"A tourist goes to see something. A traveler sees it along the way."

— Gentlemen’s Wisdom 

"We’ll grow until our bones ache and our skin wrinkles and our hair goes white, and until our hearts decide, at last, that it’s time to stop."

— Lauren DeStefano, from Sever 

"No one in my family, not one of my friends or classmates realized that I was going through life asleep.
It was literally true: I was going through life asleep. My body had no more feeling than a drowned corpse. My very existence, my life in the world, seemed like a hallucination. A strong wind would make me think my body was about to be blown to the end of the earth, to some land I had never seen or heard of, where my mind and body would separate forever. ‘Hold tight,’ I would tell myself, but there was nothing for me to hold on to."

— Haruki Murakami, Sleep 

"He looked at me like I was crazy. Most of my lovers do, and that’s partly why they love me, and partly why they leave."

— Jeanette Winterson 

"Do not ignore it. Fuck it. Cry your heart out. Then fuck it some more."

— Charles Bukowski, from Selected Letters Vol. 4  

"You tried to change, didn’t you? Closed your mouth more, tried to be softer, prettier, less volatile, less awake…You can’t make homes out of human beings. Someone should have already told you that."

— Warsan Shire

"Eventually you forgive people for not knowing about you the things you’ve spent your life keeping from them."

— Robert Brault