"I sit here without identity: faceless."
S.PLATH
"The imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself."
"The imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself."
William Blake
"I have never deceived anyone, for I have never belonged to anyone. My independence was all my wealth: I have known no other happiness."
"Don’t waste the rest of your time here worrying about other people—unless it affects the common good. It will keep you from doing anything useful. You’ll be too preoccupied with what so-and-so is doing, and why, and what they’re saying, and what they’re thinking, and what they’re up to, and all the other things that throw you off and keep you from focusing on your own mind."
"Naming and labeling are habitual, but that habit can be broken. Start practicing “not naming”with small things. If you miss the plane, drop and break a cup, or slip and fall in the mud, can you refrain from naming the experience as bad or painful? Can you immediately accept the “isness”of that moment?"
Eckhart Tolle
"The cause of my profound sense of incompatibility with others is, I believe, that most people think with their feelings, whereas I feel with my thoughts."
The Book of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa.
"We must look at ourselves over and over again in order to learn to love, to discover what has kept our hearts closed, and what it means to allow our hearts to open."
Jack Kornfield
"I used to walk into a room full of people and wonder if they like me. Now I look around and wonder if I like them."
Rikkie Gale
"Stars above. Earth below. Fire within."
Liam Tinker
"The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself."
Maya Angelou
"But all the magic I have known
I’ve had to make myself."
Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends: The Poems and Drawings of Shel Silverstein
"Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known."
I’ve had to make myself."
Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends: The Poems and Drawings of Shel Silverstein
"Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known."
"دل به دل راه داره
There is telepathy between hearts"
There is telepathy between hearts"
This is an Afghan proverb.
"The more I live the more I think two people together is a miracle."Adreienne Rich
"I dream about having a house by the water and not doing anything, not feeling ambitious, nor having the need to make money."Lee Pace
"The words of truth are always paradoxical."Lao Tzu
"Don’t be ashamed to be a human being, be proud!
Inside you one vault after another opens endlessly.
You’ll never be complete, and that’s as it should be."Tomas Tranströmer, from ‘Romanesque Arches’, The Half-finished Heaven
"If we all did the things we are capable of, we would astound ourselves."Thomas Edison
"Habseligkeiten"(noun, plural) Voted the most beautiful German word, the concept of Habseligkeiten is stunning yet, difficult to explain. Literally defined as belongings, Habseligkeiten are the small treasures and property, which define our happiness and sentiments. Although these possessions hold a dear place in our heart, they are useless to another person, such as a gold coin a child found during a treasure hunt in the woods. Overall, Habseligkeiten is characterized as beautiful personal belongings, which evolve from personal meanings: compassionate or sad attachments.
"Those who love you are not fooled by mistakes you have made or dark images you hold about yourself. They remember your beauty when you feel ugly; your wholeness when you are broken; your innocence when you feel guilty; and your purpose when you are confused."Alan Cohen
"She’s never where she is. She’s only inside her head."Janet Fitch, White Oleander.
"What can you know about a person? They shift in the light. You can’t light up all sides at once."Richard Siken, Portrait of Fryderyk in shifting light
"There are days that must happen to you."Walt Whitman
"I sleep. I dream. I make up things that I would never say. I say them very quietly."Richard Siken
"There is magic in decay.
A dance to be done
For the rotting,"Dan Chelotti, from “Compost,” Poetry (June 2014)
"My revenge will be artistic not personal."Beetlejuice (TV series), Dir. Tim Burton
"She’s confused and afraid to commit to the wrong thing, so she won’t commit to anything."Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
"I live with my contradictions
intact,…"David Ignatow, from Against the Evidence: Selected Poems, 1934–1994; “I live with my contradictions,”
"You are like night, calmed, constellated.
