Rachel

“Sometimes I try to pray, late at night when I am unable to sleep, my bed hot from my body and me tossing and turning. It's hard not to pray in a rehearsed way, and I can feel myself perform a routine even in my most desperate moments: "Oh Lord, please help me do X or feel Y." So I try to sink back into myself, to a self that is unaware of church and religion, to a more primal self. I imagine God as the night sky, not a man or even a person, and then I try just to be me, to be real, to experience my humanity with God as a witness.”
― Paula Carter

“You can only do so much pretending before you become the thing you're pretending to be.”
― Hank Green, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

“Don't pretend to be what you're not, instead, pretend to what you want to be, it is not pretence, it is a journey to self realization.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests. The library was open, unending, free.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates