“I’m not saying that at some point love isn’t staying up until 2am phone calls or stealing kisses when you least expect it, or instantly falling for each other’s favorite songs because it is, or at least that’s what the lead up to it feels like, but real love, is so much more. It’s going out at 12am to get something to eat for your wife who can’t get out of bed, it’s listening to them as they explode with vulnerability on your living room couch talking about how they were only so young when their parents passed on. It’s remembering how someone likes their coffee in the morning without asking—without ever asking, it’s visiting someone in the hospital knowing the last thing you want to do is see them in that condition, it’s wanting to be with that person despite everything, the future, the past, and everything in between, it’s the intimate things that you don’t even realize involve such intimacy, but they do, in secret, like the pinky promises you two made behind your back, to love one another for always, in the time you thought you were in love, when you were actually just on your way to it.”
--52hearts

I want to be somebody’s favorite hiding place

“That’s what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you’re not so lovable.”

--Deb Caletti

“Sometimes you’ve got to be able to listen to yourself and be okay with no one else understanding.”

--Christopher Barzak

“Gracious, soft-voiced girls, who were brought up on memories instead of money.”

--F Scott Fitzgerald, 'The Ice Palace'

"Don’t be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die, world without end, amen."

--George Saunders

“I’m the kind of person who likes to be by himself. To put a finer point on it, I’m the type of person who doesn’t find it painful to be alone. I find spending an hour or two every day running alone, not speaking to anyone, as well as four or five hours alone at my desk, to be neither difficult nor boring. I’ve had this tendency ever since I was young, when, given a choice, I much preferred reading books on my own or concentrating on listening to music over being with someone else. I could always think of things to do by myself.”

--Haruki Murakami, 'What I Talk About When I Talk About Running'

“We gotta start teaching our daughters to be somebodies instead of somebody’s.”

--Kifah Shah

“Lately I’ve been thinking about who I want to love, and how I want to love, and why I want to love the way I want to love, and what I need to learn to love that way, and who I need to become to become the kind of love I want to be…and when I break it all down, when I whittle it into a single breath, it essentially comes out like this: Before I die, I want to be somebody’s favorite hiding place, the place they can put everything they know they need to survive, every secret, every solitude, every nervous prayer, and be absolutely certain I will keep it safe. I will keep it safe.”

--Andrea Gibson