#over

Now that you're an adult, you might still feel a pang of guilt when you decline a dinner invitation in favor of a good book. Or maybe you like to eat alone in restaurans and could do without the pitying looks from fellow diners. Or you're told that you're "in your head too much", a phrase that's often deployed against the quiet and cerebral. Of course, there's another word for such people: thinkers. ↗

— Susan Cain

#thinkers #introvert

The last introvert in a world of extroverts. Silence: my response to both emptiness and saturation. But silence frightens people. I had to learn how to talk. Out of politeness. ↗

— Ariel Gore

#silence #socialization #talking #introvert

I love her. I know she loves me. And despite what Julia thinks is good for us, I want her to wait for me. We need to be together. We have to be together. If I don't stop her from walking away right now, I'll regret it for the rest of my life. ↗

— Colleen Hoover

#this-girl #life

I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost... I am helpless. It isn't my fault. It takes forever to find a way out. I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I am in the same place. But, it isn't my fault. It still takes me a long time to get out. I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it is there. I still fall in. It's a habit. My eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately. walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it. I walk down another street. ↗

— Portia Nelson

#nelson #sidewalk #discovery

From books, I winnowed the glue that held together my psyche as it struggled to stay whole. It was from stories and myths that I learned to dream, to imagine a different life, to realize potentials and probabilities other than those of the painful, poverty-mired existence I found myself in as a child. With a book I could hide in a corner, safe from the heavy hand and belt of my stepfather, and for a while not worry about where our next meal would come from, or where we would be sleeping that night, or when my mother would break and have to be sent yet again to the mental institution. Books, for me, we tiny life rafts that I clung to desperately. ↗

— J. Don Cook

#poverty #real-life #dreams

Once your past no longer has the power to define you, your future is, quite literally, yours for the taking. Every single beautiful thing you could possibly want or imagine will be yours. ↗

— Dan Pearce

#future #goals #our-pasts #overcoming-fear #past

One second she’s all timid, and then reeoowr! Hellcat. ↗

— Carrie Butler

#crossover-fiction #mark-of-nexus #mature-ya #new-adult #paranormal

My hopes for pie died on the sidewalk. There went my grin. ↗

— Carrie Butler

#crossover-fiction #mark-of-nexus #mature-ya #new-adult #paranormal

I mean, that was the code, wasn’t it? Single girls and taken guys weren’t allowed to be friends. The leash always got in the way. ↗

— Carrie Butler

#crossover-fiction #mark-of-nexus #mature-ya #new-adult #paranormal

There's a difference between preferring books to parties and preferring sixteen cats to seeing the light of day. ↗