Kelsey

“In a world myriad as ours, the gaze is a singular act: to look at something is to fill your whole life with it, if only briefly.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“I cannot conceive of an enlightenment as a sustained state, static once achieved. But I have had moments of illumination as bright and flashing as fish. They arrive unannounced, without fanfare--say, stepping off the Sixth Avenue bus or walking the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The sky turns lavender in the evening. Is that divine? I know it is the beauty of the material world, that I feel it in my body, and that it means something to me--that my breath will catch in my throat, that it fades almost as soon as it arrives, that I will be stunned again at its sudden reappearance.”
― Sarah McColl, Joy Enough: A Memoir

“Do you remember the happiest day of your life? What about the saddest? Do you ever wonder if sadness and happiness can be combined, to make a deep purple feeling, not good, not bad, but remarkable simply because you didn't have to live on one side or the other?”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“You want to know joy, as a woman who swims against her own sadness. Opposites are most striking when held at once: bloom and rot, reverie and boredom, grief and joy.”
― Sarah McColl, Joy Enough: A Memoir