RIOT

“Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed”

“When you realize that you’re not as happy as you want to be, you wish to change things. That’s where I am right now, trying to figure out how to modify myself in order to make this world easier to live in. How much of a heart can I have? How can I make the word no taste as sweet as the word yes? What can I do to keep a smile on my face? A part of me always seemed to feel selfish whenever I weighed my wants and needs against someone else’s - like the thought of pleasing myself shouldn’t even exist. But after a while, you realize you matter too.”

“If I tell you I need you, do not take it lightly. I do everything I can to never have to depend on anyone, to never show weakness. and if I say I that I need you it means I am trusting you to catch me if I fall.”

“Grief will keep you reaching back / for what is not there”

“I love you, selflessly. From afar, through tears, and in my loneliness.”

“I love the grey area between right and wrong.”

“Maybe home is nothing but two arms holding you tight when you’re at your worst.”

“The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - that you’d thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you’ve never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it’s as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.”

“Someone once told me that human beings have three dimensions: how you see yourself, how others see you, and how you want others to see you. The closer the distance between the three dimensions, the more at peace you are and the more stable you become.”

“I can’t think of a better way to revenge someone who tried to break you, than to live and love life more without them.”

“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side. Or you don’t.”

“Attention: deep listening. People are dying in spirit for lack of it. In academic culture, most listening is critical listening. We tend to pay attention only long enough to develop a counterargument; we critique the student’s or the colleague’s ideas; we mentally grade and pigeonhole each other. In society at large, people often listen with an agenda, to sell or petition or seduce. Seldom is there a deep, open-hearted nonjudgmental reception of the other. And so we all talk louder and more stridently and with a terrible desperation. By contrast, if someone truly listens to me, my spirit begins to expand.”

“I know — better than anyone — that once someone’s made up her mind to leave you, there’s nothing you can do to make her stay.”