Sylvia

“As long as I’ve studied vulnerability (which dates back to my dissertation research in 1998), I will always think that the very best example of vulnerability is saying “I love you” first. Talk about taking off the armor! Just thinking about that moment takes my breath away. Like many of you, I’ve taken that risk and had the indescribable experience of hearing “Oh, my God! I love you too!” And I’ve been on the shitty end of “Aww, thank you! But I think we’re on different pages.”
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

“It is not even the American Dream that they pursue, but rather the more modest aspiration to wake up from the nightmare into which they were born.”
― Valeria Luiselli, Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions

“And of every occupational category, poets have far and away the highest suicide rates—as much as five times higher than the general population. Something about writing poetry appears either to attract the wounded or to open new wounds—and few have so perfectly embodied that image of the doomed genius as Sylvia Plath.1”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know

“Rapes: eighty percent of the women and girls who cross Mexico to get to the U.S. border are raped on the way. The situation is so common that most of them take contraceptive precautions as they begin the journey north.”
― Valeria Luiselli, Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions