Mayla Carling-Singh

“First loves take us like that. But because they rarely have any consequence (few marry the sixth-grade sweetheart), people slight them. They exist in the thin cliche of bad country tunes, thus becoming generic, sandblasted of peculiarities. Our own features in youth have not yet been sharply carved. So in some way, we don’t exist. Thus we mock ourselves for loving so easily and in the process choke the breath from our first darlings.Which denies their truth, I think, for my inner life took full shape around such love. I learned to imagine around his face. Before such enchantment takes us, there are only the faces of parents, other kin. Those are doled out to us; they are us in some portion. These first beloveds are other. And we invent ourselves by choosing them.”
― Mary Karr, Cherry

“To abstain from politics is in itself a political attitude.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Prime of Life

“The more we analyze, the more ambiguous things become.”
― Timothy Morton, The Ecological Thought

“We shall be permitted to live on this planet only for as long as we treat all nature with compassion and intelligence.”
― Aldous Huxley, Island