“I see the words “I know he would never hit me/physically harm me” in a lot of letters I get. Far more than I could ever, ever, ever answer or publish.
Those words break my heart, every time, because the people who write them are offering them up as an example of how the relationship can be saved and how I shouldn’t judge their partner too harshly. They mean “he’s not ABUSIVE-abusive (even though he does all these abusive and controlling things to me). I’m not like those abused women, I would leave if someone actually hit me.” They break my heart because the letter writers have had to do the calculus, the calculus called Would He Hit Me? and they offer the answer up as proof that he wouldn’t but all I can see is proof that he almost did, that he’s thinking about it, that he’s a week or a year or a hair’s breadth away from it. It’s proof that she’s thinking about it, too, that she’s had to do the math. Nathan wouldn’t hit you, but he’d punch a wall in front of you, so you can see the force of how his fists slam into things., so you can see how hurt his hand is afterward, so you know that the damage is your fault. When I read those words about how the partner doesn’t harm or hit, I can hear the echo of the guy saying them, too, like “Well, it’s not like I physically hurt you! Come on! Be reasonable (and do what I say)!“(Mentioning how “at least you don’t hit” someone kinda sorta exactly like reminding them that you could hit them, that you might hit them, that hitting them is on the list of possible things that could happen, you are a fucking goddamn hero of a man for making the difficult heroic choice not to. Someone saying this to you should always make the little hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and prompt you to look around for the exits).
And then the letters, like your letter, contain the most heartbreaking question of all, which is how, how can I be better/fix it/make it right/not make him scary and angry anymore. How can I be perfect (give up caffeine), how can I show him (check in with him by cell phone every time I change locations or company) that I’m worthy? Because the abuser-logic has worked. “When you make mistakes it’s your fault, when I make mistakes (like scaring you) it’s also your fault.” Someone doesn’t have to physically hurt you to harm you.
People in non-abusive relationships don’t have to do this constant calculus. Non-abusive dudes don’t get described as “intimidating” by their girlfriends, because non-abusive dudes, even the big strong burly ones who might look pretty intimidating to a stranger don’t intimidate their girlfriends. They don’t punch walls, or throw things, or put 10,000 tiny conditions around everything, or monitor their movements or their phones. When those dudes feel lonely, they fucking call a friend, or they muddle through those lonely feelings. Non-abusive dudes don’t pat themselves on the back for not hurting women, because it doesn’t occur to them to hurt women.”
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~ Captain Awkward, #640: “I Know He Would Never Physically Hurt Me” and Other Fairy Tales
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Leonard Nimoy’s last tweet:
“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.”
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“It was one of those glorious days in March when the air was so fresh you worshipped every whiff of it; that each breath of the intoxicating stuff created such new universes in your lungs and brain you were certain you were about to explode with sheer joy; one of those blustery days of scudding clouds and piddling showers and gum boots and wind-blown brollies that made you know you were truly alive.
Somewhere off to the east in the woods, a bird was singing: Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we-to-witta-woo.
It was the first day of spring, and Mother Nature seemed to know it.
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~ Alan Bradley, Speaking From Among the Bones
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“Spring was moving in the air above and the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.”
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~ Kenneth Grahame
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“I’d wish it might be spring all the time and in everybody’s heart and all of our lives.”
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~ Anne Shirley, Anne of Avonlea
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“Spring is the time of plans and projects.”
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Leo Tolstoy
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“You don’t have to be perfect to inspire other people. Let them be inspired by the way you deal with your struggles, your heartache and your imperfections.”
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~ Unknown (via onlinecounsellingcollege)
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“I am my own woman- first, last, and always.”
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~ Natalia Romanova (The Black Widow, Marvel)
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“One game at a time.”
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~ Wreck it Ralph
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“The winds, the sea, and the moving tides are what they are. If there is wonder and beauty and majesty in them, science will discover these qualities… If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry.”
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~ Rachel Carson
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“Summer is the time when one sheds one’s tensions with one’s clothes,
and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit.”
~ Ada Louise Huxtable
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“Today’s the day to declare independence from whatever you have an unhealthy dependence on. For me it’s ice cream.”
~ Robert Reich
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“The world is overflowing with horrible things. But there is always a tray of cakes next to death.”
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~ Olenna Tyrell to her adult granddaughter, Game of Thrones, S4 E3
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“Cake or death?”
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“Cake please.”
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~ Eddie Izzard
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“The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone.”
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~ Natalie Babbitt
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“Continue to share your heart with people even if it has been broken.”
~ Amy Poehler
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“Got a one way ticket to the promised land.”
