izzy

“The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things,
I lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
frog voice; now,
he said, and now,
and never once mentioned forever

from, One or Two Things”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“You laugh very loud—as if you are the only one in the world,” Despina commented.

Shahrzad wrinkled her nose. “That’s funny. My sister says something very similar.”

“I assume it makes little difference to you.”

“Why? You’d prefer I stop?” she teased.

“No,” Khalid said, as he strode into the Grand Portico. “I would not.”

“Sayyidi.” Despina bowed.

He nodded at her. “I cannot speak for Despina. But you do laugh too loud. And I hope you never stop.”
― Renee Ahdieh, The Wrath and the Dawn

“You’re overthinking it.’ ‘I have anxiety. I have no other type of thinking available.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“It is easy to mourn the lives we aren't living. Easy to wish we'd developed other other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we'd worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga.
It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn't make and the work we didn't do the people we didn't do and the people we didn't marry and the children we didn't have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out.
But it is not lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy.
We can't tell if any of those other versions would of been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library