Your silence is star-like, as distant, as true."Pablo Neruda, “I Like You Calm, As If You Were Absent”
"She launched into an astounding description of this world of hers. Psychoanalytical symbols, dream interpretations, numerology and floral signs, puns and anagrams - all served to invest the slightest object or most casual incident with infinite purposiveness, aimed directly at her. In this universe there were no casual moments, not an inch of neutral territory, not one detail left to chance: it was governed by iron necessity, and significant in all its parts. To me it seemed removed, far from the earth and its human weakness, to a paradise or a hell. Hell now, beyond any doubt: her face was dark. At the same time I was fascinated by the grim fantasy world in which she moved. Madness for me possessed its own metaphysical dignity: I saw in it both a refusal and a circumvention of the human condition."Simone de Beauvoir, from The Prime of Life: The Autobiography of Simone de Beauvoir; 1929-1944
"Years of love have been forgot, In the hatred of a minute."Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Stories and Poems
"Fall for them but don’t let them ruin you…"Ernest Hemingway, “The Three Day”
"Every moon is brutal, every sun bitter."Arthur Rimbaud
"Is the true self this which stands on the pavement in January, or that which bends over the balcony in June? Am I here, or am I there? Or is the true self neither this nor that, neither here nor there, but something so varied and wandering that it is only when we give the rein to its wishes and let it take its way unimpeded that we are indeed ourselves?"Virginia Woolf, from “Streethaunting: A London Adventure,”
"Don’t let your loyalty become slavery. If they don’t appreciate what you bring to the table, then let them eat alone."
"No one will understand you. It is not, ultimately, that important. What is important is that you understand you."Matt Haig, The Humans
"What I want is for the two of us to meet somewhere by chance one day, like, passing on the street, or getting on the same bus."Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
"No one warns you about the amount of mourning in growth."Té V. Smith, Releasing & Recieving
"And we will talk of love
like we know of it
"Pranita Rimal // “unsent love letters”
"I want to feel but feeling comes with pain."Jeanette Winterson, from “Gut Symmetries,” published c. 1998
"To end suffering, you must first realize that your psyche is not okay. You must then acknowledge that it does not have to be that way. It can be healthy. It is truly a gift just to realize that you don’t have to put up with, or protect, your psyche. You don’t have to constantly be mulling over what you said or what this person thinks of you. What kind of life are you going to have if you worry about these things all the time? And her sensitivity is a symptom of non-well-being. It’s the same as when The body sends pain or displays other symptoms when it’s not well. Pain is not bad; it’s how the body talks to you. When you overeat, you get a stomachache. When you do something that puts too much stress on your arm, it starts to hurt. The body is communicating through its universal language: pain. Your psyche is communicating through its universal language: fear. Self-consciousness, jealousy, insecurity, anxiety—they are all fear.
If you mistreat an animal, it becomes afraid. This is what has happened to your psyche. You have mistreated it by giving it a responsibility that is incomprehensible. Just stop for a moment and see what you have given your mind to do. You said to your mind, “I want everyone to like me. I don’t want anyone to speak badly of me. I want everything I say and do to be acceptable and pleasing to everyone. I don’t want anyone to hurt me. I don’t want anything to happen that I don’t like. And I want everything to happen that I do like.” Then you said, “Now, mind, figure out how to make every one of these things a reality, even if you have to think about it day and night.” And of course your mind said, “I’m on the job. I will work on it constantly.”
"Michael A. Singer
"I knew I did from that first moment we met. It was… Not love at first sight exactly, but - familiarity. Like: oh, hello, it’s you. It’s going to be you."Mhairi McFarlane
"Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow."
Dil ba dil ra dara.
"The more I live the more I think two people together is a miracle."Adreienne Rich
"I dream about having a house by the water and not doing anything, not feeling ambitious, nor having the need to make money."Lee Pace
"The words of truth are always paradoxical."Lao Tzu
"Don’t be ashamed to be a human being, be proud!
Inside you one vault after another opens endlessly.
