26 April 2012
...that others might pick them up.
"There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up." -Oscar Wilde
...ruled by Frankenstein logic.
"We live in a Newtonian world of Einsteinian physics ruled by Frankenstein logic." -David Russell
...live to be 100 minus 1 day...
"If you live to be 100, I hope I live to be 100 minus 1 day, so I never have to live without you." -Winnie the Pooh
The irreversibility of time...
"The irreversibility of time is the mechanism that brings order out of chaos." -Unknown
...death i think is no parenthesis
"for life's not a paragraph / and death i think is no parenthesis" -e.e. cummings
...i carry your heart...
"here is the deeper secret nobody knows / (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud / and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows / higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) / and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart // i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)" -e.e. cummings; i carry your heart with me
...a heaven where some screams have gone?
"Do you think there's a heaven where some screams have gone?" -Unknown
...I wrote myself into the world.
"I made myself with words. I wrote myself into the world." -Benjamin Hale; The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore
...ruined everything / In the nicest way
"You should know / How great things were before you / Even so / They're better still today / I can't think of who I was before / You ruined everything / In the nicest way" -Jonathan Coulton; You Ruined Everything
09 April 2012
Damaged people are dangerous...
"Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive." -Josephine Hart
...that we are powerful beyond measure.
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure." -Marianne Williamson
The goal of all inanimate objects...
"The goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately defeat him." -Russell Baker
06 April 2012
...to break your own heart.
"You are not a terrible person for wanting to beak up with someone you love. You don't need a reason to leave. Wanting to leave is enough. Leaving doesn't mean you're incapable of real love or that you'll never love anyone else again. It doesn't mean you're morally bankrupt or psychologically demented or a nymphomaniac. It means you wish to change the terms of one particular relationship. That's all. Be brave enough to break your own heart." -Sugar; Dear Sugar, The Rumpus Advice Column
...a right to such tiny beautiful things...
"One hot afternoon during the year in which you've gotten yourself ridiculously tangled up with heroin you will be riding the bus and thinking what a worthless piece of crap you are when a little girl will get on the bus holding the strings of two purple balloons. She'll offer you one of the balloons, but you won't take it because you believe you no longer have a right to such tiny beautiful things. You're wrong. You do." -Sugar; Dear Sugar, The Rumpus Advice Column
...These things are your becoming.
"The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people's diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming." -Sugar; Dear Sugar, The Rumpus Advice Column
...we have to continue upward...
"But the thing about rising is we have to continue upward, the thing about going beyond is we have to keep going." -Sugar; Dear Sugar, The Rumpus Advice Column
...You don't have to be broken for me.
"Don't get me wrong. I want to hear everything about your life. But I want you to know that you don't need to tell me this to get me to love you. You don't have to be broken for me." -Sugar; Dear Sugar, The Rumpus Advice Column
Happiness is like catching air...
"Happiness is like catching air in a jar. You think you have caught something so worthwhile, only it has been there all along." -Unknown
05 April 2012
...I was a different person then.
"But it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then." Lewis Carroll; Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Healing is a small and ordinary...
"Healing is a small and ordinary and very burnt thing. And it's one thing and one thing only: it's doing what you have to do." -Cheryl Strayed
We are all in the gutter...
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." -Oscare Wilde
Life is a spell so exquisite...
"Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it." -Emily Dickinson
04 April 2012
...Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.
" 'Unhappy is the land that breeds no hero.' 'No ... Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.' " -Bertolt Brecht; Life of Galileo
Invisible Pink Unicorns....
"Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of great spiritual power. We know this because they are capable of being invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorn is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can’t see them." -Steve Eley
...all crazy and pissed off!
" 'And what happens when you repress something?' 'It goes away?' 'It comes back, all crazy and pissed off!' " -Wonderfalls (TV)
...Transformation isn’t a butterfly...
"I used to see a butterfly in my mind’s eye every time I heard the word transformation, but life has schooled me. Transformation isn’t a butterfly. It’s the thing before you get to be a pretty bug flying away. It’s huddling in the dark cocoon and then pushing your way out." -Sugar; Dear Sugar
02 April 2012
Withholding distorts reality...
"Withholding distorts reality. It makes the people who do the withholding ugly and small-hearted. It makes the people from whom things are withheld crazy and desperate and incapable of knowing what they actually feel. / So release yourself from that. Don’t be strategic or coy. Strategic and coy are for jackasses. Be brave. Be authentic. Practice saying the word love to the people you love so when it matters the most to say it, you will." -Sugar; Dear Sugar
...tinging everything with shades of gray.
"Maybe we visited a place so dark that we couldn't see anything but the trauma or our loved one's absence and maybe when we came back, part of that place stuck to us like a layer of soot across our eyes. Or an iron weight in our throat. A shadow that filters how we feel and think about the world, tinging everything with shades of gray." -Dani Burlison; One Settled Comfortable in the Cuckoo's Nest
...power to stand on its own.
"The last word that my mother ever said to me was love. She was so sick and weak and out of her head she couldn't muster the 'I' or the 'you,' but it didn't matter. That puny word has the power to stand on its own." -Sugar; Dear Sugar
...realize they were the big things.
"Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things." -Unknown
...beauty is goodness.
"What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness." -Leo Tolstoy
27 January 2012
...born nice as hell...
"I was born nice as hell. I was born so damn sweet. I could never get mad. I could never get in trouble. Good good good. I curtsied. I studied hard. I said my prayers. I finished my food. If I went to your mom’s house I’d make her love me. I was born with an invisible locket around my neck. Only half of a heart. The right half. The half that said, 'BE.' Everyone else had the 'MINE.' " -Melissa Chadburn
26 January 2012
What is a ghost?...
"What is a ghost? A tragedy condemned to repeat itself time and again? An instant of pain, perhaps. Something dead which still seems to be alive. An emotion suspended in time. Like a blurred photograph. Like an insect trapped in amber." -The Devil's Backbone (movie)
...by this infallible sign...
"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this infallible sign: that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." -Jonathan Swift
...who you cannot live without.
"Love isn't about who you live with... it's about who you cannot live without." -Unknown
...full extent of the evil...
"There is hardly a man clever enough to recognize the full extent of the evil he does." -Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld
18 January 2012
...a silent parallel world...
"There are people with the same hidden opinions and fantasies and together their thoughts are a silent parallel world where secrets are few." -Winston Rowntree; Virus Comix
...I still read fairy-tales...
"If I'm honest I have to tell you I still read fairy-tales and I like them best of all." -Audrey Hepburn
...to be anything at all
"How strange it is to be anything at all" -Neutral Milk Hotel; In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
12 January 2012
...get over a break up?...
" 'How do you get over a break up? How do you cope with that amount of pain, logistical nightmares, and abject sadness?' 'You let time pass. That's the cure. You survive the days. You float like a rabid ghost through the weeks. You cry and wallow and lament and scratch your way back up through the months. And then one day you find yourself alone on a bench in the sun and you close your eyes and lean your head back and realize you're okay." -Sugar; Dear Sugar, The Rumpus Advice Column
...Write like a motherfucker.
"So write ... Not like a girl. Not like a boy. Write like a motherfucker." -Sugar; Dear Sugar, The Rumpus Advice Column
...Love, child! What else?...
" 'What will I find, my lord priest?' ... 'Love, child! What else? You will find it and lose it, again and again. And with each finding and each loss, you will become more than before. What you make of it is yours to choose.' " -Jacqueline Carey; Kushiel's Scion
...Give me just one reason...
"Take the book and cross away and take them out out the door'; / Take them from my hand, 'cause I don't want to them anymore. / If I had the choice, you know I wouldn't fight this war. / Give me just one reason this damn world's worth fighting for." -Seanan McGuire; Book and Cross
...Absolutely Nothing and Absolutely Everything...
"You are what happens when Absolutely Nothing and Absolutely Everything fuck" -Sera Beak; Divinewinks.com
...Forget the broken places...
"There is a place within you that has never been broken. No matter what fractures and cracks, no matter what seismic blows have battered your heart year after year after wearying year, within you there is something that grows strong, that stands. It has never been laid low by storm, never drowned in flood, never frozen and cracked. It has never burned to the ground, never faded away. ... Forget the broken places. Forget dragging those bags of dust around with you. The broken places had their shot. Do you want them in charge forever? Aren’t you bored with those 'not good enough' messages? Aren’t you done being the broken girl? Go to the source. Find that still place unbroken in your being and let it speak." -Dianne Sylvan
...we fight for roses, too!
"Yes, it is bread we fight for -- but we fight for roses, too!" -James Oppenheim; Bread and Roses
09 January 2012
Every time you see the sun...
"Every time you see the sun, take it as a personal challenge. Can you make your heart beam that badass and bright?" -Sera Beak; Divinewinks.com
06 January 2012
...hardly enough of me left...
"... for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people. 'But it's no use now,' thought poor Alice, 'to pretend to be two people! Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make ONE respectable person!' " -Lewis Carroll; Alice in Wonderland
...till I'm somebody else
"It'll be no use their putting their heads down and saying 'Come up again, dear!' I shall only look up and say 'Who am I then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, I'll come up: if not, I'll stay down here till I'm somebody else' " -Lewis Carroll; Alice in Wonderland
That proves you are unusual...
" 'That proves you are unusual,' returned the Scarecrow; 'and I am convinced that the only people worthy of consideration in this world are the unusual ones. For the common folk are like leaves of a tree, and live and die unnoticed.' " -L. Frank Baum; The Road to Oz
You have some queer friends...
