β
If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled?
β
β
Jodi Picoult (Nineteen Minutes (Platinum Fiction Series))
β
Youβll get over itβ¦β Itβs the clichΓ©s that cause the trouble. To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You donβt get over it because βitβ is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it? The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?
β
β
Jeanette Winterson (Written on the Body)
β
Maybe we all have darkness inside of us and some of us are better at dealing with it than others.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
Anyone who has actually been that sad can tell you that there's nothing beautiful or literary or mysterious about depression.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
You're like a grey sky. You're beautiful, even though you don't want to be.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
I will be stronger than my sadness.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
I cannot go to school today"
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
"I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry.
I'm going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I've counted sixteen chicken pox.
And there's one more - that's seventeen,
And don't you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut, my eyes are blue,
It might be the instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I'm sure that my left leg is broke.
My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button's caving in.
My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained,
My 'pendix pains each time it rains.
My toes are cold, my toes are numb,
I have a sliver in my thumb.
My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There's a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is ...
What? What's that? What's that you say?
You say today is .............. Saturday?
G'bye, I'm going out to play!
β
β
Shel Silverstein
β
How can you be happy in this world? You have a hole in your heart. You have a gateway inside you to lands beyond the world you know. They will call you, as you grow.
β
β
Neil Gaiman (The Ocean at the End of the Lane)
β
Sometimes loneliness makes the loudest noise.
β
β
Aaron Ben-Ze'ev
β
Sometimes I wonder if my heart is like a black hole--it's so dense that there's no room for light, but that doesn't mean it can't still suck me in.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
Itβs always hard to lose somebody. It leaves a hole in you heart that never grows back.
β
β
Kevin Brooks (Lucas)
β
I wonder if that's how darkness wins, by convincing us to trap it inside ourselves, instead of emptying it out.
I don't want it to win.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
Depression is like a heaviness that you canβt ever escape. It crushes down on you, making even the smallest things like tying your shoes or chewing on toast seem like a twenty-mile hike uphill. Depression is a part of you; itβs in your bones and your blood.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
In the end, he was nobody to Adam, he was nobody to Ronan. Adam spit his words back at him and Ronan squandered however many second chances he gave him. Gansey was just a guy with a lot of stuff and a hole inside him that chewed away more of his heart every year.
β
β
Maggie Stiefvater (The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle, #1))
β
Itβs funny how once you like someone, even the unattractive things they do somehow become endearing.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
It's like your sadness is so deep and overwhelming that you're worried it will drown everyone else in your life if you let them too close to it.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
I wish I could draw you how I see you. I'd draw a boy with the most magnetic smile, and the kindest hands, and eyes that are gloomy, but can sometimes be bright. I'd draw a boy who deserves to see the ocean.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
Life can seem awful and unfixable until the universe shifts a little and the observation point is altered, and then suddenly, everything seems more bearable.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
I once read in my physics book that the universe begs to be observed, that energy travels and transfers when people pay attention. Maybe that's what love really boils down to--having someone who cares enough to pay attention so that you're encouraged to travel and transfer, to make your potential energy spark into kinetic energy.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
..because never in my life have I ever been picked when there was another alternative.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
Her best friend was gone and nobody understood that no amount of makeup, fresh air or shopping was going to fill the hole in her heart.
β
β
Cecelia Ahern (P.S. I Love You (P.S. I Love You, #1))
β
He was fucking sad. That's it. That's the point. He knows life is never going to get any different for him. That there's no fixing him. It's always going to be the same monotonous depressing bullshit. Boring, sad, boring, sad. He just wants it to be over.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
His heart's occupied elsewhere," said Ben from behind me. "And even if it weren't he's not interested in your kind. But, I'm available and ready."
"You don't have a heart," I told him. "Just a gaping hole where it should have been."
"All the more reason for you to give me yours."
I pounded my forehead against Warren 's back. "Tell me Ben's not flirting with me."
"Hey," said Ben sounding hurt. "I was talking cannibalism, not romance.
β
β
Patricia Briggs (Blood Bound (Mercy Thompson, #2))
β
You know, Zellie, there are enough broken things in the world. You shouldn't go around breaking things just for the fun of it.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest. I was standing on the lawn and I fell. The bullet hole opened wide and my heart rolled out of my rib cage and down into a flower bed. Blood gushed rhythmically from my open wound,
then from my eyes,
my ears,
my mouth.
It tasted like salt and failure. The bright red shame of being unloved soaked the grass in front of our house, the bricks of the path, the steps of the porch. My heart spasmed among the peonies like a trout.
