Gibson Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Gibson. Here they are! All 100 of them:

The future is there... looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become.
William Gibson (Pattern Recognition (Blue Ant, #1))
The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed. The Economist, December 4, 2003
William Gibson
Autumn is the hardest season. The leaves are all falling, and they're falling like they're falling in love with the ground.
Andrea Gibson
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
William Gibson (Neuromancer (Sprawl, #1))
I said to the sun, ‘Tell me about the big bang.’ The sun said, ‘it hurts to become.
Andrea Gibson
That night when you kissed me, I left a poem in your mouth, and you can hear some of the lines every time you breathe out.
Andrea Gibson
and I wonder if Beethoven held his breath the first time his fingers touched the keys the same way a soldier holds his breath the first time his finger clicks the trigger. We all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe.
Andrea Gibson
A doctor once told me I feel too much. I said, so does god. that’s why you can see the grand canyon from the moon.
Andrea Gibson
Before I die, I want to be somebody’s favorite hiding place, the place they can put everything they know they need to survive, every secret, every solitude, every nervous prayer, and be absolutely certain I will keep it safe. I will keep it safe.
Andrea Gibson
The trauma said, ‘Don’t write these poems. Nobody wants to hear you cry about the grief inside your bones.
Andrea Gibson (The Madness Vase)
When you want to know how things really work, study them when they're coming apart.
William Gibson (Zero History (Blue Ant, #3))
My mouth is a fire escape. The words coming out don’t care that they are naked. There is something burning in there.
Andrea Gibson (The Madness Vase)
Forests may be gorgeous but there is nothing more alive than a tree that learns how to grow in a cemetery.
Andrea Gibson
But whatever However Whenever this ends I want you to know That right now I love you forever
Andrea Gibson (How It Ends)
Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.
William Gibson
I could never trust anyone who's well adjusted to a sick society.
Andrea Gibson
Time moves in one direction, memory another. We are that strange species that constructs artifacts intended to counter the natural flow of forgetting.
William Gibson (Distrust That Particular Flavor)
Our hearts beat so loud the neighbours think we’re fucking when I’m just trying to find the nerve to touch your face.
Andrea Gibson
Because sometimes in life Ken doesn't always choose Barbie.
Rachel Gibson (See Jane Score (Chinooks Hockey Team #2))
To think, a sweater, is made entirely of knots. My stomach could clothe a village.
Andrea Gibson
Safety isn't always safe. You can find one on every gun.
Andrea Gibson
How many wars will it take us to learn that only the dead return?
Andrea Gibson
I know you think this world is too dark to even dream in color, but I’ve seen flowers bloom at midnight. I’ve seen kites fly in gray skies and they were real close to looking like the sunrise, and sometime it takes the most wounded wings the most broken things to notice how strong the breeze is, how precious the flight.
Andrea Gibson
I have fallen in love with you, and there is no future for us. That you burst into my life suddenly only a short time ago. That it's too fast, too soon, and you will leave the same way you came into my life. I'll turn around one day and you'll be gone.
Rachel Gibson (Lola Carlyle Reveals All)
Do you think anger is a sincere emotion or the timid motion of a fragile heart trying to beat away its pain?
Andrea Gibson
Your ignorance keeps dismembering every piece of patience I have left.
Andrea Gibson
I think I'd probably tell you that it's easier to desire and pursue the attention of tens of millions of total strangers than it is to accept the love and loyalty of the people closest to us.
William Gibson (Idoru (Bridge, #2))
The street finds its own uses for things.
William Gibson
Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding...
William Gibson (Neuromancer (Sprawl, #1))
You are not weak just because your heart feels so heavy.
Andrea Gibson
I would kiss you in the middle of the ocean during a lightning storm cuz I'd rather be left for dead than wondering what thunder sounds like.
Andrea Gibson
I want to try with someone who loves me enough to try with me. I want to grow old looking at the same face every morning. I want to grow old looking at the same face every night at the dinner table. I want to be one of those old couples you see still holding hands and laughing after fifty years of marriage. That's what I want. I want to be someone's forever.
Rachel Gibson (The Trouble With Valentine's Day (Chinooks Hockey Team, #3))
We all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe.
Andrea Gibson
And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.
