Picture, you're the queen of everything

All lyrics by The Fray

Happiness was just outside my window
I thought it'd crash blowing eighty miles an hour
But happiness is a little more like knocking
On your door, you just let it in

But you are gone, not for good but for now
And gone for now feels a lot like gone for good

Happiness, it's like the old man told me
Look for it and you'll never find it all
But let it go, live your life and leave it
Then one day, you'll wake up and
She'll be home

Picture you're the queen of everything
Far as the eye can see
Under your command
I will be your guardian
When all is crumbling
I'll steady your hand

You been the song playing on the background
All along but you're turning up now
And everyone is rising to meet you, to greet you
Turn around and you're walking toward me
I'm breaking down and you're breathing slowly
You say the word and I will be your man

Quiet, but I'm sure there is something here
Tell me everything 'cause I want to hear

It's a kiss that sits upon on her lips
That waits for planes and battleships
She wants to be a dancer
And he has got a picture
On his wall, and it's a sailor
In a new port every night
Yet man was born to trouble
Like sparks fly upwards innocent

All we know is distance
We're close and then we run
Kiss away the difference
I know you hate this one

A heavy pocket on a weighed down heart.

My gut is hurting. Like, really hurting. I channel all my stress to my stomach, and it kills. Everything is a possibility. Temptation is a possibility. You give in, and your faced with the consequences. You don’t give in, your still thinking about the consequences. The what ifs. Its a cycle of tangents. But they all lead back to the same thing. Right now I want to dissolve. I want to escape this current train of thought. This pattern in my life. This void in my life. But its not a void. Its not empty. Its a collage of broken sanity. Its a mud map to everywhere. Connections, how much can I get, memoirs, rushes, colours, encounters, dreams, hallucinations, tastes, cravings within cravings. That feeling of whatever being in your pocket. You check every 30 seconds just to see if its still there. That it hasn’t fallen out. You clasp its greatness. Its the holy grail, and your walking like some guilty hero. A heavy pocket on a weighed down heart, with a head as high as a broken kite is all your worth. Why am I even saying “your”, when this is me. I think I’m just holding on to some hope that this is me talking, and not my cravings. But this only proves my insanity.

I can feel your eyes on these words as I write each one.

You need to stop being so concerned with collecting beautiful things and start being more concerned with making things beautiful.

I began thousands of years ago on a cave wall somewhere in Africa. I painted the idea of you before symbols could make sounds in our heads. And each time I come back, I'm the same. This is not the first time you've read this. I've told you a thousand times over a thousand years. I am no more the first me that's ever been than you are the first you. And we certainly won't be the last.

Let's pretend we're artists and everything we feel is something new to be proud of. Let's take our imaginary friends on a double date and ditch them in a movie and hope they get along while we kiss outside on the sidewalk. Let's take the dreams you mumbled in your sleep and paint a child's nursery. And if we don't finish today, we've always got tomorrow.

I let the clock face the mirror so that each second takes me closer towards you. Instead of further away.

It only hurt the first time so you'd know how much it didn't hurt the second time.

I need you to give me the chance to take you for granted.

If you found anything of value here or in others, it's only because you'd seen it before inside yourself.

I'll tell you the truth so close to your lips it'll taste like a lie. There's a tongue in my mouth. It matters. This fucking matters. The only thing that works is the truth and you are the hardest truth to tell. So kiss like you give a damn.

I would set up shop inside your heart and charge the world to love you.

You want me to be made of the same thin paper as you. But it'd feel like I was kissing cardboard.

And I can feel your eyes on these words as I write each one. And I know you read it. And it's the tips of your fingers that pushes back on each key. And your hand on the mouse. And your back in that chair. And I just want you to know, that I know.

I’m all out of midnight phone calls and flowers sent to your door. I’m out of throwing letters off fire escapes and drawing a cathedral in the sand. I’m out of spray-painting your name on freeway overpasses. I’m low on cute names given between blankets and 9am. I’ve got no dramatic displays of public affection left. And now everyone else I ever love is going to think me boring. Because I used it all up on you.

Futures have a way of falling down.

