Birdie

“Sometimes I think the universe is just a glow. The glow of a cigarette in the dark. All the stars, the planets, the galaxies, the infinite edges. It's all in the small glowin' tip of a cigarette in the hand of a man leanin' back against a wall, watchin' a girl walk by on her way home, knowin' she'll never get there.”
― Tiffany McDaniel, Betty

“It was better not to judge the man who had gone down under an impossible burden. It was better to remember: Thou knowest this man's fall, but thou knowest not his wrassling.”
― James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

“I daresay I wasn’t like other girls harder than anyone else ever was. I was so unlike other girls that I wasn’t even like myself, except on Sundays.”
― T. Kingfisher, The Raven and the Reindeer

“I wonder if anyone really identifies as the adult they’ve morphed into. I remember being sixteen and feeling eleven. I remember thinking, how could I be a teenager? I remember finishing high school and thinking, am I grown now? Is this what it feels like? I feel the same as I did before.”
― Emily R. Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead