#press

But laugh?" He pressed the flat of his hand against my stomach. "Here lives laugh." He ran his finger straight up to my mouth and spread his fingers. "Push back laugh is not good. Not healthy." "Also cry?" I asked. I traced an imaginary tear down my cheek with one finger. "Also cry." He put his hand on his own belly. "Ha ha ha," he said, pressing his hand to show me the motion of his stomach. Then his expression changed to sad. "Huh huh huh," he heaved with exaggerated sobs, pressing his stomach again. "Same place. Not healthy to push down. ↗

— Patrick Rothfuss

#laughter #suppression #tears #change

Sometimes I get depressed about my age. In March I’ll be 26. If man weren’t measured in numbers, but rather letters, I’d be turning Z. And then I’d be dead. ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#dead #death #depressed #funny #letters

When I first met Cara, she was twelve and angry at the world. Her parents had split up, her brother was gone, and her mom was infatuated with some guy who was missing vowels in his unpronounceable last name. So I did what any other man in that situation would do: I came armed with gifts. I bought her things that I thought a twelve-year-old would love: a poster of Taylor Lautner, a Miley Cyrus CD, nail polish that glowed in the dark. "I can't wait for the next Twilight movie," I babbled, when I presented her with the gifts in front of Georgie. "My favorite song on the CD is 'If We Were a Movie.' And I almost went with glitter nail polish, but the salesperson said this is much cooler, especially with Halloween coming up." Cara looked at her mother and said, without any judgment, "I think your boyfriend is gay. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#impression #kids #parents-dating #dating

Everything was usual. That was depression: being stuck, clinging to an out-of-date version of oneself. ↗

— Edward St. Aubyn

#dating

Early impressions are hard to eradicate from the mind. When once wool has been dyed purple, who can restore it to its previous whiteness? ↗

— Saint Jérôme

#first-impressions #past #change

I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows. ↗

— Katherine Graham

#decide #democracy #flourishes #government #i

Her eyes were of different colors, the left as brown as autumn, the right as gray as Atlantic wind. Both seemed alive with questions that would never be voiced, as if no words yet existed with which to frame them. She was nineteen years old, or thereabouts; her exact age was unknown. Her face was as fresh as an apple and as delicate as blossom, but a marked depression in the bones beneath her left eye gave her features a disturbing asymmetry. Her mouth never curved into a smile. God, it seemed, had withheld that possibility, as surely as from a blind man the power of sight. He had withheld much else. Amparo was touched—by genius, by madness, by the Devil, or by a conspiracy of all these and more. She took no sacraments and appeared incapable of prayer. She had a horror of clocks and mirrors. By her own account she spoke with Angels and could hear the thoughts of animals and trees. She was passionately kind to all living things. She was a beam of starlight trapped in flesh and awaiting only the moment when it would continue on its journey into forever.” (p.33) ↗

— Tim Willocks

#apple #asymmetry #atlantic #autumn #blind-man

But who could bear to know which stars were already dead, she thought, blinking up at the night sky, could anybody stand to know that they all were? ↗

— J. K. Rowling - The Casual Vacancy

#depression #endings #parminder #stars #universe

adulthood is depressing. for me at least. i cried at the death of every illusion harder than i cried at the death of friends. ↗

— Darnell Lamont Walker

#cried #depression #friends #death

Life is short enough, there is nothing worth here to take your life, and those things we do gain can never be taken to our grave. ↗

— Anthony Liccione

#depression #suicide #death