February 2012
37 posts
1 tag
“You know I am not particularly tender; I’ve had to strike and to fend off....”
– Joseph Conrad, from “Heart of Darkness”
“There is nothing better than imagining other worlds … to forget the painful one...”
– Umberto Eco, Baudolino (via underpaidgenius)
2 tags
“People who feel any sort of regret where you are concerned will suppose you are...”
– Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (via devilduck)
1 tag
Umberto Fiori, "Slide"
A playground, in a park. One lady raises to the top of the slide a ball of newspaper, gives it a kiss: “Ready … set … go!” Another holds a lampshade in her hands, smoothing its chenille bangs. “My daughter, you should see her dance— she’s already won two prizes.” “Did I tell you mine—he’s three—can already write?” A girl, in line behind them with her son, is listening. She tightens her grip on his...
1 tag
Anne Carson's new book 'Antigonick' →
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“In the multiple peregrinations of love, Sabina was quick to recognize the echoes of larger loves and desires. The large ones, particularly if they had not died a natural death, never died completely and left reverberations. Once interrupted, broken artificially, suffocated accidentally, they continued to exist in separate fragments and endless smaller echoes. […]A partial resemblance could stir...
1 tag
“It’s like going around a mirrorless world asking everyone you meet to describe...”
– Diane Arbus (via dialogues)
“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he...”
– Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (via absea)
Jonathan Galassi, from “Girlhood”
How else will you know the color of crushed time; how else will you feel what it is to change and remember, to lose and absorb this summer inside you
(via ahuntersheart)
1 tag
“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension,...”
– Anaïs Nin (via killthecashcow)
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Erica Jong, Penis Envy
I envy men who can yearn with infinite emptiness toward the body of a woman, hoping that the yearning will make a child, that the emptiness itself will fertilize the darkness. Women have no illusions about this, being at once houses, tunnels, cups & cupbearers, knowing emptiness as a temporary state between two fullnesses, & seeing no romance in it. If I were a man doomed to...
1 tag
“In the years afterward, I fled whenever somebody began to understand me. That...”
– Pascal Mercier (via mirroir)
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“Celebration when your plan is working? Anyone can do that. But when you realize...”
– “Cold Tangerines” by Shauna Niequist (via julie911)
“If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s...”
– Audre Lorde (via human-voices)
“Now’s just the right moment to throw a bottle at them all, I thought, and,...”
– Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (via hateshiploveship)
2 tags
Wislawa Szymborska, "Lot's Wife"
They say I looked back out of curiosity. But I could have had other reasons. I looked back mourning my silver bowl. Carelessly, while tying my sandal strap. So I wouldn’t have to keep staring at the righteous nape of my husband Lot’s neck. From the sudden conviction that if I dropped dead he wouldn’t so much as hesitate. From the disobedience of the meek. Checking for pursuers. Struck by the...
1 tag
“If men could see us as we really are, they would be a little amazed; but the...”
– Charlotte Brontë, Shirley (via frenchtwist)
4 tags
Wislawa Szymborska, "A 'Thank You' Note"
There is much I owe to those I do not love.
The relief in accepting they are closer to another.
Joy that I am not the wolf to their sheep.
My peace be with them for with them I am free, and this, love can neither give, nor know how to take.
I don’t wait for them from window to door. Almost as patient as a sun dial, I understand what love does not understand. I forgive what love would...
“What on earth can you do on this earth but catch at whatever comes near you,...”
– Tennessee Williams, Orpheus Descending (via human-voices)
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Clifford DeHaven, "I Have These Echoes"
Just as that honeybee goes through his day busy, as they say collecting his nectar He has no idea that his real purpose is spreading the pollination of an entire world. This then is how you are going through your day busy, as they say Running your errands having no idea the effect you are having on people like me. I should have been a motorcycle man you know, full time. And I could have had a...
January 2012
106 posts
“Who was it that took away my voice?
The black wound he left in my throat
Can’t...”
– Bella Akhmadulina, from “Silence” (trans. Daniel Halpern)
(via awritersruminations)
“Her heart was exceptionally loud—not with love,
But with knowing. Knowing...”
– Rex Wilder, from “Séverine in Summer School” (via aubade)
1 tag
Bethany van Rijswijk, from "Water Hyacinths"
I dreamt you naked in the creek Your skin all stars and crying gulls – Your hair in the cottonwoods; a spate-woven nest Cradling whitethroats and luminous bodies.
Eyelids flickered in the branches of willows And you washed my feet in phosphorescent water – A green herb spat from your sweet mouth Turned wounds to silver crescents.
I dreamt darkest gods and drowned rivers – Water hyacinths...
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Antonio Machado, from "Last Night As I Was...
Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt—marvelous error!— that a spring was breaking out in my heart. I said: Along which secret aqueduct, Oh water, are you coming to me, water of a new life that I have never drunk? Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt—marvelous error!— that I had a beehive here inside my heart. And the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures.
cosmicnavel:
The Angels of Light - Praise Your...
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“There can be no resolution— only patient endurance— of the opposites Which ultimately spring from your own nature. You yourself are a conflict that rages in itself and against itself in order to melt its incompatible substances, the male and the female in the fire of suffering , and thus create that form which is the goal of life. Everyone goes through this mill— consciously or unconsciously,...
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“I’ve nothing against people who love truth. Apart from the fact that they make dull companions. (…) What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? When the lightning strikes shadows on the bedroom wall and the rain taps at the window with its long fingernails? No. When fear...
“Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear...”
– Emily Brontë, from “The night is darkening round me” (via the-final-sentence)
“Study me as much as you like, you will never know me, for I differ a hundred ways from what you see me to be. Put yourself behind my eyes and see me as I see myself, for I have chosen to dwell in a place you cannot see.”
-Rumi (via thepurestheart)