You’ll never be complete, and that’s as it should be."Tomas Tranströmer, from ‘Romanesque Arches’, The Half-finished Heaven
"If we all did the things we are capable of, we would astound ourselves."Thomas Edison
"Habseligkeiten"(noun, plural) Voted the most beautiful German word, the concept of Habseligkeiten is stunning yet, difficult to explain. Literally defined as belongings, Habseligkeiten are the small treasures and property, which define our happiness and sentiments. Although these possessions hold a dear place in our heart, they are useless to another person, such as a gold coin a child found during a treasure hunt in the woods. Overall, Habseligkeiten is characterized as beautiful personal belongings, which evolve from personal meanings: compassionate or sad attachments.
"Those who love you are not fooled by mistakes you have made or dark images you hold about yourself. They remember your beauty when you feel ugly; your wholeness when you are broken; your innocence when you feel guilty; and your purpose when you are confused."Alan Cohen
"She’s never where she is. She’s only inside her head."Janet Fitch, White Oleander.
"What can you know about a person? They shift in the light. You can’t light up all sides at once."Richard Siken, Portrait of Fryderyk in shifting light
"There are days that must happen to you."Walt Whitman
"I sleep. I dream. I make up things that I would never say. I say them very quietly."Richard Siken
"There is magic in decay.
A dance to be done
For the rotting,"Dan Chelotti, from “Compost,” Poetry (June 2014)
"My revenge will be artistic not personal."Beetlejuice (TV series), Dir. Tim Burton
"She’s confused and afraid to commit to the wrong thing, so she won’t commit to anything."Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
"I live with my contradictions
intact,…"David Ignatow, from Against the Evidence: Selected Poems, 1934–1994; “I live with my contradictions,”
"You are like night, calmed, constellated.
Your silence is star-like, as distant, as true."Pablo Neruda, “I Like You Calm, As If You Were Absent”
"She launched into an astounding description of this world of hers. Psychoanalytical symbols, dream interpretations, numerology and floral signs, puns and anagrams - all served to invest the slightest object or most casual incident with infinite purposiveness, aimed directly at her. In this universe there were no casual moments, not an inch of neutral territory, not one detail left to chance: it was governed by iron necessity, and significant in all its parts. To me it seemed removed, far from the earth and its human weakness, to a paradise or a hell. Hell now, beyond any doubt: her face was dark. At the same time I was fascinated by the grim fantasy world in which she moved. Madness for me possessed its own metaphysical dignity: I saw in it both a refusal and a circumvention of the human condition."Simone de Beauvoir, from The Prime of Life: The Autobiography of Simone de Beauvoir; 1929-1944
"Years of love have been forgot, In the hatred of a minute."Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Stories and Poems
"Fall for them but don’t let them ruin you…"Ernest Hemingway, “The Three Day”
"Every moon is brutal, every sun bitter."Arthur Rimbaud
"Is the true self this which stands on the pavement in January, or that which bends over the balcony in June? Am I here, or am I there? Or is the true self neither this nor that, neither here nor there, but something so varied and wandering that it is only when we give the rein to its wishes and let it take its way unimpeded that we are indeed ourselves?"Virginia Woolf, from “Streethaunting: A London Adventure,”
"Don’t let your loyalty become slavery. If they don’t appreciate what you bring to the table, then let them eat alone."
"No one will understand you. It is not, ultimately, that important. What is important is that you understand you."Matt Haig, The Humans
"What I want is for the two of us to meet somewhere by chance one day, like, passing on the street, or getting on the same bus."Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
"No one warns you about the amount of mourning in growth."Té V. Smith, Releasing & Recieving
"And we will talk of love
like we know of it
"Pranita Rimal // “unsent love letters”
"I want to feel but feeling comes with pain."Jeanette Winterson, from “Gut Symmetries,” published c. 1998
"To end suffering, you must first realize that your psyche is not okay. You must then acknowledge that it does not have to be that way. It can be healthy. It is truly a gift just to realize that you don’t have to put up with, or protect, your psyche. You don’t have to constantly be mulling over what you said or what this person thinks of you. What kind of life are you going to have if you worry about these things all the time? And her sensitivity is a symptom of non-well-being. It’s the same as when The body sends pain or displays other symptoms when it’s not well. Pain is not bad; it’s how the body talks to you. When you overeat, you get a stomachache. When you do something that puts too much stress on your arm, it starts to hurt. The body is communicating through its universal language: pain. Your psyche is communicating through its universal language: fear. Self-consciousness, jealousy, insecurity, anxiety—they are all fear.
If you mistreat an animal, it becomes afraid. This is what has happened to your psyche. You have mistreated it by giving it a responsibility that is incomprehensible. Just stop for a moment and see what you have given your mind to do. You said to your mind, “I want everyone to like me. I don’t want anyone to speak badly of me. I want everything I say and do to be acceptable and pleasing to everyone. I don’t want anyone to hurt me. I don’t want anything to happen that I don’t like. And I want everything to happen that I do like.” Then you said, “Now, mind, figure out how to make every one of these things a reality, even if you have to think about it day and night.” And of course your mind said, “I’m on the job. I will work on it constantly.”
"Michael A. Singer
"I knew I did from that first moment we met. It was… Not love at first sight exactly, but - familiarity. Like: oh, hello, it’s you. It’s going to be you."Mhairi McFarlane
"Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow."
Carrie Fisher on pursuing dreams despite mental illness [X]
"The hardest battle you will ever have to fight is between who you are now and who you want to be."
Anonymous
"The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink."
T.S. Eliot.
"Commit yourself to the process, NOT the project. Don’t be afraid to write badly, everyone does."
Frank Conroy
"I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year."
"I think all writing is a disease. You can’t stop it."
"I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year."
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"I think all writing is a disease. You can’t stop it."
"I have in me like a haze
Which holds and which is nothing
A nostalgia for nothing at all,
The desire for something vague."
Which holds and which is nothing
A nostalgia for nothing at all,
The desire for something vague."
Fernando Pessoa, opening lines to “[I have in me like a haze],” trans. Richard Zenith, Fernando Pessoa and Co.: Selected Poems (Grove Press, 1998).
"I think of other people
then I think of you.
I think of someone else
then I think of you.
"
then I think of you.
I think of someone else
then I think of you.
"
Jakob Maier, “Conversation With Self,” Conversations
"It’s summer, which means
my skin is all honey
before noon.
Which means
I’m celebrating the anniversaries
of lovers I never kissed and
bodies I never loved.
Which means
the air is humid
as an open mouth
with all this wanting."
"I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing."
my skin is all honey
before noon.
Which means
I’m celebrating the anniversaries
of lovers I never kissed and
bodies I never loved.
Which means
the air is humid
as an open mouth
with all this wanting."
POPSICLES AND GEORGIA O’KEEFFE PAINTINGS by Ashe Vernon
"I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing."
Anaïs Nin
"People do not see you, / They invent you and accuse you."
Hélène Cixous, from The Selected Plays of Hélène Cixous; “The Perjured City,”
"I would like to be known as an intelligent woman, a courageous woman, a loving woman, a woman who teaches by being."
Maya Angelou
"Forget who you’re ‘supposed to be’. None of us have to be anyone and that is the best part of life… you get to create and recreate yourself every day."
Koi Fresco
"I am so afraid of disappointing the people I love, I often forget that I am someone I love too. And I need kindness just as much as I believe the people I love do."
Nikita Gill
"I learned not to trust people; I learned not to believe what they say but to watch what they do; I learned to suspect that anyone and everyone is capable of ‘living a lie’. I came to believe that other people - even when you think you know them well - are ultimately unknowable."
Lynn Barber, An Education
"…to be loved / and found magical, / like a secret…"
Anne Sexton, from The Complete Poems; “The Fury of Flowers and Worms,”
"But she was not made for any man, And she never will be all mine."
