a composition notebook filled with quotes

Wishing that your pillow will always be cool, your creamer always in date, your breakfast drive thru always be 24 hours, and your wallet always full of exact change. – Reverend Lizzie

Sometimes I think I was so obsessed with the idea of saving others because I thought, in some way, it might save me too. Turns out I wasn’t good at either. @artefactsofyou

If I can endure in self-destruction, I can endure in self-improvement. – Unknown

I hope death is like being carried to your bedroom when you were a child and fell asleep on the couch during a family party. I hope you can hear the laughter from the next room. – someone on Twitter

I loved and loved and loved but yet – nothing loved me back. @sumaya

I hate that I have to heal from the things that were not my fault. @artefactsofyou

Sometimes I think I was so obsessed with the idea of saving others because I thought, in some way, it might save me too. Turns out I wasn’t good at either. @artefactsofyou

If someone offered you a box with everything you’ve lost, what’s the first thing you would look for? – Unknown

And when it’s finally your turn, you will understand why the wait was needed. @theopeninvite

Please don’t forget me and all the things we did. – Unknown

Maybe I’m just something to hold but never to keep. – Unknown

I can do something even though I feel hopeless right now. – Wynonna Judd

Healing also means taking responsibility for the role you play in your own suffering. – Unknown

How do I wait for someone I’m not even sure will ever show up? – Unknown

I’m somewhere between hell and hallelujah. – Wynonna Judd

If anything, I am everything. – Unknown

What you allow will continue. – Unknown

It’s time to stop tearing yourself apart over things you can’t fix and people you can’t save. – Unknown

Don’t cling to a mistake just because you spent a long time making it. – Unknown

I hope the pain eases soon. – Unknown

Real life will never be on a five-year plan. – Unknown

I hate you for what you did and I miss you like a little kid. – Phoebe Bridgers

Be where your boots are. – Unknown

Live. Laugh. Lasagna. – Graffiti

Make peace with what didn’t happen. – @wetheurban (IG)

I want to accept heaven inside of me. – Unknown

Shaming and relentlessly criticizing yourself doesn’t bring healing or change, it simply turns you into your own abuser. – Jerry Henderson

Actually, life is beautiful, and I have time. – Unknown

It only takes five minutes to break the cycle. Five minutes of exercise and you are back on the path. Five minutes of writing and the manuscript is moving forward again. Five minutes of conversation and the relationship is restored. It doesn’t take much to feel good again. – James Clear

This life is so breathtakingly brief. – Unknown

You cannot correct what you are not willing to confront. – Unknown

Much of your pain is self-chosen. – Unknown

If anyone is magically going to appear, and just suddenly make your life better, just know that person is always going to be you. – Brianna Pastor

Is this what growing up is? Just leaving things behind, over and over again? – Unknown

Don’t rush it. It takes time returning to yourself. – Unknown

We love because it’s the only true adventure. – Unknown

A Japanese legend says your present face is the face of the one you loved most in your past life. – Unknown

You gave me very little, and I tried to build an entire future with it. – @cgcpoems (IG)

There’s no competition in my universe. – Unknown

How do I stop carrying everything that has ever happened to me? – Unknown

All years are our best years. – from a comment on Instagram

What do you think about closure? It doesn’t require anyone else but you. – @theangrytherapist

I’m not alone. I’m by myself. – Unknown

Make it enough. – Unknown

Don’t compare your blooper reel to someone else’s movie. – Unknown

Life is way too short to spend another day at war with yourself. – @selflovesupply (IG)

Confidence is lost in places where there is no love. – Unknown

I want release from the prison of scrutiny that comes with being a woman. @welcometoheidi (YT)

When we compare ourselves to others, we reject ourselves. – Andy Puddicombe

Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself. – Truman Capote

The healer also needs healing. The planner also needs surprises. The giver also needs to receive. The thoughtful also needs to be thought of. The considerate also needs to be considered. – someone on Twitter

Don’t surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn’t true anymore. – Cheryl Strayed

Kill that urge to be chosen. Choose yourself. – SZA

I’ve been pulling myself out of dark places alone since I was a child. I’m built for anything. – Unknown

So, what if, instead of thinking about solving your whole life, you just think about adding additional good things. One at a time, just let your pile of good things grow. – Unknown

Someday this pain will be useful. – Unknown

What’s it like to leave me behind? – Unknown

It is always the right time for a fresh start. – Unknown

You often feel tired, not because you’ve done too much, but because you’ve done too little of what sparks a light in you. – Unknown

Do you ever get tired of becoming? Do you think we will ever just arrive? On days like today, growth is too much work. I want to be who I am and be done with it. – Clara McGowan

If someone does not want me, it is not the end of the world, but if I do not want me, the world is nothing but endings. – Unknown

This is a good sign, having a broken heart, it means we have tried for something. – Unknown

Before life yells, it whispers. – Unknown

Confidence does not come from how you look, but what you believe in your heart about yourself. – Unknown

No one knows how much I cried that night. – Unknown

I hope you never stop looking for you. – Unknown

The right people will feel different to your nervous system. – Unknown

It is always the right time for a fresh start. – Unknown

And while you hold it all together, who is holding you? – Cleo Wade

There is nothing wrong with the core of who I am. – Unkown

To love yourself right now, just as you are, is to give yourself heaven. Don’t wait until you die. If you wait, you die now. If you love, you live now. – Alan Cohen

Healing also means taking responsibility for the role you play in your own suffering. – Unknown

I don’t know what they are called, the spaces between seconds – but I think of you always in those intervals. – Unknown

I thought I had something that you were too scared to lose. – Unknown

The wet dog of desire jumps into my bed and I let it. I’ll sleep next to anything if it means I won’t be alone. – Caitlin Conlon

You mistake love. You think it has to have a future in order to matter, but it doesn’t. It’s the only thing that does not need to become at all. It matters only insofar as it exists. Here. Love doesn’t require a future. – Unknown

What a relief it was to lose you. – Audrey Emmett

He pushes me against a tree and kisses me so hard – I go blind. The blindness lasts just a second, then the colors start flooding into me: not through my eyes, but right through my skin, replacing blood and bone, muscle and sinew, until I am redorangebluegreenpurpleyellowredorangebluegreenpurpleyellow. – Unknown

I was never addicted to one thing; I was addicted to filling a void within myself with things other than my own love. – Yung Pueblo

You fell in love with my flowers, but not my roots. – Unknown

You are a match for your mountain. – Unknown

It’s one of my theories that when people give you advice, they are really just talking to themselves in the past. – Unknown

It’s been very rare to have known you, very strange and wonderful. – Unknown

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our life, not our darkness, that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It’s not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. – Marianne Williamson

We were together, I forgot the rest. – Walt Whitman

When I remember you, I dance. Thank you for your wonder. – Unknown

You, he said, are a terribly real thing in a terribly false world, and that, I believe, is why you are in so much pain. – Unknown

It’s a bad day, not a bad life. – Unknown

Don’t surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn’t true anymore. – Cheryl Strayed

I hope to arrive to my death, late, in love, and a little drunk. – Unknown

The women whom I love and admire for their strength and grace did not get that way because shit worked out. They got that way because shit went wrong, and they handled it. They handled it in a thousand different ways on a thousand different days, but they handled it. Those women are my superheroes. – Elizabeth Gilbert

The wound is where the light gets in. – Unknown

I would swallow the sun and kiss it straight into your mouth if it meant you’d be warm again. I would bury green gardens deep inside your heart if it meant you would blossom there. I would pull myself apart, jagged bone and soft skin, if it meant I could find the right pieces to put you back together again. – Unknown

You have to believe in the version of you that is laughing in bed on a Sunday morning with the person they love twenty years from now, because you deserve that future. It is waiting for you. Choose it. – Unknown

Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe, I was strong, I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me. – Cheryl Strayed

I wish I had done everything on earth with you. – Unknown

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies – I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer. – Unknown

Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. – Unknown

You’re not going to want to hear this – but I’ll say it anyway; it’s the sad days, the long ones that feel like they’ll never end, that reveal the person buried beneath all that charade. It’s the sorrow that shapes us, the heartache, and how we respond. We are created by what we endure. – Unknown

After a while, you realize the only special thing about someone was the fact that you loved them. – Unknown

My fear cemented my feet. – Unknown

It was starting to feel like everything that was going to happen to me had already happened. – Unknown

The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs, the hours writing in your journal, the long meandering walks, the hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and god and whether you should shave under your arms or not, these things are your becoming. – Cheryl Strayed

