An emotionally abusive relationship, in very simplistic terms, is much like standing up in a too hot bath and sinking back in so as not to feel so dizzy.

— Jackie Haze

I felt that the magical people must be in the hidden back roads and dusty cubbyholes of life; on highways, in hostels, and in shabby, smoky cafés. These enchanting people are in trees, around fires and under hand-knit hats and streetlamps reflecting gold on rain soaked pavement. They dance while others dangle; they vibrantly sing the songs that get jumbled and stuck in the subconscious of others who only wish to catch tune. They are the rare ones whose uncommon experiences touch your heart through just a wink of their eye, the stories stitched in the holes of their shoes, invoking a longing for the unknown, taking others to a place of missing what they've never even had -- they do not settle, they do not compromise.

— Jackie Haze

I have always thought that people are, by nature, nomadic, but they’ve built up anti-human constructs to keep them in place, and then they pop pills to mask their misery and look for ways to distract from their emptiness.

— Jackie Haze

I imagined each experience going on in that city, the world that was taking up my chest and throat, and I wanted to experience all of them. For every person sitting on a rooftop staring at the stars, every person driving out to the desert with their lover and a mattress in the back of their pickup, every adrenalin shot of stepping on a stage or movie set, every hand and breath casting music into the night, every kiss that felt like the first, every breath stealing glance, every dance, every burst of camera light, everything – I wanted to do it all. I was a moment chaser.

— Jackie Haze

In the lowest of lows you can learn the highest of highs, and that often when you get to the point of wanting to die, it’s because you already have and are truly aching to live.

— Jackie Haze

It felt important to be able to pick up and go whenever this endless stirring and inevitable craving for a change of scenery would bubble over because I didn’t want to die someday yearning for something else when it was only “something else” worth living.

— Jackie Haze

Many things as we have constructed them can be redefined and are neither correct nor incorrect. I love making love to a woman. I love her every quiver, her every movement, her every moan, her every breath. Furthermore, I love the journey my hands make over her every soft curve, the smell of her skin, and I revel in the feminine beauty, unmatched by anything else on this earth. But the core connection is what matters most and, while I don’t know what draws me to the essence of women rather than men or both, I wanted to be swallowed up by exactly that – the mystery of why we don’t want to be without each other.

— Jackie Haze

Moreover, we were to each other aspects of a dream unrealized. I emblematized the excitement of freedom, a life untethered by the confines of constructs. She illustrated a sense of belonging, of ongoing laughter in the face of those constructs, a true lifeline within the walking dead. We were standing in different places, yet the same, seeing within each other a sense of truth within the lies, a radiant light that illuminated the dark.

— Jackie Haze

Often I didn’t think I was cut out for the way the world is, being born into a common culture and system I would never choose for myself.

— Jackie Haze

Portland was a dream both in the literal sense and the metaphorical sense, both tangible and not - a fleeting affair you want to hold on to but can't, so you try memorizing her every detail only to fail to do so in the consumption, in the savoring, in the absorbing of yourself into her. When she's gone, she comes to you in snippets, replaying in your mind like a fragmented picture show.

— Jackie Haze