William Gibson (Count Zero (Sprawl, #2))
When your heart is broken, you plant seeds in the cracks and pray for rain.
Andrea Gibson
she's wondering how many women are walking around this world feeling the tingling of their amputated wings remembering what it was to fly to sing
Andrea Gibson
I can guarantee a haircut will never tell you anything about someone's gender, who they love, or how they fuck.
Andrea Gibson
You can stand on the cliff of my heart and shout nothing but ‘ugly’ through me. I promise all I will echo back is ‘Beauty, beauty, you have always been beauty
Andrea Gibson
I’m never gonna wait that extra twenty minutes to text you back, and I’m never gonna play hard to get when I know your life has been hard enough already. When we all know everyone’s life has been hard enough already it’s hard to watch the game we make of love, like everyone’s playing checkers with their scars, saying checkmate whenever they get out without a broken heart. Just to be clear I don’t want to get out without a broken heart. I intend to leave this life so shattered there’s gonna have to be a thousand separate heavens for all of my flying parts.
Andrea Gibson
Yesterday i carved your name into the surface of an ice cube then held it against my chest til it melted into my aching pores today i cried so hard the neighbors knocked on my door and asked if I wanted to borrow some sugar.
Andrea Gibson
One of the most difficult things he'd ever done was turn away and leave her standing in the shadows.
Rachel Gibson (I'm In No Mood For Love (Writer Friends, #2))
I’d cut my soul into a million different pieces just to form a constellation to light your way home. I’d write love poems to the parts of yourself you can’t stand. I’d stand in the shadows of your heart and tell you I’m not afraid of your dark.
Andrea Gibson
Do you know they found land mines in woman's souls.
Andrea Gibson
Everyone’s chest is a living room wall with awkwardly placed photographs hiding fist-shaped holes.
Andrea Gibson
We see in order to move; we move in order to see.
William Gibson
You told me I was the best sex you'd ever had in your life...You couldn't get enough...At one point you were so loud I thought sure hotel security was going to beat down the door.
Rachel Gibson (I'm In No Mood For Love (Writer Friends, #2))
The day I can't pull something useful out of my ass is the day I quit sticking things up my ass.
Sean Gibson
I say, Gibson, we're old friends, and you're a fool if you take anything I say as an offence. Madam your wife and I did not hit it off the only time I ever saw her. I won't say she was silly, but I think one of us was silly, and it was not me.
Elizabeth Gaskell (Wives and Daughters)
Remind me that the most fertile lands were built by the fires of volcanoes.
Andrea Gibson (The Madness Vase)
If a tree fell in the forest, and you were the only one there to hear it; if its fall to the ground didn’t make a sound, would you panic in fear that you didn’t exist, or would you bask in the bliss of your nothingness?
Andrea Gibson
You liked me best when I was like an oil painting; perfectly arranged and silent.
S.T. Gibson (A Dowry of Blood (A Dowry of Blood, #1))
When the past is always with you, it may as well be present; and if it is present, it will be future as well.
William Gibson (Neuromancer (Sprawl, #1))
You have a heart of gold and I am kneeling in your bloodstream panning for the only thing that has ever felt like home.
Andrea Gibson
Lately I've been thinking about who I want to love, and how I want to love, and why I want to love the way I want to love, and what I need to learn to love that way, and how I need to become to become the kind of love I want to be. And when I break it all down, when I whittle it into a single breath, it essentially comes out like this: before I die, I want to be somebody's favorite hiding place, the place they can put everything they need to survive, every secret, every solitude, every nervous prayer, and be absolutely certain I will keep it safe. I will keep it safe.
Andrea Gibson
One of the liberating effects of science fiction when I was a teenager was precisely its ability to tune me into all sorts of strange data and make me realize that I wasn’t as totally isolated in perceiving the world as being monstrous and crazy
William Gibson
But when I thought I hit bottom, it started hitting back.
Andrea Gibson
Stand high long enough and your lightning will come.
William Gibson
You want the fairy tale." "I want a chance at it.
Rachel Gibson (I'm In No Mood For Love (Writer Friends, #2))
You could have kissed me or slit my throat and either would have made as much sense.