β
β
E. Lockhart (We Were Liars)
β
I like other people's words. They fill me up.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
Maybe the sadness comes just before the insanity
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
Do you think itβs easy for me? No, I donβt remember you. I donβt remember holding you or talking to you or falling in love with youβbut I walk around with a giant hole in my heart all the time. I feel your absence every second of the day. It aches and nothing soothes it. Losing you is bad enough, but I donβt even get the comfort of remembering that I had you once.
-Haden
β
β
Gwen Hayes (Falling Under (Falling Under, #1))
β
Heβs no longer the person I want to die with; heβs the person I want to be alive with.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
Something inside me clicks. It's like I've spent my whole life fiddling with a complicated combination only to discover I was toying with the wrong lock.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
You can fill your life with nice things, but nice things donβt fill the holes in your soul.β
βWhat fills the holes in a soul?β
Samsonβs eyes scroll over my face for a few seconds. βPieces of someone elseβs soul.
β
β
Colleen Hoover (Heart Bones)
β
Sympathy is common. Knowing the exact shape of the hole someoneβs loss leaves in your heart is rare.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (Queen of Air and Darkness (The Dark Artifices, #3))
β
The days will always be brighter because he existed.
The nights will always be darker because he's gone.
And no matter what anybody says about grief, and about time healing all wounds, the truth is, there are certain sorrows that never fade away until the heart stops beating and the last breath is taken.
β
β
Tiffanie DeBartolo (God-Shaped Hole)
β
As a general rule, I like holes. A hole at the top of my tank gives me freedom. But I do not like the hole in her heart. She only has one, not three, like me. Tovaβs heart. I will do everything I can to help her fill it.
β
β
Shelby Van Pelt (Remarkably Bright Creatures)
β
Sorry.
Sorry means you feel the pulse of other people's pain as well as your own, and saying it means you take a share of it. And so it binds us together, makes us trodden and sodden as one another. Sorry is a lot of things. It's a hole refilled. A debt repaid. Sorry is the wake of misdeed. It's the crippling ripple of consequence. Sorry is sadness, just as knowing is sadness. Sorry is sometimes self-pity. But Sorry, really, is not about you. It's theirs to take or leave.
Sorry means you leave yourself open, to embrace or to ridicule or to revenge. Sorry is a question that begs forgiveness, because the metronome of a good heart won't settle until things are set right and true. Sorry doesn't take things back, but it pushes things forward. It bridges the gap. Sorry is a sacrament. It's an offering. A gift.
β
β
Craig Silvey (Jasper Jones)
β
She also understood there was a hole in her heart where her son should be, that she was a wicked, selfish woman for wishing him back.
β
β
Shannon Celebi (Driving Off Bridges (Small Town Ghosts))
β
And this time, I can feel my hand. I can feel everything. And I want to keep feeling everything. Even the painful, awful, terrible things. Because feeling things is what lets us know that weβre alive.
And I want to be alive.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
I don't like songs about wanting things. I like songs about letting go, saying goodbye.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
I bet if you cut open my stomach, the black slug of depression would slide out.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
I spend a lot of time wondering what dying feels like. What dying sounds like. If Iβll burst like those notes, let out my last cries of pain, and then go silent forever. Or maybe Iβll turn into a shadowy static thatβs barely there, if you just listen hard enough.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
I have a hole where my heart should be, she thought, and nowhere else to go.
β
β
George R.R. Martin (A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, #4))
β
As mankind grew obsessed with its hours, the sorrow of lost time became a permanent hole in the human heart. People fretted over missed chances, over inefficient days; they worried constantly about how long they would live, because counting lifeβs moments had led, inevitably, to counting them down. Soon, in every nation and in every language, time became the most precious commodity.
β
β
Mitch Albom (The Time Keeper)
β
Girls like her, my grandfather once warned me, girls like her turn into women with eyes like bullet holes and mouths made of knives. They are always restless. They are always hungry. They are bad news. They will drink you down like a shot of whisky. Falling in love with them is like falling down a flight of stairs. What no one told me, with all those warnings, is that even after youβve fallen, even after you know how painful it is, youβd still get in line to do it again.
β
β
Holly Black (Black Heart (Curse Workers, #3))
β
You take the breath right out of me
You left a hole where my heart should be
β
β
Breaking Benjamin
β
I have a big hole in my heart," I said. "But it'll close over."
I don't want to sound all Dr. Phil," she said. "But don't let the scab seal the pain in, okay?"
That's good advice," I said. "I hope I can manage it.
β
β
Charlaine Harris (Definitely Dead (Sookie Stackhouse, #6))
β
I wish gravity would go away and just let us all be a big mess.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
He knows what he'll find if he digs deeper. there's no rush to unpack my insides. he understands there is nothing special about emptiness, nothing interesting about depression.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
A family can be the bane of one's existence. A family can also be most of the meaning of one's existence. I don't know whether my family is bane or meaning, but they have surely gone away and left a large hole in my heart.
β
β
Keri Hulme (The Bone People)
β
Iβve been walking around with a hollow chasm in my chest where my heart used to be.
But that gaping hole is full again. My heart is back, because Jamie is here.
And he fucking loves me.
β
β
Sarina Bowen (Him (Him, #1))
β
I think he's looking for comfort, but I don't have any to give.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
Paintings are seldom guilty and often framed for crimes they did not commit. Some cover holes-holes in walls, holes in lives. Some make holes-in wallets, holes in hearts...in negative space.
β
β
Marilyn Manson
β
He couldnβt stand it, all of this inside him. In the end, he was nobody to Adam, he was nobody to Ronan. Adam spit his words back at him and Ronan squandered however many second chances he gave him. Gansey was just a guy with a lot of stuff and a hole inside him that chewed away more of his heart every year. They were always walking away from him. But he never seemed able to walk away from them.
β
β
Maggie Stiefvater (The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle, #1))
β
I want to run or die or get fucked up. I want to be blind and dumb and have no heart. I want to crawl in a hole and never come out. I want to wipe my existence straight off the map. Straight off the fucking map.
β
β
James Frey
β
Love can give you such happiness, then can break the very heart it filled, leaving a hole that can never be fixed or protected by any armour.
β
β
Kevin McLeod (The Viking's Apprentice (The Viking's Apprentice, #1))
β
We are sometimes dragged into a pit of unhappiness by someone elseβs opinion that we do not look happy.
β
β
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
β
I don't know how to describe it, but the more I stare at him, the more I see his grief wrapped around him like shackles he can never take off.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
What people never understand is that depression isn't about the outside; it's about the inside. Something inside me is wrong. Sure, there are things in my life that make me feel alone, but nothing makes me feel more isolated and terrified than my own voice in my head.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
This hole in my heart is in the shape of you. No one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?
β
β
Jeanette Winterson (Written on the Body)
β
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
β
β
Andrea Gibson (Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns)
β
My heart is burning a hole in my chest and every time you speak to me, it keeps sinking, and I'm left with nothing but ashes. I wish she were talking to me, because the more she speaks to me, the more my heart flutters like a rising phoenix.
-Karen Quan and Jarod Kintz
β
β
Karen Quan (liQUID PROse QUOtes)
β
BLUE SWEATER
Bom Bom...
Bom Bom...
Bom Bom...
Do you hear that?
That's the sound of my heart beating...
Bom Bom...
Bom Bom...
Bom Bom...
Do you hear that? That's the sound of your heart beating.
It was the first day of October. I was wearing my blue sweater, you know the one I bought at Dillardβs? The one with a double knitted hem and holes in the ends of the sleeves that I could poke my thumbs through when it was cold but I didn't feel like wearing gloves? It was the same sweater you said made my eyes look like reflections of the stars on the ocean.
You promised to love me forever that night...
and boy
did you
ever!
It was the first day of December this time. I was wearing my blue sweater, you know the one I bought at Dillardβs? The one with a double knitted hem and holes in the ends of the sleeves that I could poke my thumbs through when it was cold but I didn't feel like wearing gloves? It was the same sweater you said made my eyes look like reflections of the stars on the ocean.
I told you I was three weeks late
You said it was fate.
You promised to love me forever that night...
and boy
did you
ever!
It was the first day of May. I was wearing my blue sweater, although this time the double stitched hem was worn
and the strength of each thread tested as they were pulled tight against my growing belly. You know the one. The same one I bought at Dillardβs? The one with holes in the ends of the
sleeves that I could poke my thumbs through when it was cold but I didn't feel like wearing gloves? It was the same sweater you said made my eyes look like reflections of the stars on the
ocean.
The SAME sweater you RIPPED off of my body as you shoved me to the
floor,
calling me a
whore
,
telling me
you didn't love me
anymore.
Bom Bom...
Bom Bom...
Bom Bom...
Do you hear that? That's the sound of my heart beating.
Bom Bom...
Bom Bom...
Bom Bom...
Do you hear that? That's the sound of your heart
beating.
(There is a long silence as she clasps her hands to her stomach, tears streaming down her face)
Do you hear that? Of course you don't. That's the silence
of my womb.
Because you
RIPPED
OFF
MY
SWEATER!
β
β
Colleen Hoover (Slammed (Slammed, #1))
β
Sebastian lay a few feet away from her, on his back. There was a great blackened hole across the front of his chest. He turned his head toward her, his face taut and white with pain, and her heart contracted.
His eyes were green.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
β
He could feel the strong, steady beat of Isabelle's heart.
'I thought you were dead,' she went on. 'I saw you fall down, and--I thought you were dead.'
Simon let her hold him, propping himself up on his hands. He realized that he was listing like a ship with a hole in its side, and tried not to move. He was afraid that if he did, he would fall over. 'I am dead.'
'I know,' Izzy snapped. I mean more dead than usual.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Lost Souls (The Mortal Instruments, #5))
β
Some girls have to go to college to discover what they are good at; some are born doing what they must without even truly knowing why. I felt a hole in my heart shaped like a dark door I needed to guard.
β
β
Catherynne M. Valente (The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There (Fairyland, #2))
β
When relationships become tempestuous, and our hearts cannot endure the cracks of emotional blizzards, we must retreat for a while into the rabbit hole of our inner world to foster insight, redeem ourselves, and recover mental balance. (βThe Infinite Wisdom of Meditationβ)
β
β
Erik Pevernagie
β
Vlad's heart sank into his stomach, then squeezed its way down his leg and popped out of the hole in his shoe, where it struck the floor and broke.
β
β
Heather Brewer (Eighth Grade Bites (The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod, #1))
β
In these moments, it always feels like my skin is too thin, like everyone can see right inside me, can see my empty and dark insides.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
But as things got thinner, more full of holes, our hearts got thinner, too, diluted somehow. I suppose that kept things in balance.
β
β
YΕko Ogawa (The Memory Police)
β
In the vaults of our hearts and brains, danger waits. All the chambers are not lovely, light and high. There are holes in the floor of the mind, like those in a medieval dungeon floor - the stinking oubliettes, named for forgetting, bottle-shaped cells in solid rock with the trapdoor in the top. Nothing escapes from them quietly to ease us. A quake, some betrayal by our safeguards, and sparks of memory fire the noxious gases - things trapped for years fly free, ready to explode in pain and drive us to dangerous behavior...
β
β
Thomas Harris (Hannibal (Hannibal Lecter, #3))
β
That which tears open our souls, those holes that splatter our sight, may actually become the thin, open places to see through the mess of this place to the heart-aching beauty beyond. To Him. To the God whom we endlessly crave.
β
β
Ann Voskamp (One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are)
β
She put a hand on his hip and turned him to her. "But things could go wrong, so i want to tell you something while it's just the two of us, Eddie. I want to tell you how much I love you." She spoke simply, with no drama.
I know you do," he said, "but I'll be damned if I know why."
Because you made me feel whole," she said. "When I was younger, I used to vacillate between thinking love was this great and glorious mystery and thinking it was just something a bunch of Hollywood move producers made up to sell more tickets in the Depression, when Dish Night kind of played out."
Eddie laughed.
Now I think that all of us are born with a hole in our hearts, and we go around looking for the person who can fill it. You...Eddie, you fill me up.
β
β
Stephen King (Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower, #5))
β
Sometimes it takes watching someone else observe how you live to realize exactly how you live.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
What fills the holes in a soul?β Samsonβs eyes scroll over my face for a few seconds. βPieces of someone elseβs soul.
β
β
Colleen Hoover (Heart Bones)
β
But though sheβs told a longer version of the story a thousand times before to a thousand different people, she gets the feeling that Oliver might understand better than anyone else. Itβs something about the way heβs looking at her, his eyes punching a neat little hole in her heart. Sheβs knows itβs not real: Itβs the illusion of closeness, the false confidence of a hushed and darkened plane, but she doesnβt mind. For the moment, at least, it feels real.
β
β
Jennifer E. Smith (The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight)
β
Depression is like a heaviness that you canβt ever escape. It crushes down on you, making even the smallest things like tying your shoes or chewing on toast seem like a twenty-mile hike uphill. Depression is a part of you; itβs in your bones and your blood. If I know anything about it, this is what I know: Itβs impossible to escape.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
How can you be happy in this world? You have a hole in your heart. You have a gateway inside you to lands beyond the world you know. They will call you, as you grow. There can never be a time when you forget them, when you are not, in your heart, questing after something you cannot have, something you cannot even properly imagine, the lack of which will spoil your sleep and your day and your life, until you close your eyes for the final time, until your loved ones give you poison and sell you to anatomy, and even then you will die with a hole inside you, and you will wail and curse at a life ill-lived.
β
β
Neil Gaiman (The Ocean at the End of the Lane)
β
But don't forget who you really are. And I'm not talking about your so-called real name. All names are made up by someone else, even the one your parents gave you.
Β You know who you really are. When you're alone at night, looking up at the stars, or maybe lying in your bed in total darkness, you know that nameless person inside you.
Β Your life is about to be ripped apart. You will be turned into a digging machine. Your muscles will toughen. So will your heart and soul. That's necessary for survival. But don't lose touch with that person deep inside you, or else you won't really have survived at all.