" 'You have some queer friends, Dorothy,' she said. 'The queerness doesn't matter, so long as they're friends,' was the answer." -L. Frank Baum; The Road to Oz
...you were red with me.
"... as one would press [a handkerchief] / against a wound from which life, all in one spurt, / is trying to escape--I held you close / till you were red with me." -Rilke
Every life ... 'has a sister ship,'...
"Every life, Transtromer writes, 'has a sister ship,' one that follows 'quite another route' than the one we ended up taking. We want it to be otherwise, but it cannot be: the people we might have been live in a different, phantom life than the people we are. ... I'll never know and neither will you of the life you don't choose. We'll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. IT was the ghost ship that didn't carry us. There's nothing to do but salute it from the shore." -Sugar; Dear Sugar, the Rumpus Advice Column
...green tree in your heart...
"Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come." -Chinese proverb
...wrong / In all the right ways...
"So raise your glass if you are wrong / In all the right ways / All my underdogs, we will never be, never be / Anything but loud / And nitty gritty dirty little freaks" -Pink; Raise Your Glass
...dumb, panicky dangerous animals...
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody *knew* the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody *knew* the Earth was flat ... Imagine what you'll know tomorrow." -Men in Black (movie)
...a part of you now...
"Know that all those stories and poems and plays and novels are a part of you now and that they are bigger than you and they will always be." -Sugar; Dear Sugar, the Rumpus Advice Column
...Make it yours...
"The most terrible and beautiful and interesting things happen in a life. For some of you, those things have already happened. Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will." -Sugar; Dear Sugar, the Rumpus Advice Column
...Carry it with me...
"I hope when people ask what you're going to do with your English and/or creative writing degree you'll say: _Continue my bookish examination of the contradictions and complexities of human motivation and desire;_ or maybe just: _Carry it with me, as I do everything that matters._ And then smile very serenely until they say _oh._" -Sugar; Dear Sugar, the Rumpus Advice Column
...the philosophical hatred of the world?
"Religion says that this world is not good enough for us--that there is more, or that there should be. What is religion but the philosophical hatred of the world?" -Benjamin Hale; The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore
...but rather the world's creation.
"But when an infant gazes into his mother's eyes and speaks a first word--even if he has no clue what it 'means'--*that* is language. The child's first word is *not* a symbol. It is not a representation, it is not a sign impregnated with abstract meaning, it is not a signifier and not a semiote. It is not a thin coating of significance painted over the surface of an a priori extant concept, suddenly revealing its definition like the act of throwing a sheet over something invisible. It is not a representation. Before a word becomes any of these things, it is simply an *act*. It is not a naming of the world, but rather the world's creation." -Benjamin Hale; The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore
...must always be drunk...
"If you ever have children, tell them they must always be drunk. Drunk on love, drunk on poetry, drunk on wine, it doesn't matter. This world is too goddamn painful to waste a second of your existence sober." -Benjamin Hale; The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore
...in a sate of constant pursuit...
"And it was this vanity and greed and lust that drove me to--following your example some several million years too late--come down out of the tree. I climbed down from that tree to spend the rest of my life running from the yawning darkness of animal terror toward the light of fire stolen from the gods, and like you, I remain in a sate of constant pursuit, never quite escaping the darkness, nor ever reaching the light." -Benjamin Hale; The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore
05 January 2012
...Sphinx without a secret.
"She had a passion for secrecy, but she was merely a Sphinx without a secret." -Oscar Wilde; The Sphinx without a Secret
...discover everything except the obvious.
"Women have wonderful instincts about thing. They can discover everything except the obvious." -Oscar Wilde; An Ideal Husband
We read fantasy...
"We read fantasy because we crave wonder, a longing no one should ever lose. We read because it is life writ large on a vast canvas, and the timeless arc of the hero's journey resonates for us. ... We read because fantasy, unshackled from the constraints of reality, is free to explore the depth and breadth of the human condition; to tackle ethical quandries from unexpected directions; to ask philosphical questions couched in the form of entertainment; to use allegory to hold up a mirror and make us look at ourselves anew. We read to visit worlds that aren't, but show us the shape of a world that could be. ... We read because fantasy offers a beacon of hope in an increasingly cynical and materialistic world, an unapologetic celebration of the abiding power of storytelling and the triumph of good over evil." -Jacqueline Carey
...People die at all ages...
"20. When my son was six he said, “We don’t know how many years we have for our lives. People die at all ages.” He said it without anguish or remorse, without fear or desire. It has been healing to me to accept in a very simple way that my mother’s life was 45 years long, that there was nothing beyond that. There was only my expectation that there would be—-my mother at 89, my mother at 63, my mother at 46. Those things don’t exist. They never did. / 21. Think: *my son’s life was 22 years long.* Breathe in. / 22. Think: *my son’s life was 22 years long.* Breathe out. / 23. There is no 23." -Sugar; Dear Sugar
...go on as you never have...
