Writing And Reading Decrease Our Sense Of Isolation. They Deepen And Widen And Expand Our Sense Of Life:

“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It’s like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can’t stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.”

— Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

The Uses of Sorrow

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.

                              I want to leave                               no one behind.

To keep & be kept.

                             The way a field turns                              its secrets

into peonies.

                            The way light                             keeps its shadow

by swallowing it.

Ocean Vuong, from “Into the Breach,” Night Sky with Exit Wounds (Copper Canyon Press, 2016) 

journalofanobody:

“And isn’t the whole point of things–beautiful things–that they connect you to some larger beauty? Those first images that crack your heart wide open and you spend the rest of your life chasing, or trying to recapture, in one way or another?”

— Donna Tartt, from The Goldfinch (Little, Brown & Co., 2013) (via rabbitinthemoon-blog)

“Bilinguals overwhelmingly report that they feel like different people in different languages. It is often assumed that the mother tongue is the language of the true self. (…) But, it first languages are reservoirs of emotion, second languages can be rivers undammed, freeing their speakers to ride different currents.”

— Love in Translation by Lauren Collins from the New Yorker, August 8 & 15, 2016

“The way to love anything is to realise that it might be lost.”

— G. K. Chesterton, from “The Advantages of Having One Leg,” Tremendous Trifles (Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1910)