4 weddings and a funeral

I was searching for the ending song of 4 weddings and a funeral (the only part i was able to catch when it was shown on tv, though i’ve seen the movie years ago) when I happened to find this video of John Hannah reciting a poem of WH Auden. The way he recited it was just so moving I couldn’t help but look for the poem and post it here…

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West.
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever; I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

– W. H. Auden

Do it anyway

Here’s a nice poem to start the year. This was found written on the wall of Mother Theresa’s home for children in India.

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. 
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies.  Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you.
Be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. 
Create anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. 
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, will often be forgotten.  Do good anyway.

Give the best you have, and it will never be enough.
Give your best anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God. 
It was never between you and them anyway.

JK

J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, delivers her Commencement Address, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination,” at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association

Text as prepared follows.
Copyright of JK Rowling, June 2008

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.

The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I’ve experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world’s best-educated Harry Potter convention.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.

Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.

They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.

I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.

Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I’ve used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
I wish you all very good lives.
Thank you very much.

Spell/ Marie Digby

why i like nobuta wo produce

  Nobuta Wo Produce is a Japanese tv series. It revolves around 3 different characters: Shuji, Akira, and Nobuta/Nobuko. Shuji is the cool and popular guy. He is friends with everyone, except Akira, whom he finds annoying. Yet, he is the one guy in school he can talk to about his feelings. One day, Nobuta, a shy girl, comes to school. She is bullied everyday by Bando. With nothing else to do, Shuji and Akira decided to make Nobuta popular. They call themselves "the producers". As they attempt to "produce Nobuta", they ended up "producing" a wonderful friendship. In the end, Shuji ended up producing himself: an authentic self.

Shuji: Because of that girl, who seemed to have a grudge against everything in the world, and this stupid guy, who’s convinced everything in the world exists for him, my school  days, that were peaceful up until now, slowly began to get complicated.

———-

Shuji: Amidst all of these kids gathered together, I, the serious one, am the one who loses. 

—-—-

  Shuji: If you don’t change yourself, you’re always going to be picked on! You’re going to be uprooted like that willow tree. Is that alright with you?

Nobuta: That’s why I said, nothing will change, the world is going to be the same no matter where I go. It’s a world that I can’t live in and it just continues on and on.

Shuji: Then let’s make one… a world that you can live in. I’ll make one for you.

————-

Nobuta: It’s like I’ve come into a different world.

Bookshop owner: A world that I’ve made…

—————-

Nobuta: The willow tree… it couldn’t have know that it was going across the ocean, huh?          

Shuji: If you don’t live your life, you never k now what’s going to happen.

Nobuta: They exist… places where you can live your life anew.

Shuji: Yeah…

Nobuta: I wonder if I can be a big tree? One that no one can uproot. I wonder if I can be a big tree like that?

————————-

Nobuta: I will live my life in this world where Bando is…

———————–

Shuji: But at this time, I really didn’t understand, in what was to come, that we would have to fight against people’s evils that were dark and deep, without reason.

————————

Shuji: No one in the world has confidence. Everyone is afraid. Really, everyone’s so obsessed with themselves that they have no leisure to think about others. So you don’t have to be afraid. First, forget about wanting to look good. Let everyone know that you’re there.

——————-

Shuji: Think about the fact that you’re here… and only that.

——-—————-

Nobuta: Good morning…. Good morning…. I’m right here! Good morning!

—————————-

Nobuta: I threw out that shirt and it somehow ended in

Africa. And the kid is smiling with that shirt. So you can smile no matter what you wear. You can live smiling.

——————

Nobuta: For me, it’s more fun looking back on it all later.

Akira: What do you mean?

Nobuta: Like with video games, they’re not fun when I’m playing them. But when I’m studying, I remember playing them, and they were fun. You probably don’t realize that things are fun until later afterwards.

Akira: I wonder if you’ll remember this, years from now.

Nobuta: Remember what?

Akira: Making dolls from early on in the morning, or picking flowers at sunset. Years from now, do you think we’ll look back and say “that was fun!”?

—————–

Vice Principal: The festival when they were in school must have been a lot of fun. It’s a once in a lifetime thing, meeting friends, being engrossed in meaningless things.

———————-

Writing in the mirror: The chances of meeting the person whose hand you’re holding right now i s like that of a miracle. Even when you step out into the light, don’t let go of their hand.

