"The thing about performance, even if it's
only an illusion, is that it is a celebration of the
fact that we do contain within ourselves
infinite possibilities."
— Daniel Day-Lewis

“you
not wanting me
was
the beginning of me
wanting myself
thank you”
― Nayyirah Waheed

“if
the ocean
can calm itself,
so can you.
we
are both
salt water
mixed with
air.”
― Nayyirah Waheed

“i don't pay attention to the
world ending.
it has ended for me
many times
and began again in the morning.”
― Nayyirah Waheed, Salt

“expect sadness
like
you expect rain.
both,
cleanse you.”
― Nayyirah Waheed

“Someone can be madly in love with you and still not be ready. They can love you in a way you have never been loved and still not join you on the bridge. And whatever their reasons you must leave. Because you never ever have to inspire anyone to meet you on the bridge. You never ever have to convince someone to do the work to be ready. There is more extraordinary love, more love that you have never seen, out here in this wide and wild universe. And there is the love that will be ready.”
― Nayyirah Waheed

“i loved you
because
it was easier
than
loving myself.”
― Nayyirah waheed

if someone
does not want me
it is not the end of the world.
but
if i do not want me.
the world is nothing but endings.
― Nayyirah waheed

“can we speak in flowers.
it will be easier for me to understand.”
― Nayyirah Waheed, Salt

“be softer with you.
you are a breathing thing.
a memory to someone.
a home to a life.”
― Nayyirah Waheed

“Almighty God, I am sorry I am now an atheist, but have You read Nietzsche?”
― John Fante, Ask the Dust

“I felt his hot tears and the loneliness of man and the sweetness of all men and the aching haunting beauty of the living”
― John Fante, Full of Life

“Oh, God, help me! And I walked faster, my thoughts pursuing me, and I began to run, my frozen shoes squealing like mice, but running didn't help, the thoughts to the left and right and behind me. But as I ran, The Arm, that good left arm, took hold of the situation and spoke soothingly: ease up, Kid, it's loneliness, you're all alone in the world; your father, your mother, your faith, they can't help you, nobody helps anybody, you only help yourself, and that's why I'm here, because we are inseperable, and we'll take care of everything.”
― John Fante, 1933 Was a Bad Year

"Dostoevsky changed me. The Idiot, The Demons,
The Karamazov Brothers, The Gambler. He turned
me inside out like a glove. I realized that I could
breathe, I could see invisible horizons. The hatred
for my father melted. I loved my father, a poor
suffering and persecuted wretch. I also loved my
mother, and my whole family. It was time to become
a man...go out into the world. I wanted to think and
feel like Dostoevsky. I wanted to write."
― John Fante

"The ones that are truly worth loving are the ones
that make you a stranger to yourself, Those who
manage to eradicate you from your habitat and your
journey, and transplant you into another ecosystem,
managing to keep you alive in that jungle you do not
know and where you would certainly die were it not
that they are there and teach you the steps and
gestures and the words: and you, against all odds,
are able to repeat them."
― John Fante

"l looked at the faces around me and I knew mine
was like theirs. Faces with the blood drained
away, tight faces, worried, lost. Faces like
flowers torn from their roots and stuffed into a
pretty vase."
― John Fante

“When your weakness are your strengths, you cry.”

— John Fante

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
― Carl Gustav Jung