"After awhile you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul, and you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning and company doesn’t mean security, and you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts and presents aren’t promises, and you begin to accept your defeats with your head up and your eyes open, with the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child, and you learn to build all your roads on today because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight. After awhile you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much so you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers, and you learn that you really can endure, that you really are strong and you really do have worth, and you learn and learn, with every goodbye, you learn."

--Veronica Shoffstall, 'After Awhile'

Grief is like a moving river.

“I guess it’s always changing,” she says. There’s another pause. “What else can I say?” Her voice is breathy and fragile, and she takes a few gulps of air. “I just wake up each day in a slightly different place—grief is like a moving river, so that’s what I mean by ‘it’s always changing’.” She stops again. “It’s a strange thing to say”—her words unravel slowly, her eyes tear up—”because I’m at heart an optimistic person, but I would say in some ways it just gets worse. It’s just that the more time that passes, the more you miss someone. In some ways it gets worse. That’s what I would say.”

- Michelle Williams, on Heath Ledger’s death, Newsweek

Hallucinations

You really do have such beautiful things to write about. You write about experience and love and the inbetweens of boiling water. You speak simply like a photograph, of the perpetuation of beauty and tell stories of egyptian mythology. About rolling joints in underwear, rubbing the stickyness off on old newspaper corners coffee stained, grafittied with sketches of eyes and of our noses, touching their noses. And of our ears, who hear nothing but the deep buzzing of air and cells and atoms fluttering together. Frank Sinatra goes about his day, whispering songs like a silouette in the background while you make love like a poet. Only that doesn’t happen. Because only you can write those lines.

Sometimes the unexplained can define you.

I'm upside down, but ten feet tall.

"Don't you know that a man being rich is like a girl being pretty? You wouldn't marry a girl just because she's pretty, but my goodness, doesn't it help?"
--'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes'

There's a certain kind of pain that can numb you.
There's a type of freedom that can tie you down.
Sometimes the unexplained can define you,
and sometimes silence is the only sound.

Stay sane; you ground me when I feel I have no place to land.

Life’s under no obligation to give us what we expect.

Don’t be a “get-this-day-over-with” person. Open yourself up to the rich blessings that God pours onto you at every moment of life. Value yourself. Put a little garnish. Enjoy life! Have some style! Create ambience in your life! Be five-star! No, I’m not talking about luxury. I’m talking about enjoying life. About breathing with passion. Sing. Dance. Dream. Stop to smell the flowers. Listen to the birds and watch sunsets. Play like a child. Eat more ice cream. Embrace the people that you love. Take vacations often. Give more. Smile more. Worry less. Say “thank you” with all your heart. Have more fun. Don’t be ordinary. Because you’re not. You’re God’s child. Live with gusto!

"The grace of God means something like: here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you."
--Frederick Buechner

“Nothing has turned out as we expected! It never does. Life’s under no obligation to give us what we expect. We take what we get and are thankful it’s no worse than it is.”
--'Gone With The Wind'

The people you don’t know take you far too seriously, and see only a portion of you. The people you know just don’t take you at all. Sometimes, you need to be taken.

We are born with this longing, this desire for love.

"The connection was so bad, and I couldn’t talk at all during most of the call. How terrible it is when you say I love you and the person at the other end shouts back ‘What?’"
--J.D. Salinger

I don’t think “Whoa” is a standard response to “I love you,” but it was the only one I could come up with at the time.

"You had to exercise that part of your brain, the part that let's you fall for someone, otherwise you'd never be able to fall in love with anyone. Ever."
--'Second Helpings'

I love you more than I have ever found a way to say to you.

We are born with this longing, this desire for love. We search for it even when we are younger. At birth we reach out tiny hands and hope to feel soft skin against our own. And as we grow up that wish doesn’t really change. We cross our fingers on shooting stars and soft smiles and pray when we pass graveyards and the breath is stolen from our lungs as that one special person looks over at you. When the clock strikes 11:11 we close our eyes and let every fiber of our being desperately call out to someone out there and will them to come home.

I'll be back so soon you won't have time to miss me. Look after my heart--I've left it with you.

You’re out there, I know it. My lover in the storm. Somewhere in this world, could you be thinking of me? To me, you are a blank face with everything I’ve ever wanted inside. Beautiful as the stars with words rolling off your tongue. I can’t wait to hear everything you have to say. I can’t wait to feel your skin against my own. I want to share it all with you; mornings and nights, memories and hurt. I want you to be there, and I have never even met you. Or have I? Perhaps you are closer than I think. Either way, I will be waiting. Please come, because each day that you linger is another cross for me to bear.

