No, being heroic is the ability to conjure hope where there is none. To strike a match to light up the void. To show us a possibility for a better world—not a better world we want to exist, but a better world we didn’t know could exist. To
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“If you’re in bed next to me, I will take your hand. If you are not, I will go find you. I will spend the rest of my life, if I get that lucky, seeking you out. Not because I promised you or because you’re there. But because I will want to. I will want to be beside you. Every day. Forever.” “You will?” Vanessa tucked a strand of Joan’s hair behind her ear. “Every morning, I wake up and I think, ‘God, yes, her.’ ” Joan smiled and dried her tears. “If that can be enough for you,” Vanessa said, “it’s yours until the day I die.”
― Atmosphere
― Atmosphere
“I want to spend my energy thinking not of how my actions might be frowned upon by a man in the sky, but how my actions affect every living and non-living thing around me. Life is God. My life is tied to yours, and to everyone’s on this planet. How does that not instantly make us more in debt to one another? And also offer us the comfort that we are not alone?”
― Atmosphere
― Atmosphere
“Because the world had decided that to be soft was to be weak, even though in Joan’s experience being soft and flexible was always more durable than being hard and brittle. Admitting you were afraid always took more guts than pretending you weren’t. Being willing to make a mistake got you further than never trying. The world had decided that to be fallible was weak. But we are all fallible. The strong ones are the ones who accept it.”
― Atmosphere
― Atmosphere
“But I think it is also the relief I feel that those stars are immovable. Nothing you or I could do will ever alter them. They are so much bigger than us. And they will not change within our lifetime. We can succeed or fail, get it right or get it wrong, love and lose the ones we love, and still the Summer Triangle will point south. And in that way, I know everything will be some type of okay—as impossible as that can seem sometimes.”
― Atmosphere
― Atmosphere
“Vanessa smiled. “I’m not nervous, no.” Joan’s cheeks started to burn. “I’m excited,” Vanessa said, closing the gap between them. “I want to take you everywhere. And do everything with you. And ask you every single question that’s been on my mind for months. And I want to know when you knew what was happening between us and I want to tell you when I knew. And I want to hold your hand in a quiet corner and I want to lie in bed and hear your heartbeat through your chest. I want to bring you coffee in bed. And I want to hear you tell me anything you’ve always wanted to tell someone. Because you know that you’ve met someone who desperately wants to listen.”
― Atmosphere
― Atmosphere
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