The children of the sun, happy people whose eyes shone with a bright radiance and whose faces gleamed with wisdom, and with a certain consciousness, … - Maria Popova

Some of our dormant multitudes come awake with a catlike stretch, slowly and lazily over years of personal development. Others leap into being with the jolt of an alarm sounded by a particular event or person who has entered our lives at a particular moment — rarely anticipated, almost never convenient, always transformational. On those rare, momentous mornings, one looks into the bathroom mirror and greets — sometimes grudgingly, sometimes gleefully — the gladsome stranger of oneself.

There are infinitely many kinds of beautiful lives

This false notion of the body as the testing ground for intimacy has long warped our understanding of what constitutes a romantic relationship. The measure of intimacy is not the quotient of friction between skin and skin, but something else entirely — something of the love and trust, the joy and ease that flow between two people as they inhabit that private world walled off from everything and everyone else.