside myself for treasure.”
― Hazel Hayes, Better by Far

“It’s one thing to complain about the life you have and another thing altogether to describe the one you lost. There’s more strength in vulnerability than there is in battling through.”
― Hazel Hayes, Better by Far

“The stories we tell ourselves often cause us more pain than the truth ever could.”
― Hazel Hayes, Better by Far

“This why is much more dangerous. This why has me disregarding the evidence entirely and entertaining the theory that you were perfect, everything was great, and I was just incapable of enjoying it. The junkie in me especially likes this theory, because if I was the problem, then maybe there’s still hope.”
― Hazel Hayes, Better by Far

“This is why the cloak of grief hangs so heavy; it’s not one cloak, but two. And on days when I can hardly move under the weight of it, I remind myself that grief and love are intricately woven together, and healing isn’t about shedding one or the other, it’s about becoming strong enough to bear them both. This pain is a productive pain, a fortifying pain, no different to the itchy ache of bones that knit together after breaking. And just like broken bones need rest, so too do hearts. Like days when the words won’t come, I see these pauses now as part of the process. With life, as with art, there’s the in breath, the out breath, and the space in between. And this is where I feel you most, in the space between breath.”
― Hazel Hayes, Better by Far

“For ridding oneself of faith is like boiling seawater to retrieve the salt—something is gained but something is lost.”
― Zadie Smith, White Teeth

“Our children will be born of our actions. Our accidents will become their destinies. Oh, the actions will remain. It is a simple matter of what you will do when the chips are down, my friend. When the fat lady is singing. When the walls are falling in, and the sky is dark, and the ground is rumbling. In that moment our actions will define us. And it makes no difference whether you are being watched by Allah, Jesus, Buddah, or whether you are not. On cold days a man can see his breath, on a hot day he can’t. On both occasions, the man breathes.”
― Zadie Smith, White Teeth

“He had never yet extemporized a prayer. Many of the men prayed with fine-sounding phrases and quotations from the Scriptures, almost as if they were sermonizing. Billy himself suspected God was not so easily impressed. He always felt most moved by simple prayers that seemed heartfelt.”
― Ken Follett, Fall of Giants

“A man hates the person he has wronged, paradoxically. I think it’s because the victim is a perpetual reminder that he behaved shamefully.”
― Ken Follett, Edge of Eternity

“A person who breaks a promise diminishes herself. It’s like losing a finger. It’s worse than being paralyzed, which is merely physical. Someone whose promises are worthless has a disabled soul.”
― Ken Follett, Edge of Eternity

“We never thought of ourselves as witches, my mother and I. For this was a word invented by men, a word that brings power to those who speak it, not those it describes. A word that builds gallows and pyres, turns breathing women into corpses.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“A great many things look different from a distance. Truth is like ugliness: you need to be close to see it.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward