Words, Collected (Boston University Supplement #3) Sophie

I collect words. Not just words, but phrases. Lines of text that make my heart feel like it’s going to explode out of my chest. I live for the feeling when a sentence is perfect, when each syllable flows perfectly into the next and the words come together to form a delicate, balancing moment before they topple into the next line. I love words. There is such solidarity in writing, an aching feeling when an unknown author understands the raw emotions you can’t express on your own.

I have hundreds of quotes saved on my phone, books filled with highlighter and pencil smudges, post-it notes stuck on every available surface. Because when a sentence catches me, I can’t just abandon it. When Blaise Pascal said “Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed” I wrote it down. When I read Slaughterhouse Five and came upon the line “How nice - to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive” I had to keep it, to preserve the feeling, even out of context.

Each sentence is a new experience. “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time” - Jack Kerouac.

Each phrase, a...