Because she left, he was alone. Because he wouldn’t dance without her, he forgot how to. Because his world stood still, they left him behind. Because he missed the plane, he explored the city. Because she didn’t sleep anymore, she needed coffee. Because her scarf was yellow, it caught his eye. Because she didn’t see him, she wandered out. Because the 594 bus was late, she took the train. Because he liked to watch the sky, he took the window seat. Because she knew his hat, she slid right in. Because he smiled slightly, she spoke at last. Because she missed him. Because her body still regretted leaving. Because she loved him still, the world spun again.

If I want to speak I will open my mouth and speak.

This fear we have. This fear I had. To speak. 'Thank You' is never too much to say.

"Why must you lead, when I want to lead? If I want to dance I will ask you to dance. If I want to speak I will open my mouth and speak. Everyone is forever plaguing me to speak further. Why? What good is it to tell you you are in my every thought from the time I wake? What good can come from my saying that I sometimes cannot think clearly or do my work properly? What gain can rise of my telling you the only time I feel fear as others do is when I think of you in harm? That is why I am on this porch, Ivy Walker. I fear for your safety before all others. And yes, I will dance with you on our wedding night."
--Lucius Hunt, 'The Village'

I've discovered Clare likes to be alone.

"For fear you will be alone you do so many things that aren’t you at all."
--Richard Brautigan

"When you live with a woman you learn something every day. So far I have learned that long hair will clog up the shower drain before you can say “Liquid-Plumr”; that it is not advisable to clip something out of the newspaper before your wife has read it, even if the newspaper in question is a week old; that I am the only person in our two-person household who can eat the same thing for dinner three nights in a row without pouting; and that headphones were invented to preserve spouses from each other’s musical excesses. The hardest lesson is Clare’s solitude. Sometimes I come home and Clare seems kind of irritated; I’ve interrupted some train of thought, broken into the dreary silence of her day. Sometimes I see an expression on Clare’s face that is like a closed door. She has gone inside the room of her mind and is sitting there knitting or something. I’ve discovered that Clare likes to be alone. But when I return from time traveling she is always relieved to see me."
--'The Time Traveler's Wife'

This must be what praying is like.

"I am a princess. All girls are. Even if they live in tiny old attics. Even if they dress in rags, even if they aren’t pretty, or smart, or young. They’re still princesses. All of us. Didn’t your father ever tell you that? Didn’t he?"
--'A Little Princess'

"It was Wednesday when we met. Saturday by the time I asked her to move in. And by the time Sunday came, I had flowers in my apartment and hummus in my refrigerator. I remember waking up that Sunday; I don’t think I ever slept. I just sat there thinking, ‘Goddamn, this must be what praying is like.’"
--'The Hottest State'

Light from cake is such a great light. We should live in cake light.

"Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you’re falling to the floor crying thinking, “I am falling to the floor crying,” but there’s an element of the ridiculous to it — you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you’re on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn’t paint it very well and when you’re having sex with your next lover on this very floor they will also notice that you didn’t paint it very well and they will think less of you for it. And then you think, “Is that sentence too long?” and then you have to hold the contradictions of sobbing uncontrollably and wondering about grammar in your head at the same time."
--Richard Siken

Breaking up with someone is literally the most common thing. Everyone you know broke up with everyone they ever dated until maybe the person they’re with right now, if they’re with someone right now. But when it happens to you, it feels so specific.

Every morning, when I open my eyes, I think the same four thoughts:
1) I am not a superhero.
2) I have to go to work.
3) If I didn’t have to work, I could be a superhero.
4) If I were a superhero, I wouldn’t have to work.

"You shouldn’t buy me things. Save your money for unicorn rides or whatever it is girls spend money on."
--thingsmyboyfriendsays.com

"There are short-cuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them."
--Vicki Baum

Also, I enjoy texting. Have you heard of it? You type stuff into your phone that you’ll regret later and the other person gets it instantly!

