Jess

“What you're trying to say is that it's easier for you to hide in your own darkness, than emerge cloaked in your own vulnerability. Not better, but easier. However the longer you hold it in, the more likely you are to suffocate.
At some point, you must breathe.”
― Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water

“Frodo: I can't do this, Sam.
Sam: I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness, and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it'll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we holding on to, Sam?
Sam: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo...and it's worth fighting for.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Maybe I should have stayed longer, explained better. But all I can do right now is remain here, so very far from where I want to be. Maybe it'll all be worth it one day. Maybe it won't, and we'll have lost all this time (and your grandfather will have been right). But know that what I'm doing here is trying to give you a future filled with light.”
― Sequoia Nagamatsu, How High We Go in the Dark