Nikki Giovanni, The Collected Poetry, 1968-1998

... One night a friend lent me a book of short stories by Franz Kafka. I went back to the pension where I was staying and began to read The Metamorphosis. The first line almost knocked me off the bed. I was so surprised. The first line reads, “As Gregor Samsa awoke that morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. . . .” When I read the line I thought to myself that I didn’t know anyone was allowed to write things like that. If I had known, I would have started writing a long time ago. ...

Gabriel García Márquez, The Art of Fiction No. 69 (interviewed by Peter Stone)

“You’re not a monster,” I said. But I lied. What I really wanted to say was that a monster is not such a terrible thing to be. From the Latin root monstrum, a divine messenger of catastrophe, then adapted by the Old French to mean an animal of myriad origins: centaur, griffin, satyr. To be a monster is to be a hybrid signal, a lighthouse: both shelter and warning at once.”

— Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

it feels weird and sad, you know? when you have shared such giggles with someone that you know everything about them, yet do not know the reason why you fell apart. you know their rainbows, their rain, their sunny days, and their cold winter but now you're stuck in the fall and it feels like autumn is never coming back. the hands that once grooved you to soft beats do not dare to make you smile anymore. and when you read those old conversations, you bury your head in a pillow and call yourself stupid, but the heart still beats. it never stops. time moves quickly slipping out of your hands when you read their words, and you keep reading. you want time to slip letters under your door by their name and you want autumn, and you want to be that stupid again because you realize stupidity is not fun unless there's a person to prove that it's not stupid to love someone.

enigma

Many relationships would be a lot healthier if we romanticized honest, open and direct communication instead of idealizing the idea of a partner who's intuitively in tune with your every need. You don't need someone who can read your mind, you just need someone who's willing to listen when you speak.

ordered a customizable spotify plaque for more dark academia vibes

I am, as the poets say, a disaster.

THE SECRET HISTORY- NETFLIX SERIES

musings on the sun

christina perneta, noor hindi, vincent van gogh, jeanette winterson, zinaida vysota docenko, anne sexton, olga kos, khalil gibran

stop putting anyone or anything up on a pedestal (2021)

the betrayal knows my name (2010)