"It is impossible for you to go on as you were before, so you must go on as you never have. It’s wrong that this is required of you. It’s wrong that your son died. It will always be wrong. The obliterated place [from your son's death] is equal parts destruction and creation. The obliterated place is pitch black and bright light. It is water and parched earth. It is mud and it is manna. The real work of deep grief is making a home there." Sugar; Dear Sugar
...conversation / / without us.
"i want our / lips to have / a conversation / / without us." -Taylor Marie Meredith; they have a lot to say
...Thank you for existing so intensely.
"Once, when you thought no one was looking, I saw you open your heart so wide the earth fell in. Once, when you thought no one was listening, I heard you sigh so deep the oceans roared with support. Once, when you thought you were all alone, I felt every atom in this universe rush forward to embrace you. Again. Thank you for existing so intensely." -Sera Beak; Divine Winks
...make that self over and over...
"In life, we have to make ourselves. In art, we have to make that self over and over again and present it to the world. We have to put it up on the wall or down on the page or project it on a screen or allow it to resound or glide or crackle across the room. And each time we do that, we must endure the sense that perhaps all has failed, that no one wants this, that we are too much that. Too ordinary or female or obsessed with turtles or experimental or rural or Jewish or derivative or slutty or neurotic or sentimental or gay or Jesus-worshipping or Asian or emotionally restrained or outside-the-whole-MFA-thing or linguistically dense or offensively lewd or just incredibly stupid and weird and boring. / Each time!" -Sugar; Dear Sugar
You linger on the edge...
"You linger on the edge... as if it is comfortable... as if it is your home. The most loving thing life can offer you is a push." -Sera Beak; Divine Winks
...not found 'here' nor 'there'...
"The divine is not found 'here' nor 'there' but in the giggling spaces between set beliefs." -Sera Beak; Divine Winks
...That was It. Thank you.
"That thing you did a few moments ago, or days, or years, or lifetimes... you know the one... when you stopped trying so hard to 'be spiritual' and started relaxing real soft into simply being you... oh yes, that. That was It. Thank you." -Sera Beak; Divine Winks
...how not to dance
"I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance" -e e Cummings
...teacher creates many masterpieces...
"Teaching is the greatest of all the arts, for the teacher creates many masterpieces all at the same time." -Michael Barringer
...the tale of the world...
"Sara Kendell once read somewhere that the tale of the world is like a tree." -Charles de Lint; Moonheart
...the music that lovers hear.
"I envy the music that lovers hear." -Charles de Lint; Moonlight Vines
...sing the song of parenthood...
"We sing the song of parenthood in only the major notes." -Sugar; Dear Sugar
...all the magic I have known...
"But all the magic I have known / I've had to make myself." -Shel Silverstein; Where the Sidewalk Ends
...all the colors I am inside...
"And all the colors I am inside / Have not been invented yet." -Shel Silverstein; Where the Sidewalk Ends
...do with My Wife?!!!...
"'What the hell did you do with My Wife?!!!' God has been asking us for thousands of years." -Divine Winks
What has writing taught you?...
"'What has writing taught you?' 'How to be fierce. How to forgive. How to see the world spinning from another perspective. How to build a sacred hut. How to find and hold ten thousand versions of the truth. How to fail. How to work incredibly hard on the smallest, most invisible thing. / How to be quiet and scared and brave.'" -Sugar; 50-in-50
...The world is rudderless.
"The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theorists actually believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish baking conspiracy or grey aliens or the 12 foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control. The truth is more frightening, nobody is in control. The world is rudderless." -Alan Moore
Life isn't divided into genres...
"Life isn't divided into genres. It's horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky." -Alan Moore
...learning something new every day...
"Knowledge is learning something new every day. Wisdom is letting go of something every day." -Zen proverb
...Our core is madness...
"At the bottom, you see, we are not Homo-sapiens at all. Our core is madness. The prime directive is murder. What Darwin was too polite to say, my friends, is that we came to rule the earth not because we were the smartest, or even the meanest, but because we were the craziest, most murderous motherfucks in the jungle." -Stephen King
...there was only one Christian...
"In truth, there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross." -Friedrich Nietzsche
04 January 2012
...watch with glittering eyes...
"And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it." -Roald Dahl
...not willing to look stupid...
"If you are not willing to look stupid, nothing great is ever going to happen to you." -House (TV show)
...Beautiful people do not just happen.
"The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen." -Elizabeth Kubler Ros
...don't want the whole world...
"Well, I don't want the whole world / The sun, the moon, and all their light / I just want to be the only girl / You love all your life" -The Band Perry; All Your Life
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