"May you not rest as long as I am living. You said I killed you — haunt me then."
"I didn’t just lose what I had. I lost what I hoped for."
"I’ve polished this anger and now it’s a knife."
Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Witch-Wife”, Renascence and Other Poems
"May you not rest as long as I am living. You said I killed you — haunt me then."
"I didn’t just lose what I had. I lost what I hoped for."
"I’ve polished this anger and now it’s a knife."
Cathy Linh Che, from “Go Forget Your Father,” published in Poetry
"some days I feel like I am an impossible person to love"
"Overflow gently — don’t drown."
Albert Camus, Notebooks (1935-1951)
"It was only much later that I came to realize that just to be there is also a form of giving."
Clarice Lispector, from The Foreign Legion: Stories; “A Sincere Friendship,”
"You know what? You’re an individual, and that makes people nervous. And it’s gonna keep making people nervous for the rest of your life."
"I’d gaze at him
as though his were the first
face I’d ever seen."
as though his were the first
face I’d ever seen."
Ellen Bass, from Mules of Love; “Remodeling the Bathroom,”
"It is quite unbelievable that there will be people that I will love unconditionally that I have not met yet.
Somewhere out there, in a supermarket or singing in the shower, there are souls that have not touched mine yet but will, eventually."
Somewhere out there, in a supermarket or singing in the shower, there are souls that have not touched mine yet but will, eventually."
// The Skies We’re Under
j.d.m.
j.d.m.
"Be of good heart."
Vincent van Gogh, “Letter to Theo Van Gogh” January 1873
"Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."
Franz Kafka
"I like people to be unhappy because I like them to have souls. Now unhappiness means vapour, atmosphere, interest. I am often unhappy. I was cursing my fate at two this morning, sitting up in bed, wishing to be killed instantly. You will never guess why."
Virginia Woolf, from a letter to Edward Sackville-West c. September 1926
"To agree with anti-vegan arguments I would have to believe we have a right to use animals for food, clothing and entertainment etc. even when alternatives are available to us. I would have to believe animals are exploited and slaughtered ‘humanely’ in slaughterhouses. I would have to ignore nutritional science. I would have to believe it’s just a personal choice to kill or not to kill animals and believe there is an equivalence. I would have to ignore a lot of science on climate change. I would have to be more satisfied with thought terminating cliches like ‘found the vegan!’ than actually bothering to look at the issues and learn things. I would have to be intellectually satisfied using arguments about canine teeth, lions killing animals, being stranded on deserted islands, plants having feelings etc in order to justify only certain forms of animal exploitation and slaughter. Nope."
Benny Malone
"You will not recognize me.
This time, I put my pieces back differently."
This time, I put my pieces back differently."
Malia Makana, Like Differently Love
"If you realize that you’re the problem, then you can change yourself, learn something, and grow wiser. Most people want everyone else in the world to change but themselves. Let me tell you, it’s easier to change yourself than everyone else."
Robert T. Kiyosaki
"It is paradoxical that even in this heaviness I feel unusually free and easy, and it occurred to me suddenly the other night that this may be because I am not in love with anyone. I feel independent, as I did when I was a child, before I came to understand the promise and responsibility of gender."
Anne Truitt, from a journal entry featured in “Turn: The Journal of an Artist,”
"I go back and forth between wanting the universe and wanting nothing more than a small corner of the room."
"Internal validation means that ultimately, the source of esteem and satisfaction comes from within; it means that you believe in your own intrinsic value regardless of how others see you."
Where Do You Get Your Validation? (taken from doctornerdlove.com)
"days you want to spend alone in bed / not because you hate the world but because you love a version of it that’s / elsewhere."
Uyen Hua, from a/s/l
"Forgive yourself every night, Recommit every morning."
"We never know self-realization. We are two abysses - a well staring at the sky."