S.T. Gibson (A Dowry of Blood (A Dowry of Blood, #1))
The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables. Said if I could get down thirteen turnips a day I would be grounded, rooted. Said my head would not keep flying away to where the darkness lives. The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight. Said for twenty dollars she’d tell me what to do. I handed her the twenty. She said, “Stop worrying, darling. You will find a good man soon.” The first psycho therapist told me to spend three hours each day sitting in a dark closet with my eyes closed and ears plugged. I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinking about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet. The yogi told me to stretch everything but the truth. Said to focus on the out breath. Said everyone finds happiness when they care more about what they give than what they get. The pharmacist said, “Lexapro, Lamicatl, Lithium, Xanax.” The doctor said an anti-psychotic might help me forget what the trauma said. The trauma said, “Don’t write these poems. Nobody wants to hear you cry about the grief inside your bones.” But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi jumped from the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River convinced he was entirely alone.” My bones said, “Write the poems.
Andrea Gibson (The Madness Vase)
Things aren't different. Things are things.
William Gibson (Neuromancer (Sprawl, #1))
You did not let me keep my name, so I will strip you of yours. In this world you are what I say you are, and I say you are a ghost, a long night's fever dream that I have finally woken up from. I say you are the smoke-wisp memory of a flame, thawing ice suffering under an early spring sun, a chalk ledger of depts being wiped clean. I say you do not have a name.
S.T. Gibson (A Dowry of Blood (A Dowry of Blood, #1))
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it.
William Gibson
He took a duck in the face at 250 knots.
William Gibson (Pattern Recognition (Blue Ant, #1))
Would I use the word 'genius' to describe myself? No. 'Alive?' Perhaps. 'Befuddled?' Certainly.
Sean Gibson
Secrets...are the very root of cool.
William Gibson (Spook Country (Blue Ant, #2))
Our insanity is not that we see people who aren’t there. It’s that we ignore the ones who are.
Andrea Gibson
We have no future because our present is too volatile. We have only risk management. The spinning of the given moment's scenarios. Pattern recognition.
William Gibson (Pattern Recognition (Blue Ant, #1))
This is my last love letter to you, though some would call it a confession. I suppose both are a sort of gentle violence, putting down in ink what scorches the air when spoken aloud.
S.T. Gibson (A Dowry of Blood (A Dowry of Blood, #1))
You make me want to suck a bruise on you just to kiss it better. --Luc to Jane--
Rachel Gibson (See Jane Score (Chinooks Hockey Team #2))
Remember, your goodness as a person isn’t based on how much you give in relationships, and it isn’t selfish to set limits on people who keep on taking.
Lindsay C. Gibson (Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents)
Time is money, but also money is money.
William Gibson (Pattern Recognition (Blue Ant, #1))
I’ve written this poem before but always through a window, never through an open door.
Andrea Gibson
All the speed he took, all the turns he'd taken and the corners he'd cut in Night City, and still he'd see the matrix in his sleep, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colorless void...
William Gibson (Neuromancer (Sprawl, #1))
Just because you refuse to acknowledge something, refuse to look at it or think about it, doesn’t mean it’s not there, that it doesn’t affect you and the choices you make in your life.
Rachel Gibson (Tangled Up In You (Truly Idaho, #2; Writer Friends, #3))
Even loneliness, hollow and cold, becomes so familiar it starts to feel like a friend.
S.T. Gibson (A Dowry of Blood (A Dowry of Blood, #1))
There must be some Tommy Hilfiger event horizon, beyond which it is impossible to be more derivative, more removed from the source, more devoid of soul.
William Gibson (Pattern Recognition (Blue Ant, #1))
This is for the times you went through hell so someone else wouldn’t have to.
Andrea Gibson (When The Bough Breaks)
You are a mystery I promise I will never try to solve.