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~ Bruce Springsteen, The Ghost of Tom Joad
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“If winter is slumber and spring is birth, and summer is life, then autumn rounds out to be reflection. It’s a time of year when the leaves are down and the harvest is in and the perennials are gone. Mother Earth just closed up the drapes on another year and it’s time to reflect on what’s come before.”
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~ Mitchell Burgess
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“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”
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~ Albert Camus
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“I am so glad that I live in a world where there are Octobers.”
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~ L.M. Montgomery
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“In October any wonderful unexpected thing might be possible.”
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~ Elizabeth George Speare
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“I like Autumn. The drama of it; the golden lion roaring through the back door of the year, shaking its mane of leaves.”
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~ Joanne Harris, Gentlemen and Players
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“And yet. while a breath of life remains within me, I shall fight on!”
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~ Dr. Strange, Those Who Would Destroy Me, Strange Tales 142, Doctor Strange Marvel Masterworks.
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“Self care will save your life.”
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~ 6 Word Story
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“I think it’s brave to try to be happy.”
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~ Vivian, Pushing Daisies, S1E7
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“How beautifully leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.”
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~ John Burroughs
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“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”
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~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
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“Your diamonds are inside of you. Your diamonds are in your heart, and in your mind, and in your soul, and in your body. It’s hard, at the best of times, to see clearly something so internalized. Others might be able to see your diamonds with clarity. Nothing seems to stop some people from seeing them. However, the more deeply buried our diamonds are, the more difficult it can be to discern them. Even when we unearth them, they are often covered over and up. It is important to remember that they are still unrefined and perhaps not so beautiful to the eye, yet. Clarity can take time and healing.”
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~ Kate Is Rising
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“If you could think of one thing in the world to make you feel better, what would it be?”
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~ Juliet, Psych (tv series)
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“Never deprive someone else of hope; it might be all they have.”
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~ Unknown
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“It doesn’t matter who likes us. We like us.”
.
Zen to Zany
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“I got my own back.”
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~ Maya Angelou
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“your soul is full of stars embrace them”
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~ paleception.tumblr.com
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“and the sky smiled right back at you, like it knew a little more about you, each night.”
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~ R.M. Drake
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“May you seek to know the vastness of your light.”
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~ Danielle Porte
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“I like being weird. Weird is all I’ve got. That and my sweet style.”
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~ Moss, The I.T. Crowd
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“Thank goodness for the first snow. It was a reminder– now matter how old you become and how much you’d seen, things could still be new if you were willing to believe they still mattered.”
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~ Candace Bushnell
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“Snow flurries began to fall and they swirled around people’s legs like house cats. It was magical, this snow globe world.”
.
~ Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen
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“Life is short.. don’t spend too much of your time with your family.”
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~ Susan, Difficult People, S1EE4
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“I love snow the same reason that I love Christmas: It brings people together while time stands still. Cozy couples lazily meandering the streets and children trudged sleds and chased snowballs. No one seemed to be in a rush to experience anything other than the glory of the day, with each other, whenever and however it happened.”
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~ Rachel Cohen, Dash Lily’s Book of Dares
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“Snowflakes swirl down gently in the deep blue haze beyond the window. The outside world is a dream.
Inside, the fireplace is brightly lit, and the Yule log crackles with orange and crimson sparks.
There’s a steaming mug in your hands, warming your fingers.
There’s a friend seated across from you in the cozy chair, warming your heart.
There is mystery unfolding.”
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Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
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“Colorful lights blink on and off, racing across the green boughs. Their reflections dance across exquisite glass globes and splinter into shards against tinsel thread and garlands of metallic filaments that disappear underneath the other ornaments and finery.
Shadows follow, joyful, laughing sprites.
The tree is rich with potential wonder.
All it needs is a glance from you to come alive.”
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~ Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
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“It’s Christmas Eve. It’s one night of the year when we all act a little nicer, we smile a little easier, we cheer a little more. For a couple of hours out of the whole year we are the people that we always hoped we would be.”
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~ Frank Cross, Scrooged
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“Good and healing thoughts to you all.”
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~ Kate
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“Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart.”
~ Victor Hugo
.
“There shall be an eternal summer in the grateful heart.”
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~ Celia Thaxter
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“If winter comes can spring be far behind.?”
~ Lailah Gifty Akita
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“Don’t try to win over the haters. You’re not the jackass whisperer.”
.
~ Scott Stratten
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“Butterflies can’t see their wings. They can’t see how truly beautiful they are.”
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~ Anonymous
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Yes, I do sample from the salad bar of life.”
