Cody Gohl

If you’re going through a slump, put down the pen, pick up the novels of your favorite artists.

People feel different things after they graduate college but I can guarantee you that almost all of them feel a little deflated.

I want someone to say beautiful things to.

You won’t have room for much in your suitcase, but keep room for books. You’ll find it hard to find English books and you’ll be surprised at how much you miss reading the language.

I imagine a boy who became a man before he’d realized it.

The hardest thing about writing about Madrid is finding my beginning. Because the story of Madrid and the story of who I was before and who I became after it does not fit solely into the stretch of the five autumnal months that I spent living there.

I’ve starred constellations of cities on the worldmap beating against my rib cage and still don’t know what accent I will speak my tomorrows in, don’t know whether or not to bend back the arms of this compass or to trust in their magnetism, don’t know with whom or for whom I will do all of this travelling.

Kindergarten teachers don’t ever get as much thanks as they deserve because their students never realize the impact they made on them until much later in life.

Help me to write down the things that move me even if it’s just the first warm Hello of a sort of sucky day. Help me to know that even sort of sucky days end.

Katie forgets her purse and so I pay even though I will never see her again. Do I know this? Even now, do I know this?

I’m a deeply blue-stained liberal and I believe in God and sometimes that means that things get messy.

You just… get a feeling about certain people.

This is just dinner, one of many we will have together, these misfit toy students stuffed in apartments that are too big for their barely-20-something hearts.

I miss the start of it all and I think that’s why I cling to any artifacts from our beginnings.

Her lips linger far past politeness. She chugs a quarter of the bottle, smacking tongue to lip, wiping the coke that drips along the corners of her mouth with the back of her hand.

I think mostly what I miss is having someone to call at one o’clock in the morning when the room is warm and the edges are slightly purple, when my full bed is loose with longing.

Because Dallas is a messy and complicated city. Here, you’ll find some of the wealthiest people you’ll ever meet in areas like Midtown and Preston Hollow (wuddup, Bush) and some of the poorest in neighborhoods in the south of the city.

And don’t bother with your words I know them all by heart could stick them to needle point and sell them at craft fairs.