β
β
Louis Sachar (Stanley Yelnats' Survival Guide to Camp Green Lake (Holes, #1.5))
β
And she wept as well for the others lost in the Dark War, and she wept for her mother and the loss she had endured, and she wept for Emma and the Blackthorns, remembering how they had fought back tears when she had told them that she had seen Mark in the tunnels of Faerie, and how he belonged to the Hunt now, and she wept for Simon and the hole in her heart where he had been, and the she would miss him every day until she died, and she wept for herself and the changes that had been wrought in her, because sometimes even change for the better felt like a little death.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
β
The hole in my heart, I canβt even begin to describe. Itβs hard when you open your heart and let someone in and then suddenly theyβre not in it anymore. It doesnβt matter whose fault it is; that empty spot stings so bad that you want to find any kind of relief, or wrap yourself up so tight you canβt feel it anymore. I knew it might be there a little while. Or maybe even a long while. For both of us.
β
β
Bill Konigsberg (Openly Straight (Openly Straight, #1))
β
It had struck me that the world was full of holes, holes which you could fall into, never to be seen again. I couldn't understand the difference between disappearance and death. Both seemed the same to me, both left holes. Holes in your heart holes in your life.
β
β
Sally Gardner (Maggot Moon)
β
Moon In the Window
I wish I could say I was the kind of child
who watched the moon from her window,
would turn toward it and wonder.
I never wondered. I read. Dark signs
that crawled toward the edge of the page.
It took me years to grow a heart
from paper and glue. All I had
was a flashlight, bright as the moon,
a white hole blazing beneath the sheets.
β
β
Dorianne Laux
β
Some adventures begin easily. It is not hard, after all, to be sucked up by a tornado or pushed through a particularly porous mirror; there is no skill involved in being swept away by a great wave or pulled down a rabbit hole. Some adventures require nothing more than a willing heart and the ability to trip over the cracks in the world.
Other adventures must be committed to before they have even properly begun. How else will they know the worthy from the unworthy, if they do not require a certain amount of effort on the part of the ones who would undertake them? Some adventures are cruel, because it is the only way they know to be kind.
β
β
Seanan McGuire (Down Among the Sticks and Bones (Wayward Children, #2))
β
Everything used to seem so final, inevitable, predestined. But now I'm starting to believe that life may have more surprises in store than I ever realized. Maybe it's all relative, not just light and time like Einstein theorized, but everything. Like life can seem awful and unfixable until the universe shifts a little and the observation point is altered, and then suddenly, everything seems more bearable.
β
β
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
β
Iβm not asking you to live for me. Even though that would be nice because Iβm in love with you. And yeah, yeah, you can tell me Iβm misusing that word, but I donβt care. Thatβs how I feel. But this isnβt even about me, or how I feel about you. I want you to live for you because I know thereβs so much more waiting for you. Thereβs so much more for you to discover and experience. And you deserve it, you might not think you do, but you do. Iβm here to tell you that you deserve it. And I know I sound cheesy as hell. Believe me, six weeks ago, I wouldβve slapped myself for saying shit like this, but knowing you... Knowing you has helped me see things differently. See myself differently. And all I want is for you to see yourself the way that I do.
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Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
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The life I walk binds my hands
it makes me take things that I donβt understand I walk this dark world unknowing of what they hold true,
forgetting the me I once knew,
until you.
The life I walk eternally was all I knew nothing more held me here to this earth until you.
I feel the pain of every heart I take I feel the desire to replace all that I have grown to hate Darkness holds me close but the light still draws my empty soul
The emptiness where I used pain to fill the hole no longer controls me, no longer calls me because of you.
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Abbi Glines (Existence (Existence, #1))
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--and then you're in serious trouble, very serious trouble, and you know it, finally, deadly serious trouble, because this Substance you thought was your one true friend, that you gave up all for, gladly, that for so long gave you relief from the pain of the Losses your love of that relief caused, your mother and lover and god and compadre, has finally removed its smily-face mask to reveal centerless eyes and a ravening maw, and canines down to here, it's the Face In The Floor, the grinning root-white face of your worst nightmares, and the face is your own face in the mirror, now, it's you, the Substance has devoured or replaced and become you, and the puke-, drool- and Substance-crusted T-shirt you've both worn for weeks now gets torn off and you stand there looking and in the root-white chest where your heart (given away to It) should be beating, in its exposed chest's center and centerless eyes is just a lightless hole, more teeth, and a beckoning taloned hand dangling something irresistible, and now you see you've been had, screwed royal, stripped and fucked and tossed to the side like some stuffed toy to lie for all time in the posture you land in. You see now that It's your enemy and your worst personal nightmare and the trouble It's gotten you into is undeniable and you still can't stop. Doing the Substance now is like attending Black Mass but you still can't stop, even though the Substance no longer gets you high. You are, as they say, Finished. You cannot get drunk and you cannot get sober; you cannot get high and you cannot get straight. You are behind bars; you are in a cage and can see only bars in every direction. You are in the kind of a hell of a mess that either ends lives or turns them around.
