Nick C

“For years and years I struggled
just to love my life. And then

the butterfly
rose, weightless, in the wind.
"Don't love you life
too much," it said,

and vanished
into the world.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“As a grown woman, I would have said to my father that there are true things in this world observed only by a single set of eyes.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

“I once heard a story about a girl who requested something so vile from her paramour that he told her family and they had her hauled her off to a sanatorium. I don’t know what deviant pleasure she asked for, though I desperately wish I did. What magical thing could you want so badly they take you away from the known world for wanting it?”
― Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties

“There is almost nothing outside you that will help in any kind of lasting way,”
― Anne Lamott, Almost Everything: Notes on Hope