"I suppose I do get sad, but not for too long. I just look in the mirror and go, ‘What a fucking good-looking fuck you are.’ And then I brighten up."
--Liam Gallagher

"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity."
--Albert Einstein

When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calendar that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from a chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table. I spent my life learning to feel less. Every day I felt less. Is that growing old? Or is it something worse? And what do girls do if the growing old never comes? Are you just meant to go through life with no skin on like that, feeling everything?

Out of sight, hard to recognize, but still able to be found.

All quotes from 'Lock And Key' by Sarah Dessen (Part 2)

"On my way downstairs, in clothes that weren't mine, to go to a school I'd never claim, I stopped and looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. You couldn't see the key around my neck: it hung too low under both collars. But if I leaned in close, I could make it out, buried deep beneath. Out of sight, hard to recognize, but still able to be found, even if I was the only one to ever look for it."

"A lot can change between planning something and actually doing it. But maybe all that really matters is that anything is different at all."

"I didn't like people period, unless they gave me a reason to think otherwise."

I secretly want all of you.

You laugh at my mishaps, I laugh at your cynicism. You kiss me, I push you away. You roll over, I secretly want all of you.

I’m ready to get excited about someone. I’m ready to fall for someone instead of being excited that someone is falling for me. I’m through with being flattered, I want to be swept away.

My head says “who cares?”. My heart says “you do, stupid”.

I am not going to fall in love. I'm not trying to be cynical; I'm not fishing for reassurance, or looking for someone to disagree with me. I just don't think it's going to happen. I don't think I'm capable of a relationship in the way other people are, and I don't think it's something that I should expect for myself, or try to fix. Call me a pessimist, call me angry and bitter and jaded, but sometimes I think that I am stronger for knowing this. Deep down, no matter how much I daydream and secretly hope that my life will suddenly turn a sharp corner, I'm very much aware that I am not normal. And sometimes, I think the sooner I can come to terms with this, the easier it will be to find fulfillment in other parts of my life, to have a purpose and passions that will complete the void others choose to fill with love. I don't think you have to know love to be happy. I know most of the world will disagree with me. But honestly, I don't think I'm any weaker or more scared than the people who think that you do.

You're never alone, but you're always on your own.

“You mean she would rather imagine herself relating to an absent person than build relationships with those around her?”
—'Le Fabuleux Destin Amelie Poulain'

We're not alone just lonely all the time.

“Loneliness: there is no organ that can take it all.”
--Nicole Krauss

“I fucking love New York. You’re never alone, but you’re always on your own.”
--Leighton Meester

I wouldn’t mind looking like a fairytale all the time.

"Want third wave feminism, you could cite Ariel Levy and the idea that women have internalized male opression. Going to spring break at Fort Lauderdale, getting drunk, and flashing your breasts isn't an act of personal empowerment. It's you, so fashioned and programmed by the construct of patriarchal society that you no longer know whats best for yourself. A damsel too dumb to even know she's in distress."
--Chuck Palahiuk, 'Snuff'

Jim: Are you alright?
Dwight: I am better than you have ever been or ever will be.
--'The Office'

I've been tip toeing on the edges of the constellations of the milky way. When the stars explode, the supernovae smell of cinnamon vanilla candles, the kind that leaves noses tingling. Yes, I tip toed across the galaxy. I met the Little Dipper and the Man on the Moon. The Little Dipper dreams of being a bear with a fearsome roar that would scare away the meteor monsters. The man on the moon wishes for a Lady on the Moon. They could love and love and love. Yes, I tip toed on the edges and laid down on skipping comets. I slept in the craters of the moon and danced on the rings of Saturn.

No matter how hard she tried, she was still several standard deviations from gorgeous.

I wouldn’t mind looking like a fairytale all the time. Just the air of a fairy tale anyways. All wispy and small footed, curious, confused, beautiful and ultimately successful in your endevors.

"He was pretty as any picture to me."
--'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'

"I don't mind the rejection. It's the smile that bugs me."
--'Happy New Year, Charlie Brown'

Phoebe: Hi, I'm Phoebe.
Tag: Phoebe. That's a really great name.
Phoebe: You like that? You should hear my phone number.

confession #134: I'd rather read a book than go to a party.