————————

Nobuta: I was digging by myself for a long time, like a mole… underground. Then suddenly, two others came up.

Akira: Two others? You mean us?

Nobuta: yeah… I wonder if in the future I’m going to suddenly meet people like this? If so, it’s not going to be so bad digging by myself.

Akira: You’ll meet them… all sorts of different people.

Shuuji: And then one day… you won’t be able to see them again.

————-

Shuuji: I was shocked that Nobuta and Akira, who I thought was stupid could make something like that so well.

———————-

Shuuji: When tomorrow comes, the classroom will go back to normal. Nobuta will be bullied again and Akira will be as annoying as always. And I’ll be popular. Even though that’s s omething that isn’t supposed to change, I was worried. I, who had nothing to worry about, was really worried.

————————

Akira: Why did Bando choose flowers?

Nobuta: I think she wanted to do something against what everyone expected. I think she wanted to think that she too can change.

————–

Shuji: I was gonna make flowers fall over Nobuta. Even if I were gonna lose my popularity, I was gonna choose flowers. That was probably because I liked the two of them. I like myself when I’m with the two of them.

—————

Nobuta: I’m always just catching balls from you guys, right? But catching is all I can do. So one day I want to throw the ball back at you. If I could get it into your gloves with a snapping sound, it would really feel good.

—————-

Akira: We don’t really know anything about Nobuta, do we? Do you know what Nobuta wishes for? To become popular one day and to say thank you to you.

—————

Shuji: And then like a regular girl, I want to see her crying and laughing about something stupid, so much that her stomach gets all twisted up.

———————

Akira: A 10 yen coin, wandering the street

Nobuta: To live my life smiling

Shuji: To be a good person

Yokoyama: What’s with them? Are they not taking this seriously……they are taking this seriously.

—————

Akira: Nobuta becoming everyone else is painful.

Shuji: What do you mean?

Akira: I want Nobuta to be only mine. To be honest, I don’t even want others to look at her.

———————

Akira: What you’ve been watching is Shuji’s only

Nobuta: Everytime I watch it, I like it more. There are only people in this, did you know?  So what he likes is people. It’s interesting. He looks cool and yet he loves people. He probably really cares about others. And that’s why he lies. And he holds back. When I watch this, I really see that.

———————

Akira: Nobuta, I love you. I like the book that you read. I like the sidewalk that you walk. I like the top floor where you are. I like everywhere where you are. I love it.

———————-

Shuji: From tomorrow, she’s gonna hate me. From others… to be hated by others… is scary.

——————

Shuji: I have to say something to Nobuta. I have to smile and say something or Nobuta’s gonna be worried. I was thinking. But I couldn’t move…. When Nobuta hugged me, I understood for the first time… I’m a lonely human being.

———————

Shuji: Even if I fell to the bottom, life doesn’t end. As he said, life doesn’t end easily. But I still have to live on.

——————–

Shuji: I don’t care if no one believes me. But I just want them to believe me… now, and forever more.

—————–

Goyokudo: If you live, there’s a horrible day. But there’s also an amazing day.

———————

Akira: Inside me, shuji and nobuta is first. I’m second.

——————-

Shuji: Right now, feeling that these words aren’t reaching you, guys, is scary. I’m scared to death….

Tani: It’s reaching us. Don’t worry, it’s reaching us.

———————

Shuji: As long as someone’s there for you, even if you go to a place that you regret, you can come back… As long as I’m here, I won’t get lost.

——————

Shuji: More than this, I don’t wanna become any closer…. We’re gonna be separated soon. If we become closer, we’re just gonna be sadder.

————————

Akira: But why don’t you care more about yourself?

Shuji: To do something for someone else, does it mean you’re not caring about yourself? I… when I’m doing something for Nobuta, I feel like I was most myself. Don’t you think so, too? So whenever she’s trying to make others happy, isn’t she the most lively?

——————–

Shuji: I never understood what loving others meant. But because of Nobuta, I think I understand. Like eating together and having fun, seeing the same scene, and thinking I’ll never forget this moment, or laughing like crazy, at times getting worried. And thinking you wanna spend more time with them. To like others, it’s simple happy things like that. In the future if I am able to love someone, I’ll probably remember you. Everything you’ve taught me, I’ll remember. Thanks

Nobuta: I’m the one who wants to thank you. I regret that that’s all I can say. Right now, everything I’m thinking, I wish I could express it. How much I’m thankful, I wish I can express it.

