Jessie

“Everybody will have an opinion about what you should do, but what matters is what you want for yourself, and not what others want you to want.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

“Taking a photograph is an act of possession, a way of making something visible while simultaneously freezing it in place, locking it in time.”
― Olivia Laing, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone

“Whether you want to or not. But the place you return to is always slightly different from the place you left. That’s the rule. It can never be exactly the same.”
― Haruki Murakami, Men Without Women

“Talking so much you horrify yourself and those around you; talking so little that you almost refuse your own existence: a demonstrates that speech is by no means a straightforward route to connection. If loneliness is to be defined as a desire for intimacy, then included within that is the need to express oneself and to be heard, to share thoughts, experiences and feelings. Intimacy can’t exist if the participants aren’t willing to make themselves known, to be revealed. But gauging the levels is tricky. Either you don’t communicate enough and remain concealed from other people, or you risk rejection by exposing too much altogether: the minor and major hurts, the tedious obsessions, the abscesses and cataracts of need and shame and longing.”
― Olivia Laing, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone