Nº 002
“She felt very old and mature and wise
which showed how young she was.”— Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery
Nº 003
“One hears it a lot on airplanes: “Make sure you have your own mask on, before helping others with theirs.””
Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket), upon being asked "What’s your very best life advice?"
Nº 004
“I’m sorry I gave you everything I had without making sure you wanted it.”
Heavy (#418: April 21, 2014)
Nº 005
“Reality doesn’t impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.”
Anaïs Nin
Nº 006
“In the end, I think the relationships that survive in this world are the ones where two people can finish each other’s sentences. Forget drama and torrid sex and the clash of opposites. Give me banter any day of the week.”
Douglas Coupland, Hey Nostradamus!
Nº 007
I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn’t have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non
being, and I accepted it. I didn’t make for an interesting person. I didn’t want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone. On the other hand, when I got drunk I screamed, went crazy, got all out of hand. One kind of behavior didn’t fit the other. I didn’t care."-Charles Bukowski
Nº 008
“I want to write a novel about silence. The things people don’t say.”
Virginia Woolf
Nº 009
“Johnny said once, Eating with someone is really intimateand it’s stuck with me. So I decline dates at restaurantsbecause he’s right and it’s too soon and, anyway, maybe I’ll hate how these long
necked boys who don’t know how to hold a fork eat. I’ve written a lot of things for him, Johnny, more than he knows about. I am 22 now so naturally I miss everyone. I am 22 so I roll my eyes when someone says love. Dad has the air conditioner all the way up but I’m still waking up sweating. My brother has taken to degrading women in that casual way that boys do—flick of the shoulder, dark-eyed, he is my father in miniature, but I love him, as sisters do, even if I don’t agree with his mouth. I wanted this poem to go somewhere important but I keep looking over my shoulder. I hate mornings. I keep spilling my guts out to strangers on the internet,and this is not the first time I waxed my legs for a boy. We’re all fighting over who we’re going to take homeand I’m still pretending I can play the clarinet.Everyone keeps complimenting my nail beds. Remember mood rings? Mine stays black.”— Kristina Haynes, “Johnny Said Once”
Nº 010
“I don’t owe people anything, and I don’t have to talk to them any more than I feel I need to.”
Ned Vizzini, It’s Kind of a Funny Story
Nº 011
“It’s messing people up, this social pressure to “find your passion” and “know what it is you want to do”. It’s perfectly fine to just live your moments fully, and marvel as many small and large passions, many small and large purposes enter and leave your life. For many people there is no realization, no bliss to follow, no discovery of your life’s purpose. This isn’t sad, it’s just the way things are. Stop trying to find the forest and just enjoy the trees.”
Sally Coulter
Nº 012
“I’m not sure what I’ll do, but
well, I want to go places and see people. I want my mind to grow. I want to live where things happen on a big scale.”— F. Scott Fitzgerald
Nº 013
“A psychologist walked around a room while teaching stress management to an audience. As she raised a glass of water, everyone expected they’d be asked the “half empty or half full” question. Instead, with a smile on her face she inquired, “How heavy is this glass of water?” The answers called out ranged from 8oz to 20 oz. She replied, “The absolute weight doesn’t matter. It depends on how long I hold it. If i hold it for a minute, its not a problem. If i hold it for an hour, i’ll have an ache in my arm. If i hold it for a day, my arm will feel numb and paralyzed. In each case, the weight of the glass doesn’t change, but the longer i hold it, the heavier it becomes.” She continued, “The stress and worries in life are like that glass of water. Think about them for a while and nothing happens. Think about them for a bit longer and they begin to hurt. And if you think about them all day long, you will feel paralyzed
incapable of doing anything.” Always remember to put the glass down.”
Nº 014
“I usually solve problems by letting them devour me.”