Andrea Gibson (Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns)
I feel like I should probably ask you to leave. But I don’t really want you to go. I want you to stay, but I know you shouldn’t. - Hope
Rachel Gibson (True Confessions (Gospel, Idaho #1))
I want you to tell me about every person you’ve ever been in love with. Tell me why you loved them, then tell me why they loved you. Tell me about a day in your life you didn’t think you’d live through. Tell me what the word home means to you and tell me in a way that I’ll know your mother’s name just by the way you describe your bedroom when you were eight. See, I want to know the first time you felt the weight of hate, and if that day still trembles beneath your bones. Do you prefer to play in puddles of rain or bounce in the bellies of snow? And if you were to build a snowman, would you rip two branches from a tree to build your snowman arms or would leave your snowman armless for the sake of being harmless to the tree? And if you would, would you notice how that tree weeps for you because your snowman has no arms to hug you every time you kiss him on the cheek? Do you kiss your friends on the cheek? Do you sleep beside them when they’re sad even if it makes your lover mad? Do you think that anger is a sincere emotion or just the timid motion of a fragile heart trying to beat away its pain? See, I wanna know what you think of your first name, and if you often lie awake at night and imagine your mother’s joy when she spoke it for the very first time. I want you to tell me all the ways you’ve been unkind. Tell me all the ways you’ve been cruel. Tell me, knowing I often picture Gandhi at ten years old beating up little boys at school. If you were walking by a chemical plant where smokestacks were filling the sky with dark black clouds would you holler “Poison! Poison! Poison!” really loud or would you whisper “That cloud looks like a fish, and that cloud looks like a fairy!” Do you believe that Mary was really a virgin? Do you believe that Moses really parted the sea? And if you don’t believe in miracles, tell me — how would you explain the miracle of my life to me? See, I wanna know if you believe in any god or if you believe in many gods or better yet what gods believe in you. And for all the times that you’ve knelt before the temple of yourself, have the prayers you asked come true? And if they didn’t, did you feel denied? And if you felt denied, denied by who? I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirror on a day you’re feeling good. I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirror on a day you’re feeling bad. I wanna know the first person who taught you your beauty could ever be reflected on a lousy piece of glass. If you ever reach enlightenment will you remember how to laugh? Have you ever been a song? Would you think less of me if I told you I’ve lived my entire life a little off-key? And I’m not nearly as smart as my poetry I just plagiarize the thoughts of the people around me who have learned the wisdom of silence. Do you believe that concrete perpetuates violence? And if you do — I want you to tell me of a meadow where my skateboard will soar. See, I wanna know more than what you do for a living. I wanna know how much of your life you spend just giving, and if you love yourself enough to also receive sometimes. I wanna know if you bleed sometimes from other people’s wounds, and if you dream sometimes that this life is just a balloon — that if you wanted to, you could pop, but you never would ‘cause you’d never want it to stop. If a tree fell in the forest and you were the only one there to hear — if its fall to the ground didn’t make a sound, would you panic in fear that you didn’t exist, or would you bask in the bliss of your nothingness? And lastly, let me ask you this: If you and I went for a walk and the entire walk, we didn’t talk — do you think eventually, we’d… kiss? No, wait. That’s asking too much — after all, this is only our first date.
Andrea Gibson
His eyes were eggs of unstable crystal, vibrating with a frequency whose name was rain and the sound of trains, suddenly sprouting a humming forest of hair-fine glass spines.
William Gibson (Neuromancer (Sprawl, #1))
Give me some sugar.
Rachel Gibson (Simply Irresistible (Chinooks Hockey Team, #1))
I know this world is far from perfect. I am not the type to mistake a streetlight for the moon. I know our wounds are deep as the Atlantic. But every ocean has a shoreline and every shoreline has a tide that is constantly returning to wake the songbirds in our hands, to wake the music in our bones, to place one fearless kiss on the mouth of that new born river that has to run through the center of our hearts to find its way home.
Andrea Gibson (Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns)
I have never met a heavy heart that wasn’t a phone booth with a red cape inside Some people will never understand the kind of superpower it takes for some people to just walk outside Some days I know my smile looks like the gutter of a falling house But my hands are always holding tight to the ripchord of believing
Andrea Gibson
And if there’s one thing in this world I’ve ever known for sure, it’s that this girl is gonna crush me like a small bug, leave me so fucking broken there’ll be body bags beneath my eyes from nights I cried so hard the stars died. But I’m like, go ahead. I’m all yours. I would kiss you in the middle of the ocean during a lightning storm, cause I’d rather be left for dead than left to wonder what thunder sounds like.
