Love Letters to the Dead

I think a lot of people want to be someone, but we are scared that if we try, we won't be as good as everyone imagines we could be.

And maybe what growing up really means is knowing that you don't have to be just a character, going whichever way the story says. It's knowing you could be the author instead.

What I told you about saving people isn't true. You might think it is, because you might want someone else to save you, or you might want to save someone so badly. But no one else can save you, not really. Not from yourself. [...] You fall asleep in the foothills, and the wolf comes down from the mountains. And you hope someone will wake you up. Or chase it off. Or shoot it dead. But when you realize that the wolf is inside you, that's when you know. You can't run from it. And no one who loves you can kill the wolf, because it's part of you. They see your face on it. And they won't fire the shot.

You can be noble and brave and beautiful and still find yourself falling.

When we are in love, we are both completely in danger and completely saved.

You think you know someone, but that person always changes, and you keep changing, too. I understood it suddenly, how that’s what being alive means. Our own invisible plates shifting inside of our bodies, beginning to align into the people we are going to become.

But we aren't transparent. If we want someone to know us, we have to tell them stuff.

There's more to life than being a passenger.

There are a lot of human experiences that challenge the limits of our language,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons that we have poetry.

Truth is beautiful, no matter what the truth is. Even if it's scary or bad. It is beauty simply because it's true. And truth is bright. Truth makes you more you.

Sometimes when we say things, we hear silence. Or only echoes. Like screaming from inside. And that’s really lonely. But that only happens when we weren’t really listening. It means we weren’t ready to listen yet. Because every time we speak, there is a voice. There is the world that answers back.

I wish you could tell me where you are now. I mean, I know you’re dead, but I think there must be something in a human being that can’t just disappear. It’s dark out. You’re out there. Somewhere, somewhere. I’d like to let you in.

Nirvana means freedom. Freedom from suffering. I guess some people would say that death is just that. So, congratulations on being free, I guess. The rest of us are still here, grappling with all that's been torn up.

she walked like she belonged in a better world,

I mean, words can't be good enough for a lot of things. But, you know, I guess we have to try.

A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself - and especially to feel, or not to feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at any moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to -- letting a person be what he really is.

I know that it can be hard to believe that someone loves you if you are afraid of being yourself, or if you are not exactly sure who you are. It can be hard to believe that someone won't leave.

So maybe when we can say things, when we can write the words, when we can express how it feels, we aren’t so helpless.

I think that by beauty, you don't just mean something that's pretty. You mean something that makes us human.

It's sad when everyone knows you, but no one knows you.

We do things sometimes because we feel so much inside of us, and we don’t notice how it affects somebody else.

The thing about traditions is that they hold up the shape of your memory.

How could she just leave me here to live without her? I miss her so much. I love her. I want her to grow up and become who she was meant to be. I wanted her to grow up with me.

You learned right away that applause sounds like love.

I think it’s like when you lose something so close to you, it’s like losing yourself. That’s why at the end, it’s hard for her to write even. She can hardly remember how. Because she barely knows what she is anymore.

I feel like I am drowning in memories. Everything is too bright.

If beauty is truth, and truth is beauty, they are defined by each other, so how do we know the meaning of either?

You know when you think you know someone? More than anyone in the world? You know you know them, because you've seen them, like, for real. And then you reach out, and suddenly they are just... gone. You though you belonged together. You thought they were yours, but they're not. You want to protect them, but you can't.