grace xiaosheng ✨

“London was beginning to illuminate herself against the night. Electric lights sizzled and jagged in the main thoroughfares, gas-lamps in the side streets glimmered a canary gold or green. The sky was a crimson battlefield of spring, but London was not afraid. Her smoke mitigated the splendour, and the clouds down Oxford Street were a delicately painted ceiling, which adorned while it did not distract. She has never known the clear-cut armies of the purer air. Leonard hurried through her tinted wonders, very much part of the picture. His was a grey life, and to brighten it he had ruled off a few corners for romance.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“But we-' she glanced at him as if to ascertain his position, 'we see each other only now and then-'
'Like lights in a storm-'
'In the midst of a hurricane,' she concluded, as the window shook beneath the pressure of the wind.”
― Virginia Woolf, Night and Day

“I have hope
in who I am becoming.

I have belief in every scar and disgraceful word
I have ever spoken
or been told
because it is still teaching me
and I have hope in who I am becoming.

They say it takes 756 days to run to someone you love
and they also say that the only romance worth fighting for
is the one with yourself
and I know by now
that they say a lot of things,
people talking everywhere
without saying a word,
but if it took me all those years to learn myself
or teach myself
how to look into the mirror
without breaking it
I know for a fact that it was a fight worth fighting.

I stood up for my own head and so did my heart
and we are coming to terms with ourselves.
Shaking hands, saying ”let’s make this work
for we have places to go
and people to see
and we will need each other”
So I have hope
in who I am becoming.

It’s July
and I have hope in who I am becoming.”
― Charlotte Eriksson

“You’re going to go on dreaming and imagining and making up stories about me as you walk along the street, and pretending that we’re riding in a forest, or landing on an island —'
'No. I shall think of you ordering dinner, paying bills, doing the accounts, showing old ladies the relics —”
― Virginia Woolf, Night and Day