Andrea Gibson
Cause I don't wanna be a witness to this life, I want to be charged and convicted, ear lifted to her song like a bouquet of yes because my heart is a parachute that has never opened in time and I wanna fuck up that pattern, leave a hole where the cold comes in and fill it every day with her sun, 'cause anyone who has ever sat in lotus for more than a few seconds knows it takes a hell of a lot more muscle to stay than to go
Andrea Gibson (Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns)
...It’s hard to watch the game we make of love, like everyone’s playing checkers with their scars, saying checkmate whenever they get out without a broken heart. Just to be clear I don’t want to get out without a broken heart. I intend to leave this life so shattered there’s gonna have to be a thousand separate heavens for all of my flying parts.
Andrea Gibson
We have no idea, now, of who or what the inhabitants of our future might be. In that sense, we have no future. Not in the sense that our grandparents had a future, or thought they did. Fully imagined cultural futures were the luxury of another day, one in which 'now' was of some greater duration. For us, of course, things can change so abruptly, so violently, so profoundly, that futures like our grandparents' have insufficient 'now' to stand on. We have no future because our present is too volatile. ... We have only risk management. The spinning of the given moment's scenarios. Pattern recognition
William Gibson (Pattern Recognition (Blue Ant, #1))
Addictions [...] started out like magical pets, pocket monsters. They did extraordinary tricks, showed you things you hadn't seen, were fun. But came, through some gradual dire alchemy, to make decisions for you. Eventually, they were making your most crucial life-decisions. And they were [...] less intelligent than goldfish.
William Gibson (Zero History (Blue Ant, #3))
..when a war ends, what does that look like exactly? do the cells in the body stop detonating themselves? does the orphanage stop screaming for its mother? when the sand in the desert has been melted down to glass and our reflection is not something we can stand to look at does the white flag make for a perfect blindfold? yesterday i was told a story about this little girl in Iraq, six-years-old, who cannot fall asleep because when she does she dreams of nothing but the day she watched her dog eat her neighbor's corpse. if you told her war is over do you think she can sleep?
Andrea Gibson (The Madness Vase)
I want you to tell me about every person you've ever been in love with. Tell me why you loved them, then tell me why they loved you. Tell me about a day in your life you didn't think you’d live through. Tell me what the word “home” means to you and tell me in a way that I’ll know your mothers name just by the way you describe your bed room when you were 8. See, I wanna know the first time you felt the weight of hate and if that day still trembles beneath your bones. Do you kiss your friends on the cheek? Do you think that anger is a sincere emotion or just the timid motion of a fragile heart trying to beat away its pain? See, I wanna know what you think of your first name. And if you often lie awake at night and imagine your mothers joy when she spoke it for the very first time. I want you tell me all the ways you've been unkind. Tell me all the ways you've been cruel.Do you believe that Mary was really a virgin? Do you believe that Moses really parted the sea? And if you don’t believe in miracles, tell me, how would you explain the miracle of my life to me? And for all the times you've knelt before the temple of yourself, have the prayers you've asked come true? And if they didn't did you feel denied? And if you felt denied, denied by who[m]? I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirror on a day you’re feeling good. I wanna know what you see in the mirror on a day a day you’re feeling bad. I wanna know the first person who ever taught you your beauty could ever be reflected on a lousy piece of glass. If you ever reach enlightenment, will you remember how to laugh? Have you ever been a song? See, I wanna know more than what you do for a living. I wanna know how much of your life you spend just giving. And if you love yourself enough to also receive sometimes. I wanna know if you bleed sometimes through other people’s wounds. And if you dream sometimes that this life is just a balloon that if you wanted to you could pop—but you never would because you’d never want it to stop.
Andrea Gibson
You healed my heart and taught me that forgiveness is about love. I used to think that any man of mine had to live up to a list of my expectations. I was wrong. Love has no list. You are the pinch in my heart. The catch in my breath. The reason my stomach tumbles and why I lie awake at night just to look at you. And every time I look at you, I know that I want to look at you forever
Rachel Gibson (Any Man of Mine (Chinooks Hockey Team, #6))
She knows, now, absolutely, hearing the white noise that is London, that Damien's theory of jet lag is correct: that her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can't move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.
