Niusha

“But my experience in this world has been that the people who believe themselves to be white are obsessed with the politics of personal exoneration. And the word racist, to them, conjures, if not a tobacco-spitting oaf, then something just as fantastic -- an orc, troll, or gorgon...This was the attempt to commit a shameful act while escaping all sanction, and I raise it to show you that there was no golden era when evildoers did their business and loudly proclaimed it as such.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“I had not stopped wanting to die. It was not romantic because it felt passionless - like a job I hated and needed. Romanticism requires bravery and risk. The obsessive thoughts ruined things. Good news was met with a numb feeling. The voice I heard was practical.”
― Terese Marie Mailhot, Heart Berries

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and being alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You have to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes too near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

“Your new life is going to cost you your old one.
It’s going to cost you your comfort zone and your sense
of direction.
It’s going to cost you relationships and friends.
It’s going to cost you being liked and understood.
It doesn’t matter.
The people who are meant for you are going to meet you
on the other side. You’re going to build a new comfort
zone around the things that actually move you forward.
Instead of being liked, you’re going to be loved. Instead of
being understood, you’re going to be seen.
All you’re going to lose is what was built for a person you
no longer are.”
― Brianna Wiest, The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery