[notesonophelia]

A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river but then he’s still left with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away but then he’s still left with his hands.

Richard Siken, Crush

[notesonophelia]

To live in this world you must be able to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

against your bones knowing your own life depends on it;

to hold it and, when the time comes to let it go.

Mary Oliver, Devotions

[notesonophelia]

My mother was young, only I noticed too late.

Tove Ditlevsen, There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die

[notesonophelia]

I am good and bad and you will never forget me.

Tove Ditlevsen, There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die

[notesonophelia]

Copenhagen has eyes like a watchful animal

Tove Ditlevsen, There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die

[notesonophelia]

The way somebody comes back, but only in a dream.

Mary Oliver, Devotions

[notesonophelia]

I didn't intend to start thinking about God,

it just happened.

How God, or the gods, are invisible,

quite understandable.

But holiness is visible, entirely.

Mary Oliver, Devotions

[notesonophelia]

Maybe the desire to make something beautiful is the piece of God that is inside each of us.

Mary Oliver, Devotions

[notesonophelia]

I have refused to live locked in the orderly house of reasons and proofs.

Mary Oliver, Devotions

[notesonophelia]

I wrote a pep talk recently to myself on a bar napkin: no matter which road you take, it will be both glorious and unbearable. Every road is lonely. Every road, holy. The only error is not walking forth.

Yesterday, a friend in California, when giving me directions, told me I could take the trail toward the tall pines or turn left and find a field of poppies, growing gold and savage at the edge of the valley.

When I asked which to choose, she simply shrugged and said: either way, it's all heaven.

Joy Sullivan, Instructions for Traveling West

[notesonophelia]

But being unable to choose becomes its own choice. When you don't decide, a decision still arrives.

Joy Sullivan, Instructions for Traveling West

[notesonophelia]

I'd hurry back to this life, the one where you are standing beside the open window looking drowsy and beautiful, a half-eaten pear, in your left hand. What? You ask, handing me the other half.

Joy Sullivan, Instructions for Traveling West

[notesonophelia]

It's almost cruel, he laughs. He After everything, how the world still insists on being beautiful.

Joy Sullivan, Instructions for Traveling West

[notesonophelia]

I worry that I love poetry too much. And sleep. And Paris. And how, right now, my body is still just my body — with no one else's footprint.

Joy Sullivan, Instructions for Traveling West

[notesonophelia]

They say men want freedom and girls want love, but I've seen women leave lovers and countries and kingdoms of comfort just for the chance to sleep unbothered, to bathe unwatched, to waltz around apartments all their own, wearing nothing but lipstick the color of desire.

Joy Sullivan, Instructions for Traveling West

[notesonophelia]

One day you're sitting alone at the bakery and the next, you're standing across from the ocean and the next, you're crying at the movies and after that, you're planting fruit trees and learning street names and bringing in the mail and kissing someone's delicate face. You suddenly realize you've slung together something called a life. The word home drops out of your mouth like a ripe summer pear plopping in the backyard. Sticky at the edges. Heavy with sweetness.

Joy Sullivan, Instructions for Traveling West

[notesonophelia]

I would like to touch the world and not harm it. I would like to be touched and not harmed.

Joy Sullivan, Instructions for Traveling West