"There is no peace, I’m sorry to say. We find it. We lose it. We find it again. We lose it again."
The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa
"There is no peace, I’m sorry to say. We find it. We lose it. We find it again. We lose it again."
Kurt Vonnegut, from Slapstick
"Sleep is my lover now, my forgetting, my opiate, my oblivion."
"I don’t do anything with my life except romanticize and decay with indecision."
Allen Ginsberg, The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice
"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."
Buddha
"I myself am half-hell
and half-morning."
and half-morning."
Hannah Cohen, from “Self-Portrait as Grendel,” published in Calamus Journal
"Resist the temptation to think what afflicts you is peculiar to you. Have faith that what is in your consciousness can be communicated to the consciousness of all. And is, in many cases, already there."
Alice Walker, The Temple of My Familiar
"Your love has passed through me and now I feel my mind something like an opal, that is, full of strange uncertain hues and colours, of warm lights and quick shadows and of broken music."
"
"I feel that it is necessary and ordained that I should be alone, a stranger and an exile in relation to every human circle without exception."
Do it or don’t do it — you will regret both.
"
Søren Kierkegaard, from Either/Or
"I feel that it is necessary and ordained that I should be alone, a stranger and an exile in relation to every human circle without exception."
Simone Weil, from a journal entry featured in “Waiting for God; The Letters and Notebooks,”
"Everything you feel is okay. Everything you feel is okay."
Andrea Gibson, “Panic Button Collector”
"I am my own enemy, I am my own murderer! My own murderer, that is what I am!"
Fyodor Dostoevsky, from Selected Prose; “The Double,”
"August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time."
Sylvia Plath
"It takes a special someone to see darkness inside of someone and not condemn them."
Shannon Messenger, Everblaze: Keeper of the Lost Cities
"I go to sleep alone, and wake up alone. I take walks. I work until I’m tired. I watch the wind play with the trash that’s been under the snow all winter. Everything seems simple until you think about it. Why is love intensified by absence?"
Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife
"…pure / shiver, pure Saturn."
Margaret Atwood, from Selected Poems II: 1976 - 1986; “Bad Mouth,”
"I am sick of lovable people, Somehow they are a lie."
D.H. Lawrence, from The Complete Poems; “Elemental,”
"How much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it’s some kind of murder?"
Richard Siken, Portrait of Fryderyk in Shifting Light, from War of the Foxes.
"My restlessness, which was vague and lyrical, has become sharp-pointed and intolerably clear."
Anaïs Nin, in a diary entry from The Diary of Anaïs Nin: Vol. 1, 1931-1934
"I feel free
to choose
my suffering."
to choose
my suffering."
Abbas Kiarostami, from tr. by Iman Tavassoly, from Winds & Leaf: Poems
"…I want enough time to be in love with everything."
Marina Keegan, The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories
"Not all toxic people are cruel and uncaring. Some of them love us dearly. Many of them have good intentions. Most are toxic to our being simply because their needs and way of existing in the world force us to compromise ourselves and our happiness. They aren’t inherently bad people, but they aren’t the right people for us. And as hard as it is, we have to let them go. Life is hard enough without being around people who bring you down, and as much as you care, you can’t destroy yourself for the sake of someone else. You have to make your well being a priority. Whether that means breaking up with someone, loving a family member from a distance, letting go of a friend, or removing yourself from a situation that feels painful – you have every right to leave and create a safer space for yourself."
Daniell Koepke
"Maybe it was entirely my fault, I don’t know. I wildly overestimated my own strength, I suppose. And I don’t, darling, I don’t want to be this kind of person at all but I’m afraid I’m really disintegrating…"
Elizabeth Bishop, from a letter to Loren McIver written c. July 1949
"If you find the river of happiness, drown."
Sean Wilhelm.
"I think I am the victim of a dream."
Anaïs Nin, from a diary entry featured in Trapeze: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1947–1955
"Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion."
bell hooks All About Love - New Visions
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