You have to say I am forgiven again and again until it becomes the story you believe about yourself. – Cheryl Strayed

The unspoken isn’t unfelt. – Unknown

No is a complete sentence. It does not require justification or explanation. – Unknown

I know now (too little too late, or better late than never) that what we had was real and rare and special, and the way that it felt to kiss you is the way I always want to feel. Just know that I’m thinking about you, and I miss you, and I’m still sleeping on your shoulder when I close my eyes at night. – Carry Bradshaw

Write hard and clear about what hurts. – Unknown

As you are. You are happening right now. Right at this moment. And your happening is beautiful. The thing that both keeps me alive and brings me to my knees. You don’t even know how breathtaking you are. As you are, says the universe through tears. – Unknown

Real love doesn’t hurt, but the imitation of it does. – Unknown

I fell in love with the way you touched me without using your hands. – Unknown

Who broke your heart? Someone necessary. – Unknown

Expect nothing. Appreciate everything. – Unknown

I’ve realized a lot of people are at war with themselves, but they’ll battle themselves vicariously through you. – Unknown

Don’t rush, it takes time returning to yourself. – Unknown

You know what you’d dream it’d be like? It’s better than that. – Unknown

It may have just been a moment for you, but it changed every single one that followed for me. – Unknown

How wild it was, to let it be. – Cheryl Strayed

The world will ask you who you are and if you don’t know, the world will tell you. – Unknown

I think we all have certain prisons within us. – Unknown

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. – Unknown

There are decades where nothing happens and then there are weeks where decades happen. – Unknown

You were salt hiding in a bag labeled sugar. – Unknown

There are some things that you can’t understand yet. Your life will be a great and continuous unfolding. It’s good you’ve worked hard to resolve childhood issues while in your twenties, but understand that what you resolve will need to be resolved again. And again. You will come to know things that can only be known with wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of these things will have to do with forgiveness. – Unknown

You let time pass, that’s the cure. You survive the days. You float like a rabid ghost through the weeks. You cry and wallow and lament and scratch your way back up through the months. And then one day you find yourself alone on a bench in the sun and you close your eyes and lean your head back and you realize you’re okay. – Unknown

You don’t deserve a lukewarm love. – Unknown

I believe the misery there brought forth a certain flower that wouldn’t have grown anywhere else. – Unknown

Tell me who you spend time with and I will tell you who you are. – Unknown

Sometimes I wake up and remind myself that there is nothing wrong with me. I have patterns to unlearn, new behaviors to embody, and wounds to heal. But there is nothing wrong with the core of who I am. I am unlearning generations of harm and remembering love. It takes time. – Unknown

You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily; or have sharp edges; or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand. – Unknown

I love unmade beds. I love when people are drunk and crying and cannot be anything but honest in that moment. I love the look in people’s eyes when they realize they are in love. I love the way people look when they first wake up and how they’ve forgotten their surroundings. I love the gasp people take when their favorite character dies. I love when people close their eyes and drift to somewhere in the clouds. I fall in love with people and their honest moments all the time. I fall in love with their breakdowns and their smeared make-up and their daydreams. Honesty is just too beautiful to ever put into words. – Unknown

When I ask you about your first love, I am always secretly hoping that you will say your own name. Now, wouldn’t that be beautiful – to above all else, have a heart that was proud of itself? – Unknown

Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you’ll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you’ll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room. – Cheryl Strayed

I started looking for good things and now I see good things all around me. – Unknown

I learned my final lesson, that life and death do not exist as enemies, and one does not begin where the other ends. They are shadows and shades which often mingle, and sometimes there is very little to distinguish between the two. – Unknown

I have to believe that there are moments of incorruptible beauty upon this earth. – Unknown

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen. – Unknown

Have you ever stared at a painting so long that the colors blur and you can’t tell what you’re looking at anymore? There’s no form, face, or shape – just color, just swirls of paint? I think people are like that. When you really look at them, you stop seeing a perfect nose or straight teeth. You stop seeing the acne scar or the dimple in the chin. Those things start to blur, and suddenly you see them, the colors, the life inside of the shell, and beauty takes on a whole new meaning. – Unknown

If you are willing to look at another person’s behavior toward you as a reflection of the state of their relationship with themselves rather than a statement about your value as a person – then you will, over a period of time, cease to react at all. – Unknown