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David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest)
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[S]ecrets are like stars. They blaze inside the heart and ultimately could be explosive. But there are two types of secrets. Small secrets, like small stars, will eventually burn out. With time and space they lose their importance and simply vanish. No harm done. But big secrets, like massive stars, with time and constant fear grow stronger, creating a gravitational pull that eventually ... When they get so big, they become a black hole.
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Jennifer Jabaley (Lipstick Apology)
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He scanned the skies beyond her for the Thirteen, for Asterin Blackbeak, undoubtedly roaring her victory to the stars. Manon said quietly, βYou will not find them. In this sky, or any other.β His heart strained as he understood. As the loss of those twelve fierce, brilliant lives carved another hole within him. One he would not forget, one he would honor. Silently, he crossed the balcony. Manon did not back away as he slid his arms around her. βI am sorry,β he said into her hair. Tentatively, slowly, her hands drifted across his back. Then settled, embracing him. βI miss them,β she whispered, shuddering. Dorian only held her tighter, and let Manon lean on him for as long as she needed, Abraxos staring toward that blasted bit of earth on the plain, toward the mate who would never return, while the city below celebrated.
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Sarah J. Maas (Kingdom of Ash (Throne of Glass, #7))
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If we are taken over by craving, no matter who or what is before us, all we can see is how it might satisfy our needs. This kind of thirst contracts our body and mind into a profound trance. We move through the world with a kind of tunnel vision that prevents us from enjoying what is in front of us. The color of an autumn leaves or a passage of poetry merely amplifies the feeling that there is a gaping hole in our life. The smile of a child only reminds us that we are painfully childless. We turn away from simple pleasures because our craving compels us to seek more intense stimulation or numbing relief.
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Tara Brach (Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha)
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There was a clearing in the middle of the woods. It tasted of lightning and magic.
Of claw and fang.
And in the middle of this clearing sat a man who had once been a boy.
A boy who I had loved.
Then a monster had come to town with murder on his mind and tore a hole in our heads and hearts.
The boy chased after the monster with revenge in his bloodred eyes.
The monster was gone now.
And so was the boy. Because a man had taken his place.
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T.J. Klune (Wolfsong (Green Creek, #1))
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Solar Eclipse
Each morning
I wake invisible.
I make a needle
from a porcupine quill,
sew feet to legs,
lift spine onto my thighs.
I put on my rib and collarbone.
I pin an ear to my head,
hear the waxwing's yellow cry.
I open my mouth for purple berries,
stick on periwinkle eyes.
I almost know what it is to be seen.
My throat enlarges from anger.
I make a hand to hold my pain.
My heart a hole the size of the sun's eclipse.
I push through the dark circle's
tattered edge of light.
All day I struggle with one hair after another
until the moon moves from the face of the sun
and there is a strange light
as though from a kerosene lamp in a cabin.
I pun on a dress,
a shawl over my shoulders.
My threads knotted and scissors gleaming.
Now I know I am seen.
I have a shadow.
I extend my arms,
dance and chant in the sun's new light.
I put a hat and coat on my shadow,
another larger dress.
I put on more shawls and blouses and underskirts
until even the shadow has substance
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Diane Glancy
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Gauguin was a stockbroker in Paris, married, had five kids. One day he came home from work and told his wife he was leaving, that he was through supporting the family, that he had had enough. Just like that he fucking took off. He said he had always felt that he was a painter, so he moved to a rat-infested shithole and started painting. His wife begged him to come back, his bosses told him he was insane, he didn't care, he was following his heart. He left Paris, moved to Rouen, went from Rouen to Arles, from Arles to Tahiti. He was searching for peace, contentment, trying to fill that fucking hole he felt inside, and he believed he could fill it. He died in Tahiti, blind and crazy from syphilis, but he did it. He filled his fucking hole, made beautiful work, made beautiful, beautiful work... It takes a brave man to walk away, to care so much that he doesn't care about anything else, to be willing to obey what he feels inside, to be willing to suffer the consequences of living for himself. Every time I stand before his work it makes me cry, and I cry because I'm proud of him, and happy for him, and because I admire him.
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James Frey (My Friend Leonard)
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Well, the husband was very depressed for the longest while. Even after he found out that his wife was going to pull through, he was still very depressed. Not about the accident, though. I mean, the accident was one thing, but it wasn't everything. I'd get up to his mouth-hole, you know, and he'd say no, it wasn't the accident exactly but it was because he couldn't see her through his eye-holes. He said that was what was making him feel bad. Can you imagine? I'm telling you, the man's heart was breaking because he couldn't turn his goddamn head and see his goddamn wife.
