Lift your head when you're down so you don't drop your crown.

I really like how Madonna writes: (from her Harpers article)

"I was defiant. Hell-bent on surviving. On making it. But it was hard and it was lonely, and I had to dare myself every day to keep going. Sometimes I would play the victim and cry in my shoe box of a bedroom with a window that faced a wall, watching the pigeons shit on my windowsill. And I wondered if it was all worth it, but then I would pull myself together and look at a postcard of Frida Kahlo taped to my wall, and the sight of her mustache consoled me. Because she was an artist who didn't care what people thought. I admired her. She was daring. People gave her a hard time. Life gave her a hard time. If she could do it, then so could I."

I know things get hard but girl you got it, girl you got it there you go
Can't you tell by how they looking at you everywhere you go
Wondering what's on your mind, it must be hard to be that fine,
When all these motherfuckas wanna waste your time
It's just amazing, girl, and all I can say is...

I'm so, I'm so, I'm so, I'm so, I'm so proud of you

Everything's adding up, you've been through hell and back
That's why you're bad as fuck and you know you are.

Mark.

Shirley asked me some questions today.
One that stuck with me is what I've learned.
I guess I've learned how big my heart can be.
Love is like a liquid that needs to be held in a safe vessel.

My dad told me about this CS Lewis excerpt from "A Grief Observed"

When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be — or so it feels — welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house.

__

Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand. 

My dear Will,

You must be healed by now... on the outside at least, I hope you're not too ugly.
What a collection of scars you have. Never forget who gave you the best of them, and be grateful, our scars have the power to remind us that the past was real.
We live in a primitive time, don't we, Will? Neither savage nor wise. Half measures of the curse of it, any rational society will either kill me or put me to some use.
Do you dream much, Will? I think of you often.

Your old friend,
Hannibal Lector.

My life is just dreams shared with people. Some of which don't come true. But some do.

I've made people my center, my job my identity, but all those things change. 

The only thing that doesn't is a belief system, accountability that dictates decisions. stable, unchanging.

Cool pics:

http://news.distractify.com/people/complex-humans/?v=1