William Gibson (Pattern Recognition (Blue Ant, #1))
Baby, I have no idea how this will end. Maybe the equator will fall like a hula hoop from the earth’s hips and our mouths will freeze mid-kiss on our 80th anniversary or maybe tomorrow my absolute insanity combined with the absolute obstacle course of your communication skills will leave us like a love letter in a landfill. But whatever, however, whenever this ends I want you to know that right now, I love you forever.
Andrea Gibson (How It Ends)
I still love you like moons love the planets they circle around, like children love recess bells. I still hear the sound of you and think of playgrounds where outcasts who stutter beneath braces and bruises and acne are finally learning that their rich handsome bullies are never gonna grow up to be happy. I think of happy when I think of you. So wherever you are I hope you’re happy, I really do. I hope the stars are kissing your cheeks tonight I hope you finally found a way to quit smoking I hope your lungs are open and breathing this life I hope there’s a kite in your hand that’s flying all the way up to Orion and you still got a thousand yards of string to let out. I hope you’re smiling like God is pulling at the corners of your mouth, ‘cause I might be naked and lonely shaking branches for bones but I’m still time zones away from who I was the day before we met. You were the first mile where my heart broke a sweat, and I wish you were here; I wish you’d never left; but mostly I wish you well. I wish you my very, very best
Andrea Gibson
My mouth is a fire escape. The words coming out don't care that they are naked. There is something burning in here. When it burns I hold my own shell to my ear, listen for the parade from when I was seven, when the man who played the bagpipes wore a skirt. He was from Scotland. I wanted to move there. Wanted my spine to be the spine of an unpublished book, my faith the first and last page. The day my ribcage became monkey bars for a girl hanging on my every word they said, "You are not allowed to love her." Tried to take me by the throat to teach me, "You are not a boy." I had to unlearn their prison speak, refusing to make wishes on the star on the sheriff's chest. I started taking to the stars in the sky instead. I said, "Tell me about the big bang." The stars said, "It hurts to become.
Andrea Gibson (The Madness Vase)
For Jenn At 12 years old I started bleeding with the moon and beating up boys who dreamed of becoming astronauts. I fought with my knuckles white as stars, and left bruises the shape of Salem. There are things we know by heart, and things we don't. At 13 my friend Jen tried to teach me how to blow rings of smoke. I'd watch the nicotine rising from her lips like halos, but I could never make dying beautiful. The sky didn't fill with colors the night I convinced myself veins are kite strings you can only cut free. I suppose I love this life, in spite of my clenched fist. I open my palm and my lifelines look like branches from an Aspen tree, and there are songbirds perched on the tips of my fingers, and I wonder if Beethoven held his breath the first time his fingers touched the keys the same way a soldier holds his breath the first time his finger clicks the trigger. We all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe. But my lungs remember the day my mother took my hand and placed it on her belly and told me the symphony beneath was my baby sister's heartbeat. And I knew life would tremble like the first tear on a prison guard's hardened cheek, like a prayer on a dying man's lips, like a vet holding a full bottle of whisky like an empty gun in a war zone… just take me just take me Sometimes the scales themselves weigh far too much, the heaviness of forever balancing blue sky with red blood. We were all born on days when too many people died in terrible ways, but you still have to call it a birthday. You still have to fall for the prettiest girl on the playground at recess and hope she knows you can hit a baseball further than any boy in the whole third grade and I've been running for home through the windpipe of a man who sings while his hands playing washboard with a spoon on a street corner in New Orleans where every boarded up window is still painted with the words We're Coming Back like a promise to the ocean that we will always keep moving towards the music, the way Basquait slept in a cardboard box to be closer to the rain. Beauty, catch me on your tongue. Thunder, clap us open. The pupils in our eyes were not born to hide beneath their desks. Tonight lay us down to rest in the Arizona desert, then wake us washing the feet of pregnant women who climbed across the border with their bellies aimed towards the sun. I know a thousand things louder than a soldier's gun. I know the heartbeat of his mother. Don't cover your ears, Love. Don't cover your ears, Life. There is a boy writing poems in Central Park and as he writes he moves and his bones become the bars of Mandela's jail cell stretching apart, and there are men playing chess in the December cold who can't tell if the breath rising from the board is their opponents or their own, and there's a woman on the stairwell of the subway swearing she can hear Niagara Falls from her rooftop in Brooklyn, and I'm remembering how Niagara Falls is a city overrun with strip malls and traffic and vendors and one incredibly brave river that makes it all worth it. Ya'll, I know this world is far from perfect. I am not the type to mistake a streetlight for the moon. I know our wounds are deep as the Atlantic. But every ocean has a shoreline and every shoreline has a tide that is constantly returning to wake the songbirds in our hands, to wake the music in our bones, to place one fearless kiss on the mouth of that brave river that has to run through the center of our hearts to find its way home.
