Ellen X.

“Maybe certain kinds of pain, at certain formative stages in life, just impress themselves into a person's sense of self permanently.”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“Keep putting love out into the world and it will come back to you in one way or another.”
― Dolly Alderton, Dear Dolly

“We all die. We have only the choice, if we are privileged, of whether death comes with a whimper or a bang; of what worlds we taste before we go.”
― C Pam Zhang, Land of Milk and Honey

“I once had my heart broken – a proper sledgehammer job – and I went for a drink with a friend who is happily married in her forties with a child. My tears collected in a wine glass and I told her that I wanted to sleep until it was over. She held me by the shoulders and said: ‘One day you’ll look back on this and you will think, I was never more alive.’ I don’t want to romanticize your pain, but I now understand exactly what she meant. Grief is an electric shock that tells us we are fully alive – it means we’re connecting and creating and caring. We’re participating. We’re making the most of this short go. We’re opening up and taking risks, we’re tangling ourselves in other lives.”
― Dolly Alderton, Dear Dolly