“I like to see people reunited, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can’t tell fast enough, the ears that aren’t big enough, the eyes that can’t take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone.”
--Jonathan Safran Foer, 'Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close'

“Generally by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you’re real, you can’t be ugly, except to the people who don’t understand.”
--'The Velveteen Rabbit'

"I know a lot of morning people and I know a lot of night people but I have yet to meet a late afternoon person."
--Douglas Coupland

“She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there, leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.”
--JD Salinger

“The fool looks at a finger that points at the sky.”
--'Le Fabuleux Destin Amelie Poulain'

"Be yourself" is about the worst advice you can give to some people.

“I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on and it will be better tomorrow. I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he or she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your family, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life. I’ve learned that making a living is not the same thing as making a life and I’ve learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance. I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back. I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision and I’ve learned that even when I have pains, I don’t have to be one. I’ve learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn in life and I’ve learned that people will forget what you said and what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
--Maya Angelou

I understand feeling as small and as insignificant as humanly possible. And how it can actually ache in places you didn't know you had inside you. And it doesn't matter how many new haircuts you get, or gyms you join, or how many glasses of chardonnay you drink with your girlfriends... you still go to bed every night going over every detail and wonder what you did wrong or how you could have misunderstood. And how in the hell for that brief moment you could think that you were that happy. And sometimes you can even convince yourself that he'll see the light and show up at your door. And after all that, however long all that may be, you'll go somewhere new. And you'll meet people who make you feel worthwhile again. And little pieces of your soul will finally come back. And all that fuzzy stuff, those years of your life that you wasted, that will eventually begin to fade.

Home at last!

"Art is the only way to run away without leaving home."
--Twyla Tharp

"Home is a shelter from storms - all sorts of storms."
--William J. Bennett

"If you can organize your kitchen, you can organize your life."
--Louis Parrish

And each heart is whispering, "Home, home at last!"

Without words, it comes.

"It's just, there's so many things I want to tell Poppy, but I don't know how to say them. I hate that you can feel things but there's no words for them. There should be a rule about that, that you can only have feelings if there words to match."
--Jackie Moyer Fischer, 'An Egg On Three Sticks'

“Without words, it comes. And suddenly, sharply, one is aware of being separated from every person on one’s earth and every object, and from the beginning of things and from the future and even a little, from one’s self. A moment before one was happily playing, the world was round and friendly. Now at one’s feet there are chasms that had been invisible until this moment. And one knows, and never remembers how it was learned, that there will always be chasms, and across the chasms will always be those one loves.”
--Lillian Smith

Life becomes so cynical when you're waiting to fall.

I'm so tired but you probably don't even know what I mean, I'm full of contradictions and hypocrisies, I'm so tired I don't even know which side of the fighting I'm on, and if I wanted no part of it, you'd say I was doing something wrong. Today was just like yesterday and the day before. I've been taking myself so goddamn seriously and I can't recall what for. I can't feel the sunshine anymore. I'm so tired of bitching because life becomes so cynical when you're waiting to fall. And I'm waiting to fall.

“At times I believed that the last page of my book and the last page of my life were one and the same, that when my book ended I’d end, a great wind would sweep through my rooms carrying the pages away, and when the air cleared of all those fluttering white sheets the room would be silent, the chair where I sat would be empty.”
--Nicole Krauss

“I had you. Right there with me. I had you living in my life and I was alive.”
--Francesca Lia Block

Along the way you bump into people who make a dent on your life.

I like you first and second and third.

We all have love and peace and comfort at our fingertips, yet we continue to lock ourselves up in vaults, making up lies to keep us safe while the world falls down around us and the people we have a chance with disappear.

“‘I don’t like girls in the daytime,’ he said shortly, and then, thinking this a bit abrupt, he added: ‘But I like you.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I like you first and second and third.’”
--F. Scott Fitzgerald, 'This Side of Paradise'

“Assuming that sex means a relationship. The only relationship you have is that he has now stuck his hoo hoo dilly in your cha cha. That’s as far as it goes unless otherwise noted.”
--50 Mistakes Women Make When Having Sex

“You love somebody and then you don’t love them anymore. But if you really love somebody, you always love them, don’t you? Isn’t there always some small part of you that reads their horoscope in the paper everyday?”
--Cynthia Heimel

I am disappearing but not fast enough.

