𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓼𝓾𝓷 𝔀𝓲𝓵𝓵 𝓻𝓲𝓼𝓮

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth

[mournfulroses]

Tove Ditlevsen, from a poem featured in There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die: Selected Poems

[radical-revolution]

We don’t hate life itself, but the fake world people have built. This version of the world forces us to follow strict rules and act like everyone else just to fit in. Because of this, we often feel like we have to apologize for our own dreams. The problem is not you; it is a society that has forgotten how to value a person just for being alive.

[mournfulroses]

Cecilia Martinez, from a poem titled "Winter Then," featured in A Magnificently Ordinary Romance: Poems

[mournfulroses]

Cecilia Martinez, from a poem titled "Winter Then," featured in A Magnificently Ordinary Romance: Poems

[seraphinesaintclair]

“Shed Skins” by Seraphine Saintclair

[existential-celestial]

“I’m not doing awfully well but I’m trying very, very, very hard,”

— Anne Sexton, from a letter to Florence Ehrhardt, c. February 1974

[metamorphesque]

"Beautiful Losers", Leonard Cohen

[thekashishverse]

I wish I could be normal about affection but my love language is merging souls.

[shisasan]

When I care, I don’t merely experience affection. I undergo it.

[mournfulroses]

Franz Kafka, from a letter to Felice Bauer written in 1913, featured in Letters To Felice

[ether--net]

[radical-revolution]

The Blessed One said:

Whenever you encounter people who commit evil things...

you will train like this:

I will remain with calm, peaceful mind;

I will not use evil speech;

I will remain with friendly heart,

free of hatred and blame;

and starting with these people,

I will develop a thought of loving-kindness:

"May they be filled with loving kindness.

May they be peaceful and at ease.

May they be well.

May they be happy."

Unless you find Me in your own heart,

the whole world will seem meaningless to you.

[mournfulroses]

Jane Hirshfield, from a poem titled "Today, When I Could Do Nothing," featured in The Asking: New and Selected Poems

[weltenwellen]

Joy Sullivan, from “These Days People Are Really Selling Me On California”, Instructions for Traveling West

[weltenwellen]

Tracy K. Smith, from “Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes?”, Life on Mars

[askyea-poesy]

I am so imperfect, can you love me when really my soul is deformed? Will you love me anyhow?

Anne Sexton

[cor-ardens-archive]

[scatteredprayerbeads]

ID: two lines of a poem reading "The bed itself is an operating table / where my dreams slice me to pieces."

This is from "The Lost Lie" by Anne Sexton

[sentimentalbeing2001]

Jenny Holzer.

[letsbelonelytogetherr]

— Susan Sontag; As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh (via letsbelonelytogetherr)