I cannot rid the entire world of noxious problems, but I can patiently cultivate the good earth around my own two feet and grow what I wish to see in my own back yard.
Jack Nordby (via herdirtylittleheart)
quotes
You must not reduce yourself to a puddle just because the person you like is afraid to swim and you are a fierce sea to them; because there will be someone who was born with love of the waves within their blood, and they will look at you with fear and respect.
T.B. LaBerge // Things I’m Still Learning at 25 (via
)
I need to write this down and put it everywhere. Every mirror. Every drawer. In my car. Write it on my heart.
(via
)
I begin to long for some little language such as lovers use, broken words, inarticulate words, like the shuffling of feet on pavement.
Virginia Woolf, The Waves (via fables-of-the-reconstruction)
Crying does not indicate that you are weak. Since birth, it has always been a sign that you are alive.
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (via gerardgay)
“Often, in black literature, it seems as though the author is performing two roles: that of the explorer and the explainer. Morrison does not do this. Morrison writes stories that are more aesthetic than overtly political, better expressed in accurate Tolstoyan detail than in generalizing sentiments blunted with anger. Most important, she is an author who writes to tease and complicate her world, not to convince others it is valid.
“What I’m interested in is writing without the gaze, without the white gaze,” she told me. “In so many earlier books by African-American writers, particularly the men, I felt that they were not writing to me. But what interested me was the African-American experience throughout whichever time I spoke of. It was always about African-American culture and people — good, bad, indifferent, whatever — but that was, for me, the universe.””
The Radical Vision of Toni Morrison by RACHEL KAADZI GHANSAH
Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.
I think I fall in love a little bit with anyone who shows me their soul. This world is so guarded and fearful. I appreciate rawness so much.
(via bl-ossomed)
“There is a perception that speaking up for boundaries is somehow introducing conflict into a situation, or at very least, escalating it in an unkind way, like, everything was fine until you spoke up for your needs and now you made it weird. But not speaking up is not making the situation better, it’s just giving the other person more license to operate and communicating that you are okay with the behavior. There is no prize for being the world’s most stoic and accommodating person. A friendship that cannot survive a the momentary discomfort of you standing up for your needs is not actually a friendship worth holding onto. Nobody loves being told that they are screwing up, obviously, but if you don’t have the ability to ever take any negative feedback along the lines of “Hey, could you not do that one thing anymore, thanks?” from a friend, YOU are the problem. When told that they are stepping on someone’s foot, good adult people will apologize and get off the foot and not perpetuate a FEELINGSDUMP about their need to really stand on feet sometimes. Communicating “Hey, that’s where my boundary is, thanks” IS KINDNESS. It is giving the other person the tools they need to be in a good relationship with you.”— Jennifer Peepas
This is so relevant to my day and where I’m at, and I needed to see it right the fuck now.
Sometimes my dash is magic.
Having perfected our disguise, we spend our lives searching for someone we don’t fool.
Robert Brault (via apoetreflects)