You are the sky, everything else is the weather. – Unknown

You are not too old and it is not too late. – Unknown

Just because things could have been different doesn’t mean that they would’ve been better. – Unknown

Power is being told you are not loved and not being destroyed by it. – Unknown

You often feel tired not because you’ve done too much, but because you’ve done too little of what sparks a light in you. – Unknown

It’s only heavy for as long as you hold it. – Unknown

I’m homesick for arms that will never hold me again. – Unknown

I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing light of your own being. – Unknown

Another moon we wait. – Unknown

It doesn’t make sense to call ourselves ugly, because we don’t really see ourselves. We don’t watch ourselves sleeping in bed, curled up, and silent with chests rising and falling with our own rhythm. We don’t see ourselves reading a book, eyes fluttering and glowing. You don’t see yourself looking at someone with love and care inside your heart. There’s no mirror in your way when you’re laughing and smiling, and happiness is leaking out of you. You would know exactly how bright and beautiful you are if you saw yourself in the moments where you are truly yourself. – Unknown

Listen to me, your body is not a temple. Temples can be destroyed and desecrated. Your body is a forest. Thick canopies of maple trees and sweet-scented wildflowers sprouting in the underwood. You will grow back, over and over, not matter how badly you are devestated. – Unknown

I don’t think existence wants you to be serious. I have not seen a serious tree. I have not seen a serious bird. I have not seen a serious sunrise. I have not seen a serious starry night. It seems they are all laughing in their own ways, dancing in their own ways. We may not understand it, but there is a subtle feeling that the whole existence is a celebration. – Unknown

Does the sun ask itself, am I good? Am I worthwhile? Is there enough of me? No, it burns and shines. Does the sun ask itself, what does the moon think of me? How does mars feel about me today? No, it burns. It shines. Does the sun ask itself, am I as big as other suns in other galaxies? No, it burns, it fucking burns. – Unknown

Nothing in nature blooms all year, be patience with yourself. – Unknown

What’s in you can never be taken away. – Unknown

You’ve been my turn-up and my church. – Lauren London

If you don’t feed something, it dies. – Unknown

You have no idea how boring everything was before I met you. – Unknown

All you have to do is something. – Unknown

I won’t miss waiting. And waiting. And waiting. Then waiting some more. For life to begin. – Unknown

I knew how fast a spiral could grab you, how far the surface could seem from below. – Unknown

The only thing I ever saw in the darkened windows was my distorted reflection watching back. My own personal haunting. – Unknown

My superpower is I feel everything and I let it rip me apart every night and still I don’t die. Instead, I grow open and make more room. – Unknown

Forgive yourself for being who you needed to be. – Unknown

Self-esteem is the ability to see yourself as a flawed individual and still hold yourself in high regard. – Unknown

The fact that someone else loves you does not rescue you from the project of loving yourself. – Unknown

What’s stopping you? – Unknown

I am still learning how to welcome myself home. – Unknown

You are wildly worthwhile. – Unknown

Comparison is an act of violence against the self. – Unknown

I am the longest relationship of my life. – Unknown

Trust the timing of your life. – Unknown

A horror interlude in the monotony of my daily life. – The Only Survivors, Megan Miranda

Maybe it would feel this way no matter where we were, as long as we were together. Maybe everything we touched together, turned to ash. – The Only Survivors, Megan Miranda

He was an outlet and a sealed box. – The Only Survivors, Megan Miranda

I believed fate was an accumulation of decisions, not all of them yours. – The Only Survivors, Megan Miranda

Every year, we returned like we were expecting some new breakthrough. But year after year, the only thing that ever cracked was us. – The Only Survivors, Megan Miranda

She felt like a magnet, like the darkness was seeking her out. Like she could see straight into the heart of others, the unspoken things they were thinking, or wondering, and something within her pulled it closer. Something within her encouraged them, promised them, I won’t tell. – The Only Survivors, Megan Miranda

Oliver was afraid in the same dull, ever-present way he was afraid of most things: saying the wrong thing, making the wrong impression, choosing the wrong path. An anxiety that crept in whenever he was fully awake, that he noticed every morning, as he lay in bed and felt the familiar feeling wash over him. Otherwise, he could go hours forgetting it existed. It was background noise, a permanent condition, something for which he could find no obvious cause. – The Only Survivors, Megan Miranda

