Kiki

“Pull up a weed from the wet soil of the drenched garden and smell the rich life the earthworm has left behind. Just a whiff of it will flood you with a feeling of well-being. The microbes in freshly turned soil stimulate serotonin production, working on the human brain the same way antidepressants do.”
― Margaret Renkl, The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year

“It made perfect sense to me later in life when I discovered that the Chinese word for endurance is simply the word knife on top of the word heart. You walk around with a knife in your heart. You do it with stoicism. This is the apex of being.”
― Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

“He was free but didn’t know it: trapped by the walls of his interpretations and stories, the perpetual trance of his self-constructed reality.”
― Matthew Maxwell, How To Hold a Cockroach: A book for those who are free and don't know it

“I was to hurt a great many people by being unable to imagine that anyone could possibly be in love with an ugly boy like me. To be valued is one thing, the recognition of this assessment demanding, essentially, an act of the will. But love is another matter: it is scarcely worth observing what a mockery love makes of the will.”
― James Baldwin