#pa

I realize, for the first time, how very lonely I've been in the arena. How comforting the presence of another human being can be. ↗

— Suzanne Collins

#companionship #loneliness #comfort

And at some point you realize that there are more flavors of pain than coffee. There's the little empty pain of leaving something behind ‒ graduating, taking the next step forward, walking out of something familiar and safe into the unknown. There's the big, whirling pain of life upending all of your plans and expectations. There's the sharp little pains of failure, and the more obscure aches of successes that didn't give you what you thought they would. There are the vicious, stabbing pains of hopes being torn up. The sweet little pains of finding others, giving them your love, and taking joy in their life as they grow and learn. There's the steady pain of empathy that you shrug off so you can stand beside a wounded friend and help them bear their burdens. And if you are very, very lucky, there are a few blazing hot little pains you feel when you realize that you are standing in a moment of utter perfection, an instant of triumph, or happiness, or mirth which at the same time cannot possibly last ‒ and yet will remain with you for life. Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it. ↗

— Jim Butcher

#life #living #lucky #mirth #pain

I nibbled my lower lip. "If you could see into my past just by touching my back, you'd have a hard time resisting the temptation too." "I have a hard time keeping my hands off you without that added bonus. ↗

— Becca Fitzpatrick

#crescendo #hush-hush #longing #lust #nora-grey

Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real. ↗

— Cormac McCarthy

#injuries #memory #past #reality #scars

You can't look back - you just have to put the past behind you, and find something better in your future. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#past

The past is a pebble in my shoe. ↗

— Edgar Allan Poe

#misattributed #misattributed-to-poe #poe-singer #past

WE two boys together clinging, One the other never leaving, Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making, Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching, Arm'd and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving. No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving, threatening, Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, on the turf or the sea-beach dancing, Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness chasing, Fulfilling our foray. ↗

— Walt Whitman

#companionship #friendship #life #love #togetherness

The antique, almost primitive band he held between his fingers caught the sunlight, glinting silver. “I found this ring shortly after I was banished from heaven. I kept it to remind myself of how endless my sentence was, how eternal one small choice can be. I’ve kept it a long time. I want you to have it. You broke my suffering. You’ve given me a new eternity. Be my girl, Nora. Be my everything. ↗

— Becca Fitzpatrick

#suffering

We still name our military helicopter gunships after victims of genocide. Nobody bats an eyelash about that: Blackhawk. Apache. And Comanche. If the Luftwaffe named its military helicopters Jew and Gypsy, I suppose people would notice. ↗

— Noam Chomsky

#blackhawk #comanche #military

So you see, Good and Evil have the same face; it all depends on when they cross the path of each individual human being. ↗

— Paulo Coelho

#good #humanity #path