Ellen Mallernee

“I can tell you we were right, our bodies were right, life was really going to be that good, that pleasurable in every cell. Suddenly I remember the exact look of your body, but better than that the bright corners of your eyes, or the light of your face, the rich Long Island puppy-fat of your thighs, or the slick chino of your pants bright in the corners of my eyes, I remember your extraordinary act of courage in loving me”
― Sharon Olds

“I am doing something I learned early to do, I am
paying attention to small beauties,
whatever I have-as if it were our duty
to find things to love, to bind ourselves to this world.”
― Sharon Olds, Strike Sparks: Selected Poems, 1980-2002

“This isn't a spotless life. There is much ahead, my immaculate little peach. And there is no way to say it other than to say it: marriage is indeed this horribly complex thing for which you appear to be ill prepared and about which you seem to be utterly naive. That's okay. A lot of people are. You can learn along the way. A good way to start would be to let fall your notions about "perfect couples." It's really such an impossible thing to either perceive honestly in others or live up to when others believe it about us. It does nothing but box some people in and shut other people out, and it ultimately makes just about everyone feel like shit. A perfect couple is a wholly private thing. No one but the two people in the perfect relationship know for certain whether they're in one. Its only defining quality is that it's composed of two people who feel perfectly right about sharing their lives with each other, even during the hard times.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

“And the way to it is surrender. Stop fighting. And to stop fighting just an understanding is needed, because it creates misery, it never brings bliss. So to stop it is not a problem. The only problem is to understand it, to understand how we are creating our own misery. The ego is a self-created hell. The mind is our own creation and it is a nightmare, a constant on-going nightmare.
When the mind is no more, for the first time one realises how beautiful life is, what a benediction, what a blessing. Then celebration starts. Learn to be in a let-go.”
― Osho, Let go!: A darshan diary