#dole

Tombstones covered the dale, the smooth marble surfaces bright. She had spent days here as a teenager, though not out of any awareness of mortality. Like every adolescent, she intended to live forever. ↗

— Thomm Quackenbush

#cemetery #death #immortality #teenager #death

For as long as I could remember, I had been transparent to myself, unselfconscious, learning, doing, most of every day. Now I was in my own way; I myself was a dark object I could not ignore. I couldn't remember how to forget myself. I didn't want to think about myself, to reckon myself in, to deal with myself every livelong minute on top of everything else - but swerve as I might, I couldn't avoid it. I was a boulder blocking my own path. I was a dog barking between my own ears, a barking dog who wouldn't hush. So this was adolescence. Is this how the people around me had died on their feet - inevitably, helplessly? Perhaps their own selves eclipsed the sun for so many years the world shriveled around them, and when at least their inescapable orbits had passed through these dark egoistic years it was too late, they had adjusted. Must I then lose the world forever, that I had so loved? Was it all, the whole bright and various planet, where I had been so ardent about finding myself alive, only a passion peculiar to children, that I would outgrow even against my will? ↗

— Annie Dillard

#awakening #consciousness #selfconsciousness #love

The groove is so mysterious. We're born with it and we lose it and the world seems to split apart before our eyes into stupid and cool. When we get it back, the world unifies around us, and both stupid and cool fall away. I am grateful to those who are keepers of the groove. The babies and the grandmas who hang on to it and help us remember when we forget that any kind of dancing is better than no dancing at all. ↗

— Lynda Barry

#babies #confidence #cool #dance #dancing

The yearning sadness of a farewell stole plaintively across her heart as she recalled those sweet sessions when she stood with him in the shadowy upper reaches of the street listening to his murmured tale of woe. She felt that happiness being furtively withdrawn, stolen by sly hands which she could not resist. No longer would he feed the deep longing in her heart; no more could she escape, through him, those bleak lonelinesses which sometimes stole upon her. ↗

— Walter Greenwood

#love

Nobody, she felt, understood her--not her mother, not her father, not her sister or brother, none of the girls or boys at school, nadie--except her man. ↗

— Raquel Cepeda

#first-love #infatuation #love #lust #teenage-love

Humans are very strange. When you need a hug, they throw you away, when you need condolence , they insult you, and when you need love, they betray you. ↗

— M.F. Moonzajer

#condolence #hug #humans #insult #love

It will be about which candidate, which of the two candidates remaining, is best suited to make a positive difference in the lives of North Carolina families, and I submit to each of you tonight that I am that candidate and Elizabeth Dole is not. ↗

— Erskine Bowles

#am #best #candidate #candidates #carolina

I am living out my adolescent dream of travel and adventure. ↗

— Tim Cahill

#adventure #am #dream #i #i am

These irresponsible acts, which cannot have any justification whatsoever, are to be fully condemned. In these appalling circumstances, I want to offer you the most sincere condolences, both in my name and in that of the French people. ↗

— Jacques Chirac

#any #appalling #both #cannot #circumstances

Typically diagnosed during childhood and adolescent years, juvenile diabetes, also referred to as Type I diabetes, currently affects more than 3 million Americans and more then 13,000 children are diagnosed each year. ↗

— Elijah Cummings

#affects #also #childhood #children #currently