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Raymond Carver (What We Talk About When We Talk About Love)
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It faded slowly, ebbing like the tide. He rolled onto his back, staring up, his head still aching. The black clouds were beginning to roll back, showing a widening strip of blue; the Angel was gone, the lake surging under the growing light as if the water were boiling.
Simon began to sit up slowly, his eyes squinted painfully against the sun. He could see someone racing down the path from the farmhouse to the lake. Someone with long black hair, and a purple jacket that flew out behind her like wings. She hit the end of the path and leaped onto the lakeside, her boots kicking up puffs of sand behind her. She reached him and threw herself sand behind her. She reached him and threw herself down, wrapping her arms around him. βSimon,β she whispered.
He could feel the strong, steady beat of Isabelleβs heart.
βI thought you were dead,β she went on. βI saw you fall down, andβI thought you were dead.β
Simon let her hold him, propping himself up on his hands. He realized he was listing like a ship with a hole in the side, and tried not to move. He was afraid that if he did, he would fall over. βI am dead.β
β I know,β Izzy snapped. βI mean more dead than usual.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Lost Souls (The Mortal Instruments, #5))
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What if you ended up in the wrong kind of love? What if you accidentally ended up in the falling kind with someone it would be so gross to fall in love with that you could never tell anyone in the world about it? The kind youβd have to crush down so deep inside yourself that it almost turned your heart into a black hole? The kind you squashed deeper and deeper down, but no matter how much you hoped it would suffocate, it never did? Instead, it seemed to inflate, to grow gigantic as time went by, filling every little spare space you had until it was you. You were it. Until everything you ever saw or thought led you back to one person. The person you werenβt supposed to love that way.
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Carol Rifka Brunt (Tell the Wolves I'm Home)
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Gansey despised raising his voice (in his head, his mother said, People shout when they don't have the vocabulary to whisper), but he heard it happening despite himself and so, with effort, he kept his voice even. "Not like this. At least you have a place to go. 'End of the world'... What is your problem, Adam? I mean, is there something about my place that's too repugnant for you to imagine living there? Why is it that everything kind I do is pity to you? Everything is charity. Well, here it is: I'm sick of tiptoeing around your principles."
"God, I'm sick of your condescension, Gansey," Adam said. "Don't try to make me feel stupid. Who whips out repugnant? Don't pretend you're not trying to make me feel stupid."
"This is the way I talk. I'm sorry your father never taught you the meaning of repugnant. He was too busy smashing your head against the wall of your trailer while you apologized for being alive."
Both of them stopped breathing.
Gansey knew he'd gone too far. It was too far, too late, too much.
Adam shoved open the door.
"Fuck you, Gansey. Fuck you," he said, voice low and furious.
Gansey close his eyes.
Adam slammed the door, and then he slammed it again when the latch didn't catch. Gansey didn't open his eyes. He didn't want to see if people were watching some kid fight with a boy in a bright orange Camaro and an Aglionby jumper. Just then he hated his raven-breasted uniform and his loud car and every three- and four-syllable word his parents had used in casual conversation at the dinner table and he hated Adam's hideous father and Adam's permissive mother and most of all, most of all, he hated the sound of Adam's last words, playing over and over.
He couldn't stand it, all of this inside him.
In the end, he was nobody to Adam, he was nobody to Ronan. Adam spit his words back at him and Ronan squandered however many second chances he gave him. Gansey was just a guy with a lot of stuff and a hole inside him that chewed away more of his heart every year.
They were always walking away from him. But he never seemed able to walk away from them.
Gansey opened his eyes. The ambulance was still there, but Adam was gone.
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Maggie Stiefvater (The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle, #1))
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Could you bring back a man without a head?β Arya asked. βJust the once, not six times. Could you?β
βI have no magic, child. Only prayers. That first time, his lordship had a hole right through him and blood in his mouth, I knew there was no hope. So when his poor torn chest stopped moving, I gave him the good godβs own kiss to send him on his way. I filled my mouth with fire and breathed the flames inside him, down his throat to lungs and heart and soul. The last kiss it is called, and many a time I saw the old priests bestow it on the Lordβs servants as they died. I had given it a time or two myself, as all priests must. But never before had I felt a dead man shudder as the fire filled him, nor seen his eyes come open. It was not me who raised him, my lady. It was the Lord. Rβhllor is not done with him yet. Life is warmth, and warmth is fire, and fire is Godβs and Godβs alone.β
Arya felt tears well in her eyes. Thoros used a lot of words, but all they meant was no, that much she understood.
