F.K. Preston

“I begin my life. I live again. I meet a young girl called Valeria. She smiles easily. She laughs tender sounds that pull at my heart. I’m too young to be profound but she makes me feel so safe. So cherished. I am thirty years old. I bump into a woman I knew when she was a girl. Valeria looks annoyed to see me. She lives in the future. Where the world is turning. I live within the past. Where the people are trapped and screaming and alone. I live within the past when Valeria and I were in love. She’s waiting for the cab to come, her foot tapping against the sidewalk. Her eyes glancing at her watch every few minutes. I’m eager to reunite our lives through some kind of friendship. I’m so eager to know her again, as she was when she was a child. But Valeria lives within the future. I live within the past. Have the two ever gotten along? Have they ever even met?”

“Two dreams and a cup of coffee later.”

“I am a deeply uncertain individual. I often find myself acting like a fool to make the people around me laugh. When they’re laughing, they’re not watching me quite as closely. I smile to put people at ease. But what if I opened my mouth one day, spoke my actual thoughts, and the people glared at my opinions? What if they thought me disgusting or frightening or ugly because of my words? Would you keep your lips shut for the rest of your life to not face that judgment? Just for the sake of someone else’s comfort? For these strangers, who I will never know? If I can’t speak then I’ll write. These strangers, whose opinions crush me, will be forced to listen. Because when they read my words those words will make a home within their heads. They may even end up using my own opinions against me. But at least I’ll be hidden behind the pages of a book.”

“My creativity keeps me from starving. Humanity keeps my life mundane. Loving secures my love for life, but my imagination keeps me sane.”

“I keep dying and hoping you notice me. But you’re too busy living.”

“The belief in their actions can mend constellations. The ambition in their thirst for knowledge can both create and destroy.”

“I wanted to give you something that would last forever. Something that would surpass the world, that would still be alive and bright even after you passed away. Something beautiful. For your eyes and smile only. But I never found it. All I could give you is words. Words which were as fleeting as the heartbeats that shook my soul whenever you looked my way.”

“My sister lived in the moment. She said she would love the summer only when it came and warmed her. But I lived and still live in the future. Where it’s warm when it’s cold. Where dreams are not yet reality. Where the sad people are happy. The only problem with living in the future is that everyone has died, including yourself. So your plans are fiction and your predictions are fantasy. Living in the future is pure fantasy. I think that’s why I love it so dearly.”

“Dreams are memories we’ve lost to sleep.”

“All around us is a nothing that stretches on for infinity. We humans can barely comprehend that. If we comprehend it we are rarely pleased.”

“Honestly, I don’t know what I would recommend from this story. Perhaps it is this: if you have the choice to laugh or do nothing, you might as well laugh.”

“The greatest happiness is a quiet kind. It’s the tender understanding that we’re living in a very strange place full of strange creatures. And there’s quite a bit of wonder in that.”

“Hurting someone will not impress them. Intelligence requires empathy to work. Water is wet. The sky is pink through these rose-tinted glasses.”

“Dreams are memories. Memories are dreams. But my time with you hasn’t become a dream just yet. Because the sensation of your kisses keep me from sleep. I’m in love, God help me, I’m in love.”

“It was a bright day for me when I realised there wasn’t any one way to live as myself. You’re not a character. You have as many sides and reflections as the ripples that pass through a river in the spring. Don’t trick yourself into thinking you must be one person. Because you will never be only one person. Not even in the span of a day are you only one person. We are worlds stitched inside skin. There’s nothing small or simple about a world. There’s nothing small or simple about any living being. Remember this the next time someone tells you who to be and how to live. They haven’t figured it out yet. But don’t let yourself forget.”

“What is infinity? I haven’t a clue.But maybe that’s the whole point I’ve been attempting to explain to you.The fact that it’s not knownOr seenOr heard.Infinity is every person, every being, every bird. Infinity is a simple mystery.It looks like a mystery.Tastes mysterious.Feels like something completely delirious. We cannot imagine what this sound could be.All we can imagine is infinity.”

“Where do they go, these dreams of mine? Do they live? Do they die? Do they fall? Do they fly?”

“We are not bound by time. But there are things we cannot speak of because the repercussions of particular thoughts can break lives.”

“What a selfish boy you are. You wished for the world and she could only give you the skies.”

“No one ever claimed that creating art was simple. But they failed to mention the mess.”