I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited. - Silvia Plath

If you believe in love

but fine it difficult to

explain:

This is for you.

"In an effort to get people to look into each other's eyes more, the government has decided to allot each person exactly one hundred and sixty-seven words per day. When the phone rings, I put it to my ear without saying hello. In the restaurant, I point at chicken noodle soup. I am adjusting well to the new way. Late at night, I call my long-dstance lover and proudly say: I only used fifty-nine words today, I saved the rest for you. When she doesn't respond, I know she's used up all her words, so I slowly whisper 'I love you' thirty-two and a third times. After that, we just sit on the line and listen to each other breathe."

-Jeffrey McDaniel

no amount of coffee

no amount of crying

no amount of whiskey

no amount of wine

no, nothing else will do

I gotta have you.

Go now, and live.

Experience. Dream. Risk. Close your eyes and jump. Enjoy the freefall. Choose exhilaration over comfort. Choose magic over predictability. Choose potential over safety. Wake up to the magic of everyday life. Make friends with your intuition. Trust your gut. Discover the beauty of uncertainty. Know yourself fully before you make promises to another. Make millions of mistakes so that you will know how to choose what you really need. Know when to hold on and when to let go. Love hard and often and without reservation. Seek knowledge. Open yourself up to possibility. Keep your heart open, your head high and your spirit free. Embrace your darkness along with your light. Be wrong every once in a while, and don't be afraid to admit it. Awaken to the brilliance in ordinary moments. Tell the truth about yourself no matter what the cost. Own your reality without apology. See goodness in the world. Be Bold. Be Fierce. Be Grateful. Be Wild, Crazy and Gloriously Free. Be you.

Go now, and live.

-Jeanette LeBlanc

I hate when I start liking someone because then I start expecting things out of them.

Sufjan Stevens was found in a milk crate on the doorstep of Mr. and Mrs. Stevens, in Detroit, MI, on Canada Day, July 1, 1975. He was wrapped in cellophane, and tagged on the wrist with the mysterious note: “I love you.” Mr. and Mrs. Stevens had three other children: Jo-Jo, Zukey-Dukey, and Jam-Jam. Mrs. Stevens crocheted afghans for the flea market. Mr. Stevens was the custodian at the hospital. They had very little money, but very big hearts. They decided to keep the baby (using the milk crate to hold their National Geographics). They named him Sufjan Stevens, after Abu Sufjan Muhammad, the great Armenian Sufi warrior who slew ten thousand dragons to save the Fairy Princess. Despite his despondent looks, Sufjan was a good kid. Mr. and Mrs. Stevens did the best they could. They fed him carrots, they read him parts of the Bhagavad Gita, they combed his hair, they sang songs and tap-danced in the living room. Things were looking good!

We've got our deepest hopes tattooed on our eyelids, so when we sleep we speak fireworks.

What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls? When you skateboarded down the street at night you could hear everyone's heartbeat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone's hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but I don't really want to know about. That would be so weird, except that the place in the hospital where babies are born would sound like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat, because the babies wouldn't have had time to match up their heartbeats yet. And at the finish line at the end of the New York City Marathon it would sound like war.

-Justin Safran Foer

There are things you do

because they feel right

& they may make no sense

& they may make no money

& it may be the real reason

we are here: to love each

other & to eat each other's

cooking & say it was good.

-B. Andreas

Go after her. Fuck, don't sit there and wait for her to call, go after her because that's what you should do if you love someone, don't wait for them to give you a sign cause it might never come, don't let people happen to you, don't let me happen to you, or her, she's not a fucking television show or tornado. There are people I might have loved had they gotten on the airplane or run down the street after me or called me up drunk at four in the morning because they need to tell me right now and because they cannot regret this and I always thought I'd be the only one doing crazy things for people who would never give enough of a fuck to do it back or to act like idiots or be entirely vulnerable and honest and making someone fall in love with you is easy and flying 3000 miles on four days notice because you can't just sit there and do nothing and breathe into telephones is not everyone's idea of love but it is the way I can recognize it because that is what I do. Go scream it and be with her in meaningful ways because that is beautiful and that is generous and that is what loving someone is, that is raw and that is unguarded, and that is all that is worth anything, really.

"You must write every single day of your life. You must lurk in libraries to sniff books like perfumes & wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. May you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. & out of that love, remake a world." - Ray Bradbury

Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what. - Atticus Finch

i want to wear your sweatshirt to bed, watch scary movies with you, talk on the phone until sunrise, sneak out at night to look at the stars with you, play your favorite video game, make you watch chick flicks, kiss you in the rain, go on walks with you, laugh until i can't breath, hold hands, build a fort and have a snowball fight, sit in front of the fireplace and talk about life. i want to fall hopelessly in love with you.

"There isn't anyone you couldn't love once you've heard their story." -Mary Lou Kownacki

(Mister Roger's favorite quote)

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

-Plato

i've fallen for you like an amazonian tree.

which is to say:

hard, fast, and although unnoticed by most

of the world's population,

not without great consequence.

"Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark. In the hopeless swamps of the not quite, the not yet, and the not at all, do not let the hero in your soul perish and leave only frustration for the life you deserved, but never have been able to reach. The world you desire can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours."

-Ayn Rand

"Everything that is beautiful will eventually break our hearts OR our hands will eventually break everything that is beautiful."

The worst mistake you can make is to think you're alive when really, you're asleep in life's waiting room.

"These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves." -Gilbert Highet

I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others -- the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad. -Justin Safran Foer

Life is a battle;

Wear your scars with pride.

it's not who you are that holds you back, it's who you think you are not. - anonymous

I am not

I am not what you want

But I turn off the light

and take you out on plush dates

that involve popcorn and

rusty bicycles in Tokyo.

I suck on a pear flavored candy.

I want to be unique.

I want to be the one you love more than anything.