#lose

He whistles. Que viva Colombia. Hands you back the Book. You really should write the cheater's guide to love. You think? I do. It takes a while. You see the tall girl. You go to more doctors. You celebrate Arlenny's Ph.D defense. And then one June night you scribble the ex's name and: The half-life of love is forever. You bust out a couple more things. Then you put your head down. The next day you look at the new pages. For once you don't want to burn them or give up writing forever. It's a start, you say to the room. That's about it. In the months that follow you bend to the work, because it feels like hope, like grace- and because you know in your lying cheater's heart that sometimes a start is all we ever get. ↗

— Junot Díaz

#love

Analyzing data from 79 men and women who wore inconspicuous devices that recorded some of their conversations over the course of four days, researchers from Washington University and the University of Arizona found a correlation between feelings of well-being and the amount of time spent talking every day. Moreover, the more substantive your conversations, the happier you're likely to be. In other words, heart-to-hearts trump small talk. (LA Times, "A lof of happy talk", March 11, 2010, A21.) ↗

— Meghan Daum

#happiness #talking #men

In the first place, you can't see anything from a car. ↗

— Ed Abbey

#close #life #looking #nature #noticing

In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who loses a child. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#english #inadequacy-of-words #language #lose #loss

The Auden/Kallman relationship had this to be said for it: It affirmed that it's better to be blatant than latent. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#coming-out #homosexuality #relationships #the-closet #wh-auden

Nothing optional—from homosexuality to adultery—is ever made punishable unless those who do the prohibiting (and exact the fierce punishments) have a repressed desire to participate. As Shakespeare put it in King Lear, the policeman who lashes the whore has a hot need to use her for the very offense for which he plies the lash. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#closeted #homosexuality #hypocrisy #prohibition #religion

Sometimes the thing that brings us together also pulls us apart. Sort of like a zipper.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#cohesive #proximity #pull #together #unity

It's not about whether or not someone is a bigot, but whether or not the argument which that someone is arguing is worth being a bigot about. ↗

— Criss Jami

#arguments #bigot #bigotry #bigots #certainty

Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#fiction

You crave winning and fear losing instead of just doing. To succeed you must remove your self-imposed limitations. ↗

— Wayne Gerard Trotman

#confidence #craving #doing #limitations #loser