Someone you haven't even met yet is wondering what it'd be like to know someone like you.

"It's not where you take things from--it's where you take them to."
--Jean-Luc Godard

“She worried way too much what people thought of her, wore her heart on her sleeve, expected too much from people, and got hurt too easily. She kept people’s secrets like a champ, but told her own too fast. She expected the world not to cheat her and was always surprised when it did.”
--Rob Sheffield

“We can catch buses and count our change and cross the roads and talk real sentences. But our innocence goes awfully deep, and our discreditable secret is that we don’t know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don’t care that we don’t.”
--Dylan Thomas

Tears come in funny places.

“You’re too choosy, and you know why that is? You’re afraid to choose.”
--'The Women'

"I think they're prettier and smarter and that no one really wants me around which is pretty stupid since they keep inviting me over there all the time. I guess I'm just a jerk."
--'Go Ask Alice'

"It was hard to believe that there were things happening in the world that were not about me."
--Elizabeth Wurtzel, 'More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction'

"Every so often, I would sit in the locker room on the floor, leaning against the concrete wall while my tape recorder sat on the bench, and I would fantasize about going back to the person I had always been. The reverse transformation couldn't be that much of a leap. I could just try talking to people again. I could get the astonished look off my face, as if my eyes had just been exposed to a terrible glare. I could laugh a bit. I would imagine myself doing the things I once did."
--'Prozac Nation'

"Now a word to young women: Please don’t lose yourself. You don’t need anyone to be someone yourself! You can be girly and strong, have careers and go far, and when you get married not lose who you are. And you young men in the room? Know this from the start: You can be manly and macho and still have a warm heart."

“I already forget how I used to feel about you.”
--'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'

"You have to make your own little pieces of magic, like the room with the stars on the ceiling where you could be in bed and look up at infinity."
--Adriann Wilson

“I am a strange bird. But, I am not even a bird. And that’s the strangest part.”
--Katherine Hepburn

Maybe if we surround ourselves in beauty, someday we’ll become what we see.

You'll find blessings in the clouds and mercy in the rain.

“I am screaming but it comes out like pieces of clear ice. I am signaling that the volume of all this is too high. I am waving. I am waving my hands. I am disappearing. I am disappearing but not fast enough.”
--David Wojnarowicz

Did I make me up, or make the face till it stuck?

"All that is gold does not glitter,
not all those who wander are lost;
the old that is strong does not wither,
deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
a light from the shadows shall spring;
renewed shall be blade that was broken,
the crownless again shall be king."
--J.R.R. Tolkien

“I'm so happy you came back tonight. I have to grow up tomorrow.”
--'Peter Pan'

Maybe there's something fundamentally honest about feeling tiny.

When you don’t know who you are, you make something up.

You wake up, or rather you stop trying to sleep.

A promise left behind does not exactly disappear, but perhaps rusts to nothing or is buried in the sand. The things we leave behind.

One year, you are perfectly comfortable in a crowd, on a train, swimming in the ocean, walking under an open sky. One scar later, everything about crowds, trains, oceans, or skies is forever changed.

Any amount of time can pass, and really the stars don’t change that much, and nothing else changes that much, except maybe what you hold on to between A and B, between B and C, and so on forever.

One morning you wake up, the air is cool, your vision is crisp, and you can see without a filter. What a morning that is.

You know that feeling, when you really “get” a work of art, or the stars in the sky or the clouds just overwhelm you, or you sense the depth of another person, or a massive number floors you? I always feel tiny. Maybe there’s something fundamentally honest about feeling tiny.

Stay with me, but listen: we are less than a little breeze can blow. Of course nothing lasts forever. But nothing even lasts for very long. Have you ever gone somewhere, done something, known someone, specifically because it would blow away, because it was better that way?

I'm going to jump so high. I was meant for big empty spaces. Have you ever felt so constrained in a space, like you filled more space than you were being given?

We are invisible voices, you and me. Imagine us. Have you ever spoken with someone, known someone, for a long time, only to discover it was mostly imaginary?

I have bitten at smoke I wanted it so badly. Have you ever wanted something so badly you have chomped at the air for it?

If we speak quietly enough I just know we will hear each other. Have you ever wondered if someone can still hear you, behind the words that drown it all out?

