133 quotes found
“I was desperate not to confront the fact that this really could be itthat "nineteen" didn't matter, that there really was a point at which even young bodies fail. I was not immortal.”
“Though I was starved for contact, I didnt stop to talk to any of these strangers. I had forgotten how to convincingly speak the polite things strangers say to each other.”
“He understood. In lovesickness we had found a common language.”
“It was my first lesson in the fragility of attraction.”
“I walked without breaks, slept through nights without waking, inhumanly smooth a small machine.”
“All I could think as he was speaking was that, if he touched me at all, all the miles Id walked, the pain Id felt, the beauty Id drunken like milk, like good wine making me happy, the four million ...”
“I reached into my pack and held something small in the fist I made. Its a pocketknife, I said, enunciating each letter. I was asserting myself, Id snapped out of something; he visibly snapped out o...”
“I was able to pitch a tent and carry a backpack twenty-five miles a day through mountainsId mastered a thousand amazing physical featsphysically Id become undeniably confident and capablebut physic...”
“I needed to begin respecting my own bodys boundaries. I had to draw clear lines. Ones that were sound in my mind and therefore impermeable, and would always, no matter where I walked, protect me. M...”
“My malady was submission.The symptom: my compliance.The antidote was loud clear boundaries.”
“I felt unready to hold myself responsible for the decision if I slept with him”
“The small word, No. Id see its deity.”
“SecondId take much better care of myself.There were simple things I could do. I could start with my poor feet. These little two feet carried me each day for miles and miles, steady and flexed, tire...”
“Rest fixed most things. Sleep was my sweet reward. I treated bedtime as both incentive and sacrament.”
“When I felt strongly I would say it strongly.”
“I needed to stop hiding: I was raped. It was time to honestly be exactly who I was. I sawthe shame wasn't mine, it was his, and I could stop misrepresenting myself, and I could accept myself.”
“Childhood is a wilderness.”
“I was beginning to feel compassion for myself.”
“I had stripped naked in front of men. Drunk. In mornings somber brightness I tried to remember why I had done it. Total exposure had seemed like the only way to be seen more clearly, heard, but now...”
“I doubted I could survive in the woods without these very basic things to help me. It seemed like a tremendous leap of faith to forsake the tools Id always been told I needed. And yet leaving colle...”
