Anna Biala

“It's about the important things, like the way their face lights up when they laugh, or the way they move as they're walking towards you, or the way their freckles create a map of the stars.”
― Jennifer Niven, Holding Up the Universe

“Journalists can sound grandiose when they talk about their profession. Some of us are adrenaline junkies; some of us are escapists; some of us do wreck our personal lives and hurt those who love us most. This work can destroy people. I have seen so many friends and colleagues become unrecognizable from trauma: short-tempered, sleepless, and alienated from friends. But after years of witnessing so much suffering in the world, we find it hard to acknowledge that lucky, free, prosperous people like us might be suffering, too. We feel more comfortable in the darkest places than we do back home, where life seems too simple and too easy. We don’t listen to that inner voice that says it is time to take a break from documenting other people’s lives and start building our own. Under it all, however, are the things that sustain us and bring us together: the privilege of witnessing things that others do not; an idealistic belief that a photograph might affect people’s souls; the thrill of creating art and contributing to the world’s database of knowledge. When I return home and rationally consider the risks, the choices are difficult. But when I am doing my work, I am alive and I am me. It’s what I do. I am sure there are other versions of happiness, but this one is mine.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“But he's no planet, just the final fading light of an already dead star.”
― Nicola Yoon, The Sun Is Also a Star

“Somewhere deep in my twisted little brain is the desire to be so good at so many things that I earn the chance to be multiple people. It seems so unfair that we only get to read the choose-your-own adventure book of our lives once, that we can't pick a point and go, "Okay, this time flip to page 102 and do the rest another way.”
― Mary Laura Philpott, I Miss You When I Blink: Essays