Humans of New York: Stories by Brandon Stanton

"Life is cumulative, and you can't devalue any type of experience."

"If you're only true to your short-term self, your long-term self slowly decays."

"I want to make different versions of myself."

"I don't want to be happy because I don't think that's realistic. But I would like to be able to deal with life."

How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti

For some reason, I requested this book from the library. Still have no idea where the suggestion came from, but when I picked it up, there was a Miranda July quote on the front. Makes sense. AND THEN I LOVED THIS BOOK ON EVERY LEVEL. My usual bookmark was filled with notes by page 18, so I then turned down page corners (gasp!).

"It's like with improv...True improv is about surprising yourself--but most people won't improvise truthfully. They're afraid. What they do is pull from their bag of tricks. They take what they already know how to do and apply it to the present situation. But that's cheating! And cheating's bad for an artist. It's bad in life---but it's really bad in art."

"It's good for an artist to be ridiculous."

"...It would have been so easy to count the ways I had been betrayed by girls, all the ways I had been hurt by them. I could have easily made a list of all the girls to whom I had caused pain. ...But it was not that way with men. ...It was simple. It was men I enjoyed talking to at parties, and whose opinions I was interested in hearing. it was men I wanted to grow close to and be influenced by. It was easy. There was a way in which I felt they would always come home. ...Even if they could be neglectful or forgetful, they were rarely cruel, and though they weren't necessarily so reliable, they were trustworthy in  a deeper sense: I never worried that a man's heart would turn against me--at least not before mine turned against him--and certainly not for no reason at all."

""But--and here is the hope--there is a solution for people of this type, and it's perhaps not the solution that could have been predicted. The answer for them is to build on what they have begun and not abandon their plans as soon as things start getting difficult. They must work--without escaping into fantasies ...I don't mean work for its own sake, but they must choose work that begins and ends in a passion, a question that is gnawing at their guts, which is not to be avoided but must be realized and live through the hard work and suffering that inevitable comes with the process. ...

They must reinforce and build on what is in their life already rather than always starting anew, hoping to find a situation without danger. Puers don't need to check themselves in to analysis. If they can just remember this--It is their everlasting switching that is the dangerous thing; not what they choose--they might discover themselves save."

"Not something you could control, but something you could love. But if it had left the bathroom and invaded the bedroom, you probably wouldn't have liked it so much. ... I'm doing a lot, what with letting you tape me, but --boundaries, Sheila. Barriers. We need them. They let you love someone. Otherwise you might kill them."

"In the daytime, austerity. In the nighttime, oblivion. Daytime, nighttime. Daytime, nighttime. It went on like that, like throwing a ball from one had to the other."

One Kick by Chelsea Cain

"Synchronicity...(the Jungian) kept talking about sychronicity. She kept trying to get me to see the meaniful coincidences in my life...We see what we want to see...It's called cognitive bias. Sychronicity has potential in fractal geometry; otherwise, it's bunk."

Swim Back to Me by Ann Packer

Ann Packer's book The Dive From Clausen's Pier is one of my hands-down favorites. It's a book that I have read and reread, each time feeling something new and rediscovering the meaning of hot tears.

However, I haven't been moved nearly as much by any of Packer's work since. Enter Swim Back to Me.

...

Extraordinary Means by Robyn Schneider/ I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson

"I don't know how this can be but it can: A painting is both exactly the same and entirely different every single time you look at it. That's the way it is between Jude and me now."

Yard War by Taylor Kitchings

"So people can throw bombs in other peoples' yards and still be good. As long as they keep their yards nice and go to church."