But A Book Is Only The Heart's Portrait- Every Page A Pulse.

Denis Forkas

bro like would it kill you to fall in love with me

Mahmoud Darwish, from Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems; “The Hoopoe,”

sonder

 when sylvia plath wrote “the silence depressed me. it wasn’t the silence of silence. it was my own silence.” and when anne carson wrote “why does tragedy exist? because you are full of rage. why are you full of rage? because you are full of grief.” and when jenny slate wrote “and i am getting older but i am not growing up and my heart is getting soft dark spots on it like a fruit that has gone bad.” and when virginia woolf wrote “to want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain.” and when susanna kaysen wrote “when you’re sad, you need to hear your sorrow structured into sound.” and when margaret atwood wrote “already my childhood seemed far away – a remote age, faded and bittersweet, like dried flowers. did i regret its loss, did i want it back? i didn’t think so…” and when gillian flynn wrote “i was not a lovable child, and i’d grown into a deeply unlovable adult.”

Strolling aimlessly in a bookshop is self care

Details: The Angel appears to Hagar and Ishmael, 1640, by Gioacchino Assereto (Italian, 1600-1649)

Baroque plaster meets ancient mosaic in the baptistry of St. John Lateran, Rome.