Julie Combs

“This is a story of survival.
It is your story,
even when you feel like that word
does not belong to you.”
― Ashe Vernon, Wrong Side of a Fistfight

“Occasionally you'll say "Excuse me" when I happen to stand in your way, and "Thank you" when your ball drifts into my court and I hurl it back to you. With these few words, I find comfort in false hopes and hope in false starts. I'll coddle anything instead of nothing. Even thinking that nothing can come of nothing gives me a leg to stand on, something to consider when I wake up in the middle of the night and can see nothing, not the blackout in my life, not the screen, not the cellar, not even hope and false comforts -just the joy of your imagined limb touching mine. I prefer the illusion of perpetual fasting to the certainty of famine. I have, I think, what's called a broken heart.”
― André Aciman, Enigma Variations

“Experience is what you get while looking for something else.”
― Federico Fellini

“Tonight the rain feels so meek and muted that brushing it away with a hand might make it stop. It lacks conviction, has lost its vigor. Don't bother with umbrellas, it seems to say. I'm about to stop anyway, my heart's not in it tonight.”
― André Aciman, Enigma Variations