Amelia

“To accept one's past - one's history - is not the same things as drowning in it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“God, let me think clearly and brightly; let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences, let me someday see who I am.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Journals of Sylvia Plath

“But I need to feel beautiful and holy things around me, always: music, mystery cults, symbols, myths. I need it, and I refuse to give it up... That’s my fatal flaw.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian

“You, yesterday’s boy,
to whom confusion came:
Listen, lest you forget who you are.

It was not pleasure you fell into. It was joy.
You were called to be bridegroom,
though the bride coming toward you is your shame.

What chose you is the great desire.
Now all flesh bares itself to you.

On pious images pale cheeks
blush with a strange fire.
Your senses uncoil like snakes
awakened by the beat of the tambourine.

Then suddenly you’re left all alone
with your body that can’t love you
and your will that can’t save you.

But now, like a whispering in dark streets,
rumors of God run through your dark blood.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God