——————-

Shuji: The last scene I saw at school was Mariko and Nobuko having fun. That really really made me happy. Me and Akira, we left as if we would see each other tomorrow and never even looked up.

—————-

Caretaker: Hey, aren’t you gonna go say bye?

Akira: Don’t want to…

Caretaker: Just cause it’s hard what the point of hiding. You’re gonna just say that nothing happened with Shuji? If you give up what’s difficult, it means you’re gonna give up what was fun, too. Is that ok?

Akira: To make it nothing, I can’t do it.

Caretaker: Then do it till the end.

————–———-

Shuji: Nobuta power… enter!

 

Good news to Harry Potter fans!

According to Warner Bros. Pictures president Jeff Robinov:

"It has been an honor for our studio to be entrusted with bringing J.K. Rowling’s extraordinary book series to the screen, and we have always felt a great responsibility to be true to her vision. In concluding the film franchise, we recognized that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is packed with vital plot points that complete the story arcs of all of its beloved characters. That said, we feel that the best way to do the book, and its many fans, justice is to expand the screen adaptation of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and release the film in two parts. We could not imagine the final chapter of the film franchise being in better hands than those of David Yates."

It’s official! HP Deathly Hallows is gonna be released in 2 movies!

It All Depends On Whose Hands It’s In

A basketball in my hands is worth about $19.00. A basketball in Michael Jordan’s hands is worth about 33 million.

It depends on whose hands it’s in.

A baseball in my hands is worth about $6.00. A baseball in Roger Clemens’ hands is worth about $4.75 million.

It depends on whose hands it’s in.

A tennis racket is useless in my hands. A tennis racket in Andre Agassi’s hands is worth millions.

It depends on whose hands it’s in.

A rod in my hands will keep away an angry dog. A rod in Moses’ hands parted the mighty Red Sea.

It depends on whose hands it’s in.

A slingshot in my hands is a kid’s toy. A slingshot in David’s hands was a mighty weapon.

It depends on whose hands it’s in.

Two fish and five loaves of bread in my hands are a couple of fish sandwiches. Two fish and five loaves of bread in Jesus’ hands fed thousands.

It depends on whose hands it’s in.

Nails in my hands might produce a bird house. Nails in Jesus Christ’s hands produced salvation for the entire world.

It depends on whose hands it’s in.

You see now that it depends on whose hands it’s in. So put your concerns, your worries, your fears, your hopes, your dreams, your family, and your relationships in God’s hands because it depends on whose hands it’s in.

Martha Harper

how to save a life

Step one you say we need to talk
He walks you say sit down it’s just a talk
He smiles politely back at you
You stare politely right on through
Some sort of window to your right
As he goes left and you stay right
Between the lines of fear and blame
You begin to wonder why you came

Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life

Let him know that you know best
Cause after all you do know best
Try to slip past his defense
Without granting innocence
Lay down a list of what is wrong
The things you’ve told him all along
And pray to God he hears you
And pray to God he hears you

Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life

As he begins to raise his voice
You lower yours and grant him one last choice
Drive until you lose the road
Or break with the ones you’ve followed
He will do one of two things
He will admit to everything
Or he’ll say he’s just not the same
And you’ll begin to wonder why you came

Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life
How to save a life
How to save a life

Hogwarts Exclusive

"You know when I said I knew a little about love? That wasn’t true. I know a lot about love. I’ve seen it, centuries and centuries of it, and it was the only thing that made watching your world bearable. All those wars, pain, lies, hate… It made me want to turn away and never look down again. But when I see the way that mankind loves… you could search to the farthest reaches of the universe and never find anything more beautiful.

So yes, I know that love is unconditional. But I also know that it can be unpredictable, unexpected, uncontrollable, unbearable and strangely easy to mistake for loathing, and…what Im trying to say…. is I think I love you. Is this love….? I never imagined I’d know it for myself. My heart…it feels like my chest can barely contain it. Like its trying to escape because it doesnt belong to me anymore. It belongs to you, and if you wanted to, id wish for nothing in exchange-no fits. No goods. No demonstrations of devotion. Nothing but knowing you love me too. Just your heart. In exchange of mine."

                                                                   — Yvaine, Stardust —