I suppose you cannot get very far if you stay connected to the ground. Jumping helps, but only a little.

Some cross bridges. Some jump. Some stand terrified in the middle, and wait for it to collapse.

She hung on his every word.

Did you know that if you go into just about any bakery and tell them you are getting married, they'll give you a free slice of wedding cake to sample? "What a great idea for a first date," she said, taking his hand for the first time.

I think loneliness is the worst thing in the world. It's the only problem you can have where you can't turn to others for comfort.

There's nothing I want more in this world than to go home. It's just that I haven't decided exactly where that's gonna be just yet.

He loved her because she hung on his every word. He never realized that she couldn't help it, she had never mastered disinterest.

Sometimes I get down on myself because I've got all these problems. But then I look up at the sky and realize that the world is so big, and I'm so small, and I'm so insignificant that my problems don't really amount to all that much.

I prayed that God would give me enough time and enough sense and strength to be able to tell people what I knew (as I can't even do properly now), so they'd know what I know and not despair so much.
--Jack Kerouac

Once I realized that I'd never experience falling in love, I got it in my head that maybe falling off a bridge would feel about the same. It really doesn't though.

So the other day I was watching TV and I said out loud, "Darn, I wish I didn't just eat all those chips," and then I was like, "Wait, I didn't just eat any chips." And now I'm like, "Maybe I had one free wish and I blew it on chips."

I've come to the conclusion that I'm not actually living. I'm just killing time.

He named his daughter "Hurricane." He felt that if you could name a storm after a woman, why couldn't you name a woman after a storm?

When you told me that you thought I was extraordinary my heart skipped a beat. But the more I think about it, the more I realize you meant that I was just extra-ordinary.

I'm alone because I want to be.

I never have anyone to sit with at church, but wearing cute shoes somehow makes me feel like I'm alone because I want to be.
--PostSecret

“Maybe I’ll share my life with somebody… maybe not. But the truth is, when I think back of my loneliest moments, there was usually somebody sitting there next to me.”
--'Ally McBeal'

“Everyone, at some point in their lives, wakes up in the middle of the night with the feeling that they are all alone in the world, and that nobody loves them now and that nobody will ever love them, and that they will never have a decent night’s sleep again and will spend their lives wandering blearily around a loveless landscape, hoping desperately that their circumstances will improve, but suspecting, in their heart of hearts, that they will remain unloved forever. The best thing to do in these circumstances is to wake somebody else up, so that they can feel this way, too.”
--Lemony Snicket

The Ones We Love

She is a mystery. I need to know why I love her, why she loves me, what makes her a genius, whether any of it can rub off on me.

Oh, it's hard to choose your loves, but then, then there's that redheaded preacher's daughter running wild through my mind at sunrise, and I told her, see, see Beth, Elizabeth Raiguel, fox to fox, I think you're a species above the average straight haired masses.

We go places. We do things. We're so fairy tale it makes people sick.

My first, my last, my everything.

She's the mist on my mountains. When she smiles she's the sun in the sky. She's really good, she my woman.

She knows me inside out, she feels the slightest change of my mood.

She is so many parts of me and I love her very much.

She's white when I'm black. She's black when I'm white. The two of us makes grey. She'll always be my dream of colours. My naked dance on the kitchen table. An infinite chance for a dissolved ego. A fragile life.

Because somehow we speak the same language.

I'm not good with words and feelings. I hope that my silence can explain what I feel about him.

When I saw her at first sight it seemed like a sound of a striking match.

She and I joke that we are husband and wife. We go on adventures and plan trips to far away places we may never see. Her energy is inspiring and often she makes me laugh so hard that I cry. She is quite special, that wife of mine.

The one I love is just the one who loves me no matter what. That's her, my only one.

Because we can draw a map to get lost.

He is one million good things and then some.

He is the cup from which I drink.

He is the best guy on this planet. He is quirky and smart and forward thinking and old-fashioned. My strongest support. The reason I want to do good things in the world.

I hope you see things that startle you.

