jpiccs

“No one can be independent of other people completely, so why not give up the attempt, she thought, go running in the other direction, depend on people for everything, allow them to depend on you, why not.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“What would it mean to live
in a city whose people were changing
each other’s despair into hope?
You yourself must change it.
What would it feel like to know
your country was changing?
You yourself must change it.
Though your life felt arduous
new and unmapped and strange
What would it mean to stand on the first
page of the end of despair?”
― Adrienne Rich

“be strange to yourself
in your love, your grief”
― Brenda Shaughnessy, Our Andromeda

“Each and every moment, our bodies are on a one-way journey to collapse and deterioration, unable to turn back the clock. I close my eyes, I open them again, only to realize that in the interim so many things have vanished. Buffeted by the intense midnight winds, these things—some with names, some without—disappear without a trace. All that is left is a faint memory. Even memory, though, can hardly be relied on. Can anyone say for certain what really happened to us back then?”
― Haruki Murakami, First Person Singular: Stories