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George R.R. Martin (A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, #3))
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No parent should have to bury a child ... No mother should have to bury a son. Mothers are not meant to bury sons. It is not in the natural order of things.
I buried my son. In a potter's field. In a field of Blood. In empty, acrid silence. There was no funeral. There were no mourners. His friends all absent. His father dead. His sisters refusing to attend. I discovered his body alone, I dug his grave alone, I placed him in a hole, and covered him with dirt and rock alone. I was not able to finish burying him before sundown, and I'm not sure if that affected his fate ...
I begrudge God none of this. I do not curse him or bemoan my lot. And though my heart keeps beating only to keep breaking--I do not question why.
I remember the morning my son was born as if it was yesterday. The moment the midwife placed him in my arms, I was infused with a love beyond all measure and understanding. I remember holding my son, and looking over at my own mother and saying, "Now I understand why the sun comes up at day and the stars come out at night. I understand why rain falls gently. Now I understand you, Mother" ...
I loved my son every day of his life, and I will love him ferociously long after I've stopped breathing. I am a simple woman. I am not bright or learn-ed. I do not read. I do not write. My opinions are not solicited. My voice is not important ... On the day of my son's birth I was infused with a love beyond all measure and understanding ... The world tells me that God is in Heaven and that my son is in Hell. I tell the world the one true thing I know: If my son is in Hell, then there is no Heaven--because if my son sits in Hell, there is no God.
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Stephen Adly Guirgis (The Last Days of Judas Iscariot)
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A Kite is a Victim
A kite is a victim you are sure of.
You love it because it pulls
gentle enough to call you master,
strong enough to call you fool;
because it lives
like a desperate trained falcon
in the high sweet air,
and you can always haul it down
to tame it in your drawer.
A kite is a fish you have already caught
in a pool where no fish come,
so you play him carefully and long,
and hope he won't give up,
or the wind die down.
A kite is the last poem you've written
so you give it to the wind,
but you don't let it go
until someone finds you
something else to do.
A kite is a contract of glory
that must be made with the sun,
so you make friends with the field
the river and the wind,
then you pray the whole cold night before,
under the travelling cordless moon,
to make you worthy and lyric and pure.
Gift
You tell me that silence
is nearer to peace than poems
but if for my gift
I brought you silence
(for I know silence)
you would say
This is not silence
this is another poem
and you would hand it back to me
There are some men
There are some men
who should have mountains
to bear their names through time
Grave markers are not high enough
or green
and sons go far away to lose the fist
their fatherβs hand will always seem
I had a friend he lived and died
in mighty silence and with dignity
left no book son or lover to mourn.
Nor is this a mourning song
but only a naming of this mountain
on which I walk
fragrant, dark and softly white
under the pale of mist
I name this mountain after him.
-Believe nothing of me
Except that I felt your beauty
more closely than my own.
I did not see any cities burn,
I heard no promises of endless night,
I felt your beauty
more closely than my own.
Promise me that I will return.-
-When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want to summon
the eyes and hidden mouths
of stone and light and water
to testify against you.-
Song
I almost went to bed
without remembering
the four white violets
I put in the button-hole
of your green sweater
and how i kissed you then
and you kissed me
shy as though I'd
never been your lover
-Reach into the vineyard of arteries for my heart.
Eat the fruit of ignorance and share with me the mist and
fragrance of dying.-
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Leonard Cohen (The Spice-Box of Earth)
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You'll get over it...' It's the cliches that cause the trouble. To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You don't get over it because 'it' is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it? The particularness of someone who mattered enough to greive over is not made anodyne by death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?
I've thought a lot about death recently, the finality of it, the argument ending in mid-air. One of us hadn't finished, why did the other one go? And why without warning? Even death after long illness is without warning. The moment you had prepared for so carefully took you by storm. The troops broke through the window and snatched the body and the body is gone. The day before the Wednesday last, this time a year ago, you were here and now you're not. Why not? Death reduces us to the baffled logic of a small child. If yesterday why not today? And where are you?
Fragile creatures of a small blue planet, surrounded by light years of silent space. Do the dead find peace beyond the rattle of the world? What peace is there for us whose best love cannot return them even for a day? I raise my head to the door and think I will see you in the frame. I know it is your voice in the corridor but when I run outside the corridor is empty. There is nothing I can do that will make any difference. The last word was yours.
The fluttering in the stomach goes away and the dull waking pain. Sometimes I think of you and I feel giddy. Memory makes me lightheaded, drunk on champagne. All the things we did. And if anyone had said this was the price I would have agreed to pay it. That surprises me; that with the hurt and the mess comes a shaft of recognition. It was worth it. Love is worth it.
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Jeanette Winterson (Written on the Body)