Franz Kafka
Nº 015
“Here, we drink our coffee black, love like cracked ribs.Nothing about this was easy, your hands, two chestnut spiders creeping through my bones.This, the car crash, both of us burning wildfires of snapped shins, split down the middle.This, our stigmata, hungry graves begging for a bite.This
this, the way we throw knives just to bleed, leave the doors unlocked and gaping, the way we carve our names into the floorboards and try to forget the wreckage.See, my mother warned me about the wolves in the walls, but never about the ones that will love me wildly and sleep in my bed at night.”— Wolf Lovers | d.a.s
Nº 016
“No one calls and after a while you feel pleased with how long it has been since the last time you thought about how long it had been since somebody called. You can’t remember when you last remembered. You must really be good at living like this. And its just as well because when the phone rings by this time, even when it’s a wrong number, a hang
up or a telemarketer, you don’t want to speak to anyone. You’re in no fit state to speak to anyone. It’s not even a matter of sobriety. Even sober, you’re in no fit state to speak to anyone. You’re out of practice. When you do have to speak to someone, you have trouble. You have to practice the words and the tone of the small talk and it always sounds stilted. You’re either too vague or too focused or too polite. The person serving you looks at you strangely and you know you’ve done it badly. You can’t do it anymore.”— Elliot Perlman, Seven Types of Ambiguity
Nº 017
he called me “baby” & put a cigarette out on my wristI swear it’s almost like he kissed mehe said, “now the scar will always remind you of me”I’m in love with drowning & he is the sea
Nº 018
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Nº 019
Sobre o nada eu tenho profundidades.Não tenho conexões com a realidade.Poderoso para mim não é aquele que descobre ouro.Para mim poderoso é aquele que descobre as insignificâncias (do mundo e as nossas).Por essa pequena sentença me elogiaram de imbecil.Fiquei emocionado.Sou fraco para elogios.
Nº 020
“People waitall week for friday,all year for summer,all life for happiness.”
Nº 021
“Most adult children of toxic parents grow up feeling tremendous confusion about what love means and how it’s supposed to feel. Their parents did extremely unloving things to them in the name of love. They came to understand love as something chaotic, dramatic, confusing, and often painful
something they had to give up their own dreams and desires for. Obviously, that’s not what love is all about. Loving behavior doesn’t grind you down, keep you off balance, or create feelings of self-hatred. Love doesn’t hurt, it feels good. Loving behavior nourishes your emotional well-being. When someone is being loving to you, you feel accepted, cared for, valued, and respected. Genuine love creates feelings of warmth, pleasure, safety, stability, and inner peace.”— Susan Forward, Toxic Parents, p381
Nº 022
“I am where I was:I walk behind the murmur,footsteps within me, heard with my eyes,the murmur is in the mind, I am my footsteps,I hear the voices that I think,the voices that think me as as I think them.I am the shadow my words cast.”
Octavio Paz, closing lines to “A draft of shadows”, translated by Eliot Weinberger
Nº 023
“Trauma permanently changes us.This is the big, scary truth about trauma: there is no such thing as “getting over it.” The five stages of grief model marks universal stages in learning to accept loss, but the reality is in fact much bigger: a major life disruption leaves a new normal in its wake. There is no “back to the old me.” You are different now, full stop. This is not a wholly negative thing. Healing from trauma can also mean finding new strength and joy. The goal of healing is not a papering
over of changes in an effort to preserve or present things as normal. It is to acknowledge and wear your new life — warts, wisdom, and all — with courage.”— Catherine Woodiwiss, “A New Normal: Ten Things I’ve Learned About Trauma”
Nº 024
Take it all back. Life is boring, except for flowers, sunshine, your perfect legs. A glass of cold water when you are really thirsty. The way bodies fit together. Fresh and young and sweet. Coffee in the morning. These are just moments. I struggle with the in
betweens. I just want to never stop loving like there is nothing else to do, because what else is there to do?"—Pablo Neruda
Nº 025
I’m really into poetry that does nothing to help the reader. Poetry that doesn’t say: find consolation in me. Poetry that doesn’t say: here is what you should do. Poetry that doesn’t stay: get off your knees. I like poems that are selfish. That take up space. That cause itchy bones and aching teeth. That speak to speak but not to teach. That’s what I want to write. Me.
Nº 026
Ego says, Once everything falls into place, I’ll feel peace. Spirit says,Find your peace, and then everything will fall into place.
Marianne Williamson
Nº 027
“Maturing is realizing how many things don’t require your comment.”
Rachel Wolchin
Nº 028
“I don’t know what I need but for no apparent reason I’m going terribly south. Nothing has happened, absolutely nothing, but I’m still having problems breathing.”
