poems, songs, things people said

[notebookofquotes]

Lately a small tabby cat has come everyday and stared at me with a strange, intense look. Of course I put food out, night and morning. She is so terrified that she runs away at once when I open the door, but she comes back to eat ravenously as soon as I disappear. Yet her hunger is clearly not only for food. I long to take her in my arms and hear her purr with relief at finding shelter. Will she ever become tame enough for that, to give in to what she longs to have? It is such an intense look with which she scans my face at the door before she runs away. It is not a pleading look, simply a huge question: "Can I trust?" Our two gazes hang on its taut thread. I find it painful.

May Sarton

[notebookofquotes]

How was it possible to miss something you no longer wanted?

Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche

[notebookofquotes]

I wanted to be loved more than I wanted to be alive. For so long I thought not 'to be loved is good' but 'to be loved is to be good.'

Leila Chatti

[notebookofquotes]

when we are loved we are afraid love will vanish when we are alone we are afraid love will never return and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid. So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive.

Audre Lorde

[notebookofquotes]

I had two desires: desire to be safe and desire to feel.

Louise Gluck

[notebookofquotes]

If you remember me, then I don’t care if everyone else forgets.

Haruki Murakami (via notebookofquotes)

[notebookofquotes]

...and I think we most fully understood each other when once I tried to kill him with a kitchen knife.

Joan Didion

[notebookofquotes]

And you want to be the kind of person who doesn't need to feel beautiful, but you are. You are predictable in your longing.

Hieu Minh Nguyen

[notebookofquotes]

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers flow in the right direction, will the earth turn as it was taught, and if not, how shall I correct it? Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven, can I do better?

Mary Oliver

[notebookofquotes]

I’m not sure which is worse: intense feeling, or the absence of it.

Margaret Atwood (via notebookofquotes)

[notebookofquotes]

Maybe we just live between hurting and healing.

Benjamin Alire Saenz (via notebookofquotes)

[notebookofquotes]

I said so little. Days were short. I said so little. I couldn't keep up.

Czeslaw Milosz

[notebookofquotes]

Do not thing all this blue is without pain.

Jean-Michel Maulpoix

[notebookofquotes]

I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me. If I had words to speak such a thing, I would have. But there were none that seemed big enough for it, to hold that swelling truth.

Madeline Miller (via notebookofquotes)

[notebookofquotes]

I would love you with all of my heart if you would Just love me and hold me then leave me for good.

Keaton Henson

[notebookofquotes]

I can't go on. I'll go on.

Samuel Beckett

[notebookofquotes]

I begin to feel a new tenderness toward you, very raw and unfamiliar, like what I remember of love when I was young - love that was so often foolish in its objectives but never in its choices, its intensities.

Louise Gluck (via notebookofquotes)