“I used to think truth was eternal, that once I knew, once I saw, it would be with me forever, a constant by which everything else could be measured. I know now that this isn't so, that most truths are inherently unretainable, that we have to work hard all our lives to remember the most basic things. Society is no help. It tells us again and again that we can most be ourselves by acting and looking like someone else...”

― Lucy Grealy, Autobiography of a Face

"I wish I’d partied a little less. People always say ‘be true to yourself.’ But that’s misleading, because there are two selves. There’s your short term self, and there’s your long term self. And if you’re only true to your short term self, your long term self slowly decays."

-- humans of new york

sometimes i skip workouts to eat burgers and drink beer.
sometimes i make really bad decisions at 2am.
sometimes i love more than i am loved.
sometimes i fall asleep with all of my eye make up on.
sometimes i fuck up.
sometimes i’m supremely on point.
sometimes i get so hopped up on coffee it’s insane.
sometimes i play beautiful music.
sometimes i do absolutely nothing.
but most times…. i have a really good time.

From tarafirma

Stories

"I still think the same way I thought as a child. I still worry. I'm still frightened... Nothing changes." "I've always had a deep respect for children and how they solve complex problems by themselves...through shrewdness, fantasy and just plain strength. They want to survive. THEY WANT TO SURVIVE."

 - Maurice Sendak

Interview by Andrew Romano and Ramin Seetodeh from BlankOnBlank.org
2009. Sendak's home in Connecticut
Read the Newsweek article
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek...

I love the internets and i love eavesdropping....

no.

Have the courage to say no. Have the courage to face the truth. Do the right thing because it is right. These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity.

--W.Clement Stone


art from the sketchbook of martha rich via thejealouscurator

Riot Grrrl

“This flyer, a pre–Riot Grrrl ‘manifesto’ that was later repurposed for the minizine Riot Grrrl, is the first image in the book. Kathleen told me she made it in 1989, when she was volunteering at Safeplace, Olympia’s long-lived domestic-violence shelter and advocacy organization. Designed so that it could be folded up into a small rectangle with the word trust on top, this flyer was both a secret invitation and a public announcement, much like Riot Grrrl itself.”

Archivist Lisa Darms reflects on her favorites from the Riot Grrrl Collection.

By Yumi Sakugawa for The Rumpus

"...I didn't want to stay with my ex-husband, not at my core, even though whole swaths of me did. And if there is one thing i believe more than I believe anything else, it's that you can't fake the core. The truth that lives there will eventually win out. It's a god we must obey, a force that brings us to our knees..." 

 -- Cheryl Strayed, Dear Sugar

Stories We Tell

"I'm interested in the way we tell stories about our lives. The fact that truth about the past is often ephemeral and hard to pin down."
-- Sarah Polley

I went to see this at the weekend and it is definitely one to watch! I wanted to go right back into the cinema and watch it again, despite the fact it made me cry THROUGH OUT and it's been on my mind alot since.
Polley has created a challenging,  gripping and absorbing meditation on the unknowability of other lives. It is funny and devastating in equal amounts and full or universal truth.
Go see it!!
...if only for the last line...
www.storieswetellmovie.com

“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”

― Virginia Woolf

Prism

Truth.  One thing can be refracted and seen in so many different ways by different people.
Prisms, found here via here.

truth

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

-- Carl Sagan

'We don't go wrong when we do that.'

All the world’s religions — so many of them represented here today — start with a simple question: Why are we here? What gives our life meaning? What gives our acts purpose? We know our time on this Earth is fleeting. We know that we will each have our share of pleasure and pain; that even after we chase after some earthly goal, whether it’s wealth or power or fame, or just simple comfort, we will, in some fashion, fall short of what we had hoped. We know that no matter how good our intentions, we will all stumble sometimes, in some way. We will make mistakes, we will experience hardships. And even when we’re trying to do the right thing, we know that much of our time will be spent groping through the darkness, so often unable to discern God’s heavenly plans.

There’s only one thing we can be sure of, and that is the love that we have — for our children, for our families, for each other. The warmth of a small child’s embrace — that is true. The memories we have of them, the joy that they bring, the wonder we see through their eyes, that fierce and boundless love we feel for them, a love that takes us out of ourselves, and binds us to something larger — we know that’s what matters. We know we’re always doing right when we’re taking care of them, when we’re teaching them well, when we’re showing acts of kindness. We don’t go wrong when we do that.

From President Obama's speech at the Sandy Hook vigil via evencleveland. Full text here.

Found here

Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it aint going away
--Elvis Presley

 Image by Ed Ruscha. 1973. "Truth." Oil on canvas

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune.
 
-- Noam Chomsky

Allow

There is no controlling life.
Try corralling a lightening bolt,
containing a tornado. Dam a stream, and it will create a new
channel. Resist, and the tide will sweep you off your feet.
Allow, and grace will carry
you to higher ground. The only
safety lies in letting it all in-
the wild with the weak; fear,
fantasies, failures and success.
when loss rips off the doors of
the heart, or sadness veils your
vision with despair, practice
becomes simply bearing the truth.
In the choice to let go of your
known way of being, the whole
world is revealed to your new eyes

 - Danna Faulds

Truth.

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

--Shakespeare
Hamlet Act 1, scene 3, 78–82