"For what it’s worth, it’s never too late, or in my case too early, to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit… start whenever you want… you can change or stay the same. There are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things that you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life that you’re proud of and if you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again."
--Benjamin Button

"You’ve got to own your days and name them, each one of them, every one of them, or else the years go right by and none of them belong to you."
--Herb Gardner

You and I have changed vastly throughout the many years we have known each other, but each change I make, each decision I stand by — you are there, you are the rock that stands still while I squirm for ground.

"You were shoveling snow and I was the snow. And everywhere I went, everywhere I landed, you scooped me up."
--'The Family Stone'

Travel dissolves you. It makes you need to rebuild yourself, forces you to remember where you’re from.

"Traveling is like flirting with life. It’s like saying, ‘I would stay and love you, but I have to go; this is my station.’"
--Lisa St. Aubin de Terán

"I promise to make you feel so alive that the fall of dust on furniture will deafen you."
--Nina Cassian

There's a moment. There's always a moment, I can do this or I can't. I don't know when your moment was but I bet you there was one.

“Everything comes down to not being listened to any more.”
--Albert Camus

“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”
--Neil Gaiman

I think that it will all come right.

“Once I was told, “You can’t always have great. Every now & then you’re going to have to settle for good enough.” That’s not true. When you can’t have great, it means you’re not supposed to have great. It means that you’re supposed to have something better than just great. It means you’re supposed to have something amazing. Or maybe, if you’re lucky, something extraordinary.”

“It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet, I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.”
--Anne Frank

"This thing about finding someone less different... it only really worked if you were convinced that being you wasn't so bad in the first place."
--Nick Hornby, 'About A Boy'

Some people say that the ground falls away beneath you, but with me it was as if I suddenly knew it was there. It was as though I could feel the entire planet right there beneath the souls of my feet.

"Maybe nothing ever happens once and is finished. Maybe happen is never once but like ripples maybe on water after the pebble sinks."
--Faulkner

"'None of your business' I want to say, but instead my mouth opens and I serve up a plain, simple, inviting 'yes.' Like a single red checker sliding up to double-decker black ones, just waiting to be jumped."
--Emily Giffin, 'Love The One You're With'

That song you keep playing is nothing but a photograph you look at with your ears.

"Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go."
--Brooks Atkinson

Breathe out, so I can breathe you in. The only thing I’ll ever ask of you, gotta promise not to stop when I say when.

I have one of those lives.

If they call you strange, that’s OK with you. You meet more interesting people this way. Let your new outlook on life take you somewhere else.

"For a long time it seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, some unfinished business. At last it dawned on me that this was my life. There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way."
--Souza

"It'll be fun, it'll be a thrill. Something stupid, something bad for you, just something different. Isn't this the point of being young? It's your choice. People can live a hundred years without really living for a minute. You climb up here with me, it's one less minute you haven't lived."
--'Gilmore Girls'

We're conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments. But great moments often catch us unaware -- beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.

I never asked for it to be over. Then again, I never asked for it to begin. That’s the way it is with life. Some of the most beautiful days come completely by chance. But even the most beautiful days have their sunsets.

Life’s not about expecting, hoping and wishing. It’s about doing, being and becoming. It’s about the choices you’ve just made, and the ones you’re about to make. It’s about the things you choose to say - today. It’s about what you’re gonna do after you finish reading this.

Some people have one of those days… I have one of those lives.

Like a riot in the heart and nothing to be done.

“I will have poetry in my life, and adventures, and love. Love above all. No, not the artful postures of love, not playful and poetical games of love for the amusement of an evening. But love that overthrows life. Unbiddable, ungovernable, like a riot in the heart and nothing to be done, come ruin or rapture.”
-'Shakespeare In Love'

I’m in love with who I think you are, and not who you really are. The less you speak, the easier it is to stay in love with the self image I’ve created for you. It’s a cold feeling to know my heart can believe lies just like I do.

It is the hardest and most rewarding thing you have ever done. You ache with love. You cry sometimes, because you know two things: you know that you’ve never felt this good before. You also know that it couldn’t possibly last forever. You want it to. You want it frozen. You want to stop time, right there, as he hands you your toothbrush, or as he pulls you back from the curb of the street for one more kiss. You want to be able to pull them closer than the hug, into your body, so you can keep the smell of them inside you, next to you, all around you. You love someone and it hurts. You love someone and it is very, very good. Not only do you feel better about yourself, you feel better about people, life, animals, and the color orange.