Andrea Gibson
Because they’re so attuned to feelings, internalizers are extremely sensitive to the quality of emotional intimacy in their relationships. Their entire personality longs for emotional spontaneity and intimacy, and they can’t be satisfied with less. Therefore, when they’re raised by immature and emotionally phobic parents, they feel painfully lonely. If there’s anything internalizers have in common, it’s their need to share their inner experience. As children, their need for genuine emotional connection is the central fact of their existence. Nothing hurts their spirit more than being around someone who won’t engage with them emotionally. A blank face kills something in them. They read people closely, looking for signs that they’ve made a connection. This isn’t a social urge, like wanting people to chat with; it’s a powerful hunger to connect heart to heart with a like-minded person who can understand them. They find nothing more exhilarating than clicking with someone who gets them. When they can’t make that kind of connection, they feel emotional loneliness. From
Lindsay C. Gibson (Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents)
I WANT YOU TO TELL ME ABOUT EVERY PERSON YOU’VE EVER BEEN IN LOVE WITH. TELL ME WHY YOU LOVED THEM, THEN TELL ME WHY THEY LOVED YOU. TELL ME ABOUT A DAY IN YOUR LIFE YOU DIDN’T THINK YOU’D LIVE THROUGH. TELL ME WHAT THE WORD “HOME” MEANS TO YOU AND TELL ME IN A WAY THAT I’LL KNOW YOUR MOTHER’S NAME JUST BY THE WAY YOU DESCRIBE YOUR BED ROOM WHEN YOU WERE 8. SEE, I WANNA KNOW THE FIRST TIME YOU FELT THE WEIGHT OF HATE AND IF THAT DAY STILL TREMBLES BENEATH YOUR BONES. DO YOU PREFER TO PLAY IN PUDDLES OF RAIN OR BOUNCE IN THE BELLIES OF SNOW? AND IF YOU WERE TO BUILD A SNOWMAN, WOULD YOU RIP TWO BRANCHES FROM A TREE TO BUILD YOUR SNOWMAN ARMS? OR WOULD YOU LEAVE THE SNOWMAN ARMLESS FOR THE SAKE OF BEING HARMLESS TO THE TREE? AND IF YOU WOULD, WOULD YOU NOTICE HOW THAT TREE WEEPS FOR YOU BECAUSE YOUR SNOWMAN HAS NO ARMS TO HUG YOU EVERY TIME YOU KISS HIM ON THE CHEEK? DO YOU KISS YOUR FRIENDS ON THE CHEEK? DO YOU SLEEP BESIDE THEM WHEN THEY’RE SAD, EVEN IF IT MAKES YOUR LOVER MAD? DO YOU THINK THAT ANGER IS A SINCERE EMOTION OR JUST THE TIMID MOTION OF A FRAGILE HEART TRYING TO BEAT AWAY ITS PAIN? SEE, I WANNA KNOW WHAT YOU THINK OF YOUR FIRST NAME. AND IF YOU OFTEN LIE AWAKE AT NIGHT AND IMAGINE YOUR MOTHER’S JOY WHEN SHE SPOKE IT FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME. I WANT YOU TELL ME ALL THE WAYS YOU’VE BEEN UNKIND. TELL ME ALL THE WAYS YOU’VE BEEN CRUEL. SEE, I WANNA KNOW MORE THAN WHAT YOU DO FOR A LIVING. I WANNA KNOW HOW MUCH OF YOUR LIFE YOU SPEND JUST GIVING. AND IF YOU LOVE YOURSELF ENOUGH TO ALSO RECEIVE SOMETIMES. I WANNA KNOW IF YOU BLEED SOMETIMES THROUGH OTHER PEOPLE’S WOUNDS.
Andrea Gibson