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~ Pops, The Goldbergs, S3E13.
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It is my wish and hope that you all sample from the salad bar of life.🙂
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“Even in a room full of people, want yourself first.”
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~ Kharla Mae Brillo, Other Than Sadness
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“One of the jobs of poetry is to make the unbearable bearable by clear, precise confrontation.”
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~ Wilbur
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“I always kept two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.”
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~ Robert Louis Stevenson
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“What is art? Nature concentrated.”
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~Honore de Balzac
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“Art has the role in education of helping children become like themselves instead of more like everyone else.”
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~ Unknown
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“A book is a loaded gun in the house next door.”
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~ Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
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“Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life.”
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~ Golda Meir
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“Resist much. Obey little.”
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~ Walt Whitman
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“Writing is the way I give language to my days, offer a legacy for my children, and set reminders like breadcrumbs to find my way home. It is the art I practice to create space in my soul for rest, for worship, for lament, for glory. I write the reminders.”
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~ Alia Joy
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“I am not responsible for your thoughts.”
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~ @bronwinning.tumblr.com
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“People seem to think embracing life means to jump off cliffs and kiss strangers. Maybe it’s just slowly learning to love yourself.”
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~ @becomingroux.tumblr.com
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“You need to realize that the way you are feeling now will not be permanent.”
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~ r.h. (via ohwittlephamnator.tumblr.com)
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“Writing is a form of therapy.
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~ Graham Greene
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“It’s gonna be good. (Just you wait and see.)”
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~ bravegirlsclub.com
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“The most beautiful part of your body is where it’s headed. & remember, lonliness is still time spent with the world.”
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~ Ocean Vuong
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“I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them– with books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself.”
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~ Eudora Welty
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“The first step to becoming strong is deciding that you are.”
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~ Unknown
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“A poem is a picture with words.”
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~ Confucius
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Some people say home is where you come from. But I think it’s a place you need to find, like it’s scattered and you pick pieces of it up along the way.”
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~ Katie Kacvinsky
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“You are such a perfect arrangement of atoms.”
.
~ little-blackbook.tumblr.com
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“I have my own soul. My own spark of divine fire.”
.
~ George Bernard Shaw
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“No one has ever made himself great by showing how small someone else is.”
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~ Irvin Himmel
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“Every film is a political act; it’s how you see the world.”
.
~ Mira Pali Nair
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“What you’re missing is that the path itself changes you.”
.
~ Julien Smith
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“Rituals are a good signal to your unconscious that it is time to kick in.”
.
~ Anne Lamott
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“Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.”
.
~ John Updike
.
“Mother Nature has the power to please, to comfort, to calm, and to nurture one’s soul.”
.
~ Anthony Douglas Williams
.
“Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.”
.
~ Ovid
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“Never go too long without watching a sunset.”
.
~ Atticus
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“Because I cannot sleep I make music in the night.”
.
~ Rumi
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“I drank coffee and read old books and waited for the year to end.”
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~ Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America
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“Seeing the results of your actions is not important, only the actions are.”
.
~ God, Joan of Arcadia, S2E18
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“Faith is the peerless bridge supporting what we see, and the seen we do not, too slender for the eye.”
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~ Emily Dickinson
.
“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves
growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies,
I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning
over again with the summer.”
.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
.
“Summer weather, like being in love, is a philosopher’s stone which turns our ordinary days to gold. But not the whole day… For it is never the whole day, never all our life, which is transformed in any happiness, but only the exquisite moments.”
.
~ Nan Fairbrother
.
“Green was the silence, wet was the light,
the month of June trembled like a butterfly….”
.
~ Pablo Neruda
.
“I love late night conversations, late night drives, late night snacks, late night showers, everything’s better at night.”
.
~ Unknown
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“I’ve met many thinkers and many cats, but the wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.”
.
~ Hippolyte Taine
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“The summer night is like a perfection of thought.”
.
~ Wallace Stevens
.
“Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.”
.
~ Jean-Paul Sartre
.
“I love trying things and discovering how I hate them.”
.
~ D.H. Lawrence
.
“A dog has one aim in life… to bestow his heart.”
.
~ J.R. Ackerley
.
This morning, out the window,
the deer stood like a blessing, then vanished.
~ Jane Kenyon, Standing Deer
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“If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it.”
.
~ Willy Wonka, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
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“Let your life speak…”
.
~ Old Quaker saying
.
“Don’t judge yourself by your past. You don’t live there anymore.”
.
~ Unknown
.
“Love the trees until their leaves fall off, then encourage them to try again next year.”
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~ Chad Sugg
Kate Is Rising 
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