{"author":"Laurie Perez","author_id":"Laurie+Perez","total_quotes":21,"quotes":[{"text":"Feeling compassion toward a dangerous person will not lead you to submit to them or put yourself at risk or condone their actions. What it does simply, is relieve your anxiety – which immediately makes you stronger and more resilient.","author":"Laurie Perez","tags":["anxiety","compassion","difficult-people","resilience"],"id":1270,"author_id":"Laurie+Perez"},{"text":"The more at ease you are in the world, the more vibrant, creative and easygoing the world in you becomes.","author":"Laurie Perez","tags":["compassion","creativity","inner-beauty"],"id":27088,"author_id":"Laurie+Perez"},{"text":"We pick up our shots and for the first time there's a total absence of sound in the room. From the ceiling, shy silver things blink and wait. Dennis doesn't sit, but hovers at the edge of the table, leaning in with a darkroom perfected slump. His hair hangs like its edges were dipped in lead. Thin spears pointing to the table. I'm looking at his face; we're both serious in a self-aware way, pretending not to notice.'It doesn't even feel like I left. God, you look fucking terrible. But it's a terrible face that drinks tequila well. Down. And cheers.'We force a dull clash of cups and pour everything down at once. The hard tequila shudders that never happen in the movies. First your head feels light, then it starts receiving the distress signals from throat, lungs, belly. Your shoulders jerk to shake off the snake that wrapped around you and squeezed. It burns. The good burn.","author":"Laurie Perez","tags":["best-friends","drinking","men","tequila"],"id":58197,"author_id":"Laurie+Perez"},{"text":"His eyes spark with revolutions, enlightened trickery and unconditional affection.","author":"Laurie Perez","tags":["attar-of-nishapur","curiosity","encounter","greatness","kismet","poet"],"id":67494,"author_id":"Laurie+Perez"},{"text":"Shake off the tonnage of old genetics, nitpicking naysayers and hand-me-down Egos hoarding junk in the back of your mind.Be a Friday night liberty set loose on Monday morning.","author":"Laurie Perez","tags":["creativity","destiny","ego","expansion","fearless","genetics","limitless","purpose","rebel"],"id":109264,"author_id":"Laurie+Perez"},{"text":"I look around with divine precision and gazing free upon the earth, I see —— architects and earthquakes - empaths and robots - fictions and near misses - lives changing, children sleeping, beauty brimming.I see us - trying on ways of being - so sweet and messy, so worthwhile.","author":"Laurie Perez","tags":["architecture","being","consciousness","cosmic","earthquakes","empathy","grace","gratitude","grit","humanity","perspective"],"id":113081,"author_id":"Laurie+Perez"},{"text":"Bringing a novel to light - revealing the form and cadence, shadows and demeanor of a protagonist constructed from thin air - linking scenes and synchronicity across translucent time - holding up a glass brimming with chilled, never-tasted liquid, then sipping from it with intoxicated focus - allowing lovers to make a perilous mess of things, fall apart and nakedly come back together again - looking through conjured windows deep into someone else’s snow-bound solitude, feeling utterly alone yet being all-connected: this is not writing. It’s world-creating.It’s raw, exposed dreaming. It’s humbling. At first too personal and intimate to share, it evolves like a child into a life of its own until I have no say in what comes next. It’s what I wake at 4am to say Yes to, the spinning possibility of a new story relentlessly commanding me to write it down so it can whirl in your experience.","author":"Laurie Perez","tags":["art-making","creative-process","creatives","creativity","discovery","dreaming","fearless","imagination","intimacy","novel","novelist","stamina","thin-air","vision","visionary","writing"],"id":133655,"author_id":"Laurie+Perez"},{"text":"Light, Amie, can be blinding when it first comes on. Lasers can be deadly, even when streaming from benevolence. We need perspective. We need it to seem wiser than us, tested and tempered by time.","author":"Laurie Perez","tags":["awakening","clarity","light","light-and-darkness"],"id":137558,"author_id":"Laurie+Perez"},{"text":"Corporeal reality is much more rich and precious than we realize. It feels good to have a body, to surge on currents of emotion, to have nerve endings, mitochondria in our cells, tangible focused energy, the embodiment of light — given a voice.","author":"Laurie Perez","tags":["body-mind-spirit","emotions","light","mitochondria","physicality","sensual","sensuality","voice"],"id":141867,"author_id":"Laurie+Perez"},{"text":"She opens the book. Each sheet has one or two antique photographs stuck with corner tabs. The images are neither black and white nor gray, but hold that brownish gold of time and exposure to air.'This man is your great grandfather. Look at that face, Pedro. It is a mean mean face.' He's standing in front of a wood pile, holding an axe. 'I think he was only a teenager there, a long time before he met my mother. But look how handsome he was. And how mean.'It's funny the way she smiles when she talks about him. Saying he's mean has a perverse joy for her, as if she can stick her tongue out at him and his hands are tied so he can't slap her for doing it. She's right, though. There's no lingering smile, no potential for mirth in the burlap of his skin. I notice snow on the ground at his feet, but he's wearing a thin, unbuttoned shirt, showing no sign of cold.","author":"Laurie Perez","tags":["ancestors","family","family-history","mexico","rising-above-your-past"],"id":155929,"author_id":"Laurie+Perez"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":21,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}