Why shouldn’t I stop and smell the espresso beans / Or say, in a voice a little too loud, This is the best margarita I’ve ever had!! / Or use the full curse word / Or have my dessert first / Why shouldn’t I give it my all / And do it for the story / And leap before looking / And let love consume me / Why shouldn’t I use my expensive face creams with abandon / Triple text my crush / Laugh at my own jokes / Cry at commercials / Sing at the top of my lungs while I vacuum / Buy the orange chair / Paint the town purple / And fly across the country just to pinch a cheek / Why shouldn’t I hold your face in both of my hands at 11:30AM on a Tuesday while you’re chopping a salad and remind you that you’re the center of my happiest days / Why shouldn’t I memorize how the sun comes in from the front window / Turn the music up / Give the dog a piece of cheese / Say what I mean / Let my hair down / Forgive fast / Believe that the best is yet to come / Tell me - no really - why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t we? Why shouldn’t you?
it is okay to gasp at the sunset every single evening like it is the first sunset you have ever seen. it is okay to take photos of everything you find pretty. it is okay to laugh about something that happened a week ago (it is okay to laugh entirely too much). it is okay to say that the sunlight looks like honey, that the world looks like a dream today. it is okay to memorize poems by heart and recite them to people who make your heart feel warm. it is okay to take this life and weave it golden. don’t let anyone tell you that you are silly or dramatic or stupid. you are beautiful. you have beautiful eyes through which everything sparkles and nothing goes unnoticed and you are so loved for that.
“Finally, in a low whisper, he said, “I think I might be a terrible person.” For a split second I believed him - I thought he was about to confess a crime, maybe a murder. Then I realized that we all think we might be terrible people. But we only reveal this before asking someone to love us. It is a kind of undressing.”
“What I remember is love - all love - love of this dirt road, this sunrise, a day by the river, the stranger I met in a cafe. Myself, even, which is the hardest thing of all to love, because love and selfishness are not the same thing. It is easy to be selfish. It is hard to love who I am. No wonder I am surprised if you do.”
creed bratton, all the faces // melina marchetta, on the jellicoe road // jeannette winterson, lighthousekeeping
Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life / Frances Ha (dir. Noah Baumbach) / Philip Roth, The Human Stain / The Perks of Being a Wallflower (dir. Stephen Chbosky)
i think when we meet someone we will grow to love, we recognize them a little bit. we know them beyond what our eyes can see. not a soul mate or a twin flame, but someone whose edges line up perfectly with your own. someone who comes into your life and clicks into place like they had never not been a part of who you are. you recognize them through their outline, through the parts of themselves that are inverse of your own. you are, to each other, matching pieces of the same puzzle and you would know them anywhere.
weird how nothing about u is like, too small or too dumb to know bc it all comes together to become YOU. sending your friend a picture of your favorite snack is saying something important whether u realize it or not. wheres that palahniuk quote
an author i love just tweeted about how “big joy and small joy are the same” and how she was just as content the other night eating chocolate and cuddling her dog as she was on her Big Trip to new york and honestly. i think that’s it. this morning i was listening to an audiobook while baking shortbread in my joggers and i realised i really didn’t care what Big Things happened in my future as long as i could keep baking and reading at the weekend and maybe that is the kind of bar we have to set to guard ourselves against disappointment. just appreciate and cherish the mundane stuff and see everything else as a bonus.
found it - she was replying to this thread that starts “unpopular opinion: i don’t think your life has to have a purpose, or you a grand ambition; i think it’s okay to just wander through life finding interesting things until you die” and i for one think that’s fucking brilliant
“She remembered it was August and they say August brings bad luck. But September would arrive one day like an exit. And September was for some reason a lighter and more transparent month.”
— Clarice Lispector, from The Complete Stories; “In Search for a Dignity,” (via writemeanna)