Mark Z. Danielewski, The House of Leaves
Nº 029
“You kiss me and tell me that I taste like sand.You tell me that you have dreams of the ocean dragging me away.You tell me that you wake up afraid of rip tides and ocean currents;and then you kiss me again.”
excerpt from “Between Your Anxieties And My Pen” by Trista Mateer
Nº 030
“I swear to every heaven ever imagined,if I hear one more dead
eyed hipstertell me that art is dead, I will personally summon Shakespeare from the grave so he can tell them every reasonwhy he wishes he were born in a time where he could have a damn Gmail account. The day after I taught my mother how to send pictures over Iphone she texted me a blurry image of our cocker spaniel ten times in a row.Don’t you dare try to tell me that that is not beautiful.But whatever, go ahead and choose to stay inyour backwards-hoping-all-inclusive clubwhile the rest of us fall in love over Skype.Send angry letters to state representatives, as we record the years first sunrise so we can remember what beginning feels like when we are inches away from the trigger. Lock yourself away in your Antoinette castlewhile we eat cake and tweet to the whole universe that we did. Hashtag you’re a pretentious ass hole.Van Gogh would have taken 20 selflies a day. Sylvia Plath would have texted her lovers nothing but heart eyed emojis when she ran out of words.Andy Warhol would have had the worlds weirdest Vine account, and we all would have checked it every morning while weSnap Chat our coffee orders to the people we wish were pressed against our lips instead of lattes. This life is spilling over with 85 year olds rewatching JFK’s assassination and 7 year olds teaching themselves guitar over Youtube videos. Never again do I have to be afraid of forgettingwhat my fathers voice sounds like. No longer must we sneak into our families phonebookto look up an eating disorder hotline for our best friend.No more must I wonder what people in Australia sound like or how grasshoppers procreate. I will gleefully continue to take pictures of tulipsin public parks on my cellphone and you will continue to scoff and that is okay. But I hope, I pray, that one day you will realize how blessed you are to be alive in a moment where you can google searchhow to say I love you in 164 different languages.”— b.e.fitzgerald (Art is a Facebook status about your winter break.)
Nº 031
“Everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world, I mean everybody
no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds.”— Neil Gaiman
Nº 032
“The honey hasn’t been sweet in years,but my teeth are still rotting.Mama doesn’t know the half of it.She loves everyone too hardeven if she pretendsshe can’t remember their names.I would have told you this sooner,but the poems had other ideas.All those love letters were talking about someone else,and I can’t even tell you what their hands looked like.Tell I’m changing the worldwhile you’re not looking.Tell me that’s why you turned your back on me.It’s okay, things aren’t so lonelyonce you realize you’re own company counts, too.It’s okay,the bad men stopped showing up in my dreams.It’s okay, we are all oceans trying to forget the oneswho drowned when they loved us.I know you’ve been renting out that bodyfor so long,and it’s still not home,but one day the lights will stop flickering.The bees will start singing again, and honey will drip down every jarlike forgiveness that’s finally thicker than shame.”
Y.Z, the things that don’t rot
Nº 033
“There are 7 billion people on this planet who I have not met,and 195 countries I have not visited.Yet I am stuck in this insignificant town,Being pressured into making decisions about my future,When I barely even know who I am.”
Nº 034
“They’ve promised that dreams come true, but forgot to mention that nightmares are dreams, too.”
Oscar Wilde
Nº 035
“There’s so much more to life than finding someone who will want you, or being sad over someone who doesn’t. There’s a lot of wonderful time to be spent discovering yourself without hoping someone will fall in love with you along the way, and it doesn’t need to be painful or empty. You need to fill yourself up with love. Not anyone else. Become a whole being on your own. Go on adventures, fall asleep in the woods with friends, wander around the city at night, sit in a coffee shop on your own, write on bathroom stalls, leave notes in library books, dress up for yourself, give to others, smile a lot. Do all things with love, but don’t romanticize life like you can’t survive without it. Live for yourself and be happy on your own. It isn’t any less beautiful, I promise.”
Nº 036
If it’s darkness we’re having, let it be extravagant.
Jane Kenyon
Nº 037
A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers
by only see a wisp of smoke.
Nº 038
and when love came to us twice and lied to us twice we decided to never love again that was fair fair to us and fair to love itself.we ask for no mercy or no miracles; we are strong enough to live and to die and to kill flies,attend the boxing matches, go to the racetrack, live on luck and skill, get alone, get alone often, and if you can’t sleep alone be careful of the words you speak in your sleep; and ask for no mercy no miracles;and don’t forget: time is meant to be wasted, love failsand death is useless.
Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire
Nº 039
We are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of wine.
Eduardo Galeano
Nº 040
Most people think happiness is about gaining something, but it’s not. It’s all about getting rid of the darkness you accumulate.
Carolyn Crane
Nº 041
No matter how much you feed the wolf, he keeps looking at the forest.
Ilse Lehiste