“Each year, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch that he thinks is the most sincere. He’s gotta pick this one. He’s got to.
I don’t see how a pumpkin patch can be more sincere than this one. You can look around and there’s not a sign of hypocrisy.
Nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see.”
—Linus, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
What they don’t understand about birthdays and what
they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten,
and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and
three, and two, and one…
Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion
or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden
dolls that fit one inside the other,
each year inside the next
one.
—Sandra Cisneros
How to Not Be a Perfectionist
People are vivid
and small
and don’t live
very long—
Molly Brodak
I say this with incredulity: happy 8th birthday to La Pêche Fraîche.
You are loved just for being who you are, just for existing.
You don’t have to do anything to earn it.
Your shortcomings, your lack of self-esteem, physical perfection, or social and economic success—none of that matters.
No one can take this love away from you, and it will always be here.
Ram Dass
You won’t always,
don’t always
get what you need –
And try as you will,
you won’t always succeed –
And sometimes you’ll struggle,
And sometimes you’ll doubt –
And sometimes you’ll work,
But it just won’t work out.
It’s toil and it’s trouble,
This troubling life –
It’s juggling stress,
And it’s struggle and strife –
It’s bearing the bad times,
And riding the rough –
It’s knowing you tried,
But it wasn’t enough.
But try all the same,
With a hope in your heart –
Be sad but be strong,
And be ready to start –
The bad times will hurt,
And the dreadful times too –
You have to survive them.
It’s all you can do.
—Sam Garland
“Home wasn’t a set house, or a single town on a map.
It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together.
Not a place, but a moment, and then another, building on each other like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for your entire life, wherever you may go.”
― Sarah Dessen, What Happened to Goodbye
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
Carl Sagan, Cosmos
Pour me plaindre ou m’aimer je ne cherche personne;
J’ai planté l’arbre amer dont la sève empoisonne.
Je savais, je devais savoir quel fruit affreux
Naît d’une ronce aride au piquant douloureux.
Je saigne. Je me tais. Je regarde sans larmes
Des yeux pour qui mes pleurs auraient de si doux charmes.
Dans le fond de mon coeur je renferme mon sort,
Et mon étonnement, et mes cris, et ma mort.
Oui ! Je veux bien mourir d’une flèche honteuse,
Mais sauvez-moi, mon Dieu ! De la pitié menteuse.
Oh ! La pitié qui ment ! Oh ! Les perfides bras
Valent moins qu’une tombe à l’abri des ingrats.
—Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, La Ronce
