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1 " There’s this feeling you get when you write a really good, true sentence or paragraph or scene, and it makes you feel invincible, as if you can do anything. It feels like a superpower, and in that moment no one can touch you. You’re the best there is. That’s how you make me feel, Jeremiah Crew. Like I’m the best there is. "
― Jennifer Niven , Breathless
2 " What makes someone stop loving you?One day there's love, the next day there's not. Where does it go?Something that lived and breathed like that - how can it just vanish as if it never really existed?I imagine a room or maybe an entire planet where the love goes to live once we're done with it. Like a kind of junkyard. Little remnants of love scattered everywhere. People picking through, collecting the strongest, biggest pieces, and trying to make something of them again. Isn't this what we do every time we meet someone new or start loving someone new? Pick up the old battered bits of ourselves and try again? "
3 " But all the scary stuff doesn't really compare to getting lost in your own mind. "
4 " This whole concept is so antiquated. As if all that matters is penis-plus-vagina sex. Something like twenty percent of Americans identify as something other than completely straight, so why are we still so focused on a woman's first time with a man? And why is a girl's virginity such a big deal anyway? People don't get excited about a straight guy having sex. It's all high fives and 'Now you're a man.' They don't sit around wringing their hands and searching the internet for replacement parts. "
5 " I'm right here. We're right here. I can't tell you what the point of this is except that I'm so fucking happy I met you, and I can't tell you what's going to happen... But I do know that right now, in this moment, on this island, I'm where I'm supposed to be, and that's with you. "
6 " (...) when life suddenly changes and you’re left picking up the pieces. She says it’s actually how you pick up the pieces that defines you. "
7 " There’s beauty in every story. And there’s a story in everything. "
8 " Because after suffering a loss, you become a ghost in your own body. You observe yourself doing things and saying things that you might not normally do or say. You need something to ground you and prove to you that you’re still here. As a way of feeling something. Anything. "
9 " Trapped behind the wall I’ve built around myself, unable to move or breathe or do anything but keep building it up around me, brick by brick, fast as I can. "
10 " You have you let the tears come,” she always says. “Because if you don’t, they’ll come out eventually – maybe not as tears, but as anger or something else. "
11 " Just like I will decide my life. No more waiting for other people to decide things for me. I'm writing it right now. "
12 " Life is an accumulation of aches. They fill you up and take your breath away and you think you’ll never breathe again, but before you know it, you are just words on paper, gone quiet and asleep until someone finds those words and reads them. "
13 " So what scares you most? With us?”I give this a little thought. “That you’ll be really into me one day and the next day you won’t be, and I won’t see it coming. Because apparently feelings can change overnight. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m too much. Or maybe I’m not enough. "
14 " I am staring at the place where the floor used to be. All I can think is how one minute the floor was there and now it’s not. How you could go through an entire day, every day, not thinking about the floor or the groundbecause you just assume it will always be there. Until it isn’t. "
15 " It’s funny how the bad things stay with you and the good things sometimes get lost. "
16 " Sometimes things end, even if you don’t want them to. "
17 " Why do some love stories have a shelf life and others last forever? "
18 " You never know what someone’s hiding. We all hide ourselves when we need to. "
19 " I’ve never realised how hard we are on our bodies. I think, Why are we so mean to ourselves? Why aren’t we happy with what we have? "
20 " Now.Close the book.But first—remember to open yourself up to love and possibility, to almostness and maybe.Use your voice.Let others in.Choose your future. Choose your body. Choose yourself.And go out there and write your life. "