You are imperfect, permanently, and inevitably flawed. And you are beautiful. – Amy Bloom

Being human means being in a permanent state of becoming and what a relief that is. – Unknown

All stress is caused by wanting this moment to be something it’s not. I inhale what is. I accept this time for whatever it has to show me. – Oprah

You have to say I am forgiven, again and again, until it becomes the story you believe about yourself. – Unknown

I’ve never seen any life transformation that didn’t begin with the person in question getting tired of their own bullshit. – Unknown

It was sort of the first step on a long trip falling down the stairs – Unknown

I will not bend my truth to make someone else comfortable. – Unknown

The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all and then stands back to see if we can find them. – Unknown

There is nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death, I will still protect you. I am stronger than depression and braver than loneliness. Nothing will ever exhaust me. – Elizabeth Gilbert

Rock-bottom will teach you lessons that mountain tops never will. – Unknown

In order to love who you are, you cannot hate the experiences that shaped you. – Unknown

One mistake will not unravel all of the progress you’ve made. – Unknown

The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself. – Unknown

Can you love yourself enough to come to terms with the magnitude of your own significance? – Unknown

You are enough, a thousand times enough. – Atticus

I am no scientist, but I think love is bound to find us all, in the end. It slips underneath doors, floats to us in the sudden wave of a childhood smell in the middle of a busy city street, stopping us in our tracks, it speaks to us in our friends’ voices, hoarse with laughter, it caresses our cheeks with the hands of our mothers. I must believe there is a little bit of love in everything, or there is little point in living. – Unknown

I’d forgotten how to take care of myself. – Unknown

Sometimes I think of my feelings as trail mix. I can be happy and sad together. That’s trail mix. – James, 10 years old, @livefromsnacktime (IG)

We suffer more in our imagination than in our reality. – Somebody’s Pastor

Wherever you go, there you are. – Unknown

Be gentle. You are just now meeting parts of yourself that you have been at war with. – @bigfightinwords (IG)

Maybe in the end we don’t really want to be loved as hard as we would want to. Maybe all we really want is to be understood. Is to be appreciated. And told that we are just as important as we think we are. – R.M. Drake

My therapist once told me: what if your mom never changes and goes to her death bed with absolutely no guilt about all the damage she caused? Your healing can’t depend on someone else deciding they also want to heal. – @QueerXiChisme (IG)

I am built from every mistake I ever made. – Unknown

You are not the worst thing you’ve ever done. – The Only Survivors, Megan Miranda

I gave the wrong people the right pieces of me. – Unknown

Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. – Unknown

You are the happiness you are looking for. – Unknown

I love those moments when I realize that I’m handling a situation better than an older version of myself would have been able to. I love conversations with myself when I realize that the self-work has been working. I love realizing that I’ve grown. – @wetheurban (IG)

It’s important to remember that those feelings that you are having aren’t your feelings. But rather a feeling that is passing through you. – Kristen Bell

I hope the pain eases soon. – Unknown

My great hope for us as young women is to start being kinder to ourselves so that we can be kinder to others. To stop shaming ourselves and other people: ‘too fat, too skinny, too short, too tall, too anything.’ There’s a sense that we’re all ‘too’ something, and we’re all not enough. This is life. Our bodies change. Our minds change. Our hearts change. – Emma Stone

Hating our bodies is something that we learn, and it sure as hell is something that we can unlearn. – Megan Jayne Crabbe

Bring me your real bumps and curves and your forehead zits. Bring me your granny panties and your scars. I’m here for it. – Lauren Leavell

Everybody has a part of her body that she doesn’t like, but I’ve stopped complaining about mine because I don’t want to critique nature’s handiwork. My job is simply to allow the light to shine out of the masterpiece. – Alfre Woodard

You don’t tell people you’re not okay because it’s hard watching them not know what to do. Then you end up comforting them, even though the one who needed comforting was you. – Unknown

Self-care is choosing not to argue with people who are committed to misunderstanding you. – Unknown

I don’t think it’s any big secret that I was too busy collapsing in on myself to love you in the way I wanted to. – Audrey Emmett

I used to never want the heartache to end because it would mean you were really gone.

Isn’t that kind of romantic in a way? – Unknown